Catherina Halkes: Feminism and Spirituality

SPIRITUALITY TODAY
Autumn 1988, Vol.40 No. 3, pp. 220-236.
Catherina Halkes:
Feminism and Spirituality

Major elements of American feminist spirituality are interpreted in a European context as promise and challenge for Christian theology and liberation.

Dr. Catherina Halkes is professor emerita at the University of Nijmegen, Holland, and a leading figure in European feminist theology. This article is token from the text of her farewell speech on her retirement úrom the chair of Feminism and Christianity in 1986 translated by Joan van der Sman. (Ed. note: Gratitude is also due to Patricia E. McVay and Judith E. Beckett for their invaluable assistance in contributing and preparing Dr. Halkes' article for publication.)

SPIRITUALITY presents a sensible way to approach the subject of "feminism and Christianity." My intention is to recognize the mutual tension between them; not to reconcile them too soon, but to keep them confronting each other. In this respect, because of its connections with both feminism and Christianity, spirituality supplies a useful component.

I
In the 1970s, a new phenomenon appeared within the women's movement in the United States under the name of "feminist spirituality." This movement came to Europe around 1980. It arose from the insight that the origins of women's estrangement go deeper than the polarization of sex-roles between man and woman. Its roots lie in the dualism between spirit and body which characterizes patriarchy itself. In titles such as Woman Spirit (a magazine) and Woman Spirit Rising (a well-known book), this 'spirit' becomes visible as the new dimension of a feministic consciousness which wants to redefine reality.
In the following ten to fifteen years many other new phenomena appeared which can be treated under the heading of feminist spirituality. But If I am correct, there are three main elements: the goddess movement, the witch movement, and a current based more on esoteric, psychoanalytic, and therapeutic processes.
GODDESSES
In the goddess movement two aspects of feminist spirituality coincide: the connection with the old pre-patriarchal religions and women's search for their own strength and life style.
Now-familiar objections have been raised from many sides against the god-images in the dominant patriarchal religions Jewish, Christian, and Islamic. Further, many women have come to prefer the Goddess as the feminine expression of the divine. In her they experience recognition and identity. They experience their being-as-woman affirmed rather than ignored or belittled.
The Goddess symbol stands for the life force and the processes of birth, death, and rebirth. That is how we have known her for a long time from religious studies and mythology - the Great Mother, the Goddess with the many names.
The movement places strong emphasis on immanence, understood in the first place as "the Goddess within yourself," through which you become strong, become creative, and gather strength from your own resources. Purportedly, in a matriarchal societies power was widely shared, life was more peace-loving (Crete is an obvious example), and people had a sense of strong ties with nature and respected it. It is also generally accepted that in a society in which the Goddess was central, women played an important role in religion as well as in public life. Even though none of this can be proved, it is still of vital importance for this movement to see in the Goddess and what she symbolizes a utopia from which women can draw life.
Starhawk, an important recent author, stresses the importance of immanence in the cosmic sense of the great connection on which everything depends. For her, the Goddess is the image for this immanence as the divine presence in nature but also in human beings and our bodies. Thus estrangement from nature, from other people, and from within our own selves is reversed. With regards to women, Starhawk mentions an extra dimension, namely their sexuality. For "In the empty world of the machine, when religious strictures fall away, sex becomes another arena of performance, another commodity to be bought and sold. The erotic becomes the pornographic."(1)
Finally, the Goddess cannot be contained in one image, but takes many forms, associations, and colors. With regard to her being woman, she finds three expressions: the young girl, the mature woman or mother, and the old wise woman -- symbols for independence, fertility, and the wise ordering of life.
In the Dutch anthology In the Name of the Goddess, Heleen Crul shows that the encounter with what the Goddess stands for, and what she appeals to, is essential for everyone involved in constructing a more truthful portrait out of the debris of the false image of 'woman.'(2) Various goddesses express singly the many aspects of ourselves. Clearly, theoreticians of this movement, particularly in Europe, are strongly influenced here by the theories of C. G. Jung, to whom they often refer. They recognize that the gods' images are projections. The essence of the Divine and Absolute cannot be captured or named. But, according to Crul, a certain form of religion can bring us into direct contact with the collective subconscious. As a result, respect and awe for the unfathomable Mystery will grow again.(3)
WITCHES
In my description of the goddess movement, I mentioned several elements which are also found in two other streams, witchcraft and psychology.
In some measure, the witchcraft movement came from America to Europe in the 'seventies together with the goddess movement. A sort of religion, it is on one side a militant protest movement and on the other it wants to give expression to mutual bondedness through magic and self-created rituals. The protest element is already manifest in the militant name of "witch," which objects against the historic witchcraft persecutions. But this image also bears a positive meaning. In one way it deals with the knowledge of nature, its healing powers, and herbs. In another, it concerns defiance and resistance, as witches take to the street in protest against what befalls women, from being ogled to being raped. They demand the return of night and darkness for women so that they will feel safe and free to move.
Witches appeal to "the witch in every woman," that is, to the power to change negative self-associations into a positive selfimage, self-confidence, and militant self-expression. Nevertheless, while they see themselves constituting a religion and a spiritual movement, their rituals are not directed towards the sacred but more towards the profane, if in a light way.
PSYCHOLOGY AND THERAPY
In the third current within feminist spirituality, the accent falls primarily on women's search for "self" in therapeutically oriented groups, through psychoanalytical process, and by means of esoteric movements. What is important in all this is the process of change, in which ideas about reality shift and women acquire a different vision of the cosmos and human nature. This manner of changing is variously called transformation, reforming, re-creation.
Christine Quispel convincingly describes these processes of change, particularly as they occur both in individual women and in the women's movement as a whole.(4) She also shows the connection between how women manage their personal transformations and their contribution to the larger movement. This conversion enables women to look at their situation and problems in a new way and guides them towards solutions which are more effective, satisfying, and meaningful. With wider scope, they no longer need to fix their attention on a single problem and thus experience greater freedom and creativity.
The idea of transformation which is often mentioned in feminist spirituality, as it is in all sort of New Age movements, can be used in a variety of ways. In Jungian psychology it expresses the process of individuation in which women develop their "animus" and men their "anima," and the dark side of the subconscious is integrated into the personality as a whole. "Transformation" is also used by mystics to describe the way towards enlightenment. It always deals with a change of consciousness, "awakening" in Carol Christ's terminology, waking up. As a result, a new idea of the self emerges in which the experience of wholeness is central, a wholeness which transcends the dualities of spirit and body, reason and feeling, life and death which have so long influenced Western consciousness.
When the self joins with the greater Self, love and strength arise. And past the collective self, a transcendental universal self is being realized. All this occurs in a process of self-development and total involvement. A new sense of responsibility appears along with a sense of being called to fulfil a specific mission. According to Quispel, so far as this transformation concerns feminist women, their own depth as well as new social possibilities are being recognized. Sexism no longer seems inevitable.
Simultaneously, then, a reformation within the women's moment is occurring which expresses itself in working for change in society, a growing bond between women, and experiences of transcendence in feminism itself. Within such feminist spirituality, transformation is being experienced as contact with streams of strength and energy at work in all natural and social processes.
THE ETHICAL ELEMENT
If we reflect on the overall spiritual movement within feminism, we thus encounter several elements: first, awareness -- growth, development, and transformation, both of women personally and the women's movement as a whole. Secondly, we find religious elements, primarily in the image of the Goddess, which points towards both transcendence and immanence, but also in the form of rituals, play, and magic as expressions of this spirituality. In third place we find ethical elements, about which I can be brief as far as theory is concerned.
There is in fact only one ethical principle in both the Goddess and witch movements: do what you want but harm no one. This rule has to be understood from the viewpoint that the Goddess is immanent in the world and present in all forms of life. She implies respect for life and service of the power of life. Consequences include involvement in the environmental movement, the peace movement, and the liberation movement of Native Americans with regard to their respect for Mother Earth.
Witchcraft does not promote feelings of guilt and self-hatred among its members but responsibility for personal conduct, partly from the motive that any evil done to others returns to oneself threefold.
Fourth and finally, political elements are part of feminist spirituality, which is often criticized as an escape from political activities. After extensive study of this subject, such criticism seems wrong to me. The title alone of the collection edited by Charlene Spretnak, The Politics of Women's Spirituality, clearly demonstrates the opposite. She explains that the term "spirituality" refers to our attitude towards life. For her the meaning of the word "political" is the manner in which we experience power, make that visible, and use it. Spretnak sees that in and through feminist spirituality women are regaining their inner strength in order to use it for the whole while sharing power. Ultimately the aims of spirituality and of revolutionary politics are the same: the creation of a world in which love, equality, and fulfillment of both the individual and the collective are being made possible (Starhawk).
As a whole the feminist movement resists revolution based on violence and dominated by a small group. Rather it advocates a revolution based on consensus, which can only occur through a process in which insights are shared regarding the roots of evil as well as strategies to overcome them.(5)
INTERMEZZO: ON THE TERM "SPIRITUALITY"
Before moving on, I would like to include a brief intermission in order to catch our breath. I imagine that some are rather puzzled about using the term "spirituality" for the new movements with which I have been dealing up to now. For a long time this term has been translated by "inner life," "spiritual life," "personal piety," or "striving for perfection," with overtones of asceticism and self-denial. But I urge you to suspend your judgment, because in circles in which Christian spirituality is being systematically studied, we discover a number of new insights allied to the currents being dealt with here. Not all that is new comes from feminism!
Until the Second Vatican Council, spirituality had in fact been defined in contrast to matter, the world, the physical; in terms of temporal vs. eternal life; or individual piety vs. social activity. This polarization is slowly but surely being overcome. In the first instance, spirituality is understood as the mental attitude with which people conduct their lives and labor, and within which, if it is conducted positively, now and then a moment of transcendence will occur. Empirically, the humane sciences have made sure that the process does not go too fast or too high or too far. First of all, each person has to discover his or her own roots in order to realize the personal context of his or her life. Therefore, a sound, i.e. contextual, spirituality starts from the concrete world and shared life situation. Christian spirituality is thus an attitude oriented towards the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ inspiring us to live in justice and love, in liberty and authenticity, and, moving out from there, in availability for God and for people. In other words: a life in which this Spirit moves freely.
With regard to the second point of this intermezzo, it is remarkable to me that talk about feminist spirituality always means the type of spirituality I described earlier. As a theologian, I feel challenged to reflect on the possibilities for a Christian feminist spirituality. Is it possible that Christian faith and tradition have no elements and no models which concur with the new self-experience of women and with their desire to give that concrete form?

II
Within feminist theology, a number of aspects can be identified which could become part of a renewed Christian spirituality. I will present them in a certain order, although with some arbitrariness because the selection is made out of my own life and faith experiences. Other women might find certain elements important which are not mentioned here. More research will be necessary. What I am presenting here is at most an outline or sketch.
CHRISTIAN FEMINISM AND LIBERATION SPIRITUALITY
In the first place, such a spirituality ought to be one of liberation. The theological basis lies in the courage to be, which means the courage to choose life. "Life and death I give you, blessing and curse. Choose life," says the bible (Deut. 30:19). By loving God, by listening to God's voice, and remaining united with God, our life will become fruitful.
Liberation spirituality starts off uneasy with and in revolt against all structures in society and church based on man-woman relations and the resultant limitations these place on women's autonomy. Uneasiness and revolt put women on their toes. They raise their voices to break out of their anonymity, recognize each other and go on their way, in search of a personal calling and responding to it. The "exodus" of women has biblical connotations and reminds us of Miriam, who led the victory song in joy and gratitude to the Voice which had called the Hebrews to leave the house of slavery.(6) Such a moment of transcendence, a response to a beckoning Voice, can also break through on the way towards women's liberation. Here, as a community, women can fulfil an intercessory function, moving in the domain of the Spirit who sets us free from all external constraints. Living in the Spirit of Christ encourages us not to allow ourselves to be enslaved anew.
Whoever has dared to go through the process of awareness and liberation (it takes a whole lifetime!) comes not only to a reordering of her personal life, but also to a re-ordering of the foci of attention in the Christian message, emphasizing its unknown or forgotten aspects. We distinguish what is important from the inside. We convert ourselves to greater sensitivity to and a deeper solidarity with other marginalized people, first and foremost with women who sometimes have to fight in a threefold way -- not only as women, but as women who are poor, and as women who are discriminated against because of their skin color.
The restriction or suppression of women is one side of the alienation in which we live and from which we want to liberate ourselves. More complicated because of its subtlety is the liberation of women from their acceptance of established positions and the sometimes comfortable structures in which they find themselves because of their emancipation. This is a form of alienation of which they are not conscious or wish to ignore by suppressing their discomfort. They still do not understand what feminism is all about when they repeat: "I do not feel oppressed at all." They not only deny themselves but unknowingly deny millions of women who are being sold, raped, and sexually mistreated because of their female body. Such women are our 'neighbors.' Whether they will ever become our sisters depends on our solidarity with them.
Liberation spirituality is therefore also a militant spirituality which can be fruitful only if it fuses together elements of the journey to Tabor, the Transfiguration, and the return journey to the Jerusalem of death and resurrection. For liberation is finally a way to freedom: freedom to love, to celebrate ordinary life, to become open to the Mystery of our existence which we call God. There we find space to live attentively and to listen, which is the basis for the liberation struggle.
If I may establish a link between Latin-American liberation theology and feminist liberation spirituality, it strikes me as significant that Gustavo Gutierrez places special emphasis on the experience of God's grace.(8) For him, "Communion with God and with all people is first and foremost a gift."
Feminist theologians are reluctant to use the word "grace." Our prime feeling is that perhaps it is up to us to liberate ourselves. Words such as gift, grace, openness, emptiness (in the mystical sense) are still too closely linked with terms from a past not yet superseded, such as: waiting, receiving, the empty womb which yearns to become fruitful. Women have become allergic to such terms. It requires a real maturing process to experience the threefold journey from imposed passivity via self-initiated activity towards authentic and creative receptiveness.
POSITIVE SEXUAL ATTITUDES
In the second place, feminist spirituality is manifested by a positive experience of (female) sexuality and the processes connected with it. Spirituality concerns the whole human being and not only the spirit, and certainly not the spirit versus the body. It aims to abolish all dualistic thinking. Women have been alienated from their own bodies by patriarchal domination and decision-making. But women no longer experience the changes and rhythms of our bodies as shameful or unclean, rendering us unworthy of the sacred.
Neither a patriarchal nor a mechanical vision of sexuality is humane. But we still await a healthy "Spirit-in-matter" mentality which transcends sexuality, not by sublimation and rejection, but by an affirmation and integration in which affection, games, and communication are necessary components.8 Such an appreciation of sexuality must receive more attention in the liturgy, for example, in dance. In such ways we become more familiar with our bodies, our means of expression and communication for celebrating creation and making this celebration viable.(9)
CREATION SPIRITUALITY
An intense experience of the earth and the whole of nature as God's good creation is another positive aspect of a Christian feminist spirituality. But realizing how we belong to and participate in the cosmos as a whole does not mean returning to nature-religion, but rather living and thinking so as to include nature.
Creation is not thus deified, as in nature-religions, but neither is it rendered godless. There are traces of God in creation. And human beings are called to be co-creators. "God needs people" is the Dutch title of Dorothee Sölle's book To Work and to Love.
Thus, women will protest against a strong anthropocentric doctrine of creation extolling man as 'Lord of creation,' which in practice means domination over women, children, and slaves, and a ruthless subjection of nature. Women are witnesses for a re-direction towards the proper use of nature. Modern physics itself teaches us that we human beings are part of nature, or of the cosmos (which means something quite different). Similarly, many women experience a profound need for connectedness and thus oppose an exclusive, divisive way of thinking. They resist a mechanical, technological domination of the world. They believe in an ecological world community.
CREATIVE INTEGRITY
One aspect of creation-spirituality concerns women in particular. Masculine, western thinking tends to identify women with nature because of their bodily processes, while associating men with culture and spirit. Thus, in reaction to the deification of the female principle in the old religions, a devaluation occurred with the rise of masculine monotheism. The resulting demonization of woman has done incalculable damage to women, to humanity in general, and to culture.
Now that the phase of humanizing woman has arrived, and women are becoming human beings again, it is time for a revaluation which will underline the connection and balance between nature and culture, between women and men. If Christianity really espouses an incarnate faith, which means that God became human, it must take seriously the humanity of all little and despised people.
Similarly, a dominant theology of redemption tends to neglect creation theology. It would therefore be helpful if images and symbols of Mother Earth, Sister Moon, and Brother Sun were more present in our liturgies so that we could thereby incorporate the celebration of heaven, the earth, and the human world in dance and play.
An increasing number of theological publications independent of the feminist quarter are already promoting creation theology. With regard to spirituality, they warn us not to put one-sided emphasis on social crisis and social changes, but to devote our attention equally to our relationship with nature. Rather, in opposition to a one-dimensional and too-strongly humanistic culture there ought to develop a spirituality which overrides all 'man-nature' dualism and leads to greater concern for all living creatures as well as to inner-subjective experiences instead of technological subject-object thinking. Solidarity with the poor demands solidarity with nature and with the earth, which is 'for all of us.'(10)
Again I have something to say in this regard concerning the liturgy. On one hand the Catholic liturgy has from of old incorporated many natural elements, such as fire, water, and oil. The prayer-times of monasteries and convents were adapted to the rhythm of day and night, light and darkness. The liturgical year still has its seasons and their changes. But from the feminist point of view one can pose the question whether the Roman liturgy after Vatican II does not bear the stamp of purely male rationality, what Jacques Pohier calls the mono-sexual character of the magisterium and theology of the Roman Catholic Church.(11)
On one hand we have a spirituality of the symbolic, on the other the efforts of renewal in the 'social-critical' climate of the 1960s. Matters have not improved. What remains to celebrate has been buried under a heavy layer of socio-ethical warnings. Isn't it time to give the deeper levels of human experience a new opportunity in the liturgy, to retrieve for a moment old symbols and rituals which direct us beyond ourselves and our daily activities, not to escape reality, but to derive motivation from such moments of transcendence in order to act critically?
GROWTH IN TRUTH AND LIFE
Women who have got up and started to move experience their lives as a 'way which they want to discover themselves, and as a 'process' of creative development. As we saw earlier, we can speak of away-in-growth' psychologically, but the'way' is also a symbol biblically and theologically. Here I am thinking of images of exodus, a way out of oppression and a journey through a desert of uncertainties where now and then an oasis appears as a feast of recognition with other women. In the young Christian communities the new religion itself was called the Way (Acts 9:2).
Christian feminists want to go that way in the Spirit of Christ. For them, that means more than ever a way on which they set out for themselves. Here I think of the words of Christ: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6). During the last few years, these words have become more meaningful for me. Jesus of Nazareth is not a fixed model which has to be imitated unhistorically. On the contrary, Jesus is rather a 'model breaker; as Mary Daly once wrote.(12) This means that we ought to go about our life-way in the Spirit of Christ, who is first and foremost "the great updater of Jesus,"(13) the creative and illuminating power that brings Jesus into our time with concrete questions about women in a new era.
Christ also says: I am the Truth. Here too I am touched more by the element of movement than of fixation. The Greek word for truth is aletheia, which means 'un-hiddenness; that which lights up in our life as the center, but which needs to be cleared of many veils and cleansed to reveal the gleaming center of our existence. Courage is always needed to go a way which demands constant openness to the impulse to question the meaning of the gospel both earlier, and now for women.
Christian spirituality means living pre-eminently through the Spirit and in the freedom of the Spirit. Today, many women experience a strong desire for originality and authenticity. This demands letting go of everything that has been imposed on us and has alienated us from ourselves, so that we can accept the emptiness which can grow into the space to live creatively and recreatively. This is what Dorothee Sölle means when she pleads with us to leave everything behind in ultimate abandonment to the center of our existence.(14) We know the biblical invitation not to hold on to the old, but to leave the well-known and take the risk of reaching towards the unknown, in confidence that God's Spirit is present in new situations. Letting go and following a new way, in search of their origin, is now particularly important for women.
THREE FEMINIST VIRTUES
In feminist theology there is often talk of the 'triad' of anger, pride, and hope. Anger at the present non-recognition of women as human and autonomous persons can be very effective as the motive force of a new creativity. But it must not degenerate into bitterness or vengeance, because such attitudes enslave and restrict us. Pride also has two sides: a creative impulse which gives us the sense that we are worthwhile beings, and a sterile pride which cuts us off from others in a self-satisfied attitude. I think the word "strength" might be better for the former. "High-spiritedness" was a key word in the work for Hadewych of Antwerp, the twelfth century mystic, for whom it had a relational, dialectical meaning with respect to Minne (Divine Love).(15)
Feminism is not only a movement of struggle but also of hope -- hope of a healed world, for hope is healing. I regret that sometimes even liberation theologians do not understand the liberation movement of western women. They see it as a sort of luxury, a self-centered indulgence out of place with regard to the needs of the poor. It escapes these theologians that it is exactly the feminist critique of all patriarchal domination and colonialism which could form the basis of a contextual European liberation theology, and work for increased justice in the world as a whole.
However hopeful this may sound it is not a simple task for women to pursue such a Way. They who dare to embark on it become marginalized, living on the border between two worlds, living on the boundary, as Mary Daly says. In principle, you have left the old country but you still have to work there. Every day you encounter people who do not understand. Living on the boundary you can see the contours of the new land, full of promises, but will we ever reach it? We are gaining inner strength, which is the first necessity, but we are not gaining in the combined power necessary to effect change. I do not mean the power of domination and lust, but taking positions where it becomes possible to create conditions and structures which can change and reform thinking and acting so that more people achieve justice.
Being marginalized is a characteristic of our lives. We continually trek between the old and the new, relying on each other to keep going. It creates distance, which is painful but also potent. It sharpens our vision, empowering us to reflect critically on experiences and to develop our ideas. For me moments of crisis in life and faith belong here, because over and over again we come to new life through pain and emptying.
CREATIVE SUFFERING
This brings me to a final aspect of our possible spirituality: the meaning of the cross and resurrection. Feminist theology often rightly accuses Christianity as it is practiced of being a necrophilic religion far too oriented towards suffering and death because of the image of a suffering Christ and the influence of a specific mystique of suffering. The Goddess supposedly offers a more 'biophilic' religion founded specifically on life and the meaning of the cosmos.
Over the centuries, Christian history has indeed given that impression. But whoever goes back to the origin discovers that it is not a true one. In the first place, the Christian faith is an Easter faith, a resurrection faith, and the risen Christ is central to it. As St. Paul has said already: if Christ was not risen our faith would have no content (1 Cor. 15:14).
The essence of the mystery of Christ is the passover from suffering and death to victory and resurrection. Suffering and death do not exist for their own sake but as a route to new life. Therefore from of old the Cross was seen to be the tree of life. Not long ago in Paderborn, I was touched by a cross in a Catholic church there in the form of a tree with two branches on which Christ was hanging. It truly presented the Cross as a sign of life, like a fruit tree.
A second observation: about which life are we speaking? We can give two meanings to the word "life": in nature-religions, life and death alternate and life comes out of death anew, like the growth of grain from the dying seed and the spring arriving after the death of winter. The myth of the eternal return pertains here with regard to physical life (bios) and physical death. But there is another death, namely that of a human life which has been deprived of dignity through oppression, torture, and domination. This must have been evident in Israel because of the Hebrews' historical experience of slavery in Egypt and their experience of a Covenant-God which led to the liberation of humanity. From then on, a double understanding of life and death developed in scripture: in addition to bios was found the word "zoë," human life which transcends physical life. It refers mainly to the quality of human life, its history, and future, which is also endangered because of abuse and deficient personal choices.(16)
As marginalized, women have to work through crises in order to go further. In other words, we have to go through suffering and death to come to new life, a resurrection which may even require rebellion or revolution in order to give form to that new life. This passover is repeatedly necessary for those who have not been taken seriously or made suspect because their choices have been rejected. Crisis is not a serene process, but rather an obstinate "matter of life and death."
NOTES

Starhawk, "Consciousness, Politics and Magic," in Charlene Spretnak, The Politics of Women's Spirituality (New York: 1982), p. 177.
Heleen Crul, Uit Naam van de Godin (In the Name of the Goddess), ed. H. Crul (Haarlem, 1985), pp. 13-14.
Ibid., pp. 20-35.
Christine M. Quispel, Speling 2 (1983): 17-23.
Cf. Dorothy R. Riddle, "Politics, Spirituality, and Models of Change," in Spretnak, op. cit., pp. 373-381.
Cf. H. Langer et al., Mit Mirjam durch das Schilfmeer: Frauen Bewegen die Kirche (With Miriam through the Red Sea: Women Changing the Church), Stuttgart: 1982) and K. Waaijman, "Het lied van Mirjam (The Song of Miriam)," Speling, ed. cit., 56-61.
See Otger Steggink and Kees Waaijman, Inleiding Spiritualiteit: een Workboek (Introducing Spirituality: a Workbook) (Nijmegen: Heerlen, 1982), pp. 17-19.
See Ursula King, "Women in Dialogue: A New Vision of Ecumenism," The Heythrop Journal 36, 2 (1985):125-42, and June O'Connor, "Sensuality, Spirituality, Sacramentality," Union Seminary Quarterly Review 1 & 2 (1985): 5970.
R. Buezmanjer, "Wees Realisties, in het Onmogelijke (Be Realistic in the Impossible)," Werkschrift voor Leerhuis en Liturgie 3, 2 (1982):31-32, an d 4,1(1983): 125-27.
Steggink/Waaijman, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
Jacques Pohier, God in Fragmenten (God in Fragments) (Hilversum: 1985), pp. 166ff.
Cf. Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).
Cf. Raymond E. Brown, Crises Facing the Church (London: 1975), p. 106.
Dorothee Sölle, "Mysticism, Liberation, and the Names of God," Christianity and Crisis, June 22, 1981, pp. 179-85.
Marieke van Baert, Fiere Herte Doelt na Minnen Gronde (A High-Spirited Heart Searches the Depths of Love) (University of Tilburg: Faculty of Theology, 1984).
Cf. R. van Kessel, "Gezen en Huwelijk in Christelijk Perspectief (Marriage and Family in Christian Perspective)," Huwelijk en Gezen (Family and Marriage), ed. by R. A. deMoor (Baarn: 1985), pp. 140ff.

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