Receiving, Giving, Reciprocating vs. Nonintervention: Two Different Models for Environmental Ethics by Carol P. Christ

“Gifts from the earth or from each other establish a particular relationship, an obligation of sorts to give, to receive, to reciprocate.” –Robin Wall Kimmerer

The notion of a gift economy is at the heart of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass. Kimmerer shares a different way of being in the world: one that recognizes the gifts that have been given to us and the necessity to reciprocate. In the modern world we have been taught that nature’s resources are ours for the taking. We have not been taught that nature’s resources are not infinite, that they exist in a web of interdependent relationships in which minerals, plants, animals, and human beings all participate. Everything we do has consequences for other living things.

For many environmentalists, the goal is to leave “wild” nature alone. In this model, the destruction human beings have done to nature is recognized. But what is not understood is that human beings are part of nature too. For hundreds of thousands of years, we and our ancestors have interacted with nature. The model of setting aside spaces for wild nature does not recognize that human beings can interact in positive ways with nature and that we have done so for millennia. Continue reading “Receiving, Giving, Reciprocating vs. Nonintervention: Two Different Models for Environmental Ethics by Carol P. Christ”

The Goddesses Ereshkigal and Epona and Their Help in My Grief by Anjeanette LeBoeuf

AnjeanetteIn November, my paternal grandmother passed. She was five days away from her 93rd birthday. As I was/am going through the grieving process, I started to actively recall all the studies I have done regarding death and grieving practices across the globe and throughout the centuries. Mixed with the grieving process was constructing a January term class called “Goddesses Around the World.” As I marked each culture, religion, and goddesses we would be studying I kept coming back to an interesting fact. In many ancient cultures, it was the divine feminine who oversaw death, not only at times as the bringer of death but more importantly, as the guardian of the dead, the protector of all those that have gone from the earthly realm. Continue reading “The Goddesses Ereshkigal and Epona and Their Help in My Grief by Anjeanette LeBoeuf”

Eve is the Hero of the Garden of Eden, Part 2 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

The serpent in the Bible is treated as Eve’s partner in crime, a malevolent seducer who is responsible for humankind’s expulsion from paradise. But did you know there are serpents who figure positively in the Bible? There are serpent priests, a feathered serpent and a healing serpent. Check out this passage:

Be ye therefore wise as serpents

Matthew 10:16

Levites were serpent priests as evidenced by the etymology of their name. The root word levi is seen in the name of the creature “leviathan,” the giant serpent. This is reminiscent of the Pythia, the oracle from Delphi whose title is derived from the root word python.

The feathered serpent referenced in Isaiah 30:6 is a seraph, usually translated as a “fiery flying serpent.”

Continue reading “Eve is the Hero of the Garden of Eden, Part 2 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph”

Eve is the Hero of the Garden of Eden, Part 1 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

She is a tree of life to those who embrace her

and those who lay hold of her are blessed.

Proverbs 3:18 (Berean Study Bible)

Eve’s story, as it has been passed onto us from the Bible, makes Her responsible for manki . . .ahem . . .humankind’s being cursed for all time. The story as our culture sets it up is that the serpent is an evil tempter with Eve as a weakling co-conspirator. Both Eve and the serpent are considered guilty parties, responsible for their own drawing down of the curse.

At the risk of being rude: BULLSHIT!

In truth, Eve’s story is a powerful tale complete with a magical talking serpent. And it only communicates directly with Eve, and never with Adam. Why?

BECAUSE THIS IS EVE’S STORY.

Continue reading “Eve is the Hero of the Garden of Eden, Part 1 by Janet Maika’i Rudolph”

Women’s March 2019–Orange County, California! by Marie Cartier

Author (Marie Cartier) pictured on right Photo by: Kimba Wild All other photos by the author.

As I have done in 2017 and 2018, I am showcasing photos of protest and resilience from The Women’s March, which began as a response to the “election” of 2016, and was a show of solidarity of women, especially in response to Trump’s remarks overheard from an Access Hollywood tape that he was entitled to “grab pussy” because he was “a star.” Hence the creation of the iconic “pussy hat” and the many signs which read then and now, “pussy grabs back.”  He lost the popular vote by over 3 million, but was still elected. Women grabbed back.

The country erupted with a march that was the largest protest march the US had ever seen, with Los Angles having the largest of those marches. In 2017 organizers had planned for 100,00 and over 750,000 showed up—over three quarters of a million people.

In the previous photo essays you can see what women and others were saying in Los Angles (and mirrored around the globe).

This year, I went to Orange County, CA. Famously in the 2018 midterm election, the Orange Curtain came down—and now Orange County of California is blue! Many protesters celebrated this new blue wave. Since Santa Ana is a city with a huge Latinx population, many protesters held signs illustrating solidarity with immigrants and an embedded protest was staged against deportations. Also showing was what is happening with the “promise” of DACA, the health of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the upcoming elections, and overall girlhood. These were all some of the rather recent illustrations of protest at this year’s Women’s March.

Continue reading “Women’s March 2019–Orange County, California! by Marie Cartier”

Crow/Raven – A Messenger of Magic and Mystery by Judith Shaw

judith shaw photoCaw! Caw! calls Crow. Gronk! Gronk! honks Raven. Magic and mystery are in the air. Ancient cultures saw birds as spiritual messengers, whose gift of flight gave them access to the spirit realm.

Continue reading “Crow/Raven – A Messenger of Magic and Mystery by Judith Shaw”

Tree of Life: The Festival of the Trees in an Age of Treefall by Jill Hammer

Almost every day, I walk in Central Park.  There are certain trees there I’ve come to know: the gnarled cherry trees by the reservoir, the bending willows and tall bald cypress by the pond, the sycamores that drop their bark each summer, the hawthorn not far from Central Park West.  Lately I’ve been taking photos of the trees to try to capture their essence, their posture in the world.  The trees around me feel like friends, which is what an ancient midrash (interpretation/legend) called Genesis Rabbah says about trees: that they are friends to humankind.  To me, they’ve always been a central manifestation of Mother Earth.

Currently, the national parks in the United States have no staff because of the government shutdown. Some people have taken the opportunity to cut down the rare and endangered Joshua trees in the Joshua Tree National Park—just for fun, I guess, or as a trophy of some kind.  Meanwhile, President Bolsonaro of Brazil recently has indicted that he wants to remove protection for the rainforest, in order to allow development.  It appears that my friends the trees have enemies.  Sometimes the enmity is for personal/corporate gain, and sometimes the enmity seems to have no reason at all.

Continue reading “Tree of Life: The Festival of the Trees in an Age of Treefall by Jill Hammer”

Iroquoian Women: Power Held and Shared by Carol P. Christ

According to Barbara Alice Mann, author of Iroquoian Women, women were at the center of a matrilineal Iroquoian society that could be called (though she does not call it that) an “egalitarian matriarchy.” As in other egalitarian matriarchies, including those of the Mosuo and the Minangkabau, women both hold power and share it with men. According to Peggy Reeves Sanday who studied many societies in the anthropological records, female power does not mean female domination.

In attempting to reconstruct the role of women in Iroquois society, Mann first had to engage in a painstaking deconstruction of the scholarly consensus that men ruled among the Iroquois. Believing that male dominance is universal, scholars ignored or explained away a great deal of evidence that Iroquoian women were and are at the center of Iroquoian society. Those who believe that academic scholarship is objective or relatively objective may have to revise their opinions after reading the masses of evidence of witting and unwitting distortion of Iroquois society that Mann uncovers. In order to reconstruct the role of women in Iroquoian society, Mann also had to deal with the fact that the American government destroyed much of Iroquoian oral tradition through policies of forced assimilation that removed children to government schools and forbade the speaking of native languages. Continue reading “Iroquoian Women: Power Held and Shared by Carol P. Christ”

Ancient Dreamer by Elizabeth Cunningham

Raised view fallen autumn leaves deciduous trees

The poems below are excerpted from my new (I hope forthcoming) collection, Tell Me the Story Again. Ancient dreamer’s voice is one among many voices including sorrow singer, temple sweeper, sword woman, morose fool, merry drunk, grey cat and mouse, stone mountain, skeleton woman, mother rain and many more. The voices speak from a time perhaps just after (or long before) our time, in a real and magical world.

I chose to excerpt ancient dreamer’s poems because winter is the time, in Celtic lore, of the Cailleach, the old one, the divine hag.  When I began writing the poems in 2014, my mother-in-law, then age 101, was in the last stages of her life. She slept and dreamed most of the time, and I would sit and daydream with her. She died two months before her 102nd birthday. When I took up the collection again in 2018 to complete it, ancient dreamer remained a strong presence and has the last word.  

Continue reading “Ancient Dreamer by Elizabeth Cunningham”

Creatrix Mundi: Speculating The Godma by Isabella Ides

Photo Credit: KTYarbrough

What does it mean to approach the idea of a Godma, a mother-of-all, as an act of the imagination, as a pure act of speculation? I particularly love the word speculator: one who is mining for the diamond, one who is going off the map, a voyager, a voyeur, a seer. A spiritual adventurer. A gambler, a trader in divine currencies.

I am a writer of fictions—speculative fictions. I am a poet-philosopher. Acts of the imagination and divine currencies are my trade.

I like this phrase: In the beginning was an of the imagination, a movement of mind. Or better—an act of procreation, a giving of birth. I love how words lead an idea deeper into the woods. A chance to get lost in variations and find new places to hide and seek. Perchance to meet an angel. Or a wolf. Or yourself in disguise. Continue reading “Creatrix Mundi: Speculating The Godma by Isabella Ides”