The Tree of Life and the Forest of Friendship: Circle Dance to Restore our Hope by Laura Shannon

Tree and Goddess motifs on the ‘Wall of the Foremothers’ (Ahninnenwand), Bodensee, Germany, 4th Millenium BCE

Yes, times are tough. But a better understanding of our interconnectedness can help us move beyond the cynicism, frustration, and despair we may be feeling in the modern world. A closer look at trees, and at women’s traditional circle dances, can offer valuable lessons about friendship, community, and the interconnectedness of all life.

The sacred Tree is found in virtually all cultures, often identified with the life-giving figure of the Goddess. Both motifs appear abundantly in archaeological finds dating back to the early Neolithic era. Dance archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel affirms that humans have been dancing in circles since then and probably for far longer.

The Tree of Life is central to the women’s traditional circle dances of the Balkans and the Near East, which I have been researching for over thirty years.  The pattern of the Tree of Life is encoded in the steps of dances, many dance songs refer to women as sacred or magical trees, people often dance around or under sacred trees, and Tree and Goddess motifs are featured on the textiles worn while dancing.  Furthermore, each dancer resembles a tree, with her ‘trunk’ upright and centred, arms symmetrically extended like branches, and hands joined so that we support each other in the circle.   Continue reading “The Tree of Life and the Forest of Friendship: Circle Dance to Restore our Hope by Laura Shannon”

Making Space for the Joy and the Grief by Chris Ash

Christy CroftLast week, I made a day trip on short notice to fly with a friend to Orlando. As we said our goodbyes, my friend encouraged me to try to catch an earlier flight to avoid arriving home too late in the evening. I briefly considered it, but instead grabbed a late lunch in the Orlando airport, sat down with a journal, and spent some time writing. It had been a stressful few weeks, and I relished the opportunity to put my heart to paper, to allow the pen to help me sort out the mix of emotions that were rolling over me.

Later that evening, during a two-hour layover in Baltimore, my friend called. “Are you home yet?” they asked, hopeful. Continue reading “Making Space for the Joy and the Grief by Chris Ash”

Call Me the Devil, If You’d Like by Natalie Weaver

Call me the devil, if you’d like.

I have just completed the three-hour retreat at the church to prepare my son for his first communion.  It was a long morning, to be sure, but during that time I decide I want to try to bring the family all together.  I host such occasions often, at significant cost and personal effort, but I think it builds up love and community so I do it anyhow.  I go home and begin sending out invitations for the gathering.

At precisely the moment of my welcoming, I learn that I have, once again, been directly charged by so-and-so, because I have worked in a professional capacity and (I am not kidding, dear readers) because I have not had my children in T-ball and Rec Center sports. I am accused of self-aggrandizement because I go to professional conferences (to which I also take my children almost without exception).  I am charged with doing things for my own glory because I teach overloads and offer paid lecture series.

There is no acknowledgement that I work to eat and to earn income to support my children or that I have never had the option not to work outside the home.  I am furious, of course, because I have heard this in varying degrees over the length of my professional life and time as a parent, including once on Mother’s Day. I’m tired of the insult, but when I respond after years of such claims in outrage, I am accused of being too angry.

But, life goes on, and so does the gathering.  It’s a nice time, but after the gathering, I wake up to the boldly voiced disgruntlement of a friend who has been inadvertently insulted by a conversation that occurred at the table.  The insult is derived from the charge that I did not say the right words when I should have. There is a very strong critique and withering suggestion about my core values at stake, since the issue is racial.  I listen and apologize but am left wondering, “don’t you know me by now?”  Have you not dined with me, celebrated with me, felt my love and friendship, outreach and appreciation? I am stymied.  Am I here to be judged?

Continue reading “Call Me the Devil, If You’d Like by Natalie Weaver”

Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg

My students are taking their final exams this week, which means I will be spending the week frantically, but attentively grading in order to make our grade submission deadline next week. End of semester grading is a mountain of careful criticism we educators scale one step at a time, with deliberateness, towards an ultimate goal of student success (if not in our classes, then in the next, or in life, relationships, etc.). Thus, I often find myself returning to the question: what am I hoping to create in what I say and write, and in how I critique?

One of the goals of feminist pedagogies is to help us prevent recreating the domination of kyrio-patriarchy in classroom spaces. While activism is not the same thing as education, and strategies of resistance are different than pedagogy in important ways, the concern for careful critique is warranted in both praxes. What do we create in how we critique, resist, and protest? What do we recreate, wittingly or no? I have found myself concerned with this since the election of Trump, DT (cause I can only write that name so many times), to the presidency. Continue reading “Careful Criticism: Resisting Hetero-Patriarchy while Resisting Trump by Sara Frykenberg”

“He Owes Us Nothing”: A Very Bad and Very Sad Theology by Carol P. Christ

While waiting to get off a plane last week,  I overheard a serious young woman explaining a recent theological insight to her half-asleep and equally young husband. “You see,” she began, “what I just learned is that though He owes us nothing and does not reward us for our good deeds, nonetheless, He takes pleasure in them.”

As the flight was from Mytilene, Lesbos to Athens, I guessed that the young couple had come from the United States to my island to assist the refugees. I imagined that the young woman wanted to do good deeds, to help others, and to please her God.  At the same time, she seemed to be struggling with Lutheran, Calvinist, or Anabaptist doctrines of justification by faith alone and predestination. I suspected that she had been told she must accept the teachings of church authorities on faith as the correct interpretation of the word of God. Her new insight was attributed to someone else. Continue reading ““He Owes Us Nothing”: A Very Bad and Very Sad Theology by Carol P. Christ”

The Cracked Glass by Vibha Shetiya

13327613_10208448645447348_6913754683590458893_nI haven’t shared this story with too many people, yet it is one that has always remained on the back burner of my mind.

I was almost thirteen and as boy-mad as an almost-thirteen-year-old could be. I remember me and my then best friend coming of age in Zambia, our experiences manifested in squeals of “Oh my god, I think he’s looking at us” or in the life-and-death decision of “Ooh, should we really walk past them?” for the ultimate target of a not-really-necessary packet of crisps, the “them” referring to equally silly, starry-eyed boys.

I thought these were universal expressions of puberty; shyly glancing over to catch someone’s eye, wanting to look your best while Jello-ed legs and a temporary loss of voice inhibited your ability to say a simple “hi” to the object of your very existence, the raison d’etre of your life, well, at that particular moment anyway.  Or deciding to spend the afternoon at the movies, never mind what was running, so long as cute guys would be hanging out for pretty much the same reason as you were. Of course, all of this was accompanied by the attention span of a freshly pubescent brain with expressions wrapped in innocence, with harmless and fleeting murmurings of the heart. Continue reading “The Cracked Glass by Vibha Shetiya”

Writing Through the Body: Betty Smith’s A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Joyce Zonana

 TreeGrowsInBrooklynIn her 1975 manifesto, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” French feminist Hélène Cixous urges women to write: “Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes . . .”

“The Laugh of the Medusa” remains a thrilling essay, challenging and inspiring women to “return to the body” and to language.  “Woman must write woman,” Cixous insists, “for, with a few rare exceptions there has not yet been any writing that inscribes femininity.”

Although Cixous may not have been aware of it, Betty Smith’s beloved, perennially popular 1943 novel, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is one of those “rare exceptions” that “inscribes femininity” in precisely the way she advocates. This autobiographical novel, so often dismissed as sentimental or as a children’s book, is actually written through the female body—which may explain its lasting popularity and power. Continue reading “Writing Through the Body: Betty Smith’s A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Joyce Zonana”

After the First 100 Days—What Do We Do Now? by Marie Cartier

deb-and-i
Marie & Deb

I am sitting here again with my friend Deb—you can see our first conversation here,  where we were excited about the activism ensuing from the Women’s March. A photo essay of the Los Angeles Women’s March is here. However, like so many conversations we are all having still, we ask each other— “after the first 100 days…what do we do now?” We are speaking of the first 100 days of the 45th president. When we last got together, we gave a list of options for doing activism as a daily part of life. In this blog, we want to expand on that idea.

Let’s first take stock of where we have gone since the last blog that Deb and I collaborated on February 24th . . Among other things Trump accused President Obama of illegally wiretapping his phones. Here is a list of many other terrifying things he has done. As we write this, we have also recently bombed Syria, sent warships to Korea, and appointed an extremely conservative Supreme Court Justice, because the Republican Senate voted to remove the ability to filibuster, which allowed Gorsuch’s appointment to go through with only 54 votes (rather than the formally required 60). Continue reading “After the First 100 Days—What Do We Do Now? by Marie Cartier”

Public Art and Personal Transformation by Jessica Bowman

 

Public Art Sculptures

Borrego Springs, CA

Artist: Ricardo Breceda

Photo: Jessica Bowman

 

Public Art displays like the image above, a dragon that appears to be moving through the sand dunes of Borrego Springs, California offer tremendous insight into the time and era of the society when it was created, the surrounding community, the patron of the work and of course, the artist. In the case of this artwork and several other similar sculptures found in the barren but beautiful landscape within the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park the subject matter supports the wildness of the region and invites the viewer to consider the area before the impacts of modern civilization.  In this case, it isn’t difficult to imagine such an untamed time as there are miles and miles of sandstone, treeless mountains and desert brush with very few people anywhere to be found. Also in this case, the artwork is absolutely appropriate for the environment in which it is placed.

“If private art suggests an intimate exchange, public art gathers a congregation.  While I have observed that all art is to some degree public, pubic art merits its name in virtue of the fact that the creation of a public is its point of departure.  Public art presupposes the public sphere and produces a public in relation to that concept.  Unlike popular or mass art, it does not assume a preexistent generic audience to be entertained or instructed but sets out to forge a specific public by means of an aesthetic interaction.” (Hein, pg. 49)

Continue reading “Public Art and Personal Transformation by Jessica Bowman”

My Turn: A Femifesto by Marcia Mount Shoop

It’s coming up on a year now that pretty much everything changed in my family’s life. My over twenty years of married life, up until last year around this time, our lives had been built around my husband’s job. John’s work as a coach in the NFL and Division I collegiate football had moved us all over the country—coast to coast and in between.

MMS Headshot 2015This time last year our move was for me to take a job. No more football. And a move not for football meant massive shifts in the daily life of our family.

I cannot count the number of times since I took this new job that people have said to me, “Finally, it’s your turn!” Continue reading “My Turn: A Femifesto by Marcia Mount Shoop”