Tag: Art and Faith
Stations of the Cross: the Weight of Dust
Kathryn Cramer Brown shares a series of clay tiles she created to represent the Stations of the Cross and, with each tile, a poem in her book Stations of the Cross: the Weight of Dust.
The Nativity of Mary as Revealed by James
Each page offers a few lines of translated text with a number of beautiful images, enhancing the reader’s reflection of the smooth translation. Reading Mattison’s book feels like immersing oneself in a spiritual experience.
Gender Politics in Early Christian Art
"In this Bible and Beyond video interview, she first shows how to distinguish Jesus from other biblical characters and how to distinguish women from men depicted on Christian sarcophagi, mosaics, and other art forms."
Feeling Good and Healing with Tiana Marquez
"Sometimes you need a strong, positive message—repeated with an insistent beat. That’s what the title song on Tiana Marquez’s latest album brings. “It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life for me, and I’m feelin’ good.”
Cosmic Pockets
"This is a collection to be pulled from the shelf that you may be struck by their wise thoroughness of Truth's vital beauty."
Tender Songs for Tough Times by Mary Ann V
"'Be Kind to Strangers' begins with an upbeat rhythm followed by three notes... which echo later after the words “Be kind” in the chorus. What better message for times like these, even as we interact behind masks?"
Woman in Repose
April 2020 Untold Volumes Selection is an artwork by Dorothea Lee. "What is it like to honor a woman’s body instead of use it as a form or an art object, especially when removing it from context and working with it in collage?"
Kol Isha from a Whisper to a Song: The Voice of a Jewish Woman
Our tradition encourages, even requires, us to examine things from different angles, to question, and to make sense of ideas in the context of our own time and place.
Women Serving as Clergy in the Early Church
August 26, 2019
Women serving as clergy in the early church may have been more common place than has previously been believed. Backed by research...
Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership
In her book Kateusz is able to expose “the intentional scribal activity associated with the redaction of the markers of female religious authority, the attempt to erase the memory of powerful historical women has weakened.”
Petrichor
April, 2019 Poetry Selection
Worship is no more
No less
Than the gentle bow of the branch
Worship is no more
No less
Than the gentle bow of the branch
A Visual Diary
February 2019 Poetry Selection
These grew and became works of art.
Reared and fostered by my own hands.
But these were not my literal children.
These grew and became works of art.
Reared and fostered by my own hands.
But these were not my literal children.
An Interview with Singer-Songwriter Jennifer Knapp
I’m resisting language in many ways and I’m seeking to find that language that expresses something more. At the end of the day, I don’t think what we do changes who God is, but what we say about it changes how people view God.
The Gift of the Graveyard
The key is receptivity, the willingness to accept the invitation into stillness—the stillness that is at the center of all movement—and to become immersed in it. Stillness is not death; on the contrary, it is a quality of presence, pure and alive. In fact, it's perhaps only in the heart of stillness that life truly lets itself be known and delighted in.
Book of the Heart: A Personal History of Seeing
What makes this book so extraordinary is that the author is not only humble and patient and curious enough to allow herself to explore what lies beyond and within the events of her life, but she is also articulate enough to allow the reader the opportunity to witness this internal process
Feminism Is — Christina Rossetti: 19th Century Spiritual Poet
December 11, 2017
"Rossetti wrote hundreds of haunting, wistful, mystical, and spiritual poems in English and Italian. In 1862 her collection, Goblin Market and Other Poems,...
Wonder Woman: A Divine Feminine Myth for our Time
Wonder Woman is truly a divine feminine myth for our day, filled with beautiful truths empowering for people everywhere. As we experience this narrative, may we find our inner feminine divine and join Dianna as love saves the world.
Where can I find music and hymns that use inclusive language?
Hymns, anthems, and other songs that don’t jolt women out of their seats are available and becoming more widely used. “I will make you fishers of men” is so last-century.
A Provocative Representation of The Divine Feminine: Eric Drooker’s “Crucifixion”
I view this piece and know I can gather the hurting world in my womb. I can allow my feminine-specific suffering under patriarchy to be the conduit for my passionate pursuit of justice and my spark of love I extend toward others. For truly, I am the arms stretched out inside the fallopian tubes. The darkest night of my soul under patriarchy can become the very hope for others to find light.
The Beautiful Not Yet by Carrie Newcomer
My first listen to this album was during the commute between my hospice patients’ homes. I was reminded that there are many points of light and joy in a world that seems so dark and inhospitable to the people of God. We hold on to "The Slender Thread" of our faith and hope, because love always calls us back. Always.
The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays and Lyrics
Her essays in this volume are thought provoking, the golden prize being her commencement address this past June at her alma mater. She offered three lessons for life: “be kind, be true, and pay attention.” In her essay “Miracle, Light and Considerable Magic” (p. 70), she refers to “the mysterious nature of the Sacred,” the Light that appears in daily moments.
Personal Transformation and a New Creation
By shifting our concept of the universe as static to “an unfinished universe in the act of becoming,” we gain hope. We see a way forward “to an ultimate evolutionary convergeance of consciousness and love.".
Reclaiming Your Story: Mary Magdalene and Lady Gaga’s “Judas”
Mary Magdalene is a person in her own right. Her real story is remarkable, and can be uncovered through the accurate interpretation of scripture. Mary Magdalene is featured in the New Testament more than any other women, with the exception of Mary, the Mother of Jesus; she’s mentioned in 14 different verses.
Hagar Poems
Centering Hagar Poems on Hajar’s tale, a problematic moment in sacred narrative, the profusion of viewpoints contributes to Kahf’s nuanced approach. Looking at Hajar from her own point of view, as Sarah and Abraham see her, in anger, in forgiveness, as heroine, foremother, and exile, Kahf shows how the different sides of the story have much to say to one another.
Lady Midrash: Poems Reclaiming the Voices of Biblical Women
I am so thankful for the honor given to these biblical women by these poems. This collection, spoken through the voices of women in both testaments, puts flesh and energy into what have too often become stale stories from our early Sunday School days—if we heard them there at all.
Suffragette
We encounter the women’s suffrage movement in Britain through the eyes of a fictional young woman working in an industrial laundry about 1911–13. Maud Watts is movingly portrayed by Carey Mulligan as she transforms from an overworked laborer, wife, and mother into a woman repeatedly jailed for attending demonstrations.
Biblical Feminists, Meet Anthrosophia!
For Gabriel, Sophia is a threefold Goddess who rules the past, present, and future. As the sevenfold Goddess, she rules time and the planets in the solar system as well as the seven organs in the human body. And as the twelvefold Goddess, She is the collective consciousness of humanity...
“A Permeable Life” by Carrie Newcomer
It’s like a sweet cup of a caramel macchiato. The silence of the first snowfall. A porch swing on a perfect spring day. A breeze carried from the surf across your beach blanket. These are the inviting images that came to me as I listened to Carrie Newcomer’s newest album, A Permeable Life. This is Newcomer’s twelfth album, and it will not disappoint those of us who enjoy her music.
Eternity’s Sunrise: William Blake’s Vision of Christ
Skillfully Dr. Welling describes the mutual enlightenment that stems from studying Blake's drawings in conjunction with his words. And Welling explains why certain misunderstandings of Blake have arisen, such as the charge of misogyny, showing that a deeper grasp of Blake's symbols reveals his belief in the equality of women with men.
The Invention of Wings: A Novel
The combination of engaging fictional narrative with the outlines of the historical record provide an enjoyable means of learning more about the Grimké sisters, the early abolitionist movement, and the early women’s rights movements during this period.
Artist Shawna Khalily and the Strength of the Feminine
That to me is Her strength, the strength of God. It's not the strength required to shock or kill, manipulate or destroy, but rather the strength required to contain Her creation and the Light of Love for millennia, despite our efforts to usurp and degrade the meaning of All That Is.
The Risk of Returning: A Novel
One rarely encounters a suspense novel in which the protagonist reminisces about insights from C. S. Lewis and the Bible and gets intimately involved with the mysterious woman who is helping him relearn his Spanish, but it's all here.
Maggie Anton’s Historical Fiction Novels: “Joheved” and “Apprentice”
... in a class taught by Rachel Adler, Anton fell so in love with the Talmud that she has since written four novels about rabbis who broke with tradition by teaching their daughters the Talmud (i.e., the Oral law, including the Mishnah, that topically arranges all the laws from the Torah, and the Gemara, which records discussions about the meaning of the Mishnah).
Princeton, Demons, and Fundamentalists
'Hence, the controlling metaphor of The Accursed would seem to be that as long as people believe God is angry, totalitarian, and brutally unforgiving, their whole world takes on a vampirish, bloodthirsty, fearsome coloration."
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
With their sheer numbers and unprecedented consumerism, Baby Boomers are a coveted marketing segment. . . . Now that it’s lucrative to do so, we can finally start having a discussion in pop culture about aging and ageism.
Higher Ground
The film Higher Ground is a story about a rational woman, Corinne Walker, trying to find some solid footing within the context of being literally immersed (baptism is the strong opening image in the film) within the subculture of evangelical fundamentalism.
The Story of Ruth: Twelve Moments in Every Woman’s Life
This is a book of distilled wisdom. For me, the moment called "Aging" was especially poignant. It is certainly part of my life review at this period in my life. Reading and responding to the words here was invigorating. Also challenging.
Christ For All Peoples: Celebrating a World of Christian Art
Ron O'Grady has done the world a beautiful service in this collection of art and commentary. The arrangement of the book by the periods in Jesus' life make it a valuable resource for preaching and teaching--and as a book for use in meditation.
Walking with Wisdom’s Daughters: Twelve Celebrations and Stories of Women of Passion and Faith
It is not often that one comes across a worship-related book so richly layered that it becomes a prized resource far beyond the parameters of corporate prayer. This volume, a treasure trove of both scholarship and artistry, is one of those.
Gather into One: Praying and Singing Globally
Ultimately, Hawn concludes, the point of engaging in multicultural musical expressions "is not to 'feel good' but to feel again — feel a sense of the holy and an experience of community" which will move us, with all our sisters and brothers around the globe, to shout in renewed, "polyrhythmic" enthusiasm: Alleluia! and Amen!
A Woman of Salt
Three threads of this story [there are many] seem especially powerful to me: (1) the conflict with the mother that starts when Ruth enters puberty; (2) the attempt through much of Ruth's life to pretend that her body doesn't matter; (3) the struggle to discover the life of the spirit through the mind alone.
The Secret Life of Bees
Now the content of her previous books has become the air breathed by Sue's fully-drawn characters. My favorite is May, a woman so vulnerable that she builds her own private wailing wall where she can tuck in scraps of paper from her wounded life and suffering world.
The Red Tent and Good Harbor by Anita Diamant
In addition to the theme of women's friendships, both novels deal with the theme of choosing a religion... Clearly, the God that women worship and the communities in which women worship their God are unique and bind women, ancient and modern, together in Diamant's world.
Woman Spirit Awakening in Nature: Growing into the Fullness of Who You Are
The child-like wonder and delight in nature is recaptured, and the healing power of the Divine in nature comes through clearly in their words. Chickerneo refers to these times as finding those “metaphors-in-waiting,” and reflecting on them for self-discovery and understanding.
In the Land of the Living: Prayers Personal and Public
I have just retired from college teaching, but I wish I had had this book earlier to read prayers to my Bible classes. Each professor, teacher, worship leader, and preacher who cares about justice and contemporizing our scriptures could enrich their own tasks by using this book of prayers.
Kathryn Christian: Mysticism, Music, Marriage, and Ministry
One day I profoundly needed comforting by God, and I needed to be sung a lullaby like a mother and child. So I started strumming around with lullabies in three-quarter time, and then I was thinking of images of God as my Mother, caring for me.
The Galilean Secret
As theology or ethics, The Galilean Secret scores an A for its emphasis on internal reconciliation leading to external reconciliation. But as fiction, the plotting sometimes strains the reader’s credulity with some rather unlikely coincidences.
God’s Motherly Care for Us
"I have been blessed with many images of the Divine which have helped me to pray and find comfort. But the one image that I return to, that I cling to when I am in my most desperate moments, is Mother. 'As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,' God says in Isaiah 66:13."
Praise God’s Name with Festive Dance
She is saddened that so many fear and deny their bodies. "People 'stay in their heads' a lot to protect themselves," she said. "Rhythm gets us in touch with the unconscious and takes us out of our heads.
Martha Ann Kirk, Th.D.-Embodying Christ to the World
“Peace is built as men and women learn to have historical perspectives. Uncovering and recovering women’s stories can contribute to a more egalitarian, less domineering world. Stories of ancient women travelers give people today courage to travel. Women’s history is as important for men as for women”
Two Paintings of the Supper at Emmaus
The Emmaus story has always been one of my favorite New Testament stories. As the account unfolds, I think we quickly feel that we could be one of those disciples — sad, perplexed, needing to talk, amazed that anybody could be in the neighborhood and not know what has been going on.
The Singer and the Song: An Autobiography of the Spirit
But even as I finished the book, I sensed I was only touching the edges of it — the tassels on her magic carpet. MT's largeness of heart and ability to see and relate to Mystery goes beyond anything I can really apprehend. Yes, I understand something of the world of the Spirit, but I am too rational, too linear, too controlled to dive in with M.T.'s abandon.
Poets on the Psalms
Poets on the Psalms engages heart and mind and opens many windows into the ancient treasure house that is the Psalms. May these essays be given the attention that they so richly deserve.
The Help
The Help richly deserves its many weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list. Stockett, a white woman from Jackson, overcame her fear and tackled this tricky topic by creating the voices of three women whose lives are forever entangled and unforgettable.
Semisweetness and Light
I think Semisweetness and Light will delight and move every reader. Its small size makes it easy to carry around, and you will find yourself having a conversation with Cartledgehayes sooner or later.
Growing into God — Book by Edwina Gately, CD by Kathryn Christian
[Gately's] life has been plagued with roadblocks erected by the Catholic hierarchy, self-doubt, and sometimes despair and periods of spiritual dryness. Yet, through it all, she has managed to maintain her dignity and become a truly gifted writer, poet, and speaker.
Everything Is Everywhere – Carrie Newcomer
I think we like music that speaks for us. I often feel Carrie Newcomer's music speaks for me. But after listening to this album many, many times, I realize that it doesn't really speak for me as much as it speaks for all of us. Everything Is Everywhere defines the people we can someday become, and the loving Spirit we, as one people, will someday embody.
Before and After – Carrie Newcomer
Singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer's newest album, Before and After, features a collection of thirteen original compositions—including many contemplative, midlife songs that have grown out of Newcomer's reading and conversations with other spiritual people like Parker Palmer.
but Joy Comes in the Morning – Margaret S. Meier
This quilt of text and music is not a warm, cozy listening experience, though. It is very challenging music and painful text, richly expressing the anger, despair, and, ultimately, courageous healing and hope of survivors of child sexual abuse.
Carrie Newcomer — Several Albums
A gifted poet, Newcomer writes lyrics that can tell stories or share feelings. Her Quaker beliefs are evident in many of her words, but she doesn't preach at you.
Keepsake — Women’s Voices Blending in Song
This is singable, listenable hymnody that would be appropriate in traditional or contemporary worship services as much as in women's spirituality gatherings. The language and images are inclusive; the melodies are delightful, and the harmonies rich.
Growing into God — CD by Kathryn Christian and Poetry by Edwina Gateley
All of the tracks are superb, but our favorite is "Come Holy Mother" (inspired by Julian of Norwich) which profoundly evokes an image of God's motherly tenderness, as does "Gather Me Under Thy Wings."
Come, Holy Mother by Kathryn Christian
A central purpose of Kathryn's music is to help her listeners broaden their concept of God to include the truth of those scripture passages that speak of God as Mother. The songs on this CD fulfill that purpose admirably.
alone… by 3rd margaret
The music can be experienced on as many levels as there are moments and listeners, but ultimately the album captures Marg's anguish when she learned that although she was trained to be a church musician, in fact the church was not a safe or welcoming place for lesbian women like herself.
Latest Posts on CFT
New Noah
May 2023 Poetry Selection
We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed
We travel the waters;
the waters travel us, trace us,
turn us dark and dank. The
trip from pupil to lip: traversed
