Women’s Spirituality – Page 37 – Feminism and Religion

Moving the World Forward on the Spiral of Life by Carolyn Lee Boyd

The wasp nest dwells at the edge of my vision waiting for me to notice what it has to show me. In my mind, I have come to this beloved circle of earth beneath the embracing branches of this tree to ponder because the need is urgent for all the world’s women to have lives of peace, safety, equality, opportunity, and enough prosperity to guarantee necessities, and to save our planet from ecological disaster. I seek new ways of thinking about my life and actions and those of the global community of women to inspire more effective means of progress.

wasps nest I finally spy the wasp nest. I follow its spiral shape, beginning at one point and then expanding in circles ever-outward and upward. I wonder, what if, in addition to perceiving my life as the more traditional journey or age-defined stages, I imagined it as a spiral like the galaxy, flowers, ancient sea creatures caught forever in fossils, swirling water, and so much else of nature? What if at my birth I was like a spiral’s central point, perhaps me at my most essential or as an infinite potential, and then, over time, I spiraled endlessly into the cosmos? Continue reading “Moving the World Forward on the Spiral of Life by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Painting Lottie Moon, Redeeming Lottie Moon by Angela Yarber

angela I never imagined I’d paint her. Though I was not raised in church, I have vivid memories of worshiping in Southern Baptist Churches, churches where women’s voices were not permitted behind the pulpit, churches where women could never dream of ordination, churches that damned LGBTQ folks to hell with a pound of a fiery fist on a well-worn bible perched atop an angry pulpit. Canonize a Southern Baptist woman into the sainthood of Holy Women Icons? No, thank you.

Though I am an ordained Baptist minister myself, it’s important to remember that there is a vast spectrum of belief and practice when it comes to the Baptist church. Because our polity is non-hierarchical and we are anti-creedal, one cannot easily say, “All Baptists believe ______ or all Baptists practice _______.” Whether you are as conservative as the Southern Baptist Convention or as liberal as the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, we all share some core Baptist distinctives: the separation of church and state, believer’s baptism, the autonomy of the local church, freedom of conscious, and the priesthood of all believers. Learning of these distinctives as a young feminist searching for a faith to call my own, I was immediately drawn to the core Baptist tradition. They reject hierarchy. All are supposed to be equal. It is up to the individual conscious to determine what one believes. And it is up to the individual church to determine how that particular community of faith will practice those beliefs. It is feminist to its core. Southern Baptists feel otherwise, which is why they refrain for ordaining women and claim that they should be submissive to their husbands.

Continue reading “Painting Lottie Moon, Redeeming Lottie Moon by Angela Yarber”

Great Hera! Wonder Woman and Taking Women’s Power Back from the Mainstream Media by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Carolyns new look When I was a teen in the 1970s, Wonder Woman was everywhere. A feminist cheerfully determined to right the world’s wrongs, especially against women, she boldly sprinted onto the cover of Ms. Magazine’s 1972 inaugural issue. Her tv series spun off toys, t-shirts, action figures, lunch boxes, and more. Now she’s back. Jill Lepore’s new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman, tells of her bizarre 1940s creation and subsequent history. In 2016, a revamped Wonder Woman will be sword-fighting her way into movie theaters worldwide in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Wonder Woman is just one of many currently popular women warriors or superheras, including the X-Men series’ female super-mutants, the Hunger Games’ lead character, the women warriors in the Avatar tv series, and many more, whose power comes from the ability to fight. Even Snow White became a martial arts expert in 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsmen. Like Wonder Woman’s recent regeneration, however, these characters seem grimmer, and more deadly, violent, and dystopian than the earlier Wonder Woman with her optimistic, colorful comic book style, and an innocence that would now seem naive. Continue reading “Great Hera! Wonder Woman and Taking Women’s Power Back from the Mainstream Media by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Be Wild this Holiday and Find the Face of God(dess) by Marie Cartier

I know that you all will be reading this the day after Christmas…so this is my Christmas and/or winter holiday gift to you. I so love the Feminism and Religion (FAR) community—its discourse, intelligence, and its community of like minds. And I appreciate that so many of us offer lessons to each other on how to live—wild. For in some ways the very juxtaposition of the words “feminism” and “religion” posits an out of bounds existence. What does it mean?

I was recently asked how I would teach a class on “women and religion.” Among my first responses was that I would, among other texts, use the book The Feminine Face of God: the Unfolding of the Sacred in Women by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins (1992). Although this book was published over two decades ago it still holds, perhaps unfortunately, as true today as then. The text is based on interviews with women regarding the “unfolding of the sacred” in their lives. This book was required as part of my graduate program in the first class I took at Claremont Graduate University (CGU) “Women’s Studies in Religion.” CGU was the first program in the country where you could get your Ph.D. in Religion, with an emphasis in Women’s Studies in Religion, and I believe it is still the only program where you can do so.

My professor for that class, Dr. Karen Torjesen, challenged us to write, if we could, the “theology” in the book—was there one? She challenged us to see if there was a “theo” “logo” word of God in this idea of the “unfolding of the sacred” in women. I took up her challenge—and so one of my first big graduate papers was to unpack this book of interviews and see if I could find a theology in these lives/stories. This is what I found—what is sacred to women—right now (in 1992 and still today)—is the chance to find the sacred. Continue reading “Be Wild this Holiday and Find the Face of God(dess) by Marie Cartier”

Winter Solstice Meditation by Molly

December 2014 022 When the wheel of the year turns towards fall, I always feel the call to retreat, to cocoon, to pull away. I also feel the urge for fall de-cluttering—my eyes cast about the house for things to unload, get rid of, to cast away. I also search my calendar for those things which can be eliminated, trimmed down, cut back on. I think it is the inexorable approach of the winter holiday season that prompts this desire to withdraw, as well as the natural rhythm of the earth which so clearly says: let things go, it is almost time to hibernate.

Late autumn and the shift toward winter is a time of discernment. A time to choose. A time to notice that which has not made it through the summer’s heat and thus needs to be pruned away. In this time of the year, we both recognize the harvest of our labors and that which needs to be released or even sacrificed as we sense the promise of the new year to come. Continue reading “Winter Solstice Meditation by Molly”

An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger In her comment following my last post which was about mythology, my friend, Carol Christ, expands on my paragraph about how the so-called “ancient triple goddess” was really invented in 1948 by Robert Graves in his book, The White Goddess. (Thanks, Carol.)

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when the Goddess movement was just getting up on its feet and our ovular books were being published, the idea arose that if “they” have a holy trinity, “we” have one, too. And ours is older and holier. We see it in the three phases of the moon, new (Virgin), full (Mother), and dark (Crone). Here’s a tiny sample of these books that changed the lives of so many women and men:

Woman’s Mysteries Ancient and Modern by M. Esther Harding (1971, but first published in 1933)
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe (1974) by Marija Gimbutas
When God Was a Woman (1976) by Merlin Stone
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (1978) by Charlene Spretnak
The first edition of The Spiral Dance (1979) by Starhawk
The Chalice and the Blade (1987) by Riane Eisler
Laughter of Aphrodite (1987) by Carol P. Christ
The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries (1989) by Z. Budapest
The Reflowering of the Goddess (1990) by Gloria Feman Orenstein
Whence the Goddesses: A Source Book (1990) by Miriam Robbins Dexter

Triple goddess? ’Tain’t so. Our beloved triple goddess is one of our foundational myths. It’s nice and it’s perhaps inspiring, but it’s only a myth. Anyone who looks at a calendar or almanac—or up into the sky every night for a month—can easily see that the moon doesn’t have three phases. It has four: waxing, full, waning, and dark. And since the late 20^th century, women have lived long enough to go through more than three stages of life. Continue reading “An Archaic Trinity of Goddesses? Not Necessarily. by Barbara Ardinger”

A Women’s Mosque: An Interfaith Space for Feminist Spirituality by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

If you thought that all I could do in regards to feminism and religion is challenge Patriarchy and tease around ladies and gentlemen of good temper and better reputation with my corrosive comments, this post may change your mind.

As I said in a previous article, this year I started, with a small group of people, a social project called Imaan, whose goal is centered on inter-faith dialogue and better visibility of the actions and contributions of women in Islam (and religion in general,) plus critical thinking on religion from a feminist and progressive perspective.

As part of the activities of Imaan, we are developing “A Women’s Mosque” project; an initiative that aims to create a meeting place for women and our spirituality. The idea came after a reunion to talk on Islam and inter-faith dialogue with women from different denominations. At one point in the discussion, they asked me about sex segregation in mosques, which led us to a broader reflection on the position of women in the religious space, both material and symbolic, and how uncomfortable we were with that.

We realized that, in a variety of ways, places of worship displace women. Whether they relegate us to separate rooms, or refuse to allow us to speak, limiting our participation to “strictly female” issues such as maternity, caregiving, the role of wife and – of course- clothing, these prohibitions are always from a patriarchal “canonical” perspective.

So we decided to join together to create our own space. Continue reading “A Women’s Mosque: An Interfaith Space for Feminist Spirituality by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

I Look To The Sky by Martha Cecilia Ovadia

I was formed by traditions. I was formed by religious rituals. I was a part of a religious community.

I no longer have traditions. I no longer have religious rituals. I am no longer part of a religious community.

I constantly have to tell myself the “no longers” when I feel the echos and ghosts of my past creeping up behind me, reminding me of not only who I was, but who I no longer am.

I sometimes whisper to my husband, “I sleep with ghosts…”

I do not just sleep with ghosts. I wake with ghosts. I sometimes even feel like a ghost. Why?

For me, the act of being Catholic was very much a part of my be-ing. To no longer have Catholicism as part of my be-ing leaves me feeling haunted.

My normal schedule when I was 21 looked like this:

6:00 am: Morning Prayer (Liturgy of the Hours)
7:oo am: Daily Mass, rosary
12:00 pm: Meet people at our church hall (the youth room) to then go to lunch (where we would do midday prayers before eating)
5 pm: sometimes mass again
7 pm: adoration, rosary, and then evening prayer with praise and worship

If it was Saturday or Sunday, it was even more intense (because I was not in classes).

When I was an active Catholic, I had a very distinct language for everything. I had a ritual for all occasions. I was an integral part of a community with very defined roles. I do not have these things anymore and navigating without them has been exhilarating but terrifying. Continue reading “I Look To The Sky by Martha Cecilia Ovadia”

O Madre Nostra Cara by Kaalii Cargill

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My historical novel, DAUGHTERS OF TIME, traces a line of mothers and daughters through 4000 years as they carry the way of the Goddess from ancient Sumer to the present day. In 1926, a daughter in the lineage is born in Southern Italy:

“Maria’s family had lived in the village and surrounding area for longer than anyone could remember. Like all the girls of her village, she grew up a Catholic, yet on Christmas Eve she gathered with the other women to perform a ritual in the Church that no man was allowed to see. The words she spoke would have been familiar to her many, many times great grandmother, Meh-tan, who once met a Queen in Ursalimmu.It did not occur to Maria that the ritual was not in keeping with the teachings of the Church; it was what her mother and all the mothers before her had done on Christmas Eve to honour the Great Mother.“

Five years after writing about my fictional Maria, I stood in the church in Calabria where my grandmother Carmella once met with the other women on Christmas Eve. And the Great Mother was still there – the Madonna del Carmine a Varapodio, whom the people call “O Madre nostra cara.”

Kargill

The transition from Goddess to Madonna is very tangible in Calabria . . . Continue reading “O Madre Nostra Cara by Kaalii Cargill”

Honoring Our Mothers, Honoring Our Selves by Safa Plenty

moon

“The moon has always been the primary symbol for female energy; its cycle around the earth takes approximately twenty-nine days, the same amount of time as the average woman’s menstrual cycle. It is often felt that as the pull of the moon affects the waters of the world, so does its motion affect the body of woman.” —Women’s Medicine Ways’ Cross-Cultural Rites of Passage by Marcia Starck

Her full moon arose today,
sprinkling liquid stardust
onto her bathroom floor,
decorating her mattress
with vibrant hues of deep red,
staining her pajama pants
with artistic, circular symmetry.

For days, she had waited
for the completion of her moon,
while the sun shun
its luminous rays upon her,
the fall equinox bringing that
massive star into greater centrality.

And on a night, her moon had not set,
she sang to the four directions,
shattering myths of tainted womanhood,
tales of storks placing fragile care packages,
under willow trees.

Sang to Grandmother Moon,
Honoring the feminine Divine,
Celebrating her Sacred Waters,
Occupying her sanctified space
for the rejuvenation of Mother Earth,
honoring our Mothers,
honoring our selves.

Safa N. Plenty is currently pursing her Ph.D at Claremont Lincoln School of Theology in the area of Practical Theology, Spiritual Formation and Education. She holds a Masters of Social Work from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies with a minor in Africana Studies. For the past three years, she has worked as a K-12 education contractor and assistant counselor at a community college. Her research interests include Sufism, Attachment to God, indigenous cosmology, particularly Native American and Australian spirituality and somatic psychology. She is also interested in religious mysticism, mindfulness practice in Buddhism and the role of feminism and religion in cultivating a peacemaking capacity among young Muslim women. She is currently working to develop a faith based healthy relationships program for Mothers and Daughters. She enjoys writing poetry, research, and contemplative practice and tuning in with nature.