CONFERENCE BACKGROUND
We are currently at a critical juncture in human evolution. More and more people are beginning to wake up to the depth and pervasiveness of the harm that patriarchal societies have wrought, including misogyny, sexual violence, institutionalized racism, economic oppression, and ecological devastation. Movements such as #MeToo, #TimesUp, #BlackLivesMatter, #IdleNoMore, and #NeverAgain are heralding transformative global change, and grassroots communities are developing new systems and paradigms for cooperation and spirit-based activism. Women are at the forefront of these movements, which include both new and traditional wisdoms, practices, and systems of knowledge, not only bringing a much-needed Sacred Feminist voice to the table, but altogether reinventing the table.
The Women Rising! Conference seeks to connect and amplify the voices of those who are actively building a new, post-patriarchal world from the ashes of the burning world of hierarchy and oppression. Our conference grows out of the women’s spiritual and political movements of today. We seek to honor, ignite, connect, and empower every person’s innate divinity. Women Rising fosters embodied spirituality to address the dis-spiriting of our lives, and to re-sacralize in free and open ways our personal and communal endeavors, as women and allies, who for so long have been under assault. We invite participants to celebrate and co-create a visionary culture and activism that promotes a plurality of voices and brings us ever closer to our dreams for a more just, equitable, humane, and sustainable future inclusive of all beings.
CONFERENCE THEMES
Our conference seeks to offer sessions and experiences for participants in one or more of the following themes:
- Goddesses, Female Deities, and the Divine Feminist
How might the Divine, particularly in female form, can support the liberation of all beings? This theme includes our collective spiritual history of Goddess(es) and the Female Sacred, which long predates contemporary patriarchal religions, a history on which we may draw to affirm the Divine in ourselves and in our human and more-than-human communities.
- Healing, Reconciliation, and Transformation
Recovering from patriarchal culture involves both personal and collective healing. We will explore practices and tools for transformation. This includes explorations of how we might build solidarity across differing gendered and racialized identities, heal from intergenerational trauma, enact transformative justice, and develop new paradigms of relating.
- Earth-Based Ethics and Relationships
We emphasize our relationship to Mother Earth, nonhuman animals, and plant life. How can we begin to move away from paradigms of domination and toward ethical relationships with the other beings with whom we share the planet? We explore perspectives rooted in Earth-based traditions, ecofeminism, eco-womanism, ecopsychology, environmental justice, permaculture, and others.
- Sacred Mysteries, the Arts, and Imagination
Participants are invited to draw upon both ancient and contemporary practices to liberate our psyches, to create relationships of reciprocity and harmony with each other and the rest of the natural world, and to dream and invoke our visions for the future. Ritual, ceremony, music, dance, and other art forms are explored as tools for creating new worlds.
- Spiritual Activism and Liberation
We are summoned to imagine and create activist practices that are rooted in Spirit. We explore practices that are also based in a grounded analysis of the “isms” that currently shape our world yet simultaneously hold a vision of our fundamental interconnectedness. How do we co-create the world we want to live in?