Exploring the F-word in religion at the intersection of scholarship, activism, and community.
Art that seeks the essence. Such art comes in many forms and styles.
Some art is political, some is decorative. Some art is conceptual, some is commercial. But the art that draws me in, that makes me feel deeply, and that compels me to truly be with it, is art that expresses the mysterious essence of life, the unfathomable depths of infinity, the indescribable nature of existence.
“Be gentle with yourself.”
It may be some of the most redemptive guidance I have ever received. And I share that invitation daily with people in painful situations.
“Be gentle with yourself.”
In a world seemingly hell bent on self-destruction, being gentle even for a moment is a radical act of resistance. A moment of tenderness. A moment of trust. A moment of attentiveness to need.
But really, what good does gentleness do in a world as brutal as ours can be? How does being gentle provide any kind of answer to the assault of being commodified or objectified or betrayed or assaulted or oppressed or erased or abused or discarded or exploited? Continue reading “Gentle Moments in a Violent World by Marcia Mount Shoop”
I dream that all of us who are suffering burn-out because of national and world politics come together to plant and nurture trees. Scientists say that planting ONE TRILLION TREES would neutralize two-thirds of carbon emissions and reverse climate change. Yes, we need to march, to organize, and to vote. But it is also important to embody our commitment to life and the living. Putting our hands in the soil, tenderly teasing the roots of the trees we plant as we nestle them into the earth, we move from our heads to our bodies, re-membering the interdependence of life.
This has already begun to happen in India—a country where what Vandana Shiva named “maldevelopment” has produced massive deforestation. At the Paris climate change conference India pledged to “make India green again” by reforesting 235 million acres of land. The government allotted 6.2 billion dollars to support the plan. What was not expected was the overwhelming enthusiasm of those who volunteered to plant trees. Continue reading “Plant Trees, Trees, and More Trees by Carol P. Christ”
As a follow up of my June FAR post, I am writing about soccer and the Women’s World Cup. The final aired on Sunday July 7th and saw the USA women beat the Netherlands 2-0. This historical win was the fourth time the USA women have won the World Cup since its inception. It was also the highest watched sporting event of the year.
I could probably go on and on about this topic, so in the interest of education I offer the following information gathered in my own recovery. Why would I write about bullying at all? Are we not Goddess lovers, one and all? How would such behavior ever come into a spiritual path that believes all life is sacred?
Well, we all come to this path with all our old baggage. That baggage may include jealousy, fear, and a desire for the wrong kind of power, that which attempts to control others.
Bullying is not merely, as many believe, an occasional stinging comment made by a significant other at the breakfast table, a bad day with the boss, or children wrestling on the playground.
Bullying is cruelty deliberately aimed at others with the intent of gaining power by inflicting psychological and/or physical pain.
Bullying behaviors are varied: name calling, humiliation, spreading rumors, gossiping, public ridicule, scape-goating or blaming, isolating, assigning poor work conditions and job assignments, or denying holiday and vacation time in the workplace, or more obvious punching, hitting, kicking, taunting, ostracizing, sexualizing, or making ethnic or gender slurs, etc.
Continue reading “What to Do About Bullies by Deanne Quarrie”
What is taken from a woman?
When someone breaks her open and fills her with nothing of herself,
and then leaves?
She has to find all the pieces of herself.
That’s why they call it—recovery.
You have to recover.
It doesn’t always happen. You’re not put back together
exactly the same. The pieces were broken.
Still are, just glued back together.
It’s a four letter word: rape.
Continue reading “Poem: “How to Survive a Four Letter Word” by Marie Cartier”
On December 15, 2018, at 10:22PM, I received a call and a voicemail from someone I didn’t know. The charming message left for me? “Hello, Karen. You fat, disgusting slob. Go back to your country. I hope your new year’s is great. You fat, disgusting slob. Goodbye.”
What to say?
With just the right amount of racism, misogyny and stereotyping, at first, I was scared. I remember sitting in my apartment, with the lights off thinking that no one should see I was at home – wondering who this person is? Was he close? Did he live in San Francisco? How does he know my name? How did he get my number? Does he know where I live? It completely freaked me out. I listened to the voicemail several times, wondering if I knew this person – perhaps he was someone I angered because I didn’t want to date him – I had no idea.
In the coming days, after a conversation with Verizon and a friend who works with AT&T, I got the caller’s name and some other pertinent information. An 18 year-old kid named Dominic, from Ohio, was the culprit, and after a bit of sleuthing on Facebook, I contacted Dominic’s dad. I left a voicemail at his dad’s work, sent his dad an email with a copy of the voicemail, and I called the Youngstown police – and I never heard back from anyone.
I wanted to pull myself away from the ugliness out there and take time to honor the Egyptian Goddess, Isis, as Her birthday is recognized to be in the latter part of July. My husband, Roy, and I formed the Isis Ancient Cultures Society and the Iseum of Isis Navigatum, in Los Angeles, sometime ago and for more than a decade, in Her name, we sponsored Moon Circles to promote diversity, Salons to teach, and we put out a quarterly newsletter when you still had to fold and mail them – remember that? But the premier events every year were the Isis Birthday Tea and the Isis Navigatum or Festival of Isis, every March. Our aim was to reconstruct Isis rituals in a modern context and make them relevant for today.
We put on the Isis Tea in prestigious locations like aboard the Queen Mary and the Isis Navigatum in various public locations including The Japanese Gardens, in the San Fernando Valley, and on the beach on Point Dume, in Malibu, California. So detailed were our events, sometimes the public joined us thinking we were a movie crew and our organization was written about by a anthropologist/folklorist citing the detail and depth of the material culture of contemporary Isian devotees.
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Isis: Isis Isis…Ra! Ra! Ra! by Karen Tate”
For by my side you put on
many wreaths of roses
and garlands of flowers
around your soft neck
and with precious and royal perfume
you anointed yourself.
On soft beds you satisfied your passion.
And there was no dance
no holy place
from which we were absent.
–Sappho (trans. Julia Dubnoff)
Sappho, the poet from Lesbos (630-570 BCE), was considered one of the greatest poets of her time—one of her epithets was “the tenth Muse.” I discovered the poems of Sappho in my thirties and was utterly captivated. I had newly embarked on a relationship with a woman and Sappho’s love poetry (though by no means exclusively lesbian) supported the expression of eros between women. Yet even more than that, Sappho’s poems supported an erotic relationship between self and world—a relationship that included ritual as a form of intimacy. I’m not a Greek scholar—I experience Sappho’s poems in translation. Yet the translations I read back then were a revelation: a world in which women lived in circle with one another.
Continue reading “Sappho’s Poems as an Ethos for Women’s Ritual by Jill Hammer”
Last week I wrote about the grief I feel for the state of my nation (the United States) and of the world. A few days later one of my favorite writers, Katha Pollitt, asked why we are not all in the streets all the time, keeping alive the enormous energy that came together in the first of the women’s marches against Trump and that continued for several months thereafter in protests women’s rights, for immigrants, for the planet.
After reading Pollitt’s essay, I thought: we should be weeping and wailing in the streets. Instead of pink hats we should be wearing black, the color of mourning. But then I pulled myself up short. In the symbolism of our Old Europe, black is the color of rebirth and regeneration: the dark place where seeds must be placed if they are to germinate, the color of rich and fertile earth. If we are going to protest the racism of the Donald and his followers, we must be careful not to repeat the Indo-European binary in which light is associated with truth and goodness, while the devil and all that is evil is dark.
Nonetheless, I like the idea of acknowledging our grief for all that is being lost publicly and with others. Continue reading “And We Are Singing, Singing for Our Lives! by Carol P. Christ”
Feminism and Religion 