Child abuse does not have to be physical or sexual. The most widespread forms of child abuse are psychological, and therefore harder to see, acknowledge, and eradicate. As abused children, we unconsciously pass on patterns of abuse visited on us to children, and to others we have power over including students, employees, and even friends and lovers.
The recent visit of a friend who is suffering greatly in a “battle” with her own “demons” reminded me of the important work of Alice Miller. My friend’s “demons” take the form of a persistent self-criticism laced with the feeling that “if only” she did or didn’t do certain things, her world would fall into place. My “demons” generally take a different form, telling me that I am helpless and that there is nothing I can do to ease my suffering.
Such “demons” were not implanted in my friend and me by the devil. They took root in interactions with our own parents, who were not themselves any different from most of the parents of their time and place. Recognizing that our parents were not “bad” people should not blind us to the great harm they did to us. However, when abused children speak of their abuse, the statement that their parents did not intend to harm them usually functions to deflect attention away from child abuse that really did occur. Continue reading “Are Most of Us Abused Children? And is Child Abuse the Root of Evil? by Carol P. Christ”
My body, my love, how terribly I’ve missed you. Do you remember the night we wept? The night I touched you for the first time since . . . I can’t remember when. I asked your forgiveness a hundred times. I had to make up for all the nights I spent ignoring you and asking forgiveness from that ridiculous Man in the sky. I thought you were His. I thought He was angry because I wanted to know your secrets and your secret places. I was ashamed of myself and I was ashamed of you . . . of your sensual motions . . . of your dark spaces . . . where only men, well, only one man is supposed to go. I am forbidden. So they say. If I explore your depths in secret it’s a sin and the Man in the sky will be angry, perhaps for Himself, perhaps for that one man on whose territory I am trespassing. Never speak of such a transgression! Everyone will be shocked, embarrassed, horrified. Well . . . Continue reading “A Love Letter to My Body by Amanda Kieffer”
Each month I am writing an article that discusses one of my Holy Women Icons, which are an array of icons painted with a folk feminist twist. These Holy Women Icons are comprised of biblical women, such as the Shulamite, feminist scholars, such as Mary Daly, artists, dancers, and women from mythology and literature. This month, I’d like to focus on a holy woman whose preaching embodied eschatological imagination and whose dance liberated broken bodies. This holy woman cannot be found within the confines of scripture or met in the flesh. Rather, her preaching and dancing are found within the pages of Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved. If ever there was a holy woman who preached on behalf of all those broken and bound it was Morrison’s stunning character, Baby Suggs, holy.
Eschatological imagination is a communal foretaste of resurrection that does not suppress the social conflicts and injustices of racism, poverty, slavery, and privilege. Through the preaching and dancing of Baby Suggs, enslaved bodies are redeemed and transformed into resurrected bodies. A slave herself, Baby Suggs leads all the black men, women, and children to a clearing each week for worship. After inviting men to dance, children to laugh, and women to cry, she offers up one of the most beautiful sermons on behalf of her enslaved community. Morrison describes the efficacy of Baby Suggs’ message, saying:
She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glory-bound pure. She told them the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it. Continue reading “Painting Baby Suggs by Angela Yarber”
There are some words a mother never wants to hear. For me, those words came one evening as I tucked my 3 year old son, G, in to bed. We had just finished reading God’s Dream, a children’s book by Bishop Desmond Tutu, and were discussing what God might want us to do. The conversation went something like this:
G: “I think God wants me to share.”
Me: “I think so too. God likes sharing.”
G: “ “Yeah, He likes it when I share.”
SCREEEEECH!!! Insert here the sound of the needle suddenly scratching and falling off the record.
He?
Where did G get that? With two theologians as parents, G’s religious world has been carefully and intentionally constructed since birth. Nowhere ever did we refer to God as “He.”
Perhaps it was just a slip of the tongue, a mistaken pronoun, an unintentional lapse. God/dess knows I pride myself on my child’s gender fluidity. I take his vacillating male and female pronouns as a sign of early queer, gender non-conformity. Though, I suspect others might interpret that as part of normal verbal development. You choose.
Spiritual Power is arguably the most dangerous power of all. In the wrong hands, it gives the power to make judgments even about the eternal fate of another person. It needs a sign on it at all times saying, ‘Handle with extreme care.’ The greater the power a person exercises, the more need there is for checks and balances before it is used and accountability after it is used.” – – Bishop Geoffrey Robinson
May 6th, I addressed the issue of abuse of power in the Catholic Church and how we seem to be unraveling any kind of progress made since Vatican II. Since writing that article, the Leadership of the LCWR met with Vatican Officials and expressed their concerns openly. A dialogue occurred and left no resolution, just information that the leadership will discuss with the community at their August meeting. That meeting will reveal their next step in this controversy – concede and follow the conditions and rules sets forth by the CDF or disband and form a new religious community or maybe there will be another option revealed.
I have to ask though – Was this a meaningful meeting or was it meant to pacify the Sisters and their supporters? Will the Vatican change its stance? Certainly, the U. S. Catholic Sisters have not been
pacified, nor have their supporters. For example, there is a “Nuns on the Bus” tour traveling around the United States, prayer services for the Sisters, #nunjustice and #whatthesistersmeantome campaigns on Twitter. Even the Women’s Ordination Conference delivered a petition containing over 57,000 signatures to the Vatican in support of the Sisters. Certainly, the support for the sisters and their mission is not dwindling, but growing stronger every day.
As for the Vatican, a change in their position is doubtful, but we can continue to pray. I am, however, very discouraged by a statement attributed to Pope Benedict that indicates a desire to have a smaller more faithful Church of Catholics then a large Church of people who do not adhere to Church Teaching – seeking out a small, strong, holy community.
Obviously, it is my hope that this statement was taken out of context, but I have to be honest and say
Women’s Ordination Conference delivering Petition Picture reprinted from WOC’s page on Facebook
that my hope is filled with doubt. This is not the first time I have heard clergy make this statement. Priests have made this statement in my presence – wanting a more faithful flock and dismissing those that do not adhere to their interpretation of Church teaching. This stance does not bear fruit, but is rather a power play – a play that can be called many things – misogynist, arrogant, non-pastoral, cold-hearted, and frankly un-Christian. It also plays with a person’s spiritual fate and in many cases their soul. The psychological impact of something like this is dangerous for some. Some ordained will go so far as to withhold sacraments or even compromise the person’s status in the Church, including their role in ministry, for the sole purpose of inducing compliance – a tactic that dates to the medieval period.
Like thousands of other mothers, I found myself consumed by Anne-Marie Slaughter’s 13,000 word cover story, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” for the July/August edition of The Atlantic. As a new mom with a Ph.D. and growing career, I have wondered if I can truly “have it all” or if something will eventually have to give in my overloaded schedule. It has been exhausting and near impossible to keep up with my “normal” workload while being a parent and I have constantly been concerned about my daughter getting all she needs from me (and me getting all I need from my daughter!).
I had a long struggle to becoming a mother. After ten years, multiple infertility treatments, many prayers, and even more tears, me and my husband decided to adopt. We’ve been so fortunate to be blessed with our darling daughter, but becoming a mother has been nothing of what I expected. I had fantasized about motherhood, imagined it as my true destiny, a spiritual path, the role God intended me to have. Now that I am a mother, I find myself constantly falling short. The laundry is never done, take out for dinner happens far too often, and some days I forget to pack my daughter’s lunch. I’m late to work, I miss deadlines, I don’t return phone calls or emails, and I wonder if it is possible to get back to being organized and on top of life the way I was before. Continue reading “Having it All or Embracing What We Have? by Gina Messina-Dysert”
This is a moment we all face—the moment when we slay the enemy, only to realize we have slain ourselves and the enemy is still at large.
In Part I of this blog, I analyzed the themes of power and beauty in the film Snow White and the Huntsman in relation to the character of the Queen. In Part II, I would like to continue exploring these themes in light of Snow White’s character and her relationship with the Queen. That Snow White’s power is her beauty is clear. True, it is stated right up front that Snow White is admired throughout her father’s kingdom “as much for defiant spirit as for her beauty.” However, it is her beauty that grants her agency and power, not her free and defiant spirit. The battle scene in the climax of the film illustrates this connection between power and beauty well—as Snow White drives her dagger into Ravenna’s heart she repeats the mantra: “By fairest blood it is done; by fairest blood it is undone.” After Ravenna breathes her last, we see Snow White looking into the mirror on the wall, the victor, the fairest. Her beauty has allowed her to ascend to power. Her beauty has allowed her to defeat Ravenna. We are left wondering—who has won exactly? Continue reading “A Tale of Power and Beauty, Part II: Snow White by Amanda Kieffer”
My relationship to God changed when I accused “Him” of everything I thought “He” had done or let be done to women—from allowing us to be beaten and raped and sold into slavery, to not sending us female prophets and saviors, to allowing “Himself” to be portrayed as a “man of war.”
In the silence that followed my outpouring of anger, I heard a still small voice within me say: In God is a woman like yourself. She too has been silenced and had her history stolen from her. Until that moment God had been an “Other” to me. “He” sometimes appeared as a dominating and judgmental Other, and at other times as a loving and supportive Other, but “He” was always an “Other.” I as a woman in my female mind-body definitely was not in “His” image.
After I expressed my anger to God, God transformed from an Other into what Whitehead once described as “a fellow [or should I say female] sufferer who understands.” Although I had already been searching for a “God in my image” or “in whose image I could be,” I had yet to find Her. In the quiet after the storm, I came to believe that I would. Continue reading “WHY DON’T FEMINISTS EXPRESS ANGER AT GOD? by Carol P. Christ”
Neil Gilman in his book Sacred Fragmentswrites, “Since our faculty of reason is G-d-given, since it is the quality that distinguishes us from the rest of creation, and since all human beings share that same innate faculty, what better way to establish the veracity of a religious tradition than by demonstrating its inherent rationality?” To be fair, Gilman is not the only and definitely not the first to support this position. Many theologians, especially those influenced by various Greek philosophers like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, have said the same thing. In the Roman Catholic tradition, Thomas Aquinas is adamant that rationality is humanity’s imago dei, how we are made in the image of God – what the beginning of Bereshit (Genesis) suggests. Descartes argues, “I think therefore I am.
What le renard teaches le petit prince is that when people tame each other, they spend time together and get to know each other. It’s not power-over, but power-with. We become important to each other…. The world is made more sacred. That’s what we pagans and good, honorable people in the other religions who talk to each other without preaching are doing.
In Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the little prince takes advantage of the migration of wild birds to leave his home, the tiny Asteroid B 612, because he running away from a vain and fickle rose. After he arrives on earth, he sees a whole garden of roses, and it breaks his heart because he thought his rose was unique in all the world. When he returns to the desert where he originally landed, he meets le renard, a very wise fox. The fox tells the prince that they should “tame” each other. “Apprivoise-moi,” he says, “tame me. Let us create ties so that we know each other.”[i]Continue reading “Rien n’est parfait by Barbara Ardinger”
Child abuse does not have to be physical or sexual. The most widespread forms of child abuse are psychological, and therefore harder to see, acknowledge, and eradicate. As abused children, we unconsciously pass on patterns of abuse visited on us to children, and to others we have power over including students, employees, and even friends and lovers.
Feminism and Religion 