Wings by Sara Wright


Early in January I discovered a chickadee with a broken wing floundering in the snow. I rescued him, providing him with a safe haven in the house, hoping he might recover use of his wing. For the first couple of days we conversed at the edge of the mesh that covered the sides of his cage and he seemed pleased to be with me. I named him Blue.

On the third morning, a solitary chickadee chirped just behind me outside the window. I immediately suspected it was his mate because Blue became almost frantic jumping back and forth on the mesh that faced the window.

After that incident, things changed radically. Blue bit me hard whenever I changed his water. He tried to escape repeatedly. I knew that to let him go was to consign him to death because sub-zero temperatures were the norm for this time of year. I resisted. It took a few more days to face the truth. I could feel and sense it. I had to let him go although I knew he would die. Continue reading “Wings by Sara Wright”

What’s Done Is Really Done by Barbara Ardinger

This is an encore performance of a satire I wrote in November 2019, when I thought Trump’s sociopathic behavior was at its height. Little did I know. Little did we know. Only a year later, following the 2020 election, we watched him lie and deny, spread conspiracy theories, and finally encourage his true believers to invade the Capital and “stop the steal.” It’s good to see that President Biden is a normal person who knows what presidential behavior and work really are. A small example: right after the inauguration, we watched him signing executive orders. Did he use a Sharpie? No. Biden used (and still uses) a normal pen to sign his name. And he doesn’t wave an illegible signature at the TV cameras.

Two brief notes: In his novel Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka does not say the protagonist is turned into a cockroach. He’s an ungeheures Ungeziefer, i.e., a “monstrous vermin.” But if you want to see Trump as a roach, that’s fine. Note also that Trump’s answers are spoken by Dogberry in Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Dogberry, Messina’s police constable, is probably the stupidest character Shakespeare created. And so, here’s the encore. Enjoy! (And let’s squash that bug!) Continue reading “What’s Done Is Really Done by Barbara Ardinger”

Toadwise: A Tale for a Life Lover – Part II by Sara Wright

Read Part I here…

In the Americas I found more recent Indigenous mythology on the Toad as Goddess. Tlaltecuhtli is a Pre–Columbian (1200–1519) goddess belonging to the Mexica. Although Tlaltecuhtli’s name is masculine modern scholars interpret this toad figure as female because she is squatting giving birth. Some see her as crouching under the earth, mouth open waiting to devour the dead. Since the Aztec culture was a warring male dominated Patriarchal one I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the Earth Goddess/Toad was seen as masculine to the Mexica.

In Mesoamerica we find Toad widely represented in art, often with feline or other non-naturalistic attributes, including jaguar claws and fangs. These images can be regarded as versions of Tlaltecuhtli. In contemporary Mexico, as in Guatemala, and throughout South America toads play a role in myth, sorcery, shamanism, and in curing/healing. Continue reading “Toadwise: A Tale for a Life Lover – Part II by Sara Wright”

Toadwise: A Tale for a Life Lover – Part I by Sara Wright


Last night I was thinking about the giant western toad that is living in my garden when I had a peculiar thought: Write a story about the Toad and an Old Woman and call it A Tale for a Life Lover. At this very moment I heard my toad’s rasping guttural cry outside my window. I was so shocked I got up and went out on the porch, hoping to hear the call again, but the toad only spoke once. Afterwards, I wondered if I had imagined it.

When the giant western toad appeared in my yard last week I had been in a state bordering on despair over baffling health issues and the ravages of Climate Change. Maybe it is no longer possible for me to separate the two? After the visitation I sensed that the toad’s abrupt appearance meant something beyond the amazing fact that I had met a giant toad who apparently had been living here all along. Continue reading “Toadwise: A Tale for a Life Lover – Part I by Sara Wright”

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.

Grown Little Girl, Grow Little Girl by Chasity Jones Selenga


I have newly found myself a wife and in the throes of motherhood. In many feminist circles, I have encountered anti-family and anti-wifehood sentiments. The understanding is that to be a wife, and, to be a wife that chooses to start a family, is an oppressive position to occupy as well as the antithesis of the feminist movement. Though I am not typically a fan of tough physical, emotional, soulful labor, these two positions have been the highlights of my life so far.

My daughter embodies both my husband and me, physically. However, she is and will become her own person-soul. She is so young, but her soul is eternal, and has experienced eternity. I am here to help her navigate remembering who she is. She inhabits the intersection of Blackness, divinity, femininity, and infinity. Motherhood has greatly increased my capacity of appreciation for women and what women are capable of doing. Especially from the intersection of Blackness and woman-ness. From the capacity to create, labor, and deliver life to the task of raising Black children in a country that would have them annihilated, emotionally traumatized, and made to accept they are inferior.

Continue reading “Grown Little Girl, Grow Little Girl by Chasity Jones Selenga”

The largest protest in the world: India’s Farmers Protest by Anjeanette LeBoeuf


So much has happened since my last post. From the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the GameStop Investment, the military coup of Myanmar, the 2nd Impeachment Trial and Republican Acquittal of Donald Trump, a catastrophic Artic Freeze of Texas, and other states, and the upcoming “no holding back, tell all” from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But what I really want to focus on this month is on something that is struggling to maintain publicity and support despite its importance; The Farmer’s Protest/Strike in India.

Continue reading “The largest protest in the world: India’s Farmers Protest by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

God’s Womb by Joyce Zonana

The first time I came across the phrase, I thought I must be making a mistake. “Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice,” the passage read in French, “May God’s womb enfold her.” or possibly, “May God enfold her in His womb.” His womb?

Joyce Zonana
The first time I came across the phrase, I thought I must be making a mistake. “Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice,” the passage read in French, “May God’s womb enfold her,” or possibly, “May God enfold her in His womb.” His womb?

I’d just started translating Ce pays qui te ressemble [A Land Like You], Tobie Nathan’s remarkable novel of Egypt’s Jews in the first half of the twentieth-century, and I couldn’t be sure I was correct in thinking that “womb” was the proper rendering for “matrice.” But a quick search confirmed my hunch. Matrice (from the Latin matrix < mater) might be translated as “matrix” or “mould,” but that made no sense here. “Uterus or womb” was the anatomical meaning, and it was the first meaning listed in my French dictionary.

The phrase, or something very like it, kept turning up, always after a dead person was named:  

Que Dieu accueille son âme en sa matrice.

Que Dieu l’enveloppe dans sa matrice.

Que Dieu la berce dans sa matrice. 

May God’s womb welcome his soul.

May God’s womb enfold him.

May God’s womb cradle her.

In all, “God’s womb” is mentioned seven times in this novel set in Cairo’s ancient Jewish quarter, Haret al-Yahud. Each time, it’s part of a ritual prayer, a formulaic wish for the wellbeing of a departed soul. But what extraordinary wellbeing is wished for here, what a remarkable envisioning of God as the possessor of a welcoming, warm womb. Continue reading “God’s Womb by Joyce Zonana”

How I Learned to Love Snakes (a poem) by Marie Cartier


Can I recall a time when my resilience surprised me?

My mother always said, “If you feel bad, go out into the garden and eat worms.” Sigh. We didn’t have a garden. My resilience. My head hits the counter, as my father’s hand slams into the back of my head. I am locked in a closet. I am. That would be my mother as I grew up. Kicked up. Weeds grow. They do. What is surprising to me at sixty is not my resilience, but the fact that I never leaned back. Stopped. Being resilient is the inside and out of my blood type—moving through all of my veins. I am surprised if I cut myself there is blood left. But there is. I still bleed.

This is resilience.

Can I recall a time when resistance was the only option?

My father. I am twelve. My best friend is over. I go in the other room with him. I have to. She hears this, my best friend. I resist shame like a knife blade I hold. I leave the room with the blade held out. Shame then holds out a cloak promising me something. A space to hide maybe. I resist. I am in a cold fever. My best friend and I sit; we are watching a documentary on TV. My mother sits behind us. She says to no one, “Things happen at everyone’s house. I bet things happen at your house, too.” My best friend and I say nothing. I resist feeling. On the TV are flamingoes and I will hate flamingoes for the rest of my life.

This is resistance. Continue reading “How I Learned to Love Snakes (a poem) by Marie Cartier”

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”