Tag: mother

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A Proper Feminist Nativity

A Modern Madonna by Caro Dranow

“i like my nativities
with a side of heresy
with midwives and mothers
and empty mangers
and full arms

i like wise women
over wise men
attending to bloody people
born and crucified
showing up in places
church leaders won’t go

i like heralding feminist agendas
and trouble
and god’s good news
which is kind of repetitive
since they’re all the same thing

proper churches
want proper nativities
because women’s bodies
are shameful
whether bearing christ
or just bare

and instead of silent nights
i like loud protests
because
be silent
is not a phrase about joy
but about control

so give me a christmas
without white supremacy
and bright sexism
where the story of a baby
becomes a story of a woman
and my nativity looks like
god’s
and not like
man’s”

~ Kaitlin Hardy Shetler

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Holy Her

Goddess of Laussel, c. 22,000-18,000 BCE

“Before the shrinking of the Feminine was the Goddess—and all that is split in our own lives was in harmony in Hers. She was profoundly in Her body. Her body itself was sacred. In the Old Religion, body and spirit were one. She was seen as substantial, as essentially embodied. Her thighs, Her Belly, Her breasts were generous, Her physical strength apparent. We miss the beauty of such an image, we who have been taught to measure ourselves endlessly. Too fat, too thin, too flat, too wrinkled. Our bodies are never good, and in themselves. We must deny our naturalness to see beauty.

What we learn to reject was once holy. What we learn to hide behind closed doors was once celebrated in the open. Blood was sacred to the Goddess—menstrual blood. Some of Her images were painted red between the legs. What some of us and many of our mothers learned to see as ‘the curse’ was once seen as the Blessing, women’s particular creative magic. The blood that flows of itself and not from a wounding was thought to be the very source of life. One early creation tale stated than when the Mother created man and woman, She made them from a mixture of Her menstrual blood and clay. Moreover, every woman carried some of the Goddess’s sacred substance and participated in Her ability to create life.”


~Kathie Carlson,
In Her Image: The Unhealed
Daughter’s Search for Her Mother

🌙

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Emotional Full Moon in Cancer

The Moon’s Daughter by Seb McKinnon

Full moon in watery, emotional Cancer, the sign of the nurturing mother.

Expect your emotions to run high. You may be super sensitive and a bit off balance. Little upsets may seem huge.

Mother yourself. Shield yourself from the meanness of others until you feel stronger. Draw on your spiritual support. Hold your inner child close.

You’ve got this.

🌙

#moon
#cancer
#innerchild
#watery
#feelingitall,

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The World Stops

god is a mother
and with that
sentence
the world stops
the world always stops
when woman and
divine
commingle
as if the
feminine
dilutes the
miraculous
when in reality
it embodies it
when jesus turns water
to wine
they clap
but when women turn breasts
to milk
they cringe
a broken man’s body
is celebrated each sunday
while a broken woman’s body
is just hidden away
and it’s no wonder
that mother is a word
used by men
to demonize those
who don’t claim the name
and weaponized to shame
those who step out of line
because
their ideal
woman
plays the role of
nurturer and silencer
in pews
built and led by them
but
when god
becomes mother
she is neither quiet
or compliant
she leads confidently
she questions authority
she commands respect
which might be the problem
for mother god
did not gather us up
carelessly
but took her time with it
she fed us milk
birthed our souls
and broke her body
and the permanence
can be uncomfortable
and to disentangle god
from motherhood
Is impossible
but
to disentangle god
from womanhood
is sinful
because seeing god as mother
is one step closer
to seeing god in me
and it’s in that
i am truly
born again

~Kaitlin Hardy Shetler

🌙

Image: A new mother nurses her baby
unknown photographer

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“Just” a Mother

Drawing by Henry Gray

“It is not female biology that has betrayed the female, as Elizabeth Cady Stanton observed more than one hundred years ago, it is the myths and stories that have been told about her, what has come to be believed about her – even by the female herself.

In the Christian West, it is common for a woman to be described or to describe herself as “just a mother”. It is common for “barefoot and pregnant” to connote powerlessness. Simone de Beauvoir suggested that it was as mother that woman was most fearsome, so it was as mother that she was enslaved.

Yet there are cultures in the human community where a birthing mother is described as a “great warrior” – going to the gates of life and death, to heave and push a soul into the world.”

~Glenys Livingstone, PhD

Magna Mater, Great Mother Cybele
Lounging on her Lion

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Our First Reality

Leonardo da Vinci

“The mothers who remind us, no matter who we are, that our first country was a woman’s body, and our first element was water, and that our first reality was darkness…”

~Meggan Watterson,
Mary Magdalene Revealed

🌙

#source
#sacredwomb
#MotherGoddess
#femininepower
Triple Goddess by Amy Haderer
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The Divine in Feminine Form


“An uneasy reaction to the word Goddess is common among women. Thousands of years of repression, hostility, and conditioning against a Divine Mother have made a deep impression on us. We’ve been conditioned to shrink back from the Sacred Feminine, to fear it, to think of it as sinful, even to revile it… Goddess is just a word. It simply means the divine in feminine form.”

~Sue Monk Kidd

The Lady of Guadelupe/Frida Kahlo by Fabian Debora