Spiritual Activism

Today I wrote drafted a short letter (one page) to the women priests who will be participants in my study. I shared who I am and why I am studying the struggles of women priests. I wrote in part:

"I am a woman who loves deeply and tenderly. I have a fire in my heart that refuses to give up no matter what hardships come my way. . . . I call myself a recovering Catholic, a Chicana feminist who bases her life (personal and professional) in spirituality. I jokingly say “recovering” because I go back and forth, trying to decide if I’m going to stay in or leave the Church. . . . I’m a cultural Catholic and more, Jesus’s teachings of inclusivity, love, hope, serving the poor, strike a deep chord within me. . . . Learning about Catholic women priests gives me a renewed hope for my Church."

I also created a brief video (3:25 mins) to further discuss why I conducting this study. I want the women priests to get a chance to view me, to get to know me a little more. I shared that I want to learn how we can support social activists at the frontlines, like Catholic women priests. I introduce Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of spiritual activism. Below is an excerpt from one of my comprehensive examinations on the topic. 

Spiritual Activism

Spiritual activism is central to Gloria Anzaldúa’s legacy (Anzaldúa & Keating, 2000). When social activists engage in not only spiritual acts, like contemplation, meditation, private rituals, but also political acts like protests, demonstrations, and speaking out, they engage in spiritual activism (Anzaldúa, 2015, p. 19). Anzaldúa was a spiritual activist, living her life in a “deeply spiritual and intensely political” way (Keating, 2006, p. 9). Spirituality is embedded in the social activism of the person who acts out of their vision, who makes spiritual activism a way of life. For Gloria Anzaldúa, “spiritual activism [was] a completely embodied, highly political endeavor,” and not a “new age fad” (Keating, 2015, p. xxiv). Living as a spiritual activist, you engage with communities who live in the margins, sharing what you learned as you practice your own self-care, as you develop new conocimiento (consciousness) in pursuit of social change. Spiritual activists do work that matters, that feeds “[their] soul” (Calderón, Delgado Bernal, Huber, Malagón, & Vélez, 2012). They do social justice work (Keating, 2005). Spiritual activists use the conocimiento that they gain not only for their personal growth, but also to share with el mundo, the world. 

(Cherry, 2020)             

Thank you Anzaldúa for doing work that matters and encouraging us to also engage with what  and who we love.  

References

• Anzaldúa, G. E. (2015). Light in the dark = Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality. A. Keating (Ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
• Anzaldúa, G. E., & Keating, A. (Eds.). (2000). Interviews=: Entrevistas. New York, NY: Routledge.
• Calderón, D., Delgado Bernal, D., Huber, L. P., Malagón, M. C., & Vélez, V. N. (2012). Chicana feminist epistemology revisited: Cultivating ideas a generation later. Harvard Educational Review, 82(4), 513-539.
• Cherry, K. (2020, May 15). Gloria Anzaldúa: Queer feminist Chicana scholar of spiritual activism. https://qspirit.net/gloria-anzaldua-queer-spiritual-activism/
• Keating, A. (2005). Introduction - shifting worlds, una entrada - between and among worlds: Introducing Gloria. In A. Keating (Ed.), Entremundos/among worlds: New perspectives on Gloria E. Anzaldúa. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Keating, A. (2006). From borderlands and new mestizas to nepantlas and nepantleras: Anzaldúan theories for social change. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 4, 5-16.
• Keating, A. (2015). Editor’s introduction – re-envisioning Coyolxauhqui, decolonizing reality: Anzaldúa’s twenty-first-century imperative. In G.E. Anzaldúa, Light in the dark=Luz en lo oscuro: Rewriting identity, spirituality, reality. A. Keating (Ed.). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.