Mary Daly Rest In Peace 1928-2010

It was with great sorrow that I learned on Sunday evening (and I am writing this on Tuesday) from Heart who writes the Women’s Space Blog that feminist theologian Mary Daly had died.  Heart had learned about it via email.  Newshound that I am, I quickly did a Google search and came up with zip, nada, nothing from mainstream media sources, and at that point just a few blog entries.  After rumors circulated a few months ago that Maya Angelou had died, which came as a great shock to Ms. Angelou who was quite alive, I was a bit skeptical and hesitated to post anything at that point.

I owe Heart, who has never led me astray and from whom I’ve learned much, an apology.  Finally today, there was first something in the Catholic Reporter, then in a Washington Post blog and tonight the Boston Globe.  But that is it and these reports did not surface until today.

Given the profound influence Daly’s work had on feminist thinking, this is truly insulting and sad and a true failure of the mainstream media.    And no doubt about it, this is a case where the blogs got it first.  Which is why it is so very important to support  feminist media because if we don’t tell our own stories, all too often they will not get told.

I’ve spent too much space here  telling the story of how the story of Daly’s death did not get told.  With her gracious permission, I am cross-posting an excerpt from Heart’s beautiful obituary which I hope you will read in it’s entirety here.

Mary, I will so miss your presence in this world, your Be-ing in this world.  Thank you for all you gave to us.  Thank you for Beyond God the Father, a historic, brilliant challenge to and confrontation of misogyny in patriarchal Christianity.  Thank you for an entire lifetime lived for the love of women.  Thank you for writing in my copy of your book, Pure Lust, “To Heart:  Wishing you Pure Lust,” ”lust” as you understand it  having nothing to do with “lust” as it is defined by patriarchy and patriarchal religion.

Thank you for writing brilliant books that still made us laugh our heads off, brilliant as they were, and thank you for theorizing what the laughter and Cackling of Crones might really mean and accomplish and be in the world.  Thank you for taking such incredible risks and for being so courageous.  Thank you for your relentless challenge to Christian orthodoxy and Christian patriarchy.  Thank you for your doleful and always hilarious take-downs of “academentia” and its unending parade of fool-o-crats and snools.  Thank you for never giving up, even when you were being kicked without mercy while you were down.  Thank you for your wise example of silence in the face of women who lied, who used every weapon they could create to take you down and out, and who, in fact, caused you great harm, and thank you for your example of relentlessly, loudly, unapologetically speaking your truth in the face of the patriarchs and woman-haters, who also caused you so much harm.

Thank you for Be-ing so magnificently in this world, for teaching us how to live out our lives as old women in style, with A-Mazing Amazon Grace, as Positively Re-Volting Hags.  Thank you for giving us a whole new language that raised our consciousnesses with every word, exciting, frustrating, inspiring and confounding us until all of a sudden, in a moment at times, it all came together for us and things were clear in a way we had not experienced clarity before we read this new language– our language.  Our Mother Tongue.  Thank you for creating, writing, speaking, envisioning, building, rebuilding and encouraging us until the end of your life.  You were a True Amazon, a Giant.  I will never forget you.  As much as it lies with me, I will never allow you or your work to be forgotten.