Mary Magdalen’s Feast Day: Celebrating Goddess Incarnate by Elizabeth Cunningham

I believe the current resurgence of interest in Mary Magdalen does reflect a collective desire for the divine incarnate in a woman’s body. 

July 22nd. In the Village of St Maximin in the South of France, a (real) blackened skull with topped with  gold hair (that looks a bit like a battle helmet) is being lovingly paraded through the streets in celebration of Mary Magdalen’s feast day. Except for this annual airing, the skull resides atop a gold bust of the saint in a glass case in the crypt of the basilica. Just under where her heart would be is a small glass cylinder reputed to contain a shred of tissue from Mary Magdalen’s breast bone, the place where Jesus touched her on Resurrection morning warning her: Noli me tangere. Don’t touch me.  Not yet.

Incarnation is all about touch. Though most of us no longer venerate—or battle over—the relics of saints, there is something touching about our longing for the divine made tangible, vulnerable, human. Continue reading “Mary Magdalen’s Feast Day: Celebrating Goddess Incarnate by Elizabeth Cunningham”

What I Learned (and Found) Dumpster Diving, Part II, by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

“I had known that dumpster diving is subversive….What I hadn’t considered previously is its arguable feminist and biblical precedents.”

 

The following is a continuation of a two-part blog. Read part I for what prompted me to go dumpster diving, what freeganism is, and what three things surprised me the most about dumpstering beyond the sad and shocking reality of tremendous waste. 

My Dumpster Dive Haul

After sorting through several trash bags of edible food in the approximately 10 minutes that we spent at one site in my first ever urban scavenging trip, this is what I ultimately brought home.

 

(Reminder: As explained in part I, I have intentionally photoshopped out the store’s name and the use-by/best by dates).

Continue reading “What I Learned (and Found) Dumpster Diving, Part II, by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

What I Learned (and Found) Dumpster Diving, Part I, by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

“I get that consumers generally prefer to buy produce that looks a certain way, but can the routine act of trashing whole bags of clementines, apples, or tomatoes because of a few imperfections be justified in a world that is full of hungry and malnourished people?”

 

Renowned climate change activist and author Bill McKibben spoke at our graduation earlier this year. Among the charges he gave to all of us in attendance (i.e., not just the graduates) was for us older folks to be willing to bear more of the possible “costs” of political activism. His reasoning was that being a 20-something with an arrest record was not a particularly good thing for young job-seekers today.

I was inspired. I thought to myself, “I have tenure, I work with colleagues who champion prophetic civil disobedience, and my class privilege would allow me to post bail if arrested.”

When chatting with a graduate that afternoon, I told him that I’d like to make good on something we once discussed in class during a session on the ethics of consumption—I’d like to go dumpster diving with him.

Mind you, I don’t fit the stereotypical urban scavenger profile (although middle class dumpster diving is on the rise). I grew up in a gated community, once brought my portable curling iron on a junior high church group camping trip, and today am more bourgeois than Bohemian. So what interest did I have in electively digging through garbage?

Continue reading “What I Learned (and Found) Dumpster Diving, Part I, by Grace Yia-Hei Kao”

Re-creating the World by Elise Edwards

All of us have the same creative power as artists to contribute to the world in our own domains. When we do so, we re-create the world and participate in its ongoing creation.

For years, my friend Lisa Cole Smith has been working with artists and thinking about their important role in the world.  She has been building a community to support artists and other creative people through a Christian church in the Northern Virginia/Washington DC area and at times, I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in that effort.  My conversations with Lisa are always rewarding, whether we are simply catching up as friends, giving each other encouragement for our work, or discussing theological concepts.  Although she works in a church and I work in an academic setting, we have similar pursuits. Continue reading “Re-creating the World by Elise Edwards”

Process Thought: Feminist Friendly Metaphysics by Xochitl Alvizo

To be is necessarily to be in process and engagement with the lure of creative advance (that is, with God). In this sense, God is the poet of the world continually luring the world toward its full be-coming.

“It all goes back to one’s metaphysics.” That is what my TA said in the first theology class I took during my masters program. We were discussing our theological statements in class – a statement that outlines our individual understanding of God, humanity, sin, etc. – presenting them to one another for feedback and discussion.  As we argued  and discussed (“How can you possibly believe that?”) our TA made the case that our theological statements and the varying differences among them were largely determined by our particular metaphysics – that is, they are determined by whatever we hold to be the nature of existence.  That is to say, if science studies the physical world, metaphysics is the result of asking questions about the underlying reality of that physical world – about the nature of the physical world and by extension all of existence. As one can imagine, not all metaphysics are created equal, but all of them are theories with enormous implications. Continue reading “Process Thought: Feminist Friendly Metaphysics by Xochitl Alvizo”

Why Men (and Women) Can’t Have It All by John Erickson

Can women have it all? Possibly. Can men ever have it all? Maybe. Regardless of however we put it, the are ills to every good deed in the world and we need to get back to understanding how and why we use each other in order to fully understand that behind every good man might be a good woman but also behind every good women there might also be a good man.

Growing up, my favorite movie was The Associate staring Whoopi Goldberg as a woman at a Wall Street firm attempting to climb her way up the corporate ladder through hard work and dedication.  Her character Laurel Ayres does all the work and comes up with the ideas that clients eventually invest in, her partner Frank takes all the credit and eventually surpasses her at work by getting the promotion she had been vying for.  In a prodigious scene that I still vividly remember from my childhood, Laurel quits her job and starts an investment firm on her own; betting every cent and piece of property she has on the eventual success of her new business adventure.

In an attempt to break through the proverbial glass ceiling and play with the big boys of Wall Street, Laurel eventually discovers that although she can be (and is) the genius behind many of the great ideas that would save companies millions, she still needs to have her ideas expelled by a man she creates in order to win over clients, which eventually leads her to become successful.  However, while Laurel is reaping in the benefits of having Mr. Cutty, her made up business partner, by her side, she eventually learns that no matter what she does she will always be secondary to her male business partner. Continue reading “Why Men (and Women) Can’t Have It All by John Erickson”

Are Most of Us Abused Children? And is Child Abuse the Root of Evil? by Carol P. Christ

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”

A Love Letter to My Body by Amanda Kieffer

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”

Painting Baby Suggs by Angela Yarber

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”

Imaging God by Tiffany Steinwert

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.

Whether intentional or unintentional, I decided to nip this in the bud once and for all. Continue reading “Imaging God by Tiffany Steinwert”