The New Feminist Spirituality?

The New Feminist Spirituality?

The new spirituality is a spirituality of illuminating our daily lives

With what we call the divine, and recognizing that in ourselves.

Riane Eisler

Brother Teasdale expounds on this concept further with these words:

“The great proponent of the partnership model, which rejects the necessity of domination, 

Riane Eisler looks in the direction of the ordinary to define and understand what spirituality is all about. What she calls” the new spirituality” involves a transfiguration of the ordinary, everyday life, of the experiences we all have in common. This new spirituality is not about religion but about illuminating the ordinary aspects of daily life to reveal the Divine. It is about the simplicity of tending a garden, of watching birds, of playing with our children,of looking into one another’s eyes, or of washing dishes, cooking, walking or reading. It is also about our dreams and inner stirrings, our experiences with meditation and prayer. In these experiences, the divine is manifesting itself, communicating itself to us, and transmitting to us its wisdom and grace.”

She is a pioneer in feminist thought for me… Once out of seminary and becoming established in researching other approaches to ministry and community, the relational model made sense!

Increasingly, from my earlier exposure and appreciation of the ideals of a covenant and the tents of a more relational theology, I saw that the established social paradigm and the dominant cultural worldview that are linchpins in the patriarchal patterns that have been previously accepted as the norms for Western culture have served their purpose. Now they have decayed! And now, they begrudgingly await their demise or transformation!

It was from an Earth-based more inclusively female and Pagan approach that my eyes were first opened-Teachers such as Starhawk, Margo Adler, and Riane Eisler who gave me a startling perspective that eroded preconceived notions and replaced them with a far more egalitarian, more respectful, and hopeful outlook on how our society needs to change. They advocated for a path towards effective change flows through the equality of the sexes, and moves through culture to broaden opportunities for women across the many parts of our society that need a more compassionate and conversational perspective.