A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

Following up on my recent blogs on the roles of women in the Neolithic revolution and on “egalitarian matriarchy,” I have been re-reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s ground-breaking book, Women at the Center, about the survival of the “adat matriarchaat” (the principles of matriarchy) among the more than four million Minangkabau people of Indonesia.

According to Sanday, the customs of the matriarchaat (the Dutch word has been adopted by the Minangkabau people)—including matrilineal descent, matrilocal marriage, and ownership of the land by the mother clan—have survived accommodation with Islam. This is in no small part due to the fact that one of the principle values of the matriachaat is to conjugate (to come together) rather than to dominate. Rather than viewing Islam as an opposing force, the Minangkabau emphasize the aspects of Islam–such as love and compassion for the weak–that are compatible with their traditional worldview. Through this clever maneuver, the Minangkabau manage to practice Islam while maintaining their traditional egalitarian matriarchy. Continue reading “A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ”

Celtic Myth, Moon Blood, and the White Beauty Standard by Marisa Goudy

My woman’s body is entering the dark time of the moon, even with blinding white snow lashing the windows, even with a full moon tracing its way far above thick clouds. My mood is black and soon I’ll be flowing red, and the snow will just drive on white, white, white.

In The White Goddess, Robert Graves tells us: “…the New Moon is the white goddess of birth and growth; the Full Moon, the red goddess of love and battle; the Old Moon, the black goddess of death and divination.”

The Celt in me feels cradled by this imagery, even if, as Judith Shaw and Carol P. Christ have pointed out elsewhere on this site, the idea of maid, mother, and crone is a modern invention, not gift from the past. I agree with Christ:  “My suggestion is that we give up the idea that the details of contemporary Goddess Spirituality are rooted in and authorized by tradition. We can instead acknowledge that though we are inspired by the past, we are the ones who are creating contemporary Goddess Spirituality.”

Continue reading “Celtic Myth, Moon Blood, and the White Beauty Standard by Marisa Goudy”

My Heroine’s Journey: Writing Women Back in History by Mary Sharratt

Alma Maria Schindler

We have been lost to each other for so long. My name means nothing to you. My memory is dust.             

This is not your fault or mine. The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed into the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father and the celebrated chronicle of my brother.

Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

I am an expat author. My home is everywhere and nowhere. A wanderer, I have lived in many different places, from Minnesota, my birthplace, with its rustling marshes haunted by the cries of redwing blackbirds, to Bavaria with its dark forests and dazzling meadows and pure streams where otter still live, to my present home in the haunted moorlands of Pendle Witch country in Lancashire, England. My entire adult life has been a literal journey of finding myself in the great world.

For as long as I remember, I longed to be a writer. As a novelist I am on a mission to write women back into history. To tell the neglected, unwritten stories of women like my pioneering foremothers who emigrated from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) in the 1860s to break the prairie soil of southern Minnesota.

To a large extent, women have been written out of history. Their lives and deeds have become lost to us. To uncover their buried truths, we must act as detectives, studying the sparse clues that have been handed down to us. We must learn to read between the lines and fill in the blanks. My heroine’s journey, in other words, is about reclaiming the lost heroines of history. My quest is to give voice to ancestral memory of that lost motherline.

Continue reading “My Heroine’s Journey: Writing Women Back in History by Mary Sharratt”

Bless This House: Creating Sacred Space Where You Live, Work & Travel by Mama Donna Henes – A Book Review by Joyce Zonana

“There is no such thing as a bad blessing,” Mama Donna tell us, “no rules . . . no recipes, no prescriptions, no instruction manuals,” no “one-size-fits-all” House Blessing. Yet it’s not so much “anything goes” as “everything matters”: “The only thing you can do wrong in a ritual is to not pay attention to your true intentions.”

jz-headshotDonna Henes, familiarly known as “Mama Donna,” is a national treasure. From her “House of Many Altars” in what she mischievously calls “Exotic Brooklyn,” she serves as an exuberant, irrepressible urban shaman: holding outdoor public rituals at each solstice and equinox for over forty years; blessing and leading New York City’s annual Halloween Parade; creating meaningful, personalized ceremonies for funerals, weddings, new babies, new homes, and new businesses. In 2009, the governor of New York State called on her to bless the fleet during the quadricentennial celebration of Henry Hudson’s voyage to the New World. She is the author of five books, including The Queen of Myself  and Celestially Auspicious Occasions, and publishes a monthly e-newsletter, The Queen’s Chronicles, that offers “meaning, moxie, and magic for midlife women.”

In her most recent book, Bless This House: Creating Sacred Space Where You Live, Work & Travel (Ixia Press, 2018), Mama Donna generously shares her house-blessing “secrets”—revealing that they are not secrets after all. Demystifying the blessing process, the book details everything you need to know to “claim and consecrate” your own house with “authority and aplomb.” Continue reading “Bless This House: Creating Sacred Space Where You Live, Work & Travel by Mama Donna Henes – A Book Review by Joyce Zonana”

A Grounded Spirituality, in Community by Xochitl Alvizo

It was Sunday, April 1, with grilled corn and veggie-dogs and a day gardening with friends and neighbors. Each household with their own raised bed. We started seeds and planted starter plants. We spent all day outside, various friends and neighbors stopping by at different times of the day. This was my effort at a new practice of spirituality – to touch something green every day. Perhaps not the most obvious starting point, but it was what I could do.

I’ve always had a hard time understanding “spirituality” – or what people mean by it. I’ve never quite connected. When explained to me, I understand what people say it means, whether to them specifically or as a term broadly speaking, and as a scholar of religion I can study it and learn about it, but I just don’t connect with it. I didn’t have an entry point to the term or the practice. Continue reading “A Grounded Spirituality, in Community by Xochitl Alvizo”

Do This in Memory of Me By Gina Messina

The passing of my mother was very sudden.  At the young age of fifty-six, I thought I had many years to spend with her so I hadn’t worried that any conversation with my mom would also be our last.  Now when I look back, I wish I would have treated every word I spoke to her so delicately, as if those words would be the last she would ever hear from me, but I suppose that is why they say hind sight is 20/20.

Preparing for her funeral I went to her home and gathered some of her things; I wept as I came to the realization that they were all I had left of her.  I found many cherished and priceless possessions that served as reminders of her continued presence in my life.  I discovered her diary that described her absolute joy over being a mother during our childhood years and her poetry that described her belief of motherhood as her most important role.  And then there were her recipes, her cookbooks, perhaps her most important possessions, at least to me, which held her secrets that she used to comfort and love those around her.   Continue reading “Do This in Memory of Me By Gina Messina”

Brigid from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri

She is the reason BRIDES wear white, swan-like wedding gowns. Brides veil themselves like the Goddess herself, Whom all Bridegrooms honor, until revealing Herself to Her chosen groom. Tiny flowers and shamrocks are said to bloom in Her wake, She brings new life.

BRIDGET BRIGHT by Hedgewytch

She is known as Brigid Bright,
Goddess who shines against the night.
At Cille Dara, at the setting sun,
Her sacred flame is kept by one.
Nineteen times the earth turns round,
As sacred springs come forth the ground.
Twenty times the sun has burned,
And now the Goddess has returned.
Alone she tends her thrice-bright flame,
Born of her heart that bears her name.
The Dagda knows Brigid as Daughter,
Triple Blessed by fire and water.
Poets call her name to inspire.
And healers oft gain from her fire.
Wayland too would know her well
As hammer and anvil ring like a bell.
A sorrowful cry did she give meaning,
When first she brought to Eire keening.
Oh Sacred Fire against darkest night,
Burn for Brigid, for Brigid Bright!
Fire in the head…to quicken us.
Fire in the cauldron…to heal us.
Fire in the forge of the heart…to temper us.

Continue reading “Brigid from The Goddess Project: Made in Her Image by Colette Numajiri”

Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ

When the word “matriarchy” is spoken, the first question that comes up is: what about men? Most people imagine that matriarchy must oppress men—just as patriarchy oppresses women. Sadly, concern about the oppression of women in patriarchy is less automatic.

In the classical dualisms (stemming from Plato) that structure much of western thought up to the present day, nature is associated with finitude and death, which are viewed as limitations. Men are said to be able to transcend finitude and death through their rational capacities, while women are said to be tied to the body and less capable of transcending it. This becomes a justification for the subordination and domination of women.

While western thought disparages nature, the egalitarian matriarchal Minangkabau people of western Sumatra, base their worldview on the principle of growth in nature. The Minangkabau say that they “take the good in nature” and “throw away the bad.” While they recognize chaos and violence within nature, they choose to focus on the good: the powers of birth and growth.

The Minangkabau believe that women who nurture growth in children and rice exemplify the good within nature. Continue reading “Women and Men in “Egalitarian Matriarchy” by Carol P. Christ”

On Belief and Action by Ivy Helman

29662350_10155723099993089_8391051315166448776_oMy birthday was last Wednesday.  Perhaps more than any other time of the year (yes, even more than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), the days and weeks leading up to my birthday are filled with personal reflection.  Not that religious and secular new years don’t give me pause to reflect, but I think the lack of buzz around this personal event seems to offer me more space and time to think.

This year more than past years, I’ve been thinking about beliefs: what I believe in; how ideas and concepts that were important to me last year are less so this year and vice versa; how beliefs motivate me to act or not; what role belief plays in my life; why some beliefs demand solid resolve and others not so much; and so on.  I wanted to share with you some of my personal reflection. Continue reading “On Belief and Action by Ivy Helman”

Is there Space for Beyoncé in Worship? by Katey Zeh

Last month nearly 1,000 people gathered at Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco, to participate in a worship service notably referred to as the Beyoncé Mass. Several of Beyoncé’s songs, including “Survivor,” “Flaws And All,” and “Freedom,” were sung throughout the liturgy. The service included a reading from Ella Baker and two versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the traditional English prayer and a modern Womanist version. The timing of the mass fell just weeks after Beyoncé’s stunning two-hour performance at Coachella (#Beychella), the first time a black woman headlined the event.

Continue reading “Is there Space for Beyoncé in Worship? by Katey Zeh”