Category: Women Mystics

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”

Mary Magdalen’s Feast Day: Celebrating Goddess Incarnate by Elizabeth Cunningham

I believe the current resurgence of interest in Mary Magdalen does reflect a collective desire for the divine incarnate in a woman’s body. 

July 22nd. In the Village of St Maximin in the South of France, a (real) blackened skull with topped with  gold hair (that looks a bit like a battle helmet) is being lovingly paraded through the streets in celebration of Mary Magdalen’s feast day. Except for this annual airing, the skull resides atop a gold bust of the saint in a glass case in the crypt of the basilica. Just under where her heart would be is a small glass cylinder reputed to contain a shred of tissue from Mary Magdalen’s breast bone, the place where Jesus touched her on Resurrection morning warning her: Noli me tangere. Don’t touch me.  Not yet.

Incarnation is all about touch. Though most of us no longer venerate—or battle over—the relics of saints, there is something touching about our longing for the divine made tangible, vulnerable, human. Continue reading “Mary Magdalen’s Feast Day: Celebrating Goddess Incarnate by Elizabeth Cunningham”

“Eating Our Words” Decoupling Women’s Eating Habits from the Language of Sin: Part 2 by Stefanie Goyette

This post is the second part of a two-part series. Read Part I here.

In my previous discussion of the language associated with women’s eating habits, I mostly left aside the problem of weight. Weight, and certainly obesity, was hardly a concern in the Middle Ages, whereas I do not think that it would be controversial to suggest that fatness in the modern era is viewed as nothing less than a moral weakness, a failure of self-control. This viewpoint that is emphasized by weight-loss programs on television, in magazines, etc. But this is another matter that deserves a full discussion, which I cannot offer today. Rather, I would like to suggest that gluttony as a moral concern has shifted in meaning between the Middle Ages and the modern era, building on the fact that in medieval Europe, gluttony was an explicitly religious problem, a cardinal sin, even when separated from the related issues of libido and lust.

Despite the intense moralization of alimentary behavior in the Middle Ages, medieval writers often refused constrictive, moralized models of food and eating. Hildegard of Bingen, in her manual of natural medicine, the Physica (twelfth century), recommends different foods that help feed and diminish sexual desire, in order to balance the body rather than to suppress its needs. Continue reading ““Eating Our Words” Decoupling Women’s Eating Habits from the Language of Sin: Part 2 by Stefanie Goyette”

“Eating Our Words” Decoupling Women’s Eating Habits from the Language of Sin: Part 1 by Stefanie Goyette

Any woman who has eaten a big holiday meal with her family or had a weekend brunch with girlfriends has probably heard the following words: “I’m so bad, but I’m going to order…” or “I shouldn’t, but…” or “I’m being good; I skipped dessert.” Foods and the recipes in cookbooks marketed towards women are described as “sinfully delicious,” especially if they are low-carb, or low-fat, or low-sugar. “Sinfully delicious” diet food can be enjoyed “without the guilt.” Further marking the matrix of food, women, and “bad” behavior or sin, is the intimate relationship between food, women, and sex. Recent Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s commercials feature swimsuit model Kate Upton making out with – nearly making love to – a hamburger. This love scene takes place in a convertible, at a drive-in, the classic site of American, teenage, illicit sex. The take-out bag is used as a prop to conceal Upton’s vagina, as she spreads her legs for the camera. Another commercial, for Lay’s potato chips, features a women biting her lip while she slowly peels open the bag, set to Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

A seeming contradiction emerges between these two discourses: one that persists within and between women, who are expected to be on a diet and who speak, and are spoken to, about food in terms of morality, “good” and “bad.” At the same time, women eating, especially eating greasy, fatty, comfort food, as long as these women are thin and attractive, has become a quintessential symbol for sex, and is used most particularly to market food to men. Continue reading ““Eating Our Words” Decoupling Women’s Eating Habits from the Language of Sin: Part 1 by Stefanie Goyette”

Hildegard of Bingen to be Canonized and Named Doctor of the Church By Gina Messina-Dysert

Known as the “Sybil of the Rhine,” Hildegard of Bingen was a remarkable woman who produced multiple visionary writings and major theological works throughout her life (1098-1179).  During a time period when women received little respect, Hildegard was consulted by religious and political leaders and advised popes and kings.  Her contributions are many and include founding a convent, composing music, and writing about the medicinal uses of natural objects such as plants, trees, animals, and stones.

It was recently announced that Hildegard of Bingen will be canonized and declared a doctor of the church.  Hearing this I was among the many who were surprised by the news since I had assumed that Hildegard was already canonized, particularly since she has been called St. Hildegard and has had a feast day on September 17th since 1940 (although only within the Benedictine order in Germany).  Nonetheless, I have recognized Hildegard as a crucial woman in Christian history – as crucial as St. Catherine of Siena, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Therese of Lisieux who have already been canonized.  So why the delay in granting this honor to Hildegard of Bingen? Continue reading “Hildegard of Bingen to be Canonized and Named Doctor of the Church By Gina Messina-Dysert”