Happy Oshun Day

Shakti reminds us that today is Oshun day.

Lovely.

Speaking of ocean Goddesses, I encountered Hi'iaki (Pele's sister) in a number of different guises during our trip to Hawaii this year. But more on that another time.

Happy Oshun Day to all here. The blessings of Yemaya be with you and yours.

You can see more photos like these at the Personal Altars group.

I would also recommend taking a look at Green Kali's self portrait as Yemaya Okute, and her Yemaya altar, as well as her other photos. She also keeps a hurricane diary.

Sia

Photo: Happy Oshun Day by Shakti Womyn

Related Articles:

Building an Altar

Robert Ballard on Exploring The Ocean's Hidden Worlds
(My thanks to Captain Lightning for the link to this video)

Recovering From Our Culture: Why Words Matter
Excerpt: The Blessings of the Goddess

To embrace the womanly part of the divine, to see ourselves as holy, connected and worthy is a necessary part of our spiritual practice and our personal healing. One way we do that, is to find that part of the sacred that is also a part of you and me...To be honest, I think that the nature of the divine is beyond the issues of gender, race and culture. I also believe that divine is connected to all these at the same time. When I perform a Celtic rites to celebrate Bridget, I am connected to all the Celtic women in my line, and to all of the power and the sacredness that this implies. As women who were told that only men could do or be certain things, we find healing in rejecting that negativity and power in supporting our precious and poetic spirit.

Oprah's Pagan Teachings

Yamaya must be smiling....

According to The Religion Blog at the Dallas News, Oprah's Book Club is promoting Paganism:

The latest selection of Oprah's Book Club is "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle.

Balderdash, says Michael Craven, founding director of the Center for Christ & Culture.

Craven, a strong proponent of "orthodox Christianity," writes on his blog for Crosswalk.com, that the book is little more than a New Age recycling of ancient Buddhist teachings.

This is bad, in Craven's eyes, because, well, because Buddhism isn't Christianity....he books like Tolle's "are nothing but spiritualized self-help and repackaged paganism that serve to deceive and divert people from the One True God and the salvation that comes only through Jesus Christ."

According to The Guardian:

Winfrey's decision to include self-help book A New Earth in her book club, and embark on a global promotional campaign, has turned it into this year's publishing sensation, boosting sales of the Penguin Books title from 500,000 to four million, a far greater uplift than winning the Man Booker prize might generate.

The American book market grew by 2 per cent in 2007, and Winfrey was responsible for half that expansion, according to Penguin's chief executive John Makinson, a former journalist who took over at Penguin in June 2002. The American Association of Book Publishers says the US market was worth $24.2bn in 2006, so Winfrey provided the industry with a $250m fillip last year.

Chuck (rewrite the Constitution for a Christian nation) Norris had this to say in an article titled Oprah's New Easter:

Since Oprah's endorsement of Tolle's book a month ago, about 3.5 million copies of his spiritual self-help guide have been sent out to enlighten the minds of people around the globe. More than 500,000 people in 125 countries have signed up for the World Wide Web seminar.

But will this religious text and its subsequent Internet churchlike gathering really lead you and our world to God's gates of splendor? Is it merely a coincidence that Winfrey and Tolle's spiritual quest aligns with one of Christendom's most sacred times of year? To me, it is more evidence of the paradigm shift in our culture from its moral absolute and Judeo-Christian basis to a relativistic worldview, in which anything goes and everything is tolerated. The fact is Tolle's "A New Earth" is being adopted and transformed into Oprah's new Easter.

...Tolle himself doesn't align with any one religion but blends tenets of Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sufism, Christianity and other faiths. A review in The Vancouver Sun said of Tolle:

"His spiritual outlook has become more complex since (his earlier book) The Power of Now, when he dismissed external reality as an illusion and made it sound as if 'living in the now' was a panacea for all the world's problems. …

"In addition, Tolle believes outer realities -- including politics, war, poverty and even the climate -- will magically be transformed when individuals change their inner consciousness. This may be true, but only to an extent."

...."The reason Tolle's psychology and spirituality is marketed so easily is that it is an eclectic mix of conventional and unconventional wisdom, and Western and Eastern beliefs, presented in a tolerant, non-threatening and nonsectarian way."

Horrors. Tolerance, interfaith dialogue, and unconventional wisdom. We can't be having that.

Mary Friedal-Hunt says this about the book:

I just finished reading "A New Earth" by Eckhart Tolle, a book that sees humanity more and more evolving to the place where we live with awareness, consciousness, in each moment. He explains that the past is over, the future does not exist and that life only happens in the now, the present moment. Think about that.

Yes, please. Speaking as a Pagan, I would like more people to think about that.

What would the world look like if we loved living, really loved it, and wanted other people to be as happy as we are, in the here and now? So much would have to change.

Common Ground.com says that:

A New Earth is a profound guide for creating a better way of living and a better world to live in. At the core of the teachings lies the transformation of consciousness, a spiritual awakening that Eckhart Tolle sees as the next step in human evolution. This is a prerequisite not only to achieve personal happiness, but also to end the violent conflict endemic on our planet. Visit eckharttolle.com.

The New York Times is not quite so enamoured:

His secret, according to fans, publishing industry experts and booksellers, is packing thousands of years of teaching — from Buddha, Jesus, Shakespeare and even the Rolling Stones — into what one of his publishers, Constance Kellough, called “a clean contemporary bottle.”

“He essentially taken some of the wisdom of the ages and said, ‘Let me make this easier for you,’ ” said Vivien L. Jennings, a major independent bookseller in Fairway, Kan. “And you don’t have to read 20 books to get this wisdom. I’ll give it to you in a $14 paperback.”

What's most interesting to me is the fact that she has chosen to use the web as a huge world classroom. This has been talked about for years, but Oprah is making is happen. Leslie Poston tells us how Ms. Winfrey is reaching out to her audience:

Oprah is bringing her magic touch to the web. She has recently ventured into offering podcasts of interviews on iTunes, and teaching classes online using Silverlight and Skype....

You may not like Oprah. You may even think that she homogenizes everything from literature to news to make it all palatable to the Oprah Army. But you can't deny that she has done more to get people involved in reading, charity, self improvement and more over the decades than just about any other female public figure in recent memory. If Oprah sets her sights on something, chances are it will give whatever it is a boost into the stratosphere.

Oprah has now set her sights on using the internet to reach her viewing audience in a new and interactive way. Whether or not the subject matter is worthwhile is beside the point in this equation. What makes this interesting are the tools Oprah has chosen.

Silverlight is a new tool by Microsoft that is designed to be a competitor to Adobe Flash. Perhaps because it is saddled with the Microsoft label and a high price tag for developers, it has had trouble gaining traction against the now-standard Flash. Having Oprah in its corner could do wonders to give it the toehold it needs to be around long enough to compete against the existing giant, Flash.

The other tool chosen by Oprah is Skype. Skype has been around for a while now as a way to make cheap calls, video chat and instant message. It has had trouble catching on with multi-taskers like myself because it doesn't offer a way to use its IM feature in a program like Adium or Trillian. It's quite popular with people looking to make cheap phone calls and a reliable video chat; however, and this could push it out into the mainstream by showing it to less tech savvy people who may not have heard of it before now.

Thus far, I have only read the reviews of Tolle's book. Frankly, I am less interested in Oprah's message - which seems fairly benign and very familiar to us Pagans; yet another a user-friendly rehash of what other earthwise and metaphysical writers have been saying for centuries (1) ) - then I am in the medium she's using to conduct her classes. Does this wired trail she's blazing mean that other progressive teachers and writers can do the same sort of world-wide teaching? Perhaps. I look forward to seeing this play out.

As far as I'm concerned, if Oprah helps a few more people find a compassionate, aware path that compliments (and respects) my own, then more power to her. As things stand, Mamma Ocean needs all the help she can get.

Sia
Honor the Past, Celebrate the Present, Create the Future

(1) Including, let us note, Progressive Christians and Ecofeminists

Related Articles:

Gut Wisdom and Miss Oprah

Links:

African Goddess Culture (video at Youtube)

Art: Yemeya by Thalia Took

Recovering From Our Culture: Why Words Matter

Off the Shelf:

She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World by Carol P. Christ

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Live Girls) - Daisy Hernández, Bushra Rehman (Editors)

Crones Don't Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women by Jean Shinoda Bolen

Many Roads One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps by Dr. Charlotte Kasl.

A series of recent events has got me thinking about words and the power they hold.

During the Civil Rights era, a famous case called Brown vs Board of Education challenged the White's Only school policy in the south. (1) Attorneys with the NAACP (future justice Thurgood Marshall among them) used Kenneth Clark's Doll Study to show the psychological effects of the so-called "separate but equal" system on black children. In this study, psychologists showed little black children two dolls, one black and one white, and asked them to describe them. They described the white dolls as beautiful, smart, and sweet. They described the black dolls - the ones that looked just like them - as ugly stupid and lazy. That is how insidious Jim Crow culture was; little children clearly understood the comments, behavior and assumptions of adults around them and they interpreted this to mean that that they did not matter, and were somehow consider less worthy than other people by their very nature. (1)

We have made progress as a culture, and it was evident when the Women of Rutgers stood up with dignity and grace and pride and denounced the insults they had received.

And we still have a long ways to go.

Why This Matters:

When someone tells me that it doesn't matter that generations of girls grew up with a white, male god, and were told that they were not allowed to be priests, and were somehow more sinful (because of Eve's disobedience, and their own sexual nature), and that they were even occasions of sin in others and must be shamed and shut away, then I say this:

What we say and how we say it matters a great deal. The images we use, the words we use, the assumptions about power and worth we hold in mainstream culture all suggest that men are better and women are less important, even less important to God, because we are not, after all, made in "His" lordly image.

Inclusion

We are told that these are just words and that they should not matter. We are criticized for making too much out of too little. The same thing was said when the NAACP objected to the disgraceful treatment of their people in the Jim Crow south. A "Whites Only" sign is more then just words.

The Witches' Voice recently published an amusing, heartfelt and thought provoking article by Rabbi Geoffrey Dennis on the challenge posed by including everyone at our spiritual table. It is based on his experience as the only non-Christian in the room on Texas Clergy Day:

The superintendent, an affable old scion of Texas, began talking about church-state separation. Not so much about how it limits church participation in the public schools, really, but more about how were the best ways for ministers to work around it. ....That means, ” he continued, “that we’re not going to allow hate groups like the Klan, neo-Nazis, or Wiccans get access to our children…”

As if seized by a dybbuk, my innate Jewish need to kibitz took me over. My hand shot in the air. Flustered by the interruption, he paused mid-presentation. “…Yes?”

“Excuse me, I’m Rabbi Dennis, I’m new to the area, but did I understand that you just lumped Wiccans in with hate groups?”

“Well, yes, we feel…”

“Pardon me, ” I went on, “But Wiccans are not a hate group, they are a religious movement – they have chaplains in the United States military, for God’s sake – and they are entitled to the same access as any other religious group. And as for this whole concept of ‘limited equal access’, ”I went on, “That sounds like code for ‘selective access’ – if you are going to allow any religious groups to operate inside the schools, then you have to allow all religions to do so, that’s the law…”

It was all boilerplate religious freedom rhetoric, but at the time I suddenly felt like I was a Jew arguing for freedom of conscious before the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

My speech effectively ended the presentation. He muttered a summary statement and invited us to enjoy the cold cuts buffet. As for my fellow clergy, half sat in aghast silence, the other half buzzed among themselves in amused whispers. At lunch one of the Methodist ministers simply chuckled and said to me, “Well, you certainly know how to kill a party.”

A Modest Proposal:

To anyone who thinks that words still do not matter, and that I should just read "her" whenever I read "him" or or see "her" when the image is male, I say this:

I would like to offer a modest proposal. It's this: Men have had power over the history we read, the words we use, the money we spend and the wars we fight for centuries. They have carved and painted images of the powerful male for us to admire and portrayed women as the weaker sex. They have projected this patriarchal view of Father God and Male Leader for over 5,000 years and hidden any evidence to the contrary. Now it's our turn.

We will use only Her words and Her images for the next 5,000 years. Only women can be Priests and Presidents, and let's not pay men anywhere near what we make for the same work (assuming we let them do that work at all). Let literature, film and music portray women as powerful and men as weak tools and victims and then let us use our religions to suggest that they have a good but lesser place, and that is in the home. We will control their sexual behavior and their reproductive rights, of course, because they are not mature enough to make these decisions on their own. Meanwhile, our charming boys can "rule" the domestic sphere, and we women will honor them for their dedication and compassion by praising them from the pulpit while refusing to pass, let alone fund, child care, health care, education reform or social initiatives that would serve them and their families.

And here we ask (as another modest proposal once did), "Who in their right minds would want to subjugate, humiliate and legislate another human being in this way?"

It's a long list - How much time ya got?

The Blessings of the Goddess

To embrace the womanly part of the divine, to see ourselves as holy, connected and worthy is a necessary part of our spiritual practice and our personal healing. One way we do that, is to find that part of the sacred that is also a part of you and me.

To be honest, I think that the nature of the divine is beyond the issues of gender, race and culture. I also believe that divine is connected to all these at the same time. When I perform a Celtic rites to celebrate Bridget, I am connected to all the Celtic women in my line, and to all of the power and the sacredness that this implies. As women who were told that only men could do or be certain things, we find healing in rejecting that negativity and power in supporting our precious and poetic spirit.

Pagans and Others in Recovery:

Words are dangerous when they support ignorance and hate, but they can also have a less obvious, but insidious effect. One example of this would be the experience of Pagans and others in traditional 12 Step groups.

Pagans, feminists, gays and lesbians and people of color often don't feel welcome in rooms where God is (always and only) spoken of as a white male Christian construct. Supposedly, these are non-denomination meetings, but Pagans and others know that the Christian bias in 12 Step meetings (as well as the heterosexual bias, the well meaning, but limited world view in their literature, and the outdated assumptions about addict and codependent psychology) is a very touchy subject.

Some of their members get it. Many don't.

Why are you so upset, they ask? This isn't a Christian God at these meetings. We clearly state that we speak of "God (singular) as you understand Him."

(sigh)

Pay no attention to the use of The Lord's Prayer after every meeting.

The use of this Christian Testament prayer is not enshrined in either the 12 Steps or the 12 Traditions. It is simply a habit, and a bad one at that. These are good and decent people, overall, but it does not occur to them to wonder if a Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist person would feel welcome at a meeting that insists on saying this prayer. I don't believe that 12 Steps meetings do this to be mean (although I could wish that they would open their minds and their hearts a bit wider). I believe that they are comfortable sitting in the middle of the mainstream and they just don't get it that others follow a different, and equally valid path.

So, here we are, back at my modest proposal: Let's start today by rewriting all the texts in AA to say only "Goddess as you understand Her" and talk only of "God the Mother" as a Black African female, and speak only of Yemaya and never Christ in these meetings. I'm sure it won't matter. It's only words, after all.

Focusing on the Solution:

Some Pagans in Recovery choose to attend Spiral Steps meetings or Pagan-only 12 Step meetings, and avoid traditional 12 Step groups entirely. Some Pagans cherish the fellowship (sic) and recovery that they find in traditional meetings so much that they simply find ways to live with the language. Some Pagans go because these traditional meetings are the only available recovery meetings in their area. (2) I know Pagans and feminists who attend traditional meetings, but they also use words like Her, Goddess and Mother when they do the readings, and in their shares. And if some of the AA old guard find that it bit jarring when they hear that then perhaps it will cause them to question how women have felt in hearing Him, God and Father for so long. (3)

Where Do We Go From Here?

Firing one idiotic shock jock for calling a team of beautiful, strong, educated young women "nappy headed Ho's" doesn't even begin to cover the extent of harm done spiritually, psychologically and physically to women all over the world that the use of such language and the assumptions behind it support. Although it was a nice start. One hopes that people will remember those splendid students, and let Don Imus fade into obscurity, where he belongs. As the mainstream media turns it's attention to other matters (I hear that Paris is in the news again) let us continue this dialog among ourselves, but let's take it further afield. Questioning the words we use, all the words, sacred, sexual and mundane, is a sure, firm step towards healing.

Sia

(1) These were, in fact, a series of cases.

(2) For information on finding or starting a Spiral Steps group in your area, write to Dj at info@spiralsteps.org or visit the website to join the cyber support group: www.spiralsteps.org

(3) For more in this issue, read Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps by Dr. Charlotte Kasl.