Woman to woman

Alex Coolman

As a child, Crystal Bujol liked to read the Bible, but it was a book that

always left her with the same question: ‘Where is God’s wife?’

Women, as far as Bujol could tell, didn’t play a very prominent role in

the Christianity of her parents. For that matter, it didn’t seem to

Bujol, who is black, that the men who were at the core of the religion

were much like her either.

‘All the Sunday schools ... had a blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus,’ Bujol

said.

These early experiences left Bujol with a desire for a more flexible and

personal idea of religion -- a desire that, many years later, has led her

to open a Costa Mesa chapter of a church specifically for women.

‘The First Woman’s Church’ -- the name refers to the ‘first’ woman, who

some believe is the ancestor of all humans -- held its first meeting in

September at The Latest Thing Metaphysical Bookstore and Teaching and

Healing Center. For Bujol, the meeting represents the articulation of a

vision of religion she has been developing for decades.Bujol said it was

at a Religious Science service in the early 1970s that she first heard a

preacher speak of ‘father/mother God.’ The moment suddenly crystallized

for her the misgivings she had about a faith that didn’t recognize the

divinity in women.

‘That was the first time I had heard ‘mother God,” said Bujol, whose

feelings on the subject were so powerful that she stayed with that church

for 10 years.

Eventually, though, Bujol’s inquisitive approach to the church services

led her to question the practices she was following, reminding her of

another mystery she had pondered as a child reading the Bible.

‘I started craving the other part of my question: when is it going to be

my turn to be one of the chosen people? ... I was also studying African

spirituality at the time. I wanted more of that,’ she said.

With the encouragement of her husband and friends, Bujol eventually

formed her own church, which she called The Inner Circle Church of

Graduate Christians. It was a place, she said, ‘where the student could

reach out a little bit more to the feminine energy and to the African

spirituality.’

The first branch of Bujol’s church was in Los Angeles and was open to all

comers. In time, and as the church expanded, Bujol made an important

modification to the services: she decided that they should be for women

only.

The point of this change, Bujol said, was not to attack men or to create

an exclusionary atmosphere.

The idea, rather, was to create an environment in which ‘we could have

the freedom and the privacy to practice women’s spirituality without

being distracted by our wonderful men,’ Bujol said.

‘It’s not a man-bashing church,’ she said. ‘We’re not excluding men

because we don’t want to be bothered.’

Bujol said the women-only gathering is able to create a kind of intimacy

and communal understanding that can’t be achieved in a mixed gathering.

‘When a man is present, [women] tend to think [men] don’t understand what

we’re talking about, so we have to explain things a certain way,’ Bujol

said.

‘When it’s just women, we don’t have to explain it.’

The services of the church draw from a variety of different faiths and

customs.

‘We have gathered energy and parts of our ritual from many sources,’

Bujol said. ‘From the American Indians, we have a prayer chant we use.

From the Sikhs we have a chant that we use. From the Baptists we have

music that we bring in. We change the words, though, to make everything

feminine.’In addition to the songs and chanting, the services incorporate

drumming, techniques of tai chi, and a ceremonial lighting of candles.

‘We light four basic candles in our ritual to honor the four phases of

womanhood,’ Bujol said.

A white, a black, a red and a green candle are used in the ritual -- each

one corresponding to a specific aspect of women’s experience.

The white candle is intended to represent virginity, the red candle the

experience of menstruation, the green candle pregnancy, and the black

candle menopause. Each of these phases of life, Bujol said, has been

denigrated in various ways by Western culture and each needs to reclaimed

as a source of power for women.

‘We’re saying, ‘Wait a minute. We gave birth to you. We’re the hand that

rocks the cradle and you can not take that power away from us,” Bujol

said.

The church strives to illuminate the divinity within women, Bujol said,

to recognize that, whatever negative messages they may have absorbed from

their upbringing and experiences in life, they are still a source of

power and rebirth.

It’s an easier message for women to understand, Bujol said, when they

hear it from the mouth of someone who is like them.

‘It takes a woman to talk to a woman,’ she said.

WHAT: The First Woman’s Church at The Latest Thing Metaphysical Bookstore

and Teaching and Healing Center

WHERE: 270 17th St., Costa Mesa

WHEN: 10 a.m. to noon, the fourth Sunday of every month

TELEPHONE: (949) 645-6211