The Cottontail
watched me
climb
a steep hill
to meet her
at the Cross –
road.
She split the stone.
Datura delusions emerge
from this bloodline.
I stumble
down down down…
Her feet beat
a mourning drum
I’m in free fall.
Healing Uphill
These are trying times for all sentient beings. We are all carrying the intensity and stress in our bodies and spirits. I feel it. You feel it. In fact, we are feeling it together—sharing an experience even though interpreting and understanding it in our own unique ways.
As a person of faith, I believe we are on a collective healing journey. As a feminist, I believe that journey continues to involve extended uphill challenges because of intersecting systems of oppression. And that is how I understand this particular moment in time—a healing journey in a difficult uphill section on the path. As a human collective we are healing uphill.
Healing uphill can feel like too much to bear sometimes. Healing uphill is the experience of having more and more challenges heaped on your back when you are already tired and struggling to keep going. Healing uphill is like trying to take care of yourself when you lose your job in a global pandemic and one of your kids gets sick and your landlord tells you that you are late on your rent and then your spouse comes home angry and blames you for all the stress and, well… you get the picture. Healing uphill is when you can’t seem to catch a break and things seem to just keep getting worse.
Continue reading “Healing Uphill”The Mask and the Mirror-Part 1 by Sara Wright
When I first saw this extraordinary clay round last spring I was immediately captured by the story being told. As I recall it was the second, and to me, the central image in a series of three that Debra Fritts created. To paraphrase Debra’s words these forms were hand built from Stoneware clay and underwent multiple firings with layers of oxides, under-glazes, and glazes during the spring of 2020. They expressed her daily thoughts and experiences. When I asked her about the order in which the pieces came into being she told me that it was hard to say because she built all three forms at the same time and then added the relief.
Debra is an incredibly gifted artist who lives in Abiquiu, New Mexico. She seems to have a pulse on Western Culture especially from a feminine standpoint that penetrates the hearts of many women and men. It is no wonder that she has become so well known and loved.
What follows is a personal exploratory analysis of this particular relief, a technique I learned many years ago from an art teacher I had in graduate school that helped me to articulate what I saw and felt when I gazed at a piece of work that I loved.
The focus of this exploration will be on this central piece. However, towards the end of this analysis I will briefly attempt to situate this relief in the storied frame of the series as a whole.
Continue reading “The Mask and the Mirror-Part 1 by Sara Wright”
Cat – Mysterious and Magical by Judith Shaw
Cat moves elegantly through our lives with grace, independence and an unquenchable self-assurance. “My dog believes its human; my cat believes its god” is a saying reflected by the beliefs of our ancestors. Since Neolithic days cats have been associated with goddesses.
Cats, domesticated members and the smallest of the family Felidae in the Carnivora order, are a study in balance – between quiet calm and powerful action, independence and connection, the seen and unseen.
Continue reading “Cat – Mysterious and Magical by Judith Shaw”
Glimpsing La Vièio ié Danso – “The Untouchable Wild Goddess” – in Jóusè d’Arbaud’s Beast of Vacarés by Joyce Zonana
Nearly a century later, d’Arbaud’s words still have the power to startle and delight, vividly evoking Earth’s sacredness.
Early in Jóusè d’Arbaud’s 1926 Provençal novella, The Beast of Vacarés, the narrator, a 15th century gardian or bull herder, describes how in summer la Vièio ié danso—the Old Dancer— “can be glimpsed on the dazzling salt flats” that surround the Vacarés lagoon in the Camargue region of Southern France.
In a note, d’Arbaud explains that la Vièio is how locals refer to mirages in this liminal landscape where earth, sea, and sky merge. “Mirages are common in the Camargue,” he tells us:
They begin with a vibration in the air, a trembling that runs along the ground and seems to make the images dance; it spreads into the distance in great waves that reflect the dark thickets. How not to see in this mysterious Vièio, dancing in the desert sun, a folk memory of the untouchable wild goddess, ancient power, spirit of solitude, once considered divine, that remains the soul of this great wild land?
“The untouchable wild goddess . . . once considered divine . . .”
Nearly a century later, d’Arbaud’s words still have the power to startle and move us, vividly evoking Earth’s sacredness. Here is a man, himself a bull herder in the region he so lovingly describes, who seems to have been a devotee of the Goddess, the “ancient power” he venerates and bring to life for his readers. Indeed, in an early poem, “Esperit de la Terro” — “Spirit of the Earth”— d’Arbaud explicitly dedicates himself to the old gods sleeping below the earth, vowing to “defend” and “aid” them. How extraordinary to discover this writer making such a commitment, well before the rise of our recent feminist spirituality and ecofeminist movements. D’Arbaud speaks directly to our current environmental, theological, social, and political concerns.
Continue reading “Glimpsing La Vièio ié Danso – “The Untouchable Wild Goddess” – in Jóusè d’Arbaud’s Beast of Vacarés by Joyce Zonana”A Story to Inspire Hope by Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann
These days deep emotions seem to burst forth at unexpected moments.
While in the car between visiting a pumpkin farm owned by friends and the local cider mill, I decided to pull out a crumpled paper with my brief presentation on the history of Crete. “Does anybody want to hear a story?” I asked my captive audience of one of my best friends and her three boys. “Yes!” As the fall foliage whirled by, I started reading, thinking that attention would wander soon, and I’d put it away. To my surprise the boys wanted me to keep reading and even asked that I continue the story when we returned to the car after a break to feed ducks.
When I finished, the youngest boy exclaimed “that was the best story I’ve ever heard!” I was thrilled I had related it in a way that he enjoyed so much and recognized in his giddy exclamation that mysterious emotional pull of the story of Crete that seemed to reach into his soul. Later he said to me as we watched the moon together, “you have to finish that story and add more about hope and the positive.” I told him, “The hope is in those who hear this story and others like it and strive to create a better world.”
So would you like to hear a story? Continue reading “A Story to Inspire Hope by Elizabeth Chloe Erdmann”
Netflix Pandemic Show binge-a-thon by Anjeanette LeBoeuf
Given the progressively dismal state of affairs in the nation currently, I have relied heavily on binge watching shows on Netflix. One of my coping strategies I started using in graduate school was having tv shows or movies playing in the background. More often then not, it was something I had already watched or something I was not truly invested in so it would become a form of white noise while I did work. During this pandemic, I have found not only have I continued using Netflix as my white noise, it has also become a source of coping, self-care mechanism. From watching the ridiculous “Tiger King” docuseries, re-watching the “Great British Bake Off”, and the hilarious movie “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga.”
Continue reading “Netflix Pandemic Show binge-a-thon by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”Ancient Mother by Sara Wright
On the path
through the pines
I see clumps of
moss scattered,
an old tree trunk
is raked as if
with claws;
clumps of downed bark
food for the earth.
My heart soars.
Wild hope pours
through me like honey.
Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier
We have nine justices usually but one of our most beloved, and notorious,
Ruth Bader Ginsberg, RBG, has gone to the Summerland, across
the Rainbow Bridge, to the afterlife—wherever that is for her, she’s
gone there. May her memory be a blessing. May her memory be a revolution.
And we are left with eight, five conservatives and
three liberals. RBG was liberal. Our current Pennsylvania Avenue occupant has already
nominated someone to replace RBG. This someone believes that god
speaks to the wife through her husband, the wife is submissive to the husband in all things,
she must submit in all things to her husband.
Sigh. As someone joked, this someone is walking through and slamming shut,
all the doors that RBG kicked open.
This nominated replacement believes that a woman has no choice in the matter of pregnancy,
and being gay is (once again) a sin in the eyes of the law, as well as her church.
This RBG replacement is Catholic, I guess.
I’m Catholic, too.
Maybe you’ve seen that meme on social media?
“I’m Christian. Oh…classic Jesus or Republican Jesus?”
That’s a joke: Ha. Ha.
Continue reading “Poem: In These United States- The Court Supreme By Marie Cartier”
From Military Wife to Peacebuilder – Learning from the Greenham Common Peace Women by Karen Leslie Hernandez
There’s a pinnacle moment, I believe, when everyone’s path is laid before them. The funny thing about that, is that we usually don’t see that moment, until many years later. It is then, at that sudden moment of clarity, in that epiphany, that it all comes together.
My former husband was in the United States Air Force and from 1990-1992, we were stationed at RAF Greenham Common, in the United Kingdom. When we first received our orders, not even ten minutes after, other service members started to inform us: “You’re going to where all those crazy ass bitches are.” “You’re gonna have to deal with those dike peaceniks.” “Wait until you get a load of those nasty, dirty women. They live at the base, camp out there, never shower, stop the convoys – they’re disgusting pigs.” Continue reading “From Military Wife to Peacebuilder – Learning from the Greenham Common Peace Women by Karen Leslie Hernandez”
Feminism and Religion 