‘Women’s Spirituality’

A speech by Manuela Kalsky for the opening of the new Grail Centre in Utrecht
2nd September 2006

Ladies and gentlemen, dear Grail women, and friends of the Grail Movement,
What a splendid house this is! I am really very honoured to be the one to officially open it today. ‘Why me?’ I wondered, when I received the invitation. I am not closely connected to the Grail Movement, I am not a member or a participant. Ine van Emmerik, however, thought that was not required; it is today’s theme that connects us: women’s spiritual power. This is the central issue.

Women’s spiritual power – in fact this theme immediately brought back memories of my first meeting with the Grail Movement in February of 2001. I had just received my Ph.D. for research on Jesus, seen from the perspectives of women in different cultures, when I was invited to give a two-day course on this subject at ‘De Tiltenberg’, the former Grail centre in Vogelenzang. I did not know the Grail Movement. All I knew was that ‘De Tiltenberg’ was a centre for contemplation and meditation, where women’s celebrations took place and especially Zen meditation. The invitation was accompanied by a warning: the number of people showing up for this subject will most likely be small, because the Tiltenberg public is not so fond of dogmatic themes. There were indeed ten women at the most who had enrolled, among them a number of Grail women, spirited women, intensely interested in the latest scientific insights about how women in different cultures were thinking about Jesus, and how they shaped their images of salvation and liberation. That was what it was about after all.

Two interesting days took place, during which a lot of knowledge and information was exchanged in a very pleasant, homelike environment. Small things made one feel at ease and a little at home at ‘De Tiltenberg’ right away – for example, the small bouquet of flowers in my room on arrival. The tapestries, the pleasant chapel with a Buddha in front of the altar, the sitting areas where one could withdraw to immerse oneself in a book from the extensive library: everything had been chosen carefully. The building was breathing women’s spiritual power, women’s wisdom, a spirituality which united engagement and contemplation.

The course I gave at the time was also about women’s wisdom, their struggle for change, in which their faith played an important role. I reported about Ghanaian women who tell stories about female saviours from their African context, like the one about Eku, the matriarch, who travelled through the desert with her people. The people were thirsty and they looked for water. When they finally found a pond, Eku and her dog were the first ones to drink from the water, because it could have been poisoned by the enemy. Eku was ready to die for her people and that’s why she is a Christ-figure in the eyes of African women.

We also looked at images of Christian women from Asia and what is healing and liberating in their eyes. For example, they associate the working of the holy spirit with the goddess of wisdom and protection Kuan Yin. Kuan Yin is a bodhisattva, an enlightened being. She is completely free to enter nirvana but, filled with compassion for all suffering beings, she voluntarily stays on earth. Her goal is to bring enlightenment. Her wisdom is healing and she gives every living being the strength to swim to the shore of nirvana. She is waiting patiently for the whole cosmos, humans, birds, trees, sky and water to be enlightened, so that all may live together in nirvana in eternal wisdom and safety. Besides Kuan Yin, Asian women consider female shamans, who exorcise evil spirits and heal people as Jesus did, to be images of Christ as well.

We also talked about North-American black women, the ‘womanist’ theologians, who resist discrimination based on their colour, gender and miserable economic position and about how they are inspired by their Christian faith in overcoming their dreadful situation. For example, they read the biblical story of Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave who gave birth to Abraham’s son Ismael instead of the childless Sarah, from their own vantage point. Hagar is the first woman in the bible to try and liberate herself from slavery by fleeing into the desert with her child, away from Sarah who belittled her, away from the house in which she was enslaved. In the desert, at the moment they are at the verge of dying from thirst, God appears before Hagar and opens her eyes so she is able to discover the water source that will keep her and her son alive. However God does not liberate her; he doesn’t bring her back to her own country of Egypt, but sends her back to Sarah and Abraham, back to slavery – albeit with the promise of creating a great people from her son Ismael.

The biblical image of ‘the desert’ where Hagar resided is for black theologians a metaphor for the degrading circumstances black women and men have had to live in and still live in. Just like Hagar, however, they developed a ‘survival intelligence’ and a vision, that managed to transform oppressing powers into a positive life-spirituality. Spiritual power is at work here too: women’s spiritual power, inspired by the Spirit of God, which creates the impossible possibility, which finds a way out of no-way. This is not a story in which the great liberation happens, but a story in which Hagar (and other black women with her) are empowered to withstand the period of oppression and to see new visions that enable them to tap into unexpected new resources for survival. God is not the heroic liberator here but, as they put it,  ‘the Sustainer’ – the strengthening power which allows black women to experience the Spirit of God, which carries them, and kept and continues to keep them alive.

I have always found this story of Hagar, and the explanation black women give to it, very special. It is a beautiful example of how stories from the Christian tradition can inspire and direct one in everyday situations. They show how God’s spiritual power gets interwoven in women’s spiritual power; they bring forth a wisdom that puts one back on track again, that asks for one’s effort and at the same time encourages one to surrender. This life-spirituality makes one stand up for the disadvantaged but also makes one realize that life can never be without suffering.

I think I find this same spirituality, this spiritual power within women, that I encountered in my Christology research in the book Dangerously Modern, Living History of Women in the Grail Movement, which is comprised of interviews with Grail women from the very beginning of the movement. The contexts are very different of course, and by now all of us know there is not just one ‘we women’, but at the same time surprising similarities exist along with the differences.

I don’t know if everyone present here today knows the history of the Grail Movement? For me it was new and very fascinating. Once there was a Jesuit priest named Jacques van Ginneken, who was a linguist, a professor at Nijmegen University. He believed that the problems at the beginning of the twentieth century caused by industrialisation and urbanisation could only be solved by utilising the special talents of women. According to him, those special talents were: self-sacrifice, perseverance and tenaciousness. According to what Marjet Derks wrote about Grail history in her beautiful article about the Grail Movement ‘Stories from the Past for the Future’, he was looking for ‘…strong women, women who were religiously inspired and who wanted to transform their inspiration into deeds, by working together for the conversion of the world and the safeguarding of Christianity.’ He found these women among his students, including Mia van der Kallen, Lydwine van Kersbergen and Liesbeth Allard. From 1921 on a small group called ‘The Women of Nazareth’ met regularly. They wanted to work in the world and live a religious life outside convent walls. Van Ginneken thought the Church was locking women up, thus preventing them from developing their real strength. Finally the Bishop of Haarlem came around and ‘The Women of Nazareth’, later called the Grail Movement, was established in 1928 as a lay organisation.

It was a movement with a spirituality aimed at action. ‘De Tiltenberg’ was built in 1931 as a formation centre for this work. Those women stood for grand ideals. As I mentioned earlier, their focus was ‘conversion of the world’, and in the beautiful stories of the Grail women from the very beginning two mottos come up again and again: ‘The world must convert and God will triumph’, and ‘Lord, let me grow to be that for which you have created me.’ The motor behind all of this was van Ginneken’s concept of the spirit of early Christianity, the ur-Catholicism that they wanted to spread in society. As Mia van der Kallen said: ‘It is the Spirit that matters – the spirit that gives life.’ This spirit is what made the Grail Movement, particularly in the beginning, so very lively. Mass meetings were organised with 8,000 to 10,000 participants. And the Grail developed into an international movement, despite all the inevitable setbacks, ambivalences and disappointments that accompanied such growth.

Although these ideals were great ones, I did not get the impression the Grail spirituality was woolly idealism. It was actually more like what one would call ‘empowerment’ today: a desire to bring forth the special qualities of women, to free their strength and creativity for action, the practical emancipation of women. The signs of the times were taken seriously and caused the Grail to keep moving, open for change, however difficult it might be.

The Grail developed from a strictly Roman Catholic women’s movement into an ecumenical movement, offering women the chance to develop their own talents, individually and in community with others, aiming at the transformation of society. And not only Christian women have joined in the course of time. The movement offered a place to other religions such as Buddhism, particularly the practice of Zen meditation, without denying the richness of its own Christian tradition. The motto appears to be ‘stay loyal to what is good in your own tradition’ yet ‘be open to the newness of other religious traditions’. A very progressive attitude, even more so if one thinks of how afraid the settled church authorities are of mixing different religions.

Perhaps you remember the Korean theologian Chung Hyun Kyung at the Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Canberra in 1991. In her performance she addressed the spirits of those who have been violated in history. She invoked Hagar, Uria, Jefta’s daughter, Joan of Arc and the many others who have become victims of colonialism, fascism, racism and sexism, as well as the people who had to pay with their lives for their fight for freedom for their people: Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Biko, Oscar Romero and the students at the Red Square in Beijing. She also invoked the spirit of the exploited earth and the polluted air. Her summing up ended with an invocation of the spirit of Jesus: ‘Come, spirit of the liberator, our brother Jesus, who was tortured and killed on the cross.’ Chung explained that Korean people believe that those who have died unjustly become han-spirits. Subsequently, the living are responsible for listening to those han-spirits and to right the injustice. According to her, these han-spirits are icons of the Holy Spirit and perform the function of giving a voice to the Holy Spirit. Thus they show the path that leads away from the powers of death, away from the ideals of progress, from the urge to possess, from envy and discord. They show the way to the wholeness of creation and protection of life. Christian authorities and theologians in the West responded indignantly: this was syncretism, an unacceptable mixture of religions.

This story shows too how the Grail has always stood outside the settled church structure and therefore has been able to become an ecumenical movement with a strong Zen Buddhist influence. Trees van Voorst tot Voorst, born in 1921, one of the women who was interviewed for the book Dangerously Modern, said about this: ‘I think that it is quite possible to practise Zen as a Christian, by paying attention to deepening and quieting, without having to become a Buddhist. I think it is enriching and I am glad we have always been open for new influences.’ And when the interviewer asked if she was still searching, she said: ‘That is part of my life, that is the Grail, the quest. I never know…. My image of God, for example, is changing continuously; it is not a static fact for me. I keep being inspired by other people, by encounters. It is the “spirit” again and again.’

And this Grail spirit, in which (like in womanist theology) God’s Spirit and women’s spiritual power are intermingled, has managed over and over, through all those years, to find a way out of no-way when it got difficult. Once again, after having to say goodbye to the Tiltenberg, the Grail Movement is moving on, in this new house in the heart of Utrecht. I saw on the website that the calendar for the fall is filled with interesting activities, which you can get a taste of in the workshops this afternoon.

Women’s spiritual power in the biblical sense, the female ruach, the breath that opens us, is for me inextricably bound up with the image of Dame Sophia, the embodiment of God’s wisdom. Exegetes agree that the wisdom tradition played an important role with the first Christians. Sophia is a sparkling figure; in the Book of Proverbs she is described as co-creator with God and in the Book of Wisdom she appears as part of the on-going creation process. In the Book of Proverbs she is a self-confident, often raging teacher or preacher; in Jesus Sirach she is a protecting and food-offering tree goddess. She is lover, bride, spouse, sister and mother of the wisdom student, but she is the beloved of God, too, sharing the throne with him.
And in Proverbs 9, verses 1- 6, she offers as a hostess invitation to her house. A text that seemed very suitable to today’s occasion:

Wisdom has built her house, she has carved out seven pillars.
She has prepared her meat, mixed her wine and set her table.
She has sent out her maidens to town;
she herself calls out from the highest places of the city:
‘Foolish people, please come this way!’ And she says to the ignorant:
‘Come, eat the bread I give you, drink the wine I have mixed!
Leave your foolish ways, and live. Walk in the way of understanding.’

I declare this building officially open with the wish that in this house an abundance of spiritual power and wisdom of women may come together.