commonplace Wednesday: Womanspirit Rising

Originally published in 1979, Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, is a new classic on my summer reading list.  It's a collection of early essays by some of the most recognized writers in feminism and spirituality including: Merlin Stone, Starhawk, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Mary Daly, and Zsuzsanna E. Budapest.  I'm about 25 pages into it and feel energized by the ideas, and reconnected with the feminist identity and theological interests of my college years.  But I'm a little puzzled too - how can I be part of this movement, this bigger conversation, these changes, as a mom with a job?  [When I was in college I was convinced that if the values and ideas I was engaging weren't accessible and actionable by "ordinary people" (rather than ivory tower PhD types) then they were useless.  I inadvertently made that my mission and fumbled my way into ordinariness.  Here I am and what to do, how to do it, with these big ideas?]

This quote from the Introduction offers some hints:

If the world has been named by Adam without Eve's consultation, then the world has been named from the male point of view.  As women begin to name the world for themselves, they will upset the order that has been taken for granted throughout history.  They will call themselves and the world into new being.  Naming women's experience thus becomes the model not only for personal liberation and growth, but for a feminist transformation of culture and religion.  "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" asks poet Muriel Rukeyser. "The world would split open." p.7.

When women describe their experience they have the potential to change culture and to change religion.  I don't have complete understanding of this yet but I think it's something about the man-made constructs falling away, the rules and the givens, the masculine common sense is revealed for its incompleteness, inconsistency, and inaccuracy.  It is not whole and complete for human experience.  It is not a valid placeholder or assumption.  This falling away makes room for more understanding, more dimensions and perspectives can occupy the space held as truth.

One of my favorite ideas from Carry On, Warrior was G's approach to scripture.  She is totally up front about the fact that all Bible readers pick and choose what to obey and how to understand the Bible. When faced with a passage that she didn't understand she interpreted it against the primary rules to love God and love others.  Based on this she decides what to do with the puzzling verses.  All the other rules, and what I call the man-made constructs, get cast aside to make way for the real work of loving.   Some of her readers find this sacrilegious or blasphemous.  I call it a hermeneutic of love and I dig it.

At it's best, at my best, feminism is an angle for speaking back to the dominant culture and taking apart the givens and the rules.  It's not necessarily about male versus female, men vs. women.  Women just happen to have a particular opportunity to initiate these changes since they weren't welcome to participate in the original naming.  (But women aren't the only "other" that was left out.  There are lots of opportunities.)  And the way this happens, in part, is women talking about their lives - like G in Carry On, Warrior, like me on my blog and Facebook and in life.  It's tiny.  It's barely visible, one woman at a time.  It's sometimes exhausting and seemingly pointless.  But as I, and we, persist in lifting up our very personal lives for public view and value, we participate in a political process of making room for more, different, other than the man-made norms.  The world is "split open" and we have the opportunity to reorder and remake with a new measure - a measure of love.

it's here

my book, now on Amazon!

My labor of love, labor of labor, of intellect and heart and rendering something good and useful from years of living as an "other" within the community of my formative faith.

Out of the Attic: Leveraging Women's Experience of Otherness in the Evangelical Christian Church

This is my masters synthesis, now available as a self-published book on Amazon.  I even have an Author's page!

looking forward

and it looks promising for a year of
creativity! passion! fire! motion!

I just ordered my We'Moon datebook for 2010.

"Riding on the thin rim of the Wheel of Change, between alarm at what humankind has wrought and trust in Spirit at the center, We'Moon 2010 inspires us to Reinvent the Wheel to repair the earth's sacred order."

We'Moon calendars beautifully connect the grid of the Gregorian calendar with moon phases, planetary cycles, and "the wheel of the year." Composed of original art & writing by women, these unique pieces encourage the user to tend both her personal spirituality and the collective health of her community. Please visit their website for more about their gorgeous products.

commonplacing: yeast & the feast

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast," we heard him say, "that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
Judith put her hands to her mouth and actually giggled.
"What's so funny?" I wondered.
"Don't you know, Mary? The rabbis consider yeast unclean. Only women handle it. Who but our Jesus would dare to compare it to the Kingdom of God!"
Many times I witnessed the gap-toothed grins of old women, and the clapping and dancing of younger ones as they recognized themselves and their lives in the stories: the persistent widow demanding justice, the woman throwing a party when she finds the lost coin. They needed no explanation. They understood: the Bridegroom was here in their midst. They were invited to the feast." pp 414-415

First, the obvious things that I like about this passage:
1) Jesus speaks directly to women's lives - rather than overlooking us or lumping us into stories where men are normative & primary.
2) Jesus says and does the things that are vitally different from the conventions of his time & place and through that conveys the heart of his message.
3) Jesus used stories about people's real lives to share that message and to welcome & cultivate a community who got the message.

Now, maybe more subtly, how this passage applies to me.

In the last few weeks, my little family took a pause from our church attendance. We need more time as a family, interacting with each other, doing fun stuff, chatting, chasing & getting chased by Baby N.... When we go to church we feel like we give the best hours of the day (before N's nap) to an event that doesn't give us much room to interact with each other. It felt like a loss. Plus, I tend to come home all riled up.

But in the course of Sunday night's June moon ritual, something came to me. I need to go back to church:
1) Because it's good for me to hear other people's ideas about Christianity. Some of the folks in this congregation have powerful love and commitment to Jesus. They tell stories of their experiences of the presence of Christ in their lives.
2) Because I want to do good work in my community and this church does that all day, every day. They are sharing "the feast" in tangible ways (rent, food, recovery groups, access to medical care...). I will be a lot more effective as part of this community than I will be on my own.
3) It's good for me to get riled up. Maybe not every Sunday, & certainly not to the point where I get bitter & dried up, but enough to point me to something vitally different as illuminated by Jesus & to prompt me in how I'm going to live that.
4) [bonus!] This is a congregation of quirky loving folks that I enjoy. They love my son. They welcomed my family from minute 1. (They shared "the feast" even with us?) Churches like this are rare. People like this are to be held onto.

So, this Sunday, Baby N and I will be heading around the corner to church. Instead of family time, L will get a morning to himself - to play bass or read philosophy or take a long bath. All the good refreshing restorative things that a stay-at-home parent rarely gets to do for himself. And we'll work it out, like all families do. We'll keep moving so that each of us is growing and challenged, nurtured and celebrated. And I hope we'll bring a little bit more into our time together from this kind of time apart.

Cunningham, Elizabeth. The Passion of Mary Magdalen. New York: Monkfish. 2006.

speak up woman

I've been going to a specialist for almost a year now to help me repair the remaining damage from Baby N's delivery. Month after month I come home from her office feeling like we got somewhere and yet... it wasn't quite me we were taking care of. It's as if we've been going down a textbook list of options rather than addressing my life in particular.

I went into today's appointment intent on understanding the big picture of what we're working on. We started with an explanation of the diagnosis. Then I did something new, "I want to tell you about my life a little bit so that we're treating me." Ok. "I don't have a car." Oh! "So everywhere I go I'm walking & carrying at least one bag."

Suddenly my best treatment option was my worst. (It would require 6 weeks of no lifting and no activity beyond a leisurely stroll. Great for a suburban minivan mama, but prohibitive for an urban pedestrian family.) We went back through the possibilities, covered all of my questions, got me more info, and even brought in a nurse practitioner that the doctor deems especially gifted with these treatment options. Speaking up made a real difference in the methods we'll use to treat my body. And it's renewed my optimism about and my commitment to the treatment plan.

Looking back, this whole week has presented me with the message "speak up." Starting at church on Sunday (see zucchini & onion below); next establishing a timeframe for placing S the Cat in his new home (his new mom picked him up last night); then providing clear boundaries and feedback at my job (& getting results!); and now advocating for healing my body in accordance with my family's lifestyle.

"Finding your voice" is easily cliche in a post-women's studies, girl-power culture. I talked about it so much in my twenties that it became an empty refrain in my mind. Disillusioned with all my feminist ideals, and preoccupied with other real life things (like making the rent), my "voice" sort of faded out of range. Lingering. Lying in wait. Now I'm remembering the power of speaking up - in my own real life voice and what I have to say about real life. And I think that is where the ideals become real, the cliches regain some substance, and make a difference.





Circle image found at US Women Connect: Linking US Women & Girls to the Global Women's Movement. "The national women's action network linking US women for collective action on the US women's agenda." Please be sure to visit Girl's Connect page for a really cool set of resources for girls (women might enjoy them too!).