Culture

Death Defying – 1

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I seem to be surrounded by issues concerning death lately. It began a week ago yesterday when Barbara Coombs Lee spoke at First Unitarian Society (my church in Madison) about Compassion and Choices, an organization that advocates for more choice and better care at the end of life. This week a friend told me about the suicide of his best buddy. And even the Sunday newspaper had a comic strip about our fear of death. There’s probably a second reason for what some might consider my morbid train of thought.

Earth-based Religions

Giving Back to Gaia

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My husband Mark and I started composting again this week.  I’ve missed it, because giving back to the Earth — in this extremely literal way — is part of my spiritual practice.  In the past, even when Mark wasn’t gardening, I still composted.  We take so much from Gaia, we depend on Her as the very ground of our being, the source of our lives.  The least we can do is compost.

Environment

Dolphins Leapt All Around Us

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The highpoint of my vacation last week was literally 15 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. That’s how high at least one of the dolphins leapt as they swam around Barbara, my disabled sister, and half of the 23 members of the Vedder clan gathered in North Carolina for a reunion. Our beach vacation was the first time we had all gotten together in 10 years. It’s hard for that to happen these days. My mother is 86, my aunt almost 88, but most importantly, my sister Barbara uses a wheelchair, and that makes travel for her extremely difficult and very expensive.

Culture

Math Gender Gap Disappears, along with Larry Summers

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A friend of mine was interviewed in the Wisconsin State Journal last Sunday on the front page of the Local Section. Janet Hyde does research on gender differences in math performance (among other research areas). In this interview Hyde told the reporter that she had taken it as a personal challenge back in 2005 when Larry Summers spouted off about women mathematicians and scientists. Summers, then president of Harvard, stated that there were fewer female scientists and mathematicians than male, because men were innately better at math and science than women. Actually when it comes to math, Hyde had already proven Summers wrong before he opened his mouth.

Earth-based Religions

All Acts of Love and Pleasure are My Rituals

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It horrified me to read about the recent exorcism performed on a 16-year-old boy in Connecticut to cast out a “homosexual demon.” I had to ask myself if we’re still living in the Middle Ages. It also reminded me of Doreen Valiente’s “Charge of the Star Goddess,” the Wiccan antidote to the hate and fear-filled behavior of the Manifested Glory Ministries when they abused their young parishioner. “The Charge of the Star Goddess” – one of the best-known evocations of the Goddess as we envision Her in Wicca – states that “all acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals.” Not just the ones that the Manifested Glory Ministries deem appropriate, but all acts of love and pleasure.

Gender and Sexuality

Whose Post-Feminism?

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Introducing myself as a feminist seems much harder to me than talking about my views on sustainability and my love for the Earth, because feminism just seems like common sense to me. I know that’s not the case for everyone, but after 30 years, it’s a viewpoint that’s become second-nature to me. When a man recently told me that we in the US were living in a post-feminist era, I wondered which United States he lived in. I told him the fact that Hilary Clinton made a credible run for President doesn’t make this country any more post-feminist than the fact that we elected an African-American President makes it post-racist. Just look at the brouhaha over Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination for Supreme Court Justice, and you can see both sexism and racism operating, as well as reporters sensationalizing soundbites out of context.