The Buddha made understanding this very simple, though he did it in the context of reincarnation. He spoke of consequences as karma, which simply means, cause and effect. Skillful actions will land you in future lives that will be prosperous and spiritually fulfilling; unskillful actions, into miserable, spiritually challenging ones. A famous story about this features a murderer the Buddha inspired to take up the robe and vows. The man began practicing intensely and became peaceful, kind, caring, generous. However, when out collecting alms one day a few years later, he was caught by locals who severely beat him. Even then, the man remained centered on his Buddhist practice. When he returned, the other monks were confused why this would happen now when the man was so serene. The Buddha replied something along the lines of, “it was karma from a previous life.” (I grossly paraphrase.)

So, karma can have a long cycle. With consequences, it can be more immediate. I noticed this in Manhattan, riding in taxis. Before I began practicing, I would simply get into a cab and tell the driver my destination. No chit-chat, no acknowledgement of the driver’s humanity. Once I started on the path, I began getting into taxis and saying, “hi, how are you?” And with that small change, I noticed the drivers became more conscientious, more relaxed and more receptive to questions or any route alterations I had. One driver even gave me a free ride when I explained I’d forgotten my wallet. (I took his address and sent him cash.) Taxi rides became much more easeful. I found a direct correlation between my attitude and theirs.

Whether you call it karma or consequences I’ll venture to say that it is actually the only way we truly learn. Again, it is another concept the Buddha taught, ehipassiko, “come and see for yourself.” The Buddha did not teach a belief system, he taught ethics. He replaced the old system of ritual — burning incense, sacrificing animals to gods to ensure fortune; to one of — “you reap what you sow.” The point is, he said anyone can begin to learn how to chose different actions given the consequences. The Dhammapada begins with this very teaching, “Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draw it. … Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.” We constantly live through karma and consequences, the key point is to discern between unskillful (evil) and skillful (joyful) actions and choose the skillful ones.

There is, however, just one little glitch with experiencing karma and consequences. It can hurt. The Little League team loses the game because of errors and no hits and leaves the field despondent. Being told my job performance is sub-par (a true story) becomes a shame spiral. However, the Buddha offered a straightforward way to skillfully approach these situations, so as not to produce more karma to work out later — and that is, to be with the hurt in the present moment, and learn from it. Instead, what often happens is we come up with ways to soften the blow, and in the worst case, ignore it all together. This means we never learn, we perpetuate the belief that we are too fragile to get hurt. Eventually, people, places, and objects start to be excluded from our experience … and our world gets smaller and smaller.

This leads to a narrow life, and high sensitivity. We no longer allow ourselves to encounter situations which challenge our beliefs, projections, status quo. Only that which doesn’t piss me off will I interact with. In such a state, learning stops, and so does growth. While the Buddha taught so many concepts, when questioned, he said he only taught one thing, “suffering and the end of suffering.” Which does not mean that the causes and conditions for suffering stop. What changes is the internal response to such causes and conditions. The team still loses games; the performance review is still bad. The hurt is still there, it’s just that now it is information from which to learn. Maybe the team gets a different coach, or practices every day. In my job example, I took a long drive and then asked a friend for help, and I followed the friend’s advice (I did keep the job, only to quit when I could fully embrace the spiritual path).

Unlike what commercials, self-help books, and oftentimes, friends and family recommend, the skillful action with karma and consequences is to meet them head on, with as much compassion as possible, and enough clarity to see the lesson. Only, we often interpret “life’s lessons” as punishments, as if some superior entity is testing us, or toying with us. Unfortunately, this is a fairly negative projection, one that has been cultivated over millennia by various cultures and religious beliefs and perpetuated in the commercialism of most societies. On the other hand, how I see karma is value neutral. I do this, this happens. No moral judgement whatsoever. When something “bad” happens in my life, it is not personal. Well, maybe personal in a sense that I am reaping karma I sowed at some point. But it isn’t here to make me feel bad. It is here to guide me further along the path.

This is how suffering ends. I no longer perpetuate the painful events by grousing about them, and retelling the story ad nauseam. Instead, on my path, I have learned to broaden my perspective to see 1) how this one incident is not the whole of my life, 2) how looking at it objectively could benefit me and others, and 3) how choosing a different behavior leads to less consequences in the future.

And then, there are times I have to be the one to hold another accountable, to dole out the consequences. My younger-self belief that saying “no” had to be done from anger or resentment, has ripened into a realization that love is very good at saying no. Kindness can draw a razor sharp boundary with nary a scratch. It’s not that I vow to stop hurting people as much as I vow to have integrity, clarity, strength and compassion if I know my skillful actions might be taken as painful. Acknowledging that when I say “no” could hurt someone, I want to do it as respectfully as I can. Which means, it might be done with a hug, or it might be done five feet away, through a fence, with a BFF holding my hand. While many might call this “tough” love, that is not what I would call it. Compassion would be the word I would choose.

In the end, I have no idea what might be painful to others. And I have no idea what might help them on the path. I am still learning to discern what is most beneficial to me. How can I possible know what might be beneficial to someone else? This was brought home to me when I first started my journey. I would hear all these great teachings and then say to my teacher, “oh yeah, I have to share that with so-and-so; they could really benefit from it.” Until one day she said, “here’s the person those teachings will most help,” as she pointed at me. Ah, the Buddha strikes again. His reputed final words were, “be a lamp unto yourself,” or “work with care on your own realization.” It wasn’t until I tried hundreds of times to tell people what I thought would help them, and to have them either ignore it, laugh it off, or point blank tell me to mind my own business, did I realize the reason those teachings resonated so much because they were for my benefit, and mine alone.

It is only through incorporating the teachings into my own life that I can even discern how to skillfully speak and act in the world, recognizing that such words and deeds might feel painful for another. My hope, as the Buddha offered, is that such speech and action is at its core, beneficial. And that, from my experience is a rare gift.

About the Author: Beth Hinnen came to the spiritual path from the corporate world. After experiencing impermanence and greed, she left to study Yoga and has over 1,000 hours in Yoga teacher training, and ended up specializing in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, spiritual scripture that closely aligns with Buddhism. From there, she studied Zen Buddhism for over ten years, including in-person, month-long monastic retreats, until she earned certification, in January, 2023, as a Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Currently, Beth is a co-leader of the IMCD Council, and on the Teachers Collective, as administrator. She hosts a Meetup group called Yoga Meets Buddhism, and for the past three years, has held an online Dharma Wednesdays class that discusses the Yoga Sutras while also bringing in Buddhist teachings, along with Sufi poets, Christianity, Judaism and other spiritual paths that reinforce the words of Sri Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga where Beth studied. “The truth is one, the paths are many.” More information about Beth is at www.samayaco.org.

At this point, we were told we could read the paper again, then go talk to anyone else in the room. As people drifted to different groups, I read the paper, felt confident in my assessment and stayed put at 6. However, I noticed that more than half of the 6 group went to 9. Hmm, I thought, what’s up with that? Once again, we were offered to read the paper, and go talk to anyone else. As I looked over at the 9 group, I saw two women standing near the wall, and felt an openness from them, a non-judgmental attitude and recognized a softening in my being. I approached them and asked what they knew. They explained how they got to 9 and I immediately joined that group.

It turns out, we were all given the same sentence. And how the brain operates, human eyes tend to skip small words that don’t add to the content or meaning of the sentence, like the, and, a and yes, of. While technically I did the exercise correctly, I saw 6 Fs, there were actually 9 including 3 Fs in the word of. There was much discussion, lots of congratulations to the folks who initially saw all the Fs; more congratulations to the people who immediately went to another group to find the answer, and awe and wonder at the person who included Es as elaborate forms of Fs (and so was in the over 9 group).

What I found fascinating was the lack of acknowledgment of the folks who initially trusted what they saw; who didn’t immediately think they were wrong and had to seek external confirmation as soon as they could. Do we all lack a sense of faith and trust in our own experience that we bail on it as soon as we see other people doing something different?

On the other hand, there is a place where holding onto a belief doesn’t serve us. What’s a spiritual practitioner to do?

The Yoga Sutras offer an answer. To gain what is called “right knowledge” what my teacher defines as reliable and trustworthy information, it has three aspects. The first is direct experience. Direct is the key word. It can’t be clouded by beliefs or assumptions. For instance, I remember growing up and being served scallions, only I called them “little green things.” I tried to pick them out of everything because they looked funny, and they were … green. My suspicion of them doubled when one night I didn’t pick them out, and woke up vomiting at 2 am. I told my mother who was cleaning up that the “little green things” made me sick. She wearily told me that wasn’t true. I had caught a stomach virus. Hmm, my 12 year old self thought, I don’t think so. The story about “little green things” in food being awful stuck.

Fast forward to a few decades later when I took an interest in cooking and lo, I came across scallions again. No longer the tender, doubting 12 year old, I got a chance to experience scallions with new eyes and palate. With the clarity of age and the curiosity of a budding home chef, I began to buy, eat and enjoy scallions with no ensuing sickness. I finally had a direct experience of them without a story about them.

Which brings us to the second aspect of direct knowledge, inference. Had I had access to that skill at age 12, I would have realized that if the “little green things” made me sick, they would have made my entire family sick. We’d have all been up at 2 am making a mess. Inference means not having direct experience but having enough experience to draw an accurate conclusion. Like where there’s smoke, there’s fire (or at least some kind of burning happening). In my case, I could have inferred that my mother was correct. Since I was the only one sick, I could conclude it was not something everyone ate. It was another source.

The last aspect is authoritative testimony. This is where it’s been written down, and passed the test of the ages, or where a trusted source offers wisdom. It’s what rings true, even if there isn’t a direct experience, or more so, absent the building blocks for inference. The Bible (Old and New Testaments), the Koran, the Yoga Sutras, the Tao de Ching, the Bhagavad Gita, the Pali Canon (Buddhist scripture) and many more texts point to the ultimate reality, and so ring true after millennia of time has passed. (Of course, I could have taken my mother to be an authoritative source, but you know how pre-teens are.)

Lest we be bamboozled by TikTok, the worldwide web or any other platforms, the Yoga Sutras make it clear that it is best if all three are present for reliable, trustworthy knowledge. Authoritative testimony on its own might point you in a certain direction, yet, as the Buddha said time and again, don’t trust that alone, have your own experience. Test it out.

Back to the conference. When I stood up to share my experience, and said I was totally fine staying in the 6 group, that I didn’t need anyone external to confirm what I saw, much of the room laughed. I’m guessing they were laughing at my obstinance, my ego-related confidence in knowing I was right. It wasn’t that. What I was saying is that I was confident in my experience. That is, until I inferred a major shift in how other people were seeing it. Even so, I still wouldn’t have been convinced in their epiphany, except, what I saw was two women who had no agenda, no pride in their choice, authoritative testimonies if you will. It was such openness and non-attachment that drew me over to explore what they had seen.

And just as quickly as I had held my 6 ground, I switched to 9 with nary a recrimination. I harbored no guilt or shame, no sheepishness or hesitation. After all, I did the exercise correctly. I only saw 6, and I trusted my capacity to count. And just as equally, I trusted my capacity to be enlightened, to be shown how others saw the same piece of paper in a different way.

In the atmosphere we live in today, there is such little ability, it seems to me, for folks to have honest conversations, to question their own opinions and views, even harder, their beliefs, and open themselves up to new information. Yes, first, trust your own experience. That way, when new information comes in and you test it out, it is much easier to trust the new experience, which may or may not include, changing your mind.

About the Author: Beth Hinnen came to the spiritual path from the corporate world. After experiencing impermanence and greed, she left to study Yoga and has over 1,000 hours in Yoga teacher training, and ended up specializing in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, spiritual scripture that closely aligns with Buddhism. From there, she studied Zen Buddhism for over ten years, including in-person, month-long monastic retreats, until she earned certification, in January, 2023, as a Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Currently, Beth is a co-leader of the IMCD Council, and on the Teachers Collective, as administrator. She hosts a Meetup group called Yoga Meets Buddhism, and for the past three years, has held an online Dharma Wednesdays class that discusses the Yoga Sutras while also bringing in Buddhist teachings, along with Sufi poets, Christianity, Judaism and other spiritual paths that reinforce the words of Sri Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga where Beth studied. “The truth is one, the paths are many.” More information about Beth is at www.samayaco.org.

Anyone who knows me knows that studying Ian Barbour and his books comparing science and religion rocked my Christian worldview. Not only did it rock it, but it crumbled around me. I felt disappointment with all the male pastors who never preached metaphors, similes, analogies, and paradigms from the pulpit or discussed them during a Sunday school class. And worse—they were passing this travesty onto our children. At the time, I was doing postgraduate studies in Theological Ethics with an emphasis on Environmental Justice through the University of South Africa while living in Islamabad, Pakistan. This was years before online studies took off in the United States.

Barbour wrote about how both science and religion use metaphors, similes, analogies, and paradigms to speak of and describe the ineffable. In physics, quantum mechanics takes on the fuzzy world of our physical universe. In religion, well, who really knows g-d? The patriarchy says it does. But if you create g-d in your own image—a male g-d reinforced and “revealed” by the male gender of our species—you can justify about anything, comparing yourself to this male g-d, your male g-d, how convenient.  And they are committing idolatry, creating g-d in their own image.

I’ve had well-meaning folks tell me, “Well, if God wants to use male pronouns in defining himself, who are we to argue?” Well, that means the two scriptures I mentioned in the opening paragraph are wrong—and then what else is “wrong?” All the verses that use male pronouns? Or the entire Christian bible? And

⁸ “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
⁹ “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.

(Isaiah 55:8-9, NIV)

Sometime in the past few weeks, I received an email—I don’t even remember from whom.  But a word jumped out at me from the many: g-d. My first thought was, “It encompasses all metaphors without claiming any as the absolute truth!”

The perfect universal metaphor for this entity we name as Divinity, Ultimate Reality, or g-d. It doesn’t matter which religion you adhere to, or which metaphor you prefer. Many of you don’t care. You gave up believing in this oppressive male monarch who lives in the sky a long time ago. I did and left churches in Jakarta, Indonesia; Islamabad, Pakistan (see Note 1); Cuernavaca, Mexico; and Nebraska, USA. And Barbour sealed it for me. Barbour lists other words that are relevant to a large percentage of the world’s population. I’ve included a couple in the beginning of this blog. And here is more: g-d as liberator; as suffering servant; father; vine; light; potter; water; voice; bread of life—it’s not difficult to find more.

I say to the many who have felt excluded, their voices silenced and not celebrated throughout history. “Leave this male g-d and it’s male spokesmen who tell you what to think, when you can speak and if your speech is ‘acceptable,’ how you can dress, what you can and cannot do with your life, how you define your sexuality, and how you can be involved in your church: ‘You have the gift of hospitality and working in the nursery.” And, of course, the giving of your money so you can prop up this male institution.

If any of these denominations saw a decline in finances or a marked decrease in people giving up their time through voluntary contributions, they might contemplate a policy change. I encourage you to think about the role you can play in creating a religion that won’t have seekers running for the nearest door.

If we are created in the image of our creator (and even if we aren’t), we contain the imprint of the cosmos in our DNA. We are made of stardust. We are one with the galaxies. And we limit ourselves to a male g-d, because the patriarchy tells us so.

Sources:

Note 1: In Islamabad, we had a choice. A British vicar led the second church we visited, and as often as he could, changed the words from patriarchal idolatry to inclusive language, honoring other ways when speaking of g-d.

1. McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, 1987.
2. The atoms/subatomic construct cannot be directly observed, but based on theories we’ve developed amazing technology, such as this computer I’m typing on, my cell phone, and information available at my fingertips due to the Internet.
3. Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Or any other books on science and religion by Barbour.
4. Books on science and religion by John Polkinghorne.
5. Terryl Warnock, a blogger for MoonLit Press, penned a book review for my book, To Travel Well, Travel Light. You can read it here: https://blanketfort.blog/wordsbyterryl/to-travel-well-travel-light

https://39n.a5f.myftpupload.com/-by-rev-mary-coday-edwards-ma

About the Author: Award-winning author Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister, and author of To Travel Well, Travel Light. An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. A lifelong student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.

            The Buddha’s First Noble Truth lays it out very clearly. There is suffering. While I disagree with the translation, “Life is suffering,” as I believe I have experienced the absolute joy and bliss that life can offer, I also contend that life is neither suffering nor bliss when lived from an enlightened state, or when lived with awareness and compassion. It is simply an acceptance of “this is how it is,” and its our perception of events that make them painful or not painful. (As an aside, I believe enlightened folks feel a sense of deep joy constantly, but the source is inside, not from the outside.)

            When I first heard the expression, “there are no mistakes,” from my old Zen teacher, I thought she was nuts. On the one hand, a part of me was thrilled to hear there are no mistakes, that Life offered me a proverbial “get out of jail free” card no matter what I did. On the other hand, the folly is that if important lessons go unlearned, we will continue to make the same choices that don’t turn out so well (i.e. what we normally call mistakes). The reason there are no mistakes, especially if we look at life as a spiritual journey, is because we take every misstep as an opportunity to learn — to learn about life, other people, and most importantly, ourselves.

            When the Buddha was teaching about the First Noble Truth, he said to his students, “to grasp this truth, suffering must be fully known.” Meaning, we can’t avoid suffering (though it is far from being the only experience in life) and we all know what suffering is — the searing pain of a knife cut; the heart vacuum of losing a loved one; the utter regret of choosing something that felt good in the moment, and later turned out to be deeply painful, to ourselves and/or others. The real trick then, to know suffering fully, is to be able to completely enter the pain, despair, remorse, anger, fear and numbness that causes our suffering. Only when we fully know it inside and out — the depth, breadth and width of the suffering we encounter — will be able to see how the Second Noble Truth is true: that suffering is caused by craving.

            Craving what, you ask. Well, while cravings might take the form of different objects, ideas, or people, underneath it all, I speculate that what we are all craving is to be loved, accepted, seen and heard. Only, to say that, and even more challenging, to feel such vulnerability and complete humanity, is not only frightening, it can be down right life threatening. And I don’t mean in a physical sense, I mean in an emotional and mental sense. We are taught early on through the Western ideal of individualism that we are islands, that we can be self-sufficient and utterly independent. And in doing so, we can not then admit our desire (see my blogs on desire and the positive spiritual interpretation of this word) to be connected, seen, in relationship with others, whether others are people, pets, trees, water, trash, diseases, and a host of other objects we come into contact with minute by minute.

            So rather than being in relationship, we instead crave to possess things, places, people, objects. They are ours, and not independent (even though we are, go figure). And herein lies the rub. Because we can’t actually possess things, and I mean this in a way of taking them into our bodies and making them us (other than food which is a miraculous process), we are forever buying, collecting, gathering things and people around us to fill some kind of hole deep inside, and in so doing, we end up wreaking havoc. Such a hole will never be filled by material objects. I’ve yet to hear of a wealthy person say, “yep, $40 million is enough.” I mean marketing is built on buying, obtaining more. Potato chip, anyone?

            It makes sense, then, that possession is nine-tenths of the law. If its in our hands, someone has to take it from us if they want it. This compounds the materialistic view that permeates not just the Western world anymore, but everywhere that has internet which publicizes wealth and obtaining as a noble goal. While we are trying to fill the hole, what we are really doing is creating more suffering by acquiring things, bling, people, jobs, spaceships, immortality that in the end, can not satisfy our deepest craving, to be loved, accepted, seen and heard.

            Which brings us back to spiritual bypassing. Instead of acknowledging and addressing the deep hole inside that calls out for care, love and belonging, we buy things, pop in and out of relationships, binge watch Netflix (guilty), eat indiscriminately (guilty), drink even more so (in recovery), and never get to the root of the issue. Everything that is here in our experience is really to keep pointing us back to the reality that we are Divine Intelligence, Christ Consciousness, Buddha-Nature. Such words are pointing to something ineffable, untouchable, eternal and unchanging. It can not be comprehended by the mind, it can only be experienced by the heart.

            This is why spiritual bypassing is so big in the spiritual world. We explain away our hurt and pain through spiritual concepts rather than sitting in the muck of resentment, loss, despair and anger. And because we are adept with all the teachings, it becomes even easier to call on them to explain away our hurt and anger. Saying fancy words, and bringing up difficult concepts as ideas gives us a way to intellectualize the pain and suffering without feeling it.

            For instance, let’s say I interact with a friend and the conversation gets heated and I say something that is hurtful. And let’s say my friend has enough courage and fortitude (and perhaps balance and equanimity) to call it out. Perhaps taken aback, I look at this dear one and say, “Oh, my bad. That was Mara (the Lord of illusion and delusion) talking. I got caught in papanca (a whirlwind of thoughts) and said the first thing that came to mind.” Certainly, I get points for having the Pali words roll so easily off my tongue, and more points for so quickly addressing the hurtful language with spiritual concepts, but such a reaction has done nothing to heal the relationship between me and my friend.

            However, the hurt started before that. Where my spiritual practice actually needs to begin is the moment I felt heat in the conversation. If I had really been practicing, I would have noticed my skin prickling, my heart feeling heavy, my mind begin the papanca. And because of my deeply ingrained practice, I would know that it was here I felt injured, or triggered. It might have been something my friend said, it could have been the topic itself, it could have been a combination. And while a part of me might want to leap to blame and outwardly project the hurt, as a spiritual practitioner I would instead focus intensely on my own inner state and attend to that. This is the old, put on your own oxygen mask first. Even if I didn’t break the conversation, I could internally take a deep breath, mentally put a hand on my heart, acknowledge to myself that something was amiss, and recognize the internal hurt, frustration, confusion, whatever the emotion was that began bubbling up for me during the conversation. And the beauty is, I don’t have to get my friend to see or understand this. As long as I see it, I can attend to it.

            From there, I might be able to chose different words, to exit gracefully from the conversation, to ask my friend to pause a moment for me to consider my response. Once, in a heated argument with a boyfriend at the time, I fell quiet. He finally yelled at me, asking me why I wasn’t engaging with him and I calmly replied, “because I’m staying present so I don’t get angry.” The whole argument was over right then. We both took deep breaths and resumed the conversation in a more kind manner.

            While we learn wonderful concepts about suffering, the point of spiritual practice is to get out of it and not simply be able to name it. Where we change how we are in the world is internally first, giving all of us a chance to see our adequacy, to know our capacity for love, kindness, relationships, and connection. We no longer have to bypass because we know how to go straight into the pain, how to care for it, and how to come out the other side feeling whole.

About the Author: Beth Hinnen came to the spiritual path from the corporate world. After experiencing impermanence and greed, she left to study Yoga and has over 1,000 hours in Yoga teacher training, and ended up specializing in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, spiritual scripture that closely aligns with Buddhism. From there, she studied Zen Buddhism for over ten years, including in-person, month-long monastic retreats, until she earned certification, in January, 2023, as a Mindfulness and Meditation Teacher with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach. Currently, Beth is a co-leader of the IMCD Council, and on the Teachers Collective, as administrator. She hosts a Meetup group called Yoga Meets Buddhism, and for the past three years, has held an online Dharma Wednesdays class that discusses the Yoga Sutras while also bringing in Buddhist teachings, along with Sufi poets, Christianity, Judaism and other spiritual paths that reinforce the words of Sri Swami Satchidananda, the founder of Integral Yoga where Beth studied. “The truth is one, the paths are many.” More information about Beth is at www.samayaco.org.

1 – Staying present to your current experience: basically, HOW is your NOW? Your NOW holds valuable information.

2 – A space where we experience Oneness with the Universe, Divine, Higher Consciousness, Gaia, Brahman, Ultimate Reality, Goddess/God, non-God, Light, Love (space limits the ways this concept is expressed), and

3 – Seeking a connection with something greater than ourselves and at the same time, seeking through self-knowledge to live a fully human and integrated life.

So, combining those three items, did you experience anything when you read that last phrase of No. 2, words I used to describe the ineffable, the unexplainable, the Mystery? Did any of those limiting words cause a reaction within you? In your body? Is one of your emotions screaming at the edge of your consciousness? Did you stop reading at that point? Or is one rising gently, peacefully? Did a past memory surface, pleasant or unpleasant? What did I leave out that feels important to your experience? Do you believe that some of those words/images are just flat out wrong?

I encourage you to bring your awareness to WHAT you may be rejecting and WHY.

No one can tell us exactly what—or who—this Ultimate Reality really IS. Mystics and poets down through the eons have described their own experiences and thus have given us intimations of what this Reality may look like, but at the end of the day, all these terms are metaphoric variations.

A metaphor is used when we don’t know what something is in order to give it some sort of meaning that we can connect the concept to.

Feminist Christian theologian Sallie McFague says that to think metaphorically “… means spotting a thread of similarity between two dissimilar objects, events, or whatever, one of which is better known that the other, and using the better-known one as a way of speaking about the lesser known (Note 1, p. 15).

Scholar Ian Barbour first studied science and then religion, eventually drawing comparisons and differences between the two, in particular how both used metaphors, models, and paradigms to explain the unseen (Note 2). Barbour says that “Religious language often uses imaginative metaphors, symbols, and parables, all of which express analogies” (Note 3, p. 119).   

Models & paradigms: Helpful, but not the same as Reality!

Some of these analogies evolve into models. For example, Western Christians are familiar with the metaphors of God as father, king/conqueror, to the point where the Divine is restricted to this patriarchal-defined reality, leaving analogical language behind. In parts of Latin America, the model of God as Liberator informs reality.

But the New Testament scriptures are replete with other metaphors, such as God as the woman seeking her coin. Although that is mentioned in the same Bible verse as the parable of the good shepherd, how many stained glass windows do you see depicting God as Woman seeking her lost coin? Or Jesus as a Mother Hen, gathering up her chicks under her wings (Note 4)? Neither of those metaphors even made it to model stage.

And this is not just true of Western Christianity; I’ve seen and experienced this pattern repeat itself all over the world. Every religion, every sect, for the most part, has definite ideas about Ultimate Reality, leaving little wiggle room— in other words, little room left for Mystery. It’s the mystics who shatter the walls of their respective boxes.

Barbour goes on to explain how a model can then crystalize into a paradigm. A paradigm, whether in science or religion, includes metaphysical assumptions and captures the imagination of its adherents. In the process, a paradigm defines reality, determines what sort of questions can be asked, and what sort of answers we’re looking for (Note 5).

Doubt frees us from illusions of having captured God in a creed.

We have inklings of this Otherness, but our words anthropomorphize this Otherness. When we say, “God is Love,” our human ideas, images, and definitions of love immediately surface. Whatever negative or positive attributes we associate with love are now imputed to the God we defined as love.

When we reject “God”, what we might really be rejecting is the metaphor, the model, or the paradigm presented to us as the only or primary version of Ultimate Reality.  Perhaps it was imposed upon us in our childhoods and it no longer fits our experience. Our world picture changes as we grow and change.

Spirituality conveys the idea of living peaceably with ourselves, with each other, and with our natural environment. The global battle for religious supremacy still rages among us. Thinking metaphorically versus in absolutes (OUR absolutes) about the Divine opens up a space of humility within us where we can cultivate kindness, gentleness, and compassion for our fellow travelers.  

Barbour says that, “Doubt frees us from illusions of having captured God in a creed” (Note 6).

So does thinking metaphorically.

Note 1: McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982, 1987.

Note 2: The atoms subatomic construct cannot be directly observed, but based on theories we’ve developed amazing technology, such as this computer I’m typing on, my cell phone, and information available at my fingertips due to the internet.

Note 3: Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York: HarperCollins, 1997.

Note 4: Luke 15:8-10; Matthew 23:37

Note 5: For more information on metaphors, models, and paradigms, see Barbour, Religion and Science; Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science & Religion; Harper & Row, 1974; and Kuhn, T.S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; University of Chicago Press, 1996 ed.

Note 6: Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: A Comparative Study in Science & Religion.

Award-winning author Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister, and author of To Travel Well, Travel Light. An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. A lifelong student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.

The extensive support of the community and the rituals surrounding death serve as an example of how to care for the bereaved and communally process death.

When Maria was a young woman, her father, a local influential attorney and community leader, passed away suddenly at the age of 56, leaving a legacy of a large family and a prominent and valuable position in the community. The shock of his passing left all in the community grieving, and so began a days- and weeks-long ritual of mourning his death.

Because Igbo people are a majority Catholic group, much of Maria’s story of the beliefs and rituals surrounding the death of her father relate to the Bible. Maria described her community’s belief about rituals related to the ages of the deceased as stemming from Psalm 90:10, “Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” For this reason, a celebration of life ritual is valued for those eighty and older because they have reached the pinnacle of strength. If a person dies between 70 and 80, and the person is not in pain, it is also a reason for a celebration of life. If the deceased is younger than 70, it is more difficult for the community, especially if it was due to unexpected circumstances. Due to this, Maria described the impact of her father’s death as immense “crying and wailing” throughout the family and community.

Her father was mourned also by smaller sub-communities – the local group of attorneys in Lagos, the Catholic society, their home village. Each community along with their family hosted wakes, called “wake- keeping”, to provide the necessary honoring of his life. Wake-keepings are times of mourning and celebration imbued with singing, dancing, eating, drinking and remembering. Families often spend significant amounts of money providing the community with several opportunities to commemorate the deceased. This can be overwhelming at times for the family and so the community often contributes. In the case of the death of children, the community forbids the family from providing for the ceremonies and burial, instead providing for the family to bury their child.

Maria’s family accompanied his body along the trek toward the home village, where his final resting place would be. After several days of wake-keepings and ceremonies, the people walked behind the car with his body for four miles to the burial site near his village in Igboland. The Igbo people believe that if the body is not brought home to Igboland, the soul becomes lost and will never rest until the body is brought home.

After his death, Maria’s mother shaved her hair in steps, a small bit after each ceremony. Widows mark the mourning not only by shaving their hair but also by staying out of markets and other shopping areas for three months to one year, until the ikwa ozu or “second burial”. The ikwa ozu is a celebration of deceased loved ones which takes place anywhere from two weeks to one year after the death. It is another time of spiritual rites, songs, dance and expression which also serves as a support for the bereaved family members.

Maria reminded me that for the Igbo people, death is a time of transition – a home-going for the soul of the deceased to take their place as an honored ancestor.

All their celebrations and mourning rites do not avoid or diminish the pain of the loss, but rather honor their love for the deceased and their value to the community as a whole. Finally, Maria emphasized the importance of the concept, “Mbọsi onye kwalụ mmadụ k’ọkwalụ onw’ye’”, or “The day you mourn and weep for another’s death is perceived as the day that you mourn your own death – a recognition of your own transition.” Through this, the Igbo community demonstrates ancient understanding of the vital need for extensive social support during times of painful loss and transforms the fear of death into a time of transition from one part of life to the next.

Resources:
https://www.academia.edu/35168817/Continuum_Journal_of_Media_and_Cultural_Studies_Creativity
_in_calamity_Igbo_funeral_as_interface_of_visuality_and_performance
https://www.nigerianjournalsonline.com/index.php/JOCAS/article/download/1757/1717?__cf_chl_tk=d
7cyfDvs9_khWRQoI0TMc.5q69pxSxSiPQcHRU1OGR8-1686090299-0-gaNycGzNDFA

About the Author: As a mother of six sons, Lisa’s greatest joy in life is her family. Tragically, however, in 2002, she and her husband, Aaron, lost their fourth son Benjamin in an unexpected accident. From then on, Lisa experienced a long, painful struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder and deep grief. She was introduced to yoga as a daily practice to help her rest and reset her mind. After over 18 years of her personal growth as a student and a teacher of yoga, she continues to explore the relationship between spirituality, somatics and mental health. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at Messiah University and is privileged to work with People House as an Affordable Counseling Intern. Upon licensure, she intends to combine her in-depth knowledge of spiritual practices, yoga, and meditation with clinical counseling techniques to offer holistic therapy to clients, focusing on grief, trauma and bereavement issues for parents.

New Year’s resolutions can be quickly made and then quickly forgotten. I’m proposing one that only requires a conscious change in one’s thinking: live the “as if.”

Again, we do not know what the inside of an atom looks like, but scientists have theories that created our cell phones and computers, and so we live with the atom acting as if. Scientists took the plunge and acted as if their theories were correct. In addition, the creatives and the mystics around us have pulled back the curtain of our often-cloudy vision and shown us an as if of a spiritual world, an ultimate reality, a divinity, whatever you call it (2, 3).

When you live as if, you can tentatively and gently commit yourself to something, knowing you may be wrong, which is okay. It’s an experiment: NOT an absolute of good/bad or right/wrong. Living as-if not only frees you from fear, but also opens up a space inside you for unthought of possibilities.

Turn Turtle Thoughts & Actions: Choose a healthier path

See the world from a different perspective; that’s what happens when we turn turtle.

• Live as if nature is holy. Walk gently on the earth.
• Live as if nature is imbued with spirit.
• Live as if you co-create with divinity, with the cosmos, that you can create more good in the universe, more consciousness.
• Live as if your choices matter.
• Live as if you are one with the natural world. Instead of seeing yourself as separate from your natural environment. Use your imagination to insert yourself into it. Commune with the trees, swim in the air you breathe. Visualize that when you walk on the ground, you walk on yourself.
• Live as if the market economy isn’t the only way. Our current economic system is based on private profit and public loss. CEOs and shareholders create private profit for themselves: think Jeff Bezos or any of the resource extraction industries. Public loss is when these industries don’t clean up their mess (basic kindergarten rule). The rest of us experience that public loss in our pollution-poisoned air; freshwater streams, rivers, and lakes; and the earth.  And we pay for it through medical bills: asthma, allergies, and gut problems. Ask the Navajos about their loss through irresponsible uranium mining companies and their complicity with the US government (4). And taxpayers foot the cleanup bill. Capitalism isn’t wrong; it just needs an update.

Our economic system is based on lies:

• Lie number one: That we can dump our pollutants into the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the ground that grows our food and, that somehow, these poisons will magically disappear. Note also that some religions teach that we can abuse this natural creation and that “God will take care of it.”
• Lie number two: That there will always be enough to satiate humanity’s greed—not our needs, but our wants.

Status quo: Don’t step outside the line!

In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, the evil headmistress sings, “…you have to stay inside the circle all the time!” and viciously punishes the children who don’t.

That’s what the status quo tells us, whether it be our politicians, economists, or religious leaders: Stay inside the line.

Humanity needs a flip.

Turn turtle. At a minimum, see the world as alive, as interconnected. We don’t need absolutes at this point—we need to see potentialities and possibilities.

Sit mindfully with this as you ponder the new year and how you want to live. Use your creative imagination to think outside the status quo fed to us repeatedly by our politicians and CEOs. After all, they are the ones who financially benefit from the rest of us when we live as mindless consumers.

Notes & Sources:

1. Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. Penguin Books. 2019.
2. Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997:110
3. Edwards, Mary Coday. To Travel Well, Travel Light: An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. SBNR Press, 2022.
4. Many sources exist detailing this abuse and poison. This is just one article. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/10/473547227/for-the-navajo-nation-uranium-minings-deadly-legacy-lingers
5. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, says mindfulness is “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.”

About the Author: Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister. A life-long student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.

One of my previous posts gave a brief synopsis of the historical and cultural role of soul in psychology in the West. I received my masters in a program, grounded in depth psychology, an orientation started by Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Jung believed that the psyche or “soul” will move towards wholeness and thus the path to healing is integration of all aspects of Self: mind, body, soul. 

Also in my previous post, we explored how the Western interpretation of Freudian psychological text, attributed mystical and divine aspects of psyche to human mental processes. This was further exacerbated with the Western adaptation of the Cartestian split. The cartesian split is the oversimplified interpretation of Descartes work, the belief that mind and body are separate entities with an emphasis on mind over matter. 

I feel this prioritization of mind above and separate of body, and the exclusion of divine mysticism, has left the majority of Western psychological practice stilted and incomplete. In the last decade we have seen a return to incorporating body processes and wisdom into psychological process with somatic approaches like EMDR, brainspotting and authentic movement. I believe body practice is necessary to full efficacy of any psychological practice.

I am also seeing a consistent seeking for and calling in spirit or psyche into therapeutic practice. I previously shared the prevalence of religious trauma that many clients of my private practice have experienced in the past. We are seeing younger generations and individuals that have turned away from religious and spiritual practice. 

Following the depth tradition for healing, we see a major gap in the healing approach, without incorporating the soul, we lose a complete dimension of the Self. Jung shared that was remains unconscious in the self will seek integration through whatever means are available. I believe that what is unconscious is constantly speaking to us through dream, symbolism, feeling and physical dis-ease. It is no wonder that we see a culture struggling with a healthy sense of Self and deeper meaning. My hope is that as therapists, we bring Soul back into psychology and even when we don’t have the answers, which many times we do not, we can encourage the client’s soulful exploration. Could there be something more at play, less literal and more poetic. 

“When we relate to our bodies as having soul, we attend to their beauty, their poetry and their expressiveness. Our very habit of treating the body as a machine, whose muscles are like pulleys and its organs engines, forces its poetry underground, so that we experience the body as an instrument and see its poetics only in illness.” 

― Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

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How do I justify these claims of knowledge of what I believe to be true about reality?

“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” Physicist Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize Winner

I am deeply suspicious of any worldview or world picture that claims to be THE absolute truth. However, there are not enough hours in the day and years in my life to understand everything well enough before I can make a decision as to what IS truth and subsequently, how to live my life.

However, about 25 years ago I did venture forth on that quest in typical quixotic zealousness. I was sitting at my desk in Peshawar, Pakistan, planning how we were going to feed the thousands of Afghan refugees returning to a war-pocked Afghan countryside (this is pre-Taliban and post-USSR days), and I was looking for an absolute value.

The Green Revolution had come to Afghanistan. We were increasing crop production through the use of modified seeds which required substantial increases in pesticides and fertilizers, and our European donors wanted agricultural projects that reduced or prevented groundwater pollution.  At the time, we couldn’t see a win/win solution.

Looking back on it, I now know it isn’t either/or, but and/both. At the time my Afghan colleagues and I chaffed at this clash of values between East and West, this “colonial imperialism”. We came around of course, as polluted water supplies aren’t supportive of a healthy population (think Flint, Michigan), but I soon hit the moral philosophy books, looking for an apex ethic that would guide my actions. In my naivety, I wanted something that would ALWAYS be right, in ALL situations.

Only to find out that there really isn’t any.

But what I DID discover rocked my world.

The As-If Function: Critical Realism Opens Us Up to Further Discovery

How we think the world IS determines our actions in this world. For example, ancient cultures supposed the earth was flat. Based on that reality, drifting off in your fishing boat from the coastal area was a scary undertaking. Not having Google Earth, these cultures depended upon their regional experts for exploration guidance.

What is your mode of truth seeking, your theory of knowledge, in other words – your epistemology? Table 1 lists three categories (1):

Table 1: Three Broad Epistemological Theories

I use all three, and all three tempered with critical realism (see Table 2) —but more of that further into this blog.

Physicist/theologian Ian Barbour says the meaning of truth is correspondence with reality (2, 3), but reality is inaccessible to us. Example: We still don’t know what the inside of an atom looks like (4). But if the scientific community had waited until we knew with absolute certainty how an atom’s quark functioned, we’d still be using rotary phones.

Therefore, we have a form of realism, in that some aspects of the physical world are accessible to us, but it is a critical realism because our scientific—and spiritual—constructs are also reflections of the imagination and intuition of our human minds; they are extrapolations.

John Polkinghorne speaks similarly, saying critical realism is a means to bridge the gap between what we CAN know about entities to WHAT THEY ACTUALLY ARE and regardless, requires a metaphysical choice (5).

This is living with—and loving—mystery. Only a tiny fraction of the physical universe can humankind understand, let alone explain.

The same is true of my spiritual universe; I have limited intimations and experiential glimpses of its vastness and potentialities.

However, if I waited until I could live this life with absolute certainty—what I set out to do when I left my desk in Peshawar—I’d be living a life uncommitted to anything. I’d want absolute certainty of the goodness or rightness of any system, set of rules, or ideology. I’d be paralyzed with immobility.

By committing myself to the world picture outlined in my opening sentence, I also open myself up to further discovery. Scientists commit themselves to models and then allow their imaginations and intuition to carry on their creative and scientific endeavors in order to discover other connections.

Therefore, I elect to live my life based on critical realism’s as-if function: I live my life as if the world is interconnected, as if it’s full of potentialities, and as if my efforts matter (see Table 2). This does not translate into a shifting reality based on last night’s pizza.

I, too, rely on experts to help me navigate my world, but I choose carefully those whom I tentatively follow. Hallmarks of worthy guides are those with humility and acceptance of mystery. These guides dwell among the mystics and poets, spiritual organizations such as People House, and the scientific community.

Spiritual concepts emerging from the world revealed to us through quantum mechanics are foundational to my as-if realities. Pay attention through mindfulness practices (6) to what YOUR reality looks like!

Table 2: An Epistemology of Critical Realism

Notes & Sources:

1- Grassie, Billy. “Quaker Epistemology: Towards a Friends Philosophy. Presentation to the Friends Association for Higher Education” at Haverford College, June 24, 1995. Also, keep in mind these are broad philosophical sweeps which obscure many differences and distinctions of knowing, such as psychological, moral, spiritual, biophysical, and aesthetic.
2- Barbour, Ian. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997:110
3- Two strains of critical realism (CR) have emerged since the 1960s. Ian Barbour, who has been widely recognized as creating the contemporary field of natural science and religion, used the term first in his 1966 book, Issues in Science and Religion. He explored the tensions and antagonisms existing at the time between the two disciplines. Roy Bhaskar began using the term in the late 1970s in service of his philosophical studies in the social sciences. My eureka moment came through Barbour’s scientific-theologian strain. His clicked with me—perhaps because of my background in both; Bhaskar’s has not. Therefore, I will focus on Barbour’s development of critical realism. For the more curious among you, see resources and/or Google Bhaskar and critical realism. (Social science as a field of study is separate from the natural sciences, which cover topics such as physics, biology, and chemistry. Social science examines the relationships between individuals and societies, as well as the development and operation of societies, rather than studying the physical world.)
4- The atoms subatomic construct cannot be directly observed, but based on theories we’ve developed amazing technology, such as this computer I’m typing on, my cell phone, and information available at my fingertips due to the internet.
5- Polkinghorne, J.C. Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 1998:53
6- Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, says, mindfulness is “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.”

About the Author: Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister. A life-long student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.

“The game is rigged,” wrote Lux Alptraum in a recent article in The New York Times (1). She continued, saying that women needed to stop playing by the rules.

Feminist empowerment, which is the ability for women to make decisions for themselves and act on them, is failing women, she says. 

By definition, empowerment feminism requires a system that’s operating in good faith—a system that empowers its members. Whether it be political, religious, educational, or economic, if women display confidence and strength, if we vote responsibly, if we work within the system, the system will reward us.  It shows it respects our values and our truths. There have been many successes. In 2022, more than a quarter of the seats in Congress, almost a third of the seats in state legislatures, nearly half of the seats on the Supreme Court, and the vice president’s office are all occupied by women.

But Ms. Alptraum says we live in a rigged system, “one that attempts to discredit women and girls, that forces us to jump through unnecessary hoops and is more interested in discouraging us than in listening to what we have to say.” 

Bodily autonomy: Governance over one’s body

While the #MeToo movement outed abusers, many remain in power. The FBI confirmed that they received 4,500 tips about Brett Kavanagh’s behavior but only investigated a handful—done at the directive of the then-current administration. Thus we ended up with a Supreme Court justice serving a lifetime appointment who voted to reverse Roe vs. Wade, denying women bodily autonomy (2). 

Bodily autonomy is about the right to make decisions over one’s own life and future. It is about having the information to make informed choices. It’s the right to governance over one’s own body. These are universal values. True, we have seatbelt and motorcycle helmet requirements, and they are justified by the costs to society in lost lives and disabilities. 

Bodily autonomy is regularly challenged by laws informed by patriarchal ideologies designed to subdue and govern others. Especially for women of color and LGBTQIA+ people, these laws determine how their bodies exist in the world.

Why seek the approval of an unjust system?

Ms. Alptraum asks why play by the rules when the rules are written so we lose? Why seek the validation and approval of an unjust system? 

She says that we also need a feminism of disempowerment, which is knowing that since the system’s rigged against us, we go around it. 

That’s nothing new. Marginalized groups throughout history purposefully worked outside established channels, knowing it might be their only path to equality. In the United States, the civil rights and LGBTQIA+ movements would have made little progress if they’d only quietly sought justice. 

Being nice will not cause life to sing.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés 

Ask Black South Africans how submitting nicely to the ruling white class worked out for them, or any other colonized people who fought the shackles of their colonial oppressors. 

Ms. Alptraum gives examples of abortion-rights advocates and how throughout history and continuing today, they worked around the political systems that subjugated them, both in the U.S. and globally (3). 

Former President Jimmy Carter severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention because he saw how the institution was rigged against women. He said, “The truth is that male religious leaders have had – and still have – an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.”

Go where you’re valued. I left patriarchal Christian churches when I grew weary of trying to change it from within. I was consistently told that if I wanted the all-male leaders to listen to me, I had “to talk nicer.” Which of course, revealed its rigged system, because “nice” was defined by the patriarchy. I would never be heard or accepted as an equal. I left those churches behind and became a nonsectarian ordained minister through a supportive institution, People House. As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes, “Finding that being good, being sweet, being nice will not cause life to sing” (4).

I am not advocating for violence, nor does Ms. Alptraum. She says, “It is always better when we’re able to secure our wins through established channels, when our rights are recognized through all levels of society — and certainly, voting remains a crucial tool in our toolbox.”

But a feminism of disempowerment reminds us that even when the system is rigged, no one can take away our basic human rights.

~~~~~~~~

Check out my recently published memoir, To Travel Well, Travel Light: An Adventure Memoir of Living Abroad and Letting Go of Life’s Trappings: Material Possessions, Cultural Blinders, and a Patriarchal Christian Worldview. 

If you like it, please leave a review! 

What’s it about? 

“Young mother from the US moves to Peshawar, Pakistan, with her family to help her Afghan friends rebuild their country, only to painfully watch her patriarchal Christian worldview tumble down and be rebuilt with soul-driven goals and values.” Available on Amazon.

Notes & Sources: 

1. Alptraum, Lux. “Women, the Game Is Rigged. It’s Time We Stop Playing by the Rules.” The New York Times; July 29, 2022
2. For more information on bodily autonomy, see the United Nations Population Fund, https://www.friendsofunfpa.org/bodily-autonomy-busting-7-myths-that-undermine-individual-rights-and-freedoms/; https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/03/what-is-bodily-autonomy-and-why-does-it-matter-for-women/; https://www.thegoodtrade.com/features/reclaiming-body-autonomy-for-women
3. For those interested, check out these websites: https://www.plancpills.org/ and https://www.mayday.health/ 
4. Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. Women who Run with the Wolves. Ballantine Books, 1992. Page 85. 

About the Author: Rev. Mary Coday Edwards is a Spiritual Growth Facilitator and People House Minister. A life-long student of spirituality, Mary spent almost 20 years living, working, and sojourning abroad in Asia, Southeast Asia, East Africa, and Latin America before finding her spiritual connection at People House and completing its Ministerial Program. Past studies include postgraduate studies from the University of South Africa in Theological Ethics/Ecological Justice, where she focused on the spiritual and physical interconnectedness of all things. With her MA in Environmental Studies from Boston University, abroad she worked and wrote on environmental sustainability issues at both global and local levels. In addition to working in refugee repatriation, she was an editor for international, English print, daily newspapers in Indonesia and Mexico.