Sara Frykenberg

From the Archives: New Year and Sustainable Resolution by Sara Frykenberg

This was originally posted on January 3, 2017

I am writing this blog on New Year’s Day, so Happy New Year! Today I say these words as both a statement of hope and as invocation. Happy New Year: may it be! My twin told me that our horoscope said that 2017 would be a party: we should throw our energies into anything and everything we want to see happen in our worlds because it can and will happen this year—may it be! Because it certainly doesn’t feel like a time for flourishing. I echo the introductory sentiments of Kate’s blog last Friday:

“ I am fried. These last two years proved personally & professionally exhausting. And yet, another year looms ahead unavoidably — another incredibly demanding year which will require more than I can fathom I actually have to give at this moment.”

Yes Kate. Oh my god/dess yes. This is exactly how I feel… and sitting down to write this blog this morning, I felt overcome with a wave of anxiety and stress, focused on all the things I have to do, the lack of time I have to do them, and the lack of energy I feel. Lurking beneath this stress is real pain and fear. What should we expect this year, in light of what’s already happening, in light of the hate already ignited? I think I have been locked in this pain and this fear.

From the Archives: Thanksgiving and Service by Sara Frykenberg

This was originally posted on December 3, 2103

Growing up in an evangelical Christian church, I was taught that human beings should serve one another and put others before themselves. These two different teachings, paired with patriarchal misogyny, have sometimes been very problematic for me. I tend(ed) to give too much. Too many demands with which I complied were self-negating (which after all, helped me to make other people more important than myself). It took me a long time to learn how to appropriately prioritize my own needs, to stop mistaking self-esteem for the”‘sin of pride,” and how to say no when I needed to… Actually, I am still learning some of these lessons.

Conversely, my ritualized service to the church was sometimes confusing, awkward or embarrassing. I clearly remember having the opportunity to serve as something like an usher during Thanksgiving at our family’s church as a child. This involved wearing a pilgrim costume, which for me meant finding a Puritan style costume in the church’s closet that fit my overweight childhood frame. This was not an easy task and left me feeling ashamed. Later as an adolescent, my youth group asked us to wash one another’s feet as Jesus did for his disciples. Now, don’t misunderstand me here— I do believe that this ritual has the potential to be very powerful and meaningful for those involved. However, my teenage self could not identify with the symbolic gesture beyond realizing that:

1) I thought touching other people’s feet was gross, as was having my dirty feet touched and,
2) I knew I ‘should’ get something out of the ritual but did not, so I felt spiritually guilty or inadequate.

Overall, I often associated Christian service with guilt, inadequacy, my role as a daughter or woman or my sacrificial duty.

Despite these issues, I usually genuinely enjoy serving others and giving to other people. I love to host people and care for them. I like to help. I even prefer to help. Serving one another we can express and allow others to express love. But this past week, one day before Thanksgiving, a dear friend of mine gently challenged me to allow myself to be served or, as she put it, “to give someone else the gift of giving to me.” Specifically, she was referring to a pending holiday meal for which I expressed my anxiety and frustration with not being allowed to help—which somehow makes me feel like a child. Even writing this phrase, “makes me feel like a child,” I know that I have touched deeper feelings of helplessness or vulnerability that at some point, I learned to battle with competence and over-achievement. I do often feel like a child or guilty when other people do for me what I think I could or should do for myself; and my friend’s brief words encouraged me to explore this relationship to being served.

“Service” can sometimes feel uncomfortable for the reasons I mention above, but more so, for its connection to the coercive “servitude” required by existent hierarchies within andro-kyriarchal oppressive systems. I have been subject to this coercive servitude, and also, its beneficiary. As a white, middle class, Western woman I have far too much privilege that is contingent upon the forced labor and oppression of other people. This kind of forced servitude is very wrong; and I am still learning how and where to choose other than to be complicit in this abuse. But, there have also been many distinctive instances in my life where I have felt reciprocally and undeniably “served” by people around me, without abuse and without manipulation.

Driving to Colorado one summer to see the friend I mentioned above, my two companions and I served one another. The individual in the back seat was responsible for cutting bagels and spreading cream cheese on them for the driver and navigator, while the navigator held the drink, food or whatever other item that the driver could not. This may sound like a small thing, but it wasn’t. I felt taken care of and loved in this small and traveling community. We also had a safe word that meant, “leave me alone, I’m grumpy” on our long trip. We made agreements to account for one another’s discomfort and effort. We respected one another and cared for each other.

Beginning my work as an adjunct professor, I encountered a great deal of stress and often long and awkward work hours. Many times I felt like I needed help, but there was nothing I could ask for help with when it came to my job: I needed to grade my own papers, plan my own lectures, and yes, write my own blogs. My husband has responded by taking care of me in other ways. He makes me dinner, goes to the store and makes sure I take breaks. We take turns taking care of one another, and I am grateful for him.

This past week after talking to my friend, I noticed how willing people were to touch me to soothe aching muscles. I’m not sure how to describe what I felt, but it was like something invisible in certain spaces was suddenly visible. I also realized that it had been a very long time since I had freely and openly received this touch. Later during the weekend, a friend came to my house and she made me dinner! My husband rubbed my chest after a long night of coughing yesterday because I still haven’t completely rid myself of the smoldering in my lungs. I was defensive for so long. Shedding my defender allows me to rediscover all those things for which I am thankful.

Gratefulness is an action. It can be found in those expressions that return, receive and allow for mutual loving. I am learning new rituals that help me to remember that this kind of mutual serving and being served is sacred. In a summer ritual, my friend and I washed one another’s hair instead of our feet. I am still learning to ask for assistance from the goddess after freeing myself from an abusive omnipotent god, but I am starting to ask.

I am starting to pray again.

BIO: Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D.: Graduate of the women studies in religion program at Claremont Graduate University, Sara’s research considers the way in which process feminist theo/alogies reveal a kind transitory violence present in the liminal space between abusive paradigms and new non-abusive creations: a counter-necessary violence. In addition to her feminist, theo/alogical and pedagogical pursuits, Sara is also an avid fan of science fiction and fantasy literature, and a level one Kundalini yoga teacher.

My Daughter’s Religions by Sara Frykenberg

I find it interesting how certain or settled we often expect our little ones to be instead of getting curious about them or acknowledging that they are curious.

My daughter, Hazel, is six years old and will be starting first grade next week. She loves cats, swimming, her cousin, and food. Purportedly, Chinese style barbecue pork buns come first in her heart, even before mommy and daddy (though we are a close second). She also prefers to run instead of walk; and has recently declared that she is Taoist and Shinto. This determination came after some discussion which went something like this:

Sitting at the kitchen table one morning, Hazel declares “My best friend asked me if I was a Christian and I told her I was. I am a Christian.”

Mommy the agnostic is a little surprised. Daddy, the atheist, is biting back a retort—he is somewhat hostile towards Christianity. I am only hostile to abusive, hetero-Patriarchal Christianity. I say to Hazel, “Oh. That’s interesting. Do you know what that means?”

“No. What do Christians believe,” she asks.

Turning Five by Sarah Frykenberg

My daughter turned five years old this week. I am now a five-year-old-mother of one. Big Five <3. I’ve been thinking a lot about the fact that this is the age when children’s brains are developed enough to start creating more permanent memories of their childhood. What will my daughter’s earliest memories be when she is grown?

Four was a pretty chock-full year.

Fires—though those may seem like just another California season to her by now. Pandemic; staying home with Mommy, Daddy, and our new roommates, Auntie and Uncle for weeks on end.

Learning to ride a bike.

Pages upon pages of art, including a whole notebook almost exclusively dedicated to her “study” of “Hazel Vampire” (I blame Uncle and Auntie for this one).

Pandemic. More pandemic.

Continue reading “Turning Five by Sarah Frykenberg”

Moments of Beauty by Sara Frykenberg

Last week a friend of mine started a post asking people to share something that they’ve enjoyed or appreciated since shelter-at-home orders began across the country and globe. This friend was in no way trying to minimize the very difficult situations that so many of us find ourselves facing during this pandemic. Rather, the list she elicited and generated helped to create, at least for me, a moment of hope or peace—a moment that I suspect many of us need right now.

Inspired by my friend (who has quite a talent for pointing out the potential for joy or happiness), I would like to add to her list here by sharing a couple of my “moments of beauty” in the hopes I can share this hope or peace. Continue reading “Moments of Beauty by Sara Frykenberg”

Staying Un-Frozen by Sara Frykenberg

It is February 14^th, Valentines Day. So, today I want to explore my daughter’s love affair with Frozen; a story that I did not like, but that I learned to love by watching it through her eyes. A story which through her eyes, has taught me a lot about how to stay and be un-frozen.

I did not understand the phenomenon that was Disney’s Frozen in 2013. I did not like film’s premier song Let it Go, which you could hear e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. The film wasn’t even about Elsa; the queen with magical powers who sings this song while reveling in the new-found freedom of her isolation. It’s about Elsa’s sister, Anna, and her quest to find Elsa. So really, I thought, the song was misleading. I also didn’t like the ‘loveable Olaf;’ and while switching up the “true love’s kiss” narrative was a positive change for Disney (Anna saves herself and Elsa with her love, instead of that of a man), I just didn’t get the widespread appeal. Continue reading “Staying Un-Frozen by Sara Frykenberg”

Teaching After the Getty Fire by Sara Frykenberg

This is the third year in a row that I will be writing about wildfires in California and their impact on me and my community.

This year, I don’t have any poetry.
This year, I’m not afraid.
This year, I’m angry. I am very angry. And again, I am awash in the (not so?) mundane concerns that surface in the wake of devastation. I am continually struck by this: the strangeness of the everyday next to the blackened hillside, the restricted access, and soot covered floors—the persistence and tremendous regularity, even normality of the everyday. Continue reading “Teaching After the Getty Fire by Sara Frykenberg”

I’m [Not] Batman by Sara Frykenberg

A little tongue-in-cheek, somewhat punchy, somewhat angry reflection for your consideration. Thank you for reading.

Ever have trouble speaking your mind? I do. I do, particularly in situations where I was taught (in all sorts of ways, violent and nonviolent alike, religious, patriarchal) to be “a good girl.” The “good girl” training I received is so deeply ingrained in me that I often don’t realize when I’m doing it. I catch myself being agreeable with people when I want to be arguing. I use extra exclamation points in communications with my online classes to appear more likable, friendly or non-threatening. I also have a peculiar habit of, unconsciously, changing my clothes repeatedly until I ‘match’ someone around me, usually in color. I honestly don’t mean to do this, and only became aware of the habit in the last decade because my husband started pointing it out to me ALL THE TIME.

But I’m working on it. “Be authentic, Sara.” “Be yourself.” That’s got to be different than being good, right? I probe my habits and relationships for the tell-tale signs of this “good girl.” Continue reading “I’m [Not] Batman by Sara Frykenberg”

What We Can’t See by Sara Frykenberg

As a professor, I find myself returning to a similar struggle again and again. I know what I know; and I know what I hope students will gain from the class, in terms of content knowledge, critical thinking, classroom community-making, etc. But often, I don’t know what they don’t know.

This might seem a silly kind of observation. No duh, Sara, you barely know this group of people. Also, this may seem an easy question to answer. And sometimes it is; and I do have part of the answer when I begin a class. My “Intro to Ethics” students, for example, will understand and be frustrated by the way people use the Bible to justify their own positions, but they usually won’t know the term “proof texting,” or easily understand “hermeneutics.” My “Women in Christianity” students will understand sexism and often, the idea of gender as a social construct, but they are usually unfamiliar with the dualistic gendering and ranking of larger social realities, like nature and culture, production and reproduction, etc.

There are obvious differences in academic training—that’s why I’m allowed to teach at a university after all. But I’m not really wrestling with what I can contribute in terms of content knowledge or historical/ theoretical contextualization. I think what I don’t know is what understandings of reality they bring into the classroom and what these realities have allowed them to see. Learning and/or teaching feminist theory and theo/alogy for the last fifteen years at least, I also often take my own reality for granted. I “know what I know,” after all—I just can’t always remember what it was like to learn it. And all of these classroom dynamics can make it harder to catch the realities we can’t yet know or can’t see. Continue reading “What We Can’t See by Sara Frykenberg”

Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg

For those of us living in Southern California, it has been a tense week to say the least: flames ravaging up and down the coast, homes lost, thousands displaced, freeway and school closures, smoke thick in the air, and ash raining from the sky.

And the fires are still raging.

Whether or not one is directly impacted by the wildfires here in Ventura and Los Angeles County, you can’t walk through the grocery store, turn on the radio, or get a cup of coffee without engaging the fear and concern, or hearing about the devastation left behind. We are sharing a trauma, howbeit differently, and with different levels of need.

I have been lucky during the fires. I live just south of Ventura. My work is on the Getty side of the 405: it was threatened, but not in flames. I spent the week checking in with family and friends, offering my home, and breathing the toxic air. I also made dinner, picked my brother up from the airport, attended a baby shower, and graded papers. … This is a strange juxtaposition, and like many Californians, I have had a hard time processing what’s going on.

On Sunday afternoon, surrounded by the unnatural darkness of an ash filled sky while traveling down the 101 freeway, I wrote the following. This is my effort to make sense. And I offer it to you all here, in case this helps you make sense too. Continue reading “Just South of Ventura by Sara Frykenberg”

You Can’t Debate Mutuality by Sara Frykenberg

I use words like “mutuality,” “listening,” and “love,” here as I discuss my understanding of feminist justice-making and eschew debate…I want to make it abundantly clear: I see these as powerful, often forceful and even angry tools. We listen to what oppressors say so that they cannot deceive with their “alternative facts.” We love forcefully…We counter violence—we do not debate it—with anger, humor, creativity and power, in order to redirect its energies into more mutual possibilities.

Sara Frykenberg Participating in the Women’s March on Jan. 21^st in Los Angeles fed my soul deeply. I didn’t realize how much I needed to protest in this way, how stuck I had been in grief and despair after the election, and the way that coming together as a community would help me to mourn. There’s nothing quite like standing together with hundreds of thousands of people who also care deeply with hope, humor, and real power. Marching helped me to find the energy to fight back. It refilled a reservoir, so depleted in 2016, much as the badly needed winter rain in my home state of California has helped to abate the severe drought. Continue reading “You Can’t Debate Mutuality by Sara Frykenberg”

New Year and Sustainable Resolution by Sara Frykenberg

At the end of 2016, my foot hurt—my body telling me: it is painful to move forward as you have been. You have to walk differently. Yow have to walk with more support, and sometimes, carrying less weight.

I am writing this blog on New Year’s Day, so Happy New Year! Today I say these words as both a statement of hope and as invocation. Happy New Year: may it be! My twin sister told me that our horoscope said that 2017 would be a party: we should throw our energies into anything and everything we want to see happen in our worlds because it can and will happen this year—may it be! Because it certainly doesn’t feel like a time for flourishing. I echo the introductory sentiments of Kate’s blog last Friday:

Turning One by Sara Frykenberg

14724657_10154061354658546_8918956387379465095_n This month I turn one as a mother. My daughter, consequently, is also turning one—a first birthday I am excitedly planning. Specifically, I want to make Hazel a rainbow cake with lots of colored layers and white frosting. I’m not even sure she’ll be able to eat the cake (avoiding lots of sugar for a one-year-old and all), but among those family pictures I treasure, my mother held a cake for her little ones. I want to be like my mother. I am going to make a cake.

But planning my daughter’s party, I realized that I am also going to have a kind of birth-day anniversary. Other moms have told me that it takes a year to really process the experience of giving birth. While I did consider the significance of my “birthing community,” in a blog last fall, I realized a couple of weeks ago that I wasn’t done understanding what I, what mothers, and what life givers of all kinds go through to bring life into the world. Continue reading “Turning One by Sara Frykenberg”

Breastfeeding and the Abject? by Sara Frykenberg

The trappings of motherhood are all too powerful reminders that, as Catherine Keller reminds us in her book From a Broken Web, mother goddesses have to be continually slain for patriarchal heroes to be born. Indeed, she suggests that conceptions of Western selfhood are based upon this symbolic matricide—so it is no wonder that breast milk might be considered abject…

Once upon time formula companies and complicit medical experts launched a serious campaign to sell more formula, telling a generation of mothers that this product was both superior to breast milk and far better for baby and mother. Some were convinced, others found formula a good alternative to breast milk given their employment status, hormonal changes, their particular baby’s needs,personal choice, difficulty producing their own milk, or the like; and still others chose to breastfeed despite criticism, like my mother-in-law, who received scorn and derision from medical personnel as the only breastfeeding mother in the hospital in which she gave birth in 1970.

Despite this effort, science has finally “proven” that breast milk, when it is possible to give it, is better for your child than synthesized alternatives. Wow. Well, the politics of believability aside, women in the U.S. are now encouraged to trust their own bodies to feed their babies and give the breast a try. In fact, every new book, article, website and internet forum, birthing class teacher and hospital nurse will tell you that “breast is best,” repeatedly, for months, asking you about your breastfeeding plan, and urging you to keep trying until you and baby get it right. A counter-campaign, this vigorous encouragement is working to undo the attitudinal changes within popular culture that placed a stigma on the breastfeeding woman. Continue reading “Breastfeeding and the Abject? by Sara Frykenberg”

Feminism and “The Force:” Thinking Through “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” by Sara Frykenberg

Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), on the other hand, works to resist the call of the “light.” The Force Awakens puts emphasis on the villain’s perspective; and my question is, is this because many of us who are in the audience need to see how we are also like this villain?

Sci-fi fan that I am, I would feel remiss if I failed to discuss Star Wars: The Force Awakens here on feminismandreligion.com (warning, spoilers ahead). Yet, despite the fact that I have seen the movie two times since its release and the many, many discussions of this movie already out there, I have yet to form some conclusion as to the relationship between feminism or religion, and Star Wars.

Latest-The-Force-Awakens-Trailer-Description — Image sourced from here.

On the one hand, The Force Awakens is just like the other Star Wars movies. ‘Good guys’ fight the ‘bad guys,’ a hero/ine emerges and some characters are tragically lost, either by choosing the wrong side or when killed by emerging villains. Interesting iterations of “the Hero’s Journey,” these movies fulfill standard mythic tropes—mythic tropes that also tend reinforce our existent social structures and ideals… so, often kyriarchal ideals of power. Continue reading “Feminism and “The Force:” Thinking Through “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” by Sara Frykenberg”

Violent and Non-Violent Protest by Sara Frykenberg

For those of you who have read my blogs before, you may have gathered that my approach to justice-making is not entirely non-violent. Researching and writing about the movement away from abusive community paradigms in my dissertation, I argue that we need to care for the kind of refractory violence or counter-violence that arises in our movements away from abuse.

The idea here is not that violence should be a goal, or even that violence is “good”—but rather, that we are in (close) relationship to violence of all kinds. All violence, as I define the term, is destructive in some way; but as many religions of the world remind us, destruction, like creation, is an important part of life. Not all violence is “bad.”

Continue reading “Violent and Non-Violent Protest by Sara Frykenberg”

“‘A’ is for Adjunct:” National Adjunct Walkout Day #NAWD

"Scooped" by Vanessa Vaile onto A is for Adjunct — “Scooped” by Vanessa Vaile onto A is for Adjunct

On Wednesday February 25^th, adjunct faculty across the United States walked out of their classrooms, and hosted teach-ins, lectures, film screenings and rallies, to protest the employment conditions faced by adjunct and all contingent faculty members of colleges and universities. I am adjunct faculty; and encouraged by what I learned in my own participation in the protest, I would like to share my experiences with you in this blog.

While many Universities last week held massive protests and walkouts on campus, I realized when planning my own protest that if I walked out, I would probably be standing outside on the lawn with very few other protesters. There are plenty of adjunct faculty on my campus—75% to be exact, the national average for all college and university campuses— but I know very few of my adjunct peers and we have no organized voice at the school. Weighing my options (admittedly last minute), I found a great power point presentation on the National Adjunct Walkout Day Facebook page prepared by a Texas adjunct professor, Dr. Jenny Smith, and made available for use by all through Slideshare. Instead of walking out, I taught-in; and I was surprised by how little my students knew about this issue, though I was incredibly heartened by their responses.

Continue reading ““‘A’ is for Adjunct:” National Adjunct Walkout Day #NAWD”

Reconsidering Faith in the New Semester by Sara Frykenberg

Ironically—though if I’d really thought about it I should have expected this—I have found that my own experiences feeling lost, in-between and more despairingly, halfway, have proved my most useful tools for teaching a class about faith.

Sara Frykenberg Last October I wrote a blog about feeling halfway: halfway between faith and identity, halfway present in the day to day of my life, halfway full, and afraid to lose the “half as much as I really needed” to which I clung. Of possible experiences that might feed my soul and lighten my heart last year, I didn’t expect it to be my visit the AAR National Conference, but it was. I came home from San Diego feeling excited, capable and cared about, after visiting friends with whom I share passion, meeting new people and listening to scholarship that woke up my brain.

A necessary respite, this short trip reminded me that really I like what I do. Scholarship and genuine camaraderie feed my soul and the work that I do. And while I am glad to be holding onto these facts of my life, I find that the question of faith and identity has surfaced again this semester. Continue reading “Reconsidering Faith in the New Semester by Sara Frykenberg”

Voting Day by Sara Frykenberg

Sara Frykenberg Can we think of the voting place as an altar where we hole-punch a prayer to the honored dead?

This past Sunday, Barbara Adinger wrote a beautiful blog entitled “November, a Silent Month?” While welcoming the November darkness and a “delicious melancholy composed of silence and rest” settling over her home, Adinger reminds us that: no, we are not silent.

As human beings protesting invisibility and the erasure of the history of the marginalized, we are not silent. Given special command(ment)s to be silent in far too many patriarchal and kyriarchal religions, we cannot silently accept the violence, abuse and invisibility forced upon us or upon those whose struggle is different than our own.

At times, silence is a survival strategy. But this year and last, I am striving to thrive instead.

At times, silence is an important place of meditation: a spiritual necessity, an oasis and praxis in the creation of peace. But, today, my meditations lead me to speak.

When first reading “a silent month,” in the title above, I thought to myself: “I hope not.” I am glad that Barbara agrees. Today—November 4^th, aka, “voting day”—those of us living with the privilege of citizenship in the United States have a responsibility to speak. As a woman, I also have a responsibility to my feminist sisters and brothers who won me this right—an inheritance that has become increasingly important to me. Continue reading “Voting Day by Sara Frykenberg”

Musings on Reification by Sara Frykenberg

The following is a bit of a messy and meandering blog: a kind of a ‘brain train,’ that starts with a question of reification and eating disorders, and moves into a sense of the literal ‘consuming’ nature of oppression. So I will start with a ‘thank you’ to readers who will meander with me and with gratitude to the teachers whose thoughts I am wandering with along the way.

Reification is the process by which those created ideas that we externalize into institutions, concrete objects, or social principles then become so real to us that we tend to think of them as a separate reality or a thing/ life in and of itself.[1] I teach this concept in my ethics classes when we discuss the way in which actions and choices are connected to what we often consider to be external forces like “the government,” or “the economy,” when in fact, we are in relationship to and often, actively play a role in maintaining these realities (even when only playing a small role). Reification can subversively undermine our understanding of response-ability because it is a way of making the structures that form our society “other” than ourselves.

My students definitely struggle with this concept and often express the fear that they are too small as individuals to see any real change happen. (I too, often struggle with this fear when thinking about the reified ‘monsters’ of oppression and hate.) Dealing with this discouragement in class, I (and we) switch gears by emphasizing praxis and recognizing its successes. I ask my students to consider what can be done and what choices/changes I, they, or we are capable of making while re-membering changes already being made. As Gustavo Guiterrez says: “Pessimism comes from reality because reality is tragic, while optimism comes from action because action can change reality.”[2] Continue reading “Musings on Reification by Sara Frykenberg”

A Gift I hope I can give: A Thank you to Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz by Sara Frykenberg

At some point, I finally asked the mentor what her name was and with a smile and joy that I do remember, she said, “I’m Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz.” OH MY GOD/DESS. I was completely taken aback. I really couldn’t believe that I was sitting at a table and casually talking with this woman whose work I had read and loved: a woman I considered famous. More than this, however, I couldn’t believe that she was talking to me.

I attended a memorial panel for Mujerista theologian, teacher and activist Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz at the American Academy of Religion National Conference this year. After panelists shared their memories of their friend and mentor, audience members were also invited to speak. Sitting in the audience, listening to story after beautiful story of this woman’s life, I was amazed not only by how many people Isasi-Diaz affected in that one room, but also by the similarities of the stories I heard. Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz was a woman who shared her gift with many people: empowerment and access to their own power. She generated confidence, both by creating opportunities directly and indirectly for others, and by rewarding the faith of those who believe in her work by living her ideals in an obvious, open and caring way.

I was lucky enough to meet Prof. Isasi-Diaz once in my life. I was attending a women’s mentor luncheon as a graduate student, hoping to meet a more senior scholar who could tell me something I needed to know in order to get a job some day. I sat down at a table with another student and a woman older than both of us who seemed to be our mentor representative. I do not remember the entire conversation. However, I do remember that we, the students at the table, did most of the talking and the mentor asked us questions. Continue reading “A Gift I hope I can give: A Thank you to Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz by Sara Frykenberg”

On being an imperfect feminist: releasing definitions built in shame By Sara Frykenberg

A few weeks ago, a very interesting and in some places, tense discussion arose from John Erickson’s post, “Hands Off,” some of which related to the difference between what it means to be a liberal feminist and what it means to identify as radical. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about what the identification “feminist” means to me, what it means to be an ally and how I am defining these categories. Rather, I mean to say, against what kind of a standard am I applying this definition.

I think I have asked myself these questions many times in my life, in different ways, but perhaps most significantly I asked myself “am I a feminist?” when I started graduate school. I was sitting in a classroom, set up like a circle, and all the women and two men in my… I think, “Gender and Education,” class were introducing themselves. “Hello, I am so and so, and I have been a feminist for X number of years and I do this, etc.” “Hello, I am so and so, and I am a feminist ally and I do such and such, etc.”—as I remember, some classmates identified more as allies. When it came time for me to introduce myself, I said, “Hello, my name is Sara, and I am not sure if I am a feminist or not. I thought I was, but I don’t know now.” Continue reading “On being an imperfect feminist: releasing definitions built in shame By Sara Frykenberg”

Taking my body back from… the pill? A call for more of “her stories” about contraception By Sara Frykenberg

I recently made what felt like a very big decision in my life to stop taking the birth control pill… not to try to get pregnant mind you, though some of those I told incorrectly read this as the subtext of my decision. I stopped taking the birth control pill because I didn’t like what it was doing to my body. So, I am taking my body back… but from the pill? Really? Didn’t it, in some ways, give me a kind of freedom? Didn’t it do what it promised and help me to feel that I was being responsible in my sex life (since I don’t want kids right now)? Yes, I suppose it did; and I very much believe that access to contraception is a very important feminist and religious issue. … But after a three year on and off relationship and six years steady with pills, all with different side effects, all with different demands on my metabolism and libido, I began to feel a stranger to my nether regions and so I have decided to stop. Continue reading “Taking my body back from… the pill? A call for more of “her stories” about contraception By Sara Frykenberg”

A Meditation on a Mantra: Sat-Nam By Sara Frykenberg

The following is a guest post written by Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D., graduate of the women studies in religion program at Claremont Graduate University. Her research considers the way in which process feminist theo/alogies reveal a kind transitory violence present in the liminal space between abusive paradigms and new non-abusive creations: a counter-necessary violence. In addition to her feminist, theo/alogical and pedagogical pursuits, Sara is also an avid fan of science fiction and fantasy literature, and a level one Kundalini yoga teacher.

Sat-Nam. It means, “My name is truth.” Or if you will, I am who I am. It is an affirmation in the Kundalini Yogic tradition, a greeting and a mantra. According to one of my teachers, saying the phrase “Sat-Nam” even once changes something inside of you and accesses a resonant power attached to the vibration of the mantra. Sat Nam. I am speaking myself. I am authentically me.

Sat-Nam. “I am who I am”… “I am that I am”… I write this interpretation of the mantra twice because it is uncomfortable for me. It sometimes still feels blasphemous to utter this phrase: a phrase that I was taught in my Christian upbringing belonged to God and was the name He gave Himself (sic). But when I feel this way, I am now inclined to ask myself, what is wrong with saying that I am me? Do I really feel like this is a power that god/dess reserves for herself? No. I affirm me. I exist. “I am,” means to me that I am living, breathing, lively and thriving in this space between life now and life later that I like to think of as an event horizon full of gravity and opportunity. Continue reading “A Meditation on a Mantra: Sat-Nam By Sara Frykenberg”

In my defense against an abusive God… what I forget and what I am learning By Sara Frykenberg

I spent a great deal of my life believing that the smaller and smaller I made myself, the bigger God would be in my life and the more power He (sic) would have to do the good things He had planned. If I could just get out of the way… If I could resist my humanness… If I could be “alive to Him and dead to me,” as one of the songs we sang in my college church group reminded me. I stopped believing this when I felt I had become so small and lost so much of myself that I couldn’t bear it anymore.

I don’t know how to explain it otherwise, but I had a physically violent reaction to any more of myself disappearing. I yelled and snapped at people like a wounded animal; and when I reached out to members of my Bible study for help, I remember one woman suggesting that maybe demons were involved in some way. I’m not sure if she thought I was being possessed or attacked, but I remember feeling like she hadn’t heard me at all.

I didn’t understand… excuse me, couldn’t understand why the God I was always taught to believe in, the God who was in control of everything and the God who purposefully made things the way they were, would plan for all the suffering and loss I saw around me—for the loss I was experiencing. A man who is my ally and my spirit friend listened to me explain this feeling. He then looked up at me and asked, “You think that God is abusive, don’t you?” And I replied, “I guess I do.” Continue reading “In my defense against an abusive God… what I forget and what I am learning By Sara Frykenberg”

What about “the final frontier?” Saying goodbye to the Space Shuttle Program By Sara Frykenberg

The following is a guest post written by Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D., independent scholar and graduate of the Women Studies in Religion program at Claremont Graduate University.

“It all started when they messed with Pluto,” my husband joked to me as we listened to the NPR report last week about the end of NASA’s Space Shuttle Program. I imagined a slighted god of the underworld smiting our exploration of the heavens! “How dare you tell me that Pluto doesn’t count,” he yells, dragging our shuttles out of the sky. But joking aside, I am really, truly bummed about this new “development” is US space exploration. The idea that human beings have the ability to travel in outer space is a great source of hope and inspiration for me— but why? And why am I so bummed? I decided that I needed to examine these feelings from both a feminist and a spiritual dimension.

Does feminism care about the Space Program? That is a question, because I really don’t know. I know particular feminists do. I know some don’t. Continue reading “What about “the final frontier?” Saying goodbye to the Space Shuttle Program By Sara Frykenberg”

Why (I) Work? The Difference Between A House Wife and Being Unemployed By Sara Frykenberg

The following is a guest post written by Sara Frykenberg, Ph.D., independent scholar and graduate of theWomen Studies in Religion program at Claremont Graduate University.

Ever since I graduated I have been keenly aware of the fact that am no longer a student who is “not working right now,” but am in fact, unemployed. I do not have a job and have accumulated countless hours, applications and my fair share of rejection letters to attest to this fact. However, something else has changed in my life this year: I also became a wife and gained a husband… and in between my job searches, while I am cleaning the house, planning meals and working on a GARDEN (which is thriving by the way, despite my previous occupation as a serial plant-killer), I’ve found myself considering, “Am I unemployed or am I a housewife?”

I ask myself this question, as I water the money tree next to my desk: a graduation gift from a friend. *Am I imagining things or did it slightly quiver when I thought about getting an (outside) job*

Planti-cide aside, the more I have considered this question, the more of a spiritual issue and a feminist issue its has become for me. How do I find a balance between my sincere belief that the choice to be a homemaker is a beautiful one, and the feelings of shame or worthlessness I sometimes struggle with because I have not found a “real job.” I find myself listing all of the things I have accomplished in the house each day to my husband when he gets home, as though I have to justify my existence or earn the grocery money I no longer have in my own bank account. Continue reading “Why (I) Work? The Difference Between A House Wife and Being Unemployed By Sara Frykenberg”