Summer Reading: Post 6 - Circling Faith

"Faith is . . . not firm.  Nor is it a settled state or a fixed noun.  We've decided it is an ongoing process, a verb" (Reed and Horne 6).


"This is my living faith, an active faith, a faith of verbs: to question, explore, experiment, experience, walk, run, dance, play, eat, love, learn, dare, taste, touch, smell, listen, argue, speak, write, read, draw, provoke, emote, scream, sin, repent, cry, kneel, pray, bow, rise, stand, look, laugh, cajole, create, confront, confound, walk back, walk forward, circle, hide and seek"
- - Terry Tempest Williams

Circling Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality, Ed. by Wendy Reed and Jennifer Horne (Source)

I love the cover art for the book I've been reading this past week: simple, elegant, and it appropriately reminds me of the south - the bees, the bones, the flowers.  The lovely cover is what made me pick it up off the 'new in religion/spirituality' shelf at the library.  I thought it would be a great one to read after Winner's Still and although I didn't read all the essays in the collection, I did very much enjoy the ones I did read, skimming through many of the others.  The introduction to the book, written by the two editors, discusses the process of coming out with this second collection after receiving such great feedback from their first, All Out of Faith.  However, with their first book of essays they suspected a controversy but were met instead with lots of women who felt their own stories had been told - their voices were being heard and there were other women having questioning conversations about faith and spirituality.

So, they started work on this second collection: "The story begins: Two women and a laptop walk into a monastery. (There is no bar - the country's dry; there are no men - it's all nuns).  For inspiration, they'd brought books.  For sleep, they'd brought PJs.  For thirst, they'd stashed a cooler in the trunk.  This was before Eat, Pray, Love had sold millions of copies, inspiring women all over the world to seek spiritual retreat . . ." (3).  I was intrigued.  And what followed was a book of essays written by women discussing their relationship oftentimes with their body/flesh and their faith/spirituality.  "As several of our essayists note, we are, after all, creatures of flesh and spirit.  Remaining open to the wonder and mystery of both sometimes take courage.  With this book we are hoping to inspire conversation and encourage vulerability, to challenge memory, to up the volume.  What follows are voices, sartorial words echoing and tumbling, patching and mending . . ." (8). I became even more intrigued and excited as I began reading the essays.

What follows are quotes from the introduction and a couple of the essays that interested me and I found worth sharing.  Similar to the authors' comments in their introduction I was moved by the essayists' discoveries about their own connections with their bodies and spirits.

Reed and Horne (Source)

- - from "Introduction: A Faith of Verbs" by Reed and Horne
'Some keep the Sabbath going to church; / I keep it staying home" - - Emily Dickinson

"One mother expressed delight to read of faith being discussed outside the church walls.  For a while, she'd been telling people who asked, 'We home-church'" (5).

"We passed a pawn shop that proclaimed 'Jesus Saves' right alongside 'We Buy Guns.'  The oddest part, we decided, was that it didn't seem odd, and we agreed that it was a Southern thing, inexplicable to many, even - if we thought about it - to ourselves" (5).

"We remembered wondering, as a child, why you had to dress up to go to church and being told that it had to do with showing respect to God, which included wearing a slip with your dress . . . Was God some kind of fashion police?  Did God listen only to those who were properly attired?  Wasn't God more present in the exaltation you felt in the high limbs of a tree or in the feeling of running barefoot across a soft lawn, than in the itchy tights and hard patent-leather shoes you wore to church?" (7-8).


"It's all very well to consider the lilies in the field, but a lily never experience closet trauma or wondered whether the field made her butt look big" (8).


- - from "Amazons in Appalachia" by Marilou Awiakta:

"I am Cherokee.
      My people believe in the Spirit that unites all things.
      I am woman.  I am life force.  My word has great value.
      The man reveres me as he reveres Mother Earth and his own spirit . . .
      Women share in all of life.  We lead sacred dances.  In the Council we debate freely with men until an agreement is reached.  When the nation considers war, we have a say, for we bear the warriors.
      Sometimes I go into battle.  I also plant and harvest . . .
      I love and work and sing.
      I listen to the Spirit.
      In all things I speak my mind.
      I walk without fear.
      I am Cherokee" (63-4).

"The Grandmother's hand on my arm halts my imaginings.  We stand at the edge of a secluded clearing, rimmed with tall pines.  In the center is a large log house and around it women - many women - move through sun and shadow.  Some walk in the clearing . . . A great weaving is going on here, a deep bonding . . . 'This is the menstrual lodge,' says the Grandmother.  'When our power sign is with us, we come here.  It is a sacred time - a time for rest and meditation.  No one is allowed to disturb our harmony.  No warrior may even cross our path.  In the menstrual lodge many things are known, many plans are made'" (68-9).

- - from "What the Body Knows" by Barbara Brown Taylor:
"Sacraments schooled me in the wedding of spirit and flesh.  I learned how to do the official ones in church - not just communion, but also baptism, reconciliation, the laying on of hands - and then, when I had the hang of seeing the holy in the most ordinary things, I moved on to celebrating the sacraments of picnic lunches, ordinary baths, forgiving embraces, and rubbing sick friends' feet.  Once you get the pattern down, there is really no place to stop.  Every material thing opens a door to the infinite.  Every bodily activity holds sacred possibility.   All that is necessary for this transformation to take place is someone to see it and say so, taking one small piece of the world in her hands and saying a blessing over it" (107).

"Every single day I am presented with the opportunity to wake up, say something kind and thankful over this body, and offer it to the world in a way that promises to be useful.  I accept the sacraments of other people's bodies in the same way.  They feed me, I feed them: bread of heaven, cup of salvation, given for you . . . Knowing neither the end nor the beginning, my body knows this: this is my soul's home on earth, in which I am pleased to dwell" (110).

- - from "Alice Walker Calls God 'Mama:' An Interview with Alice Walker" by Valerie Reiss
"I think that if there are periods when you're not doing something that you're used to doing, it means that you can spend that time doing something else.  If I get up and I think I'm going to write something and it's not there, rather than sitting there and trying to wait for it or try to give it a little nudge, I think, 'Oh, I can do something else with this time.' And then, there's so much else to do" (189).

"I paint.  I garden.  I dance.  I cook. I farm.  I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am" (189).

- - from "Signs of Faith" by Barbara Robinette Moss
"I put my hands on my torso and felt the metal staples under my shirt; my belly seemed hot, but I felt cold.  Cold and thin.  As if I'd been washed in hot water and had shrunk to practically nothing.  Or to my very essence.  No matter what - there was an awareness inside me, so unexplainable.  Isn't that God?  I argued.  God essence?  The drugs were catching up with me and I felt too confused to go on ruminating.  A floating feeling washed over me and my eyes closed.  Dear God, I prayed, help me find my way" (197).