Re: More on Ecofeminism and Spirituality

[Dancing Hummingbird /aka Joy Williams]

And let us not oppress religion or spirituality either.  

I want to point out that it is neither the religion (which is NOT the same
as spirituality) nor the spirituality which is in those religions which is
responsible for the atrocities you have mentioned.  It is the institutions
in charge of the religions which did those things, usually motivated by
greed and a desire to possess things.  It is the attachment involved in
wishing to control things, including thought. 

Society has for a few thousand year been suffering under the pathology 
of a power-over paradigm which seeks to diminish diversity, to 
desacralize (and that means to take away the sacredness of something by 
how we treat it, whether that be nature or woman or race or culture) 
people and nature so that they are no longer beings in their own right, 
with their own inherent Divinity, but rather objects to be owned or 
resources to be exploited.  

This can all be laid at the feet of the Patriarchal paradigm, because by 
separating the Divine from the world, you then can have an excuse to 
exploit it.  As soon as the Earth became "objectified" as something to 
have "dominion over" then every thing started sliding downhill.  I have a 
wonderful essay about this in Truth or Dare by Starhawk, which if I have 
time, will scan and download.

It is my contention that the moment we take the sacred, the spiritual out 
of our work is the moment we create the problems that we have today.  To 
separate the spiritual healing out of our work is buying into the 
paradigm that created the problems we are fighting.  As many physicians 
are finally understanding, the key to healing is not only treating the 
symptoms but treating the sufferer completely, mind, body and spirit.  If 
we approach our work as activists and only treat the mind and body of the 
sufferer then we leave out a critical part of treatment, which is the 
spirit, and which is in this pathology of Western Culture, the most 
wounded aspect of all.  When we connect to the sacred in nature and each 
other (and I don't care what way you do it), then that gives us the heart 
and we learn compassion, and our motivations are not strictly from the 
place of anger or frustration, but from love and mystery.

Having worked on both issues of the women's movement and environmental
degradation for years, I have witnessed burn out so many times as to
wonder how we keep going at all.  The people who have kept going and DON'T
get burnt out as dramatically are the ones who keep the sacred and
spiritual alive in them and see it all around. Whether that spirituality
means the love you have for your family or fellow activists, a religious
organization or daily walks in the woods, it doesn't really matter,
whatever works for you. 

When i worked at the Environmental Defense Fund, in the center of DC, 
many of the folks there rarely ever left the city and got back in touch 
with the essense of what they were working so hard to preserve.  That is 
why EDF decided to insist that people go and "re-connect" with nature 
(which is, as i said, what "religion" means, to "re-connect").


I think that it is interesting that you mentioned the indigenous cultures. 
What the institutions (who were primarily motivated to own the land) were
doing was trying cut off these people's connection to the land and what
they regard as sacred, they were (and are) trying to perform cultural
genocide by removing these people's religion and spirituality.  That is
the whole deal with the paradigm, that is their modus operandi.

The issue of cliterectomies, by the way is NOT advocated in Koran, this 
again, is a way of dehumanizing young women and turning them into objects 
strictly for men's pleasure removing forever the possibility of finding 
the sacred joy of sexual pleasure.  Again, it is desacralizeing them and 
turning these poor young girls into objects to be slaves of the current 
paradigm.


Please let us not confuse spirituality with "Churchianity" or with the 
institutions that perpetrate such evils on the world.  Spirituality 
is the way we relate, as individuals to the Earth and to each other and 
to the greater mysteries of creation.  It is our birthright as conscious 
beings and is needed now more than ever before.

Would you say that the spirituality has no place in a fight against 
religious discrimination?  Would you say that the Dalai Lama should 
divorce himself from his spirituality to try and liberate his people in 
Tibet?  It is his very spirituality that keeps him going and keeps the 
hope alive in the people that are being oppressed.

"Guard the mysteries, constantly reveal them."

Joy Williams 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Scion in the Church of All Worlds
"The Garrulous Grok Flok"
Thou Art Goddess!