Lessons from Shofetim by Ivy Helman.

29662350_10155723099993089_8391051315166448776_oThis is the first part of a series of reflections on the weekly Torah portions.  For those of you unfamiliar with Judaism, we read the Torah in sections.  There are 52 parshot (or portions), one parshah (portion) is read each week (most often during Shabbat morning services).  It is common for rabbis, prayer leaders or someone of the congregation to offer reflections on the week’s parshah at Shabbat services.

The parshah for this week is Shofetim.  It is Devarim/Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9 and will be read this Shabbat, 18 August.  Shofetim discusses a range of topics: setting up of a system of judges to make important decisions for Israel; the entitlements of the Levites; the rules of warfare; the importance of justice and just governments; and the acknowledgment of G-d as the true and highest Judge.  It also warns Israel against false prophets and practices of idolatry.  Shofetim contains a number of well-known verses including ‘justice, justice you shall pursue…(16:18),’ and notorious punishments like “…a tooth for a tooth; an eye for an eye…(19:21)”  Continue reading “Lessons from Shofetim by Ivy Helman.”

Three Herstorical Divas to Die For by Mary Sharratt

The Urban Dictionary defines a diva as a woman who exudes great style and confidence and expresses her unique personality without letting others define who she should be. In my mind, a diva is a woman who stands in her sovereignty and blazes a trail for other women. We all need to claim our inner diva to truly dance in our power. And if you’re looking for inspiration, I present three herstorical divas to die for.

 

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  1. Sappho ca. 630 – 580 BCE

 

Sappho of Lesbos wrote the book on love. Literally. Her searing love poetry addressed to other women gave us the word lesbian. She was the first—and the best!—to describe passion as a visceral experience, in which we are seized and transfixed by Aphrodite, Goddess of love. Though much of her work was destroyed by the patriarchal fun police, the fragments of her poetry that survive are timeless, haunting, and utterly true.

What we must remember is that Sappho’s poetry wasn’t just romantic or erotic–it was sacred, each poem a holy offering to Goddess Aphrodite.

Continue reading “Three Herstorical Divas to Die For by Mary Sharratt”

A Silhouette of a Woman, the Menorah, and a Pillar of Light: Discovering the Origins of the Goddess in Judaism by Alaya A. Dannu

2.24.2017

During a meditation before bed, I saw an image of a candelabra similar to what Jewish people use for Hanukkah. It was yellow/gold in color, engraved/etched onto a surface. All at once I saw the imagery of a star, a silhouette of a woman, and a beam of light move from the base of the candelabra through the top and beyond.

In these moments, I did not understand the significance of or the relationship between these images. What did a feminine figure have to do with the Jewish candelabra? What is the name of their candelabra? I could not even recall the name of it. It was something I grew up knowing the name of, as it was an image that I frequently saw beside the kinara of Kwanzaa in my school-aged years.

Because I was sheltered from the Abrahamic religions, my mother opted for participating in Kwanzaa as a means to shield me from any potential bullying from my classmates, and to celebrate a part of my diverse heritage. It was already a problem for my peers and the adult staff at school that I chose to identify as a Jamaican-American or a mixed person, as opposed to African-American. To tell a group of African-American Christians or those with an Afro-centric view that I didn’t celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa, or that my mother taught me to listen to my dreams and intuition, would only serve as a means to further isolate myself; and by extension, my little sister. So celebrate Kwanzaa we did, until I began high school.

Continue reading “A Silhouette of a Woman, the Menorah, and a Pillar of Light: Discovering the Origins of the Goddess in Judaism by Alaya A. Dannu”

Emergence: Poem to a Plant Goddess by Sara Wright

 

Her name is Datura.

Delicate fluted deep-throated trumpets open to

humming honey bees and summer rains.

She communicates through scent.

 

 In the fall I collect her sharp-needled pods.

They rattle like dry bones.

I chill them.

In the spring I coax seeds to sprout

wrapping each in papery white cloth,

sing love songs  –  siren calls

to rouse each root from winter’s sleep.

 

I am patient…

 a woman in waiting for the heat of the sun

to unfurl the mystery of becoming

 that is re-acted in spring.

 

Only seeds know when to swell and burst.

Continue reading “Emergence: Poem to a Plant Goddess by Sara Wright”

Sustaining Myself by Molly Remer

37880751_2142186212660256_8002693145366102016_nI touch the earth and offer gratitude
for this land I call home.
I reach towards the sky and offer gratitude
for sun, moon, and stars.
I place my hand on my heart
and breathe deep, offering gratitude
for all that I am and all that I have
and for the many blessings of my life…

June 2016

I am finishing my last semester of college teaching. I have four children ranging from 18 months to 12 years and a thriving home business. I am exhausted. I feel wrung out, weary, overloaded, sped up, and on the edge of collapse. My dominant fantasy, the one that pops unbidden to my mind as I work through my never-ending to-do list is to just lie on the floor, flat on my back. I tell my husband, “this isn’t a sustainable pace for me. If I keep going like this, something bad is going to happen to me.”

I keep going.

Continue reading “Sustaining Myself by Molly Remer”

I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult – Part 1 by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

Trigger warning: child sexual abuse, domestic abuse

I was so thoroughly brainwashed that my voice changed without me realizing it. My appearance changed so much that close family members did not recognize me. Multiple therapists told me that I had undergone such sustained brainwashing and abuse that I was like a POW or a sex trafficking victim. Here is my story.

I will never forget the first time I came across the famous quote, “Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” Reading that phrase rocked me back on my heels as few things have done. Suddenly, with that simple summary, so much of my experience, so much of life, so much of the world made perfect sense. Clarity struck, bringing both pain and relief: in my society, females are not considered human.

Continue reading “I Was Brainwashed to Believe I Wasn’t Human. Now I’m on a Mission Against that Cult – Part 1 by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Think About the Consequences of Your Actions for Seven Generations by Carol P. Christ

Nurture life.

Walk in love and beauty.

Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.

Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

Take only what you need.

Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.

Approach the taking of life with great restraint.

Practice great generosity.

Repair the web

In Rebirth of the Goddess, I offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The Nine Touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political. Continue reading “Think About the Consequences of Your Actions for Seven Generations by Carol P. Christ”

Lessons from Candide by Barbara Ardinger

Candide, ou l’Optimisme (in English, Candide, or Optimism) is a satirical, picaresque novel published in 1759 by François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, who was possibly the smartest author of the Age of Enlightenment…but he annoyed so many courtiers and public officials that he was forever traveling around Europe to get away from their threats of arrest and bodily harm. A picaresque novel is an adventure novel with a clever, tricky hero who somehow survives and makes us like him. Voltaire wrote his novel primarily to criticize the optimism of the German writer Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who said that because God is always benevolent, everything that happens is always for the best. This presumably includes the bloody Seven Years War (Protestant vs. Catholic, fought mostly in Germany and France) and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which occurs both in Lisbon and in the novel. Even though Voltaire was accused of blasphemy and heresy, among his other sins and crimes, Candide was enormously popular throughout Europe, a popularity that continues to this day.

In 1956, playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman (who had been persecuted by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and HUAC) proposed to composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein that they turn Voltaire’s novel into a Broadway musical. Bernstein composed some of the most beautiful music ever written for this show, which has been produced as an opera, an operetta, and a musical comedy. Hellman’s libretto turned out to be weak, so Bernstein turned to the poet Richard Wilbur and Stephen Sondheim, among others for new libretto and lyrics. It’s been through numerous revisions, and every time it’s staged, it’s different. I have four or five versions on DVD. My favorite is the New York Philharmonic staged concert written and directed by Lonny Price and broadcast on PBS in 2004. Continue reading “Lessons from Candide by Barbara Ardinger”

The Cosmic Dance (Part Two) by Laura Shannon

Part One of this post looked at connections between the cosmic dance and the Goddess Hera. To read it, click here.

Pythagoras was the first to call the universe by the Greek term kósmos, referring to the order, beauty and tranquility which are inherent in natural and universal geometric form and proportion. He described the cosmos as a single living being in which all things are related, including music, beauty, movement, and justice – much as the world was understood in the Neolithic Goddess cultures of Old Europe, of which more later.

The word kósmos (κόσμος) gives us the word kósmima (κόσμημα), jewellery – silver and gold like the moon and sun, with glinting gems like the stars and planets – as well as the word kosmitiká (κοσμητικά), cosmetics. These adornments were used by priestesses in classical Greece, not to emphasise their individual beauty, but rather to identify them in their public role as instruments of cosmic beauty, harmony, and order. This is the same role which dancers take on today when they don traditional costume to dance on ritual occasions such as Epiphany or Easter. Continue reading “The Cosmic Dance (Part Two) by Laura Shannon”

A Curious Blessing by Natalie Weaver

A few years back, I turned forty years old. On the cusp of this landmark birthday, I wrote about the stigma of so-called midlife crises.  I resisted the idea that changes associated with midlife should be mocked, when indeed many of those changes actually represent something like birth itself.  I have come to think, however, that I was perhaps naïve in my wild embrace of midlife self-birthing.  I still believe what I said before, basically, which was that midlife occasions opportunity for self-knowledge in a way that is largely inaccessible to babies, children, adolescents, and novice adults.  What I could not have known a few years back is how much it costs to answer the waking self’s summons.

In the years since I first started thinking about myself as a person in midlife, I have experienced a trifecta of sweeping changes in work, family, and health.  My sense of self has been destabilized, and, even more, what I value has changed.  In ways, I do not recognize myself, while in others, I do not recognize the girl in the photographs around my house.  It seems like she was always hiding beneath her Mona Lisa smile the woman that would show up in a few decades.  All these disillusionments!  All these decisions!  All this stuff in my kitchen and basement! Continue reading “A Curious Blessing by Natalie Weaver”