I love following a path that honors my own spiritual authority and that of others, teaching, "if it harms none, do as you will"-- a deceptively simple and profoundly wise maxim.
I was ten years old sitting in Sunday school trying to make sense of the stories we were reading, which the teacher explained were considered to be "God's word." I couldn't get the echo of his comment out of my head, "God's word?" God writes? God's published?
The practice of Shabbat is not only a spiritual response to the timeless commandment given to my ancestors to keep the Sabbath holy. It is a political act. I am keeping the Sabbath radical. That too is my heritage.
My daughter and I sit in parallel agitation. She is frustrated. I am too. She wants her freedom. I want mine too. We want the same thing, this freedom...
Every day, call forth the Divine Mother that lives within, the undeniable voice deep inside each of us that calls us to nurture, to love and to protec...
The winter solstice (Dec. 21 in the Northern Hemisphere) is one of the most important celestial events of the year, and it has always been a festival of lights in every culture. In ancient times, people knew that winter would be hard, so they found a way to feel hope in the season of dark.
She did not feel she should hate the Druze for their tradition or put them in "The Other Box." She just wanted to understand better where and why the tradition existed -- and how it might be put to an end. Her pull to the topic was undeniably related to her own life experience.
The stories of these women who faithfully made church history are now part of a vast spiritual legacy. I am enormously proud and grateful that my mother stands in their ranks.
Arts move, inspires and transforms us. In times of great change, it is art that captures and preserves what is occurring.
The current anti-woman pope has declared Hildegard, a nature-based mystic and a fighter for justice inside and outside the church, a herald of the Divine Feminine to a patriarchal world and church, a Doctor of the Church. Do we have the courage to listen to her?
In a world where patriarchal norms and xenophobic platforms hold sway, one can celebrate the nine shining days of Navratri, when Durga holds her own with Rambo, Lakshmi blesses books on the Big Bang Theory and Saraswati encourages you to play one more tune, learn one more dance.
I didn't see the Goddess honored in the Holy Land of Jerusalem, but I did feel her in the Holy Land. I felt her swimming in the sea, in the clouds at sunset, with the flow of the river that goes through Tel-Aviv, in the peaceful quiet of the desert, and in the salt of the Dead Sea.
It is difficult, if not impossible, for a woman to access one of her deepest powers of intuition -- receiving guidance from the Divine and the courage to follow it -- if she inherently believes that she does not have the capability of doing so.
In many women, including myself, there is a deep call to explore the feminine within themselves. And for many, it feels like a strong magnetic attraction. For some, it feels like the whole reason we are here.
In our contemporary, violent world of environmental disasters and human rights violations, shouldn't there be more opportunities for men to cultivate, honor and embrace the divine feminine
The women I meet at retreats and conferences around the world have proved to me the power of co-creation. We can inspire and sustain one another, not struggle or compete in conflicting factions.
Reason can no longer stand alone as the sole basis for our reality. It is time to integrate our gifts of reason and the intellect with our gifts of intuition and the path of the heart.
Let there be no mistake about it: woman or man, man or woman -- the full image of God is in you: masculine and feminine, feminine and masculine godness.
Lately I've been on a kick: I'm reading books set in the 1940s and earlier. They detail the stories of the lives of their times. I've recently noticed, though, that no one ever mentions the environment. It wasn't on their radar.
What rape is and what rape isn't, can be precarious in our individual minds. As societies, we struggle to do right. It's hard to stand in the daylight and call it what it is
People sometimes object to the word "worship." They hear the hierarchy of a subservient relationship. I use the word "worship" in a completely different way: "to pay extravagant respect and admiration."
Already impatient with the slow pace of health care reform, many women are now furious that conservatives in Washington have once more made women's reproductive rights a pawn in their power game.
Will embracing woman-centered spirituality take us beyond patriarchy? The goal is to create a new spiritual and ethical context that would balance and heal our hyper-masculine world.
I am appalled at the coverage of Governor Mark Sanford's infidelity to his wife and sons. I am appalled at the moral posturing. I am appalled that we think we have the right.
Given the story of Eve, it's no wonder that women have an underlying sense of blame, shame and in many cases, a fear of questioning male authority.
