Food is the product of the earth; the earth is a mother goddess, literally the matrix of our physical existence. We are all products of the stars: earth, animals, plants; all the elements were forged in the reactions in the heart of stars. We are what we eat, so it is important to eat healthily & well. –Yvonne Aburrow

In Part 1 on Eating and Spirituality I talked about getting started incorporating food into your spiritual life during pregnancy.  I also had the pleasure of introducing Selina Rifkin who graciously answered many of my questions on the subject. This week I want to go a little further into why Pagans should give attention to food.

If we follow Pagan paths of celebrating and honoring our bodies, then nourishing those bodies makes sense.  It’s especially important to feed our bodies well during pregnancy because, as Selina says, “The long term-health of the baby is dependent on the nutrients she receives while in her mother’s womb.”

In addition to the question of what goes into our bodies, there is the question of what goes into making the food in the first place.  Our babies, our physical bodies, our foods, and our natural environment are all interconnected.   Selina says,

We care about the health of the planet. Industrial agriculture has a huge negative impact on the health of the planet. First there is the constant spraying of chemicals and the over-use of fertilizers. The chemicals sterilize the soil and the fertilizers cause dead zones in coastal areas all over the world. Second, is mono-cropping and the use of GMOs. Mono-cropping destroys biodiversity and GMOs are just plain dangerous. The companies that make them have no idea – or are in complete denial – of the effect they are having. Third, how the industrial system produces animal foods is cruel, as well as being unhealthy. There is a spiritual disconnect between how we nourish our bodies and our souls. If we care about the well-being of all life, then mindlessly eating meat from animals raised in factory farms is spiritual necrosis.

So we should take what steps we can to reintegrate that spiritual disconnect and see ourselves in relationship to the production of our foods.

Finally, attention to eating shouldn’t just be about worrying over chemicals in our food or the effects of mono-cropping; it should also be delicious.  When “all acts of love and pleasure are [Her] rituals” then when we can take pleasure in eating yummy, lovingly prepared food that nourishes our bodies (I know this isn’t always possible in pregnancy; sometimes nausea and food aversions leave us feeling lucky if we can choke down any food at all).

The meal itself, consumed with pleasure, becomes a celebration of the Goddess.  So if your developing baby is asking you to indulge in a great meal, grab a fork, and eat up!

Next week I’ll continue this series with some more specific ideas on how to incorporate food into the spiritual practice of pregnancy.

On top of all that, Pagans who celebrate their physical bodies and their connection to the natural world may also have ritual and theological questions about food.  Selina Rifkin, who writes about paganism, food, and spirituality at Cauldron to Kitchen told me that Pagans should care about what we eat because, “As an earth-based religious practice, being embodied is a celebration. But when we are not healthy, it is harder to feel celebratory.”

If treating eating as part of your spiritual life is new to you, getting started might be overwhelming.  Selina has a few simple suggestions:

Pay attention to what you eat and when. Are you eating out of habit? Emotion? Eat because you are hungry and honor your food. Learn how to cook if you don’t know. That is a skill all adult humans need. You don’t have to be a gourmet, but you should be able to make yourself real food from scratch, that you enjoy eating. Find out where your food comes from. Talk to the person who produces it if possible. Make the connection between what you eat and how you feel. Be in your body when you eat. Treat your food as sacred. Our ancestors recognized that food becomes part of us. It is who we are, part of our identities.

If you want to go deeper into the topic with Selina, starting next week she will be teaching an open enrollment course at Cherry Hill Seminary on Sacred Nourishment.

We’ll also be exploring some topics specific to childbearing and food in the coming weeks here at Pagan Families.  What topics would you like to see addressed?

I admit I am completely intrigued by the idea of shamanic midwifery. Jane Hardwicke Collings, an Australian, has forged this path, combining traditional midwifery with shamanic concepts and work with the Divine Feminine. She trains other women, midwives and doulas, in this process, which, from her websites, is more of a set interpersonal skills and mindset, than an actual magical system.

I was sent the e-book version of Collings’s book on preparing for natural childbirth, as this book may be of interest to our readers here at Pagan Families. For those that loved Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery this book will be a welcome companion. Collings places absolute trust in the female body to birth healthy babies, she trusts the birth process implicitly, and she advocates for a return to embracing the sacredness of birth. The entire book is a reminder to women to really listen, and listen deeply, to our bodies and our intuition. Personally, I agree with this need to listen, from a spiritual perspective but also from a feminist perspective, recognizing that our society does not encourage anyone to listen to their bodies, much less women’s reproductive cycles. Collings has a lot to say about the need to embrace not just pregnancy and childbirth, but menarche (the onset of menstruation) as well. She believes that listening helps us endure pain. I agree that the overculture tells us that pain is bad and should be avoided. Those of us interested in natural birth know that pain is information, the pain slows us down and, as Collings reminds us, forces us to focus on the work of birth.

In addition to agreeing with a lot of her philosophy on birth, I loved all of the questions sprinkled through the book. Collings has several lists of questions that an expectant mother should ask herself – things related to the birth experience explicitly and things about her own past and feelings about her body. Collings also has a variety of rituals and suggestions for new and expectant mothers, such as the birthing way and the naming ceremony, that help foster community and mark out birth as a sacred rite of passage.

While this book comes from a Pagan perspective, its language is not so partisan that a woman from another faith tradition couldn’t get a lot out of it. I think any woman with a belief in birth as sacred and perhaps a more liberal spiritual viewpoint (a concept of the Feminine Divine is almost always associated with the more liberal strains in every tradition) will find this book welcoming.

For all of those positives I don’t recommend book this solely on its own, nor as the first book to read for a first time mother. There are a few tonal and theological flaws that rub me the wrong way. The first is the strong sense of gender essentialism in the first part of the book. Yes, only women can bear children, and it is a profound and unique experience. I trust the female body to birth. But I find phrases such as birth is “a process that the female body is built for” and discussions of the right hemisphere of the brain being “feminine…. non-rational, metaphoric, intuitive” and the left brain as “masculine” very unhelpful and more than a bit alienating for those that don’t fit typical gender expressions – or for those whose female bodies can’t bear children.

Collings breaks up women’s lives into four phases: Maiden (0 to birth), Mother (childbirth to menopause), Maga (menopause to retirement), and Crone (retirement to death), outlined on page 10. This is particularly problematic as the entirety of a woman’s life is defined by her fertility. What of those women who aren’t fertile? Who choose not to bear children? What of the 30 year old cancer survivor who enters early menopause? The mention of retirement also smacks of economic privilege, as many women in the world do not have the luxury of stopping paid work. What of the women who never engaged in paid work to begin with? Perhaps I am making too much of this essentialism as this is a book about the bearing of children, but creating systems that lay claim to defining women’s mysteries based on fertility seems a little narrow-minded.

Another, more personal, issue with the book are the statements that we have the births we believe we will have. Early in the book (page 5) Collings says, “As with all normal bodily functions, birth can be influenced by the thoughts, beliefs, and fears created by your mind, as well as your health.” I think it is hard to argue with this. But more sweeping statements about how every birth is the birth we need and create with our beliefs feels awfully cold and smacks of bad theology.

This point is rather personal for me. My first child was born premature and spent the first month of his life in the NICU. I was in excellent health, practiced daily meditation, and believed implicitly in the strength of my body and its ability to birth naturally. I had a midwife and a supportive partner. But for whatever reason (no medical reason was ever diagnosed) my son came early. I was able to have a rather easy and enjoyable birth, given the circumstances, and I learned a lot from the experience. But the idea that my family somehow “needed” that experience and that my beliefs somehow encouraged a preterm birth smacks of a misguided belief in spiritual healing. Seeing as how she also mentions the Law of Attraction in two places I am not sure her theology is sound.

Collings’s enthusiasm for women and natural birth is clear throughout this book. Her voice is forceful and encouraging, which I quite like. However, there is one place where I felt this tone took an antagonistic turn. In her chapter on “So-called High Risk Birthing” which covers VBAC, breech and twin births she lays out all the reasons these births are typically done in hospitals, their risks, and questions a woman in these situations can use to gain more information from her care-provider. Collings acknowledges that many midwives and OBs aren’t trained anymore to deliver in these situations. She encourages home birth in these situations and takes a rather manipulative turn when she says “You won’t make a friend of your obstetrician if you go against his or her recommendation. Would you rather be told that you’re a good girl or know that you are a powerful woman?” (pg 65)

Minor annoyances in the book were the lack of firm editing and a strange organization, for example at the end of an early chapter Collings reprints an entire newsletter from an organization she belongs to. Her history of childbirth jumps centuries and makes sweeping statements. Some of these editing and formatting issues may be due to the e-book format; I’ve not seen a hard copy to compare it to.

While I have strong opinions on some of the philosophical and theological components of the book, I still think this could be a beneficial and welcome book for the more experienced mother or doula. With beautiful, intimate pictures of pregnant and birthing women, suggestions for healthy eating, recipes for labor tea, and lists of helpful questions and rituals, I think there is much to be gained from reading this book.

For more information you can check out the following sites:

Jane Hardwicke Collings’s personal blog

School of Shamanic Midwifery

School of Shamanic Midwifery Blog

Buy the book here – available in e-book format

by Kira Nuit

Growing up Catholic, I’ve prayed a rosary or thirty. The experience is meditative and calming. Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam also have rituals involving beads. Beads may have been among the earliest ornaments created by humans. Their colors please the eye; their textures and weight please the hands; their soft clicks please the ears.

During the inescapably visceral experience of pregnancy I felt fully connected to my body for the first time. It seemed the perfect opportunity to try switching my approach to the world: instead of thinking  or studying first, I let my burgeoning body teach me to feel and experience before analyzing. I was delighted to incorporate more of the physical into my spiritual practices. Prayer beads became one of my favorite tools.

I have strung beads before, but with these I intended to create an heirloom. I wanted the beads to be made sturdily and professionally. I turned to the artist and witch behind Green Woman Crafts and commissioned exactly what I wanted. She made me a gorgeous set of 108 beads of lapis and pearl. This worked out to be nine sets of ten with nine spacers, and a tail of eight beads with a centerpiece.

I didn’t want the beads relegated for use only during my more formal, sit-before-the-altar daily practices. I wanted to use them frequently – waiting in line, riding in the car, sitting through my prenatal appointments, etc. So even though I had a lot I could have said while praying for my unborn baby, I kept it simple. I started by praying to the Star Goddess on the center bead. Then I worked my way up the tail, asking Her to bless my child. For the next seven sets of beads I said, “Powers of  [X], bless my child,” replacing X with the name of each element. I prayed to the Holy Mother on each of the spacer beads. For the last two sets of beads, I asked the Ancestors and Gods of my people to bless my child.

I had terrible nightmares about losing the pregnancy, and the beads became a talisman for my baby’s health: if I could pray for her, I knew that I was using all of my energies to keep her growing and safe. Sometimes I wore them as a necklace, under my clothes. I held them while I labored at home. I prayed the beads while laboring at the hospital. When it became clear that my labor could not continue naturally, I handed the beads to my mother. She went to the chapel and used them in her own way, adding her own energies to them, while doctors rescued my daughter from my body. Later, in the recovery room, I held the beads again and thanked all of the Powers for my baby safe and beautiful in my arms.

When my daughter is older — perhaps when she’s pregnant for the first time, perhaps sooner; I’ll know the right moment — I will give them to her. Until then, I still use those beads to pray for her well-being.

To make beads of your own, begin with your intention in mind. Let that intention inform the number of beads you might choose: for complex prayers, perhaps a string of fewer beads is wise; for simple mantras, the repetition of many beads is key. Consider utilizing a favorite sacred number to decide how many beads to string. Choose beads that delight the senses. Any bead shop will have a dizzying array of choices; allow the colors and shapes that resonate with your personal symbolism to guide you. (I chose blue and white for my colors to evoke the water of the womb and the soft beauty of the pearl growing inside.)

For more ideas, I’ve seen this book (but have not read it): Pagan Prayer Beads by John Michael Greer.  Raven Kaldera offers a workshop on the subject. Reclaiming witch Donald Engstrom-Reese wrote a great article that informed my thinking on the matter.

Kira Nuit is a writer, geek, textile artist, witch and mother. She strives to build a simple and fulfilling life that integrates all her parts — which includes figuring out how to provide excellent care for her toddling daughter while also bathing regularly. She writes about it at Earth Mama Prime.

The report says “Women may prefer a home birth over a hospital birth for a variety of reasons, including a desire for a low-intervention birth in a familiar environment surrounded by family and friends, and cultural or religious concerns.”

We don’t know how many Pagans choose home birth, but we do know that Pagans are highly likely to prefer unmedicated births attended by midwives.

Depending on where you live, you may be able to get that kind of birth at a birth center or a hospital, but it is certainly the norm for home births.

According to the CDC report, “In 2009, 62% of home births were attended by midwives: 19% by certified nurse midwives and 43% by other midwives (such as certified professional midwives or direct-entry midwives). Among hospital births, only 7% were attended by midwives.”

Did you plan a home birth?  Was it motivated by Paganism or did you have other reasons?

Jane Hardwicke Collings

I am a midwife, I’ve been attending homebirths since 1984.

Birth is the archetypal rite of passage for a woman, containing the essential elements of any ritual: separation from normal life, a profound transition during which the participants occupy a timeless time, followed by re-entry into society in a changed state.  It can also be seen as a holy sacrament; the entry of a soul from another plane into this earthly dimension. – Jackie Singer, Birthrites

Birthrites: Rituals and Celebrations for the Child-bearing Years was a fortuitous find for me, a book stumbled upon in a bookstore and title hastily scribbled down before I agreed to read my toddler a picture book.  From home I emailed Jackie Singer and she was kind enough to send me a review copy to read in quieter moments. 

This book isn’t written for an exclusively Pagan audience, but Singer’s experience in several religious communities includes Paganism.  So the book is very accessible to Pagans, and maybe even more useful than many Pagan books because she doesn’t offer ritual scripts that either cater to the lowest common denominator generic Pagan or else are so thoroughly embedded in a particular Pagan tradition as to require a great deal of adaptation to be used in a different tradition.  Instead, this book is subtle, complex, and offers lots of support and specific ideas for readers planning ceremonies appropriate to their own families and communities.

Underlying everything in Birthrites is the belief that as the coming generations will face new environmental and social challenges, “We owe it both to our children and to the world, to conceive, birth and welcome our children with as much love and prayerfulness as possible.” (178)

Singer is also careful to attend to a wide range of pregnancy outcomes.  While many families conceive, birth, and welcome children all with intention and joy, these are not universal experiences.  Birthrites makes plenty of space for ritualizing and honoring the sacred in the experiences of infertility, miscarriage, stillbirth, adoption, abortion, and even the deliberate choice to not have children.

This book will be of particular use to readers in the UK because Singer occasionally offers UK-based resources, but these in no way dominate the text.  I highly recommend Birthrites to anyone seeking inspiration and guidance in ritualizing the childbearing years.

You can read an excerpt from the book here.

Jackie Singer, Birthrites: Rituals and Celebrations for the Child-bearing Years.  Permanent Publications, 2009.

On the night of the Winter Solstice this year, between fifty and sixty people gathered in the chapel at the First Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco.  Women and their loved ones came to honor their ‘spirit babies’ – those who had been lost due to a miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth.  It was standing room only.

As people entered the chapel, we invited them to write out thoughts and prayers and place them on the altar.  For those who couldn’t make it to the ceremony, we transcribed their emails and added them to the altar so they could be there with us in spirit.  The altar had a statue of the Goddess Tara in the middle of it, surrounded by flowers and candles.  We were greeted at the beginning of the ceremony with a beautiful voice singing “Amazing Grace.”

Isa Gucciardi from the Foundation of the Sacred Stream officiated the ceremony.   She talked about loss and the Winter solstice, including a Buddhist story of woman grieving the loss of a baby (the transcript of her speech can be found here). Chandra Alexandre, the founder of Sharanya and Jeremiah Kalendae, Beyond Sunday Minister from the First Unitarian Universalist Church, contributed stories from their spiritual work and readings from different traditions around the world.  Several women whose lives have been affected by miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth were brave enough to share their stories in front of everyone and lift their voices in song.  One woman invited us to speak the name of the child we had lost.

Perhaps for the first time, we were not alone facing our grief.   Isa said to us “You are all mothers” and let us sit with that thought for a while.  She led us through a guided meditation to connect with the power and spirit of the Earth – because, as she says, “it is the Earth that teaches all mothers how to mother through her example.”  After the meditation, we lit candles, brought them to the center of the room and placed them into a large cauldron of water as we sang about light returning both to the earth and to our lives.

After the ceremony, we gathered for food and drink in a room across from the chapel.   We wanted to give people time for silent prayer, reflection or to talk to someone if they needed support.  We collected all of the papers from the altar and will plant them in the springtime with daffodils.

Pregnancy loss can be so isolating.  Not a lot of people know what to say to women who have had a miscarriage, abortion, or stillbirth.  One goal for this ceremony was to honor our spirit babies and ourselves. Another goal was to have people leave the ceremony with a feeling of peace.  I can’t speak for everyone but I certainly left feeling more at peace and with a sense of community.

It was community after all that made this ceremony possible. Amber Dawn Hallet asked the church about sponsoring the ceremony, organized most of the people who contributed to it and led the campaign to get the word out all in a span of three months.  People who had never even met each other in person before the night of the winter solstice gathered in the chapel of the UU Church to make this sacred space together.

I have to admit, I was concerned about anti-abortion people showing up to protest the ceremony.  Put the word ‘abortion’ on anything and protest is a possibility.  I even asked my husband to act as a bouncer at the door if need be.  Seminary student Gina Pond and a friend of hers did some protective spiritual workings and maintained a physical presence at the doors to the ritual space before and during the ceremony.  I’m sure that did a lot to help and luckily we were left undisturbed.

As I escorted a woman out after the ceremony, she asked me “Do you do this every year?”  I responded, “We will. This is the first time we’ve done this.”  A woman who had just recently had an abortion was there that night.  Another told us she had been waiting over 40 years for something like this.  If anything convinced me that we had done the right thing by holding this ceremony, it was hearing from those women.

My hope is that we can continue to hold this ceremony once a year and inspire people from around the country to hold similar ones where they live. To that end, there will be more information about our ceremony and resources listed at the Spirit Babies website.  No one should have to go through the grief of a miscarriage, abortion or stillbirth alone.   The Spirit Babies ceremony is one way to make it so fewer of us will have to.

Silverwing is a health care provider working in the Bay Area. She specializes in women’s health and has been an activist and advocate for women’s reproductive rights for 20 years. She hopes someday to live in a world where women’s bodies are not politicized and it is no longer necessary to hide behind a pseudonym when talking about her abortion.

Editor’s Note: Read about the origins of the Spirit Babies ceremony in Silverwing’s previous post.

Are you a writer who’s been thinking about making a contribution?  Now’s a great time to have a look at our contributor guidelines and send us that post.

Here are some topics it would be great to see addressed here at Pagan Families:

• * ritualizing adoption
• * communicating with healthcare providers about Paganism
• * energy bodies in pregnancy and birth
• * dealing with pregnancy loss
• * reviews of Birthing From Within and Hypnobirthing (the books and/or the courses)
• * interpreting pregnancy dreams
• * how to do a Mothering Way/Blessing Way
• * divining/discerning when to have a baby
• * midwifery as spiritual calling

This is far from a comprehensive list.  What other issues would you like to see addressed here at Pagan Families?

Many years ago, a friend told me about the Mizuko Jizo, a Japanese deity that watches over the spirits of those who were miscarried, aborted or stillborn.  There are temples with gardens of hundreds of these jizo statues.  There is a place in Japanese society for women to grieve openly about their pregnancy losses.  There are ceremonies in Japanese temples for this, called Mizuko Kuyo.  The spirits of the unborn are called ‘mizuko’ or ‘water babies’ and they may come back again someday.

I told a friend about this ceremony when she had a miscarriage last year.  And then, earlier this year, I had to terminate a pregnancy due to medical reasons.  I remembered the Mizuko Jizo.  I got my own little statue, not from Japan, but from a Swedish artist on etsy.  I biked to the beach one afternoon and I did my own ritual to say goodbye to my mizuko.  It was a very off-the-cuff simple pagan ritual.  I consulted with a close friend who is a priestess to make sure I had something to represent earth, air, fire and water.  I asked that my mizuko go to someone who was ready for her.  I told her I would never forget her.  I left the beach and felt more at peace.  A few weeks later, I found out two people I knew were pregnant.  Perhaps my water baby had found a home.

A few months ago, I decided to get up in front of a roomful of women healers in a class on acupuncture and pregnancy and tell them about the ritual I had done.  Telling my story was one of the most difficult and important things I have ever done.  I told it through tears (and saw some in the eyes of other women in the room).  I told it because I want other women to know that this is an option for taking care of ourselves after we have experienced a pregnancy loss.  I find that in our society, we do not have the space to grieve openly about it.  And people often don’t know what to say to us.

After I spoke, a woman who is a doula approached me.  She told me that part of her work was training women to be abortion doulas so that no woman has to go through this alone.  We got together a few weeks later and decided to organize a ceremony for women and their loved ones who have been affected by miscarriage, abortion and stillbirth.  We decided to call it ‘Honoring Our Spirit Babies’ and to hold it on the Winter Solstice.  Our intention is that the symbol of the returning light after the longest night of the year will bring hope to those who attend the ceremony.

Honoring Our Spirit Babies will take place on Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 from 5-7pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco at 1187 Franklin Street.  The ceremony will draw from Buddhism, Christianity, Unitarian Universalism, Paganism and more.  Isa Gucciardi will be officiating our ceremony.  She is the Founding Director of the Foundation of the Sacred Stream.

This is a free event.  People from all religious and spiritual paths are welcome.  All those whose lives have been touched by miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion are welcome.  We encourage people to bring something (for example: a photograph, poem, statue, etc.) to place on the altar.  If you are unable to attend, you may email us a thought, prayer or wish to ourspiritbabies@gmail.com that will be included on the altar.

Silverwing is a health care provider working in the Bay Area. She specializes in women’s health and has been an activist and advocate for women’s reproductive rights for 20 years. She hopes someday to live in a world where women’s bodies are not politicized and it is no longer necessary to hide behind a pseudonym when talking about her abortion.