Feminism and Religion

Everyday Inanna by Molly

The spirit of adventure
runs through my veins
with the rich color
of crushed raspberry

May it always run so free
may it be blessed
and may I be reminded
of the courage and love
shown in small, wild adventures…

via Earthprayer

A friend once laughed to hear me describe picking wild raspberries as a “holy task,” but it is. A task earthy, embodied, mundane, and miraculous at once. Each year, I sweat and struggle, am scratched and stung, but I return home once again with my bounty.

Several years ago I wrote about my “Inanna’s descent” as I picked wild raspberries with my children:

As I returned, red-faced, sweating, and after having yelled much more than I should and having said several things I instantly regretted, I was reminded of something that I manage to forget every year: one definition of insanity is picking wild berries with a toddler. In fact, the closest I ever came to spanking one of my kids was during one of these idyllic romps through the brambles when my second son was three. While still involving some suffering, this ramble was easier since I had a nine and a half year old as well as the toddler. This time, my oldest son took my toddler daughter back inside and gave her a bath and put her in new clothes while I was still outside crawling under the deck in an effort to retrieve the shoes and the tiny antique ceramic bluebird that my girl tossed over the railing and into the thorns “for mama.”

While under the deck, I successfully fished out the shoes (could not find the tiny bird) and I found one more small handful of raspberries. Since the kids were all safely indoors, I took my sweaty and scratched up and irritable self and ran down to my sacred sanctuary in the woods. I was thinking about how I was hot, tired, sweaty, sore, scratched, bloody, worn, and stained from what “should” have been a simple, fun little outing with my children and the above prayer came to my lips. I felt inspired by the idea that parenting involves uncountable numbers of small, wild adventures. I was no longer “just” a mom trying to find raspberries with her kids, I was a raspberry warrior. I braved brambles, swallowed irritations, battled bugs, sweated, swore, argued, struggled, crawled into scary spaces and over rough terrain, lost possessions and let go of the need to find them, and served as a rescuer of others. I gave my blood and body over to the task.

Like Inanna, I faced thorny gates and descended into darkness, crawled on my knees, and gave up things that I cherished, and in the process discovering things about myself, and then returned with a renewed sense of purpose and an awareness of my own strengths.

Now this year, I set out to make homemade marshmallow fondant icing for our daughter’s fifth birthday party. My January 2016 030 goal: to make little fondant pandas for her birthday cake. I began with my two pounds of powdered sugar, my melted marshmallows, and my all-natural $12 jar of black food pigment. As I kneaded and kneaded the stiff and difficult dough, my journey became more arduous. I ended up yelling at my lovely children who were leaning over my shoulders to watch the adventure unfold. I said, “just get out of the kitchen!” to the birthday girl herself and I hollered for my now 12 year old to come peel the one year old away from my legs as he attempted to scale my body and reach my arms while my hands were covered with black-icing cement. I ranted and raved briefly about how this is an example of my own life-long tendency to overdo and overperform. Making these pandas wasn’t necessary. I do it to myself. Why do this to myself, I lamented over and over. What is the point? What am I teaching my kids—the cost of having fun and doing something nice and neat for each other is yelling and feel strained and tense? What didn’t I just buy lard-frosting, I lamented (meaning slimy hydrogenated oil frosting from the store). Why aren’t we eating Chicken McNuggets and a cake from Wal-Mart right now? Wouldn’t that be better than yelling at my kids and forcing myself to spend hours kneading panda dough? Shouldn’t we just eat frozen taquitos and watch TV all day and never, ever invite anyone to come to a birthday party ever again?

Then, I fell into a rhythm with the fondant. The sugar started to incorporate. The black started to knead in. I could see it coming together. This is a Hero’s Journey, I thought, this is an Inanna’s Descent. I heard the call to adventure, or fondant, as it were, and I answered. I set forth with my tools and my optimism. I was challenged on my journey. I came face to face with my own shadows. My fingernails became stained with effort. I cast away expectations and judgments. And, then I started to emerge, coming back from my trek, bearing my prize, carrying my treasure, offering my sweet elixir to my people. When I realized it was actually going to work, I started to feel a sense of exhilaration and glee. It is empowering to make your own dang fondant. I called out to my husband with a slightly manic bark of laughter, this is another one of those small adventures! Parenting involves hero’s journeys and Inanna’s Descents every day. What if I’d given up when the fondant got tough? Doesn’t that teach my kids to quit, to not bother, to not learn, experiment, do, and try? I thought about giving birth to my children—how the going gets difficult, how you feel like giving up, and then you emerge, tender and strong, a new human in your arms. I did that! I can do anything! My parenting is stronger, richer, and deeper from knowing that I can face difficult tasks and do them anyway, from knowing that I can draw upon my own strength, my own body wisdom, my own power, and succeed. I am a better person, a better mother, for having hit my own limit and then, incredibly, realized I could go beyond it, that I actually still had the will and courage left in me to do it. Those pandas, while less earth-shaking and life-changing than giving birth to children, were birthed from my own love and effort into my black-icing hands, and my willingness to do it myself, for the ones I love.

January 2016 036

I’ve said before that I’d rather be the mom that does cool and fun stuff with her kids and sometimes yells while doing it than a mom who doesn’t yell, but who doesn’t do cool stuff because she’s afraid she might yell or worse yet, because she doesn’t have any fun ideas. (Of course, an awesomer option, would be to be the mom who does cool stuff and also doesn’t yell, but I’m not holding my breath on that one!) After I constructed the first tiny panda and seeing how cute it was and how excited my daughter was about her cake, I felt such a sense of thrill and triumph. I thought that if I hadn’t decided to do it and make it easier on myself, sure, I wouldn’t have yelled, but I also wouldn’t have felt the empowering sense of having done exactly what I imagined doing. When you do hard things and encounter shadows and keep going and come out the other side, you are strengthened. You learn something about yourself. You realize your own capacities and power. If you are unwilling to embark, you stay safer, and maybe even are a nicer person, but you do not experience the overwhelming satisfaction of accomplishment. The pairing—the difficulty with the triumph—is what makes the journey worth it. This is it, I told my husband, this is The Return. I have returned to my people and I come bearing bears. It feels good to be home.

January 2016 055 — Each child at her party made a panda to add to the cake.

Molly has been “gathering the women” to circle, sing, celebrate, and share since 2008. She plans and facilitates women’s circles, seasonal retreats and rituals, mother-daughter circles, family ceremonies, and red tent circles in rural Missouri and teaches online courses in Red Tent facilitation and Practical Priestessing. She is a priestess who holds MSW and M.Div degrees and recently finished her dissertation about contemporary priestessing in the U.S. Molly and her husband Mark co-create original goddess sculptures, ceremony kits, and jewelry at Brigid’s Grove. Molly is the author of Womanrunes, Earthprayer, and The Red Tent Resource Kit. She writes about thealogy, nature, practical priestessing, and the goddess at her Woodspriestess blog.

Pope Francis’ “The Joy of Love” Falls Short by Gina Messina

Gina Messina-Dysert profile It seems that Pope Francis has finally read Margaret Farley’s Just Love; and while he is taking steps in a positive direction, he still needs to spend time processing Farley’s words. With his new statement, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), Francis has called for us to begin to change our attitudes towards “the other” but is still unwilling to change the man made rules of the Vatican. He refuses to acknowledge that LGBTQ relationships are in fact just and maintains the idea of complementarity rejecting women’s roles and capabilities outside of the home. Continue reading “Pope Francis’ “The Joy of Love” Falls Short by Gina Messina”

An Illegitimate Child in Mecklenburg, 1850 by Carol P. Christ

I am Carol Patrice Christ, born in Pasadena, California, daughter of Janet Claire Bergman, born in El Paso, Texas in 1919, daughter of Lena Marie Searing, born in Lyons, Michigan in 1891, daughter of Dora Sophia Bahlke, born in Lyons, Michigan in 1858, daughter of Maria Sophia Catherina Hundt, born in Parum, Mecklenburg in 1827, daughter of Catherina Sophia Elisabeth Schoppenhauer, born in Pogress, Mecklenburg in 1798, daughter of Anna Sophia Seehasse, born in Zulow, Mecklenburg in 1756 in the clan of Tara. I come from a long line of women, known and unknown, stretching back to Africa.

In our ritual on the Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete this May, I will have two new names to add to my mother line. The name Sophia was passed down through the maternal line for at least four generations. I am sorry it was not handed down to my grandmother, my mother, and me.

When I left for Germany a little over a month ago, I knew that Dora Sophia Bahlke was the mother of my grandmother Lena Marie Searing and that Dora Sophia’s parents were Anton Bahlke and Maria Hundt, immigrants from the small towns of Parum and Dummerhutte, in Mecklenburg, Germany. I did not have their parents’ correct names, and I had very little information about their lives in Germany. I have now put some flesh on the bones. Continue reading “An Illegitimate Child in Mecklenburg, 1850 by Carol P. Christ”

Pesach, Toilets, and Clean, Local Water: Seemingly Mundane Yet Necessary Components of an Embodied Liberation by Ivy Helman

Despite all of the ways Western society has separated the spiritual pursuit from the material and deemed spirituality superior to physicality, the religious holiday of Pesach doesn’t. In fact, it is the physical liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt that starts them on their path toward the covenant and an even deeper spiritual connection to the divine. The Exodus story overflows with images, tales and situations in which: bodies are not ignored; nourishment, comfort and care is addressed spiritually as well as physically and the divine’s spiritual gift, so to speak, to the Israelites is not some other-worldly paradise but a this-worldly land flowing with milk and honey.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the story is perfect: it is replete with war, murder, militarism, forms of colonialism and other manifestations of patriarchal violence. Patriarchal influences encourage androcentric tellings of events and sexism as well. Three examples are the all-male priesthood, the tenth plague “death of the first-born” (of course the only first born that counts are boy children), and the over-the-top covenantal concern about women as menstruators, adulterers, untrustworthy and so on. These aspects are important to acknowledge and critique, but we cannot stop there. We must cherish the story for its insights as well. Continue reading “Pesach, Toilets, and Clean, Local Water: Seemingly Mundane Yet Necessary Components of an Embodied Liberation by Ivy Helman”

Drawing Pele, Retreating to Hawai’i by Angela Yarber

angela I knew I’d paint her from the moment we discovered that we would spend three months of our Year of Volunteer Travel Discernment in Hawai’i. Little did I know how Pele would turn our world inside out, destroying what needed obliteration and recreating new life that we never could have imagined. Pele is the Hawai’ian Volcano Goddess who governs fire, lightening, volcanoes, and the flow of lava. According to legend, she lives in the Halema’uma’u crater of Kilauea on the Big Island.

For over a year, I’d corresponded with a retreat center on the Big Island for my wife and I to be Scholars in Residence, while I also taught yoga and my wife worked on the organic farm. We were beyond excited and arrived in Hilo this January with open hearts and minds, eager to begin our work. Pele had other plans for us. The retreat center where we were planning to work turned out to be a complete disaster: dengue fever, mosquitoes biting my child within five minutes inside our living quarters, proprietors clearly on drugs. We’ve roughed it with no running water in the middle of the woods for months at time, but this was squalor. My wife and I took one look at each other and knew that there was no way we were keeping our child in this environment. Continue reading “Drawing Pele, Retreating to Hawai’i by Angela Yarber”

Islamic Feminism and Heterosexual Dogma by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

12065675_170600583286234_3734458453482361154_n — Santa Niña Marica

Reza Aslan says in his book “No God But God” that religions are myths. He explains that “religion” is a set of stories fluctuating between truth and fantasy that serve to explain and answer questions about human fate. Taking this idea as base, I think “religion” is a historical product that enables other mythical stories and must be addressed critically about its truth and meanings.

Patriarchal religious discourses, currently mainstream, have a common element that often is left outside the reading of equality and is part of the myth: Heterosexual belief.

Feminisms in Religions aim at challenging patriarchal readings. However, questioning the nature of God is not enough if we don´t challenge heterosexual belief that may or may not include the idea of a God Father/Male. In Islam, Allah has no sex or gender, is not masculine nor feminine. However, the heterosexual belief exists in the Islamic religious narrative. Continue reading “Islamic Feminism and Heterosexual Dogma by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

Caroline Schelling on Birth & Death by Stuart Dean

Caroline Schelling

Of the many letters Caroline wrote to her lifelong friend Luise, one of the most intense (the 57th Letter) dates from seven years after the 4th Letter discussed in my last post. By then both were married; only a few months earlier Caroline had given birth to her first child (Auguste); though Luise already had children, Caroline knew that one of them was terminally ill. In the first paragraph Caroline describes how difficult Auguste’s birth was for her; in the second she consoles Luise over the impending death of her child. She thus subtly parallels birth with death and hence the labor for one with mourning over the other.

Fifteen years later, only a few months after the death of Auguste–the last of her four children to die–Caroline’s generally positive disposition evidenced in the 4th Letter and her experience in grappling with birth and death evidenced in the 57th Letter were being put to the test. Though she was holding up well, Friedrich Schelling (Friedrich), the man who was to be her third husband, seems to have been suicidal from feeling guilty (rightly or wrongly) for having failed to do enough to cure whatever illness killed Auguste. Caroline wrote frequently and urgently to him, offering advice and comfort. In one of those letters (274d) she characterizes the challenge of overcoming grief as a formula to be solved: “(death/pain) x (love/bliss) = (life/peace).” She terms this one of her ‘primal axioms’ (the “Ursatz”), although she seems playfully to concede to Friedrich that he or perhaps someone else shares responsibility for it. Continue reading “Caroline Schelling on Birth & Death by Stuart Dean”

STEM and Sexism: Pedagogical Responses to “Chilly Climates” by Sara Frykenberg

Another way to put this: there is nothing inherently competitive about the study of mathematics. The classroom is competitive in order to create a particular kind of graduate—one who engages in a particular [dominant] culture. Liberative pedagogy challenges the ways that classrooms are run in order to challenge the dominant culture.

Sara Frykenberg Recently, a friend of mine sent me a journal article entitled, “Are STEM Syllabi Gendered? A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis,” and a response to the research from a rather conservative publication, the National Review: “Female Researcher: We Must Make STEM Courses ‘Less Competitive’ to be more ‘Inclusive’ of Women.” Not a feminist or feminist scholar himself, his question to me was whether or not the author of the original research article, Laura Parson, was sexist and/or racist for suggesting that course syllabi needed to be, or rather sound, less “difficult,” less competitive, etc.

For those of you who don’t know, STEM educations refers to education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics; and within the United States, women are significantly underrepresented within these fields. I share these articles and my friend’s question in this blog because I believe there is a common misconception that feminist and other liberative educators are arguing that we need to make courses “easier” or “less intimidating” in order to create inclusion. The implication here, that somehow women and/or people of color need an easier course, can be understood as a sexist and racist assertion of inferiority. However, this common critique misses its own investment in kyriarchal codes. Conflating masculinist pedagogical practices with academic rigor, this circular logic redirects the responsibility for inclusion onto the oppressed themselves as though the supposedly “intimidated minority,” is deficient, not the exclusivist language and practices that reinscribe power for particular people and particular ways of being. Continue reading “STEM and Sexism: Pedagogical Responses to “Chilly Climates” by Sara Frykenberg”

Finding Bavarian Ancestors by Carol P. Christ

Bavarian first communion — First communion, Bavaria 1800s

In the past month I have been on a spiritual journey seeking my German ancestors. Six of my 2x great-grandparents were born in Germany, which means I am 37 ½ percent German. Growing up, I was subjected to a form of patriarchal family disciple I came to identify as German, but I was told very little, positive or negative, about my German heritage.

Though I had been researching my family tree for five years when I began my trip to Germany, I had no clue about where in Bavaria the Thomas Christ-Anna Maria Hemmerlein branch of my family originated. While making final preparations before the trip, I learned that German church records are no longer kept in individual churches, but are grouped together in church archives. Some areas also have family records in state archives. Contrary to popular belief, the majority of German records were not destroyed in the two World Wars. However, many of the German records are not online. Continue reading “Finding Bavarian Ancestors by Carol P. Christ”

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockleshells
And pretty maids all in a row.

From her lips to our ears.

Who wrote that poem? I’ve heard that some so-called scholars think it’s about a queen of England named Mary Tudor (slandered as “Bloody Mary” because she stuck to her religion after her father declared himself head of his own bloody church) or Mary Queen of Scots (slandered for other reasons, and then murdered). Well, much as I feel sorry for those two queens, the poem’s about me, and I don’t grow any little garden. I am a gentlewoman farmer. The fellow who wrote that silly poem probably works for one of those corporations that want to buy my land and plant their engineered crops on it and create monocultures that murder the land. Continue reading “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary by Barbara Ardinger”