Interdependence of Life – Feminism and Religion

Tortured Turtle by Sara Wright

Yesterday I attended a community event where someone from a rescue organization was holding up the biggest painted turtle that I have ever seen. More than a foot in length. An equally large snapper was lying on the grass surrounded by people.

The point this woman was trying to make is that turtles grow up into large turtles that can end up in rescue organizations. I froze in horror as I took the pictures, tried to get details but the woman was occupied with someone else while she held this creature in the air.

This morning I gazed into a forest that is dripping with dew. Astonishing golden autumn light is gilding the trees as tears fall through the leaves. Achingly beautiful until I see an image of the turtle in my mind. Remembering times when I was young and didn’t pay attention to what a sensitive child KNEW.

All creatures are sentient; all feel pain and fear. The image of yesterday’s turtle highlights everything that is wrong in a world when most people believe that only humans are sentient. Once I thought I believed that too, although the child in me did not. I couldn’t deal with the terrorized child, so I left her behind as soon as I could. As a young adolescent my second (rejecting the child was the first) crisis of faith occurred when the religion I adhered to created no space for the rest of nature or geological time.

Miriam MacGillis Discusses Thomas Berry’s View of the Universe, part 2 Transcribed by Janet Rudolph

Introduction: Miriam MacGillis is a modern-day prophet who not only holds a broad understanding of cosmology but brilliantly expresses it. She was an early colleague of Thomas Berry, introducing many people to the Story of the Universe. I have had the great honor of transcribing the eight tapes of her lecture series called Education for a Small Planet from 1986. Excerpts from tape 1A can be read here and here.

She was a protégé of Thomas Berry and on these tapes spoke about three principles which have been at the heart of the unfolding of the universe from the beginning. As she says, They are very simple and can’t be separated. I’m just separating them now [to discuss them]. In reality they’re three in one. They are extremely simple. Very often, the simplest things are the hardest things to grasp. But once we really begin to reflect on them and their implications, it’s so logical, so clear, so simple.

The first is the principle of differentiation. I posted Miriam’s discussion of differentiation here.

Below is the long delayed 2nd part, where she discusses the next two principles; interiority and communion. Her words have been lightly edited.

Second principle. The principle of interiority. Or subjectivity. And all that means is that whether we’re speaking about this particular atom or whether this is Harry or Henry or Homer or horse, or hippo, each is its own unique articulation of the universe, its own integrity. It has its own inner spaces, which are unique to itself. Hydrogen is hydrogen, it is not helium. And it is hydrogen because as you probe the inner spaces of that, whatever causes that to be hydrogen in those inner spaces has an integrity that will always unfold hydrogen. And the universe only can be at any moment, the sum total of all of that. And because each is what it is, it’s different.

Notes from the Cauldron of Change, by Molly Remer

Mirabai Starr writes that to be a mystic is to “harvest the bounty of your own soul garden,” a place that is “both wild and tended,” sometimes lush and sometimes arid.

As summer’s heat presses in
and the clamor of growth and change
rises to a peak of abundance and urgency,
we may begin to hear a summons
from deep within.
The cauldron call begins,
at first a whisper
and then an irresistible song
that leads us away from the to-do list
and into a mystical realm
in which dreams and desire meet
and begin to bubble into possibility.
May we grant ourselves space
for descent,
even in the middle of all that
is hot and bright and beautiful.
May we listen to the yearning we feel
to explore the depths,
stepping out of the light
and into the cool shadows
that beckons us to steep.
Right here,
right now,
in the middle of all that swirls,
is when we are invited to stop,
to put our ears back down
to our souls
and listen hard.
It is now that we are invited
to step into the cauldron of change,
to sink down
and in
and let everything we are carrying
soften and melt away
while we remember how it feels
to simmer in everything
we have made,
all that we love to taste
and serve.

For years now, August has been my “Cauldron Month,” a dedicated time in which I take my life into the metaphorical cauldron of being, to reflect, to re-collect, to reconnect, to consider what I’m “simmering” in, what is bubbling and brewing in my days, and what needs to be scooped out of the pot. It is time in which I review the year to date and consider where I’m going, what I’m savoring, and what I’m dishing up to serve.

Winter Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Yes, it is December
already and again.
Let yourself notice the milkweed pods,
how they have split their sides
and are sending silky white seed fluffs
into the waiting air.
Witness the trees,
bare and gray and patient.
Watch the squirrels,
tails puffed against the chill,
stored nuts in their cheeks.
Listen to the wind
how it whispers and rattles
through the empty branches.
Watch the clouds,
slow-moving white billows
in a pale blue sky.
Be patient with yourself.
Grant yourself grace.
Remember the three invitations
of the solstice season:
to listen,
to wonder,
to be content.
Remember your promise
to keep company with joy.
Remember your vow
to be in devotion
to your own life.
Think about everything
there is to do.
Open your hands.
Feel that thin, whispering
winter wind
skim over your palms.
Take a deep breath.
Allow yourself to marvel
at all this year
has held.
Bless it.
Thank it.
Cup your hands
around your own face.
Say: thank you.
Here you are in the center
of your own life’s unfolding.
There is nowhere else to be.
Be gentle with yourself.
Invite the winter crone to tea.
Look into her eyes.
See yourself reflected there,
your own winter eyes open
to the possibility
of both clarity and delight.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. In the summer, I compiled a post with 13 summer lessons from 13 years of posts here at FAR. I decided to bookend that post with a Winter Lessons post as well. Here are thirteen lessons to share from past winter posts:

Threshold Time, by Molly M. Remer

Step by step,
we make our way.
Breath by breath,
we choose.
Day by day,
we see where we are.
Let us remember
that we do not really finish anything,
we tumble with the turning
which is right where we belong.

It is now
in this liminal space
between the cauldron
and the cave,
as obligation struggles
to come roaring back
into center,
that we sense what we truly need
whispering beneath the surface
of all that clamors to co-opt our time
and all that howls
to claim our attention.
Stand steady.
Inhabit your own wholeness.
Cast a one word
spell of power: return.
Step into the sacred
right where you are.
Re-collect yourself.
Reclaim your right
to your own life.
Defend your edges.
Give clarity space
to crystallize
and your own knowing
space to emerge.
It is vital,
this work of reclamation.
Hold it holy.
Let the knots unravel.
Set yourself free.

Legacy Of Carol P. Christ: The Great Commandment for Women: Love and Care for Yourself as You Love and Care for Others

This post was originally published on Feb. 3rd, 2014.

A rabbi known as Jesus of Nazareth taught that you should “love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” Charles Hartshorne, philosopher of relationship and a twentieth century advocate of the “two great commandments,” added that it should be understood that this means that God wants you to love yourself too.

I quote Hartshorne’s midrash on the great teaching often because, sadly, too many women—and some men too–have been taught to love their neighbors at the expense of themselves, to care for others, but not to care as much for themselves. Continue reading “Legacy Of Carol P. Christ: The Great Commandment for Women: Love and Care for Yourself as You Love and Care for Others”

Summer Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Let us be gentle with ourselves
as we cross the threshold
into summer,
as we both open our hearts to change
and open our hands to choice.
It is now that we both let things go
and celebrate what is flourishing,
what is thriving and growing
and calling us onward.
Let us be soft and supple,
luminous and languorous.
Let us practice the discipline of pleasure
and the liturgy of delight.
Let us protect wide margins for magic,
commit to our own life’s unfolding
and swim freely
in the current of the sacred
that is always available
to receive us
and welcome us home.

Today, I sit missing the orioles and thinking about cycles of change, how things grow and decline, and how we can choose to be present or not with what we see and feel. I tip my head back in the green filtered light of morning and discover berries beginning on the mulberry trees. The wild raspberries and blackberries too are tipped with small, firm caps of green. I am feeling the sort of overdue clarity that descends when I finally realize I can let something go, that not everything is mine to carry or mine to fix. I know that this clarity too will come and go, but for now, I welcome it, feeling the cool wind stirring my hair and brushing my shoulders as I enjoy the sunshine and the sound of hawks on the wing. There is a powerful hope in these blue sky days and for now, I bask in the sensation of both remembering and reclamation.

This year, as we tip into summer in the Northern hemisphere, the temperatures in my own Midwestern biome have been surprisingly cool, peaceful and rainy. In an era of climate change, this slow entry into the heat of the year has felt welcome and encouraging. Something that continues to inspire and teach me this year has been to start where my feet are, to return again and again to where I am on this earth and in my body. In a culture that encourages fragmentation and distraction, distance, discord, and dis-embodiment, this practice of return is an act of both rebellion and reclamation.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. This year, sitting down to write and reflecting on the life lesson of starting where my feet are, I decided to go back through my past summer posts here to discover the other lessons I have learned from summers gone by. I chose thirteen lessons to share from past summer posts:

Hydrangea Lessons, by Molly Remer

How to create a ritual:
Look at the sky.
Touch your skin.
Breathe deep in your belly.
Feel your heart beat.
Stand on the earth.
Let life carry you.

September 2024:

It is now that slender bush clover makes flower crowns along the roadside and coreopsis lifts its yellow faces to the sky. There is change in the air, whispering on cooling winds and shrieking by above the field on the feathers of broad-winged hawks. The last cicadas continue to drone and the apples hang rosy on the trees. The deck bears a sprinkling of yellow walnut leaves, and I picked up a brown and green patterned oak leaf to press into the pages of my prayers. It is now that I pause to steep, to listen to myself before pressing onward into the final part of the year. There is both an invitation and a summons here, to evaluate and renew, to consider the pace of life and whether to ease off or push onward. It is now that I remember that restoration is the antidote to depletion and I gather myself up, tenderly calling the fragments home, recollecting myself and taking time to look at where I am and what I have and what I’ve chosen. There are crows calling at the end of the driveway. I keep my eyes open for any passing monarchs. There is a slight hint of spiced pumpkin on the wind. The Virginia creeper has darkened to rusty red.

The Nature of Reality Is Relationship by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Water drops on spider web, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Public Domain.

According to the Universe, the true nature of reality is relationship. In fact, at the level of quanta, the smallest objects in the cosmos, we don’t even exist outside of our relationships¹. How different this is from our common 21st century understanding of ourselves as inherently alone in our bubbles of existence, our societies conceived of as a collection of individuals all wrestling each other for the basics of life. What if we took this truth about quanta to heart on our human level? What if we began to think of ourselves as not primarily alone, but rather as a node in a web of connection, an essential part of a greater, even universal, whole? How might our lives and societies be different? When I experience Goddess myths and traditions and look at some of the societies from which they rose, I seem to catch a glimpse of what this change in perception might be like in our daily lives.

Listening to Our Landscapes, by Molly Remer

Today the hawk is back, tail feathers lit gold and black by a bright and welcome sun. It stays only a moment before tilting out of the tree and continuing on its way, but this moment is enough to spark a sense of joy and wonder in my chest, the awake kind of glee that fuels and feeds me, that inspires and holds me. This feels like the Year of the Hawk to me, of clear focus and intentional commitment. I watch it glide away between the trees and take a deep breath of release and freedom. I re-center myself into my body and reconnect to the sacred What Is. I am open to clarity. I am open to trust. I am present with this day’s unfolding.