story-telling – Feminism and Religion

SheSpeaks! Eve by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Author’s Note: I have begun a project called She Speaks! Women of the Bible Have Their Say. As part of this project, I have done five films with some very dedicated actors (friends of mine) who have dubbed themselves the SheSpeaks!Ensemble. I showed 4 of the films at the recent Yerusha Symposium. Based on the comments and reception, the project is now expanding. I am looking to create longer films that include story arcs. The first one will be of Eve. Below is the script for Eve along with the link to the video.

EVE speaks:

Why hello I don’t get visitors very often! Welcome. Come, come sit under my tree, let’s share some tea. I have the most wonderful and flavorful herbs here in my garden.

Look around at my most marvelous paradise. It is all filled with magical treasure. I’ll tell you a secret, the treasure I care for spans both the heavens and the earth. You see, we are at the place where spirit, breath and matter intersect. Where the living beings of earth and the animating forces of the divine join in harmony.

It is so hard to look at your holy book. I can’t imagine why I keep getting blamed for . . .well . . . just about everything. It’s strange that your world wants to connect me with curses as I am the giver of life. In fact, did you know that my name Eve means life. I don’t understand what has become of you, my children. It is said that I brought a curse to humanity. Do you see life as a curse? Let me tell you a bit about myself. Perhaps then you will see me differently.

The Stories We Tell by Xochitl Alvizo

I often read multiple books at the same time that seemingly have nothing to do with one another. Currently I’m in the middle of these three:

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith;
Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by Adrienne Maree Brown; and
Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will by Robert M. Sapolsky.

And I also just completed these two:

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kistin Kobes Du Mez; and
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment without Burnout by Cal Newport.

And although these books are of different genres and very different topics, the importance of our imagination comes up as a point of connection in four out of the five books. As I’m also in the midst of thinking and writing about church for my current book project, the role of our human imagination across the many parts of our lives, both individual and social, feels timely.

Naso: An Invitation for Feminist Imagining.

This week’s Torah portion is Naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89). The portion discusses who, among the Israelites, carries the components of the Miskan (Tenting of Meeting) while wandering through the desert. It also entails a census of the tribe of Levi, describes various offerings that were brought to the Tent of Meeting in general and for its twelve days of dedication, decrees keeping the ill and ‘contaminated’ out of Israelite settlements, details the Nazirite vow, gives us the priestly blessing, and proscribes the process through which women are acquitted or found guilty of affairs. There are many components of this parshah that offer food for thought when it comes to a feminist analysis, but for today, I am going to focus on where there is equality between men and women within the text and where there isn’t.

Prophetic Publishing, Feminist Publishing: 2024 Goals by Dr. Angela Yarber

Queer Chicana feminist author, Gloria Anzaldúa, once claimed, “The world I create in my writing compensates for what the real world does not give me.” I’ve long connected with the revolutionary Anzaldúa, believing in the prophetic power of the written word to create new worlds, worlds big and wide and just and beautiful enough for all people. Worlds where the perspectives of the marginalized are brought to the center.

This is what I aim to do as a publisher and writer myself. It was a meandering path to get here, but on the cusp of a new year, I find myself finally in place with my calling and vocation where all my skills as an activist, writer, professor, artist, and pastoral presence are coming together.

The Old Woman and the Wave: Sage-ing, Age-ing, Wage-ing Wander & Wonder by Margot Van Sluytman

“Set out, pilgrim. Set out into the freedom and the wandering. Find your people. Godde is much bigger, wilder, more generous, and more wonderful than you imagined.”
― Sarah Bessey

Joy and justice reside in grace. Thrive in gratitude. Find fulminating llanos of miracle, might, and magic contoured in story. Etched in song. Sculpted in the untempered and unmanacled invitation of HER resplendent and resounding voice and vision willing us to be the very creative fires we wish to live. To come to recognize, at the time of age-ing and sage-ing, the call to freedom.

The call to be wage-ing pilgrimage and poetry with and because of being Grandparents, is a gift SHE bestows upon us, often when we are not even aware of the liminal’s need of our life’s learnings.

HONEY SELLERS by Kapka Kassabova with Intro by Laura Shannon

Introduction to Kapka Kassabova’s ‘Honey Sellers‘, by Laura Shannon

Kapka Kassabova. Author photo by Tony Davidson. Used by permission.

After my recent review of Kapka Kassabova’s latest book, Elixir: The Valley at the End of Time, I am delighted to share an excerpt from Elixir with FAR readers here, by kind permission of the author and the publisher.

Elixir is an astounding book, revealing a little-known world of foragers, healers, and mystics in a remote corner of Bulgaria. Here people live in profound connection to nature, with respect for herbs and the earth and older women, echoing the peaceful Neolithic civilisations which once flourished in the same valley Kassabova describes.

Welcome to the Psychopomp Dreamhouse! by Stacey Simmon, PhD

When I first heard a Barbie movie was going to be released this summer I groaned. Like the awful complements of GI Joe, American Girl, and Trolls, I assumed that the content of this film would be designed to fleece parents out of the cost of tickets and popcorn. I am delighted to report that I was completely mistaken. Not only does Barbie enchant, she also delivers a complex message about idealism and womanhood.

But Barbie’s most important revelation is in her role as a psychopomp between the world of the ideal and the world of the real. Barbie Land is like a patriarchal heaven. Women are ideal, they don’t have flaws. They get shit done without breaking a sweat or wearing comfortable shoes, and the men are the accessories. It is what I imagine all the men who struggle with patriarchy idealize about what it would mean to be a beautiful, flawless woman- all of the power, where men can relax and be accessories for a change.

Fear and Need in the Absence of Mother God, part 2 by Caryn MacGrandle

Yesterday’s part 1 post quoted from the book, The Malleus Maleficarum

Witches Well in Edinburgh, Scotland, …the Roman numerals for 1479 on one side and 1722 [years when witch persecution was most prominent]

The book wasn’t just a message for women but for all. The tenets that formed the backbone of colonial culture:

Paddle your own canoe.
Success comes with hard individual effort when you stay within the lines that we draw.
And if you fail? Well, that’s on you.
Maybe you will get another shot if you are lucky, work relentlessly and act as you should.
And never ever forget that your worth is defined by the number of 0’s in your bank account.

The Blue Beetle: “¡No contaban con mi astucia!” by Yara González-Justiniano

Literally, you did not count on my astuteness. Or in other words, you underestimated my intelligence. It is the perpetual trick of arrogance that white supremacy and classism plays on racially and ethnically minoritized people and the joke/yoke these people carry. It is the most frequent microaggression I experience in academia in the supposed –– disque–– compliment of “you are so articulate!”

El Chapulín Colorado (The Red Grasshopper) is a Mexican comedic superhero character created by artist Roberto Gómez Bolaños, better known as Chespirito (little Shakespeare), in the 1970s. Whenever Chapulín untangles a mess, whether on purpose or by chance, he says “¡No contaban con mi astucia!” The movie Blue Beetle, which pays homage to this beloved character across Latin America and Latinx people is ––entre otras cosas–– exactly that, astute! Puerto Rican director, Angel Manuel Soto, and Mexican writer, Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, take the DC comic book story of Jaime Reyes’s Blue Beetle (2006) and transform it into a film that, more than responds to a Latino superhero gap, it takes representation, impact, and issues of capitalism seriously. The truck, the heart-shaped shield, the tools, and the crickets playing in the background of the outdoor scenes ––to name a few–– are an extension of the characters’ parallelisms and the possibilities of what it means to have higher numbers of representation in mass media-produced films with integrity and astucia. ¡Awiwi!

Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time by Kapka Kassabova, Book review by Laura Shannon

Kapka Kassabova is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction and nonfiction, born in Bulgaria and now living in the Scottish Highlands. Her newest work of narrative nonfiction, Elixir, soars with the luminous prose and unflinching honesty we have come to expect from this brilliantly gifted writer.

Elixir is an extraordinary, profoundly moving book. The moment I finished reading it, I began again from the beginning, pausing only to order multiple copies for friends. Like Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass, Kassabova effortlessly integrates science and the sacred, addressing historical, ecological, and personal trauma with clarity, compassion, and hope. Elixir combines memoir, travel, history, ethnography, botany, philosophy, spirituality, eco-psychology, traditional Chinese medicine, and even alchemy, in a subtle, sophisticated exploration which defies categorisation.