Holy Women Icons by Angela Yarber

Reimagining the Classroom: Embodied Ecofeminism and the Arts Course on Hawai’i Island by Angela Yarber

“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”-bell hooks

Like many academics, my “in the box” dream was to be a professor. The full-time, tenured kind. Like many queer feminist academics, I know that such dreams are rarely reality. When you’re also an artist and activist with a strong penchant for wanderlust, these dreams are simply unattainable fairytales. Never one for “in the box” living, I left the traditional academy and traditional church years ago, wandering over the garden’s walls with Lilith as my intrepid guide. I’ve told the story before. My wife and I left our jobs, sold our home, traveled full-time with our toddler, and turned the Holy Women Icons Project into a non-profit while building an off-grid tiny house on the television show Tiny House Nation in Hawai’i. It’s become old news. But since we’ve been doing this for several years now, those faraway dreams are finally starting to become reality. The academic classroom, the activist’s platform, the artist’s studio, the feminist’s megaphone, and the farmer’s orchard are fusing into one creative, life-giving, empowering space for teaching. The Holy Women Icons Project’s first academic course, “Embodied Ecofeminism and the Arts,” is actually happening. Seminarians and doctoral students from Berkeley join us in January. They’re soon followed by undergraduates from New York and seminarians from Atlanta. And I’m reaching out to more and more schools interested in creatively, subversively, and sustainably decolonizing the classroom with us for one week on the Big Island.

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Holy Women Icons Bearing the Light of Advent by Angela Yarber

There’s nothing like the holiday season to bring out everyone’s least feminist self. In one of the courses that I teach—Gender, Food, and the Body in Popular Culture—students are assigned to examine gender roles throughout the holiday season through the lens intersectional ecofeminism. Inevitably, almost every student returns from holiday break with the same assessment: mom, grandma, and a kitchen full of women prepare, cook, and clean every family meal; women do the holiday shopping; men in the family watch sports. Of course, this isn’t true of everyone. There are plenty of families who subvert and dismantle stereotypical gender roles, but the holidays seem to heighten these roles, undergirding them with some kind of nostalgic and theological weight that claims that if mama doesn’t arduously prepare her famed casserole, the season will be ruined. Otherwise committed feminists find themselves singing carols filled with sexist language and participating in holiday rituals that they would critique any other time of the year. Subversion be damned because we want our traditional family holiday!

I’ve long struggled with creative ways to subversively approach the holidays as a queer clergywoman, parent, artist, and author. People like their nostalgic and heart-warming traditions, even when they sometimes smack of patriarchy, racism, and heteronormativity. I’ve confronted this as a preacher and worship planner, often to raised eyebrows or angry phone calls from congregants who just want to sing the carols without the preacher changing the words, or dismissing the notion of a virgin birth, or hanging enormous paintings of pregnant women all over the sanctuary.

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Self-Care is a Feminist Issue: Holy Women Icons Project’s 7-Day Online Self-Care Retreat by Rev. Dr. Angela Yarber

Several years ago, I was pastor of a welcoming and affirming church. As a queer clergywoman, I thought that such a place would be the perfect place to flourish and thrive as a pastor. And yet, because of heterosexist and sexist microaggressions, I found myself anxious, depressed, and in need of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual care.

After a three-day retreat filled with self-care and soul-nourishment at a non-profit retreat center that catered to activists and artists , I felt as though a tremendous weight was lifted off my shoulders, that I could focus and find clarity in my vocation. Pausing to care for myself gave me the courage to leave my toxic job and live more fully into my calling. This experience taught me the vital importance of self-care.

Womanist Audre Lorde once proclaimed, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Because caring for the self violates the patriarchal norms that traditionally dictate that you should be the one caring for everyone else. Yes, everyone needs to pause to care for the self. But oppressed minorities have a particular need for self-care, not simply as a way of refreshing oneself in order to do the work of justice, but as a vital part of the work of social justice. Because caring for yourself in a society—and a church—that wishes for you to do otherwise is an act of political warfare. When feminists care for themselves, it is a radical act of soul redemption, spirit rejuvenation, and a political and spiritual act of acknowledging your holy and innate self-worth. In case anyone has told you that you are not worthy, let me reassure you. You are worthy. And you deserve to care for yourself.

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Painting the Virgen de la Caridad, Doing Intersectionality by Angela Yarber

angela The most recent Holy Woman Icon with a folk feminist twist that I’ve painted is the Virgen de la Caridad. Like Mary, Guadalupe, La Negrita, and the Virgin of Regla, she was commissioned by a bold and brilliant friend, a scholar who lives, teaches, and does the work of intersectional feminism on a daily basis. As with my beloved friend who taught me so much about Jane Addams last month, this dear friend has taught me so much about feminist understandings of Marian Spirituality and of the need for many secular scholars to keep a connection to their religious roots.

When we discussed her commission, she wanted to make sure that the Virgin of Caridad was the primary focus of the icon, but since she is also often associated with Oshun, she also wanted elements of this Yoruban goddess to shine through. I was thrilled with the opportunity to learn, research, grow, and paint. Little did I know what kind of important learning was in store. Continue reading “Painting the Virgen de la Caridad, Doing Intersectionality by Angela Yarber”

Painting “Unknown” Holy Women: Commissions, Gifts, and the Unsung Stories of “Ordinary” Women by Angela Yarber

angela Each month on Feminism and Religion, I feature a Holy Women Icon with a folk feminist twist. The painting is accompanied by an essay describing the holy woman’s life and the ways she stood for justice and peace, the ways in which she embodied feminism. Thus far, we have explored the stories of holy women that are well-known, perhaps not by the wider public, but by feminists seeking to uncover the forgotten truths of holy women throughout history. They are goddesses, saints, artists, dancers, scholars, clergy, and pillars of the faith: Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, Dorothy Day, Sappho, Jephthah’s daughter, Anna Julia Cooper, the Holy Woman Icon archetype, Maya Angelou, Martha Graham, Pauli Murray, La Negrita, Tiamat/tehom, and Mother Teresa, just to name a few.

We tell their stories in our classrooms. Other artists paint them. Many have biographies or autobiographies recounting their lives. Their stories embolden us to stay strong, and continue working for justice and equality. But what of the women whose songs really are unsung, whose stories never grace the pages of our textbooks? What about the “unknown” women who have, indeed, emboldened us, paved the way for us to be who we are, but who most people have never heard of? Many such women are also holy, thus deserving of canonization as Holy Woman Icons.

Elizabeth I would like to dedicate this post to all the holy women who fill our lives, yet whose stories we never hear. Because it is not only these seemingly famous women—these heroines of feminism—who are holy and whose stories matter. Continue reading “Painting “Unknown” Holy Women: Commissions, Gifts, and the Unsung Stories of “Ordinary” Women by Angela Yarber”

Painting Sappho by Angela Yarber

“Someone, I say, will remember us in the future,” she once wrote. To my knowledge, she was never dubbed a prophet. A muse, yes. A romantic, perhaps. But never a prophet, rarely holy, and nary an icon. Until now. Hailed as one of the best Greek lyric poets, many have tried to forget her, or at least the more provocative elements of her life. The passionate poet Sappho was born on the island of Lesbos around 620 BCE (sometime between 630-612 BCE). The word lesbian stems from the place of her birth and her name is the origin of the word sapphic, though most scholars assert that little is known of her actual life and that the majority of her poetry is not autobiographical. Yet her lyric poetry speaks of love for both sexes and myriad people.

What is more, the idea of homo and heterosexuality are not transhistorical essences, but instead are relatively recent socio-historical constructs. To say that there were strict sexual binaries in the ancient world in which Sappho lived would be an anachronism. Sexuality was much more fluid. Not surprisingly, many scholars have tried to name and claim male lovers for Sappho, a heteronormative attempt to erase her fluid sexuality, her hope to be remembered in the future dashed, demeaned, forgotten. In fact, during the Victorian Era, many asserted that Sappho was the headmistress of a girls’ school, another attempt to straighten out her memory, her poetry, her love. Continue reading “Painting Sappho by Angela Yarber”

Painting Dorothy Day by Angela Yarber

Radical Revolutionary. One with the workers. Daily works of mercy. One who challenged the status quo. She never wanted to be called a saint, though the Claretian Missionaries proposed that she be canonized in 1983. The Catholic Church calls her a “Servant of God.” I call her a Holy Woman Icon. She joins the myriad other Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist that I feature each month: Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin.

Born on November 8, 1897 Dorothy Day’s radical spirit, her development of the Catholic Worker Movement, and her solidarity with the poor have taught countless women what it means to be a revolutionary. This American anarchist and activist converted to Catholicism as an adult after living what many describe as a bohemian lifestyle. She advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism, daily works of mercy, pacifism, and solidarity with the poor. Continue reading “Painting Dorothy Day by Angela Yarber”

Painting Holy Women By Angela Yarber

Each month, I focus on one of my Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist, highlighting the often unsung stories of feminism’s heroines: Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, Jarena Lee, Isadora Duncan, Miriam, Lilith, Georgia O’Keeffe, Guanyin, and many others who will be featured in the months to come. While some of these holy women may not be incredibly famous to the wider public, most of their names and stories are familiar to the readers of Feminism and Religion. They are goddesses, saints, artists, dancers, scholars, clergy, and pillars of the faith. We tell their stories in our classrooms. Their stories embolden us to stand tall, stay strong, and continue working for justice and equality. But what of the women whose songs really are unsung, whose stories never grace the pages of our textbooks? What about the women who have, indeed, emboldened us, paved the way for us to be who we are, but who our readers have never heard of? This month I would like to focus on one of these women. You’ve probably never heard her name, but I know her very well. It is her courage that has given me strength, her compassion that has taught me to love. Her name is Mary Harrell and she is my mother.

In her seminal work that highlights the importance of telling women’s stories, FAR’s own Carol Christ begins by saying:

Women’s stories have not been told. And without stories there is no articulation of experience. Without stories a woman is lost when she comes to make the important decisions of her life. She does not learn to value her struggles, to celebrate her strengths, to comprehend her pain. Without stories she cannot understand herself. Without stories she is alienated from those experiences of self and world that have been called spiritual or religious. She is closed in silence. The expression of women’s spiritual quest is integrally related to the telling of women’s stories. If women’s stories are not told, the depth of women’s souls will not be known. (Carol Christ, Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest. Boston: Beacon Press, 1980) Continue reading “Painting Holy Women By Angela Yarber”