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Donna Read Wins 2016 Saga Award

Donna Read and ASWM Vice President Dawn Work-Makinne
Donna Read and ASWM Vice President Dawn Work-Makinne

At our Boston conference, Donna Read, innovator, filmmaker, producer and activist, received ASWM’s2016 Saga Award for Special Contributions to Women’s History and Culture. The award honors Donna’s role in making feminist scholarship and the history of spirituality visible and accessible to a wide audience,

The ASWM Board of Directors recognizes Donna as “one of the premier visionary artists of our time” for films that include the Women’s Spirituality Series (Goddess Remembered, Burning Times, and Full Circle), Signs Out of Time, Permaculture: The Growing Edge, and (with producer/directorDonna Roberts) Yemanjá: Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil.

In particular, Donna’s visual chronicles in both the “Women & Spirituality trilogy” and “Signs Out of Time” document the history of the sacred feminine and its re-emergence in the cultural mythology and activism of our time. Her films introduced scholars, feminists, artists and interested women to new interpretations of the myriad array of images of the female divine. As her award letter states, this work “has enlightened and continues to inspire viewers to re-examine their assumptions about women, about men, about spirituality and about culture.”

We were privileged to have Donna present Yemanjá:  Wisdom from the African Heart of Brazil to our 2016 conference, and moderate an important discussion about the film and the remarkable women upon whose work it is based.

Hearing of her award, Donna’s good friend and collaborator Starhawk had this to say:

Donna Read Cooper has made great contributions to women’s culture and history.  She created key resources through her work as a filmmaker, first with the National Film Board of Canada and later with her own independent company, Belili Productions.  She began as an editor, worked for many years at Studio D, the Film Board’s special studio for women, and progressed on to direct and produce documentaries concerned with women and the earth, including the Women’s Spirituality Trilogy:  Goddess Remembered, Burning Times and Full Circle.  Together, we made Signs Out of Time, on the life of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, and Permaculture:  The Growing Edge.  

As her long-time friend, and sometime film making companion, I know some of the obstacles she faced.  From the early days, when women in film faced prejudice and dismissal, to challenges persuading the more hard-nosed political feminists that women’s spirituality was a valid subject, to the difficulty raising funds for independent documentaries, to the health challenges that come with aging.  

But she always persevered.  Donna made films about key issues, but she also took action.  We’ve marched together in the streets, stood together in front of tanks on the West Bank supporting the nonviolent resistance in Palestine, attended endless meetings, and most recently, Donna has opened her home to Syrian refugees.  Through it all managed to raise five children, and remain a mentor, teacher, and a good friend to me and to many younger women.  

I am thrilled that Donna is receiving this well-deserved award that honors a lifetime of devotion to women and social justice.

Congratulations to Donna, along with deep gratitude for her work which has both chronicled and transformed generations of scholarship.

 

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Her banner over me is Love: Remembering Lydia Ruyle

Her banner over me is Love: Remembering Lydia Ruyle

By Gayatri Devi for the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology, March 27, 2016

 

Her banner over me is Love.

–adapted from the Song of Songs for Lydia

 

It is with great love and sadness that the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology (ASWM) shares the the sorrow of the community of Lydia Ruyle’s family and friends at Lydia’s passing from our world to the world of ancestors. Lydia’s presence, personality, passion and painting enriched our association’s dedicated and evolving work on goddess scholarship and the mythology of the divine feminine for many years in a variety of ways.

 

When most of us visualize the goddess in our mind, in her many incarnations and aspects, we might actually see her in the forms and figures through which Lydia showed the goddess to us. Lydia often referred to the goddesses as her “girls,” a tender apostrophe that illuminated not only Lydia’s motherly care towards her banners, but also the eternal and imperishable purity and power of the timeless goddess herself. Lydia’s banners of the incarnate goddesses, from the many living traditions of goddess cultures from across the world, showed us how to see the energy, playfulness, joy, seriousness, intelligence and beauty of the sacred feminine through paintings that were both abstract and powerfully expressive at the same time.

 

Lydia’s banners of the goddesses literally enveloped our association’s conferences and symposia. Since their first exhibition at Ephesus in Turkey in 1995, Lydia’s goddess banners–paintings of goddesses on nylon flag banners– have traveled all over the world bringing joy, wisdom, and light to all who come across them.  Lydia’s goddess banners were always one of the high points of our association’s conferences. Hanging Lydia’s banners at our conference site was a ritual that several of us have been fortunate to take part in. The meeting rooms, board rooms and other mundane spaces would be transformed in a matter of minutes to sacred structures as we hung up the “girls” in all their rich and golden yellows, bright burning oranges, shimmering earthy greens, dark eyed blacks and blues, and colors of all hues and infinite richness.  We spoke and did our work enveloped in the presence of Lydia’s girls.

 

For the 2010 ASWM conference at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in the Poconos, Lydia taught us how to paint our own scarves. Lydia gave us plain silk scarves and paint and showed us what the paint does on the material, and how to manage the paint correctly. From idea to its imprint, the great teacher in Lydia patiently walked us through what it takes to paint what you see with your inner and outer eyes.  Lydia liked to tell the story of how the girls went “missing” in 2014 for a brief period of time when all forty of the goddess banners were shipped for display to a conference in Seattle. Upon hearing that the goddesses were missing, Lydia tried to find the box of her paintings in the big city of Seattle where they were lost to no avail. Back in Colorado, Lydia and her husband Bob created a despacho to dispel the negative energies surrounding the loss of the goddesses. Lydia heard the good news a week later when the conference organizer called to tell her that the goddesses were returned when a kind old woman saw some teenagers throwing the banners out in the streets and picked them up and returned the box to the conference organizers. The goddesses were once again able to come to all of us who need to see them.

 

Lydia is listed in our 2016 Boston conference program for both a panel on Matriarchal Studies and a solo workshop on Goddess Images from around the world. In place of Lydia’s banners, we are bringing our personal collections of Lydia’s prayer flags–smaller versions of the goddess banners–that we had gathered over the years. We will string them in our conference space in place of the banners. Lydia’s girls will still grace our conference space this Friday and Saturday. Our altar will be graced by the beautiful 2015 Portland Oregon conference poster that Lydia made for us. Our hearts will be full to the brim with the love and loving kindness that embody all that Lydia means to us.

 

 

 

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For Lydia with Love

 

Lydia's unforgettable smile
Lydia’s unforgettable smile

Here is a wonderful affirmation that Amejo Amyot wrote for Lydia, which was read at the gathering to celebrate her life.  Thank you, Amejo, for finding the words to say what so many people were feeling.

Lydia, in Celebration of  your Life
And so the Great Goddess said unto Lydia, as she entered the wise woman time of her life,  “what dear one will you do with your one wild and precious life?” 1
And Lydia looking up to the Great Mystery, straightening her spine and opening her crown chakra, she breathes:
Oh Blessed one:  I will travel all over the world.  I will visit all the sacred sites, the caves and temples and ruins.  I will feel what the women felt who honored the Goddess of their lands. I will come to know in my bones what was being honored here.  I will bring this back to the women of my world so that they too will remember.  And then I will lead tours so that hundreds of women can see and feel for themselves the wonders of ancient ruins like Gobekli Tepe.
And so she did!
And oh Blessed One:  I will lead women in ceremony and create sacred space before all our meetings, assemblies, classes and conferences.  I will call in the goddesses of the East, the South, the West, and the North,  the Above and the Below and all the goddess energies of the Middle World.  I will call in Kali, Guadalupe, Pele, Sedna, Skywoman and Pachamama.  And the women will remember to bring spirit back into the mind.
And so she did!
And oh Blessed one:  I will create great large banners to honor hundreds of Goddesses from all over the world.  I will help women to know and remember their ancestors and the deities that were honored thousands of years ago when the world was a matriarchy and all things essential to women were honored.  And these banners will fly all over the world, wherever people are gathered to celebrate Goddess.  And so the banners have graced many a conference and the women remember.
And oh Blessed One, as I transform to the world of spirit, I will teach the women how to celebrate life as I call us all together to celebrate my one wild and precious life. I give thanks and gratitude for allowing the divine feminine force to flow through me and I’m grateful that you Oh Great Goddess have trusted me to be your messenger on Earth.
And so it was!
Blessed be
Amejo Amyot, Ph.D.
1.  Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
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The Passing of Lydia Ruyle

Dear friends of ASWM,

This is a sad day for all who love Lydia, and who have been touched by her beautiful artwork.  We will have more to say about her life and work in future posts, but for now, we all pause to remember her dedication, intelligence, and generosity, and through our sadness, we celebrate her achievements and her loving heart.

Here is a joyful article about her “living memorial service,” a gathering earlier this month in her home town of Greeley, CO.

 

Aloha, Lydia.

The ASWM Board