Naming – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Learning Compassion from Inmate Number 74799 by Cynthia Garrity-Bond

Technically I was employed as a lab assistant at our community hospital. This position entailed multiple responsibilities, from receptionist to actual bench work within the laboratory. The task I dreaded most was my assistance at autopsies. Beyond a strong constitution, it required no measurable skill set. This job was not the high-tech, immaculate setting of any of the CSI programs of today; instead the morgue was a stark, condensed room with two pullout refrigerators for the deceased, a stainless steel table the autopsy was performed on, and the necessary instruments and accouterments, some suspended from what appeared thin air. These tools of the trade ranged from the expected scalpels and retractors to saws and garden-like shears.

Fast-forward fifteen years. It is the morning of July 11, 1991. Prisoner number 74799 has just been transferred from the Department of Corrections, Arizona State Prison in Florence to Tucson County General Hospital in critical condition. Eight months prior to his admittance to the prison hospital, Prisoner 74799 was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. While considered inoperable, he was administered the customary chemotherapy treatments until four months later when the cancer spread to his brain, taking most if not all of his cognitive abilities away. Within one hour of his transport, Prisoner 74799, my brother, Michael Paul, died at the age of thirty-nine.

Continue reading “Learning Compassion from Inmate Number 74799 by Cynthia Garrity-Bond”

Sirens, Thunderstorms, and Bowling: The Divine on this Mother’s Day by Ivy Helman

untitled Let’s see if the following course of events makes sense. A few Wednesdays ago, I was thinking about possible topics for this post considering it would be Mother’s Day. In the midst of thought, the warning sirens in Prague began. They were only being tested but, nontheless, I immediately thought of tornados. You see tornados, as awful and devastating as they are, make me think of thunderstorms and lightning. I love a good thunderstorm, the louder the better.

A Wisconsin childhood supplies plenty of thunderstorms. I cannot tell you the number of times as I was growing up that I stood outside watching the sky turn into that distinctive greenish-purple and smelling the storm on the breeze. Nor could I count the umpteen times we gathered in the basement as the tornado sirens blared and the radio advised its listeners in no uncertain terms to seek shelter. Nor could I recall how many times I sat with my mom during more recent summers watching the storms come in or the lightning blaze across the sky like a spider’s web. We’ve been lucky. Never once did a tornado hit our neighborhood although a house or two has been hit by lightning. Continue reading “Sirens, Thunderstorms, and Bowling: The Divine on this Mother’s Day by Ivy Helman”

The Nature of Communal Pondering by Elise M. Edwards

Last week, I listened to an episode of Krista Tippett’s series On Being that featured an interview with poet Marilyn Nelson. I am not very knowledgeable about the world of modern poetry, but I am familiar with Nelson’s work. A couple years ago, I wrote about Fortune’s Bones: The Manumission Requiem, Nelson’s poetic composition about Fortune, an enslaved man whose owner rendered his body into a skeleton for medical training. Fortune’s identity and history had been erased across centuries as his remains were displayed. Community concerns eventually led to a multi-disciplinary academic, artistic, and community effort to honor the man and, in 2013, put his bones to rest. Isaye M. Barnwell, a musician formerly of Sweet Honey in the Rock, developed a cantata and choral work for Fortune’s Bones. These developed into a series of artistic performances and community events that demonstrate the power of art to speak through and for those who are marginalized—even in death. Disparate communities joined together to ponder Fortune’s life, and it was powerful.

In the On Being interview, Nelson spoke about “communal pondering,” and I’ve been repeating this phrase to myself since then. It identifies a form of creative activity and a spiritual way of being that I am deeply committed to, and have not been able to name. Communal pondering occurs when a group of people are listening together and are opening up new paths for discourse and action by the engaged reflection that takes place within that listening.

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Garden of Eden Retold by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Trelawney bio picture

Today, I came up with a less patriarchal Garden of Eden story:

Endelyn (age 7): “When I think of my soul, in my name “fire-soul,” I think of a powerful wind.”

Me: “That makes sense, since one of the names in the Bible for God/ess is Ruach, which means “breath” or “wind”, but we call it the Holy Spirit. God/ess is also symbolized by the other elements: fire, air, and earth – like when she shaped Eve and Adam out of clay.”

Endelyn, “What? I don’t remember that story.”

Me: “Oh, ok, I’ll tell you.” ……

Here’s the part where I froze momentarily, thinking “how can I tell my children that misogynist failed mentor story? how? how?” <deep breath>
Continue reading “Garden of Eden Retold by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Novel Excerpt III: That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier

I have posted selections from my novel in progress before here and here and here…I am again. My last post here at FAR was about women and silence. Silencing women—from the powerful (Hillary Clinton) to the obscure (this girl that in this novel excerpt is now a teenager) women are silenced.

In this novel, as you can read from the previous excerpts a journal is found by a brother who is twin to his sister. The journals he finds are addressed to him after his parents’ house sells. Upon reading them he begins to discover that they are written by his sister when she was younger and in all likelihood she does not now as an adult remember having written them. She does not remember what it looks like happened to her. Incest. What must he do? This grown up person that he now is finding this information out? She has been silenced and he is holding the key to the only voice she had at the time. I have been working on this novel for over ten years and am currently immersed in trying to pull together all of the pieces I have written over the years. What I have posted so far is excerpts from the journals he, Chris, finds. This excerpt continues that story line. Continue reading “Novel Excerpt III: That Christmas Morning Feeling by Marie Cartier”

A Renewed Vision of Being by Katey Zeh

Last Friday I spent the day at a re:New retreat led by author, speaker, and teacher Rosie Molinary. This year brought some big professional changes in my life and since I’ve never been one to make resolutions, I decided that I needed a different way to mark the transition into 2016. Instead of forming new habits, what new intentions would I be setting for this next chapter?

One of the biggest takeaways for me from the re:New retreat was something Molinary articulated at the very beginning of our time together. She said that as a culture we often use this formula:

doing–> having–> being

We start with the belief that if we do something, we’ll have something and then we’ll be something. An appropriate example for this time of year of resolutions: if I lose ten pounds, then I will have the self-acceptance I need to be more confident in my life.

Molinary said what we need to do is reverse the formula:

being–> having –> doing

If we focus on achieving the feeling that we want, then we have what we need to do the things we want to do. For a productivity junkie like me, this was a major shift in thinking.

Molinary led us through several journal and small-group exercises that helped us land on a single word that captured the feeling we wanted more of this year. One woman chose light. Another chose enjoy. I landed on resolve. The irony isn’t lost on me. I signed up for this retreat because I resisted the idea of resolutions, and yet I ended up selecting “resolve” as my 2016 world.

When I picture having more resolve in my life, I think of determination, focus, and decision. As a young leader I’m tempted to spend a significant amount of time fixated on how others perceive the job I am doing and when I sense dissatisfaction from anyone, I question myself. Not only is this detrimental to my own well-being, but it is also a distraction from the work.

Resolve also means that I will be careful in my decision making around opportunities that arise. Molinary shared with us a metric she uses when deciding when to say yes (and no). She calls it the whole-hearted continuum. From beginning to ending, will this opportunity bring her joy? If it will, she says yes, and if not, she lets it go with the faith that it will become an opportunity for someone else’s whole-hearted yes.

Surprisingly the most enjoyable part of the day for me was putting together my vision board for 2016. At first I felt a little like the way Brené Brown describes in this On Being interview with Krista Tippett:

I was one of those people who, if someone said, you know, “Hey, do you want to take this painting class with me, or do you want to scrapbook or do you want to …” you know, I was like, aw, that’s really cute. You know, “You do your A-R-T, I’ve got a J-O-B.”

As I sat on the floor and flipped through magazines, I pulled images and words that resonated with me, some of them for reasons I could not articulate until they came together on the board itself. It now sits by my desk as a constant reminder of my goal to have more resolve in my life this year.

If you’re interested in learning more about Rosie’s retreats and coaching or if you’re looking for some ideas on renewal for this year (or anytime), please check out her website at rosiemolinary.com.

Katey Zeh, M.Div is a strategist, writer, and educator who inspires intentionalcommunities to create a more just, compassionate world through building connection, sacred truth telling, and striving for the common good. She has written for outlets including Huffington Post, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, Response magazine, the Good Mother Project, the Journal for Feminist Studies in Religion, and the United Methodist News Service. Find her on Twitter at @ktzeh or on her website www.kateyzeh.com.

Story Woman by Molly

“Human connections are deeply nurtured in the field of shared story.” –Jean Houston

“The universe of made of stories, not of atoms.” –Muriel Rukeyser

This month I went searching for a quote for one of my Red Tent Initiation students. She had shared some powerful reflections about the vulnerability required to reveal our personal stories—there can be a lot of risk, sometimes shame, and more, bound up in our ability to uncover ourselves and speak our truth. What I wanted to communicate with her was the idea that in sharing our stories, including the painful pieces, we free other women to do the same. Our courage to be vulnerable, to be naked, to be flawed, to experiment with ideas, concepts, or ways of being gives permission for other people to do the same.

In 2012, I went to a dancing workshop at Gaea Goddess Gathering. The facilitator mentioned that when facilitating ritual, you have to be willing to look a little ridiculous yourself, have to be willing to risk going a little “over the top” yourself, because in so doing you liberate the other participants—“if she can take that risk and look a little goofy doing so, maybe it is okay for me to do it too.”

After a lot of digging around, I found the quote! I should have known it was from one of my favorite authors and sister FAR blogger, Carol Christ, who said:

“When one woman puts her experiences into words, another woman who has kept silent, afraid of what others will think, can find validation. And when the second woman says aloud, ‘yes, that was my experience too,’ the first woman loses some of her fear.”

This is part of what makes Red Tent Circles so powerful. When women are willing to dig into the questions, activities, and processes, to turn them over, to explore how they work in their own lives…they lose some of the fear and they encourage others to lose their fear too. Continue reading “Story Woman by Molly”

Translating the Self by Vibha Shetiya

Viba One of my favourite tasks is translating works from various Indian languages into English. I developed a love for this while enrolled in a graduate seminar on translation theory. The challenge of it all was mind-boggling – how do I reduce the jaggedness of despair running within the depths of someone’s soul into two-dimensional, Times New Roman, 12-point font? How do I convey an intangible phenomenon such as a believer’s union with god without losing the intensity of his or her experience? I loved the exercises, but it is only now I realize how much the concept of translation had also been intertwined with my own fiber of being.

When I lived in India and for many years afterwards, I went by Vib-ha, the usual pronunciation of my Indian name. I didn’t realize then that I didn’t identify with Vibha. A few years ago, I reverted to the Vee-bah of my childhood, the Anglicized pronunciation. It wasn’t so much as being picky, as it was about getting involved in the search for who I really was.

Growing up in an English environment since not quite the age of two, I automatically internalized the label of Vee-bah that my teachers and friends addressed me by, along with developing a “foreign” set of ideals and sense of self. “I’m Veebah,” would be a natural extension of myself; without thinking I had adjusted the complexities of being a little brown girl into one neat word: Veebah.

But by the sixth grade something wonderful was happening. I began to literally feel more comfortable in my skin – I no longer felt like I had to hide my Indian snacks from the rest of the class. I no longer felt I had to apologize for looking different or having a weird sounding, albeit Anglicized, name. And by the time I turned twelve, my changing mind and body soon began to embrace Veebah. It was like I had finally begun to own Veebah.

A year later, however, I moved to India, the land of my birth. My parents had come back “home,” but I had just acquired newly found status of “alien.” Could years of growing up abroad simply be undone by a one-way ticket and an unsigned contract between my father and Zamefa Pvt Ltd.? It got worse as time progressed. There were too many things to deal with. I sounded different; my ideas about music and movies were different; I was too outspoken; I looked much older than I was, and worst of all, I had a certain precociousness about me when it came to the birds and the bees. By the time I was fifteen, however, I managed to figure it all out. With a bit of help from others, I smoothened myself, rough edges, “over-smartness” and all into a two-dimensional being who, in turn, was soon transformed into an echo of everyone around her. An echo called Vib-ha. I was now in India, and had to go by Vib-ha, was what I told myself. With that label, I found myself pushing Veebah more and more into the background; I smothered her with my Indian sounding name and all the Indianness I thought ought to go with it. Continue reading “Translating the Self by Vibha Shetiya”

Normativity, Naming, and the Divine Image by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Over the past two days, I have been considering the challenges and competing perspectives on Carol Christ’s post, “Who is Gender Queer?” I’d like to weigh in with some thoughts on normativity, naming, and the divine image.

I do not identify as genderqueer. But, like Carol describes in her post, I have often felt misfit or misnamed. As we all do, I internalized categories of masculine and feminine in childhood and somehow felt myself to be “masculine” in my physicality, my dark eyebrows (which people – frequently strangers – felt regularly inclined to describe, critique, and even molest in bathrooms, checkout lines, and salons), my hairy legs (which seemed hairier than my girlfriends’ legs in grade school), my interests, even the way I thought. My sense of my sexual self felt somehow masculine because I never experienced my body passively. I climbed and jumped and ran more than my female classmates, and I had much smaller breasts than the women in my family. The real proof for me, though, was that I never had a period on a 28-day cycle. I grew up thinking I was defective and generally not a very good female. All of this, of course, I now know merely reflects the onslaught of normative messages I unwittingly accepted in my formation about the experience, presentation, and performance of physical sex and gender. Continue reading “Normativity, Naming, and the Divine Image by Natalie Weaver”

An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger In her comment following my last post which was about mythology, my friend, Carol Christ, expands on my paragraph about how the so-called “ancient triple goddess” was really invented in 1948 by Robert Graves in his book, The White Goddess. (Thanks, Carol.)

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Goddess movement was just getting up on its feet and our ovular books were being published, the idea arose that if “they” have a holy trinity, “we” have one, too. And ours is older and holier. We see it in the three phases of the moon, new (Virgin), full (Mother), and dark (Crone). Here’s a tiny sample of these books that changed the lives of so many women and men:

Woman’s Mysteries Ancient and Modern by M. Esther Harding (1971, but first published in 1933)
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974) by Marija Gimbutas
When God Was a Woman (1976) by Merlin Stone
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (1978) by Charlene Spretnak
The first edition of The Spiral Dance (1979) by Starhawk
The Chalice and the Blade (1987) by Riane Eisler
Laughter of Aphrodite (1987) by Carol P. Christ
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries (1989) by Z. Budapest
The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990) by Gloria Feman Orenstein
Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990) by Miriam Robbins Dexter

Triple goddess? ’Tain’t so. Our beloved triple goddess is one of our foundational myths. It’s nice and it’s perhaps inspiring, but it’s only a myth. Anyone who looks at a calendar or almanac—or up into the sky every night for a month—can easily see that the moon doesn’t have three phases. It has four: waxing, full, waning, and dark. And since the late 20^th century, women have lived long enough to go through more than three stages of life. Continue reading “An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger”