on holy ground
by sandra smith

In Asheville on Orange Street, just off of Merrimon Avenue in a beautiful old house, there is a place of sanctuary and beauty where the word feminist warms the heart and brings a smile to the face. The tea kettle whistles often,women’s artwork adorns the walls, and a lending library is packed full of books relating to women’s spirituality, ritual and worship and justice issues.

At 18 Orange Street, people of all faiths and those calling themselves “seekers” are welcome to engage in conversation with others about their spiritual journey and know that their experience will be heard and respected.  For almost tenyears, Holy Ground—a feminist nonprofit—has been nurturing the spiritual life and encouraging interfaith exploration.  Through education and public action,Holy Ground seeks to empower women and men to create a world of greater social and ecological justice.
The idea of a place called Holy Ground was birthed through conversations between Dorri Sherrill and myself. We met while attending the Candler School ofTheology at Emory University in Atlanta.  In 1994, our vision became a reality as Holy Ground, Inc. began publishing newsletters and offering retreats and workshops in the Asheville area.  Dorri remains supportive of and active inHoly Ground, although her main focus and energy is currently in her role as chaplain at Mission St. Joseph’s; currently, I serve as director of Holy Ground.

I became a feminist while attending theology school, a seemingly unlikely place for such an occurrence.  For me, theology school was a marvelous cocoonthat held me in a caring embrace as it challenged and questioned me and guided me in some serious self-reflection.  What did I believe and why? What in my faith tradition was life giving and affirming?  What wasn’t?  Believing in very few of the (Christian) church’s teachings, I enrolled in theology school not because I intended to serve as pastor for a church, but because I had lots of questions.  My experience of the Holy didn’t resonate with what I was hearing from the “man in the pulpit.”  Simply put, the Christian tradition and its institution, the church, left women out of the picture.  It still does.

During my three years at Candler School of Theology, there were several strong feminists on faculty.  In their classes, we read biblical texts through a feminist lens, discussed the subtle and not so subtle oppressions of patriarchal structures, and learned new metaphors that honored and valued women’s experiences.  These years were a healing balm for me and enabled me toquestion the traditions and doctrines I had been taught and to give birth to a faith posture that was life-giving, to a faith that included me.  When it was time to graduate, I didn’t want to leave.  I wanted to continue the rich conversations and the challenging questioning.  Holy Ground was birthed as a way to do this-to continue the conversations and the questions and explore humanity’s relationship to the Holy and how that relationship expresses itself in the world.  At Holy Ground’s events, questions guide conversations rather thanconversations providing answers.

As a feminist theologian, I believe that the starting point for women’sspiritual journey is the question “Who Am I?”  We live in a world that devalues our experience, our ideas, and our work.  So this question precedes “Who isGod/the Holy?”  If I really don’t know myself, how can I relate to the Holy in a meaningful way?  At Holy Ground, we study, express, interpret and imagine religious traditions and texts through the lens of women’s experiences.  In a recent series on “Women in the Old Testament/Hebrew Scriptures” offered at Holy Ground, we read several biblical stories of women and read them consciously as women.  Rather than discussing the traditional interpretations of the texts, we relied on feminist biblical scholars to lead us in relating to these women’sstories through our own personal stories.  This made for a very differentread!

Part of our programming and work at Holy Ground is directed towardenabling women and men to claim and value their own experience and to use that experience as a point of departure into the spiritual life.  We all have rich stories that offer a great deal of wisdom when we learn to honor those stories. Using words and metaphors that are inclusive of women’s lives helps us aswomen move toward valuing our own stories.

At Holy Ground, we take great care with the words we speak and write.Metaphors matter and words inform our thoughts and internal images.  For example, if we express our spiritual life or theology using words like obedience, servant, sacrifice, and self-emptying, how might that be interpreted by awoman experiencing domestic violence?  Jewish, Islamic, and Christian faiths have traditionally used male images for the Holy.  How does one, for instance, whose father was abusive, relate to this image of the Divine?  Images of the Holy are foundational to howwe relate to ourselves and to our community.  I have a difficult timeunderstanding how, in the 21st century, faith communities can continue to name the Divinein male terms.  It’s so unimaginative to continue naming Holy Creativity in such narrow terms, don’t you think?   When we restrict our images of the Divine, we limit how we engage and relate to the Divine.  We limit how we understand the Divine’s love for us, and that, in turn, informs and influences our human relationships.

Discussions and presentations at Holy Ground’s events revolve around faith and justice issues and nudge us to integrate the private and public dimensions of our lives in service of greater justice and beauty.  To support the private dimensions of our spiritual lives—the journey to the heart—Holy Ground offers an annual silent retreat, a March labyrinth walk, several Enneagramworkshops (reflecting on “Who am I?”), a course on simpler living, and a yearly series that reads biblical texts through a feminist lens.  We also offer a weekly Wednesday morning Sacred Circle, a time of communal silence, meditative reading, and ritual from 9-10 am.  The circle is open to people of allfaiths as are all of Holy Ground’s offerings.  

Holy Ground’s focus on justice and the public dimensions of our lives in 2004 will incorporate group conversations such as “eco-feminism as response to global militarism”, an interfaith exploration of how our faith guides our thinking about the death penalty, and a June workshop entitled Spiritual Activism: How We Live Liberation.  Weaving together the inward journey to our hearts with our social action is essential for our spiritual lives. When ourservice, our justice-making, arises from an inner groundedness, we move from a place of heart and act with a patient passion and with compassion. Both public service and personal spiritual practice are necessary components of an integrative life, a life in the Spirit.

As we approach our tenth anniversary we do so with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for a community that has embraced us and supported us over theyears.  To celebrate what has been, Holy Ground has invited two of our nation’s prominent feminist theological scholars to Asheville during the weekend of March 26-28.  One of the foremothers of feminist theology, Professor Rosemary Radford Ruether, will offer the Friday evening presentation, a timely lecture entitled Women, Ecology, and Globalization.  On Saturday Ruether will lead a half-day workshop, 10 am to 2 pm, focusing on Women and Religion.  Saturdayevening, feminist biblical scholar Dr. Carol Newsom will offer remarks at the evening dinner event. Her topic: Woman Wisdom Contemplates Nature.  In keeping with our insistence on the importance of beauty, Holy Ground will host a women’s art exhibit from March 20-April 2.  All are invited to a reception and Open House on Sunday afternoon, March 28 at Holy Ground. (To learn more about the anniversary weekend celebration, visit Holy Ground’s website at holygroundretreats.org or call us at 828-236-0222.)

I continue to be touched by those who share their lives and their faithjourneys in the many on-going conversations at Holy Ground.  Spirit hasmoved in delightful ways in retreats and classes over the years.  My prayer is that we all come to a place where we allow the boundaries of our hearts to becomemore expansive and inclusive so that together we manifest the Divinepresence in our world and come to believe that the ground of our being is Holy.

To learn more about Holy Ground, visit their website at holygroundretreats.org.

Sandra Smith, M.Div., is co-founder and director of Holy Ground and is a certified Enneagram teacher and retreat leader.