Spirituality – Page 11 – Feminism and Religion

Stopping to Smell the Flowers by Marie Cartier

There is a saying, “Take time to smell the flowers.” Attributed to many different sources, it means among other things– take time and be grateful. Take time and relax. Take time.

In that spirit I am sending along pictures from the amazing “super bloom” California is experiencing this spring. It is the most magnificent we have ever had, I think. It happens once a decade, but we are lucky to have had a super bloom in 2017 and now this year as well. California had an extreme drought last year and then extreme rain this past winter. And now we have flowers…and flowers. Poppies are the state flower of California and they are being celebrated—all over. And people dropping in by helicopter and influencers ruining some of the poppy beds by laying in them for Instagram pics. Yes, it’s been crazy. But, when we were there (my wife and I) on a past Sunday, it felt so magical that so much of Los Angeles it seemed was out to smell the flowers. You can see a picture of folks lined up (my wife at the end in the picture below) photographing the flowers. Flowers suddenly are the new super star!

Continue reading “Stopping to Smell the Flowers by Marie Cartier”

Hekate, Goddess of Liminality and Intermediary by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne Quarrie

Let me share with you the Goddess most honored as the Goddess of liminal time and space. It is our beloved Hekate, Great Goddess of the Three Ways, bridging Earth, Sea and Sky as we travel between worlds.

In modern times, She is seen by many as a “hag” or old witch stirring the cauldron. This idea was popularized by Roberts Graves’ book, The White Goddess. In early writings, however, she is portrayed as a beautiful and powerful maiden goddess.

“I come, a virgin of varied forms, wandering through the heavens, bull-faced, three-headed, ruthless, with golden arrows; chaste Phoebe bringing light to mortals, Eileithyia; bearing the three synthemata [sacred signs] of a triple nature. In the Aether I appear in fiery forms and in the air, I sit in a silver chariot.” (Chaldean Oracles)

She was the only one of the ancient Titans that Zeus allowed to retain her power after the Olympians seized control. She shared with Zeus, the awesome power of granting all wishes to humanity (or withholding, if she chose).

Continue reading “Hekate, Goddess of Liminality and Intermediary by Deanne Quarrie”

Marianne Williamson. . . I’m Sacredly Smitten by Elisabeth Schilling

I caution myself to be critical and nuanced. I’m sorry, folks. I just haven’t had such dazzling hope or remote interest in politics since. . . well, since I was a puppet junior high evangelist for an independent candidate my Dad liked, and I don’t want to try to remember who it was. But I was 13. And I’m 38 now. What hath made this cold, indifferent, anxious millennial’s soul to warm?

I am into mindfulness, contemplative studies, Eckhart Tolle, Don Miguel Ruiz, Nhat Thich Hanh, the kind of comparative religious studies scholar who has eastern spirituality leanings, so when I heard Marianne Williamson was a presidential candidate, I got curious. I’ve not read A Course in Miracles (although I think I’ve avoided it for the same assumptions Williamson says she initially made) or actually any of her books. Williamson is Jewish and has a pluralistic perspective when it comes to noting the basic underlying wisdom of all religious and spiritual beliefs (I realize we have discussed this before when I called them “wisdom traditions” – is any tradition actually wise/can you separate the violence, oppressions, and misogynies of them?).

She speaks in cool, rushing waters and has a platform that still sounds “political”/political (she breaks down what this word actually means in her latest CNN Town Hall) and is spiritual and based in a rhetoric of love. After the complete loss of hope in what [T . .] represents, and the not-yet healed wounds from [B. . .], she sounds like a reasonable adult, much like Obama did during his years. I wonder if they are friends? They should be.

Continue reading “Marianne Williamson. . . I’m Sacredly Smitten by Elisabeth Schilling”

Making it Mine: An Un-Orthodox Passover by Joyce Zonana

Passover is a holiday of remembrance, of ritual re-enactment: this, we say, is what our ancestors experienced. This is what they felt and knew, what they tasted in their blood. The movement from slavery to liberation, from the soul’s winter to spring. We must never forget, we say, we must always remember, be thankful for our freedom, never take it for granted. “In each generation,” the Haggadah enjoins, “we should feel as if we personally had come out of Egypt.”

jz-headshot This year, I celebrated the Jewish feast of Passover on March 31st–almost three weeks before the holiday’s official start on the evening of April 19th, the 15th of Nissan. It turned out to be my best Passover yet.

Because I’d been accepted for a residency at an artists’ colony beginning on April 17th, I had known since last Fall that I would not be home for the holiday. Given Passover’s importance for me–a Jew who left Egypt in her own lifetime, part of what some have called the “Second Exodus”–I had thought I might postpone the residency and even considered turning it down. But the colony could not change the dates, and, after much deliberation, I decided that my work as a fledgling translator was worth missing my usual gathering of family and friends. I told myself I could mark the arrival of Passover internally.

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The Sanctuary of One Another by Molly Remer

“Please prepare me
to be a sanctuary.
Pure and holy
tried and true.
With thanksgiving
I’ll be a living
sanctuary
for you.”*

—Beautiful Chorus (Hymns of Spirit)

In March, my husband drove our daughter into town to work at her Girl Scout cookie booth and released me to prepare for an all-day Red Tent retreat for my local women’s circle. After I packed my supplies for ritual, I set off on a walk in the deepening, rain-dark twilight. As I walked, I sang a song of sanctuary over and over, until I felt transported into a different type of consciousness, my feet steady on muddy gravel, the leafless branches stark against grey sky, moss and stones gleaming with sharp color against the roadside. A fallen tree absolutely carpeted with enchanting mushrooms caught my eye and invited me off the road and into its arms. As I stood there, feeling as if I had stepped out of ordinary reality and into a “backyard journey,” the spring peepers in the ephemeral pool in our field began their evening chorus. It has been so cold out with below freezing temperatures, snow, and ice for days since first hearing them in early March that I actually wondered if they would survive to continue their song.

Mercifully, though, it is not a silent spring. Continue reading “The Sanctuary of One Another by Molly Remer”

Windigo by Sara Wright

Windigo,

the Potawami Nations call him.

Malignant,

this spirit thrives

in the Northern Woods,

within the human soul.

Hatred for self or other

hidden

under Lies.

Windigo, the

Potawami Nations call him

He thrives

on greed.

Empty

He can never

Be filled.

Continue reading “Windigo by Sara Wright”

Who is God? by Gina Messina

I often say I am a theologian who is uncomfortable with prayer and does not have a relationship with God. What I mean is that I am still trying to figure out how I understand the divine; conventional prayers feel exclusionary and that is not something I want to participate in. Instead, I believe there is so much more to these concepts than traditional theology offers.

I find comfort in Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary of Magdala, Maria Goretti, my grandmothers, and my own mother — in communing with the saints. I feel connected to them. I know what it means to be a woman, a mother, a daughter, and to live in a misogynistic world. Growing up with patriarchal imagery of God continues to influence my perceptions about the divine and I have not yet found a way to develop a sacred relationship with a being I have struggled to view as anything other than oppressive. I am on a journey, and one that often gets pushed to the side in favor of teaching, grading, parenting, writing, cooking, cleaning, laundry…and when I can get it, sleep.

It seems that my nine-year old daughter is also on a journey and having her first crisis of faith. She has come to me with many questions about God lately. Initially she asked if God is real and how we can know. Then she moved on to other questions…and then assumptions. Last week, Sarah came home from school and told me that God is a white man. My heart broke a little. I asked her why she thought that and she responded, “Haven’t you seen all the pictures of God? Duh.” Continue reading “Who is God? by Gina Messina”

I Celebrate Love by Elise M. Edwards

Happy Valentine’s Day! I know, I know… so many of us do not like this holiday. It’s too commercialized, we say. We don’t need card-makers or florists to tell us how or when to show affection. Some of us don’t like Valentine’s Day because it reminds us of loves we have lost or never found. I get it. This day can seem shallow, overhyped, and falsely sentimental. It can be lonely. And yet, I won’t let today pass without celebrating and honoring love. Love is too important to concede to commercial interests.

Love, in its many forms, keep us alive and able to endure. Love is powerful because it is expansive, growing in unexpected places and ways. We tend to separate our celebrations of romantic love, friendship, familial love, self-love, and religious devotion. We make distinctions between our valentines and “galentines.” Rarely do we shout for joy in ecstatic worship while also celebrating the passionate longings of our innermost desires. But occasionally, in my religious tradition, we let our disparate loves come together. We unite them on holy feast days, enjoying the sensual pleasures of good food and company to mark spiritual occasions. So that’s my inspiration. Today, I’m celebrating love by reflecting on various forms of love merged together and sharing insight from poets and mystics about the power and beauty experienced in love.

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Devotion by Molly Remer

There are things that ask
to be remembered
or, is it that I ask to remember?
The everyday enchantments
of our living
words forming slices of
memory.
A white squirrel watching
from a sycamore tree
the sounds of black
crows calling
from within the secret
passages
between oak tree
and neighborhood
footprints of a shy orange
coastal fox in the sand.
Rays of sunlight
forming individual white rainbows
stretching from cloud
to water.
I no longer feel like I have anything
to teach
I just want to tell you about the
shell I found today
the sandy pink color
of its wave-shaped spiral
the way the pine needles
form a canopy under
which orange monarchs dance
the surprising softness and bright
green hue of thin fingers of grass
the pretty purple pollen cones
of a longleaf pine.
The colors of a morning woven
into a tapestry of devotion.
That is the word for this feeling
in my chest.
Devotion
to noticing.

Devotion is not a word that I have previously felt particularly inspired by or connected to. Perhaps it is too heavy, too responsible, or even “too religious”—carrying connotations of dogma or roteness. However, in the last month or so, something has opened up for me to consider the word, and the process, in a different way. Continue reading “Devotion by Molly Remer”

The Goddesses Ereshkigal and Epona and Their Help in My Grief by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

Anjeanette In November, my paternal grandmother passed. She was five days away from her 93^rd birthday. As I was/am going through the grieving process, I started to actively recall all the studies I have done regarding death and grieving practices across the globe and throughout the centuries. Mixed with the grieving process was constructing a January term class called “Goddesses Around the World.” As I marked each culture, religion, and goddesses we would be studying I kept coming back to an interesting fact. In many ancient cultures, it was the divine feminine who oversaw death, not only at times as the bringer of death but more importantly, as the guardian of the dead, the protector of all those that have gone from the earthly realm. Continue reading “The Goddesses Ereshkigal and Epona and Their Help in My Grief by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”