feminism and religion – Page 27 – Feminism and Religion

Waking Up in Shock by Carol P. Christ

I went to sleep in Greece on Wednesday night January 6 feeling elated that Jon Ossoff, following Raphael Warnock whose victory had been declared earlier, was officially named the winner of his runoff election in Georgia, returning the Senate to the Democrats by the slimmest of margins. I expected to wake up to the celebration of Stacey Abrams’ contribution to the victory and to listening to commentators discussing how it came about and what we could expect from the next Congress.

Instead, I learned that a violent insurrection by thousands of people hoping to overturn the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had taken place in the Capitol of the United States. It was clear from the early footage that there had been a massive failure on the part of police and security forces to secure the Capitol building. The President himself, abetted by his son Don Junior, Rudy Guiliani, and other Republicans, urged the mob to march to the Capitol and to fight to overturn the certification of the Electoral College results. This is why Democrats will most likely move to impeach him for a second time.

Just as disturbing is the emerging news that the Capitol Police had been adequately warned that some of the groups urging their members to attend the rally were posting on social media about their intent to storm the Capitol. Apparently there had been discussions about trying and hanging Vice President Pence and also about killing Nany Pelsoi. Questions have been raised about how the mob knew its way about secret rooms within the Capitol building, with the suspicion being that members of Congress, their staff, or security personnel within the building had been in communication with leaders of the mob.

Though the press has been hesitant to fuel the fires by reporting on it, insurrectionist groups are calling for armed rallies at the US Capitol and state capitols on Inauguration Day or in the days leading up to it. In other words, the failed coup of January 6 could be the beginning, not the end of violent insurrection in the United States. Continue reading “Waking Up in Shock by Carol P. Christ”

Another Bow to Hestia by Carol P. Christ

I am not big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have vowed to change one of my habits. I have always been house-proud and love using my artistic flair to decorate my home in beauty. I have had a cleaning lady most of the time for many years, so my homes have been relatively clean. The living room and dining room have always been ready to receive guests. But I didn’t always do the dishes or clean the surfaces in the kitchen right away, clothes I had worn often sat on chairs before I hung them up, and I didn’t make the bed every day.

Now that I think about it, this habit goes back to my childhood and teen-age years, when my not picking up things in my bedroom was a bone of contention between me and my mother. Joyce Zonana wrote recently about how she rejected her mother’s role as homemaker and “dutiful” wife when she was young. Only now during the Covid crisis, she writes, is she beginning to enjoy the traditional women’s work of cooking regularly and knitting.

When I was a teen-ager, I sewed all of my clothes (both because we didn’t have a lot of money and because, as I was very tall and very skinny, most ready-made clothes didn’t fit). I was a second mother to my baby brother. For me, those were the fun parts of women’s work. But I hated washing dishes and cleaning the house, and I did not learn how to cook. I suppose I recoiled from the repetitiveness of those tasks. I was also aware that my father ruled the roost, and though I would never have criticized him, I knew that one of my mother’s jobs was to please him. Laura Montoya’s meditation on her grandmother’s life in a recent blog reminds us that the failure of homemakers to meet their husbands needs or wants can lead to violence.

When I went away to college, I learned to disparage all of women’s work, including the parts of it I had loved. I was taught that the “life of the mind” was the highest pursuit and that the “life of the body” was secondary. I now see this aspect of university culture as brainwashing of the highest order. Continue reading “Another Bow to Hestia by Carol P. Christ”

What I Celebrate at Christmas by Carol P. Christ

Though I have not been Christian for many years, I love to decorate my house for the holidays. I have many decorations that I have collected over the years, including a Hummel angel gazing at the Christ child that was my father’s mother’s and a small crocheted Christmas tree given to me by my mother. My Christmas tree is a living one in a pot, and I usually manage to keep it alive on the balcony or outside for several years. One of my hobbies is collecting ornaments for the tree. Among my favorites are glass icicles and snowflakes crocheted by my friend Alexis many decades ago. There are white doves and brown birds that land on the tree branches and glass balls that have come into the stores again in recent years.

During the years I lived in Lesbos I was always invited to my friend Birgitt’s for a German Christmas Eve dinner with many of her friends. The meal began with fresh cured salmon (gravadlax) with dill sauce prepared by Swedish Christina, followed by meat and and all the trimmings—once it was wild boar and another time venison, but more often beef or turkey. I always brought a spinach salad with pomegranate seeds and special dressing from the Silver Palate cookbook. For dessert there was German Christmas cake called stollen made with nuts, spices, and candied fruit, covered with powdered sugar, as well as a variety of German Christmas cookies and chocolates. On Christmas day, I often went out to a restaurant on with other friends and feasted on Symrna style lamb stuffed with rice, raisins, pine nuts, and parsley, sweetened with orange juice.

Among my most treasured childhood memories are holiday meals at mother’s mother’s house. Continue reading “What I Celebrate at Christmas by Carol P. Christ”

Gratitude and Hope: With a Lot of Help from My Friends by Carol P. Christ

Last Friday my oncologist gave me the best birthday present I could have imagined. (My birthday was 7:30 pm last night December 20, California time.) Without going into details, my latest CT scan was so much more positive than the last one that it feels like a miracle. I have reason to hope.

Today I am full of gratitude. I am grateful to my doctor Dimitrios Mavroudis who is the head of Oncology at the University of Crete and at the Pagni Hospital in Heraklion. I am grateful to medical science for the chemotherapy that is healing my body.

I am grateful for the national health system of Greece that is covering the cost of my treatment because I am a Greek citizen even though I never contributed to the national health insurance.

I am grateful to the nurses at the Pagni hospital who are unfailingly kind as they take my blood and regulate my chemotherapy.

I am grateful to Vera Dervesi, my cleaning lady and now friend, who with her husband Eddie, took me to the hospital where I was diagnosed, and who has helped me finish unpacking and moving in to my new apartment, and for her sweet presence in my home that soothes my soul. Continue reading “Gratitude and Hope: With a Lot of Help from My Friends by Carol P. Christ”

Delilah, Lost by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

Delilah is a beautiful name on its own merits. As a biblical personage Delilah is forever connected to Samson for their tales are intertwined. As it is told in Judges, Samson is the clear hero of the tale and Delilah is merely the temptress who betrays him. But as in all spiritual accounts there is more here than meets the eye. A spiritual journey is never a linear affair. When reading the story of Samson and Delilah, it immediately becomes clear that something mythical is afoot. The root of Samson’s name is the same as the word shamash, the Hebrew word for sun. The root of Delilah is lila, meaning night. Right away we understand that this story contains apparent opposites, heavenly aspects, the sun and the night, light and dark . . . Continue reading “Delilah, Lost by Janet Maika’i Rudolph”

Winter Solstice: Can We Celebrate the Restful, Welcoming Darkness?

The days are slowly winding down toward Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, the longest night of the year. Today the sun rose at 7:20 and will set at 5:08 in Crete. In Sweden, the sun will rise at 9:25 and set at 2:12. Though I light candles in the darkness of morning and have lights on my tree, I am not celebrating the “return of the light,” but rather welcoming the restful dark.

In The Spiral Dance, Starhawk writes that Winter Solstice is about the rebirth of the sun. This interpretation has taken hold. For most pagans, Summer Solstice also is a celebration of the sun on the longest day. Few are those mark it as the time of the dying of the sun or the rebirth of night.

In our culture we have learned to celebrate the light and to avoid and disparage the darkness. We have inherited this habit of mind from the Indo-Europeans who, as Marija Gimbutas wrote, celebrated the shining light of the sun as reflected in their shining bronze weapons. When the Indo-Europeans rewrote the myths of the land that came to be called Greece, they placed the “Olympian” deities on Mount Olympus while relegating many of the oldest female deities to the underworld, which became a fearful place. New Age spiritualities follow this pattern, celebrating “light and love.” This habit of mind reinforces racism. Continue reading “Winter Solstice: Can We Celebrate the Restful, Welcoming Darkness?”

Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts by Carol P. Christ

In the 1960s and 1970s, American-born Genevieve Vaughan was living in Rome with her husband, philosopher Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, and their three daughters. When Rossi-Landi, using Marxist models, began to write about language as a form of “exchange,” Vaughan was inspired to articulate her alternative theory based on the idea that language was developed and is learned through the gifts of the mother to the child. From that beginning, Vaughn developed an alternative theory of culture based on what she calls the “gift economy.”

We are born into a Gift Economy practiced by those who mother us, enabling us to survive. The economy of exchange, quid pro quo, separates us from each other and makes us adversarial, while gift giving and receiving creates mutuality and trust.

According to Vaughan, the “exchange economy” is based in the gift economy, while at the same time it denies the gifts it has received from mothers and mothering figures and disparages mothers and their work. Mothers rear children who enter into the exchange economy, but these children would not be alive to enter the exchange economy unless they had first been nurtured by the freely given gifts of mother. Vaughan writes that prior to patriarchy, cultures and societies valued the gifts of mothers and were organized around the principle of gift-giving. Vaughan states that gift-giving economies are based in the idea of meeting the needs of others, while exchange economies are focused on the enrichment of the individual self. She believes that re-valuing and re-instating the gift economy is the only path to creating and restoring peace and justice in the world. Continue reading “Maternal Gift Economy: Webinar Gifts by Carol P. Christ”

Altars Everywhere, Part 1 by Carol P. Christ

In a recent blog, Carolyn Boyd invited us to reflect on how our women’s spiritual power is activated through symbols that help us to remember and manifest the “deep well” of our inner knowing. According to historian of religion Mircea Eliade, the sacred and the profane were not separated in premodern cultures because all of life was considered to be sacred. Many in the Women’s Spirituality and Goddess communities have advocated this earlier more wholistic understanding. Although it is not always easy to overcome the dualism between sacred and profane, we attempt to do so.

One of the symptoms of my chemotherapy is neurasthenia or partial numbness in my right foot. When it first occurred, I fell three times in my apartment because I was not lifting my foot automatically. I became afraid to move without holding onto the walls or furniture. I resisted my friends’ advice to get a walker, but finally agreed that I needed some form of physical support. I arranged for my friend Eirini Kouraki to have a rubber tip added to the shepherd’s cane I sometimes use walking in the mountains. When she brought it too me, I decorated it with three ribbons I saved from rituals at the Holy Myrtle Tree at the Paliani monastery in Crete. The most recent were brown, the color of the earth, and red, the strong energy I will need to heal. I added a light green-blue ribbon, representing the calm and clear optimism I feel as I face a crisis of life and death. The ribbons remind me of the healing power of the Holy Tree that I have called upon many times, turning a symbol of my infirmity into a symbol of healing and hope.

In the past weeks as my cancer treatment continues, I have been feeling strong enough to finish unpacking (with the help of Vera, my cleaning lady) and organizing my new home in Crete. As I rediscover sacred objects, I create altars. Altars are physical reminders of our spiritual beliefs. Creating and tending them helps to create the embodied knowing that brings the spirit into our daily lives.

The living area of my new apartment has 3 glass shelving units. In one of them, I created a triple altar with images of the Goddess and female power from ancient Crete. Because the apartment is sleek and modern yet welcoming to my antique furniture, I kept the altar minimal.

On the top shelf I placed three pre-palatial “pitcher” Goddesses, two with breasts from which liquid pours and one that is holding a water jug from which liquid can also be poured. These images, dated before 2000 BCE, express the Old European insight that the Goddess represents the powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of life. Though they have human qualities, they are more than human. The Goddess from Malia who sits in the center of this altar has a beaked face and wings and her triangular shape evokes the mountains from which water flows to villages and fields. These images remind me that the Goddess is the Source of Life, provider of gift of life that is our embodied being and the gifts of life—including food and water–that nourish us daily.

The second shelf holds one of the oldest images from ancient Crete, the Neolithic Goddess from Ierapetra. She is seated on massive buttocks, securely rooted in the earth. Her face is beaked, symbolizing her connection to the birds that fly in the air. Her body is decorated with lines identified by archaeologist Marija Gimbutas as the flowing water that nourishes all of life. Her body too is shaped like the mountain. She represents the never-ending powers of birth, death, and regeneration in all of nature.

In front of the Neolithic Goddess I placed a twig from Paliani with a dark blue ribbon reminding me that my friend Tina Nevans is sending the healing energy of the Blue Buddha to me in her daily meditations, as well as several handsewn triangles holding leaves from the Holy Myrtle tree, and a crystal extracted from the Trapeza Cave, found on the path outside of it. To Her right is a small image of the long-necked turtle Goddess from Myrtos who holds a pitcher recalling women’s daily visits to water sources, and a small copy of a Kamares ware pitcher used to pour libations in the Sacred Centers. To the left are a bronze copy of a labrys, originally the double sacred female triangle transformed into wings and also a happy little bull who reminds us that animals experience the joy of life.

On the lower shelf, copies of dancing women from post-Minoan Paliakastro symbolize the transmission of Old European values of community, lack of hierarchy, and most of all, celebration of the joy of life as Laura Shannon has written. The dancing women are surrounded by images of later Mycenaean Goddesses and of Aphrodite who was worshiped at the Minoan site of Kato Symi in classical times, and a small reproduction of the Neolithic Goddess from Catal Huyuk, who reminds us that Crete was settled c.7000 BCE by farmers from Anatolia.

In the hallway I placed a copy of a drawing of the Holy Myrtle Tree of the monastery of Paliani created by one of the nuns. According to the story told, the area where the monastery was later built was burned in a fire but a small myrtle bush survived. It was watered by girls who saw the image of the Panagia (Mary the Mother of Jesus) in its charred branches. So, the monastery which was known as ancient in 668 CE was built. The monastery is a sacred place for the surrounding villages. The sacred tree and the icon of the Panagia in the church are said to have performed many miracles. Below the drawing of the Sacred Myrle Tree is a small image of a face in a twig from tree given to me by German artist Carla Randel.

On a small table under the drawing, I placed an image of Aphrodite who was earlier associated with myrtle trees, along with a candle, a star, a blue glass paperweight, and a triton shell, symbolizing Aphrodite as the morning and evening star, and her relation to the sea.

When I light candles in translucent glass holders on the altar with the pitcher Goddesses as the day dawns and in the evening as day turns to night, and when I gaze at my other altars, I remember that I am always surrounded by the nurturing love of the Goddess. This love takes root in my body, and I am inspired to share it with others.

To be continued.

Covid in Greece by Carol P. Christ

Greece is on nationwide lockdown due to a surge in Covid cases in the fall. What does this mean? For three weeks until December 1, we can leave home only for essential reasons which include: going to a nearby supermarket; visiting the doctor or pharmacy; going to banks or public utility offices; helping someone in need; traveling to work if working from home is not possible; attending a funeral; traveling to see children when parents are separated; leaving home for physical exercise or to care for pets or strays. Masks must be worn at all times outside the house; SMS must be sent to a national number listing the reason for leaving home or a paper must be carried with the same information; a special document is required for work listing hours; the fine for violation is 300 euros and police are enforcing this, particularly in the cities. Restaurants and bars are closed; only a few categories of shops are open. A curfew from 12 am to 5 am was extended to begin at 9 pm; this is because young people have been congregating outside in groups. Travel in Greece is restricted; visits to second homes are not allowed. Primary schools are open, but secondary schools are using internet. Similar restrictions were in place in March and April in Greece and the country had one of the lowest virus rates in the world until recently. The hope is that the lockdown will stem the spread of the virus and that the restrictions will be lifted before the holidays.

This situation contrasts with the United States where the President has refused to acknowledge the extent of the health crisis or to take measures to restrict the spread of the Covid virus. Continue reading “Covid in Greece by Carol P. Christ”

Dancing for Forgiveness and Reconciliation – Part Two By Laura Shannon

In Part One of this article, I described dancing Jewish, Romani, and Armenian dances for forgiveness and reconciliation with groups in Germany and all over the world. I also offered danced rituals of remembrance at former concentration camps and other places scarred by the atrocities of war.

I went to camps including Dachau and Auschwitz, to genocide memorials and sites of massacre throughout Eastern Europe, in Australia, and the Americas. At first, my prayers were private: I brought flowers, lit candles, danced my grief, and spent time in meditation. I tried to visualise the prisoners in those places, sending them my deep sorrow and regret back through time. I wanted to let them know that they are remembered and mourned by people from their future. My prayers contained a fervent apology as well as a soul commitment to do my part in this lifetime to overcome prejudice and stand for peace.

In time I invited others to dance with me for healing and peace. We danced at former camps in Germany, including Bad Gandersheim, a subcamp of Buchenwald, and on many occasions in Steyerberg, a former prison camp and forced-labour munitions factory which is now the site of an intentional community called Lebensgarten (‘Garden of Life’), a centre for permaculture, non-violent communication, and other ecologically and spiritually oriented ways of living.

Continue reading “Dancing for Forgiveness and Reconciliation – Part Two By Laura Shannon”