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THE BODY AS SACRED TEXT, by Mary Grigolia |
IMAGINING ASHERAH / SARAH
O taste, taste and See, How good is the fruit that falls from the tree!
O taste, taste and see, how good is the fruit of the garden!
Sometimes I wonder what it must have been like, to live among the ancient Hebrews 5000 years ago in the land of Canaan. The people had been hunter gatherers, who then domesticated animals and learned to farm the land. We know that their ancient settlements had no walls. And that the image of the divine was a round fertile goddess, whose body was sacred, giving birth to life. Is it wishful thinking to assume that these were peaceful people because their towns had no walls to protect them? Is it naïve to assume that no invaders had tried to lay them waste, to steal their goods or men or women or children? We have many questions about this time before the stories were written down. The change came abruptly. Suddenly, people huddled in towns, protected by walls. Invaders swept across the Middle East, invaders with iron swords and weapons. The most profound casualty of the carnage was the Great Goddess, the divine in female form, the sacred life-giving body in whom men and women put their faith. The Goddess who commanded the mystery of transformation of life into death into life.
I who am the beauty of the green earth and the white moon among the stars and the mysteries of the waters, I call upon your soul to arise and come unto Me.
What must it have been like to be living in a time when the source of divine power could not protect you? What was it like to live when the sacred mysteries and stories no longer offered guidance and hope?
This is the origin of that terrible story in Genesis, the second story of creation. In the first story, you may recall, man and woman were created at the same time. And like all of creation, both were good. This is the more ancient story. In the second story, the first woman was created out of the body of the first man. This is a story of rupture. A reversal of the natural order. The story shows us that the world of values and meaning and mystery had been turned up-side down.
For I am the soul of nature that gives life to the Universe. From me all things proceed and unto Me they must return.
I imagine that it was desperation that gave birth to Father God. And in his anger, in the collective grief of betrayal, that second story of creation emerged to blame the Goddess for not protecting them, a story that blamed woman, the human counterpart of the goddess, for the great loss.
Eve disobeyed God's instruction not to eat from the tree of knowledge. And the rest, so to speak, is his story. For the last 3500 years, we have lived in a society which has systematically blamed woman and the body for the loss of primal safety. That which was the source of life, the symbol of mystery, was deemed unclean, inferior.
I want to praise hands / those architects that create us anew / fingers, cartographers, revealing who we can become / and palms, cupped priestesses worshipping the long slow curve
ADOLESCENCE
All of us have experience putting our faith in something or someone who lets us down. As adolescents, we are no longer able to recognize our own bodies; we find out for the first time that our sense of self is in flux. Like those who blamed the Goddess for not protecting them from the invading horde, as adolescents we punished our families, rejecting our parents' taste in music, politics, religion, fashion; looking for a new sense of self in a peer group, alternately blaming our families and yearning to retain a sense of safety and home.
I want to praise muscle / and the heart, that flamboyant champion / with its insistent pelting like tropical rain
It's during adolescence that many of us eat from that tree of knowledge. We see ourselves through the eyes of our peer group. And like Adam and Eve after the fall, we become ashamed of our nakedness. Where we had once been able to channel the creative spark, we begin to doubt ourselves. As we doubt ourselves, we secure the veil between ourselves and the mystery, between our body and Life.
I want to praise the face, engraved / like a river bed, it breaks like morning / like a pinata, festival of hope
THE VEIL
For the nine year old Russian dancer in the reading from Gabrielle Roth, there was no veil between self and mystery. Her body is still intact and powerful, dancing as one with the Goddess. She has not yet taken the blame into herself. She has not yet accepted the role of Eve in the culture's ancient story ripping her power away from her. She has not yet rejected her body.
For those of us raised after the Fall of Adam and Eve, it's easy to believe that rejection of the body, self-doubt or self-consciousness is a necessary part of an evolving sense of self. Especially but not exclusively for those of us socialized as girls.
CALORIE-CONSCIOUS BIRTHDAY PARTY
I went to a birthday party for a six year old girl. Elena, one of the guests, was a healthy, active six year old of normal weight. When it was time to cut the cake, Elena's mother reminded her that she shouldn't take a piece because she had to watch her weight. Elena rolled her eyes and pouted, and went on to the next activity. Several other moms at the party chimed in with their low-calorie recipes to keep their six year old girls looking attractive. The moms of the little boys at the party didn't participate in this conversation.
Sunday morning at the marina / Barely enough wind to keep the kites aloft / and so we drifted to the ground / to nibble bagels, chocolate, / giant loose-skinned oranges, / random poetry, blades of grass / Sacraments and indulgences for the first of Spring.
As cultural change accelerated in the 20th century there has been a rise in fundamentalism around the world, sharing a yearning to return to simpler times, with clear cut ideas of right and wrong, and a clear authority in charge. Like the ancient Canaanites, these are generally good people who are afraid. Fundamentalism is just their way of responding to uncertainty. The changes aren't just "out there." They've come home, with drastically changing expectations about gender roles. In scarcity mentality, women gaining rights means men losing power. People want to protect their way of life, their families. And so they've reconstructed and reinterpreted the stories of the ancient Hebrews. Once again, women and the body are to blame. Once again, we are told that the fruit from the tree of knowledge is poisonous.
Let my worship be in the heart that rejoices, for behold—all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.
They condemn all of us who search more widely for understanding. Feminist biblical scholars parsed the story of Adam and Eve's Fall from Grace. We've connected the dots between the vilification of the body and rape of the earth. But thirty years after the Women's Liberation Movement, twenty years after the rise of feminist theology, our young women models and film stars look like war-time survivors of a prison camp. Intellectual analysis has not been enough to restore the body from its fall from grace.
Let there be beauty and strength, / power and compassion, honor and humility, mirth and reverence within you
SUE HENSHAW'S STORY
My colleague, Sue Henshaw, said that one day last summer her 18 year old daughter came into the livingroom wearing an incredibly skimpy bikini. She
looked great in it. And that was the problem for both Sue and her husband. Sue blurted out something about whether she was really going to wear that in public.
Her daughter's response was, "Aren't you glad I'm not ashamed of my body and I don't want to hide it? I'm not anorexic and I love who I am. You raised me right."
Sue asked, “Now exactly what kind of parental response does one make to that???? The truth, being a mirror for her great beauty and our own discomfort, a mirror willing to own its imperfections.
And you who seek to know me, know that your seeking and yearning will avail you not, unless you know the Mystery: For if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without.
THE PROMISE OF WHOLENESS OF THE NEXT GENERATION
It's astounding to me to imagine what it must be like to know that your body is a good and sacred gift. In Khalil Gibran's poem about parenting, he reminds us that our children live in the land of the future, a place we can never visit even in our dreams. I may understand intellectually how the Goddess, woman, and the body were dethroned in the ancient Near East and that is necessary to heal the wound inflicted on our psyche by that rupture. But I will never know what it's like to be raised in a family that teaches me that my body is sacred. People of my generation will never know what it's like to be taught and supported by a religion that celebrates the sacred mysteries of the body and the earth.
OWL / AYS
The UU's were in the forefront of the movement to create a positive attitude toward the body and sexuality, with our radical sex education program, About Your Sexuality, which was published more than 20 years ago. There are thousands of young adults who had the benefit of its honest information, its respect for the participants and its life-affirming values. And these young adults are having their own children now, and moving into positions of leadership in our communities.
For behold, I have been with you from the beginning.
I take great hope in these young adults, in the children of Unitarian Universalist congregations, in Cynthia Stewart and her daughter, in Sue's daughter.
And I am that which is attained at the end of desire.
They have been listening as we talked about the worth and dignity of every person. They believed us. They've joined us in circling 'round for freedom. They believed it was possible and important. They tasted the fruit that falls from the tree and they find it good. They would share it with us. They are tending trees, planting new ones, and harvesting fruit so that others may taste of it, too. They are letting their light shine, light that we passed to them, in spite of our limitations and fear. Let's join them in singing: "This Little Light of Mine!"
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Note: The poetry comes from Ellen Bass, “To Praise;” from Starhawk, The Invocation of the Goddess; and from Lynn Ungar, “Sabbath”