Women’s Voices – Page 43 – Feminism and Religion

Breathe with me by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Breathe with me.

I know. I know. I understand.
Breathe with me anyway.
It hurts. It’s scary. It’s horrible. It’s relentless. I know.
Just breathe.
Every time we breathe out, our bodies release things we do not want.
So breathe it out. All of it. Let it go.
Deep breath. However you prefer—mouth, nose—just breathe.
What do you need to let go?

For me right now, there’s rage.
All the people refusing the masks, refusing the vaccine, even friends of mine who have watched me suffer with post-COVID syndrome for almost a year, still blaming me somehow for my illness.
Breathe. Let it out. Don’t have to carry it anymore.
There’s fear, too — friends, family, fighting COVID, or taking dangerous, unnecessary risks.
Long, slow breaths. Release. Into the loving matrix of Creation-Life-Love. I can’t hold this anymore. I release it.

There’s grief. Loss. Suffering. Isolation. Pain. Oh, breathe, let the tears flow, let the breaths and the tears just be what they are.
Stress. So much stress. We’re all frayed, so far beyond our limits. Breathe it out. Breathe it out again. Deep breaths – make noise if you want. Moan.
She cradles us in breath, the Divine Womb. She is the Source of our breath, and She is always cradling us, always breathing with us.
Breathe again. Close your eyes. Let your Holy Spirit bathe you in its healing power.
But it doesn’t fix anything, doesn’t DO anything!
I know. But it is enough. Just let it be. Be breath breathing itself.
What if you deserve to let go?
What if you deserve to be cradled in healing Love?
What if you deserve just to be?

Breathe. It sometimes feels so nice. Breath in, breath out.
Your body is letting go of anything you do not want.
You can release it now. Breathe it out. It’s ok.
Anywhere you want to feel your breath is ok. Wherever you want it to go, just breathe it there, and then release.
There’s no way to do this wrong. It’s your breath. It’s your breathing. A gift your body has, a magical, powerful, simple, holy gift. Breathe however feels good and right to you.
No rush. Take your time. As long as you want. As often as you want.
What if you deserve compassion?
What if you deserve to be bathed in healing Love?
What if you deserve to rest in your breath?
Breathe, darling. Close your eyes if you like. With every breath, you are holy.

In my Methodist tradition, which focuses heavily on the Holy Spirit, we sing a breathing hymn I love. Here is my rewritten version:

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
fill me with Life anew,
restore my soul with ev’ry breath,
to do what Love wouldst do.

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
so shall I rest, secure,
cradled in Love’s bright healing peace,
and held in compassion pure.

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
till I am wholly thine,
till body, spirit, all of me,
glows with thy Fire divine.

Breathe on me, Breath of Love,
until my heart is free,
and I perceive my ev’ry breath
is thine Eternity.

—Edwin Hatch (1878), revised.

Our world is so frayed right now. We are all at the end of our rope. We feel the same way most new mothers feel in capitalist patriarchies, in which motherhood means financial strain (or poverty), isolation, anxiety, constant demands, an inability to meet basic physical and mental health needs, and no escape from continuous, relentless emotional and physical labor. Women are expected to embrace this level of self-sacrificial stress in motherhood, as part of our female slave role in capitalist patriarchy, which defines our unpaid, unvalued labor as a natural extension of our biological sex. The burden on women is higher than ever these days, with women and even girls taking the lion’s share of extra household duties so that boys and men can continue in their education and careers. Women are suffering 100% of job losses as well.

In times like these, I keep turning to my faith for comfort and strength. In my tradition, the Holy Spirit is the Divine Breath, the Source of Life, which animates all living things and all Creation as sacred. It comes originally from the Hebrew “ruach,” a feminine noun. So when I take time just to breathe, that is sacred time, allowing my true, divine self to feel its divinity (as Methodism’s founder John Wesley might say). I do not take breathing for granted. After my COVID experience, how could I ever take it for granted again? So, for me, breathing time is holy — “set apart” as a communion, a Eucharist of Grace: life-giving, healing, restorative, and liberative. Almost every night for the past eleven months, I have spent time lying in bed just breathing: feeling the breath of the trees behind me in the woods, allowing their wellness to enter me, breathing out to them whatever I want to let go. In breathing this way, I am able to understand bodily that my breath is Goddess. Goddess who is ever birthing Love and Liberation. The Divine Source of All, who is every justice, every healing, every restoration. My breath is fair economies and safe respected female bodies; it is just relationships and female thriving. This is my breath. This is the Source of the Healing that rebirths every death into Life. This is Goddess.

So, breathe with me, sisters. And brothers. She is here, and we are the ones who breathe her. What if we deserve to be bathed in Healing Love? She knows. She understands.

Just breathe.

Trelawney Grenfell-Muir teaches courses about Sex, Dating, Marriage, and Work in the Religion and Theological Studies Department at Merrimack College and about Cross Cultural Conflict in the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A Senior Discussant at the Religion and the Practices of Peace Initiative at Harvard University, she holds an M.Div. from the Boston University School of Theology with a concentration in Religion and Conflict, and a Ph.D. in Conflict Studies and Religion with the University Professors Program at Boston University. She currently writes articles, book chapters, and liturgical resources about feminist, nature-based Christianity.

The Gathering: A Womanist Church BOOK REVIEW by Mary Ann Beavis

Book title: The Gathering: A Womanist Church—Origins, Stories, Sermons, and Litanies

Authors: Irie Lynne Session, Kamilah Hall Sharp and Jann Aldredge-Clanton

Publisher: Wipf & Stock, 2020

Womanist theology is a form of theological reflection that centers on Black women’s experience, sensitive to issues of race, class and gender. It originated in the United States in the mid-1980s and has grown in scope, sophistication and influence, but until recently there has been no expressly womanist church. This book charts the founding and development of a womanist church from the perspectives not only of its pastors (Irie Lynne Session and Kamilah Hall Sharp) but also of its ministry partners (Jann Aldredge-Clanton and others). Continue reading “The Gathering: A Womanist Church BOOK REVIEW by Mary Ann Beavis”

The Abuser was Someone I Loved by Sara Wright

Dedication: I dedicate this writing to all animals, women, children who have been violated, brutalized or murdered by men.

I will never forget
the look in her eyes
when he kicked her
the ugly brown shoe
smashing the domed
brown skull –
the daze – vacant
uncomprehending
falling to the floor
her eyes glazed
still find mine
“What did I do?”

Is death stalking us both
Will she die?

I scoop her in
my arms
and flee
slamming a door
to get away
from him –
my terror – her fright
a matrix of confusion Continue reading “The Abuser was Someone I Loved by Sara Wright”

Rescuing Purity from Patriarchy — With Candlemas Vagina Candles by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

I was invited to give a Dharma Talk at a Buddhist temple service in Hawai’i recently. Last time these folks invited me to speak, I explained my Christian feminist theory of Christ the Cosmic Vagina, so I was glad they invited me back! But that was the classroom – for temple service, I decided to talk about Candlemas.

This Buddhist community chants a beautiful prayer together every week:

“I am a link in Amida Buddha’s Golden Chain of Love that stretches around the world. I must keep my link bright and strong. I will try to be kind and gentle to every living thing and protect all who are weaker than myself.

I will try to think pure and beautiful thoughts, to say pure and beautiful words, and to do pure and beautiful deeds, knowing that on what I do now depends not only my happiness or unhappiness, but also that of others.

May every link in Amida’s Golden Chain of Love be bright and strong, and may we all attain perfect peace.”

Continue reading “Rescuing Purity from Patriarchy — With Candlemas Vagina Candles by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

This Story, I Am This Story by Marie Cartier

The papaya, the lemon, the squash.
The everything going bad—not yet.
I can pickle anything I can save—still. And I am never still.
Still…at sixty-four here I am. Rise. This is age—still.

I have a passport to somewhere that does not
exist. As a white skin person with color
roots that do not show. My grandfather could not
have had the chance I have to walk at night
in a white neighborhood and nobody knows who I am,
until they know. And still… I am here. This is race—still.

An ivory castle, an ant hill teeming with fire ants, a
stop sign, the rich woman’s house my grandmother
cleaned, the rich woman was my English teacher. My
father beat me for wanting to go to the Ivy League
school, Sarah Lawrence—I could not want to go
where he did not go. So, I went—to the state school.
But, I went, and I did, and I still…I’m
never still. This is possession.
This is wanting—still.

The dark room without a light. The stars
blink at me to move along. I am less
afraid of a coyote than a man out
with my dog at night walking
it off. Walking off the fear of a pandemic virus.
Walking off the fear of—everything—
where are we headed?
Somewhere.
Walking somewhere – my dog ahead of me,
Her ears pointing. She is…I am
never, ever still.

I am a rape survivor many times over, and I survived
to be this woman with a pen. And I am…
never still. Stillness as location.
For this is location—still.

A red apple on the teacher’s desk is never
enough if you are not in the class.
The guy said I wouldn’t get the job at seventeen
because it had to go to a boy even though I
created the job the summer before—
a park director in a dangerous neighborhood that I made
a park because no one wanted it. But I did. And I did.
I knew he was wrong, but it would be twenty years
before the words sexual harassment became a
tool I could use. Because…and still. I am
now. I am never still. This is gender—still.

I am a wave, a crash, a body among bodies
among bodies. I believe in people
fighting for what’s right. My wife and I
got married in 2008 and two days later
the state shut down gay marriage and we
spent our honeymoon protesting.
Her first protest sign,
“When do I get to vote on your marriage?’

And here I am. Still. Still protesting this shit, is
a sign I would use later. Still. I am never.
I am never still. And this is relationship—still.

It’s a long life, I say to students.
A lot can happen. Miles to go before you sleep.
A long road. At sixty-four I think, yes. Maybe yes, it is… A Wonderful Life.
And still…
I am never still.
This body I am. This story I am
is to be continued. And still.
For I am never…I am never still.

–Marie Cartier
January 9, 2021
With thanks to LA’s Cuties Coffee Shop, Poetry Workshop

Marie Cartier has a Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis on Women and Religion from Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall (Routledge 2013). She is a senior lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies and Queer Studies at California State University Northridge, and in Film Studies at Univ. of CA Irvine.

About Bridgerton: A Different Feminist Perspective by Christine Irving

First of all, I’m grateful to Bridgerton for providing several spirited conversations between my friends and me, not to mention the POVs penned recently in these pages. It was fun to take part in exchanges that did not highlight or veer off into either politics or the COVID-19 epidemic.

What first drew me to Bridgerton was the fun of it – the blatant over the top spoofery and satire so like the Commedia dell’arte it so brilliantly imitates. The Commedia got away with its mockery of society because it disguised it beneath a froth of opulent, frippery, and coarse buffoonery that distracted the rich (but not the poor) from its real message about the foolishness and vanity of the ruling class. So does Bridgerton, but in this case, the culture being satirized and unveiled is ours. Unlike those earlier dramatists, in our age we fortunately and so far, at least in this country, still enjoy much greater leeway in making mockery. “Huzzah!” I say. Continue reading “About Bridgerton: A Different Feminist Perspective by Christine Irving”

Bridgerton: The Next Wrong Thing in Misogynist Television

Why can’t we have nice things? Because the porn industry has infected media, that’s why.

I have read several of Julia Quinn’s fanciful romance novels. They contain entertaining and sympathetic stories about the economic and social pressures on gentlewomen of early 19th century Britain. The females are creative, courageous, intelligent, and honorable. The males are… well, they are somewhat sexist, of course, but no more sexist than most men I know. The books do a mediocre job of challenging gender roles or stereotypes (especially in their cookie cutter portrayals of male heroes), but they directly challenge overt sexism and misogyny. Quinn calls herself a feminist. Continue reading “Bridgerton: The Next Wrong Thing in Misogynist Television”

Good(?) Grief by Esther Nelson

The current pandemic has kicked our collective butt by putting a huge dent in our ability to maintain relationships so necessary for keeping our social gears greased and running smoothly. Grabbing coffee with a friend or meeting up for lunch in order to “catch up” with one another are activities that in times past we took for granted. Meetings nowadays (both work related and social) are done primarily via Zoom. Even a doctor’s visit can be accomplished electronically—a mode that, in my opinion, leaves much to be desired.

Besides feeing socially deprived over the past year, I’ve experienced a number of other losses. I’ll mention a few of them, but am not prepared to write about the ones that sting the most. I gave up my house in Richmond, Virginia, and moved to a high-rise condominium just down the road. I’ve yet to make it “home.” Halfway through the Spring semester, all classes at the university where I taught went online. The Fall semester followed suit, delivering classes (mainly) online. I didn’t want to box myself in on a screen. I find classroom interaction meaningful in a way that I cannot replicate on Zoom. I gave up teaching. In August, I drove to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and have been here ever since except for a brief visit in September to New Jersey for my brother’s funeral—another loss. Continue reading “Good(?) Grief by Esther Nelson”

In These United States: Georgia is on My Mind by Marie Cartier

Photo by Ted Fisher and Douglas Mcculloh. Author, mixed media installation, “the story of ohhh.”

Georgia on my mind, so goes the song, and right now the road leads back to you, Georgia.

The run-off election which could make two senators blue and give control of the Senate to the Democrats, remove a Republican as speaker, and Goddess willing, and the creek don’t rise…make America kind again… is happening now.

Early voting started December fourteenth and the federal election will be January fifth.

And then we will know. For right now, Georgia is on our minds in these United States.

There are white Southern political leaders who treat the Southern states they work in as if…

it is an acknowledged fact that the states are racist. But states are made up of people,

and all of those people are not racist. Racism may have worked as political strategy,

but the times they are a’changing. Continue reading “In These United States: Georgia is on My Mind by Marie Cartier”

Restoration by Molly Remer

In 2014, I sat on a low wooden bench nursing my 6 week old baby boy while wet plaster strips were laid across my face to create a mask. The final activity of the Rise Up and Call Her Name program, a women’s spirituality curriculum by Elizabeth Fisher that I’d been guiding over the course of an entire year, I had shown all of the women in my living room how to make masks and now it was my turn to have the mask material applied. My back was sore and I felt tired and lonely within my plaster shell. As my face faded from view, the women began to talk around me as if I suddenly wasn’t there and as my lips were covered, I became voiceless and closed in, shrouded and silent. When the plaster dried and I emerged again, I saw a dear friend sitting in the recliner drinking tea. While I was not sorry to have finished my commitment to the group and to have closed out the year-long program, I was suddenly awash with a deep longing for rest, a deep longing to be the one in the chair being brought tea, instead of the one to lead the group, baby dangling from her breast, tugged in a million directions by questions and needs.

This moment, this snapshot of maternal priestessing, has recurred for me many times over the last few years, a wondering of why I could not permit myself to be the tea-drinker instead of the hostess, the person to enjoy instead of the person to teach, the person to rest instead of the person to create experiences. Continue reading “Restoration by Molly Remer”