life and death – Feminism and Religion

Hospicing Hope Continued by Sara Wright

Part 2, You can read last week’s post here.

Walking over to Hope’s gravestone early the next morning, I immediately noted the passionflower was still open. Very Unusual. But then, crucifixion and abandonment by someone this dog loved characterized the last two months of Hope’s life, the dark side associated with the mysterious power that permeates this wild vine and flower. When this passionflower started blooming profusely in the house months before ki’s time, I felt the threat looming…

A few minutes later after the sun cast her fire over the hillside where Hope’s body lay, masses of golden swallowtails dipped and soared around her grave. Oh, that’s when I felt Hope surrounding us with love. I am well she told me and flying with the butterflies as you can see…

The earth moved beneath my feet.

One month later swallowtails continue to fly around Hope’s grave.

Hospicing Hope by Sara Wright

9/30/2012 – 6/11/2025

6/12

Part One

Hope’s black eyes pierced my soul- body as she stood staring through me, ears erect. It was time. Are you sure? Yes. She lay back down. I immediately got up.

Walking helps me to process what I must do. A half an hour later I called.

A numbing drive, walking into a room lit with three candles, and a brief wait before the two kindly women appeared.

Hope washed my tearful face as I held her, reminding me that we would never be separated. For thirteen years she had showered me with kisses beginning each day and again at night before we slept. A long low sigh, before Hope took her last breath. Her body suddenly felt limp, heavy in my arms. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that her heaped up overflowing heart had ceased to beat.

Lucy, her twelve year old adopted sister peered anxiously at me as I looked down at her, eyes perplexed. Seconds later Lucy’s pencil thin tail went limp as the knowing seeped in. As usual we conversed beneath words.

A blurry drive home.

Reflection on the Fourth of July by Sara Wright

Early Summer Days 2025

Hermit thrush’s trill and the bittern’s kerplunk are only two of the birds that mark this dawning with squawks or song. Red eyed vireo sings from the highest pine. My little Lucy (Lucia means Light in Italian, one of my mother tongues) and I bring in the day listening to bird symphonies as the sun star rises over the trees splashing verdant leaf tips in gold. First the ferns and then sparks of light sweep through the forest lighting patches of brook waters, lemony splotches appear here and there on deep humus, the rich soil that is conversing with the roots below the forest floor. Listen and you will hear that hum.

The phoebe family is fledging, and I feel privileged to be part of their story. Especially because they lost their first nest to a giant squirrel. Flicking their tails just like their parents the fledglings land on the little cherry growing just beyond my window before diving towards ground covers for tasty insect morsels.

The Mark of the Bear is upon us.

The Cauldron of Life: Destruction and Creation in Celtic Myth, Part 1 by Judith Shaw

With each passing day, the world spirals deeper into chaos under the weight of the most unsuitable and morally bankrupt president the United States has ever elected. In nearly every aspect of life—from politics to economics to technology to the environment—the world as we knew it is gone. We find ourselves caught between chaos and creation. We are in liminal times.

Badb, Dark Goddess by Judith Shaw — *Badb: Fate Weaver* by Judith Shaw

Samhain and the Waters of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, part 2 by Susan Foster

Part 1 was posted yesterday

On Samhain we are given the opportunity to come together in community to grieve our losses. We grieve for all those we have known personally who have passed over. But this year we also grieve for all those who lost their lives and homes in Hurricanes Helene and Milton and in the many other disasters around the world. We grieve as well for the other losses that occurred—of homes, of jobs, of community, of pets (many of whom also died or were separated from their owners). The losses are so enormous and overwhelming that we need the support that community provides to cope with them. We need to bind together in the strength of community to express our sorrow. Being aware of the death from so many natural disasters helps us to listen to the earth to see what She is telling us, to hear Her crying because She is weakened and out of balance, breaking apart under the strain.

Feeling the earth’s grief from the hurts inflicted upon Her enables us to take stock of our policies, to change our course while we still can. As we float downstream on our raft, we can ignore what we see around us until we see the rapids ahead and say to ourselves, before we plunge over them, “Why didn’t we change course earlier?”

Persistent Beauty by Molly Remer

I knelt beside a sprinkling
of deer fur
dotted with delicate snowflakes.
Don’t take a picture of that,
my husband said,
people will think it is gross.
I don’t find it gross.
I find it curious.
I find it surprising.
I find a story.
Sometimes I feel like
I have to battle a horde
of demonic trolls
before I can take care of myself,
I tell him,
and yet somehow,
I say,
always,
always,
I find my life is still a poem,
in the quietude,
in the battling,
on my knees in brown gravel
to better see this spray of fur
and how the frost
glows like white stars.

I sit on a stone in the pines and let the winds come, sweeping my hair back and lifting my lamentations from my forehead, where they have settled like a black cloud.

I let the air soften my shoulders and my sorrows, sunshine bright on thick brown pine needles, slickly strewn across the steep hill. Continue reading “Persistent Beauty by Molly Remer”

Death with Dignity by Carol P. Christ

In the summer of 1960 when I was 14 years old my much loved grandmother Mae Inglis Christ died of a cancer that affected her brain. The last time I saw my Nannie was shortly after her diagnosis in the early spring. While we were visiting, the cancer affected her back, and she took to her bed. In those days children were not allowed in hospitals. I never saw my grandmother alive again, but my mother told us that our grandmother was hooked up to tubes much longer than she should have been. Mother vowed, “This will never happen to me.” I was driven to the funeral in a limousine with my grandmother’s girlfriends. They spoke about my grandmother’s last days, describing how (because her mind was affected by cancer) my little grandmother had screamed and screamed at them for not visiting–even though they were with her every day. They found my grandmother’s outbursts so traumatic that they said they were relieved to see her looking so peaceful in her coffin. Continue reading “Death with Dignity by Carol P. Christ”