Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Is the Spirit of Great Generosity in Crete a Survival of Ancient Matriarchal Values?

This was originally posted on October 28, 2013

At a coffee shop in Agios Thomas, Crete last month a perfect stranger offered to pay for the coffees and sodas of the 16 women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This spirit of great generosity is rarely experienced in the United States or other parts of Europe, but it is still common in rural Crete and some parts of Greece.

In fact our group was in Agios Thomas because our bus driver Babis, also in a spirit of great generosity, insisted on stopping to show us his village when we were passing nearby. He guided us to see Roman rock cut tombs and arranged for the early Byzantine church to be opened. At the end of the our pilgrimage, Babis stopped the bus at a wooded glen beside a small church where he offered us his own homemake raki, wine, and olives, accompanied by local sheep cheese he had purchased while we were climbing a mountain. After every meal that we ate in local tavernas, we were offered bottles of cold raki, fruit, and sweets.

This spirit of great generosity has long been commented on by travelers in Greece, who often speak of it as unexpected (for them) hospitality to the stranger or traveler. That it is, of course. Through the work of Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, I now understand that the famous Greek hospitality to the stranger has deep roots in matriarchal cultures. According to Goettner-Abendroth, equality of wealth is assured through the widely-practiced custom of gift-giving in matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Is the Spirit of Great Generosity in Crete a Survival of Ancient Matriarchal Values?”

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?

The Cauldron of Life: Destruction and Creation in Celtic Myth, Part 2 by Judith Shaw

Branwen’s Story

Branwen, sister of King Bran the Blessed, was cherished for her gentleness, compassion, and beauty. As the mother of the future king in the tradition of the Old Tribes of the British Isles, she embodies Sovereignty. She is the source of all life, ruling over both the spirit and the land.

Branwen, Celtic Goddess painting my Judith Shaw — Branwen: Celtic Goddess of Love and Compassion by Judith Shaw

We first meet Branwen when the Irish King Matholuch arrives, his fleet signaling peace with a great shield pointing outwards. He asks for Branwen’s hand in marriage—a significant event, as no woman of the old tribes had ever left her people for a foreigner, much less she who would give birth to the next king. Nonetheless, Matholuch is welcomed ashore, and Branwen is summoned.

The Cauldron of Life: Destruction and Creation in Celtic Myth, Part 1 by Judith Shaw

With each passing day, the world spirals deeper into chaos under the weight of the most unsuitable and morally bankrupt president the United States has ever elected. In nearly every aspect of life—from politics to economics to technology to the environment—the world as we knew it is gone. We find ourselves caught between chaos and creation. We are in liminal times.

Badb, Dark Goddess by Judith Shaw — *Badb: Fate Weaver* by Judith Shaw

Time Travel with Your Moving Body as Antenna by Eline Kieft

Explore how your body is always positioned in time and space, connected to the world around you, and even to the times that came before and the ones still to unfold. Use movement as a way to travel through time…

I’m passionate about movement as a way of knowing, and how we can calibrate our body* to perceive information from our interior world, and from the living, breathing world around us. Read how movement can become a conscious act of locating yourself in various conditions and unfolding layers of being.

Eline Kieft, 2025 by Andy Murray.

Archives from the FAR founders: Systemic Violence and the Killing of Michael Brown by Xochitl Alvizo

This piece was originally posted on August 14, 2014, over ten years ago; add immigrants and Latine where it reads young black men, boys, or women, and it is as if I wrote it for today.

The current U.S. regime gives us more and more to rage and grieve over every single day. It is indeed important to grieve and to give ourselves the time to really feel what is going on under our watch so that we can then move into action with more resolve and efficacy. I invite you then to read, grieve, and then take action. Every day, do at least one thing – make a call to the president, your governor, senators, and representatives; engage in mutual aid; show up to a protest – and choose not to be a bystander. Oppression is systemic, indeed, but it is also a people, it is us. The system is people and we are the system.

~~~~~~~~~

Oppression is systemic. Injustice is systemic. It pervades the whole – it seeps into everyday actions and becomes habits and patterns that function as default. As a result, the actions that fall within these patterns hardly need justifying. If anything, the questioning of them is what is put on the defensive. And those who stand against injustice must usually do so in the face of militarized policing, before vast forces that serve to preserve the status quo.

Two Poems: Crucifixion and Renewal by Sara Wright

(The Mark of the Bear is Upon Her)

CRUCIFIXION

Part I

She listens
to those
who intone
Betrayal
break hearts
open

love
pours golden
honey
healing
blood
soaked
wounds

truth
often
lies hidden
deep
beneath
kindly words

torment
tears holes
in fragile
skin

without
closure

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SACRED RHYTHMS OF THE OLIVE HARVEST

This was originally posted on December 2, 2013

Olives are being harvested in the fields outside my town these days. We have been having the first rains of the season. The roads are wet and muddy, and the trees are partially shrouded in mist. The fields are spread with black plastic nets, and people are hard at work, the men hitting the trees to make the olives fall, and the women picking up the olives from the nets. The harvest will continue throughout the winter.

The olive press is busy. Cars and trucks come and go, unloading heavy bags filled with olives. These days the bags are white, made of sturdy woven plastic. In Crete this fall several of us bought canvas olive bags, hand-woven by women. These, along with baskets hand-woven by men, were still in use only a few decades ago.

olive harvest in Lesbos early 20th century by Theofilos Hajimichael

A friend who died a few years ago told me that “in the old days” there were no nets. The women and the children had to pick the olives up from the ground, often cutting their hands on thorns and stones. The nets are a Goddess-send. Between harvests, the nets are simply folded up and placed in the crotch of the tree. Here no one steals them.

In the fields where I walk some of the trees have enormous trunks. Some of them have two trunks, growing like sisters. Many of them are 300, some perhaps 500, years old. A man emerges from a field that has some particularly old trees. I ask him how old they are. “Older than I am,” he replies. “They were here before I was born. They will be here after I die.” Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: SACRED RHYTHMS OF THE OLIVE HARVEST”

Lessons from a Tragedy by Beth Bartlett

It’s been over a week now since I first heard the news on MPR that four people had been shot in their homes near a golf course in Brooklyn Park where my son once lived. My first thought was that I was glad my son was no longer living there. A little while later I learned that this was not a random act of violence, but rather political violence targeting two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses. Gradually the details came in. The lawmakers were Democratic lawmakers, former Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and State Senator John Hoffman and their spouses. And then came the tragic news that Hortman and her husband had been killed. As I drove to pick up a friend to attend the “No Kings” protest downtown, I listened to the news reports of warnings not to attend the protests out of an abundance of caution, with the shooter still at large, as well as the voices of protest leaders saying the tragic events of the morning only strengthened their resolve. In the first few moments of the protest, we observed a moment of silence for Hortman and her husband, and for the recovery of Hoffman and his wife. The entire rally felt like a strange mix of grief and rebellious revelry.

As the identification and eventual arrest of the suspected shooter became known, the tragic events took on an even more ominous tone. The suspect, Vance Boelter, is a far-right Christian nationalist extremist who had preached against abortion and gay rights. He was schooled in his religious beliefs at the Christ for Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas[i] and was aligned with a charismatic Christian movement whose leaders, in the words of The Atlantic columnist Stephanie McCrummen, “speak of spiritual warfare, an army of God, and demon-possessed politicians.”[ii]

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.