Women’s Spirituality – Page 28 – Feminism and Religion

It’s Called Practice For a Reason by Kay Bee

My daily practice isn’t what I’d like it to be these days what with working two jobs, raising three teenagers, and going to grad school. I am clocking about 60 hours of work and school every week, which doesn’t leave very many spare hours for formal ritual, prayer, or meditation.

During previous phases of my life, I’ve had a daily devotional practice that’s taken on many different forms as my spiritual studies deepen. I’ve learned to use new tools, and gone from singing other people’s chants to writing my own and creating my own prayers. As my path unfolded, my practice evolved. But last autumn, life shifted when I went back to school and shifted again a couple of months ago when I added a second job to the mix. My spiritual practice over the last month has been sporadic, random moments stolen from other obligations to say a rushed prayer, a chant sung on the drive to work, or an energy center balancing done in the shower before bed.

Meanwhile, in the back of my mind was the fact that I had committed to attending a 4-day training intensive within the Avalonian Tradition, followed immediately by a 4-day leadership retreat for the Sisterhood of Avalon. A couple of weeks ago, with my daily practice in what felt like utter shambles, I suffered an bout of extreme self-doubt. What was I thinking committing to this training intensive and leadership work when I couldn’t even manage to find 15 minutes every day to engage the practice of my faith? How on earth could I think I was ready for this? Should I even still go? Continue reading “It’s Called Practice For a Reason by Kay Bee”

Weaving together
roots
twigs, leaves,
clumps of dirt,
the two carve out
an underground story.
Mythic toads instruct them
about the Ground Way
of Being: Continue reading “Two Friends by Sara Wright”

Grief and Rebirth by Gina Messina

Rebirth is challenging. It demands that we be accountable, acknowledge failures and fears, recognize the ramifications of our actions, and the ways we impact those who share our journey. We often don’t realize that denying self-love and care in favor of sacrifice for others results in a double negative. If we don’t care or ourselves, we cannot care for anyone else.

Warning…TMI ahead. I’ve thought a lot about writing this piece. I believe in the spirit of sharing experience; learning from one another—recognizing our own stories and finding we are not alone—when someone is willing to speak her truth. My gratitude to Carol Christ whose courage to share experience has empowered me to brave (I feel an overwhelming urge to insert emojis to express my emotion and gratitude; and although I am desperately trying to restrain myself… 🤗❤️🙏).

Being vulnerable is scary. It is uncomfortable. It requires us to share our deepest fears, that for which we feel shame. It can be embarrassing. We don’t want to be judged. And yet, our vulnerability can also promote our own healing and offer a sense of comfort to those who share in our struggle. And so, I feel like I should shout out Geronimo…

This month marks eleven years since losing my mother to violence. It also marks fours year since I chose to leave my seventeen year marriage. I hadn’t before made the connection about these two events occurring the same month until this very moment of my writing – but it occurs to me that there is a significance in finding strength during a time when I was grieving the anniversary of my mother’s passing. Perhaps a reflection for another post…

I remember the moment I knew that my marriage was likely going to end; I felt like I was dying. I begged my husband to stay. I recited prayers that have never brought me comfort. I went to a church that offered me no community. I sought counseling from a priest who devalues me because I am a woman. I turned to the traditional interpretation of my religion to keep me firmly placed in an unhealthy marriage. Power structure enforcing power structure. Continue reading “Grief and Rebirth by Gina Messina”

Falling Down and Going Under by Sara Wright

I have been traveling across country during the past week from New Mexico to Maine, leaving one “home” for another wondering what the word even means for me these days. I suspect the word doesn’t refer to a place, but a state of mind/body that continues to elude me.

In a forested glen in Virginia I first heard the cardinals singing from the trees and smelled fragrant mounds of trailing honeysuckle that cascaded over every bush and lichened granite stone. For a while I seemed unable to soak in enough of the fully leafed out deciduous trees – trees dressed in miraculous shades of lime, deepening to dark spruce. My endless hunger for emerald green was finally appeased by endless rolling hills and blue tipped mountains. Continue reading “Falling Down and Going Under by Sara Wright”

The Gift by Sara Wright

We drifted through

the green

hungrily absorbing

plant souls,

each twig, flower, and tree

has her own story to tell…

Such a joyful way

for me

to spend a

‘mother’s day.’

Being with him

when family

extends sharp claws

is an antidote to suffering.

“This is my church”

He said,

not for the first time.

I nodded.

He and I are almost

always in agreement

when it comes

to plants

and people.

Continue reading “The Gift by Sara Wright”

Our Lady is on Fire by Sara Wright

I entered the Silent Tomb;
the Mosque felt
devoid of Presence.
We wandered through
a myriad of glorious arched rooms,
ornately carved woodwork –
soft carpeted floors.
Removing our shoes
we spoke softly
in deference to
Something ineffable?
Each tiled courtyard,
Mute, yet
starred in
cobalt blue.
Opaque light streamed
through precisely cut
geometric shapes,
domed ceilings
cracked the heavenly stream
into patterned shards.
Outside,
unattended,
High mud walls
kept Creation
at bay.
Fruit trees
twisted by bitter west winds
ragged junipers
sagging in sorrow
rendered invisible
by those who choose
not to see…
I wept for the casually discarded
living breathing
Beings –
Pulsing with Light.
Beyond white sand walls
the stark white capped
Mountains cried out in torment
“Here we are!”
“Sangre de Christos” –
it is our body, our blood
that has been shed
not just his.
Stretching north –
Ridged, ribbed serpents
split the continent in two,
valley gorges meandered far below
arroyos flooded Rio Grande
and all the colors of
the rainbow streamed
out of mud and stone. Continue reading “Our Lady is on Fire by Sara Wright”

Lise Weil – Requiem by Sara Wright

For the Visionaries of the Women’s Movement and Beyond.

“I glimpse lines crazing my face in the windowglass,
crone’s bones emerging. My eyes are growing larger;
soon they will perch on stalks and swivel, crustacean.
The better to see how others do it:
this last chance at living…

The message is we’re too fatigued to change the myths
of ourselves at this stage, preferring to die, unmake
the world, in the familiar. Understandable. Yet I persist
in lusting to be seamless with the universe while still aware
of it—so I suspect a future darkly bright, kaleidoscopic
as symmetries glittering beneath eyelids rubbed dry of tears.”

Italics are my own.

Robin Morgan “Reading the Bones,” from her latest book of poems, Dark Matter: New Poems, published by Spinifex Press.

Yesterday I attended a reading for the memoir In Search of Pure Lust written by my friend and former professor Lise Weil, a woman who has dedicated her life to visionary thinking and teaching by inviting anyone to enter who has ears to listen and an open heart.

When I first encountered Lise’s radical feminist ideas my hair caught fire; and the flames between us continued to rise higher and higher. Our friendship remains as tempestuous as the fire that binds us still – fire and air are the two mediums of communication that flow between us – one a lover of women, a lesbian, internationally known translator, editor, writer, lifetime visionary activist and teacher, the other, a dedicated Earth centered heterosexual woman, a naturalist and mystic whose lifetime of writing had been confined to her journals up until that point, a woman who returned to school only after her children were grown. Continue reading “Lise Weil – Requiem by Sara Wright”

The Sanctuary of One Another by Molly Remer

“Please prepare me
to be a sanctuary.
Pure and holy
tried and true.
With thanksgiving
I’ll be a living
sanctuary
for you.”*

—Beautiful Chorus (Hymns of Spirit)

In March, my husband drove our daughter into town to work at her Girl Scout cookie booth and released me to prepare for an all-day Red Tent retreat for my local women’s circle. After I packed my supplies for ritual, I set off on a walk in the deepening, rain-dark twilight. As I walked, I sang a song of sanctuary over and over, until I felt transported into a different type of consciousness, my feet steady on muddy gravel, the leafless branches stark against grey sky, moss and stones gleaming with sharp color against the roadside. A fallen tree absolutely carpeted with enchanting mushrooms caught my eye and invited me off the road and into its arms. As I stood there, feeling as if I had stepped out of ordinary reality and into a “backyard journey,” the spring peepers in the ephemeral pool in our field began their evening chorus. It has been so cold out with below freezing temperatures, snow, and ice for days since first hearing them in early March that I actually wondered if they would survive to continue their song.

Mercifully, though, it is not a silent spring. Continue reading “The Sanctuary of One Another by Molly Remer”

The Healing Feminine Energy of Food by Elisabeth Schilling

In our society, relationships with food are complicated. Sometimes we might be anxious that our food is not safe, that we are not told the whole story, that we have to educate ourselves on what we can and guess the rest. Sometimes there are emotions connected with food such as ecstasy, joy, guilt, remorse, anxiety, or disgust. Sometimes thinking about food can be stressful, that we don’t have enough money to feed ourselves and others in the ways we would like or at all. Other times, we might wish food away because it is boring or we have limited skills or vision. I cannot say that my relationship with food is the healthiest. I have used food as a punishment and way to self-harm, I’ve been restrictive with food or scared of certain foods. I’m a little or a lot OCD and neurotic with how I handle food.

Ultimately, though, I love good food, and I rather enjoy cooking, especially when I have time to myself and am alone in the kitchen. There is something soothing in cleaning the preparation space and items, chopping the vegetables, combining the green, orange, purple together, letting my intuition guide me for spices. I know that food can be a ritual. It is a time where I listen to the water spill from the spout, the crackle of garlic in oils, the silence in the gaps where I pause before completing another step. Sometimes I go renegade, experimental or familiar, and other times the recipe is liturgy as it requires my faith to be guided by another’s wisdom. Continue reading “The Healing Feminine Energy of Food by Elisabeth Schilling”

The Mud and the Lotus: What India Is Teaching Me by Vanessa Soriano

About 5 years ago, I began a consistent yoga practice. Right around the same time, I started a PhD program in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I eventually wrote my dissertation on Women’s Spiritual Leadership. Throughout my studies, I realized that the path of the Divine Feminine is an intricate journey that accentuates the mind, body, soul connection. The yogic path does the same. In late 2018, I enrolled in an intensive 5-week 300-hour yoga teacher training in India where I continued my spiritual explorations. Hindu culture reveres the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine and yoga is viewed as a pathway into God/dess through the body. Here’s the first part of the story…

I’m in India and it’s 5:30 a.m. and an hour of pranayama awaits me. The yogis define prana as the life force that animates the entire body and yama relates to discipline. The practice of pranayama consists of breathing techniques that aim to control the breath in order to connect to the life force that resides within. Accessing this life force can invoke feelings of bliss and a connection to the Divine.

Class starts, I’m officially starving, and I haven’t had enough coffee. Continue reading “The Mud and the Lotus: What India Is Teaching Me by Vanessa Soriano”