Preparing for today’s service, | started thinking about my own life- what female role models I’ve had, how have they influenced me., some of the women who have been important in my life, including my spirirtual life.
Most, but not all of us were raised by our mother and father. Its their world view we are first exposed to, for good or ill..
I was lucky to be raised by a gentle man, Richard, and a kind and loving mother, named Annie. From her | learned about generosity and non-judgement. She often helped people and was a ‘confident’ to other women.
She was a woman’s woman, amongst her happiest memories was the fun she had, working with all ‘the girls’,as a machinist making uniforms during the war.
The youngest of 7, born in a 2 up 2 down, by Salford Docks, at work age 15. From her,| also learned about the rewards of hard work, supporting Man Utd, and voting Labour.Also that women did the decorating and kind of ran the show at home and that you could be happily married to the same lovely man for 63 years.
It was only when | left home to become a student, that | met others who had had a very different and unhappy experience of home life.
I salute Annie today, and mothers, and thank her for giving me such a safe, good grounding in life.
Unusually, Annie didn’t give birth to me. That was Christine, my lrish birth mother. Her pregnancy in 1950s Ireland, will have been a disaster, and shaped the rest of her life. Like millions of women today, her reproductive life, her life, was not in her control. She had to flee her country, in shame, and give up a child she couldn’t afford to raise. | knew her as someone carrying a lot of sadness, a devout Catholic, she also had a twinkle in her eye. From her, and my origins, | developed a love
for Ireland, a feeling of being different, and a ‘questioning’, a desire to find answers…
Growing up,my main spiritual female influence was Mary Mother of God- might as well start at the top! | was raised a Catholic, and was a firm believer until age 19.
One of my strongest memories from childhood is being chosen to be the May Queen, age 6, leading the procession round our Salford parish, dressed like a little bride and crowning the large
and rather scary statue of Mary, whilst reciting the Hail Mary prayer to the crowd. I think this experience instilled in me a special bond, or connection to Mary.
I prayed to her, she was a real and comforting prescence in my life, of unconditional love and not judging.
Going into my 20s, | was influenced by the lives and writings of many political women. Firstly Germaine Greer’s book, The Female Eunuch, which gave voice to my own issues with
women’s place in the world, and what | came to know as Patriarchy. Pioneers like the revolutionary Rosa Luxemborg,Angela Davis the black activist, The Suffragettes, Barbara Castle, to name but a few..
In 1971, | moved into a Womens centre on Upper Brook St, living and working there for 5 years. We just had a pay phone on the wall,answering calls from women. It was there, for the first time, | learnt about the reality of life for so many women. They were dealing with domestic violence, rape, poverty, or,like Raising groups, where we challenged all we had been taught, particularly that of seeing other women as competition. We organised national Womens conferences, attended by 2,000 women.
I realised the power of women together, to open Womens refuges, rape crisis and lesbian centres, start rock bands, printing presses – things that had never existed before, changing the world.
I’d left the Catholic Church at age 19, angry at the hypocrisy and misogeny.
But through reading feminist literarature, | started to reassess the role of Mary. It was a revelation to discover that she was part of the Goddess tradition, going back millenia.
Of course | was oblivious as a six year old May queen, to being part of an ancient tradition of a virgin female of the tribe/ community, chosen to honour the Goddess of Spring.
I became aware that the monotheistic religions of Christianity, islam and Juadism had excluded female deities, unlike most previous religions or spiritual traditions, such as paganism, that of the Celts or Egyptians.
It became clear Mary fulfilled the necessary role of a female deity, but without the status,and as a role model, impossible to live up to, being both a virgin and a mother…
It has somehow helped me salvage Mary, from Catholicism, and validate my early devotion to her.
Thankfully,the Devine Feminine is being reclaimed. In our time the Devine Feminine is returning, in the awakening of women the world over, to their rights and proper role in leadership, Many now recognise the need to integrate a healthy Sacred Masculine, with a resurrected Devine Feminine
In the fight against Patriarchy, for the good of all. This is also being linked with the movements in defense of Gaia, our Mother Earth.
With the emmergence of ancient gnostic texts, found in the desert, we are getting insights into sacred texts other than the New Testament.
Partly due to The gospel of Mary, Mary Magdalen, has been reevaluated as a central figure in Jesus’ life, possibly his wife. It seems due to prevailing attitudes to women, it was felt necessary, by early christians, to denigrate her.
She is now revered by many, and has become central to study and focus on the Devine Femine energy, and to balancing the male and female energies in all of us.
There has been a rediscovery of some important spiritual female figures from the past, such as the Christian Mother Julian and Hildergard of Bingen, both lost for centuries.
Mother Julian, was a medieval English mystic and theologian, on death she more or less disappeared from history. She wrote the first book in english, by a woman.Her writings focus on love, and have an optimism at odds_ with the historic christian church’s focus on sin, guilt and damnation.
She describes God as ‘our mother’
Her outlook and most famous saying:
“All will be well and all manner of things shall be well”
She lived in Norwich,in an enclosed cell, with her cat, giving advice to locals, through a hatch in the wall. I’ve visited this place, meditated there and felt a connection to her.
She has been rediscovered and her message resonates today, with the emphasis on positivity and love.
Hildergard of Bingen was born in Germany in 1098. She entered a convent at an early age, and was instructed in the Benedictine rules of liturgy, prayer, chanting and silence. 800 years later, in 2012 she was finally made a saint, by the Pope, and later a doctor of the church, one of only 4 women
ever to be.
She wrote 9 books, covering theology, medicine and science, 70 poems, many musical compositions, paintings,she was a diplomat and an abbess.
Many books have recently been written about her, including Matthew Fox,
Who descibes her as ‘one of the greatest female artists and intellectuals of the Western Mystical tradition’
There is an immediacy of connection to her, for us,through herpaintings and music, some of which we will hear later.
But as David Lane observed,
‘like so many whose core is rooted in silence, she was not only
an artist, a poet, but an actor on the stage of life….solitude and prayer disposed her soul for the mysterious work of creation in
which she excelled’
She wrote:
‘there is no creation that does not have a radiance. Be it greenness or seed, blossom or beauty, it could not be creation without it – the world is living, being, spirit, all Verdant greening,
all creativity. All creation awakened, called, by the resounding melody, God’s invocation of the word’.
I’m not really sure why, but the discovery and study of Mother Julian and Hildergard of Bingen,has helped me, in my efforts to reconcile with my christian past, feel more at peace with it
and integrate it into my spiritual life now. | was a christian for nearly 20 formative years and | believe it gave me a capacity or a need for a spiritual life, for which I’m now grateful.
I’ve also been influenced and inspired by Pema Chodrun, the Buddhist nun, writer and teacher. Through her Buddhist teachings, | discovered there is a way to be spiritual, without a
God. Compassion for self and others is the message at the heart of her books such as “When things fall apart”. | find her guidance for life, such as mindfullness, non attachment and
living in the moment, so much more useful than the belief that this life is just a prelude to heaven or hell.
Her book include titles: ‘When things fall apart”, the Wisdom of no escape” and ‘the places that scare you”, imagine her publishers faces….
During a period of grieving, | listened to her tapes, and found them strangely comforting …life is hard and then you’re dead., kind of sums it up. She says:
“to be fully alive, fully human and completely awake, is to be continually thrown out of the nest’
‘the most difficult times, for many of us, are those we give ourselves’
‘this very moment is the perfect teacher, and lucky for us, its with us wherever we go..’
‘no feeling is final’
She believes in Loving what is, or more accurately, Living what is.
The feminist writer Vicki Noble writes: “Almost all popular theory comes from the minds of men and into the mass pysche, via tv, film books and mass media”. You could extend that comment back through the ages.
It has previously seemed we have few female role models from the past.
Now there are whole industries dedicated to discovering or rediscovering our foremothers, whether as artists, writers, innovators, or goddesses.
The past has largely been interpreted or misinterpreted by men. Much of history is being reevaluated, through the female gaze, discovering matriarchal societies, female deities, cave paintings by women.
I was pleased and proud to find out more recently, the role Unitarian women have played, in changing the world for the better.
As far back as 1792, Mary Woolstencroft wrote -“A vindication of the rights of women”, trying to live upto her principles, including relationships and children out of wedlock, caused her to be shunned by society.
It was actually illegal in England,not to believe in the Trinity, until 1813, when the law was repealed. Because Unitarians didn’t believe in it, they were somewhat outcasts, not able to go to university, for example. As outsiders, they were more open to progressive ideas such as voting rights, feminism, the Anti Slavery movement.
Many Unitarian women were very active in the fight for women to vote, some were law abinding, but others, being Unitarians, joined with the more radical Pankhursts. Helen Watts, for example, was imprisoned several times, force fed.
Anne Peart, writes, in her book ‘Unitarian Women’; “As Unitarians, they dissented from the orthodox doctrines of the time, as women they dissented from the restricted cultural roles prescribed for them by society”
I’ll just tell you about one women, from the book,as she was born and bred in Manchester, and will have influenced our lives.
hemselves’. This was radical, for a time when just being a
single woman was somehow suspect…
Margaret Ashton, who when she died in 1937, was honoured as ‘Manchester’s greatest woman citizen’. As well as a lifelong Unitarian, she was a suffragette, philanthropist,politician and peace campaigner. Against the norms of the time, and her own family,she addressed crowds of thousands, at open air meetings about suffrage.
She campaigned for women to be local politicians and mayors,for changes in local government, education, social services. She opened Ashton House,a hostel for women, she insisted ‘without any enquiries being made into their character, where they slept at night or what they had been doing with
tShe also open a school, got slums cleared and new council housing built.
This didn’t always make her popular with the city council, who refused to put up her portrait in the city gallery. We get a glimpse of her character, in this letter to a friend-
‘| wish you could have been at the party given to me with the portrait. Such a happy occasion, everyone, even myself, enjoyed it. There were a few sound digs at my unyielding and obstinate character, which delighted us all. The Town Council had to go in for a great deal of manoevering and finally passed a new bye-law, before they could decline the portrait” Plus as change…
The Unitarian emphasis is on thinking for ourselves, lead by our conscience and having an inherent sense of self-worth, the emphasis is on community, belonging to a group, less about the niceties of doctrine.
Again, I feel gratitude, for having found a spiritual home here,for all my somewhat jumbled and contradictory spiritual beliefs and experiences, still very much evolving, in your company, for
which I thank you.