Emerging Women

By Jessica Coblentz

I kept thinking about the incarnation as I lay on the cement floor in St. Mark’s Cathedral this evening during Compline prayer. I was between Stephanie and Jen, two of my best friends since childhood. Throughout our friendships they have been constant pillars in my spiritual life. Each of us comes from her own unique Christian upbringing, and even as we all spent our undergraduate years with the Jesuits, we still hold many differences in faith. Yet they have always been embodiments of Christ to me. Real Love in Flesh and Blood. Truth speakers in some of the most trying of circumstances.

According to Roman Catholic doctrine, one of the major reasons women cannot be ordained priests is the fact that Christ became human in the form of a man. The priest, who represents Jesus in the consecration of the Eucharist, must therefore be male in order to adequately reflect Christ’s embodiment. I’ve acquired plenty of strong theological arguments to dismiss the institution’s logic on this matter, but tonight I didn’t need any intellectual assertions to support by belief that Christ’s embodiment was not merely male. No. There next to me, on my right and on my left, Jesus lay in Flesh and Blood. Skin and Bones. Jen and Steph.

The Incarnation I witness every day is often female, just as it is often male. And it is always a Mystery.

Jessica Coblentz is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. Follow her writing on the Web at www.jessicacoblentz.com.

By Jessica Coblentz

In an excerpt from her recently published diaries, Dorothy Day recalled a friend who, exactly 9 months before Christmas day, celebrated the Annunciation by getting on his knees, leaning over, and kissing the ground. This is the day that God entered Mary’s womb, he would exclaim. He delighted in the fact that Christ Christened the earth with divine incarnation on that day. With that day, the earth became sacred in the most tangible, significant event of Christian history.

I so often think of Christmas day as the annual celebration of the Incarnation. However, this man’s celebration of the Annunciation challenges me to think of the Incarnation of God in the world as something that occurred not in a single day like Christmas, but rather, through an unfolding process–quite literally, though the season of Mary’s pregnancy.

And, really, the Incarnation did not reach its pinnacle with the birth of Christ in a manger. The Incarnation continued throughout Jesus’ childhood, adult life, crucifixion, and resurrection. And I think the Incarnation, the unfolding of the divine in temporal life, it continues today. It is my regular witness of it in ordinary life that compels me to believe this paradoxical religious claim with such devotion.

What if I lived each day like it was Christmas–the celebration of divine Incarnation in this broken, messed up world? I don’t mean to pose this question in some sort of sappy Coca-cola Christmas commercial kind of way. I mean it. What if I lived with the type of reverence for the goodness in this world that would compel me to kneel down and kiss the dirt? What if I took the time to recognize the continuous unfolding of the Incarnation like that?

Come to think of it, what if I simply lived Christmas day–one day a year–like that? Perhaps that’s a start to a new way of living out the whole year.

Jessica Coblentz is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. Follow her writing on the Web at www.jessicacoblentz.com.

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 Coblentz

I have a problem. I’m addicted to Sex— Sex and the City, that is.

A friend lent me a couple seasons on DVD recently. I had needed an episode for a program I facilitated at the women’s college where I work in campus ministry. The students and I gathered for popcorn, Oreos, and an episode of Sex and the City, followed by a thoughtful discussion about sex, dating and spirituality. Ideally, the show provides a point of reference for the discussion beyond one’s own sexual and dating experiences (or, sexless and dateless experiences).

The weekend following my program was chilly and wet. Cooped up in my apartment, I found myself utterly pathetic in any attempt to resist the sassy DVDs stacked on my desk. I would watch a couple episodes, eject the disk, and return to some writing, my “to do” list, or a phone call to a friend—only to cave in, again, to “just one more episode!”

What is it about this series that I love so much?! Why do I find it so utterly irresistible? Surely, I love the clothes, the shoes, and the posh New York restaurants. Ultimately, though, it’s the hip sitcom’s candid, witty talk about sex that keeps me glued to the screen. It’s so absolutely refreshing. Even when I disagree with the assertions they make about sex, I love the honest, bold, and fearless way they talk about the sexual decisions they make. They are confident in their sexualities. Not driven to silence or timidity by guilt or shame like so many of us.

In the discussion that followed the episode I watched with my students, I had asked them to characterize the conversations they’d had about sexuality in their religious communities. Most of them were Catholic like me, and all of them responded with, “NO. No, no, no, no, no, no! All we’ve heard is NO.” If they heard about sex in the church setting, it came across as “no,” and “Don’t do it, period. None of it.” There was no honest talk about the complexities of sexual decision-making. No hospitality that allowed them to feel they could ask genuine questions about the reality of sex in their relationships.

This got me thinking…what would a Catholic-type Sex and the City look like? Sex and the Vatican City, perhaps? Honestly, my first response was, “Well, it might look exactly the same as the regular Sex and the City!” Like most folks, we Catholics have pious speech about sex that we often fail to live up to. However, as I thought about it more it occurred to me that if there was a “Catholic” version of Sex and the City that embraced a conversation style akin to the show, yet ultimately continued to espouse the same “Catholic” positions on sexual ethics (anti-abortion, pro-NFP and anti-artificial birth control, no extra-heterosexual-marital sex, etc.), I might still love it. And my students might have a very different experience of Catholic sexual teaching.

I can see it now: The four ladies chatting over brunch. Charlotte is cheering about how happy she is that her natural family planning is not working and she’s pregnant again with her fifth child. Samantha is complaining about her latest boyfriend who just can’t understand why she won’t marry him: he’s been divorced and she is standing by the Church’s position that he cannot remarry. Miranda is still struggling to balance her work as a mother and as a lawyer—only now its in the context of Pope John Paul II’s teachings on “the genius of women” and women’s unquestioned responsibility to family life. Carrie writes a witty sex column for the National Catholic Reporter.

I can envision it now! And I would still like this “Catholic” version in many ways—even if I continued to wrestle with some of the ethical positions it endorsed. Perhaps this type of show will never happen for the Catholic Church, but I still hope that some version of this honest, hospitable conversation about sexuality will.

Jessica Coblentz, a graduate of Santa Clara University, works in Catholic young adult ministry. She will begin graduate studies at Harvard Divinity School this fall. This post originally appeared on her personal blog, www.jessicacoblentz.blogspot.com.