Feminism and Religion

As Above, So Below—A Cosmic Tale by Mary Gelfand

It was when I was studying to become a Witch that I first encountered the phrase ‘As Above, So Below,’ which I now know to be a paraphrase of a ninth century Hermetic text from an Arabic source. I liked this phrase from the beginning as it expressed something I believed but had struggled to articulate so elegantly. I believe that there is a sacred connection between our earthy human existence and the grandeur of the cosmos—our very bodies are composed of star dust.

I was delighted to discover a more specific description of that connection in the Journey of the Universe, by cosmologist Brian Swimme & Mary Tucker, founder of the Forum on Religion & Ecology at Yale. They discuss the creation of the universe in terms of natural cycles of expansion and contraction, which they also refer to as ‘attraction,’ or gravity. They write “All of space and time and mass and energy began as a ‘single point’ that was trillions of degrees hot and that instantly rushed apart. (p. 4)” That expansion is on-going, billions of years later.

Hecate’s Moon by Sara Wright

I spent hours
writing
you snaked by
underground roots
entering my story
with your
forked stick
‘witches’ are a
lie that christians
made up
to legitimize
harm done
to our kind
Artists, Writers,
Healers,
Visionaries,
Trees,
(men too)
Women whose
Difference
others defined.
Nature defiled.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Home for the Holidays

This post was originally published on Dec. 16th, 2011

Yesterday I was watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy in which George’s father said to him, “you’re not like us, you’re a surgeon.” “And,” George’s father added, “you don’t like to do the things we like to do.” It is not easy not being like your family and not liking the things they like. When my mother was alive, she was the glue that held us together. Since then, my sheer presence in the lives of my father and my brothers and their families is disruptive. No matter that I try not to make waves, I make them all the same. I do keep my mouth shut about politics and religion and feminism. Even so, the last time I was home for the holidays my father asked me to stay in a hotel because having me in the house made him nervous and uncomfortable. To be fair, how would you feel if your daughter was 6 feet tall and you weren’t, she had a PhD and you didn’t, and even if she didn’t open her mouth at all, you knew that she didn’t agree with your political views or your everyday assumption that men make the final decisions on all important matters? Or if you were my brother who does not have a college education and who feels that women and minorities and gays have taken something from him? Or if you were my Mormon brother who is trying to keep his three daughters on the straight and narrow and not on the path chosen by their aunt? On the last Christmas day I spent at my brother’s house, I did not mention any of the obvious things, but it was hard to hide being astonished by the number of presents and the amount of money spent on them, and I simply could not force myself to watch football. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Home for the Holidays”

Harris Could Not Outrun 2000 Years of Patriarchy by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I made this poster 8 years ago and am devastated to have to dust it off again. The safety pins came from a British idea when Brexit was passed. People would wear the safety pins on their clothes to let anyone feeling vulnerable know that they would be “safe” with them.

The political finger pointing for Harris’ loss is beyond noxious. I have heard all manner of scapegoats; Biden, the Obamas, VP candidate Walz, Harris for saying too much of one thing, not enough of another, the progressives, Liz Cheney and even George Clooney. . . .blah blah blah

How can we make sense of a world where women voted for a misogynistic abuser. Black and brown people voted for a white supremist. Latinos voted for a policy of mass deportations targeting their brethren. Youth voted for a climate denier affecting their future. And so on. Think of all the women who voted for a world where they, their daughters and their granddaughters can be denied basic healthcare. It’s a true-to-life Cinderella scenario whose stepmother cut the toes off her own daughters to please a prince. Or Chinese mothers who would bind their own’s daughter’s feet, thereby crippling them in the service of marriage.

Arianrhod; Postnatal Trauma and the Rejecting of Patriarchy by Kelle BanDea

Mothers and sons. The stories that make up the Four Branches of the Mabinogi, a Welsh medieval collection of Celtic legends, are in large part about mothers and sons. Mostly about their separation. Mabon is stolen from Modron. Rhiannon’s son Pryderi is twice captured. Branwen’s baby is murdered. In Arianrhod’s tale, the Fourth Branch, it is she, the mother, who rejects her son.

Now What by Esther Nelson

Eight years ago (2016), Donald Trump became the 45^th president of the USA. I felt much the same way then as I do now—eight years later—when Trump somehow was re-elected to that office.

Back in 2016, one of my colleagues brought a short essay by Alice Walker (b. 1944) into his classroom a few days after the election. Many of those university students were upset–even dazed—by Trump’s victory. How did it happen? Here’s a link to Walker’s work—a piece that’s just as appropriate today as it was eight years ago.

What Happens When Hate Wins? by Sara Wright

Do the sandhill cranes stop singing?
Do the junipers cease to release their scent?
Do the stars fall into the sea?
Does the white moon weep??

I want to keep writing stories…

The wind still ruffles fine sand in the wash.
Cottontails leap, jumping through twilight.
Scaled quail still peep as they scurry over red ground.
The thrasher gobbles his suet without restraint.
A woodpecker taps at my window.

I want to keep writing stories…

Unknown History Is My Sweet Spot by Michelle Cameron

“I never knew that,” is a comment I often hear from my readers. “Why don’t I know that?”

Finding what I call my “sweet spot” in historical fiction – writing stories of Jewish history that are relatively unknown to my Jewish and non-Jewish readers alike – was a total fluke.

I had completed my first published book – a verse novel about William Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, called In the Shadow of the Globe – and was considering my next project. I thought perhaps I could write about the woman I was named for – my great-aunt Masha, who, with her red hair and fiery personality, seemed like a promising subject to base a novel around. My mother had told me stories of how her family had become wealthy with huge forests in an estate on the Russia-Poland border. Mom spoke wistfully about her, recounting the second-hand tale of the diamonds that used to flash in Masha’s hair and how my grandmother had adored her.

But Mom had passed on and I had only one source to call upon – a genealogy that a distant cousin of mine had compiled of the various branches of my extensive maternal family.

And as I opened the genealogy, I stopped short at the first passage.

The Future of Sorjuanista Studies in the Americas: Challenges and Possibilities by Theresa A. Yugar

I had nearly resolved to leave the matter in silence;
yet although silence explains much by the emphasis of leaving all unexplained, because it is a negative thing, one must name the silence,
so that what it signifies may be understood.
Failing that, silence will say nothing,
for that is its proper function, to say nothing.[i]
La Respuesta/The Answer (al Soldado, or The Soldier)
Sor (Sr.) Juana Inés de la Cruz
(November 12, 1651 – April 18, 1695)

Today, I honor the legacy of mid-17th century Mexican Catholic nun, scholar, and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. She was born in the central valley of Mexico in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, now in modern-day Mexico. She was the daughter of Doña Isabel Ramírez de Santillana and Don Pedro Manuel de Asbaje. They had three daughters: María, Juana, and Josefa. Doña Isabel also had three other children – Antonia, Inés, and Diego – with Diego Ruiz Lozano. Sor Juana Inés was raised with her siblings on their family’s hacienda of Nepantla which was managed by their strong-willed mother Doña Isabel.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Forty Years and Counting: Women and Religion in the Academy

This post was originally published on Oct. 21st, 2011

Carol P. Christ is a founding mother in the study of women and religion, feminist theology, women’s spirituality, and the Goddess movement. She teaches in the Women’s Spirituality program at CIIS and through Ariadne Institute offers Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete. Her books include She Who Changes and Rebirth of the Goddess and the widely used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

The receipt of an invitation to the Fortieth Anniversary Celebration of the Women’s Caucus in the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature this week, takes me back to the summer of 1971. At the first meeting of Women Theologians at Alverno College (which was followed up at Grailville in succeeding years), I proposed that we form a feminist caucus in the field of religion, as had already been done by feminists in several other fields.

Since I was one of the few women at Alverno who had attended the annual meetings in the field of religion, I was delegated to call Harry Buck, then director of the AAR, to ask for space on the program. Harry, who continued to support the work of women in the field through lecture series at Wilson College and the magazine Anima which he founded, offered not only space at the meetings, but a print-out of the names and addresses of all of the members of the AAR who were not obviously male. I invited all of them to come to a feminist meeting at the AAR in Atlanta. It is hard to imagine now, but before 1971, the women who attended the AAR in any given year could probably have been counted on one hand. Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Forty Years and Counting: Women and Religion in the Academy”