prayer – Feminism and Religion

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: “AS WE BLESS THE SOURCE OF LIFE, SO WE ARE BLESSED”

This was originally post May 7, 2012

Blessing the Source of Life harks back to the time when shrines were built near springs, the very literal sources of life for plants, animals, and humans.

The prayer “As we bless the Source of Life, so we are blessed,” based on a Hebrew metaphor which refers to a water source and set to music in a Jewish feminist context by Faith Rogow, has become one of the bedrocks of my Goddess practice.

In Minoan Crete, seeds were blessed on the altars of the Goddess and the first fruits of every crop were returned to Her. The ancient Minoans piled their altars high with barley, fruits, nuts, and beans, and poured libations of milk and honey, water and wine, over the offerings they placed on altars. Evidence of these actions is found in the large number of pouring vessels stored near altars.

Reclaiming Our Birthright of Joy by Mary Gelfand

Part 2 was posted yesterday

In my earlier piece on joy I wrote about collective joy—the kind that can be experienced in larger groups of people engaging in a shared experience that brings them a sense of joy and connection, like dancing in the streets. Here I’m talking about a more personal kind of joy, shared perhaps with a few people.

Speaking as a woman and a feminist, I have often been conflicted about joy. Sure I want to experience joy, but I often feel guilty about it. How can I allow myself to feel the simple joy that beauty and cosmic connection can bring when there is so much suffering in the world? When I was finally able to accept that denying myself joy did not reduce the suffering of others and was harmful to me, I was able to move past the guilt trip induced by my Christian upbringing. I began to look for ways to bring more joy into my life, and discovered a mother-lode of wisdom from multiple sources.

Channeling the Divine: A Creative Process by Brenda Edgar

Last year, I completed a life-changing yoga teacher training and spiritual development program at Supreme Peace Yoga and Wellness in Louisville, KY. One of its components was the creation of Soul Collage cards which were prompted by facilitator Jodie Tingle-Willis’s guided meditations.

The Soul Collage process is not only a profound way of connecting to the divine within and around us; for me, it is also a powerful vehicle for channeling poetry from this same source. My results from this multi-step creative process have led me to explore some pleasantly surprising spiritual terrain.

As an example, the card above was created after a visualization exercise around the idea of community—specifically, the small cohort of women in our training program, and the influence they had on me as we worked and learned together:

After some time had passed, I revisited the card and asked it once again to inspire me creatively. The result was this poem, which evokes an indigenous vision quest—an experience I have not had outside of this creative journey.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Our Mother Whose Body Is The Earth

This was originally posted on March 11, 2013

This prayer came to me recently in waking sleep:

Our Mother whose body is the Earth,
Blessed are you,
And blessed are all the fruits of your womb.
You give us this day our daily bread,
And we share it with others.
Our Mother whose body is the Earth,
We love you with all our hearts,
And our neighbors as ourselves.

“Our Mother Whose Body Is the Earth” is a creative synthesis of elements of the Hail Mary, the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus’ two great commandments via Charles Hartshorne, Hebrew blessings via Marcia Falk, process philosophy, and the central principles of earth-based religions, gratitude and sharing, that I discovered on Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete.

“Our Father who art in Heaven” becomes “Our Mother whose body is the Earth.” Transcendence of the earth and the body are replaced with immanence, suggesting that the earth and the body are good. Our mothers’ bodies are the source of our lives. Our Mother’s body is the Source of all life on our planet. The earth as the body of the Mother is a very ancient conception. Process philosopher Charles Hartshorne says that the earth as the divine body is the best rational model for understanding the intimate relationship of God to the world.

Don’t Feed the Christians and More Importantly Don’t Feed the Fear by Caryn MacGrandle

I just returned from a Pagan festival in Tennessee. This is the first overnight event that I have gone to post Covid pandemic and also the first Pagan festival that I have ever been to. Pre-pandemic all the events that I have gone to have been Women’s events and gatherings such as Gather The Women Annual Gathering, ALisa Starkweather’s Daughters of the Earth, Midwest Women’s Herbal Conference and others along those lines.

They pretty much all had a Pagan dusting to them because anything where you find the Divine in the Feminine and in the Earth, rocks, crystals, herbs, the stars, and populated by people who live closer to the Earth, avoid crowds, are empathetic, well, you’ve got Pagan leanings.

But I shied away from the word ‘Pagan’ for a long time, because I grew up Catholic and even though growing up in a very waspy suburb of Dallas, I did not give it much thought at all, I have since realized that the undercurrent of my belief system was that Pagans were evil, animal sacrificing, overly sexual, devil-worshiping and otherwise just something to be avoided.

Full Moon Prayer by Sara Wright

Lupita (Mary Guadalupe Tree of Life)

Your steel points of light

Your branches of Light (Asherah)

glow in grave darkness.

Hecate’s second moon is Red.

The raven slices the sky into shards.

The river catches shivering stars.

We remember the First Mother…

Patiently, painfully,

we return the parts to the Whole.

See the Wolf who hides

behind the Tree,

the door?

Welcome him in.

Only then can we begin…

Lupita,

Your needled points of light

glow in grave darkness.

This kind of prayer is said during the dark months when shadows are feared and the nights are long. I use it at the solstice or the full moon before the winter solstice, a fire festival. But it can be used any time during the dark months. There are good reasons for this kind of prayer. It is so important to acknowledge our shadow and to invite him/her in as a friend, not as an enemy. Otherwise harmful projections occur as we place undesirable qualities that we can’t own onto others.

In Indigenous traditions there are always masked personages that act out these shadow qualities in sometimes very humorous or scary ways. The Tewa have a masked dancer who uses a whip to strike the ground. In central Europe masked dancers walk the streets creating havoc in rural areas even today. These figures are acting out the shadow in us all, keeping it present so this energy does not go underground where it can become quite deadly.

Sara is a naturalist, ethologist (a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.

Winter Stories by Sara Wright

Every November I begin to create stories inside. Except for going into the woods to tip balsam and making wreaths I never know what else I might decide to do, but by the time I have finished I know what the images are saying! This is a poem about the stories I created this year. With the silence of winter soothing me I begin this kind of play without awareness and without a goal…I love this idea of story being told through image.

Gratitude and Hope: With a Lot of Help from My Friends by Carol P. Christ

Last Friday my oncologist gave me the best birthday present I could have imagined. (My birthday was 7:30 pm last night December 20, California time.) Without going into details, my latest CT scan was so much more positive than the last one that it feels like a miracle. I have reason to hope.

Today I am full of gratitude. I am grateful to my doctor Dimitrios Mavroudis who is the head of Oncology at the University of Crete and at the Pagni Hospital in Heraklion. I am grateful to medical science for the chemotherapy that is healing my body.

I am grateful for the national health system of Greece that is covering the cost of my treatment because I am a Greek citizen even though I never contributed to the national health insurance.

I am grateful to the nurses at the Pagni hospital who are unfailingly kind as they take my blood and regulate my chemotherapy.

I am grateful to Vera Dervesi, my cleaning lady and now friend, who with her husband Eddie, took me to the hospital where I was diagnosed, and who has helped me finish unpacking and moving in to my new apartment, and for her sweet presence in my home that soothes my soul. Continue reading “Gratitude and Hope: With a Lot of Help from My Friends by Carol P. Christ”

The Messy, Wild Mystery that’s Stronger than Wrong by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

I am an annoying feminist. I annoy pretty much everyone about it, because I’m never NOT applying a feminist lens to every aspect of life: science (looking at you, Larry Summers), politics (Joe Biden is a rapist), art (objectification is NOT empowerment), culture (make-up is a prison), and, of course religion. I’m perhaps most annoying of all when it comes to religion. I annoy Christians by raving about Christ The Cosmic Vagina, and I annoy secularists by raving about feminist Jesus. I especially annoy my church friends and colleagues by refusing to use the (male) word “God” to talk about the Infinite Divine Mystery, much less male pronouns or oppressive symbols such as Lord, King, or Kingdom.

Yep, I’ve been cheerfully annoying the hell out of everyone for decades, drawing vagina art during male-centric worship services, changing lyrics on the fly, slipping female words and symbols into prayers and startling whomever sits near me… I am a feminist. Not the fun kind. Continue reading “The Messy, Wild Mystery that’s Stronger than Wrong by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”