Poetry – Page 22 – Feminism and Religion

One Small Red Leaf by Deanne Quarrie

It seems to me that the goal of most people is to be happy. We seek it ourselves and hope that those we love find it as well. Happy is an elusive state. At best it is hard to define – what is happy anyway?

As young adults we may seek happiness in alcohol and parties, perhaps even in drugs. We hope to find it in our careers and certainly in the unions we make and partners we choose. Happy is to be pleased, or glad, over a particular thing. The dictionary associates a state of happiness with contentment as well as with the experience of joy. And it also says that happiness is associated with good fortune or luck. Continue reading “One Small Red Leaf by Deanne Quarrie”

Devotional Poetry: You’re Invited to a Community Bardic Exercise

Kate Brunner Let the creative word romp begin! Our exercise will be simple, yet challenging. I invite you to write one devotional poem per day for the next seven days about whatever moves you spiritually that day in whatever poetic format the words emerge.

Your goal for the next seven days is to let loose a little- step into the creative flow and allow your Bardic Soul to speak. What we will not be going for is perfect, publication-ready material. I know whenever I undertake something like this, I have to remind myself of that. And I have to muzzle that horribly devious little fellow known as my Inner Critic in order for my Courageous Bard to spring free.

Poetry is the creative form which attempts to capture in words and sound the mystery which lies beyond language. We are all capable of writing poetry.

~from Priestess of Avalon, Priestess of the Goddess by Kathy Jones~

Look for divine poetic inspiration in any and everything around you during next week. Step with intention through your days. Let the whole world sing to you. Dance with language- FEEL it move you! Do not bludgeon yourself with repeated editing. Write, share, and be brave enough to let it be. Continue reading “Devotional Poetry: You’re Invited to a Community Bardic Exercise”

She Alone Was There In The Beginning: Nature Creatrix by Stuart Dean

Stuart WordPress photo I concluded my last post by suggesting that “Creator” in the Declaration of Independence (DI) should have been ‘Creatrix.’ Though ‘Creator’ imbues the DI with a bit of quasi-scriptural authority, the possessive pronoun “their” before it effectively limits the full benefits of creation to men. That alone should have precluded even the suggestion that the DI effectively endorses Christianity or that it constitutes the basis for a civil religion.

Quite obviously that has not been the case, but that should not be taken to validate the misogyny the DI manifests. ‘Creator,’ the masculine form of the Latin noun derived from the verb ‘to create’ (‘Creatrix’ is the feminine), is unambiguously masculine in a way that ‘God’ simply is not. Its appearance in the DI raises the suspicion that it was selected to underscore the masculinity of “Nature’s God,” the phase used in the DI’s opening paragraph. Surely some of the signatories of the DI knew their Latin authors well enough to know how peculiar it is to speak of Nature as having or needing a God. Perhaps they wanted to clarify things. Continue reading “She Alone Was There In The Beginning: Nature Creatrix by Stuart Dean”

A Change in the Air by Deanne Quarrie

We had a wonderful taste of the autumn yet to come here in Austin, Texas. It began with a lovely, cool and drenching rain. We have been blessed with more rain than normal this year. When one comes in, however, after days of scorching heat, it feels like such a gift. This one brought cooling temperatures for a couple of days, a damp coolness that makes you want to lie in bed with the window open feeling the cool breeze and lingering just a bit, relaxing longer than usual. You know it won’t last for long so you have to just stop and be with it. Revel in it! For us to go from the near 100’s dipping down into the 60’s for the high of the day was such a treat! Later today, we will be back up in the 90’s, the coolness just a memory and yet a taste for what is coming.

Lying in the cool, green grass, I feel it thick beneath me.
I gaze at the clouds in the sky and my mind wanders,
drifting out to times remembered and times yet to come.
I feel close to the Earth, immanently connected and
embraced by the unknown universe above. Continue reading “A Change in the Air by Deanne Quarrie”

Painting Tiamat/Tehom by Angela Yarber

angela Today I am honored to give a lecture on “Queering Iconography: Holy Women Icons from Sappho to Pauli Murray” at the North Star LGBT Center in Winston-Salem, NC. So, I want to continue the theme of featuring some of my queer Holy Women Icons. Joining Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, Dorothy Day, Sappho, Jephthah’s daughter, Anna Julia Cooper, the Holy Woman Icon archetype, Maya Angelou, Martha Graham, Pauli Murray, La Negrita, and all my other Holy Women Icons with a folk feminist twist is the often overlooked and misunderstood primordial goddess of creation: tehom.

In Genesis 1 we read, “In beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” It is the creation narrative held dear, formative, and meaningful for countless Jews and Christians. Interestingly, this word, deep, in Hebrew is tehom. Tehom translates as “deep or depths,” but it’s also a cognate for Tiamat, a Babylonian Goddess of creation. Out of the face of the deep, the world begins. Out of tehom, God creates. Out of Tiamat, the earth comes into being. This dancing Babylonian goddess syncretistically intermingles with the creation myth so pivotal to the faith of Christians and Jews in a way that could be terrifying, or beautiful, or—like the chaotic body of Tiamat that brings the world into being—both. Continue reading “Painting Tiamat/Tehom by Angela Yarber”

Thealogy of the Ordinary by Molly

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The Goddess Gaia is alive
In this time and in this space
She speaks in sunrises
And waves against the shore
She sings with the wind
She dances in moonlight
She holds you close
Your heart beats in time with hers
A great, grand hope and possibility
For this planet…

Over the last two months, I have been listening to a wonderful telesummit about priestesses. I am also a huge fan of the radio show, Voices of the Sacred Feminine. However, as I listen to both, I sometimes find myself wondering if walking a Goddess path is also viewed as synonymous with, “believe everything, question nothing.” Crystal essences, gemstone healing, soul contracts, past lives, spirit guides, astrology, the many realms and dimensions of the occult, mystical, New Age and metaphysical. Is wholesale suspension of logic required to join hands with the Goddess? Is deft management of the tarot essential to the priestess path? Is excavating my “inner masculine” relevant or appropriate? Must I ascribe to “enlightened” tenets like, “you are not your body,” “I am a spiritual being having a spiritual experience” and “we made an agreement to do this work before we showed up in this body at this time and place” in order to move forward? Continue reading “Thealogy of the Ordinary by Molly”

Painting La Negrita by Angela Yarber

One week ago thousands of Costa Ricans made a pilgrimage to visit their patron saint on August 2. Some penitents walked the 22 kilometers on their knees from the capital of San José to the Nuestra Señora de los Angeles Basilica in Cartago where the small statue of La Negrita is now on display. Joining Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, Dorothy Day, Sappho, Jephthah’s daughter, Anna Julia Cooper, the Holy Woman Icon archetype, Maya Angelou, Martha Graham, Pauli Murray, and all my other Holy Women Icons with a folk feminist twist is this seemingly small saint who has done big and mighty things: La Negrita.

Also known as La Virgen de los Angeles, the Black Virgin is a very small representation of the Virgin Mary. She was originally discovered by an indigenous woman on August 2, 1635. When the poor indigenous woman tried to take the stone statuette, it miraculously reappeared. The people responded by building a shrine around her. Continue reading “Painting La Negrita by Angela Yarber”

Queering Iconography, Painting Pauli Murray by Angela Yarber

Even as my book, Holy Women Icons, is printed, bound, and available for purchase, filled with the stories of nearly fifty holy women, my project of painting these beloved saints continues. Joining all my other Holy Women Icons with a folk feminist twist is the brave, bold, and revolutionary Pauli Murray.

This month is a celebration of Murray’s life and witness is several meaningful ways. The first of July was her feast day, as she was deemed an Episcopal saint in 2012. LGBTQ author and activist, Kittredge Cherry, detailed Murray’s feast day, celebrating her as a “Human rights champion and queer saint…renowned civil rights pioneer, feminist, author, lawyer and the first black woman ordained as an Episcopal priest.” And the celebration of Pauli Murray’s radical witness continues as the icon bearing her image joins seventeen of my other Holy Women Icons at the North Star LGBTQ Center Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC for an exhibition entitled, “Queering Iconography: Holy Women Icons from Sappho to Pauli Murray.” Continue reading “Queering Iconography, Painting Pauli Murray by Angela Yarber”

The Outraged Ancestral Mother by Molly

crop027 During the fifth week of the Rise Up and Call Her Name curriculum by Elizabeth Fisher, “We honor the Outraged Ancestral Mother and the belief that the sacred and secular are one.” When I priestessed this session for my women’s circle, I was caught by the idea of the Outraged Ancestral Mother and we spent some time discussing her and the degree to which humanity has hurt our planet. The next morning while I was practicing yoga, snippets of a poem came floating to my mind. I had the distinct feeling that the Outraged Ancestral Mother was ready to speak to me. I went down to the woods to listen to what she had to say.

Continue reading “The Outraged Ancestral Mother by Molly”

Love Facing by Safa Plenty

This piece titled, ‘Love Facing’ is a meditation on the intergenerational dynamics of family violence and our need to move beyond labels in order to understand the complexities of American violence. It begins with a narrative critic of spanking as a corrective measure and its propensity to escalate into other forms of violence. The poem continues with reflection on how male privilege and power impact the disempowerment of women and girls. It signals forgiveness as a possible means of understanding intergenerational trauma and stress, however. The piece advocates an understanding of male privilege and dynamics of power and control, as a means of empowering women and children, affected by family violence. Furthermore, it examines our societies failure to raise healthy men and boys, who are comfortable openly expressing their emotions. In the end, the poem signals our human need for unconditional love, respect, and honor and need for religious and spiritual practice imbued with compassion, mercy, and kindness, or feminine attributes of the Divine.