So my friends at Women and Wisdom have just put out a new book, an anthology of writings on women’s spirituality.  The WOW folks do a conference every year in Seattle, where I have spoken and led workshops a number of times.  To launch their book, they are doing a campaign to get it up into the top sellers on Amazon.com.  Much as I dislike Amazon, which did away with the vast majority of independent bookstores, I think this might be a good idea and I decided to support them by sending out an email and offering a free prize for people who buy the book today.

Why?  Because, although you may or may not have noticed, major publishers are no longer terribly interested in books on women’s spirituality.  Why?  Back in the ‘eighties, HarperSanFrancisco published not just me but a whole lot of great books—Carol Christ, Marija Gimbutas, Z. Budapest, Luisah Teish, Vicki Noble if I’m remembering it all right.  They were the books we read, discussed, got excited about and inspired by.

Then sometime in the nineties they dropped just about everyone except me—not because the books weren’t selling, but because they weren’t selling enough.  They lost interest in publishing for a strong, steady niche, and only really wanted to publish blockbusters for the mass market.  This probably coincided with them being bought out by Rupert Murdoch, but it had a debilitating effect on the movement.  Without the books to inspire women, without new books to continue the discussions and debate, we lost ground, especially with younger women.  Now the entire publishing industry is in disarray.  Part of it is the web—you’re spending time reading this and I’m spending time writing it instead of a book which might carry a lot more weight (and which I might actually get paid at least some pittance for writing.)  But part of it is their own damn fault—if they don’t publish books of quality and promote them to potential readers, how will they persuade people that some things just can’t be said in 1500 words or less, and are worth reading?  So, though I dislike Amazon and promotions in general, I’m curious to see if the WOW folks can pull it off.  If they can, it will help all of us who are writing things we’d like to get out in the world.  And you can bet I’ll follow their lead when my new book, The Last Wild Witch, comes out in a few weeks.  It’s a picture book for kids that I’ve never been able to get any of my usual publishers interested in, but which finally found a home with Mother Tongue Ink, the women who publish the WeMoon calendar.

So, the message is below.  Check it out—get a good book and a lot of free stuff and help keep the door open for more feminist spiritual writing.

Join me today in this special offer from Kris Steinnes, founder of Women of Wisdom Foundation and director of the WOW Conference for 17 years.

Purchase this Award Winning Book today only and receive exciting gifts  valued over $3000 from many wise women and men, including a fabulous bonus from myself!

To purchase your copy today go to:
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The first time I heard this idea I was speaking to a pretty sophisticated audience, educated and conscientious.  I took it as a cultural nuance, a fluke.  When I heard it again I was speaking to a group of students at a Pesantran, a religious boarding school, in Jepara, the birthplace of Kartini.  Kartini Day is celebrated each year to commemorate this woman who advocated for the education of girls and women in Indonesia.  In Japara, they celebrate for a week, presumably at this Pesantran as well, since it was one of the live-in teachers who told me this was her birthplace.

This particular Pesantran,  on the Island of Java, houses hundreds of students, male and female, between the ages of 8 and 14.  The educator in me likes this system because it is self regenerating: graduates of the system teach others, or go for further education, including higher education, at home or abroad.  Once that is completed, some of these students then set up their own Pesantran.  It is the oldest and most wide spread educational structure in Indonesia.  In addition, it is seat to some progressive thought because students are challenged to critique their own and other traditions, and to generate new ideas.  Of course, there are problems of redundancy, and not every student goes on to make valuable contributions.

Following my talk at this Pesantran, one of the male students asked the question with the same idea I had earlier dismissed as ridiculous.  He asked, “What can we do?” When a girl grows up and becomes a woman, then marries and has children, she begins to lose her brain cells???

This time I took this seriously, but I did not answer the question, instead, I gave two real life examples to contradict it.  

One, is my own example:  I married, twice, and had five children.  All three of us parents sought the Masters and Ph.D degrees from the same university.  Only I completed them (walking for my diploma pregnant with my fifth child).  The other example is the woman who had invited me.  She was a student of the Pesantran system, is a live-in teacher, with her husband, also a teacher.  When I spoke at the Pesantran and for an earlier lecture to a community organization, she translated, on the spot, from my English to Bahasa Indonesia.  She also translated questions from Bahasa to English for me.  Occasionally, questions were in Arabic and she translated these and my Arabic answers into Bahasa.  Think about, it she had to work twice as hard as anyone did.  I and the audience got to rest while she translated to and from me. At the time she was pregnant with her fourth child.  

That child was born a month ago, her first daughter, Zahra.  So I went to see her during her “confinement” (which meant she was with her mom, instead back with her sons in Jepara).  As it happens her mom also teaches at a Pesantran, for girls, ages 12-16.  She asked if I would speak to some of her students.  Again I spoke English and Arabic, and again my friend translated on the spot.  (In other words she was not so “confined”!)

This is what made me think of this idea again.  Zahra’s grandmother told me, said she agreed that women should be able to lead the mixed gender prayers.  Her reasoning was from direct experience. Sometimes, she said, when she would attend the prayers while at the market or in the malls, some man would stand to lead the prayer but he was hardly competent in reciting the Qur’an (the main element in the liturgy and what she’s been teaching to girls for decades).

In all the controversy generated about the act of publically leading mixed gender prayers, as a woman, I am still heartened by the experiences and wisdom of such women. I admit, though, I am still pleasantly surprised by the grace of their logic.  Especially for these Kartini women; not only do their brain cells continue to grow, but also they contribute to the growth of the brain cells of others, as educators.  This is the gender politics of life: knowledge is power and spreading that knowledge is even better.  

Returning from a trip to Scotland to speak about Goddess and God-She at the University of Glasgow, I found this among my emails:

WASHINGTON - June 10 – Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today made the following statement against the war supplemental on the House floor:

“Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, had no intention or capability of attacking United States, had nothing to do with Al-Qaida’s role in 9/11, and each and every statement made by the previous administration in support of going to war turned out to be false.

Yet here we are. A new administration and the same old war, with an expansion of the war in Afghanistan.  We cannot afford these wars. We cannot afford these wars spiritually.  They are wars of aggression and they are based on lies.  We cannot afford these wars financially. They add trillions to our national debt and destroy our domestic agenda. We cannot afford the human cost of these wars, the loss of lives of our beloved troops and the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. So, why do we do this? Why do we keep funding wars when they are so obviously against truth and justice and when they undermine our military?  These are matters of heart and conscience, which must be explored. Our ability to bring an end to these wars will be the real test of our power. “

I could not agree more with Kucinich.  He is not only right about the human and monetary costs of these and all wars.  He is also right that these are matters of heart and conscience, and I would add: spirituality!  

Patriarchal religions arose in the wake of the victories of warrior kings and in many ways they have “spiritualized” warfare, not only making wars seem inevitable and part of the “nature” of “things,” but also making it seem possible and probable that wars can and must be fought “in the name of God.”  

In the Hebrew Bible, “God” was said to have “thrown” the horses and horsemen of the Pharaoh into the sea.  Christianity became the official religion of the Holy Roman Empire when Constantine saw a vision of a cross in the sky under which was written “in this sign conquer.”  In the present day, George W. Bush consulted his heavenly Father and claimed to have received the “go ahead” to start the Iraq war.

Marija Gimbutas in The Language of the Goddess and her other important works showed us that there were cultures in what she “Old Europe” (c. 6500-3500 BCE) that were peaceful, sedentary, matrifocal, highly artistic.  She also said that these cultures worshipped the Goddess and were egalitarian.  I believe Gimbutas to have been one of the greatest scholars of the twentieth century.  However, her work is scorned in universities in the United States and Great Britain.  Some who have carefully read her work believe that this is because her work undermines the widely accepted idea that all “higher” religions and cultures in the history of the world have worshipped Gods and male power.  But I sometimes wonder whether her conclusion that societies and cultures can exist without celebrating violence and war is even more radical.

In the few dark nights of Artemis' moon, just before the Summer Solstice on June 21 and 22 and the new moon in Cancer, energy, mine at least, has turned inward, reflective, and pensive. I feel quiet. And it is appropriate to be quiet.

I'm replenishing my reserves. In a few days, I will celebrate the new moon and light with fervor at a time when ironically, the light will begin to dim, the hours of daylight to diminish, as we move toward the fall. Strange, non, that the height of summer marks the beginning of its end. Perhaps not.

Now, on the 18th of June, I should be in Greece, sitting in the orange chairs and tables at Amoudi Bay at Katina's Taverna on Santorini.  I should be sipping light, cold white wine and lunching all afternoon on fresh fish, laughing with friends, vacating. I long for the joy of a long swim in the silky waters. I can feel them cool and soft on my skin. I see the sapphire Aegean sparkle under the summer sun in an impossible blue sky.

I should be there just gazing at the magnificence in that corner of the world. A sacred place for me where time stops and I gain perspective. I have been there, at the Summer Solstice for nearly two decades, save one summer. Until now...

Now, I am here in the Southwest where the temperatures are in the triple digits Fahrenheit and the water is all in swimming pools.

I trust there is good reason for this circumstance—this ironic twist of fate.  It's been a highly emotional time, full of salty water, but not the kind you can drink. I guess I need to keep searching the roots and looking deep inside, until I get it. I trust I am not the only one on this journey and believe that we are all holding a collective breath as we inch forward in this time of change.  

Last week, I drew a card that spoke to the seeming standstill on my journey.

The Queen of Cups, also known as the Queen of Hearts, in the tarot, is represented by the archetypal figure from Greek mythology, Helen of Troy. Volumes have been written on Helen, a Goddess of my heart. I recently read a marvelous fictional account by Margaret George. In this blog, I can only touch the high points and the salient lessons.

Helen was born a princess of Sparta, child of Zeus, who appeared in his swan form, and seduced Leda, Helen's mortal mother. Helen's great beauty was legendary, but she was required by her parents to hide it, to take shelter behind a veil. Helen felt imprisoned by this great beauty and the need to hide her true self to the world, and spent much time alone looking inward.  This helped her to become a bold and extraordinary woman/Goddess and to meet the great challenges of her life. She was sheltered and hidden by her parents, the King and Queen of Sparta, lest as predicted at the Oracle at Delphi, she cause much Greek blood to be shed. This fate she ultimately lived, because it was Helen who was said to cause the Trojan War.

Helen married Menelaus of the cursed House of Atreus, in a hotly contested pursuit for the favor of her hand. Thus, she became Queen of Sparta. And following the matriarchal law of Sparta, her husband Menalaus, took her father's throne as King of Sparta when he stepped down.

When as a married woman Helen could finally allow others to look upon her beauty, and was ready at last to live and love with her whole passionate being, she found no passion, no Eros, in her marriage bed.  How had she offended Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, she asked herself? Was her beauty a curse?

Helen turned inward for answers and explored the depth of her conscious and unconscious, her feelings and emotions. Eventually, she found the answer and soon after courting favor with Aphrodite, she met Paris a prince of Troy and they fell instantly and madly in love. She was filled with passion. A gift from the Goddess of Love.

Helen left her husband, her child and her throne, and eloped with Paris, to take up residence in a faraway land. Thereafter, with the excuse of avenging Menelaus' honor, the long-time, power and war hungry brother, King Agamemnon, began the long siege of the Trojan War. Was it merely legend or was it history? Nonetheless, it is instructive to us, particularly in these times on Planet Earth, because real or fictional, the Trojan War utilized all the resources of both Sparta and Troy and their surrounding allies, ending the Golden Age of Classical Greece.
 
Helen lost Paris in the war, Troy, said to be the most beautiful place in the world at the time, was destroyed and Helen of Troy returned to a very different Sparta to once more become Helen of Sparta, late of Troy. A woman who lived long and held her beauty from within. She was a wise woman with a goodly measure of sadness and courage.

The lesson of the Queen of Cups, Helen of Troy is about the power of the sacred feminine world of feelings. That power is magical and magnetic and comes from a reflection from the depths of the soul. It is mysterious and hypnotic, like the sea, and governed by the sign Cancer and the element of water, because of its fluidity. Reflected in the water, others see the depth of their souls, yet Helen herself remains elusive.

Our deepest feelings and soul connections are elusive, contradictory and unknowable. And yet we are bound to go deep inside our core soul being, open our hearts and try to understand our purpose so that we can align with it, and shed what is no longer our truth.

It takes courage to do this. Helen was brave, perhaps misunderstood and certainly hated and loved in equal measure.  And yet, because was able to look beyond her own beauty and explore her deep truths, she was able to live her life as she wanted, while being just and kind.

Helen is our catalyst at this time.  The new moon is a super moon, and we can use her light and Helen's to courageously dive deep into our own feeling realm and learn our present truth. We have a chance at this time, to stop and reflect on our own inner magic.  Look for it. Feel it. Align with it. Allow the portal of the Solstice to open a gateway for you to shine light on your hidden soul, to bare your shadowy self, so it can be embraced and lovingly released.

Celebrate the Summer Solstice on Sunday knowing that like Helen we are both our past and our present. Our future rests on the alchemy of the two. Let Helen and the Goddess Helene be your guide to enter into sacred marriage with yourself. She saw nothing to be gained from hiding behind her veil.

Let passion be your light to live your dreams every single moment. I know that if I reflect on my own inner mysteries, that I can fully accept myself and thus, like Helen liberate my higher self, let go of old pain and patterns and marry my own heart. Then, perhaps I shall travel to my island sanctuary once more.

Happy Summer Solstice. Dance joyfully even if you are paused for a moment on your journey. You are stuck only if you think you are. The portal awaits.

Juliette

Of all the things that people have in common around the world, stress and suffering rank at the top of the list. Regardless of how much you make, your age, looks, culture, or job, you likely do not escape frustration and aggravation with ease - it’s a part of being on planet earth. Fortunately, we also share the ability to rise above these things, and in many cases we can even learn to heal the stress and suffering in our lives. Spiritual traditions have long been the refuge from stress with simple techniques and philosophies that can transform daily life.

It is easy to feel that stress and suffering are unavoidable or that somehow you are doomed to face them again and again. This helpless feeling stems from the mistaken assumption that our emotions need to drive our decisions and our lives. The strong emotions that create suffering are rooted in either hurts of the past or unfulfilled expectations of the present.

A spouse, friend, or boss that talks to you the way a parent did while in a cruel or impatient mood will trigger the same old feelings, as if you were a child encountering the hurt again. If you have an expectation that people should always be polite or that airplanes should always be on time or that traffic should not be heavy when you are late, then you will consistently encounter the stress of that disappointment.

A spiritual perspective says that emotions like anger, anxiety, and sadness are normal and need to be felt, but when it comes to making decisions and taking action, we need to look deeper. It is possible to be less driven by old hurts and release the tight grip on unrealistic expectations. Learning about the power of perception and the mind-body connection can turn everything around. Here are six timeless techniques for managing or ending stress and suffering.

1. Breathe. When stress rises, the body moves in to a reaction mode: the body tightens, the mind races, and it is hard to gain a better perspective. Try taking some deep breaths. Breathe in through the nose, and instead of puffing your chest out, try imagining that you are sending the breath into your belly – push your stomach muscles out. Then, notice where you are tense or tight, and imagine you are breathing it all out your mouth, slowly and easily. When you are in a difficult moment, take at least 2 full minutes to be with your breath.

2. Stick to the Facts. One way we create our experience of stress and suffering is through emotional ideas like worry and regret. Instead of keeping our attention in the present moment and focusing on the limited truth we know for certain, too often we spend our energy on worrying about things that haven’t happened, or we dwell on the past we regret. Remember, “sticking to the facts” doesn’t include judgments like “she’s wrong” or “he’s a fool” or “what if I lose my job?” Those are emotional ideas, not facts.

A fact sounds like this “all I know is that he is late, but I don’t know why.” An emotional idea sounds like “he is late because he is selfish and doesn’t care. I must be a pushover.” A fact sounds like this “lots of people are losing their jobs these days, and some fall on hard times, and some find new work.” An emotional idea sounds like this “I am so worried every day I go into work. What if I lose my job and then cannot pay my bills and car payment – I cannot concentrate.” Learn to limit those thoughts, and stick to the facts.

3. Forgive. The cornerstone of most spiritual philosophies lies in learning to forgive. Forgiveness does not mean that you pretend you are not hurt by someone or something, nor does it mean you condone a cruel or harmful act. Forgiveness does mean that you are committed to letting go of the energy, stories, and actions you have become caught up in. Forgiveness means that you are committed to letting go and moving on. It doesn’t start with a feeling; it starts with a decision. Start by changing the way you act and think, and then, eventually, the feelings will follow.

For example, if you have been hurt by a coworker or a romantic partner, you can invest a lot of time in complaining to friends, gossiping, and reviewing the offense in your head. Or you can say that being hurt once is enough, see that each time you replay it you are only hurting yourself again, and learn to change the topic.

Each time we encounter stress or hurt there is a small chance to practice forgiveness. The quicker we forgive a situation and accept it for what it is, the quicker we end our suffering and move on to better things.

4. Learn from Everything. Another common spiritual perspective that transforms hard times is to look for the lesson in each situation life presents. Even the most unpleasant and unexpected situations can offer you a great chance to learn what to do better next time or what to avoid or heal in your life. This is about the power of optimism and the ability to take a disappointment and turn it into something that makes you a better person.

Failed relationships can teach you things like the importance of having clear boundaries, the importance of good communication, the importance of trust, or how to let go of self-doubt. A loss of work can open a door to find new opportunities, refine your focus on what gives you joy, or show you where you have things to improve.

People who learn from each situation are always bettering themselves and bettering their chances at not running into a wall again. They understand that you will always be happier and less stressed if you learn to define your situations, instead of letting your situations define you.

5. Set Inner Intentions. One of the biggest hooks that catches most people in life is attachment to outer goals and desires. Spiritual traditions have long been warning people about how dangerous it is to place all your hopes and intentions on wealth, sex, beauty, a dream house, and clothing. These things come and go and are based on things we cannot always control. Even the most wealthy find that possessions can be taken away at a moment’s notice, and the desires of life often go unfulfilled.

An inner intention is a goal that is based on the type of person you want to be. It is about growing your character. It is about being more balanced and mature. The desires to be peaceful, loving, kind, or patient are all examples of inner intentions. If my goal is to love myself or be kind, then, no matter what happens, I can practice working toward that goal. In contrast, if my goal is never to be alone, I might fall apart every time a relationship ends. Inner intentions are goals we can take responsibility for and influence through choice. Outer intentions are like traps waiting to go off in our lives. Learn to let go of expectations about things that are beyond your control! Commit to one inner intention for the week. Try being grateful, non-judgmental, or kind.

6. Commit to a Spiritual Practice. A spiritual practice is a regular time out from life to do something that helps you to feel at peace, learn about yourself, and connect to a sense of what is important. It is a time apart from stress and helps put pain and loss in perspective. It could be taking a daily walk in nature (without cell phone), meditation before work, prayer before bed, yoga, Tai Chi, bible study, volunteering at the hospital, or working in a garden. The key is to make it regular, intentional, and a non-competitive, non-work related activity. It should last long enough that you get a real break from the rush and demands of life.

My book, Return to the Sacred: Ancient Pathways to Spiritual Awakening, offers examples and descriptions about what it is like to experience some of the world’s most time tested practices. My audio program, Your Spiritual Personality, walks you through how to pick a practice and describes, step by step, how 12 universal practices can be used in your own life day to day.