I recently returned home from a two-week visit to Buenos Aires, Argentina—a trip I took with my eldest son, Mike, who throughout the years has expressed an interest in my birthplace. He has an avid interest in history, geography, and economics. It was like putting puzzle pieces together for him—attempting to understand the various aspects of Argentina in light of my experience. What was it like living in a “foreign” country? Did I have friends? Who were they? What were they like? How did we, the family (parents, 4 children—the 5th was born much later), get along?
My parents were American, Protestant missionaries. They met at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago, Illinois, in the early 1940s. My mother was a Registered Nurse. My father had been recently discharged from the U.S. Navy. Both of them were eager to do the “Lord’s work.” For them, that meant serving the Lord as missionaries. They felt “called” to go to Argentina and preach the gospel mainly to Jews, God’s “chosen people.”
In Argentina, my parents struggled financially. Their mantra (especially my mother’s) was “God will provide.” That translated in my mind to “don’t ask for anything we cannot afford.” My parents’ income depended on God placing our needs on the hearts of people (mainly in the U.S.) who would then be moved to support our mission—the New Testament Missionary Union. Funds were divided among all the missionaries in the organization equitably, meaning the more children you had, the greater percentage of the available funds you received. It was never enough. My maternal grandmother, Jessie, often supplemented our income. I don’t remember ever going hungry, but I do recall appearing slovenly and disheveled—always an embarrassment. Except for my school uniform, the only clothes I wore were hand-me-downs or the ones Jessie sent from the U.S.
Moderator’s Note: This post was written in early February, 2026
The Big Bear Moon
(Ojibwe and other Northern Tribes)
We know that each full moon exerts a powerful pull on the earth. At the full moon, the Earth, Moon, and Sun align and the tidal bulges on both sides of the earth manifest as extremes (reminds us that extremes are part of all nature).
This full moon, called the Big Bear Moon also ushers in the First Turning of the year. Last night’s luminous round pearl reminds me that every full moon creates a magnetic and gravitational pull that effects every living being on this planet.
Dealing with these natural extremes on a personal level is necessary if sometimes unpleasant work. I have been a regular journal keeper for 50 plus years and notice that each full moon brings on physical symptoms that have increased in severity with age (inability to sleep/headache spikes/ irritability). When I was younger, I experienced the full moon’s pull as a potent ‘high’ that energized me too much. Another curious consistency is that for me the worst human betrayals including self – betrayal have occurred occur around or during the full moons. I have learned not to make personal decisions during this period and to watch out for weird highs/lows and for inexplicable/explosive anger.
Lately I also have been thinking about the forest whose individual trees synchronize to prepare for the magnetic/and gravitational pull of lunar and solar cycles/includes eclipses, etc. that literally suck up water drying trees out, so trees have learned to shut down to protect themselves from water loss. These extremes are particularly dangerous for young trees who have few if any water reserves, so old trees communicate to the seedlings/adolescents what to expect and what to do. Afterwards, trees separate again into individuals, but they also remain connected through their root systems and through the air so interspecies relationship within the forest does not cease. I wonder if during the winter months the trees are less likely to dry out during celestial events because so many are sleeping? Although most tree energy/power descends below to roots and the mycelial networks where life keeps humming, in colder climates natural antifreeze remains in tree trunks and expands during full moons. Sometimes the antifreeze isn’t enough to stop cracking which will damage the tree.
Plants as well as trees respond to the Moon’s gravitational and magnetic pull through leaf movements, altered stem/root growth, and by absorbing more water to compensate for shrinkage. I have noticed all these effects occurring in my houseplants during the months I spend more time inside with plants and the moon.
Winters go on forever and without my beloved bright green houseplants I would be bereft. I have been paying very close attention to my passionflowers this week during the waxing moon which is also occurring at the First Turning of the year.
One beauty needs repotting and until four days ago I planned to do this job in a couple of weeks. While immersed in another project I received an urgent message from that plant: repot me now. (root growth) Her voice was so insistent that I immediately dropped what I was doing to respond (all plants communicate with those who love them). As usual I expected an ordeal for both of us, so I was stunned to see how easily the plant separated from her pot. Although her thick white roots were spiraling out of the bottom, the whole plant let go without my help (this has never happened to me before – usually re-potting is traumatic with the plant giving off a scent that I associate with pain because plants make sounds or scents when hurt) Ah, she knew when the timing was just right and I (thankfully) was listening! Another point worth mentioning is that repotting/cutting creates distress for all plants. This repotted passionflower had no reaction at all and is already showing new stem growth.
I have also been watching my two other passionflowers. The two in the south windows have required daily watering One is a cutting I placed in a dove pot early last summer that has vined herself around the whole southern window and is now attaching tendrils to the ceiling and a piece of string that I attached to the plant to give the tendrils purchase if/ as the vine moves across the room. Instead of turning south the top of this vine seems to be traveling northeast– or was (it might be important to add that I also had a dream that my dog Coalie and I were traveling northeast via the coast earlier this month). In the last two days the tendrils have reversed their trajectory and are climbing back over themselves towards the west! It’s winter, and southern sun is normally what these plants love.
The Big Bear moon was full last night and this morning the passionflower is once again traveling northeast! So, this reversal was temporary, but it demonstrates the powers of the moon (and other celestial bodies) to create effects like reversals on earth, humans included. Intriguing to say the least.
The third passionflower is in a window that faces north/ northeast. I planted cuttings for someone whose brutal betrayal last spring on the full moon and good friday*(2) unhinged me. After crucifixion day this passionflower immediately developed a mass of blooms, eight weeks before the onset of her regular blossoming cycle. A crown of thorns greeted me each day.
The trauma was so severe that I lost two months of my life. When each astonishing blossom scented the air I felt the knife twist like a corkscrew deepening the hole in my gut. After two plus months nature intervened and I was free at last.
But it took months before I was able to separate that one passionflower from the Betrayer. My passionflowers lived outdoors for the summer which allowed me some space. I started new plants. Both prospered under my care. When I was able, I asked the original plant for forgiveness, but it was too late. My lack of love and attention resulted in a passionflower that was no longer thriving.
Today I remain the ‘Old Woman’ in the crucifier’s life. What I will never forget is that he scapegoated me without cause; I do not hate him but I do not wish him well. That crown of thorns is on his head, not mine.
Lately, I have been asking the passionflower that produced vines and flowers for a killer of soul what to do. Yesterday I received a nudge. Take three cuttings and let me go.
Begin again.
The words could have come from a fairy tale.
I followed the first directions. Next, I burned both my homemade solstice balsam wreaths to acknowledge the circle that had been broken.
I am hedging around throwing out the old plant – part of me wonders if I need to wait until she speaks again – or maybe I am just not ready. Plants are wonderfully patient with humans who often need many more than one set of instructions.
This morning the three cuttings are waving their tendrils towards the light – (normally they droop for days). The repotted plant looks as if ki has been in her new home for a while. No indication that she has just been repotted!
Plants are Powerful Teachers and I am in perpetual awe of how little I know, how mysterious the ways of nature remain. But in this process of writing about plants, I have also uncovered my most recent intentions. Nature, no doubt has known all along!!
Postscript: February 5 9AM – this morning I was stunned to see a bud emerge from a new plant just repotted…. this too has never happened before (this plant has not lived long enough to adjust her cycle for blooming to the light the plant receives in the house). How important it is to learn how to observe and to listen!
_____________________________________
(1) February 2nd is when the bear first leaves his den to determine how much longer winter will last – if he doesn’t see the sun, he knows that winter will last much longer. When the colonists arrived, they turned the Indigenous bear story into a groundhog story)
(2) (AI) The passionflower is steeped in16th-century Christian mythology, where Spanish missionaries interpreted its unique structure as symbols of the Passion of Christ. The corona filaments represented the Crown of Thorns, while the three stigmas symbolized the nails, and the five anthers were wounds.
My commentary:.
In pre – christian/christian mythology one sees Osiris, Dionysus, and Jesus all wearing crowns of one sort or another. Both sides of the archetype can be lived out depending upon whichever side of the alignment a person is living through. For example, in myth Dionysus wore a crown to celebrate joy; Jesus wore a crown to die. Osiris wore a crown depicting his rule over the Underworld.
For Indigenous peoples of South America the passionflower is called the Vine of Souls.
I read FAR’s repost of Carol Christ’s 2016 essay,Maiden, Mother, Crone: Ancient Tradition or New Creative Synthesis, with great interest and was struck by this sentence, “It has been suggested that we need a fourth stage, Queen, to celebrate the years between menopause and old age. Since I reject hierarchy of every kind, I don’t want to be a Queen.” Christ rejected the Queen archetype while acknowledging that in her fifties, she felt no connection to Mother or Crone. I believe, the Queen archetype offers middle-aged women who live after the veil of estrogen has lifted, a realm that no longer prioritizes the relational over self – a vital sacred space.
In my work as a somatic psychotherapist, I often encounter women grappling with the time between motherhood (or choosing not to mother) and cronehood. While the Mother archetype symbolizes a universal pattern of nurturing, protection, and sustaining growth and regeneration, the Crone embodies wisdom, intuition, and spiritual power. Many women between the age of 50 – 65 simply do not connect with either of these personifications and I am one of them.
When I picked berries in the mountain field that first summer, I could sense wave after wave of feeling rising up – seeping into my feet from the ground below. The sun spread blue heat over the hills, and I bathed in summer’s glow. For the first time in my life I felt visible, witnessed for who I really was and accepted: I was loved –unconditionally loved by a Mother. That She was a mountain field didn’t seem odd at all. I loved her back – fiercely. I marveled. To be in love with my goddess, the one that lived in this field, brook, young forest, the one who inhabited each of these rolling hills and mountains seemed so natural. Remarkably, She celebrated my presence not only by gifting me with a love that ran like a great underground river beneath me but because She created a palpable sense of belonging. I belonged to Her. She loved me just because I was. I couldn’t get over it. My gratitude knew no bounds. All I wanted to do was to serve her…
She was visible in so many ways – in the riot of purple and green jack in the pulpits that sprung out of the sphagnum moss behind the camp in the moist valley that often filled with water, through the solitary pink lady slipper that appeared by the bridge that crossed the brook, the tiny white swamp violets, the blue fringed gentians and pearl-white turtleheads that popped up in the meadow fed by it’s own spring in the center of the field.
I glimpsed her face in the cedar that sprung to life in the rich wooded soil that bordered the brook, she sang to me from the wild apple branches that bowed over rippling water, she blinked through each firefly night, burst into a “high” when thunder and lightening churned up the waters and the brook overflowed – White Fire crackling out of her clouds and slamming into me.
For five days this March, I gifted myself with a stay at the Meher Baba Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I often plan short getaways to help me find my center and decompress from everyday life. The contrast between “worlds” is very great when you’re staying in a pristine nature preserve with the overwhelming commercialism of Myrtle Beach right outside the gates. I knew that this retreat was helping me to deal with a similar conflict I felt in my body, from the pain and stress of living in this moment in time. Poems flowed easily, and I’m grateful for that.
Lagoon Bridge
Retreat in Myrtle Beach
A preserve of five hundred acres, here on the South Carolina coast, where fresh-water lagoons teem with waterbirds just across the forested dunes from the breaking ocean waves. Turtles sun in the grass, deer leap and raise generations. A preserve! and out beyond the gates, over the protecting wall, is Myrtle Beach, another type of Mecca. Come out the gate, and it’s “Hooters!” then, “Tsunami Beach Souvenir Shop!” (everything on sale!) then, “Maui Beach Miniature Golf,” with an exploding volcano! and of course, “the MAGA Megastore,” who’ll sell you anything you could want or need. This morning I awoke in my sweet-smelling cabin, little propane heater in the old fireplace keeping me warm. And here is the teaching: Plant your feet on the Earth. Love this greenness, these creatures, love Yourself, because the entire off-kilter, out-of-balance, koyaanisqatsi (*) world out there is depending on You: feet planted, head in the stars.
Moderator’s Note: This beautiful invocation appeared on the Lilith Institute’s website on February Feb 19, 2024. If you would like to learn more or see this invocation on their website, click here.
*
She of all knowing, dark wisdom … She of the deep abyss, snake’s descent, owl’s knowing … woman of the dark, the light.
We praise You, we stand in awe, marveling at the myriad surprises you hold in store for us always respectful of your power, your M/mystery.
Shekhinah-Lilith-Ishtar, we worship you, in all your aspects; we sing your name.
Walk with us as we yearn to see you, to feel you, to exchange the divine sparks we both need to live … Never let us forget your P/presence in, around and through us, as we seek to proclaim and praise you in every corner of the world, in your many guises, by every name.
Walk with us as we love you, when we are angered by you, when we fail to comprehend you and when we renew our resolve to serve …
Be patient with us as we must be with ourselves, and each other, holding your Presence even when we are in doubt or despair.
Moderator’s Note: This piece is in 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. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on Feb 18, 2025. You can see more of their posts here.
“It’s history and nature all wrapped together, baby.” -MaVynee Betsch
I had heard of MaVynee’s great-grandfather, Abraham Lincoln Lewis (1864-1947), one of the founders of the Afro-American Life Insurance Company in Jacksonville, Florida during the Jim Crow era. Lewis became Florida’s first Black millionaire.
“What if the teachings within the Bible were not dualistic, but taught of oneness, connection, and the flow of energy?” (9) In The Music of Creation: Exploring Verse and Vibration in the Bible, Janet Rudolph (whom FAR readers already know as a FAR co-weaver) explores the definitions and vibrational elements of the sounds of original Hebrew words in the Bible. This is her latest book. In this book, Janet creates retranslations that express the energy, flow, dynamism and movement of the verses. She also discusses ways for readers to experience the power and potential of the verses for themselves. As she notes, Hebrew is a “sacred language” so that “the words themselves carry a vibrational element that we, as human beings, find meaningful and compelling” (3). In doing so, her retranslations revive the energy of “nature and its cyclical wisdom” (4). These are remnants of the original teachings, bringing forth their fresh beauty, inspiration, and world perspective we so need now.
“Let me sing to you about how people turn into other things.” (Ovid)
Years ago I placed my brother’s ashes in a shallow depression that I had dug near a granite fern and moss covered boulder. The brook flowed just a few feet away and at the last minute I scattered a few filaments over the shallow waters, returning them to the sea. A week later I planted a hazel nut tree nearby. A fossilized spiral ammonite marks my brother’s grave.
Thanks to the underground highway created out of millions of tree/plant roots, the extensive net of fungal hyphae and this communal system’s miraculous ability to exchange nutrients/minerals/sugar, my brother lives on as part of this forest…The gracefully spreading hazel and all the other trees (spruce, maple, balsam, hemlock, ash) that are scattered around this hallowed woodland grove have been nourished by the bones of one I loved.
Yet only recently have I been possessed by revelation.
Last week, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was in the news again, but not for reasons you would expect. She, along with Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt, penned a feminist essay about the Exodus title “The Heroic and Visionary Women of Passover.” Finding this story was exciting, especially because I am so drawn to the Exodus story (the intrigue and curiosity of which caused me to return to school and study, as one of my main areas of focus, Hebrew Scriptures – along with Archaeology and Ancient Near Eastern History). Now women’s roles in this story are being elevated thanks to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Rabbi Holtzblatt.
Before I discuss the message and the importance this message brings, I think it is important to know an important fact about Justice Ginsburg. Ginsburg is not observant, but does embrace her Jewish identity. When her mother died, she was excluded from the mourner’s minyan because she was a woman; an event in Judaism that is meant to comfort the mourner, brings a sense of community, and is considered obligatory – a means of honoring our mother/father. This important event left an impression and sent a loud message that inspired and influenced her career path – she did not count – she had no voice – she had no authority to speak. No wonder her life and career focuses so much on women’s rights and equality.
As many of us know, the story of Exodus is focused on two things 1) Moses and 2) liberation from the bonds of servitude and enslavement; women are rarely discussed. In the essay co-authored by Ginsberg, women are described as playing a crucial role in defying the orders of Pharaoh and helping to bring light to a world in darkness. In the Exodus event, God had partners – five brave women are the first among them, according to Ginsburg and Holtzblatt. These women are: Continue reading “From the Archives: Passover and the Exodus: A Feminist Reflection on Action, Hope, and Legacy by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”
Last week, Supreme Court ![Ruth_Bader_Ginsburg_official_portrait[1]](https://feminismandreligion.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ruth_bader_ginsburg_official_portrait1.jpg)
from the 
Feminism and Religion 