Women’s Spirituality – Page 5 – Feminism and Religion

Womanist Sapphic Reflections on Sex, Desire, and Power by Chaz J.

**This post is based on my personal experience, research, survivor of the purity movement, and professional experience as a therapist and spiritual advisor of 5 years.

**Sapphic = women loving women <3

Everything is sex, except sex- which is power. Now ask yourself who is screwing you. – Janelle Monae

Desire, a flame that flickers, not always fanned to embers of the flesh, but today, let’s speak of its carnal heat, its dance with power, its intimate embrace with sex.

A tempest roils within, desire’s current a raging, untamed beast. A lifetime shrouded in the gloom of putrified dread, where yearning was condemned, branded a scarlet path to eternal fire, has left its indelible scar. The hollow pronouncements of warning, like the venomous whisper of James 1:14-15, still slither within, etched into the marrow of my bones: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” These words, seared into my soul, a brand of shame, a constant, gnawing reminder of the perceived treachery of wanting, the supposed sin of simply feeling and wanting.

Love Without Want by Arianne MacBean

I have only felt love without want twice in my life. The first time was when I was invited to my therapist’s funeral. The summons arrived without surprise. Strangely, my therapist and I had talked about it, before dying any time soon was a thing either of us thought would occur. After my own mother had just received her second breast cancer diagnosis, I impulsively asked my therapist during our session, “How will I know if something happens to you? Will someone call?” Someone would call. I was on a list – a list of people to call if my therapist died.

In session, we talked through how her unexpected disappearance might go – playacting for therapeutical reasons, but not knowing we were setting the stage for a true and imminent exit. She asked me if I would like to come to her funeral. There was no hesitation. Yes. I had been seeing her for twelve years. She had gotten me through life, she had gotten me through me. Of course, I wanted to go to her funeral. Then, we talked about what would happen if I died. I asked her if she would come to my funeral. Yes. I asked her if she would give the eulogy. She laughed, “That might be a little weird.” Just two months later, she received her own gut-wrenchingly aggressive cancer diagnosis. We needed no list. She told me herself. The funeral was planned and when it arrived, I sat in the back row not knowing anyone there, listening to stories about a woman I didn’t know but knew. Because as much as I didn’t know anything about her, I knew her so fully through the way she loved me. The funeral invitation, her last selfless gift.

The Field of Belonging, by Molly Remer

May we be resilient
in the face of conflict and change.
May we lean in,
reach out,
root down,
and deepen into
the practices that nurture us
and sustain us.
May we cultivate wise discernment.
May we persist in reclaiming our power
and our attention.
May we embody our prayers.
May we dance bravely
on the bones of the coercive systems
that try to drag us down.
May we lift our heads
to meet the eyes of life.
May we persist in seeing,
in being,
in lifting our resilient and stubborn joys
up to soar.

I know we are weary, overwhelmed by how much damage can be done by sweeps of pen and distant deciding, callous disregard seeming to seep into all the edges and change how the world feels to live in. We may feel frozen with indecision, unsure of what to do or how to help or what to say. So much asks for our attention and our time, asks us to look and to not turn away. We wonder what there is to celebrate in the face of so much anger and so much need. It is hard to feel so small and human, hard to keep hoping, to trust in our own inherent magic and that goodness and beauty are still at work amid the pain.

Preaching with a Predator in the First Pew by Angela Yarber

Seeing him in the first pew was distracting. Legs splayed in expert manspreading fashion, both arms draped unaware across either side of the backrest, belly protruding over a worn leather belt. He wasn’t a tall man, yet his sprawling body occupied nearly six feet of space. A slight smirk was always smeared across his lips and his eyes were fixed on me.

Preaching to a predator is never easy. So, while I could never imagine what it would be like to speak truth to power like Bishop Budde at the National Prayer Service, I’m confident that, like me, every clergywoman in America knows what it’s like for a pussy grabber to leer at you from the first pew. Even the finest vestments, highest clerical honors, and the divine herself cannot protect you from that.

Priestess or Goddess? The Real Morgan le Fay by Kelle ban Dea

Morgan le Fay is a popular figure for goddess-women and those interested in depictions of female spirituality, as well as a role model for some witches and pagans. Entire modern spiritual traditions such as the Avalonian tradition in Glastonbury have been created around her. She’s been portrayed in various ways in popular media and culture, and for many is more beloved than her mythical contemporaries, Arthur and Merlin. Which is interesting, because she’s a wholly fictional character, first encountered in the medieval Vita Merlini. Or is she?

While Morgan herself is, indeed, a fictional creation, many have seen echoes of ancient Celtic myth in her story. She’s a healer and magic worker, living on an Otherworldly island, sometimes with her eight sisters, guardian of Avalon with its magical apples and mists. In later iterations she’s a darker figure, an enemy of her brother Arthur, a witch and a seductress. A story we’ve all heard before.

Standing Under the Stars by Sara Wright

one winter night
a velvet cloak
wrapped herself
around me
starry cosmos
poured down
points of light.

kindled a planetary fire
casting a circle
inviting Spirit to hover
recovering
abandoned Body…

once embraced
Winged Animal
Presence
Guided me Home.

A little Story about How Nature Heals

Opening All the Windows and Returning the Goddess to Her Rightful Place by Caryn MacGrandle

The quote that describes Jesus as the “front door of God” is found in the Bible, John 10:7, where Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep”; essentially meaning that the only way to access God is through Jesus, as he is the entrance point to God’s presence.

I have been calling on Hathor, and last night, She came.

Ah, let me back up a few steps.

I have up to now not given much thought to Egyptian Goddesses instead preferring my Celtic and Greek ones. But a few days ago, I attended this lovely workshop by Tahya who has developed a modern day systrum, the percussion instrument used by Priestesses in honor of Hathor. And as so often happens on my path, when you crack the window, She comes.

The last two days I have been listening to Hathor meditations, the Mother of all creation, the Goddess of Love, an Egyptian Goddess whose worship may have begun in the Predynastic Era over 5,000 years ago.

The Grandfathers, part 1 by Sara Wright

Moderator’s Note: Sara wrote this in 2019. This is its first publication and has grown all the more pertinent now.

Sapawe is an ancestral Tewa Pueblo located outside of El Rito. Until this weekend I had never been to the ruin. I didn’t know, for example, that it was the largest ruin in New Mexico, and perhaps the entire Southwest or that during the period it was built and occupied (1300- 1500’s) that ten thousand people lived there. Estimates suggest that there were at least 1,800 ground rooms and twenty – three kivas. Walking around the huge compound is something I have yet to do. It was too hot for me to do more than take in the astonishing view or traverse a small part of the plateau, briefly. I did note that there were artifacts and planned to come back another time – soon.

Early yesterday morning I met with four other people to see the shrine that was located outside the pueblo. This was the place that secret ceremonies were held on behalf of all the people in the pueblo. On the surface all that could be seen was a large raised stone circle, but there was a sense of presencethere that felt both powerful and peaceful probably because few people knew about this shrine and the natural power of place had not had a chance to dissipate. After having explored a couple of other Tewa ruins, I learned that it was very important to allow place to speak in its own time, and to allow that to happen I had to return again and again with an open heart, eyes that could see beyond the obvious, and an active inner ear … The land speaks to those that can listen.

St. Brigid: Reproductive Justice and the Realms of the Miraculous by Elanur Williams

St Brigid being carried away by angels, in a painting by John
Duncan (1913)

One of my favorite saints is St. Brigid of Kildare, the patroness of poetry, learning, healing and protection. She is frequently called upon during childbirth. Brigid’s hagiographies are noteworthy for her remarkable abilities to heal and perform miracles—including her ability to make pregnancies vanish, for those who ask. In Vita Prima and Vita Brigitae (Life of Saint Brigit) published around 650 C.E. by Cogitosus, an Irish monk from Kildare, it is claimed that “Saint Brigid, by the very powerful strength of her faith, blessed a woman who had fallen [pregnant]…and the conception in the woman’s womb decreased and she restored her to health…without childbirth and its pangs.” The pregnant people in Brigid’s tales turned to Brigid to help them reclaim and restore their dignity. Consequently, their abortions served as catalysts for change. “Abortion miracles” have narrative and theological functions: they expose constructs of sexuality, chastity, purity, and sin. In addition, they test our understandings of healing—physical and spiritual—by revealing the intersectionality between medicine, pregnant people, power, and personal agency. Scholars have theorized the presence of “abortion miracles” in hagiographies, and whether they are to be read as a kind of defiance towards early Christian morality, or as a demonstration of chastity’s role and value in early medieval Irish Christianity. Some Irish penitentials view medieval abortions as malefic acts or as a kind of malevolent magic; however, according to Arica Roberts (2020), it can be argued the abortion miracles found in Irish hagiography can instead be read as “medicines of penance” and as contributing to healing.

From the Archives: Painting Herstory: Our Lady of Silver Lake by Angela Yarber

This was originally posted August 8, 2015

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.