Feminism and Religion

Of Waterfalls and Wonder by Beth Bartlett

“A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder . . . . If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life . . . .”[i] – Rachel Carson

When I flipped my wall calendar on May 1^st, the accompanying photo was of a waterfall. My two-year-old grandson noticed it immediately, and said “waterfall!” I asked him if wanted to go see waterfalls, and ever since then we’ve been hiking local trails along rivers and streams in search of waterfalls. Fortunately, we live in a city and surrounding area with a wealth of waterfalls, many within a few minutes of our home. Each one is unique and changes with the volume of water as it varies from day to day.

I was lucky enough to be raised by parents with a love of waterfalls, so they were a staple of my childhood. We lived near waterfalls on the Cuyahoga River, where we would sometimes go for picnics and hikes, and our family vacations when I was young were often to visit waterfalls – Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite, Tahquamenon Falls in the UP of Michigan, and of course, Niagara Falls.

My Grandmother’s Pearls are Green by Sara Wright

“That move into mystery
is not an abandonment of
perception
into a cloud of unknowing.
It’s a move
into a different form
of knowing.”

Robert Macfarlane

I stepped outside when the sun was just rising over the horizon and low enough in the sky to create a play of shadow and light. This is my favorite time of the day to witness the astonishing beauty of the earth that is spreading her shimmering cloak around my feet… ‘oh, my grandmother’s hair, the words rose unbidden’. Chartreuse, plum, wine, lime, gold leaf and emerald canopies stretched across the brook blurring the leaves between birch, ash, beech and maples. The silvery water glistened, and I imagined myself flowing around those serpentine moss-covered banks listening to an ancient song that has been sung by water for more than 4 billion years. How I wish I understood what ‘ki’ was saying but I am no longer able to discern the language.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES?

This post was originally published on Oct. 28th, 2013

At a coffee shop in Agios Thomas, Crete last month a perfect stranger offered to pay for the coffees and sodas of the 16 women on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. This spirit of great generosity is rarely experienced in the United States or other parts of Europe, but it is still common in rural Crete and some parts of Greece.

In fact our group was in Agios Thomas because our bus driver Babis, also in a spirit of great generosity, insisted on stopping to show us his village when we were passing nearby. He guided us to see Roman rock cut tombs and arranged for the early Byzantine church to be opened. At the end of the our pilgrimage, Babis stopped the bus at a wooded glen beside a small church where he offered us his own homemake raki, wine, and olives, accompanied by local sheep cheese he had purchased while we were climbing a mountain. After every meal that we ate in local tavernas, we were offered bottles of cold raki, fruit, and sweets.

This spirit of great generosity has long been commented on by travelers in Greece, who often speak of it as unexpected (for them) hospitality to the stranger or traveler. That it is, of course. Through the work of Heidi Goettner-Abendroth, I now understand that the famous Greek hospitality to the stranger has deep roots in matriarchal cultures. According to Goettner-Abendroth, equality of wealth is assured through the widely-practiced custom of gift-giving in matriarchal cultures. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: IS THE SPIRIT OF GREAT GENEROSITY IN CRETE A SURVIVAL OF ANCIENT MATRIARCHAL VALUES?”

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Integrating Celtic Wisdom and Science, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1 was posted yesterday

Combining ancient wisdom and western science

At age sixteen Beresford-Kroeger was graduated from her mentorship of the Lisheens and went on to become a scientist, learning medical biochemistry and botany. Eventually she saw that many of the things she learned from the Lisheens elders could be scientifically proven. This offered her delight and reassurance.

One of the first of these was the plant Chrondrus crispus or seaweed named Irish moss. Her Great-Aunt Nellie taught her that it cured tuberculosis and how to prepare and use the gel-like mucilage it released upon being boiled.

In the lab Beresford-Kroeger later discovered that this mucilage has antibiotic properties.

“The feeling this confirmation of Nellie’s teaching gave me is hard to describe. I loved my teachers in Lisheens, but I hadn’t completely ruled out the idea that the things I’d been taught there were just old superstitions. I needed to confirm them for myself. There was always the chance that there would turn out to be nothing of import in the plants they’d emphasized to me, and nothing more to the ancient knowledge than beautiful clouds of vapor”(96).

She began to understand that what she had been taught was an oral tradition and that it existed in no other format and that she was meant to be a bridge between “the ancient and the scientific”(97).

“My teachers in the valley might have indicated that a particular plant was good for poor circulation, which I’d taken to mean heart trouble. I would then know to keep a particular eye out for the presence of any chemical known to benefit the heart. “Well, Diana,” they might have begun, while cradling a small, five-pointed yellow flower in the crook of two fingers. “St. John’s Wort, as you see here, has a strong medicine for nervousness and mental problems.” I would later find out that St. John’s Wort contains phytochemicals such as hyperforin, which increase the effectiveness of dopamine and serotonin in the brain. The plant is as effective as many prescription anti-depressants, and may in some cases be more effective”(98).

Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Integrating Celtic Wisdom and Science, part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is brought to you by a collaboration by FAR and Nasty Women Writers written and hosted by Maria and Theresa Dintino. This post originally appeared on their website on Sep 12, 2023

In her book To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest, Diana Beresford-Kroeger shares her origin story, the humble beginnings of the famous scientist, the activist and crusader for the planet she became. We learn on what forge that will, strength, brain and consciousness were smelted. And it is one of beauty, strength and love, one that takes the breath away.

I loved this book. I loved going deeper and deeper into Beresford-Kroeger’s life story, into the rich depths of her Celtic heritage and medicine lineage. To learn the secrets and the wisdom. Beresford-Kroeger offers sacred transmission in this book, revealing another part of herself. It is a vulnerable telling and an irreplaceable gift.

So, You Think You’re a Feminist? The Culturally Palatable ‘Feminism’ of The Barbie Movie by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

People are often surprised to learn that I actually love Barbie. Years ago, I heard a BBC interview with Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie. In a world of baby dolls for mothering creative play, she wanted her daughter – Barbara – to have the opportunity to imagine other things, too. A computer scientist. A top executive. An astronaut. (The film shows a bit of this early intent.) Of course, no one would support her idea. Then, one day in Switzerland, she was walking past a toy shop and saw a small, plastic, adult, female doll. She had finally found a prototype!

Unfortunately, this original Lilli doll had been created to depict an alluring, sassy, provocative “golddigger, exhibitionist, and floozy.” And Ruth specifically didn’t want her doll to be stereotypically ‘beautiful,’ because she didn’t want it to hurt girls’ self-esteem. But the only manufacturer willing to create the dolls was in Japan; their English was so limited, she finally picked up a file and literally filed off the plastic nipples in order to explain that she didn’t want the doll to have nipples.

From the Archives: To Nurse at the Same Breasts: Muslim-Jewish Kinship in Literature and Life by Joyce Zonana

It is tempting to read these recurring images of milk twins in Arab-Jewish literature as no more than a symbol, albeit a powerful one, of the profoundly intimate “brother- (and sister-)hood” of Jews and Muslims in the pre-partition culture of the Middle East and North Africa.

But the image of “milk twins” is much more than a metaphor or a symbol: it represents a reality. For it seems that many Jewish and Muslim women, living side by side as they did, had in fact regularly nursed one another’s children.

Moderator’s Note: We received the devastating news yesterday that Joyce has died. (She was born on July 16, 1949, and passed on June 11, 2025 during the full moon.) She wrote bravely of her diagnosis of glioblastoma multiforma from Feb 2022. She survived far longer than her diagnosis would suggest. Joyce is a long time contributor to FAR, writing many brilliant pieces along the way. We’ve been so lucky to have been a platform for her writings. We are posting this one today in honor of her. It was originally posted on Jan. 20, 2022 and has special poignance given the situation happening now in the Muslim/Jewish world.

Joyce Zonana. headshot Tobie Nathan’s panoramic novel about Jews and Muslims (and Christians) in early twentieth-century Egypt, A Land Like You, revolves around one central image: two infants—one Jewish, one Muslim; one male, one female—peacefully nursing at the breasts of a young Muslim woman, Oum Jinane (“Mother Paradise”).

After the birth of her long-desired daughter Masreya (“The Egyptian Woman”), Jinane travels from her poor Muslim neighborhood to a poor Jewish neighborhood to help another young mother whose long-desired infant son is languishing because she has no milk. “It’s a miracle, a great miracle,” the Jewish boy’s relatives declare:

images

Never had any neighborhood in Cairo been so excited by a baby’s nursing. Until bedtime, the child nursed three more times at the breasts of abundance. He took hold of one nipple, little Masreya another, and the two children’s hands sometimes touched. You would have thought they were two lovers entering Paradise as they held each other’s hands.

Continue reading “From the Archives: To Nurse at the Same Breasts: Muslim-Jewish Kinship in Literature and Life by Joyce Zonana”

Summer Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Let us be gentle with ourselves
as we cross the threshold
into summer,
as we both open our hearts to change
and open our hands to choice.
It is now that we both let things go
and celebrate what is flourishing,
what is thriving and growing
and calling us onward.
Let us be soft and supple,
luminous and languorous.
Let us practice the discipline of pleasure
and the liturgy of delight.
Let us protect wide margins for magic,
commit to our own life’s unfolding
and swim freely
in the current of the sacred
that is always available
to receive us
and welcome us home.

Today, I sit missing the orioles and thinking about cycles of change, how things grow and decline, and how we can choose to be present or not with what we see and feel. I tip my head back in the green filtered light of morning and discover berries beginning on the mulberry trees. The wild raspberries and blackberries too are tipped with small, firm caps of green. I am feeling the sort of overdue clarity that descends when I finally realize I can let something go, that not everything is mine to carry or mine to fix. I know that this clarity too will come and go, but for now, I welcome it, feeling the cool wind stirring my hair and brushing my shoulders as I enjoy the sunshine and the sound of hawks on the wing. There is a powerful hope in these blue sky days and for now, I bask in the sensation of both remembering and reclamation.

This year, as we tip into summer in the Northern hemisphere, the temperatures in my own Midwestern biome have been surprisingly cool, peaceful and rainy. In an era of climate change, this slow entry into the heat of the year has felt welcome and encouraging. Something that continues to inspire and teach me this year has been to start where my feet are, to return again and again to where I am on this earth and in my body. In a culture that encourages fragmentation and distraction, distance, discord, and dis-embodiment, this practice of return is an act of both rebellion and reclamation.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. This year, sitting down to write and reflecting on the life lesson of starting where my feet are, I decided to go back through my past summer posts here to discover the other lessons I have learned from summers gone by. I chose thirteen lessons to share from past summer posts:

Empty Nest by Sara Wright

She fluttered
out of a woven
mossy green
basket
above the door
at dawn
the
nest
had fallen
onto granite
stone.
Oh
my drowning senses
couldn’t
contain such grief
every cell
drilled
deeper
I gasped
this
cavernous
hole
had no
bottom
I continued
to fall
Nature had
Spoken
my silent
plea went
unanswered
Ki’s* message
was clear
I replaced
the nest
added a
cedar shingle
enticing
the phoebes
to return
listened
to a vibrating
body
whose mourning
bell
rang clear
Nature
had Spoken
my beloved
birds
and those
I loved
were gone.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: In The News – Global Climate Change

This post was originally posted on Nov. 7th, 2012

Climate change is in the news again due to the devasting storm known as Hurricane Sandy. Scientists, activists, journalists, and politicians are telling us that Sandy is not just another “unpredictable event” brought to us by “Mother Nature.” Will we listen this time?

Hurricane Sandy is a human-made and entirely predictable and sure to be repeated environmental consequence of the use of fossil fuels, especially oil and coal. Burning fossil fuels puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This raises the global temperature in the air, land, and sea. Melting of polar ice caps is a result of the rise in global temperatures. This will cause a 3 foot or more rise in the seas, leading to the permanent flooding of the seacoasts and sea coast constructions, including homes, restaurants and shops, office buildings, and harbors and ports.

The warming of the seas is also producing extreme weather conditions, including high winds and hurricanes, along with colder winters and hotter summers. Extreme weather conditions will lead to regular storm-related flooding of rivers and sea coasts, erosion of hills and mountains in winter, followed by catastrophic fires in summer. Prolonged droughts and unseasonal rains will devastate farms and food production. Wildlife habitats will be destroyed. Places where people live will become too hot, too cold, too wet, and generally unfriendly to life.

Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: In The News – Global Climate Change”