Women’s Agency – Page 7 – Feminism and Religion

Let Your Voice Be Heard • Let Your Heart Be Inspired! by Dale Allen

I was honored to be a part of a special project for the Parliament of the World’s Religions Women’s Task Force: conducting interviews inside the first-ever Women’s Village in Chicago at the Parliament Convening. I had been on a team of women led by Sande Hart with Pat Fero. We met online over the course of nearly a year to plan the Women’s Village. It was a very special endeavor, and our group efforts produced a beautiful, calming, nurturing, sacred and inspiring space.

The McCormick Center is America’s largest convention center, and yet we were able to create serenity. The tapestries of Women’s Woven Voices provided a colorful and meaningful enclosure for our space. A fountain cascaded a peaceful hum. Majestic staffs created by Erin Beatty stood as sentries; keepers of ancient feminine power. A great Mother Tree crafted by Elisa Guyton and Leah Myers spread her paper branches outward and received the written prayers and blessing posted there by attendees. The crown-making table was always busy with women talking and crafting exquisite headpieces. The Red Tent room was a tranquil place of mediation, rest, and a variety of spirit-nourishing workshops and presentations.

The Great Mother Tree crafted by Elisa Guyton and Leah Myers, close up with written prayers and blessings.

On the changing role of the Goddess

Goddess Prominence & Nature Participation through time

Today I reflect on the presence or absence of the goddess in religion and society, and how we view humanity and participate in nature as a result.

This post is inspired by “The Myth of the Goddess. Evolution of an Image” by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, and especially by its final chapter “The Sacred Marriage of Goddess and God: the Reunion of Nature and Spirit.” This dance of integration of apparent opposites is essential to my work.

Invisible Connections: The Hidden Web of Women Writers, part 2 by Theresa C. Dintino

You can read part 1 here.

The erasure of this web is to make women feel alone and disconnected. Maybe it would make them want to give up.

Angela Davis and Toni Morrison

This may sound extreme but imagine this scenario: You are a young woman starting out and you are told that the path you wish to follow is one of pain, loneliness and lacks any kind of support or network with other women that came before you. There are plenty of men but you are left out of that network.

Why would you want to do it? Because in your soul of souls you are a writer, or an artist or a scientist . . . So you decide to do it anyway. But instead of expecting support and connection you have already decided, based on what you have been told, that there won’t be any and so you start to not expect it.

Invisible Connections: The Hidden Web of Women Writers, part 1 by Theresa C. Dintino

Moderator’s Note: We are pleased to announce that we are forming a co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women.The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on Nov. 16, 2021. You can see more of their posts here.

created by Data Visualization Specialist Mia S.Szarvas as part of a larger project of Nasty Women Writers about the Web of Women Writers

In the years that my sister Maria and I have been writing for Nasty Women Writers, one of the things that has become increasingly clear is how connected women writers are to one another. Every time I explore the life of a woman writer for Nasty Women Writers, I learn of other women writers she is connected to, inspired and supported by. Some of these connections are through time, meaning one woman writer reads and interacts with the body of work of a woman writer whose lifetime preceded hers chronologically, others are alive at the same time and they interact in person or through letter writing.

This Saturday March for Love, March for Healing, March for Strength by Caryn MacGrandle

Marches and Rallies will be held all over the United States this Saturday January 20^th to mark the upcoming 51^st anniversary of Roe vs. Wade. WomensMarch.Com

But what is happening in our world right now is Bigger than Roe.

It is not about Life, it is about Control.

I voted for Trump in 2016. There. I said it. My entire family was Republican. My husband at the time was Republican. I spent many years on an Airforce base where I saw firsthand that things the government run are full of red tape and inefficiency.

Patriarchy as Primer of Cruelty by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This was a hard post to write. When I write about my personal trauma, it is not only healing for me but adds to the canon of stories of other women that help all of us navigate trauma. That makes it easier. When writing about the trauma of women in a whole culture, I feel a sense of helplessness, especially here in the United States. We are all experiencing a group trauma and it is digging in deep.

January 5, 2024, will live in the Patriarchal Hall of Infamy. On this date the Supremes agreed to allow the rapist, misogynist, trying-to-be-dictator former President an opportunity to have his rights heard. But this same date, the Supremes also told we women that our lives are insignificant. No that’s not right, less than insignificant, a mere distraction to what they consider to be more important issues. They allowed an Idaho abortion law to go into effect that doesn’t allow an abortion even in the case of a medical emergency when a pregnant woman in life-threatening distress has been rushed to the emergency room. The split screen exhibits patriarchy for what it is. I want to use the word, “culmination” but that means the height. I don’t think we’ve reached a culmination because there seems no end to the cruelty that patriarchy seeks to inflict.

The Dark Tunnel by Sara Wright

Recently I had a very strange experience. I had fallen and was dumped into a nursing home to ‘recover’.

Since I have written about other aspects of this terrifying experience on this blog and published some pieces elsewhere, I am turning my attention to what happened to me after being drugged senseless, and then being stripped of every aspect of personal autonomy.

After I refused the 17 drugs, I incurred hostility from some nurses and aides who blamed me for having diarrhea and many other infractions none worth mentioning (one of the consequences of stopping the drugs was loose bowels).

The one medication I needed was routinely withheld. Each time this happened I became more frightened and anxious. Shaky. These same caregivers either ignored me or intoned “all you have to do is relax, breathe”. They dismissed my PTSD/Anxiety disorder as some kind of psychological problem or were too ignorant or indifferent to care.

Can Feminist Christians Hasten the Advent of Reproductive Liberation? by Elizabeth M. Freese, PhD

Wikimedia Commons, Servite Church in Hungary

The collision of the 2023 Christian liturgical season of Advent with American reproductive politics has been jarring. Feminist religious critique and transformative activism are imperative.

With the Texas Supreme Court decision on a dire abortion case, alongside increasing criminalization of women having miscarriages, we are witnessing the principle of patriarchal dominance of female reproductive capacity and the denigration of women’s full, equal personhood pushed to the extreme. In part, this barbarity is perpetuated by Christianity. Even though this tradition often challenges social systems of injustice, and it does not actually support their hollow theology of “life at conception,” misogynist oppressors have plenty of Christian religiosity to stand on.

What “Can” Women Do? – An Excerpt from Nice Churchy Patriarchy by Liz Cooledge Jenkins

In an essay called Sister, You Can Be Anything God Desires You to Be,^[1] Kara Triboulet recalls a discussion in her theology class at her Christian college. When the professor opened up the floor and invited students to express their views on women in leadership, these are some of the things her classmates said:

“I believe women can be in leadership, just not as pastors.”

“Allowing women to teach other women and children isn’t limiting. At least they have a place to serve.”

“Women can be directors, but not pastors.”

“The Bible is very clear . . . women can’t teach or lead men because men were created first. It’s just the way God ordained it, and we all just need to accept that.”

A Recipe for Dancing Your Soul Home

When you hear the word ‘soul’, what is your first association?

Soul is a complex and much-debated word, that often brings up strong feelings. Without going into religious or philosophical discourse, it is often associated with the breath, and with that mysterious spark of life force that animates the body. I discussed soul in a previous post Untangling the Triad of Life Force, Spirit and Soul. Today I write about soul as a fluid concept, an essence that can get dispersed and also retrieved, and propose a light self-retrieval through dance as remedy that you can do by yourself.