feminism and religion – Page 36 – Feminism and Religion

See, Hear, and Believe Women’s Pain by Katey Zeh

women in pain

Rachel Fassler was in so much pain that she couldn’t remain still long enough for the emergency room nurses to take her blood pressure. After hours of being overlooked, dismissed, and misdiagnosed (she was initially treated for kidney stones) by two male doctors, Fassler was finally treated appropriately by a third physician, a woman, and rushed into emergency surgery to have a swollen ovary removed.

The details of Fassler’s horrific experience in the hospital that day was told by her husband Joe Fassler in The Atlantic back in 2015. The piece “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously” opened the floodgates for women to share their stories of having their pain ignored sometimes for years by mostly by male doctors, though not exclusively. Rachel Fassler refers to this as “the trauma of not being seen.”

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Knowing my Voice through Writing by Elise M. Edwards

Over the summer, I’ve been writing more than I do during the traditional academic year when other tasks consume the bulk of my workday. I have spent more time experiencing the joy of creative discovery and production, but I’ve also had more time confronting the difficulties of creative work as I’ve wrestled with some of its unique challenges. One of those challenges has been to refine my academic writing voice. I’ve approaches the challenge of developing my voice as both a spiritual and feminist practice and this has helped me find confidence in my work.

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Walk in Love and Beauty: A Touchstone for Healing by Carol P. Christ

Nurture life.

Walk in love and beauty.

Trust the knowledge that comes through the body.

Speak the truth about conflict, pain, and suffering.

Take only what you need.

Think about the consequences of your actions for seven generations.

Approach the taking of life with great restraint.

Practice great generosity.

Repair the web

In Rebirth of the Goddess, I offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The Nine Touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political.

The second touchstone, “Walk in love and beauty,” derives from the insight that love and beauty are the great gifts of bounteous earth. Just recently at a meeting of the Green Party Greece, one of our representatives in Parliament, Giorgos Dimaras, said to me, “It all begins with love.” He understands that our Green Party principles of environmental sustainability, social justice, no violence, and participatory democracy are rooted in the prior value of love. If we do not love nature, then why would we care about saving it? If we do not love others, why would we care about injustice and suffering? If we do not love the world, why would we care about creating peace on earth? If we do love others, why would we care about creating ways to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard in our families, communities, and societies? Continue reading “Walk in Love and Beauty: A Touchstone for Healing by Carol P. Christ”

God, Gender Violence and The Male Ego by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente

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We live in a world in which women are the preferred target of different types of violence: physical, sexual, psychological, economic, symbolic and structural, among others. A type of violence we are not talking so much about is spiritual violence. This can be defined as using a person’s spiritual beliefs to harm, manipulate, dominate or control the person.

Spiritual violence includes, but is not limited to: disallowing the person to follow his or her preferred spiritual or religious tradition; forcing a spiritual or religious path or practice on another; belittling or making fun of a person’s spiritual or religious tradition, beliefs or practices; and, using one’s spiritual or religious position, rituals or practices to manipulate or alienate a person. Continue reading “God, Gender Violence and The Male Ego by Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente”

The Blessing of Spiritual Direction by Elise M. Edwards

Five years ago, I moved to Texas from California. In that time, my spiritual practice and my feminist and womanist worldview has grown through contemplative practices. It’s ironic. “Everything’s bigger in Texas!” the saying goes, but in the presence of big, sweeping landscapes and open skies, big storms, and big egos, I’ve found the sacred in the small things. I have deepened my connection to God through a small group of women who practice group spiritual direction.

This past Sunday evening, I gathered with these women at my church for our spiritual direction group. We sat comfortably in a circle, relaxing on a couch and chairs around a coffee table, as the evening sun streamed in from a large picture window and lit the room. As we read a passage from the Bible (Mark 3:34-35) in which Jesus looks at the people sitting around him and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother,” I saw my companions more clearly. Although my eyes were closed, I had a vision of these women sitting around me, halos made of sunbeams shimmering over their heads. I thought, “Here are my sisters!”

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Celebrating Pride: Honoring the Spiritualities of Queer Holy Women of Color by Angela Yarber

With rainbow colors erupting from even the big box stores, I find my super queer-feminist-self scratching my head at the way Pride has transformed into a capital enterprise. I mean, I’m pretty stoked that the cultural climate seems to be slightly more affirming of queer people, but as queer culture is commodified, I cannot help but think of what is being lost or forgotten. And I want to shout from the rooftops that the rich spiritual history of Pride rests firmly on the shoulders of queer women of color who have marched and meditated, prayed and protested long before rainbow Pride headbands were available at chain stores across the land. It is for this reason that, in honor of Pride Month, the Holy Women Icons Project (HWIP) has launched a 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat that celebrates seven different queer holy women of color.

HWIP’s 7-Day Online Queer Spirituality Retreat is an opportunity to subversively queer your spirituality, and for the LGBTQ+ community to celebrate our spirituality without having to translate it through the lens of heteronormativity. Open to everyone, the Queer Spirituality Retreat features seven different queer women of color: Pauli Murray, Frida Kahlo, Perpetua and Felicity, the Shulamite, Marsha P Johnson, Guanyin, and Gloria Anzaldúa. Each retreat day takes about 20 minutes and includes an inspirational quote, an icon image, a reflective essay, a guided writing exercise, a ritual exercise, and a closing blessing. The most important part of the retreat is, of course, the revolutionary queer women who make it possible. So, allow me to briefly introduce you to seven queer women of color who should make us all proud…

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My Grandmother is a Gangster… a Spiritual Gangster by Valentina Khan

My grandmother is a gangster… a spiritual gangster

I recently attended a funeral for a relative-in-law. The grassy patch at the cemetery was filled with many familiar faces as well as unfamiliar. My side of the family was asked to come. My father, mother and even teeny tiny little 4 foot 9 grandmother showed up. I emphasize her height because it has nothing to do with her stature… and this is where my story begins.

My grandmother aka “Mama Shamsey” is from my maternal side. She grew up in Tehran, Iran. She was a young bride to a handsome intellectual who was French educated but a deeply spiritual and passionately religious Iranian Shia Muslim. He truly believed people should never discuss politics or religion. He knew how to be open and compassionate with people of differing opinions than his. They married, had 5 children, my mother was the eldest. When she was just entering her tender teenage years, many of her peers were flocking to Europe to be educated in Germany or France. She however had the dream of going to school in America, so in the 70’s this family of 7 made the great migration over to America.

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A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ

Following up on my recent blogs on the roles of women in the Neolithic revolution and on “egalitarian matriarchy,” I have been re-reading Peggy Reeves Sanday’s ground-breaking book, Women at the Center, about the survival of the “adat matriarchaat” (the principles of matriarchy) among the more than four million Minangkabau people of Indonesia.

According to Sanday, the customs of the matriarchaat (the Dutch word has been adopted by the Minangkabau people)—including matrilineal descent, matrilocal marriage, and ownership of the land by the mother clan—have survived accommodation with Islam. This is in no small part due to the fact that one of the principle values of the matriachaat is to conjugate (to come together) rather than to dominate. Rather than viewing Islam as an opposing force, the Minangkabau emphasize the aspects of Islam–such as love and compassion for the weak–that are compatible with their traditional worldview. Through this clever maneuver, the Minangkabau manage to practice Islam while maintaining their traditional egalitarian matriarchy. Continue reading “A Question about “Egalitarian Matriarchy” in West Sumatra by Carol P. Christ”

An Open Letter to Mom by Natalie Weaver

Dear Mom,

I want to take this opportunity to tell you I have learned so much from you over these years that I have been privileged to call you “mom.” I watch you, as you get older, as I also get older, and I continue to learn from you. You are always telling me that a person cannot know something truly until they get there; that every decade of life is different; and that life becomes, in the end-game, a process of letting go. I see you, and I know by watching you that this is true.

I remembered you today, from when I was just a child, getting ready to go out for the evening with Dad. You were spraying your hair into an impressive beehive, pulling on stockings, and fragrancing your wrists with Fabergé cologne. You were beautiful then, and you taught me that life should be beautiful, our home should be a place of refuge, and every day was worth celebrating. You used to sing about loving your home, and you maintained it so elegantly. It was lovely to be your child in that home. Thank you. Continue reading “An Open Letter to Mom by Natalie Weaver”

Creating Women’s Circles that Heal and Enrich Our Lives by Anne Yeomans and the Women’s Well

From 1994 until 2012, the Women’s Well, based in Concord, Massachusetts, offered thousands of women the opportunity to participate in women’s circles of all kinds. In the first and second parts of this series, Anne Yeomans, a co-founder of the Women’s Well, and others who co-created the Women’s Well, shared about their experiences with the power and wisdom of the circle and the use of altars and ritual. (Part I and Part II). This third part, explains the guidelines that the Women’s Well developed for their circles. This post is adapted from the Women’s Well website at www.womenswell.org.

We often used the guidelines in our circles. Sometimes the facilitator or holder of the circle would speak of them and then place them around the circle on printed cards, to remind us of the quality of listening and speaking that we were trying to invite in.

These guidelines were originally drawn from the work of Tom Yeomans who developed a way of working in groups, called the Corona Process. It was an approach to group dialogue that came to him in a dream the night after attending a meeting with the great physicist David Bohn, who at the end of his life became interested in dialogue and world peace. Continue reading “Creating Women’s Circles that Heal and Enrich Our Lives by Anne Yeomans and the Women’s Well”