This Book Is Not Pink

This evening I was headed to hang out with a friend, so I grabbed the first T-shirt my hand landed on in my closet and threw on a hoodie over it. It wasn't until I was getting ready for bed and tugged the hoodie off that I realized I was wearing my feminism T-shirt.

I got the shirt in college, when I first started taking gender studies courses, when I was all fired up about shattering the glass ceiling and getting rid of the stigma around issues of sexual assault. I got the shirt when I first started experiencing the conflict between my gender studies classmates and the religion I so adored. I was just beginning to discern my call to ministry at that point, and I was nervous about how people would treat me.

When I told my classmates about my call and my aspirations to become an ordained pastor, they asked how I could be part of such a misogynistic institution. Why, they asked, would I want to work for people who had historically devalued women, and many of whom still pray to an angry father god saying "thank God I am not a woman"? I explained to them over and over again that the church had, at times, adopted harmful social trends, but that it was precisely my faith and the Bible that had taught me that God made all humans in God's image: male and female. I explained that I wasn't willing to surrender faith and Christianity to a history of misogyny, that I would stand up as a woman of faith and fight to make the church better. And, while they often did not share my faith or understand my decision, they respected me for it and affirmed me in pursuing it.

At the same time, I found myself debating gender issues with some of my more conservative friends. I brought up issues of rights and dignity and equality. And the discussions were civil and enlightening when they were purely academic. But when I told them I was called to ministry, most of them abruptly ended their contact with me, telling me I must be mistaken. Only one continued to talk to me, and he told me that he thought God might be calling women to ministry now because many men refuse to go. I was shocked to discover that he saw women as God's backup plan.

At that time in my life, when I was engaged in those debates, I was so impassioned. I'd wear my feminism shirt to church events just to push the envelope. It felt like rebelling, in a way, even though my church had no problem with women's ordination and, on the whole, was pretty good with gender issues.

I'm still a feminist, still passionate about gender issues, but it takes a different form now. I haven't worn my feminism T-shirt outside my apartment since I took this appointment. But I avoid masculine language for God and I try to bring different images for God into the life of the congregation. I've learned to tolerate being called cute as long as people still respect the authority my call gives me in the pulpit and around the meeting table. And I hope that women outside the church, feminists who see the church as patriarchal, misogynistic, and irrelevant, will see me, a young feminist woman in sanctioned leadership in the church, and will take a second look at faith. Maybe they'll see in me a counterbalance to the pink, gender-stereotyping books that dominate the religion sections in bookstores.

As I seek to live as both faithful and feminist in the local church, I read a lot of spiritual memoirs by women. I love them all, from the mystical words of Julian of Norwich and Theresa de Avila to Kathleen Norris and Anne Lamott and Lauren Winner. I admire both the strength and the deep faith they display in their writings, and I draw inspiration from them to stay strong. I also love that they are different: they don't follow the stereotype paths the pink faith-for-women books prescribe. They are authentic in their depictions of the struggles and messiness of life and faith.

Perhaps one day I'll write my own spiritual memoir, inspiring women of the next generation to be faithful anf feminists. If I do, I think I'll entitle it "This Book Is Not Pink", just to remind those who see it that there is room in the church for feminists. I can prove it, too, because I know there is room in the church for me.

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Advent Again?

Ready or not, here it comes! Advent is upon us (again) and I just don't feel prepared. Which, I suppose, is ironic. But here I am, unprepared for the season of preparation.

Last year, I tried to keep focused on the joy of Advent by taking pictures of something each day that brought me joy. This year, since the season snuck up on me, I didn't think to take a picture today. And, while I could grab my camera and snap a shot of Charlie chewing on a toy, I want to try something different this year.
This year, I'm going to write instead. Since I feel unprepared for Advent and Christmas, I'm going to process my thoughts in writing, here on my blog. Every day.

Today, since Advent is a season of penance, we started worship with a prayer of confession. I love participating in the confession and pardon in a congregation. I love it because we, as a congregation, need it so badly.

As a congregation, we're a big family. And as anyone who spent Thanksgiving with family will tell you, families always have conflict, we're always a little dysfunctional. With many people and many personalities, we'll always end up disagreeing at times, and those disagreements will sometimes hurt us. So, in our congregations we always need to be forgiving each other and receiving forgiveness. We need to be practicing saying, "You are forgiven," and we need to hear week in and week out that WE are forgiven. As people who believe in a merciful God, and who are called to likewise forgive, we need to be practicing grace.

And I think this is perhaps most important for clergy. We work closely with the people in our churches, and in our leadership we sometimes ruffle feathers. We disappoint them sometimes, and other times they disappoint us. So, there is a certain beauty to saying, as a pastor, "In the name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven," and looking into the eyes of your members as they assure you, "In the name of Jesus Christ, YOU are forgiven."

In this season of Advent, as we prepare to welcome our Savior, we need to be practicing mercy. And as we prepare for visits with our families, we need to be practicing grace. Tonight, I'm praying to be better at both.

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From the Road

It amazes me that I can be going 70 miles per hour down the highway, watching the snow stream past, and still blogging. But, I suppose, that is the wonder of technology.

I'm on my way back...home? To the place where I now live and work, certainly. But it's too weird to say I'm going home when I'm driving away from the place I called home for more than twenty years. The place I live now should be home, since I've lived there for more than a year, and it's where all of my stuff is, and where my dog is. But when I my family all lives far away, and the holidays are so focused on "family", it's hard to think of my solitary apartment as homey.

I'm going to need to work on home-ifying my apartment before Christmas.

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Mind the Gap

Once upon a time I was a regular blogger. Then I became a semi-regular blogger. Then, in the last two months, life got really, really messy. But, I do intend to get back to blogging regularly. I'm even hoping to do something special for Advent again, either through pictures or through a discipline of regular writing.

Now, for an explanation of why I haven't been blogging:
1) I work for a church and, as such, there are a lot of things from my work that I simply cannot talk about. And, lately, almost all of my time and energy has been consumed by work, leaving me with very little that I could, or was willing, to write about here.
2) I've been writing, but by and large it has been stuff that I wouldn't want my bishop to read. And, since this is a public blog, I try not to post things on here that I'd be unwilling to say in front of the bishop. I love you all, but there's no way I'm risking my job just to share my thoughts with you.

The two months since my last post have featured some exciting events, though. I had a birthday, saw some family members, and, probably best of all, went on a fabulous vacation. The trip started in Las Vegas, with a visit to my seminary roommate. I could say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but the truth is, I was remarkably well-behaved during my stay. I didn't pick up any men, I didn't gamble, and I didn't even drink. I did, however, get to see rainbows over the Grand Canyon, explore the Strip at night, see Cirque du Soleil, and take the dam tour at Hoover Dam. The best thing about being in Vegas, though, was getting to catch up with my old roommate, as she is one of the coolest people I know. I then traveled to Long Beach to visit two more friends. We relaxed, had adventures in L.A. and along the Pacific beaches, and spent lots of time laughing and catching up. It was a blessedly relaxing week, and I'm very, VERY glad to have gotten away and had some sabbath time.

Unfortunately, vacation ended and I had to hit the ground running, because Advent is approaching with unexpected speed. So, until I dig up a Delorian with a flux capacitor, it's going to be a rough few weeks. That's all the update I have energy for at the moment, but don't despair! I fully intend to blog more in the next few days.

I Laughed

One of the things I treasure most in life is humor. I love sharing laughter with people. I'm pretty sure that laughter can be part of God's grace, healing us, bringing joy to our souls. I recognize that it can also be dark and harmful, but I'm going to say that dark, harmful humor is a perversion of this good gift (like all evil is, to borrow a definition from a great theologian). And so, on this late evening, I'll share with you some things that have made me laugh over the last few weeks.

My mother always carries large bags. It's probably part of being a mom; she carries a huge bag so that she always has everything anyone might need. I'm convinced that the contents of her purse could keep someone alive for a week if they were stranded on a desert island. But I digress. My mother came to visit me a few weeks ago, and on the night of her arrival I took her to dinner. She offered to pay, then picked up her backpack (an easier carry-on than a purse) and tried to find her billfold. She took out six or eight different items, covering half of our table, before she finally found the billfold. (I was reminded of the scene in Oscar where the title character is taking all of the weapons off one of his henchmen and, after taking a huge pile of things including a mace, a billy club, a small pistol, and brass knuckles from the man, says, "It's like disarming Germany!") Then, once she had located it, she remembered that the card she was going to use to pay for dinner was already in an outside pocket of the bag from when she'd checked in for her flight earlier that day. We laughed for five minutes straight at the huge pile of stuff on the table.

I went to see a movie the other night and overheard the following conversation:
Boy, 11 years old: "There should be a law that action movies aren't allowed to have any kissing. Yuck!"
Girl, 13 years old: "An action movie without kissing would be like trying to eat lunch without a mouth."

I took Charlie to the dog park today. He likes the dog park and enjoys chasing the other dogs around and wrestling with them, and it's great exercise for him. However, my 60-something pound dog is, apparently, very attractive to much smaller dogs. Nearly every time I take him to the dog park, some small dog makes unwelcome advances toward Charlie, and Charlie ends up with a much-smaller dog humping his leg. He doesn't seem to know what to make of this, so instead of fighting the smaller dog off, he usually tries to run away. So, my large dog is frequently chased all around the dog park by strangely-gyrating mini-dogs. This evening, Charlie responded to this behavior by finding a muddy spot near my feet and flopping down in it. So I was forced to give my dirty, stinky dog a bath. Charlie is usually well-behaved about baths, but he still has a bad habit of waiting until he's out of the bathroom to shake all the excess water out of his fur. So, while Charlie smells a bit better after a bath, my entire apartment ends up smelling much, much worse: like wet dog. I'm sure there's a better way of doing this, but for the life of me I can't figure out what it is. So I laugh at the water droplets everywhere and take joy in the goofy face Charlie makes when he's all wet.

I got new furniture for my balcony as an early birthday present. It was a pain to put together, but it looks very nice. And as excited as I am to have lovely, cozy new furniture so I can sit on my balcony to enjoy this gorgeous fall weather, I think I'm more excited about the giant cardboard box the furniture came in. I'm planning to make it into a spaceship before it goes to the dumpster. After all, doesn't every twenty-something professional need to make a pretend spaceship now and then?

Wrapped in Community

I spent a good part of this afternoon sorting out prayer shawls to send to the youth from the church I serve who will be starting college this fall. I wrote liturgy and double-checked names because this is an important ministry. Women from the church have spent months making prayer shawls with these particular students in mind. Smooth hands and gnarled hands and able hands and arthritic hands have passed over the yarn and knotted it into patterns, into rectangles that will wrap around the shoulders of our students. We hope that, as they wrap the shawls around them, they'll remember the people from our church who are praying for them, and remember that God is with them even when those people, and all the dear, familiar things they're used to, are not.

Congregation members occasionally inform me that I need a prayer shawl from this church. They say this, not because I appear to be in need of consolation, but because I'm usually wrapped in a blanket when I'm at work. I tend to be cold most of the time and my air conditioned office feels like an icebox to me, so I often throw a blanket around my shoulders while I'm sitting at my computer or going to meetings. But I'm particular about the blanket I use. A prayer shawl from this church would be fine, too, but it doesn't have the same meaning.

The blanket that I keep in my office, that I wear when I'm cold, is one that bears the name of my hometown and the names and pictures of many of its churches. I choose to keep it in my office to remind me that, on the tough days when I'm tired and frustrated and feeling alone, not only is God with me but there are people far away who are wrapping me and my ministry in prayer. The blanket has pictures of the many churches where I attended Vacation Bible School, where I learned memory verses and did crafts and saw the dedication of lay people in helping form the faith of children. It has the names of the churches with whom I went on mission trips, whose volunteers climbed under houses and into ditches alongside me to be examples of servant leadership.

Most of all, the blanket has the name and picture of my home church, the place where I was most formed in the faith. It's the place where I learned hymns and creeds, prayers and theology. It's the place where I discovered the joy of being in mission and experienced what the love in the body of Christ should be like. It wasn't, and isn't, a perfect church. But the people of that congregation did a great job of teaching and shaping me as a person of faith. And though the blanket didn't come from their hands, it reminds me of all the gifts they've given me. That simple blanket provides not only physical warmth, but spiritual reassurance.

I got a Facebook friend request yesterday from one of my childhood Sunday School teachers. I hadn't heard from her in probably a decade, but I was jubilant about the contact. This gives me the opportunity to tell her that all of those Sunday mornings putting up with my know-it-all talking and encouraging me to put characters on the felt board and telling Bible stories really made a difference to me. It's my chance to tell her that she's one of the examples I draw upon when I work with children in my ministry. I doubt that she knew, when she listened to that seven year old girl with dimples talking, that her work would inspire and shape ministry almost twenty years later. But it has.

I wish I could find a way to impress that message upon the people in the church I now serve. But how can I tell them that the way they greet and teach and love the congregation's children today could affect Christ's mission in the world several decades later? How do I help people to see that their work doesn't just enable ministry today and this year, but has an impact for years to come? If that message came through clearly, I think churches might not have quite the problems with recruiting volunteers and leaders that we often face.

Mawaige is What Bwings Us Twogevah Twoday

"Are you happy? Do you have what you want, have you achieved all the goals you had for yourself at 25?"
Bear, one of my male friends from college asked me this question the other day. I paused for a few moments, then said, "For the most part, yes. I have a job that I love. I'm in a place that I like. I have a dog to keep me company. I've got great friends, though I wish some of them lived much closer to me. I've been to lots of interesting places, I've been privileged to go to some great schools. Yes, I'm where I hoped I'd be at this point. There are really only two more things I would like before I turn 30. I want to go to Australia and I want to get married." Then he asked what is perhaps a more interesting question: "Is getting married a goal for you?"

I couldn't really articulate an answer to that question immediately on the phone, and our conversation soon moved to other topics, but it left me pondering. I don't thin of marriage as a goal, exactly, since a goal is often an achievement toward which one works. Marriage isn't an achievement, really, and it's also not something you can really work toward. It's a relationship, carefully built between two people, a covenant and a lifelong commitment, not just a title to attain.

The idea of marriage as a goal is fascinating to me because popular culture often frames marriage as some sort of achievement for women. It's not framed that way for men, really. For men it's a desirable state when you get tired of dating, or perhaps for sex or companionship, but it isn't presented, I don't think, as a social achievement. But for women it's a different game. People speak about "getting your Mrs. degree" as though it's an achievement one acquires through dedication, work, strategy, and a little luck. There are books and magazine articles about how to catch a man, how to "get him to propose", as though if you have the right moves and work hard enough, you can force a relationship, and as though attaining a couple of rings and the privilege of checking "married" boxes on forms is a prize to be won. (Take, for example, the lassoing scenes in The Bachelor... YIKES!)

"But what if I never get married?!"

I can't tell you how many times I've said this or heard friends say it. Ask any single woman over the age of 22 their fears, and this will be among them. It comes up after every friend's wedding, every breakup, every bad date, and every birthday. This flip side of the marriage pressure: the "terror" of singleness. Because, while even pop culture will let you be the happy single girl for a few years, there's a point after which, if you're not married, people assume that there's something wrong with you. Take, for example, Sex and the City. Even in this progressive, VERY sexually liberated plotline, three of the four main characters were married before age 41. Women who remain unmarried are cast as closeted lesbians, crazy cat ladies, or poor, pathetic, awkward spinster aunts. At a certain age (and this age varies based on geographical location), you go from Sex and the City to Nanny McPhee. Quick, try for sixty seconds to name every strong, well-adjusted, never-married female character in your favorite movies and TV shows. Did you come up with any?

I want to be married. Not really because society tells me so, and not really (though slightly, I'll admit) because if I don't get married I'm cast as the freak who escaped from the circus, but because I'm looking for companionship. I want a partner to share my life with, to catch up with at the end of the day, to share the joys and the worries with. It would be nice to come home at the end of a long day and have someone to talk to that doesn't drool on my forearm.

At the same time, I refuse to treat this as a goal. It's not something I can work toward, other than being open to the possibilities of relationships. It's a relationship I hope to share with someone one day, not an achievement to tell society that I'm kind, well-adjusted, and desirable enough to attract a mate. I don't need that validation. Because, while the media really gives me no models for how to live as a happy, normal single woman, I do actually know such women in the real world. I have friends and mentors who are strong, single, and NOT crazy stereotypes. And I thank God for them every single day.

I know that there aren't manners books on how to treat your single friends, and it's easy for folks who have been married for a while to remember what it was like to be single. It's especially hard for people who got married young to understand what it's like for people who are single and older. And the media isn't giving any helpful guidelines, either. So, I offer a few suggestions for how to make life easier for the single folks. (I'm not being sarcastic here, folks. These could actually help you.)

1) For God's sake, stop portraying single women only in stereotypes. There are all sorts of different well-rounded images of people in relationships, different kinds of relationships, etc. Get with the creativity already.

2) Please stop assuming that everything is about/for "families". This is less of an assumption in the wider world, but the church, on the whole, assumes that everyone is somehow part of a locally-centered nuclear family. For example, church meals and potlucks are often REALLY AWKWARD for people who are there by themselves, so please make an effort to be welcoming to the single folks.

3) Unless the person you're asking is a really good friend, don't ask us if we're seeing anyone. If we want to tell you about someone we're dating, we will. If we're not, or are and don't want to talk about it, we won't bring it up and you don't need to either. I've been asked this at work functions, family gatherings, and even job interviews, and it's almost always awkward. One of the worst conversations I've had in several years was on this very topic with someone I'd met the same night. It went like this:
Him: So, are you married?
Me: No.
Him: Engaged?
Me: No.
Him: Dating?
Me: No.
*Long Pause*
Him: Sad?
I wanted to simultaneously slap him on the back of the head and vanish from the spot. Please don't put your single friends in this position. You don't even need to bring it up. There are lots of topics of conversation beyond families: ask about our pets/jobs/hobbies/weekend plans/last vacation/upcoming vacation/book we're reading... You get the picture.

4) Getting married is not the threshold to adulthood. Single adults are not children. Try not to put your unmarried friends or family members at the kids' table or give them the couch because they don't have someone to share the bed with or, worst of all, send their invitations and Christmas cards and things to their parents' address. If the single person has a home of his or her own, he or she deserves an invitation/card of his or her own. We're not eight-year-olds living at home, we're adults with places of our own. It's common courtesy to acknowledge that fact.

5) There is much debate about assurance that someday we, too, will be married. This can be somewhat comforting, insofar as it is an assurance that you, our friend or loved one, don't believe that we are undesirable, unmarryable freaks. And that's important for combatting the accursed views of singleness. On the other hand, it simultaneously upholds those views of singleness as a terrible state from which you hope your friends will be rescued. And what if we don't get married? The vague promises of "someday" stop holding water at a certain point. So, while I don't think such assurances should be outlawed, it pays to think carefully before you use them.

There are, I'm sure, other guidelines and suggestions to consider. At the moment, these are the ones that come to my mind. If you have others, feel free to share them in the comments section.