Being a Woman & Using Certain FOUR-letter Words by Valentina Khan

Throughout my life I refrained from hard core cursing and substituted certain four letter words with modified publicly suitable words. I just didn’t think it was becoming of me to curse, but if and when I did do it it was about something pretty major, and I would softly let it out.

Being a woman and holding yourself with “old world” elegance means to negate any kind of cursing. I’ve always thought that until the last four years of my life. My cursing content has gone up 10 times since I became a mom. Suddenly it felt so much more potent to add f-ing to the word tired. Or instead of saying, “wow, that really sucks” and replacing with “that’s bullsh!t.” My choice of curse words has no boundaries anymore as it once used to. I feel sad about that. Like I’ve lost discipline–but in a way I also feel liberated.

It’s now a new year. The season to make changes to makes oneself better and to make progress to a healthier state of being. I could say, OK I’ll go back to my innocence, so to speak. I’ll refrain from cursing, since it’s totally taboo in my family to begin with, not really appropriate in my field of work, philanthropy, and simply not lady like. It really isn’t. But, I still enjoy it when I feel like using those words.  Continue reading “Being a Woman & Using Certain FOUR-letter Words by Valentina Khan”

Considering Our Spaces in the Pursuit of Justice by Elise M. Edwards

This past summer, my friend and I were perusing the exhibits at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture when she urgently called for my attention.  “Psst… Isn’t this where you are from?” she asked, pointing at a placard titled African American Life in Montgomery County.  Yes!  I grew up, I was educated, and I was churched in Montgomery County, Maryland.  So I eagerly read the exhibit’s description:

By 1900 there were at least eight African American communities in Montgomery County, Maryland. Unlike many rural African Americans, the residents were not tenant farmers—they owned their property and homes.  This gave them greater control over the land and the crops they produced.  They also directly benefited from improvements to their homes, which was an incentive to make additions and to stay in place.  Descendants of these early settlers still live in these communities today. Continue reading “Considering Our Spaces in the Pursuit of Justice by Elise M. Edwards”

Sunday Shaming by Alison Downie

On a recent Friday, I learned that the 43 year old husband of someone I went to graduate school with, parent of four young children, died suddenly. Though I had been out of touch with my grad school friend for some years, I felt deeply for her loss, her unexpected plunge into single parenting, the way her life and the lives of her children would forever be shaped by this grievous tragedy.

I carried this family in my heart as I drove to my weekly Sunday visit with one of my adult sons, who lives about 75 miles from me. At this time, disabled by mental illness, he lives in an AA recovery house, surviving on Supplemental Security Income of $740.00/month and SNAP food allotments. Now 27, he dropped out of college after one semester, has never held a job for more than a month, and has been hospitalized three times for psychiatric care.

I usually enjoy our weekly visits, during which we sit at a coffee shop or do an errand. But I never know how he will be doing. When he is doing poorly, my own tendency to depression means that being present as best I can, even for just a few hours, to his deep suffering may utterly deplete me for the rest of the day or several days following. Continue reading “Sunday Shaming by Alison Downie”

Human Elements in Plants: Wisdom and Botanical Lore by Nazia Islam

My paternal side of the family comes from an extensive line of farmers. They were notable for growing eggplants, but they held all sorts of agricultural knowledge. My maternal side of the family has a hushed history of female kobiraj/ natural medicine practitioners. General folk knowledge was passed through mothers and mothers-in-law.

Much of this “folk knowledge” would peek into my life as I was growing up in New Jersey–especially through our garden. It didn’t matter where we lived, we would always grow something somewhere even if it was just germinating seeds for other people. My parents would go to great measures to bring back seeds of vegetables they could not find in the US–specifically gourds and beans– from Bangladesh whenever they visited.

Continue reading “Human Elements in Plants: Wisdom and Botanical Lore by Nazia Islam”

Reclaiming My Body by Carol P. Christ

Shortly after writing “Asking for Help,” a blog in which I described losing my physical strength following a series injuries, I finally took a friend’s advice—mainly to stop her from badgering me—and went to the doctor. This is something I don’t usually do, as not only have I almost always had excellent health, but also, I believe that, for the most part, the body can heal itself.  The first doctor sent me to an orthopedist who told me that the persistent bursa on my knee was nearly healed and to go ahead and exercise in order to regain my strength.

A few days later, I found myself walking to the end of my cobblestone street with my little dog and continuing on to the harbor, a walk of about fifty minutes that included a good deal of up and down, as my house is situated above the sea. As I had only planned to walk a short distance, I was amazed that I found the strength to go farther. Soon I found the perfect walk. Leaving home at 4:30 in the afternoon, I follow the road past houses and open fields down to the sea and around the harbor quay out to the lighthouse. The sun sets while I am on the quay and on most days the clear winter sky lights up and the sea turns rose-gold. The return around the harbor takes me past the little church of Agios Nikolaos where I stop to light a candle and say a prayer. Then back up the hill to my house, where I arrive just before dark. Continue reading “Reclaiming My Body by Carol P. Christ”

A Rescue Remedy, Part I by Barbara Ardinger

A year, now. It has been a full year since the phony election that put El Presidente in the Golden Office. A year since people began leaving the capital and the nation’s other large cities. While some of the refugees emigrated to quasi-democratic nations, most of them settled in the small towns and on the farms across the countryside, where they began building new, rural lives. A year ago, it was a flood of refugees. Now fewer people are able to escape.

A year, now, and even though she has studied and practiced, the wicked witch is no wickeder than she ever was. Nowadays she even forgets to put on the wicked-witch mask that she used to think scared people. But it’s easy for everyone to see that, masked or not, she’s just an ordinary woman practicing an old-time religion. She’s never fooled anyone, not the sixty or so refugees who now live on her farm, especially not the various ravens who drop by regularly for snacks in exchange for gossip.

Continue reading “A Rescue Remedy, Part I by Barbara Ardinger”

30 Years of Activism by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

Diseño sin título

My first memory as an activist is of attending my first political public meeting to listen leaders of the resistance talking against the  Dictatorship, marching holding a sign that read “Democracy Now,” and taking my first dose of tear gas. It was 1988. I was 13 years old. My first menstrual period had come six weeks before. At that time, I didn’t know what feminism was; there were many books forbidden. Social Sciences such as Anthropology, Philosophy, and Sociology were banned in most universities.

But lack of theories could never prevent experience from happening and leaving its imprint. In 1990, at 15, I was gender conscious without recognizing my actions as feminism.

Continue reading “30 Years of Activism by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

That Refreshing Change by Esther Nelson

Right now, I’m between semesters so find myself in Las Cruces, New Mexico, nestled into the house I plan to retire in—whenever that time comes.  Best to leave it all open.

While traveling here, I began feeling lighter and lighter—not unlike the sensation I got as a kid when school let out for summer recess.  Time stretched out forever, holding infinite possibilities.  Now that I’ve been in New Mexico three weeks, I wish time would slow down.  Christmas and New Year have come and gone with minimal fanfare.  I did not hang a single decoration, nor did I attend a single party.  Blessed relief.

Continue reading “That Refreshing Change by Esther Nelson”

Priestessing the Priestesses by Chris Ash

Christy CroftLast week, I had the incredible privilege of sitting vigil with a friend in hospice in her final hours on this earth. She slept for most of the time I was there, but her waking moments were lucid, if brief. She whispered how good the fresh juice tasted (it had been made for her by a friend), and she seemed to prefer having my hands on her back to pain medication. In the last hour I was with her before leaving, a mutual friend joined us and played gentle, lullaby-style music for her on the kalimba and guitar. As he sang softly to her, I could barely make out his words; the intention was pure, the moment was intimate, and I felt honored to be present for such a profoundly sacred moment.

Speaking with another mutual friend who had held space for Maria in her final days, I mentioned that as I was at hospice I had felt an awareness of priestessing the priestess. Our friend agreed, and said she’d had a similar sensation. “That’s who Maria has been for many of us, whether she claimed that title or not.”

Maria and I were not part of a shared formal congregation or spiritual community in the traditional sense. We were both part of an informal network of friends in a variety of communities whose membership and interests overlap – sacred movement, ecstatic dance, ancestral healing, sound healing, and alternative spiritualities. It’s a network that is both leaderless and full of leaders, as its inherent diversity of beliefs and practices lends itself to members who are specialists in one tradition, students in another, and generalists in deep compassion, holy presence, and unconditional love. Continue reading “Priestessing the Priestesses by Chris Ash”

Saving Joan of Arc by Natalie Weaver

I’m finished with my first semester as a studio arts major at Kent State University.  I am not sure whether I’ll be registering for a second one.  There were pros and cons about the experience, and I am not sure if one set outweighed the other. Regardless, I am on sabbatical this spring, have two books to complete, and figured I would do well not to be trekking back and forth in an hours worth of snow and ice over the next few months from my home to the school.  So, I am taking a semester off, and I have become one of those retention risks. I am grateful for the opportunity to reflect on the experience with only minimal consequence to my bank account and my (laughing) future in the arts.

It wasn’t a bad experience; it wasn’t a good one either, really.  I learned some things in drawing, but I am very much on the fence about my experience in sculpture.  For starters, I imagined playing with clay and making pinch pots while some Swayzesque spirit from beyond rubbed my shoulders.  Instead, I was more Jessica Beal with a welding mask, except, instead of wearing a swanky black leotard and off-the-shoulder-slouch-dance tunic, I was wearing ugly jeans and steal-toed shoes under the green welding suit that had half-dollar size holes in it.  The protective gear only partially worked; I was scared of the tools after a classmate almost lost a finger; and the top of my hair went up in smoke when a spark shot under my ill-fitting Vader hat on week two.  I put it out quickly, fortunately.

Continue reading “Saving Joan of Arc by Natalie Weaver”