Sometimes I describe my work and writing as “a love song to the Ozarks.” I am deeply embedded, body and soul, in this land that I come from, my bloodland, the place where I belong. Seven generations of my family have called these wooded hillsides and stony ridgetops home. This is my mystery school, where I explore hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.
The Earth is my teacher I shall always want I witness her still meadows She leadeth me to green pastures She restoreth my soul On tree covered hills She reminds me I am home and, yea, I walk in her valleys and I fear no suffering She is with me Her mountains and rolling rivers they comfort me joy bubbles through my veins and enlivens my footsteps my cup runneth over truly I stand in mysterious awareness all the days of my life and She holds me in the palm of her hand forever.
Let us trust the cycles
of retreat and renewal
alive in both the land
and in our hearts right now
as the melody of belonging
continues to serenade us
and we follow April’s determination
to create and shape
this world anew.
And, so, April arrives all at once to enliven the land, trailing cool breezes and the first blush of pollen possibility across fields and forests, fence rows and farms. She blankets open spaces with purple clover and violets, with chickweed and dandelion. When we pause to listen, we can hear the laughter of awakening rippling behind her. She brings an invitation into healing, into extending outward and reaching up. She offers wild promise and tender hope and the sweet, fresh breath of change. Let us soften into spring, into this invitation, into restoration and reclamation. It is now that we choose. Let us be content to be here, witnessing the changes, leaning into the wind, and savoring the blooming. Let us trust the cycles of retreat and renewal alive in both the land and in our hearts right now as the melody of belonging continues to serenade us and we follow April’s determination to create and shape this world anew.
A Prayer for Solstice Winter’s Crone, cave tender, cauldron keeper, mother of time, guide us into stillness, into a time of deep rest and reflection. Unwind our knots and soothe our scurrying, remind us how to listen, how to be still, how to turn inward and know. Remind us not to fear darkness for it is a time of necessary patience and growth. Help us to celebrate the cycles of change through which we move, honoring the fallow times and the flourishing times as equally essential for life. Bone woman, great mother of us all, quiet our wondering and our worries, gentle our grief, and soften our sorrow. Restore our weary hearts and renew our spirits that we might turn towards the light we carry within and warm ourselves by this, life’s eternal and powerful flame, knowing that we belong to this great grand web of incarnation and all it holds.
Yes, it is December
already and again.
Let yourself notice the milkweed pods,
how they have split their sides
and are sending silky white seed fluffs
into the waiting air.
Witness the trees,
bare and gray and patient.
Yes, it is December already and again. Let yourself notice the milkweed pods, how they have split their sides and are sending silky white seed fluffs into the waiting air. Witness the trees, bare and gray and patient. Watch the squirrels, tails puffed against the chill, stored nuts in their cheeks. Listen to the wind how it whispers and rattles through the empty branches. Watch the clouds, slow-moving white billows in a pale blue sky. Be patient with yourself. Grant yourself grace. Remember the three invitations of the solstice season: to listen, to wonder, to be content. Remember your promise to keep company with joy. Remember your vow to be in devotion to your own life. Think about everything there is to do. Open your hands. Feel that thin, whispering winter wind skim over your palms. Take a deep breath. Allow yourself to marvel at all this year has held. Bless it. Thank it. Cup your hands around your own face. Say: thank you. Here you are in the center of your own life’s unfolding. There is nowhere else to be. Be gentle with yourself. Invite the winter crone to tea. Look into her eyes. See yourself reflected there, your own winter eyes open to the possibility of both clarity and delight.
I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. In the summer, I compiled a post with 13 summer lessons from 13 years of posts here at FAR. I decided to bookend that post with a Winter Lessons post as well. Here are thirteen lessons to share from past winter posts:
Moderator’s Note: This was originally posted on February 24, 2013. Sadly Mama Donna died on Sept. 21, 2024. You can read FAR’s post that honored her life here.
The Queen paradigm promotes a new understanding of what it might mean to be a middle-aged woman today who accepts complete responsibility for and to her self, and it celebrates the physical, emotional, and spiritual rewards of doing so.
Although I have been passionately devoted to the Many Splendored Goddess in Her complex multiplicity for more than thirty years now, I am not a believer in the Triple Goddess paradigm. It has never resonated with me because it belies what I believe to be the true nature of nature. The Triple Goddess in Her tripartite phases is widely understood to represent the complete cyclical wholeness of life. She who is Three is likened to the moon, the tides and the seasons, whose mutability She mirrors. And therein, lies the rub.
Step by step,
we make our way.
Breath by breath,
we choose.
Day by day,
we see where we are.
Let us remember
that we do not really finish anything,
we tumble with the turning
which is right where we belong.
It is now in this liminal space between the cauldron and the cave, as obligation struggles to come roaring back into center, that we sense what we truly need whispering beneath the surface of all that clamors to co-opt our time and all that howls to claim our attention. Stand steady. Inhabit your own wholeness. Cast a one word spell of power: return. Step into the sacred right where you are. Re-collect yourself. Reclaim your right to your own life. Defend your edges. Give clarity space to crystallize and your own knowing space to emerge. It is vital, this work of reclamation. Hold it holy. Let the knots unravel. Set yourself free.
Living as I do in the midst of both Finnish immigrant and Anishinaabe cultures, and where the two merge in the many here who identify as “Findians,” I was intrigued by the description of Kaarina Kailo’s book, Sauna, Culture, Sweat and Spirituality, as a comparative exploration of Indigenous sweat lodges — madoodiswan in Anishinaabemowin — and Finnish saunas.[i] As an outsider to both cultures, I have no ancestral or traditional knowledge of either saunas or sweat lodges and I wanted to learn more about both. Kailo’s book did not disappoint. What I hadn’t expected and was delighted to discover was that Kailo connects both with ancient goddess religions, contemporary feminist spiritualities, and ecofeminism.
Kailo’s book is a widely and deeply researched cross-cultural comparative study of the elements, practices, intentions, and spiritualities of sweat cultures ranging far beyond various Native American sweat lodge practices – Delaware Great Houses, Anishinaabe sweat lodges, Pueblo kivas – and the Finnish sauna,to Iberian/Galician saunas, Irish sweathouses, and Old Europe. As Kailo herself says, the value of such cross-cultural studies is the way they help to expand our thinking, enabling us to see things we might not have otherwise. She repeatedly says that she is looking for the “affinities” among these various sweat cultures, rather than focusing on their differences, and she finds many. In the process, she reveals the role of sweat lodges, sweat houses, and saunas as sacred spaces of healing, restorative balance, connection with the spirits, rebirth and regeneration, women-centered spirituality, and Great Bear religions. Infiltrated throughout are her reflections on how reviving the widespread use of sweat cultures and saunas, and the woman and life-centered spiritualities at their heart, would provide an antidote to the current economic, ecological, and political threats to the world.
At a coffee shop in Agios Thomas, Crete last month a perfect stranger offered to pay for the coffees and sodas of the 16 women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This spirit of great generosity is rarely experienced in the United States or other parts of Europe, but it is still common in rural Crete and some parts of Greece.
In fact our group was in Agios Thomas because our bus driver Babis, also in a spirit of great generosity, insisted on stopping to show us his village when we were passing nearby. He guided us to see Roman rock cut tombs and arranged for the early Byzantine church to be opened. At the end of the our pilgrimage, Babis stopped the bus at a wooded glen beside a small church where he offered us his own homemake raki, wine, and olives, accompanied by local sheep cheese he had purchased while we were climbing a mountain. After every meal that we ate in local tavernas, we were offered bottles of cold raki, fruit, and sweets.
This spirit of great generosity has long been commented on by travelers in Greece, who often speak of it as unexpected (for them) hospitality to the stranger or traveler. That it is, of course. Through the work of Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, I now understand that the famous Greek hospitality to the stranger has deep roots in matriarchal cultures. According to Goettner-Abendroth, equality of wealth is assured through the widely-practiced custom of gift-giving in matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Is the Spirit of Great Generosity in Crete a Survival of Ancient Matriarchal Values?”
The Book of Exodus is a well-known scripture, and it is one that many Jews, Christians, and even people who are non-religious are very familiar with. Growing up, our family continued to tell this story year after year during Passover. It was one of many classic Torah readings shown to us in our temple. So, one of the key figures in this story is Miriam, Moses’ older sister. Most remember that she helped her mother deliver Moses in secret at the Nile River when he was an infant due to the Pharaoh setting an order to kill every Hebrew son because of concerns of the population growing too much (Exodus 11:5-6). She also assisted in leading the Israelites across the Red Sea when Moses opened it up for the Hebrews to cross (Exodus 14:21-22). An article titled “Miriam: Midrash and Aggadah” shares a deeper analysis of the roles that Miriam upheld as a sister, a daughter, and a woman during this time. It has also informed my understanding of Miriam’s story.
This post was originally published on Oct. 28th, 2013
At a coffee shop in Agios Thomas, Crete last month a perfect stranger offered to pay for the coffees and sodas of the 16 women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This spirit of great generosity is rarely experienced in the United States or other parts of Europe, but it is still common in rural Crete and some parts of Greece.
In fact our group was in Agios Thomas because our bus driver Babis, also in a spirit of great generosity, insisted on stopping to show us his village when we were passing nearby. He guided us to see Roman rock cut tombs and arranged for the early Byzantine church to be opened. At the end of the our pilgrimage, Babis stopped the bus at a wooded glen beside a small church where he offered us his own homemake raki, wine, and olives, accompanied by local sheep cheese he had purchased while we were climbing a mountain. After every meal that we ate in local tavernas, we were offered bottles of cold raki, fruit, and sweets.
This spirit of great generosity has long been commented on by travelers in Greece, who often speak of it as unexpected (for them) hospitality to the stranger or traveler. That it is, of course. Through the work of Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, I now understand that the famous Greek hospitality to the stranger has deep roots in matriarchal cultures. According to Goettner-Abendroth, equality of wealth is assured through the widely-practiced custom of gift-giving in matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES?”
Feminism and Religion 