Emerging Women

By Renee Hixson

It was a rainy day. I needed to wash clothes, clean the house and prepare a lesson for Sunday school. But I just wanted to crawl in bed, pull the covers over my head and fall asleep. At least it would give me a little break from the crazy mess my life had become. No matter how hard I tried I could not keep the house clean enough for all the people that dropped by throughout the day, train my kids well enough to impress the congregation of the church where my husband worked, or network cleverly enough to fulfill my role as a pastor’s wife. I was a failure. That was all I would ever be.

“Mom, we got books overdue,” one of my kids tugged at my arm as I shoved a large plastic dump truck out of the way and picked a few dirty cereal bowls off the table, “Can we go to the library?”

“Why not,” I muttered and grabbed my coat. After leaving instructions to my oldest child to take care of his little brother we left the apartment and headed to the library.

“Somebody’s hurt,” my son gasped when the wail of a siren came from somewhere behind us. My son pressed his chest against his seatbelt to get a better look at the ambulance that raced by seconds later.

“They’ll be O.K., right?” He asked when the rescue vehicle disappeared into traffic. All he wanted to know was a medical prognosis for an unknown individual suffering from an unknown trauma for an unknown reason. My job was to provide the answer “yes” because I was Mom and somehow it was in my job description to make “everything beautiful”. Another failure. But, I had to try.

“If God cares for sparrows…” I sputtered in my best this-is-from-the-Holy-Bible-but-I-will-dumb-it-down-for-you voice, “You know…those…um…scrawny little birds that poop all over the sidewalk…he must really love every little boy and girl…”

In the middle of this pitiful theological dissertation my son pointed to a cluster of weathered apartment units complete with sagging swing sets and scattered toys.

“Look,” he squealed, “that sign says, ‘Pets Welcome’.”

I glanced at the two words carved on a wooden sign in front of the complex and braced for a passionate plea for a family pet. At least it would an easier conversation to maneuver than an inquiry into the medical state of an unknown person in speeding vehicle.

I was wrong.

“I am so glad,” my son said as the sign receded in the distance, “there is a place for pets that have no home.”

“Not…exactly,” I stalled as I scrambled for an answer that would not totally destroy his joy over the kindness of strangers in weathered apartment units, “It’s for pet owners who want to move in.”

Too late. My imagination was captivated. Tired, lonely pets lining up in front of the co-op for comfort and sustenance. Little puppies that’d been abandoned, cats on their own, maybe even a gerbil or two could wander by and find a welcoming shelter from the cold, cruel world.

“Wouldn’t mind checking one out for myself,” I thought as I pondered the mangy, flea bitten core of my being. I felt like a stray dog in the world of the spirit, even though I had an owner. God was my father. Where was He now?

I know. I know. The Sunday school teachers of my childhood adopted “God is everywhere,” as their battle cry while they fought for space in children’s minds to store eternal truth. I had witnessed enough flannel graph lessons to know that God was too big to huddle in the confines of a temple made of stone, wood or any other material. He swelled the ocean waves, echoed through the mountains and gently rustled through the meadows in the early morning sun.

My struggle was not with His omnipresence but with my unworthiness to be in His world. I was a shy kid growing up, practically invisible. As an adult, my peers looked right through me in search of friendship with people of consequence, movers and shakers in confusing world of spiritual greatness.

After dumping our overdue books off at the Public Library I drove back home. The chaos of a tiny apartment filled with three other kids had not disappeared but a brought something back with me, something tiny and precious. It was a glimmer of truth no bigger than a thought but I held on to it. I still hold onto it today. God delights in his children not because they are skinny, or clever or careful to follow all the rules. He loves the broken, the bruised and the strays. His love is untamed and unending. It takes my breath away.

Renee Hixson is a mom, wife, and former pastor’s kid. She’s currently on a journey making her way back to the truth and often finds direction in the innocence of her own children.

by Jemila Kwon

“One. Trillion. Dollars.”

TIME says that’s Obama’s take on what we are called to invest to kick-start the U.S. economy.

On Tuesday Barack Obama will take the next step in expressing his vision for this country and inviting us to celebrate and invest in that vision. And when the dude says invest, he is talking about your heart, your mind and yes your your share in one trillion dollars. It will be the inaguration of a ginormous investment. Invest almost enough and you may get modest improvements or even continued loss…Invest fully and appropriately to the situation and you may live to see a fabulous rising of what was dead (can we say that last 8 years!) into new life.

Like, can you imagine a half-dead Jesus limping down off the cross?

Invest Fully and something may come alive in you that was dead before. What could it be?

What is the spirit inviting you to inagurate in your life? What investment would it take to kick-start your Life?

What’s state of the union between you and Spirit like in your inner economy: downturn or upturn? What would make YOU a full-out expression of the Creator’s greatness as you look toward inagurating a new day in our country’s history and a new day in the living herstory of God’s Life in YOU?

Happy Inaguration Ladies (and you nice guys out there who like EW),

Love & Peace,
Jemila K

www.leapcoachinc.com

I came across some writing about ecopsychology which I would like to share:

“An individual’s harmon with his or her ‘own deep self’ requires not merely a journey to the interior but a harmonizing with the environmental world.” (James Hillman, quoted in Parenting with Spirit by Jane Bartlett).

I was invibing this idea and imagining that the same is true of our spiritual selves, and not only our psychological selves. We are created from God, from the stuff the earth. What connects us to the earth connects us to our ‘own deep self,’ and also to the One from Whom all created essence flows and vibrates its creational songs, crying out the Joy! of Being. What’s connecting you to you to the earth, to your ‘own deep self’ and to the One, like you and I, who entered the created order through a natural mother and cried, “I am here!”?

The Chocolate Cake Sutra, by Geri Larkin, is a fun and nuanced look into the lifestyle and actions that lead to a “Sweet Life.” Larkin writes as a Jesus-friendly Buddhist and her prescriptions sound familiarly scented not only with “Sweet Life,” but with the Abundant Life offered when we live in harmony with the Spirit and act in ways that incarnate the kingdom of God.

You can find a review here .

The prologue and introduction are full of fodder for growth and an interchange of ideas. Let’s start with the story Larkin tells of a “young man named Eugene who was desperate to find a truly holy person with whom he could study.” After much searching, Eugene eventually happens upon a guy in woods who works for a hot-shot holy woman called Jaya, who has an incredible reputation for what she can do for her students’ spirituality. It takes Eugene taking three years and many near-death experiences to even gain admittance into Jaya’s complex, where he is instructed to wait in the shrine room. Eugene is told it won’t be long before Jaya is able to meet with him.

So Eugene waits. But he really has to pee.

“‘I have to go to the bathroom,’” Eugene says to Jaya’s assistant.
“‘You have to stay in the shrine room.’”

Eugene sure waits his best, and at last, hours later, he aims at a corner of the shrine room and pees like nobody’s business, whereupon he is dragged away by two acolytes, with the largest bellowing,

“‘How dare you!’”

“‘You show me a place that isn’t holy, and I’ll pee there!’”

“‘He stays’.”

“It was Jaya.”

1. What is your reaction to this approach to the holy?
2. What can communities of Christian disciples learn from this story that can be applied to worship?

In her introduction, Larkin isn’t afraid to deal a significant blow (or is it constructive criticism?) to her celebrity crush, on a serious count of spiritual arrogance.

Larkin writes, “The Interview was about a movie he had just directed. It was about Jesus Christ. As a card-carrying Buddhist, I have have always been moved to tears by the last hours of Jesus. Even as I write, I can barely fathom the depth of love and compassion for the people harming him. It is the best love story ever.” Larkin goes on to describe the situation that sparked her accusation:

My crush was responding to criticisms of his interpretation of the story…As I remember it, the interviewer asked how he would respond to someone criticizing his film.
A pause. ‘I’d forgive them.’
Oh, no. The arrogance in his voice told me he had it wrong. It was that ‘I’m-better-than-you tone that gives me the goose bumps because it’s the same tone that says ‘You don’t get God because he’s ours.’

3. What is it like for you to read about a non-Christian pouring her heart out over her love of Jesus? What feelings and ideas come up for you?

4. What is your sensibility about what differentiates self-perceived spiritual accuracy from self-deceived spiritual pride?

5. What’s your favorite story or quote in the book so far?

As some of you may imagine, one of the most frequent search engine terms that bring readers to my blog is the “sensuous”+”posted in blog”. I clicked on this search this morning, and found a daisy chain of beautiful thoughts which I will share with you today.

The first link that caught my eye was “God’s Sensuous Prescence“. Y’all know, I am all about God and all about sensuous, so of course I was curious. This beautiful article is what I found:

“Men had turned from the contemplation of God above, and were looking Him in the opposite direction, down among created things and things of sense. The Saviour of us all, the Word of God, in His great love took to Himself a body and moved as Man among men, meeting their senses, so to speak, half way. He became Himself an object for the senses, so that those who were seeking God in sensible things might apprehend the Father through the works which He, the Word of God, did in the body.”

At first glance this sounded at once beautiful and potentially sacreligious. Because when my woman-who-was-sexually-abused brain hears the words “an object for the senses”, I recoil. But there was that beautiful phrase “in His great love took to Himself a body” and I believe that lock, stock and barrell, so I deliberately let go of my CSA thoughts and took another closer look. And what I saw astounded me with it’s beauty.

I visualized my beloved Jesus extending his hand to Thomas, such a human loving inclusive gesture all by itself, and then he speaks “don’t believe it’s really me? Touch me. it’s me, Thomas. Touch me, and remember all the many other times you touched my hand and were comforted. It’s me. really. Touch me, and believe.”

Of course, by then, poignant tears had gathered in my eyes and I was on board with the phrase “He became Himself an object for the senses.” Oh yes he did. And there’s my favorite name for Jesus too, Himself. A gift with purchase. Confirmation.

I wanted to hear more, so I clicked on the link provided by the blog author Eric Daryl Meyer (shown here with he and his wife. look at them! aren’t they precious?)

This took me to Faith and Theology, a guest post by Oliver Davies. And what a treasure trove I found there!

Get a load of this!

“We constantly treat Christianity as though it were a philosophy or a work of literature (I am not against philosophy or literature) rather than a disclosure to practical intellect which calls us into the radical freedom of action in and for Christ in the world (i.e. the ascended, wounded and glorified Christ). Faith is faith in Christ who acts rather than thinks.”

Seriously, y’all. I don’t wanna just be smarter. I wanna be CHANGED.

Wait, there’s more.

Instead of allowing ourselves to be opened up to the revelation of Christ in the world, communicated through command at work through the senses and the particularity of space and time events (“the command of grace”, in Janz’s phrase), we focus on the mind as the place of insight, generativity and meaning.

I’ll tell you what this means to me. All my life, up until the point of my spiritual and sexual awakening, I thought it was true “Spirit good, mind good, body bad.” I really did. As hard to believe as these words sound now, coming from from a woman who experiences God in every orgasm and feels the sweet nearness of the Spirit in every cool breeze on my sweaty face when I run, I used to really believe that. The condition of my heart, the condition of my marriage, the quality of how despised or cherished my sexuality was to me is a living lab test of what those ideas look like in behavior. When I believed my body was bad and my mind was good, I shrank from every touch from my husband and generally rolled my eyes at the depravity of man every time he got an erection. I’m not proud to admit it, but that was my reality. Oh but I was a good Christian girl who “selflessly ministered to her husband” by laying there and taking it. What a martyr! Not even good enough to be called a real martyr either, like Jim Elliot or the first disciple to be stoned to death, because I was laying down and dying for a cause that was contrary to scripture and so FAR from the life of joy God had called me to! What a senseless wasteful non-God-honoring martyr.

But you know my Jesus, he loves us just as we are and loves us too much to leave us that way. Read on.

“And here the third problem arises which follows from the first two: we have lost an understanding of the way we can and should access and be attentive to the presence of Christ in this way. We constantly bypass with mind the very place in which he is present for us in the here and now, which is to do with the senses and with command, since this is a place where the mind does not necessarily want to go.”

Yes! Yes! Yes! I used to do that all the time, and folks, I’ll tell you why. Because of my own sin and the sin of others, my senses were associated for me with sensations of pain, emotions of pain, shame, doubt, fear, self-loathing and just an overall sense of “ugh get me outta here”. Maybe some of you can relate.

But here’s the good part. Jesus still lives. And His Lordship in the nitty gritty details of our lives is the way we are to live not just as prescription (take 2 pills and call me in the morning) but as invitation. Invitation to the path to healing we are walk (come walk with me this way my darling and let me heal you, my love). That’s my paraphrase and I paraphrase it that way because I have lived it that way. This is the path I’ve been walking for 16 years.

Oliver Davies puts it this way:

“Getting it” entails seeing that incarnational revelation still comes to us through the senses (“Jesus still lives, and his Lordship in the particularity of our lives is the mode for us of that life“), and that the senses cannot be absorbed without remainder into mind. Thus ascension allows that our faith in Christ can be far closer to that of the apostles than we might ordinarily admit, not on our own account, but on account of the nature of the transformation effected in Christ. Doctrinally (theologically) and anthropologically (philosophically) we have lost the tools and practices which help us to “recognise” him in his transformed state in the everyday reality of our lives where he comes to meet us.

As so often happens in my reading since the internet, I connected the dots between three unrelated poets and writers that from my point of view seem tailor made for each other. On one hand we have these brilliant intellectuals—theology professor no less!— saying in essence, “Excuse me, everybody. Something precious has been lost. And I’m going to do my darndest to show you what and how and show you why and more importantly, show you how to get it back.”

For as I read the scholarly article, I remembered the last time—the only time—I’ve heard a scholar talk about these ideas. It was when I heard Christopher West speak about Theology of the Body at a Created and Redeemed Seminar. I remember Christopher’s main point being “Jesus had a real body and our bodies are important because God Almighty thought to inhabit one so we should believe our body is important too and inhabit it well and with truth and honor.” That is my paraphrase after attending the 7 hour seminar. (By the way, I do not believe that using birth control violates this cherished concept, since I believe any lovemaking between a husband and wife has the fruit of pleasure and oneness if not the fruit of children) So first as I’m reading, I’m reminded of Theology of the Body.

And then, I’m reminded of the song I sang in church last week. The song that so grounded me and comforted me by reminding me that every area of my life matters to God and is inhabited by God. The song that gave me opportunity to respond to this newfound hope and comfort by pouring our my adoration upon Jesus, or as we say in the South, “singin’ my little heart out”. Listen to this!

God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping

God in my resting
there in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

God in my hoping
there in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
there in my breathing
God in my hurting
God in my healing

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me
the hope of glory
you are everything

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me
the hope of glory
be my everything

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything

God in my hoping
there in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting

God in my laughing
there in my breathing
God in my hurting
God in my healing

be my everything
be my everything
be my everything
you are everything

So yes, beloved friends, our bodies matter. They matter to Jesus too, as he—by living in us—inhabits our bodies every single day. And everything we do in these bodies matters very VERY much! If it’s sin that we’re doing with our bodies—slapping our children, abandoning our husbands in the marriage bed, or using drugs or food or the absence of food to numb our aching hearts— we need grace and healing to get to the root of that sin and let Jesus heal us. And if it’s not sin that we’re doing with our bodies—laying our cool hand on our child’s fevered brow, welcoming our husbands and drawing them into our body with passion and tenderness, or caring for and cherishing our bodies in beautiful small ways like eating with gratitude in an attitude of self-care—then we are in the acts of doing these very things, bringing the hands and love of Christ into our world, which is a humbling, immensely gorgeous thing to think about.

Isn’t it?

Love,
SW

Epilogue:
Parenting
Once in the course of my life as a mother I lost my temper and slapped one of my children. It was listed as a sin in the article and also listed as a sin I am living in active repentance of. I don’t refuse my husband anymore or do emotional eating anymore either. I don’t believe there’s a mother alive that hasn’t lost her temper and slapped her child once or been sorely tempted to do so. But my experience of losing my temper like that disturbed me enough that I took myself to a licensed marriage and family therapist and learned some better parenting strategies. I also took my child to a child therapist and got some treatment for them and we’re all doing much better on that regard. The licensed marriage and family therapist who treated me counseled me that my unresolved guilt over slapping my child that one time was far harmful to my effectiveness as a parent than the slap itself because that guilt gave me a propensity to cave into their demands and not keep firm loving boundaries. I hope any parent who reads my story will not hesitate to seek wise counsel for their parenting challenges.

Singles
I want to cherish my single readers by saying that there are many beautiful ways use use our bodies to bring the hands and love of Christ into our world, many many more than the 3 ways I listed. The reason that drove what I listed as ways to bring love is that I began with listing 3 ways I personally used my body to sin and 3 ways I used my body to repent and to love. You’re not excluded, beloved darlings, or exempt from embodying the love of Christ just because you are not a wife or mommy. Never meant to imply that, beloved. Not in a hundred years did I mean to imply that. (squeeze your hand and look you in the eye for good measure) Love, SW

I was sitting in the swinging chair enjoying the spring Phoenix day. It wasn’t too hot, and the breeze was refreshing. And I was feeling guilty. Why? Because I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t working. I wasn’t being productive. I was on vacation and feeling guilty for being on vacation. How American is that? It took me a whole day, but I finally did it: I stopped feeling guilty about taking a break and resting. I found out what true rest, true letting go feels like. Or may be I remembered how to let go and rest.

Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and then rested on the Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath and not working one day a week is one of The Ten Commandments. It is also the commandment that’s most often broken by Chrsitians and non-Christians alike. We can wax eloquently all we want to about not taking God’s name in vain or not committing murder, but bring up keeping the Sabbath, and the room gets very, very quiet. Why do some branches of American Christianity insist that God created the earth in six literal days, but then fall silent when it comes to taking what God did on the seventh day literally?

And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation (Genesis 2:2-3).

Why is it so hard for us to stop and rest?

On of the reasons is that we have believed the lie that we are what we do. We believe the myth that what we do is who we are. So we work. We perform. We jump through hoops. One of the reason for keeping the Sabbath is to remind us who we really are: children of God. The Sabbath also reminds us that everything we have comes from God. God provides for all our needs. The Sabbath is for remembering: remembering who we are and remembering who God is. God rested on the seventh day, and God commanded us to do the same. If it is okay for God to rest, then it is okay for us to rest as well.

In fact, it is imperative to rest. We need a day where we let go of the worry and stress and our work, and we trust God to take care of us.

The last three Sundays I have rested. In fact, I’ve even been taking naps. I rested, and I did not feel one iota of guit.

What about you? Do you take time off? How do you rest?

Related post
An Update Merry-Go-Round

1. What does it mean to live biblically?

A.J. Jacobs shares the insight he gets on biblical interpretation from Steven Greenberg, the first out-of-the-closet gay orthodox Jewish Rabbi:

“The whole Bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man,” says Greenberg. “God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are lways two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn’t mean we can’t use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways…Never blame a text from the Bible for your behavior. It’s irresponsible. Anybody who says X,Y and Z is in the bible — it’s as if one says, ‘I have no role in evaluating this.’”

2. What ways have you experienced a happy cooperation between mind and Spirit in the Word coming to life for you?

3. Have you ever used “the bible says…” as a cop out when you didn’t actually believe what you were saying?

4. What, in your opinion is the healthiest way we can approach biblical texts with which our spirits deep down cannot agree, at least in terms of a traditional interpretation of the passage?