story-telling – Feminism and Religion

From the Archives: Storytelling as a Spiritual Practice by Nurete Brenner

This was originally posted on April 10, 2019

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Audre Lorde

Question: What tools do we have that are powerful enough to dismantle the Master’s house?

Answer: Storytelling.

Storytelling does not belong to the “master.” Storytelling is subversive because it belongs to the collective and not to the individual; it gives agency to the powerless; it is not dependent on time or money, and it makes visible those who are overlooked and ignored in our globalized industrialized system.

We are not seeking to overthrow the patriarchy or “master,” and replace him with a queen. We are seeking something which Riane Eisler (2002) would call a partnership society or a society in which polarities are well balanced, in which the masculine and feminine values which we all hold are given equal weight. We have become so indoctrinated in the patriarchal master’s way of thinking that we think we need some show of force, some violence, some upheaval to create the more beautiful world. But – truthfully – it won’t look like that. It might actually look like a group of women and men gathering together in a circle, in community, to tell stories. Storytelling is subversive because it belongs to the community; it is a medicine to transmute the toxins of industrialized society; it is a spiritual practice. Storytelling is the antidote to empire.

A Fable for the Season by Marie Cartier

Once upon a time there was a person who only saw themselves in the mirror—even if someone else was passing by in the background, and they certainly never saw the shadows of all the people who had helped them in their life swimming in their eyes. That’s the way it is sometimes—we just don’t see what we don’t want to see.

And every day this person would look into the mirror, adjust their hair or their jewelry or their collar and then go off to work—never seeing anyone besides themselves.

Until one day they fell. The fell hard over a “stupid, goddamn tree trunk root that some goddam someone should have cut or shaved or done something with –goddamn it.” They said a version of this over and over on their way to the hospital.

And because of that they had to be fed by a nurse. And they had to have their bandages changed. And they had to have a cast put on—several. And they had to have a lot of things happen because it had been a nasty fall and they broke both wrists and their right leg.

Storytelling as a Spiritual Practice by Nurete Brenner

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Audre Lorde

Question: What tools do we have that are powerful enough to dismantle the Master’s house?

Answer: Storytelling.

Toil and Trouble (Part 4) by Barbara Ardinger

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

When the Amazons land in the capital city, they find themselves standing on the wide lawn in front of the Golden Tower in which El Presidente lives and rules. And look—El Presidente is still talking. Not having noticed the disappearance of twenty-seven princess, he’s still strutting, still emphatically gesturing, still addressing the fifty-four handsome, charming princes, who make up what he considers to be his people. (His fan club?)

Hippolyta, the Queen of the Amazons, adjusts her armor and walks across the sidewalk into the empty street. Her warriors follow her. “Now what?” she asks the air around her.

They hear a voice. “Greetings, Sisters! And be welcome! We haven’t met in many years. I’m glad to see you again.” Hippolyta looks a bit confused. “Don’t you remember Brunhilda?” the voice asks. Continue reading “Toil and Trouble (Part 4) by Barbara Ardinger”

Toil and Trouble (Part 3) by Barbara Ardinger

Continued from Part 2

The magical school bus, carrying twenty-seven young women, drives across two or three states almost as quickly as the magic carpet flew a few days ago. The bus seems to fly, guided by Bunbury and Icarus as GPS and guards and Kahlil riding on the bus driver’s shoulder (well, not always; the driver keeps shrugging the heavy raven off, so Kahlil finally perches on the back of the first seat) and giving directions. (How the GPS ravens communicate with him is not to be disclosed.)

“So whaddaya think the magic’s for?” Kahlil asks the driver. “We’re guardin’ these here girls. Takin’ ’em somewheres safe.”

All the driver can do is keep driving. When the bus and its precious passengers arrive at the witch’s farm and the girls descend, everyone can see that the finery they’d been wearing to sit in El Presidente’s audience is no longer fine. Their silks and satins have turned into ragged T-shirts and crepe paper. Their priceless jewelry is now colored plastic straws strung together with string. Their exquisite hairdos are now lank and limp. And soon there are loud cries from the witch and her friends—these girls have black eyes and bruises all over their bodies. Some of them are missing chunks of hair or their front teeth. They are all barefoot, and their feet are filthy. And these twenty-seven former princesses—were they ever genuine princesses?—are scared. Continue reading “Toil and Trouble (Part 3) by Barbara Ardinger”

Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break by Sara Wright

Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break.

I remember so vividly entering graduate school in my early forties and being told I was an “eco – feminist” by my professors. What does that phrase mean I asked having no relationship that I knew of to feminism. Feminists, I thought vaguely, naively, even stupidly, burned bras and hated men…

I was asked to read “Woman and Nature; The Roaring Inside Her” by Susan Griffin to help me see who I was, and after finishing this one book I submerged myself in feminist writings like a starved woman – child. My teachers were right. I was a feminist – an eco –feminist because I had already made the connection between what was happening to the Earth and what had happened to me. Every tree that was chopped down was a part of me, every stream that was polluted was a part of me, every animal that was slaughtered was a part of me because I was a part of Nature. I owed my life to Nature, the only mother I had ever had. I loved Her, honored her, became her fierce advocate and in the process She eventually taught me to love myself.

Continue reading “Please, Let’s Give Feminists a Break by Sara Wright”

Telling Stories by Natalie Weaver

Human beings tell stories. This may sound like a simple truth. To folklorists, literature professors, and people who work in media and in government, I would sound like a rather simple-minded child to be arriving so late in life at this obvious fact. We tell stories. And, just as the phrase “telling a story” might connote, our stories are not always true to life. Our stories are descriptors and meaning-making efforts, largely rooted in our grappling with self and group identity.

Take, for example, the story of human life as exceptional in the animal kingdom. As a child I would try to answer for myself the question of what made human beings distinct from other animals, since I had learned somewhere along the way that we were and are exceptional. I considered the stock answer “reason,” which seemed to me sufficient to explain how human beings did everything, from the writing of language to the building of skyscrapers. As a student of theology, I enlarged upon the rational faculty to see it as the divine in the human, operating as the co-creative element with which human beings gain structural manipulation over our environments. We make things after our image, just as God made us after God’s. Continue reading “Telling Stories by Natalie Weaver”

Toil and Trouble (Part 2) by Barbara Ardinger

Continued from Part 1.

“Mirror, mirror, on the table,
Show us all that you are able…”

The witch and her ad hoc coven and the ravens are leaning forward to see and hear more clearly what the mirror is showing them. The scarecrow wearing the human mask and his Gollumesque advisor are suddenly standing in a formal garden and addressing an audience that consists of a dozen rows of handsome but uncharming and self-important princes and (possibly) some princesses.

“Those girls are all captives,” Ella says. “Like I was until I started thinking for myself.” She gasps. “Oh, look—my sisters Annette and Darlene are there, too. When did they surrender?” As she begins weeping (she can’t help it), Mrs. Bezukhov pulls her into her arms. “Look, my Pierre is there, too,” she whispers. “He was always so kind, so smart…he spent his days helping other people. How could he stand among those, those—I don’t know what to call them.” Continue reading “Toil and Trouble (Part 2) by Barbara Ardinger”