Jennifer’s Reviews > The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine > Status Update

"...in ancient times the word virgin(i) had a different meaning than it does now. It didn't mean being chaste or physically untouched. Rather, being a virgin meant belonging to oneself."

"A woman of power becomes a genius in desperate situations; she is an improvisational artist. Rather than bypassing or shrinking from situations where her consciousness is needed, she speaks and acts, relying on something inside herself. All improvisational artists know that you must trust yourself. To improvise you must value your own knowing."

"No longer must we be either mystics or prophets: now we can and must claim our experience both of God/ess and of the call to bring about justice as two interweaving threads of one common experience, the experience of the mystic/prophet. An introverted mysticism is a truncated mysticism, and a mere social reformer is no prophet at all."

"Ultimately our experience needs to become a force for compassion and justice in the world. We must bear witness to what we have experienced."

There is still a tone of ownership I am uncomfortable with on this page - a cultural disconnect, I feel. I'm not sure how else to describe it.

"What we need is a potent, forceful power, yes, but one that is also compassionate, that enables others as well."

"First we need to find this soul of our own. We must wake up, journey, name, challenge, shed, reclaim, ground, and heal. We need to follow our Big Wisdom, the thread that spins out of our feminine core. And then, then(i) we find the means - the authority, the solidity, the internal coagulation - that allows us to voice this soul."

"Three things, she said: something to say, the ability to express it, and, finally, the courage to express it at all." ~Maya Angelou on what it takes to be a writer.

"...the offender, and the suffering, and rising to a higher love. It is an act of letting go so that we ourselves can go on."

"Perhaps it's possible to forgive in one grand swoop, but I didn't experience it that way. I did it in bits and pieces, one stage at a time. The dance began the process.
You forgive what you can, when you can. That's all you can do.
To forgive does not mean overlooking the offense and pretending it never happened. Forgiveness means releasing our rage and our need to retaliate, no longer dwelling on the offense,..."

"What is ultimately needed is balance-divine symbols that reflect masculine and feminine and a genuine marriage of the masculine and feminine in each of us. Meinrad Craighead in her book 'The Mother's Song' refers to this. Her Catholic heritage and her deep foundation in God the Mother came together, she says. "The two movements are not in conflict, they simply water different layers of my soul."^60..."