Feminism and Religion

3 Taoist Secrets for Embodying your Life

Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy and spiritual tradition that offers a unique perspective on life, existence, and human experience. Where many religious practices aim to transcend and sometimes even punish the body, Taoism cultivates a deep connection with our physical self in ongoing relationship with nature around us.

This resonates with my own experience, in which I see the body as starting point and place of return for everything we do in life. Leaving the body in order to meet spirit or the divine has never made any sense to me.

In this article I’ll highlight a few elements of Taoism as an embodied philosophy, specifically zooming in on principles and practices that promote holistic wellbeing and inner peace.

Cymidei Cymeinfoll by Diane Finkle Perazzo

Carbon and quartz; granite and marble.
Her iron bones were forged in fire.
Her heavy body was carved from stone.

She rose up through black water and rocky soil,
up to the out and around, and born into
the green and growing ground.

As she walked, the ground rumbled and shook.
Rocks rolled and tumbled from the mountains
and Roman roads crumbled where she stepped.

She brought a gift they did not ask for; a vessel
forged in fire from the womb of the earth —
a life-giving cauldron of renewal and birth.

An Ambitious Task: A Queer, Feminist, Decolonial Listening to the Gospel According to Mark by Xochitl Alvizo

Photo by Chris Pinkham. (I recently shaved by head again – I’ll get an updated photo soon!)

I was recently invited to give the Castañeda-Jennings lecture via Zoom at the Chicago Theological Seminary. The lecture was yesterday and it was founded to celebrate the the awarding of the Castañeda-Jennings Scholarships, which go to students whose work helps transform Christian congregations from places of hostility to places of support and empowerment for the LGBTQ community. It really was an honor to get to participate and share through a lecture. And, it was an opportunity to do what I don’t often get to do, which is to be fully theological – to present my critical reflection on Christian praxis in light of the scripture, which is considered the word of God by Christians, and in this case, I was specifically reflecting on the gospel according to Mark.

This lecture is a snapshot of the larger book project on ecclesiology that I am working on – a feminist, queer, anti-racist, decolonial theology of church. So here I’ll share some of the highlights of the talk…

After the Crowning by Sara Wright

Emerald and lime
chartreuse lemon
burgundy
burnt umber
leafy green
breath
transformer
palms and
needles
raining light
magic bean
spirals skyward
star gazing
ferns feather
paths
pearls
at my feet
wild lilies
woodland
valley brook
scarlet
roots
hug
weeping
fruit trees
conversing
underground
pollinated
rose petals
nourish
moist earth
each tear
slips away
bowed
deep
gratitude, a
grieving moment
a thousand
bees hum
as One.
This cycle
ends even
as
another
has begun.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: A Gift Economy: Could It Be Better To Give Than To Receive?

This was originally posted on April 15, 2013

In a gift economy inequalities are balanced out by the cultural practice of gift-giving. If you have more, then you give more, if you have little, you still feel it is better to give than to receive. A person who hoards wealth is not viewed positively.

The worldview of a gift-giving economy is so far from our own that we can barely comprehend it.

In Skoteino, Crete, eighty-seven year old Marika awaits eagerly for the arrival of our group. She does not come empty-handed to join us after we have finished a meal lovingly prepared by Christina. Marika brings a bottle of raki and urges us all to join her in downing a small glass of her homemade moonshine. Often she offers us nuts she has cracked or raisins she has prepared as well . She has almost nothing and lives without many modern conveniences, but she would not consider joining us without bringing a gift.

The Impresa of Great Mystery by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

The Fibonacci series has been called the fingerprint of god. That is because they are a sequence of numbers found ubiquitously in nature. I’ve been thinking up new names for it. It is a progression created by adding each number to its previous number after starting with the number one. It looks like this:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on to infinity.

The Fibonacci Sequence was first described in the 12^th century by Leonardo Pisano Bigollo, an Italian mathematician. His nickname was Fibonacci, which translates to “son of Bonacci.” He has been called the Leonardo of Pisa, the city of his birth. The series is unique. When you take the ratio of any two successive numbers in the series (after the three), the resultant numbers have a pattern. They fall into an increasingly narrow range with the sequence revolving around a ratio called the Golden Mean, the golden ratio, or the golden number. It is 1.618. Below is an example of how the number sequence works:

5 / 3 = 1.666
8 / 5 = 1.600
13 / 8 = 1.625
21 / 13 = 1.615
34 / 21 = 1.619
55 / 34 = 1.617

From the Archives: Writing Through the Body: Betty Smith’s A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN by Joyce Zonana

This was originally posted on April 29, 2017

In her 1975 manifesto, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” French feminist Hélène Cixous urges women to write: “Writing is for you, you are for you; your body is yours, take it. . . . Women must write through their bodies, they must invent the impregnable language that will wreck partitions, classes, and rhetorics, regulations and codes . . .”

“The Laugh of the Medusa” remains a thrilling essay, challenging and inspiring women to “return to the body” and to language. “Woman must write woman,” Cixous insists, “for, with a few rare exceptions there has not yet been any writing that inscribes femininity.”

Why I Wrote Queering the American Dream by Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber

Like most authors, I had grand plans for Queering the American Dream. Heeding the wisdom of the venerable black, queer writer, Pauli Murray—“One person plus one typewriter constitutes a movement”—I committed, not simply to writing and publishing a book, but creating a movement. With my modern-day typewriter (laptop) in hand, I dreamed of readers throwing off the shackles of an ill-suited dream, galvanizing retreats, coaching to help other marginalized creatives queer their own iterations of the so-called American dream.

I tried learning about book marketing and pitching companion essays and creating a launch team and all those things small-time authors without expensive publicists on retainer do. I tried so hard.

Desperately Seeking Persephone by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd, Part Two

In Part One of this review (posted yesterday), we learned how Janet descended into the Underworld, like Inanna and Persephone, after child abuse and rape, and how she began a decades-long journey back to our own world, healed and empowered. To learn more about her return from the Underworld and how she became the shaman and author she is today, I invite you to join the journey in Part Two as we continue to explore “Signposts” that marked her ascent.

Signpost #3. Be aware, be free, be focused, be here, be loved, be strong, be healed.

Janet’s teachers at the Mystery School had brought together shamanic traditions from throughout then world. Among them was Huna, or Hawaiian Adventure Shamanism as practiced by Serge Kahili King. A summary of Huna is shown in a mantra: Be aware, be free, be focused, be here, be loved, be strong, be healed (114) and “focus on the gifts that come to us through adversity” (116).

Desperately Seeking Persephone by Janet Rudolph, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd, Part One

The myths of the descents of the Sumerian Inanna and the Greek Persephone to the underworld have fascinated and inspired women for millennia with their violence and betrayal, leaving behind all you love and that hold you up, and facing your deepest fears, even death. We recognize our own traumas in their struggles and seek guidance as to how to navigate our ascents back to wholeness and well being in their stories.

After her own experience of childhood abuse and stranger rape as a young woman, Janet Rudolph, one of FAR’s co-weavers, also pored over the myths in hopes of finding a helpful account of their journey home. “Once I had tumbled metaphorically, literally and mythically into the thorny quagmire of the underworld, it was devilishly hard to escape. I felt lost. I needed a guide, a role model to find my path outward”(xii). The problem is, Janet says, “The stories of their return are glossed over. There is no detailed story called From the Great Below Back to the Great Above” (15). Until now in Janet’s recently re-published book, Desperately Seeking Persephone.