commonplace Wednesday: Womanspirit Rising

Originally published in 1979, Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, is a new classic on my summer reading list.  It's a collection of early essays by some of the most recognized writers in feminism and spirituality including: Merlin Stone, Starhawk, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Mary Daly, and Zsuzsanna E. Budapest.  I'm about 25 pages into it and feel energized by the ideas, and reconnected with the feminist identity and theological interests of my college years.  But I'm a little puzzled too - how can I be part of this movement, this bigger conversation, these changes, as a mom with a job?  [When I was in college I was convinced that if the values and ideas I was engaging weren't accessible and actionable by "ordinary people" (rather than ivory tower PhD types) then they were useless.  I inadvertently made that my mission and fumbled my way into ordinariness.  Here I am and what to do, how to do it, with these big ideas?]

This quote from the Introduction offers some hints:

If the world has been named by Adam without Eve's consultation, then the world has been named from the male point of view.  As women begin to name the world for themselves, they will upset the order that has been taken for granted throughout history.  They will call themselves and the world into new being.  Naming women's experience thus becomes the model not only for personal liberation and growth, but for a feminist transformation of culture and religion.  "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" asks poet Muriel Rukeyser. "The world would split open." p.7.

When women describe their experience they have the potential to change culture and to change religion.  I don't have complete understanding of this yet but I think it's something about the man-made constructs falling away, the rules and the givens, the masculine common sense is revealed for its incompleteness, inconsistency, and inaccuracy.  It is not whole and complete for human experience.  It is not a valid placeholder or assumption.  This falling away makes room for more understanding, more dimensions and perspectives can occupy the space held as truth.

One of my favorite ideas from Carry On, Warrior was G's approach to scripture.  She is totally up front about the fact that all Bible readers pick and choose what to obey and how to understand the Bible. When faced with a passage that she didn't understand she interpreted it against the primary rules to love God and love others.  Based on this she decides what to do with the puzzling verses.  All the other rules, and what I call the man-made constructs, get cast aside to make way for the real work of loving.   Some of her readers find this sacrilegious or blasphemous.  I call it a hermeneutic of love and I dig it.

At it's best, at my best, feminism is an angle for speaking back to the dominant culture and taking apart the givens and the rules.  It's not necessarily about male versus female, men vs. women.  Women just happen to have a particular opportunity to initiate these changes since they weren't welcome to participate in the original naming.  (But women aren't the only "other" that was left out.  There are lots of opportunities.)  And the way this happens, in part, is women talking about their lives - like G in Carry On, Warrior, like me on my blog and Facebook and in life.  It's tiny.  It's barely visible, one woman at a time.  It's sometimes exhausting and seemingly pointless.  But as I, and we, persist in lifting up our very personal lives for public view and value, we participate in a political process of making room for more, different, other than the man-made norms.  The world is "split open" and we have the opportunity to reorder and remake with a new measure - a measure of love.

self-portrait Saturday

It's been a while since I've been on here with any kind of regularity.  The truth is that I've been wrangling with depression.  For a couple of years.  And really struggled to find any words about anything, especially myself.  Between the daily grind (job, family, laundry, bills) and getting well (meds, new meds, new meds again, therapy) there hasn't been much of me left over.

I'm improving - I have more energy, my head has cleared from the fog, and my body has shed that achey, leaden feeling.  I give myself credit for mushing through the daily grind and getting well.  And now I'm trying to build on that credit to render some words.  Some perspective.  Replace the sad, tired beliefs in my head with something - brighter, honest, hinting of possibility.

I have a few friends who live these commitments to big things.  Justice. Grace. Art. Health. Ecology. The last time I could say something similar about myself was graduate school.  Since then it's been all about Little N.  Coupled with this mind numbing, heart stopping, passion evaporating depression.  I don't know what I'm about anymore.  Sanity. Family.  and...?  Looking for Something More.

I chose a word for this year.  It seemed a useful tool for focusing my efforts as I come out of this haze.  I chose Connection.  And in some gradation between vagueness and optimism, I applied it to multiple aspects of my life: Connection to my feelings, people, ideas, spirit, and my body.  So every week I choose activities that relate back to Connection - send a letter to a friend, resume yoga, participate in ritual, go to church group, read.  And my hope is that through this practice of Connection that commitment to some big thing will reveal itself.  Or maybe Connection, itself, will appear as my big thing.

clarity

Lately I've been forgetting that I wanted to be working part-time and home more with Little N.  Things are busy, complex, and stressful at the office and I feel out of the loop and only half informed as a part-time employee.  I also find that I miss being with adults all day and that I get some pride, or at least satisfaction, in the work I've done.  Plus, part-time work was supposed to provide a little time alone for me, to read and write and to figure out my next steps professionally.  But Little N's schedule erased any chance for that.  So what am I doing?

at the zoo

My yoga practice has given me a way to work with this question.  At the start of each session we set an intention for our practice.  Mine has been "clarity."  That one word has made a difference for me.  The yoga opened my mind and my body to see something more true than the rush and needs of the office.  The intention of clarity shone a light on what and who is most important to me, enjoyable, and fulfilling for me right now. 

What I'm doing is being with Little N in a simple and real way, which I wasn't able to do when he was a baby.  Postpartum depression sent me running back to the adult world of the office as soon as maternity leave ended.  Now I feel like I have a second chance and more time to cultivate a mother son relationship; we're bonding.  

We have good moments and draining hours, like every mother and son.  It's not easy, getting to know and learn this little person.  But it is good.  And when he calls for me, "Mommy, come hold my hand."  "Mommy, come over here and play with Little N."  "Mommy, come sit with Little N right there."  I'm starting to think, "He's not always going to want me right there.   I'm not always going to be right here to hold his hand."  I might sigh or tell him to wait a minute, but I usually stop what I'm in the middle of and go be with him.  And I usually remember that it's what I wanted to be doing in the first place.    

it's here

my book, now on Amazon!

My labor of love, labor of labor, of intellect and heart and rendering something good and useful from years of living as an "other" within the community of my formative faith.

Out of the Attic: Leveraging Women's Experience of Otherness in the Evangelical Christian Church

This is my masters synthesis, now available as a self-published book on Amazon.  I even have an Author's page!

Imbolc ritual

We celebrated Imbolc Friday night with a beautiful ritual among kind friends.  The ritual impressed upon me additional elements of the holiday that hadn't stood out to me before.  Imbolc is Brigid's day, goddess of hearth, home, healing waters, light, inspiration, poetry, and even smithing.  She's a triple goddess and with her sisters shares these skills and gifts.  We honored Brigid with candlelight, poetry, blessed water, and new spring plants.

I'm not usually very attached to or inspired by particular gods and goddesses.  They tend to feel flimsy to me; spent inventions belonging to another people and another time.  But the character of Brigid reached me last night both as an icon imbued with things that are important to me and as a messenger bearing news about something about which I am very vulnerable and unsure.  Brigid told me that I am a writer.  She would know... as a goddess of inspiration, poetry, and intellect.  The message came with clarity and courage in my heart to keep putting words together about what I feel, know, and experience.

Brigid's message carried another insight too.  She convinced me of the significance and power of knowing your gods and goddesses.  I still don't perceive supernatural entities hanging out in the ether guiding, protecting, or judging us.  I don't experience divine presence that way (if at all).  But I do recognize the utility and power of recognizing and committing to strong characters holding and exemplifying our highest values.  They provide models, guides, examples, good company as we navigate change and confusion, celebrate our arrivals into new good places in our lives, and generally strive to live well with each other.

For years now I've played with the metaphor of the madwoman in the attic, where God is the madwoman.  Inherent to that metaphor has been my own struggle to perceive a divine feminine.  An aspect of the madwoman has been the male God in women's clothing.  I couldn't shake the masculine deity of my formative faith.  But through the icon of Brigid, within the ritual's meditation, I recognized and felt the madwoman as her own distinct feminine sacred self.  And with the new beginnings of Imbolc, I committed this year to knowing her character and committed my writing to her.  What does this mean?  I'm still translating the feelings of that night into meaning and action, but it's something about mercy, creativity, release rather than rules, love rather than laws, sharing my struggle, celebrating each tiny success, and knowing the sacred and holy in the good company of other people.

weirdo (me)

My husband explained to me this morning that I'm a weirdo.   I was fair game since I say similar things to him more frequently than would be considered nice.  (He describes himself as, "the hard stuff is easy and the easy stuff is hard."  I describe that as weird - and so frustrating!)

We were chatting about the fabulous job at the fabulous company that I quit after three months this summer because it was not a fabulous fit for me.  The CEO there told me that he thought I was a star.  So why didn't it feel like a good fit?  Why didn't I feel like a star?  Where the heck is my good fit?

L described me as really strong in some areas and really weak in other areas that are not normal.  As in, "weirdly shy and apprehensive about normal things, like driving."  And it all adds up to a… quirky? person who doesn't exactly fit in.  A weirdo.

From L's point of view,  where he's seen me shine has been in particular pieces of writing I've done in the last several years.  That's your strength, he told me.  That's what you should be doing.  

It would seem that the only thing left, is to do it.  

gratitude Sunday: morning pages

Jamie Ridler of Jamie Ridler Studios invited her readers to join her in a commitment and a community of morning pages for the month of September.  I've tried morning pages before and it stunk.  I understood the idea but somewhere in the implementation it turned into one more morning obligation and quickly spun itself out from there.  Even so, I wanted to try it again.  To see what I would meet on those pages.  To get writing again.  And this time, I gave myself permission to miss a day or to catch it up in the afternoon as my work schedule and parenting permitted.  It worked!

Here's some of what I gleaned from a semi-regular practice of morning pages:

• The pages functioned as a mirror, guide, compassionate inquisitor, and giver of good gifts.
• They nudged me to take the same boldness, assertiveness, methodical-ism, and un-attached-ness that I'm developing in my job and apply it to my writing.
• Reminded me about what I care about, beyond my immediate family.  Things like returning to Quaker meeting, reaching out to friends, checking out Venus Hill, book binding, meditation, and painting.
• Showed me the circuitous route I took to this place in my life and the choices, the work and investment and reinvention, that still remains.  
• Exorcised a distracting fantasy about my life and showed me what I want and can do.
• Anchored me in myself - boundaries, direction, desires - before the day began with all the pull from others - son, husband, boss, coworkers - for my time, attention, effort, thinking, compassion, and direction.  
• Presented a number of topics and ideas to dig into, study, write about. 

I am grateful and will continue the practice to further flush out and flesh out what these mornings hold.