Gender and Sexuality

Spiritual Wisdom of the Week

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This week’s spiritual wisdom comes from “Building Cultures of Peace: Four Cornerstones,” an essay by author and historian Riane Eisler:
To spread the consciousness that we can, and must, change traditions of domination requires courage. It takes courage to challenge domination and violence in both international relations and intimate relations. It takes courage to actively oppose injustice and cruelty in all spheres of life: not only in the so-called public sphere of politics and business but in the so-called private sphere of parent-child, gender, and sexual relations. It may not be popular, and may even be dangerous to do so, since domination and violence in intimate and intergroup relations are encoded in some religious and ethnic traditions that are our heritage from a more rigid dominator past. But it must be done.

Culture

CBS Will Air "Focus on Family" Ad

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I guess I would have missed it altogether. I never watch the Super Bowl. I never watch TV. I don’t subject myself to its violence and idiocy. I get my information by reading, whether on the internet (more and more) or through print media.

Culture

Avatar — It's Not Just about Whiteness

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Yesterday I posted some ecofeminist reflections on Avatar. Today I want to take on the racism issue that several Goddess Scholars as well as bloggers here at Tikkun Daily have raised. Originally I thought this movie was carefully crafted to bring the (mostly) white audience into an understanding that indigenous people already have — the importance, even sacredness, of their world ecology. The hero is Jake Sully, a human who becomes a Na’vi, thereby moving from one world to the other. He begins by betraying the people who ultimately become his own, so it’s not like his first actions are laudable — he’s actually an anti-hero in the beginning, not meant to be liked.

Culture

Avatar — an Ecofeminist Response

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I’ve really been enjoying the Avatar discussion, both here on Tikkun Daily and on the Goddess Scholars List I belong to. I waited until I’d seen the film to read any of the posts, because I didn’t want to prejudice my reaction to it. The GoddessScholars’ discussion reminded me a lot of a Women and Science Fiction class I taught in the 1980s. In my classes I always had a check-in before we began (despite the fact that they were university courses), because then we had deeper discussions. One of the odd things about the Women and Science Fiction class that semester was that there was a sizable minority (about 7 women out of 24) who were big football fans.

Gender and Sexuality

Mary Daly Lives On

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I’ve been reading the GoddessScholars list and surfing the web looking for eulogies of Mary Daly, the radical feminist theologian (from theos, ancient Greek for God) who made thealogy possible (from thea, ancient Greek for Goddess). And in reading through several of them, I’ve been remembering how important she was to me in the early 1970s. At that point in time, I could buy every book on feminism that came out, and I did. But not each one opened up my mind like Beyond God the Father. I can tell from my notes that although it was published in 1973, I must have read it in 1974.

Gender and Sexuality

Mary Daly

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I missed the fact that Mary Daly, the astounding feminist theologian, died a week ago. My local paper reprinted an article from the Boston Globe, but the best piece commemorating her I could find turned out to be published by our friends at Religion Dispatches here, by Susan Henking. The Globe quotes Daly:
“Ever since childhood, I have been honing my skills for living the life of a Radical Feminist Pirate and cultivating the Courage to Sin,” she wrote in the opening of “Sin Big,” her New Yorker piece. “The word ‘sin’ is derived from the Indo-European root ‘es-,’ meaning ‘to be.’ When I discovered this etymology, I intuitively understood that for a woman trapped in patriarchy, which is the religion of the entire planet, ‘to be’ in the fullest sense is ‘to sin.’

Christianity

The Sacred Feminine at the Parliament of World Religions

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I’m surprised that almost none of us blogged about the Parliament of World Religions (PWR) in Melbourne, Australia (12/3 – 12/9). I realize that the US Congress was still discussing the health care bill, Obama had just given his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and the Copenhagen Climate conference was underway. So we all have good excuses. Here at Tikkun Daily, we heard from Dave Belden, who wrote about Rabbi Michael Lerner’s workshop on the spiritual progressive movement. And Rabbi Lerner also wrote about the great disappointment world spiritual leaders at the PWR felt at Obama’s speech in Oslo.

Culture

Fears of a Future Rabbi

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Many religious leaders like to feel in control and give others advice. Though I am still a very much a rabbi-in-progress, with three-and-a-half years of study to go before ordination, I think it would show a great deal more strength for clergy to admit their shortcomings and be honest about how often they (and fairly soon soon we) don’t know what to do or how to do it. In the spirit of seeking, rather than giving, advice, I wanted to share some of the fears that I have about my future career – and lifestyle – as a rabbi. I was recently asked to record these as part of a professional development course at Hebrew Union College but thought they might be of interest here and foment conversation about the difficult life’s choices that many religious leaders face. As I look forward to life as a rabbi, I have a number of aspirations, tinged by concerns about achieving them – or missing the mark.

Gender and Sexuality

Houston? A Lesbian mayor? How sweet is this!

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Just when you thought the progressive momentum had stalled, comes this! Annise Danette Parker was elected mayor of Houston on Saturday, winning her seventh consecutive city election and becoming both the first contender in a generation to defeat the hand-picked candidate of Houston’s business establishment and the first openly gay person to lead a major U.S. city. … Less than two weeks into the five-week runoff, social conservatives mounted a campaign to turn voters against Parker because of her sexual orientation, sending out mailers and e-mail blasts that cast the election as a referendum on gay rights. While some voters acknowledged it was a matter of concern, many saw no problem voting for a gay candidate, especially given Parker’s assurances that she did not intend to expand gay rights through her position as mayor.