Women’s Voices – Page 60 – Feminism and Religion

Realize by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Autumn of 1977. The faculty wives have come together in the modest University Heights home of a physics professor. Their Aquanet hair is sprayed to the heavens and at significant risk of igniting from lipstick-stained cigarettes that are resting precariously in the cradle a heavy crystal ashtray. Their business is serious. They are putting together a cookbook. The Faculty Wives Cookbook of 1977, to be precise. It is a noble task. They will cook from it for their young families, for their husbands, that is, the faculty. Even more, they will use each other’s recipes. Martha will cook Mary’s chili; Margaret will lose weight on Donna’s diet cabbage stew. It is an achievement that will be smugly displayed on bookshelves for decades. It will yellow, and the black plastic spiral binding will wear and crack. The Kinko’s heavy card stock cover will be ringed with coffee marks. And, one day, daughters-in-law will decide whether to keep it or to pitch it out.

I think I must have one of the last remaining copies of this rare book. Almost 40 years old, I stumbled on it while cleaning the other day, seeing at last with my own eyes a thing of legend. At the dinner table, I oft heard of the making of this collection of recipes – what a job it was to oversee and how much pride the wives felt in its completion. Holding it now, I was struck poignantly by the absence of its authors from the scene. No longer card bearing faculty wives, they are widows or caregivers to aged retirees or elderly divorcees or simply deceased. Continue reading “Realize by Natalie Weaver”

Power & Restraint: A Feminist Perspective on Mormon Sisterhood: A sculpture series by Page Turner, presented by David Volodzko

David Volodzko History offers few instances of women helping create scripture. Hinduism’s sacred Rigveda may have been partly composed by women, and scholars believe the biblical Book of Ruth was possibly written by a woman, but the evidence for each is wanting. And while Muhammad’s widow was entrusted with the manuscript that would become the Quran, its scribe was a man named Zayd ibn Thabit. The only clear exception to this is the Book of Mormon, which Joseph Smith partially dictated to his wife Emma. The central role of Mormon women in the church was therefore fixed from the start.

In 1842 Joseph Smith organized the church sisters into a philanthropic organization known as the Relief Society. Among other things, the Relief Society sent women to medical school and opened cooperative stores. Operating independently from local bishops, it afforded Mormon women unprecedented independence. In fact the early Mormon Church was a feminist pathfinder. The first Mormon pioneers arrived in Salt Lake City in 1846, and by 1870 Utah Territory became the second place in the Union (after Wyoming) to give women the right to vote—nearly fifty years before the Nineteenth Amendment. But Mormons wanted freedom for all women, and that same year the Relief Society held a meeting in which the renowned poet Eliza Snow entrusted Bathsheba Smith with a mission to travel “all through the South” preaching “retrenchment [restriction of government spending] … and women’s rights.” Continue reading “Power & Restraint: A Feminist Perspective on Mormon Sisterhood: A sculpture series by Page Turner, presented by David Volodzko”

Nobody’s Disciple by Maeve Rhuad aka the Celtic Magdalen via Elizabeth Cunningham

Elizabeth Cunningham headshot jpeg Since beginning her posts for FAR four years ago, Elizabeth has featured an excerpt from my chronicles each July in honor of my feast day on the 22^nd. At least I thought it was my Feast day. It has been brought to our attention that Pope Francis only recently elevated the 22^nd to the status of a Feast. Before that, it was merely a Memorial of me as a saint, whether optional or obligatory I am not sure. The only thing more elevated than a Feast day is a Solemnity. (Needless to say my mother-in-law, aka the Blessed Virgin Mary, has one of those.)

You may not know me as Maeve, the Celtic Magdalen. Mary Magdalen, who she was (or is) should or could have been is a highly charged subject. Not very much is known about me, really, which is why legends, novels, and films abound. I’m a storied woman, to borrow Natalie Weaver’s term. There are fourteen references to me in the Gospels. I am associated with the non-canonical Gospel of Mary (I believe the credit for that should go to Mary of Bethany whom many people conflate with me). Pope Gregory is largely responsible for my lugubrious image as a penitent prostitute. Continue reading “Nobody’s Disciple by Maeve Rhuad aka the Celtic Magdalen via Elizabeth Cunningham”

Gratitude by Esther Nelson

esther-nelson I’ve been in the midst of moving for almost a year, yet am still not finished with that onerous task. My youngest son and family recently moved into the place I’ve called home since 1980. I bought a small house in the vicinity and have just settled in after spending four months painting, cleaning, and hauling box after box to my new dwelling. At the same time, I’ve been traveling back and forth to New Mexico busy with painting, cleaning, and remodeling my “retirement house.”

I’m tired. Am also experiencing emotions that I thought I was impervious to. I never perceived myself as somebody having an attachment to place, but a month or so before moving out of my old home, I began to feel nostalgic. There was so much I didn’t want to leave behind–the woods, birds nesting in bushes around the property as well as on top of the front porch light, the wildlife (deer, opossum, rabbits), and neighbors far enough away so I didn’t have to hang curtains at the windows.

Just days before the agreed-upon date to turn the old home over to my son and family, I became emotionally distraught. A friend suggested I read Oliver Sacks’ book, Gratitude. Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) was a British neurologist who spent his professional life in the United States caring for people with brain “disorders” such as aphasia, Tourette Syndrome, amnesia, autism, and a host of other neurological diagnoses.

Gratitude is a slim volume featuring four essays written during the last few months of Dr. Sacks’ life. In the second essay, “My Own Life,” he writes: “I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.”

I wanted to know more about Dr. Sacks’ life and promptly procured his memoir, On The Move A Life, published just before he died in 2015. I was struck by the apparent comfort he felt in his own skin as he went about living in the world. He came from a fairly Orthodox Jewish family and realized during his teen years that he was gay. When his mother discovered his homosexuality, she said, “You are an abomination. I wish you had never been born.” He writes that she undoubtedly was referring to a text in Leviticus (Hebrew Bible) and although she never mentioned the incident again,” …her harsh words made me hate religion’s capacity for bigotry and cruelty.”

His mother’s view regarding his homosexuality didn’t seem to affect Dr. Sacks’ ability to get on with his adventures living on, what he calls, “this beautiful planet.” He focused on his passions–medicine, literature, traveling, observing the natural world, swimming, lifting weights, and riding his motorcycle. Along the way he met a wide variety of people (patients, colleagues, authors, and characters in books). He squeezed gallons of nectar from those meaningful encounters. Yet, I think his mother’s disgust regarding his sexual orientation must have cut him to the quick. He included the incident in his last book, Gratitude. Continue reading “Gratitude by Esther Nelson”

What Traci West Taught Me about Dominant and Excluded Voices by Elise M. Edwards

In my previous post, I mentioned a book I am writing about how theological and ethical considerations in architectural design can define good architecture. In that post and in ones to follow, I am acknowledging the feminists and womanists and mujeristas who have influenced me while also opening up the dialogue to the feminists in this community who continue to inspire and guide me to do my best work.

But today, instead of talking about creativity or architecture, I want to discuss how I arrived at the conviction that community decisions about how we ought to live—whether those are decisions about laws, institutional policies, religious practices or architectural buildings—need to include the voices of the diverse people they directly and indirectly influence. Continue reading “What Traci West Taught Me about Dominant and Excluded Voices by Elise M. Edwards”

The Self is Not the Territory by Vibha Shetiya

Vibha As a teenager, I grew up wondering where exactly I belonged. Aside from the confusion resulting from straddling two entirely different, perhaps even opposing, cultures, my main concern seemed to center on which country was I from – India or Zambia? Or was I inherently British because of an education and upbringing enveloped by things English – values, books, magazines, not to mention people? Was I American because I grew up on TV shows like Charlie’s Angles, Wonder Woman, Six Million Dollar Man and Dallas that played a major role in fashioning my idea of the world around me? Perhaps I was Zambian because I had been living in that part of the world since the age of one. Or maybe I was from India because that was after all the land of my birth, to where I returned as an utterly confused and disjointed teenager who believed she now had to be “Indian” even though I could not relate so much as an iota to my immediate surroundings.

Looking back, I realize I felt the need to identify my sense of self with nationality. Ultimately, I reasoned, I had to be Indian due to many factors. For one, I looked Indian; I was brown-skinned with black hair and dark brown eyes. I now lived in India amid Indian people, Indian values (oh, so confusing), Indian music and Indian TV shows. And I was “born” a Hindu. So there I was – an Indian Hindu and so had jolly well behave like one. Of course none of this came with a manual on what exactly being Indian or Hindu meant. And so I looked to people around me, people I loved and whose approval my teenage mind so craved, and decided being Indian meant being who they wanted me to be. After all, how many times had I heard the phrase – “You’re in India now, so be Indian.” And then as an adult, I came to America accompanied by even more potential for confusion; at times I felt the need to cling to my “Indianness,” at other times, I wanted to jettison it for fear of being denied entry into the great melting pot. Continue reading “The Self is Not the Territory by Vibha Shetiya”

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.

From her lips to our ears.

Who wrote that poem? I’ve heard that some so-called scholars think it’s about a queen of England named Mary Tudor (slandered as “Bloody Mary” because she stuck to her religion after her father declared himself head of his own bloody church) or Mary Queen of Scots (slandered for other reasons, and then murdered). Well, much as I feel sorry for those two queens, the poem’s about me, and I don’t grow any little garden. I am a gentlewoman farmer. The fellow who wrote that silly poem probably works for one of those corporations that want to buy my land and plant their engineered crops on it and create monocultures that murder the land. Continue reading “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary by Barbara Ardinger”

#HillYes by John Erickson

I’m going to do something I’d never thought I’d do: fill your newsfeed with yet another article pertaining to the 2016 United States Presidential election and yes, I’m going to talk about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (hint: I’m emphatically supporting her and I’m unapologetic about it.)

Let me start off with my central point: a vote for Hillary is a vote to change history and the world. No, not because she’ll hail in some type of new economic stimulus (although I’m sure she’ll do just fine with our economy #ThanksObama) or because she’ll save us all from the evils of the GOP (looking at you Trump/Cruz/and the “moderate” Kasich) but because she’ll do one thing that’s never been done before: become the first female President of the United States, ever.

While I have tried not to get into “it” (read: online trysts with my friends on social networks who are #FeelingtheBern) the question I beg to ask is: what’s so wrong with wanting the right woman to be the President? This is one, but not my only reason, I will cast my vote for her both in the Democratic Primary in California in June as well as in November (and, if you haven’t guessed, I do not believe or promulgate the reasoning or rhetoric that Bernie Sanders will come from behind and win the Democratic Party’s nomination because I passed 5th grade level Math.)

Continue reading “#HillYes by John Erickson”

Painting the Virgen de la Caridad, Doing Intersectionality by Angela Yarber

angela The most recent Holy Woman Icon with a folk feminist twist that I’ve painted is the Virgen de la Caridad. Like Mary, Guadalupe, La Negrita, and the Virgin of Regla, she was commissioned by a bold and brilliant friend, a scholar who lives, teaches, and does the work of intersectional feminism on a daily basis. As with my beloved friend who taught me so much about Jane Addams last month, this dear friend has taught me so much about feminist understandings of Marian Spirituality and of the need for many secular scholars to keep a connection to their religious roots.

When we discussed her commission, she wanted to make sure that the Virgin of Caridad was the primary focus of the icon, but since she is also often associated with Oshun, she also wanted elements of this Yoruban goddess to shine through. I was thrilled with the opportunity to learn, research, grow, and paint. Little did I know what kind of important learning was in store. Continue reading “Painting the Virgen de la Caridad, Doing Intersectionality by Angela Yarber”

Rewriting Religion: the radical poetry of Aemilia Bassano Lanier by Mary Sharratt

Sharratt_DarkLady-hi

Aemilia Bassano Lanier (also spelled Lanyer) is the heroine of my new novel The Dark Lady’s Mask. Born in 1569, she was the highly educated daughter of an Italian court musician—a man thought to have been a Marrano, a secret Jew living under the guise of a Christian convert. She may have also been the mysterious, musical Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets, although most academic scholars dispute this. What we do know for a fact and what really matters is that she was the first woman in England to pursue a career as a published poet.

In Italy women such as Isabella Andreini published plays and poetry on a wide variety of secular subjects, but in England Lanier effectively had only one option—to write devotional Protestant verse. Her English literary predecessors, Anne Locke and Mary Sidney, wrote poetic meditations on the Psalms.

But Lanier turned this tradition of women’s religious poetry on its head. Published in 1611, her Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail God, King of the Jews) is a radical, ground-breaking tour de force, a searing vindication of the rights of women—and of herself as a woman writer.

In this epic narrative poem, Lanier describes the passion of Christ from the viewpoint of the women in the Gospels. In comparing the sufferings of women in male-dominated culture to the sufferings of Christ, she upholds women as Christ’s true imitators.

Most significantly Salve Deus is dedicated and addressed exclusively to women, and is prefaced by nine praise poems dedicated to the royal and aristocratic women whose patronage Lanier sought. She also included a dedication in praise of all women.

Having thus established her female audience, Lanier attacks the theological roots of male domination, namely the blame attached to Eve—and by extension all women—for humanity’s fall from grace. In “Eve’s Apology in Defence of Women,” Lanier argues that the original sin was actually Adam’s for accepting the forbidden fruit. For he, unlike Eve, was fully aware of the consequences. Out of selfishness and desire for power, Adam let Eve take the fall.

If Eve did err, it was for knowledge sake,

The fruit being fair persuaded him to fall:

No subtle serpent’s falsehood did betray him,

If he would eat it, who had the power to stay him?

Not Eve, whose fault was only too much love.

Lanier contends that male culpability in crucifying Christ far exceeds Eve’s tragic misunderstanding. Therefore there is no moral or divine cause to justify women’s subjugation. Here Lanier explicitly champions women’s rights and freedoms:

Let us have our Liberty again,

And challenge to yourselves no Sovereignty,

You came not into the world without our pain,

Make that a bar against your cruelty;

Your fault being greater, why should you disdain

Our being your equals, free from tyranny?

If one weak woman simply did offend,

This sin of yours hath no excuse, nor end.

Lanier’s poetry lays claim to women’s God-given call to rise up against male arrogance, just as the strong women of the Old Testament rose up against their oppressors. While wooing her highborn female patrons, Lanier uses the scriptures to assert a sense of social egalitarianism that foreshadows the Levellers and the Quaker religious movement that emerged a few decades after her poetry’s publication. “God makes both even, the cottage with the throne,” Lanier writes in her dedicatory poem to her former pupil, Lady Anne Clifford. (Clifford was herself a feminist firebrand who fought long and hard to regain her properties after her father disinherited her because of her sex. Anne Clifford was an ancestor of Vita Sackville West and the historical inspiration for Virginia Woolf’s novel, Orlando.)

Lanier’s book ends with “A Description of Cookham,” an elegiac ode to the country house where she lived for a time with Anne Clifford and her mother Margaret, who was Lanier’s greatest patron. Cookham was the blessed refuge where Lanier received both her spiritual epiphany and the confirmation of her vocation as a poet.

Farewell (sweet Cookham) where I first obtained

Grace from the Grace where perfect Grace remained,

And where the Muses gave their full consent,

I should have the power the virtuous to content.

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum is a corpus of poetry celebrating female and divine goodness, penned by a poet who found her own sense of salvation in a community of women who supported her and believed in her.

Mary Sharratt’s book Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, won the 2013 Nautilus Gold Award, Better Books for a Better World. Her forthcoming novel, The Dark Lady’s Mask, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in April 2016. Visit Mary’s website.