Women’s Voices – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Seeing Double by Esther Nelson

I’ve often thought that we (in the USA) have been somewhat, albeit reluctantly, willing to discuss and perhaps even change our minds, behavior, policies, and laws when confronted about the long-lived presence of racism in our local and national institutions. However, when it comes to misogyny—not so much.

Shirley Anita Chisholm St. Hill (1924 – 2005), was an American politician who, in 1968, became the first black woman to be elected to Congress. “Chisholm represented a district centered in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1972, she became the first black candidate for a major-party nomination for President of the U.S. and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Throughout her career, she was known for taking ‘a resolute stand against economic, social, and political injustices’ as well as being a strong supporter of black civil rights and women’s rights” (Wikipedia).

Chisholm noted that “…she had faced much more discrimination during her New York legislative career because she was a woman than for her race” (Wikipedia). Why are not more of us aware of Chisholm’s confession?

Mother Blues: Interfaith Somatic Reflections on Support Systems, Chronic Pain, Tension Relief, and Supporting Oneself by Chaz J

I have had a weird relationship with my stomach or core BEFORE birth.

My back has been hurting since giving birth.

I’ve carried fragments of my birth story like heirlooms,
passed down in murmurs from my mother and family.
They say she went into labor at home,
a warm plate of food in her hands,
My aunt Akami recalls she refused to leave for the hospital
until every bite was finished.

I came into the world under sudden urgency—
an emergency C-section,
my first act a quiet rebellion:
I had soiled the waters before taking my first breath.

My mother remembers it in a haze,
“I was pregnant, went to sleep…
when I woke up, there was a baby in the corner.”

I do not know if every detail is true,
but the outline fits—
the origin of a loneliness that has followed me
like a shadow that never unhooks from the heel.

Honeysuckle Jewels and Women with Wings by Sara Wright

Initially I wrote this article for publication at a plant site but was forcibly struck by the reality that what we are doing to plants is exactly the same thing we are doing to humans, women in particular. Separating, Othering, Judging, Dismissing, Eradicating. I could go on here. When you read this article about invasives think about how we are being treated as women. It alarms me that no matter I turn I see the same story played out with humans (women and children suffer most overall), trees, plants, and the animals we are so busy annihilating if not physically then in some other monstrous way. Fill in the blank with your own story. Then imagine yourself as a bird with wings who carries the seeds of new life into unexpected places.

When I first moved to this area many years ago, I used to spend most of the time in the forests that surrounded my house except in the spring. Then I walked along what used to be a country road to see the wild trilliums, arbutus, lady slippers, bunch berry, violets and columbine that peppered the road edges.

All the trees and flowers were so plentiful and so beautiful that it took me a few years to pay closer attention to the bushes like the various pussy willows and wild cherries, beaked hazelnut, witch hazel and hobblebush that I also came to love.

We Don’t Have to Live Like This by Trista Hendren

A Tribute to Carol P. Christ’s Legacy of Peace

Rawan Anani, The Melody of Freedom, Gaza Palestine

Carol P. Christ was a feminist scholar and thealogian I deeply admired from afar for many years. That changed when I read her post in Feminism and Religion describing “washing wet clothes cast off by refugees who crossed the Sea of Death.”[1]

In that moment, she became a woman I connected with on a soul level. What could be more profound than washing and folding the clothing of tiny dead children? What other metaphor could be more vivid for how desperately we need to change the world?

“A tiny pink long-sleeved shirt with a boat neck, for a girl, size 3 months.

A pair of leggings with feet, grey with pink, orange, brown, white, and blue polka-dots, to be worn over diapers.”

The week before, she asserted that “the only ‘solution’ to the problem of people leaving their homes in fear for their lives is TO END WAR.” She continued, “No one takes this suggestion seriously enough to engage it.”[2]

I remember sitting inside the Idean cave with our Goddess Pilgrimage group when Carol read, “We Need a God Who Bleeds Now” by Ntozake Shange. I knew the poem well, but hearing Carolina read it so forcefully shook something deep inside me.

While I have had the privilege of having several wonderful female pastors, they were never particularly affirming of my womanhood—or my divinity. They certainly never celebrated my period.

SheSpeaks! Eve by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Author’s Note: I have begun a project called She Speaks! Women of the Bible Have Their Say. As part of this project, I have done five films with some very dedicated actors (friends of mine) who have dubbed themselves the SheSpeaks!Ensemble. I showed 4 of the films at the recent Yerusha Symposium. Based on the comments and reception, the project is now expanding. I am looking to create longer films that include story arcs. The first one will be of Eve. Below is the script for Eve along with the link to the video.

EVE speaks:

Why hello I don’t get visitors very often! Welcome. Come, come sit under my tree, let’s share some tea. I have the most wonderful and flavorful herbs here in my garden.

Look around at my most marvelous paradise. It is all filled with magical treasure. I’ll tell you a secret, the treasure I care for spans both the heavens and the earth. You see, we are at the place where spirit, breath and matter intersect. Where the living beings of earth and the animating forces of the divine join in harmony.

It is so hard to look at your holy book. I can’t imagine why I keep getting blamed for . . .well . . . just about everything. It’s strange that your world wants to connect me with curses as I am the giver of life. In fact, did you know that my name Eve means life. I don’t understand what has become of you, my children. It is said that I brought a curse to humanity. Do you see life as a curse? Let me tell you a bit about myself. Perhaps then you will see me differently.

My Grandmother’s Pearls are Green by Sara Wright

“That move into mystery
is not an abandonment of
perception
into a cloud of unknowing.
It’s a move
into a different form
of knowing.”

Robert Macfarlane

I stepped outside when the sun was just rising over the horizon and low enough in the sky to create a play of shadow and light. This is my favorite time of the day to witness the astonishing beauty of the earth that is spreading her shimmering cloak around my feet… ‘oh, my grandmother’s hair, the words rose unbidden’. Chartreuse, plum, wine, lime, gold leaf and emerald canopies stretched across the brook blurring the leaves between birch, ash, beech and maples. The silvery water glistened, and I imagined myself flowing around those serpentine moss-covered banks listening to an ancient song that has been sung by water for more than 4 billion years. How I wish I understood what ‘ki’ was saying but I am no longer able to discern the language.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Integrating Celtic Wisdom and Science, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday

Combining ancient wisdom and western science

At age sixteen Beresford-Kroeger was graduated from her mentorship of the Lisheens and went on to become a scientist, learning medical biochemistry and botany. Eventually she saw that many of the things she learned from the Lisheens elders could be scientifically proven. This offered her delight and reassurance.

One of the first of these was the plant Chrondrus crispus or seaweed named Irish moss. Her Great-Aunt Nellie taught her that it cured tuberculosis and how to prepare and use the gel-like mucilage it released upon being boiled.

In the lab Beresford-Kroeger later discovered that this mucilage has antibiotic properties.

“The feeling this confirmation of Nellie’s teaching gave me is hard to describe. I loved my teachers in Lisheens, but I hadn’t completely ruled out the idea that the things I’d been taught there were just old superstitions. I needed to confirm them for myself. There was always the chance that there would turn out to be nothing of import in the plants they’d emphasized to me, and nothing more to the ancient knowledge than beautiful clouds of vapor”(96).

She began to understand that what she had been taught was an oral tradition and that it existed in no other format and that she was meant to be a bridge between “the ancient and the scientific”(97).

“My teachers in the valley might have indicated that a particular plant was good for poor circulation, which I’d taken to mean heart trouble. I would then know to keep a particular eye out for the presence of any chemical known to benefit the heart. “Well, Diana,” they might have begun, while cradling a small, five-pointed yellow flower in the crook of two fingers. “St. John’s Wort, as you see here, has a strong medicine for nervousness and mental problems.” I would later find out that St. John’s Wort contains phytochemicals such as hyperforin, which increase the effectiveness of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. The plant is as effective as many prescription anti-depressants, and may in some cases be more effective”(98).

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Integrating Celtic Wisdom and Science, part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is brought to you by a collaboration by FAR and Nasty Women Writers written and hosted by Maria and Theresa Dintino. This post originally appeared on their website on Sep 12, 2023

In her book To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, Diana Beresford-Kroeger shares her origin story, the humble beginnings of the famous scientist, the activist and crusader for the planet she became. We learn on what forge that will, strength, brain and consciousness were smelted. And it is one of beauty, strength and love, one that takes the breath away.

I loved this book. I loved going deeper and deeper into Beresford-Kroeger’s life story, into the rich depths of her Celtic heritage and medicine lineage. To learn the secrets and the wisdom. Beresford-Kroeger offers sacred transmission in this book, revealing another part of herself. It is a vulnerable telling and an irreplaceable gift.

So, You Think You’re a Feminist? The Culturally Palatable ‘Feminism’ of The Barbie Movie by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

People are often surprised to learn that I actually love Barbie. Years ago, I heard a BBC interview with Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie. In a world of baby dolls for mothering creative play, she wanted her daughter – Barbara – to have the opportunity to imagine other things, too. A computer scientist. A top executive. An astronaut. (The film shows a bit of this early intent.) Of course, no one would support her idea. Then, one day in Switzerland, she was walking past a toy shop and saw a small, plastic, adult, female doll. She had finally found a prototype!

Unfortunately, this original Lilli doll had been created to depict an alluring, sassy, provocative “golddigger, exhibitionist, and floozy.” And Ruth specifically didn’t want her doll to be stereotypically ‘beautiful,’ because she didn’t want it to hurt girls’ self-esteem. But the only manufacturer willing to create the dolls was in Japan; their English was so limited, she finally picked up a file and literally filed off the plastic nipples in order to explain that she didn’t want the doll to have nipples.

#ShareTheirStories, June 2025 Edition

Photo from Amnesty International. For more information and to support his petition click here.

This is a project that FAR has started to share the stories of immigrants who are targeted by the US administration. It is our belief that when people are recognized as human beings, it is harder to dehumanize them and to take away their civil rights. We are facing a devastating situation where in the United States people are being “disappeared” without any recourse to the legal system. The viciousness of what is happening is growing. Some of those arrested have been released but it is a small drop in the bucket of the flood of arrestees, most not even receiving a day in court and some caught in legal mazes that show no sign of ending.

Take Mahmoud Khalil, whom we have already discussed. He was arrested in March due to his outspoken Pro-Palestinian views. In May, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz in New Jersey ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio likely violated the Constitution when he stripped Mahmoud Khalil of his green card and ordered him deported. Even so the Judge declined to release him because he has not proven “irreparable harm” caused by his detention. I think an elementary school child can even understand the irreparable harm one suffers by being detained, esp. in Trump prisons that are designed for harshness. And to add to it, Khalil is a new father who only got to hold his son while in prison after a flurry of lawsuits.