spring equinox – Feminism and Religion

Persephone’s Return and the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries by Deanne Quarrie

Deanne Quarrie Many of us are quite familiar with the story of Persephone and Demeter, the Greek myth behind the changing of seasons each year.

“The story basically goes that Zeus arranges a marriage for Hades, the God of the Underworld and the Dead. Zeus gives Persephone to him. Persephone is gathering flowers in a field when she is tempted by the sight of a narcissus. The flower, however, is a trap set by Gaia, acting on the instructions of Zeus, and when Persephone picks the flower the earth opens and the god of the underworld, Hades, also known as Pluto, kidnaps her and rapes her. Only Hecate, a daughter of Rhea, and Helios, the sun god, hear Persephone’s cries.

For nine days, Demeter wanders throughout the world searching for her daughter, carrying blazing torches and neither eating, drinking or washing. No one, god or mortal, comes to aid her.

On the 10th day, Hecate and Helios finally tell her what has happened. Demeter flees Olympus in anger and wanders the earth unrecognized until She comes to Eleusis.” (excerpt from Eleusinian Mysteries, Charles River Editors) Continue reading “Persephone’s Return and the Lesser Eleusinian Mysteries by Deanne Quarrie”

The Black Wings of Spring by Sara Wright

Spring on the Wing

Red Willow River’s
waters are rising.
Sea green waves
wash whittled
beaver sticks
against pebble strewn shores.
I bend.
filling a
miniature vessel
with river water
to hold her song:
Water Is Life.

Spring is on the wing.
Bird migrations,
wild winds,
leave – taking,
these are the
elements of seasonal change.
Prayers for rain
may be answered.
Pale green desert rosettes,
toothed scorpion rounds,
purple filigreed ferns,
swelling Cottonwood buds,
all create a chorus of rain chants
sweetening the night.
Blackbirds trill from
tallest branches,
flash crimson
in morning flight. Continue reading “The Black Wings of Spring by Sara Wright”

Out of the Darkness by Gina Messina

Gina and Sarah Today is Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, a time to celebrate moving into light and abundance after the darker cold winter. While many of us are lucky enough to have shelter and access to food out of season, this is a time that continues to be a resurrection in countless ways. Not only is it a literal shift from darker days to increasing light, but a symbolic time that allows us to reflect on changes, that while seeming to be hopeless can blossom into new life.

I have been consumed in a time of shifting ground and deep darkness as my sixteen year marriage has come to an end. Choosing to divorce rather than remain committed to good times and bad is a frightening and soul crushing event. To walk away from what seems to be stability in favor of a questionable future and to defy one’s foundational understanding of family as dictated by society and religion is beyond terrifying. Continue reading “Out of the Darkness by Gina Messina”

It’s Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere – not Spring/Eostar by Glenys Livingstone

Glenys Despite the chocolate bunnies, eggs and toy chickens in the shops along with the coaxing to buy and celebrate Easter at this time in Australia, it is not Spring: Earth here does not seem to co-operate with the Consumer Faith, built as it is around the Northern Hemisphere and dominant Christian calendar. In the Southern Hemisphere it is Autumn, the dark part of the day is lengthening.

On March 20^th at 4:30 UT Earth will be perfectly poised in balance for a moment: it is a global moment of Equinox – one of the annual two. Humans have celebrated it for millennia, perhaps for many tens of thousands of years, in ways appropriate to various regions, in both the South and the North of the Planet. The light and dark parts of the day in the South and in the North of our planet, are of equal length at this time. In the Northern Hemisphere it is Spring, and Easter is commonly celebrated: with those of Earth-based tradition celebrating the moment and season of Equinox with the name of Eostar. Continue reading “It’s Autumn in the Southern Hemisphere – not Spring/Eostar by Glenys Livingstone”

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”

Persephone by Barbara Ardinger

Here we are, creeping up on the vernal equinox (March 21), which astronomers and weathermen on TV tell us is the start of spring. I see Imbolc (as described by Deanne Quarrie) as the true beginning of spring, however. It’s when we see the first little crocuses popping up through the snow…..oh, yeah…..well, maybe not this year, when more than half the U.S. is buried under mountains of snow. Let’s just agree that in ordinary years crocuses pop up and bloom and trees start showing us their tiny green leaves in February. The equinox is really the turning point of spring, the hinge of time when the rising energy tips over into falling energy that is flowing toward summertime, which will arrive at Beltane (May 1 or 2).

We’re probably all familiar with the story of Persephone, who under her childhood name, Kore, was out picking flowers in the meadow one day when her Uncle Hades roared up out of the earth in his mighty chariot and kidnapped her. This led her mother, Demeter, the grain goddess, to search for her and finally go on strike and let the world turn back into winter. This went on until Aunt Hecate told Demeter where her daughter was. When Persephone, now queen of the underworld, came back up with her mother—voilà! It was springtime. That’s how the vegetation myth goes. Continue reading “Persephone by Barbara Ardinger”