Altars

Our house is so sad right now. First I was just about gutted by the latest news of the all-out assault on American women’s rights— the attack on Griswold, foundational to Roe and so much more. I wept. My entire adult life I have considered how important the bodily autonomy of women and girls is to their lives, their very being.

It was only two or three days after that when Putin laid siege to Ukraine, where my husband’s grandparents came from, to Vienna in 1914. He is feeling rolling grief — not this, not again.

I finally made an altar for Ukraine. It is simple, but helps settle my mind. The background is blue and yellow, and I have blue and amber glass votives. I added two little Byzantine icons I got while in Crete 23 years ago: one is the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ, and the other is her cousin St. Elizabeth holding the infant John the Baptist. The mothers of Ukraine are valiant. There is a heart made of rose quartz. I brought out the bottle of homemade slivovitz, and tucked it in the back. I’ll add a copy of the Invocation to Berehynia, patron goddess of Kiyev. If I can find something to represent President Zelenskyy himself, I will add that. Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who like Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian Jew, called him a Lion of Europe.

All my altars, in the end, are about women, and under the circumstances in our own country, where women’s rights are under assault — I feel I need to rearrange some pieces and make one intentional to the moment. My calligrapher friend LK once sent me a print she’d made in honor of Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman:
I had reasoned this out in my mind,
there was two things I had a right to,
Liberty and Death,
If I could not have one, I would have the other,
for no man should take me alive.
1815? - 1913

The print is matted, tho not framed, and is much too large to fit on my usual bookshelf (move books: assemble altar). But I know where it can go, and I will make it the centerpiece of the altar for American women, 2022. Until now I had not known quite what to do with this print. I do now.

Blessed Be.
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