Rapture and the Volcano: A Special Issue on Women and the Natural World

摘要

Inam standing at the lookout over the active volcanic craternHalemaumau on the Big Island of Hawaii. It is late at night and thencrater glows with a golden-red luminescent light that pulses like anheart-beat. The Milky Way reels over my head and the slight windnbrings the smell of sulfur over the barren, dark landscape. I think ofnPele, the volcano goddess of the Native Hawaiian people, her moltennhair wrapping around the new-born slopes of mountains. The nativenpeople have many stories of her wrath, jealousy, vulnerability, andncreative powers. Here, the edge of creation and destruction pulsesnwarmly in the night. Then, I think of the stories ofmy own childhoodnthe Catholic catechism classes where I was told of the fiery hell in thenearth where my poor doomed soul would go if I committed a mortansin. Fire and brimstone (which means sulfur) stories frighten us, keepnus in our place, and keep us away from the deep beauty that plays outnindifferent to the stories we tell about it.