Someone I care a lot about asked me on New Year’s Eve, “What are you looking forward to in 2023?” This question was the follow up to another question, which was, “What are you grateful for from 2022?”
I was able to come up with many gratitudes for 2022 even as it was a tough year. I lost my mom on February 3. I lost my mother-in-law on October 25. These losses of the mothers in my life have generated an untethered sensation in my spirit. My center of gravity feels gone, dissolved, undone. I am a pastor, so I walked through more and more and more loss in my community. There were many deaths, all of them with their own unique load of grief.
I mentioned in a recent post that I would share a little more about my current research, as one of the aspects of my life I gained more clarity in during my recent process of regrounding was in the area of my research.
Two things stood out to me as I reflected on my work and scholarship: my concern for individual human dignity drives my work—it is an underlying thread in how I think and theologize. The second is that I want to make a major contribution to the theology of the church—I know I want to write a feminist ecclesiology. These two things are obviously related. I have witnessed enough of the ways that not only Christianity harms people, but how the church specifically is a conduit for the damages Christianity causes. At the same time, Christianity remains a living tradition, a shared story and language, and a community to which many are committed. So just as people are harmed by church, some are also nurtured and held by it. While it is true, then, that church indeed harms people and violates their dignity, often also justifying that violation on theological grounds, it need not do so and has other possibilities before it.
Thus, I want to contribute to a theology of church that is a grounded and liberating alternative to the problematic one to which people most often default or inherit. A queer, feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial ecclesiology.
When I was a young woman, a divorced mother of two, working as a waitress I became obsessed by a window hanging in a local store. This cluster of grapes was fashioned out of thick, uneven hunks of stained glass that the artist had retrieved from bombed cathedrals in Europe. The grapes shimmered – ecclesiastical purple with limed green leaves. Although I could hardly afford to, I paid an outrageous $50.00 for this piece and hung it above my bedroom window. I never regretted the choice. Whenever I looked at the stained glass, I had the strange sense that there was a message hidden there. I ignored it.
After my brother’s death two years later (my youngest son was two) I lost most of myself, but held on to my love for plants tending to them with deep affection and attention.
My first word was ‘fower’ for flower so my relationship with plants stretched back to babyhood. I believed the flowers plants and trees that lived around my grandmother’s house were my close friends.
On August 26, 1970, I borrowed an old VW bug from my mentor and summer employer Michael Novak to drive from Oyster Bay, Long Island to New York City to take part in the Women’s Strike for Equality march down Fifth Avenue. Some 50,000 women attended the march and another 50,000 took part in sister actions around the United States. The march celebrated the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment that gave women the right to vote. The ERA was on our minds, but it was not the only issue on the feminist agenda. We believed that all the walls created by patriarchy would come tumbling down, and soon!
I am writing this blog on New Year’s Day, so Happy New Year! Today I say these words as both a statement of hope and as invocation. Happy New Year: may it be! My twin told me that our horoscope said that 2017 would be a party: we should throw our energies into anything and everything we want to see happen in our worlds because it can and will happen this year—may it be! Because it certainly doesn’t feel like a time for flourishing. I echo the introductory sentiments of Kate’s blog last Friday:
“ I am fried. These last two years proved personally & professionally exhausting. And yet, another year looms ahead unavoidably — another incredibly demanding year which will require more than I can fathom I actually have to give at this moment.”
Yes Kate. Oh my god/dess yes. This is exactly how I feel… and sitting down to write this blog this morning, I felt overcome with a wave of anxiety and stress, focused on all the things I have to do, the lack of time I have to do them, and the lack of energy I feel. Lurking beneath this stress is real pain and fear. What should we expect this year, in light of what’s already happening, in light of the hate already ignited? I think I have been locked in this pain and this fear.
On Winter Solstice, I hosted a Return of the Sun event at the local healing arts center where I do my Circles. We had offerings and presentations all night long. It was the first time I have ever done anything that large or public, so it was a stretch for me.
At the end of the night, a friend said, ‘Oh my, I needed this. Let’s do it once a month.’
And I thought, ‘yea, right.’
And then I thought, ‘Yea. Right.’
I’ve already started thinking about ways we could do it better and things we could change.
I feel a bit like when I first started hosting Circles nine years ago. I’m tired and judging whether or not it was worth the stress and effort.
But this time around I know it’s worth the stress and effort.
Transcendentalism is a philosophical, literary, and spiritual movement begun in 19th century America whose founders centered being guided by your own inner voice, the immanence of divinity in all beings, the sacredness of nature, and the importance of social reform, among other aspects. Its influence is still felt today in the environmental movement, civil rights, literature, spirituality celebrating nature, and more. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and others are often considered to be its originators, but before them all was Mary Moody Emerson.
The Old Manse, Concord, Massachusetts, where Mary Moody Emerson was born and lived periodically, as did various minister ancestors and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Mary Moody Emerson was born in 1774 in Concord, Massachusetts into a family of ministers and philosophers, including her nephew, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Her literary legacy includes a few published pieces, but is primarily the mountain of letters and journals which she called her “Almanacks.” She circulated these among friends and family, including many transcendentalists, especially Ralph Waldo Emerson. They featured many revolutionary ideas that made their way into his books and lectures, in particular, especially foreshadowing his book Nature, which launched transcendentalism. She also held influential conversations with Henry David Thoreau as he was writing Walden and with many other prominent thinkers over decades. Ralph Waldo Emerson praised her “Genius always new, subtle, frolicsome, musical, unpredictable” (Cole, 262). Almost entirely self-educated through books given or lent by family, friends, and local libraries, her sagacity was the well-spring of a movement that has been instrumental in making her world and ours.
This past summer, my family and I lovingly carried my brother’s ashes to a favorite spot of his, in the woods at our grandparents’ Catskill farm. My mind was on the simple, beautiful ritual, each of us stating memories and scattering some of the ashes around the tree, and singing a few songs. It had slipped my mind that this tree grew at the entrance of the very meadow where, at age 11, I felt urgently compelled to create a ritual for myself, just at puberty, where I connected with the Grandmothers of the four directions. No one had taught me this, and I am still in wonder at what we carry with us, undoubtedly from prior lives. I feel that this poem was my self initiating myself into the world of the Goddess, and preparing for my own future.
In this poem, the Grandmothers are speaking to me, with a bit of disdain and fond teasing.
The mad pre-Christmas rush of activity has passed and we find ourselves again in the quiet, dark and cold of winter. Winter Solstice, the longest night and shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, occurred last week. With a gain of only a few seconds of daylight each day in the ten days after Winter Solstice, we can take advantage of the stillness offered to seek within ourselves for the seeds laying dormant, waiting to be recognized and nurtured into fruition and manifestation.
Bright Solstice Night by Judith Shaw
Having just finished all the pre-press and pre-order fulfillment of the first of the Animal Wisdom Oracle decks, now is the perfect time for me to work on seeds of my own – another project that has long been in the works. This project has gotten back burnered every spring for the past couple of years as I seem to need the dark of winter to complete the art. It’s a folk tale inspired by the ancient stories of the Reindeer Goddess. It’s a tale that honors the Sacred Feminine. The story is written and now I have the illustrations to complete. Here’s a little taste of what’s to come:
Elena and the Reindeer Goddess
Just before dawn on a cold winter morning, Grandmother woke up with a smile on her wrinkled face and a feeling of hope in her heart. She had had a dream, one that had come from her ancestors, and from her own deep knowledge. It was a dream of prophecy.
“The Reindeer Goddess returns,” Grandmother whispered to herself.
She threw back her quilts and rose, shoving her cold feet into soft wool slippers, and hurried to wake her granddaughter, Elena.
She rushed into Elena’s cozy little room, then leaned over her and shook her gently, saying, “Elena, Elena, wake up. Quickly Elena, there’s no time to lose!”
Elena opened her eyes and yawned. “What’s wrong Grandmother? What’s happened?”
“It’s more about what will happen,” Grandmother said. “Come, let’s put on our coats and boots and while we walk I’ll explain everything. I need your pure heart, your quick wit, and your strength.”
Elena and Grandmother bundled up against the cold and stepped outside. They began to trudge through the snow lying thickly on the ground, past little puddles here and there, glinting hard as stone in the light from a million stars.
Grandmother gathered her coat more tightly around her as she began telling Elena the story, her breath puffing out like mist in front of her.
“Long, long ago in the northern lands of snow and ice – the Old World of our ancestors – the Reindeer Goddess was alive in the hearts of the people. It was she who took flight on the Winter Solstice bringing understanding of the power that lies in darkness and of the hope that spring would return.
“Our people knew her as Reinna. Sometimes she was seen as a woman who flew through the skies in a chariot pulled by reindeer. At other times she was seen as a flying reindeer herself.
Flight of the Reindeer Goddess by Judith Shaw
Look for more excerpts over the winter months and discover how Elena helps the Reindeer Goddess accomplish her very important mission of love. The book should be ready for the printers by the end of summer – early fall 2024.
Reindeer are the only deer species in which the females grow antlers. And the females’ antlers are larger and stronger than those of male reindeer. So who was Santa Claus really and who were his flying reindeer?
As our ancestors were well aware of the need for balance, Stag – the male red deer indigenous to the UK – is also celebrated at this time. Stag, who grows a massive rack, is symbolic of the masculine power of regeneration, a messenger from the spirit world and one who leads humans to spiritual enlightenment. Males are called bucks in other deer species.
The racks found on bucks from other deer species during the fall rut are also impressive. I was lucky to see many mule deer during my Thanksgiving stay in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico. Deer who wander into town are protected and thus not afraid of humans. This allowed me to get very close to this magnificent buck and capture his photo. He was not at all interested in looking at me so it took awhile to get this shot from just a few feet away.
And finally I’ll share my painting of Stag with you all again.
May the Reindeer Goddess continue to nurture you with her love and gifts of abundance while Stag guides you to spiritual enlightenment.
Judith Shaw, a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute, has been interested in myth, culture and mystical studies all her life. Not long after graduating from SFAI, while living in Greece, Judith began exploring the Goddess in her art. She continues to be inspired by the Goddess in all of her manifestations, which of course includes the flora and fauna of our beautiful Earth. Originally from New Orleans, Judith makes her home in New Mexico, The Land of Enchantment.
Judith’s illustrated fairytale: Elena and the Reindeer Goddess — A Magical Winter Solstice Mission — will be released by late January 2024. Sign up for Judith’s newsletter on her website for more info on the release.
Judith’s oracle decks are available on her website: Celtic Goddess Oracle — order your deck here. Animal Wisdom Oracle – order your deck here.
The winter solstice is almost upon us just as the first heavy snow buries the forest and house under 28 inches of snow. I never look forward to this shift into the cold, ice, and snow, although I do wrap myself in peaceful silence, sitting by the fire dreaming as twilight turns to night. My Norfolk Island pine and tipped balsam wreath shimmer with tiny stars. The scent of balsam soothes my senses and purifies the air. This month above all others is my time to honor the trees… I am keenly aware that Bone Woman and Old Man Winter are rising with the moon, whipped up by Northwest winds.
My scientist and naturalist friend, a member of one of the seven Indigenous Sioux tribes agrees with me that winter solstice is a dangerous time, one of the reasons in the old European way that everyone is masked while acting out winter solstice stories. These tales may vary in content but all have the same root. Shadow is on the move. Masks protect the people, the risk of exposure to danger is minimized in this way.
Feminism and Religion 