Herstory – Page 16 – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: TULIP by Esther Nelson

This was originally posted on May 7, 2022

I’ve been blown away this Spring by the abundant beauty and sheer number of tulips planted throughout Roanoke, Virginia, a city I’m beginning to think of as “home.”

If I were to pick a favorite flower, it would be the tulip, yet I find it impossible to look at a tulip without being reminded of my religious upbringing regarding “salvation” as represented in the acronym of Calvinism’s “Five Points.” Each tulip displays five petals in its flower. Each petal stands for one point.

T=Total Depravity

U=Unconditional Election

L=Limited Atonement

I=Irresistible Grace

P=Preservation and Perseverance of the saints.

When my (now ex-) sister-in-law delivered her first baby one Spring, I gave her a pot of tulip plants, reminding her that T-U-L-I-P was the basis of our faith. The plant didn’t live to the following Spring, portending perhaps my future abandonment of T-U-L-I-P doctrine—doctrine being an interpretation of Scripture. T-U-L-I-P lays out an understanding of soteriology (doctrine explaining human salvation) hammered out by the French theologian John Calvin (1509-1564) and developed further by his Protestant followers.

Expansion and Contraction: The Rhythms of Life by Dr. Mary Gelfand

Mary and her Aunt Dot (Dorothy Ellis) near the end of her life

This morning, my husband and I loaded seven large orange garbage bags into the car, along with two containers each of paper products and plastics. Off we went to the local transfer station to dispose of our trash and recycling. Next, we drove to the grocery store and came home with 3 bags of food. Disposables out, consumables in.

This rhythm is familiar from my old urban life as well—haul garbage cans to the curb—shop for more food. Indeed, it is a pattern repeated multiple times daily across the country, and perhaps even the world. It is a pattern present in our bodies and the bodies of all other living things. Receive food, water, air—release waste products composed of food, water and air. A simple process of in and out—inhale and exhale—repeated ad infinitum until death claims us.

In the Journey of the Universe, cosmologist Brian Swimme discusses the creation of the universe in terms of natural cycles of expansion and contraction. These “two opposing dynamics, expansion and contraction, were the dominant powers operating at the beginning of the universe. … the universe as a whole…has been shaped by these two opposing and creative dynamics. (p. 6)”

Our Parent Who Art In Charge: The Subconscious Idolatry of Authoritarian Parenting by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I remember the first time I noticed my oldest child intentionally tell me a lie. She was probably six. Of course, she had fibbed plenty of times as a toddler, but those were more like experiments by a budding scientist to discover what would happen if she said this or that. But as a slightly older child, this lie – which I saw through immediately – was clearly an attempt to escape punishment or chastisement of some kind.

Frankly, it was an understandable, intelligent choice. I stared at her, frozen, feeling like a failure as a parent. I realized in that moment that it was entirely because of me that she was lying. I had clearly taught her that telling me the truth led to undesirable outcomes – shaming, ‘consequences,’ maybe even anger – and forced her to choose between two bad options: now she felt bad about the lie, too.

It was a pivotal moment in my parenting journey, because I had been raised with the idea that my job as a parent was to be in charge, teach right from wrong, and direct my kids’ behavior and choices. Basically, I should be a benevolent dictator. But that idea had never really sat well with me, so I had been trying to find alternatives to either authoritarian or permissive parenting styles. I didn’t have a term for it at the time, but nowadays, you could call what I was seeking ‘democratic parenting.’

The Gift of Enduring Friendship by Sara Wright

Mathias Klang from Göteborg, Sweden, Wikimedia Commons

After I experienced a sudden shattering break in a friendship with a woman writer/editor that I loved (that I believed would endure any personal difficulty) I was unable to process the event. I wrote a short poem to express my disbelief in which I likened this betrayal to the cutting down of this woman’s tree and left it at that. Silence is a killer of soul. There is no place to go.

The profound rupture of this woman thread felt catastrophic (I have never had a woman friend like her), and in retrospect I still see and experience our friendship in this light. At the time my life was in crisis. I had other consuming worries. Because I had learned at my mother’s knee that silence is literally the end of the road the bottomless chasm that separated us did not lessen in intensity, but I lived on.

Six years later that rupture has been healed. How did this happen? My friend, who happens to be something of a genius, intellectual, professional editor writer/poet wrote a book that she offered to anyone who wanted to read it for free. This act of great generosity was so typical of this woman’s behavior that it galvanized me into action. I took the risk and contacted her directly asking for a copy. I don’t recall just what I said except that I wished we could be friends again, never believing the impossible would happen but it did.

We’ve Seen This Playbook Before by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

ICE has been doing mass round-ups of anyone who looks like “the other.” The people cheered. “This is my country,” they shouted to the deportees. “Go back where you came from.” The people are flush with excitement thinking this is what we voted for, meanwhile ignoring that they came from someplace too. We know this is a publicity stunt. How? Dr. Phil tagged along on one of round-ups. Newly minted secretary Kristi Noem also took her role in the spotlight attending one in NYC and saying dehumanizing words I will not repeat here.

We’ve seen this playbook before. Creating chaos, disorientation and suffering for political points, TV or other publicity ratings. It doesn’t end well – EVER!

The NY Times had a report of how deportees were treated in a dehumanizing manner, being held on a broken plane in the Amazonian heat with no AC, people shackled, children were on board. There are always people available to treat other people as less than human. “I was just doing my job.” “I was only following orders.”

We’ve seen this playbook before. It doesn’t end well – EVER!

Overnight at a Neolithic Dolmen: A Womb Healing Ceremony by Eline Kieft

In preparation for my hysterectomy, I decided to spend a night in a dolmen at Samhain last year, to seek guidance and healing. I chose Dolmen de Bajouilière in Saint-Rémy-la-Varenne, in Northern France, a site I had discovered by chance the previous year on my local explorations.

This well-preserved structure, with its spacious square divided into two rooms, felt inviting and safe for an overnight ritual. Though I am accustomed to spending nights in neolithic monuments, mostly in the UK, I felt some hesitation, partly due to my intermediate French and unfamiliarity with the local spirits.

Nevertheless, I recognized this resistance as part of the ego’s fear of the unknown, and I gave myself permission to retreat if needed. If I would feel too vulnerable, it wouldn’t serve my body and spirit ahead of the surgery. Please join me on my overnight Samhain Ceremony full of deep imagery and transformation as I shed my womb three times…

Preaching with a Predator in the First Pew by Angela Yarber

Seeing him in the first pew was distracting. Legs splayed in expert manspreading fashion, both arms draped unaware across either side of the backrest, belly protruding over a worn leather belt. He wasn’t a tall man, yet his sprawling body occupied nearly six feet of space. A slight smirk was always smeared across his lips and his eyes were fixed on me.

Preaching to a predator is never easy. So, while I could never imagine what it would be like to speak truth to power like Bishop Budde at the National Prayer Service, I’m confident that, like me, every clergywoman in America knows what it’s like for a pussy grabber to leer at you from the first pew. Even the finest vestments, highest clerical honors, and the divine herself cannot protect you from that.

Two Poems by Alice Bullard, PhD

Dear FAR Community, These poems arise from feminist spiritual practice with syncretic dimensions. The Irish-American Catholicism of my family mixes with the popular American confessional-style that charts and embodies emerging spirit, yet this very American path of self-styling and narrative self-creation has been refined via the influence of Zen practices, originally via the influence of the Soto practictioners of Green Gulch in Marin and then later via the teachings of Vietnamese refugee and Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. The feminism here is deeply personal, political, and spiritual.

This post was inspired by one written my Janet Maika’i Rudolph about Alice Munro which you can read here.

About Alice Munro: I experienced the revelations of her daughter very personally … I’ve read Alice Munro since I was very young and used to read my parent’s copy of the New Yorker. Because we shared the name Alice and also shared the cold Midwestern prairie though she was further north and across the border, I had always felt some affinity for her but also I felt something I really didn’t get. To me her stories took inexplicable turns and now we know why. Her daughter’s experience is dreadful and probably much more common than anyone would care to admit. That Alice Munro was famous doesn’t make that type of negligent mothering something rare.

Priestess or Goddess? The Real Morgan le Fay by Kelle ban Dea

Morgan le Fay is a popular figure for goddess-women and those interested in depictions of female spirituality, as well as a role model for some witches and pagans. Entire modern spiritual traditions such as the Avalonian tradition in Glastonbury have been created around her. She’s been portrayed in various ways in popular media and culture, and for many is more beloved than her mythical contemporaries, Arthur and Merlin. Which is interesting, because she’s a wholly fictional character, first encountered in the medieval Vita Merlini. Or is she?

While Morgan herself is, indeed, a fictional creation, many have seen echoes of ancient Celtic myth in her story. She’s a healer and magic worker, living on an Otherworldly island, sometimes with her eight sisters, guardian of Avalon with its magical apples and mists. In later iterations she’s a darker figure, an enemy of her brother Arthur, a witch and a seductress. A story we’ve all heard before.

From Competition to Community – Creating a Business in the Feminine Model by Lucy H. Pearce

I was standing in a supermarket car park, packing my groceries into the car when I had a light bulb moment.

It was the sort of moment where it feels like the sun has come out from behind the clouds and the birds are about to start dancing around my head with ribbons a la Cinderella.

I had been working from a city coffee shop for a couple of hours whilst I waited for my child who is struggling with school right now. This was followed by a harried grocery shop around the aisles laden down with Christmas produce.

Whilst I was waiting in the queue at the supermarket, I was reading through and responding to woman after woman who had reached out to me with such beautiful words of recognition and support for my vulnerable sharing about what I have learned and struggled with personally running Womancraft for the last decade.

To anyone in that supermarket I was just a middle-aged woman doing her shopping. They didn’t know I was at that moment also running my successful publishing business and weaving community.