On a recent journey within, guided by drumming and visualisation I encountered my Muse. Her Native American Indian appearance surprised, even bewildered me, as I know so little about North America’s indigenous cultures.
As I painted her into being I listened closely to what she told me, stating clearly “I am Ancient Spirit Wisdom,” the wisdom of our ancestors passed on through story, image, sculpture, word, song, dance, ritual, prayer and ceremony. The closer I listened, the more my Mysterious Muse reminded me that I had a story within, one of my very own, yet one shared by women everywhere. I too am a container of Ancient Spirit Wisdom, more precisely, Ancient Women’s Wisdom.
I remember how Mary Daly used to ask me where the feminists were – what were they up to today? I would try to update her on the things I was aware of here in Boston, events at the Women’s Center in Cambridge, conferences by Women, Action, and the Media, the latest publication of Rain and Thunder: A Radical Feminist Journal of Activism and Discussion, and the myriad of things happening within feminist theology with which I was most familiar. Nonetheless, Mary was never satisfied with my responses, “Where is the revolution?” she would ask. At the time, I didn’t quite understand her disappointment. I could tell she wanted me to update her on something big – she wanted to hear of sweeping changes, lots of them. I often thought that the changes were already there, that big things had taken place and were incorporated into the daily life of society. I was always vexed that I couldn’t give her the answer she was looking for – but also, I didn’t know exactly what she was looking for. Then one day she asked me to find her a book that was on one of her shelves – she didn’t know which shelf – so I went searching, and in that search I discovered a world that gave me a glimpse of the revolution Mary wanted and I understood a little bit more why Mary was dissatisfied with feminism today. Continue reading “Re-membering the Revolution by Xochitl Alvizo”
oes God exist within the LGBTQ community anymore or has the community itself abandoned God for all-night raves, dance clubs, alcohol, and hypersexualized and over commoditized fetishized forms of femininity and masculinity? Oftentimes, I find myself answering yes to the above questions. After surviving hate crime after hate crime and endless batches of newly elected conservative politicians hell bent on ignoring medical and social epidemic plaguing the very country they were elected to serve and protect, why would a community, oftentimes linked to sin itself, believe in a holy entity?
My good friend and fellow Feminism and Religion Contributor Marie Cartier’s forthcoming book, Baby You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall argues that American butch-femme bar culture of the mid-20th Century should be interpreted as a sacred space. Specifically, gay bars served as both communal and spiritual gathering spaces where butch-femme women were able to discover and explore not only their sexuality but also their spirituality. An opus of an academic accomplishment based off of the amount of in-depth interviews she conducted, Professor Cartier explores lived religion in an area that has become all too common within the LGBTQ community: the bar
For the past two months I have been participating in a teacher training called the Colour of Woman (COW) method, an intensive healing and transformational program of sacred painting and intentional creativity founded by visionary artist, teacher, author, and publisher, Shiloh Sophia McCloud. The course is designed for women who want to infuse their lives and work with the mysterious and ancient powers of the creative principles of the Sacred Feminine; she who is known by many names and forms; She who is the mysterious source of life that births both the feminine and masculine; She who has been honoured and deified by many ancient cultures as the bringer of life, growth, decline, death and re-birth; She who is the wellspring of creativity. Continue reading “Coming out as a Cosmic Cowgirl by Jassy Watson”
Rather than release the sadness, heartache and struggle we put into the bowl out into the world, we meditated …to transform what we could of this energy, re-membering the parts of ourselves that had helped to create these blocks and are responsible for transforming them. We took the transformed energy back into ourselves.
As I have written about many times before, I believe that contemporary Western society operates within a largely abusive paradigm. I often think of oppression in terms of an abusive cycle. Theologians like Cater Heyward and Rita Nakashima Brock describe the impact of the theologies that generate such abusiveness, noting how we become smaller to ourselves and smaller to one another. We do not believe that we are enough, nor are the people or the planet around us ‘enough’ to fill the vacuous alienation that substitutes itself for real relational need in an abusive context. Judith Shaw wrote eloquently about the environmental impact of conflating need with greed in her Friday post, “Can We Honor Inanna and Her Gifts?”
Shaw writes, “At first glance we appear to be abundant with things, energy, experiences. But in our mad desire for more and more and always more we neglect the balance of the very earth who provides us with all.” Many people, particularly in industrialized nations, have been taught to fill the need for a sense of abundance, connection and ‘enough-ness’ with more stuff: more things, more money, more food, more land, etc. And yet, ironically, this quest for ‘more’ can also prevent us from experiencing the very abundance we seek. We can create blocks to abundance by trying to fill the vacuum instead of our actual needs: and difficultly, abusive patterns and cycles can prevent us from seeing the difference between the two. Continue reading “Unblocking Abundance: A Ritual by Sara Frykenberg”
Cosplay is often a deliberate, interpretive and self-chosen performance of gender and power. Like drag performers, cosplayers put on a show of the characters they represent; and in my experience, they often do so within diverse, supportive and principally, inclusive communities.
This week my husband sent me a great blog post he found about cosplay and one woman’s determination that she would no longer tolerate being demeaned, objectified or trivialized because of what she chooses to wear. Blogger Megan Marie’s post, entitled “What would you do if you weren’t afraid,” inspires me. She points out and refuses the trappings of rape culture: victim blaming, assumed male control over female sexuality and shame; and claims her right to be who she is. I, as fellow (what is the female equivalent for fellow???) cosplayer, was also moved by her defense of this creative art. I have been cosplaying a long time, but I have been too afraid to speak much about this or to directly protest the rejection of these fantasy images within some feminist communities. So to answer Megan Marie’s question* in her own words, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid? My answer. I’d write this blog.”
Coplay = costume + play! It is the recreation of popular characters from video games, comic books, anime, scifi series, fantasy literature or the like. Cosplayers do this for the fun of it, the craft involved, to express one’s fandom and sometimes, professionally, usually within an arena where fans can enjoy one another’s recreations. The attempt to embody these characters involves a great deal of work and artistic expression. Many conventions, like Fanime Con in San Jose, CA, host panels in which fans can learn cosplay skills, such as armor construction, wig making and costume design. I have cosplayed the following characters: Sailor Star Healer, Eudial and Sailor Iron Mouse from the anime Sailor Moon, Misa
Death Note Cosplay: Misa and Light are in the center, flanked by their respective “Shinigami,” or the death gods they are working with
Sachiel from Neon Genesis Evangelion: I am trying on my almost finished costume here!
I am currently planning a to make a Metroid out of an umbrella and to cosplay Nyan-kitty at the May conference that my husband (who will be playing Tac-nyan), my sister and many of my friends attend.
This is part two of a post started yesterday. At the end of it I asked why a woman cannot be a follower of St. Ignatius and a Jesuit.
The days of separating religious communities because rape is a possibility should be behind us–as we all know separating the sexes does not prevent rape anyway. Let’s get real, if I can understand the Ignatian exercises, use them in discernment, prayer, and reflection, understand the concepts and gain the graces, through doing them in a similar fashion as male Jesuits, what’s the big mystery, what’s keeping me out of the Jesuits–except that that it is a male club that is exclusive. Exclusion of any kind is oppressive, whether it is for racist, sexist, or other reasons.
Communities based on separation and exclusion because of sexual temptation ignore the simple fact that all people need to be responsible for their own actions. Male religious in exclusivist communities are like the Iowa dentist who fired his assistant because she was “too” good looking. He said could not control his own urges, his own temptations. An all-male court was unanimous in upholding his right to fire his assistant of more than 10 years. Is not an all male court a biased court? The woman in question certainly did not get a decision rendered by her peers!
In the last few weeks of 2012, a sister parishioner recommended I read Transforming Knowledgeby Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich. Many in academia perhaps have already read this book, but I am just getting to know the world of scholars and have found this book refreshing. It puts its finger on the messy entangled core issues that we grapple with on this blog site.
Minnich enumerates errors prevalent the way we think, suggesting that we need to restructure knowledge traditions that privilege the few and create “higher/lower” thinking, categorical “kind” thinking, and hermeneutical circles of presuppositions that only get reinforced time and again. Such circles are never broken into by any other thoughts or ideas because they are believed to be epistemologically and ontologically normative.
Imbalances that start in academic disciplines and then trickle down to and through society at large in all areas, not just religion, must be brought into consciousness so they can be corrected with new thinking that no longer oppresses those outside these circles, but brings them into the dialogue so that new more creative thinking happens. The point is to level the playing field, but not to relativize knowledge. The goal is create a new way of thinking that is a diverse and pluralistic.
Much that currently passes for reasoning is based on four errors in thinking that Minnich identifies as:
faulty generalizations – thinking that uses the few to create maxims about the many;
circular reasoning – thinking that reinforces its major premise over and over again without evolving even in the view of new information that might refute the original thesis;
mystified concepts – thinking evolving out of circular reasoning by surrounding the idea in a mythical membrane of illogically, believed legends that endure;
It is still a radical and generous act to love a woman for who she is apart from, as well as with, others.
My favorite artist is Frida Kahlo because she was a woman who dared to do art about her own self, in fact often about her own physical self. When she did that it was brave; and it still is brave to consider your life as a woman important enough to focus on. Let’s face it– women are not considered a priority in a world which still underpays women for the same jobs that men do. When I entered the work force in 1976 women made 60.2% of what men make. In 1986 they made 64.3%; in 1996 73.8%; in 2006 76.9%; and in 2010 women made 77.4%.
The story of Thecla is an intriguing one – it is above all a story that demonstrates a woman in active ministry – a story that shows a woman as an Apostle. The story found is found in the apocryphal literature called Acts of Thecla (sometimes found in “The Acts of St. Paul and Thecla) and seemed to attract the ire of Tertullian and the writers of the Pastoral Epistles. In fact, some of the names in this story also appear in the New Testament writings. Thecla used to be a Saint in the Catholic Church, and is still a Saint in the Byzantine Rite. Please note that what I say here is not my original work but a compilation of various interpretations of stories about St. Thecla.
St. Paul was travelling in Iconium with his two companions, Demas and Hermogenes. They were offered hospitality at the house of Onesiphorus. Paul was giving a sermon praising virginity, stating that eternal reward awaits anyone who lives a chaste life. Thecla overheard his sermon from her window and became enamoured by his teaching to the point that she was unable to move from her window for three days and three nights. Continue reading “St. Thecla: Transvestite Saint and Woman Apostle by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”
On a recent journey within, guided by drumming and visualisation I encountered my Muse. Her Native American Indian appearance surprised, even bewildered me, as I know so little about North America’s indigenous cultures.
It is still a radical and generous act to love a woman for who she is apart from, as well as with, others.
Feminism and Religion 
