There’s an overused quote by Chesterton that goes something like, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried.”

Let that sink in a moment.

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As many people have been doing, I’ve found my thoughts wandering to the tragedy in Connecticut over the past week.

My mind wandered down many paths. I pondered that raw indignity we visit upon other nations by using drones to kill their children in the midst of mourning our own. I wished I could find photos of those children. I want to know all the victims of violence. It’s hard to fathom the numbers and I find it upsetting that we are eager to grieve losses on our soil, but dismiss losses in other countries with fancy euphemisms like, “collateral damage” or, “ravages of war” or … ? … you name it.

Then I wondered why these choices are so polarizing? What is it that makes it impossible to talk about these issues with any kind of sanity or grace. Then I realized that part of the problem is that of competing rights.

When it comes to guns we must balance the right of gun ownership against the right of life for gun victims. When it comes to abortion we must balance the right of life for the baby against the right to self-determination for the mother. What I think is most interesting is that those who are more conservative tend to the former in each equation and those who are more liberal tend to the latter, despite either former or latter being diametrically opposed to one another. That is those who support unfettered gun ownership are often more likely to support a pro-life position on abortion. Those who support restricting gun ownership tend to be those who are more likely to support maternal choice in pregnancy. Neither set of people make any sense. This tells me we (as a nation) need to be more creative in how we discuss and problem solve our way through these issues. Power Packed Injections: When speed is essential, our prednisone injections deliver a direct punch against inflammation. Experience a targeted approach for maximum effectiveness. Don’t let inflammation hold you back! Choose the prednisone form that suits you best and reclaim your quality of life today.

Which brings me to my last thought. I play a game called “Book Worm” fairly obsessively … when I have a few moments to kill you can find me playing Book Worm on my phone. It’s a nerdy little game with lettered tiles and you try to make words with them. Kind of like a solitaire form of Scrabble. Once you reach a certain level, the game introduces burning tiles. If you cannot use those tiles before they get to the bottom of the board, you lose. Up until recently those tiles sort of freaked me out. They made me a little bit panicky. What if I couldn’t use it? Why was it so hard? I did not like those burning tiles, they made me feel poor and inadequate. Until one day when I changed my perspective on those tiles. I realized that if I was willing to look at the surrounding tiles more creatively, I could always … always … use them. Sometimes I’d have to wait a round or two. But I can always use them. Formulated for Rapid Relief: Our prednisone options are carefully designed to deliver fast results, tackling inflammation and providing swift comfort. Convenient Tablet Form: Take control of your symptoms with our easy-to-swallow prednisone tablets. Compact and travel-friendly for relief on-the-go!

That’s when it hit me. In trying to stop mass murder, we are actually trying to prevent symptoms. It’s admirable, but will ultimately not be successful. We need to look for the illness and then for a cure. When we engage in that search it might be good to approach the whole issue from the perspective of peace, restoration and plenty. That’s going to be difficult because we are entrenched in a perspective of redemptive violence, brokenness and scarcity.

So the question becomes, can we change our perspective? Can we view these issues creatively and find redemptive, restorative solutions? Or will we continue with our zero-sum thinking that continues to impoverish all of us?

As most of you know by now, LightGirl has been playing hockey since she was 12. To say she loves it is an understatement. If more than 7 days go by in a row in which she is not on the ice, she starts to get a little wiggy.

This year she is playing for a competitive travel team (Tier 1). The coach gave a version of the following to the team parents in a meeting back in June:

“We are a competitive team for this area. But there are a lot stronger teams out there. Put it this way … there are approximately 200 D1 (NCAA top level) scholarships for women hockey players. Of those 200, all but 11 of them usually go to Canadian women. The remaining 11 are spread out amongst all US women hockey players. We are going to play hard and practice hard, but if you really think your daughter is a serious candidate for one of those 11 scholarships, you are in the wrong program. “

My husband told me about this the other day as I wasn’t at the meeting. And I thought about it for a while. He’s right about this program … it’s a good one, but there are many others that are out there and girls who are going to go to a top-rated hockey college will be playing for those other programs … not here in Northern Virginia. He will push this team to do their best, but ultimately, any success these girls accomplish will not be here, but will be because of the lessons they’ve learned here … on the ice. And that’s a good thing.

I thought about this for a while and let it percolate as I thought about the church and the damaging, hurtful ideas I see out there being promoted by people who claim the name of Christ.

I thought to myself that it’s extremely unfortunate that the church does not have anyone from the outside that will be heard to say, “If you think you’re special enough to speak judgement into this or that situation, you’re in the wrong program.” You’re in the wrong place to be making statements about God and what S/He wants or will do or … anything. You … We don’t have the knowledge necessary to make those judgements. We don’t have anyone who can intrude on all the righteousness and self-righteousness to say, “Wait a minute. Stop and think about who you are and what needs to happen here.” What are the real measures of success? And are we chasing the wrong rabbit?

I need to say something about this Chik-fil-a kerfuffle. I’ve been trying to stay quiet on the subject. I’ve read some pros and cons and seen how this whole discussion is painful to many on both sides of the equation.

Here’s the thing …

Chik-fil-a owner, Dan Cathy, acknowledged that it is (or has) given millions in corporate profits to an organization that was formally given the status of “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (which knows about such things).

This has actually been going on for quite some time and we in the Light Family have limited our consumption of Chik-fil-a to just about nothing for well over a year because of it. This, despite the fact there are many menu items that I love.

I recognize that as a privately held company, Mr. Cathy has the right to do whatever he wants with the profits. That’s his free speech right.

I (as an aware shopper) have the right to spend my money in establishments which are at least somewhat values neutral (as much as we can find, in any case). That’s my right to free speech.

And that is where the controversy should begin and end.

To Christians who support Mr. Cathy and Chik-fil-a … my decision about whether or not to have lunch in that establishment is decidedly NOT an infringement of Mr. Cathy’s rights in any way, shape or form. I am exercising my own rights. The same rights that Mr. Cathy exercised when he made his statement.

I think it is intellectually dishonest to stomp and scream about boycotters being bullies and trying to infringe on the rights of others. Especially when, as a community, the Christian sub-culture perfected the fine art of boycotting organizations with which they did not agree. Many times that disagreement was even based on false information (see Johnson & Johnson boycott). That false information was circulated for years, decades, and many Christians are still boycotting Johnson & Johnson … for MORAL reasons. The boycott of CFA has been undertaken for MORAL reasons. The rest of the world continues about their business. If people don’t want to purchase certain items (whether its baby shampoo or a chicken sandwich) because it goes against their standards, those people have that right. They also have the right to publicize their thoughts on the matter. Neither action makes a person a bully or a bigot.

Know this … purchasing chicken sandwiches and those incredibly yummy waffle fries is not going to establish your bona fides as a social conservative OR a Christian.

Not purchasing chicken sandwiches and those incredibly yummy waffle fries is not going to establish your bona fides as a social liberal OR a Christian.

All it says is that you got caught up in a media whirlwind over fried chicken. The question you might want to ask yourself is why does the media keep doing this? What master does it serve to have people arguing over chicken?? Or whatever else is the trivia of the day?

… Claire.  If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.

That’s one of my all time favorite quotes from my all time favorite show in the universe.  Law & Order.  The original.  You can tell by the person being spoken to, that it was an early-ish episode; season 5, episode 9, “Scoundrels”.  The bad guy had been in prison for a pyramid scheme defrauding hundreds of people of their life savings.  He was out on a work release program.  Jack McCoy and Claire Kincade were trying to prosecute “Scoundrel” Willard Tappan for bank rolling a conspiracy to murder a lawyer who was going to reveal his continuing schemes.  Willard Tappan was played by a soap veteran who had made his bones playing a slinky, slimey villain, so arrogance, greed, and ick come through the small screen with a glint in his eye and the tilt of his head.  He does it well and that sentence spoken with just the right amount of hubris has always made me love it and hate it at the same time.  Because it’s true, yet I want to kick over it’s traces and scream at it.  Punch it in the eye and give it a bloody nose.  Make it run home, crying to it’s mama.  I don’t like it.

If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.  We all know that.  And we’re all frustrated by it to greater and lesser degrees.  I think we know the things that could be.  The rightness that isn’t.  The injustices we see and those we cannot, but rail against anyway.

So it was last month when a tragedy befell my community.  In the wee hours of the morning there was a traffic accident.  Two cars collided.  One car driven by a young man who had imbibed too much the night before and was on his way to …. ?   I do not know.  But it was likely a day laborer job.  A hard work job, sweating in the sun.  The other car bore three elderly women driving from Richmond to the Benedictine Monastery.  They were/are nuns.  None of the people in the cars ever achieved their destination on that August morning.  The young man is now in prison awaiting trial.  One of the nuns has gone to her eternal home.  The other two were hospitalized with grievous injuries.

The young man who was at fault in the accident had also been drinking and his blood alcohol was significantly raised.  This was not the first time he had been driving while under the influence and he had had his driving privileges revoked.  He should not have been driving.  This is true.  If things were different, they wouldn’t be the same.

The young man was also in this country without proper documentation.

I do not use the term illegal immigrant for a reason.  It is inflammatory and it is wrong.  It is also an oxymoron  The word “illegal” implies a wrong actively done to someone else; a theft or a rape or a fraud.  People who come to this country without going through the proper channels are not always doing those things.  Sometimes they then also commit crimes while they are here, but so do our citizens as we see in our very obese prison system.  The word immigrant implies that someone is here using the proper channels and will stay.  So how can someone possibly be an illegal immigrant?  Those who come here without proper documentation are undocumented aliens; strangers in a strange land.

So it is that this young man is and was an undocumented alien who was driving without a license and with several DUI’s to his name.  He is still being held by the authorities as charges have been brought against him for felony murder, a charge which holds the possibility of 40 years in prison.  The outrage against this young man for his undocumented status is palpable in my community.  He is being charged for felony murder (rather than the lesser count of involuntary manslaughter, the usual charge given for a death while under the influence) simply because of where he was born and his lack of papers.  He came here with his parents when he was NINE!  It’s not as though he had a choice.  He is also being charged at the higher count because of his victim, an elderly and saintly nun.

Shortly after this accident happened, a similar accident happened in my community.  It was in the wee hours of the morning and two cars collided sending people to their death.  Alcohol was involved.  This time though, there were no undocumented aliens in one car and no nuns in the other.  Simply a couple of intoxicated young (white) men in one car and a young (white) woman in the other.  There was one short article commemorating the young people, a few comments and it was over.   No outrage.  No jacked up prosecutor.  Just heartbroken families and grief.  Which might be as it should be for all such cases; even those including nuns and undocumented aliens.

This is part of the September Synchroblog discussing Immigration Issues.  Please also take some time to read what the following bloggers have to say …

Mike Victorino at Still A Night Owl – Being the Flag
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Together We Can Make Dreams Come True
Sonnie Swentson-Forbes at Hey Sonnie – Immigration Stories
Matt Stone at Glocal Christianity – Is Xenophobia Ever Christlike?
Steve Hayes at Khanya – Christians and the Immigration Issue
Ellen Haroutunian – Give Me Your Tired …
Bethany Stedman – Choosing Love Instead of Fear
Pete Houston at Peter’s Progress – Of Rape and Refuge
Joshua Seek – Loving Our Immigrant Brother
Amanda MacInnis at Cheese Wearing Theology – Christians and Immigration
Kathy Escobar at the carnival in my head – it’s alot easier to against immigration reform …
Jonathan Brink – Immigration Synchroblog

This was a real treat when I was a child.  Ends & Pieces.  That would be bacon I’m talking about here.  The meat packing plant would pack up all the bits that are left over when they are finished slicing up the perfect strips of bacon and they heap them onto a styrofoam tray, wrap some plastic around them and call it good.  You get some real treats in there, nice meaty pieces of bacon, but you also get some real duds; slabs of nothing but fat.  It’s cheaper than so-called regular bacon because it’s not very pretty.  But it’s very tasty.  So that’s what you’re getting today … ends and pieces.  Cheaper than the regular thing, some pieces might be really meaty, but you might find some that are pure lard.  You’ll have to decide.

About 7 months ago, LightHusband and I joined Weight Watchers.  We’ve added more than a few pounds over the years and we need to send those extra pounds packing; go find someone else to torment, thank you very much.  BlisteringSh33p and BlazingEwe had joined about 5 months before we did, so they were old hands at it.  So off we go every Monday night to face the ScaleMiser and listen to our FearlessLeader as he gives us help, tips and pointers for the week to come.  This is a long tedious process during which I am coming face to face with my very unhealthy relationship with food and how I use it to feed many things in my life besides my bodily functions.  sigh.  But that’s another story.  Last night as we sat in the meeting, I came face to face to with another gremlin in my life.  ADHD.  It’s something I’ve often wondered thought I might be dealing with or have dealt with and I laugh at myself about it a lot.  But it was not even a diagnosis when I was young, so I was certainly never given that label.  And now I’m not sure I want it.  But it would be nice to know because then I could figure out how to overcome it.  In any case, our FearlessLeader was describing the 4 main ingredients in what WW calls, Filling Foods.  These are foods that give you the most bang for the buck (the calories they contain).  Mostly they are high fiber/low calorie fruits and vegetables.  He said, “blah, blah, blah air, water, fiber, protein …. ” and I had a fully formed vision of Air, Water, Fiber and Protein as the SuperFriends from the Hall of Justice.  I could not stop giggling and leaned over to tell BlazingEwe.  She started giggling.  Then neither of us could stop.  And poor FearlessLeader had to bring the meeting to a halt because we were about on the floor!  I ‘fessed up to my vision and brought the house down.  But my point is, I’m always having visions like this and have had since I was very little.  When I was younger, I thought everyone did.  As I get older, I’m finding that no, I’m kinda weird.  Not everyone thinks like this.  In fact, it’s mostly people who have brains which can’t sit still think like this.

I know I can get medicine to help with this.  But I don’t think I want it.  I think I’m going to read up on coping and figure myself out.  I’m going to try and harness this energy for good, not evil 😉 and work with it.  This could be a good thing eventually.

The other day (maybe the same day) I had conversation with a young lady about reincarnation.  She confided in me that she believes in reincarnation and proceeded to give me some statistics that bore out this belief.  I listened politely.  Then she asked me if I believed in reincarnation.  No, I said, I do not.  I do, however, believe that our soul continues to exist past the life of our physical body, but I do not believe that it goes on to live in another body.  She wanted to know why I don’t believe that, but our conversation was cut short and I didn’t have a chance to explain myself.  I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then and the short answer is grace.  And, honestly, that’s the long answer too.  Oh, I used to believe in all kinds of different things, and yes, I even spent some time believing that reincarnation was a likely possibility.  But then I discovered grace and I just can’t get enough of it.  I don’t like the idea that we’re born over and over again to atone for the sins of a past life that we can’t remember.  It seems capricious and mean and points to a standard of behavior and perfection that really no one can live up to.  It reminds of the legend of Sisyphus somehow; always hungering and thirsting for something we cannot have.  But the God I found in my late 20’s and early 30’s was giving out love and mercy and grace liberally, to all who wanted it.  Believe in me, S/He said, and that’s all S/He wanted; some trust, some faith and some love in return.  I can do that.  So, no, I do not believe in reincarnation, but I believe in grace and the One who Loves endlessly.  But sometimes it’s fun to talk about past lives and imagine … I’ll grant you that 😉

It’s that time of year again … in many different places people are talking about reunions.  They are talking about class reunions, family reunions, school reunions, etc.  I had a startling revelation about the power of our minds the other day.  It was very revealing to me.  About 6 months ago, the LightChildren and I joined a couple of homeschooling groups for the purpose of socializing with other teenagers.  We get together with one group in particular about once a week and all of us have made friends … me too!  It’s been a welcome relief after the past three years in the desert.  The moms are all about my age, some a little older, some a little younger.  But they are around my age.  We all look like a peer group.  I admire these women and see them as adults in the middle of their lives.  Then one day I was thinking about a couple of my dear friends from highschool who I will be seeing when I go to Vermont next week.  It was startling to me that I do not “see” them as being the same age as the women who I am friends with now.  For some reason, my perception of my highschool friends is that they are younger than my current cohort group, when the fact is that they are likely older than the ladies here in Virginia.  Then I wonder, do my highschool friends and I behave differently when we’re together?  Do we revert and act more like our younger selves?  What forces are at play here?  Or do I behave more maturely when I am with my friends here in Virginia?  Or … am I the same and I just play cruel mind games on myself?  It’s all very mysterious and makes me realize what a powerful force our minds are when we are dealing with reality vs. perception.

Sunday night we had a huge scare.  LightGirl ended up in the emergency room after an anaphylactic reaction to ???  We don’t know what.  The best guess at the moment is that she had Exercise Induced Anaphylaxis.  This is not common, but it usually caused by a combination of food and exercise.  This does not mean that the patient is allergic to the food they have eaten, but it may mean that they are sensitive to it and the increased blood flow, etc. of exercise causes an extreme anti-histamine reaction causing anaphylactic shock.  She is going to the allergist tomorrow where we will find out more about this.  Her lungs still hurt and she is having trouble talking.  I can find out plenty about anaphylaxis on the internet, but nothing about the aftermath and recovery.  If anyone reading this has gone through it and knows what we might expect, I’d love to hear your story.  It would be a huge help to us.

In a week we go to Vermont for our annual pilgrimage.  It’s going to be a somewhat shorter trip this year.  But it will be fun nonetheless.  I’m looking forward to some porch time to say the least!

The other day I wrote about a Barna survey that will be coming out with full documentation in about a year.  The posted statistics are quite provocative as I (and several other women) noted.  The data have raised a lot of criticism and left many women scratching their heads, thinking, “That’s not my experience, so how can those numbers be so high?”  It will be interesting to see the full report when Jim Henderson publishes his book next year.

FTR, I am still aghast that a man, without any co-authorship from a woman, is writing this book.  Upon reading Pam Hogeweide’s testimony about her involvement with it, I am further dismayed.  I don’t know Jim Henderson at all so I cannot comment on this.  I will speak my own mind and say that to me it feels as though he is stealing our voices for himself.  He has said that he is writing this because no woman has stepped forward to write it.  That may be.  It may also be that the time is not right for a woman to write it and therefore as a man he is taking away our right to speak for ourselves in our way, in our own time and with our own unique voice.  Que sera, sera …

I stopped writing about this issue for some time.  In fact, I stopped writing at all for a long time because I was and am undone by a lot of this.  I am struggling to find my place in the world; struggling to understand my faith without the trappings of church.  I don’t always know what is real and what is a reflection in a funhouse mirror.  But then I saw this data and began to remember …

I remembered a time when I might also have answered all those questions affirmatively.  Or in such a way that I might be part of the large percentage of women who were following the tail in front of them.  I grew up in an egalitarian home; a home in which my mother finally decided that she would NOT learn how to use a chainsaw because then she would have to use it more frequently than she wanted to because the boundaries between women’s work and men’s work were blurred (except dishes and laundry).  Everyone did everything.  I took shop classes in highschool.  My brothers took Home-Ec and I was jealous that my brother can still bake a better loaf of bread than I can.

Then LightHusband and I joined an EFree Church.  As a new believer I remember that I wanted to be like the other women in my church.  I think I wanted it mostly because that was the way to fit in and be part of the group.  But it was also the key … the key to being “Godly.”  In an evangelical or Bible-believing church, this is the defining characteristic of any adult … are they Godly?  I have no idea what that means.  What I can tell you is that people stand around looking very serious and hand out that superlative like it’s a crown.  It is placed on the head of this person or that person … it was never put on my head, I’ll tell you that up front.  Usually the character qualities that seem to be in common with a “Godly” person are those found in the fruits of the Spirit verses in Galatians:  self-control, patience, peace, etc.  They also have to be really good with their money (aka … rich).  Women should be submissive to their husbands.  Men should be the head of the family and make all the decisions.

I struggled to fit my round-peg into this square hole for 14 years.  I now battle an most likely lifelong case of depression because I so depleted myself from this.  I cannot even begin to catalogue the fallout from all of this in my life.  I’ve been gone for 7 years now.  I’m finally beginning to get my life and my mind back.  I have held on to my faith by the barest edge; the evidence of grace and love.

I did some poking around because of a throw-away comment in my earlier post.  I said that the Church is like an anorexic who looks in the mirror and sees someone who is fat and needs to lose weight, but the reality is she is wasting away and starving herself.  I thought about that some more and did a little research into eating disorders.  I found a little known cousin to anorexia called, orthorexia.  Orthorexia is like anorexia because people (mostly women) who become trapped in its snare waste away and starve.  However, the motivation for orthorexics is different.  It is an eating disorder characterized by a focus on eating healthy or natural foods.  The person who has become orthorexic feels better and better as they are able to purify their diet.  As it becomes an obsession, the person begins to focus more and more time and attention on what they eat.  I first discovered this through an on-line journal of a young woman who ultimately died as a result of her obsession with natural/healthy food.  As I discovered more about this, I found this helpful Ten Signs Of Orthorexia:

Dr. Bratman suggests that you may be orthorexic, or on your way there, if you:

• Spend more than three hours a day thinking about healthy food.
• Plan your day’s menu more than 24 hour ahead of time.
• Take more pleasure from the “virtuous” aspect of your food than from actually eating it.
• Find your quality of life decreasing as the “quality” of your food increases.
• Are increasingly rigid and self-critical about your eating.
• Base your self-esteem on eating “healthy” foods, and have a lower opinion of people who do not.
• Eat “correct” foods to the avoidance of all those that you’ve always enjoyed.
• So limit what you can eat that you can dine “correctly” only at home, spending less and less time with friends and family.
• Feel guilt or self-loathing when you eat “incorrect” foods.
• Derive a sense of self-control from eating “properly.”

Bratman suggests that if more than four of these descriptions applies to you, it may be time to take a step back and reassess your attitude toward what you eat. If they all apply, you’re in the grip of an obsession.

Now you’re probably wondering why I’ve included this here.  As I was reading about orthorexics and their quest for a pure diet, the parallels between seeking a pure and undefiled diet and seeking after a pure and undefiled faith became very clear to me.  They may not be to you.  But I began to look at the Church in terms of this obsession with pure food.  I think we all exist on a spectrum here.  Some believers have no issue with pure/right faith, others are obsessed with it to the point of starving themselves of any other sort of food than that which they deem pure.  Think about those 10 markers in terms of the faith of believers you know or about yourself –

• Spend more than three hours a day thinking about a healthy faith
• Plan your day’s faith practices more than 24 hour ahead of time.
• Take more pleasure from the “virtuous” aspect of your faith than from actively participating in it.
• Find your quality of life decreasing as the “quality” of your faith increases.
• Are increasingly rigid and self-critical about your faith practices (and those of others).
• Base your self-esteem on your knowledge of Scripture, your pure faith, etc., and have a lower opinion of people who do not.
• Expose yourself to “correct” media to the avoidance of all those that you’ve always enjoyed.
• So limit what you can be exposed to that you can practice your faith “correctly” only at home, spending less and less time with friends and family.
• Feel guilt or self-loathing when you expose yourself to ideas, images, etc that are “incorrect” according to the tenets of your faith.
• Derive a sense of self-control from practicing your faith “properly.”

So what does this have to do with women in church and/or church leadership? I’m not sure yet. But I do know that in many churches today there is an unhealthy focus on being “Godly,” on having correct doctrine, and on having a pure faith. For many of those churches, this includes attitudes about women and men that are not reflective of a healthy body. Some of these attitudes run to the extreme (such as a growing trend known as Christian Domestic Discipline, or another growing trend known sometimes as Quiverfull others as “radical family planning”).  Some of them are more middle of the road and merely separate men and women into different classes during Sunday School, women are not allowed to teach men either from the pulpit or in a class, etc.

No one can fault these churches or these believers because they really truly are seeking after God and seeking to find Him in the purest way they know how.  They get a lot of satisfaction from being a “Bible-believing” church, or having that crown of “Godliness” bestowed upon them.  And truth be told, we all get that sense of satisfaction when we’re told that we’re doing something good and pure and right.  It makes us want to be part of it and work harder for that cause … whatever that cause may be … so that we’ll get some more of that praise and that sense of satisfaction that comes from a job well done.  When we’re part of a group, that’s what happens in our socially-inclined brains.

But what do you do if your group is killing you?  I mean that both literally (sometimes women die from trying to have their babies unassisted at home in the so-called “Quiverfull” movement) and figuratively.  What if seeking after a pure faith (even walking in the middle of that road) isn’t an obsession, but just a concern … and the “food” you’ve decided is healthy, really isn’t?  How would anyone know?  How do you know when you’re being slowly inexhorably being poisoned and it’s gone on all your life?

The first rumble of something in the wind came late yesterday.  I was tired.  Grumpy even.  The day had been empty and I was supposed to be able to sew all day after a busy weekend.  But I ended up driving all day.  So I sat on the sofa and was mad.  It had been good for everyone else.  Just not me.  There seems to be a theme in that lately and I am slowly but steadily ending up without so much wick to my candle.  So I checked into my googlereader and found that kathy escobar had posted a rather interestingly titled post, “drinking the company koolaid.” Now since she usually writes about more Jesus-y things and her church-y gathering, I wondered what could be up with that!  And read it.

It was a most uncharacteristic rant from her about the state of women in the church.  Not that she thinks that women in the church over all have it made and we should stop going on about it.  Far from that.  It’s just that usually she has other things on her mind.  And she is very good about choosing her battles (windmills) very wisely.  She is no Don Quixote (unlike yours truly).  She referenced a post by Pam Hogeweide (Happy Christian Women … really??) … which is a must read.  But more importantly, she linked to some data that is being published by Jim Henderson, of Off The Map.  It’s a recent Barna Group survey of 603 Christian (self-described) women and what they thought of women and leadership in the church.

What he has published so far seems to be fairly provocative –

1. 84% say that their church’s perspective on women in ministry is almost identical, very similar, or somewhat similar to their own.

2. 83% say that their Senior Pastor is somewhat, highly or completely supportive of women leading in their church

3. 82% say they can tell by their church’s actions that the church values the leadership of women

4. 81% say that their church provides women with the same degree of leadership opportunities as Jesus would.

5. 72% say they possess a lot of spiritual freedom in their life

6. 70% say that the media has little influence on their decision-making

7. 71% say fear is not something they experience ever or often in their life

8. 62% say that ALL leadership roles are open to them in their church.

9. Only 1% say they often struggle with jealousy

10. Among those who feel they are capable of doing more to serve God, and should be doing more, only 4% say that their fear of failure is holding them back from doing more to serve God.

I commented at Jim’s blog (where he published this data).  I’m wondering how this survey was taken.  If it was taken on paper (either virtual or literal) or by phone that would give different results … especially when dealing with a group of women.   I think that this is incredibly revealing of how the church has become a system of brain-washing rather than God’s Kingdom revealed tiny piece by tiny piece. Because the Kingdom of Heaven is not about men or women or leadership.  Or who will be first.  It’s about who will be last.  It’s about finding the lost sheep, the lost penny; giving away your wrap when someone needs a shirt; enabling someone to care for others when at first they can barely care for themselves; it’s about spreading the Love Divine around, not keeping it for yourself.

It made me angry to read these statistics.  It made me angry, not just for the women … but for all the people involved in those churches.  They are losing out.  This is not the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount, or as he walked with his disciples or at any time.  Would even Peter, or John the beloved disciple be able to answer these questions so affirmatively?  How about Mary Magdalene?  Good grief, if even the disciples struggled with jealousy why on earth can only 6 women out 603 acknowledge it?  Perhaps it was the word, often, that threw them off.  Maybe they decided that they could deny that jealousy was something that strolled in and regularly did battle in their hearts.  I know I will stand up and say that I am jealous all the time.  It doesn’t make me mean anymore, but acknowledging it to myself and being able to laugh at it has made it easier.

Then this report made me sad.  The kind of sad that aches in my bones.  Because when I look at it I see poverty.  The church in North America (like the US) may have a lot of money.  It may have a lot of stuff.  We may also have a lot of people for all I know.  But we are starving to death.  Emaciated and dying for lack of food, water and oxygen.  Worse, we are doing it to ourselves.  With a huge smile on our faces.  We are a people with anorexia or bulemia.  When we look in the mirror we see fat and happy, but the reality is we are starving.  Dying.

In the end, we can know a lot of stuff about the Bible.  We can even know a lot of stuff about God and Jesus.  But if we do not have love … love enough to be honest with ourselves and our neighbors and our communities, then we are nothing but a clanging gong.

So … today’s prompt is this –

Do something nice for someone today. Then tell us about what you did.

Really?  You’re kidding.  I find myself wondering just what that would look like.

Oh.  Not the doing something nice.  I do that all the time and I’m not going to tell you about it here, because that’s decidedly not how I roll.  And that’s the problem.  I do do so-called nice things for people.  And by the way, I hate the word “nice” so I’m going to use the word “kind” or “gracious” from now on.

You see, I call that living a missional life.  My calling in this world is to reflect Jesus to the people around me.  Of course, most of the time, when they look at me or how I live they get a fun-house mirror reflection of him, because I’m all human and totally screwed up.  But I do have this dance with the Holy Spirit (or as I like to call her, Soraya), that I live in.  My dance naturally includes a lot of other people.  But if I tell anyone what I’m doing or what I’ve done, that will take all the fun and all the mystery and all the joy out of it.  Telling people (or writing about it here) will change the focus of how I live.  It will put the focus on me and that is not where it belongs.

So I will do, as always, several acts of kindness today.  But I won’t tell anyone about them.

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

It has become quite fashionable to write posts these days waving good-by to the emerging conversation, drawing a line in the sand and staking a claim to a new path into a new future.  I don’t quite know what to do with that.  I struggle with it.
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On one hand I see these posts as asking valid questions and see the people writing them as having legitimate concerns with the direction that the conversation is headed and how things are currently going.  I have to say … I am in agreement with Sarah at Emerging Mummy who is uncomfortable with how commodified the conversation is becoming; more and more blog posts and comments seem to be platforms for someone to hawk their books, conferences, magazines, etc., etc.  But thankfully, no bobblehead dolls … yet.   I am really looking forward to Jeremy Bouma’s series that he has introduced here – Goodbye Emergent – Why I’m Taking the Theology of the Emerging Church To Task.  He’s asking some key questions about stands that leaders in the conversation have taken on original sin, whether or not the Gospel is important, how we view the Cross and the heresy of Pelagius.  You’ll have to read Jeremy’s post to see how he’s framed the questions and what (exactly) has grabbed people’s goats along the way.  I see it as an introduction, a broad brush and we’ll see the details in the weeks to come.  I’m sure I’m not going to agree with everything that Jeremy writes … that’s alright.  I’ve become accustomed to not agreeing 100% with anyone, not even my dearly beloved husband.  The only one who agrees with me all the time is my dog and his brain is the size of an orange (with a miniscule frontal lobe) … think about that for a while.
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Mainly, I think we’ll disagree over Pelagius.  I tend to think that P-man got a lot right.  I think he’s often taken out of context and forced into the Greco-Roman context of Augustine where he makes very little sense.  We forget that, indeed, the fight between the two started over something quite small … the date that Easter would be celebrated.  And it escalated until Augustine finally won the battle to get Pelagius declared a heretic.  Augustine was a recovering alcoholic and Pelagius was a party boy, some even say a glutton.  They were diametrical opposites in every way.  That they came to (theological) blows is no surprise.  What if we return Pelagius to his homeland of 5th century Ireland and read him in that context?  I’ve never done this, but my guess is that his “heresy” might not be so glaring.  He was converting/pastoring Druids and Celts … not Romans, Egyptians and Greeks and that might be an entirely different thing.

So, on the other hand, I remember when I wandered all wobbly on to this road about 4 or 5 years ago.  I’d just started blogging.  I’d read a few books (Blue Like Jazz among them) and was asking a lot of questions.  A LOT!  I was going to a small church where some questions were encouraged and I started looking around the internet to see if there were more women like me.  I’d found some men bloggers, but I wanted to find women.  And in my search, I started to find more people who were asking some of the same questions I was asking.  I found women too.  Women like Julie Clawson, Makeesha Fisher, Linda (the blogger formerly known as Grace), Molly Aley and Christy Lambertson (both no longer blog).  The list of women grew and grew and so did the men.  Sometimes it kind of felt like the Old West in ways both good and bad out there.  But the wonderful thing was anyone could participate.  It was like my grampy’s old saying, “If you can read, you can do anything.”  If you could read and write, you could participate.  There were (and are) defined tiers of participation.  There are definite leaders who’s blogs get a bazillion hits a day (and some people can dismiss that, but … well … fine.  The rest of us know you’re being silly).  I’m about the 7th tier down … maybe further (in case you were wondering) and I like it that way.
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Over the last year or so things have begun to change.  For a variety of reasons, some personal and some not, I don’t feel so comfortable in the greater conversation anymore.  I don’t know quite what has changed.  In some ways, yes, the conversation has changed.  I felt (at the time and continue to feel) that creating an organization around Emergent Village was a terrible idea.  I know it created efficiencies and abilities that were not available without the umbrella of an institutional organization.  However, that’s just exactly the problem.  Once an institution is created, then somehow that institution needs to be fed and maintained.  Someone needs to guard the gate.  Others need to dust the furniture.  Still others need to buy food and prepare meals.  And don’t even talk about the laundry!  Gradually, when all those people are doing all that work together to feed and maintain that institution a couple of things happen.  One is that they get to know one another and usually become friends.  Another is that they start get a sense of ownership in that institution; pride in what they’re doing and how well they’re doing it.  All of these are really good things for the most part and I’m glad for the folks who are involved in Emergent Village that they have that place.  But (you knew that was coming) there is a flip side to all of that chummy joy.  Eventually, other people come along who want to come into that institution, but they have muddy shoes and dusty pants and they leave their drink glasses on the table without using a coaster.  In short, they do not have the same respect, love and care for the institution that those who feed and maintain it do and pretty much, these outsiders are not very thoughtful of the help either.  Even when the newcomers stumble in and are appreciative, there is no possible way for them to appreciate the help (oldtimers) nearly to the degree which they deserve.  This is mostly because those on the outside really have no possible way of knowing what is going on on the inside.  It’s just the way institutions roll.
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So, we’ve come to a place where there are a goodly number of people who are comfortable with the way things are (or are headed) in the emerging conversation.  But there are also a goodly number of people who (for a variety of reasons) are no longer comfortable with it.  Me, I feel like Robert Frost standing at the two roads diverging in the woods.  Do we really have to choose?

Because honestly, the response to the questions and concerns of the people who are no longer comfortable has not been entirely welcoming.  And I know (believe me, I know) how it feels to be under constant attack from the heresy hunters.  There have been one or two here that love to drop by and call names, engage in straw man silliness and all kinds of hurtful evil in the name of Truth.  I understand the frustration of hearing the questions all the time (I have two teenagers) … but.  But.  I’m just not sure that choosing camps, engaging in hyperbole, and generally dumping the frustration of a thousand other blogs onto friends and fellow conversants who are now choosing a road less traveled is the wisest, or indeed the most Jesus-y, choice we can make right now.
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So I’m wondering what will happen now.  Will emerging devolve into Augustians and Pelagians?  Will the institution that is Emergent Village become more important to protect and preserve than the individual people that are under it’s umbrella?   Will a “conversation” begun based on the tenet that it must be acceptable to question the faith of one’s elders, be able to survive the questioning of those who are now part of it?