The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (38 page)

THE DANCE OF THE DISSIDENT DAUGHTER
STUDY GUIDE

AWAKENING

1.
          
It frequently takes a series of wake-up calls or collisions with the truth to jolt a woman into a deep awakening to the Sacred Feminine. What experiences have served as wake-up calls for you?

2.
          
What was your childhood church or culture of faith like? How did it become part of your internal geography? Did you identify with Kidd's memories of being a young girl in school and church, think-ing God was male?

3.
          
“The truth may set you free,” Kidd writes, “but first it will shatter the safe, sweet way you live.” Has your awakening been difficult and challenging? Was there internal and external resistance to it? Did you experience any part of it as shattering? Dangerous? Freeing?

4.
          
If Jesus was a feminist in that he preached a gospel of liberation and mutuality and treated women as equal, why were women excluded for so long from leadership in most churches and forbidden from having authority over men? Where does your tradition stand on women's positions in organized religion? Are there ways in which we support the very structures that wound us?

INITIATION

5.
          
Kidd writes about her need to find a “circle of trees,” her metaphor for the container that would hold and nurture her as she began the process of reconnecting to her feminine soul. How and when has it been important for you to find a contained space where you could really face and tend what was happening, where “the green shoot of your feminine soul could have its hothouse”?

6.
          
The author writes candidly of her husband's initial resistance to her process. Men's resistance to Sacred Feminine awakenings often grows out of their fear of change, fear that women's gain may be their loss. Kidd suggests that men need to become aware, but that blaming them doesn't help, it only polarizes the two sides. How can we negotiate through the resistance that might arise in a marriage? How can men become aware? How can they be invited into the struggle and made part of the quest?

7.
          
Do you remember the first time you encountered a Divine Feminine image? Do you recall the first time you heard prayers using “she,” “her,” and “mother”? How did these things affect you?

8.
          
How do you feel about the importance of rituals? In what ways have they shifted things for you? Have you had moments in which you felt you had truly crossed a threshold into a new landscape of feminine spiritual consciousness from which there was no turning back?

GROUNDING

9.
          
How do you respond to the word
Goddess
? Does it create anxiety in you? Why? Do you think it helps to break the lock that patriarchy has on divine imagery?

10.
      
Kidd concludes that since images, symbols, and words for God are necessary, they should be balanced and equitable. Do you agree with her that imbalance in our pictures of God perpetuates imbalance in our societies? In what ways does our world suffer from this imbalance? What impact does it have on the psychological and spiritual unfolding of girls and boys, women and men?

11.
      
The Divine Feminine symbol creates a feminist spiritual consciousness that includes a passionate struggle for women's dignity, value, and power. When Kidd looked at the horrors women have suffered through the ages, she embraced their struggles as her own. How has the church helped women in their struggles for safety and full personhood? How has it undermined these struggles?

12.
      
Are there times when it may be necessary to leave one's religious tradition (e.g., in order to protect and “birth” one's feminine spiritual consciousness)? Have you ever been in a dilemma about whether to leave or to stay? How do you feel about women who believe they need a brand new model that exists outside their tradition, and women who attempt to create new models within their tradition?

13.
      
As Kidd immersed herself in the feminine spiritual experience, she was initiated into her body in a deeper way. Women's experience of body has historically been immersed in shame. What messages did you receive about your body as a child? As an adult? Are we still affected both subtly and unsubtly by ancient taboos and attitudes that are associated with women's bodily functions such as menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation?

14.
      
How do fear and silence cut off your journey? Did you identify with the image of a “lovely, quiet girl, no trouble at all”?
Do you have a negative voice inside that cages or restricts the natural or spirited part of yourself?

15.
      
The Russian Matryoshka doll became for Kidd a symbol of the “mother line”—the unbroken line of grandmothers, mothers, and daughters—and the feminine wisdom that can flow through this connection. The nesting doll reminded her of the ways we've nested within one another and birthed one another. How do you feel about your mother line? In what ways did your mother express the Sacred Feminine? In what ways did she uphold patriarchal values and caution you not to step outside conventional boundaries or to rock the boat?

EMPOWERMENT

16.
      
What does the word
empowerment
mean to you?

17.
      
In a dream, a wise old woman told Kidd: “Your heart is a seed. Go, plant it in the world.” How are you compelled to plant your heart in the world? What deep impulse in your feminine soul needs to be expressed? What holds you back?

18.
      
“All journeys of soul lead us to the smallest moment of the most ordinary day.” What does it mean to embody Sacred Feminine experience in your daily life? How can it become a seamless part of how you relate, work, play, and go about your life?

NOTES

INTRODUCTION

1.
          
Nisa, “From Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman,”
The Norton Book of Women's Lives
, ed. Phyllis Rose (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), 637.

2.
          
Etty Hillesum,
An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum 1941–43
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1981), 35.

PART ONE: AWAKENING

1.
          
Maxime Kumin, “The Archeology of a Marriage,”
The Retrieval System
(New York: Viking, 1978).

2.
          
Toni Morrison,
Song of Solomon
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 149.

3.
          
Jenny Joseph, “Warning,”
When I Am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
, ed. Sandra Haldeman Martz (Watsonville, CA: Papier-Mache Press, 1979), 1.

4.
          
Clarissa Pinkola Estés,
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1992), 10.

5.
          
Carolyn G. Heilbrun,
Writing a Woman's Life
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 20–21.

6.
          
Madonna Kolbenschlag,
Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-Bye: Breaking the Spell of Feminine Myths and Models
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), xiii.

7.
          
Quoted in Peggy Taylor, “Rediscovering the Wild Woman,”
New Age Journal
(Nov.–Dec. 1992), 63.

8.
          
See Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan,
Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).

9.
          
Statistics from Lori Hesse, World Watch Institute, and the United Nations Report on the Status of Women, as quoted in Christiane Northrup,
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
(New York: Bantam Books, 1994), 5.

10.
      
Sue Monk Kidd, “Sleepwalking,”
South Carolina Collection
(Fall 1991), 40–48.

11.
      
For a discussion of the mother tongue and father tongue, see Ursula K. Le Guin,
Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places
(New York: Harper & Row, 1989), 147–63.

12.
      
Elizabeth A. Johnson,
She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse
(New York: Crossroad, 1993), 27.

13.
      
Carol P. Christ,
Diving Deep and Surfacing: Women Writers on Spiritual Quest
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1980), 13.

14.
      
Anne Wilson Schaef,
Women's Reality: An Emerging Female System in a White Male Society
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 27.

15.
      
See Peggy Orenstein,
Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap
(New York: Doubleday, 1994).

16.
      
Polly Young-Eisendrath and Florence Wiedemann,
Female Authority
(New York: Guilford Press, 1987), 2.

17.
      
Quoted in Alice Ostriker,
Writing Like a Woman
, Michigan Poets on Poetry Series (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1983), 126.

18.
      
C. G. Jung, “On Psychic Energy,”
Collected Works
, vol. 8, par. 100 (Princeton Univ. Press, 1978), 53–54.

19.
      
Christiane Northrup,
Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom
(New York: Bantam, 1994), 4.

20.
      
Naomi Wolf,
Fire with Fire
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), 141.

21.
      
Mary Daly,
Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 4.

22.
      
Children's Letters to God
, compiled by Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1967).

23.
      
Le Guin,
Dancing
, 151.

24.
      
“A Self of One's Own: An Interview with Alice Walker,”
Common Boundary
(Mar.–Apr. 1990), 17.

25.
      
Northrup,
Women's Bodies
, 19.

26.
      
Barbara Walker,
The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1983), 603, 610.

27.
      
This story is related in Sue Monk Kidd, “Going Back for Mary: A Protestant's Journey,”
Daughters of Sarah
(Fall 1991), 28.

28.
      
Referred to in Carol P. Christ,
Laughter of Aphrodite: Reflections on a Journey to the Goddess
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 130.

29.
      
See Heilbrun,
Writing a Woman's Life
, 11–31.

30.
      
Gerda Lerner,
The Creation of Patriarchy
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 12.

31.
      
See Le Guin,
Dancing
, 157; Kolbenschlag,
Kiss Sleeping Beauty Good-bye
, 23.

32.
      
Sylvia Brinton Perera,
Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women
(Toronto: Inner City Books, 1981), 12.

33.
      
Quoted in Heilbrun,
Writing a Woman's Life
, 109.

34.
      
Lerner,
Creation of Patriarchy
, 5.

35.
      
June Singer,
Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung's Psychology
(New York: Doubleday, 1972), 240.

36.
      
Sherry Ruth Anderson and Patricia Hopkins,
The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women
(New York: Bantam Books, 1991), 184.

37.
      
Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women,”
Women and Writing
, ed. Michele Barrett (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1990), 59.

38.
      
Jong, quoted in Judith Warner, “Fearless,”
Mirabella
(June 1994), 42.

39.
      
Gail Godwin,
A Southern Family
(New York: William Morrow, 1987), 51.

40.
      
Muriel Rukeyser, “Kathe Kollitz,”
No More Masks: An Anthology of Poems by Women
, ed. Florence Howe and Ellen Bass (New York: Doubleday, 1973), 103.

41.
      
Schaef,
Women's Reality
, 4.

42.
      
Jane Wagner,
The Search for Signs of Intelligence Life in the Universe
(New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 18.

43.
      
Anne E. Carr,
Transforming Grace: Christian Tradition and Women's Experience
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 136.

44.
      
Schaef,
Women's Reality
, 162–63.

45.
      
Elizabeth Dodson Gray,
Patriarchy as a Conceptual Trap
(Wellesley, MA: Roundtable Press, 1982), 19.

46.
      
Carol Gilligan,
In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development
(Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982).

47.
      
For instance, an article in my local newspaper on Jan. 27, 1995, reported that researchers at the brain behavior laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania have found several dimensions of brain function that correspond to differences between men and women. They found the brains of men and women identical except in the region that deals with emotional processing. The part of the brain controlling action-oriented responses was more active in men, while the part controlling more symbolic emotional responses (like words) was more active in women. It is not known, however, whether we develop brain chemistry because we act a certain way, or we act a certain way because of brain chemistry.

48.
      
Margaret Starbird,
The Woman with the Alabaster Jar: Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail
(Sante Fe, NM: Bear, 1993), xix.

49.
      
Quoted in Joanna Macy, “Awakening to the Ecological Self,” in
Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism
, ed. Judith Plant (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1989), 202.

50.
      
Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Motherearth and the Megamachine,” in
Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion
, ed. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 48–49.

51.
      
Elaine Pagels,
The Gnostic Gospels
(New York: Random House, 1979), 63.

52.
      
Carr,
Transforming Grace
, 46–48.

53.
      
Cullen Murphy, “Women and the Bible,”
Atlantic Monthly
272, no. 2 (Aug. 1993): 41–42.

54.
      
Johnson,
She Who Is
, 26.

55.
      
Nelle Morton, quoted from the film of her life,
Coming Home.

56.
      
Heilbrun,
Writing a Woman's Life
, 15.

57.
      
Joy Harjo, “The Blanket Around Her,” in
That's What She Said: Contemporary Poetry and Fiction by Native American Women
, ed. Rayna Green (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984), 127.

58.
      
Henrik Ibsen,
A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, The Lady From the Sea
, trans. R. Farquharson Sharp (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1958), 68–69.

59.
      
Estés,
Women Who Run
, 13.

60.
      
Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
The Woman's Bible
(New York: European Publishing, 1895).

61.
      
May Sarton,
The House by the Sea
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1977), 224–25.

62.
      
Anne Sexton,
The Complete Poems
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 255–58.

63.
      
Kabir,
The Kabir Book
, trans. Robert Bly (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977), 41.

PART TWO: INITIATION

1.
          
Carter Heyward,
Touching Our Strength
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 29.

2.
          
Penelope Washbourn,
Becoming Woman: The Quest for Wholeness in Female Experience
(New York: Harper & Row, 1977).

3.
          
Karen A. Signell,
Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Women's Dreams
(New York: Bantam, 1990), 75, 40.

4.
          
May Sarton,
The Reckoning
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 90.

5.
          
Jean Shinoda Bolen,
Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Midlife Pilgrimage
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 108.

6.
          
Christin Lore Weber,
Womanchrist: A New Vision of Feminist Spirituality
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 36–37.

7.
          
Nelle Morton,
The Journey Is Home
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1985), 153.

8.
          
Starhawk,
Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 67.

9.
          
The picture can be found in Erich Neumann's
The Great Mother
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1963), 332, plate 180.

10.
      
Naomi Wolf,
Fire with Fire
(New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1993), 23.

11.
      
Carolyn G. Heilbrun,
Writing a Woman's Life
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 92.

12.
      
Jean Baker Miller, M.D., “What Do We Mean by Relationships?”
Work in Progress
, no. 22 (Wellesley: The Stone Center Working Paper Series, 1986), 3.

13.
      
Riane Eisler,
The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future
(San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987), 31.

14.
      
Charlene Spretnak,
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 17–38.

15.
      
Joseph Campbell,
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Myth as Metaphor and as Religion
(New York: Harper & Row, 1986), 55.

16.
      
Heilbrun,
Writing a Woman's Life
, 62–63.

17.
      
Bolen,
Crossing to Avalon
, 163.

18.
      
See Robert Graves,
The Greek Myths
(Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1955), 1:293–95 and 2:400.