Women's Spiritualities: Resource for Mission

What are the distinguishing features of women's spiritualities, what informs women's spiritualities and practice? This paper attends to the transformative elements that women's spiritualities potentially offer to the task of mission. Mary and her song in Luke 1 are explored in order to plumb something of the depth of the spirituality of Mary and her song and Mary in her role as woman, as co‐worker with God to redeem and transform the world.     

The impact of client race on clinician detection of eating disorders

Eating disorders are thought to occur less among African-American women than among women of other ethnic groups. Ninety-one clinicians read 1 of 3 passages (differing only with regards to the girl’s race: African-American, Caucasian, or Hispanic) describing disturbed eating patterns of a fictional character named Mary. Participants were then asked to indicate if they thought Mary had a problem and to rate her anxiety, depression, and eating disorder symptoms based upon the passage they had read. The results suggest that clinicians may have race-based stereotypes about eating disorders that could impede their detection of symptoms in African-American girls.     

Mother and child. A psychobiographical portrait of Mary Cassatt

The noted American impressionist, Mary Cassatt is remembered for her intimate portrayal of women, children, and the mother-child relationship. In this paper I have attempted to highlight some of the psychological forces impinging upon the artist, feeling that the artist's work is highly overdetermined. Mention was made of some of the difficulties that a psychobiographical study engenders. Nevertheless, it is hoped that such a study leads to enhanced understanding and appreciation of the artist, her work, and her rich inner world. An examination of the artist's life indicates that difficulties in the family of origin impinged upon her and deeply influenced her work. The loss of several siblings during critical developmental subphases may have produced intense survival guilt in Mary, motivating her to "recreate" her siblings on canvas and to devote her life to care of survivors. Lack of confirmation of Mary's talents by her father may have hindered her development, propelling the child toward a profoundly libidinalized and enmeshed relationship with the mother. Mary's intense relationship with her mother may have led the artist to develop particular stylistic nuances in her productions, contributed to her inability to become a wife and mother herself, and led to frequent episodes of depression. A case was made that Mary suffered from narcissistic disturbance, never completing the recognition of herself as a person outside of the orbit of her mother. Finally, the role of Edgar Degas in the artist's life was described. He seems to have played a major role in the evolution of Mary's style as well as being an important influence in her making a partial separation from her mother in adulthood. In spite of Mary's deep personal suffering, she was able to epitomize in her paintings the most tender and nurturant of relationships. By painting the mother-child theme, she sublimated her own wishes to become a mother as creator of art. Within her family system, she appropriated the position of mother; as the artist, she became the interpreter of this experience. By developing her talent, she communicated her wish to be a mother, and expressed the need to find, if only on canvas, a more truly empathic mother. In essence, her work allowed her to conceive of a life different from the one external reality imposed upon her. It also served as an indispensable adaptive function, allowing the artist to communicate with others, achieve recognition, and play.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)     

The encounter with God in myth and madness

Background

It is well known how often psychiatric patients report religious experiences. These are especially frequent in schizophrenic and epileptic patients as the subject of their delusions. The question we pose is: are there differences between this kind of religious experiences and those we find in religious texts or in the mythological tradition?

Results

An overview on famous mythological narratives, such as The Aeneid, allows us to establish that the divinities become recognizable to the human being at the moment of their departure. Thus, Aeneas does not recognise his mother, Venus, when she appears to him in the middle of the forest at the coast of Africa. A dialogue between the two takes place, and only at the end of the encounter, when she is going away and already with her back to Aeneas, she shows her son the signs of her divinity: the rose-flush emanating from her neck, her hair perfume and the majesty of her gait. Something analogous can be observed in the encounter of Moses with Yahweh on Mount Sinai. Moses asks God: "Show me your glory, I beg you". And God replies, among other things: "you shall see the back of me, but my face is not to be seen". In the same sense, the Emmaus disciples do not recognise Jesus till the moment of his disappearance ("but he had vanished from their sight"), and Saul of Tars falls off his horse just in the moment when he feels the divine presence. In short, the direct encounter with the divinity seems not to occur in the realm of myth or in religious tradition. The realm of madness is exactly the opposite. Our research on religious experiences in schizophrenic and epileptic patients leads us to conclude that God appears to them face to face, and the patient describes God the father, Jesus or the Virgin Mary in intimate detail, always in an everyday setting. So, the divinity is seen in the garden, or in the bedroom, or maybe above the wardrobe, without any of its majesty. The nearness to God also tends to be so extreme that even an identification of patient and God can occur. That light emanating from the world of the divine ceases to be perceived by them.

Conclusion

While in mythological narratives God appears to the human being at the moment of His departure or showing His back, psychiatric patients with religious delusions experience the divinity in a direct way, face to face. Given the deformation of the divine occurring on the edge of madness we can better understand the mysterious words from Yahweh to Moses in Exodus: "for man cannot see me and live".     

CLIMATE CHANGE,LAUDATO SI', CREATION SPIRITUALITY,AND THE NOBILITY OF THE SCIENTIST'S VOCATION

This exploration into spirituality and climate change employs the “four paths” of the creation spirituality tradition. The author recognizes those paths in the rich teachings of Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si' and applies them in considering the nobility of the scientist's vocation. Premodern thinkers often resisted any split between science and religion. The author then lays out the basic archetypes for recognizing the sacredness of creation, namely, the Cosmic Christ (Christianity); the Buddha Nature (Buddhism); the Image of God (Judaism); the “Primordial Man” (Hinduism), as well as the premodern universal teaching of “God as Beauty.” He addresses the subject of evil which deserves serious attention in the face of the realities posed by climate change and the resistance to addressing them. In the concluding section, the author speaks of a new Order of the Sacred Earth that was launched in fall 2017 to gather persons of whatever spiritual tradition or none to devote themselves to preserving Mother Earth.     

Mary Astell’s theory of spiritual friendship

Mary Astell’s theory of friendship has been interpreted either as a version of Aristotelian virtue friendship, or as aligned with a Christian and Platonist tradition. In this paper, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship is determinedly anti-Aristotelian; it is a theory of spiritual friendship offered as an alternative to Aristotelian virtue friendship. By grounding her conception of friendship in a Christian–Platonist metaphysics, I show that Astell rejects the Aristotelian criteria of reciprocity and partiality as essential features of the friendship bond and that she develops a theory of friendship that is neither reciprocal nor partial. Further, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship advances her feminist aims by providing a justification for female–female spiritual bonds in contradistinction to female–male marriage bonds. Astell argues that the female–female bond of spiritual friendship is sanctioned by God, and is, therefore, a divinely authorized alternative to the male–female bond of marriage. Through her theory of spiritual friendship, Astell marks out a central place for female–female bonds and provides women with a justification for resisting marriage.     

Nonverbal Behaviors and Perceptions of Sexual Intentions: Effects of Sexual Connotativeness,Verbal response,and Rape Outcome

Through the exchange of nonverbal and verbal behaviors, a man and a woman on a date negotiate situated identities. However, a woman's nonverbal and verbal behaviors may reflect an identity discrepant from the one she intended to project, leading to miscommunication between men and women regarding the woman's desire for sexual activity. In Experiment 1, subjects read scenarios in which a woman, Mary, engaged in behaviors that were low, moderate, or high in the degree to which they connotated a desire for sex. In addition, they learned that Mary responded to her date's sexual advances either by saying "no," or by slapping him, or they received no information regarding Mary's verbal response. Subjects were also informed that Mary's date either did or did not force her to have sexual intercourse. Subjects perceived Mary more sexually as her behaviors increased in sexual connotation. In addition, they perceived that Mary desired sex more when no information about her verbal response was provided than when she resisted her date's sexual advances. Subjects also rated the woman more negatively when her nonverbal behaviors were incongruent with her responses to her dale's sexual advances. Contrary to previous research, little evidence of victim derogation was obtained. Results from Experiment 2 showed that men and women agreed in their perceptions of a woman whose behaviors connoted a high interest in sex, but that men perceived behaviors low in sexual connotation ore sexually than women. Implications of the data for understanding sexual miscommunication between men and women as well as reactions to rape victims are examined.     

Letter to a Friend

In a letter to her younger friend, Elizabeth reflects on topics that arose when she and Barbara met for lunch. These include the emergent groups of women who gather intentionally to explore their own spirituality, and groups of women who gather and unintentionally create community. She sees the shared power in these groups as being politically opposed to the vested power of the therapist in the psychotherapy dyad. Models of "mentally healthy" females are to be found in the writings of feminists whose works emerge from the socio-cultural and economic matrix of their own experiences.     

Examining the Assumption

Many believe that at the end of her life Mary was assumed bodily 'into heaven' where she remains exalted by her divine son. This claim, magisterially entitled The Doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary , strikes some as absurd. Even many traditional Christians are opposed to, or have doubts about this aspect of Catholic doctrine (as they do of its non–defined equivalent among the Eastern Orthodox marked by the feast of the koimesis (dormition) of the Theotokos [the one who 'gave birth to' God]).
Typically critics regard the doctrine as being at best a sentimental piety and at worst a neo–Pagan accretion entirely lacking in support from any appropriate quarter. Others go further, however; suggesting that it is not simply without biblical or other evidential warrant but is in some way incoherent. Here I explore some of the sources of difficulties that confront any attempt to present and defend the doctrine.
Ancient and mediaeval accounts often relate narratives of Mary's final days. Significantly, however, they also reason that given Mary's unique status the Assumption must have happened because it should have done. I consider this style of deductive theology before examining certain historical presentations, in which I argue that there may be material evidence of the tradition as far back as the end of the persecution of Diocletian around the time of the Edict of Milan.
Thereafter I take up the philosophical problems, exploring various possibilities and suggesting that acknowledging Aquinas's insistence on the impoverished nature of disembodied human souls, and their need of resurrected embodiment is consistent with Mary's unique role that the mode of her present existence is of a different order to that of other separated subjects.     

Suffering and Spirituality in the Poetry of Emily Dickinson

After a brief review of recent accounts of spirituality in its relation to medicine and psychotherapy, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is considered as a springboard to a more specific account of spirituality. While not conventionally religious, she is arguably among the most spiritual of poets inasmuch as her themes of God, love, beauty, and especially death and suffering all depend upon the jarring juxtaposition of embodied human experience and transcendent human significance. Her poems suggest a complex view of the ambiguous relation of suffering to human action and meaning. Psychotherapy is a spiritual process not because it necessarily involves supernatural beings or destinies, but because it represents the struggle between human will and aspiration on the one hand and acceptance of biological and other realities on the other.     

My Home Is Over Jordan

The great African American tenor Roland Hayes, as well known in his day as Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson, both of whom he mentored, introduced the beauty and joy of spirituals to concert audiences in Europe and America. Sadly, he's been forgotten.

This article remembers his story and his charisma. Roland Hayes touched the author's life when she was a very young child, when her parents were faculty at Black Mountain College and her father invited Hayes to sing there. In the mid 1940s, in North Carolina, an integrated audience heard this son of freed slaves sing both the European repertoire of Schubert and Bach and the African-American folk tradition of spirituals.

Spirituals offer a religious attitude that intertwines African, Jewish, and Christian roots with the practical function of conveying secret messages about the way to freedom—a peculiarly American blend of soul that has much in it to sustain us in difficult times.

Roland Hayes made a profound impression on the author. She invokes his spirit in this article and learns much about herself and about him.     

The empowering image of the divine mother: A South African Hindu woman worshipping the goddess

The worship of the Mother Goddess by Hindu women in KwaZulu‐Natal is very popular, as an ongoing daily devotion, as well as at the Goddess's various annual festivals, especially the Draupadi firewalking festival. A crucial question is how far this veneration of a powerful female deity brings empowerment, both to a woman's sense of her own worth and as recognition in the community. Pat Pillay, of Pietermaritzburg, is an example of a woman with little education or social and economic status, whose devotion to the Goddess has brought her a considerable sense of personal empowerment and social recognition, as well as offering healing to numbers of women in her community. It has also motivated her to challenge an all‐male temple committee over their decision not to allow women full participation in the firewalking ceremony.1     

Julian of Norwich: Problems of Evil and the Seriousness of Sin

Julian of Norwich emphasizes God’s eternal and unchanging love for humankind. Her visions show how God is not angry with our sins and so has no need to forgive us. God does not shame or blame us but excuses us and plans how to reward and compensate us for sin. In relation to Mother Jesus, we remain dear lovely children who need help, correction, and education. Although these remarks suggest to some that Julian must be “soft” on sin, that she has no adequate appreciation of the worthiness of God or the dignity of human nature, I argue that this is far from the case. On the contrary, she makes Divine worthiness axiomatic and urges readers to live into it. She relocates human dignity not in its intrinsic value but in our centrality to God’s plan. She measures the seriousness of sin in terms of the “real hard work” it takes to rear us up out of it: crucifixion for Christ, the hell of being a sinner and the crucifixion of life-long penance for us. Nevertheless, the brightness of her visions dominates with her assurance that despite the sin-produced sufferings of this present life, all will be well.     

Mother holle

Sometimes she appears as the beautiful White Woman, floating or hovering above the surface of her pond. At other times, however, she is invisible. Then one hears only the pealing of her bells and other dark rumblings from deep beneath the surface “Mother Holle's Pond”

Whenever it snowed in the olden days, people in Hessia used to say, “Mother Holle is making her bed” Grimms' note to “Mother Holle”     

Gray Matters: A Deployed Physician’s Perspective on Combat Medicine in Iraq

A female physician who was serving as a first-year medicine resident in Manhattan in September 2001 writes this paper. It details her experience of signing up for military service as a result of the September 11th attack on the United States. She lays out the surroundings, atmosphere, and reactions of those around her during the attack and details her own personal motivations for joining the military, her need to take control and help those in need heal while also trying to heal herself. Grateful, yet haunted by her experience, she provides an intimate glimpse into her time serving as a combat physician at a trauma hospital in Balad, Iraq during the 2007 military surge. A trained geriatrician and palliative care physician she recounts the stories of several patients that have forever shaped her life and explores the contradictions and ethical challenges she faced while caring for them ultimately struggling with the uncertainty of whether what she was truly doing was good for those she served or herself.     

Theme Articles: A Man Caught Between Bad Anthropology and Good Theology? Martin Luther's View of Women Generally and of Mary Specifically

Abstract : Martin Luther's view of women is as complex as his authorship is vast, encompassing a diversity of genres and purposes. Luther seems ambivalent toward women like the tradition before and after him. In his reformation enterprise he appears torn between his good theology and the bad anthropology that obscures his purportedly universal principles. This article uncovers some of the ambiguities in Luther's approaches to women, theoretically teaching men's authority over women yet simultaneously teaching the mutuality and equality of women and men; and practicing such mutuality and equality in his everyday life, not least in his marriage to Katharina von Bora. His good theology also comes to the fore in his Mariology, especially in his commentary to the Magnificat, in which Mary is not just a ‘woman’ but the human being par excellence in her truly faithful relation to God.     

Honoring the duallium: disability,environmental ethics,and the implicit religion of gardening

In recent years, the pilgrimage shrine of La Sainte-Baume has attracted an increasing number of non-Catholic pilgrims influenced by the ‘New Age’ and the Neopagan movement. These pilgrims consider Mary Magdalene as a sort of female counterpart of Jesus and the mountain of La Sainte-Baume, where according to a Christian legend she spent the last part of her life, as a ‘power place’ charged with ‘healing energy’. Based on 3 years of field work among Mary Magdalene pilgrims and drawing on Tanya Luhrmann's idea of ‘interpretive drift’ (1989), the essay describes the way in which these pilgrims gradually shift from their previous Christian background towards what they generally identify as ‘spirituality’. The pilgrims reconceptualise La Sainte-Baume and its saint, and make their own a shrine they feel was misappropriated and unjustly monopolised by the ‘Church’.     

Celebrating 50 Years of Service: A Conversation With Mary Thomas Burke

Mary Thomas Burke, known affectionately to many in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the surrounding communities as “Sister,” has devoted over 50 of the past years of her life to service. In this interview, she explores the paths that her service endeavors have followed, the influences and turning points in her life, and shares her insights on achieving balance in service and in life.     

Portrait of Our Lady: Mary, Piero, and the Great Mother Archetype

Mary the God-bearer is explored symbolically from the perspective of the archetype of the Great Mother as described by Carl Jung and Erich Neumann. Drawing from primordial and collective origins, the dark and the chthonic as well as the light and spiritual aspects of the archetype are considered as represented in the work of fifteenth century Italian painter Piero della Francesca. Piero's images of Mary incorporate body as well as spirit, power as well as vulnerability, death, as well as life and rebirth. The feminine presence of the Great Mother archetype creates a powerful dynamic on an unconscious level in both men and women that culminates in radical transformation.     

Change,Vulnerability, Fear,and Taking Risks–An Interview with Virginia Satir

SUMMARY

The author addresses the mythic characters of Ulysses and Penelope as archetypes for herself. She reviews divergent attitudes, beliefs and aspirations of her life by detailing an internal conflict between her identification with Ulysses1 adventuresomeness and her reluctant realization that Penelope can also represent her, however much she rejected her for seeming dull and repetitve

In this process the author notes how she constricted her own creativity when she took on uncritically the patriarchal beliefs about the roles of wives and mothers. Nevertheless she wonders whether present-day women's liberation from archaic notions about women inadvertently sacrifices the optimal development of children because of the rigid demands of the work-place.

Finally she experiences the symbolic reunion of Penelope's and Ulysses' different images within herself, and considers how what each represents can have renewed meaning for her as she moves towards the end of her life.