fear – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: “On Purim and the Value of Courage.”

Author’s Note: This post was first published on 10 March 2013. This year, Purim was on the 2nd of March. This post has updated imagery.

The Jewish Festival of Purim and the book of Esther offer us an opportunity to reflect on the value of courage from a feminist perspective. The online Webster’s Dictionary defines courage as, “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.” In religious discourse, courage is often categorized as a virtue or a moral principle. Aristotle (384BCE – 322BCE), one of the most famous of the virtue ethicists, believed a virtue like courage should be practiced according to the mean or the right amount. Too much courage leaves one rash, possibly too reactionary and hot-headed while too little makes one cowardly and weak, but just the right amount in a given situation leads to moral behavior. Virtuous living leads to happiness, or perhaps is itself happiness, for Aristotle. Yet, as a feminist, I understand the worth of courage differently. To me, the value of courage lies not in individualistic gains nor in personal happiness but in its use toward achieving justice and equality in society.

Witch Power? part 2 by Sara Wright

You can read part 1 here

After being nailed as a witch I separated myself from the word and witch power in general. The word witch had a very dark side and could be used in the same frightening manner as it had been during medieval times to label and to expel any woman who lived on the edge (source of my original sense of unease). Especially one who lived alone in the woods and loved animals like I did.

Why had I been singled out? I was an outsider whose crime was to animate nature. Anything associated with nature was suspect if not ‘evil’.

Feminists beware. If you claim to be a witch – recall that the word is loaded. Personally, I think the label has backfired reducing our overall power as women. Perhaps making us more suspect than we already are.

Emerging from the Underworld: a book review by Eline Kieft

Desperately Seeking Persephone: A Shamanic Journey Through the Underworld by Janet Rudolph weaves together a healing journey from abuse and rape, a deep personal connection with the goddesses Inanna and Persephone, and the ups and downs of a long-term shamanic apprenticeship. These strands could have easily filled three separate books, but Janet masterfully crafts an integrated tapestry of personal and mythical strands. She integrates everyday life experiences, liminal space and the archetypal realms until something new emerges that is more than personal story, more than myth, and more than a description of discovering a shamanic path.

The Patriarchy Strikes Back by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I suppose no one is all that surprised but it is still stunning how quickly certain politicians are rushing to pull back women’s rights. It’s become a race to regulate women’s bodies of with draconian and cruel laws.

Each law is more extreme than the next. In South Carolina it has even been proposed to make abortion a crime subject to the death penalty.

Commentators say the bill isn’t going anywhere. But it was still proposed. It is now in the eco-system of abortion politics. It is being imagined and that opens up all possibilities of where it can go from here. We never thought, after all, that Roe would be overturned.

ClubQ…. #702 by Marie Cartier

I have written about this before

And, no doubt, I will write about it again.

This morning we woke to the news of

Another mass shooting, a mass shooting is defined as four or more people shot in a single violent outburst.

So, this time last night there were five killed, and eighteen injured—a mass shooting

Last night at a gay bar in Colorado Springs, ClubQ

The only place, so described by its patrons, for anyone queer in Colorado Springs to go.

I am visiting Denver for a conference and to see friends.

Queer friends.

I don’t live here anymore.

But I know that gay bar without ever entering it.

The sense of being me, being here, I could have gone

There last night and screamed in joy for the drag queens…made it rain with compliments and dollar bills for one of them named Del Lusional….and others.

I could have been happy in that club with chosen family that I had never met before

And I could have been one of those who screamed as I watched someone die, or as I was shot.

I wasn’t there last night. But I know that bar without ever having entered it.

I know those people and how they would have made me feel welcome. How they would have made me feel

Part of things. How they would have made me family.

The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, says the GOP narrative.

But no one with a gun stopped the guy at ClubQ

I am a woman with a pen and a notebook. Age sixty. With queer friends crying and angry Because we’ve been here before: Pulse where 49 were killed and the only thing stopping this from being another Pulse was a good guy without a gun.

The GOP has ramped up its hate on the gay population- let’s take down gay marriage, and even a politician who advocates execution for gays.

And so here we are: an assailant with an assault rifle in a gay bar. He had a history of violence on his own mother

And yet, here he is entering a queer club with a gun.

In Colorado my friends mark themselves safe from the mass shooting at Colorado Springs

But are we …?

Can I mark myself safe from gun violence? homophobia?

From the random and now expected crazy cycle of hate.

Today was Trans Remembrance Day in Colorado Springs and because of the shooting last night “the only place to go” is shuttered today.

But nobody is more resilient says my friend, than gays, than drag queens, than trans kids, than butch dykes,

The queer community has a history of resistance, my friend says… I say we have a history of claiming geography in contested spaces. We will do it again and again we both say.

I let hope flutter. There will be a vigil in California where I live. There will be a vigil in Colorado. There will be vigils. There will be prayers. And thoughts.

And…

There were 38,000 gun-related deaths in the US this year. The GOP passed no gun control laws There were 2 instances of voter fraud. The GOP passed 361 voter suppression laws.

This is America.

What’s it gonna take? Asks most of Americans who support gun control.

The GOP opposes gun control overandoverandover and here we are: the not so new anymore normal.

And make no mistake: this is normal now. This is America

Where a public space is defined by

Fear.

Where are we gonna go now? Asks the queer folk of Colorado Springs and indeed we can all ask that—where are we gonna go now?

Where are we gonna go now? Asks a drag performer on the news who hid in the dressing room with the door locked and two friends. They threw themselves on the floor. They saved themselves just in time.

Because five people were murdered in the five minutes that the gunman opened fire on a crowded dance club before two people took him down. A former vet and a performer in high heels. A veteran of several wars, a military guy there with his family to watch his daughter’s friend do drag. He tackled the assailant and took him down. And told the performer to kick the assailant with her high heels.

How I love queer community and our allies. How I love how we love.

And…in five minutes before he rushed the guy five people died.

Where are we gonna go now?

There is no safe place for us now, says another performer on the news.

And my friend who I am visiting says, if someone can kill twenty-five children in a classroom in Sandy Hook and… it. Has. Only. Gotten. Worse. I mean, she says, what’s it gonna take?

If that’s where we are—where are we gonna go now?

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the US, the end of November.

It’s number 702 in terms of mass shootings this year.

Is that it, America? Are we done?

What’s it gonna take? Is this really our new, not so new, normal?

Number 702… is that it, America, for this year?

There were 702 as I write this poem, but as I edit it I look up the number and now…there are 706. Can we get to a point where we answer- that’s it. We are not 706 and counting.

We are 706…and done.

For now, I mark myself safe– from despair.

And…I mark myself lucky to be alive. And…

I mark myself loved. I mark myself part of this chosen family.

There is nothing this kid with a gun could do to make me change who I am, says my friend.

I look for the rainbow.

And I agree.

And I mark myself

Proud.

–Marie Cartier

November 21, 2022

Denver , Colorado

Number of Mass Shootings in America This Year Compared to Past Years (insider.com)

Mass Shooting Tracker

Bio

Marie Cartier is a teacher, poet, writer, healer, artist, and scholar. She holds a BA in Communications from the University of New Hampshire; an MA in English/Poetry from Colorado State University; an MFA in Theatre Arts (Playwriting) from UCLA; an MFA in Film and TV (Screenwriting) from UCLA; an MFA in Visual Art (Painting/Sculpture) from Claremont Graduate University; and a Ph.D. in Religion with an emphasis on Women and Religion from Claremont Graduate University.

Mother of All Fears by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

This time of year, the general public tends to pay more attention than usual to witches. Much of it is lighthearted – halloween costumes and memes about where to park your broom. Some of it is spiritual – adherents of the modern religions of Wicca and neopaganism discussing symbolic and supernatural beliefs. And some of it is historical – analyzing the witch trials of past centuries and wondering how they apply, ethically, to modern day intolerance and violence.

Within all these discussions, usually unnamed and unexamined, is the framing metaquestion: what should we fear? And what should we do about that which we fear?

Historic witch trials (from a time when witches were believed to be evil agents of Satan) reveals how we humans always try to externalize badness and goodness, so we can exterminate badness and excuse ourselves for our lack of goodness. So we have heroes and villains, neither of them very human, but rather idols and symbols of our fears. I honestly think the patriarchy’s fear of females is as strong as it ever was. When the most popular videos on the most popular internet porn sites are of ****TRIGGER WARNING RAPE, INCEST**** raping a stepsister, or doctors raping a teenage girl in the hospital for cancer, or of border agents raping a pregnant young refugee, and these sites are visited by 98% of the men in our society, what does that say about us as a species? Or a culture? As Tallessyn Grenfell-Lee says, “Scary, scary vaginas!”

Continue reading “Mother of All Fears by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

What to Do About Bullies by Deanne Quarrie

I could probably go on and on about this topic, so in the interest of education I offer the following information gathered in my own recovery. Why would I write about bullying at all? Are we not Goddess lovers, one and all? How would such behavior ever come into a spiritual path that believes all life is sacred?

Well, we all come to this path with all our old baggage. That baggage may include jealousy, fear, and a desire for the wrong kind of power, that which attempts to control others.

Bullying is not merely, as many believe, an occasional stinging comment made by a significant other at the breakfast table, a bad day with the boss, or children wrestling on the playground.

Bullying is cruelty deliberately aimed at others with the intent of gaining power by inflicting psychological and/or physical pain.

Bullying behaviors are varied: name calling, humiliation, spreading rumors, gossiping, public ridicule, scape-goating or blaming, isolating, assigning poor work conditions and job assignments, or denying holiday and vacation time in the workplace, or more obvious punching, hitting, kicking, taunting, ostracizing, sexualizing, or making ethnic or gender slurs, etc.

Continue reading “What to Do About Bullies by Deanne Quarrie”

Inner Garbage (Fear) vs. Inner Goddess (Love) by Vanessa Soriano

I’m sitting on my meditation pillow for the thousandth time searching for clarity. Initially, going within feels like traversing a jungle; swinging from one thought branch to another. I’m itching for some peace and I’m almost certain this isn’t the way to it. But, I’ve been here before and I won’t quit breathing through the discomfort. I know I will greet the inner goddess soon enough. Getting past the noise is part of accessing her wisdom. The noise teaches me discernment (if I allow it to).

Eventually, the monkey mind gathers up all the branches and turns them into a prodigious figure that blocks the sun inside. Hello darkness my old friend. Inner garbage (fear) makes her entrance. I’m still breathing. Eyes closed. Determined through slow, rhythmic breaths, to move past her. I know I cannot run from her. She’s faster and outwits me every time. Continue reading “Inner Garbage (Fear) vs. Inner Goddess (Love) by Vanessa Soriano”

The Doubt of the Empty Tomb and the Hope for Tomorrow by Katie M. Deaver

I recently had the opportunity to travel to my undergrad institution on a student recruitment trip. During this trip I was able to preach during the college’s weekday chapel service. Despite the fact that I have lived, studied, and worked within a seminary community for the last seven years I had not actually written (not to mention preached!) a sermon since I was a senior at this very college… to say the least I was a bit nervous. As it turned out the sermon writing went well, and I also felt positively about the preaching experience. But even though the writing and preaching are over I can’t stop thinking about the topics I choose to speak about.

The scripture lesson I used was Luke chapter 24 verses 22-24 “Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”

These verses offer a quick recap of the Easter story that comes earlier in chapter 24 of Luke. The women go to the tomb with the spices that they have prepared, but when they arrive they discover that the stone has been rolled away and the body of their friend and teacher is not there. Instead, there are two men in dazzling clothes who ask the women “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”

Continue reading “The Doubt of the Empty Tomb and the Hope for Tomorrow by Katie M. Deaver”

Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg

For those of us living in Southern California, it has been a tense week to say the least: flames ravaging up and down the coast, homes lost, thousands displaced, freeway and school closures, smoke thick in the air, and ash raining from the sky.

And the fires are still raging.

Whether or not one is directly impacted by the wildfires here in Ventura and Los Angeles County, you can’t walk through the grocery store, turn on the radio, or get a cup of coffee without engaging the fear and concern, or hearing about the devastation left behind. We are sharing a trauma, howbeit differently, and with different levels of need.

I have been lucky during the fires. I live just south of Ventura. My work is on the Getty side of the 405: it was threatened, but not in flames. I spent the week checking in with family and friends, offering my home, and breathing the toxic air. I also made dinner, picked my brother up from the airport, attended a baby shower, and graded papers. … This is a strange juxtaposition, and like many Californians, I have had a hard time processing what’s going on.

On Sunday afternoon, surrounded by the unnatural darkness of an ash filled sky while traveling down the 101 freeway, I wrote the following. This is my effort to make sense. And I offer it to you all here, in case this helps you make sense too. Continue reading “Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg”