Goddess Festival celebrates the divine feminine

Wiccans, pagans and others who worship the goddess know well the three stages of a woman's life -- maiden, mother and crone. The crone is the matriarch, the wise woman, the healer and teacher, revered for her experiences, her knowledge and her embodiment of a living link between the past and the future.

If there is a face that is immediately synonymous with the Fayetteville Goddess Festival, it is Diana Rivers, one of its founders in 2008 and now clearly its matriarch. In her 80s, she has a long history of activism and feminism, and even though she tried to retire from the festival two years ago, she remains its figurehead.

"Her impact in this movement really can't be overstated," says Shawna Thorup, one of the Planning Circle members shaping this year's Goddess Festival. "Sometimes, one person starts to embody a movement, and Diana Rivers is that person."

Rivers was born Diana Duer Smith on Oct. 17, 1931, in New York City and grew up in suburban New Jersey near Morristown. Most of the influences in her young life were female -- poets, novelists, artists and supporters of women's suffrage. She went to art school, married and had three sons -- later living with them in Gate Hill Co-op, an intentional community of artists, writers and musicians in Stony Point, N.Y. It wasn't until 1970, however, that Rivers, newly divorced, started to look for a place to build her own community and settled near Jasper, in Newton County. In the 1980s, she created the Ozark Land Holding Association near Fayetteville, still an intentional community for women only.

Although she has been recovering from an illness, Rivers will be feted at 3 p.m. March 19 during the Goddess Festival's first weekend at the Omni Center for Peace, Justice and Ecology in Fayetteville. She will be interviewed by Vick Kelley, co-founder of the festival, and will also be guest of honor at a reception at 5 p.m.

Rivers brands herself as pagan, but also "an ardent lesbian-feminist."

"Feminism is a big part of this for me," Rivers said before the 2014 Goddess Festival. "I grew up under a male God, so for me, to see the divinity in women, the divine feminine, is a way to empower women, a way to get out from under the weight of patriarchy.

"'Goddess' is still a revolutionary word in a lot of ways."

"I think most people think of goddess reverence as a neo-pagan thing that is based in Wicca or feminism, and there is room for those approaches, but many of us do not identify in that way," adds Talina Madonna, another member of this year's planning circle.

"So many of the symbols we observe in our culture come from very ancient earth and divine feminine-honoring traditions from cultures all around the world," she goes on. "The contemporary earth-based religion is all-inclusive and connected. We understand that God is actually without gender and beyond our comprehension, but each deity represents an aspect of the mystery that we can call upon and invoke in our daily lives to more deeply connect to the Divine. We honor the forms of god and goddess because they represent the divinity in humanity and the duality of nature."

Adding another perspective, Thorup says she "identifies" as Unitarian Universalist, but her "personal theology" is reminiscent of the Jedi from the Star Wars films: "I believe energy permeates everything and binds the universe together."

The female side of that energy, she says, is best imagined by thinking of a mother or a teacher "and what they do -- nurture, teach, socialize, keep you from being a total brat. The world needs more building people up, not tearing people down. Female energy is good at nurturing instead of destroying."

Marty Smith, who has been involved with the festival since its inception in 2009, says she doesn't practice a particular religion but is devoted to keeping this event alive.

"Every year, there's a new crop of people whose ears or hearts become open," she says.

Recalling her childhood, she talks of being sent down the street to church, "where they taught us to sing 'Jesus Loves Me.' I raised my hand. I didn't believe them. But I kept going back for the pineapple upside-down cake."

She was in her 40s, she says, before she discovered a feminist take on religion and reconnected "with that little girl who knew better."

"I hope the Goddess Festival can be a vehicle for other kids who know what they're hearing isn't right. It isn't the whole story."

At this year's festival -- which begins Thursday and continues through March 27 -- "we have yoga, sacred dance, a workshop on the harmony of divine masculine and feminine, a gong healing session which is based in Buddhist meditation traditions and kirtan, a devotional chanting of the names of gods and goddesses which has its origins in Hinduism. Just to name a few," Madonna concludes. "There is room for each person to have their own profound spiritual experience and perspective within the circle and to be loved, respected and accepted by those of us who are willing to see the god and goddess within us all."

NAN Religion on 03/12/2016