Holy Women Icons – Page 5 – Feminism and Religion

Painting Maya Angelou by Angela Yarber

Author. Performer. Activist. Poet. Actress. Playwright. There are few others whose accomplishments are as prestigious, prolific, or expansive as Maya Angelou’s. I initially encountered her work in a ninth grade literature class. The first of her seven autobiographies was our assigned reading. I voraciously consumed every word of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, my heart filled with grief, my eyes filled with tears, my mind filled with questions. It is no wonder this book is the most acclaimed of all her autobiographies, books of poetry, and essays. As a fourteen year-old, my mind was opened to the power of stories, particularly the stories of those vastly different from oneself, and to the oppression black women like Angelou experienced in the United States. As a native white Southerner, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was my first foray into grappling with the nuances of white privilege.

In college, my creative writing professor packed all ten of the creative writing minors into a van to drive to a neighboring college where Angelou was lecturing. I sat in awe, riveted by every word. And upon the completion of my Ph.D., I moved to Winston-Salem, the place Angelou calls home. I have yet to meet her. If I could, I’d surely hand her the icon I painted in her honor, knowing that my words would fail to express how profound my gratitude is for the work she has done in our world. Continue reading “Painting Maya Angelou by Angela Yarber”

Painting and Ordaining the Holy Woman Icon by Angela Yarber

This month on the Spring Equinox I celebrate ten years of ordination. And for the first time in over fourteen years I am not employed as a minister at a local church. While I miss preaching and occasionally long for liturgy, I have never been more happy, and I find company and solace in the myriad holy women that fill my life. They have become my beloved community. They hold me accountable to my calling. They celebrate the birth of my child, dry my tears, laugh with me heartily, and remind me to dance for justice even when it’s difficult.

Most of them are real flesh and blood women—my wife, friends, family, colleagues, even the Feminism and Religion virtual community. Many are also the 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, Dorothy Day, Sappho, Jephthah’s daughter, Anna Julia Cooper.

So, as winter turns to spring and I enter the next decade of ordained life now outside the church’s walls, I find myself clinging to Walt Whitman’s admonition: “From this hour forward I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines.” As I think about this great cloud of witnesses surrounding me—my beloved Holy Women—I recall the ways in which we are all called to be prophets for justice.

Many have claimed that artists are our contemporary prophets, those who rage against the status quo, and call us to actions of justice that create beauty in the lives of all humanity, even all creation. So I turn to a great artist whose music has set free countless women and queer folk in search of new symbols, new language, new stories that are deep and wide enough to contain our subverted and searching spiritualities. The great womanist prophet, Tracy Chapman, sings these words in her song, New Beginnings: Continue reading “Painting and Ordaining the Holy Woman Icon by Angela Yarber”

Painting Anna Julia Cooper by Angela Yarber

As we celebrate Black History Month I’d like to honor a remarkable black woman who joins the Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist that I feature each month. Anna Julia Cooper stands alongside 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, and Jephthah’s daughter.

Cooper was born a slave in Raleigh, NC in 1858. Her mother was a slave and her biological father was her mother’s white master. After living and working as a slave until the age of five, Cooper began her formal education at a school for slaves. She would grow up to become one of the most educated and intellectual black women of her century. In fact, she was the fourth African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in the United States, writing her dissertation on “Attitudes toward Slavery in Revolutionary France.” Continue reading “Painting Anna Julia Cooper by Angela Yarber”

Painting Guanyin by Angela Yarber

As hundreds of thousands of people are dying in Syria and myriad individuals suffer from political unrest in Egypt, as we continue to debate the sexuality of young women (yes, we’re still talking about Miley Cyrus) in the face of America’s rape culture and as countless nameless victims are ravaged by war, poverty, racism, and violence, I sometimes find myself overwhelmed, as though my two hands are never enough to reach out, help, rage, change. And I find myself—and our world—in need of mercy and compassion. Since I always focus on one of my Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist, I am drawn this month to the Goddess of Mercy. So, Guanyin joins this great cloud of witnesses who inspire, embolden, and surround us: 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, and Georgia O’Keeffe.

In English we know Guanyin as the Goddess of Mercy and Compassion. Generally regarded among East Asian devotees as originating from Avalokitesvara, her name is shortened from Guanshiyin, which means “One who hears the sounds/cries of the world.” In the Lotus Sutra, Avalokitesvara is a bodhisattva who is androgynous and can take on the form of any female, male, adult, child, human, or non-human sentient being in order to teach the Dharma. Typically she is depicted in female form and she is widely venerated by East Asian Buddhists. Though she is particularly poignant for Buddhists, Guanyin is present in almost every facet of Chinese religion, from Buddhism to Taoism to shrines for local fishermen. Continue reading “Painting Guanyin by Angela Yarber”

Painting Georgia O’Keeffe by Angela Yarber

Hailed as the Mother of American Modernism, her seemingly vaginal flowers lauded by feminists and artists alike, Georgia O’Keeffe stands as a sentinel for strong, creative women who balk at tradition and embrace a faraway freedom. Though she adamantly denied any association with female genitalia embedded in her sensuously up-close-and-personal flowers—even from feminist artists as famed as Judy Chicago—she remained a female force unbound, painting, living, loving, and creating on her own terms. So, it’s no wonder that she joins my Holy Woman Icons with a folk feminist twist: 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, and Lilith.

Born in November 1887, O’Keeffe knew she would be an artist from the young age of seven. Whether you’re familiar with her intricate flowers, soaring skyscrapers, or desert skulls depends largely on the period of her life that interests you. Whether it was the rural Wisconsin farm of her childhood, the bustling city of New York where she began her relationship with famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz, the peaceful lake in the Adirondack Mountains where they summered, or the harsh desert landscapes of New Mexico where she devoted her later years, she found inspiration and captured beauty wherever she lived, camped, traveled, hiked, or drove in her Ford Model A. Continue reading “Painting Georgia O’Keeffe by Angela Yarber”

Painting Lilith, Leaving Church by Angela Yarber

Lilith has been a misunderstood, appropriated, and redeemed woman throughout the ages. Many feminists claim her as an empowering figure in Jewish mythology, her story reclaimed by contemporary artists such as Sarah McLachlan, who created the all-women music tour, “Lilith Fair.” Others have claimed that Lilith was a demon who seduced men and strangled children in the night.

Based almost entirely on Judith Plaskow’s beautiful Midrash, “The Coming of Lilith,” this new Holy Woman Icon with a folk feminist twist has empowered me to reject the sexism and heterosexism that was rendering me broken. So, she joins 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, and Miriam as powerful women who have done holy and remarkable things. First, her story. Then—if I may—my own.

Continue reading “Painting Lilith, Leaving Church by Angela Yarber”

Painting Miriam by Angela Yarber

We are your subtlest instruments:
no music branches to your breast
that does not sound in us,
no music dies away from you,
that in us lives not,
and even in your absence
your cadence journeys…

Allen Mandelbaum, Chelmaxioms

The path to freedom is often muddy. Water sloshes through your sandals and the soles of your shoes stick, clinging to the past, weighing down the future. No one said dancing in wet sand was easy. But it is very holy. Just ask the brave prophetess who celebrated liberation by dancing on the shores of a reedy sea.

Often relegated to the submissive role of sister, the character of Miriam is typically overshadowed by the triumphs of her younger brother. Like many of her canonical contemporaries, Miriam receives little attention in scripture. Her name is only mentioned twice and the story of her song is left unsung by the writers of Exodus. Yet she is there, her song hidden in the crevices of the canon, her dance demanding that we notice the ritual event of liberation, her courageous voice prophesying, leaving a legacy for all the dancing women who will follow in her intrepid food steps. Continue reading “Painting Miriam by Angela Yarber”

Painting Isadora Duncan By Angela Yarber

A dancing woman stands center stage, her arms outstretched in natural, free, and unbound movement, as her heart cries out to us…

In May of 1877 a dancing, feminist, revolutionary was born. She was not constrained by the corsets, morals, or traditions of her time. Barefoot, clad in flowing garments, with a diaphanous scarf in hand, she stepped onto the stage and rocked the world: the world of dance, the world of women, and the world of religion.

Born in San Francisco as Dora Angela Duncan and known to us as Isadora Duncan, or Holy Isadora. This wild woman rejected the rigidity of ballet, conventional roles for women, and traditional religion. After feeling constrained by the pointe shoes, corsets, and unyielding technique of American ballet, Duncan left for Europe, intent on revolutionizing the world through dance. She claimed, “I have come to bring about a great renaissance of religion through the dance, to bring the knowledge of the beauty and holiness of the human body … (Duncan quoted by Terry Walter in Isadora Duncan).” Continue reading “Painting Isadora Duncan By Angela Yarber”

Painting Jarena Lee By Angela Yarber

When we gender the pulpit in the direction of justice, we ordain her spirit with gratitude for the many miles she walked and the countless sermons she preached.

This month I celebrate the release of my second book, The Gendered Pulpit: Sex, Body, and Desire in Preaching and Worship. As I celebrate the privilege I have as queer feminist to stand behind the pulpit each Sunday—to gender the space in the direction of justice—I must also recall the myriad holy women who have gone before me. I think of many of my Holy Women Icons with a folk feminist twist: Virginia Woolf , the Shulamite, Mary Daly, Baby Suggs, Pachamama and Gaia, Frida Kahlo, Salome, Guadalupe and Mary, Fatima, Sojourner Truth, Saraswati, and so many others. And this month I think specifically of my sister preachers, those who raised their voices in bold proclamations when the road was long and unimaginably difficult. I think of preachers like Jarena Lee.

Lee spent thirty years as an itinerant preacher and was the first black woman to be licensed to preach through the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. Despite the fact that the AME issued a definitive ruling that women were not permitted to preach in 1852, Lee spent the bulk of her adult life preaching. Jarena Lee’s struggle to preach is a familiar story in nineteenth-century American Protestantism, even though the Second Awakening ushered in a period of intense religious revival; with camp meetings around every corner, there was an unprecedented opportunity for women to preach. Like Jarena Lee, though, they weren’t paid, ordained, or protected. Continue reading “Painting Jarena Lee By Angela Yarber”

Painting Saraswati By Angela Yarber

Saraswati reminds me that the divisions between fields are our construction; that academics can be creative, art can be holy, and preaching can engage the mind.

I was precariously perched atop a file cabinet tacking a giant cloth to the wall when another staff member entered my office. “What’s that?” she asked, puzzled, and pointing to the massive cloth now covering my wall. “Saraswati,” I responded, hopping off the file cabinet, “the Hindu goddess of arts, creativity, and learning.” She raised her eyebrows. “Our previous Baptist preacher didn’t have any Hindu goddesses hanging on the wall,” she said with a wry smile. “I guess I’m not your average Baptist preacher,” I chuckled.

For years I have been searching for Saraswati, claiming her as my patron saint, the one who guides my path as I navigate three seemingly disparate callings: artist, scholar, and preacher. In Saraswati, these three callings merge. Naturally, I hang a giant image of her on my office wall and wear a pendant bearing her likeness around my neck. She reminds me that the divisions between fields are our construction; that academics can be creative, art can be holy, and preaching can engage the mind. These three seemingly disparate callings do not have to be mutually exclusive. Saraswati certainly wouldn’t see them this way. Continue reading “Painting Saraswati By Angela Yarber”