4.4 Exploring Ideas that Contribute to the Themes in an Ecofeminist Spirituality
4.4.2 Experience and Storytelling
52 McFague proposes another metaphor of “God as mother”, a metaphor that promotes powerful images of the birthing and feeding process for the expression of the interrelatedness of all life. McFague uses this image “for an understanding of creation as bodied forth from the divine being, for it is the imagery of gestation, giving birth, and lactation that creates an imaginative picture of creation as profoundly dependent on and cared for by divine life” (McFague 1989:106).
In summary, integration in spirituality means changing the way humanity views and relates to the world.
Any faith praxis which supports relationships of diversity and multiplicity while encouraging new ways of relating to the earth promotes a spirituality of ecofeminism. The task of healing and sustaining the earth recognizes the importance of challenging constructs and metaphors for God which promotes transcendence above immanence. It is a spirituality of activism that challenges and confronts constructs of domination. It embraces compassion and the awareness of others while encouraging love, mercy and justice for all creation. It awakens wonder, reverence, and love for the cosmic story and yearns for a holistic new reality where divisions between people are minimized such as the gap between men and women, rich and poor, old and young, and hetrosexual and gay. Bodiliness in spirituality emphasizes the importance of bodies as a primary vehicle of our experience and explores new ways to use women’s bodies in the expression of their faith.
53 perpetuation of dominance and exclusion such as “Almighty King” and “Lord” which legitimizes ancient feudal practices of dominance.
Ruether states that in Christianity, the Holy Spirit has been given feminine qualities through Sophia. She argues that despite there being both male and female images of God within the Christian tradition the female images are rarely used and are often in submission to a dominant male image. She states that the image of God “falls easily into an androcentric or male dominant perspective” and as a result the female side of God then becomes a “subordinate principle underneath the dominant image of male divine sovereignty” (Ruether 1983:60).
Ivone Gebara looks at the concept of epistemology and its contribution to our inherited knowledge and proposes ecofeminist ideas which promote being open to new ways of knowing. She suggests experience as an important link which allows us to recognize our kinship and mutuality with all beings. Gebara sees knowing as a process people engage with in order to perceive, to understand and to assimilate into meaning. This process is ongoing and “needs to be open to change” as it is upon this basis that humanity builds its understanding of itself and its relationship with others (Gebara 1999:68). Understanding therefore needs to be open to new concepts and correction.
An ecofeminist perspective drives a growing awareness of people’s relation to the cosmic whole.
Previously this perspective has been confined to a western, rationalistic, male and white consciousness which offered only one way of viewing the world. Gebara expounds on how it gave credibility to scientific objectivity at the expense of bodily experiences of intuition, attraction, memories, forebodings and common sense. This western perspective was associated with rationality and men, and was regarded as superior to knowledge associated with intuition, emotions and feelings. Gebara challenges this perspective and embraces a unitary and holistic understanding of reality which encourages all avenues of knowledge.
Gebara advises multiple ways of knowing and assimilating knowledge as she upholds the importance of
‘affection’ as an emotional and intuitive realm of knowledge. The concept of affectivity opens up emotion as a source of knowing which releases creativity and recognizes a range of emotions and feelings in all men and women according to their characters. She states that “bringing the affective dimension into the realm of knowing appears likely to frighten even the most coolheaded philosophers” as affection is related to seduction and involves “a passionate approach to other people and to the things we want to know” (Gebara 1999:63). Affection is related to “eroticism”, “to the senses”, “to emotions” and “gut feelings” and evokes a passionate involvement leading us to discover things that would normally pass unobserved in the “act of knowing” (Gebara 1999:63).
54 An ecofeminist perspective in regards to the concept of knowledge is inclusive, sets no limits on knowing, recognizes a diversity of experience and accepts new ways of arriving at knowledge in a manner that supports and affirms nature. The inherited and patriarchal understanding of assimilated knowledge supports a concept of eternal truths. These belong to a body of unquestionable truths which are regarded as true knowledge such as God as “absolute being” and “creator of the world” (Gebara 1999:40). These eternal truths cannot be altered and do not recognize socio-cultural contexts, they are not open to process and change and thus prevent new revelation. This concept is the opposite of Gebara’s ecofeminist understanding that knowing should come first from experience and evolve in association with all living beings. According to Gebara, experiential learning increases universal consciousness and helps us in kinship with others thereby increasing our interdependence with one another, nature, the earth and our cosmic realities. This perspective supports change, recognizing that we are part of a greater body which exceeds our individual egos and needs and that change is a way of bringing balance to the whole body. She stresses that “Each new generation must rediscover, through mutual aid and surely also by learning from its past, new forms of shared living that will permit, to the greatest possible extent, the flourishing of the life of all beings and the development of each individual” (Gebara 1999:98).
This new ecofeminist perspective affirms the nurturing of positive interrelationships with the whole earth community especially with indigenous people. Indigenous cultures value storytelling and use it as a tool to pass on knowledge from one generation to the next. This knowledge is based on the experiences of the older generation and in order to find value in these cultures we need to recognize that indigenous cultures have been the victims of colonial processes in which white, masculine ways of viewing the world have judged them as inferior. This judgment has been imposed partly because of the western notion of knowledge which does not recognize experience, intuition, and change. Gebara argues that “This perspective opens us to the world of natural human experience and at the same time to supernatural revelation, which is a gratuitous gift of the goodness and mercy of God” (Gebara 1999:40).
In concluding the theme of experience and storytelling in an ecofeminist spirituality, we see that experience is the basis of the act of knowing, either through personal bodily encounters or through being open to new ways of assimilating knowledge. Christian religious patriarchal imagery such as ‘God as father’ has lent justification to a model of knowledge that sets itself up above other knowledges. This understanding of knowledge does not support egalitarian relationships which promote kinship with all beings. Therefore ecofeminist theologians propose multiple ways of knowing and uphold bodily experiences such as intuition, attraction, memories, emotions and feelings as contributing to knowledge, thus opening up the emotional and intuitive realm of knowledge which releases creativity and new revelations. Storytelling is found in indigenous cultures and is a tool to pass on personal experiences and
55 experiential knowledge to the next generation. It conveys affection, emotion and intuition in a meaningful and interesting way and is an expression of an ecofeminist spirituality.