Jimmy Carter is My Hero

Losing my religion for equality…by Jimmy Carter

25 JANUARY 2013 393,009 VIEWS 31 COMMENTS

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I HAVE been a practicing Christian all my life and a deacon and Bible teacher for many years. My faith is a source of strength and comfort to me, as religious beliefs are to hundreds of millions of people around the world. So my decision to sever my ties with the Southern Baptist Convention, after six decades, was painful and difficult. It was, however, an unavoidable decision when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be “subservient” to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military service.

This view that women are somehow inferior to men is not restricted to one religion or belief. Women are prevented from playing a full and equal role in many faiths. Nor, tragically, does its influence stop at the walls of the church, mosque, synagogue or temple. This discrimination, unjustifiably attributed to a Higher Authority, has provided a reason or excuse for the deprivation of women’s equal rights across the world for centuries.

At its most repugnant, the belief that women must be subjugated to the wishes of men excuses slavery, violence, forced prostitution, genital mutilation and national laws that omit rape as a crime. But it also costs many millions of girls and women control over their own bodies and lives, and continues to deny them fair access to education, health, employment and influence within their own communities.

The impact of these religious beliefs touches every aspect of our lives. They help explain why in many countries boys are educated before girls; why girls are told when and whom they must marry; and why many face enormous and unacceptable risks in pregnancy and childbirth because their basic health needs are not met.

In some Islamic nations, women are restricted in their movements, punished for permitting the exposure of an arm or ankle, deprived of education, prohibited from driving a car or competing with men for a job. If a woman is raped, she is often most severely punished as the guilty party in the crime.

The same discriminatory thinking lies behind the continuing gender gap in pay and why there are still so few women in office in the West. The root of this prejudice lies deep in our histories, but its impact is felt every day. It is not women and girls alone who suffer. It damages all of us. The evidence shows that investing in women and girls delivers major benefits for society. An educated woman has healthier children. She is more likely to send them to school. She earns more and invests what she earns in her family.

It is simply self-defeating for any community to discriminate against half its population. We need to challenge these self-serving and outdated attitudes and practices - as we are seeing in Iran where women are at the forefront of the battle for democracy and freedom.

I understand, however, why many political leaders can be reluctant about stepping into this minefield. Religion, and tradition, are powerful and sensitive areas to challenge. But my fellow Elders and I, who come from many faiths and backgrounds, no longer need to worry about winning votes or avoiding controversy - and we are deeply committed to challenging injustice wherever we see it.

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela, who offer their influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity. We have decided to draw particular attention to the responsibility of religious and traditional leaders in ensuring equality and human rights and have recently published a statement that declares: “The justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a Higher Authority, is unacceptable.”

We are calling on all leaders to challenge and change the harmful teachings and practices, no matter how ingrained, which justify discrimination against women. We ask, in particular, that leaders of all religions have the courage to acknowledge and emphasise the positive messages of dignity and equality that all the world’s major faiths share.

The carefully selected verses found in the Holy Scriptures to justify the superiority of men owe more to time and place - and the determination of male leaders to hold onto their influence - than eternal truths. Similar biblical excerpts could be found to support the approval of slavery and the timid acquiescence to oppressive rulers.

I am also familiar with vivid descriptions in the same Scriptures in which women are revered as pre-eminent leaders. During the years of the early Christian church women served as deacons, priests, bishops, apostles, teachers and prophets. It wasn’t until the fourth century that dominant Christian leaders, all men, twisted and distorted Holy Scriptures to perpetuate their ascendant positions within the religious hierarchy.

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. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. This is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but also the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul, Moses and the prophets, Muhammad, and founders of other great religions - all of whom have called for proper and equitable treatment of all the children of God. It is time we had the courage to challenge these views.

OBSERVER

Jimmy Carter was president of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

Copyright © 2013 Fairfax Media

 

http://www.womenspress-slo.org/?p=11440

The Origins of Easter

Christians celeberate a feast day called “Easter,” on which they honor a murdered son and his miraculous return to life through the power of the Father.  This story reinterprets the much earlier, Babylonian myth of Osiris, in which Isis, ”the Giver of Life,” mother of the sun, and “oldest of the old,” restores Osiris to life, mates with him, and then begets a falcon-headed sun-god, Horus.  Representations of Isis suckling her son were commonly associated with Mary and Jesus from the 5th century, A.C.E., onwards.

Jews celebrate a kind of renewal of life during Pesach, or Passover, and recall the time when the Destroying Angel “passed over” those houses whose doorways had been sprinkled with blood, but killed the firstborn sons of all others, giving Pharoh yet another powerful sign that he should release the Jews from captivity.

Blood and eggs feature prominently in both Easter and Passover.   Christian children hunt for and devour eggs that a magic rabbit has hidden, and Jews place a roasted or hard-boiled egg, the Beitzah on the Seder plate to commemorate and mourn the sacrifices that they used to make in the destroyed Temple. But the Beitzah also symbolizes the joyful return of life at springtime.

A tradition that appears to predate Judaism and Christianity, whose traces have lingered in the Middle East, Asia, and Old Europe, is the honoring of women’s power to give birth, symbolized again by blood and eggs.  Decorated goose eggs were found in a German grave that dates back to the 4th century.   Lithuanians began to decorate and share eggs with one another at least as early as the 13th century.

A drawing of an Old European goddess found in Marja Gimbutas, The Language of the Goddess

Common motifs on these eggs are  spirals, suns, teeth, trees, flora and birds.  According to  Lithuanian historian Marja Gimbutas, who pioneered archaeomythology, an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship that combines archaeology, mythology, ethnology, folklore, linguistic paleontology, and the study of historical documents,  these symbols represent fertility goddesses worshiped by the people of ancient Europe.

Persians have exchanged red-colored eggs at the Spring equinox to celebrate No-rooz, or “New Day,”  for at least 3,000 years. The holiday is rooted in Zoroastrian religion, which prevailed in Iran long before Islam.

 

According to Bede, the Northumbrian monk living c. 720 A.C.E., the oldest origins of Easter began in rituals for Eostre, or Ostara, (Northumbrian Old English: Ēostre; West Saxon Old English: Ēastre; Old High German: *Ôstara), a Saxon goddess associated with the Moon.  In De Temporum ratione, Bede wrote:

Original Latin: Eostur-monath, qui nunc Paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a Dea illorum quæ Eostre vocabatur, et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit: a cujus nomine nunc Paschale tempus cognominant, consueto antiquæ observationis vocabulo gaudia novæ solemnitatis vocantes.

Modern English translation: Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”

The Moon-Rabbit is also a symbol of fertility and immortality in ancient China. This is embroidery on an 18th-Century Chinese Robe.

The moon-hare was sacred in both eastern and western ancient practices.

 

 

 

 

 

When Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Holy Roman Empire, defeated the Saxons in 700s, all the months of the year were changed from their Latin names.  April was called ”Osteranoth” in Frankish and Ostermonat in German.  Jacob Grimm speculated that the German equivalent ”Ostern” derived from the name of an ancient Germanic goddess, Ostara, or Oestre.

Some scholars believe that Isis and Astarte are Egyptian and Syrian names for the same moon goddess whom the  Europeans worshipped.  Astarte,  Asherah and Anath are the three great goddesses of Canaanite religion.

A goddess with a similar name is found on some Roman altar stones from the Lower Rhine in North-West Germany.  These altars were dedicated to local mother goddesses, who frequently appeared as triple deities and were associated with fertility.   Similar altars dedicated to goddesses with Celtic names occur throughout northern Italy, France, Spain, and Britain.  Very close to St. Bede’s  Easterwines monastery at Monkwearmouth there is an ancient Roman fort where many inscriptions are found on an altar dedicated to Astarte, the Syrian and Phoenician fertility goddess.

Fertility celebrations are found throughout ancient European and Mediterranean regions.  The Saxons, the Irish, and the Persians  all kept a movable feast on the first day of the week after the first full moon of the Spring equinox.

Bohemians also had a ritual on the day after Oestre Sunday, which was a “Moon-day,” in which village girls sacrificed the “Lord of Death” by throwing him into the water and singing,

Death swims in the water, spring comes to visit us,

With eggs that are red, with yellow pancakes,

We carried Death out of the village

We are carrying Summer into the village.

Ritualistically casting death into the river, the villagers celebrated the return of the growing season and new life, preparing for summer’s bounty with red eggs and sun-shaped and colored food.

“Oestre ”also is the source of our scientific term, estrous, from the Latin Oestrus and the  Greek οἶστρος).  The Oxford English Dictionary defines the estrus cycle as

the period of sexual receptivity and fertility during the reproductive cycle of most female mammals; the time of being in heat.

Lefthandofeminism likes Wikipedia’s version better:

The estrous cycle comprises the recurring physiological changes that are induced by reproductive hormones in most mammalian placental females. Humans undergo a menstrual cycle instead. Estrous cycles start after puberty in sexually mature females and are interrupted by anestrous phases or pregnancies. Typically estrous cycles continue until death. Some animals may display bloody vaginal discharge, often mistaken for menstruation, also called a “period”.

In The Left Hand of Darkness, all people of the planet Gethen experience estrus cycles, or periods of “kemmer,” which come and go.  As Le Guin observes,

Consider: Anyone can turn his[sic] hand to anything.  This sounds very simple, but its psychological effects are incalculable.  The fact that everyone between seventeen and thirty-five or so is liable to be…’tied down to child-bearing’ implies that no one is quite so thoroughly ‘tied down’ here as women, elsewhere, are likely to be–psychologically or physically. Burden and privilege are shared out pretty equally; everybody has the same risk or choice to make.  Therefore nobody here is as free as a free man anywhere else.

…

Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive.

Imagine how extraordinary our world would be if, instead of obediently rehearsing these polarities in the liturgies of the Jewish, the Christian, and the Muslim traditions,  every year, we celebrated this time of year by considering the sexes as equals, as companions, as equally powerful and active agents.

What if we were to celebrate Eostre and the oestrus in Easter by recognizing our commonality with mammals, who, like us, give birth by virtue of the blood that softens our wombs and ebbs and flows in us, like the river of life?  What if, instead of lording it over mammals and all other animals, or granting supremacy to those who do lord around, we celebrated our mutual dependence on one another and on the planet from which all life springs?

We should especially celebrate  the oestrus, the gadfly that, by stinging, moves the more bovine among us out of the mud, where we are wallowing.

Let us also remember that the figural meaning of estrus and oestrus is “Something that incites a person to passionate, esp. creative, activity.”  Let’s all be gadflies tomorrow and incite one another to passionate bursts of creative activity.

And really–to all of you who celebrate the holiday, Happy Easter!

McCaskill Demands Action in Dismissed Sexual Assault Conviction

McCaskill Demands Action in Dismissed Sexual Assault Conviction.

On Good Orderly Direction and Catholicism

Jesus said,

“If you bring forth that which is within you, it will save you.  If you do not bring forth that which is within you, it will destroy you.” 

Writing about my struggles, spiritual and secular, helps me to process my emotions and think more sensibly.  Sometimes I am venting rage or frustration, which I do utterly without any intention of insulting others. I want to make it clear that I respect other people’s spirituality and religious faith and do not mean to condemn anyone who regards the universe differently from me, but rather that masculinist and patriarchal concepts anger me because they have imposed and still perpetuate oppression.  There are many things that I admire in current and long-passed Catholic women and men.  Alice laquinta, a woman priest leading a Catholic congregation in Wisconsin, commented on the all-masculine conclave presently engaged in the selection of the next pope by reminding us that,

“Before there were popes, before there were cardinals, before there were bishops, priests, deacons, there was a young girl who said, ‘Yes’ when God called her to be the mother of the incarnation of God, and there were no men there to make a determination if she was for or worthy, that was a call between her and God.“

There is also Frances Kissling, who led the progressive Catholics for Choice organization before Jon O’Brien, the current President.  Catholic heros in my hall of honor include my son’s grandparents, Hildegard of Bingen, Theresa of Avila, and Julian of Norwich, the first woman to write a book in English, Revelations of Divine Love. It’s funny.  I love spiritual literature, including Catholic literature, Puritan literature, Anglican literature, and Buddhist writings, and draw much strength and inspiration from these and many other religious and mystical texts, including musical texts.  So why is it so difficult for me to join a group that draws upon Christianity in order to create a web of strength between people who are suffering?  It’s hard for me to decide whether I’m more irritated by the god-stuff or by the fact that many groups hold onto patriarchal terms for god “as we understood HIM.”  The language itself and the concepts it expresses have become fetishized, frozen, immobilized, dead.  I’d be happier with “g.o.d., as we understood IT,” but would’t want that phrase to become fetishized, either. 

These two previous posts of my mine have given rise to some wonderful, healing conversations with fellow travelers.  Many of them have also wrestled with what I have called the god-stuff.  One very insightful person suggested that “good orderly direction” is a useful, secular mantra to keep in mind while others are talking about god. 

I also want to report that I have encountered some genuinely generous people in the program, who have reached out to me and give me hope in this short time.  I have been meditating on my relationship with my son, which is obviously not entirely healthy.

That is, it is not so much my son who must change, but rather I who must change. I need to let go, to allow him room to be himself, if only so that his accomplishments can be his accomplishments.  Like everyone else in the world, he deserves the dignity of finding his own good, orderly direction.

As I was writing this post, a friend sent me a link to an interesting article entitled, “My Sober Conversion to Atheism” published on the Fix.  John Gordon and many of his commenters make for helpful reading.  What a community. 

Second Al-Anon Meeting

So, today I actually spoke and said I had trouble with the “god stuff” in al-anon because I’m an atheist and do not believe in a creator or a higher power.  This did not go over as badly as it might have, since I then proceeded to weep while talking about how badly I need help with my son.  A number of people came over to talk to me afterwards, and I will certainly go back to that meeting. 

 

Still, I really am going to have trouble biting my tongue about the 12 steps.  Not only am I never going to “believe that a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity” (step 2) (and actually, I don’t feel insane, either); nor am I ever going to 3. “turn my will over to God as I understand HIM” because I don’t believe in god, or any other deity or exogenous power, certainly not a masculine power  (why can’t they at least use gender-neutral language? the Episopalians do, and the Reformed Jews, and lots of other god-lovin’ folk);  and nor am I likely to admit to this mythological being the (step five): “exact nature of my wrongs,” as though I could possibly fathom them or interpret them accurately; and there is NO FUCKING WAY that I’m going to (step six and seven): “humbly ask” a mythological being to “remove these defects of character” (this defies logic–there is no power that can do this magical thing); and also NFW that I’m going to (step 11) “pray only for knowledge of this mythological masculine being’s will for me and the for the power to carry out this god’s will (especially since the god that most of the people in SUPER CATHOLIC SW Pennsylvania is literally a mother-fucker (god impregnates his own mother with himself) who, according to the cardinals and the popes and all the other masculinists in charge of the church today, created masculine beings to be permanently superior to all feminine beings).  Finally, it is highly unlikely, nay impossible, that I will (step 12)  have a spiritual awakening while submitting to these terms.  

 

If this is the program I have to buy into, the steps I have to follow, then it’s never going to work.  

 

Still, I’m so desperate to talk to other people who have struggled with the stuff I’m struggling with now that I’ll make an effort to get what I can out of the meetings.  So I’ll go along with admitting that I’m powerless drugs and make an inventory of myself and even admit those faults to anyone who will listen compassionately and nonjudgementally, try to make a list of everyone I’ve harmed (that’s a long, long list, and my kid is right at the top of it); and make direct amends whenever possible (one of the most beautiful rituals of Yom Kippor) and continue to take a personal inventory (but I’m sure as hell not going to dwell on my faults, as the steps direct me to do, and that is so like Christianity….focus on your faults, your defects, and crimes, and then pretend that only a deity that does not exist can remove them, so you’re fucked).  What’s with all the negativity and attachment to the exact words that a Christian masculinist penned fifty or so years ago? 

 

Look, I’m going to keep on going.  But I’m also going to keep on kvetching.  

Al-Anon

Just back from my first al-anon meeting.  Mostly women, mostly 40+.  One woman, whom I liked especially, let it be know that her husband was in the next room with 37 years of sobriety.  How depressing.  They’ve been going to AA meeting for 37 years, and that is why they are still married?

What bugs me most about the whole AA/Al-anon program is the god stuff.  Every single person who spoke today talked about god.  One woman said that the only way she could get through each day was by praying, to god.  Who, she then said, has everything planned out, and therefore all she needs to do is trust in “HIM” and things will be fine.

What a philosophy!!! To believe there is a “higher power,” a being, a MALE being, who has set it all up exactly as we find things, and who loves us, and that is why we are all suffering so much.  More unbelievable is the notion that one has only to trust in this god, and “let go” and all will be well.   In other words, one has absolutely no other responsibility for one’s existence and that of one’s children and loved ones but to thank god endlessly for being there.  The utterly illogical assertion that this god has also allowed things to go absolutely haywire intentionally–the wars in the Congo, where children are raped and forced to murder daily; child sex trafficking in Pittsburgh and other fine cities in the U.S.,; wars from which our young people return irrevocably damaged by trauma; the Holocaust; the genocide of the Armenians; the persecution of women who dare to think for themselves in countless countries across the globe; the devastation of the environment and wildlife; the slaughter of elephants for their tusks and wolves for sheer greed and bloodlust–all of this has been preordained and meant to be…and we humans should simply sit back and thank god and feel grateful for all that “HE” has done for us.

There is absolutely no evidence for a creator of any kind, and the concept of a god, or gods plural, is mythological.  So I find it exceedingly taxing to sit among a group of credulous human beings who tell me that all my problems and worries will be taken care of if only I have faith in what I could never possibly believe in.

I tried to open my heart and mind and listen to these people.  When they mentioned “god” I consciously attempted to make the leap between my notion of breath, or ruha, or life-spirit that abides in the universe, being, with their concept of god.  I found many of their comments moving, especially when they referred specifically to their individual worries.  They did not share much in this vein.  Most of the discussion tonight appealed to me quite a bit, since it concerned their thoughts about what the phrase, “one day at a time,” means, and nearly everyone spoke about their efforts to stay in the present and to be happy with what they could be happy about, in spite of all their cares.  I was moved to tears on more than one occasion.

I could not join in with them, not even on this abstract heart-open to open-heart space level, with them, when they recited the Lord’s Prayer at the end.  I know this prayer by heart, as they say, and can speak it without thinking, as I did when I was five.  But now that I am in my fifties, I’ve had a long time to think about it.  Aside from all the “thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,” business, which is perfect hogwash, there is also the particularly disturbing line, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those…”, which is often translated as “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  The language is financial, having to do emotional and social/spiritual obligations that have, since the very earliest Church fathers, such as Augustine, been construed in terms of money, property, exchange.  The ancient idea is that god, this mythical deity, allowed humans to live in exchange for their perpetual bond to him (this deity having been imagined as masculine, since the culture that produced this myth was patriarchal), which would only be paid off, redeemed, as the term went, when the human fulfilled his or her duties sufficiently to be reunited with the father, had paid off the original debt, which came about at birth.  It’s a fairly bizarre way to understand the relationship between humanity and a creator, but the concept has been with us for a long time.  It comes from our history of enslaving one another, and selling girls or women to men as “concubines” or “women” (there is actually no word for wife or marriage in the early scriptures). Not a pretty history.

I’ve written extensively about this in my unpublished manuscript, not that that makes any difference right now.  The point is, all of my intellect rebels against the mythological beliefs that underlay al-anon.  Believing in a creator god who has benevolently dispensed all that has come to past, including my son’s tremendous lostness, forlornness, and profound pain, psychological distress…this is not going to help me.  This DOES NOT HELP ME FIGURE OUT HOW TO HELP MY SON OR MYSELF.

Still, I’m not giving up. There are no secular groups in Pittsburgh.  I need to talk to other parents who have gone through what I’m going through.  I need help.  My partner doesn’t want to talk about it.  He doesn’t want to talk about anything “dark,” as though by refusing to countenance grief and sorrow these emotions will simply never occur.  I’m profoundly lonely.

Fasting to protest the Imprisonment of Human Rights Lawyer #Nasrin Sotoudeh

That’s funny.  I already wrote a blog and thought I had posted it, but for some reason it didn’t go through.  So, the last post won’t make any sense.  Here’s what should have come first.

I’m fasting today to honor Nasrin Sotoudeh, the heroic human rights lawyer imprisoned by the Iranian government for her willingness to take on human rights and political cases, ended a life-threatening hunger strike.  The authorities finally capitulated to international demands that the government stop punishing her family, specifically, in this case, her 12 year-old daughter, who had been prohibited from traveling until today.

Sotoudeh is a prisoner of conscience, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iran considers Sotoudeh a prisoner of conscience.  The European Union this year awarded her the prestitious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.  Numerous organizations have called for her release.

Today Nasrin will begin to take sustenance again, and she will live.  But she still remains unjustly and inhumanely imprisoned.  I will deny myself food today, as she has done for the past 49 days, in personal protest against the Iranian government’s cruel treatment of this noble hero.  Won’t you join me and fast to demonstrate your solidarity with Nasrin?