Women’s Spirituality – Page 34 – Feminism and Religion

Why Is Pizza Round? The Black Goddess of Rome by Stuart Dean

The remains of an ancient Roman bread pie from Pompeii, carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE — The remains of an ancient Roman bread pie from Pompeii,
carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE

The poem Moretum (discussed in my last post) narrates the preparation of a meal that can be characterized in modern English as ‘pizza.’ Round flatbread is baked; to go on it, a cheese spread is mixed. The details of the narration are such as to create a recipe of its ingredients and related cooking instructions.

The most important ingredient, however, is not an ‘ingredient’ as such, but a shape. The bread, the cheese, and the cheese spread are all round. That by itself might not seem remarkable, but the Latin terminology (words from which ‘orbit’ and ‘globe’ derive) is identical to then contemporary astrological terminology. The bread is even scored into quadrants, symbolizing, among other things, the four elements and the quadrants of an astrological observer’s circle.

The ancient audience of Moretum would have recognized in all this the world view of the Italian poet from southern Campania, Parmenides. Though the only poem he is known to have composed is in Greek, the combination of the fact that he likely wrote it while in Italy and that it had over the centuries since its composition become one of the most influential philosophical works of pre-Christian antiquity meant Parmenides had special importance to Romans. It is not surprising Moretum has the same meter and many of the poetic images as are found in the poem of Parmenides. Continue reading “Why Is Pizza Round? The Black Goddess of Rome by Stuart Dean”

I am mad by Mama Donna Henes

I am mad. So very mad. No, that doesn’t begin to describe it. I am pissed. I am angry. I am irate. I am incensed. I am outraged. I am enraged. I am livid. I am GODDESS DAMN FURIOUS.

“All men are created equal,” states the Declaration of Independence. From the very beginning, women were denied equality in this country. It has taken over two centuries for women to win the right to vote, to have alleged protection under the law, to earn as much as 68 and 77 cents on the dollar (depending on our skin color) that men are paid, and to gain control over our own bodies and destinies.

And now, nearly 250 years later, we are seeing our rights, our freedoms, our health care being stripped away, one by one, by mean spirited, misogynistic, right wing religious uber-conservatives. In 2015 there is still no Equal Rights Amendment. Women are still not equal under the law. Continue reading “I am mad by Mama Donna Henes”

Restoring Ourselves to Ceremony: Red Tent Circles, by Molly

April 2015 103 — At a Red Tent Circle this spring.

“I believe that these circles of women around us weave invisible nets of love that carry us when we’re weak and sing with us when we’re strong.”

–SARK, Succulent Wild Woman

Seven years ago, a small postcard at the local Unitarian Universalist church caught my eye. It was for a Cakes for the Queen of Heaven facilitator training at Eliot Chapel in St. Louis. I registered for the training and went, driving alone into an unknown neighborhood. There, I circled in ceremony and sisterhood with women I’d never met, exploring an area that was new for me, and yet that felt so right and so familiar.

I’d left my two young sons home for the day with my husband and it was the first time in what felt like a long time that I’d been on my own, as a woman and not someone’s mother. At the end of the day, each of us draped in beautiful fabric and sitting in a circle around a lovely altar covered with goddess art and symbols of personal empowerment, I looked around at the circle of women and I knew: THIS is what else there is for me. Continue reading “Restoring Ourselves to Ceremony: Red Tent Circles, by Molly”

Painting Herstory: Our Lady of Silver Lake by Angela Yarber

angela It has become my new routine during the first phase of my queer little family’s year-long journey. After completing my chores, I run along the trails surrounding Silver Lake and once I’m thoroughly drenched in sweat, I grab a book and push our enormous 15-foot canoe into the frigid waters of the little lake we’re calling home for three months. With a smile that has yet to wipe off my face, I paddle fiercely. I’m typically the only person on the lake.

It’s a steep mile hike from the trailhead, and we’re the only ones “living” here for the summer, so my giant green canoe ripples the silvery waters in solitude. Once I find the right spot, I stuff my life vest behind my head and cozy down into the belly of the canoe, book in hand, goofy grin still spread across my flushed face. In the warmth of the sun, I read. In the belly of the canoe, I drift into the history of the lake, the unwritten annals lapping alongside my rocking boat, the portions on record filling the book in my sun-warmed hands.

The author who wrote the history of Silver Lake, William Powers, hiked up with several autographed copies in his rucksack several days after our arrival. He’s a nice man who wrote a nice book. There’s nothing like reading about the history of a place while in the place. Hear me say this clearly: there’s nothing wrong with the nice book this nice man wrote. The stories of Frank Chandler feeling a call from God to build a place for religious camp meetings along Silver Lake’s shores are fascinating, an interesting part of the history of camp meetings that filled the Awakenings throughout the United States. But as I read about Frank Chandler and the various men who the logged roads hikers now hike and built the buildings that haven’t existed for years due to fire, I couldn’t help but notice who was missing. Continue reading “Painting Herstory: Our Lady of Silver Lake by Angela Yarber”

Hidden Seeds in Laudato Si by Peg Conway

Peg Conway headshot2

The opening two paragraphs of the recent environment encyclical just might be saying even more than the pope intended. Beginning with a quote from the famous Canticle of the Creatures by St. Francis of Assisi, Laudato Si refers to “our sister, Mother Earth,” and compares the earth to “a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us”. Sister and mother are seen here as two separate images. But some translations of the Canticle read “Sister Mother Earth” without commas, consistent with the style of the rest of that text, which names Brother Sun and Sister Moon, etc.

Does a little punctuation difference matter? I think it does.

The single term Sister Mother Earth suggests a seamless linkage between all female bodies, whether our sisters, our mothers, our planet. We are brothers and sisters to one another as Christians (and members of the human family), every person has a biological mother, and the earth sustains us all. “Sister Mother Earth” means there are no distinctions among the three; they are one body. This interpretation lends even greater impact to the second paragraph, where the pope speaks of “this sister who now cries out to us” because of abusive treatment:

Continue reading “Hidden Seeds in Laudato Si by Peg Conway”

An Indecent Reading of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Garrity-Bond

cynthia garrity bond Recently I took one of those on-line quizzes that show up on Facebook. Based on my response to particular questions, it promised to tell me what my Biblical name would be. To my joy I received Mary Magdalene. To my disappointment her bio lacked any of the historical tensions we have come to expect.

On July 22 we celebrate the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, witness to the Resurrection and therefore deemed, “apostle to the apostles.” For as many depictions of Mary there are just as many interpretations. Her status in early Christianity surpassed the Virgin Mother in popularity but by the fourth century her positive image began to decline. In 594 Pope Gregory the Great delivered a sermon in which he conflated the story of the unnamed woman anointing Jesus in the Gospel of Luke with Mary of Magdala as penitent whore, a title she would embody for nearly 1,400 years until in 1969 when the Catholic Church repealed its teaching of Mary as prostitute.

On the other hand, recent feminist theological scholarship, especially by Karen King, offers a depiction of Mary as leader within ecclesial settings, where, “From the second to the twenty-first century, women prophets and preachers have continued to appeal to her to legitimate their own leadership roles,” (King, 153). By casting Mary as prostitute and adulteress, King argues, the church tarnished the image of Mary as a spiritual leader. It is this binary of Mary as repentant whore or “prominent disciple of Jesus, a visionary, and a spiritual teacher” (King, 154) that I wish to explore.

To begin I ask the question what does it mean for Mary’s role as leader for her to have been a prostitute who also functioned, in the words of King, as disciple of Jesus, a visionary and spiritual teacher? Continue reading “An Indecent Reading of Mary Magdalene by Cynthia Garrity-Bond”

Katharine Bushnell—The Most Important Christian Feminist You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of by Kristin Kobes Du Mez

Katharine (Kate) Bushnell (1855-1946) was by any measure a remarkable figure in the history of Christian feminism. A global anti-trafficking activist and author of God’s Word to Women, a fascinating feminist theology that recasts the entire biblical narrative as a story of liberation for women, Bushnell was once widely known throughout the late-nineteenth-century Protestant world.

A Midwestern Methodist, Bushnell came of age in Evanston, IL. After a brief stint as a medical missionary to China, she helped launch the American “social purity” movement by leading a dramatic exposé of the trafficking of women in Wisconsin lumber camps. Drawing attention to the injustices women faced under the Victorian sexual double standard, Bushnell helped break the “conspiracy of silence” that inhibited discussion of sexuality among “respectable” women and men. She then took her activism overseas, where she exposed the abusive practices of the British army in colonial India, particularly when it came to the confinement and abuse of local women in military brothels. Continue reading “Katharine Bushnell—The Most Important Christian Feminist You’ve (Probably) Never Heard Of by Kristin Kobes Du Mez”

Holy Women Icons on Tour: A Motley Crew of Unlikely Saints Hits the Road by Angela Yarber

angela Several months ago I introduced one of my newest Holy Women Icons with a folk feminist twist, the intrepid traveler and passionate nomad, Freya Stark. In writing about her fearless journeys to far-flung places women only dreamed of visiting in the early 1900s, I also shared that my wife, toddler, and I have decided to follow her fierce lead into the seemingly unknown. In less than one month, our journey will begin as we spend an entire year volunteer traveling throughout the United States. We have sold our home. We finish teaching summer courses at the end of the month. And in Freya’s courageous words, we have decided that “it is the beckoning that counts, not the clicking latch behind you.” The beckoning is calling us to live more gently with the earth, do more justice, and to create a more peace-filled world. And we have the privilege of radically altering our lives to follow this beckoning.

This time next month, we’ll be settled into our little pop-up camper in the Green Mountain National Forest of Vermont where we’re volunteering for three months. In the fall, we’ll do the same in the southernmost part of the Shenandoah Valley. December will find our trusty camper—aptly named “Freya Stark”—chugging east to west across the southern parts of the United States, parking in the San Francisco Bay Area so that we can fly to Hawaii to volunteer on an organic farm and lead yoga retreats for the first three months of 2016. Continue reading “Holy Women Icons on Tour: A Motley Crew of Unlikely Saints Hits the Road by Angela Yarber”

Stoneflower by Molly

Like flower growing from rock
the world is full of tiny, perfect mysteries.
Secrets of heart and soul and landscape
guarded tenderly
taking root in hard crevices
stretching forth
in impossible silence.

Sleeping
resting
waiting
watching
knowing
that all one needs
is a crack in stone
and a seed of possibility…

One spring evening during my year-long woodspriestess experiment , I went for a walk through the woods with my husband and daughter and we discovered something that delighted and thrilled me. It was rock with a small, perfect flower growing out of it and it was a powerful symbol of what I learned from my time in the woods. Continue reading “Stoneflower by Molly”

Thoughts on Nuns and Sisters and Perpetual Indulgence by Marie Cartier

helen prejean — Marie and Sister Helen Prejean

The word “nun” can conjure images from traditional to irreverent in terms of gender. The gender of those who call themselves nuns can range from feminine to masculine, from a woman who looks like a woman dressed as a woman, a contemporary sister or “nun,” who does not wear the traditional black habit, but contemporary female clothing and perhaps a short veil or “wimple” and a cross around her neck; to a man dressed as nun in extremely sexual female garb, a “drag queen” nun; to the traditionally dressed nun, whose habit is a full-length black gown, and full veil covering everything but her face and hands, who means to conceal gender and become something else – a “nun.”

The physical space of “nun” then has opened the realm of gender for women, and recently men, since the creation of the category “nun” was established with the first order of female religious. Cloistered orders of women began in the fifth century, with the more liberated orders of “sisters” forming in the sixteenth century. The Encyclopedia of Catholicism lists approximately twelve Roman Catholic religious orders of sisters, or as they are commonly called, “nuns.” However, this terminology should be amended to allow for the difference between “sisters”- non-cloistered orders, and “nuns”- cloistered orders. Most traditionally the word nun officially refers to Roman Catholic nuns – those who take solemn vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and live cloistered lives of silence, and prayerful meditation. Choir nuns, such as that of the famous convent headed by Hildegard de Bingen, (1098-1179), German nun, mystic and composer, chant the Liturgy of the Hours daily – consisting of a set order of readings and prayers, including Morning, Evening, Daytime and Night Prayers. Continue reading “Thoughts on Nuns and Sisters and Perpetual Indulgence by Marie Cartier”