herstory – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Poetry by Mary Saracino

Mary Saracino’s statement on poetry: Poetry is based on intuition, emotion, something that is not really express-able other than through the poem. It’s a dialogue or conversation between the poet and the Soul (the collective unconscious, in my opinion), which then presents itself to the world. It can be a powerful medium for restoring, reviving, and revitalizing the memories of the Divine Female and reclaiming female sovereignty. Our planet, humankind and our plant and animal kin are in dire need of a paradigm shift, returning us to the time before patriarchy defiled women and usurped the natural order of the world.

Resurrection By Mary Saracino

Deep in the coils of memory our DNA
sings ancient songs of life, death, regeneration.
We each turn on our own axis,
as the Earth turns through her seasons,
winter’s fallow followed by spring’s eternal greening.
All sacred litanies arise from her soil,
take to the sky, return their blessings
to the wells, the rivers, the oceans.
Why can’t we remember?
Our souls are hung on crosses,
our limbs bound, our hands and feet
nailed to unrelenting dogma,
our tender ribs pierced with thorny spears,
our vulva-wounds ooze with bloody amnesia.
We have forgotten where we come from:
the dank caves of consciousness
littered with the bones of
stone age lovers painted ochre-red
to honor menstrual blood, the original river,
to honor, too, its womb-source, our primal passageway
the portal from which we all emerged, mouths open, wailing
for our mother’s breast,
seeking the milk that sustains us.
Like spring we are born again and again;
we circumnavigate our lives, spiraling forward,
circling back, orbiting our hearts
until we open to the sun
like red tulips in a once-fallow field,
dancing in the breeze, loose with joy,
sharing our subterranean secret,
reviving the buried bulb’s dormant hopes,
reveling in our resurrection.

Previously published: “Resurrection,” April 5, 2013

Subterranean Rage By Mary Saracino

Deeper than bone
deeper than muscle or sinew
or tenacious tendon
this howl of ages
rivers through bloodlines, ancient as oceans
salty as the primeval seas
this is what happens to women who
out-step their bounds
dare to be bold, brazen
speak up, name the subterfuge
women who grit their warriors’ teeth
fight on, for their children
their lovers, their nation
their homes, their hearts’ desires
branded as heretics: witch, bitch, cunt, whore
they race through forests and fields
trying to outrun the acrid scent of their own sweat
running from the hellish hounds
the priestly proclamations
the wrenching bite of the strappado*
running for their lives
caught between sinner or saint
rarely allowed sovereignty over Self
over mind & womb, over laws meant to undo them
Thousands of straggled cats launched the Plague
tender necks swinging from tree limbs
flaccid, cold paws an omen: the rats will have their day
Crucibles of change, cauldrons
of sorrow, voices stymied for ions by the threat of extinction
womb-wisdom silenced by public outcry
burned at the stake of cultural conditioning
the subterranean outrage
seeps out, sharp as knives
sharp as memory
sharp as justice denied
sharp as the bloodied knives
eviscerating their midnight powers
Deep is this grief
Deep this anger
A dirge of rage lost to the winds of time.
The weeping memory wails, still.
Hear it the moonless night sky,
touch it in the hot light of noon
smell it in the poisoned soil
taste it on your remembering tongue
see it in the burning irises
that bear witness to this unyielding genocide.

* Strappado is a form of torture, employed by the Inquisitional tribunals against women accused of witchcraft. Victims were suspended in the air by means of a rope attached to their hands which were tied behind their backs, causing their arms to be dislocated.

Previously published: “Subterranean Rage,” October 30, 2013

Tharros, Sardegna By Mary Saracino

The stones share their secrets with the sea,
the brilliant blue sky, the tasseled grasses,
the trees—and any humans who will listen—
defying history’s edicts to remain silent.
Parched by the wind and the rain,
the stones speak fiercely of love and of times lost
as outcroppings of brilliant wildflowers
sing sacred songs in the sunlight.
This ancient place is nestled
against a rugged shoreline,
its far-away culture castaway like a forgotten dream,
buried beneath rocks and earth;
here, the outcast souls bloom once more
in the red poppies
whose bloody tongues
whisper: “Remember, remember, remember.”

Author’s note: This poem was inspired by the ruins at Tharros, Sardegna during a visit I made in 2004 as part of a Dark Mother Study tour of that island led by Lucia Chiavola Birnbaum. I think of these ancient places as sanctuaries, containers, wombs, collecting and holding the memory of the Great Cosmic Mother; I see the flowers, the red poppies (sacred to Astarte) sprouting up among the archeological ruins, as Her resurging; blood red poppies, blood lines, blood flow; menstrual memory, carriers of life of memory, of lineage—blood-red, like flowery blooming tongues, telling their stories; reclaiming their truths; waving in the breeze, bending into the wind, but not submitting, allowing the wind to carry their message, carry their poppy seeds of memory out across the fields; kernels of memory—like an amnesic remembering, then speaking.

Previously published: “Tharros”, June 19, 2015

Mary Saracino is a novelist, poet, and memoir writer who lives in New Mexico. Her most recent novel is Heretics: A Love Story (Pearlsong Press 2014). Her novel, The Singing of Swans (Pearlsong Press 2006) was a 2007 Lambda Literary Awards Finalist. She is the author of the novels, No Matter What and Finding Grace, and the memoir Voices of the Soft-bellied Warrior. Mary’s short story, “Vicky’s Secret,” earned the 2007 Glass Woman Prize. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in a variety of literary and cultural journals and anthologies, online and in print.

She Spoke My Name: Finding the Feminine Divine in Silence, Fire, and Verse by Madeleine F. White

Two years ago I was in Pembrokeshire in South Wales. The retreat I’d taken myself to consisted of a collection of stone and flint buildings half way up a mountain and set around a farmhouse and chapel. I had come to find a way through my writer’s’ block and also to deal with a couple of really painful family issues.

My room was only a half corridor away from the chapel itself. It was four o’clock in the morning and because I was quite close to the kitchen on the other side I had my earplugs in. Despite all this, on the second night, I quite clearly heard a woman’s voice calling “Madeleine,” loudly enough to wake me and send me looking down a deserted corridor. It was not imagined or metaphorical, but distinct and unmistakably real. The experience startled, not because I was afraid but because I recognised the truth of it. This familiar, maternal and sacred truth led directly to the writing of Maiden Mother Crone, my second poetry collection just a few months later as well as a resolution of the two other issues that had weighed so heavily on my mind.

As a Hen Gathers by Elanur Williams

**Gustav Klimt, *Garden Path with Chickens*, 1916**

In the early years of my childhood, my family lived for a short time on a poultry farm in Bandırma. Hens wandered freely, unconfined. The contours of that land have long since changed, replaced by refrigerated depots and industrial freezers that hum along the highways, the relentless march of capital. In the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, Jesus laments: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.” These days, I find myself returning to the image of the mother hen—a figure who embodies a special wisdom that is seldom named, yet deeply and instinctively known.

Although I did not have a religious upbringing, I grew up embracing aspects of many faiths. My spiritual background is Alevi, and after inviting the Presbyterian faith into my life following my marriage, I find these layered identities influence each other in ways that are both intricate and transformative. In her sermon Who Is Jesus? Mother Hen, Reverend Agnes Norfleet lingers on the vulnerability of the mother hen metaphor, questioning what strength a hen can possibly offer in the face of the fox—Herod—and, more broadly, in the face of violence at large. Reverend Norfleet asks why Jesus does not invoke a more forceful or fiercer maternal figure—a lion, perhaps, or a bear? What does this choice imply for our activism and understandings of leadership? What unique wisdom does the mother hen offer?

Three poems by Rebecca Rogerson

Don’t Take Me to Church

He never let me eat communion because I wasn’t a catholic, but it was okay for me to eat his dick. My tiny palms forced to stroke him, the same dextrous hands that coloured in the lines.

I knew his God wasn’t my God. I knew she saw everything there was to see and that he wouldn’t reach salvation; no matter how many Hail Marys he said at mass in Ireland.

The Virgin Mary knew what he stole from me, what they steal from all of us.

I couldn’t fall apart on Sundays at noon when he took me to church—before he took me home after he did what he did—to the little Jewish girl who didn’t know she was Jewish.

I couldn’t remember it because I buried it in Survive, until, it was resurrected by nightmares and demons who professed caring and brought me to altars of despair to vomit up all the darkness, and when there was no more left to cleanse or tear out; light ripped in.

No one talks about the embarrassment that goes along with the telling, sharing and surfacing of sexual violence. How it comes up, how it comes back. How we’re always haunted by the deadbeat dead and grabby grandfathers who try to reach from there into here, pretending they are made of heaven.

I fled a friend’s choir concert because perpetrators keep stealing time, moments, sleep, joy, and friendship, in churches and baths. On my flight, I hunted for nature, soil and anything else that felt most alive in the hilly town of Nelson. Pretending I was like everyone else, I hid the panic that strikes broken hearts.

Two Poems by Rebecca Rogerson

ROSE WATER

I am the holy place somewhere in the stars of eternity,
someone’s daughter who seeks reprieve somewhere.

Yetta changed her name to Mary. She tried to erase her past, not as a Jew, well maybe some of that, but more as a Jew molested by her father—a frum[1], “Monster”, his daughters called him.

On my altar sits my tallit alongside a Menorah with seven brass holders. No stars of David—before or after the decimation of Gaza. Can rose water sweeten our hearts? We pour it graciously in our hands, hoping the lost petals heal our guts and brighten our thoughts. She searches hungrily for hope in glass bottles adorned with Farsi, that cost $4.29 each.

Herstory Profiles: Tending the Flame with Pema Chödrön By Anjeanette LeBoeuf

While the early days of the nation of America is seeped with Christianity, the West has also had an illustrious relationship with Buddhism. Western Buddhism and especially American Buddhisms has grown exponentially since the 1960s. One of the benefits of American Buddhism is the inclusion, reintegration of Women Religious. One of the most known Buddhist nuns is that of Pema Chödrön.

Pema Chödrön was born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown in 1936 in New York City to Catholic Parents. She would receive her English Literature Degree from Sarah Lawerence College and a Master’s in Elementary Education from University of California, Berkeley. She would be an elementary teacher for many years in New Mexico and California. Deirdre was married and divorced twice. She has two children and three grandchildren. In the 1970s. Deirdre would start to study and practice Buddhism under Lama Chime Rinpoche. This would be the start of her journey to become Pema Chödrön. Under the guidance and practice of Chögyam Trungpa, Deidre was given a new name, Pema Chödrön which means ‘lotus torch of the dharma’ when she took the refuge vows.

Long Live Queer Nightlife! by Amin Ghaziani – Book Review by Marie Cartier

I was invited to be on a panel for the Pacific Sociological Association (PSA) in San Francisco this past March for a new book by Amin Ghaziani, Long Live Queer Night life (Princeton University Press, 2024).

Since I wrote Baby, You Are My Religion – Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall and have discussed aspects of this work here I thought the FAR family would also enjoy this conversation on where queer nightlife is now.

The book is interspersed with visits to club nights, something Ghaziani says helps widen the possibilities for communities—different communities can have their own nights and these chapters where he visits these various hot spots are exciting and first person.

Sacred Secrets: The Legacy of Women’s Wisdom Across Generations by Rabbi Nadya Gross

From my earliest memories, I saw things that others didn’t see and knew things I had no business knowing. But at the time, I didn’t realize that others didn’t witness the dance of light around their bodies or the life forms at the base of trees. I didn’t know that the insights I had into people’s emotions were not universally shared. My curiosity led me to ask questions about these things… until my grandmother, Savta (Heb), took me into the kitchen (where everything important happened), closed the doors, and told me never to talk about these things with anyone except her. And so, my training began.

Savta was gifted in ways different from mine. She had grown up in a circle of women and their daughters, a circle where women educated each other, shared their unique gifts and insights, and passed down a legacy of wisdom.

The wisdom she shared with me was as ancient as the land on which we lived. We began with reverence for the Earth and all her elements—pre-patriarchal Goddess wisdom. We explored what it means to be intimately connected to all aspects of Creation, understanding that we are interdependent. Harm to a tree, an insect, or the water harms us. We learned that the respect we wish to receive from others must first be shown by us. I learned to never pick up a beautiful stone that caught my attention without first asking permission to remove it from its resting place. When harvesting fruit from one of the many trees in my grandparent’ yard, I expressed deep gratitude to the mother-tree whose body nurtured that fruit to ripeness.

WHEN I SAY THAT I MISS MY MOTHER (THIRTY YEARS AFTER HER DEATH), WHAT PRECISELY AM I MISSING? by Rebe Huntman

On the eve of my 50th birthday, I found myself longing for my mother. She’d been dead thirty years—so long that I’d forgotten the sound of her voice or the temperature of her skin. And yet I missed her. Desperately. Shamefully.

The shape of that missing had something to do with the fact that I was nearing the age she’d been when she died. As a child, I’d watched my mother dress for a night of dancing with my father, lining her lips with red and stringing her neck with beads—sure signs she knew the secrets of being a woman: self-possessed; striding through the world with confidence and self-assurance; a real badass!

By now, I’d expected to feel that same sense of largesse. But the truth was that I still felt like the nineteen-year-old version of myself who had lost her mother, a child still waiting for someone to show me the way.

~*~

I wasn’t alone. My whole country seemed to have lost our way. We were surrounded by images of the feminine—pop icons and underwear models, feminists and porn stars, soccer moms and saints—all of them flashing large but pointing in different directions, unglued from whatever architecture might give them a coherent narrative: A blueprint that might hold us through the waters of our deepest anxieties. A guide who might answer our deepest questions: Who am I? Am I part of something larger than my own life? And if so, how do I fit within it?

~*~

The Gift of Enduring Friendship by Sara Wright

Mathias Klang from Göteborg, Sweden, Wikimedia Commons

After I experienced a sudden shattering break in a friendship with a woman writer/editor that I loved (that I believed would endure any personal difficulty) I was unable to process the event. I wrote a short poem to express my disbelief in which I likened this betrayal to the cutting down of this woman’s tree and left it at that. Silence is a killer of soul. There is no place to go.

The profound rupture of this woman thread felt catastrophic (I have never had a woman friend like her), and in retrospect I still see and experience our friendship in this light. At the time my life was in crisis. I had other consuming worries. Because I had learned at my mother’s knee that silence is literally the end of the road the bottomless chasm that separated us did not lessen in intensity, but I lived on.

Six years later that rupture has been healed. How did this happen? My friend, who happens to be something of a genius, intellectual, professional editor writer/poet wrote a book that she offered to anyone who wanted to read it for free. This act of great generosity was so typical of this woman’s behavior that it galvanized me into action. I took the risk and contacted her directly asking for a copy. I don’t recall just what I said except that I wished we could be friends again, never believing the impossible would happen but it did.