Women’s Agency – Feminism and Religion

All That She Carried by Tiya Miles: Recovering the Untold Stories of Black Women in America, part 2 by Theresa Dintino

Part 1, appeared yesterday.

There are many women named Rose in the ledgers of unfree people in Charleston around 1850. The defining feature to find the Rose mentioned on this sack is that her daughter is named Ashley, not a common name for Black female children of the time. Miles finally locates a Rose and an Ashley in the inventory of Milberry Place Plantation, a country estate of a man named Robert Martin. When Martin died, his estate was liquidated and thus the mention of the sale of Ashley.

“Ashley is listed among one hundred unfree people in the inventory of Martin’s enslaved property taken in the year 1853. Her attributed value of $300, in comparison to that of other women listed at $500 and $600 in the cotton boom decade of the 1850’s, suggests that she may have been a younger or relatively unskilled worker”(69).

Things were bad enough for unfree people but the disruption that came like a tsunami through their lives when an enslaver died and his property was sold was a fear most carried and trembled at the thought of. Unfree families were always being torn apart in the time that slavery was legal and allowed in this country, but when estates were being divided up, it became particularly excruciating and this is what came to pass for Rose and Ashley.

All That She Carried by Tiya Miles: Recovering the Untold Stories of Black Women in America, part 1 by Theresa Dintino

Moderator’s Note: This piece is in co-operation with The Nasty Women Writers Project, a site dedicated to highlighting and amplifying the voices and visions of powerful women. The site was founded by sisters Theresa and Maria Dintino. To quote Theresa, “by doing this work we are expanding our own writer’s web for nourishment and support.” This was originally posted on their site on November 30, 2021. You can see more of their posts here.

First she was told about a grain sack dating from around 1851 that had these words embroidered on it:

My great grandmother Rose
mother of Ashley gave her this sack when
she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina
it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of
pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her
It be filled with my LOVE always
she never saw her again
Ashley is my grandmother
Ruth Middleton
1921

The Erotic as Power, Notes on Audre Lorde by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

I’ve long kept a tract of Audre Lorde’s seminal piece The Uses of the Erotic near my computer. “The Erotic as Power” is her subtitle. If you haven’t read it, please do. It is in her book Sister Outsider. And you can find it as a stand-alone here. It was written in 1978.

Lorde points out how the erotic is the opposite of pornography, in fact pornography is ultimately a denial of the erotic because it emphasizes sensation without feeling. “The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane . . .” She goes on to note how it is through our bodies that we recognize and access this power. But she goes on, “We have been taught to suspect this resource, vilified, abused and devalued within Western society.” In the hands of patriarchy this amazing and important resource often lies out of reach because it has become a source of shame and a sense of inferiority for women.[1]

I would add to the definition of patriarchy that one of its main goals is to damp down, even destroy, the erotic. We have seen this play out over thousands of years of history. Women are often viewed as either saints or sinners. Saints are denuded of this deep earthy power and sinners are those who flaunt it, or at least in the eyes of patriarchy.

She Spoke My Name: Finding the Feminine Divine in Silence, Fire, and Verse by Madeleine F. White

Two years ago I was in Pembrokeshire in South Wales. The retreat I’d taken myself to consisted of a collection of stone and flint buildings half way up a mountain and set around a farmhouse and chapel. I had come to find a way through my writer’s’ block and also to deal with a couple of really painful family issues.

My room was only a half corridor away from the chapel itself. It was four o’clock in the morning and because I was quite close to the kitchen on the other side I had my earplugs in. Despite all this, on the second night, I quite clearly heard a woman’s voice calling “Madeleine,” loudly enough to wake me and send me looking down a deserted corridor. It was not imagined or metaphorical, but distinct and unmistakably real. The experience startled, not because I was afraid but because I recognised the truth of it. This familiar, maternal and sacred truth led directly to the writing of Maiden Mother Crone, my second poetry collection just a few months later as well as a resolution of the two other issues that had weighed so heavily on my mind.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: WHAT DOES “GOD INTEND”?

This post was originally published on Oct. 29, 2012

Indiana Republican candidate Richard Mourdock’s statement that pregnancies resulting from rape are “something God intended” not only shows an appalling lack of empathy and distain for the experiences of raped women, it also is bad theology.

The controversy ignited by Mourdock provides a good opportunity to discuss the theological mistake of “divine omnipotence” also known as the “zero fallacy.” Mourdock’s belief that God intends the pregnancies of raped women is rooted in the notion that “whatever happens” is the will of God.

The theological category of “divine omnipotence” means that God is all-powerful. It also means that God has all the power. From this it is said to follow that everything that happens must in some way be the will of God. Such views are held not only by many devout believers, but also by everyone else who asserts that “there must be a reason” when bad things happen.

The notion that a good God is responsible for all the events that occur in the world is rendered questionable by every bad thing that happens–particularly by bad things that happen to good people. This was the question of Job, and there has never been a satisfactory answer to it. If God can intervene to stop the innocent from being harmed, why does he not do so? God’s failure to stop rape suggests that either that God is not good, or that a good God chooses a really bad outcome, or that God is not the cause of everything that happens in the world.

Charles Hartshorne called the notion of divine omnipotence the “zero fallacy.” Continue reading “Legacy of Carol P. Christ: WHAT DOES “GOD INTEND”?”

Dear Mr. Vance, Love, A Childless Cat Lady

I am a writer, one who sometimes touches on personal issues. But this is the first time I elaborate on why I don’t have children, no doubt, provoked by your “childless cat lady” jibe.

I am childless or childfree; to me, it is a matter of semantics. I have two cats whom I consider my children. In many ways, I am like most Americans; I love my job, I love my students, I love my colleagues.

And I love my cats.

In Our Right Minds: On the Sacred Feminine, the Right Brain and Restoring Humanity’s Natural Balance by Dale Allen

TODAY • BOOK LAUNCH ON AMAZON! Launch Discounts underway now!

There’s something about a book. I make a lot of things: podcasts, videos, a film, a musical production, paintings, lots of articles for publications, but this… this feels huge to me. A book. A book that represents 25 years of my life as a spokesperson and champion of the feminine side of humanity – a part of all us.

Here’s the official Press Release:

Veteran of corporate and commercial communications, host, interviewer, and filmmaker Dale Allen has now released her new book, In Our Right Minds. This new book is an in-depth exploration of the sacred feminine and its power to heal humanity as a whole. Sharing her profound journey of exploring the goddess archetype, the author combines science, art, and history for a transcendent literary journey.

Your Body Knows Before You Do by Andrea Penner

Our interstate move of 325 miles due east on U.S. Highway 40, formerly Route 66, that iconic highway through the American Southwest, took us from one rental home to another. A month later, I sat in a closed graduate seminar, having received a coveted “yellow card.” By some stroke of magic, the professor had read my master’s thesis.

“I know your work,” he said, signing the over-enrollment waiver.

For the next several years, I studied, wrote, taught, ate, slept, and moved through marriage and motherhood (and one more rental)—all toward the goal of completing the PhD in English while my then-husband cycled through professional jobs and both of us recovered from eight years of cross-cultural Christian ministry.

Better Than a Rainy Norwegian Cruise: the Divine Feminine App Comes to Another Fork in the Road by Caryn MacGrandle

I have just recently taken on debt with the divine feminine app. I made the decision to go to the Parliament of World Religions. We added a weekly email feature and an affiliate program. I have been investing in some other features in an attempt to make the app sustainable. I find myself $13,000 in debt.

And I’m not done. Both the Operating System that the app is built on and the smartphone apps need to be updated. In technological terms, they are ancient, and we are starting to have different issues pop up with them.

If I am lucky and continue to work without a paycheck as I have the past ten years and with the company in India who is about 1/8 the cost of doing this state side, this will cost us about $7,000.

In other words, I need $20,000.

I ask myself, is it worth it?

Yes.

The Importance of Finding a Local Sacred Circle or Event by Caryn MacGrandle

“What not many know that the founder Caryn MacGrandle (aka Karen Lee Moon), who is a soul-sister to me, has devoted her life to the building, developing and promoting of this app, in service to the Rising Feminine … “ Jonita D’Souza, Rising Feminine

I came back this weekend from my land in North Carolina to two email messages about women finding divinely feminine events through the divine feminine app. I cannot even begin to tell you how happy this makes me. After nine years of nurturing, developing, daily work and pouring my personal funds into the app, it is truly working.