Which Side Are You On?

Just bought the new Ani DiFranco album, Which Side Are You On?, this week. It's amazing--it's hard to choose which song cuts the deepest. For starters, track 1 gives a first person narrative in a homeless woman's voice, who laments--or rejoices?--"every time I open my mouth, I take off my clothes." But there's a line in the following song which strikes me every time as just right:

"Trust: women will still take you to their breast. Trust: women will always do their best."

It's a political song, about a lot of political issues concerning women--but for me, this is what they all come to. Trust. Trust us. Trust us as human beings. Trust us as grown-ups. As citizens. As moral agents. As bearers of the imago dei, twice over. Trust that the decisions we make for ourselves and our children are the best decisions we can make, and that we understand--understand in a way no one else can--what they are and what they mean. Trust: women will still take you to their breast. Trust: women will always do their best.



"amendment" by Ani DiFranco



wouldn't it be nice if

we had an amendment

to give civil rights to

women

to once and for all just

really lay it down from

a point of view of

women



I know what you're thinking

that's just redundant

chicks got it good now

they can almost be president

but worker against worker

time and time again

as the rich use certain issues as a tool

and when I said we need the ....? cause I'm a fool

it's cause without it nobody can get away

with anything cruel



you don't need to go far like

just over to Canada

to feel the height and sense of

live and let live

what is it about Americans

like so many pitbulls

trained to attack them

to never give



we gotta come down abortion

put it down in the books for good

as central to the civil rights of women

make diversity acceptable

make it finally understood

through the civil rights of women



and if you don't like abortion

don't have an abortion

teach your children

how they can avoid them

but don't treat all women

like they are your children

compassion has many faces

many names

and if men can kill

and be decorated instead of blamed

when a woman called onto mother

can choose to refrain



and contrary to aeons

of oldtime religion

your body is your only true dominion

nature is not here to serve you

or at any cost to preserve you

that's just some preacherman's oldtime opinion



life is sacred

life is all so profane

a woman's life

it must be hers to name

let an amendment

put this brutal game to rest

trust women will still take you to their breast

trust women will always do their best

trust that our differences make us stronger, not less



in this amendment

family structure shall be free

to be the right to civil union

if we take unions of all kinds

unions of hearts and minds

to give society communion

let's do more than tolerate

let gay and straight resonate

and emanate all things human

with equal rights and

equal protection

intolerance finally ruined



and then there's the kids rights

they'll naturally be on board

a funnel through which

womens' lives are poured

our family is so big and we're all so very small

let a web of relationship be laid over it all

over the strata of power piled up into the sky

over the illusion of autonomy on which it relies

over any absolute that nature does not supply


...and the birds say woman shall regain her place
in the circle of women, ina sacred space
 turn off the machine, put away them knives
this amendment shall deliver from bondage, midwives

#ows

Too busy now for my own words. Am borrowing from Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God, from chapter 4, "Liberating God of Life," which we are covering in class for this week:

"Idolatry entails putting alien gods before the true God of the Bible, worshiping something which is not divine. In the Latin American situation these gods are money, the comforts it brings, and the power necessary to make and keep it. Starting with the conquistadores and continuing for five centuries through successive ruling systems up to multinational corporations today, greed has divinized money and its trappings, that is, turned them into an absolute. Core transgressions against the first commandment have set up a belief system so compelling that it might be called moneytheism, in contrast to monotheism.
Like all false gods, money and its trappings require the sacrifice of victims. Whether the poor are offered up indirectly through the economic conditions necessary to produce profit, or directly through the violence necessary to sustain those conditions, their lives are the sacrifice. What is most insidious is the way traditional preaching and theology put a superficial veneer of Christian  belief over the face of these idols...Neutral in the face of injustice, the racist, sexist, classist image of God perverts the actual contours of the living God in the service of moneyed interests" (79-80).

It won't fit on a sign. But it is to the point. I don't know if Jesus would #ows, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Sister Elizabeth there.

the F word on Christian campuses

I think I've blogged about this before. I like the F word. I wear it on a t-shirt. I say it a lot. Freely. Gratuitously. Egregiously. With feeling. In appropriate and inappropriate contexts. Like this:

Feminist, feminist, feminist, FEMINIST!

So, I'm musing about this again because of a comment at a session I attended at the CSC last week. It was the first response to a question about what we can do on Christian higher ed campuses to support and promote scholarship among aspiring female academics, both students and faculty. And this responder made the case that we need to hear from women who don't identify as feminists if we want to make progress on this.

It was an odd and unexpected sentiment to hear--at least from my perspective--after the full-throated fem roar of the presentation itself, which did not shy away from the abysmal stats regarding female presence in the academy and the even worse data on female presence in Christian higher ed. Simply to state these things is a feminist act--so why is it that the solution is somehow to hide our feminism? How would you even do this? Are we supposed to privately encourage our female students, but not do anything to rock the boat because that would be "counterproductive?" Covert support like that is not exactly real supportive: it simply encourages more women to throw themselves into a hostile environment, without challenging the expressions of hostility. Here ladies, gird up your loins for battle--you're strong and smart, you'll survuve it. And hey, here are my battle-scars--pretty soon you'll have some great ones yourself. Come back in a few years and we'll compare. Good luck!

Okay, I'm being unfair. No doubt this was not the intended message. Though I'm pretty sure that, regardless of intent, this is what shying away from feminism gets us.

More than likely, the intended message was more something along these lines: "find something you want to do, and go be great at it." Ditch the feminist whining and just do your thing. Feminist whining will hold you back, distract you, brand you as troublemaker, make you depressed and angry... So don't bother with being "feminist," just go be what you want.

And "go be what you want" is a great message--one which I try every day to hand to my precocious 5-year-old (baby Z is a little young for indoctrination, though I do my best not to gender-code her onesies. It's the least I can do). But it misses something important. And that is, it's f-word hard to "do what you do" when what you do is something that, wittingly and unwittingly, you keep getting stopped from doing because you're a girl. Whether you're in that male-dominated math-and-science world, or getting an MDiv within a tradition that doesn't ordain women, this is what you face: a culture which has for so long assumed that a girl can't, shouldn't, and really deep down doesn't want to, do these things means that simply trying to "do what you do" makes you a walking-around in-your-face F-word. You can try to mitigate that by not labeling yourself with that offensive word...but I don't see how that helps you navigate reality. Instead, you've taken on the additional burden of resolutely not naming the problem you navigate. And if you can't name it, the boys can't either. And it will persist.

So I use the F word. Lots. And I think you should too. Until we get over that ridiculous Rush-Limbaugh-femi-Nazi caricature we've been indoctrinated with, and realize that feminism is, simply, about supporting women who are trying to "do what they do." We absolutely don't need women who don't identify as feminists. We need men and women who do.

Why Language for God Matters, by Naomi Walters

Naomi's article in New Wineskins is available in full here.

belated thoughts on CSC 2010

1. I am EXHAUSTED.
2. Presenting in 3 sessions of 6 (plus various other stuff) means NOT getting to do all the things you really want to do at a conference, namely, go to the sessions you want to hear, and freely skip sessions in order to grab a coffee with people you only see once a year. It also means not being able to live blog/tweet and thus, catch-up blogging. Sigh.
3. Having food provided for every meal ROCKS. Way to go Lipscomb!!!
4. The session I most wanted to attend and couldn't: Monstrous Beauty. So many awesome posthuman figures in that one...
5. The session I most enjoyed participating in: Dating Jesus with Susan Campbell. It was not the only follow-up to last year's groundbreaking sessions on experiences of gender in the c's-of-C (and yes, I agree with JRB, when it comes time to write the next volume of Reviving the Ancient Faith for these recent and upcoming decades, last year's conference is going to be read as a turning point); there was a wonderful session convened by Dr. Sharp Penya of ACU on some results of ongoing research into gender attitudes and predictors of attitudes in our churches. But it was, I think, the session that provided that same voice of experience that last year's sessions did--and I am convinced that this is the thing most needed right now. This is not (only or primarily) an intellectual or hermeneutical matter--this is something that requires a conversaion experience of some sort. And for about 50% of CofCers, that means taking the leap into someone else's experience and making that vicarious experience their own in some sense--enough to prompt the realization that it really is and has been damaging, for many of us, and blindness to that reality is not a moral option. Not everyone will make that leap--there are lots of ways to armor yourself against it--but the immediate task is to make it impossible to be unknowingly ignorant of this reality. Some will choose to be willfully ignorant. And we can't coerce conversion. But we can--like Jesus with the rich young ruler--force people to the point of decision, and if they walk away, we can watch them do it sorrowfully...and turn to the next person, because we can also hope that not everyone will choose to be willfully ignorant of the reality of women in our midst. Not to keep blathering on too much, but again...this is the point of the "women in the CofC" blog experiment, which of course is still ongoing and the invitation is for YOU! (MOM!). I had a vision last year of women sitting primly next to each other in pews every Sunday, silently saying to themselves every week, "How long, O Lord?" and all convinced they were the only ones...while together they send up their silent collective cry to God. How long, indeed? It will remain forever deferred if we all sit silently in our pews frozen by anxiety and unable to speak, even to each other, about the vision of liberation and full range of opportunity of serving our God and our church and our world that we long for. And if you can't bring yourself to lean over and whisper something subversive to the gray-haired old lady next to you--say it here, anonymously if you must, because this is not "laleo in ecclesia" and this Theologian-at-Large and Heretic-for-Hire can take the hit. Plus, back to my original point after that massive tangential diversion, Susan Campbells ROCKS. And she said some of the things we most, most need to hear--like, why does it take a year to get a CofC on board with something which, once you see it, is (in the paraphrase of JRB) "silly right," something which makes our current typical practices obviously and untenably absurd? Why are we taking baby steps? And who are we hurting when we concede to those who require baby steps but those who are already walking wounded? Does that not matter? Why are we so unjustifiably proud of our faltering baby steps--shouldn't we be sprinting toward the goal of justice in our communities? There was also a good back-and-forth on the connection between theology and justice, which makes me wonder (and so I guess I am officially asking), was this experience of injustice within the church the door into Susan's convictions regarding social justice in the wider sense?
6. Really really really really REALLY stoked about CSC 2011. It'll be sad to miss my annual pilgrimage to middle TN, which really is Home for me, but I shall content myself with the second-best option of Malibu (sarcasm alert here, y'all). AND, of course, the theme is religion and science, and John Polkinghorne is slated to be one of several awesome plenary speakers. Awesome! And there is so much to think about...so many different possibilities for presentations and sessions...very exciting. Ken Reynhout, brace yourself, because I'm going to start begging you to come starting right now.
7. People seemed to like the posthuman stuff. Always encouraging. And getting a shout-out from James Elkins in the concluding dialogue session was certainly a feather in my cap, which no longer quite fits on my great big inflated head. :)

All right, that's it for now. Next step: go home, and label an empty mayo jar "CSC 2011" and start saving the pennies. :)

defining marriage (not for the faint-hearted or easily offended)

When a three year old asks you "what is 'married,'" it sends you down a surprisingly difficult and philosophical spiral. Just what is the basic "essence" (in quotes, because I hate this word) of this particular human relationship, which we set apart from other human relationships as unique, and grace with special social status and legal rights?

Now, I am not one of those parents who is squeamish or reluctant to chat to my toddler about body parts and where babies come from. When Clare made the intuitive leap that babies in big round bellies exit from their mama's bellybutton, the cuteness of her toddler logic did not stop me from correcting her misunderstanding of this important biological process. Babies come out of vaginas, and she will gladly tell you so, and add that that is a-MAZ-ing.

But for all that, when Clare asked me to define 'what is married,' my toddler-sized definition did not include an explicit reference to sex, or where babies come from. I think I could have managed a version for her that was not alarming and made some kind of sense, but I didn't.

Instead I cobbled together something like, "when two people love each other so much, and they want to be together all the time, they get married and live together in the same house and share everything." Clare's first reaction, after digesting this information for a couple days, was to let me know that she wanted to marry me. Actually, she clarified, we're like, already married, because we love each other and live in the same house and share our things. And now, as I've noted, I've been replaced--she is determined to marry her BFF S---- from school. Because if that's what getting married means, well, that's how she perceives these relationships.

Obviously my definition has some flaws. My little toddler polygynist is just logically applying the information (though she seemed to miss the part about 'two people'). But to be honest, I like it. Particularly because the sexual aspect of the marriage relationship isn't entirely missing--it's implicit, rather than explicit. Share everything.

In the context of these toddler dialogues, NPR's recent piece on challenges to DOMA just highlights the way in which opponents of "redefining marriage" are themselves seeking to literally "redefine marriage." It seems to me that to arbitrate which relationships count as marriage and which don't, on the basis of what sort of sexual acts are engaged in, is to discount as irrelevant everything I included in my definition of marriage for Clare. Is that a "defense of marriage?" (And, let me pause for a parenthetical tangent and note how absurd the name for this law is. "Defense" of marriage? Because people who love each other so much that they want to be together all the time and live in the same house and share everything are the metaphorical equivalent of a terrorist threat? Yes, clearly these people sound horribly deranged.) I thought that marriage is supposed to be a unique and sanctified human relationship, something that the biblical text dares to use as a metaphor for our relationship to God and God's relationship with humanity and Jesus' relationship to the church--but it seems to me that in so vigorously "defending" marriage, the definition of what it is that's being defended has been stripped down to the bare naked sex act. Defense of "marriage" is just defense of the holy and singular privilege of penile penetration of female passivity.

This is not a marriage my daughter would recognize as marriage. And I intend to keep it that way.

JTB boobquake

So, blogger Jen McCreight at blaghag.com  took umbrage at this comment from an Iranian cleric, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedigric (Tehran's acting Friday prayer leader):

"Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes." 

Now, of course, we should hasten to note that this is no more ridiculous than Falwell blaming the ACLU for the attacks on 9-11, or Pat Robertson's comments about Hurricane Katrina and gay people. Apparently, religious idiocy is cross-cultural and highly ecumenical. That should make us all feel good, right?

So anyway, Jen M. decided to make this cleric's empirical claim about earthquake causality a matter of actual quasi-scientific experimentation, and suggested that yesterday, April 26, as "boobquake" day. This of course is an irresistible hybrid of my own social networking, theology, and science interests, and it took about two seconds to sign on and commit myself to teaching last night's Foundations of Theology II class in my lowest cut blouse. (FTR, no one noticed, despite the fact that I even wore my one and only push-up bra to enhance the earth-shattering effects.)

As Stephen Colbert noted last night, there was indeed an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan (I'd like to take credit but my relationship with that island is one of two degrees of separation, so I really can't).

Anyhow, the results are in, and apparently, while you may feel the earth move under your feet in a highly metaphorical sense, unsurprisingly, immodest dress is a matter of indifference for tectonic plates. (Apparently Mother Earth isn't a lesbian?)

Now, some of you may notice that the well-endowed, and by that I mean to refer to her intellect, Jen M. describes herself as "a nerdy scientific perverted atheist feminist" and that she is the lame-duck Pres of the Society of Non-Theists at Purdue. So perhaps you're confused as to why I think boobquake is awesome, since part of the point (at least as Jen M. interprets the results) is not just to demonstrate that the immodest-dress-earthquake-causality thesis is absurd, but an entirely different thesis of God's existence as well. Somehow I feel obligated to say, this is over-interpretation of the results of the boobquake experiment. I'm pretty sure that, since God created this material existence, including our beautiful boobs, She was enjoying the whole spectacle immensely, and rather uninclined therefore to, um, shake things up.

Actually, to make a serious point, what drew me in the boobquake thing is the need for protesting absurd religious misogyny. And you can do that without presuming there is no God. In fact, I believe you can probably do it better, but in the meantime, I'm happy to momentarily join forces with any fellow traveler who's willing to call it like she sees it.

Greg Kendall-Ball, journaphotolist, writes about a rally in downtown Abilene, TX called “Walk A Mile In Her Shoes,” featuring several men dressed in ladies’ heels taking a leisurely 3-block stroll through downtown, led by a Sgt. in the Abilene Police Dept.

I'm hoping that, after three blocks in those gender-specific instruments of torture (and they really should have made them wear pantyhose too), there's a heightened awareness of the prevalence of the threat and horror of sexual assault--but also of the everyday reality of women confining their bodies in painful ways to conform to cultural expectations of femininity...after all, as Rosemary Radford Ruether observes, "one might say that the measure of women's liberation in any culture is at least partly indicated by whether or not they wear shoes that allow them to walk freely!" (Sexism and God-Talk 176).

tea party jesus

I ♥ the misfits.

I originally posted this back in December of 2005. I'm still proud of it. I love the gay elf with the revealing name of Hermey (which was later redacted to Herbie, hm, wonder why) and the black, I mean red-nosed, reindeer. And, of course, the Island of Misfit toys, which as Jen Bayne points out, actually sound like a lot more fun than normal toys, I mean, who wouldn't want a cowboy who rides an ostrich?

I'm less satisfied than I was a few years back about the repentance theme at the end; sure, there's some personal repentance, but there's no systemic or structural change in the stratified society of the North Pole. And Hermey dances with a girl elf at the end (a girl elf? where were they, anyway, till the end scene where apparently they exist only to dance and ex-gay-ify Hermey?). Sigh. Well, maybe Hermey is bi. That would be all right. But Santa's still a dope; and the acceptance of Hermey and Rudolph at the end has the feel of a grand exception made in their individual cases on the basis of personal merit that symbolically covers over their misfitness.

And my reflections below don't even comment on the role of the "Bumble," whose very name is short for "abominable," the adjectival form of abomination--that which by definition must be obliterated and exiled from community in the name of purity--the Bumble's rehabilitation comes at the expense of a dramatic transformation of his nature, the removal of his teeth, the symbolic repository of his anger and violence and hatred; he is, in short, tamed. And by whom? The White Man, standing in as the paradigmatic civilized human, who in his own estimation, has colonized and owns the North and is determined to reap riches from it. ("Gold! Siiiiiiiilver!") I mean, wow. Awesome. [I think they must have cut the scene where Santa and Yukon Cornelius duke it out for the property rights to the North Pole...]

without further ado:

theological reflections on "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer"

One of my favorite perennial Christmas classics is that edition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer where Burl Ives narrates as Sam the Talking Snowman and sings. You know, the one where the little figurines move around jerkily but endearingly. (For some interesting info about this classic, click here.)

My favorite character in this thing is Hermey, the Elf who wants to be a dentist. Herbie reveals this sick unnatural ambition in a conversation with the Elf Boss, who lectures him threateningly:

Hermey, miserably: Not happy in my work, I guess.
Head Elf: WHAT??!
Hermey: I just don't like to make toys.
Head Elf: Oh well if that's all...WHAT??!! You don't like to make toys?!
Hermey: No.
Head Elf, to others: Hermey doen't like to make toys!
Others: (repeat it down down the line) and in chorus: Shame on you!
Head Elf: Do you mind telling me what you DO wanna do?
Hermey: Well sir, someday, I'd like to be...a dentist.
Head Elf: A DENTIST? Good grief!
Hermey: We need one up here...I've been studying it, it's fascinating, you've no idea, molars and bicuspids and incisors--
Head Elf: Now, listen, you. You're an elf, and elves make toys. Now get to work!

The ontology undergirding the Head Elf's reprimand of Hermey leaves no room for consideration of an elf who deviates from his "nature" by not liking to make toys. It's simply inconceivable. Hermey's attempt to "fit in" is stymied when, engrossed in the task of providing teeth for some dolls, he misses elf practice and suffers another confrontation with the Head Elf, which concludes with the Head Elf's vicious assertion, "You'll NEVER fit in!" Miserable, Hermey jumps out the window in self-imposed exile, his only option to be true to himself.

Rudolph's situation is parallel. Born with the disgusting congenital deformity of a red glowing nose, his parents are horrified (even his own mother can only weakly offer, "we'll have to overlook it," while his father goes so far as to actually hide it by daubing mud on his son's face.) Later, at the "reindeer games," Rudolph outshines the other reindeer in skill, but when his prosthesis falls off, everyone gasps and his erstwhile playmates mock and shun. The authority figures echo this attitude: the Coach gathers everyone up and leads them away, saying loudly, "From now on, we won't let Rudolph join in any of our reindeer games!"

Santa's role throughout most of the cartoon is to legitimize the prejudices against the misfits already evident in lesser members of the Christmastown community. When Santa visits the newly birthed Rudolph, his unthinking prejudice becomes plain when he comments that Rudoplh had better grow out of it if he ever wants to be on his team of flying reindeer. Santa's behavior at the scene of the reindeer games is even more disturbing; like his pronouncement at Rudolph's birth, he says, "What a pity; he had a nice takeoff, too." For Santa, Rudolph's skill is less important than his nose, an arbitrary physical attribute. A distant and authoritarian figure, Santa is unaware of Hermey's plight (apparently the welfare of elves is beneath his notice) and condemning of Rudolph's gall in considering himself a reindeer of the same worth and dignity as the others.

Rudolph and Hermey get together, and a few lines of their "misfit theme song" are revealing:

"We're a couple of misfits, we're a couple of misfits--
What's the matter with misfits?
That's where we fit in.

We may be different from the rest...
But who decides the test
of what is really best?"

In "Christmastown," those who decide "the test of what is really best" seem to be the tyrannical and thoughtless majority, reinforced by authoritarian sanction by Santa, the pseudo-benevolent despot. Those who question the status quo--those who are already marginalized--are mocked, punished, and driven out of the community.

Over the years it's become apparent to me that this simple children's cartoon contains some real subversive elements: Hermey's misfit-ness is the result of apparent "choice," but the kind of choice where the alternatives are to be true or false to oneself. Rudolph's misfit-ness is the result of birth rather than choice. Change "dentist" to "gay" and "red nose" to "black skin." Now the subversive message is clear: Santa is racist, the Head Elf and the elf community is homophobic, and "Christmastown" is really "Whiteytown."

Given this subtext, the change of heart on the parts of Santa and the Head Elf at the end are more than just the formulaic ending to a well-known Christmas fable. Although it takes a prodigious feat of community service on both Hermey's and Rudolph's parts (each requiring skills peculiar to their misfit-ness) to bring the authorities and the community to repentance, repentance is indeed the note sounded in the conclusion. Everyone, including Santa, apologizes to the misfits. And in the end, difference is valorized rather than exiled.

on the maleness of God-talk

Apparently, the presumed maleness of God is not something one can casually comment upon in one's Facebook status updates without causing consternation from unexpected quarters. So, naturally, it seems to me that a blog post is the obvious way to follow up. (Yes, that was sarcastic...in a nice way. I'm making fun of myself, y'all, and my inability to keep my mouth shut, leave well enough alone, etc.)

Actually, I'm not going to say much myself in this post. Instead, I am going to quote extensively from Elizabeth Johnson's Quest for the Living God, because 1) she's awesome and 2) she makes a really nice shield.

Johnson offers three basic ground rules for engaging in God-talk, that is to say, doing theology (whether one does theology professionally, or personally, or in my case, both). 1) remember that "the reality of the living God is an ineffable mystery beyond all telling;" 2) therefore, "no expression for God can be taken literally. None;" 3) Therefore, "from this, Thomas Aquinas argues...we see the necessity of giving to God many names" (Johnson 17-22).

Applying these reminders for our God-talk specifically to the issue of God's presumed maleness, we get this: 1) God is beyond our socio-linguistic categories, including that of gender; 2) no pronoun (male, female or neuter) in reference to God can be taken literally; 3) we need ways to reference God that incorporate every possible category since they all equally apply/do not apply.

Johnson herself observes this regarding the univocal, historical, traditional maleness of Christian God-talk:

"the practice of naming God exclusively in the image of powerful men has had at least three pernicious effects. First, because it offers no alternatives, it gets taken literally. Thereby it reduces the living God to an idol. Exclusively male language leads us to forget the incomprehensibility of holy mystery and instead reduces the living God to the fantasy of the infinitely ruling man...Second, in addition to this theological error, the exclusive use of patriarchal language for God also has powerful social effects...In the name of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, men have assumed the duty to command and control, exercising authority on earth as it is in heaven...Third, by giving rise to the unwarranted idea that maleness has more in common with divinity than femaleness, exclusively male images imply that women are somehow less like unto God...a woman may see herself as created in the image of God only by abstracting herself from her concrete bodiliness...Thus is set up a largely uinconscious dynamic that alienates women from their own spiritual power at the same time that it reinforces dependence on male authorities to act as intermediaries for them with God" (Johnson 98-99).

Johnson goes on to discuss the wealth of biblical imagery of Mother God, only one among many female images of God in the biblical text.

But I want to emphasize her main point, which I will paraphrase thus: insisting that God is male reduces God to the image of man. And God is not a man.

God's a big girl too

Tonight in the middle of a three-hour-marathon refusal to go to sleep in her bed, Clare had this to say in response to my suggestion that maybe we could pray to God to help her go to sleep (yes: desperate mommy = me).

Clare: "I want to pray to the girl God."
me: "what?" (panicking, thinking, "did I accidentally use the male pronoun without noticing it? what kind of a feminist theologian am I!")
Clare: "I want to talk to the girl God...because the girl God is like me. Can God be a girl God?"
me: "Sure honey. God is a girl God and a boy God and an everything God."
Clare: "and a baby God too."
me: "yes, and a baby God too."
Clare, worried: "but baby God needs a mommy and daddy."
me: "Well, God was a baby, just like you used to be, a little baby named Jesus, and when God was a baby he had a mommy and daddy just like you."
Clare: "and God's a big girl too."
me: "yes, baby. God's a big girl too."

part 5: birth and rebirth

And then, I became a mom.

My doula told me beforehand that I would find it spiritually empowering. I thought that was just goofy talk, so I nodded politely as she described how that sense of empowerment would spill over into all other dimensions of personal and professional life. I couldn't see how giving birth would make me a better theologian.

That was beforeI gave birth.

Many people have written and remarked on the role of their children or grandchildren in bringing them to a realization of the arbitrary limitations of gender within our churches. But that's not what I want to write about. Giving birth didn't teach me the absurdity of gender injustice within the kingdom of God--I was already aware. Giving birth taught me how to love being a woman, a lesson I didn't yet know I hadn't actually learned.

It's not that I ever wanted to be a man. It's just that, till then, being a woman was somehow always framed in the negative. And it was so normal that I didn't even realize it. I--still--didn't think of myself primarily as a woman, except for those instances when I was forced to, in recognition of the limitations of my gender. I still on some level thought of myself as a person, or a student, something generic--"man" in that grammatical universal sense supposedly divorced from actual gender. Female embodiment was sort of accidental, a historical and genetic contingency, and sort of irrelevant. I did, after all, spend a lot of time living in my head.

Pregnancy rewrote my concepts of woman and embodiment. Being a woman was suddenly revelatory, life-giving, positive, superlative, something other but also more than generic "man." I loved my body in a way I never had before; I bought tubs and tubs of cocoa butter not so much out of fear of stretch marks but for the sheer joy of rubbing my growing belly. I reveled in the compliments, which seemed to grow in proportion to my midsection. I had never before felt so beautiful, so at home in my own skin.

Birth rewrote my concepts of spirituality and materiality: who could have known that the most holy moment of my life would occur amid water and blood and shit? Or rather, how could I have missed that messy, bodily, out-of-bounds birthing is at the very center of Christian faith? That birth and rebirth are a privileged metaphor of the spiritual life within Christianity?

Maria was right: it has made me a better theologian.

I don't want to claim that this experience is necessary for a "true" understanding of Christian faith. Not everyone gets to have this experience of birthing: obviously, men do not, but neither do all women. But this is my story. This was my road to wholeness: the birth of my daughter, which rebirthed me, not as the false generic "man," but as a woman. Finally.

JTB: from Hetty (an old, and second-hand, story)

"There is a story about Hetty, one of Charles Darwin's daughters, when she was an eight-year-old girl troubled by the death of a slightly older sister. According to family records, Hetty was worried with thoughts of the afterlife and especially concerned about her sister going to Heaven. One day Hetty asked her mother, 'But Mamma, where do the women go to, for all the angels are men?' According to Emma Darwin's diary, she then burst into tears."

by JW

I think I may be one of the blessed ones. It wasn’t until I was a young adult that I really began to understand that my gender made a difference in my ability to share in the ministry of the church. I was fortunate to be raised by parents that worked to intentionally nurture my ministry skills and to model a life of service and leadership—both by my mother and my father. Even when I was a young child, my mother was writing articles for Christian magazines and going out of town to speak at churches and retreats. I didn’t know at the time that she was blazing a trail for women in Churches of Christ. Nor did I realize that her primary audiences were women—her gender prevented her from speaking to mixed audiences most of the time. All I knew is that my mother was using her God-given gifts in ministry in various ways. And it didn’t seem strange to me at all.

When I was a teenager, my mother began working on her master’s degree and, eventually, her doctorate in ministry. She did this on top of her full-time job, balancing these responsibilities with her marriage, children, and ministry at home. Again, I didn’t find this particularly remarkable at the time—it was just our life. But I do remember beginning to understand that my mother was unique. There were not many other women in her classes and sometimes the men didn’t know how to respond to her. I won’t try to tell any of these stories here because they are hers to tell, not mine. Plus, I don’t know if I really know any of them. I just remember beginning to develop a sense of otherness around this time. I knew that the way I understood myself as a female was not maybe how other people understood me.

My feelings of frustration about my gender didn’t begin until I was in late-high school. In those days, the youth group kids would sit near the back of the auditorium on the far lefthand side. Many Sunday mornings, a slightly frantic, sweaty deacon would come rushing over and would ask one or two of the guys to help serve communion. At first, it didn’t really bother me that I was never asked, nor were other great girls from the youth group. But one Sunday I looked up and saw that I was being served on each side by two guys who had JUST been talking about the party they had attended over the weekend. While they had both baptized in the previous months, neither one was resisting the temptation to party with their friends. Not that I was sinless or expected that the people serving communion would be any more righteous than any of the rest of us. But I felt the first painful pangs of frustration that my ability to serve at church was not evaluated based on spiritual maturity, desire, or willingness. Even though I had been a baptized Christian for seven years, I was not considered able to walk down the aisles with a tray because I lacked the important “spiritual gift” of the phallus.

Despite that frustration, I continued to serve in leadership roles in my youth group and was asked to deliver a public response to the church on Senior Sunday—one of two times I have ever spoken publicly during worship.

When I entered my freshman year of college, I still didn’t have much of an idea about the restrictions women faced in Churches of Christ. I had been sheltered and empowered by my family and, in many ways, by my home congregation. I quickly became involved with like-minded friends and we organized a devotional for freshmen—attended by probably 50 students. During one of the first devotionals, I volunteered to “give the talk.” You know, to use Scripture and my personal experience to edify and challenge the assembled group. After we sang a few songs, my (male) friend who was leading worship introduced me. And he said that I would be “giving my testimony.” Which was true, in a way. But what I was doing was no different than what my male cohorts had done in previous devotionals, only their talks weren’t specified as “testimonies.” He had chosen that word to describe my talk so as not to offend anyone. I remember feeling conflicted and a little hurt by that distinction, though I wasn’t wholly surprised by it. I didn’t want my gender to be the focus of my talk, I wanted the Lord to be the focus.

At the end of my talk that evening, I prayed for all of us. I don’t remember anything specific or remarkable about the prayer at all. And I didn’t think twice about doing it—after all, I had been able to pray, read scripture, and lead discussions in my youth group just months before. But after the devotional, a male friend of mine came up to me and told me that he had covered his ears while I had prayed because he didn’t want to participate in a sin: being led in prayer by a woman. I was absolutely floored. And hurt. And angered. This was the first time (and, thank the Lord, I think the only time) I have ever been so directly attacked for my spiritual leadership.

I attended college in my hometown, and my home congregation was undergoing an extensive study of women’s roles in public leadership. I was invited to be part of a discussion group one afternoon, to share my views with other members of the church as well as the elders. I shared my previous experience about feeling frustration when the boys in the youth group were invited to serve communion and the girls were excluded…and a man in the discussion group responded with the following sentiment: “It’s probably a good thing that young women don’t serve communion. What if a woman wore something sexy that made the men in the congregation lust after her. That would be detrimental to the spiritual state of the men during communion. Therefore, women shouldn’t serve communion.” Again, I was floored. I couldn’t believe his willingness to disenfranchise women based on some men’s inability to control their sexual desires (not to mention the total lack of trust that women are able to dress modestly and appropriately!).

When my husband and I started dating, he was working on his Master’s of Divinity and was ministering at a tiny rural church outside of town. I joined him in that work, and, though the church was conservative, I witnessed beautiful female servant leadership by Audrey and Mildred, the octogenarian matriarchs of the church. Each week, they would arrive at the building early to prepare for worship. One had a good right arm, the other had a good left arm. So they would stand, bad shoulder to bad shoulder each week, preparing the communion trays—Audrey on the right, using her good right hand, Mildred on the left, using her good left hand. And even then, in my early twenties, I didn’t miss the significance of this image: two women devoted to the service of the church working side by side, taking up the other one’s slack to the glory of the Lord. My husband and I learned a lot at this tiny church—our first ministry together. But the witness of Audrey and Mildred is the primary image that remains for us.

And I think of so many other women, both in progressive and conservative churches, who have blazed trails or have quietly made strides in their service of the Lord—their curious exploration of the Word. And I am grateful. Because I know that my way, though frustrating, is easier because of their work, their pain, their humiliation.

I am blessed to have a husband with whom I have an equal partnership in our marriage and in our ministry. He actively supports all of my gifts—both spiritual and otherwise. I think this may be the heart of the blessing I feel from the Lord when it relates to women in public leadership: I do not feel the desire to have full-time or public ministry in the church. At least not right now. I am a theater artist and I feel fully empowered to explore and utilize those gifts in my career. Most of the frustrations I have felt with my congregation in the last three years have had nothing to do with my gender. I have been blessed to be part of a young professionals group that has accepted me (and other women) as full teachers and leaders. I am still baffled by the silly little semantic acrobatics we go through to be sure not to offend more conservative members (women in my church are allowed to read scripture during the worship service, but they do it from a seated position; to “justify” this, men who read scripture also do it from their seat). But the last three years have been encouraging to me because, in that time, I haven’t really had any arguments about whether or not women are able or gifted to lead in the church—the conversations have been focused on how quickly the church can adapt to female leadership and what the appropriate next steps are…

And this is where I find hope, as a strong, gifted woman in Churches of Christ. I think churches will either change their views on this central issue, or they’ll further isolate themselves from the rest of the world, will lose their young, dynamic members, and will eventually either shrivel up and die or implode on themselves. I feel churches of all stripes reorienting their focus to be more concerned with justice and peace. A few Churches of Christ are joining this movement. And this gives me hope and excitement. I can see that the road will be long as women have to continue to fight for a voice and an equal share in the gospel mission. But I am encouraged that there is hope within Churches of Christ. I am committed to sticking around and doing what I can to help in the journey, knowing that if—after years of struggle and attempts at reconciliation within the C of C—my husband and I can’t make it work, we will move on to another group that recognizes my voice as equally as important as his.

Until then, I join with so many other witnesses—male and female, silent and outspoken—in testifying to the goodness of our God, even (or perhaps especially) in the face of frustration, suffering, and doubt. To Him be the glory forever and ever.

by J

When all else fails, proof text. Right? That’s the CoC way; when logic, morals, and consistency let us down, we can always pull out a verse or two that protect the status quo.

And it’s natural after all. It’s a conservative church. Not just in recent politics, but in the simplest sense. The CoC is a church that tries to conserve a tradition, so its reflexes are always to protect whatever’s always been done.

So I learned to proof text the hell out of everyone. Proof texting was like porn. I was just gazing at a bunch of dismembered parts, treating them like object(ive)s, getting the rush I craved, then feeling a little dirty afterwards.

I felt dirtier when I learned some Greek. I learned past the point where I knew just enough to be dangerous and actually had some budding hermeneutic chops. My writing was clumsy, and I still was mostly reading through a centuries-old haze of conservation, but there were signs that I was starting to reassemble the parts, glimpse a wholly different text than the hol(e)y one I had been working with.

I felt even dirtier when I wondered about the tutor for Greek. I never used the tutoring section because I really enjoyed Greek, so it wasn’t hard work. But I noticed that the tutor was a woman, my age, who had been in the program a little longer. And she was trusted with teaching the rudiments of Greek to a bunch of would-be youth ministers who saw the course as an impediment and who, as soon as they had gotten their Cs, would revert to their proper authoritative place over her. She was good enough to teach us all Greek, but it was time to shut up on Sunday morning.

I wish it had been that simple. But proof texting is a hard habit to break, and, besides, I barely knew the tutor. She dated and eventually married a friend of mine, but I never had to actually confront the paradox of her position.

No, the CoC pews became too hellish for me a few years later, sitting beside my wife, who is smarter and more creative than me in ways that are too numerous to count. It was sitting beside her and hearing her silence that I finally realized what I was doing to her. Trying all week to live up to our equal partnership (it’s a thing with us), then trudging to a church that had us behave otherwise. And for what? Ultimately just to have our souls nibbled away. A few pieces here, struggling to figure out what to do with the church of our youth. A few pieces there, hearing our parents tell us we were hell bound. A few more pieces there, hearing those same sentiments over and again, being called a disappointment, having our son marked as religious territory to be exploited.

The definition of Christian is hotly contested in the CoC, and it isn’t just one’s gender that gets in the way. It’s political affiliation. Language. Music preferences. Sexual preferences. It’s everything, all the way down. There’s a checklist of what counts as Christian, and I and my family are decidedly not measuring up.

Go outside the CoC, and checklists still apply. The otherwise profound and kind Episcopal rector tells me my son needs to be baptized instead of asking us what our choice (not to mention his!) is. The generous Catholic friends want to make sure we don’t raise our son to be the wrong kind of black. And many churches - even many progressive churches - send missionaries to the other side of the world to convert people to Christianity without once asking what these cultures have to teach us about spirituality.

All these lines are tiresome. I see Christianity defining itself narrowly in US politics, showing its ass to the whole world without the slightest bit of self-awareness, and I think that I should be hot and bothered. I should be out there reclaiming the word Christian for something better, something more inviting, something that, for Christ’s sake, includes women!

But I don’t feel it. I’ve decided somewhere along the way that God’s a big girl who can look out for herself. I’ve realized that I’m dealing with a church that will psychologically abuse my wife and my son if they go back, and I’ve started to lose interest in being a party to that sort of fate for them. I’m not even 30 yet, and already I feel too tired for the kind of fight required when one squares one’s shoulders to the CoC.

The problem is…I’m a young educated white guy. Just the sort of person who’s allowed to talk in CoCs. Just the sort of person to whom much (undesirable privilege) has been given and, therefore, of whom much (what? What’s my obligation?) will be asked. So maybe I should be in the CoC mix, fighting the good fight.

But…

I’m not a victim of the CoC’s bias. I’m its instrument of oppression. I’m the one who’s handed undeserved power because of the random specifics of my inception. The best I can see to do is throw it down and walk away.

Think we’ll turn into a pillar of salt?

Not likely.

TKP: Not Being Able to Come Home, Part 2

After my first taste of advocacy as a young teenager with a cassette tape recording, I remember several key issues with gender and my church experiences. In high school I started attending two additional church of Christ summer camps, desperate to form a spiritual connection with people my age. I always loved singing at camp; it wasn't at all like the singing at our house church. There were so many talented singers, and if you didn't know the right tune or words, you learned quickly. I wrote my first songs at Bible camp; one I sang with a friend at a talent show and another that I got to teach our singing class (after I taught it to a boy and he sang it to the class, of course.) It was exhilarating. I believed that this wonderful, amazing tradition of Christian songwriters was more relevant to me. I appreciated the poetry and lyrics of the songs I sang and started to think critically about the conflict between the words I sang and the words I spoke or thought in my mind.

That summer at camp one of my favorite staff members was a young college-aged woman whose name I do not remember. She was the epitome of cool with her icthus symbol tattoo on her ankle, her cute ripped light washed jeans and her vivacious personality. She was assigned the role of "recreation director" or something to that effect. It was basically a glorified PE/Arts & Crafts position for someone who didn't want to be a cook or counselor. She expressed her frustration at not being able to teach any classes; not just Bible classes, but any sort of class, because she was a woman. I didn't think too much about it then, but looking back I see the beginning of my questions.

The other gender-related camp issue was the Big Controversial Issue of whether or not a woman could lead a four-part song that began with a soprano or alto melody. You know, one of those "pretty songs" church of Christ schools like to sing over and over. I loved singing them, because we didn't have enough singers who knew four-part harmony at my house church. One night at campfire one girl started to lead a song that was not one of these songs. She just started singing a regular song that didn't require a female lead. I didn't find out what happened to that girl, but I'm sure that a few people took her aside to explain the usurping error of her ways. I was too busy singing the pretty songs to pay much attention.

When I was 16, I began a wonderful relationship with several international exchange students at my small high school. We had never had so many exchange students in one year and I thought it was wonderful. We formed a close-knit group of the six exchange students and three Americans. We spent Wednesday nights at a Congregational youth group. I had a couple individual Let's Start Talking classes using a simplified version of Luke to teach English. That fall I applied to do missions work in Nairobi, which sounded exotic, exciting and far away from Iowa. I could ride some giant zebras, tame lions and maybe help a few orphans along the way. I was ready for my life as a missionary (or so I thought.) I was informed a few months later that since I would only be 17 by the following summer I would not be allowed to travel across country. I was offered a domestic missions trip with the same missions group.

Instead I got on the Internet and searched for church of Christ missionaries who might want a summer intern. I e-mailed one in Europe and was referred to a couple in Tomobe, Ibaraki, Japan. They were long-time missionaries and alumni of Pepperdine University and they said, "Yes!" I spent that spring writing fundraising letters, making travel arrangements and studying Japanese with the one Japanese exchange student at my high school.

My eight weeks in Japan were amazing. I was a real life missionary and I loved it. I returned to the States for a week and then rode with my parents 1,000 miles to Abilene Christian University, where I promptly changed my major from English to Missions. For the first time in my life I was about to experience an American church of Christ as my home church and a church of Christ school with very interesting views on women in worship.

part 2: the place I went

With no place to go, I went as far as possible.

As a sophomore in college I had, actually quite unintentionally, been audience to a missions workshop presentation on the possibilities of teaching English in mainland China. All that was required was a college degree, a native accent, and the ability to raise the airfare. Conspicuously absent from the list of qualifications: maleness. I thought it was perfect.

Within a few weeks of my arrival, a unilateral attempt to homogenize our house church practices with regard to the conduct of women was initiated by one zealous colleague. Showing up unannounced at the home of our hostess one Sunday morning, he delivered a sermon which enumerated precisely what women could and could not do. Proof texts for word studies of the Greek laleo and ekklesia were cited; in possession of the only Greek NT in the room, I searched diligently only to find that those words did not appear in the cited texts. The consternation on my face and page-flipping in my Greek NT flustered our unannounced guest preacher, who stumbled and lost his focus just as I figured out the problem: he'd gotten the citations mixed up. Desiring to reassure him, I began to say, "It's okay, I got it"--and then realized, that would probably count as laleo in ekklesia. Oh well.

For awhile I hosted church in my living room--it seemed like a practical and concrete contribution, and moreover, entirely uncontroversial. I cleaned house every Saturday and rearranged the living room furniture to seat as many people as possible. On Sunday mornings I made the communion bread in my tiny narrow kitchen, and baked it in the toaster oven. Having suffered through some Sundays choking down manifestations of the body of Christ that were truly inedible--stale, or tough, or worse, one time somehow slimy--I was determined to make it good. It took a few weeks to get it right, but finally, a pastry-like bread made with the only margarine available, "Mother's Choice," evolved from my earnest experimentation. One Sunday, inspired, I threw a pinch of sugar into the flour mixture; the bread that morning was flaky, baked to perfection, and just faintly sweet. I thought, now this is the body of Christ. After church someone complimented the bread: it's the best communion bread I've ever eaten, he said. Thanks, I told him, see, I put a pinch of sugar in it this morning. A few minutes later, I was summoned to my living room, and sat down on my couch, and rebuked. Sugar doesn't belong in the communion bread, Jennifer. Don't do that again.

Frustrated, we women instituted a Tuesday night women's bible study, and my centrally located, easily accessible apartment was an ideal spot. Almost immediately we began to outgrow the space available--we packed ourselves like sardines on the couch, perched on the arms of chairs, even sat on the floor, which I scrupulously cleaned every week. We had, after all, come to do mission work, and we could do it on Tuesday nights among ourselves without the boys around. The singing was marvelous. The discussions even more so. The prayer time got so long that we exhausted ourselves with it. After awhile the men started their own Tuesday night study, and after it concluded, would drift over to my apartment to hang out. Sometimes they would arrive before our study was done, and we would close the door to the living room and, conscious of the male presence in the apartment, would try to hurry up and finish.

One evening, after all my students had said good night and drifted away, two girls approached me and asked if I was a Christian. Yes, I said, surprised at this directness. One of them wasn't my student; she was a friend of a student, and had come to my class specifically to engineer this moment and ask this question. She had been a Christian for two years, she said. She wanted to ask me about baptism: what was it, and why were people in the Bible always doing this mysterious thing she couldn't find a satisfactory definition for? I invited her to Tuesday night Bible study, and went home and wrote a whole new lesson plan for it, on baptism. After the study she approached me with eyes shining, and said, "God has answered my prayers in your words. Now, I think I understand, and I want to be baptized. ...But...you never said...how do I do it?" Overwhelmed, I assured her that was the easy part. (If only that had been really true.) We could do it now, I said, if she wanted to. Yes, she said, and we called the man in our group who held the membership card to the swimming pool in the luxury hotel down the street. "She's ready," we said, "we need the pool card," and he replied, "I'll get my swim trunks and be right there." When he arrived, swim trunks in hand, we were ready to go. But he wasn't. Leading us back into my living room, he sat my friend down on my couch, and let us know that if he were going to perform this baptism (no one asked him to!) he needed to be sure she was ready (we had already told him that!). I watched, feeling absolutely helpless, as he reduced my friend to tearfully admitting that she was not, could not be, a Christian yet, despite her years of faith, because she was not yet baptized. Only then was she ready to be baptized. By a man she'd never seen before who had just reduced her to tears, in the uncomfortable intimacy of immersion in a public pool, wearing a borrowed swimsuit.

A few months later, another friend arrived at my doorstep to spend the night, as she routinely did on Saturday nights, fresh from Bible study. It was an uncomfortable friendship, full of unwanted intimacies I hadn't asked for: I discovered in retrospect she'd been borrowing my toothbrush for months, and she was either lacking in standards or adequate facilities for personal hygiene. That night, she told me that she had decided to be baptized, and she wanted me to do it. Um, okay, I said; but knowing this would be controversial within our group of Americans, I said, what did [her Bible study teacher] say when you told him this? She answered, with a puzzled look, "He said, 'isn't God a man?'

I like to tell people that I went to China to be a missionary, and became a feminist. This is why.

the invitation

One of the most powerful things about the Friday morning panel at the Christian Scholars Conference, which I blogged about below, was the simplicity of it. It was, simply, a time and space created to let women talk: to say the things that are scary or straightout forbidden to say at other times and in other places. We need more opportunities like this. Part of the problem is that the institutional structures of our churches define when and where things may be publicly shared, and who may share them, and this rarely includes women. Even in those public spaces and times when women may speak, these experiences and stories are not the ones being sought. Why would they be, when they are cries of pain and stories of exclusion, and prophetic condemnations of the injustice of the way things are? You can hardly respond to the great challenge of being the first woman to teach a class in your church, or lead communion, or preach a sermon, by sharing truths that are so unedifying and disturbing.

So: we need more of these times and spaces. We need them convened in the flesh, and God bless the CSC and the brave folks whoever they were who organized those sessions. Let's do it again. In the meantime, let's do it here. Let me know if you'd be interested in guest-blogging. If you want to be anonymous, email me and I'll post for you. I want women's stories and women's voices, but men, if you've got a story to tell, bring it. I want stories of staying and stories of leaving. I want stories of heartbreak and stories of hope. I want it all. We need to hear it, all.

***
Here is the introduction and the prompts from the CSC discussion, moderated by Dr. Ken Cukrowski:

Intro
As the church and the academy have addressed the topic of women's roles, various theological resources have been brought into the discussion. Not surprisingly, given our heritage, Scripture has played a significant role in our reflection. Reason has also played a role, although this issue understandably stirs emotions, which sometimes strains our use of reason. Tradition--what we have always done--has played a huge role in actual practice. The use of experience--of women specifically--however, has been rare or absent, for at least a couple of reasons. First, there are few opportunities when women are invited to speak in public; second, it is culturally difficult for a woman to ask for the floor without negative connotations. So, women's stories have gone untold and unheard.

Our goal is to provide a place where those stories can be told and heard. Specifically, we'd like to know how has being female in CoC has affected you over your lifetime? How has it affected your religious experiences (e.g., in church, with other members, your own spiritual life)? How has it make you feel? In short, how has your gender affected your heart, mind, faith, and families?

Questions
I will ask specific questions, more or less moving across the life cycle:

1. What's your first memory of realizing that being female meant something different in terms of opportunities or expectations?
2. How did being female in CoC affect you as a teenager, in college, in your dating relationships?
3. How has being female in CoC affected you as an adult?
4. How has being female affected your church life?
5. How has being female in CoC affected your marriage relationship?
6. How did has being female in CoC affected your interaction with children (yours and others' children)?
7. Last question: What would you like to say? What do we need to hear?

***
If you've been silent, not because you thought it was biblical, but because you thought no one wanted to hear what you have to say, this invitation is for you. If you've been silent, because you've never been asked to find the words for your experience, this invitation is for you. If you've been silent, because you're too busy seeking ways past the scandalous obstacles placed in your path to even bother with thinking about or sharing your experiences, this invitation is for you. If you've been shouting because it's been impossible to get anyone to stop and listen, this invitation is for you. If you've been crying, because the time for words is past and all you've got left is tears, this invitation is for you.

new post at rude sermons from the 2008 Women in Ministry Conference.