Feminism and Religion

Sustaining Myself by Molly Remer

I 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”

On a Friend’s Departure by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

On June 25th, I received the news that my friend Zubeida Shaikh had passed away in South Africa. This took me by surprise. The last time Zubeida and I exchanged communication, she was as always, strong, determined and full of life, ready to realize her dreams. Zubeida Shaikh was an avid reader of feminism and religion. I would like to remember her in this space, thanks to which she and I met in life. In 2015, a little before my trip to South Africa, Zubeida sent me an email. She had read my article “Enemy of Islam” and it “was speaking to her”.

So, few weeks after my arrival in Cape Town, we met in the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa, her place of work until 2017, where I visited her in her office and we talked at length about feminism, violence against women and resilience, putting our own stories with patriarchy and abuse on the table. Then we spent the afternoon together. She was the first person from South Africa that I met. She was my first friend in South Africa. Continue reading “On a Friend’s Departure by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

The Cosmic Dance and the Goddess Hera (Part One) by Laura Shannon

Summer is here, and even with the terrible troubles going on in our world, I hope that some of us are managing to take time out and enjoy pleasant evenings outside under the stars. Gazing up at the heavens, we see the same starscape our ancestors saw, thousands of years ago.

In the worldwide Sacred Circle Dance network of which I am part, many dances have been created or choreographed which work with the energies of the sun and the moon. The power these heavenly bodies have in the human world is obvious, but many people do not realise the importance which the stars and planets also had to ceremonial practice in the ancient world. The architecture of Greek temples in antiquity was oriented to the rising of specific constellations and other astronomical phenomena, which also alerted people in far-off locations that the time was drawing near for celebrations or ceremonies in particular places. Continue reading “The Cosmic Dance and the Goddess Hera (Part One) by Laura Shannon”

To Dread and To Savor: Mothering in Real Time by Marcia Mount Shoop

Marcia Mount Shoop It happened in the blink of an eye. So much of how we got here is blurry. I try to parse out the moments that came together to add up to this many years. I pause to absorb fragments, moments of the past.

Hunkering down to watch a spider waiting patiently on her web. I can see his tiny hands balancing on his knees peaking out from his blue overall shorts.

Driving to baseball practice forty minutes from our house and realizing he doesn’t have his shoes twenty-five minutes into the drive. I hate the sound of my voice yelling at him in the car. Continue reading “To Dread and To Savor: Mothering in Real Time by Marcia Mount Shoop”

Take Only What You Need: Can We? 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

The fifth touchstone, “Take only what you need” may be the most difficult one for modern human beings to follow. Those of us not living in traditional un-modernized villages have more things, from cars to big houses, to clothes to electronic devices, than we really need. Those of us in the middle and upper classes have so much more than we need, that the mind boggles when we begin to think about whether we need everything we have or want to have.

In capitalist societies, advertising is geared to cause us to want things we don’t really need, whether it be a new pair of shoes when we already have than we can wear to the most up-to-date ipad or smart phone when the one we have still works just fine. For many of us “shopping therapy” is our first response to boredom, anxiety, or depression. Buying something brings an adrenaline rush that temporarily makes us feel better.

In some indigenous cultures, the notion of taking only what you need is rooted in a deep feeling for and understanding of the interdependence of life. These cultures teach the young that taking from the web of life always has a cost. Yes, you can pick the plants you need to eat and the others you need as herbal remedies. But when you do, you thank the plant whose life you have taken, by leaving a gift. You would learn never to pick all of the plants in a particular area because you always leave some for others and some to die and go to seed so there will be the same plants in the same place the next year. You would never throw food away because you would not have taken or prepared more than you needed, and if you had something left over, you would offer it to a neighbor.

If you grew and picked flax or sheared wool and spun it into thread and then wove the fabric that would become your sheets and blankets and clothing, you would learn to treasure what you have as the work of your own or your mother’s or grandmother’s hands, and you would not consider these precious items to be disposable. In fact you might feel sad when something wore out, knowing that you would never have the joy of using or wearing it again and knowing that you cannot replace the tangible memories associated with it.

How far we have come from this mentality, for many of us, in only a few generations. We are always looking for the newest and so ready to throw out or replace anything that we ourselves or others might consider dated or old-fashioned.

We are destroying ecosystems and using up the world’s resources to meet our needs. The notion that the world should be our resource is part of the problem. If we do not curb our need and our greed, species will continue to go extinct and the generations that come after us will struggle to survive. This is a political, not only a personal issue. We must move towards a green sustainable energy and green sustainable economies.

It is not likely that anyone reading this blog—myself included—will ever reach the state of being where we consistently take only what we need. But we can try little by little to appreciate what we have and not to keep wanting and then buying the things we do not need. We can live with so much less than we think we can. If we could stop having to have what we think we want, we might find that there is more than enough to go around. We might be able to create a world where no one has to go without and where everyone can experience the joy and grace of life.

Also see: Ethics of Goddess Religion: Healing the World , Nurture Life: Ethics of Goddess Spirituality, Walk in Love and Beauty: A Touchstone for Healing, Trust the Knowledge that Comes through the Body: Heal Yourself, Heal the World, and Speak the Truth About Conflict, Pain, and Suffering

Carol P. Christ is an internationally known feminist writer, activist, and educator currently living in Lasithi Prefecture, Crete. Carol’s recent book written with Judith Plaskow, Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, is on Amazon. A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess is on sale for $10.98 on Amazon. Carol has been leading Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete for over twenty years: join her in Crete. Carol’s photo by Michael Bakas.