Women’s Voices – Page 39 – Feminism and Religion

Avian Friendship by Sara Wright

The other night I had a dream about a strange green hooded figure that was guarding a green gate underground. She wasn’t human; she had a hooked bird’s beak (like many of Marija Gimbutas’s goddess figures). Something about the strange face reminded me of an American Indian. This creature was not friendly but she was not hostile either. Just really intent upon making it clear that you did not pass through the gate without her permission. The word Root kept reverberating out loud in this place… Root Woman? Strange that she was also a bird. Anyway, thinking about bird women prompted the following poem and brief reflection on my relationship with one kind of bird…

My Father’s Daughter by Xochitl Alvizo

Me with my aunt, my dad’s eldest sister.

I was sometimes told I look like my grandmother on my dad’s side, and although it wasn’t meant as a compliment, I always welcomed it as such. I wanted to be like my grandma. She was a tough, no-nonsense woman who was light-hearted and spunky to the very end of her life. She had a serious expression on her face most of the time but would playfully and unexpectedly stick out her tongue at neighbor-friends when they passed by her house. She had well-developed patterns of good-natured banter with most people in her neighborhood. She was well-known and well-liked, and people also knew not to mess with her. So, if I could be thought to be anything like her, I was good with that.

She lived in Mexico and my family in the United States. In Mexico, even as a younger kid, we were allowed to move around town on the bus if my older cousin was with us. We always landed and stayed with my mom’s side of the family and usually only went to visit my dad’s side for an afternoon or two during the course of our time in Guadalajara, where my parents were from. I couldn’t wait to surprise visit my dad’s side of the family – my grandma, aunt, and grandpa who all lived together. We never announced our visit in advance; so it was fun for me to get to walk into the patio of their apartment complex and find my grandma, as usual, standing in the doorway of her front door, smoking. She was a businesswoman, always running a small business, selling basic grocery items from home, so her door was always open. And she was almost always right there, standing just outside her door, a serious expression on her face, and a smoke in hand.

How Rape Culture Grooms Us for Covid Safety Violations by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Imagine this scenario: You agree to meet with some beloved friends or family who are not in your Covid pod. You’re nervous about safety, but you have a detailed discussion beforehand of exactly what Plan you will all follow in order to protect everyone. You decide to meet outside, wearing good quality masks, staying six feet apart. If people want to eat or drink, or remove their masks for any reason, they will go farther from the group, more like 20 feet away. If anyone needs to use the inside space, such as the bathroom, they will be sure no one else is inside and will keep their mask on the entire time.

“We can do this,” you tell yourselves, “We are smart, educated, considerate, careful people who love each other and want to keep us all safe.”

You arrive at the gathering. You greet everyone, masked from the proper distance. You find your seats, six feet from the seats of other pods. Within a minute or two, a beloved friend or relative approaches to give you something, h/er mask hanging down on h/er chin.

A Bombshell, Bogotá Style – Part 2 by Laura Montoya

The events of sexual harassment I shared with you in Part 1 of this post happened in my first paid-job experience. Just like Margo Robbie’s character in the movie Bombshell, my encounter with Mr. M. was like hitting the wall of the harsh world’s reality. It was a tough welcome to the adult workplace. After my first experience of harassment, I thought that feeling uncomfortable and guilty due to a man’s behavior wouldn’t happen to me again; especially since my second job was in a Christian organization. Bombshell!

I grew up in a very conservative Christian family in the Pentecostal tradition. In my teenage years I was an active member and leader in a church in Bogotá’s downtown. After that, I was a student leader in a Christian group in my university for seven years. After leaving the first job, I was a very-VERY- Pentecostal girl in my twenties, ready to take on the world again! The main requirements for my new job with the Christian organization were to know the Pentecostal culture and to have experience leading groups in peace-building projects. I was proficient in both, so, hurray – welcome job number two into my life! But what I didn’t realize was that this job would require me to welcome this new boss to it too.

Happy Birthday, to a Woman Who Used a Crisis to Benefit Humanity by Cheryl Petersen

Born two-hundred years ago in 1821, Mary Baker was raised by a doting mother and strict father. By the age of twenty-eight, she endured personal crises typical to privileged white girls. Lost lovers and unfulfilled dreams. Mary wed her second husband, Daniel Patterson, in 1853, fancying he would make things better. But in 1857, while ill in bed a few weeks, forlornly pining her dead mother, Mary noted in her scrapbook, “My dear dear…Mother waits for me in the far beyond and through the discipline, the darkness and the trials of life, I am walking unto her.”

In 1861, Daniel urged Mary to investigate mind-cure and wrote a letter to practitioner, Dr. Phineas Quimby, to request treatment for Mary’s periodic spinal and emotional challenges.

But the plan was interrupted by another crisis. The American Civil War (1861-1865).

Suffrage is Unfinished Business—On The 101 Anniversary of the 19th Amendment by Marie Cartier

Dear FAR readers – please find photos from a celebration of the 101 anniversary of women’s suffrage, the 19^th Amendment, that I attended August 26, 2021. That day marks the end of the 100^th year of women having the right to vote.

I have been proud to be a part of, these past few years, a group calling themselves Suffrage in California – LBSuffrage100 Suffrage 100. We have met continuously in person and on line for two years now, stymied by the pandemic, but still pushing forward throughout this year with actions at the Democratic Convention, Long Beach Suffrage 100 celebrates in silence for centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment – Press Telegram, standing in silence as the original suffragettes did outside the White House. We also of course marked the 100^th anniversary of suffrage, and at that time switched focus during the election to lobby for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, part of the “unfinished business” of suffrage. Text – H.R.4 – 117th Congress (2021-2022): John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 | Congress.gov | Library of Congress which seeks to expand federal ability to challenge discriminatory election rules.

Vigil by Sara Wright

The third day
dawns under a cloud.
Mourning doves
spread their wings
across leaden skies.
I am walking on air.
Two restless
nights – a huge
truck in the yard –
Blocked,
my stomach lurches.
I read Tributes
in a daze.
Fierce Little Flower
Warrior Woman
fights
a torrent of waves.
She is bridging
raging waters
forging a New Story.

“Weaving the Visions.”
Oh, now I remember
where it all
began.

She hugged a tree.
I plant a seed.
Listening to rounds of
“light and darkness”
I let my body lead.

A serpentine path
guides me
back to
Her Garden.
Cradled by Ancestors
Rooted in Body
I shed another
patriarchal skin.

Carol Christ Symposium ~ Call for Papers by Mara Lynn Keller ~ Deadline for Proposals this Week!

Carol P. Christ
A Symposium in Celebration of Her Spiritual-Feminist Activism and Women’s Spirituality Scholarship

“The Goddess is the intelligent embodied love that is in all being.”
~ Carol P. Christ

Free Symposium via Zoom hosted by
Women’s Spirituality Graduate Studies Program California Institute of Integral Studies
October 22, 2021. 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Call for papers focusing on Carol P. Christ’s scholarship and activism in the key areas of Women’s Spirituality, Goddess Studies, Ecofeminism, and Women and Religion.*

Please speak to what you think and feel are Carol P. Christ’s most important contributions to one of the academic fields listed below, and then also, to how her writings are important to you personally. We will arrange papers into the following six panels of 3-4 presenters.

Ecofeminist Philosophy and Activism
Goddess Studies and Egalitarian Matriarchal Studies
Spiritual Feminism and Peace Activism
Spiritual Feminist Literary Criticism
Women and Religion
Women’s Spiritual Pilgrimage

Please send an abstract of your proposed paper (in 300 words or less) to Mara Lynn Keller at mkeller@ciis.edu, by Wednesday, September 16, 2021. Acceptances will be sent out Friday-Monday, 9/24-27/2021. Papers are to be 12 minutes in length.

*Primary Sources include:

Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest (1986)
Woman Spirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, anthology co-edited with Judith Plaskow (1992)
Odyssey with the Goddess: A Spiritual Quest in Crete (1995)
Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality. Anthology co-edited with Judith Plaskow (1989)
Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess (1987)
Rebirth of the Goddess: Finding Meaning in Feminist Spirituality (1998)
She Who Changes: Re-imaging the Divine in the World (2004)
Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Co-authored with Judith Plaskow (2016)
Carol’s blogs on Feminism and Religion can be found at: Carol P. Christ (feminismandreligion.com)

In addition to the panels, the Symposium will include:
In Memoriam: Ritual Honoring Carol’s Life and Death (1946-2021)
Circle of Remembrance: Personal reminiscences and reflections on Carol’s life and work.

Earth Rises Again by Sara Wright

A horizon
belching sooty smoke
pollutes
once pure air
pressing invisible
particles, ozone
into granite –
lichen covered mountains –
plant/animal lungs
are coated in filth
just as ours are.
Death hangs over
a leaden sky,
the sweet scent
of moisture
is absent.
Tomorrow’s
bitter orange sunrise
signals what many
still refuse to believe:
The Earth is on Fire.
Those of us capable of Love –
Animals, plants,
Humans, who suffer,
those who fought for justice
continue to grieve
in a Silence
impossible to break.
Change,
if it comes at all
will come too late.
Humans have had 40 years
to prepare…
The age of the
Anthropocene
will not survive
a species gone insane.

Leonora Carrington’s THE HEARING TRUMPET – Book Review by Sally Abbott

Long a fan of Surrealist artist Leonora Carrington, I was initially hesitant when the New York Review of Books reissued her 1974 novel, The Hearing Trumpet. I didn’t know what to expect when this extraordinary painter picked up a pen.

To my delight and surprise, Carrington shows the same artistry and whimsy in her writing that she does in her painting. She also reveals herself to be an astute feminist and aficionado of the Goddess, well-versed in arcane lore, with which she accents her fantastical world. The Hearing Trumpet is full of British humor and eccentricity, set in a finely spun, other-worldly landscape.

Her heroine Marian Leatherby is a 92-year-old, who lacks teeth, is hard of hearing, and sports a beard–a whimsical, endearing character who loves cats. She has been given a hearing trumpet by her great friend Carmella, and thereby learns that her son and his wife plan to send her away to an old folks’ home run by a Dr. Gambit and the Well of Light Brotherhood.