Women’s Spirituality – Page 10 – Feminism and Religion

Human Being or Human Doing? by Mary Gelfand

As a cis white woman in her mid-70s, with a family history of arthritis, I am sometimes confronted by various challenging questions that I prefer not to explore. Who am I if I can’t take care of my basic physical needs? Do I have value if I can’t do my fair share of the household tasks? Who am I if I can’t contribute to my communities? Who am I if I can’t ‘do’? Can I learn to just ‘be’?

These questions swirling around in my head are indicative of the fact that, despite my best efforts, I am still shedding the ubiquitous patriarchal conditioning that tells me I have no value or worth unless I can do—something. Traditionally that something was bearing and raising children, cooking and cleaning house, making and mending clothing, growing food. I have long felt that I must ‘do’ in order to earn my right to inhabit this planet. Patriarchy tells me I am only valued to the extent I am productive. As my body ages, being productive becomes harder. Many women struggle with these questions daily, especially older women like myself. And no doubt some men as well.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SHE WHO CHANGES*

This was originally posted on May 21, 2012

She changes everything She touches and everything She touches changes. The world is Her body. The world is in Her and She is in the world. She surrounds us like the air we breathe. She is as close to us as our own breath. She is energy, movement, life, and change. She is the ground of freedom, creativity, sympathy, understanding, and love. In Her we live, and move, and co-create our being. She is always there for each and every one of us, particles of atoms, cells, animals, and human animals. We are precious in Her sight. She understands and remembers us with unending sympathy. She inspires us to live creatively, joyfully, and in harmony with others in the web of life. Yet choice is ours. The world that is Her body is co-created. The choices of every individual particle of an atom, every individual cell, every individual animal, every individual human animal play a part. The adventure of life on planet earth and in the universe as a whole will be enhanced or diminished by the choices we make. She hears the cries of the world, sharing our sorrows with infinite compassion. In a still, small voice, She whispers the desire of Her heart: Life is meant to be enjoyed. She sets before us life and death. We can choose life. Change is. Touch is. Everything we touch can change.

Ariadne and Me – Stumbling Toward the Divine by Arianne MacBean

The Sacred Myrtle Tree with its protective fence at Paliani Monastery

I went to Crete because I longed for some kind of communion with Ariadne. Each time I gathered in ritual with the women on my trip, I hoped She would speak to me, or that I would feel something and know that She was in me, or I within Her. At Paliani, I had these same wishes as I walked toward the over-1000-year-old sacred myrtle tree. Set back in the corner of the quiet convent, I was struck by the contrast between the tree’s black bark and surrounding black fence set against the hopeful flickering of silver ex-votos that filled each branch. I walked around the back of the tree on a slight upper landing and searched for a branch within reach. Finding a spot where I could rest my forearm, albeit awkwardly, I leaned in and waited for Her.

Life-Giving Blood by Michelle Bodle

“What did you think?” This question was posed to me by a young woman I am mentoring in ministry. After receiving The Book of Womanhood by Amy Davis Abdallah as a gift, she asked me to walk through the book and discuss it with her, as suggested in the introduction.

I inhaled deeply before replying that I thought Davis Abdallah was writing from a posture of privilege that she was completely unaware of – and that deeply troubled me.

Davis Abdallah’s premise is that Christian women need a rite of passage accompanying the journey of getting to know themselves. Piloted at the former Nyack College where Davis Abdallah taught, Woman was a program that sought to develop a Christian right of passage for women focused on relationships with God, self, others, and creation.

RACHEL KADISH: TRANSCENDENCE AND TEXT, part 1 by Theresa C. Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is presented as part of FAR’s 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. This was posted on their site on November 7, 2023

I love recognizing Toni Morrison’s influence on a writer as I am reading a book. Reading Rachel Kadish’s novel, The Weight of Ink, immediately sunk into Jewish reality, life, and experience without any explanation or apology, I sniffed a familiar point of view, a ghost of novels prior, detected the faint fingerprints of a giant. I liked it and when I recognized it for what it was, I thought to myself, Good for her.

Kadish had taken Toni Morrison’s advice to black writers that says you don’t have to explain yourself to white readers and applied it to not explaining herself to non-Jewish readers.

Why not?

Powerful Women in Pre-History by Rachel Thomas

*Image of a Goddess, maybe Inanna. Could she also be a Shaman and/or Queen? From 2400 BC, Sumeria.* *Photo by Rachel Thomas at the* Morgan Library, on loan from the Vorderasiatisches Museum of Berlin.

Women’s History Month brings our attention to women of the present and the recent past. What about those women from our distant past? Those whose great stories go back thousands of years?

Scholars are discovering more and more evidence of powerful women in pre-history. Here is a snippet of the true herstory of my ancestral grandmothers.

Every day there is more research showing that women played leadership roles in the earliest large-scale civilizations of Western Asia, North Africa and Europe. We know that these areas had international trade and exchange of ideas going back at least 5,000 years. Maybe more.

Margins for Magic, by Molly Remer

My ritual today
is to forgive myself
and to begin again
with what I have….

A rite of renewal:
Step out under the sky
whether it holds thunder or sun.
Rest your hands against your heart.
Say: I am here.
I am grateful.
Open your arms to the sky.
Feel air soothe you
and wind bless you.
Say: I am radiant in my wholeness.
I am loved.
Sweep your arms down
to touch the Earth (or the floor.)
Say: I am connected.
I belong.
Settle your hands against your belly.
Say: I am centered.
I am powerful.
I am strong.
Return your hands to your heart.
Wait.
The sacred will meet you here.

We pause today in the middle of the road to listen to a mockingbird perched in a crabapple tree by an abandoned house. In clear and rapid succession, it runs through its impressive repertoire: Phoebe, cardinal, chickadee, titmouse, laser-gun, a few extra trills and beeps and back again. We stand, heads cocked and silent, to experience the performance before walking on with a smile, pausing again to inhale deeply as we pass the wild plum trees so sweet and fleeting. I have been preoccupied with projects, feeling bright, creative energy burgeon inside me as it does around me, so many things tug at the mind and ask for time, leaving my dreams restless, my eyes wild, and my mind awhirl with both pressure and possibility, a persistent urgency that calls me on and away and out of being where I am. On the way back home, we stop again because there are five red winged blackbirds, conversing by the neighbor’s pond and we circle through the grass to examine white flowers in the pear trees and to check for peach blossoms (none). I love spring in Missouri, it restores and nourishes me. It reminds me I am home. I sit with my tea listening to a distant chainsaw and the wild turkeys in their rites of spring, a light rustle of wind, and the clinking of my flattened spoon wind-chimes from years gone by. A lone crow glides in to alight on an oak tree beneath the sun. It tips back and forth briefly, wings a satin shimmer in the sunbeams and then drifts away like a black kite through the spring sunshine. I have joked that the description of my next book could be: “I sat. I saw these things.” And, this is true, for I did, and this is my news for today.

Mountain Mother: Symbol from the Past, Beacon for the Future by Jeanne F. Neath

Dreaming of and working toward creating an earth- and female-centered future is proving to be my best strategy for surviving and enjoying the ecologically and politically problematic present. Current realities and predictions for the future, such as those made by climate scientists, are certainly grim. What else can we expect in a global society that puts male power and profit above the needs of people and planet?

Those in power cannot possibly undo today’s polycrisis as they are too invested, personally and financially, in the status quo. They cannot even begin to dream of the transformations called for. This is something that we women can do that they cannot. We are the ones who give birth, create new life. We can certainly dream up and create new ways of living.

Ramadan Mubarak! (Have a Blessed Ramadan)—After Covid by Jamilah Ali

It is Ramadan again for the Muslim ummah (community). May I refer you to my previous FAR article in 2020, to reference Ramadan, because this is a bit of a sequel. I am only one example of how the positive and negative pressures of the times are impacting our psyches. I consider, how can I fast voluntarily while Palestinians are literally starving? This is a paradox I’m sure shared by many this year in the world-wide diaspora of Islam. I send prayers in addition to donations for food, of course.

For the faithful, Ramadan is a month-long celebration of the Holy Quran. Our Quran as revealed is from the Creator. We believe in the Bible and Torah as well, but they are much older than the Quran, and we acknowledge are from God but we believe corrupted by people. This is why we call Christians and Jews “the People of the Book”. For us, the Quran is a special divine universal message which beckons every Muslims heart when recited. Instead of Christ for Christians, the Quran is our manifestation of Divinity. Muhammad and Jesus born 600 years apart, are both Messengers of Allah, but not divine.

The Eleusinian Mysteries: Alchemical Grain, Part II by Sally Mansfield Abbott

Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can read it here.

The Eleusinian Mystery Rites derived from early planting and harvest festivals, agricultural rites from the late Neolithic. They celebrated the growth of the plant from a seed in the ground, but their purpose was also to convey a new way of seeing, an opening of the eyes, the Epotopia. The golden grain signified the alchemical gold of a new consciousness, the miracle of a plant turning to gold. Through fasting, initiates experienced a ritual identification with grief and loss, followed by a return of life and joy, a rebirth, Persephone’s triumphant return from Hades. Demeter was a giver of agricultural rites, but she laid down spiritual laws as well, hence her title of Thesmophoria, or Lawgiver.