The Mud and the Lotus: What India Is Teaching Me by Vanessa Soriano

About 5 years ago, I began a consistent yoga practice.  Right around the same time, I started a PhD program in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studies where I eventually wrote my dissertation on Women’s Spiritual Leadership.  Throughout my studies, I realized that the path of the Divine Feminine is an intricate journey that accentuates the mind, body, soul connection.  The yogic path does the same.  In late 2018, I enrolled in an intensive 5-week 300-hour yoga teacher training in India where I continued my spiritual explorations.  Hindu culture reveres the Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine and yoga is viewed as a pathway into God/dess through the body.  Here’s the first part of the story…

I’m in India and it’s 5:30 a.m. and an hour of pranayama awaits me.  The yogis define prana as the life force that animates the entire body and yama relates to discipline.  The practice of pranayama consists of breathing techniques that aim to control the breath in order to connect to the life force that resides within.  Accessing this life force can invoke feelings of bliss and a connection to the Divine.

Class starts, I’m officially starving, and I haven’t had enough coffee. Continue reading “The Mud and the Lotus: What India Is Teaching Me by Vanessa Soriano”

Seeking Enlightenment? Let’s Try Endarkenment by Barbara Ardinger

In the version of the calendar I follow, February 1 is the true beginning of spring. That’s because early February is when we can see the light coming back. We know spring is really coming. February opens with a holiday/holy day variously known as Imbolc, Brigid, and Groundhog Day. Imbolc is the name of a traditional Celtic festival. The word is related to milk, possibly ewes’ milk, as lambing starts around this time. Brigid, whose name means “bright one,” is a triple goddess and ruler of (1) the sun and fire (and smithcraft), (2) poetry and inspiration, and (3) healing and medicine. It’s said that the straw left over from making Brigid’s crosses and other charms has healing powers. The newer Brigid is the Catholic saint who refused to marry and became a nun. And, of course, Groundhog Day is a secular holiday that uses helpless animals to make silly predictions. (But the movie is good.)

February (from the Latin word februa, which mean purification) gives us opportunities to become both enlightened and endarkened (yes, another word I invented).

ENLIGHTENMENT: “You light up my life.” A charismatic person “lights up the room.” When we become aware of something, the “lights go on” or we suddenly “see the light.” In cartoons, a light bulb turns on over the head of the guy who has the idea. Conversely, we call someone who isn’t enlightened “a dim bulb,” or maybe we say, “The lights are on but nobody’s home.”

Continue reading “Seeking Enlightenment? Let’s Try Endarkenment by Barbara Ardinger”

Generosity and Community: the Alternative Worldview of Women’s Ritual Dance, Part 1 by Laura Shannon

My life’s work with traditional women’s circle dances of Eastern Europe and the Near East has been a natural interweaving of feminism, activism and Goddess spirituality. In more than thirty years of experience, my students and I have gained valuable insight into their potential as tools for healing and transformation.

These simple and ancient dances connect us with women’s ritual practices from the past which are rooted in a Goddess-reverent paradigm honouring the earth, the body and the female face of the divine. In the present day, the practice of mindfully dancing traditional circle dances which embody this worldview can help us imagine and create a more equitable society in the future.

Continue reading “Generosity and Community: the Alternative Worldview of Women’s Ritual Dance, Part 1 by Laura Shannon”

Find Your Warrior Archetype, Sisters: We are in the Fight of our Lives by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

I read a news story this week about dozens of children sex trafficked at an auto show in Detroit. I read about a young man getting no jail time for sexually assaulting a six year old girl… sex traffickers targeting and grooming girls through internet apps for children… white women still earn $0.80 for every dollar men earn, and women of color even less… the Supreme Court may kill Roe v. Wade this week… five women executed in a bank, and the media ignored it… many men used the government shutdown to coerce (rape) poor, desperate mothers into trading sex for money or food… yet another gunman shot his ex-girlfriend and four other people…

There’s plenty more bad news. We live in a collapsing, apocalyptic dystopian misogynistic nightmare. Misogynist violence floods to us in a toxic deluge from billboards, magazines, movies, TV shows, ads, games, and most interactions with family, friends, and our culture.

How do we survive in this holocaust? How do we keep sane? How do we protect that which we hold most dear?

Continue reading “Find Your Warrior Archetype, Sisters: We are in the Fight of our Lives by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

Holly Near’s Music and a Holistic Feminist Perspective of Peace by Elisabeth Schilling

It’s hard for me to be dignified and peaceful sometimes. To produce and sacrifice without rewards, making sure I’m not “sacrificing” in a way that quells my truth and power, making sure I look at dignity in a liberating way. Words continually need to be unpacked, and I do that. I know the work. According to the OED, it means “The quality of being worthy.” For me, ‘dignity’ is just being aware of your self-worth and celebrating that. It feels hopeful and romantic and raw. To sacrifice, to me, in the way I’m using it in this moment, is to be life-giving and co-creator; I think of it in the same way as what the earth does, so that it can continue. Like a leaf fallen to nourish its own soil.

The OED definition of ‘sacrifice’ I like is “The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something regarded as having a higher or more pressing claim.” We can decide what is more pressing. For me it is the ethic of generosity and production in a non-greedy way. I do not sacrifice in this more self-empowered, law-of-the-universe way I’ve recently come to understand much. But I would like to. Sometimes, though, I feel tired in my production, like I need more feedback, even if it is another woman willing to listen to me, which is why posting on FAR is so healing and life-giving because there is all of you.

I’m glad I have wisdom in my body. Even if “I” (my mind?) goes chaotic, feels overwhelmed and lost, my body has this natural intelligence to heal and regain balance if I can listen and get out of its way. That reminds me a lot of the earth—regions harmed by human mindlessness have been known to restore itself, even after radiation or toxic explosions, when humans leave for awhile. But if “I” equate myself with my mind, isn’t that also a part of the body? Wouldn’t the mind (the brain? the processes that help mental consciousness and thoughts arise?) then be wise, seeking balance? It just does not feel like it. So if anyone can weigh in on that. . . why so easy for my body-body but not my mind-body?

Continue reading “Holly Near’s Music and a Holistic Feminist Perspective of Peace by Elisabeth Schilling”

The Race-ing of Innocence: Calling All Feminists to Converse by Marcia Mount Shoop

mms headshot 2015Well over 100,000 people and counting have read a blog post called “Nothing But the Truth: A Word to White America After the Recent Unpleasantness in Washington DC” that I wrote. Going on 400 commenters have weighed in on my website.  I have not been able to keep up with replying to all the comments, but I have read them all. And a few cluster around the topic of childhood innocence and the role of adults in nurturing/protecting/informing children around the realities of things like racism, sexism, and the ugly layers of American history.

This exploration of the nature of childhood and our culture’s role in nurturing what we value about childhood calls out for feminist reflection.  So, I put this out to the FAR community of conversation for discussion.

Some of the comments that interest me the most are those who gave the young men from Covington Catholic a pass because they are “just kids.” And they felt media and others were being too hard on them to expect them to understand what was going on in front of the Lincoln Memorial when competing narratives about our country converged.

Continue reading “The Race-ing of Innocence: Calling All Feminists to Converse by Marcia Mount Shoop”

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”