Gaia – Feminism and Religion

Two Poems by Alice Bullard, PhD

Dear FAR Community, These poems arise from feminist spiritual practice with syncretic dimensions. The Irish-American Catholicism of my family mixes with the popular American confessional-style that charts and embodies emerging spirit, yet this very American path of self-styling and narrative self-creation has been refined via the influence of Zen practices, originally via the influence of the Soto practictioners of Green Gulch in Marin and then later via the teachings of Vietnamese refugee and Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. The feminism here is deeply personal, political, and spiritual.

This post was inspired by one written my Janet Maika’i Rudolph about Alice Munro which you can read here.

About Alice Munro: I experienced the revelations of her daughter very personally … I’ve read Alice Munro since I was very young and used to read my parent’s copy of the New Yorker. Because we shared the name Alice and also shared the cold Midwestern prairie though she was further north and across the border, I had always felt some affinity for her but also I felt something I really didn’t get. To me her stories took inexplicable turns and now we know why. Her daughter’s experience is dreadful and probably much more common than anyone would care to admit. That Alice Munro was famous doesn’t make that type of negligent mothering something rare.

Mother’s Day: From Pagan Origins to Modern Celebrations by Judith Shaw

On May 12th families will gather together in the United States to celebrate another Mother’s Day. This is a good time to reflect on mothers, motherhood and why we take a day to celebrate our mothers.

“Yemayá, Mother Goddess,” oil on canvas by Judith Shaw

The Darkness by Annelinde Metzner

As a composer and poet, I’m interested in cultural perceptions and assumptions that influence beliefs. In monotheistic religions as well in some types of more recent spiritual thought, the assumption has been to equate Darkness with evil and Light with good. “Love and light!” we hear often, or maybe “I’m surrounding you in light.” But this assumption feeds a form of prejudice that infuses all of society. The mind hears “darkness” and associates it negatively with Earth, female, skin color, dirt.

Carol P. Christ’s Legacy: ON NOT GETTING WHAT WE WANT AND LEARNING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT WE HAVE

Moderator’s Note: We here at FAR have been so fortunate to work along side Carol Christ for many years. She died from cancer in July, 2021. To honor her legacy, as well as allow as many people as possible to read her thought-provoking and important blogs, we are pleased to offer this new column to highlight her work. We will be picking out special blogs for reposting. This blog was originally posted March 26, 2012. You can read it long with its original comments here. Carol mentions a book she was writing with Judith Plaskow at the time with the working title: God After Feminism. The book was published in 2016 under the title of Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embedded Theology. You can find it here.

Many women’s dreams have not been realized. How do we come to terms with this thealogically?

Although I am as neurotic as the next person, I am also really wonderful—intelligent, emotionally available, beautiful (if I do say so myself), sweet, caring, and bold. I love to dance, swim, and think about the meaning of life. I passionately wanted to find someone with whom to share my life. I did everything I could to make that happen—including years of therapy and even giving up my job and moving half way around the world when I felt I had exhausted the possibilities at home.

For much of my adult life I have asked myself: What is wrong with me? Why can’t I find what everybody else has? Even though I knew that there were a lot of other really great women in my generation in my position and even though I knew that many of my friends were with men I wouldn’t chose to be with, I still asked: What is wrong with me?

Gaia Delights: Sawbonna Resilience and the Pandemic by Margot Van Sluytman/Raven Speaks

In a recent interview about my current published paper and my life’s-work, Sawbonna, which is a model of both social and restorative justice, I was struck by how being locked down due to this global pandemic not only rips us to the core of our fears and forebodings; but, as well, invites us, if challenges us, to witness with and for each other, as we come to see the depth of resilience that has been a kindred companion throughout the ages. From time immemorial, Gaia delights by firing our hearts of justice with creativity. With love.

My interview took place over Zoom, a virtual bridge of connection and connecting. In this instance, that bridge stretched between Toronto, Canada and Cork, Ireland, where activist and researcher Jane Mulcahy and I spoke about Sawbonna, which is contextualized in the crucible of shared-humanity and human-rights. We discussed therapeutic writing, voice, trauma, poetry. Our conversation [which will be on Jane’s SoundCloud platform later this year] was infused with a crystal clear knowing that trauma and grief are in symbiotic sisterhood with resilience and voice. Continue reading “Gaia Delights: Sawbonna Resilience and the Pandemic by Margot Van Sluytman/Raven Speaks”

Reaching for New Language for the Sacred by Glenys Livingstone

The term ‘PaGaian’, which became the title of my work, was conceived in at least two places on the planet and in the opposite hemispheres within a year of each other, without either inventor being aware of the other’s new expression. It was some time before they found each other … one party in Australia, myself having published a book with PaGaian in the title; and the other party, Rob Blake – in the UK having registered the domain pagaian.org as the term seemed to him to express a cosmology constellating in his mind. The term PaGaian was actually conceived by my partner Taffy Seaborne in late 2003, enabling the book to manifest: heretofore the body of work developed there took six lines to express.

This reaching for a new word, was the reaching for a language, which is a power; to bring together an Earth-based – ‘Pagan’ – spiritual practice indigenous to Western Europe, with recent Western scientific understandings of the planet as a whole living organism – ‘Gaia’ as it has been named, and which by its name acknowledged resonance with ancient Mother Goddess understandings of our Habitat, as an alive sentient being. So, the term ‘PaGaian’ splices together Pagan and Gaian, and it may express a new autochthonic/native context in which humans find themselves: that is, the term may express for some (as it did and does) an indigeneity, a nativity, in these times, of belonging to this Earth, this Cosmos. For myself, the new expression consciously included and centralised female metaphor for sacred practice: that is, practice of relationship with the sacred whole in which we are, and whom I desired to call Mother, and imagine as the Great She. Continue reading “Reaching for New Language for the Sacred by Glenys Livingstone”

Let Us Now Practice Her Presence by Barbara Ardinger

I’m giving you a twofer this month: a poem and a ritual. I’m writing this a few days after the latest mass shooting in Texas by a crazy white man and a few days before the next debate by Democratic candidates. But you know what? I’m getting real tired of politics and…well, what’s going on around us. Tweets. Bullets. Fires. I’m a liberal, but I’m deciding that there must be a better definition of “conservative,” one that has nothing to do with politics. The OED defines “conservation” as “the action of conserving; preservation from destructive influences, decay, or waste.” Further down: “conservative: a preserving agent or principle.”

Back in the late 80s and into the 90s, I taught a class I called Practicing the Presence of the Goddess, which evolved into a ritual circle. As far as I know, most of the women in the class are still spiritual feminists (though the term hadn’t been invented then), a couple have died (cancer is an awful thing), and one is fading into dementia (but she still remembers our class). Among other assignments, I asked them to read Carol Christ’s splendid book Laughter of Aphrodite (1987), and once we went as a group to hear Marija Gimbutas speak on her newest book The Civilization of the Goddess (1991).

Continue reading “Let Us Now Practice Her Presence by Barbara Ardinger”

Embodying Gaia by Christy Sim

Rosemary Radford Ruether wrote a classic text: “Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing.” Ever since I laid eyes on this amazing book and was convinced of the genius Ruether offered within these pages, I adored images of Gaia.

The great goddess is usually pictured holding the world as her womb, a loving representation of compassionately pulling all the hurt and agony to her abdomen for healing.

Ruether says in “Classical Western cultural traditions” of which “Christianity is a major expression,” we “have justified and sacralized” notions of God and domination (3). Such ideas teach us that domination is “the ‘natural order'” and “the will of God” for the “male monotheistic God” and his followers (3).

But Gaia is so much more and challenges these patriarchical messages in today’s culture. To imagine the divine with this motherly image helps with “ecological healing” (as Ruether says), and, being able to picture a “personified being” in the feminine (4). Gaia is truly special.

Continue reading “Embodying Gaia by Christy Sim”

Notes from A Goddess Pilgrimage by Joyce Zonana

JZ HEADSHOT

The solar eclipse has had me sensing deep alignment with earth, sea, and sky, with my sisters and brothers and Self. This, then, from my 1995 journal of my first Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete with Carol Christ, a trip still engraved in my heart:

June 3 – Yesterday, anointing us with rose, lavender, or olive oil, Jana said, “Your journey has begun.” But for me it is this morning, with the purchase of this journal at the biblio on the square across from the hotel, where I sit now in the lobby, traffic noise outside, our group gathering, preparing for our journey . . . happy to be here . . .

Bleeding at the home of the Panagia, the all holy, the sacred mother, sacred myrtle, ancient tree of Aphrodite, Mary, black-bent nuns: we tie ribbons to the tree, sing, “all manner of things shall be well. Blessed be, walk in beauty.” And I am utterly in tears as I walk on the grounds of this ancient place, the birds singing everywhere, yet there is quiet, stillness, an ancient peace . . . A pilgrimage, a shrine, a very holy place.

Continue reading “Notes from A Goddess Pilgrimage by Joyce Zonana”

The Blue No Gaia Wants: Protecting the Sacred through our Lawns by Elisabeth Schilling

blue lawn If Gaia is a living body, why are we painting her blue? Whether it is public parks or residential lawns, when there is that special odor in the air, I know to look down and there it is, an endless dye job on the grass indicating treatment. My city is concrete and blue dye for miles. Furthermore, I have sales people knocking at my door monthly asking if I want to spray pesticide around the house to decimate wasps, ants and spiders.

Many religious texts encourage us to mindfully consider the earth. The Jain Acaranga sutra, for instance, says, “a wise [person] should not act sinfully toward plants” (I.1.5.7). One way we sin against the earth so casually is by these mindless manipulations of our lawns, if we have them. (Technically, I do not have a lawn, but my roommate does, and I try to protect it). I do not think most people think about researching what they allow into the earth. Continue reading “The Blue No Gaia Wants: Protecting the Sacred through our Lawns by Elisabeth Schilling”