Women’s Power – Page 5 – Feminism and Religion

Bathsheba: From Survivor of Sexual Abuse to Queen Mother by Linda Cooper Costelloe

Bathsheba by Artemisia Gentileschi, wikimedia commons, public domain

The image we have of Bathsheba is that of a scheming temptress. That’s the way she’s been portrayed in media, such as the 1951 movie, David and Bathsheba, and Leonard Cohen’s song, Hallelujah. She deliberately bathed on a rooftop in sight of King David. She caught his eye and he was helpless to withstand her charms. The Bible does not support that image of Bathsheba, however. It says that Bathsheba was used and abused by David, and God was displeased.

The Bible says that David was on his rooftop. It does not say where Bathsheba was, only that she was bathing to purify herself after her period (2 Samuel 11:2-4). She was probably in an inner courtyard. In their book, Flawed Families of the Bible. How God’s Grace Works Through Imperfect Relationships, David E. Garland and Diana R. Garland write: “The laws required ritual washing at the conclusion of her menstrual period. A woman would be highly unlikely to conduct such a cleansing from her menstrual period as a come-on. If she were in public view, she would have washed without disrobing. There is no reason even to assume that she was naked. Public nudity was not acceptable in this ancient Jewish culture but instead was considered shameful. There is no foundation for assuming she was some kind of exhibitionist.”ⁱ

From the Archives: “What If We Touched Ourselves Lovingly Every Day?” by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

This was originally posted on June 5, 2020

I watched her hand stroke along my arm, so gently, so lovingly. Her voice whispered, “I love you, Trelawney. I love you, Trelawney.” The soft, tender caress felt poignant, healing, magical. I wept with gratitude.

It was my own hand stroking me. My own voice.

I want you to take a moment and imagine the person you love best in the world. Is there anyone? Is there someone you love utterly, you think of with pure, unconditional, compassionate, embracing, affirming, tender, protective, loyal, sacred love? Close your eyes a moment and let that feeling of pure love fill your heart until you understand that feeling with every fiber of your being. Do you have that Love? Truly feel it and know it with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength?

Goddess Lost: How the Downfall of Female Deities Degraded Women’s Status in World Cultures by Rachel S. McCoppin; book review by Margot Van Sluytman

She Who Knows

What then is my repentance?
If not, by rote this repetition?
“Godde is.”
“Godde is.”
“Godde is.”
“Love.”
And my face tastes
The beating heart
Of the sun’s call
For reclamation of
SHE Who Is.
SHE Who Is: knows me.
She, who also, is.
©Margot Van Sluytman

From the moment I saw the title, Goddess Lost: How the Downfall of Female Deities Degraded Women’s Status in World Cultures, by Rachel S. McCoppin, I knew I would have to read it. When it arrived in my mailbox and I saw the cover, I was imbued with inspiration. Then I read two sentences in the Preface, which articulate what for me, and for many, is one of the most vital, powerful, and, as yet, under-addressed, facts.

Dancing for Rain: Life-Giving Gift from Heaven to Earth by Laura Shannon

Image 1: Berber women dancers and musicians of Taroudant, Southern Morocco. The long red fringes of their headscarves connote fertility and rainfall. Photo: Liz Hammer, 2014.

Since ancient times people have danced for rain, the life-giving gift from heaven to earth. Rain rituals were seen as important work and were usually performed by women, traditional bringers of life and fertility. Both bearing and raising children, and cultivating the land to nourish the community, are activities dependent on, and psychically equated to, rainfall. Women’s ability to bring rain when necessary was a key belief of indigenous European culture and is found in many places today. Many women’s dances, songs and rituals in Eastern Europe and the Near East express this connection, and women’s folk costumes often feature long fringes representing water.

Herstory Profiles: Indian Royalty, Suffragette, Women’s Rights Activist by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

April is Sikh Awareness month which is incredibly important this year due to what is currently happening in the Punjab by the Indian Nation State. If you haven’t heard about the government shutdown largely targeting Sikhs, you can read here. To keep the focus on the Sikh Community, this post will be focused on the amazing royal turning fierce activist and suffragette – Sophia Duleep Singh.

Life Still Shaped by the Witch Hunts? by Eline Kieft

In this article I reframe my understanding of feminism through the lens of Mona Chollet’s In Defence of Witches, and reflect on how my psyche as a woman today is still deeply influenced by the effects of the witch hunts in mediaeval times.

From the Archives: Who Owns the Sacred? A Personal Search beyond (European) Indigenous Knowledge by Eline Kieft

This was originally posted on Jan 17, 2020

For almost 35 years nature has been my sacred place. As an 8-year old, I started to pray to Mother Earth even though the protestant tradition in which I grew up only recognised ‘God the Father’. I went outside in my inflatable rowing boat to seek solitude (as an only child in a quiet family!) on a small island in the lake of our local park. I practised rowing and walking quietly to not break the sacred silence. I collected herbs to brew infusions in my little thermos flask with boiled water brought from home. I sung to the moon, and danced my love for all creation back through my moving body. Over the last 15 or so years, I spent many days and nights at Neolithic monuments, dreaming in ancestral burial mounds, time traveling in stone circles in Cornwall, Wales, Scotland, England, Ireland and Brittany. This nature-based practice evolved naturally, and later incorporated my training with the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies and the School of Movement Medicine. Nature is where I reconnect most easily with the Sacred, and listen to the whispers on the great web of life in which all of nature is a great teacher. Nature, for me, is a strong place of prayer, solace, awe, reverence, gratitude, joy, guidance, reconnection, healing and transformation.

The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling by Mary Sharratt

The new podcast series The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling is a deep dive into some of the most contentious ideological conflicts of our age through the experience of the world’s most successful author, a woman who has been vilified and physically threatened and whose books have been burned by both right-wing Christians and, more recently, by her detractors on the liberal and progressive left.

Hope Is Giving Birth in the Face of the Dragon by Beth Bartlett

The image of the baby born under the rubble of the earthquake in Syria has been haunting me. So has the image in my mind of her mother, giving birth to her baby while trapped after the building, where she, her husband, and their children were sleeping, collapsed. The baby’s uncle, when digging through the debris hoping to reach his brother and family, found the baby alive, her umbilical cord still attached to her mother. When he cut the cord, the baby let out a cry. Tragically, her mother had died after giving birth, as had her father and siblings.

Woman’s Sacred Hand – and Handkerchief by Laura Shannon

In my recent post ‘Forty Days After Childbirth, Mary Returns to the World,’ I wrote that ‘the woman’s power to bless and protect, as well as to create, is shown in the symbol of her hand.’ We see expressions of this power in the Orthodox Christian icon of the Three-Handed Madonna, whose third hand is over her womb, and the Hamsa, the hand-shaped talisman common to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. Also known as the Hand of Fatima, Miriam, or Mary, the Hamsa often incorporates eye or vulva motifs, which also offer protection.

Hand, womb, and eye all signify female creative power, personified in the image of Goddess and revered in Neolithic Old Europe. This life-giving principle is expressed in many ways apart from childbearing: as Carol Christ affirms, early technologies of spinning, weaving, pottery, and agriculture, along with Neolithic religion, were most likely invented by women.