EMPOWERMENT AND
SPIRITUALITY
Frank Carpenter, D. Min.;
March 26, 2006.
This morning is the last
Sunday in Women’s History Month, and the first Sunday of Spring. It might seem an ideal time to tell the
story, as often Unitarian Universalists do, of Persephone as our story for Children’s
Time.
Persephone is the goddess of the underworld in Greek mythology. She is the
daughter of Zeus and
Demeter, goddess
of the harvest. Persephone was such a beautiful young woman that everyone loved
her, even Hades
wanted her for himself. One day, when she was collecting flowers on the plain
of Enna, the earth suddenly opened and Hades rose up from the gap and abducted
her. None but Zeus, and the all-seeing sun, Helios, had noticed it.
Broken-hearted,
Demeter wandered the earth, looking for her daughter until Helios revealed what
had happened. Demeter was so angry that she withdrew herself in loneliness, and
the earth ceased to be fertile. Knowing this could not continue much longer,
Zeus sent Hermes
down to Hades to make him release Persephone. Hades grudgingly agreed, but
before she went back he gave Persephone a pomegranate. When she later ate of
it, it bound her to underworld forever and she had to stay there one-third of
the year. The other months she stayed with her mother. When Persephone was in
Hades, Demeter refused to let anything grow and winter began. This myth is a symbol
of the budding and dying of nature. [ http://www.pantheon.org/articles/p/persephone.html
]
I didn’t use this story
for children this morning. Why? What is this story about? We UU’s often use it as a myth about
spring. Some feminist theologians have
used it as a story about the great power of a mother’s love. One might also tell the story as having
several layers, perhaps some coming before the time of patriarchy, and indeed,
maybe it is in part about the victory of patriarchy over a previous way of
organizing human society.
The reason I did not use
the story with our children this morning, and most likely will never do so
again, is that I read Carol Lee Flinders AT THE ROOT OF THIS LONGING, these
past few weeks in preparation for this sermon.
Flinders recounts the Greek myth as part of her retelling of the
abduction of a thirteen year old girl in
Flinders’ home town in
Much of Flinders’ book of
feminist spirituality is about patriarchy’s war on women. Once having seen the Persephone myth as about
the abduction of a young woman, it is something we hear continuously about on television
news. It is inappropriate story to tell
children – unless of course one wants to instill patriarchy.
My reading of Flinders
book was not what I had expected. A
powerful, wonderful book, it wasn’t however what I read it for. And I am thankful.
I came across Flinders’
book while reading another book I also suggest for those interested in
spirituality, Leigh Schmidt’s RESTLESS SOULS.
At one point Schmidt is
talking about the William James take on spirituality, how the “athletic attitude”
of will power and self-improvement which seemed so prevalent in James’ day,
tends, James argue, to “break down.”
Schmidt quotes James;
To
suggest will and effort to one all sicklied o’er with the sense of irremediable
impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness,
to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying
and failing as he is. Well, we are all
such helpless failures in the last resort. (Schmidt, page 223).
In this acknowledgment of
absolute dependence and unalterable human limitation, only religious experience
can come to “our rescue”; only then can the “will to assert ourselves and hold
our own” be displaced by a willingness to close our months and be as nothing in
the floods and waterspouts of god.”
Schmidt finds the new American
spirituality has moved beyond this, to an exploration of polarities: of finitude alongside freedom, resignation alongside
autonomy, submission alongside assertion.”
Not either / or but both/and.
That caught my
attention. My long term involvement with
Twelve Step spirituality has made me sensitive to spiritual paradoxes. Some times Twelve Step meetings get into arguments
as to whether the Twelve Steps are a selfish program or a selfless program. A basic rule of Twelve Step programs is to
take proper care of oneself. An illustration
often heard comes from flying. When you
are on a plane, before taking off the attendant tells you about the use of the
oxygen mask. After telling you how to use
them, he will add, in case you are flying with a child, put your own mask on
before you put on the mask of the child, so you will be able to do it all. On the other hand, the Twelve Steps offer as
a basic solution to being mired in one’s own problems and self-pity: get out of
your own problems and help somebody else.
Forget your problems by working on someone else’s problems. Is that
selfish or unselfish?
Paradoxes, I like
paradoxes I guess. Perhaps nothing is so
teasing as sorting out paradoxes about ourselves. Carol Flinders tell us of Catherine
of Genoa’s famous claim, “My me is
God!”
Okay… What is that about? And my favorite statement of the paradoxes of
self is Jesus remark as reported by Mark [8:34], “For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life … shall save it.”
Balancing what seems to
me almost contradictory truths about our human condition appeal to me. Thus: spirituality and empowerment. Do we hold on to what we believe, or do we
let go and let god?
And so when Schmidt tells
us about Flinders book, I was quite taken.
He wrote,
Was
the feminist vision of full, emancipation and equality compatible with the
religious desire to “unseat the ego”? In
a culture that often still enshrines male authority at the expense of female
“voice,” how could she possibly accept religious enjoinders to silence and selflessness? Hadn’t women’s desires been demonized for too
long to submit to contemplative practices that hallowed the concentrated mind
over the sensuous body” (Schmidt, 224f)
That interested me. And because my partner Jacquie reads a lot in
feminist theology and womanish spirituality, I bought a copy of Flinders book
for her. And then I read it. And it was different from what I expected.
The first question that
came up was whether I could really preach about it? Could I talk about feminism? I entered the ministry in the early days of
the civil rights movement. Friends in seminary
were involved in the Black Power movement.
I became very sensitive about trying to recount what it means to be
black. Can I as a white man know what it
means to be a black woman?
Some years later, a friend
in ministry, someone I mentored a bit, was an indigenous American. We had a number of conversations about me being
white and her Indian. Some years later,
she was in the UU organization called DRUUMM.
DRUUMM stands for Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist
Multicultural Ministries: A UU People Of Color Organization. [ http://www.druumm.org/ ]
A number of members took
a strong stand on the appropriation of the cultures of indigenous peoples and
other groups. My friend argued that
whites should not use native American chants and prayers. And that makes some sense to me. Slowly, however, I knew while there is a good
case for that point of view, my understanding of what it means to be a Unitarian
Universalist is that our diversity is about understanding one another. If I cannot use Indian prayers, can I lead a
UU congregation? Indeed, can I
understand someone else if I cannot repeat what they have said?
It seems to me that it’s
like learning language. If I am prohibited
from learning Arabic, how will I understand what Arabic speakers are saying? Yes, I may never speak Arabic very well, but
in my commitment to mutual understanding, I need to try, rather than, -- as
might be argued – keep silence.
Should I be silent when
it comes to feminism? Should I never
talk about patriarchy? It may be true
that I never fully appreciate the damage patriarchy has done, but then, are we
not all learning, some further along the path than others? So, if for no other reason than to interest
you in Flinders wonderful work, I am risking talking about feminism.
Following a number of feminist
writers and scholars, Flinders talks about the War on Women. The story of Persephone, seen as the
abduction of young girl, is but a brief mention. The major myth that overarches
the book is the abduction of the heroine of the great Hindu legend, the
Mahabharata..
What I found clearest was
the story of Carol Gilligan’s research at the
My encounter with Flinders
book was very moving, at times very personal. She, of course, emphasizes
women’s relationships. At one point she
says, “the historical lineage among women must be restored … so that we see
ourselves in continuity with our own grandmothers and the other women of our own
ethnic or religious background.” ( page 322)
As with the story of
Persephone, much attention is given to the mother daughter relationship, the importance
of mothers as mentors and guides. I was reminded very much of my relationship
with my own mother, when Flinders spoke of,
an
interview with the authors of Mother
Daughter Revolution, who were describing the anger and indignation felt by adolescent
girls when they realize what kind of sacrifices their mothers have made to survive
in a male-centered world and they wonder whether they will have to make them
also. They feel betrayed, say the
authors, and worse that that, “generation after generation, daughters translate
betrayal by the culture into a betrayal by their mothers. Ironically and tragically, mothers are blamed
for the very betrayal that they themselves suffered” (page 282)
My mother died when I was
an adolescent, 15 years old. I had watched
her die for several years before any medical diagnoses – pancreatic cancer. My
father, her much beloved husband and clearly a member of the patriarchy, had
died when I was two. She was in her late fifties, finding a job became harder
and harder. I clearly remember that when
I was thirteen she told me she wanted to turn the gas oven on and put her head
in it. I watched her disappear - I guess
is one way of putting it.
And to read in Flinders of
betrayal made a lot of sense. I’m not
sure my mother, even though well college educated, could have admitted her
sense of betrayal by her husband and male culture. Perhaps it was her belief in it that did her
in, as at some level she knew my father had betrayed her, promising that his friends
would find a pension for her and me.
Yes, that makes sense for
me; Flinders helped me understand my mother.
For a few minutes, I imagined my mother and I sitting on the couch where
I was reading, just being comfortable with one another. I felt I understood her better. I felt closer to her, and still do, by reading
this book.
I did not find the resolution
of my intellectual paradoxes in Flinders book, which is why I picked it
up. Rather, an urge to spiritual
practice transcends our intellectual conundrums. Through spiritual practice, we
deepen our relationship with ourselves; we come to intuitively know how to
handle situations that once baffled us.
Just reading her book, relishing
her style, is spiritual experience.
Other practices she suggests
include singing. She likes to quote Bernice
Johnson Reagan, “the singing is running this sound through your body. You cannot sing a song, and not change your
condition.” (page 333)
Another practice she
suggests to her friends is reciting a mantra, some prayer or phrase that can be
used repetitively in meditation. At the
end of her book, she tells of a friend of hers, Suzanne. They occasionally talked about meditation,
but Suzanne, Flinders says, “was as adamantly resistant .. to the idea of
meditation.”
As her breast cancer
recurred for the third time, however, Suzanne began to think it might not be a
bad idea to have a mantra. Suzanne
rejected any mantras Flinders suggested as too theistic. Flinders rejected several that Suzanne
suggested, as lacking the depth old mantras have.
One night Flinders got a
call. Suzanne called saying, she had
found her mantra. It was from Julian of Norwich,
“All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well…”
(333)
Flinders was astonished
as Julian of Norwich was her thesis topic at UC Berkeley and knew the quote
well, a number of her friends having set it to song and sung it over and over
for hours.
At Suzanne’s memorial
service another friend told how Suzanne came by this mantra that kept her
company in the darkest hours. As she was
weakening, one day Suzanne called another friend and asked her to sing with her
over the phone. They ended up singing Julian
of Norwich’s’ mantra, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner
of thing will be well…” over and over.
And so Suzanne’s friends sang goodbye to her on an August afternoon in a
room filled with light.
Spiritual practice will deepen
us and lead us beyond such confusions as whether to speak or to be silent,
whether to assert ourselves or still our desires. We too can recite a mantra over and over
again:
“All will be well, and
all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well…”