Extinction Rebellion Whoopi Goldberg has teamed up with Extinction Rebellion in a beautiful new animation set in the future, entitled ‘The Gigantic Change’. The film, released as part of World Environment Day, looks back from 2050 to show how people came together to save the world from the climate and ecological crisis. Visit https://www.thegiganticchange.com to find out how you can take action today. As we start to plan how to rebuild our world post-Covid, the film shows that a brighter future really is possible. But this won’t happen on its own; we must all take action today. The climate and ecological crisis is an existential threat to people of all ages and backgrounds. The need for collective action has never been greater. The team behind The Gigantic Change, together with Passion Pictures – who created the famous Orangutan advert for Iceland – knew that Whoopi’s iconic voice would bring a perfect sense of gravitas to the performance. She is a prominent campaigner on environmental issues, so she had the power to inspire many of her followers to take action. The urgency of the situation clearly resonates with her, and many others, but the challenge is to communicate this urgency to the wider public. This is the primary purpose of The Gigantic Change. After seeing the film, viewers are invited to visit https://www.thegiganticchange.com, a simple website outlining the most effective actions they can take to save the environment. Whoopi Goldberg has appeared in such films as The Color Purple, Ghost, and Sister Act. She became the first African American woman to host the Academy Awards and only the second African American woman to actually win one. Today she has a strong voice on climate issues and is an active supporter of the School Strikes. Full List of Cast & Crew: Grandmother: Whoopi Goldberg Granddaughter: Livia Nelson Co-Directors: George Lewin & Nicola Jane Francis Original Story: George Lewin Co-Writers: Nicola Jane Francis & Josh Hughes Producer: Serena Schellenberg Executive Producer: Belle Palmer at Passion Pictures Designer & Animator: Nicola Jane Francis Sound Designer: Chris Banks Music Composer: Simon Chamberlain Casting Director: Nicci Topping Casting (CSA) Livia Nelson represented by Creative Kidz & Co Voiceover Recording: Factory Studios Special thanks to all those who supported our GoFundMe campaign to get this important project off the ground. Help XR mobilise and donate here: https://rebellion.earth/donate/ Extinction Rebellion: https://rebellion.earth/ International: https://rebellion.global/ 1. #TellTheTruth 2. #ActNow 3. #BeyondPolitics World Map of Extinction Rebellion Groups: https://rebellion.global/branches/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/extinctionre… Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/extinctionr…

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“I have watched this week’s unfolding events, angry and appalled. The words “Equal Justice Under Law” are carved in the pediment of the United States Supreme Court. This is precisely what protesters are rightly demanding. It is a wholesome and unifying demand — one that all of us should be able to get behind. We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers. The protests are defined by tens of thousands of people of conscience who are insisting that we live up to our values — our values as people and our values as a nation.

When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution. Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside.

We must reject any thinking of our cities as a “battlespace” that our uniformed military is called upon to “dominate.” At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors. Militarizing our response, as we witnessed in Washington, D.C., sets up a conflict — a false conflict — between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part. Keeping public order rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.

James Madison wrote in Federalist 14 that “America united with a handful of troops, or without a single soldier, exhibits a more forbidding posture to foreign ambition than America disunited, with a hundred thousand veterans ready for combat.” We do not need to militarize our response to protests. We need to unite around a common purpose. And it starts by guaranteeing that all of us are equal before the law.

Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us…was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis — confident that we are better than our politics.

Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.

We can come through this trying time stronger, and with a renewed sense of purpose and respect for one another. The pandemic has shown us that it is not only our troops who are willing to offer the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the community. Americans in hospitals, grocery stores, post offices, and elsewhere have put their lives on the line in order to serve their fellow citizens and their country. We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.

Only by adopting a new path — which means, in truth, returning to the original path of our founding ideals—will we again be a country admired and respected at home and abroad.”

James Norman Mattis (born September 8, 1950) is a retired United States Marine Corps general who served as the 26th US secretary of defense from January 2017 through January 2019. During his 44 years in the Marine Corps, he commanded forces in the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War. Wikipedia

(Courtesy of Bob of Occupy)

June 4, 2020 (integralenlightenment.com)

Like most of us, I’ve been reflecting deeply on the unrest sweeping America and the entrenched social injustice that is igniting it.

As we face this moment of societal upheaval, I want to add my voice to those denouncing these injustices, and share my commitment to deep listening and reflection on the systemic roots of racial oppression, as well as committed action to bring about a whole system change. 

As we’re all painfully aware, the events of the past two weeks have once again brought our collective attention to the reality of a brutal and systemic pattern with a long and tragic history. 

They’ve also shed a spotlight on the pioneering work of racial justice activists past and present whose heroic efforts have brought about significant advancements, often at great sacrifice.

Yet at moments like this, when our collective lack of progress on such basic issues seems to dwarf any headway we’ve made, I know that many of us find ourselves asking what it’s really going to take to bring about fundamental and enduring change.

I’m an educated, successful white male in a society that privileges and elevates both whiteness and maleness. As such, I have benefited in countless visible and invisible ways from the very race-based systems of oppression that I’m denouncing.

Like many of you reading this, I am in a process of learning and listening with the goal of transforming my relationship to racial inequity and injustice so that I can be a more effective advocate, ally and agent of change. 

So, as a humble student of these issues, I’m not writing today to share a comprehensive prescription for ending racism.

But, as a spiritual teacher and a student of cultural evolution, I’ve spent my life studying the mechanisms behind deep and fundamental change–how it happens and what obstructs it. 

And it’s from this perspective that I’m writing today, to share some reflections that I hope might contribute in some small way to our collective journey toward a more just, humane and egalitarian future.

In response to the widespread protests, Barack Obama recently wrote: “If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.”

Our former president is touching on a fundamental truth about societal change that resonates deeply for me. And I would like to expand on it by adding the following:

Our society will never become an expression of our highest ideals until the people living in our society become an expression of humanity’s highest potentials.

In other words, as long as human behavior is largely driven by unconscious habit, primitive instinct and the brute self-interest of ego, we will not have an enlightened world.

As long as the majority of us see the world through the filters of unconscious bias, conditioned defense mechanisms and emotionally driven us vs. them programming, there will be an immovable constraint on our progress toward a fair and just social order.

To be clear, I’m not saying that the only way we can make social progress is to catalyze a global spiritual awakening. 

Fortunately, history has shown us again and again that even a few conscientious people working in concert can make a big difference in the world. 

So, we need to have faith that every action any one of us takes to raise awareness and stand for change adds momentum to the collective movement toward a more fair and conscious social order.

But it’s also important to remember that, at the root of everything, our consciousness shapes our behavior and our behavior shapes our society.

So, the work any of us does to awaken and evolve our consciousness may ultimately prove to be some of the most important and impactful work we can do.

That work might include specific practices and training to deconstruct bias or become more awake to the impacts of our own privilege or our participation in systems of oppression. 

But if our goal is to truly live according to the “higher ethical code” Obama is calling us to, our work on ourselves must also include practices that address the very sources of human unconsciousness, bias and ignorance.

I’m talking about spiritual practices that enable us to truly break free from the grip of cultural conditioning itself, including those deep impulses of separation and division that lie at the heart of racism.

These practices reveal to us who we are beyond the constructed “false self” and open us to a way of living that is no longer driven by unconscious habit and emotional reactivity.

If you’re on a spiritual path, you’ve probably heard that the primary obstacle to awakening is the ego.

I would suggest that ego is also a major obstacle to overcoming racism. 

The term ego is used in different contexts to refer to many different aspects of the psyche. So, let me take a moment to clarify what I’m referring to when I use this term.

When I or any other spiritual teacher speaks about the ego we need to transcend, we’re generally talking about your self-image. More precisely, ego is your attachment to your self-image. It’s your emotional investment in seeing yourself in a particular way.

Some of us are invested in seeing ourselves as kind and caring. Others of us are attached to seeing ourselves as smart or savvy. For others, our self-story is about being strong, courageous or powerful. And for many on the spiritual path, our self-image involves a belief that we are deep, reflective, compassionate, maybe even enlightened.

Whatever self-story we’re invested in, our ego’s job is to protect it, to defend it at all costs.

Not surprisingly, one thing social justice activists and educators often lament is how difficult it is to get white people to simply and honestly face their participation in a system that oppresses people of color.

Whenever I hear this, I find myself nodding vigorously. As a spiritual teacher, I’ve consistently found that without a dedicated and systematic effort to deconstruct our ego defenses, it’s nearly impossible to get any of us to face anything about ourselves that doesn’t match our self-image. 

And how many of us have room in our self-image for the possibility that we might be participants in a system that harms others simply because they have a different skin color? Who has a self-image of being a racist?

In addition to preserving our self-image, another function of the ego is to keep us feeling okay, safe and in control. 

This need to “have it all together” and feel in control is another reason the ego makes it so hard to grapple with our role in systemic racism.

If you’re a white person who has tried to educate yourself about white privilege and your role in perpetuating social and racial injustice, you may have noticed that there comes a point in the inquiry where you start to feel confused or draw a blank. You might have even found yourself going numb to the very thing you’re trying to feel and understand more deeply.

And while part of this can be explained as the ego’s attempt to preserve your self-image, I would argue that it also stems from the ego’s need to feel in control.

To even begin to meaningfully grapple with the deeply rooted and all pervasive influence of racial bias, privilege, and systematic oppression requires us to let go of the illusion of control, the belief that “we’ve got this.” 

It calls us to recognize that we’re dealing with something much much bigger than ourselves and much more embedded than anything we can control through a simple shift in awareness or an act of personal will.

If you’ve ever found yourself wishing someone would just spell out a list of simple actions you could take to be a good, racially “woke” person, you were probably right up against what I’m pointing to.

When we really begin to open ourselves to the complex web of social and cultural forces driving racism, we are humbled by the realization that even with the best of intentions and a good deal of self-awareness, we might still go through our day perpetuating the system of injustice we are hoping to undo.

And because our ego can’t bear this lack of control, it will sabotage the inquiry, or block us from touching into or staying with the true complexity of the issue. 

If you haven’t experienced this around the issue of race, perhaps you’ve seen it in your relationship to climate change. 

Many of us have worked hard to reduce our personal carbon footprint, only to realize that the very act of living in our industrialized, fossil-fuel driven society is itself accelerating the planetary crisis we are trying to avoid. 

Faced with this seeming powerlessness or lack of control, our ego gradually begins to check out, to cloud our thinking or find ways to avoid the issue.

In both of these instances, we are confronting what I would argue is ultimately a spiritual challenge: the need to leap beyond the ego’s agenda of self-preservation and discover a different way of being, which is grounded in the deeper truths of unity and interrelatedness.

This is, of course, the very leap that spiritual practices were designed to help facilitate.

But before I talk about how we can use spiritual practice to make that leap, there is one additional observation about race and ego that I want to share.

In addition to the ego functions we’ve already discussed, another key role the ego plays in the psyche is bolstering our sense that we are separate, special and unique. 

One of the ways it does this is by highlighting differences between you and other people and using those points of difference as evidence of your uniqueness, specialness or superiority. 

If this isn’t something you’ve already observed, just take a day to closely monitor your inner monologue and notice how this comparison system works whenever you encounter another person. 

This is an example of what I call an Awakened Life Practice, and since I’m offering you a practice, let me also offer a few notes of guidance:

*Note 1: Your observations may reveal that you tend to see yourself as inferior to others more often than superior. If so, see if you can notice the subtle feeling of being special and unique that underlies even that sense of inferiority. The ego doesn’t really care if it’s better or worse, as long as it can be special and unique.

**Note 2: Because of the first ego mechanism discussed in this article (self-image preservation), even observing your own compulsive need to feel special and unique can be extremely challenging. (And, if that’s the case, then perhaps this could be a good place to begin the journey).

As for the role this need for specialness plays in racism, given that one of the easiest points of difference to identify is skin color, it stands to reason that at least one of the roots of racism lies in our ego’s primal need to use difference to elevate and differentiate our self at the expense of the other.

Like the other ego functions mentioned above, this mechanism no doubt evolved into existence because it served some function in ensuring the survival and proliferation of our genes. But presenting a specific “why story” or theory of evolutionary causality is beyond the scope of this article.

The important point here is that, again, when we look at the mechanisms that make it hard to come to terms with the injustices of systemic racism, we can see that, at least some of them are bound up in the very nature of the human ego itself.

And this is where spiritual practice comes in.

Spiritual practices were developed specifically to help people make the leap beyond the defenses, stories and attachments of the separate ego.

People today meditate for all kinds of reasons. But in its most essential form, meditation practice is a practice of relinquishing the ego.

If you’ve been following along with the practices I’ve been sharing on this blog over the past several months, you’ve experimented with practices that ask you to let go of the need for control, practices that invite you to relinquish the need for certainty, practices that open you to the discovery of your true nature beyond the mind, and practices that give you access to pure consciousness itself.

All of these practices are precisely designed to short-circuit the ego’s need for control, self-image preservation and specialness and open you to a completely different experience of self and a profound, awakened way of living that is no longer controlled by the ego’s primitive, unconscious agenda.

Indeed, when engaged wholeheartedly, authentic spiritual practice can propel us into the kind of exemplary human life we all aspire to—a life marked by wisdom, love, kindness, courage, compassion, sensitivity, creativity, generosity and immense spiritual power and inner strength.

This is the potential of a truly awakened life, and I believe that the more energy and commitment we all devote to this possibility, the sooner the world will become an expression of this potential.

This is why I felt compelled to write this article at this moment when so many of us are re-examining our relationship to race, white privilege, and social injustice. 

I want to make it clear that I’m not saying that I think that spiritual practice is a substitute for the hard work of social justice reform or that it will by itself bring an end to racism. 

But I am saying that without authentic spiritual practice, our efforts to genuinely come to terms with our participation in systems of oppression will be weighed down by the baggage of an outdated psychological operating system that we must find a way to leave behind.

I stand with those who are fiercely calling for rapid structural change, including new legislation, new training and accountability, and a holistic, systemic response to reverse the long shadow slavery has cast on our nation.

And as we face this moment of societal upheaval, I also want to remind us all that our awakening matters, because our spiritual practice is about much more than our personal liberation. 

It is a critical contribution to the evolution of our humanity, which may ultimately be the deepest and most reliable foundation for lasting social change.

By Craig Hamilton

by Kittredge Cherry | May 30, 2020

Joan of Arc was a tough cross-dressing teenage warrior who led the medieval French army to victory when she was 17. She is a queer icon, girl-power hero and patron saint of France. Her feast day is May 30.

Smart and courageous, Joan of Arc (c. 1412-1431) had visions of saints and angels who told her to cut her hair, put on men’s clothes and go to war. At age 18 she helped crown a king and at 19 she was killed by the church that later made her a saint. She died for her God-given right to wear men’s clothing, the crime for which she was executed on May 30, 1431.

Joan of Arc portrait, c. 1485 Wikimedia Commons

Contemporary LGBTQ people recognize a kindred spirit and role model in her stubborn defiance of gender rules. Queer writers tend to downplay Joan’s Christian faith, while the church covers up the importance of her cross-dressing. In truth, Joan believed strongly in God AND in cross-dressing. She insisted that God wanted her to wear men’s clothes, making her what today can be called “queer,” “lesbian” or “transgender.” It’s hard to apply these contemporary categories to people who lived centuries before those terms existed, and both the lesbian and trans communities claim Joan as one of their own.

She fits the medieval archetype sometimes known as the trans saint or “holy transvestite.” Cross-dressing was illegal, but what really upset the church authorities, then as now, was the audacity of someone being both proudly queer AND devoutly Christian. Her belief that God was the source of her gender-bending queerness makes her especially inspiring for LGBTQ Christians and our allies.

This post features contemporary portraits of Joan by Katy-Miles Wallace (top), Tony O’Connell, Rowan Lewgalon, Robert Lentz and Tobias Haller, plus many historical images.

Apollinaria, right, carries a banner proclaiming, “Saints Against Gender Roles,” along with Catherine of Siena and Joan of Arc in an image that is available on many products from Stargirllily at Redbubble.

Joan’s extraordinary life continues to fascinate all kinds of people. Many are eager to claim her as a symbol, from LGBTQ people and feminists to the Catholic Church and French nationalists. There is speculation that she was an intersex person with androgen insensitivity syndrome. Joan is the subject of more than 10,000 books, plays, paintings and films, including recent works by transgender author Leslie Feinberg and lesbian playwright Carolyn Gage.

Gage’s one-woman show “The Second Coming of Joan of Arc” is an underground classic with Joan as “a cross-dressing, teenaged, runaway lesbian” confronting male-dominated institutions. Feinberg has a chapter on Joan as “a brilliant transgender peasant teenager leading an army of laborers into battle” in her history book “Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman.”  And Joan is included in the 2017 LGBTQ history book for teens, “Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World” by Sarah Prager.

The extensive records of her trials by the Inquisition make Joan of Arc the best-documented person of 15th century. There are only hints that she may have acted on lesbian attractions, but the evidence is absolutely clear about her cross-dressing — which can be interpreted as transgender expression, butch lesbian expression or a chaste heterosexual woman disguising herself to remain safe.

Joan of Arc’s life story

Joan of Arc, also known as Jeanne d’Arc, was born to peasants in an obscure village in eastern France around 1412, toward the end of the Hundred Years War. Much of France was occupied by England, so that Charles, the heir to the French throne, did not dare to be crowned. When Joan was 13, she began hearing voices that told her to help France drive out the English.

The visions continued for years, becoming more detailed and frequent. Once or twice a week she had visions of Michael the Archangel and two virgin saints: Catherine of Alexandria and Margaret of Antioch (another transvestite saint who refused to marry a man). They told her that God wanted her to meet Charles and lead an army to Reims for his coronation.

Joan’s family tried to convince her that her visions weren’t real, and her first attempt to visit the royal court was rejected. When she was 17 she put on male clothing and succeeded in meeting Charles. He agreed to outfit her as a knight and allowed her to lead a 5,000-man army against the English.

“Saint Joan of Arc” by Brother Robert Lentz. Prints available at Amazon and Trinity Stores.

On Charles’ order, a full suit of armor was created to fit Joan. He had a banner made for her and assigned an entourage to help her: a squire, a page, two heralds, a chaplain and other servants.

Joan of Arc on Horseback, 1505 Wikimedia Commons

Joan’s appearance awed the soldiers and peasants when she traveled with the army. Mounted on a fine warhorse, she rode past cheering crowds in a suit of armor. Her hair was “cropped short and round in the fashion of young men.” She carried an ancient sword in one hand and her banner in the other. Her sword was found, as Joan predicted, buried at the church of St. Catherine at Fierbois. The banner showed Christ sitting on a rainbow against a background of white with gold lilies and the motto “Jhesus-Maria.” Legend says that white butterflies followed Joan wherever she rode with her banner unfurled.

With Joan leading the way, the army won the battle at Orleans and continued to defeat English and pro-English troops until they reached Reims. She proudly stood beside Charles VII at his coronation there on July 17, 1429.

Joan soon resumed leading military campaigns. Even during her lifetime the peasants adored her as a saint, flocking around her to touch her body or clothing. Her cross-dressing didn’t disturb them. In fact, they seemed to honor her for cross dressing. Perhaps, as some scholars say, the peasants saw Joan as part of a tradition that linked transvestites and priests in pre-modern Europe.

Was Joan of Arc a lesbian?

One of the first modern writers to raise the possibility of Joan’s lesbianism was English author Vita Sackville-West. She implied that Joan was a lesbian in her 1936 biography “Saint Joan of Arc.” The primary source for this idea was the fact, documented in her trials, that Joan shared her bed with other girls and young women. She followed the medieval custom of lodging each night in a local home. Joan always slept with the hostess or the girls of the household instead of with the men.

“Joan of Arc: Her Trial Transcripts” by Emilia Philomena Sanguinetti is a 2016 book that explores whether Joan was a lesbian or transgender person. Extensive evidence that Joan of Arc was a lesbian or transgender person is presented in the epilogue of this groundbreaking book about the cross-dressing medieval saint. She explores how Joan shared her bed with another woman and insisted on wearing male clothing.

Nobody knows for sure whether Joan of Arc was sexually attracted to women or had lesbian encounters, but her abstinence from sex with men is well documented. Her physical virginity was confirmed by official examinations at least twice during her lifetime. Joan herself liked to be called La Pucelle, French for “the Maid,” a nickname that emphasized her virginity. Witnesses at her trial testified that Joan was chaste rather than sexually active.

Capture and trial of Joan of Arc

Joan’s illustrious military career ended in May 1430. She was captured in battle by the Burgundians, the French allies of the English. During her captivity they called her “hommase,” a slur meaning “man-woman” or “masculine woman.”

In a stunning betrayal, Charles VII did nothing to rescue the warrior who helped win him the crown. It was normal to pay ransom for the release of knights and nobles caught in battle, but he abandoned Joan to her fate. Historians speculate that French aristocrats felt threatened by the peasant girl with such uncanny power to move the masses.

The Burgundians transferred Joan to the English, who then gave her to the Inquisition. She spent four torturous months in prison before her church trial began on Jan. 9, 1431 in Rouen, the seat of the English occupation government. She was charged with witchcraft and heresy.

The politically motivated church trial was rigged against her, and yet Joan was able to display her full intelligence as she answered the Inquisitors’ questions. Her subtle, witty answers and detailed memory even forced them to stop holding the trial in public.

Witchcraft was hard to prove, so the church dropped the charge. (Many of today’s Wiccans and pagans still honor Joan as one of their own.) The Inquisitors began to focus exclusively on the “heresy” of Joan’s claim that she was following God’s will when she dressed as a man. The judges told her that cross-dressing was “an abomination before God” according to church law and the Bible. (See Deuteronomy 22:5.)

“Joan of Arc Kisses the Sword of Liberation” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1863 (WikiPaintings)

Convicted of cross-dressing

They accused Joan of “leaving off the dress and clothing of the feminine sex, a thing contrary to divine law and abominable before God, and forbidden by all laws” and instead dressing in “clothing and armor such as is worn by man.”

Joan swore that God wanted her to wear men’s clothing. “For nothing in the world will I swear not to arm myself and put on a man’s dress; I must obey the orders of Our Lord,” she testified. She outraged the judges by continuing to appear in court wearing what they called “difformitate habitus” (“monstrous dress” or “degenerate apparel.”)

Today Joan’s conservative admirers claim that she wore men’s clothes only as way to avoid rape, but she said that it meant much more to her. Joan of Arc saw cross-dressing as a sacred duty.

The judges summarized Joan’s testimony by saying, “You have said that, by God’s command, you have continually worn man’s dress, wearing the short robe, doublet, and hose attached by points; that you have also worn your hair short, cut ‘en rond’ above your ears with nothing left that could show you to be a woman; and that on many occasions you received the Body of our Lord dressed in this fashion, although you have been frequently admonished to leave it off, which you have refused to do, saying that you would rather die than leave it off, save by God’s command.”

Joan refused to back down on the visions she received from God, and she was sentenced to death. She was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 in Rouen. Twenty five years later she was retried and her conviction was overturned. Joan was declared innocent.

Her armor, that “monstrous dress,” became an object of veneration, sought after like the Holy Grail with various churches claiming to possess her true armor. Joan of Arc was canonized as a saint in 1920.

Joan of Arc in the arts

In the icon at the top of this post, an androgynous Joan of Arc has a bound chest and a rainbow halo. It was created by queer Lutheran artist and seminarian Katy Miles-Wallace in 2017 as part of her “Queer Saints” series. Her icon of Joan is modeled after genderqueer model Rain Dove. The series presents traditional saints with queer qualities and heroes of the LGBTQ community.

The icons are rooted in queer theology and in Miles-Wallace’s eclectic faith journey that began at a Baptist church in Texas and led to study at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California. She drew many of them on the altar of a seminary chapel. For more info, see the Q Spirit article “New icons of Queer Saints created by artist Katy Miles-Wallace.”

Saint Joan of Arc from “Triptych for the 49” by Tony O’Connell

Joan of Arc also has a rainbow halo in “Triptych for the 49” by gay artist Tony O’Connell of Liverpool. Joan of Arc and Sebastian appear as “wrathful protector saints” in the artwork, which honors those killed in the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse gay bar in Orlando, Florida.

“Jeanne D’Arc” by Rowan Lewgalon

Lewgalon is a spiritual artist based in Germany and also a cleric in the Old Catholic Apostolic Church. Her work is online at Etsy.  Lentz is a Franciscan friar known for his innovative and LGBTQ-positive icons. He is stationed at Holy Name College in Silver Spring, Maryland.

“Jeanne d’Arc” by Tobias Haller

“Jeanne d’Arc” was sketched by Tobias Haller, an iconographer, author, composer, and vicar of Saint James Episcopal Church in the Bronx. He is the author of “Reasonable and Holy: Engaging Same-Sexuality.” Haller enjoys expanding the diversity of icons available by creating icons of LGBTQ people and other progressive holy figures as well as traditional saints. He and his husband were united in a church wedding more than 30 years ago and a civil ceremony after same-sex marriage became legal in New York.

Joan of Arc also appears with a rainbow halo as a “wrathful protector saint” in O’Connell’s “Triptych for the 49,” a tribute to the people killed by a mass shooter at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Famous writers and composers who have done works about her include Shakespeare, Voltaire, Verdi, Tchaikovsky, Mark Twain, Bertolt Brecht and George Bernard Shaw. A stunning portrait of Joan kissing her sword was painted by Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose sister Christina Rossetti is also part of the LGBTQ Saints series at the Jesus in Love Blog at Q Spirit.

Joan has a dialogue with the fire that is about to consume her in a haunting song written by award-winning Canandian poet Leonard Cohen and sung on July Collins video .

Joan of Arc Prayer

A widely used prayer to Saint Joan of Arc makes a powerful statement that can inspire those who believe in equality for LGBTQ people, despite rejection by religion and society:

“In the face of your enemies,
in the face of harassment, ridicule, and doubt,
you held firm in your faith.
Even in your abandonment,
alone and without friends,
you held firm in your faith.
Even as you faced your own mortality,
you held firm in your faith.
I pray that I may be as bold
in my beliefs as you, St. Joan.
I ask that you ride alongside me
in my own battles.
Help me be mindful
that what is worthwhile
can be won when I persist.
Help me hold firm in my faith.
Help me believe in my ability
to act well and wisely. Amen.”

___
Top image credit:
“Queer Saints: St. Joan of Arc” by Katy Miles-Wallace.

___
This post is part of the LGBTQ Saints series by Kittredge Cherry. Traditional and alternative saints, people in the Bible, LGBTQ martyrs, authors, theologians, religious leaders, artists, deities and other figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and our allies are covered.

This article was originally published in May 2017 and was updated for accuracy and expanded with new material on May 30, 2020.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

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Kittredge Cherry

Founder at Q SpiritKittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian author who writes regularly about LGBTQ spirituality.She holds degrees in religion, journalism and art history.She was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served as its national ecumenical officer, advocating for LGBTQ rights at the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches.

The eclipse of the Moon in Sagittarius this month is the first of three consecutive eclipses ushering us into the heart of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. It is unusual to experience a trio of eclipses; we more often see them arrive in pairs. Thus, this batch adds a sense of import and change to summertime events.

Sagittarius is often associated with expansive thinking and bigger plans — some of which may now seem obscured by seemingly smaller issues that just won’t go away during this period. The Moon’s opposition to the Sun–Venus conjunction in Gemini emphasizes that flexibility is the key to having harmonious relationships and finding positive ways to move forward.

This may involve stepping up communication skills, whether that means being a better listener and really understanding someone’s values and concerns or being able to put a clearer and louder voice to your own needs. With Venus, some diplomacy is often required, and we will need to carefully judge what makes the best sense in any situation. Where can we make adjustments for better balance? How could we give a little in order to gain something important? These are the kinds of questions to ask yourself and maybe others, too — if they are willing to understand more than one point of view.

There is the possibility that there will be some battling to be heard since the eclipsed Moon, Sun, and Venus are in a t-square pattern to Mars in Pisces! There could be several “sides” vying for their values to be respected, given the strong mutability of the zodiac signs involved and their tendency to relate to multiple views and positions. Gemini and Pisces are both “double-bodied,” with the human twins and two fishes represented, respectively. There is an upside to the great mutability, though, which is that more than one option might be considered.

This pattern is very in tune with modern ideas about resiliency and brainstorming unexpected solutions by borrowing from “design” models (e.g., graphic design, architecture, and engineering). Such answers often result from the power of a group working together, rather than one individual being burdened with solving a problem. There is creative power available, so long as the people involved see the value in collaboration. Given the focus of Mars in Pisces, there may well be opposing points of view.

But, oddly, they might each have strong validity. The Sun’s dispositor, Mercury, adds an emotional edge in Cancer. We might observe a risk that all the water from the Cancer and Pisces planets puts out the fire of the Sagittarius Moon! This could be one of the ways in which the eclipse theme is echoed, since eclipses sometimes coincide with small details being overlooked or hidden. At a practical level, it could relate to something becoming inoperable — just like a soggy box of matches. The items cannot be used for their intended purpose due to physical conditions. However, once dried out, maybe they will become usable again.

There can, of course, be weather problems that get in the way of some of our larger plans. Or we might need to deal with someone’s emotions (our own, even), before being able to make solid progress with more practical initiatives. But we should not forgo nor forget our dreams; there will be a time for them to be fulfilled, even if not immediately.

What we should bear in mind is that, this being the first of the eclipse trio leading us into summer, something that is now in process can undergo some complex stages, or even diversions, along the way. The Full Moon, which underpins the lunar eclipse, is so often a time of ending and purging. We might have more room to see what we no longer need or want in our lives now and be able to take clear action around it. In other situations, if we cannot see far beyond the immediate present, that will be understandable given the masking nature of an eclipse. Things may not be exactly as they seem; the full impact of a scenario has yet to come to light. But if we choose to keep in touch with our diplomatic skills and aim to work in harmony with others, we could find that helpful solutions emerge to support us along the best track, overall.

This article is from the Mountain Astrologer, written by Diana Collis.

The Big Bang has never been fully explained and in fact the biggest question is “WHAT CAUSED IT TO HAPPEN?” What caused the Big Bang cataclysmic event – the one that blasted our universe into existence 13.7 billion years ago?  before the big bang. It’s a bit perplexing, but it is grounded in sound mathematics and is it testable? What we perceive as the big bang, Three Perimeter Institute researchers argue, could be the three-dimensional “mirage” of a collapsing star in a universe profoundly different than our own.”Cosmology’s greatest challenge is understanding the big bang itself,” write Perimeter Institute Associate Faculty member Niayesh Afshordi, Affiliate Faculty member and University of Waterloo professor Robert Mann, and PhD student Razieh Pourhasan. Conventional understanding holds that the big bang began with a singularity — an unfathomably hot and dense phenomenon of spacetime where the standard laws of physics break down. Singularities are bizarre, and our understanding of them is limited.

“For all physicists know, dragons could have come flying out of the singularity,” Afshordi says in an interview with Nature. The problem, as the authors see it, is that the big bang hypothesis has our relatively comprehensible, uniform, and predictable universe arising from the physics-destroying insanity of a singularity. It seems unlikely. So perhaps something else happened. Perhaps our universe was never singular in the first place.

Their suggestion: our known universe could be the three-dimensional “wrapping” around a four-dimensional black hole’s event horizon. In this scenario, our universe burst into being when a star in a four-dimensional universe collapsed into a black hole. In our three-dimensional universe, black holes have two-dimensional event horizons — that is, they are surrounded by a two-dimensional boundary that marks the “point of no return.” In the case of a four-dimensional universe, a black hole would have a three-dimensional event horizon.

In their proposed scenario, our universe was never inside the singularity; rather, it came into being outside an event horizon, protected from the singularity. It originated as — and remains — just one feature in the imploded wreck of a four-dimensional star.

The researchers emphasize that this idea, though it may sound “absurd,” is grounded firmly in the best modern mathematics describing space and time. Specifically, they’ve used the tools of holography to “turn the big bang into a cosmic mirage.” Along the way, their model appears to address long-standing cosmological puzzles and — crucially — produce testable predictions.

Of course, our intuition tends to recoil at the idea that everything and everyone we know emerged from the event horizon of a single four-dimensional black hole. We have no concept of what a four-dimensional universe might look like. We don’t know how a four-dimensional “parent” universe itself came to be.

But our fallible human intuitions, the researchers argue, evolved in a three-dimensional world that may only reveal shadows of reality.

They draw a parallel to Plato’s allegory of the cave, in which prisoners spend their lives seeing only the flickering shadows cast by a fire on a cavern wall.

“Their shackles have prevented them from perceiving the true world, a realm with one additional dimension,” they write. “Plato’s prisoners didn’t understand the powers behind the sun, just as we don’t understand the four-dimensional bulk universe. But at least they knew where to look for answers.”

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Perimeter Institute.

Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Published by https://sciencevibe.com/

Photo: Credit: Image courtesy of Perimeter Institute

After Skool What better way to celebrate 1 million subscribers then to review the very best lessons learned thus far? This animation highlights some of the insights that inspired After Skool. The goal of this channel is to enhance the most profound ideas with art AND get you to question things. This video features: Alan Watts, Jordan Peterson, Tony Robbins, David Foster Wallace, Eckhart Tolle, Will Smith, Simon Sinek, Joe Rogan, Graham Hancock, Randall Carlson, Elon Musk, Joseph Campbell and Aristotle. Get the After Skool Kid’s Book – Why Don’t Country Flags Use The Color Purple? – https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Country-F… Get in touch via https://www.afterskool.net/ Please support on Patreon – https://www.patreon.com/AfterSkool Thank you!

From Gandhi’s Autobiography:

“God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification, therefore, must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings.”
–Autobiography, 1948; p. 615

From MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:
“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”

Or, as paraphrased by Marianne Williamson:  “Self-purification must precede political activism.”

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows calling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933) was an American lyric poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri, and used the name Sara Teasdale Filsinger after her marriage in 1914. Wikipedia