Feminism and Religion

Broken Mirrors, Broken Bodies, and Sophia Wisdom by Angela Yarber

angela Freshly cleansed, I stood naked in front of a foggy full-length mirror. I had just taken my first hot, indoor shower in nearly two months. I’ve been volunteering in a National Forest all summer with my wife and toddler; it is stunningly beautiful. While there is a lake for bathing, we have no access to running water and there are certainly no mirrors hanging from the birch trees. Sure, I can catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror of my car, but this was the first time I saw all of me—sun-kissed and mosquito-bitten—in a while. This may not seem like a big deal, and I didn’t think it would be, but the absence of mirrors has had a profoundly holy impact on me this summer.

As the dirt of two months swirled down the drain and I savored every drop of warm water pouring endlessly over my aching body, I thought about the mirror that awaited me. I thought about how it has been almost 15 years since I’ve intentionally starved myself or shoved my finger down my throat to induce calorie-purging vomiting. I thought about how I weigh thirty pounds more than I did during the nadir of my eating disorder. I thought about how much grace I’ve offered my body over these years. The grace to grow. The grace to age. The grace to gain. The grace to work hard. The grace to accept.

I thought about the tremendous privilege my body carries: the privilege of my whiteness, the privilege of being temporarily able-bodied, thin privilege. I thought about how my white body has never feared for her life when pulled over for a traffic violation. I thought about how my body has access to do whatever she wants—climb stairs into inaccessible buildings, or mountains to stunning vistas. I thought about how I can find clothing in my size in virtually any store, how no one offers me health advice when ordering at a restaurant, or diminishes my concerns at the doctor’s office based on my size. I thought about racism, ableism, and fatphobia. I thought about what it means to be a queer femme body. Continue reading “Broken Mirrors, Broken Bodies, and Sophia Wisdom by Angela Yarber”

Drawing the Four Together: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Immigration.

Last Sunday, the Czech Republic’s Narodní Divadlo (National Theater) had its opening celebrations. The National Theater is a big thing here sort of like America’s Hollywood where actors, actresses and directors are household names. The opening celebration is even broadcast on television by Česká Televize (Czech TV, the national television company).

This year, Narodní Divadlo and Česká Televize have decided to dedicate all of the profits of the day’s long events to one organization: Organizace pro Pomoc Uprchlíkům (Organization for Aid to Refugees). It is the longest running and the most well-known NGO in the Czech Republic helping refugees, immigrants and asylum seekers. In addition, it also happens to be where my partner is a lawyer and Head of the Legal Department. So I have a personal connection.

As the High Holy Days begin tomorrow evening, I’ve been thinking a lot about their connection to immigration and Sukkot. My reflection starts with the fact that we too were once refugees. We too were once persecuted and forced into slavery. We too escaped and wandered in a foreign land even though sometimes we yearned for the comfort of the familiar. The sukkah is supposed to remind us of this history. At the same time, we have also been unwelcomed by many, been seen as suspicious and have even been expelled from the many lands we once called home. We have been murdered in mass numbers too many times to count. All of this is to say, that we know the situation of the down-and-out, because we have been there. Likewise, we have in many places overcome it and have a mission to help others in similar situations.

Continue reading “Drawing the Four Together: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Immigration.”

Rosh Hashanah and the Goddess by Joyce Zonana

Joyce Zonana head shot When I was growing up in the 1950s in my Egyptian Jewish immigrant home, each of the High Holidays was imbued with sacredness, thanks largely to my mother’s commitment to a creating a harmonious and memorable gathering of family and friends. Around a long table, covered with an embroidered white cloth and set with sparkling silver and delicately fluted china, she served at each season the festive meal that made manifest for us the presence of the Divine.

My father, an Orthodox man who prayed each morning and went regularly to the local Sephardic synagogue in Brooklyn, privately followed the tenets of his faith. But it was my mother, unconsciously devout, who brought the public rituals of our religion to life. As a child, I longed to be at prayer with my father and was envious of the men and boys who studied and recited the sonorous ancient Hebrew; I did not want to be confined to polishing the silver and setting the table. But today, as an adult, I am grateful for the silent teachings bequeathed to me by my mother. Continue reading “Rosh Hashanah and the Goddess by Joyce Zonana”

Embracing Fierceness by Mary Sharratt

Maenad dancing with snake, ancient Greece, ca 450 BCE

This post is in part inspired by Donna Henes’s brilliant post, I am Mad. Too often as spiritual women, we are told we have to be nice all the time. Accomodating. Compromise our boundaries and principles.

Mainstream religions tell us we must forgive those who mistreat us. Too many women in very abusive situations literally turn the other cheek–to their extreme detriment. As Sherrie Campbell points out in her essay The 5 Faults of Forgiveness, the obligation of forgiveness oppresses survivors of abuse because it makes it all about the perpetrator and not about the healing, dignity, or boundaries of the survivor.

In my own Catholic upbringing I learned to swallow my anger and rage until it erupted in depression and burning bladder infections. My background did not teach me to skillfully dance with anger and it’s been a difficult learning curve for me. But I learned the hard way that owning my anger was crucial if I wanted to stand in my power and speak my truth.

Continue reading “Embracing Fierceness by Mary Sharratt”

Mysteries by Carol P. Christ

Savor an excerpt from A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess:

Finding ourselves together in Crete after attending a conference, four friends and I set out to visit the caves of Eilitheia in Amnissos and Agia Paraskevi in Skoteino. As we drove along the coast toward Amnissos, I recalled that caves have been understood as sacred from the dawn of religion. When people knew the earth as their mother, the cave, the opening in the earth was her vagina and womb, the passageway to her deepest mysteries, the secrets of birth and rebirth.

The Eilitheia Cave is in the hills above the ancient port of Amnissos. We arrived in the morning, accompanied by the guard who came with us to unlock the gate. The cave has one large, long room, with a wide mouth, and a low ceiling. There is a belly stone near the entrance that women rubbed to insure conception. Near the center of the cave, in shadowy darkness, are two stalagmites, one squat and the other tall, surrounded by the remains of ancient walls that enclosed the sacred space. The guard told us that they were worshipped as the Mother, seated, and the Daughter, standing. Their heads were chopped off with the blow of an ax. In the back of the cave there are small pools of water, used for healing

As our eyes adjusted to the darkness, we felt that we too had entered into the womb of the Mother. Naomi sat by the Daughter stalagmite, while I leaned against the Mother. We chanted to Her and sang, aware of the bemused but accepting presence of the guard, who retreated to the entrance of the cave. As we turned to leave, Mara crouched at the cave’s entrance to take a picture, her short, full body the image of the Mother Goddess, her wispy blonde hair capturing the light, crowning her like a halo. Slowly, we emerged from the cool depths, the place of ancient mysteries, into the light and warmth of the midday sun.

We visited the Skoteino Cave late in the day, after lunch and a refreshing swim in the sea. To reach the cave, we ascended into the mountains, passed through the small village of Skoteino, and turned right down a dirt road. Above the cave is a small church dedicated to Agia Paraskevi, the patron saint of eyesight. I had been to the cave eleven years earlier with my husband, Roger, on the saint’s name day, July 26th. That day the locals celebrated first in the church, where they decorated the icon of Agia Paraskevi with flowers and lit candles, and then in the cave, where they roasted lamb, sang, and danced. It is likely that this cave has a continuity of worship from ancient times to the present day.

The first time I visited the cave of Skoteino, which means dark, I thought it was a single, huge, high-ceilinged, cathedral-like room, adorned with stalagmites and stalactites. In the meantime, I had learned that beyond the first room, there are three more levels, the final one, totally dark. Mardy offered to lead the way. Two young German men, emerging from the depths, told us the way down was not easy, as there was no clear path.

Marie, unsure of her footing, stayed near the entrance. Naomi, afraid of the unknown, perched on a rock at the back of the first room holding her candle. Mara, Mardy, and I braved the descent. We did not know what awaited us in the dark. With candles and small flashlights, we climbed and slid, sensing a way down. The rocks were cool, damp in some places, but not slippery. There were no sharp edges because the rocks had been smoothed by water. Encouraging each other we reached a place where it looked like the next descent would be though a hole or narrow opening. We still had faint light from the mouth of the cave. The final passageway was unknown, frightening, inviting. We paused, eyes fixed on the dark opening. Mardy broke the silence saying that we should turn back because the sun was about to set.

I made the ascent more rapidly than the others, my body urging me on until I reached the first level. As I walked slowly up the path that meandered through the first large room, I could see two women before me with candles, and two behind me coming up from the depths. I could almost see Persephone coming up from the underworld, torch in hand. Surely it was in a place like this that the Eleusinian Mysteries began.

A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess is available in kindle and paperback. Carol P. Christ leads the life-transforming Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete. Her books include: Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology, written with Judith Plaskow and She Who Changes and and Rebirth of the Goddess; also with Judith Plaskow, the widely-used anthologies Womanspirit Rising and Weaving the Visions.

Updated on December 26, 2016.

Knossos: The Truly True Story by Barbara Ardinger

Barbara Ardinger (Note: this story was inspired by a blog written by Carol P. Christ. But she’s not responsible for the nonsense I write.)

Once upon a time there was a woman named Carol who lived in the largest house on the Island of Crete and had the largest flower garden and the largest herd of cattle. Because of her riches, not to mention her common sense, she had been elected chief of the Council of Mothers, the government of the island. The Council had searched and searched for a proper title for their leader and finally, reluctantly, decided that Queen was as good as anything else…as long as everyone remained politically correct and understood that Queen was merely a handy title. Queen Carol had a husband named Minos who tried and tried to assume the title of King, but no one ever paid any attention to his pretensions. Because he had nothing else to do, he spent most of his time lounging in the front parlor and reading the Knossos Times-Myth-Dispatch.

“Look here,” he said one day, waving the newspaper at his wife. “The Greeks are ramping up for a war over in Troy. They’re calling for kings and armies to join them.”

Carol laid her feather duster aside for a minute. “Well, if you really want to,” she said, “you can go. It’ll be better for you than sitting around here all the time and complaining that you’re bored. But you’d better not come back here and set yourself up as a warrior king! None of those huge statues like they’ve built in Egypt. None of those huge temples with carvings of conquering armies on them, either. We mothers won’t stand for it!”

Continue reading “Knossos: The Truly True Story by Barbara Ardinger”

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right by John Erickson

Kim Davis does need a lot of things but saying of suggesting that she needs a haircut, a makeover, or even to lose weight, makes you and those that continue to repeat it no better than she is; to state such statements doesn’t purport the ideal that #LoveWins, which took over social media just mere months ago, but changes the whole narrative to symbolize that sexism and hate are more important than love and equality.

Kim Davis, the defiant county clerk, is currently sitting in isolation in a jail cell after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in Rowan County, Kentucky, even after she was ordered by a judge to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage or be held in contempt of court.

Everywhere I turn on both social media or in person people are talking about Ms. Davis, her actions, personal history and for some weird reason her hair and looks. I’m all for individuals taking a virulent stand against an individual who chooses to not uphold the law of the land as well as continually acting in an unjust discriminatory way but bringing her looks or anything else about her physical appearance into the narrative is not only just plain wrong it is sexism in its worst form. Continue reading “Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right by John Erickson”

Life’s a Garden by Jassy Watson

Gardening is one of my greatest loves. The rhythm of the earth revealed in this little piece of Eden in sunny Queensland Australia, pulses in the cells of my being. Through close observation of the natural cycle of all life in my garden and atuning into the greater cosmological ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes I have come to know intimately not only this ‘outer’ space, but the inner as well.

Imagery and metaphor are effective tools for personal growth and transformation and the metaphor of gardening is a powerful way of looking at and experiencing the process of inner growth. I only need to look to my garden to see what needs tending, weeding, pruning, tilling, feeding, harvesting and composting in my life. Continue reading “Life’s a Garden by Jassy Watson”

Venus and Mary by Natalie Weaver

Natalie Weaver edited Of the many things I have read recently, one thing stands out in my mind in high relief. It is the opening of Lucretius’ masterwork on Epicurean philosophy, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Here Lucretius invokes Venus to help him craft this work, identifying her as the governor of all nature and the one through whose light all else comes into being. With her help, Lucretius trusts that he can write his truths with confidence and ability in defiance of dominant philosophical norms.

Lucretius goes on to extol the great wisdom of that ancient Greek, Epicurus, claiming that the philosopher saved humankind from foully groveling upon the ground by liberating people from religious superstition. Superstition, he goes on to say, is the source of true impiety and criminality, made manifest in Lucretius’ example in the sacrifice of child virgins.

Why do people succumb to religious superstition and such horrible deeds, he queries rhetorically. Because of fear of death, terror at the anticipation of penalties in the afterlife, and the desire to avoid tribulations during life. So great is the fear of suffering that it makes people susceptible to religious exploitation and subordinate to the authority of priests, whose power rests exclusively on superstition. Such a ruinous condition can only be countered by the philosophical examination of nature, including all things celestial and terrestrial, spiritual and material. Having prayerfully introduced his case and the reason for his critique, Lucretius proceeds to explore the basic tenets of Epicurean metaphysics and ethics. Continue reading “Venus and Mary by Natalie Weaver”

Why Is Pizza Round? The Black Goddess of Rome by Stuart Dean

The remains of an ancient Roman bread pie from Pompeii, carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE — The remains of an ancient Roman bread pie from Pompeii,
carbonized in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE

The poem Moretum (discussed in my last post) narrates the preparation of a meal that can be characterized in modern English as ‘pizza.’ Round flatbread is baked; to go on it, a cheese spread is mixed. The details of the narration are such as to create a recipe of its ingredients and related cooking instructions.

The most important ingredient, however, is not an ‘ingredient’ as such, but a shape. The bread, the cheese, and the cheese spread are all round. That by itself might not seem remarkable, but the Latin terminology (words from which ‘orbit’ and ‘globe’ derive) is identical to then contemporary astrological terminology. The bread is even scored into quadrants, symbolizing, among other things, the four elements and the quadrants of an astrological observer’s circle.

The ancient audience of Moretum would have recognized in all this the world view of the Italian poet from southern Campania, Parmenides. Though the only poem he is known to have composed is in Greek, the combination of the fact that he likely wrote it while in Italy and that it had over the centuries since its composition become one of the most influential philosophical works of pre-Christian antiquity meant Parmenides had special importance to Romans. It is not surprising Moretum has the same meter and many of the poetic images as are found in the poem of Parmenides. Continue reading “Why Is Pizza Round? The Black Goddess of Rome by Stuart Dean”