Healing – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Kairos Time by Beth Bartlett

I love the time between the Winter Solstice and New Year’s – a time of suspended animation, a reprieve from the demands of daily life, a respite from the woes of the world, from needing to pay attention to the time of day, days of the week, and tasks that need to be accomplished. A whole week with nothing scheduled on the calendar. Simply presence. It is a liminal time on the threshold between the old year and the new – whether measured by the turning of the planet from dark to light on the Solstice or of the Gregorian calendar year – a time when many of us pause and reflect on the year past and our hopes for the year to come. It is a moment of what the Greeks called Kairos time, as opposed to Chronos time, by which we measure most of our lives — in seconds, minutes, hours, days, and years.

In the years I spent in academia, my life was governed by Chronos time that often forced me to live in the future rather than the present. Course scheduling and book orders needed to happen far in advance. Course syllabi planned students’ readings and assignments for the next several months ahead. Learning was to occur in specific blocks of time, which always struck me as such a bizarre way to teach and learn, when we’d have to break off discussion and deep learning simply because the hour was up.

Keeping an Open Heart: My Ode to Father Ted by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

***Trigger Warning: Discussion includes sexual violence***

Father Ted and his friends helped me move in 1978. I have a bandanna on my head and Father Ted is behind me.

In early 1977 when I was 21 years old, I was followed into a building and attacked with a knife. I was raped. It is hard to express the rent in your soul when something like that happens. And yet it is a common trauma in our patriarchal world, used as a weapon of war and, in general, to control women’s bodies. When I think of Israeli women being raped even as they were murdered, I don’t even know how to process that level of evil. As for myself, I was an easy mark as victim because I had been groomed to be meek by childhood abuse.

Initiation and Descent, part 2 by Terry Folks

Part 1 was posted yesterday, you can read it here.

Stage Nine – Reward (Seizing the Sword) – Healing the Mother/Daughter Split

Some contemporary versions of the Heroine’s Journey have the heroine or hero seizing the sword quite dramatically. She takes possession of the treasure ‘sword’ as knowledge, experience, or greater understanding. My reward was more subtle but deeply profound. It took Her awhile to help me understand but eventually I stopped fighting and leaned into Mother Mountain. When I was calmer, when I became still, stopped trying so hard … when I finally surrendered I was able to ask Her why.

Why Mother Mountain? Why COVID? Why now?

Her response was as clear as though She was speaking in my ear:

“It was the only way we could meet each other. Every step you have taken up to now has led you to this sacred moment.”

I wept.

A Recipe for Dancing Your Soul Home

When you hear the word ‘soul’, what is your first association?

Soul is a complex and much-debated word, that often brings up strong feelings. Without going into religious or philosophical discourse, it is often associated with the breath, and with that mysterious spark of life force that animates the body. I discussed soul in a previous post Untangling the Triad of Life Force, Spirit and Soul. Today I write about soul as a fluid concept, an essence that can get dispersed and also retrieved, and propose a light self-retrieval through dance as remedy that you can do by yourself.

“I Don’t Want to Be “More Feminine”: Deconstructing Gender Together by Elizabeth Jenkins

Long, long ago, back before I met my husband, I met another young man at (my former) church.

I thought he was cute, fun, and funny. We spent a few months meeting up regularly for lunch, dinner, or boba. Always talking, always laughing.

Never doing anything that clearly wasn’t just friendship. Never defining the relationship.

Eventually, I noticed that he wasn’t initiating as much as he used to. I figured he was probably losing interest in anything potentially romantic, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. So, over bubble tea drinks, I asked if he could clarify how he understood what we’d been doing these last few months—did he see it as a friendship or as dating?

On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

This is an excerpt of Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World, which comes out in paperback on September 12th. Called “A must-read for anyone navigating the work of justice and healing.” by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, it applies Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance to contemporary personal and systemic issues. This is an excerpt from Chapter Four, which addresses institutional repentance.

Most of us are part of many institutions—places of work, our own and/or our children’s schools and universities, houses of worship, co-working spaces, community organizations, sports leagues, social networking websites, the list goes on. And these institutions can and do perpetrate harm. Sometimes, that harm impacts us as individuals—as stakeholders or beneficiaries of those institutions, or as those excluded or hurt by them—and sometimes it can impact our local or national culture.

Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time by Kapka Kassabova, Book review by Laura Shannon

Kapka Kassabova is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, born in Bulgaria and now living in the Scottish Highlands. Her newest work of narrative nonfiction, Elixir, soars with the luminous prose and unflinching honesty we have come to expect from this brilliantly gifted writer.

Elixir is an extraordinary, profoundly moving book. The moment I finished reading it, I began again from the beginning, pausing only to order multiple copies for friends. Like Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, Kassabova effortlessly integrates science and the sacred, addressing historical, ecological, and personal trauma with clarity, compassion, and hope. Elixir combines memoir, travel, history, ethnography, botany, philosophy, spirituality, eco-psychology, traditional Chinese medicine, and even alchemy, in a subtle, sophisticated exploration which defies categorisation.

From the Archives: Artemis As Artemisia: Ancient Female Spirituality & Modern Medicine by Stuart Dean

This was originally posted on November 29, 2015

Detail of Artemis from a 5th century BCE Attic Vase

The 2015 Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded in part to a Chinese woman (Tu) for her identification and isolation to treat malaria of a chemical known as Artemisinin. The name of that chemical derives from the fact that it is found in varying amounts in the ‘family’ (technically, genus) of plants known as Artemisia. The name of that family derives from its association with the goddess Artemis.

Because Tu’s work began in China in the 1960s it is understandable that even if she knew this about Artemisia (a term I use to refer to any one plant or all of the plants of that family) it would not have been a ‘careerbuilder’ for her to point it out to those for whom she was working. It was bad enough that she was a woman. At that place and time, however, if she had said or done something that could be associated with Western culture her name might not even be known today.

Integrating Snake Medicine Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, published yesterday, I described the first steps of my personal journey of soul recovery, including my first encounter with Green Snake, in statues, dreams and hypnotherapy. Those experiences led to choosing to tattoo Green Snake on my left arm. Read more about finding my Medicine and embracing my Golden Shadow as I stepped into an ancient lineage of Snake Healers.

Sometimes we encounter really sweet, or funny gems on the road of individuation… Let’s start with one like that!

Sweet Intermezzo (6 years ago…)

In the film The Matrix, Neo receives a message to “follow the White Rabbit.” Just before I met my partner, he encountered a live Green Snake slithering across a forest trail in Thailand, followed by a Neo-like dream to “follow the Green Snake.”

Integrating Snake Medicine Part 1

This post describes some of the steps on my personal journey of soul recovery across many, many years. It can be traced back to when I was 3 or 4 years old. Each header reflects a significant moment towards finding my Medicine and embracing my Golden Shadow of stepping into an ancient lineage of Snake Healers.

Although many of the steps created an immediate shift in my consciousness, this kind of individuation usually doesn’t happen overnight. I’m sharing it to honour the unfolding trails across time, and to encourage people to surrender to their journey, while letting go of a specific outcome. Part 2 will be published tomorrow.