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A Woman’s Fight

Oct 26, 2015 | Mothers and Daughters, Sacred Stories, Women's Voice & Power

There’s an old, old story told of the patriarch, Jacob, who wrestled through the night with an angel-man, the Divine, God-revealed. Many say he won that fight, but I am not so sure. He demanded a blessing, was given a new name, and left with a limp that haunted him the rest of his life.

There is another old, old story told of a woman who wrestled with God. Not an angel version, but flesh-and-blood, the one they called Jesus. She stopped him on the road, created a scene, and begged him to heal her daughter. He said no. She said yes. He said no again – almost rude; patronizing, inexplicable. Like Jacob, she stood firm and demanded his yes, his blessing, the miracle. And finally Jesus gave in. She won the fight, no scar; only the spoils.

The man gets blind-sided, not anticipating a fight. He demands a blessing before he’ll let this God go. Received, but wounded. The woman doesn’t pick a fight, but enters the battle willingly. She demands the wound be healed, no battle scar allowed. Received, period.

The man fights until he gets the blessing and a bone out-of-socket. The woman does too, but for her very blood and bone.

The man fights for the principle of the thing. The woman fights for what she loves.

The man wants to know who he’s fighting with. The woman already knows with whom she duels.

The man heard God’s voice and still asked who he was dealing with. The woman used her own voice and knew who she was dealing with.

The man demanded a blessing and left with a limp (and a new name). The woman demanded a miracle and left with both heart and daughter healed (we never know her name).

Jacob’s story has been told as proof of his status and stature, a template for what it means to be a man of God: chosen, honored, worthy, a fighter. Buy ringside tickets. Place your bets. Be amazed.

Her story has been told far differently: Who did she think she was to argue with God; with a man? Incorrigible. Ridiculous. Unheard of.

Still, Jacob leaves with a lifelong wound.

She leaves with a life-restored.

May it be so.

Sometimes the best choice is to RUN!

Aug 22, 2015 | Sacred Stories, Women's Voice & Power, Women's Wisdom

It is excruciating to be the victim of someone’s scorn, passive-aggressive behavior, or blatant harm. I’ve heard so many of these stories over the years. In the media. In the workplace. In families. In marriages. In churches. In friendships. (I’m hardly immune.)

There’s a voice within that tells us to run, to flee, to get the heck out of dodge. Instead, we stay – silent, enduring, keeping a stiff upper lip; we refuse to acknowledge just how profoundly this impacts our accurate and honest sense of self, how we sell our very soul.

So, run!

I don’t necessarily mean this literally (though sometimes that’s exactly the right thing to do). I do necessarily mean that we are wise-wise-wise to listen to our brilliance within that says “enough,” that stands up, that knows to walk-if-not-run away – even if only emotionally and energetically – from places and persons that don’t serve us, don’t honor all we offer, don’t recognize all of who we are.

So, run!

What would it cost you? What risks would ensue? What consequences would straggle along after you, threatening to drag you down with them? (I’m hardly immune.)

No matter how high those costs, vast those risks, or massive those consequences, you still deserve to run. I understand that you very well may choose not to. (I’m hardly immune.) But it matters that you know that you have the right, the capacity, the strength, and most of all, the desire.

When you speak your inalienable “yes” or “no,” when you honor your intuition, when you trust your most integrity-filled heart, and when you run, the Divine shows up – profoundly, miraculously, magically, overwhelmingly – because you do! Then, whether you stay or go, you are filled with blessing and strength; you carry a knowing, a secret-sense of self, a glorious glimpse of who you truly are that enables you step boldly into even the hardest and painful of situations with power and beauty.

So, run!

I promise you will be amazed by who meets you there. One look in the mirror, you’ll see her, and you’ll smile: “Oh! There you are! I know you!”

[This post is inspired by the ancient, sacred story of Hagar. She consistently and endlessly provides me strength and courage beyond-compare. She ran. She runs with me. And in such, the Divine runs toward us again and again.]

Messy is Preferable

Aug 12, 2015 | Spirituality

Sunday morning was a known and predictable entity for me while growing up; a thing in and of itself. No question ever considered, we would be in church. All five of us. Everyone in the car. Everyone in the pew. Everyone paying attention. Everyone being respectful. Everyone singing the songs. Everyone following the rules. At a certain point in the service, I would be excused to Sunday School. I have few memories of these rooms: small chairs, big tables, flannelgraphs, bible stories, right answers, wrong ones, a craft project, songs sung, maybe a snack. Afterward, the Fellowship Hall. Finding my parents. Waiting for obligatory conversations to end. Getting back in the car. Heading home.

As I reflect, I see that weekly ritual as a mirage: Sunday morning became the façade we maintained the rest of the week: all of us in our right places, paying attention, being respectful, following the rules. A command performance – though we didn’t realize it. We would be – come hell or highwater – a family that worshipped together, prayed together, and yes, stayed together. Only we didn’t.

*****

Years later, while in seminary and studying aspects of “church” of all things, I would ask my (now ex-) husband, the pastor, what he thought about making Sunday morning a space and experience that invited honest, vulnerable, and real conversation; a place in which the mirage and façade could be broken; a place in which authenticity was welcomed, invited, and above all else, safe. (That conversation never went anywhere. I think he believed that was happening.)

I’d dress my daughters in their darling outfits. The three of us would sit on the very front pew. Perfect. Pretty. Well behaved. At the expected cue, the two of them would leave my side, walk down the center aisle, and head off to Sunday School – toddlers with shiny shoes and bouncy curls. And in expected required fashion – smiling, stoic, and barely sane – I stayed. Until I didn’t.

*****

I left that pew – the one of the distant past and more recent – thinking that in so doing, I left behind the veneer. But the smell of it still lingers: the plasticky desire for a perfect Sunday morning, a perfect family, perfect relationships, a perfect life. And I can feel my highly-honed proclivity to pretend that it is. Except it isn’t.

My life is messy. My relationships are messy. My family is messy. My Sunday’s are too (thankfully): sleeping in, drinking coffee, reading Brain Pickings Weekly, braving Costco and Target and the grocery store, doing laundry, and sometimes – if my daughters’ schedules permit (and the stars align) a movie together.

And my soul is messy. The days of a Bible verse to satisfy every doubt or disappointment, definitive solutions to life’s most difficult questions, a pre-determined god, a 3-point sermon, and less-than-fresh cookies after the service are long gone.

In their place are questions and wonderings and looking within and finding my own answers and long conversations with amazing women over wine – not to mention writing (and writing and writing).

I’m learning to allow for this ongoing, twisty, often-directionless-but-incredible and did I mention (?) messy journey; this life that’s mine.

That hardly means it’s easy. The mess (though completely understood and even chosen) remains hard for me to tolerate and allow. The tendency is high to nail everything down, to find some system that works, to hammer away at my flaws, to sublimate my intuition, to think that if I just try harder… I’ve learned to color in the lines, to never get angry or be moody or say how I really feel, to bury my emotions, to keep a stiff upper lip, to be disciplined, to be the responsible one, to hold it all together, to smile politely, to sit, to stay. Except I can’t.

*****

These days, the problems inherent in my Sunday morning reality overwhelm and sadden me. The least disruption is huge. One crayon mark on the wall is fatal. One unmet expectation is seen as a betrayal.  There’s little bandwidth for ambivalence or confusion or, god forbid, grief. Desire and naming and truth-telling feel dangerous.

Because they are.

*****

So I’m experimenting (metaphorically) with scribbling on walls in permanent marker. I’m choosing to scream and yell and rage and weep (mostly on the pages of my journal or multiple documents on my Mac). I’m wondering what it would feel like to actually be connected to my body, to the earth, and consequently-really passionately, to the Feminine.

I’m learning (again and again and again) to tell the truth – first and foremost to myself. I’m throwing stuff away. I got my nose pierced. I’m toying with the idea of a tattoo. And I constantly fantasize about buying a TinyHouse and moving to Costa Rica or Southern Italy or Carmel or Vashon Island or anywhere, really.

I’ve given up nearly all of my Sunday morning beliefs. New ones, graciously and gratefully, have taken their place, including this:

Messy is preferable – to pretending, to dogmatism, to being disingenuous, to denial.

And this:

The Sacred shows up in undeniable and impossible-to-ignore ways when we acknowledge just how far we are from perfection, when we trust that know-that-we-know-that-we-know voice within, when we actually invite the mess to coexist with the miracles.

Not just on Sunday morning, but every day, all day, and in all ways.

May it be so.

In the midst . . .

Mar 16, 2015 | Hope & Encouragement, My sort-of Sermons, Sacred Stories, Spirituality, Women's Wisdom

Here is what I know about you:

Right now, in the midst, you embody the Feminine. Right now, in the midst, you inhale and exhale Sophia (wisdom as She). Right now, in the midst, you birth and behold the Sacred. Not someday. Not when your story is satisfying and happy. Right now. This story. This day. This you!

The proclivity to want a story – a life – that is satisfying and happy is high. Western culture all but demands it while simultaneously reminding us that we don’t have it…yet. But if we will only get this, buy this, do this, achieve this, then our desires will be fulfilled. Then, but not now.

What is the balance between reality and hope, between acceptance and desire, between the present and the longed-for future?

I don’t have answers. What I do have, however, is stories. Lots of them. And they are what save me.

Admittedly, it’s a paradox: most of the stories I retell, reimagine, and redeem are painful. Women who are often the victims of violence and power, excruciating cultural norms, and silencing and invisibility that haunts. But in the midst, they are beautiful, strong, and deserving of honor. And that, from my perspective and experience, is the key:

It is in the midst that our story, our very selves, demonstrate beauty, strength, and honor beyond compare. Not someday. Not then. Not ‘if only.’ Right now.

What if we didn’t work so hard to elude the parts of our story we’re not all that crazy about?

What if we didn’t work ourselves into a frenzy to somehow get out of our current circumstances and into the ones we want?

What if we learned to stay, to abide, to dwell in the midst – exactly where we are?

Beauty, strength, and honor would be (and is) ours in the midst.

An example:

Bathsheba. In going about her life, just living and being, she gets thrust into a story in which her body was dishonored, her shame prolific, her grief visceral, and her will rarely considered. It’s not an easy story. And she is beautiful. She is strong. She brings forth life. She promulgates wisdom beyond compare. In the midst.

Though I could speak endlessly of the injustice and ache within her story, this is what speaks to me: Bathsheba’s was and is a story of beauty in the midst of ugliness, strength in the midst of struggle, life in the midst of death, wisdom in the midst of foolishness, and honor in the midst of exactly its opposite.

My story is no different. Nor is yours. For we are her daughters, her lineage, her kin. This is the Feminine enfleshed and embodied. This is Sophia in breath and voice. This is the Sacred here and now. Not
someday. Not happily ever after. Right now. Within. Always. Unswerving. In the midst.

Because I can witness this in the story of Bathsheba (and Eve and Hagar and Rahab and Mary Magdalene and the Woman at the Well and a gloriously-infinite list of so many others), I can allow for the same in my own story. In the midst.

What if you did the same?

Here is what I know about you:

Right now, in the midst, you embody the Feminine. Right now, in the midst, you inhale and exhale Sophia (wisdom as She). Right now, in the midst, you birth and behold the Sacred. Not someday. Not when your story is satisfying and happy. Right now. This story. This day. This you!

May it be so.

Imagination and then some…

Feb 21, 2015 | Sacred Stories, Women's Wisdom

Imagination is a wonderful, healing, redeeming, strengthening, transformative thing.

I spend a lot of my time in this act, this work, this calling – the privilege of imagining. How lucky am I?

The stories I tell, the stories I love, are filled with imagination. It’s true! Even the stories of women in Scripture. Oh! Wait! Had you heard something else? Like they are actually carved in stone? Oh, well there’s (at least part of ) the problem! They’re not! Like any story, they are fluid, ever-changing, moving, shape-shifting, and offering meaning to their hearer through the lens of their teller.

First told ’round camp fires and in caves, the oral tradition carried their truth through the generations. Later, carved in stone (OK. I admit it: this part is true), then written on scrolls, then translated and transcribed (and imagined) again and again. Printed. Organized. Argued and fought over. And translated even more. Even still, their significance survives: in art, in poetry, in prose, in song. Ancient, sacred stories infused with imagination.

Though many have walked away (if not run screaming into the dark) because of the ways in which these stories have become doctrine have become dogma have become dogmatism, I am not willing to do so.

Because they were reimagined and retold again and again, in ever- changing ways, I can do the same. I get to do the same.

I began to figure this out while in Seminary – not the most common place in which one uses imagination. As part of my M.Div. degree I was required to take a year of Hebrew and another of Greek. I don’t remember a bit of either, but I will never forget what I learned through them: this whole translation thing is SUPER subjective. Always has been. Always will be. And if that’s true (which it is), then I can translate and imagine and tell the stories just as well as the other guys (which yes, most of the time, have been and still are guys).

My imagination. My perspective. My telling.

When I imagine to my heart’s content, I am the one who is healed, redeemed, strengthened, and transformed.

Oh, the stories I could tell you of this; the myriad of ways in which these stories (and the women within them) have changed my life. But we’d be here for days…

“There is no use trying,” said Alice; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” ~ Lewis Carroll

You may find it impossible to believe that the stories of women in Scripture could possibly still speak; more, could possibly speak to you (without the doctrine or dogma or dogmatism). I get that.

“Impossible!” you say. And, like the Queen, it is my honor to continually invite you to a world of imagination, maybe even belief, and most definitely hope. Maybe not before breakfast, but hey, I’m always up for a good challenge!

My hope(s) and endless imaginings for you?

  • That you would come to not just imagine, but know and believe that there are stories that long to be heard and known and experienced by you that will touch and embolden your heart.
  • That you would not just imagine, but know and believe that you are not alone; even more, realize that you are surrounded by an entire chorus of your matrilineage.
  • That you would not just imagine, but know and believe that your story matters.

May it be so.