Maternal Thinking

For some mothers, giving birth to and living with children inspires something akin to a religious respect for nature. (Sara Ruddick)

Despite many years working on a Ph.D. in ethics and feminism, I never read Sara Ruddick's oft-cited, oft-criticized (for being "essentialist") book Maternal Thinking: Towards a Politics of Peace. I probably read some excerpts along the way and joined in the criticisms, fancying myself a radical feminist uninterested in motherhood.

But this week I started reading the book as part of my resolution to read some whole books this year, the first year of motherhood being singularly ill-suited to reading books. My copy of Maternal Thinking is the British paperback with its ugly jacket art; I probably picked it up for a few dollars at the library book sale because I thought a feminist philosopher ought to own a copy, even if she never read it. I found it again over New Years because it rested on a bookshelf in my son's play space, behind some building blocks.

It is a wonderful book. Carefully argued--with all the usual criticisms addressed in the first chapters, ye lazy critics--impassioned, engaged, emotionally astute, blindingly smart, it has me engrossed. The notes to chapter four cite Iris Murdoch, Adrienne Rich, and Virginia Woolf, who might as well be the troika who rule my thinking life, as well as Spinoza, that old heretic.

Highly recommended.

The initiate

I feel tremendously blessed.

Last year during the full moon in Cancer, I gave birth. Last night saw the return of that full moon (though my son's solar birthday is still nine days away). These past twelve lunar cycles have been a year-long intensive, an initiation, a breathtaking journey down into myself--a self who is now two, in that strange human way that flesh begets flesh and produces another who is of oneself but not oneself. From breastfeeding, and sharing attachment parenting with my partner, has emerged the most intimate relationship of my life, we three. Being a mother challenges me in ways I never anticipated and brings me into bliss.

One of the most striking things, to me, about motherhood is how it's brought my values into sharp focus. I'm someone who cares about value--moral, aesthetic, etc.--a lot. Becoming a mother, with the relentless demands on my energy and attention, has burned away a lot of bullshit. Here is what matters to me: family, spirituality, creativity. I can flesh that out again--my spirituality encompasses my devotion to the earth, for example--but those are the clean bones.

So I return to this space, where for many years I've written about spirituality, my winding, earth-based path. My passion is still here. If you're reading--and especially if you've been reading for years--I'm grateful.

Pagan values: pleasure and beauty

Let My worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold, all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals. Let there be beauty....

(The Charge of the Goddess)

To be incarnate in a human body is to know exquisite pleasure. I imagine that when souls choose to incarnate they do so largely because they want to put on a body and feel the lusciousness of being human: of flesh upon flesh, of swimming in cool water on a hot summer's day, of eating chocolate and strawberries, of dancing and yoga, of stroking an animal's soft fur, of making and witnessing art, of warming in front of a fire, of mud baths and hot springs, of smelling incense and flowers, of nibbling a baby's fat thigh.

For we Pagani, all glory is in embodiment. We don't honor asceticism, chastity, or restraint. There is no reason to deny the pleasures of the flesh. All mutually consensual and pleasurable sex is holy. All variations on the human form are lovely and beloved. Our sacraments include taking care of oneself and one's body, of each other's body, of animals, children, and the land. We seek the pleasure in eating and shitting, in crying and bleeding, in sex and dancing, sleeping, stretching, breathing.

To make beauty is a holy thing: to plant a flower, prepare an altar, pick up litter, carve a toy, sweep a stoop, cook a meal, or paint a picture. We practice bearing witness to the beauty in others. If I could do nothing more than reflect back to my son the beauty that shines in his face and his whole being, then I have been a good mother.

It's not necessarily easy. I complain sometimes. I have a habit of negative judgment. I let ideas about what's wrong, and my self-judgment, cloud my vision of what's true and right and beautiful and holy. I sometimes deny my body what it needs. I worry about the weeds in the garden, the dust in the house, the shape of my body, the uncertainty of my path in life. I tell myself that I don't have time to enjoy myself, or that I don't deserve to, or that I should be doing something different from whatever it is I'm doing. We must be vigilant against self-denial and self-abnegation.

The call is always to open to what is, to make a small patch of earth beautiful and lively, to enjoy the pleasures given to me every day, to love my life and make it holy and delicious and good. To turn toward myself. To embrace the mystery and mess. And to give thanks for the good green earth, all-sustaining and filled with delights. Blessed be.

Pagan values: immanence

Deborah Lipp has written recently about immanence, so as a lazy blogger let me point you first to her post. Do come back.

Deborah says that the immanence of deity--which she defines as gods' being inside us--means that the source of value and goodness is also within us. Such a view rejects an authoritarian, "handed down from on high" view of morality in favor of something more self-directed, more democratic. I define immanence more broadly than Deborah does, though I don't disagree with her.

I take the transcendence of deity to mean that god is somewhere outside of nature or everyday reality: above, beyond, distant from us. If god is "out there," even if he can intervene "in here," then "out there" is more divine, better, more desirable. It's heaven. If god is transcendent, then we are necessarily at least somewhat alienated from god, because there is a place he occupies that we don't. (Hence the need for mortal intercessories in Christianity: saints, Mary, or Jesus--someone who can get the message to the big guy, who can mediate between heaven and earth).

The immanence of deity means that there is no "out there"; there is only "right here." The Divine is present on earth and in us. She is present in mountains, springs, trees, compost piles, cities and slums, my pit bull, you, and me. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote that "earth's crammed with heaven." More prosaically, I think of the world's being infused with divinity.

People either believe in the immanence of deity because they experience the world that way (Starhawk famously compares the question "do you believe in the Goddess?" to "do you believe in that rock?"--belief really isn't at issue), or they experience the world as suffused with god because they believe it is (the background belief thus affects the quality of experience). I can't tell which it is for me; the mystic favors for former explanation, and the skeptic favors the latter.

Why does it matter whether deity is immanent? On a practical level, the way I treat the beings and things around me is affected. I'm much more likely to be patient with my dog, my child, myself, if I remember that we all partake of the Divine. Other choices I make that reflect my belief in the Goddess's immanence are to eat food that's organically or humanely raised, to pick up trash when I'm hiking, not to use chemicals when I garden or clean my house. It's not that I think, "god is there, I should be careful." Rather, I experience the things in my life as holy, and from that experience I strive to make choices that honor the holiness of all beings.

Thus a belief in immanence is closely connected, for me, to a belief in the sanctity of the earth. The earth is all we get. There is no heaven, no afterlife in another place untained by fallen humanity. We don't get to escape the earth. We don't get to use it up and then leave. If we eschew or deny what's real, we don't get to transcend the consequences of our actions. God Herself is in the whole thing. She is the shadow as well as the light. And She is as close as the beating of your heart.

Blessed be.

Pagan values: the sanctity of the earth

If you had to find one value that the majority of Pagans would identify as a Pagan value, the sanctity of the earth might be it. For many Pagans, this value is central to our spirituality.

Some say that the earth is the Goddess and don't mean that metaphorically (some do). Many subscribe to something like the Gaia hypothesis, which posits that the earth itself not only houses living beings but is a living being itself. Many say that we find the gods in nature. Pagans tend to be animists, believing that even things like trees, rocks, and mountains have a kind of soul, spirit or consciousness. Many if not most contemporary Pagans believe that the earth is holy and has instrinsic value.

In keeping with this value, Pagans strive to live in right relationship with the earth and her creatures. We invoke the ideas of balance and right relationship and reject models of dominance. We may practice permaculture, buy organic foods, garden organically, strive to live sustainably, belong to conservationist groups and land trusts, advocate rights or protections for animals, or shelter and rescue domestic animals. Most of the Pagans I know are involved in one or more of these practical, earth-honoring activities.

Our rituals often take place out of doors, and even when they take place indoors, we often invoke and honor nature, the earth, or earth spirits and guardians. Many Pagans honor the old agricultural cycles and the phases of the moon. We practice grounding ourselves and our energy, and we value the particular places where we live. One Witch I know says he can't sleep well if he doesn't know the land.

Some conservative Christians make the disingenuous mistake that all environmentalists are Pagans. Of course that isn't true; one can value nature, animals, trees, habitat, and the wild without practicing Paganism. But Pagan religions are the only ones I know that make concern for the earth a central spiritual value.

Surely the image of earth as Mother arose in cultures where there was less separation from the land than in ours, and where breastfeeding children was the norm. The way that a human mother gives of herself for her child, providing nourishment and care, fulfilling the needs of early life, mut have struck our ancestors as analogous to the way the earth provides us with water, food, medicine, shelter.

In right relationship, we love the One who sustains us, as She sustains us with her love. Blessed be.

So what makes those Pagan values?

I think my five favorite Pagan values are in fact Pagan, even if not every Pagan holds them, and even if non-Pagans hold (some of) them. Why? Because they're values that arise from (many kinds of) contemporary Pagan spiritual practice. And while they're not uniquely Pagan values, strictly speaking, they are values that other religions I know of don't hold as spiritual values. So these values are intrinsic to the way I practice my religion and to my spiritual life, but they're not intrinsic, as far as I know, to other religions or spiritual practices.

That's my rough-and-ready definition of what makes something a Pagan value.

Pagan values, a brief introduction

June 2009 is International Pagan Values Blogging Month. Well, twist my arm and hold the baby (or, er, vice versa). My undergraduate and graduate training were in philosophy with specializations in ethics and feminism. Though I'm a recovering academic, I still care deeply about value and can wax pedantic with the best of them. I'll try to avoid that in a series of short posts (you can't hold the baby for that long) about my favorite Pagan values, ethical and non-. I'm optimistic about this being a series because Adonis is taking the week of from work, so I'll be holding the baby less than all the time.

So to begin, a list of my favorite Pagan values:

1. sanctity of the earth
2. immanence of the divine
3. pleasure and beauty
4. (re)enchantment
5. healing

Baptism

(The Guardian [Queen] of Water from the Gaian Tarot, by Joanna Powell Colbert)

Still no internet connection at the new homestead, so blogging hasn't been possible. That should change today. Also, things have been a bit hectic while trying to get settled in the new house.

My dad called Sunday morning and said, "is it true that you're not going to baptize your kid?" Oh boy. Talking to my mom later that morning, she said, oh yeah, he's really upset about that, he keeps saying "that's the final straw, I'm disowning her." (What you need to know about my blustery but very loving parents: they would never disown me. Dad threatened to disown me for having a child outside of legal wedlock, but then he helped us with the down payment for our new house, so you can see how that goes. They adore Adonis, and my mom says that we have the best marriage of anyone she knows--except for the part where we're not married.) Both my parents would prefer that we have the baby baptized. My sister, who is a formidable advocate for us, told them that I wasn't going to do things the way they would have me do them, so they just have to suck it up and let it go. My mom is actually kind of adjusting to this idea. Oh but it's difficult for me, the oldest and always a good girl, to "let them down" by doing things my own way.

Why not baptize the baby? Well, there is the obvious reason that Christianity is not my religion anymore. But that's not my main reason. I would even consider baptizing my baby for my parents' sake if I could get past the symbolism of baptism. Yet I believe strongly in the symbolic value of ritual, and how ritual enactment in part constitutes reality. The ritual message of baptism is this: human beings are born innately sinful, in pain and blood from a woman's body, products of a sinful act; being born human, from sexual intercourse, and of a woman necessitates purification, the cleansing with holy water. And to this I say, bullshit. Human beings are not innately sinful. To be born in the midst of blood, sweat, shit, and ecstasy is a holy thing.

I like the idea of an elemental blessing. I imagine that at a Wiccaning or Pagan baby naming ceremony, though I've never attended one, the child is blessed with earth and fire, water and air. In becoming human we become one with the elements, and to enact that symbolically seems a good thing. So we'll have a ceremony, and there will be a sacred cup filled with water, but the ritual will be something altogether other than a Christian baptism.

Thoughts on a Pagan ethic: guilt and gratitude

(1) We have a way of structuring our moral lives, in the dominant U.S. culture at least, that makes no sense: thinking of things in terms of "deserving" or "not deserving." This musty old moralism is an artifact of Protestantism, perhaps ("work hard and you'll get what you deserve"), or even of the Old Testament ("an eye for an eye"). These moral categories may cause various familiar affective problems--a misplaced sense of guilt and entitlement, for example. But another kind of problem--we might call it an ontological problem--is that these categories of desert fail to describe reality. In a world where the distribution of wealth, luck, and opportunities is so disparate, it doesn't make any sense to say that we get what we deserve.

(2) I'm someone who is inclined to feel guilty for her many blessings, as long as I'm thinking in terms of desert (deserving). Gratitude is tainted for me if I feel like I don't deserve what I have. And how could I deserve what I have, when so much of it comes down to luck? Many opportunities have come to me because I benefit from unfair systems of privilege, for example, because I am white in a racist society, or because I was born into the middle class in the United States in the late 20th century, when we lived on resources ransomed from the future. Why should I have so much when others don't? When I think in terms of desert--and inevitably I think that way--I feel nearly paralyzed with guilt.

(3) Guilt in most, if not all circumstances is a useless feeling. It's a form of moral disempowerment.

(4) How do I escape the labyrinth of guilt? I need a new way of thinking about the things I have. I used to think that there had to be a way of eschewing privilege, as if I could refuse to be white in this racist society, or as if it would be a good thing to turn down the chance for a university education. I still hold to this idea in some ways; I refuse to marry, for example, in part because it seems to me an exercise of unjust privilege. (Whether I'm cutting off my nose to spite society's face remains to be seen. And it's not as if I give up heterosexual privilege by refusing to marry my male partner. Hell, most people assume we're married anyway. )

(5) One of the characters in Widdershins says it this way: "accept the gifts that you're offered." There may be extrinsic reasons to accept those gifts; doing so may put you in a better position to help others, for example. But I believe there are intrinsic reasons, too, to accept gifts graciously and lovingly offered. The character who says to accept gifts also believes in doing good without thought of recompense. We might also accept kindnesses without feelings of obligation, of needing to pay anything back. Perhaps it is a better thing to say, humbly, thank you.

(6) The power to effect good lies in being a good steward of whatever gifts we're given. We are all of us surrounded with blessings. As a Wiccan I feel strongly how the earth offers Herself up freely to us, how She provides us with all of our needs. What shall we do? How shall we act? We shall guard and nurture the gift, rather than squander it.

(7) This is the idea I'm trying on in place of guilt: to be a good steward of my many blessings; to treat my fellow beings as worthy of respect, integrity, and love; to guard and protect, and to make wise use of that which has been given to me. In other words, to live in balance with the blessings. To live in accord.

Getting hot, cooling off

Blogging has been light because I've had an unusually busy social calendar for the last week and a half, and I'm getting ready for my trip to Turkey. I leave one week from tomorrow!

Last night was one of those sultry summer evenings where it's still in the 80s at dusk. I remember those nights when I was a kid and it was too hot to sleep; my parents would let my sister and me get out of bed to swim. For several years, we lived in a modest house in a semi-urban neighborhood, and we had a pool in our backyard. Swimming at night meant getting to swim naked, the only lights shining from under the water. After 15 minutes in the pool, our bodies cooled, we would go back to bed and sleep all night.

Swimming naked, and swimming at night - floating on my back looking up at the moon and stars - are still just about my favorite things to do. I prefer lakes, ponds, and hot springs to artificial pools. (I’ve been skinny dipping after dark in the Baltic Sea; this is both cold and dangerous. Much more peaceful was floating on my back in the large hot spring at Orr, in California.)

(Indeed, hot springs are one of the few things my town lacks. That, and Ethiopian food. Okay, and a thriving independent bookstore. We’re not perfect.)

Last night it was hot, so Adonis, Lugh, and I set out for the gorge down the street, where the temperature is about 10 degrees cooler. We hiked in, not very far, and found a flat stretch where we could all walk around in the water. (It’s been dry this year, so the water is low; normally we wouldn’t be able to walk where we did.)

There was a lot of litter, which makes me so angry, but since dog walkers always have plastic grocery bags in their pockets, I was able to clean up the space we were in. In addition to the beer and juice bottles and cigarette wrappers, there was a pair of socks, some Styrofoam peanuts, a bag of empty take-out containers, and a dirty diaper. This isn’t the first time I’ve found a wrapped, dirty diaper in a gorge! People make such a misanthrope of me. I don’t understand how anyone can go to such a beautiful place and leave trash there. It breaks my Pagan heart.

I once knew of some Quakers who would carry a bag and pick up litter wherever they went. When someone would ask them why, they would say, “we’re Quakers; we pick up litter.” I think that’s a mantra that can express our most basic Pagan values. I say it to myself to counter my angry reaction: “we’re Pagans; we pick up litter.”

A balanced life

Found in an old Yoga Journal (Issue 189, August 2005), from an article by Sally Kempton called "Seeing is Believing":

In the Indian tradition, life is said to have four aims - wealth, pleasure, ethical conduct or goodness, and enlightenment - and they are meant to be held in balance. What would your life be like if you were to cultivate each of these areas equally?

Wealth: Resources that sustain your life: skills, education, job, money, housing, food, clothing

Pleasure: Every form of healthy enjoyment - sports, sex, theater, literature, music, art, and practicing your own form of creative expression

Ethical conduct: Earning a living honestly, taking care of responsibilities, acting morally and according to your highest values, helping others

Enlightenment: Realizing your deepest nature, recognizing the oneness of everything, pursuing practices such as yoga, meditation, and spiritual study to make this possible

All acts of love and pleasure

What brings you joy?

I've been thinking about this question, and my answers - as perhaps befits someone with Taurus on the ascendent - are mostly of the body.

sex ~ massage ~ dancing ~ swimming, preferably outside, preferable naked ~ eating good food ~ laughing ~ being outside, hiking or camping ~ a good yoga class ~ ritual ~ art ~ doing things with herbs ~ my dog ~ an excellent bookstore, especially a feminist bookstore ~ good music ~ delicious smells ~ beautiful clothes ~ open-hearted connection with another person ~ flowers ~ oils and potions ~ books ~ ideas ~ my sweet life partner ~ cuddling ~ waterfalls ~ lakes and oceans ~ tarot ~ lying on the earth

Sensate, sensual connection with the earth, and with spirit, body, and heart, brings me joy.

Ethics, science, and the Goddess

I've tried a few times to write a post about this story, broadcast on the CBS news segment "freeSpeech" the evening of the Amish school shootings a couple of weeks ago. Brian Rohrbough is the father of a boy killed at Columbine; he offers his opinion that school shootings are a result of teaching evolution.

I've tried the snark angle ("science teachers everywhere rub their hands with evil glee"), but it was too easy and unsatisfying. I've tried rebuttal ("evolution doesn't entail that the strong kill the weak; that's a gross oversimplification of the principle of survival of the fittest; fitness is measured by a species's ability to adapt to a changing environment..."). I'm sick of being angry, sick of my own zeal in trying to change the world through force of reason.

Christianity doesn't entail dogmatism, biblical literalism, or other forms of irrationality. But the public face of Christianity in this country too often looks like illogical extremism. Sometime I feel like returning to the mainstream Protestantism of my upbringing just to fight the public face of Christianity in this country. But that's not where my spiritual home is.

Instead of any more snark, anger, or derision - all of which I enjoy perhaps more than I should - let me offer a Pagan counterpoint to Mr. Rohrbough's free speech.

There is no simple answer to the question, why did the Amish school shootings happen? Part of the answer is sexism and misogyny, since the victims were all girls. Part of the answer is the legal and easy availability of guns in the U.S. There are many other reasons, to be sure, some cultural, some more specific to the perpetrator.

How can anyone study evolution and not wonder at the marvels of the universe? Of course, belief in a creator God isn't incompatible with belief in evolution. Indeed, to strip the creator God of the intricacy and wonder of evolution and hand him a magic wand and a seven-day deadline seems to me to insult and diminish that God. Pagans don't believe in a creator God, however. We see the Goddess, dual deity, or multiple deities in nature itself. Science is one way to know the Goddess. The miracle needn't be conjured from some transcendent realm. It's right in front of your eyes.

The "inherent value of life" can be found in nature and in ourselves. There is an emergent morality here. It's not the morality of a stern paternalistic God, the God who says it is right and just for Abraham to kill his son if that is what God demands. (Mr. Rohrbough says that the murder of innocent children is always wrong, but his own religion offers a caveat; when God tells you to murder an innocent child, it's morally advisable to do so!) Pagan morality is grounded in respect, love, and passion for the earth and her creatures. Pagan morality is grounded in reverence for all bodies, including the human body. Responsibility for our actions, for their effects on others and the environment, is central to a Pagan ethics. Acting responsibly can in some cases include aborting pregnancies. We might think that the value of children is increased, not decreased, when they are chosen and wanted, when their mothers actively take responsibility for bringing them into this world. Indeed, around the world there is an inverse relationship between the amount of social support given to children and the restrictiveness of abortion laws. In other words, those countries with the most liberal reproductive freedoms provide the greatest social safety net for their children. Doesn't that say something about the value a society places on children?

The absence of God the patriarch doesn't preclude morality, althought it does preclude morality of a certain kind. And good riddance, say I!

Communion

I didn't plan to usher in Lughnasad in my hot kitchen at midnight, wrestling with a chicken.

Take and eat...

The chicken grew up healthily, running around on a farm near here. I hope she had a good chicken-life. Goddess knows most of her sisters don't. If Pagans talked about sin, then I would say that the way we treat other animals is one of our gravest sins.

This is my body...

For 11 years I was a vegetarian for ethical reasons. Meat wasn't necessary to sustain life, I reasoned, and so it was wrong to kill for matters of convenience or taste. Furthermore, the meat industry is cruel to animals - human and non-human - and to earth, polluting, poisoning, and otherwise squandering natural resources.

A few things happened to change my diet. Addicted to sugar, I visited a nutritionst who told me to start by doubling my protein intake. Then my sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, and all the soy protein I was eating became verboten. And I read a remarkable book by Kathryn Paxton George, who argues that the vegan ideal is sexist, racist, ageist, and classist - that it relegates all but the most robust, healthy, privileged to a position of moral inferiority.

Given for you...

To live in accord – that, I believe, is a key Pagan value. We seek to find and honor our place on the earth and in the family of beings. The dominant culture doesn’t honor this ideal in the least. Our treatment of animals makes this clear. It’s an enormous violation to raise animals for food in factory farms, and in numbers to support the fast food industry. The animals suffer, the people working in the meat industry suffer, the earth suffers, and we suffer because we consume them. We create, full-cloth, a cycle of suffering as only human beings can.

When you do this...

To live in accord, and to eat meat, means to eat animals that were raised locally and humanely. Kathryn Paxton George argues persuasively that many people need meat in their diets. She also defends ethical, aesthetic semi-vegetarianism – eating meat and plants grown locally and healthfully, in moderation, and taking pleasure in food. Being closer to the source of my food makes it more difficult to deny what I’m doing when I eat an animal. I become more intimate with the cycles of life and death. And because I love my dog so deeply, and think every day about what it means to give him a good life, I also think about what it means for other animals to have a good life.

Remember...

Beings and plants die so that you and I can live and flourish. This is one of the mysteries, and it’s difficult to face. We must take care not to pervert or deny the cycles of life and death - whether by killing people in war or labor, polluting rivers and seas, taking more than we need. Indeed, given what humans have wrought, we have a special responsibility to heal the cycles. Witches and other Pagans may have a special role to play. Our spiritual values place us in a position to articulate much-needed visions for healing. The work that Common Ground is doing in Louisiana seems to me a perfect example of Pagan vision and action.

Remember me...

The earth provides everything we need, including death. She recycles and renews, provides our breath, food, water, and endless inspiration. At Lughnasad we’re still in the height of the growing season, but we harvest the first grains, taking life, to sustain us through the winter. Thus does death come in the midst of life.

And remember yourself...

I stayed up late on a hot night to roast a chicken so I could eat good protein this week. I thanked that chicken as I prepared it for the oven and as I tore the cooked flesh from its bones; I thanked it for providing its life so I could eat. It’s a complex thing; I’m not convinced I deserve that chicken’s life, though I need it. I saved the bones for soup stock and the pan drippings for my dog. I wanted to take that life consciously, in as full an awareness as I could muster, and use every bit of the gift. On this, the first of our harvest festivals, let us give thanks for She who provides and vow to honor Her ways to the best of our abilities. So mote it be.