Poem: #MeToo, We Re-Member by Marie Cartier

I need the grandmothers to help me

re-member my rage.

Cross stitch. Double knot.  I sew it back on. The raggedy parts I let fly loose

when I thought it was OK to not be “so angry.”

“Boys will be boys.”

And so then, girls will be angry.

And we will re-member—our rage.

I need the great aunts, and all the old women with the signs that read,

“We are still protesting this shit.”

I need them, this herstory to help me

re-member my rage, feel it strong and tight. Cross stitch. Double knot. Those women re-member

me. I am that woman. She is me.

Our rage is a song.

After all this time, we are still singing it. Our rage

is a river and we swim in it, even if it’s upstream. There is a fierce mermaid goddess,

Yemaya. She protects us. She knows

our rage is our best defense.

Our rage is a

swarm of bees. Not yet extinct. Our rage

is holy. Terror. Continue reading “Poem: #MeToo, We Re-Member by Marie Cartier”

Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd

My grandparents and mother at their home in 1929.In 1929, my grandmother wrote the word “HOME” in resounding letters across the bottom of a photo of a herself and my grandfather, smiling lovingly and confidently, with my infant mother propped in between them on a rattan chair.  Within a few years the Great Depression stole that house, rendering them desolate and homeless, cutting a psychic wound so deep that it never healed.

I recently found the photo and thought of our family’s ancestors who, millennia ago in Old Europe, worshipped the Goddess in peaceful, egalitarian societies.  Then and there, as in so many cultures outside modern western societies, “home” was a sacred place. As discovered by Marija Gimbutas and others, small statues of the Goddess were frequently found by the ovens inside family dwellings, and temples included rooms for both sanctuaries and workshops for making bread and weaving cloth. Houses and temples were extensions of one another. 

Continue reading “Coming Home to the Sacred by Carolyn Lee Boyd”

Pig/Sow – Animal Spirit Guide by Judith Shaw

judith shaw photoPigs, who were called boars in the wild, were the first animals to be domesticated. Pig domestication occurred about 9,000 – 10,000 years ago in two places – central China and Neolithic Anatolia in modern day southwestern Turkey.

Around 7,000 years ago when the Anatolians moved into Europe with their domestic animals and plants, they interacted with the indigenous Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and facilitated an interbreeding of their domestic pig and the local wild boar. The European swine descends from this interbreeding.

The mythical and cultural associations assigned to Pig in all its forms is very contradictory – sacred and beneficial to some, demonic and unclean to others. For our purposes here, we will concentrate on the positive associations. Continue reading “Pig/Sow – Animal Spirit Guide by Judith Shaw”

The Cost by John Erickson

Brett Kavanaugh is a piece of shit.

Brett Kavanaugh is a piece of shit.

KavaNope

There, I said it. I know that we are supposed to “use our words” or “take the high road” but I no longer can. I am completely and totally done with the fact that it is Sunday night and I sit here wondering whether or not our Democracy will be around by the end of the week.

If you are like me, you have found yourself, more times than one I am guessing, watching the news, mouths agape, mind in disbelief, and your heart heavy with grief and sadness. While these great travesties occur, I find myself wondering what is the cost? How many children must be locked in cages? How many women must come forward with accusations of sexual assault and rape? How many more people must accuse the President of harassment and assault? How many more anonymous op-eds and faulty promises must be made before we finally all see that the real cost, is that these great travesties themselves (too many to recall here) are what it really takes to take down imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Continue reading “The Cost by John Erickson”

“What Would Happen If One Woman Told the Truth about Her Life?” by Carol P. Christ

According to poet Muriel Rukeyser, “the world would split open.”

This poem accurately describes what many women experienced in consciousness raising in the 1970s and what many women experience today in the #MeToo movement.

For many of us the world did split open. We began to take ourselves and our experiences seriously. To do so we had to question received wisdom encoded in such questions as: “What was she doing there in the first place?” “Was she drinking too?” “Why didn’t she change out of her bathing suit?” Underlying these questions is the assumption that: “whatever happened, she must have asked for it.”

A lot of people are wondering why congressmen and voters who claim to uphold Christian principles are not more outraged about credible allegations of sexual assault against a child whose name was Christine Blasey. Continue reading ““What Would Happen If One Woman Told the Truth about Her Life?” by Carol P. Christ”

Playing Safe: BDSM & The Ethics of Justice and Care By Angelina Duell

From the archives – 9/23/11 – our first FAR year! 

This post is written in conjunction with the Feminist Ethics Course Dialogue project sponsored by Claremont School of Theology in the Claremont Lincoln University Consortium,  Claremont Graduate University, and directed by Grace Yia-Hei Kao.

It is Wednesday night and I am alone in the house. It’s dark; the only light is from my computer screen. A bead of sweat rolls from my brow as I delicately tap the keys of my keyboard until two words stare back at me, “BDSM feminism.” With bated breath, I press enter.

Just kidding.  Continue reading “Playing Safe: BDSM & The Ethics of Justice and Care By Angelina Duell”

My Life with Goddess (Part Two) by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne QuarrieRead Part One here.

My way of honoring this Goddess is to be with Her.  I feel Her as my hands when touch Her soil, when I sit on Her body, or when I am walking with Her trees.  I see Her in the birds flying overhead and in the small feather left for me on the ground.  I think I am closest to Her when I am by the sea.   That may be because the ocean is the source of life, but I believe it is because I truly feel Her might and healing power as I stand in Her waves.  I view the mountains with awe, knowing that She is there.  I see the rivers as Her blood flowing, just as our own blood flows through us carrying life force throughout our bodies.  The air we breathe and share with all is given to us by the plants and the trees in their process of photosynthesis, everything carefully crafted in our co-existence.

All these outdoor glimpses of Her are seen only on occasion.  I am, for the most part, now an indoor person, due to physical limitations.  I am, however, a woman whose memories, imagination and mind are strong.   I can, at will, bring these images of Her to myself in my mind’s eye and into my body not only from my memories, but from those things I collect when I can be outside in nature.   I have shells, sand and salt for the sea.  I have rocks of all sizes, shapes and types.  I have feathers and fur.   Continue reading “My Life with Goddess (Part Two) by Deanne Quarrie”

Singing up the Dawn, a poem by Sara Wright

My walk to the river
is a joyful entrance
into the eternal Now.
The water flowing,
  crushed fresh mint,
trilling bird song
desert air so sweet
  my body vibrates
drumming with all that is…

Returning under
the bowing cottonwoods
I touch a heart shaped leaf
in reverence…
For Life. Continue reading “Singing up the Dawn, a poem by Sara Wright”

EcoJustice and Our Relationship with God by Gina Messina

Version 2This semester I am teaching the course EcoJustice and chose Sallie McFague’s A New Climate for Theology as our foundational text. Something I greatly appreciate about McFague is that she continually calls us to radically redefine our understanding of the Divine and of our roles as human beings — fundamental questions that could easily lead to an existential crisis as one student reminded me. 

My class and I ponder these questions, discussing our own interpretations of God, why we exist, what it means to pray, and understandings of salvation. Not surprisingly, many of us have an anthropocentric theology — one that puts ourselves at the center. We are so focused on what we need from God, we forget to ask what God needs from us.  Continue reading “EcoJustice and Our Relationship with God by Gina Messina”

Longing for (Dis)Connection by Katey Zeh

yuzki-yuqing-wang-585257-unsplashAs I type this post, I have another browser window open to track the path of Hurricane Florence due to make landfall in my area sometime later this week. Though I now live a few hours inland, I grew up in a coastal town, so I know how unpredictable storms like these can be. It’s entirely possible that we will get a bit of rain and wind and nothing else–and it’s just as possible that we’ll be spending quite some time without power. I pray that the latter is the absolute worst of what we all endure here.

In preparing for the storm and potential power outage, I was reminded of a time about a year ago when I was returning home after dropping off my daughter at school. As I approached the first stoplight on my route, I noticed that it wasn’t working. That’s odd, I thought.  I drove on, navigating through another half dozen malfunctioning traffic lights before arriving safely back home only to discover that the power was out there too. Continue reading “Longing for (Dis)Connection by Katey Zeh”