Something Understood

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BBC Radio 4 FM

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Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

BBC Radio 4 LW

Something Understood: The Divine Feminine

Inside Out

The Divine Feminine

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, The Divine Feminine

Journalist Remona Aly considers the multi-faceted power of the divine feminine.

Remona Aly explores the history of feminine spiritual power, taking her own inspirational relationship with the notion of the divine feminine as the starting point.

Remona Aly considers the multi-faceted power contained in the idea of the divine feminine.

From the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk to the Kaaba in Mecca, Remona journeys through some of the religious and spiritual traditions which have venerated the feminine and she reveals the obscured influence of women in major religions. 

Remona explains how her first encounter with the Quranic Maryam (the Christian Mary) - and how Maryam's status as a prophet of Islam - offered her a revelatory new perspective on her own religion and a radical new way of looking at religious traditions across cultures and throughout history.

Taking in the Native American creation story of Grandmother Spider, the mystical Jewish concept of Shekhinah, Beyonce's channelling of Oshun, a Nigerian Yoruba deity and the fierce spirituality of the Suffragettes, Remona demonstrates that the feminine divine has had many apparently contradictory faces - some soft and nurturing, others imperious, warlike and cruel.

She argues that it is vital for all of us, women and men, to recognise the legacy of the divine feminine, a legacy which transcends simplistic assumptions about gender and offers a return to a more balanced and humane relationship with the world.

The readers are Kate Lock, Milli Proust and Max O'Brien.

Thanks to Ranjana Ghatak for her performance of a poem by Meera Bai (composed by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan).

Presenter: Remona Aly
Producer: Michael Umney
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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