Conference turris::womannotes-v2

.0  Bonnie R.

Reading your note, Bonnie, made me want to write about 50 pages 
of Arggghhh!  I will curb myself and simply say that I feel
nauseous while reading things such as "women's real power: spiritual 
vitality and psychological gifts."

        
    re -.1
    
    Why nauseous?
    
    I thought the article was great. It's especially informative for people 
    living in the Boston area. It talks about the formation of the magazine 
    called *Woman of Power* (based in Somerville), which started in 1984 and 
    has as its primary objective "to nurture the development of women's 
    spirituality as a world view and as a political movement."
    
    A quote from that magazine's editor, Char McKee, states that "women are
    withdrawing our allegiance to patriarchal gods and governments and
    withdrawing our consent to patriarchal imaginings...We are envisioning
    new myths of ourselves, new ways of relating, new rituals and dreams
    and symbols, new forms of community."
    
    In general the article describes ways in which women (for a change) are 
    "naming the sacred".
    
    Sounds to me like the best thing that's happened to women since...the
    safety pin?
    
    So why "aarrgh"?
    
    Dorian

    If I got anything out of the "Power of Myth" (Campbell, w/Moyers)
    it was that our myths, religious and otherwise, form the culture to
    a great extent - the values, the mores, how we treat each other.
    
    To explore, revive, rekindle, create women-positive, women-centered,
    women-empowering myths, stories, etc. is a very positive idea to me.
    
    Campbell says (I believe) that our old myths are not apt for today's
    living - we've essentially outrun our myths, archetypes, stories, etc.
    And we will need to make new ones for the future, especially so the
    youth will have these things to look to. Why shouldn't these new ones
    reflect the coming of women into society, into power, into our
    birthright?
    
    --DE
    

    I should know better by now, but...............
    
      Paul Revere, galloping along to warn the residents:
    
          "The Patriarchs are Coming,
    
           The Patriarchs are Coming"
    
                       
      Or how about (for those of us who live in the Northeast), and find
      ourselves lost on U.S. Route 1 or I95:
    
         "Next Exit, Sullivan Stadium, 
    
              Home of the New England Patriarchs"
    
    Re: .0, 
    
    Hi, Bonnie :)
    
    Re: .1,
    
    Hi, Meigs :)
      
      Alan

Over lunch today I went to the Native Spirit bookstore in Sudbury that's 
mentioned in the Globe article on the new feminism, and that's kind of a 
center for Native American and feminist/goddess spiritual/environmentally
caring viewpoints and activities. It's a wonderful place, with books,
cards, crafts, jewelry, workshops, etc. based on pertinent mythology and
ecology and history. Although there's some element of what's described 
critically in the article as the "New Age smorgasbord approach to matters
of psyche and spirit" -- which "implicitly supports the patriarchal 
assumption of the hierarchy of man over the rest of nature" -- it's not
overplayed. Just being in the place made me feel validated as a female
human bean! 

Dorian

I think I had a bit of the same reaction as Meigs to that _particular_ line in
the article, though I thoroughly enjoyed the quotes and 'facts'. Basically, I
reacted negatively to where women's power _really_ lies because it can be
twisted to support the myth that women really can't be powerful in a
patriarchal instution (like business and industry, where we are all sitting
right this very minute). 

However, I love the emphasis on validating the 'other' aspects; spirituality
and connectedness.
	Mez

    That's what I love about the Boston Globe--they're right on top
    of the news!  As far as I remember, the women's spirituality
    movement was rather big in the Boston area starting in the MID-70s,
    somewhere around the bicentennial!!!!
    
    I mean, there were workshops, conferences, articles in the feminist
    press, classes, etc.  "Feminism's new face" indeed!
    
    Perhaps it's noteworthy to the Globe now since religion is making such
    a big comeback and you have all that Campbell/Moyers stuff on TV.  
    (By the way, I think that Campbell's idea is that the old myths ARE 
    useful (and used) today.  I think he's saying that the inner truths
    of the myths are basic human stories.  I have problems with him
    myself; just trying to interpret that part fairly.)
    
    Nina 

    I don't get this.  
    
    Do women have a monopoly on spirituality and psychological
    whatever it was?  I've always preferred the analytical, myself,
    and men have told me that's unfeminine.  Now it sounds like women
    are telling me that's unfeminine.
    
    And why can't men explore a new, affirming, integrated
    spirituality too?  Are they to be required to stick with their old
    religions? 
    
    --bonnie, very puzzled

Re .9 -

Women don't have a monopoly on spirituality. They have a different one. To 
fully characterize it would take too long, but I think it's been more oriented
towards finding the sacred in the everyday, down-to-earth, ordinary things of
life, as opposed to a more transcendent, abstract spirituality. 

Also, although there may well be disagreement on what "women's 
spirituality" *is*, there's no denying that whatever it is, it was a lot 
more flourishing in very ancient times and that there was a specific period 
during which it was - as it now largely remains - suppressed, in favor of 
the dominant patriarchal religions, which would fall more in the category of 
men's spirituality. So, in this article, there's a sense of rediscovering 
and reclaiming what has been lost, particularly lost to women.
    

RE:                     <<< Note 997.10 by GEMVAX::KOTTLER >>>


>Women don't have a monopoly on spirituality. They have a different one. To 
>fully characterize it would take too long, but I think it's been more oriented
>towards finding the sacred in the everyday, down-to-earth, ordinary things of
>life, as opposed to a more transcendent, abstract spirituality. 

I think it's great that women are discovering their spiritual sides in
whatever form they choose.

Many religions are focused on "finding the sacred" in the ordinary.  I
would say Zen Buddhism and Native American traditionals as examples. 
However, they are neither male or female religions (in my opinion)...

    

.0   WMOIS::B_REINKE 
>    I'd strongly encourage anyone with access to a copy of
>    the Globe to read the article.

I read the article and now I really feel queasy. Yucko!!  Each 
new paragraph appeared before me, verily, like a fresh cow pie.  

Quite a number of people quoted in this article seem to be 
disappointed that feminist political organizations do not answer 
their souls' deepest need!  Of course one wants more from life than 
that sought by one's PAC!!!  

>Feminism's new face

The expression "new face" implies a radical change of behavior. Not an 
enlargement; a change.  The feminist movement has not swapped 
spirituality for polical action; it does not have a new face.

> [the article] describes the new direction that feminism is headed ...

The feminist movement is *very* large, very dispersed. To speak 
of a "new direction" for such a mass movement based on the info in 
this article is baby-talk. Just hot air.

> women's real power: spiritual vitality and psychological gifts

What women? DECies? Americans?  The White American middle class?
Sioux? Mundagamore?  Mothers?  Must I have a given level of estogen to 
enjoy this real power? 

The writer seems to be suffering a peculiar case of Rousseau's nobel 
savage; that is, if the big bad patriarchy didn't corrupt our souls,
we [women] would be overflowing with spiritual vitality and psychological 
gifts.  This type of logic should vanish in the 8th grade.

Hmmmm ... Sigh. I've expressed myself very poorly in this note ... but 
the notions put forth in this article are so deeply offensive to me
... I feel like I've been reading a touchy-feely feminine variation of
Aryian nation.  

    
    re .12, fresh cow pie - 
    
    I forget, did they print the recipe for that? ;-)
    
    But seriously. Why are you so offended? Do you agree that women have
    been defined as non-spiritual beings since the rise of the great
    religions we have today; eliminated from the divine, for starters, and
    then for the most part prohibited from belonging to the priesthood,
    excused from prayer, denied souls, kept off the altar, etc....all of 
    which was very consistent with the great religions' definition of woman 
    as carnal temptress, unclean in body, the very antithesis of spiritual? 
    Until recently the very phrase "women's spirituality" would seem to have 
    been an oxymoron.
    
    So now women are again waking up to their rights in the political,
    social, economic, and other spheres. As part of that they may also want 
    to get back in touch with their lost spirituality. Where would you suggest
    they go to find it? Within existing, traditionally male-dominated
    religions that for millennia hardly even acknowledged there could be
    such a thing as women's spirituality? In the traditional Garden of Eden
    myth, with sinful Eve the prototype for all woman = cause of mankind's fall,
    subject to eternal punishment in the form of unalleviated childbirth?
    Surely we can do better than this kind of woman-defeating, patriarchy- 
    serving mythology. As I read the article (and as someone in this string 
    suggested), the search for new mythologies more appropriate to women's
    true nature and ability is part of what's going on. Such mythologies 
    are coming, in part, from rising awareness of the ancient Goddess 
    religion with its affirmation of woman as creative, powerful human
    beings (and, incidentally, its caring, non-dominating attitude toward 
    nature and the earth).

    As for all this being a "new face" of feminism, I agree that it
    shouldn't be seen as an *alternative* to women's political action.
    It should be in addition to it; the two should connect.
    
    Dorian                                           
           

    I think of the rediscovery of Goddess-based religions as something that
    happened within the last 10 years or so, and that they had been
    essentially _obliterated_ before that, completely invisible.
    
    So it came a real shock to pick up a sf/fantasy novel written by Poul
    Anderson in the late 50s(!!) that centers on the war between the
    matriarchal and patriarchal religions during the bronze/neolithic age!
    
    I've no idea how much research he did (for those who don't know who he
    is, he's a Minnesota-born-and-raised physicist-turned-prominent-author,
    of Danish ancestry (and proud of it!)) but his thesis in the book is
    that the Goddess religions produced a calm, stable, earth-based,
    tradition-bound culture in which non-ritualised violence was
    essentially unknown because interpersonal relationships were so
    important.  He contrasted that with rather unstable, creative, sky-
    based patriarchial religions from (in the book) the Russian steppes in
    which lasting interpersonal relationships extended no further than
    one's own clan and violence in the service of personal goals was just
    fine because "real" life only began after you were dead.
    
    						=maggie

    Maggie,
    
    Poul is a real scholar, which show in everything from _Three_Hearts_
    _and_Three_Lions_ to _Hrolf_Kraki's_Saga_ to "Uncleavish Truethinking".
    
    							Ann B.

re .14 -

Maybe it was ignored because it was presented as science fiction?

>  his thesis in the book is that the Goddess religions produced a calm,
>  stable, earth-based, tradition-bound culture in which non-ritualised
>  violence was essentially unknown because interpersonal relationships were
>  so important.  


Sounds a lot like what more recent books (not science fiction) such as When
God Was a Woman, The Chalice and the Blade, and the works of archeologist
Maria Gimbutas have been documenting. 


>  He contrasted that with rather unstable, creative, sky-based patriarchial
>  religions from (in the book) the Russian steppes in which lasting
>  interpersonal relationships extended no further than one's own clan and
>  violence in the service of personal goals was just fine because "real" life
>  only began after you were dead. 
    

Ditto.    				

    I didn't mean that it was ignored, particularly, Dorian, though you're
    right that it probably was in fact ignored because it took the form of
    a novel.  I was just surprised that someone --even Poul :-) --could
    develop such a well-painted picture at a time when the basic research
    apparently wasn't yet available!
    
    						=maggie  

    re .17 -
    
    Okay, I see what you're saying. What's the name of the book? (One of
    the ones Ann mentioned?)

    re .13 WADR, I think you're neglecting the fact that a few
    of us are atheists who believe that *all* religions are
    equally irrational, and that substituting one form of 
    mysticism for another is not the answer. I don't get
    offended by anybody's religious beliefs as such, and I rarely
    bother to argue against anybody's beliefs, but I am very
    tired of having another choice *totally* neglected, unconsidered,
    unacknowledged. I doubt that I'm the only one who feels this way.
    
    As I said a long time age, atheism is gender-neutral. And (IMO)
    a vast improvement over those patriarchal religions that you
    keep grousing about. Superior to 'goddess' religions ? Let's
    take *that* argument elsewhere.

    Dana

    re .14 Maggie, which PA novel or story is that ? Since I
    collect his work, it should pop into mind, but old age is 
    taking its toll, alas.

    <--(.18? & .20)
    
    I don't recall right now :-), I'll look it up.

re: .10

>Women don't have a monopoly on spirituality. They have a different one. 

Huh?  Come again??  Women have different souls from men???????????   

>To fully characterize it would take too long, but I think it's been more oriented
>towards finding the sacred in the everyday, down-to-earth, ordinary things of
>life, as opposed to a more transcendent, abstract spirituality. 

And these are things that men don't and can't want?

Does somebody have a copy of the article they could send me?  Maybe that 
would help clarify this for me.  I must be missing a point here.

Yes, traditional religious structures have been sexist -- one could hardly
expect them to have a different viewpoint than the rest of society.  But I
never felt like they denied me my soul!  [that was .12, not .10] Of course 
I live in 20th century USA, not 15th century Italy, so I may be believing 
the wrong thing.

--bonnie

    re .22
    
    I have copies of the article, if you send me your address I'll mail you
    one.
    
    Dorian

Thanks for offering to send me the article, Dorian, but somebody 
else beat you to it.  Womannoters are so helpful!

I'm not going to comment any more here until I get the article and have
a chance to read it -- I hate trying to argue with something based on 
what others have said about it.  It's not a very valid way to have an
enlightened discussion . . . I'm sure I've already misreacted.

--bonnie

    My view is that "spirituality" is not exactly the same as "religion",
    or at least religious dogma.  I would like to believe that one can be
    spiritual without taking a particular set of religious dogmas or myths
    literally.  Unfortunately, it often seems that when you buy into a
    spirituality you have to accept the whole religious package, myths and
    all.  This is commonly the case with the Western religions.  The way I
    see it, though, is that different religions are simply different paths
    for spirituality, and the associated myths are useful metaphors for
    those paths.  It seems, however, that most Western religions don't
    quite see it that way.

    I'm not about to say that everyone needs a "spirituality", though. 
    Atheism is a perfectly valid decision for some to choose, which I can
    respect and understand.  The irrationality and intolerance that seems
    to be associated with so much of religion often makes it seem like a
    rather unappealing personal choice.  However, for some, mysticism and
    spirituality are valid choices in life.  This is true for both women
    and men.

    In my case, having been brought up in a more or less fundamentalist
    Christian environment, I found that, once I reached a certain age, I
    could no longer accept the normative myths of Christianity.  But, after
    many years of subsequent atheism, I also later discovered a craving for
    a "spirituality" that the religion of my upbringing once offered me. 
    Unfortunately, this presented a problem, since I rejected (and still do
    reject) the dogmas of that religion.  The trick was to apply
    spirituality to my essentially humanist and secular outlook--no mean
    feat, as it turns out.  This is particularly difficult since the
    Western religious tradition has shaped my spirituality in my youth, not
    to mention the fact that it has shaped the culture I live in; it is in
    a sense still with me, and I cannot formulate any new spirituality
    without coming to grips with that.  I often feel caught in the middle
    between fundamentalist irrationality on the one hand, and an atheism
    that is hostile to religion, on the other; furthermore, liberal
    Christianity is not an acceptable middle ground for me, because I don't
    accept Christian doctrine, in any form.  And yet, in a small way that
    religion is still a part of me.

    So I have been engaged in an ongoing effort at formulating my own
    "spirituality", which I distinguish from religion.  Although I have no
    definite opinions about the existence or nature of "God", I do find
    God-talk to be useful in my own spiritual explorations.  The kind of
    God-talk I find agreeable has nothing in common with that of
    fundamentalist Christianity.  Curiously, the God-talk of Jewish and
    Christian feminist theology is much closer to my own conception,
    despite the alleged differences between male and female spirituality. 
    This is one reason why I do not believe that men and women necessarily
    have different spiritualities, although in some cases individuals do
    fit the stereotype.

    One of my favorite passages from the Buddhist literature involves a
    dialogue said to have occurred between the Buddha and a questioner who
    was disturbed that the Buddha would not provide any grand theological
    explanations:

        These theories which the Blessed One has left unexplained, has set
        aside and rejected--that the world is eternal, that the world is
        not eternal, that the world is finite, that the world is infinite,
        that the soul and body are identical, that the soul is one thing
        and the body another, that the saint exists after death, that the
        saint does not exist after death, that the saint both exists and
        does not exist after death, that the saint neither exists nor does
        not exist after death--these the Blessed One does not explain to
        me.  And the fact that the Blessed One does not explain them to me
        does not please me nor suit me.

    Alas, many people do need definite answers to those kinds of questions;
    that is why religions come up with detailed dogmas to explain these
    things, and fundamentalism is simply this phenomenon taken to the
    extreme, because it offers *all* the answers, and will tolerate no
    alternatives.  In this case, Buddha provides a long answer that boils
    down to the fact that he is too worried about providing enlightenment
    in the here and now to worry about such theological matters.  In my
    view, the Eightfold Path is one perfectly legitimate path of
    spirituality, just as there are other paths.  Again, I distinguish
    between spirituality and religious dogma.  And we can see that anyone,
    male or female, can legitimately seek out spirituality from any
    religious tradition, because of the spiritual value it offers them. 
    Myths and metaphors associated with that religion may help or hinder
    them on their spiritual paths, and that is something they have to deal
    with.  It is also something that others who think they know better often
    feel they have the right to determine for them.

    One of the greatest works of religious literature, Eastern or Western,
    "patriarchal" or "matriarchal", is the Bhagavad Gita.  The message of
    universal love contained within is timeless.  And yet, when I read the
    passage where Sri Krishna tells Arjuna that "the distinctions of caste,
    guna, and karma have come from me," I have to cringe.  Abhoring the
    caste system is no reason to reject Hinduism as utterly worthless,
    however.  The bhakti movement of a thousand years ago saw Shiva
    worshipers who rejected the caste system without utterly rejecting
    Hinduism.  Similarly, feminists in the Western religious tradition are
    able to adhere to their faiths while rejecting the sexist elements
    contained within.  Those who dogmatically contend that feminist
    Christianity is an oxymoron merely demonstrate their own intolerance. 

    As one of the free-verse lyrics from the bhakti movement says:

        Look here, dear fellow:
        I wear these men's clothes
        only for you.

        Sometimes I am man,
        sometimes I am woman.

        O lord of the meeting rivers
        I'll make war for you
        but I'll be your devotees' bride.

        	Basavanna 703

    -- Mike

re .19 -

"grousing" about patriarchal religions - careful now, I might get ruffled! 
;-)

Your point about atheism is interesting. I'm one myself, or somewhere 
between that and an agnostic. Yet to me the spiritual element is vital. 
Does your brand of atheism exclude the spiritual? Because if it does, I 
don't think it's relevant here.

The article concerns women seeking their spirituality. Probably most people 
do seek it within organized religion. The article indicates that some women 
are feeling their spiritual needs have not been met by the great patr.
religions, in which only men have "named the sacred," in which spirit tends
to be abstract and out-of-life and which tend to devalue women, who may
seek a spirituality that is more immanent, down-to-earth, woman-valuing,
and earth-revering. As the article documents, some women are going outside
their "religions of birth" to find that spirituality (as in their
explorations of the ancient goddess religions, or not in *any* religion),
while others are trying to change things to be more congenial to women
within the dominant patr. religions. 

One reason I think all this is particularly important now is that as Dawn
noted in .3, taking her cue from Joseph Campbell, it's to a great extent
the myths - religions and otherwise - that form a culture, the values,
mores, and ways we treat each other. These days we could sure do with a few
values along the lines of egalitarianism and reverence for women and for
nature and the earth (all apparently part of those old goddess religions),
just for starters! 

If I have time I'll type in some more detailed passages from the article.

As for atheism being "gender-free" - you mean like in Russia?

Dorian

    I don't focus on the spiritual for the simple reason that I
    don't accept the spiritual/physical or mind/body dichotomy
    as a given. All religions thrive on this dichotomy.
    
    As for Russia, their so-called atheism consists of substituting
    a new irrational belief for an old one. 

    Dana

"Feminist spirituality declares that God is not an external (or male) force 
situated somewhere 'out' or 'up' there. The sacred is not disembodied or 
transcendent, the New Feminists say. Instead, we are all saturated and 
surrounded by the sacred. Our every daily act partakes of it.

"Thus follows a rejection of hierarchical assignments within the plan of 
creation. The Genesis version of events, in which man was authorized to 
'have dominion' over the animals - and, by implication, over women - is 
scorned by New Feminists as unreal, patriarchal, and contrary to the life 
principle. They believe passionately in the notion of interconnectedness 
amid diversity of a dynamic system in which every part has unique and 
irreplaceable value....

"'Male naming in patriarchal religion has given us a strange landscape of 
the sacred, Dodson Gray writes in the introduction [to a book called 
*Sacred Dimensions of Women's Experience*....A few places, a few people, a
few occasions are seen to concentrate and to embody the holy....Women's
renaming of the sacred is quite different....Instead of withdrawing from
the reality of life to find sacredness, we go toward that reality - toward
bodies, toward nature, toward food, toward dust, toward transitory moments
in relationships. And wherever we look, we find that which nourishes and
deepens us. 

"Recent archeological findings and feminist scholarship have provided 
provocative reinforcement to women's search for spiritual consciousness in 
their substantiations of an ancient goddess-worshipping culture that 
extended across Europe. This culture endured for almost twice as long as 
the Christian era and appears to have been rooted in a world-view very 
similar to that being defined by feminists of the 1990s.

"As bits and pieces of this history became available in the early '80s, a 
number of writers began to create a literature of women's spiritual 
practices.

"The Womanspirit movement is perhaps the most accessible of these. 
Womanspirit practice relies on guided meditation, dream analysis, natural 
healing techniques, and personal rituals in one's home and among groups of 
like-minded women. Its primary aim is to get women to recognize and 
celebrate the significant moments and passages in their own lives, rather 
than those ordained by the traditional liturgical calendar.

"'Rituals in harmony with earth, moon, and sun are a form of meditation on 
this existence that we live,' says San Francisco-based writer Hallie 
Iglehart Austen, author of the leading Womanspirit work by the same name. 
'It's really important to realize that we've forgotten who nature is, how 
nature works. And therefore, we've forgotten what our existence is.'

"Goddess-centerd spiritual practices are a second element within the 
feminist spirituality movement, and this element is the fastest-growing 
one. In September, Harper & Row, San Francisco, published the first 
authoritative work on the ancient goddess culture, *The Language of the 
Goddess*, by UCLA archeologist Marija Gimbutas. Gimbutas collected, 
identified, and analyzed 2,000 artifacts from neolithic Europe, a period 
ranging from about 7000 to 3500 B.C., about which no previous coherent 
cultural picture had been established.

"By cataloging the symbols found on statues and ritual vessels, Gimbutas 
concluded that neolithic Europe was an earth-centered, goddess-worshiping, 
"gylantic" culture - that is, a culture in which women and men shared 
equally the tasks of food gathering, child rearing, governance, and sacred 
ritual making. It was as well a culture that produce no weaponry, Gimbutas 
claims. Instead of fortifications, archeologists have unearthed temples, 
shrines, and a wealth of everyday objects invested with symbols of the 
goddess.

"This goddess signified no single aspect of elemental life, such as 
"fertility." Instead, according to Gimbutas, "the Goddess in all her 
manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature," including 
death and transformation.

"Her sacred objects are not in themselves the subjects of slavish devotion 
today. Rather, they support a different worldview, before Europe was 
overrun by the Indo-Europeans and transformed into a militarized, 
patriarchal culture. From that point, Gimbutas argues, the goddess 
fractured into the quasi-militaristic figures in the Greek pantheon and was 
later echoed by the Virgin Mary and female Christian saints.

"To 'worship' the goddess today, then, is to confront the issues of gender, 
power, and myth in contemporary culture and to try to create new values and 
standard of 'right action' by consecrating, often through rituals, women's 
natural experiences, and the elements of the earth...."

There's more, focussing on writings of feminist psychiatrists at Mclean 
Hospital and the Stone Center...

RE:        <<< Note 997.27 by SA1794::CHARBONND "Mail SPWACY::CHARBONND" >>>

>    I don't focus on the spiritual for the simple reason that I
>    don't accept the spiritual/physical or mind/body dichotomy
>    as a given. All religions thrive on this dichotomy.
    
Dana,  you seem very sure of this statement.  Zen Buddhism, Native
tradtions, and Wiccan traditions would be three counterexamples of
this claim.

But perhaps I misunderstand your claim.  It was somewhat terse.

    OK. *Most* religions thrive on this dichotomy. 

RE:                     <<< Note 997.28 by GEMVAX::KOTTLER >>>


>"Feminist spirituality declares that God is not an external (or male) force 
>situated somewhere 'out' or 'up' there. The sacred is not disembodied or 
>transcendent, the New Feminists say. Instead, we are all saturated and 
>surrounded by the sacred. Our every daily act partakes of it.
.
.
.

This if fine and on the right track (in my view).  My only comment is
that other religions have been teaching the same things for thousands
of years  (even in the Christian mystical traditions such as Meister
Eckhardt and the Gnostics) for example Buddhist, Taoist, and Native
American traditions.  So, this teaching mentioned above is not
exlusive to the New Feminist Spiritual Tradtion or any other.

The quote also mentions the famous "have dominion over" statement from
Genesis which has been widely critisized from a Feminist and also
Native American viewpoint (see the book "God Is Red").  I know that
many Christians today are interpretting this to me stewardship over
earth or protecter of the earth.  So, these statements can be
interpretting in different ways.  And who knows how some of these
things have been translated over years.  Maybe before we tear
everything that has come before down in our anger,  we can really look
at has come before and find some space so that we can all co-exist
bring together what we have in common.

Let me describe this journey that I have gone thru. I was raised in
Catholic schools starting from Kindagarten to eight grade.  By about
sixth grade, I was calling myself an atheist and questioning the nuns
about evolution and how it disagreed with Genesis.  Luckily I had a
real liberal nun and lay teachers after that.  Anyways, I hated what I
was in the practicing Catholics and the Church and what the message
was supposed to be.  So for a long time, I was Mr Rational and
interested in logic, philosophy, and finding the truth thru analysis.
I studied the Philosophy of mind extensively and quantum physics, the
theory of computuation, AI, anything that was concerned with finding
ultimate truths thru analysis.  But this too seems to be a dead end.
Many of the sciences themselves were pointing towards the limitations
of the rational method itself.  Things the Uncertainty principle and
Godel's Theorum I believe point to the limits of thought itself.  And
in my own life, which I was destroying with alcohol, lonliness, and a
desire for power and success, thinking didn't seem to helping much.

It become clear that I needed to stop analyzing and start living and
I was able to solve my most pressing problems and start living.  And
at this time, I began to reconnect with the which is unnamable, the
force that Dorin's quote mentions above, that which we all have as a
birthright.  And this is not be found with thinking about it.  It has
to be experienced with a quiet mind.  If you look at most religious
traditions in the world, they have in common meditation, prayer,
and chanting.  These, I think are the LSD (least common denominator)
of our religious traditions.  The rituals and concepts vary but I
think they basically point to the same thing.  And that is, that we
all have a quiet, fully enlightened Mind, that is intimately connected
with all beings and things in the universe.  That our concept of a
separate self is just that, a concept we have learned, that can
prevent us from seeing the World As It is.

But I cannot prove this with thinking because thinking is part of the
problem.  If you have an idea about something, then you are no longer
free to really see that something!  Thinking is a great tool and it
comes in handy.  The probelm is that we think it is everything and our
ideas, opinions, self-images, and attachments to things define our
cage and cause ourselves, those around, and the world at large great
suffering.  But I hope some people will check this out for themselves
in whatever way works for them and see if it is correct or not.  This
is not something outside yourself that someone else can teach you or
give to you and it takes alot of hard work.

Anyways, back to my story, I found something missing.  When I used to
go fishing on the river or explore the fields near my house, I could
get quiet just appreciate everything around me and I found that I
missed this and wanted to get in touch with it again.  So I started
going to UU church which for me was a way to be religious again in an
accepting environment where I didn't have to worry about my own
reaction to what I perceived as dogma.  And that lead me to a practice
and investigation of Eastern Relgions which I had been interested in
for a long time.  I quickly discovered that practicing religion and
studying religion are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS!  It's like I
mentioned before in trying to understand thinking by thinking about
it.  You can never see the larger picture.  It would be like trying to
look at an elephant through a straw from 3 inches away.  

And then there was a period where I mistook the new teaching for the
truth and thought my way was the best way and others were not as good
(even if I did not say so directly).  

Now, it is a lifelong journey and practice and the more I practice the
less I know about it in a conceptual sense and the more things just
become clear.

There are many paths to the top of the mountain.  They all lead to the
same place (which is firstly towards yourself and then towards being
enlightened by the phenomonal world).

An interesting question is what is our relationship to the teaching
that we have chosen as our path.  Is my way the right way and the
other the wrong way?  If one is confident of one's path, it is my
belief that there is no need to put down other's people's choices.  If
you do so, you are defining yourself by what you are against and that
will take away from the energy needed to really throw oneself into
one's own path.

I beleive mistakes have been made in some traditions in the way the
original teaching have been interpretted.  I guess where I part
company with Dorian (if I understand her position correctly) and some
others is that I don't equate the religous institutions necessarily
with what the teaching is.  For example, if someone can show my the
Jesus Christ made sexist and misogynist statements, I'd like to see
it.  I certainly do part company with fundamentalists who beleive
everything in the Bible literally.  I beleive this is a big mistake
and that all teachings are mere pointers to something inside
ourselves.  So if we take them too literally, we fall into hell and
suffering (right here on earth) becuase no we polarize ourselves in
those that agree with me and those that disagree with me.  By the way,
If Dorian and the authors she quotes used the term Religious
Institutions I would agree 100% (or close to) with what is being said.

I really love and appreciate the tradition I'm involved with but I
hope I never mistake the teaching for the "absolute truth".  That must
be discovered and experienced for myself.  There is a Zen saying, "If
you see the Buddha on the road, kill him."  Heresy!?!  No, it means
don't mistake my finger pointing at the moon for the moon.

So, how can we support each other's lives right here and now no matter
what our paths are, what are opinions are, etc?  That, I think, is the
interesting question.

john

    "God exists. He/she/it just doesn't care about us." Lilly Tomlin
    

    I like many of the Native American views on our relationship to the
    land and the animals though I don't see it in quite the same light as
    they do. I believe it is right to give thanks to the spirit of the
    animal who died so that you can eat. I don't think it will make more
    animals die willingly so that we may eat. I do think it gives us a
    proper perspective of our place in the world.

    Religions (as a whole) spring up to answer our fears. Our deities
    address the problems we see in life. Each society rolls their own
    and is in turn shaped by it. liesl

    Judith Plaskow has written an article for the March/April 1990 issue of
    Tikkun Magazine, '"It is Not in Heaven":  Feminism and Religious
    Authority.'  She offers some interesting insights, from a feminist
    perspective, about the problems of religious authority and
    religious individualism.

    The article begins by stating:
    
        The problem of authority plagues modern theology and ethics.  Two
        centuries of biblical criticism combined with increasing awareness
        of the religious beliefs and practices of other peoples have
        undermined the secure foundations of written and oral revelation on
        which earlier thinkers grounded their philosophical reflections and
        legal decisions. Biblical criticism reminds us that the religious
        sources we look to for fundamental values are human creations, the
        culture-bound expressions of past societies.  Recognition of global
        diversity weakens the claims of any specific tradition to divine
        authority or eternal truth so that it becomes impossible for the
        sophisticated modern to respond, as a student of one of my
        colleagues did when asked to describe the difference between
        parallel miracle stories in the Talmud and the New Testament, "the
        one in the New Testament is true."

    She then suggests that this recognition of the problem with religious
    authority often creates problems because of the need in many for
    religious certainty, as witnessed by the rise in fundamentalism.  The
    usual alternative to absolute religious authority that most defenders of
    the faith pose is a morass of individual subjectivism.  But she contends
    that feminism offers another alternative, because it must confront the
    problem of authority head on:

        Religious feminism has benefited from and contributed to the
        breakdown of traditional authority structures.  Elizabeth Cady
	Stanton's _The_Woman's_Bible_, a feminist commentary published at
	the end of the nineteenth century, used the advent of biblical
	criticism to radically question the religious authority of the
	Bible, and in so doing set the tone for future generations of
	feminist critics.  Yet while feminists have helped undermine
	biblical authority by pointing to the patriarchal origins and
	development of so-called normative texts, they have also tried to
	develop alternatives to patriarchal religion which are themselves in
	need of some authoritative grounding.  Whether a particular feminist
	seeks to "prove" the fundamentally liberatory nature of her own
	tradition or elaborate a new feminist spirituality, she still faces
	the issue of secure foundations which no constructive thinker can
	avoid.

    Plaskow elaborates this point with several examples of feminist attempts
    at recapturing a scriptural or normative basis for feminism (such as
    identifying a "feminist" Jesus or a "nonsexist" Paul); but she argues
    that this effort misses the point, because it looks for authority in the
    wrong place:

	Such attempts to ground feminism in Scripture, however, point to the
	flaw in all attempts to base contemporary convictions on sure
	biblical foundations: they disguise or deny the authority of the
	reader.  Since both feminists and antifeminists, democrats and
	authoritarians, warmongers and peacemakers can ground themselves in
	the Bible, surely it is not the Bible itself that tells us which
	interpretation is final and true.  The difficulty of articulating
	even formal criteria that would be acceptable to all parties in a
	dispute over the conflicting voices in Scriptures suggests that
	whether or not the fact is acknowledged, authority must lie outside
	the text and not within it.

    The alternative, however, is not mere individual subjectivity.  She
    contends that the feminist perspective points to a *communal* basis for
    religious authority:

	The quest for feminist role models and authorities...emerges out of
	a movement of women and men struggling for social and religious
	transformation...The feminist case suggests, then, that religious
	authority rests in a community of interpreters that--whether to
	enhance its own power or give voice to the experience of a larger
	community--seeks to understand texts and/or experience in ways that
	give meaning and structure to human life.

    More importantly, however, this is not just some idea that feminists
    have invented out of the blue.  She contends that religious authority
    has *always* had this basis.  Using Judaism as an example, she points
    out:

	When the rabbis said that rabbinic enactments and modes of
	interpretation were given at Sinai, they were claiming authority for
	their own community.  When Kabbalists proposed that peshat and drash
	are two important levels of a text, but that the mystical meaning is
	the most fundamental and profound, they were claiming authority for
	their community of interpreters.

    This understanding is hardly comforting, however:

	At least earlier interpreters, so we tell ourselves, *believed* that
	their interpretations gave the true meaning of Scripture and thus
	rooted the interpreters themselves in divine authority.  Our
	self-consciousness about the authority of a community, on the other
	hand, leaves us all too aware of the precariousness of our moorings.

    But this awareness can be constructive as well, in that it can be a
    source of necessary social and religious change.  Furthermore, religious
    authority must be responsive to the ever changing needs of the religious
    and human community:

	There may be no way past communal authority into the mind of this
	Eternal You that would allow us to anchor ourselves in the absolute.
	But then even reaching for such foundation may entail an evasion of
	responsibility.  "It is not in heaven," the rabbis remind us.

	We are to be our own authorities--not against God, not without God,
	but also not in such a way that we dodge our responsibility to
	create the structures of meaning we need to live our lives.

    -- Mike

    Speaking of religious authority, by the way, I am reminded of the lines
    from the Echo and the Bunnymen song, "New Direction" (kind of an
    appropriate reference for a topic named "A New Direction for
    Feminism"):
    
    	You've learnt to speak and you're professing
    	the right to teach us our direction
    	but I found out on close inspection
    	true imperfection
    
    -- Mike

    
"If the creation of spiritually conscious communities has replaced frontal 
assaults against patriarchy as the movement's priority, then 'healing' is 
its second dominant theme. The foremost voices of the New Feminism are 
those of nurses, midwives, women's health activists, and psychiatrists. It 
is they who have treated the casualties from feminism's first wave.

"In one of the most important feminist psychiatric groups, five women based 
at McLean Hospital and at Wellesley College's Stone Center have for nearly 
10 years been debunking the theories of Freud and his followers. Trained to 
accept the orthodoxy that psychological maturation is a process of 
separation from others, increased autonomy, and the ability to assert 
oneself in relationships to get one's needs met, these five clinicians 
began in the mid-'70s to question the accuracy of this model, especially 
for their female clients. Was it possible, they asked, that if they 
dismantled the heavily proscriptive architecture of Western male theory, 
women clients would reveal an entirely different inner landscape?

"For these psychiatrists, the answer, which has produced one book and 
numerous papers to date, is yes. The central organizing principle of 
women's being, they discovered, is not separation and isolated 'self-
actualization' but connection and relationships. Women, they say, draw
their strength, power, and self-esteem from deep and meaningful ties to
others. From childhood on, they argue, females strive to maintain and
fortify relationships with their mothers. As they age, they expand their
network through what these researchers have come to call empathic
relationships and through the skill of 'intersubjectivity,' the ability to
probe others' states of mind. 

"Judith Jordan, director of McLean's Women's Studies Program and the member 
of the group who coined the term 'intersubjectivity,' believes that the New 
Feminist metaphor shift, from war to healing, is a significant one. 'The 
old metaphor is, "We have to fight this battle and win this war." There's a 
sense of hierarchy, dominance, defeat, and that's very much a male 
metaphor,' she says. 'I think the female metaphor is one of caring and 
taking care of, and the healing metaphor is very much a part of that. When 
I think of healing, I don't think of it in terms of sickness or illness, I 
think of it as "making whole" and coming...into a sense of wholeness-in-
connection.' 

"As more and more women 'heal' - that is, free themselves from the 
fragmenting values of the patriarchal worlds they have fought so hard, and 
so successfully, to enter - Jordan believes that the work of social 
transformation will occur. 'It's the place of my greatest hope, actually,' 
she says.

"Even if successful in their chosen careers, Jordan believes, many women 
suffer shame, anxiety, and low self-worth to the degree that they suppress 
the aspects of self that the dominant culture devalues.

"The key to this feminist view of healing seems to be the ability to 
listen, without judgment, to voices different from those one is accustomed 
to hearing. Rather than attempt to silence or diminish those voices, the 
empathic consciousness affirms and thus strengthens them, says Jordan."

    I think the thing that bothers me about feminist spirituality is that
    it continues ascribing gender to certain qualities and I'm not
    convinced that this is an accurate approach.  For example, the concept
    of women drawing strength from "deep and meaningful ties to others." 
    This sounds a lot like living one's life through others and I'm not
    convinced that this is entirely a good thing.  (I'm straight out of the
    Moderate Enlightenment, so I resist heading too far in any one
    direction.)  It sounds, in fact, directly counter to what many women
    have been trying to accomplish.  Also, if women draw strength from
    their connections to others, could it be that this is because they are
    conditioned to do so?  Is it necessarily attributable to being female
    or is it caused by being *raised* a female?
    
    Being a raging moderate, I like a combination of self-actualization and
    connectivity.  It *is* very satisfying to do things for others.  (Yes,
    I know I'm selfish, but I was involved with a number of "charitable"
    projects in my high school church group, so I'm still attuned to the
    joys of giving.)  It is also very dangerous to think only of others.

> Note 997.36 by GEMVAX::KOTTLER >>>

 Article text:
 >"... The foremost voices of the New Feminism are those of nurses,
 >midwives, women's health activists, and psychiatrists. It is they who
 >have treated the casualties from feminism's first wave."
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Damn it! Doesn't that above paragraph make you want to weep? 
Or hit someone? How dare some idiot write an article about "the New
Feminism" and tell us that 

     "psychiatrists ... have treated the casualties 
      from feminism's first wave." 

Let's remember that feminism's first wave occurred before the
emergence of psychiatry.

>"In one of the most important feminist psychiatric groups, five women
>based at McLean Hospital and at Wellesley College's Stone Center have
>for nearly 10 years been debunking the theories of Freud and his
>followers. 

Excuse my "imperialist warmonger" rhetoric, folks, but that "debunking 
the thories of Freud" is such a male-centered view of a female-centered 
effort that it makes me want to vomit. 

This whole article makes me ill.  I should remember that this article 
is not scholarship.  It is just a bunch of words slapped together by a
freelance writer who needs to make a buck.  But even a freelancer 
should practice a little basic logic and get an editor who can edit.

    
    might want to look at this past sunday's 'new york times magazine'
    for an interesting look at where feminism has been and where it's
    going.
    

    And Freud's theories have been being debunked on the same or similar
    grounds for much longer than 10 years!  Those women have not stumbled
    on something new (based on the article, at least)!

    Bear with me. I'm no typist and will two finger this entire note.
    
    Copied w/o permission from Margery Eagan , Boston Herald April 17,
    1990.
    
    HAVE YOU REALLY COME THAT LONG A WAY, BABY ?
    
    Some observations on the state of womanhood 1990:
    
    o The Miss Universe Pageant was on TV Sunday Night. Candidates paraded
    around in that eggshell walk - the only way you can walk wearing
    swimsuits and 4" heels. After each strut, judges assessed bustlines
    (is it hers or silicone?), tautness of upper thighs (any sponginess 
    there?), gleam of teeth (is that nature or vaseline?).
      The judges rated candidates from one to ten. And then, if you
    can believe it, average ratings for each "girl" (there are no women
    in paegant land) flashed in big numbers across her bare legs, as
    if she were a Holstein in heat at a 4-H auction.
      Miss Turkey, 19, explained how she wanted to help the handicapped.
    Yeah, Yeah, Miss Turkey, we've heard it a million times before.
    Her rating:7.139
      Miss Chile, 22, took the eggshell strut one step beyond. She did
    a sort of eroticiszed prance, pelvis in constant rotation. She looked
    like Elvis. Dick Clark looked embarrassed. Extra points for
    versatility. Miss Chile's rating: 8.410
      Miss Norway, 20, the eventual winner, boldly declared that it
    'is' possible after all for women to be fulfilled without motherhood.
    Oh, those wild Norwegians. More important, Miss Norway's lips outpouted
    Kim Bassinger's in "Batman". Her runaway rating: 8.927.
      You know, to get to be Miss America, contestants have to go through
    the mptions. Miss Idaho twirls her flaming baton. Miss Arkansas
    dresses up in a red, white, and blue spangled micro-mini and recites
    "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". 
      This is what I liked about Miss Universe Sunday: No pretense.
    No one even pretends the show has anything to do with talent, brains,
    personality, or Miss Norway's fervent desire to nurse the starving
    children of Africa.
      Miss Universe is just two hours of derrieres on parade. "Get a look
    at the pair on Miss Bolivia!" Wowie, zowie. Thank you for that display
    Miss Bolivia. A whopping 9.999 for you.
      In these hypocritical times, Miss Universe debased and demeaned
    women with refreshing honesty.
    
      o Lest anyone conclude that women everywhere are into silicone
    and stiletto heels, also one of those great big cover stories appeared
    in the Sunday New York Times: Feminism: Who Says We Haven't Made
    a Revolution?
      And right there on the cover appeared one of the 1970s' premier
    feminists, writer Kate Millet. Only Kate appeared with scraggly
    gray hair to her waist and black shirt, black pants, and big black
    leather boots that glistened from toe to knee.
      Kate looked like a biker. A rhode Island State Tooper. An executioner
    trainee. All she was missing was the ax. She looked frightening,
    which is not supposed to matter, I know. But I have to wonder, is
    this a conspiracy?
      Why is it that every time big media outlets do their big updates
    on feminism, they always feature pictures of big women trying to
    look like beefy, humorless, Gestapoettes?
      Maybe this has something to do with 21 year old being scared off
    by "feminism" and turn to Miss Universe instead.
    
    o Meanwhile, on middle-of-road womanhood, callers to WRKO yesterday
    morning debated whether Barbara Bush is a worthy commencement speaker
    at Wellesley College. One caller complained she's not a "Wellesley
    woman", whatever that is, merely a wife and mother of five, the
    lazy slug.
      Observed co-host Ted O'brien, morning drive time's big liberal:
    Maybe Wellesley would prefer as speaker, someone "who achieved on
    her own rather than as an apendage to soemoen else." That is, her
    husband George. Thus, Ted placed motherhood right back in the trash
    barrell of achievements.
      Maybe this is why today's children are in worse straits than ever:
    Even big liberals think that just being mother is not worthy enough.
    
    o Finally, from the marriage front, the other day I heard about
    one woman's harrowing marriage counseling. She and her husband got
    down to the nub; dredged up the buried resentments, angers, motives;
    learned what the other truly thinks - and now they are getting
    divorced. He refuses to confront his real feelings she said. ll
    he evr wants to talk about is the Red Sox.
      I know. Confronting real feelings has been the rage for 20 years.
    But where's it getting us? Maybe what we need is less intimacy.
    To start treating spouses like we'd treat a stranger: politely.
    You know, vow never again to floss in front of him. Start saying
    "Hello", when he comes in from work.
      As for the Red Sox, maybe men are just different. Maybe if we
    delved and found out what men truly want, it's just what they say
    they want. To talk about the Red Sox.
    
    
    	Sorry for typos. I felt  this was a thought initiating column
    that should be shared. Only took me 40 minutes....8^)
    
    Ken
    

    
    for what it's worth, i found the women on the cover of the sunday
    new york times magazine to be quite beautiful.
    

"EYECLASHES" indeed...

    
    thanks, paul!