Women’s Spirituality – Feminism and Religion

The Legacy of Intergenerational Violence/ Silence, part 1 By Sara Wright

Patriarchy begins at home.

Author’s Note: One reason I am sharing this story is that I hope that it will ease another round of suffering. However, I would dearly like to believe that others might reflect upon the ways they have been impacted by family violence or silence in their own lives, so we don’t get caught by projecting these patriarchal roots outside of us onto the collective while dismissing them in ourselves. That dark patriarchal seed is present in all of us, and I think that telling our personal stories keeps us attached to the whole with humility – a challenge in this time of monstrous ethical, social, political, ecological breakdown.

I often have dreams that leave me with questions, dreams that provoke deep personal reflection, dreams that stay with me as the following one did. At mid-life I had written tributes for two men that mentored me from a distance who brought ‘good fathering’ into the foreground because each encouraged me to believe in myself, to celebrate my original thinking, to trust my intuition and more.

The Glorians written by Terry Tempest Williams, discussion by Sara Wright

The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary is an astonishing book written by internationally acclaimed writer Terry Tempest Willams that is predicated on the necessity of bearing compassionate witness to all beings during these troubled times. It is a book about family, friends, earth and dreams, the later of which inspired the title. The volume is composed of a series of essays, only one of which I will discuss here.

Terry, who teaches at Harvard Divinity School, writes about the Divinity Tree, a two-hundred-year-old red oak that was removed from the Commons. Listening to this narrative as a ‘Tree Woman’ was/is excruciatingly painful. My stomach roils in misery, but I am compelled to listen, over and over, because this is my story too.

I came to the mountains because I was in love with trees and bears discovering an evergreen paradise or so I thought until the dreams began. In my night stories all the trees were being slaughtered and there was nothing I could do. Since I was surrounded by fragrant forests that stretched from horizon to horizon, I could make no sense of these terrifying warnings and let them be.

Burning Woman, by Lucy H. Pearce, 10th Anniversary Edition, Book Review by Beth Bartlett

As someone who came into feminism in the late 1970s early 1980s, reading Lucy Pearce’s Burning Woman was re-entering the power and promise of women-centered feminism – the heyday of Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Mary Daly, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Andrea Dworkin, Charlotte Bunch, China Galland, Riane Eisler, Carol Christ, Gloria Anzaldúa, Susan Griffin, Starhawk, Sara Ruddick.[i] It was the era of reclaiming the Feminine from its patriarchal definitions and women defining themselves outside of patriarchy – celebrating women’s spirituality, art, music, language, bodies, sexuality, birthing, voices, and power – when feminism was about transforming patriarchy rather than fitting into it — when Meg Christian proudly sang Betsy Rose’s “Glad to Be a Woman.”

And then everything changed. Just as women were coming into our own beyond patriarchy, women-centered feminism came to a halt due to pressures both from within feminism and without – with a whole school of deconstructionist feminists[ii] now critiquing women-defined women as “essentialists,” and moving back to minimizing rather than maximizing the differences between the sexes,[iii] with an emphasis on abolishing the gender binary, welcoming trans and non-binary folk, and questioning the whole concept of “women.” Indeed, one of my Women’s Studies, now Gender Studies, students asked me privately if it was okay to call herself a “woman” because the term had become so forbidden among many of the students. At this time, feminist theorist Nancy Hartsock raised the important question, “Why is that just at the moment when so many of us who have been silenced begin to demand the right to name ourselves, to act as subjects rather than objects of history, that just then the concept of subjecthood becomes problematic?”[iv]

Coming Round and Round by Sara Wright

the circle
repeats
tightens
with age
crushing
an
aging heart
I cannot
breathe
through
these lifetimes
of
loss
instead
I relive
old
pain
4AM
lasts
an eternity
each mourning

Embraced by Grace by Margot Van Sluytman

I have Come Full Circle. March 27th is the 48th anniversary of the murder of my father Theodore Van Sluytman in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. An Easter Monday. My entire life from that time the age of 16 to this time now the age of 64 was, is, and will always be a connection to how word with a capital W and words with a lowercase w, infuse, inspire, and affect my life. I might even say infect my life.

After being contacted by one of my father’s three murderers, almost 30 years after he put the bullet in my father’s heart, we did share healing. All seemed well in the crucible of tying up loose ends as it were. Ten years later, however, he, made choices that were deeply unaligned to that meeting.

When he and I met, it was powerful. It was profound. Terrifying too. And liberating. His choices 10 years after that meeting, though they shattered me for a time, leaving me with feelings of smallness, stupidity, and inadequacy based on the fact that in choosing to meet him major rifts in my family occurred. Few supported my choice to meet him. However, I grew to understand that we are the poetry that we wish to read, to be, and to see in the world. That we are human. I thought about my feelings of smallness, stupidity, and inadequacy. Thought long and hard. Many times. In early dawning days. Sitting in the gloaming. Late into the night.

Mountain Mother by Sara Wright

When I picked berries in the mountain field that first summer, I could sense wave after wave of feeling rising up – seeping into my feet from the ground below. The sun spread blue heat over the hills, and I bathed in summer’s glow. For the first time in my life I felt visible, witnessed for who I really was and accepted: I was loved –unconditionally loved by a Mother. That She was a mountain field didn’t seem odd at all. I loved her back – fiercely. I marveled. To be in love with my goddess, the one that lived in this field, brook, young forest, the one who inhabited each of these rolling hills and mountains seemed so natural. Remarkably, She celebrated my presence not only by gifting me with a love that ran like a great underground river beneath me but because She created a palpable sense of belonging. I belonged to Her. She loved me just because I was. I couldn’t get over it. My gratitude knew no bounds. All I wanted to do was to serve her…

She was visible in so many ways – in the riot of purple and green jack in the pulpits that sprung out of the sphagnum moss behind the camp in the moist valley that often filled with water, through the solitary pink lady slipper that appeared by the bridge that crossed the brook, the tiny white swamp violets, the blue fringed gentians and pearl-white turtleheads that popped up in the meadow fed by it’s own spring in the center of the field.

I glimpsed her face in the cedar that sprung to life in the rich wooded soil that bordered the brook, she sang to me from the wild apple branches that bowed over rippling water, she blinked through each firefly night, burst into a “high” when thunder and lightening churned up the waters and the brook overflowed – White Fire crackling out of her clouds and slamming into me.

Poems by Annelinde Metzner

For five days this March, I gifted myself with a stay at the Meher Baba Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I often plan short getaways to help me find my center and decompress from everyday life. The contrast between “worlds” is very great when you’re staying in a pristine nature preserve with the overwhelming commercialism of Myrtle Beach right outside the gates. I knew that this retreat was helping me to deal with a similar conflict I felt in my body, from the pain and stress of living in this moment in time. Poems flowed easily, and I’m grateful for that.

Retreat in Myrtle Beach

A preserve of five hundred acres,
here on the South Carolina coast,
where fresh-water lagoons teem with waterbirds
just across the forested dunes from the breaking ocean waves.
Turtles sun in the grass,
deer leap and raise generations.
A preserve! and out beyond the gates,
over the protecting wall,
is Myrtle Beach, another type of Mecca.
Come out the gate, and it’s “Hooters!”
then, “Tsunami Beach Souvenir Shop!” (everything on sale!)
then, “Maui Beach Miniature Golf,” with an exploding volcano!
and of course, “the MAGA Megastore,”
who’ll sell you anything you could want or need.
This morning I awoke in my sweet-smelling cabin,
little propane heater in the old fireplace
keeping me warm.
And here is the teaching:
Plant your feet on the Earth.
Love this greenness, these creatures,
love Yourself,
because the entire off-kilter, out-of-balance,
koyaanisqatsi (*) world out there
is depending on You: feet planted,
head in the stars.

Invocation to Shekhinah-Lilith-Ishtar … By D’vorah Grenn, PhD

Moderator’s Note: This beautiful invocation appeared on the Lilith Institute’s website on February Feb 19, 2024. If you would like to learn more or see this invocation on their website, click here.

She of all knowing, dark wisdom … She of the deep abyss, snake’s descent, owl’s knowing … woman of the dark, the light.

We praise You, we stand in awe, marveling at the myriad surprises you hold in store for us always respectful of your power, your M/mystery.

Shekhinah-Lilith-Ishtar, we worship you, in all your aspects; we sing your name.

Walk with us as we yearn to see you, to feel you, to exchange the divine sparks we both need to live … Never let us forget your P/presence in, around and through us, as we seek to proclaim and praise you in every corner of the world, in your many guises, by every name.

Walk with us as we love you, when we are angered by you, when we fail to comprehend you and when we renew our resolve to serve …

Be patient with us as we must be with ourselves, and each other, holding your Presence even when we are in doubt or despair.

MaVynee Betsch: Preserving History and the Environment by Maria Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in 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 Feb 18, 2025. You can see more of their posts here.

“It’s history and nature all wrapped together, baby.” -MaVynee Betsch

Recently I visited the Best Richardson African Diaspora Literature & Culture Museum (BRADLC Museum) in St. Augustine, Florida. On our tour with owner Gigi Best-Richardson, I was captivated by the stunning cover of a children’s book on display, Saving American Beach: The Biography of African American Environmentalist MaVynee Betsch, written by Heidi Tyline King and illustrated by Ekua Holmes.

I had heard of MaVynee’s great-grandfather, Abraham Lincoln Lewis (1864-1947), one of the founders of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida during the Jim Crow era. Lewis became Florida’s first Black millionaire.

The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd

“What if the teachings within the Bible were not dualistic, but taught of oneness, connection, and the flow of energy?” (9) In The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible, Janet Rudolph (whom FAR readers already know as a FAR co-weaver) explores the definitions and vibrational elements of the sounds of original Hebrew words in the Bible. This is her latest book. In this book, Janet creates retranslations that express the energy, flow, dynamism and movement of the verses. She also discusses ways for readers to experience the power and potential of the verses for themselves. As she notes, Hebrew is a “sacred language” so that “the words themselves carry a vibrational element that we, as human beings, find meaningful and compelling” (3). In doing so, her retranslations revive the energy of “nature and its cyclical wisdom” (4). These are remnants of the original teachings, bringing forth their fresh beauty, inspiration, and world perspective we so need now.