Spirituality and Religion

Emerging, A Feminist Faith

Published on by Lisa

What does it mean to be a feminist of faith?

Specifically, what does it mean to be a Catholic feminist? Is this a living contradiction? Can the two blend together in a search for truth, meaning, or even justice?

How can two radically different ideologies and practice possibly come together?

I always wanted to write about my faith and, funny, it seems the more confident I grow in writing about my faith, the more capable I am of asking questions in my writing. There are no ways to move through faith without poignant questions of practicality, relationship, and the living out of our faith.

It sometimes feels like those of us who do have some sort of active spirituality that is exercised through organized religion are often segregated, left in our own strange world of ritual, tradition, and silence.

I wanted to write about faith because I find so little feminist writers who write out of a plain existence. So many articles and books about Catholicism are written from the religious, or the scholars, the ones who have dedicated their entire lives to understanding. I’ve come to find I’ve dedicated my entire life to questioning and, therefore, often took myself out of the running to write about faith. Too scared about what people would think, too scared to find what I might possibly overturn in my own soil, but mostly, I didn’t write because I didn’t feel I had authority to write about faith, feminist faith, my faith.

How ironic, isn’t it? As a person of faith, as a person dedicated to the preferential option for the poor, social justice, and relevant theology, I never really saw myself as someone who had anything to say about faith. It was my backbone, but never my specialty to write. It was my crux, but I was convinced I would only be adding to the noise. There were plenty of people with enough opinion out in the world, and I never felt really justified in adding mine to the increasingly loud voices.

Besides, I thought to myself, the world needs people with answers and maps to help them feel better. All I have is hope and helluva lot of questions. And, I curse too much.

Once I was through categorizing my short-comings as to why I would never write about faith and feminism, I began drafting a book proposal about radical marriage. In my drafts, I began reflecting on my life, the things that most resonated with me that shaped my views on marriage. There was really no way to write authentically without centering the one thing that remained constant – my questioning and growing faith. There would be no book about radical marriage, or any topic, really, if I denied a part of myself that influenced every choice I ever made in my life. My writing, giving myself, would be something authentic. Challenging and provocative. To be a writer of substance, I had to trudge up the things that I most feared and was reluctant to address. To address my experience and understanding of marriage, I had to talk about God.

To write less, would mean to be less.

When I talk about God, some of my dearest friends still think I judge them, their lives, and their belief system, or atheism. Truthfully, I tell them, the presence of a living spirit has little to do with what you talk about, but more on how you live. The way you live is more important than whether or not you say you believe in a God or not. They don’t believe me. To this day, many of my friends still fret that I judge them for not having an active and practicing faith.

My last answer is this: If it bothers you this much, then it’s not about me or our friendship. You need to come to a place within your own life where you are comfortable and confident with what you do and do not believe. No amount of my coaxing, comforting, or shrugging will satisfy a heart laden with guilt, anger, or dismissal.

And so, the hesitancy to write about faith grew. And then, several years ago, someone gave me a quote that went something like this: You do no one a favor by shrinking yourself. It does nothing to become one with darkness out of solidarity. Be yourself. Be light.

By pretending faith was not important to me, I spent years in the dark trying to blend in the background. The veil has been pulled and these are my colors. I am a womyn, a feminist of faith. And for all the questions, contradictions, and controversy that brings – well, it’s better to face those things head on, with no pretense, than to submit to a writing life with no authentic tongue.

A Catholic Feminist’s Meditation on Holy Week

Published on by Lisa

When you say that you’re Catholic, it’s almost as loaded as when you say you’re a feminist. Almost.

When you say that you’re a Catholic feminist, well, that’s when the furrowed brows come out to play.

I’ve been both Catholic and feminist all my life, I’ve just only known about the Catholic identity a lot longer than the feminist. But, both have always been there, the development of one consciousness with separate feeding tubes.

I’ve hesitated to blog much about faith. In rare surges of courage, I’ll post a thought or two about my spirituality, but the fear of scholars and other forms of judgment have paralyzed my writing on spirituality. Often, I convince myself that writing with emotion and with truth is spiritual, and it is, but writing ON the topics of feminism, faith, and spirituality is entirely different.

The questions come swiftly every time I want to write about being a Catholic feminist. Maybe I don’t know enough. Maybe it’ll leave a bitter taste in non-Catholic, non-believers blogmouth. Maybe I’ll find something in my exploration that will make ME question my faith even more.

Being a womyn of faith is a funny thing. Often times, my experience of being a Catholic feminist runs into conflict. Many equate being a person of faith with being a person of certainty.

Oh, the irony!

Faith, for me, is about attempting to shut down every sensory tool in my body and listening only to what moves wordlessly within me. Faith, for me, is not about being right, but about relationship. Moving with a Creator, not following rules, is a hard concept to grasp. Speaking through prayer, not just reciting prayer takes a certain level of clarity and trust. Sometimes those grains are as small as seedlings, but I trust that the presence of those seedlings, no matter how tiny, are important. Critical even.

For much of my life, my friends have turned to me to inquire about my faith, its twists and turns and volatility. At times, I think a lot of people assume it’s an ongoing, painful road where I am barefoot, bleeding, and sorrowing the passion of Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ.

Two of the two heaviest words in a feminist’s vocabulary.

Faith, if you center it in relationship, will never be stable. I will never be stable. How many relationships of love are barefoot, bleeding, and sorrowing? They have moments that mirror that description. There are those dark, dark hours of tragedy, death, illness, and loss that cannot be humanly reasoned or understood.

And there is living room dancing as well.

There are moments in that relationship where I dance by myself. Salsa, ballet, my own version of hip hop…MY moves that express joy, release, and euphoria. There are moments like that, too.

The swing between the two is faith, a constant searching for a Deeper, a More.

Relationship, the kind that I am looking for, is not meant to be justified to those who don’t believe. That relationship is what I need, period. G*d is both noun and verb, an infinite and endless collaboration with a mysterious Being.

I feared writing about this. I feared that there would be no place for it in my writing.

Over the years of desiring to write about Catholic feminist spirituality, I felt small tugs on my shirt. Like a small toddler looking up at me and trying to get my attention. I would feel small tugs on my shirt that whispered, “if it’s a part of your life, it will be a part of your writing.”

But fear is paralyzing and it makes your life spotty with a haven for shadows.

I lived with the whispers for the majority of my life. The function of writing, the function of truth-telling eventually leads you to a path of fullness and strength. Writing, to work its peaceful and powerful effects, needs more light than shadows. It needs courage to talk about the shadows and dark corners.

Faith has always been a part of my life and the denial of that faith is a denial of my feminism. It is a hypocritical fallacy to declare my own feminism with no hint of my faith. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with my declaration of spirituality. What most people have found conflict is, specifically, when I say I have a Catholic faith.

Immediately, thoughts jump to one topic: abortion. Women’s rights. Reproductive health.

And while I think those conversations can frame enriching and enlightening learning, it also detracts from the millions of womyn and men who are within the Catholic faith who are striving, yearning, torturing themselves to express the conflict of being a person of faith and a person of the world. That conflict needs relationship and the need for expression encapsulates more than just the pro-life argument or the Church’s stance on gay marriage and sexuality.

What I am saying is that I want to write about my faith without fear. And I hope/think that I have come to a point in my life where I can have faith IN feminism and my feminism in my faith. For me, the two have never been disjointed.

The Tridium of Holy Week are the three most significant days of the Catholic faith and begins today. I plan to blog about my feminst spiritual perspectives on it this week.

I hope you can join me in a spirit of reflection and meditation.

My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

Published on by Lisa
My Nicaraguan Father: Reflections on Feminism, Letters, and Digital Media

Dedicated to Don Manual Montiello

My Nicaraguan father, who I had not seen in eight years, died this week. A man with a heart condition, he fell onto a street, his face purple, and died. He was walking the barrio, our home, Catorce de Junio, in Nicaragua where I used to live.

I don’t know where this piece is going. Like a storm, I sense something brewing. The signs are there: quiet moments (dark clouds), tears (rain), and fear (wind). A perfect writing storm. This time, though, I have no predictable end. Something is needing to come out and so I write. I write. There’s a lot that’s been thrown in the eye of my hurricane. I’m going to try and let it out…

* * *

In feminism, particularly the feminist blogosphere, the word “intersectionality,” is strewn around like a popular masthead. For those unfamiliar with this term, in a nutshell, it’s a nugget word of the third wave of feminism, a term to explain one’s ability/responsibility to see/understand the complex layers of oppression and severity. It is a theory by I don’t even know who that suggested we look at the varying intersecting locks of lived experience. To put it bluntly, it says that the middle of the wheel is braced together by several spokes. Look at the spokes, it suggests. Consider the spokes.

I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality. I’m not the best person to talk about intersectionality because I was introduced to it in the feminist blogosphere and the way I have observed its lack of application – its sore failure – makes me a non-believer in the term. I just don’t see any difference “intersectionality” has made in the lives of womyn offline.

My momma raised me to see the soul, not spokes.

* * *

February 11, 2009
I am in a coffee shop. I see a sign: Imported from Nicaragua.

A small thump hits my gut.

* * *

March 2000
“Buenas dias, Dona Adelia! Como estas usted?” I called out to a neighbor while I was walking in the barrio. It is a hot morning in Managua.

My friend Julia who was walking beside me smiled as Dona Adelia opened her mouth and fired off a response so quick and urgent, I blinked in surprise.

Julia translated for me, “She said, ‘well, that depends. Do you want to know how I am doing economically, physically, emotionally, mentally, politically? It depends.’”

I’ve thought about Dona Adelia’s reply to my simple greeting for nine years. She is a woman, elderly in her seventies, who loves people with so much strength that I pray I am like her when I mature into my later years.

One moment. One response. To my face. And just like that. I understood “intersectionality,” or the multiple intricacies of being. Language, culture, soul. There are so many layers to people; so many things that affect how we perceive one another.

I didn’t need a theory. I needed a teacher.

* * *

The failure of intersectionality is not surprising. Most correlate the term as a method to measure oppression and study its affect on diverse individuals, as if there is a way to truly trace the insidious and camouflaged roots of societal and social demons.

What troubles me about this method is its obsession with oppression and lack of focus on liberation. From what I have observed, most feminists want to understand the surreptitious spreading and practice of oppression – they want to understand that justice is unevenly distributed because of skin color, race, ethnicity, physical and mental mobility, religion, citizenship, class, education, property, age, sexual orientation, gender, and sex – but they don’t want to listen when it comes to transforming the world for liberation.

If liberation means a radical, and by radical I am referring to the Latin origin of radical meaning ROOT, transformation of the world, we need feminists to become more visionary. And fast.

Intersectionality is useless if it merely raises your consciousness but does little else. Ok, so YOU’RE enlightened. Great!

Now what?

The life of intersectionality is brief. It’s a theory. Nothing more.

* * *

April 2000

Don Manual has a heart condition. Somewhere, in the maze of awkward translation, I learn his quiet demeanor cloaks a very gentle man. After a long trip to Bluefields, the eastern coast of Nicaragua, I return to my home in the barrio. Once in my room, exhausted, I begin unpacking.

Don Manual walks into my room.

Puzzled and a bit anxious because he has never entered my room before, I turn to face him.

Just a few pebbles of his words were caught in my translation. There are two things I remember, “Allegra. Muy allegra.”

He was happy to have you back home. He was relieved. Others translated the conversation for me later.

And then I remember that he covered his heart, his weakened and diseased heart, as he spoke. He softly tapped it as he told me he was glad I was home. Then he and his eyes smiled into me and turned away.

* * *

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I am nearing the end of my three month writing stint at Bitch magazine. The experience has taught me so much about writing and confidence, I find it difficult to translate it to those who do not engage in writing practice.

Recently, I wrote a piece about Nadya Suleman, the woman who recently birthed octuplets and is now a mother of fourteen. In my article, where I raised questions about the issue of choice outside the realm of abortion, I asked that we engage in critical and rich discussion but to do so without berating any one woman or a segment of population of women.

That didn’t go over well.

The feedback and comments ranged from, “I think this has nothing to do with race, I never even thought of the idea until people like you to inject race into the subject to cause controversy,” to suggesting that I “become a conservative,” to “What a goddamned shithead.”

Simultaneously, I received an email from Alex Blaze, the managing editor at The Bilerico Project, who let me know that there had been good news concerning a post I had written two months ago about Agnes Scott College, a private all woman’s college, allowing a degrading and anti-feminist movie film on its grounds. The update alerted me to heightened policies the college had adopted in response to the online noise generated by senior, Louisa Hill.

I learned about Agnes Scott debacle from Jess Hoffman, a visionary friend and co-founder of make/shift magazine, where I am a section editor. It was through her that I heard about it, connected with The Bilerico Project, and helped create some online shaking.

The result: not perfect, but improved policies.

While the situation at Agnes Scott College is not the most ground breaking news or the most inspiring story, it gave credence to the power of blogging and communities working together. As Blaze wrote in his email, “Blogging can improve the world!”

Indeed.

It can also destroy.

These are the opportunities before some of us. And there are many sides to align yourself with. What do you choose?

Do you align yourself with the offense, berating women like Nadya Suleman, defining what is right and good for a woman of controversy and poor decision, but nonetheless a women in the name of feminism and “liberalism”? Or the side that tries to outreach and make one corner of the universe slightly better than it was yesterday?

It’s not that simple, I know, and the situation calls for reflection.

But is calling her a “shithead” how we move forward?

* * *

Thursday, February 12
A friend is driving me through Cedar Lee, an area of independent theaters and coffee shops. A wide sidewalk is cleared for winter, but in the summer, Christina says, the restaurants have great outdoor seating.

Out of nowhere, a thought slips through my window

I haven’t talked to my Nicaraguan family in years.

And here is where they have five dollar theater tickets with all you can eat popcorn.

I haven’t even thought about them in months. What happened to when I used to think of them everyday?

You’ll love it here, Lisa.

Raquel would be…my G*d, twenty-one years old now. They wouldn’t want to hear from me. What would I say anyway? My Spanish has depleted so much. Let it go.

* * *

Both on and offline, it’s not our race, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation or any other spoke on the wheel of “intersectionality” that divides us. It’s our objectives. It’s how we measure liberation and what we are willing to do with our privileged lives in the name of transformation. The differences in our objectives are as transparent as our URLs. Some are here for fun and professional advancement. Those of us who are here for more than business are here to question the systems that contort liberation.

Is there any wonder that there is a divide?

For me, there is only one question: what are you willing to do for liberation?

If it begins and ends with blogging, then don’t bother reading the rest of this piece.

If you say you want a world without rape, what are you doing to transform binary definitions of sexuality, relationships, and love?
If you say you want a country of peace, what cost is paid by other countries?
If you say you don’t know the answers, what are you doing to rectify that?

These are the questions before us. What are you doing?

* * *

The face of G*d for me is the liberation of those in pain, myself included. My definition of feminism is not a worded explanation, limited by my westernized and elitist tongue. It is a drive, dare I write spiritual drive, to do what I can, when I can, and make one thing, or as many things, better for another human being born in my lifetime, on our planet, this place we all call home. With all the mystery and fear in my body, soaked in ethnocentric alcohol, I sober my life by sitting on the edge of my bathroom sink and pulling the bathroom mirror into my face.

I look up.

* * *
February 16, 2009

I open an email letting me know about a post raising questions about feminism and digital colonialism.

* * *

For the most part, generation X has been the largest population which the digital age has watered. We’re the first generation of this “new media” and its shifted the way we think, communicate, and organize. It’s even changed our dreams.

As little girls, I would bet those who journaled and dreamed about writing imagined hard cover books or putting pen to physical paper; their name in print.

Blogging has ushered in a new alternative to traditional publishing and while it has created this avenue for information exchange and sharing, it has also created a monster. We, privileged activists and writers with the most immediate form of communi/gratifi/cation at our disposal, gladly reap the surface benefits of new media and, I fear, are satiated by that. We’ve yet to fully incorporate a feminist energy and discourse to digital media. Bloggers, writers, web-users have yet to fully embrace the power and responsibility to transform knowledge, journalism, and expression and bring it to a feminist standard of acceptability and practice.

We’re working on that. We’re still debating and defending privilege.

There has been no sustainable on-going and consistent effort to confront the communication patterns of womyn/gender-centered/feminist blogs or dialogue ethos. Who has time to create that analysis, to write about it? To try and put a lasso on a thousand bucks gone wild?

We’re either too busy feeding our children, finding sustainable employment, caring for our ourselves and loved ones, and making ends meet to commit to dismantling the ways blogging and new media perpetuate the existing kyriarchal systems. It is, after all, a flick of a hand to turn off our screens or we can simply walk away.

Or we’re too busy maximizing our latest idea to utilize blogging as a means to further our professional careers.

There’s a pull in two legitimate different directions that leaves the middle empty. What’s left? The space of blogging. THIS space that we say is the resting pulse of the “women’s movement.” All of it goes unchecked, with no accountability, no rules. We can call each other out, but in the end, if you think it, you can write it. We obviously don’t want a hierarchy or limitations on our speech, right? It’s as if we have lost the capacity to freely explore options and conversation, we don’t know how to dictate basic premises of decency on how to relate to one another over lines of difference.

And so the cyclic, vicious feminist problems continue. The conferences are divided, the blog wars are revisited, the colonialism/racism/classism/capitalism/ everything-ism continues in its original score. Actually, I think this screenplay was written decades ago by our ancestors. We’re all just assuming their roles.

(Who wants to play Sojournor Truth?)

* * *

February 16, 2009
I receive an email telling me of Don Manual’s death just hours after he had passed. I read the words and am confused.

My emails are usually about the latest happenings in the activist world, listserves I love, writers I follow, blogs I cherish, and updates from friends. This message was nestled in the midst of RSVPs to my 30th birthday party. Requests from writers to blog about a spreading story. The message startled me, but not more than my own reaction.

My heart continues to audibly break with each letter I type to admit this: momentarily, I didn’t even recognize Don Manual’s name.

That is how removed I have been.

For a moment, I did not recognize the name of someone with whom I lived, had spoken, formed some of my brightest moments of life, embraced, and breathed.

* * *

That night I muster every strength I could to get over my own guilt and self-consciousness.

I call my family in Nicaragua.

With no fallback of translators, my mind rewinds itself to its rusted Spanish files, long put away.

I speak first with my sister, Lynette, who now has three children. When I lived with her, she only had one son. She is mopping and I can hear her smile into the phone.

Her father just died and she smiles at me.

“Necessitas, Lisa, regressar a Nicaragua pronto.”

You need to return to Nicaragua, soon.

Yo se.

I know.

I sputter out my condolences, whatever is left in my vocabulary and try to twist it, try to offer whatever G*d-awful limiting words that remain and tell her how much I miss her and will always miss her father. How grateful I am for all that they gave me.

All I can make out from her response is “triste.”

Sad.

She asks if I want to talk to her mother.

Dona Marta.

I remember why I was so afraid to speak to my host mother. She was soft spoken and that made translation even more difficult. I am shaking inside.

Unearthing itself after nine years, my intense desire to articulate the depth of my emotions runs again into the language barrier and I feel ashamed at my lack of Spanish practice.

It’s not just about language. Language, as once famously stated, is the house of being. It is a bridge of culture, a valor of heartfelt effort and humility. It’s not just about communication; it’s about respect and offering.

Her voice is barely audible and I want to weep in her arms. Or have her weep in mine.
Neither would happen.

I tell her that she and her entire family is always in my heart.

We have deep pauses of silence. I let them rest between us knowing the loss of her lifelong spouse cannot be explained in language.

We communicate what we can. We communicate love.

* * *

There comes a time to revisit our promises and commitments. We are forever in need of smoothing them over, enhancing the details for better fits.

I remember promising to write my Nicaraguan family. I said those words. In English. They understood.

I promise.

But I broke that promise, repeatedly.

I broke that promise to write when I decided to put it off and write about what I knew – feminism – instead of a what I needed to write, letter to my family. For every post on this blog, now past seven hundred, I allowed myself to slip away into what I knew was so dangerously easy about life in the United States: living individualistically.

Oh, I’ve learned how to be a married activist, a warrior poet salivating after Audre Lorde. I’ve written letters to lovers, biological family, posts, articles, and even begun book projects. I’ve collaborated with strangers who became confidants and healed broken relationship.

“Individualism” is no longer about singularity, it’s about living in a disconnected state, where we are accountable only to those who are like us, agree with, nod with us. Nuanced individualism is serving not just ourselves but only those we choose to be in our communities, those whom we deem supportive and relative, staunchly defining who we want and gives us what we need.

Gifts of baking pans, trinkets, and money mean nothing without connection and in some realms of life, attempted communication trumps clarity. I wanted to communicate safely, with a translator so they knew precisely what I meant and they understood me. I forgot that tapping one’s heart in gesture can convey more about concern and relief than words.

I waited for perfect communication. That day never comes.

In my subconscious fear of not wanting to be uncomfortable or reminded that I lazily let my Spanish subside, I never wrote a letter. Not one. I didn’t want to be reminded of my helplessness, the nightmarish panic I had of not being able to connect transnational experiences with my own damn life. I didn’t want to look at the clock and see that I had allowed so much time to pass.

And in the customary selfish rape of wandering foreign lands merely for one’s own enlightenment, I took my “enlightenment” and applied it to my own life.

I never wrote one letter.

I’ll set up a feeble social network online and write flip responses on the digital walls of high school acquaintances who have taught me nothing, but I won’t confront my own fear of inadequacy and contact a community, a family who gave me shelter and food.

Gringa.

And for those who do not understand the significance letters hold, paper that’s traveled the winds of ocean, just know that it delivers more than anything that can be conveyed in language. It conveys that they, the recipients of the letter, are remembered in a walled country that makes you forget.

* * *

Feminism is not about self-flagellation or “saving” the world, or even piping ourselves up by saying we have the capacity to do so. But I do believe it is about living an authentic existence that challenges our comforts, our talents, and agenda. I believe that we, those with unspeakable luxuries that we cannot put in context because few other nations can even compare to our excessiveness, must be held accountable to our neighbors. Not out of obligation, but out of love.

We are accountable. In our lives. In our letters. In our writings. In our blogs.

As I repeatedly learn in painfully elementary ways, “Not everything is about you.”
Your guilt. Your discomfort. Your understanding. Your. Your. Your.
“I don’t feel like engaging.”
“I don’t want to be attacked or misunderstood.”
“I don’t want to risk.”
“I don’t want to put myself out there.”
“I’ve earned this.”
“I already explained myself.”
“I need to defend myself.”
“I don’t know what you expect me to do.”

I. I. I.

If you can, unstick yourself.

Move beyond your self-consciousness.

We are accountable. To someone.

Without accountability, without liberating practices for all, there is no “Movement.”

Only noise.

Find someone to whom you are accountable.

Responding to, “Can You Love God AND Feminism?”

Published on by Lisa

Right before I sat down to write this post, I splashed cold water on my face, brushed my hair out and roped it into a pony tail and did two brief neck stretches. No joking. Before you delve into an issue like feminism and God, you have to be ready for the long haul.

At the ever-stirring community of Feministing, a specific headliner, in the form of a question, caught my eye, “Can you love God and feminism?” Not unusual to online communication, the comments quickly delved into discussions of organized religion, personal experiences, and emotional declaratives. Not surprisingly, several different topics surfaced and none were resolved or even wholly addressed, which is typical in an online format. But even in face to face conversation, the subject of religion and feminism is too wide, the issue is personal for many, and the scrutiny too close for honest disclosure.

The question got me thinking: “Can you love God and feminism?” The two issues of religion and feminism have been the backbone for some of the ugliest debates I’ve ever seen. There are usually two problems in such verbal banter. First, at least one person with really good ideas backs down or refuses to take the plunge into the conversation. Thus, the dominant talker dominates. Two, the discussion freys into a million other topics and it doesn’t stay spinning on one or two issues, but splatters into a mess of biting words.

I’ve split this post in two segments. The first part are a few helpful hints if you ever find yourself in a dialogue with another person or with a group of people discussing these issues and you find yourself backing away. Try these suggestions. I’ve found them helpful as I grow as a feminist. They’re for everyone, regardless of religious affiliation, agnostic, or atheist identity.

The second part of this post is my personal experiences and background of religion and feminism and the problems I’ve found in the feminist blogosphere in regard to these topics. Also, to be clear, I’m not knocking the post at Feministing. It was a great stimulus for conversation and the content of the post is not what I’m addressing. I’m expanding on a much larger issue that the question raised for me.

PART I. SUGGESTIONS FOR TACKLING INCREASINGLY TENSE CONVERSATIONS

Tip #1 Look at the question being asked.

Take a critical eye to the question and examine the heart of the issue. There’s nothing academic or scholarly about thinking about the crux. Everyone can do this – at a table, a wedding (I almost saw a fight break out at a reception), or over a campfire. It’s true that there is no such thing as a dumb question, just as long as it’s a sincere one. The art of questioning is often misused as tool by some to instigate or flame a controversial issue, e.g. (the ever popular) “How can you vote for that candidate when s/he is pro-choice?” If you choose to ask or answer a question, be prepared to use a mental scalpel. Bypass pretense and admit if you don’t know something, or haven’t fully thought through your way. In most instances, people are willing to engage in honest and challenging debate that stimulates growth, not defensiveness, when you get to the heart of the question and remain calm about your position and experiences.

Tip #2 Start a revolution and embrace the gray.

Even science cannot yet find a way to explore the outer celestial heavens, so why should we presume to know every artifact of faith? Nobody, save the handful of religious scholars tucked away somewhere, has all the background knowledge on religion and religious text. Good thing we don’t need to know everything to examine our own lives and its meaning. It’s impossible to know it all or grasp all the different interpretations. Relax in the fact that you will likely never get resolution if you’re looking for black and white answers. Reject the immediate answers that most gravitate toward.

Ye be not confused with apathy or uncertainty, however! Embracing the gray is standing in conviction, not lying down in laziness. While it’s wise to accept complexity, it’s important to continuously chisel and define your evolving beliefs. It takes a carefully tended maturity to remain unthreatened and curious about these issues. It’s work, hard work, but it’s always worth it.

Tip #3 Be Yourself. Be Open. (if you) Believe.

We’re all entitled to participate or not participate in organized religion and define its traditions and orthodox with our chosen teachers, families, mentors, and conscience. But, too often in feminist circles, that freedom dissolves. I’ve seen young questioning women of faith abandon the term “feminist” because of this ridiculous notion that feminists do not believe in God. I’ve witnessed so many neon bright feminists not identify as such because of the paradoxical branding of “feminist” on a religious person/spiritual individual/worshipper of a higher power. What comes of hiding who you truly are? Come out of your shell. Most people get the fact that activism is about trying to make the world a better place and that, typically, is one of the agenda items for those who are active church goers, mosque attendees, or temple worshippers. We all have a lot more in common than is perceived.

PART II: PERSONAL MUSINGS ON FEMINISM AND RELIGION

What I didn’t like about the question, “Can you love God and feminism?” is that it reminded me of all the times I’ve been asked variations of that same thing over the course of my life and how I’ve never really been able to put my finger on my frustration; that is, until I started blogging. Only then did I get it: both sides pigeon hole the other.

While on one hand it’s clearly understandable as to why so many could ask a question such as “Can you love God and feminism,” given the media’s attention on fundamentalism and right-wing extremist’s ties to evangelicals, what’s equally disturbing is when I find feminist bloggers conflating religious groups with the terms conservatives,”pro-lifers,” and then add some sort of an insulting name because the author thinks religion and conservatism go hand in hand. Much like how feminists go hand in hand with other stereotypes, right?

With privilege, I’ve attended Catholic schools my entire life, from pre-school to graduate school. I’ve genuflected before crucifixes everyday of my existence, including the rebellion years and the periods of tumultuous resistance. I grew up with rosaries in my hands, and penance room visits on Saturday afternoon. I went through the whole blind acceptance, acidic rebellion, and then painful self-doubt. Here is what I know after 29 years of Catholicism and Feminism: neither is perfect, nor am I.

Feminism is about liberation. It is about the deepest analysis of and against the intersecting powers of racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, sizeism, and ethnocentrism that enslave ALL marginalized persons, but most especially women. Feminism recognizes, as well, that just as women are enslaved, it positions men into false characters they often do not wish to be, but in the absence of alternatives and voice, they become culprits to kyriarchal practices of domination.

In my religion of choice, Catholicism, it is about endless efforts to love others and ourselves. It is sorely educated in many gradeschools and children are short-changed from the start with cartoon coloring books and three ring circus holiday distractions. But the beauty of its symbolism and its disarming dedication to the marginalized captivates me again and again. Believe me, I know and understand its problems with women, sexuality, power, and choice, but after a lifetime of studying it, I stand with Rachel A. R. Bundang who states in “This is Not Your Mother’s Catholic Church,” in the anthology Pinay Power, “…Catholicism’s cultural significance and its ties to who I am as a Filipina are thick as blood itself. My experience of the Church cannot be encapsulated in a single sticking point and is greater than one sole controversy.”

What I’m saying is that religion and feminism are not easy. They’re difficult terrain to cross and explain. But I do know that the exploration of self within both is a thrilling journey, but both sides – religion and feminism – need to re-evaluate how we write and use language, how quick we are to interchange descriptors like “religious” and “conservative” or “feminist” and “pro-choice.” Regular everyday people – you and I – are much more than these lables and the language we choose to communicate with one another needs to make room for the reality that feminism is growing and we need our language to reflect that complexity. We do ourselves a disservice when we intentionally or unintentionally exlude activists when we point our verbal guns at communities of faith. As a small sample (in my research, I typically read Christian and Catholic feminists), here are just a few of the most courageous and inspiring lovers of both God and feminism:

Joan Chittister is one of the greatest writers on contemporary feminist spirituality. Her anti-war speeches are legendary. Mary John Mananzan is one of the most prolific writers I have ever researched. Her views on women and prostitution in Challenges to the Inner Room enriched my feminism in unspeakable ways. The term kyriarchy that I wrote about which has been so well received in the feminist blogosphere was created by Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, one of the pioneers of feminist biblical interpretation and with whom I had the honor of studying under and stood forever changed. Leela Fernandes wrote Transforming Feminist Practice and advocates for a spiritualized feminism if it wants to survive and, more importantly, succeed.

I don’t believe any of these women would laugh at me if I asked them, “Can you love God and feminism?” I think they’d be silent, as they wouldn’t see a distinction between the two.

Cross-posted at Bitch Magazine.

Spiritual Inclusion

Published on by Lisa

And because I am a trampoline-bouncing advocate for standing up to binary camps and labels, this specific call in the Reproductive Rights debate struck a chord with me. Though it doesn’t address the issue in the usual angle I like (WOC being in the thrust of the issue), I do resonate with the need for spiritual inclusion.

Via Incite Magazine: Faithfully Pro-Choice?
Why the Reproductive Justice Movement Needs to Give Pro-Choice Religious and Spiritual Voices a Seat at the Table

In a world of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, it’s tempting for the progressive movement to write off religious people entirely. In this article, pro-choice activist and Christian minister Matthew Fox discusses the importance of including spiritual and religious voices in progressive movements in general, and in the movement for reproductive justice in particular.

By: Rev. Matthew Fox

Submission for Catholic Women’s Experience

Published on by Lisa

I am submitting this essay for consideration to be included in an anthology that explores the catholic women’s experience. Copywrited, 2007.

There Are No Memoirs

What would you say if I said that I feel forgotten by God?

Would you say that it’s ludicrous because God never forgets? That I must not have strong faith? That I should pray more frequently? Or would you say that I am an ill-hearted pessimist hoping to smear the windows of the pretty blue churches?

What would you say if I reconsidered and posed that perhaps it isn’t God who is forgetting me, but rather, it is I who is allowing me to be forgotten? Is it then my lapse? Would you abandon your once ready pep talk about God’s eternal memory and reach in for a different sermon index card with “Spiritual Motivation!” in the headline instead?

What if neither of those are the answers? Suppose what I have to say is not really a memoir of statements or a collection of unreleased womanly truths about Catholicism. What if in my chance as a Catholic, first generation Filipina – who was told to shut up; who wept into the hard wooden pews; who was told to give and give until my soul bled; who mind-cursed at priests; and was told to be a sacrificial lamb for others and to forgive regardless of apology – I chose not to provide a self-testament, but a question?

Simply put, I just don’t have the desire anymore to tell the highlighted stories about my life, about the cultural split of being raised in a White western society by immigrant parents with inflexible Filipino Catholicism, or how my first and only love once left me to go to seminary. I’m too drained to once more expand upon my experience with church scandal and betrayal, symbolism, and pain. A hundred times already have I expounded upon the circular journey of finding strength and resilience in the Catholic Church. No one really listened before. So, why ask now about my seemingly unsettling identity as a Catholic Radical f(P)eminist of color? Would anyone, anymore listen? Would one more narrative really crack the walls of the church?

In my ephemeral, naïve days, I believed, yes. I believed that solely because it was my story, my voice, and my life it actually would crack the church walls from the inside. However, that kind of belief system breathes egocentric air and the church has had its full of pompous, one-way leaders who believe their footpath is strikingly similar to the road to Calvary. That kind of leadership resembles mixing oil with holy water. Not even with a thousand furious stirs, those two elements will not fuse.

In the place of a one-dimensional scorecard, I began spending more time sifting complexity, paradox, and metaphor. Asking questions swallowed me to a deeper space. I began asking questions. Not the lamenting or accusatory questions that prompt defensiveness and spit dogma, but the arrowed questions that cannot and should not be denied. The kind of questions you must never attempt to swerve around or risk silencing. They are the hinting questions that indicate perhaps most of our problems are not that we ourselves are terribly wrong, but rather we have narrowly shortchanged the creativity of our Creator. Where is the sin in truth-seeking and truthful inquiry? I figured that if the Church will not take my answers, then the Church must take my questions.

It is my prayer, my winged breath that my questions rock the core of so many leaders who have painted the Holy Spirit as a flying dove with a scroll in its mouth delivering its message to the “Chosen.” It is my desperation, not my hope that carries me forward. It is desperation for change, for urgent change because the young are being kidnapped far too swiftly and easily by indifference. Because the elderly are being treated as fragile and dying plants that simply need nutrition, not love, attention, and presence. Because more and more people are hiding from relationship, retreating from genuine struggle, and plugging their ears with devices to channel out any chance of forming community. We are becoming weak with excessive bravado and we are foolish to believe compassionate understanding alone is enough for the ostracized to feel embraced. I am desperate because so many believe contemporary faith is having answers in the face of adversity, numbing pain with pretension, and relieving any discomfort with pills, falsities, and cowardice. The absence of conflict is not an answer. That’s emptiness. Exonerated answers or pretending to have the answers only obstructs the hearing canal of our faith.

This is my experience as a catholic woman: to be fierce, not certain; to resurrect despite being discounted; to be transparent, not invisible. I do not believe one documented essay can uphold or attempt to record my life experience or that even a collection of Wisdom will save me or reveal something unknown. It is my desperate prayer that my question, my burning confusion will light someone else’s way so that our reflections are not about ourselves and our journeys, but more about providing light so I can see your face and you can see mine.

Before you is a question, not a statement. It is a 28-year-old offering, not a gift, of possibility and what could be, not what actually is. I can only share my Divinity, not in certitude, but in faith that it will be received, hopefully considered, or maybe even celebrated.

My question, among many, remains: What is so consuming in the church that it cannot hear my screaming?

The F/Peminist Catholic

Published on by Lisa

As a Spanish Filipina, one of the most complex elements of life is faith. Faith is not just the Catholic Church. Faith, for me, incorporates relationships, love, and family. My faith is the beating heart of my life. From what gives life, I believe, is my faith in Something larger than the human mind’s comprehension, and therefore, is considered sacred.

My relationship to catholicism is complicated by all the human conditions that I have been raised with: immigration, translation, ethnic shame, and ignorance. But it is a strong relationship. I know no other kinds of relationships other than strong ones. Despite all the destructive and narrow aspects of the human leadership I have experienced in the Church, I nonetheless, still believe in the power of Something larger and I believe in the spirituality of progress and growth.

As a peminist ([Filipina-American feminism or Pinayism]the “f” sound is not found in Filipino dialect and was enforced by the Spanish’s conquest and King Phillip – note the “PH” sound in Phillip), there is an often disruptive relationship between peminism and catholicism. The Philippines is largely Catholic, something like 90% of the Philippines identifies catholic, and there is no divorce either.

If you are Christian, you may be observing Holy Thursday today. This marks the beginning of the holiest time of the year in the Catholic Church. It is a time of solemnity, sacrifice, deep prayer, and observance. It gives way to Easter Sunday, the fireworks of all Holidays for the Catholic. (In addition, I can have movie popcorn again make it at home during Grey’s Anatomy. This sounds trivial, but you have no idea.)

So, for those of you who identify with the Catholic Church and concern over its well-being, here is a link. It’s a survey asking for any Catholic, under the age of 40 to answer questions pertaining to the future of the church and your personal experience. I had much to say, surprise, surprise.

But, I believe in supporting any kind of initiative that tries to gather opinion from the young. I believe that, despite what my experience tells me, the leadership, or at least some of the leadership, cares about what I, a young Catholic woman, thinks. This effort stems from someone in the the D.C area, surprise, surprise, and I encourage all who observe these holy days of the year, to contribute your thoughts to this survey.

In English:

http://www.emergingmodels.org/survey/catholic_diocesan.htm

En Espanol:

http://www.emergingmodels.org/survey/catholic_diocesanSP.htm