Emerging Women

Please hear my delight! So glad to be here in this company of women. I’ll say a bit to introduce myself. Hi, I’m Sensuous Wife. I started my blog sensuouswife.blogspot.com because I needed a place to put some stuff while it was fresh from my heart and without everything I write having to wait ages for the whole query letter>agent>book deal process. That waiting game has been a real character-builder lemme tell you! I just wanted to get some of my stuff OUT THERE for my own emotional health (can you say need an outlet?) and because I sincerely believe that what Jesus has done in my life is good and that other women could be encouraged by my journey. What I didn’t anticipate was this. I thought I was starting this blog to help uptight Christian girls like me to loosen up and enjoy their husbands. And I think that is happening. What I didn’t anticipate was God giving me opportunities to befriend women who are expressing their sexuality online in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable. There are so many refused spouses displaying their nude womanhood online hoping someone will find them appealing. Jesus allowed me to see the invisible sign hanging around everyone’s neck that says “validate me” and my heart just broke. Because there but for the grace of God go I. And I remembered something I heard in a sermon yeaarrrs ago which was “evangelism is like one homeless person telling another homeless person where to get a good meal” So I’ve been befriending women and being overwhelmed again with gratitude for all God has brought me out of. And I don’t believe I’m the only woman whose heart and sexuality Jesus wants to heal. Do you?

So here’s the emerging part. The more healed and free and happy and alive I got over the course of years, the less welcome I felt at my church. Marginalized, patronized, benched, whatever you want to call it. Which just boggled my mind. Like why would they want to hide or silence Exhibit G of the grace of God triumphing over so much abuse and pain? So we left. Delighted Husband and I are a few weeks in to our search for a new church home. And we’re really asking God to lead us because we (my Delighted Husband and I) so want to offer our hearts to love others and offer what Jesus has done in our own lives and our marriage, and we also really want to be fed relevant teaching and be able to lose ourself in worship. Tall order? I know. But we think it’s worth waiting for. So yeah, I’m emerging. So I tap tap tapped on the window, and Julie smiled and welcomed me in. So hi everybody! -SW

Our book selection for this month’s book discussion is Monica Furlong’s Visions and Longings: Medieval Women Mystics. This book was meant to give us a taste of a stream of Christianity that is unfamiliar to many of us. To read the women mystics forces one to acknowledge that there were women doing theology and teaching spirituality in the church all along. These voices were not silent, just forgotten by many.

Furlong presents us with eleven women from the Medieval period who committed their lives to serving God. She helps us by giving overviews of the period, church history, and monastic structure. For each women we are given a brief biography and then a few key selections from their writings. And so, in her own words and theirs, Furlong sketches rebellious Heloise, runaway Christina of Markyate, visionary Hildegard of Bingen, the lovesick Beguines, sickly Clare of Assisi, joyful Angela of Foligno, strong-willed Catherine of Siena, mad Margery Kemp, and optimistic Julian of Norwich. The sampler provided in the book presents the common theme that these women faced hardship and persecution in order to follow God. Resistance to women having leadership roles in the church (even if it was just over women) was a constant struggle for many of these women as they tried to establish new and distinctly female communities. Others had to overcome family and social pressure to live an indulgent life and be married off well. For these women to follow a life of chastity and devotion to God upset the dominant secular paradigm as to what were appropriate roles women. And many of these women faced severe physical illness as they took on lives of poverty and hardship for the sake of the kingdom.

I enjoyed Furlong’s matter of fact approach to these women. Unlike other hagiographers who exalt these mystics to inhumane levels of saintliness, Furlong wasn’t afraid to mention the human elements. She explores the political and religious power plays that often influenced “devotion.” She also admits the possibility that many of these women suffered from what would be labeled today as mental disorders. This is done not to emphasize their humanity at the expense of their spirituality (and therefore dismiss their mystical encounters), but to allow for the complexity of their lives to be fully acknowledged. Yes, Furlong is saying, there are other theories that can be used to explain these women away but I say that the holistic women (potential imbalances and all) should be embraced.

As much as I admire that approach and as much as I value hearing the voices of women long silenced, I still struggled to get into their writings. I am not a dualist who despises the body as these women did. I also have a hard time connecting to God through mystical visions and metaphors. But I know that many people, many of you, are greatly blessed by such writing. With that I look forward to hearing your thoughts about these women and their writings. I will start us off with a few questions but I encourage anyone bring up other ideas and questions. As always anyone is welcome to participate in the discussion (even if you haven’t read the book).

Question for Discussion -

1. What is the value in reading the medieval women mystics? I grew up very low church protestant and although the anti-catholic bias has faded, there are still those who see no value at all in reading the writings of catholic nuns who lived 700+ years ago. So I would love to hear from others – why should anyone read this stuff?

2. Many of these mystics would today be diagnosed with a mental disorder and their visions, obsessions, and passions medicated away. What are your thoughts on this? Is is right to even bring up such modern medical ideas when discussing such spiritual writings? Does having a mental disorder in any way diminish the validity and value of these women and their writings? And what about today – would it be wrong to medicate away the spiritual visions someone was having?

3. A common theme in the writings of these women is to disparage themselves and the female gender. We read over and over that women are “weak creatures” “a worm” “nothing.” What is your reaction to this? Do you think these women truly believe this about themselves and why did they? Or do you think these women had to throw in those lines of abasement in order to get published (and not be burned as a heretic) in a very male dominated church?

4. What is your reaction to the concept that in order for a women to escape being ruled by a father or husband she had to make vows to a life of chastity, seclusion, and poverty? If this was the only way you could be free to serve God, could your accept those boundaries? Do you think it a good or bad thing that it is easier for a woman to serve God these days?

5. Do you identity with any of these women or their writings? Are there any that you want to read more about?

6. Julian of Norwich addresses the hardships of life, service, disease, and death in her famous refrain about complete trust in God. She writes, “And I understand no greater stature in this life than childhood, with its feebleness and lack of power and intelligence, until the time that our gracious Mother has brought us up into our Father’s bliss. and there it will truly be made known to us what he means in the sweet words when he says: All will be well, and you will see it yourself, that every kind of thing will be well.” Is this beautiful trust or an escapist crutch women in this period had to invoke to survive?

Hi All -

Time for our weekly round-up. I’m still working on the post for our monthly book discussion, and since it is the 15 of the month I’ll get that up later today. I want to point out a new link I added to the sidebar resource section. Explore Faith is a rich site full of fantasic articles about various aspects of faith. They describe their purpose as follows – ” Our sole reason for being is to provide an open, non-judgmental, private place for ANYONE interested in exploring spiritual issues. Our simple goal is to help you move along your journey in faith by providing rich and varied material about God, faith and spirituality. We celebrate diversity and respect the insights that can be gained through the wisdom of different denominations and religious traditions.” I’ve had fun browsing through the articles and wanted to point it out to you all.

Now to highlight a few posts of note from Emerging Women this past week -

Kim has some great thoughts on belief.

Jackie needs help renaming her blog after her relocation.

Jan gives a summary of the new Africa issue of Vanity Fair including it’s mention of activist EW Shayne Moore.

Sally posted a beautiful story where the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her hair is finally given a voice.

Sonja reflects on those whom we think of as untouchables.

and I questioned why people fear the label feminist.

My friend Pat has blogged about Sabbath and consumer culture, linking to an article from the Wallstreet Journal about The Decline of the Sabbath by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway. Hemingway argues that it’s hard to maintain a value of a day for rest, rejuvenationa and worship for all people when alot of people want to spend money every day of the week including the Sabbath. I would be curious to hear thoughts on how we might restore a Sabbath spirit and sanctuary from the expectation to do and spend, without becoming legalistic about the whole thing. How do our weekend spending habits impact the ability or inability of others to enjoy a Sabbath rest with friends and family? What could we as a culture and individuals do better in this regard to foster healthy, happy communities and families?

I subscribe to Internet Q & A’s by John Shelby Spong. I know to some, he is a controversial figure, but I liked the question and his answer in this weeks topic. I just thought I would share. I know we have discussed this before, but was curious if anyone’s postion has evolved even more than before?

Donna Percy from the Internet, writes:

“The idea of calling God “He” bothers me. Although I had a loving father, in my 28 years of teaching I have come in contact with many who were abusive. One year, a grandmother came in for a parent conference and revealed that her granddaughter’s father, under the guise of saying goodnight prayers with his daughter, sexually abused her for years. I wonder how this girl will be able to receive God’s message when she continually hears God referred to as “He”? Even the hymns are filled with references to “Him.” Fortunately, our current pastors use “God” — not the pronoun — and few in the church have noticed. I write on behalf of all the girls of this world who, like my beloved student, have been hurt deeply by their fathers.”

Dear Donna,
I share your concern but we have to overcome perhaps 10,000 years of training in the maleness of God. An enormous start on this consciousness raising activity has been achieved, but to erase the influence of the ages will literally take ages. Liturgies change, but ever so slowly, and most of them even now are rooted in the 13th century. The gospels reflect the patriarchal prejudice of the first century Jewish world in which they were created. Even the Ten Commandments assume that women are the property of men (thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his ox).
Polygamy is present in the Bible because women were defined as property hence the richer the man was, the more wives he could possess, as well as more sheep and cattle. My guess is that it will take another 100-200 years to remove the prejudice and stain of patriarchy from our patterns of worship. That is not said to be discouraging since that is very rapid in terms of how long sexism has been around. The fact remains that for those who are victimized by this prejudice, every day is one day too long.
This concern only dawned on me well into my adult life. I recall that when I wrote in 1973 and published in 1974 my second book, “This Hebrew Lord,” I was unknowingly still completely insensitive to male-oriented, non-inclusive language. That was also no problem for my publisher, Harper Collins. Even their style sheet was not sensitive to the need for inclusive language. When HarperCollins asked me to revise this book for a new edition in 1986, both of us were in a new place. I made approximately 3500 changes in the text of this 180 page book, 90% of which were to remove sexist language, like the references to God that referred to God as “father, he, him or his.” A wonderful early feminist woman in my congregation in Richmond, Virginia, named Holt Carlton, had begun very lovingly, but very persistently to raise my awareness to my closed-minded, unconscious, sexist prejudices. I was amazed that in the space of 12 years things about which I had no sensitivity at all had actually become offensive to me. All of us are caught up in this change whether we recognize it or not. The rate of change accelerates every year as the flow of information becomes almost instantaneous, but for sexism to be completely removed will still take three or four more generations. One reason for the slow pace is that both fundamentalist Protestant churches and Roman Catholic churches spend enormous energy opposing these changes. Those efforts will fail, but they do keep us from moving as rapidly as we might otherwise move. It is also one more sign of both the irrelevance and even the death of institutional religion, which always seems to be on the wrong side of history.
I do not urge you to be patient. I urge you, rather, to be loud in your complaints until the consciousness of all people becomes aware of the power of language.
God is not a father or a mother. Patriarchy has defined God for thousands of years, but patriarchy is now dying.
Thanks are due to people like you for being part of its death.
– John Shelby Spong

I haven’t posted in while, but I’ve been lurking on this wonderful blog! I especially like the conversation on gender! Very interesting and a lot of great perspectives.

What do you ladies think about a job opportunity that would work in a Spiritual setting for ALL religons? The position would require a non-bias approach as well as an attitude that all religions are equal and right.

If you were considering this type of position, as an emerging Christian, what would excite you? What would give cause for concern? What do you think some of the challenges would be?

looking forward to reading your thoughts!

I recently got an email from an EW reader who wrote -

I am a graduate student in English and the wife of a campus minister … We have a baby boy who is 5 months old. We’ve been thinking about how to teach him about Jesus (of course) and I’ve been looking for children’s books. I am having a difficult time finding good books for children, and I’m wondering if you might have any recommendations. Perhaps this could be a good post on the blog. Many of the books I find portray Jesus as a white man or assign stereotypical roles to women and men. I would also love to teach him to pray for children in poverty, and I can’t seem to find any books on this!

So I contributed my $.02 -

I’m with you on the children’s books thing. So many that I find (or have been given to me) are just awful. I’ve yet to find any good Jesus books for kids, but there are a number of decent spirituality books out there. Some of my favorites include -

The Lord’s Prayer and The Twenty-third Psalm – by Tim Ladwig (uses the familiar words with fantastic artwork that portrays inner-city life)

and books from the Early Childhood Spirituality series like – Where is God?, What is God’s Name?, and How Does God Make Things Happen? (most by Laurence Kushner or Sandy Eisenburg Sasso). These books are very multicultural and focus on love and grace. They have full picture books and board book varieties (a necessity with my toddler).

and (although they are not “Christian” – by label, not intent) I like the values taught in the Todd Parr line of books like The Peace Book and The Feelings Book. (Emma especially like the idea of peace being enough pizza in the world for everyone, she’s two)

and I think they are out of print, but the allegorical stories in The Tales of the Kingdom series by David and Karen Mains have been a favorite of mine since I was a kid.

But I would love to find “bible” stories that aren’t warped in some way. That don’t change the story drastically to be suitable for kids, that don’t reduce scripture to a plithy fable, or that don’t teach individualistic “me” centered theology.

So I present the question here to the diverse community that meanders to this blog. What do you recommend?