On Faith: The Goddess

Women and the Goddess
Once again, Starhawk has an excellent (and brief) essay in the On Faith series, concerning the concept of the Goddess in Wicca, and what it means for women:

...Women have not faired well under most religions for the last five thousand years or so. But let’s take the long view: that’s just a blip on the timeline of human history...The Goddess is not just God-in-a-skirt, she represents a different spiritual orientation, one which locates the sacred in this world, in the cycles of nature, in the body and all its processes, that sees sexual communion, birth, maturation, healing, and even death and decay as sacred processes...in our tradition, we honor women without denigrating men, and there are also many wonderful, powerful and empowering men in our communities. But men do not have the automatic position of privilege—unearned, assumed authority—that they do in some other religions...

Most of the recent debates concerning spirituality have been dominated by two camps: the agnostic/atheistic view verses the JCM (Judeo-Christien-Muslim) culture. It's great that a Wiccan has finally been given a voice in the discussion. (Pic: Egyptian Predynastic Nadaqa dancing cow-goddess, about 4000 BC.)

On Faith: Starhawk

Our Goddess Weeps At Our Wars

I'd like to interrupt the snarkatude to call everybody's attention (all 5 of you) to a piece written by the author Starhawk. For Wiccans and Pagans, she needs no introduction. For my beautiful other friends, lets just say she is a prominent voice in the community. Her book, The Spiral Dance: Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, is required reading. (If you're curious--and scientists *are* curious--the above link includes a brief bio.) As an "On Faith" panelist, she composed a brief mediation on the USA's latest adventure:

...Can any war be just? Can you show me a bomb that only kills those who deserve to die, and a way to tell infallibly who they are? Or a bullet that will not penetrate the skin of a child? Every war kills the innocent, blights the lives of those who have done no wrong, leaves a toxic wake on the land and wastes the resources that are needed to nurture and sustain life...As someone born Jewish in the post-Holocaust era, I can't say that an armed response is never justified or necessary. But let us not call it 'just', or ask our religions to dignify and bless it. The worst atrocities are committed by those who are most convinced of the rightness of their cause and the demonic evil of their enemies...

The "comments" section is worth checking-out. Starhawk has had to make some tough choices of her own. She has indeed, "walked the walk". So, it's no wonder her concluding words strike us as stone:

...Religion should not be a set of earplugs to deafen us to the cries of children, nor a sedative to ease our consciences as we survey the graves. Religion should challenge us to be more than we are, to deeper levels of compassion and love than we have yet reached. The Goddess, the deep interconnectedness of all being, does not cheer on one team to kill and maim another. She is weeping.

Thank you, Starhawk. The Monotheistic/Paternalistic/Misogynistic so called "Great Religions" have a lot to answer for.