Emerging Women

“Please God, help me.”

It’s a desperate plea from an unlikely source, Hollywood screenwriter and “bad boy” legend Joe Eszterhas. Widely known as “America’s king of sex and violence” and a “Machiavellian opportunist,” Esterhas’ monikers include: “the cocaine cowboy. The weed eater. The tequila king.” He’s the “Hollywood animal” who wrote Basic Instinct, Jagged Edge, Jade, Showgirls, Flashdance, and screenplay for sixteen films that made more than a billion dollars at the box office.

With a professional resumes that reads like a rap sheet of raunch, Eszterhas suddenly finds himself recovering from larynx surgery and facing down throat cancer. He cries out to the God he shunned, mocked, and reviled all his life and begs for mercy. Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith is the startling, gritty, astonishing story of how God heard a “bad boy’s” prayer and rescued Eszterhas from himself. He writes, “God saved me… from me.” (p. 8).

“I was praying,” begins Eszterhas in this riveting first-person narrative. “Asking. Begging. For help. Begging God to help me. And I thought to myself: Me? Asking God? Begging God? Praying? I hadn’t even thought about God since I was a boy, yet I was listening to myself begging him for help over and over again as I moan in pain.”

Crossbearer is the story of one man’s simple, childlike faith, and the ever-faithful Father who heard his plea and changed Eszterhas’ life. Apparently repudiating his role in writing the kinds of movies and books that made him famous, Eszterhas’ new passion is telling “the world about You – about how You changed my life and saved me – even if telling the world destroys my Hollywood career.” (p. 21) He writes, “… for the first time in my life, I gave up all control. I put my life in God’s hands. God was in control – my life was up to His will, not mine… I thanked God for freeing me, for loving me so much that He was willing to take over my life.” This is the backdrop upon which this no-punches-pulled book is painted.

Crossbearer is divided into two parts: Faith and Hope. Both are prefaced with Scripture from Romans. There are no chapters or chapter headings. Topics and soliloquies are set off by paragraph breaks, skillfully woven into a seamless garment of masterful wordsmithing. This technique maintains Crossbearer’s whooshing momentum, deftly weaving events, personalities, perceptions, observations and prayers from one page to the next into an inimitable, compelling work.

Tightly written with a crisp, gotta-know-what-happens-next, page turner appeal, the style is terse, almost brutal in its “take-no-prisoners, no-nonsense” tone. No gilded lilies or satin and lace here. No ornamental or ostentatious language. Plain-spoken and direct, Eszterhas “tells it like it is” – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Portions may be categorized as “earthy” or “R-rated” (caveat emptor) and may not be appropriate for gentle readers. Some may find certain pages offensive. But for those who’ve been believers for years or may be lulled or dulled into a safe, semi-somnambulant faith, Crossbearer is a dash of cold water in the face. It reminds the reader of what it means to become a new creation in Christ, and chronicles the unfathomable riches of grace in terms that are sometimes startling, unconventional, maybe even eccentric – all “in living Technicolor.”

Eszterhas’ narrative runs the gamut from religious to socio-political. He comments on Mel Gibson and The Passion of the Christ, “gender prejudice” in the Catholic church, clergy celibacy and sex scandals, abortion, gay marriage, “church neighbors,” his anti-smoking campaign (“Join Joe”), “baseball religion,” his early years as a Hungarian refugee, cancer, anti-Semitism, forgiveness, miracles, and God’s love. That’s just for starters. Eszterhas’ new-found faith causes many Hollywood insiders to consider him nuts. “I am not born again…” he insists (p. 47), “I have a new relationship with God.”

The guffawing, jaw-dropping Hollywood response doesn’t bother – or slow down – Eszterhas in the least. A self-described “captive Catholic,” Eszterhas says of a Catholic festival he participates in, “I’d often been stoned on booze in my life and on more substances than I cared to remember, but I’d never been this high before. Stone sober. High on God.” (p. 213). Another example:

“I wasn’t raising hell anymore. I was raising a cross instead of raising hell. … It was like I had always had a hole in my heart that was finally filled. There was a joy in my heart that had never been there, a joy that contained an inner peace I had never known but had self-destructively always been seeking.” (p. 218)

Intermingled with the rough edges and occasional raw language is a surprising tenderness and vulnerability. This is evident as Eszterhas describes his devotion to his wife, Naomi, and their four sons, his daughter Susie, and his grand children. We see it again in his relationship with his priest at Holy Angels Roman Catholic Church, Father Dan, Deacon “Cheeze-us” Fred, his compassion toward a struggling screenplay writer, Vince, other cancer patients, and many others. A regular parishioner at Holy Angels in Ohio, Eszterhas wears Rolling Stones T-shirts and Harley Davidson jeans to Mass. He carries the cross from vestibule to altar each Sunday. His childlike faith is boundless, joyful, astonishing, and somehow… refreshing.

From Hollywood animal to crossbearer. Talk about “amazing grace.”

Written by Kristine

By Kim Wilkens

Rebellion permeates all aspects of human life. It originates from the subconscious will of mankind not to surrender to destructive forces. But rebelling is not the same as defining a cause that would improve the quality of human life, or formulating a constructive program of action. Marching in a parade is easier than blazing a trail through a forest or creating a new Jerusalem. Daumier’s hero looks like many rebels in our midst. He is fighting against evil rather than for a well-defined cause. Like most of us, he is a rebel without a program.4
— René Dubos

I’ve always had a rebellious nature. I don’t think it’s riotous or boisterous; it’s more driven and determined. My primary cause has been feminism. My earliest memory of this rebellion was at some extended family gathering, probably Thanksgiving or Christmas. At the end of the meal, I noticed the women go into the kitchen and the men go to the living room. That didn’t seem right to me, so I announced that I was not going to the help in the kitchen, I’d hang out with the guys instead. And as I’ve heard my mother say to me on many occasions the response I got was, “Where do you get these ideas?”

Well, she’s not completely blameless. Even though she did a majority of the domestic chores and actually claimed to enjoy cleaning — “it’s therapeutic,” she said — my mom also balanced being a stay-at-home mom with a part-time nursing career (working the late shift). She was on the cutting edge of childbirth education, bringing couples into our home for Lamaze training when other facilities were not available or more likely not ready to support this radical new approach to childbirth.

My feminist rebellion energized me to excel academically. It droveme into the male-dominated field of computer science. It pushed me up the corporate ladder. It alienated me from religion. Sue Monk Kidd in The Dance of the Dissident Daughter gives a very good description of what this alienation feels like:

A girl, forming her identity also experiences herself missing from pronouns in scripture, hymns, and prayers. And most of all, as long as God “himself” is exclusively male, she will experience the otherness,the lessness, of herself; all the pious talk in the world about females being equal to males will fail to compute in the deeper places inside her.

For several years, I was humming along quite nicely in my feminist cause, but then I had a child, left corporate America, turned forty and had a huge identity crisis. I had done well in a man’s world, but now I found myself in the world of motherhood. How was I supposed to excel at something I had no training for? What was happening to my feminist agenda? I thought I was helping to pave the way for the women after me to be treated as equals, but instead I was just playing by the rules of corporate America and they no longer seemed adequate for my life. I felt like a rebel without a clue. I needed to redefine the rules for living my life.

First, I tried finding balance. I searched for the magical formula that would give me just the right balance between family-life, career-life, community-life, volunteer-life and church-life. It felt like a juggling act and when I would get too much of one and not enough of the others, I started feeling out of control and unbalanced. I would lose track of some of the balls. I would have to regroup and try to figure out the formula again. Usually the new formula worked for a time, it was fresh and it was fun and exhilarating! But I would end up in a cycle of trying to arrange the balls just so, putting them up in the air, and juggling them for a while until I started to lose some of them. This strategy for living wasn’t working either.

Then I heard an interview on NPR with a soldier in Iraq. He said he had to compartmentalize his soldier-life and his home-life. He gave an example of a cell phone conversation with his wife: She’s talking about her “bad” day with the kids and he’s thinking about his “bad” day cleaning up dead bodies. Compartmentalization was necessary for him to focus on the task at hand or he might get shot. But the cost is high as it wreaks havoc on relationships because the whole person is never completely present.

It struck me that this is what I’ve been doing. I hadn’t been thinking of it as compartmentalization, but as I was performing my juggling act, I was really assigning out pieces of myself to get the tasks done. When I was working on one task, another part of me was usually occupied with lists that need to be completed for other tasks. I was rarely wholly involved with the task or relationship or situation at hand.

My new cause is wholeness. “There is nothing more important than being fully where we are, in the plain ordinary events, day in and day out. I think women understand that we create change as we live out the experiences of our souls in the common acts of life.” Where I used to be like Martha, worried and distracted, I am trying to be more like Mary, taking time to learn about Jesus (Luke 10:38-42).

I find my new cause still has room for the frustration I feel toward gender issues found in many religious institutions. Instead of fighting against the male/female stereotypes that have kept me from moving forward in my faith, I feel that God wants me to walk humbly through these human failures and acknowledge them. I believe that God can reorient the whole world from one of inequality to one of equality and I believe God wants you and me to help.

Kim is a daughter, sister, wife, mom, aunt, friend, geek, activist, volunteer, mentor, student, teacher, postmodern, seeker, writer, child of God. She and her dad have recently co-authored the book, Un-American Activities: Countercultural Themes in Christianity. This awakening is from Kim’s response to her dad’s chapter on “The Mothering Vocation of God.”

By Jessica Coblentz

I recently received a copy of This I Believe, a printed collection of essays from the famous radio show series of the same name. Most nights I read a few of the 2-3 page essays, slowly making my way through the volume. A different author composed each essay—some are famous people like Albert Einstein, and some are more ordinary people like you and I. All of them respond to the deceptively simple question, “What do you believe?”

What would I write in my This I Believe composition? This question confronts me every time I close the book before falling asleep in bed. And I have awoken in the middle of the night with answers to this question. When they strike me, I roll over and squint my eyes through the darkness to scribble a few words on the inside cover of my book before the words leave me.

“I believe your story.” This is the first statement of the short list that has formed there. I’ve been returning to it over and over again since it hit the page. And this phrase is about what I believe as much as it is about the significance of the entire This I Believe project itself. I believe that beliefs—the deepest truths and convictions of people’s lives—they don’t just appear out of thin air. On the contrary, I believe we all have stories—reasons, events, influential encounters, messy narratives—upon which the foundational truths of our lives are built. If we ask people to recount the story of the “why” behind the “what” of their beliefs, and if we take them seriously when they do, there are profound consequences.

For one thing, I have found that it is much more difficult to patronize, or oversimplify, or quickly dismiss someone’s beliefs once they have situated those beliefs within an authentic narrative of their lives. Even when I really disagree with someone’s convictions, I am more reasonable in my disagreement when we have discussed our conflicting views within the context of our experiences. I am less likely to mistreat an adversary once I have realized that his or her beliefs are rooted in assertions derived from existentially significant experiences, just like mine. The “why’s” behind people’s stories soften my heart in a good way.

I think I came to believe in other people’s stories much more when I learned the power of telling my own. There is a profound sense of dignity accompanies the process of presenting oneself to another person, and feeling heard. Really heard. What’s more, the process of telling my story, as I do in small ways all the time on this blog, compels me to take ownership of my complex motives and subsequent actions in everyday life. I believe in giving other people the opportunity to experience this. I do that by taking seriously their lives, their stories, their reasons “why.”

Articulating my belief in the power of one’s story has me reflecting on how often I actually make time to hear people. I want to hear people more. I want to be changed and challenged by their stories. I need to stop and ask and listen more.

Jessica Coblentz is a graduate of Santa Clara University and has worked in Catholic young adult ministry. She is currently involved in graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School. This post originally appeared on her personal blog, jessicacoblentz.com.

By Jessica Glaser

Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl
By Susan Campbell
Beacon Press, 2009

I first spotted the book ‘Dating Jesus’ on a friend’s list of books she was currently reading on her blog. I had a chuckle, as about a half a year ago I had started countering growing questions of “So when will you be getting married?” with answers of “When Jesus comes back. I’ll be a bride of Christ.” With that in my head, I asked if I could borrow it when she was finished, and she generously provided.

The book doesn’t give tips on dating your favorite resurrected deity, but instead covers most of what Campbell can remember from her childhood up until, roughly, her graduation from high school. Her life was defined by her participation in the fundamentalist church of Christ in Missouri, into which her family as inducted by her new stepfather. She begins by discussing her immersion baptism at the age of 13 (which had to be done over, in her mind, because there was an air bubble that ruined the whole process the first time), then goes back earlier to her vague memories of being in a Christmas pageant as a little girl in a different church, in stark contrast to the church of Christ, which had no pageants or even a piano in the sanctuary due to some scriptural sticking point.

Between discussions of baseball, the Bible, sexism in the church, and odd expressions of fundamentalist suppression, one gets the impression that this would have been a fairly grim childhood had it not been for Campbell’s own joie de vivre, spunk, and intelligence. She rewrites the stories of women in the Bible when she is dissatisfied with their scriptural treatment (an early fanfiction writer! A woman after my own heart!), but this early gift of writing and hermeneutics is quashed by her stepfather when he finds out, as she should not change one “jot or tittle” of the original scripture. She knows her Bible backward and forward, knows Jesus inside and out, and chafes at the way her church will not let her use her knowledge to teach Sunday school because a girl cannot teach boys past a certain age, or at the way she is punished for asking too many questions. She runs into the same problems that St Paul and Martin Luther did before her: she cannot follow all the rules all the time, even though she really wants to and is really trying. Yet she is not saved by grace in a church where every law must be followed to the letter, and where her physical embodiment (and all the disadvantages conferred thereof) trumps the power of her mind every time.

Sprinkled throughout the narrative are her stories of trying to become equal in the realm of sports in the days prior to and just after Title IX, rounding out the development of her mindset in which fair play is important and embodiment is not something to be ashamed of. Also included is her growing awareness of the world of boys and dating, but her by and large rejection of both due to her fears regarding her salvation and the restrictions of her church and parents (hence the “dating Jesus”). A big chunk of the book isn’t personal at all, but an exploration of the history of feminist theology and the women’s movement in the United States. She also shows the intertangled roots of the evangelical movement, the temperance movement, and the first wave feminist movement before they split off. The way she connects the desire for social justice and a better society with the desire for equality between men and women outside and inside the church is an important and key missing piece, I feel, that has been lost in discussions of women’s role in modern Christianity. My mother is fond of saying if it wasn’t for women, there wouldn’t BE a Christian church. Campbell is arguing something similar in her efforts to remind us reclaim our own history.

My primary qualms with this book don’t have to do with the subject matter at all, but the way we see her go from high school student filled with self-protective notions about purity and love to a fully grown, unchurched adult with liberal leanings. There is no discussion of the conversion process, or the first time she is able to break down her barriers about what she thinks love should be, or the first time she owns herself as a woman shedding an oppressive past. It’s a little disjointed. Perhaps she isn’t comfortable talking about it, and that’s understandable. A little more of a hint might have been useful, though.

At the end, she talks about how she is “haunted” by her fundamentalist past, and how she and her brother feel that fundamentalism “broke off” inside of them; they were pierced by this brutal arrow, and have never been able to fully heal from that experience. It reminds me of why I am troubled by fundamentalism, with its dedication to a set of beliefs with no discernment regarding them at the cost of Christ’s message and actual living people.

In spite of some gaps in the narrative, I heartily recommend this book to people looking for humor, knowledge of Christian hits and misses, American history, and a love note to the fearless little kid that used to live inside all of us.

Jessica Glaser is a fierce mainline/emergent feminist affiliated with University Park United Methodist Church and House For All Sinners and Saints in Denver. Her writings can be found at http://aredhel72.blogspot.com/.

A member of our Emerging Women community, Kristine Lowder, has a new book out, an historical novel set in 1st century Palestine called Akeldama.

She writes -

“Step into the pages of Akeldama, my historical novel of Faith.  Meet beautiful Yo-hannah, whose tortured past has imprisoned her body and heart.  Walk in the stooped steps of Veronica, whose mysterious malady has made her ceremonially unclean.  Thirst for living water with a half-breed whose checkered past is about to catch up with her.

Thrown together from different dead-ends, each woman seeks answers to her own desperation.  Will Yo-hannah find the peace she craves?  Can an unclean woman receive a touch of mercy?  Where can a despised half-breed go to be made whole?  And what about old Hadessa, whose enigmatic past is as mysterious as the young rabbi from Nazareth who crosses each woman’s path?

Each woman’s life and future hinges on the Nazarene’s answer to  one question: who are you?”

“I have read only a few Christian novels worthy of the name.  My favorite Christian authors are C.S. Lewis, Stephen R. Lawhead, Joseph F. Girzone, and now Kristine Lowder.  I must tell you that her book, Akelada, touched me so deeply that I cried like a baby as I read the final chapter.  Yes, the final chapter is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ – not a new subject.  But something in her telling of it blessed me with joy, gratitude, awe, and wonder.  I cannot remember a time when I wanted to re-read a book as soon as I finished it.  Treat yourself to a great book!
- William C. Oakes, Senior Pastor, Living Stones Fellowship, Warrens, Wisconsin

Click Here To Order

Naomi Wolf recently had a fascinating piece in The Washington Post about “Who Won Feminism?” In essence it was a review of Jennifer Scanlon’s book Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan). The article is itself a glimpse at the differences between second and third wave feminism. Or more accurately, the opposition between “intellectual, ideological, group-oriented feminism against Brown’s pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, girl-power style.” And it is this individualistic third wave feminism that the article proclaims as the winner. As the author writes, “The stereotype of feminists as asexual, hirsute Amazons in Birkenstocks that has reigned on campus for the past two decades has been replaced by a breezy vision of hip, smart young women.” But as Wolf points out, both waves have their issues. While second wave feminism was too serious, intellectual, white, and tended towards anti-male tendencies, the third wave feminism lacks substance. Merely proclaiming girl power and being self-fulfilled do little to change the world. Wolf writes – “feminists are in danger if we don’t know our history, and a saucy tattoo and a condom do not a revolution make.” She calls for a synthesis of the two waves – a third way between the personal and the political aspects of feminism.

Having become a feminist, ironically enough, through my faith, this article intrigued me. There are aspects of both second and third wave feminism that I name and claim (so to speak), but I am not at home in either world. And given that the intellectual arguments of second wave feminists are just now being heard within certain parts of the church, which then attacks them as the worst form of depraved third wave feminism, this whole discussion exists on a different level for those of us within the church. I mean there are still men in the church who argue that women aren’t made in the image of God or that we have no identity apart from the headship of a male. It’s hard to argue that empowering women in the church will make us too individualistic when we still have our identity denied in certain sectors.

But I wonder if that very alienation from the conversation that Christian feminists face places us in the perfect spot to forge this third way? Can we let our faith that cares for justice and ending oppression temper both the anger and apathy of second and third wave feminism? We can take the good from the second wave that brings freedom and hope to the oppressed while rejecting their denial of the body and the joys of family. We can as image bearers learn from the third wave to be comfortable in our skin while not using it to humiliate and harm others. We who are are accustomed to personal devotions and Kingdom work can step right into a life-affirming feminism that is both personal and political.

Perhaps if we stop being afraid of the word, Christian feminists can define the future of the movement – redeeming and restoring into a timely and powerful force for good.

Update – The contest has ended and congrats to Tracy our winner!

So Caryn Dahlstrand Rivadeneira, the author of the fantastic new book Mama’s Got a Fake ID: How to Reveal the Real You Behind All That Mom, has offered to let me do a giveaway of her book here. That means all you cool people have a chance to win a FREE copy of what I think is one of the best books on parenting I have ever read.

I reviewed the book here recently – but what I love about it (besides its honesty and humor) is how it admits lies fed to moms and encourages us to live into the person God created us to be – even as a mom. It’s a great resource for women to help us not be defined by others and their expectations of us. And this book isn’t just for moms – but is a good perspective on parenting for dads, grandparents, pastors, teachers, and whoever might encounter parents regularly.

So if you would like to win a copy just leave a comment here by the end of Sunday April 12. One of the comments will then be selected (in a super secret scientific system created by my four year old) as the lucky winner. And if you would rather not just leave a “hi, I want a book” comment, I invite you share what you think are some of the identity struggles parents face these days.

Happy commenting, and good luck.

And if you are really observant, or just really want to increase your chances of winning the book, you’ll notice that we have the same offer up at both the Emerging Parents and my blog onehandclapping.