Music

Looking Again at The Magic Flute by Barbara Ardinger

By Barbara Ardinger on October 3, 2021 • ( 20 )

I have just spent a week watching four productions of Mozart and Schikaneder’s 1791 opera. Four in a row! Now we all know that I adore musical theater more than almost anything else in the world. Operetta. Nelson and Jeanette…. Read More ›

Singing Is a Sacred Power by Carolyn Lee Boyd

By Carolyn Lee Boyd on May 23, 2021 • ( 16 )

A moss-soft ballad sung from a mountain top to the sunrise. A parent’s lullaby to soothe a newborn to sleep. Thousands of voices rising together to banish injustice from our planet. A single wavering melody infusing inspiration into a moment… Read More ›

The Healing Spirit of Sacred Play by Carolyn Lee Boyd

By Carolyn Lee Boyd on April 21, 2021 • ( 11 )

Many years ago I participated in seasonal, Goddess-focused celebrations featuring handmade decorations, including some by enormously talented artists who attended. One year, our spring fete was graced with gorgeous paintings, intricately woven and colorful fabric art, sensuous sculptures, and exquisitely… Read More ›

Dancing for Forgiveness and Reconciliation – Part Two By Laura Shannon

By Laura Shannon on November 13, 2020 • ( 12 )

In Part One of this article, I described dancing Jewish, Romani, and Armenian dances for forgiveness and reconciliation with groups in Germany and all over the world. I also offered danced rituals of remembrance at former concentration camps and other places… Read More ›

The Sacred HU by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

By Janet Rudolph on June 15, 2020 • ( 4 )

Sing to the LORD, all you godly ones! Praise his holy name. Psalm 30:4 (New Living Translation) Therefore I will give thanks unto thee, O LORD, among the heathen, and I will sing praises unto thy name. 2 Sam 22:50… Read More ›

Say it with Music by Esther Nelson

By Esther Nelson on February 21, 2020 • ( 10 )

Daniel Deitrich, a worship leader in South Bend City Church, a “Jesus-centered community” in South Bend, Indiana, isn’t the first evangelical Christian to go up against fellow evangelical Christians who support the current U.S. president. Perhaps, though, he’s the first… Read More ›

Finding God in Music by Gina Messina

By Gina Messina on July 17, 2019 • ( 6 )

We cannot force a connection with God through a faulty conduit. What is important is that we affirm ourselves when we find it — when we feel it. Embrace those experiences, name them for what they are and recognize that you are sacred and the divine – whatever that means to you – is present.

If Holly Near’s Simply Love Album Were a Musical by Lache S.

By Lache S. on June 21, 2019 • ( 4 )

For many of us, listening to women-loving-women songs is a spiritual experience. That is because somehow it makes us feel seen, puts a sense of hope into our world as well as daydreams of romance. We can understand the challenges… Read More ›

Reclaiming Sacred Music by Mary Sharratt

By Mary Sharratt on February 9, 2019 • ( 28 )

Women Singing Earth by Mary Southard Here is a hymn of praise, a beautiful and intimate piece meant to be sung. Reader, I invite you to guess the author of this text and the sacred figure to whom this work is… Read More ›

Love a Good Fail, and Fiona Apple is my Liturgy this Morning by Lache S.

By Lache S. on October 19, 2018 • ( 6 )

I am falling in love with failure. At least I’m trying. It is time I have to. We shouldn’t, lovely womyn, be short on our accomplishments. It doesn’t matter how slow going we’ve been, what we haven’t done yet, or… Read More ›

Lessons from Candide by Barbara Ardinger

By Barbara Ardinger on August 5, 2018 • ( 13 )

Candide, ou l’Optimisme (in English, Candide, or Optimism) is a satirical, picaresque novel published in 1759 by François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, who was possibly the smartest author of the Age of Enlightenment…but he annoyed so many courtiers and… Read More ›

Protecting the Children, Jesus Christ Superstar Style by Marisa Goudy

By Guest Contributor on June 30, 2018 • ( 13 )

“Where is my mother? I am thirsty.” My four year old is crooning quietly to her dolls. She is making sense of the crucifixion through play, asking her Disney princesses to stand in for Jesus, the Marys, and “the bad… Read More ›

My Heroine’s Journey: Writing Women Back in History by Mary Sharratt

By Mary Sharratt on May 19, 2018 • ( 24 )

We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust. This is not your fault or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was… Read More ›

Let’s Keep Dancing by Esther Nelson

By Esther Nelson on February 16, 2018 • ( 15 )

My children remember when they were in elementary school, I played Simon and Garfunkel’s popular song, “I am a Rock” (written by Paul Simon), several times daily. I loved it. Stark and sad, yet brutally honest, the song reflected an… Read More ›

Rest and Renewal: Gifts of Women’s Ritual Dance by Laura Shannon

By Laura Shannon on November 4, 2017 • ( 11 )

Samhain is past, and we in the northern hemisphere are once again entering the final outbreath of the solar year. At the winter solstice, light will be reborn. Until then, it is important to embrace the time of rest and… Read More ›

Drumming to the Universal Pulse in an Out of Sync World by Carolyn Lee Boyd

By Carolyn Lee Boyd on March 3, 2017 • ( 11 )

Beneath all being is a universal rhythm that is as deep as natural law and as easy to find as the beat of a drum. After giving up an early interest in percussion 50 years ago when a school music… Read More ›

A Movement Needs A Song by Esther Nelson

By Esther Nelson on December 29, 2016 • ( 33 )

I’m back in Las Cruces, New Mexico, spending the break between semesters in the spot where I plan to eventually retire. When I was here last summer (2016), I visited the Unitarian Universalist Church so decided to join the people… Read More ›

“Tricolor Mary: Encountering Three Faces of the Divine Feminine” by Simone Grace Seol

By Guest Contributor on December 6, 2016 • ( 24 )

I always felt curiously distant from the figure of Mary. I always sensed that there is so much there and yet, I could never connect to it emotionally. The foil to Eve, vessel of Love, suffering mother. I wanted to… Read More ›

It is Over, It is Just Beginning by Kate Brunner

By Kate M. Brunner on November 11, 2016 • ( 16 )

“In this nation of thinkers and philosophers, poets and artists, idealists and enthusiasts, the world will recognize nothing but a people of conquerors and destroyers. …we are neither loved nor respected, but only feared. We are deemed capable of every… Read More ›

#NastyWomen Not Ready to Play Nice by Marie Cartier

By Marie Cartier on October 28, 2016 • ( 6 )

I have blogged on this site about Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and my support of her for president of the United States, in several FAR posts this past year: here, here and here. So—this is my last post regarding her campaign before… Read More ›

I Am A Woman’s Poet by Marie Cartier

By Marie Cartier on August 28, 2015 • ( 13 )

This is the first poem I ever wrote and had published. I wrote it in the early 80s at the height of the second wave of Women’s Liberation. Having just returned from the final Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, I publish… Read More ›

Gretchen Before and After by Natalie Weaver

By Natalie Kertes Weaver on July 1, 2015 • ( 4 )

In May, I attended the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust. This work, featuring four soloists, a full choir and orchestra, and a children’s choir, was first performed in Hungary in 1846. Its composition was inspired by… Read More ›

Miley Cyrus and the Happy Hippie Foundation by Deanne Quarrie

By Deanne Quarrie on May 23, 2015 • ( 7 )

I almost got in a big fight with my son on Facebook yesterday. I posted a link to an article talking about the work that Miley Cyrus is doing for homeless teenagers. He immediately responded to my post by calling… Read More ›

Gretchen at Her Spinning Wheel by Natalie Weaver

By Natalie Kertes Weaver on April 1, 2015 • ( 3 )

In my continuing music education, I was recently introduced to Schubert’s Gretchen am Spinnrade (hear, for example, Renee Flemming’s performance of this work). The song is a setting of Goethe’s poem “Gretchens Stube,” in which Gretchen, a poor but upright… Read More ›

Revolution Through Rituals by Jann Aldredge-Clanton

By Guest Contributor on December 12, 2014 • ( 13 )

A revolution is happening through Divine Feminine rituals! More and more faith communities are reclaiming the power of the Divine Feminine in sacred rituals. Rituals move feminist theory and theology/thealogy from the head to the heart. Words and visual symbols… Read More ›