Category: Spiritual Journey

Painting Virginia Woolf by Angela Yarber

As I painted her icon, I knew that “the room of one’s own” must engulf more space on the canvas than she did, her heart beating in the room and outside of it, and her arms outstretched as though she is inviting other women into the room.

I first encountered her in the lyrics of a song.  The Indigo Girls shaped my adolescence, molding me into a young feminist as I sang in harmony with other teenage girls:

 They published your diary

And that’s how I got to know you

The key to the room of your own

And a mind without end
And here’s a young girl

On a kind of a telephone line through time

And the voice at the other end

Comes like a long lost friend
So I know I’m alright

Life will come and life will go

Still I feel it’s alright

‘Cause I just got a letter to my soul

Emily Saliers and Amy Ray (the Indigo Girls) were singing about Virginia Woolf, naming the song after her.  As I belted out the lyrics with my soon-to-become-feminist friends, I had yet to learn who Virginia Woolf was and how her life and work had shaped my own.  All I knew as I harmonized those many years ago was that this woman must be special if the Indigo Girls dedicated a song to her.  I felt a longing to know her, to learn more about her, for her to call me on that telephone line through time and tell me I’m alright.  Accordingly, Virginia Woolf is our Holy Woman Icon for September. Continue reading “Painting Virginia Woolf by Angela Yarber”

Living Liminality: Of Thresholds and Dwelling Places by Marcia W. Mount Shoop

Sometimes I think it happened gradually.  Other times it feels like sudden change.  Either way I find myself in an in-between space that is my life.

With apologies to Victor Turner and his cultural anthropological appropriation of liminality as a threshold space, I have come to view my liminal living as a more permanent dwelling place these days.  Turner’s category of liminality locates subjects in the betwixt and between as they move from one manifestation of identity in community to a new kind of integration or role in community.   I am starting to wonder, however, if the thresholds are actually dwelling places for some of us in this world.

I don’t know if that means I am actually more marginal than I am liminal.  The margins are margins because they remain on the outskirts and they help define the boundaries.  Margins are permanent.  Am I marginalized if I live at the edges of the communities and identities I use to occupy, perhaps never to return to the bosom of the center? I hesitate to make such a claim mostly because I still occupy privileged spaces not the least of which are those constructed from how whiteness grants access and authority in this world. Continue reading “Living Liminality: Of Thresholds and Dwelling Places by Marcia W. Mount Shoop”

The Original Art by Elise M. Edwards

Storytelling is the original art as the desire to communicate is a common thread of all the other arts. I started reflecting on the stories – through various mediums–that have shaped me, and I wanted to use my post today to honor the herstories, the narratives of the women that have been meaningful to me.

On Tuesday night, I attended a gathering of storytellers.  I sat with two of my friends and listened to professionals and amateurs alike share stories.  The stories they told presented a range of narratives from Danish folktales to improvised children’s stories.  I was both horrified and enchanted by the content of their works.  While one story was a particularly violent tale of retribution and “justice,” another seemed to offer lessons about cooperation.

I thought about sharing a story of my own, but I didn’t feel prepared.  By the end of the evening, I was aware of the irony of my reluctance to share.  I was afraid I was not a good enough storyteller, yet I’d spent a good part of the previous two weeks traveling and catching up with old and new friends, which certainly involved animated retellings of the events going on in my life. Continue reading “The Original Art by Elise M. Edwards”

The Solace of Another Woman’s Story by Yvonne Augustine

This week, I read an excellent, gripping, poignant blog post by Feminist Philosopher Leanne Dedrick entitled “Things That Make Me Cry: The Practice of Unbelief.” The purpose of the piece was Leanne’s desire to address a misperception by some non-atheists that atheists are devoid of emotion, violently hostile to anything associated with faith, and unable to deal honestly with the Divine. She also corrects the erroneous assumption that atheists seek to “hide from, or purposefully turn […] away from, the ‘saving grace’ of religion.” In the post, she wrote specifically about her own journey from ultra-conservative Christianity to atheism. Continue reading “The Solace of Another Woman’s Story by Yvonne Augustine”