Feminism and Religion

Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly

“Childbirth is a rite of passage so intense physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, that most other events in a woman’s life pale next to it. In our modern lives, there are few remaining rituals of initiation, few events that challenge a person’s mettle down to the very core. Childbirth remains a primary initiatory rite for a woman.” –Maren Hansen (MotherMysteries)

When I was pregnant with my first baby, I read an article with the theme of “Birth as a Shamanic Experience.” I can no longer find the exact article (online or printed), but I distinctly remember my feeling upon reading it: I was entering into a mystery. Giving birth was big. Bigger than anything I’d ever done before and it went beyond the realm of a purely biological process and into something else. Like shamanic experiences, giving birth is often described as involving a sense of connection to the larger forces of the world as well as being in an altered state of consciousness or even a trance state. While shamanic experiences may involve “journeying” to other realms of reality, giving birth requires the most thoroughly embodied rootedness of being that I’ve ever experienced. It, too, is a journey, but it is a journey into one’s own deepest resources and strongest places. The sensation of being in a totally focused, state of trance and on a soul work mission is intense, defining, and pivotal.

Shamanic journeys may be embarked upon for the purpose of soul retrieval and I can’t help but think that this is the purpose of giving birth as well—the birthing woman travels into herself to bring forth the soul of her child. Continue reading “Birth as a Shamanic Experience by Molly”

God Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Gay Bars and the Growing Divide Between Sexuality and Spirituality by John Erickson

oes God exist within the LGBTQ community anymore or has the community itself abandoned God for all-night raves, dance clubs, alcohol, and hypersexualized and over commoditized fetishized forms of femininity and masculinity? Oftentimes, I find myself answering yes to the above questions. After surviving hate crime after hate crime and endless batches of newly elected conservative politicians hell bent on ignoring medical and social epidemic plaguing the very country they were elected to serve and protect, why would a community, oftentimes linked to sin itself, believe in a holy entity?

My good friend and fellow Feminism and Religion Contributor Marie Cartier’s forthcoming book, Baby You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall argues that American butch-femme bar culture of the mid-20^th Century should be interpreted as a sacred space. Specifically, gay bars served as both communal and spiritual gathering spaces where butch-femme women were able to discover and explore not only their sexuality but also their spirituality. An opus of an academic accomplishment based off of the amount of in-depth interviews she conducted, Professor Cartier explores lived religion in an area that has become all too common within the LGBTQ community: the bar

The Palms, the last local and only lesbian bar to be found in city of West Hollywood, CA is closing its doors and I can’t help but wonder where its patrons or parishioners will now go? Continue reading “God Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: Gay Bars and the Growing Divide Between Sexuality and Spirituality by John Erickson”

Shekhinah by Rabbi Jill Hammer

I invite you to encounter Her as I encountered Her— with mystery, and with surprise.

The Sabbath night is the joy of the Queen with the King, and their uniting… Scholars who know this secret are intimate with their wives only on the Sabbath night.

This is a text from the Zohar, an important kabbalistic work. We all know who the King is—the disembodied yet fatherly entity who creates the world by word— not by sex with a goddess— and who gives the Torah. But who is the Queen? Don’t Jews reject the idea of a divine queen? Didn’t the prophet Jeremiah scold Israelite women for worshipping the Queen of Heaven?

There is a Jewish custom to recite the poem Lecha Dodi “Come, My Beloved”— on Friday night, as they turn to the door of the synagogue to greet the Sabbath. What most Jews don’t know is that Jewish mystics regard the Sabbath as an embodiment of the immanent, feminine face of God. The Sabbath’s entry into the synagogue, and the sexual coupling of lovers on Friday night, are embodiments of the divine union of the masculine face of God and the feminine face— dare we say— of Goddess. Continue reading “Shekhinah by Rabbi Jill Hammer”

Tikvah v’hashamayim (Hope and the Heavens): A Jewish Perspective on Redemption by Ivy Helman.

The Torah is bursting with hopes over-fulfilled. Abraham and Sarah hoped for a child and gave birth to a nation. The Israelites hoped for freedom from slavery and eventually received an entire Promised Land. We understand hope and, in so many ways, we live on it, as hope has sustained us for thousands of years. Today, our hopes inspire our actions and motivate us to work for peace, justice and equality. In Jewish terms, we call this goal or vision of a better world in the here-and-now: redemption.

Yet, redemption does not just appear out of thin air or because we wish it. Redemption and the hope of it requires work and cooperation with the Source of All Life. As Deuteronomy 30:19 says, “I have put before you life and death… [therefore] choose life…” This cooperation could be a simple commitment to tikkun olam, repairing the world (some times translated as social justice). For others, choosing life could mean more observant religious practice. It could also be a combination of the two. In the end, though, I think both hope and redemption require choosing life in some form or another.

Just as how we choose life depends on who we are, how we achieve this redeemed world depends on how we understand G-d’s redemptive power. Some of us think redemption will come through the moshiach (a savior), Continue reading “Tikvah v’hashamayim (Hope and the Heavens): A Jewish Perspective on Redemption by Ivy Helman.”

Painting Miriam by Angela Yarber

We are your subtlest instruments:
no music branches to your breast
that does not sound in us,
no music dies away from you,
that in us lives not,
and even in your absence
your cadence journeys…

Allen Mandelbaum, Chelmaxioms

The path to freedom is often muddy. Water sloshes through your sandals and the soles of your shoes stick, clinging to the past, weighing down the future. No one said dancing in wet sand was easy. But it is very holy. Just ask the brave prophetess who celebrated liberation by dancing on the shores of a reedy sea.

Often relegated to the submissive role of sister, the character of Miriam is typically overshadowed by the triumphs of her younger brother. Like many of her canonical contemporaries, Miriam receives little attention in scripture. Her name is only mentioned twice and the story of her song is left unsung by the writers of Exodus. Yet she is there, her song hidden in the crevices of the canon, her dance demanding that we notice the ritual event of liberation, her courageous voice prophesying, leaving a legacy for all the dancing women who will follow in her intrepid food steps. Continue reading “Painting Miriam by Angela Yarber”

Coming out as a Cosmic Cowgirl by Jassy Watson

For the past two months I have been participating in a teacher training called the Colour of Woman (COW) method, an intensive healing and transformational program of sacred painting and intentional creativity founded by visionary artist, teacher, author, and publisher, Shiloh Sophia McCloud. The course is designed for women who want to infuse their lives and work with the mysterious and ancient powers of the creative principles of the Sacred Feminine; she who is known by many names and forms; She who is the mysterious source of life that births both the feminine and masculine; She who has been honoured and deified by many ancient cultures as the bringer of life, growth, decline, death and re-birth; She who is the wellspring of creativity. Continue reading “Coming out as a Cosmic Cowgirl by Jassy Watson”

Genetic Testing: The Ethical Implications of Expanded Newborn Testing – Who Benefits? (Part One) by Michele Stopera Freyhauf

With Angelina Jolie’s electing to have a double mastectomy because she carried the BRCa Gene, and her mother and aunt died at a very early age of the disease, the issue of genetic testing is in the forefront again. This is a three-part essay explores genetic testing when it comes to newborn testing (part one and part two) and concludes with exploring personal choices, availability, and psychological ramifications of genetic testing.

BabySeq — Picture originally found at http://www.ngsleaders.org/blogs.aspx

After nine months of worrying and diligent pre-natal care, the day to meet your unborn child is here. Labor is long and for hours you lie in the birthing suite riding out contraction after contraction. The moment finally arrives and you discover you have a son; ten fingers, ten toes and seemingly healthylungs by the cry that you hear. He is then quickly taken over to the nurse’s station and a drop of blood from his heel is placed into a machine that in seconds will decode his entire genome. Soon your son’s future will be written in stone; he has a life expectancy of 30.2 years and has a 99% chance of dying from heart failure. In that instance, your son has been labeled as an in-valid and he is now doomed to exist within a lower class of society, one that will prohibit him from pursuing his dreams. Society has discriminated against your new baby boy based solely upon his DNA. A new form of eugenics is born.

This was the opening scene of the 1997 science-fiction movie called “Gattaca.” Besides pushing the bounds of human imagination, science fiction can serve as a warning about a future caused by the abuses of humankind. The opening birth scene in this movie is quickly becoming a potential reality. Now, a person’s entire genome can be decoded and in an instant, a person knows whether he or she will be susceptible to Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, Cancer, or other life threatening conditions. Proponents of genetic sequencing believe that this is the holy grail of medical care and tout phrases like “personalized medical care” and “significantly reduced costs of healthcare.” There is a rapid movement towards this goal through the proposed expansion of newborn screening for eighty-four conditions, most of which are not understood or have no known treatment. Continue reading “Genetic Testing: The Ethical Implications of Expanded Newborn Testing – Who Benefits? (Part One) by Michele Stopera Freyhauf”

Selfish Working Mothers Destroying the Natural Order? by Gina Messina-Dysert

It was nearly twelve years ago when I sat before my then pastor in pre-cana counseling and was told “how nice it is that you are trying to help women by working in a domestic violence shelter, but now that you are going to be married your role is to be a wife and mother. Working outside the home will no longer fit into your life. Your duty is to have children and care for your family.”

Our conversation continued and according to my pastor, God was not concerned with what I had to offer my community, but rather with how many children I could bear and raise as Catholic. In that moment, I was told that my life and my efforts were of little value and that having children was the one thing I could do as a woman that would make my life worthy. How funny – or sad – that in the 21st century, women’s worth continues to be tied to her womb and all other efforts are not valued.

Just this last week Pew Research released a report stating that 4 in 10 households have mothers who are either the main or sole breadwinners for the family. Continue reading “Selfish Working Mothers Destroying the Natural Order? by Gina Messina-Dysert”

Unblocking Abundance: A Ritual by Sara Frykenberg

Rather than release the sadness, heartache and struggle we put into the bowl out into the world, we meditated …to transform what we could of this energy, re-membering the parts of ourselves that had helped to create these blocks and are responsible for transforming them. We took the transformed energy back into ourselves.

As I have written about many times before, I believe that contemporary Western society operates within a largely abusive paradigm. I often think of oppression in terms of an abusive cycle. Theologians like Cater Heyward and Rita Nakashima Brock describe the impact of the theologies that generate such abusiveness, noting how we become smaller to ourselves and smaller to one another. We do not believe that we are enough, nor are the people or the planet around us ‘enough’ to fill the vacuous alienation that substitutes itself for real relational need in an abusive context. Judith Shaw wrote eloquently about the environmental impact of conflating need with greed in her Friday post, “Can We Honor Inanna and Her Gifts?”

Shaw writes, “At first glance we appear to be abundant with things, energy, experiences. But in our mad desire for more and more and always more we neglect the balance of the very earth who provides us with all.” Many people, particularly in industrialized nations, have been taught to fill the need for a sense of abundance, connection and ‘enough-ness’ with more stuff: more things, more money, more food, more land, etc. And yet, ironically, this quest for ‘more’ can also prevent us from experiencing the very abundance we seek. We can create blocks to abundance by trying to fill the vacuum instead of our actual needs: and difficultly, abusive patterns and cycles can prevent us from seeing the difference between the two. Continue reading “Unblocking Abundance: A Ritual by Sara Frykenberg”

Leaving Behind My First Love by Andreea Nica

During these realizations, the words of Sue Monk Kidd permeated my mind, “The truth may set you free, but first it will shatter the safe, sweet way you live.”

When most people inquire who my first love was, I’m reluctant to give an honest answer. At times, I just uttered the first boy’s name that would come to mind. As I matured and developed into a confident young adult, I decided to provide a more honest answer. “My first love was God. Jesus. You know, the Trinity.” I would receive puzzled looks, quizzical faces, and frazzled exits. Given the multitude of embarrassing responses, I began to rephrase my answer in a way that prompted them to further question my response. “I fell in love with God as I grew up in a charismatic, Pentecostal religious community. During my college years I left Pentecostalism, my family unit, and the community.” Responses were drastically different with this answer. Many people desired to know more about my transition and how I found the inner strength to embark on an alternative path. I quickly realized I didn’t have all the answers. Although my B.A. in Psychology aided me in understanding aspects of the psychological implications of my departure from the religious institution and a family that identified as Pentecostal, there was still much to uncover. Continue reading “Leaving Behind My First Love by Andreea Nica”