On The Whole

Internet radio discussion of the role of fiction in remembering the sacred feminine

Mary Saracino, whose novel The Singing of Swans was a finalist in the 2007 Lambda Literary Awards' Spirituality category, was interviewed on Karen Tate's Voices of the Sacred Feminine internet radio show Wednesday evening. The archived recording of the show is now available for downloading or listening online.

The interview focuses on fiction's role in rethinking, reclaiming and reawakening the memory of the sacred female, with an emphasis on Saracino's novel and how she claim to write it. Tate and Saracino also discuss Sicily's Lake Pergusa, long associated with feminine spirituality and the goddess Persephone. The lake plays an important role in The Singing of Swans.

Download the mp3 recording of Saracino's interview by going to the webpage for Tate's radio show and scrolling down to the list of Feburary 2008 guests and topics, where a link is available to the Feb. 6, 2008 show.

The radio show webpage also contains archived recordings of interviews with other authors and experts on the sacred feminine. Later this month interviews with Margaret Starbird, author of The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, and Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade.

Heaven is open to people of all sizes

Pat Ballard's letter to the editor of the Nashville Tennessean was published today and deemed a "three-star" letter. Ballard wrote the letter in response to a Jan. 21 article about an Annandale, VA minister who put his congregation on a diet last year and is now a weight-loss guru.

Ballard wrote:

We're bombarded daily with the "obesity epidemic" rhetoric from every direction, but nothing infuriates me more than when a so-called "man (or woman) of God" take it upon himself to become a "diet guru," as in the article "Bod4God minister and author helps the faithful shed pounds," Jan. 21.

These people take scriptures out of context and try to indicate that they mean our bodies need to be a certain size before we can be acceptable to God, when the scripture plainly says that God looks on the inward man, not the outward man.

The word fat occurs 130 times in 105 verses in the King James Version, and not once does it say that being fat is a sin. In fact, you'll find quite the opposite, but I won't get into that.

So to tell me that my body can't "Glorify God" because it's a certain size offends me and the scripture says in Mat 18:6: "But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and (that) he were drowned in the depth of the sea."

The authors of three-star letters receive a small payment and are invited to an annual banquet hosted by the newspaper in their honor.

Ballard, the Queen of Rubenesque Romances, is author of several books featuring "big beautiful heroines:"  Dangerous Curves Ahead: Short Stories, Wanted: One Groom, Nobody's Perfect, His Brother's Child, A Worthy Heir, Abigail's Revenge and The Best Man. Her first nonfiction book, 10 Steps to Loving Your Body (No Matter What Size You Are) will be published by Pearlsong Press later this year.