Xochitl Alvizo – Page 7 – Feminism and Religion

FAR Press Publishes A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess by Carol P. Christ

carol-p-christ-photo-michael-bakas This is a great day for me as I announce the publication of A Serpentine Path: Mysteries of the Goddess. It is the first —but certainly not the last—book from the new FAR Press, directed by Gina Messina and Xochitl Alvizo, two of the founders of www.feminismandreligion.com. The release of my book is the fruit of friendship and collaboration that has been nourished in the blog community. I hope you will join with us in celebrating our joint venture by ordering the book, telling your friends about it, sharing it Facebook and Twitter (links below), reviewing it on Amazon, and letting Gina and Xochitl know if you can review in a magazine, journal, or blog.

Here is an excerpt from the preface to whet your appetite.

A Serpentine Path is a story that begins in despair and ends in rebirth and regeneration. It depicts a turning point in my life, a psychological and spiritual breakthrough that opened me to living the rest of my life in grace and joy. Though I am tempted to say it was a journey from darkness to light, that would be inaccurate, for mine was a journey into the darkness and out again. The path of life is never straight or narrow, and the circle of light and darkness is never-ending.

When I began the journey described in A Serpentine Path, I did not feel loved, I did not want to live, I could not write, and I believed the Goddess had betrayed my faith. As I completed the book, I knew I was loved, I wanted to live, I was writing, and I understood that the Goddess had never abandoned me. Though my life has had its ups and downs since then—as all lives do—I have never forgotten that I am loved, I have wanted to live, I have not stopped writing, and I feel the Goddess ever-present in my body, in my breath, and in my connections with the living and the dead. Though my story is deeply personal, my struggles with love and death, trust and control, are widely shared.

A story of finding the Goddess, A Serpentine Path is part of a growing genre that is developing as women explain to themselves and others why they left the patriarchal religions of their origins for a more nourishing spiritual vision that affirms both women and the earth. A Serpentine Path documents the first of the Goddess Pilgrimages to Crete I have been leading twice a year since then. For the women who have traveled with me, it will evoke many memories. For those who have dreamed of a pilgrimage to the Goddess, it offers an opportunity to imagine the journey. I now know a great deal more about ancient Crete, the folklore and customs of traditional Crete, and the rocks, trees and plants of Crete, than I did when I began. But I learned the mystery on my first pilgrimage. Because we are all deeply connected to each other, I know that the path to the mystery I discovered is not mine alone.

Be among the first to order A Serpentine Path, Carol P. Christ’s moving memoir of transformation. Carol’s other new book written with Judith Plaskow is Goddess and God in the World: Conversations in Embodied Theology. Carol also wrote the first Goddess feminist theology, Rebirth of the Goddess.

Join Carol on a Goddess Pilgrimage to Crete in 2017. Save $200.

Read two of the chapters in the book: Mysteries and Dionysian Rites.

Thanks to Judith Shaw for the cover art “Downward Serpent”

“You Look Trim” and Resisting the Tyranny of Thinness by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh I caught myself reinforcing the norm. The ever present default of focusing on women’s body size and prioritizing their weight gain and loss. I did this with a colleague/friend of mine. After not seeing one another for most of the summer, my first comment to her was about her thinning waistline.

We greeted each other excitedly as we discovered the unexpected surprise that we were both attending the same pre-semester training. But following our warm greeting, and just as we went to sit down with our lunch, I commented to her that she looked more trim. She responded, “That’s the best compliment anyone could have given me – thank you!”

My heart sank a little as I realized what I had done. The first time I see her in months, of all that she is and all the amazing qualities she has, my attention and commentary went to her waistline – to paying attention to the size of her body. I felt such disappointment in myself. And in that moment it also hit me that I wasn’t only doing this with her, I had recently been doing this with myself as well. Continue reading ““You Look Trim” and Resisting the Tyranny of Thinness by Xochitl Alvizo”

Updates on Listening by Xochitl Alvizo

The pieces of my dissertation are beginning to float to the surface, piece by piece, released into the world as smaller parts of the whole. At some point this all may become a book, but for now, I have enjoyed the opportunity to share some of the learning from my dissertation research in book chapters, articles, and blog posts, which I’d like to share with you all so that you can see some of what I’ve been up to these days.

The most recent piece that has come to be is an article on The Listening Guide, the particular method of narrative analysis I used to analyze the transcriptions of the interviews I conducted with participants of Emerging Church congregations. I’m particularly excited about this piece because I think it could be a useful tool to many of us in our respective fields of study and work. And although my particular context is theological and, even more specifically, Christian, as a tool and method, The Listening Guide can be used for reflection and be of great value in a variety of contexts. Continue reading “Updates on Listening by Xochitl Alvizo”

Painting Our Own Realities in the New Year by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh A friend of mine once commented that my feminism is evident from the moment you step into my house. In reference to all the female images around my house, she noted that my space reflected a different way of being in the world. I had never thought of it actually, it was not a specifically conscious choice I made to be woman-centered in the books and artwork I displayed, I simply put up what I loved. But once she pointed that out to me, I appreciated the point it raised about what we surround ourselves with and what it reflects about the world we want to live in and help create. What do our spaces evoke for us? for others? Do they help spark the imagination, and if so, what toward?

While I have always been very conscious about how I create my home space, it has not been in the way my friend noted. I am hyper-organized at home. I am one of those people who love the expression “a place for everything and everything in its place.” It can be a difficult characteristic to live with let me tell you, as I tend not to be able to feel at home until things are all “in their place,” which I admit has made for a hard transition in these last few months! I always thought that organization was the most important part of what made a ‘home’ for me – that and having a guest room ready for welcoming visitors. But this last week, as I got a little time to organize my house a bit more, the importance of my artwork came front and center in a new way. Continue reading “Painting Our Own Realities in the New Year by Xochitl Alvizo”

My Terrible Transition Year and the Return of my Humanity by Xochitl Alvizo

Alvizo headshot small I have called it, The Terrible Transition Year, this year of finishing dissertation, uprooting from home, moving cross-country, and starting a new full-time teaching job. Last year at this time I was in LA for a 7-8 week stay, away from home – which at the time was in Boston – writing dissertation nonstop. I spent the holidays apart from my family and shared in none of my traditional holiday celebrations as I intensely pushed forward to complete the dissertation. After (seemingly) endless edits back and forth with my advisor and second reader, I finished the dissertation just in time to successfully defended it in May.

During most of this dissertation-writing time, I never had the sense that there would be a successful end to it all. I wrote and submitted each chapter-draft always with the underlying fear that I would be told my work was unworthy, my logic lacking, and my thesis unsubstantiated. So I vividly remember the moment (I can actually still feel it) when I got definitive affirmation that my dissertation would reach a successful end. I remember the shock, the relief, and the physiological rush that coursed through my body as I read the words of approval that came in response to my last chapter. I remember my body shooting up off the chair and saying, “No!” as I read the email. It was a “No” of disbelief, as in “Can this really be?!” And it was. And only at that point did I believe my dissertation would be successful. Continue reading “My Terrible Transition Year and the Return of my Humanity by Xochitl Alvizo”

From Mary Daly to the Emerging Church – An Unlikely Dissertation Trajectory by Xochitl Alvizo

Alvizo headshot small It was 2004 during the first semester in one of my classes for the master’s program when my TA presented a lecture on feminist critiques of atonement and introduced me to the writings of Mary Daly. It was my first introduction to feminism as theory and theology, and my first introduction to Mary Daly the writer.

Mary Daly was the first woman to preach at the Harvard Memorial Chapel in its three-hundred and thirty-six year history, back in 1974. On that occasion and in cahoots with some of her graduate students of the time, Mary Daly took the opportunity to invite people to give physical expression to their exodus from sexist religion by walking out of the church with her that day. Thinking that she would be leading the way out the door, she was surprised to find that people were very much ahead of her. She walked out of that church, out of sexist religion, as one among many who were ready to take their “own place in the sun.” This exodus, the act of leaving behind the silence and alienation from one’s own voice and from one’s own be-ing that is perpetuated by the prevailing patriarchal structures of church, is a choice I commit to make every day as I stay on the boundary of Christianity and church. Continue reading “From Mary Daly to the Emerging Church – An Unlikely Dissertation Trajectory by Xochitl Alvizo”

Learning to Live by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh The earliest memories of myself are as a student. I have distinct memories of myself in my kindergarten classroom. I even remember the location of my seat in the specific cluster of tables I was assigned. I also remember the stick-figure graphics that adorned the pages of the phonics books we used to learn to read. In the second grade, I have my first memory of making a mistake. In a spelling test, I wrote ‘rite’ instead of ‘write’ – and for the life of me, I could not understand how my answer wasn’t the correct one! Yet, despite this incomprehensible error (smile, smile), and the many more since, the classroom has always been the place where my life has been transformed and revolutionized.

However, my most memorable learning moments began in undergrad, when I took an “Intro to the Old Testament” class in which my faith perspective was turned upside down. It was there that I first learned that the stories of the Hebrew Bible were not unique; other ancient people also had stories that paralleled them. The creation stories, the flood story, the exodus story, among others, all had parallels in other mythological texts and traditions. In grad school I learned that even the Gospel of Mark had parallels to Homer’s Iliad. My whole religious tradition was flipped on its head – but the thing was – I absolutely loved it! I couldn’t have been more inspired. Those moments in the classroom of encountering theories and ideas that could set my whole mind reeling and my world spinning, that could revolutionize my way of thinking about the world, crystallized my commitment to a lifetime of learning. In those moments I came to realize that the classroom would always be my second home. Continue reading “Learning to Live by Xochitl Alvizo”

What “I Believe” and Found Worth Sharing by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh The end of my Ph.D. program is in sight. Originally, in 2004, I came to Boston University School of Theology (BU STH) from Los Angeles for a two-year masters program. Along the way I switched to a three-year masters program, after which I ended up staying for the Ph.D. Now, eleven years later, the end is actually in sight.

Last week I successfully defended my dissertation, “A Feminist Analysis of the Emerging Church: Toward Radical Participation in the Organic, Relational, and Inclusive Body of Christ.” Two days ago I had the last class section that I will ever teach as TA (teaching assistant) – next time I teach I will be doing so as a professor of religious studies at Cal State Northridge. Finally, because I am one of the students who will be graduating this year, I was invited to participate in the last chapel service of the year and be a speaker for the “This I Believe” service – themed after the NPR series by the same name. Yesterday, I was one of six students who were given three minutes each to share what we believe – which, let me tell you, is not a small task! Continue reading “What “I Believe” and Found Worth Sharing by Xochitl Alvizo”

The Case of Mary’s Decency by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh

This post builds on yesterday’s post on Marcella Althaus-Reid’s indecent theology.

In her book, From Feminist Theology to Indecent Theology, Marcella Althaus-Reid states that liberation theology has two dominant characteristics: the familiar ‘preferential option for the poor,’ with its suspicion of class structures and the influence these have on faith and church teachings to perpetuate and preserve its unjust systems of oppression and domination; and for its praxis of transformation of said unjust systems (FFTIT, 11). Marcella Althaus-Reid credits liberation theology for “systematically and structurally using the concept of ideological formation in order to unveil class economic interests embedded in theology” (FFTIT, 11).

To build on this, Althaus-Reid uses the concepts of ‘decency’ and ‘indecency’ to challenge theology’s obsession to regulate and control “sexual performances, roles and behavioral patterns of people…through a sexually based patriarchal hierarchy based in a particular androcentric understanding of life according to predetermined identities” – in other words, heterosexism. Indecent theology, then, aims to strip away theology’s false claim to sexual neutrality and its obsession to control, and instead aims to develop a theology free from the heterosexism that confines it (FFTIT, 83). One key place in theology she seeks to indecent (she used the word as a verb) is the “legend of Mary” (IT, 40).

Continue reading “The Case of Mary’s Decency by Xochitl Alvizo”

A Little Indecency with Marcella Althaus-Reid by Xochitl Alvizo

Incarnation, Goddess spirituality, Xochitl Alvizo, god became flesh Inspired by the conversation following Vanessa Rivera de la Fuente’s post yesterday, I offer here a little synopsis of Marcella Althaus-Reid’s work in Indecent Theology: Theological Perversion in Sex, Gender, and Politics.

Marcella Althaus-Reid opens her book by recalling a question she received from one of her colleagues: “What has sexuality to do with a Feminist Liberation Theology?” To answer she reflected on early liberation theology when it was still in formation and later liberation theology as it gained its place in the academy and the church:

[T]imes change and subversive theology becomes incorporated: church leaders claim that they themselves have always been liberation theologians. They guarantee to the state that there is no danger here…It is acceptable in the academy, entertaining to the wider public and a valuable commodity to publishers. Having reached calm waters, why would I as a feminist liberation theologian risk rocking the boat by introducing such a scandalous theme as sexuality, especially when it is not the theology of sanctified sexuality? (Indecent Theology, 2)

Continue reading “A Little Indecency with Marcella Althaus-Reid by Xochitl Alvizo”