Retrieving the Feminine Soul ...Workshop Series Cancelled Hope for future sessions!

Myths play a powerful role in communities around the world. They serve as a way to answer the HOWs and WHYs of nature and the supernatural. How and why was the world made? How and why were humans brought into existence? They serve as way to bind communities together and provide a framework for building traditions and rituals. In ancient images and myths we find a God duality - both Lord and Lady. It was a God of balance - masculine and feminine.

With time and the many changes in our societies and religions, this God of Duality has been replaced with a masculine God. Many stories

Linda Mershon

of the feminine have been forgotten, shelved or have evolved to a negative view of the feminine. Consult a book on Aztec deities and you are likely to find a wealth of information on male gods but little on the goddesses. In our own Catholic tradition, we have Eve as the bearer of original sin.

In an effort to retrieve the feminine face of God, Franciscan Sisters Cecilia Corcoran and Linda Mershon, have created the program “Retrieving the Feminine Soul Through Ancient Myth and Image.” A four-part series, it is currently being offered at St. Joan of Arc. The next session (second in the series) is called “Remembering the Disremembered: Celebrating Wholeness,” and will be offered Oct. 25-26. The other sessions “Relics From Our Ancestors” will be offered Nov. 8-9 and “The Great Weaver Crafts a Two-Sided Fabric” on Dec. 6-7.

The program is an invitation to women and men who are searching for the female Divine and who seek wholeness and holiness. It is an exploration of ancient, indigenous feminine images of the Divine in an attempt to bring back traditional richness to our traditions. The program looks at past stories and asks what do they mean?, what do they tell us today?

Throughout the series, participants study the stories and the images- watching the goddesses come to life. The program starts with some form of ritual - allowing participants to be silent, to raise the feminine energy and affirm the place of the feminine. There are creative exercises, questions for reflection, time for journaling, songs and dance. Participants call on all the four directions in order to be rooted in the earth and to receive positive energies that can be used for self-healing and for becoming strong in the feminine.

Among the goddesses studied are Xochiquetzal, from Aztec mythology. A love goddess in the simplest sense, her charm was regaled in myth. She is beautiful and butterflies and birds followed her. She is remembered as the goddess of wholeness and health and as wife of the rain god Tlaloc. Feasts were held in her honor every eight years. Some stories suggest that she and another man were the only original survivors of the great flood that devastated the earth, and that they, together, began repopulating. She is credited with teaching people about love, beauty and the gifts of arts and weaving.

Xochiquetzal	Coyolxauhqui

Another goddess studied is Coyolxauhqui - the earth and moon-goddess of the Aztecs. She is related to the four hundred star-deities Huitznauna, who are under her control. She was slain and dismembered by her brother Huitzilopochtli, the sun god and god of war. According to one tradition, Huitzilopochtli tossed Coyalxauhqui's head into the sky where it became the moon. Everyday, the battle of brother and sister is re-enacted as the rising sun chases the moon and stars away.

Cecelia Corcoran

For Corcoran, studying these stories allows us to begin retrieving our souls from all the repressed places in ourselves - where we find problems with self-esteem and self-image. It allows us to be whole in ourselves and pull back to a sense of our own integrity. In the process, we can learn and remember respect for our Mother. It also allows us to look at our place in the world, especially in these times of violence and fear since September 11-to raise feminine energy and compassion at a time when we need peace.

Corcoran has spent over ten years living in Mexico and holds a Ph.D. in Women’s Religious Studies with an emphasis in the goddess mythology of the central highlands of Mexico. Mershon holds a M.A. in Spirituality and leads ritual and integrative reflections in the Global Awareness Through Experience (GATE) Goddess programs. In addition to the workshops, Corcoran leads experiential trips to Mexico and Europe where participants can see first-hand the realm of the goddesses. Audrey Murray, a St. Joan of Arc parishioner and participant in GATE's experiential travel seminars, explains the impact the programs have had on her life. “The trips were a life changing experience,” said Murray. “I hear about the feminine God at St. Joan and I know that God is more than Father. I was able to move the idea of God as feminine from my head to my heart and experience the feminine God for the first time in my life.”

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Jeanne Morales has been active at St. Joans for the past year. She loves working in her garden, attending the St. Joan of Arc Bible Study and sneaking off for camping trips when she has time.

Much of the essence of these trips has been captured for the at-home workshops. The workshops allow those who cannot travel to experience the joy and power of remembering the feminine face of God.

The 3 remaining sessions in the series have been cancelled. Hopefully the series will be offered again in the future.