Tag Archive | earth mother

Birthing God and Christianity

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CHRISTIANITY AS AN EMBODIED RELIGION

Rachel Brunns is a spirited and thoughtful young woman who was a member of the Lutheran Volunteer Corps when I interviewed her.  She is currently studying theology at Marquette University in Milwaukee.

Rachel, who is from Minnesota but spent some time in the Andes of Peru where she experienced the Divine Feminine in Pachamama [Earth Mother], told me, “Christianity, at its core, is an earthly, embodied religion. It’s something I hope we can reclaim.”

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Send me your thoughts!

 

 

Photo credit: Viva Van Assen

Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine

Birthing God cover

Powerful narratives of suffering, love, and hope that inspire

both personal and collective transformation.

 In Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine, 40 women of faith describe inspirational, Spirit-filled moments: a Korean student feels the hands of God supporting her despite excruciating torture; a grieving pastor walks a labyrinth and rediscovers the Rock of her existence; a human rights advocate re-encounters Allah in an intensely visceral moment in the sun; a Salvadoran peasant woman under fire discovers within herself the God who gives her courage. Each woman’s story invites reflection and the deepening of readers’ own spiritual practices.

Order or preview at:

http://www.skylightpaths.com/page/product/978-1-59473-480-9

Also available on Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

This Christmas, Buck the Consumerist Mindset

Indian madonna and child, Annabel Landaverde

Every time I enter a department store, I think of the recent sweatshop tragedy in Dhakah, Bangladesh. On November 24, 2012, over a hundred women and girls, forced to slave for hours in a sweatshop locked from the outside, perished when a fire broke out and they could not escape. But the Tazreem Fashions’ sweatshop owners are not the only ones responsible for their deaths. When we shop at Wal-Mart and buy dirt-cheap goods, some of that blood and ash gets on our hands, too, for we are driving the demand for sweatshop labor with our consumption.

So this holiday season, when everyone is expected to show their love through their purchases, what can we do? Here are a few solutions I’ve come up with:

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    • Donate to organizations that the receiver supports and appreciates.
    • Shop at great consignment clothing stores like Crossroads or Buffalo Exchange.
    • Wrap fair-trade beverage items (tea, coffee, sipping chocolate) with one of your favorite poems or quotes. That way, the person can savor the words while enjoying the beverage you gifted them!
    • Share an afternoon with a friend, treating him or her to dinner and a movie or better yet, a hike or a lakeside stroll.
    • Attend artisan fairs and craft shows, purchasing local artists’ toys, pottery, artwork, jewelry, kitchen wares, and other hand-crafted items.
    • Check to ensure that your factory-made purchases are made by unionized workers whose rights are protected. If you are creative with some of your gifts, you might be better able to afford the higher price tag of a garment produced by someone whose life and rights are respected.

I know that bucking the consumerist mindset during the holidays can be very challenging. I have to admit that I’ve Floweralready bought three big-box store items this year—their rock-bottom prices were just too hard to resist! But I have also purchased local, hand-crafted jewelry, written a few poems, shopped at second-hand stores, and even purchased a clothing item from what I used to call “those super-expensive, made-in-USA” stores. Yep, that’s right—me, a single mom and tight-wad daughter of depression-era parents. And if I can do it (well, almost do it), then we all can.

It’s time to take back our holidays from the corporations who benefit from so much spending and consumption. We can celebrate our holidays in ways that recognize that we are not separate from those who slave and perish in overseas factories. We can endeavor to show our love in actions and with gifts that nature holds out to us rather than depleting her abundance or demeaning other human beings.

So this holiday, let’s make the better choice. Even if we slip up and buy a sweatshop item, there’s always the next gift idea or activity that we can improve on, so that we can continue to celebrate the holidays in an increasingly interconnected and resplendent world!

Birthing God cover

Come celebrate my new book, Birthing God!

Great news! Skylight Paths Publishing will be publishing my book, Birthing God: Women’s Experiences of the Divine in early 2013.

In Birthing God, forty women relate spirit-filled moments: a grieving pastor walks a labyrinth and rediscovers the Rock of her existence; a human rights advocate re-encounters Allah in an intensely visceral moment in the sun; an educator, moved by an ancestral vision, launches a global tree-planting project to heal the wounds of slavery; a revolutionary awakens from a coma and realizes that all of life is infused with Spirit; a peasant woman under fire discovers within herself the God who gives her courage; and a disabled doctor, embraced by Shekinah, turns her heart to rabbinical studies. Each woman’s story invites readers to deepen and enliven their own spiritual practices.

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, join with me in celebration this coming weekend at the 6th   annual herconference November 2-4 at herchurch, where I will be leading a workshop. See http://herconferencesf.org/workshops/ for more details. Hope to see you there!

June Solstice

We gathered before sunrise at the Puerta del Sol, an ancient Incan Sun Gate located a short walk from the Sacred Valley Retreat Center. For the ancient Incas, all life stemmed from the sun. They crafted their temples and other buildings with precise attention to the angle of the sun’s rays and the play of shadows. During the solstices, Inca initiates would place themselves at designated points where the first rays of the rising sun would illuminate their foreheads.

We followed this ritual at the Sun Gate in Yucay. I sat between rows of nubby stalks in a recently harvested cornfield. Before closing my eyes, I glimpsed the tomb-cliffs I had hiked to the day before. From there, my gaze traced Incan stone terraces and stone-lined irrigation channels all the way down to the stone steps of the Sun Gate. I closed my eyes to meditate. As the sun rose above the mountain, the first rays warmed my crown and then my forehead, and I felt tremendous power and gratitude welling up within me and swirling like the intense red patterns that played on my inner eye.

What a gift to allow myself to be here, I realized. What a gift to allow myself to live fully aware, dedicated to letting myself bloom. Here in this mountain valley, I could hear more clearly. Insights arose spontaneously, including:

  1. Honor the body and harbor the tender soul.

    Woman at the Inti Raymi celebration of the June Solstice

  2. Breathe into strength, the power deep within.
  3. Love openheartedly.
  4. Live in gratitude—great, great gratitude.
  5. Realize that death is a calm passing over, a sweetness not to be feared.

Back at the retreat center, I meditated for the remainder of the solstice day. By mid-afternoon, the garden and surrounding fields appeared to be both resting and abuzz with some hidden vigor and translucent sap. The poinsettia blazed red in the late afternoon sun. Off in the distance, a donkey brayed, a dog barked, and a chorus ensued. Beside me, the ewe tucked her legs beneath her woolly belly and chewed her cud.

All around me, shadows skirted the mountains, and I admired their bastion strength. Out loud I wondered how best to live my life.

The response:

  1. Live upturned like a daisy, heart open to the sun or the kiss of a child.
  2. Walk, every day, in the pulse of life. Walk with gratitude and awe, seeing the alive-ness and connectedness of everything.
  3. Meditate daily. Cultivate the inner richness.
  4. Every day, push the envelope of your courage. See what more emerges.
  5. Most of all, remember that you are part of this beauty. Remember your birthright to peace, abundance, and love.

Magnificence of the Andes

Stop! Rest! Birth!

Day 3

I dream that my car is overheating and the words shout at me: “Stop! Stop!” In the past I have often dreamed myself driving—an apt metaphor for someone who wishes to control her life and where it is going. But I am not in control; the Spirit is, if I can recognize and align myself with that divine force in my life. Here in the Sacred Valley I have stopped: I have ceased struggling, have come to rest. It is fitting that I arrived on Friday midday, just before Shabbat, the holy Sabbath. Today, all day is the Sabbath, a day of rest. Learning and seeking how to stop, how to allow for repair, for renewal and rejuvenation.

And so my journey begins with resting in this valley ringed by mountains. Into the portal I go, into the umbligo del mundo*, merging with the Pachamama, the earth mother who embraces me, who IS me.

Motorcycle taxi stopped for a rest.

View of the garden just below my window at Sacred Valley B & B Retreat Center. The whole valley is ringed by mountains!

*The Incas referred to Cusco as el umbligo del mundo: the navel of the world.