Starhawk on the end times:

A lone, muck-covered Barbie doll in the vast debris after Hurricane Katrina inspired earth-based spirituality leader Starhawk’s talk, “Goddesses for the End Times,” Monday, 7 p.m. at Alice Millar Chapel.

To Starhawk, the doll was symbolic of a goddess who would save humanity from what she calls, the “end times.”

The end times, according to Starhawk, is the end of the secular world. It is not necessarily the end of the world itself, but the culmination of the destructive path humans have imposed on the earth.

She mentioned two crucial issues of the end times – peak oil and climate change. According to Starhawk, peak oil crisis occurs when about half of an oil reserve has been extracted.

Extracting the rest of the oil from a reserve is not only expensive, but requires the unnecessary use of energy.

Starhawk said there are many estimates as to when the peak oil will be reached on a global scale – some say decades, five years, months; others say we may have already reached it.

Climate change is something we seriously need to be worried about, said Starhawk. She mentioned the melting of ice caps in Greenland, the rise of waves by 20 or more feet and the displacement of people in lowland areas.

“We are entering a period of tremendous global instability but we have no way to know what it’s going to look like,” said Starhawk. “Basically it’s not good.”

Which is why volunteering in New Orleans was so important to Starhawk.

“I wanted to see what happened in a place where everything crashed,” she said. “I learned every official institution that was supposed to function didn’t. It should be our national shame.”

Thinking about the destruction of New Orleans and the current state of the world, led Starhawk to question what we as humans need to get us through these times.

Enter the great goddess.

One of the magical teachings in the goddess tradition is the belief in the goddess. Starhawk said it is our belief in her that allows her to crystallize into a deeper form of life. And once she exists, we can evoke her in us and draw inspiration and strength from her.

According to Starhawk, we need to give up our very powerful cultural story – the story that tells us we have transcended nature’s limits. We need to go back to our bodies and admit we do die. The cycle of birth, death, growth and renewal is essential and sacred in the goddess tradition. And when we approach her in that way, she renews our souls and spirits.

“Goddesses are powerful metaphors which show us that power is not always aggressive,” said Starhawk. “We have to embrace the earth, our bodies and the cycle of birth, death, regeneration and the great powers working with us.”

During the question and answer session, a woman proposed marriage to a surprised Starhawk who ignored the request and instead, answered the woman’s next question.

Starhawk’s talk was part of the religious conference entitled, “The Feminine Divine in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” held Sunday through Tuesday at Northwestern University.