In this most challenging time, women are showing the world what women’s spiritual power can do. They are guiding nations, states, and communities through the pandemic and towards environmental sanity; feeding the hungry bodies and spirits of their neighbors by organizing community assistance projects; offering hope and care to vulnerable family members; and leading and healing in so many other ways. They are calling on their inherent, profound belief in their own sacredness and that of others to gain access to the strength and clarity that leads to wisdom and effective action.
Yet, finding and using your spiritual power is easier when it is affirmed by the people and subtle messages you experience every day. In our society, too often girls and women may struggle to find encouragement to identify and use their spiritual power, whether because of present or past experiences or the sheer overwhelming nature of our individual and societal challenges. Yet, symbols of women’s spiritual power are all around us, everyday, and can help guide us to that deep well within we have all carried since birth.
Continue reading “Women’s Spiritual Power Is All Around Us by Carolyn Lee Boyd”
going to yoga class and every time she lies on the floor at the end of class, she thinks of me. I consider this a compliment. If I could be known as a lay-down revolutionary, that would please me. At least two years ago, I put on my list of “100 Things to Do this Year,” to lie on the floor for at least three minutes every day. I have kept this up more or less every day since then, even setting my phone timer for three minutes at the end of my personal yoga practice each morning, so I know I’m actually giving this to myself. I wonder what might change for many of us if we allowed ourselves three minutes a day to lie on the floor? Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? One hour? Another friend tells me she needs a time out to refill herself until she is overflowing, instead of just refilling her cup a tiny bit and then draining it over and over again. I feel this too. I have the sensation that I been coasting on my reserve tank for at least a year and my reserves are now becoming depleted too. It takes more than three minutes to fill the tank, so that it carries sustained and lasting energy to fuel my soul.
share since 2008. She plans and facilitates women’s circles, seasonal retreats and rituals, mother-daughter circles, family ceremonies, and red tent circles in rural Missouri. She is a priestess who holds MSW, M.Div, and D.Min degrees and wrote her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly and her husband Mark co-create 
I am at such a loss over the state of things these days. What’s left for me seems to be a process of assessing where I have agency at this exact moment and of taking refuge in small things.
When my doula clients would share with me that the pregnancy they were going through was not like the previous one, I often gently reminded them that they weren’t the same women anymore. Their bodies were starting from a different baseline. They were older. They carried the history and experience of any previous pregnancies in their bodies now. They carried the experience of motherhood. Perhaps they practiced different self-care or a different spirituality, ate differently, moved their bodies more or less often, lived some place new. All of those factors could add up to a completely different baseline when the current babies were conceived. And the babies were all different too — different, unique combinations of miraculous genes, different fingerprints forming, different minds, spirits, & personalities coming into being. So, of course, this experience was different than the last. It was its own unique ritual beginning from a new and unique place.
Acknowledging and responding to feminine divine energy is an inherently radical, feminist act. With age my feminism and spiritual path have become inexorably intertwined and I have become more comfortable and confident in my identity as a daughter of the goddess, a priestess, and as a feminist. My feminism is continually being shaped by a call to serve the goddess in a variety of ways, particularly in response to an activating third element in my feminist goddess path (no surprise for fellow triad lovers who practice a Celtic spiritual path). This third activating element is my relationship with my body and my work to reclaim 
In the middle of a deep, dark lake, Ceridwen, gifted enchantress & devoted mother, set to work to brew a potion for Her disfigured son, Afagddu, in the hopes that the wisdom & talents the mixture would give him would make up for his unfortunate appearance and still grant him a successful life. While She gathered ingredients, mixed & measured, She employed a young boy from the nearby village named Gwion Bach to stir Her cauldron.
Mor is an ancient Celtic Goddess of the Sea and the Sun, bringing to mind the shining days of summer and the abundance of the harvest. Yet in a typical Celtic paradox in which opposites exist as one whole she is also a Dark Goddess of Death and Rebirth.
My father always encouraged us to interpret scripture for ourselves. We read text, learned mainstream interpretations, and then he would ask for our authentic self-generated interpretations delivered in the form of book and chapter reports due to him. Growing up, all prayers and supplications were done in English; my parents wanted us to really understand and synthesize rather than simply memorize Arabic words with a generic sense of what we were reading or reciting.
I made it. Last month, I actually made it from Australia to Wales and back on an official 
feminismandreligion.com 