Goddess Festival Celebrates Feminine Divine

Diversity, creativity, spirituality share center stage next week...

Staff Photo Becca Martin-Brown Krystina Poludnikiewicz, from left, Julie Jeannene and Cat Oswald look at entries for this year’s Goddess Festival art show. The festival begins Sunday at the Omni Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology in Fayetteville.

Staff Photo Becca Martin-Brown Krystina Poludnikiewicz, from left, Julie Jeannene and Cat Oswald look at entries for this year’s Goddess Festival art show. The festival begins Sunday at the Omni Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology in Fayetteville.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Maiden, mother, crone -- the three stages of a woman's life, the three aspects of the goddess in belief systems such as Wicca.

The maiden represents the promise of new beginnings; the mother, stability; and the crone, wisdom.

Go & Do

Goddess Festival

(All events are at the Omni Center and free unless noted)

Sunday

3 to 5 p.m. — Opening ceremony

6 to 8 p.m. — HOWL (Her Words Out Loud), Nightbird Books

Monday

1 to 2 p.m. — Our Allies in the Plant World with Melissa Clare

2:15 to 3:45 p.m. — Oceanic Awareness with Melissa Clare

4 to 6 p.m. — Cerridwyn’s Wisdom Bottles with Penny Gray ($5)

4 to 6 p.m. — Food, Body, and Restoring the pH Balance with Krystina Poludnikiewicz

4 to 6 p.m. — Dinner Discussion Hour: For the Love of the Goddess with Julie Rickard

6 to 7 p.m. — Goddess Prayer Flags: A Celtic theme craft for All Snakes Day celebration with Kathy Skaggs

Tuesday

1 to 3 p.m. — Ecstatic Healing Posture Ceremony: A Shamanic Experience with Allee Anabal ($5-$15)

4 to 6 p.m. — Animal Encounters: A Dream Sharing Circle with Seajay Crosson

4 to 5 p.m. — Story hour with Krystina Poludnikiewicz

7 to 9 p.m. — Chant cirle with Cat Oswald

Wednesday

1 to 3 p.m. — Painting the Goddess with Cedar Kindy ($30)

5:30 to 6:30 p.m. — Unordinary Folk With a Jazz Flair with Jori Costello

7 to 9 p.m. — Song Circle with Judi Neal and Ellis Ralph

7 to 9 p.m. — Understanding Your Menstrual Cycle with Michelle Green

Thursday

1 to 3 p.m. — Build and Learn to Play Didgeridoo with Sylver Blake ($8)

4 to 6 p.m. — Maintaining Joy in a Chaotic World with Willow Blake ($5)

6 to 7 p.m. — Mindful Yoga with Lisa Longino, Fayetteville Movement Co-op

7 to 9 p.m. — Spring Equinox Ritual, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

Friday

1 to 4 p.m. — Visioning Board Workshop with Manon Wilson

3:30 to 5:30 p.m. — Artemis Rising: Archery for the Amazon at Heart with Kathy Skaggs ($5)

5 to 6 p.m. — Understanding the Crystal People with Genn John

7 to 9 p.m. — Healing Circle with Harmonia, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

March 22

10 a.m. to 1 p.m. — Painting the Goddess with Cedar Kindy ($30)

10 to 11 a.m. — Laugh for the Health of It with Karen Stein

10 a.m. to noon — Chakradance Awakening Intro Workshop with Lileith Achey, Fayetteville Movement Co-op

11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. — Becoming Earth in the Ozarks: Natural Burial in a “Green Cemetery” with Vick Kelley

1 to 1:30 p.m. — Edgewalkers: Integrating Spirituality Into Daily Life with Judi Neal ($5)

1 to 4 p.m. — Sacred Women’s Wisdom Circle with Joy Caffrey (donation $5-up)

1 to 4 p.m. — Labyrinth Walk with Krystina Poludnikiewicz, Fayetteville Movement Co-op

3:30 to 5 p.m. — Artemis Rising: Archery for the Amazon at Heart with Kathy Skaggs ($5)

4 to 6 p.m. — The Goddess in Your Everyday Life, a writing workshop with Diana Rivers

4 to 6 p.m. — Wand Making with the Omni homeschoolers

7 to 9 p.m. — Music by Aelwyd

March 23

11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. — Remembering the Balance with Krystina Poludnikiewicz, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

1 to 3 p.m. — Ritual Healing with Talina Madonna, Fayetteville Movement Co-Op

1 to 3 p.m. — Shapeshifting for Balance: The Role of Benevolent Female Tricksters with Larry Faulks

3 to 5 p.m. — Closing ceremonies

Source: goddessfestival.com

It's an apt analogy for this year's Goddess Festival, which begins Sunday at the Omni Center for Peace, Justice & Ecology in Fayetteville.

It is the end of an era with the retirement of Diana Rivers and Vick Kelley, the founders of the festival six years ago, but they've been part of this year's planning circle to share their experience and wisdom.

Also part of the circle are Kathy Skaggs, who has been around since the beginning and is providing continuity, and Julie Jeannene, who got involved during the Women's Conference and Festival at the University of Arkansas in the late 1990s -- the "mothers," as it were.

And taking the festival forward are Krystina Poludnikiewicz and Cat Oswald, both fairly new to the community, both new to the organization, both filled with excitement about the future.

"I tried to arm wrestle Vick to continue," Poludnikiewicz said. "And then I had a conversation with Gladys Tiffany (of the Omni Center), and we knew we had to make this happen."

At 27, Oswald was the youngest chatting in the circle Thursday afternoon. She said she had heard about the festival as it ended two years ago and had to wait a year to attend.

"It's been hard for me to meet people who share a similar spirituality," she said. "This is a wonderful place to find them."

But even in the Omni Center's living room, there were many opinions on both spirituality and the purposes of the festival.

Crone

Rivers and Kelley both have a long history of activism and feminism.

"As a feminist, I've helped to organize several venues for women to express their creative selves and share their work in all mediums," Rivers wrote on the festival website. "I originated WomanVision, an art and performance show, which I produced with the help of a small collective of women. The show ran for three years in Kansas City during the month of March. With Full Bloom, I did a WomanVision show in Eureka Springs. I worked with MatriArts to put on a women's art and performance show at the Orpheum in Fayetteville for three years. During the 10-year period of the Women's Conference and Festival at the University of Arkansas, I was in charge of most of the art shows at the Student Union."

"Feminism is a big part of this for me," Rivers said Thursday. "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."

Kelley, who said she was raised Catholic in the "Deep South," "had never heard the word goddess" until she came to Fayetteville.

"And then, I didn't want to shift from one set of rules to another," she remembered, so she wanted to be certain following a goddess-centered religion didn't mean new constrictions. "I wanted spiritual liberation."

She found it, she said, in events such as the Women's Conference and Festival and later the Goddess Festival.

"'Restoring the balance' is our tagline," Kelley said of the festival. "We're speaking options -- saying to the public there are choices about spirituality."

Mother

Skaggs said she too sees the festival as a "vehicle for everyone -- male, female, child -- to get the idea it's OK to follow your own path of spirituality."

"I do not worship any goddess, but to me they are iconic," she said. "I hope, as every person crosses the threshold into this space, they cross a threshold spiritually inside and feel inspired to go further."

Seeing people who have sought out the festival and are amazed by what they find inspires Skaggs.

"It's like a light shines from within them," she said. "That's what keeps a lot of us going year after year."

Jeannene said it has the same inspirational effect for her.

"I have been meeting with circles for many years," she said. "They're always small and intimate, and that's wonderful. But this is a way to come together with the whole community -- sometimes in profound ways -- and it inspires me creatively. When you follow a nonmainstream spiritual path, it's a big way to feel connected and supported."

Jeannene said she remembers attending the festival when it was on the Fayetteville square and "being so proud to be part of this community."

MAIDEN

Oswald came from Eureka Springs, a community where diversity is always celebrated. She grew up in the Unitarian church, she said, but "I usually just say I'm a witch." Her spiritual beliefs are "somewhere between Wicca, Shamanism and Buddhism," she said.

Poludnikiewicz was raised in a Catholic household, but she believes "there's divine creation in every one of us."

"We need to tap into that source and contribute to making the world a better place," she explained. The festival "affirms for women the divine creativity in each of us."

A nurse educator, Poludnikiewicz spent most of the last 11 years working in India. There, she said, "everybody has their own spirituality." A family altar, she remembered, might include elements for each member of the household. Her goal for the festival, she said, is to support that diversity.

"I hope everyone feels loved as an individual," she said, "and supported by the universe. We're all in this together."

NAN Religion on 03/15/2014