movement – Page 2 – Feminism and Religion

Do You Hear Seal-Woman Calling?

It was beautiful to read Carol P. Christ recent ‘from the archives’ post “Mermaid, Goddess Of The Sea,” especially because I’m in the middle of organising my first live Story-Dance workshop since several years, to move through one of my favourite stories of the Selkie-Seal Woman!

Stories of seal-women drift across the sea from the windswept coasts of Scotland to the icy shores of the Arctic. In the Scottish and Irish Highlands, Seal-women are known as selkies—shapeshifters who live as seals in the ocean, and who, when they shed their skins, walk as women on land. These selkie women dance beneath the moonlight, their laughter echoing across the waves as they rejoin their sisters in joyful reunion with the earth.

Yoga for Witches: Should You Try This at Home?

In this post, I review Yoga for Witches by Sarah Robinson, a practical book that weaves together two ancient practices with surprising similarities, yoga from the East, and witchcraft as practiced in Northwestern Europe.

I start with what I loved, and how Robinson describes the similarities and differences between those two traditions. That weaves into some personal and deeper reflections on the theoretical background and yoga sequences. At the end you’ll find a specific recommendation so you’ll know if this is the book for you!

Navigating Arousal and Desire: What do you fantasise about?

Sexuality is a complex topic that blends the personal with the collective and the mundane with the sacred. We often engage with it privately, yet it is intertwined with broader cultural values and beliefs. This makes navigating sexual fantasies a delicate balance of desire, respect and consent.

In today’s world, especially with movements like #MeToo gaining traction, there’s a heightened awareness around the importance of boundaries—both physical and psychological—in the realm of sex and fantasy.

This post explores how we can engage with sexual energy in ways that respects both our own and other’s integrity, that don’t “steal” from others, nor diminish ourselves.

It starts with the power of consent in fantasies, discusses 4 steps to navigate desire without acting on it, and introduces the possibility of archetypal fantasies.

Detail of *Passion.* Collage by Eline Kieft (2.9.12)

Walking the Chartres Labyrinth

The Chartres Cathedral, located southwest of Paris, is rich in symbolism and history. Featuring stunning stain-glass windows, a famous labyrinth, and a shrine to “Our Lady of the Pillar”, it offers a profound meditation experience. Exploring the labyrinth’s symbolism and personal reflections amidst everyday distractions, the author shares a transformative journey.

Let me take you on a pilgrimage to Chartres Cathedral, share about the ancient symbolism of the labyrinth, and ponder on how to interpret signs and symbols we receive along the way…

3 Taoist Secrets for Embodying your Life

Taoism is an ancient Chinese philosophy and spiritual tradition that offers a unique perspective on life, existence, and human experience. Where many religious practices aim to transcend and sometimes even punish the body, Taoism cultivates a deep connection with our physical self in ongoing relationship with nature around us.

This resonates with my own experience, in which I see the body as starting point and place of return for everything we do in life. Leaving the body in order to meet spirit or the divine has never made any sense to me.

In this article I’ll highlight a few elements of Taoism as an embodied philosophy, specifically zooming in on principles and practices that promote holistic wellbeing and inner peace.

Privilege and Hierarchy in Community Care by Chris Ash

This is part one of a multi-part series on privilege, dehumanization, and hierarchy in organizing, activist, and ministry circles.

Early in my training at my current job, my boss explained our agency’s position on social justice and intersectionality to me: “When we center the margins in our work, everybody gets served.” Framed differently: When we expand the circle of who can access service, be treated with dignity, and have their humanity affirmed by others, those already within the circle get served, respected, and affirmed as well. Nobody gets excluded. Everyone gets support. In our work, we recognize that all oppressions are interlinked, and that you cannot effectively advocate for the abolition of one form of oppression without working to end them all.

I think there is a fear within circles of people who experience one or more forms of oppression that in order to allow care for those who are more marginalized, or marginalized in different ways, we must turn our focus outward to the margins, away from the center. And sometimes we do. Sometimes we need to stop talking about the needs of cis men long enough to really focus on harm experienced by women and femmes. Sometimes we need to stop talking about the experiences of white women long enough to recognize the unique oppressions experienced by Black, Latinx, and Native women. Sometimes we need to stop talking about the experiences of straight cis people to recognize the daily microaggressions, direct aggression, and harm experienced by trans and nonbinary people. Continue reading “Privilege and Hierarchy in Community Care by Chris Ash”

Yoga, Resilience and Learning Self-Care by Marie Cartier

It is spring and it is warm in California. I haven’t been exercising over the winter because it has been extremely cold for California. I had the bug everyone else had. But, now I am back, and we have just experienced Spring Equinox on March 21^st, 2019.

And I am headed back to yoga classes.

Why did I start doing yoga? It’s a good question, since I started as a senior in high school, which would have been 1973. I was a lower middle class kid who had very few resources. I was also from an abusive family, where I was responsible for taking care of my younger five brothers and sisters. This meant I almost always had to come home from school and start peeling potatoes, getting dinner ready for when my father would walk through the door—and hopefully be in a good mood.

I learned to not be around when he walked in that door, because he would take out his anger on whoever was first in his path. I remember thinking this was very smart on my part, and also feeling guilty that I hadn’t imparted this to the other kids. Someone had to be in his path when he got home, and I didn’t want it to be me. I still feel guilty about that—even though as the oldest I was punished physically by him more than the others.

Continue reading “Yoga, Resilience and Learning Self-Care by Marie Cartier”

Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Three by Laura Shannon

Women’s apron from Pentalofos, Greek Thrace

In Rebirth of the Goddess, Carol P Christ offered Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. The Nine Touchstones are intended to inform all our relationships, whether personal, communal, social, or political.^[1] In this series of blogs I am exploring ways in which these Nine Touchstones are embodied in the traditional women’s ritual dances of the Balkans, which I have studied as a spiritual practice for more than thirty years.

Carol P Christ’s Second Touchstone is: ‘Walk in love and beauty.’ As she says, ‘love and beauty are the great gifts of bounteous earth’.^[2] Dancing women of the Balkans walk in love and beauty each time they put on their festive dress to dance together in the courtyard or the village square. Their ceremonial costumes are created from the bounty of the earth – just a couple of generations ago, this was literally the case, as the women tended the sheep, prepared and spun the wool, wove, sewed, embroidered and ornamented their garments with the work of their own hands. Even now, the cloth they buy is purchased with money they have earned from working and harvesting the land.

Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Three by Laura Shannon”

Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Two by Laura Shannon

In the first part of this article, I looked at how Carol P Christ’s Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality from Rebirth of the Goddess are related to traditional women’s ritual dances of the Balkans. After more than thirty years of researching and teaching these dances and the way that they pass on information in encoded symbolic ways, I have come to see them as an educational system, a women’s mystery school.^[1] The main message which the dances convey is an ethic of community, partnership, mutual support, and other life-enhancing values aligned with the Nine Touchstones, which can be directly experienced in the dance.

We know from the research of Marija Gimbutas that these values were central to the Old European civilizations which honoured the Goddess, while Yosef Garfinkel and Elizabeth Wayland Barber show that circle dances have their roots in these same early Neolithic cultures of Eastern Europe and the Near East. This leads me to suggest that Balkan women’s circle dances surviving today may have their origin in early egalitarian matriarchal cultures of Neolithic Europe. The Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality provide an perfect template through which to explore the ethics of women’s ritual dances.

Continue reading “Women’s Ritual Dances and the Nine Touchstones of Goddess Spirituality-Part Two by Laura Shannon”

Touch and Presence as Intimate Communion by Chris Ash

Christy Croft Over the past 20 years, I’ve been blessed with many moments in which fully aware or embodied presence has intersected spiritual transformation, both in my own life and in the lives of others. In my work on a crisis hotline, I’ve held space for strangers to open up and speak freely about pain, grief, and despair. In my work as a minister, I’ve held a couple’s hands as I blessed their marriage, and I’ve held space with the dying and their loved ones.

In my work as a doula, I’ve supported women draped over my arms as they pushed new life into being; I’ve also held crying fathers in hospital hallways while their lovers were being prepped for emergency surgeries. In my rape crisis work, I’ve held the hands of women in hospitals through fear and sorrow, and I’ve facilitated support groups for survivors to reconnect with their own embodied sexuality and the fullness of its complexity as they worked toward greater compassion for themselves and their processes.

I’ve worked to build a practice of presence and compassion in my life that extends beyond my family, even beyond people. Last spring, I was late to a party because I’d stopped to help a stumbling fawn out of the highway. Seeing that it was unable to move, I sat with it at the edge of the woods and sang it to its sleep.

Each of these experiences has transformed me, my way of viewing the world, and how I see the role of touch and presence in friendship, service, and worship. Continue reading “Touch and Presence as Intimate Communion by Chris Ash”