Spirituality – Page 35 – Feminism and Religion

Like Rain on Dry Land by Marcia Bedard

When first I moved to a rural mountain community near Yosemite, I was spiritually parched, and my soul felt dry as a bone. Desperate for the rich conversations of my sisters, after taking an early retirement from the CSU Fresno Women’s Studies Program, I had an intuitive sense that I might find some like-minded women friends in a small group that met weekly at our local church, led by Diana, our courageously and outrageously feminist pastor, who has since moved on to what I hope are friendlier communities for feminist pastors.

If PFLAG, and similar marginalized groups, had found an oasis there, in what was called (in order to please the church fathers) a Women’s Bible Study Group, so could I. A year before, this would have been my last choice of groups to join, but in a town where fundamentalist churches thrived, and Starbucks was the only place you could find a copy of literature as subversive as The New York Times, it was my only choice. It was in the church basement, amidst a thinly disguised knitting/bible study group, that we gathered weekly to receive what turned out to be a truly holy (meaning wholly) communion of spirit, enriched by various reading that Diana generously shared with us. Continue reading “Like Rain on Dry Land by Marcia Bedard”

Why a Goddess Pilgrimage? by Carol P. Christ

What is a Goddess Pilgrimage and why are so many US, Canadian, and Australian women making pilgrimages to ancient holy places in Europe and Asia? The simple answer is that women are seeking to connect themselves to sources of female spiritual power that they do not find at home.

Traditionally pilgrims leave home in order to journey to a place associated with spiritual power. “Leaving home” means leaving familiar physical spaces, interrupting the routines of work and daily life, and leaving friends and family behind. For the pilgrim, “home” is a place that has provided both comfort and a degree of discomfort that provokes the desire to embark on a journey. The space of pilgrimage is a “liminal” or threshold space in which the supports systems of ordinary life are suspended, as Victor Turner said. A pilgrim chooses to leave the familiar behind in order to open herself to the unfamiliar—in hopes that she will return with new insight into the meaning of her life. Continue reading “Why a Goddess Pilgrimage? by Carol P. Christ”

Goddess as Love: From Experience To Thealogy by Carol P. Christ

If theology is rooted in experience, how do we move from experience to theology? In my life there have been a number of key moments of “revelation” that have shaped my thealogy. One of these was the moment of my mother’s death.

In 1991 my mother was diagnosed with cancer. While she was being treated, I realized that I had never loved anyone as much as I loved her. When I wrote that to her, she responded that “this was the nicest letter” she “had ever received” in her life and she invited me to come home to be with her and my Dad.

My mother died only a few weeks after I arrived, in her own bed as she wished. She was on an oxygen machine, and I heard her call out in the dark of early morning. When my Dad got to the room, he tried to turn up the oxygen, but it didn’t help. Then he called the doctor who reminded him that my mother did not want to go to the hospital under any circumstances.

My Dad then sat by my mother’s bed and held her hand. As my mother died, I felt that the room was” filled with love.” I sensed that my mother was “going to love.” Continue reading “Goddess as Love: From Experience To Thealogy by Carol P. Christ”

8 Simple Rules for Being a Queer Godfather by John Erickson

Becoming a Godfather was more than just a reentry into the Catholic traditions I had long given up but rather a journey back in time that would grant me the ability to rewrite the wrongs I felt as a kid growing up in a tradition I not only didn’t understand but also didn’t feel like I belonged in.

I often wondered why I wasn’t asked to be the Godfather of my niece and nephew. It made perfect sense to me that I would be the best person to guide and provide spiritual care for either of them as I was the only member, in both my family and my brother-in-law’s, getting a PhD in Religion. I didn’t think there would be much to it. I would go, hold my nephew, and watch a priest pour water over his head, and then go and enjoy some very sugary cake in my sister’s backyard.

On August 18^th, 2012 my wish came true and I became the Godfather to my sister’s second child, Drew. I had always believed that there was nothing to being a Godfather. That it was a title in name only and a tradition that many individuals bestowed upon members of their family as ritualistic habit rather than a sacred institution of spiritual care and upbringing. Boy, was I wrong. Continue reading “8 Simple Rules for Being a Queer Godfather by John Erickson”

How literal is too literal? My Experience with Tallit Katan. By Ivy Helman

I tried a new spiritual practice yesterday. I wore a tallit katan. It is commonly worn by Orthodox, Hasidic and other Ultra Orthodox men and boys from the age of 3 onward and usually not worn by women within these communities. Occasionally, one can see Jews (mostly men) from Conservative shuls wearing these garments and rarely from Reform congregations. They seem to be a marker of a more observant Jewish practice that reads much of the Torah literally. One is commanded to wear fringes (tzitziyot) when wearing four-cornered garments as reminders of the covenant between G-d and the Jews and more specifically of the 613 commandments.

There are a number of reasons women and men from Orthodox and ultra Orthodox communities give for discouraging women from the wearing of tallit katan and tallit gadol. First, women are said to be exempt from time-bound mitzvot, or commandments . Wearing tzitziyot are considered time-bound because the Torah says one should be able to see them which has been interpreted to mean that they be worn during the day. The reason given that women are not held to time-sensitive mitzvot has to do primarily with their childcare responsibilities. Children and fulfilling their needs often requires much time and may not allow one to complete a task within a given time frame. A related ideology says that women are often generally thought to be more spiritually attuned, and therefore do not need such physical reminders to follow the mitzvot. Continue reading “How literal is too literal? My Experience with Tallit Katan. By Ivy Helman”

Through Body and Space: A Glimpse into Women Worshippers of Aadhi Parashakthi by Amy Levin

Once what happened was after people started believing someone around also started believing in this temple and one person kept a statue on their steps. Her Aunty she believed and she is very much interested in small things. So she started decorating it up. And what happened was the statue starting getting bleeding, like monthly monthly. And the dress which the statue wore during those periods was stained with red bleeding. So they asked Guruji about what is this and he said that the shakti has come into the statue. So if you keep this in the home it will turn into a temple so go and leave it outside. This was followed by entry of snakes, king cobras, so what they did was they went and left it in the sea, after which her grandmother had a dream that you have left me in the water but still I am with you. I am the temple opposite here, put a lamp everyday at that place. So they started putting it out there, and now there is an earthen Kali which as come up in that place by nature. –Interview with Premila, March 18, 2008 Continue reading “Through Body and Space: A Glimpse into Women Worshippers of Aadhi Parashakthi by Amy Levin”

A Shaman’s Journey by Kelley Harrell

When I was five years old, I asked my Sunday School teacher–a woman, “What if Jesus had been a girl?”

“But he wasn’t,” she replied.

Unsatisfied, I asked again, only to receive the exasperated, recursive answer. My mother gave the same empty response later, in private.

It’s no huge surprise that when I was about 14, my many dissatisfactions with the Church overwhelmed my fondness for it, and I began to explore other spiritual paths. Coinciding with this transition was also the realization that intuitive gifts I’d manifest since childhood demanded open expression, and that the energetic truth of my femininity deserved acknowledgement on my spiritual path. By the time I was 17 I had separated from the Church and begun crafting my own relationship to shamanism.

That may not seem like a terribly logical leap on the surface, but for me it was sound. Continue reading “A Shaman’s Journey by Kelley Harrell”

Silencing Miriam: Prophetess, Liberator, and Leader By Michele Stopera Freyhauf

The prophetess Miriam, Aaron’s sister, took a tambourine in her hand, while all the women went out after her with tambourines, dancing; and she led them in the refrain: Sing to the LORD, for he is gloriously triumphant; horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.”(NAB, Exodus 15:20-21)

The Song of Miriam is not a story of death and destruction, but rather liberation. It is a poetic celebration of God’s liberation of the Israelites from the oppressive Egyptians, which, according to Bernhard W. Anderson in “The Song of Miriam Poetically and Theologically Considered,” marks the beginning of the Israelite tradition (292). Phyllis Trible in “Bringing Miriam out of the Shadows” states that this act marks the end of the Exodus, which was started by Miriam, not Moses (169, 172). The act of liberation reveals God’s action in humanity. Gerald Janzen in Exodus believes this act also moved the Israelites “to fear the LORD and believe in the LORD and in his servant Moses” (109). The uniqueness of this passage is that the most unlikely person leads – this person is not a man but rather a woman.

This brief passage in the Hebrew Scriptures is revelatory – Miriam is revealed for the first time. She is a prophetess, Aaron’s sister, and the role of leader of the victory dance to honor the Divine Warrior.

Continue reading “Silencing Miriam: Prophetess, Liberator, and Leader By Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

That Which Is Sacred by Max Dashu

We are going through a huge cultural shift toward restoring the female to her full radiance. However you want to define that, it is rising now, through us.

That which is Sacred, what should we call it? We’ve been told to name it he, him, his. That it was blasphemy to do otherwise, to say she, even as they desecrated the Divine with comparisons to mortal overlords, those cruel masters, despoliators, persecutors. No. Reconsider. That fearful address to an authoritarian punisher takes us far from true reverence. Rather revere the roots of Being, manifesting in all Nature around us, within us. The profound silence, and the Deep calling to the Deep.

Deeply I go down into myself. My god is Dark and like a webbing

made of a hundred roots that drink in silence. ― Rainer Maria Rilke

There are myriad emanations of the indescribable Source, but Goddess women call it she, as medicine to what they have forbidden in us, to us. That Shakti, the effulgence that pours through all living beings, including the rocks. The Shekhinah, the ever-flowing waters of Nummo, of Anahid. The Tao that is “the mother of whatever exists under the sky, upon whom myriads of beings depend for their birth and existence,” as the Dao De Jing says.

“The Universe is the Goddess. She is not separate from it, She did not create it and then let it be. She is what is, what was, and what will be.”¹ So the Kemetic people praised Neith, Mother of the Neteru, on her great temple at Sa in the Nile Delta. Inscribed magnificats exalt her in some of the greatest spiritual literature of the world:

Greater is her name than of all gods and goddesses

The primordial One, eldest of the primeval gods

She who made that which is

She who created that which exists…

Who gave birth to Ra,

Who brought forth in primeval time herself,

Never having been created.

But not all wisdom is written. Continue reading “That Which Is Sacred by Max Dashu”

A Cross-Cultural Feminist Alchemy: Studying Mago, Pan-East Asian Great Goddess, Using Mary Daly’s Radical Feminism as Springboard by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang

Feminist theology was self-transcending to me. I was unafraid of going beyond the boundary of Christianity and its God.

Mago is the Great Goddess of East Asia and in particular Korea. Reconstructing Magoism, the cultural and historical context of East Asia that venerated Mago as the supreme divine, is both the means and the end. Magoism demonstrates the derivative nature of East Asian religions such as Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism while redefining East Asian Shamanism to be the religious expression of Magoism.

I encountered the topic of Mago during my doctoral studies. The topic of Mago fell out of nowhere at the time I was preparing for qualifying examinations. I had never heard the name, Mago. Only when I was able to collect a large amount of primary sources from Korea, China, and Japan, was I awakened to the cultural memory of Mago. I grew up craving the stories of Halmi (Grandmother/Great Mother), a common referral to Mago among Koreans. I had a childhood experience of being in the fairy land unfolded by my grandmother’s old stories. While “Mago” was unfamiliar to most Koreans, she was taken for granted in her many other names such as Samsin (the Triad Deity) and Nogo (Old Goddess) and place-names such as Nogo-san (Old Goddess Mountain) and Nogo-dang (Old Goddess Shrine). Continue reading “A Cross-Cultural Feminist Alchemy: Studying Mago, Pan-East Asian Great Goddess, Using Mary Daly’s Radical Feminism as Springboard by Helen Hye-Sook Hwang”