herstory – Page 6 – Feminism and Religion

Sing Anyway by Dr. Jamie Marich

I often find myself sitting in conservative Catholic spaces. My brother is a Roman Catholic priest in the Dominican order and I remain in support of his vocation. Every time, before a Mass officially starts, I’m overcome with a sense of: “You belong here…and you don’t.”

The part of me that has always felt at home in a Catholic setting is that love of the ritual and ceremony, the smell of the incense, the familiarity of the chants and songs. It was a Catholic priest, the late Fr. Ciaran O’Donnell, who taught me how to play the guitar and got me started with the healing practice of songwriting. When I sink into these associations, I feel connected to my Croatian ancestors and our Catholic faith. And there’s the other part of me—the queer feminist and an advocate for other queer and transgender people to live the fullest, most open expressions of themselves in all spaces of life, especially faith-based spaces. As a survivor of several forms of sexual assault and as a trauma specialist who has guided countless other survivors in their healing process over the years, I can’t sit in a Catholic Church and not feel uneasy about the legacy of abuse and silencing survivors within the church. Between my queer identity and dedication to supporting survivors, I feel that I don’t belong.

Fight, Fight, Fight? by Caryn MacGrandle

I have two divorces under my belt. I’m not proud. I made bad choices. I didn’t have the support network nor the mental ability to thrive in the situations. But I had gumption. And I didn’t stay.

So here I am. 54. And starting over.

It can be rather terrifying as motherhood and family has always been my focus.

After my recent second divorce, part of my stability plan was Land. The Blue Ridge mountains in North Carolina called me. The Appalachians. I spent a year looking. I had a list: unrestricted land, at least five acres, a water feature.
I had several adventures on my own looking, but I will never forget the day I found it. I was with my son James, and I knew it right away.

Ten acres. A third of it a bog along a creek. Away from it all, but not ‘too away’ as it has a road running through it that leads to a partly developed mountain subdivision.

Home.

I can breathe.

She in Archetypes, Images, Energy… Emerging by Dale Allen

If it weren’t for my mother, I wouldn’t have gone to church on Saturday evening at 5pm. It was a special trip made by me, my daughter and my 89-year-old mother who is visiting here in Connecticut from Ohio. We are met at Holy Name of Jesus Church in Stamford, CT by one of my aunts, some cousins, one of my sisters, a brother-in-law, nieces and nephews – part of our big family.

Holy Name of Jesus Church is in walking distance from the house where my mother grew up: the house where her Polish-immigrant parents raised 8 children. My mother and her siblings attended Holy Name of Jesus Catholic School next to the church from 1^st through 9^th grade. The school is still there and now houses a daycare and learning center.

Lowlands: Who Will Answer the Call? by Sara Wright

I live under a steep craggy mountain that is gushing with the sweetest mineral rich water that pours out of an old spring. On this piece of land feeder brooks stream down the mountain feeding hemlock and cedar before silvery clear water slides into a rushing brook (miraculously) still filled with trout. Sadly, the main artery of my brook comes from another mountain that has been brutally logged, dammed up for someone’s pleasure and is currently running amok. Silt ridden water floods this lowland routinely not only changing the course of the stream now riddled with dying trees, (collapsing trees must have soil to stay upright) but creating unusual vernal pools that are beginning to mature. As a result, this has been the best frog and toad year that I have had since my first magical year spent on this land before all the surrounding areas were chopped into parcels. Once I roamed free up and down this mountain through unbroken forests fields and fens, marshes, seeps, bogs and springs. I have never lost that feeling of belonging to this land not just the area I ‘own’ (oxymoron) but all of her.

It doesn’t surprise me that in most pre -christian traditions the Original Mother of Us All was and still is a mountain! When the other mountains all around me were first being raped by dirty yellow machines someone remarked to me quite sagely, “the bones of the mountains are still here”. And so they are, and so is She.

A Healing Shrine by Joyce Zonana

From October 5, 2023. Joyce posted the blogpost which she titled: Nineteen months and Counting: Experiencing the Web of Life

On February 28, 2022, I unknowingly drove into a deep snowbank, shortly after finding myself in a strangely unfamiliar landscape. Suspecting a TIA, my primary care physician urged me to go to an emergency room for a possible CAT scan. There, a lesion in my right parietal lobe was quickly discovered.

How the Nineteenth-Century Spiritualist Movement Gave Voice to American Women -Part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This post is presented as part of FAR’s co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. Part 1 was posted yesterday

Spiritualism began with two young girls, the Fox sisters, hearing knocking sounds in their home near Rochester, N.Y . They determined the knocking to be coming from a man who was murdered and buried under their home. The knocking was soon categorized into an alphabet out of which seances began. In seances groups of people gathered and put their hands on a table while asking questions of ancestors who made themselves known by rapping and knocking in response. Next, mediums in the form of young women speaking the answers of the dead as the bereaved asked them questions, emerged. Instructions were disseminated on how to be a medium and how to run a seance. The movement took off.

The movement was largely white, northern Protestants but other ethnicities were involved. The Black population may have influenced the arising of these practices with traditions brought with them from West Africa.

Healing What Ails Us and Coming Together: Politics and Other Forbidden Subjects by Caryn MacGrandle

I met my best friend growing up in Third Grade. I moved around the country after high school, but regardless, her and I have managed to stay in touch. I spoke with her last weekend and asked about her parents. Even though its been years since I’ve seen them, I remember them as if it were yesterday. Going out to their cabin at Lake Texoma. Seeing them around the house.

You see Kim and I were tight. We saw each other pretty much daily for years. In some ways it was a much more innocent time. I remember summers leaving the house in the morning and not going back until sunset, muddy and barefoot. Crawdads and horse models. Playgrounds and baseball games.

But in some ways, it was a much less innocent time. We dabbled in quite a lot that we should not have as the term helicopter parent was unheard of. Our skies were wide open. The good and the bad. The large majority of us were latch key kids, and we raised ourselves. No apps to tell our parents where we were or check in. We went as the wind blew us.

The Eye of the Goddess by Sara Wright

Spiraling In

I buried you today,
a fluff of earthly feathers
dipped in ebony
bronze
and gold.
He left you
on my road
innocent
already broken
Just a tiny bird
peeping pitifully
in fear and pain
cocooned in
deep distress.

I scooped you up
held you against
my heart

Instantly Still
I felt you knew…

Wild Mothering
kicked in
create a loving
space for
life or death

Above all
Be Present
for whatever
is ahead…

I dug a grave
where you were born
nestled under pines
fragrant roots
cradled what
was left
your bones are
made of light

Offering prayers
to Her
Our Bird Goddess*
I bowed my head
Ancient and Wise
She who Sees
She who holds
Abusers accountable
(as do I)
She watches
over us all
honoring the dead.

To Childless Cat Ladies by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I feel you. In a patriarchy where women’s reproductive abilities determine our worth, to be childless is a curse. We can thank VP candidate JD Vance for revealing this truth in all its ugly fullness. He is a walking billboard for patriarchy. Bottom line: Patriarchy is all about women’s bodies, our reproductive abilities and men’s desire to control them. We saw this in the Dobbs decision where it was declared that women have no constitutional right to the basics of healthcare, in Texas where it’s pretty much illegal to have a poor pregnancy outcome, and in Ohio where raped children are expected to give birth to their abuser’s child. Its endless

But it is JD who made it plainer than plain what this is all about. Besides childless cat ladies being an old trope, just think of the judgement involved. Who is JD to decide on anyone’s family constellation? Or their pets? He also made disparaging remarks about the “childless left,” who have no “physical commitment to the future of this country.” That is a statement that only a person who totally lacks empathy can make. He is making a sweeping generalization that people without children don’t care about the future. This statement is more confession than truth. He reveals that until he had children, he had no care about the future of our world. It’s beyond egocentric. If only his kids are the center of his “caring,” that shuts out most of the world’s other children.

The Case for Women’s Visionary Films by Freia Serafina

Power in the woods.
Creation of artist Jym Davis.

As a film history professor, I am intimately aware that women’s representation on screen is historically lacking. While preparing to teach a new course, I found myself hard-pressed to uncover significant academic discourse that highlights the divine feminine that doesn’t solely live in the realm of a Christian worldview. Indeed, film scholar Tenzen Eaghll points out that much of the existing scholarship from the past 100 years “all tend to equate religion with Christian theology in some manner, and … focus[es] narrowly upon Christian themes such as Jesus, salvation, faith, etc.” He states that scholars of religion and film essentialize all religion as Christianity, and that many scholars of cinema additionally speak of religion as an all-encompassing umbrella organization giving us a condensed notion of a shared theological worldview, devoid of nuance and alternate meaning. Eaghll goes on to argue, as I do, for a more critical approach to the study of film that requires us to pay closer attention to how “representations of religion in film conceal issues of race, class, gender, colonialism, secularism, and capitalism – common themes in ideological critique – as well as notions of origin, authenticity, narrative, violence, and identity.” I believe the solution lays in the inclusion of women’s visionary films.