Jonalyn Grace Fincher

When Women Carry . . . Handguns: Sergeant Kimberly Munley and Fort Hood

2009-11-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

The recent shooting at Fort Hood has left me sober, but also grateful. If you have not heard the story I recommend you read it here:"Hash Browns, Then 4 Minutes of Chaos." Below is a significant section that I want to highlight this morning:

"Kimberly Munley, a 35-year-old police officer, happened to be nearby, waiting for her squad car to get a tune-up, when she heard the commotion. She raced to the scene . . . As she rounded a corner, she saw Maj. Hasan chasing a wounded soldier through an open courtyard. He looked as though he was trying to "finish off" the wounded soldier, Mr. Medley said.

"He looked extremely focused," said Francisco De La Serna, a 23-year-old medic who had fled the building and was watching the same scene unfold from a hiding spot across the street.

Ms. Munley's first shot missed Maj. Hasan. He spun to face her and began charging, Mr. Medley said.

The time was 1:27 p.m., just four minutes after the initial 911 call.

Authorities haven't said precisely how many shots were fired during the running gun battle between Maj. Hasan and Ms. Munley. But one of her shots hit Mr. Hasan in the torso, knocking him to the ground. With that, officials say, she quite likely prevented more injuries or deaths on the base.

Ms. Munley took two bullets to her legs. Both entered her left thigh, ripped through the flesh and lodged in her right thigh. She also received a minor wound to the right wrist.

Specialist De La Serna, the medic hiding across the street, sprinted to the scene as the shooting stopped and put a tourniquet on Ms. Munley, who was fading in and out of consciousness, he said. Then he moved to Maj. Hasan, who had a gunshot wound through the chest.

Ms. Munley underwent surgery Thursday night to halt bleeding and faces at least two more operations to remove the bullets in her thigh." quoted from The Wall Street Journal, to read more from this article or from another in the WSJ "Lethal Rampage at Fort Hood."

In these pictures of Major Hasan and Ms. Munley, both man and woman involved in this gunfight look like kind people. And yet they each took their weapons out to kill one another. This forces me to note an unsettling and significant fact of our fallen world.

When Sergeant Kimberly Munley pulled out her handgun to shoot Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, a man who had killed 13 and wounded 30, she put herself, a woman, against a man. Without her gun she could not have matched his strength, but with her sidearm she was capable of meeting his aggression.

Ms. Munley makes me think of the unnecessary losses when a man pits his strength against a woman's vulnerability and dominates. Makes me think of the students at Virginia Tech. What if one female student at Virginia Tech, with the same tenacity to run after the assassin as Munley had been permitted to carry concealed weapons? Makes me think of my neighbor whose close friend was hunted down at her own home by a serial murderer and despite a long, physical struggle against him, eventually decapitated in her own home. What if she had had been carrying a concealed weapon and knew how to use it?

What if women were encouraged to know how to use guns, instead of our society relegating guns to violent, dangerous, testosterone-fueled obsessive types?

Munley laid her own life in harm's way to protect those who could no longer protect themselves. She was equipped not only with a weapon but with the courage and skills to protect herself and others. She bent stereotypes and for that I am deeply grateful. I feel my heart quake in me when I think of her running toward Maj. Hasan, drawing his fire away from the wounded. I'm sure she knew she might not come through alive. Still, because she was armed, a woman's strength was on equal ground with a violent man's. It surprises me that there are not more feminist's blogs commenting on the need for women to carry a concealed weapon.

Ms. Munley's heroism and willingness to attack an aggressor, rather than run, speaks to the power a sidearm when held by a capable woman in battle. Because she was trained and armed she was a force powerful enough to stop Maj Hasan.

Upon moving to the woods, a remote region in the Rocky Mountains, Dale and I both filed for concealed carry licenses. We had to take a three hour safety class and then endure fingerprinting and knowing we're under suspicion (you should hear some of our big-city friends when they find out) for the offense of wanting to exercise our Constitutional right (something I thought only fanatical, kooky people every wanted) of carrying our own guns.

Last month we took a handgun defensive training class, in Eastern Oregon at Thunder Ranch. Their goal, "Our primary concern is that people who come to Thunder Ranch® leave with a peace of mind in their heart and head. We strongly hope that they never have to use any of the skills or things learned here for the defense of themselves or their family, but if they do, we want this knowledge to be used confidently and with great vigor."

Still, I was, frankly, afraid. I didn't know my 40 caliber pistol all that well, I was nervous about making a mistake with so much risk at stake and the gun is just LOUD and forceful. Besides, I was 16 weeks pregnant. Was this a wise thing to do? My doctor, surprised at my request, said the baby would be fine and to be careful. If I learned anything at Thunder Ranch it was awe for the power of a gun. We NEVER allowed the gun to point at something we did not want to destroy. I'm more careful now than I was before, but I'm also a heck of a lot more accurate. Dale says he's glad to have me at his side.

Our instruction, Clint Smith, marine corps veteran and police officer, nationally known for training SWAT teams in urban defense, and his wife and one other assistant, helped me and 11 others learn the importance of steady, careful gun drawing, shooting, re-loading, clearing jams and re-holstering. We fired over 800 rounds in 3 days. And I've never met a more conscientious, respectful group of strangers. None of them fit the stereotypes of gun-carrying fanatics. You can, by the way take classes like these all over the nation, but Clint's record of safety (he's had NO accidents and 19,000 clients) and professionalism motivated us to make the trip.

The cost of the class was severe, not only in dollars, but also in energy, strain and fatigue. By the end of each day my pregnant belly, around which I could barely squeeze my belt to hold my holster, were aching. While the class included several couples, I was the only pregnant woman. By the second day I had rubbed my fingers raw with clicking the safety on and off of my handgun. It was very cold most the time (watch the video below to see our breath in the air as we practice a leaning drill to know how to be off balance and shoot around corner). We could not wear gloves, so we would know how the gun felt without any protection. I felt every bump and button, I know how to load and ask for "Cover!" while I'm vulnerable. And Dale and I know how to work as a team. The ear protection helped, but the repetition of drawing, firing, belting out verbal commands to "Get Away" or "Stop" combined with the ceaseless vigilance, left me utterly exhausted at the end of each day. Then we had to pick up all our shells, carefully unload, clean our equipment, then finally off to find some dinner.

While men and their guns has grown into a stereotype mixed with red-necks and caricatures of violence, I know many gun-carrying men (many who attended the class at Thunder Ranch) and women who carry their weapons with humility, respect and utmost safety. I would trust them to defend me. I'm grateful for their willingness to carry a dangerous weapon so others might be safe. So as I move on to catch up with the rest of my life, as I read the week 24 update on my pregnancy, as I think of protecting the lives of those nearest to me, I'm grateful to have a husband who wanted to educate me about concealed carry.

And in light of the sobering murders committed at Fort Hood, I want to salute the women across the country today who bare the disapproval, misunderstanding and mockery of carrying a sidearm, not only for their own safety, but for the love of their fellow men and women.

To read more about the Biblical justification for carrying a handgun see this helpful blog: The Cornered Cat

Women- Sexy, Sexual, Feminine

2009-10-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

Since Halloween is today, the one holiday where women can get away with dressing in the most sexual version of their favorite animal or occupation, with a recent speaking engagement on women and sexuality under my belt (listen at Irving Bible Church, select "Sexuality"), with a baby boy in my womb, reminding me that I'm currently enjoying the supposedly ultima of all feminine experiences, I think a post on what it means to be a woman, to be sexy, to be sexual, to be feminine, is in order.

Sexy

What does it mean for a woman to be sexy? And is that something we can be without defrauding (arousing desires others cannot righteously pursue) in men (and women) around us?

Can you be sexy without being promiscuous, flirtatious, trampy? What are the core components of a sexy woman? Are these the same as the qualities of a sexy man?

When you say, "She's sexy!" what do we mean by the words? Are we speaking of a woman's power to dominate or attract the opposite sex? Or does 'sexy' mean something about her confidence. I remember C.S. Lewis' comment on a beautiful woman, "Just to watch her watch across the room is a liberal education."

Okay, this is where you comment below :)

Sexual

What does it mean to be sexual? Lilian Calles Barger, author of Eve's Revenge, says we are sexual when we give ourselves; it's our capacity for self-giving. I beg to differ.

The act of sex, or erotic expression is by nature an act of self-giving and therefore an act of love. All self-giving acts are by nature loving, but I would not call all loving acts sexual. Would you?

When God the Father sent God the Spirit to live among men and women, to comfort and guide us, he was self-giving, but this wasn't sexual. Put another way, all sexual acts are self-giving, but not all self-giving acts are sexual. I can give chocolates to my mom for her birthday, but I wouldn't call the gift a sexual expression.

And yet, everywhere we go, we bring our whole selves into the action and part of being human is to have a body that is gendered... from conception we have the capacity for erotic love, we just need time and nutrients to grow the capacity into possibility/actuality.

And in ever encounter in life we are gendered (which has hints of sexuality) beings, whether we're "having sex" or not.

Feminine

Have you ever noticed how every encounter between the sexes (brother/sister, father/daughter, co-workers, pastors on a church staff, bank teller and customer) has a sexual dimension to it. I'm not saying every person of the opposite sex creates a temptation for us to imagine sexual intercourse, this would mean every person struggles with incestuous thoughts.

Keep in mind that men and women's encounters need not always end in sexual intercourse. I think of the tender knowing between Matthew Cuthbert and Anne of Green Gables, when Anne says, "We're such kindred spirits he knows my thoughts." I recall the wry mutual respect between Elizabeth Bennett and her father as they mock the odious Mr. Collins. I notice my grandmother's relationship with her brother in law. They spend hours driving to visit his sister, sometimes my grandpa accompanies them, sometimes not. But they know each other personally and interact with mutual regard and delight.

I sit at an airport and watch male and female coworkers joking and teasing one another, three women and two men, tossing lines back and forth with ease and interest, witty enough for a sitcom script, enough mystery to keep me interested. I enjoy watching the sexes interacting with freedom and respect. After the men leave to de-ice a plane, the three women, all middle-aged, repeat lines, rehearse what they could have said and laugh all over again.

Now, several minutes later another woman walks up and the conversation switches to creating a wishing there were a magical machine that could lift their wrinkles and commenting on one woman's new hair color. The women switch gears, they mutually admire, they joke, but the hues have changed. They can let their hair down with each other in another way; their conversation has shifted into the ways they mutually understand female embodiment.

Unfortunately male and female friendships where the sexual element is neither erased nor swollen into raw erotic desire is hard to find.

Since most of our day to day interaction with men will be in the realm of friendship, if we're afraid that every close female/male friendship will erupt in illicit sex, we will not interact with men well. We will close off our person-hood and femininity and interact in functional ways. Kind of like the way I interact with my car: I expect it to offer a service, I feed it gas and oil and sometimes clean the windows, but I do not want to know what it thinks about, how it feels, what dreams it has. I see women relate like this to men, there's a cold efficiency in their actions, little eye-contact, a mechanical-ism that isolates and dehumanizes both parties. Perhaps it makes us feel safer. I know I whip out this functional behavior when men whistle at me, I stiffen my neck and regard them with the same interest I'd give a fence post. They've reduced me to merely my body, so I return the favor. I do not look into their eyes with any warmth. I can't and remain safe.

In a world where people are wounded and wound each other, I wonder if there are places women can be warm and fully embodied in our femininity with men?

I believe women, for instance, are always aware of the otherness of men (as men are of women), in a way that colors all male-female interaction differently than the hues in female friendship can.

When I meet a man I note the way he is different, no matter how similar our interests, training, upbringing, ethnicity or faith. A man incarnates to me another way to be human. And this otherness imbues my conversation with him with a brighter spectrum of mystery, more discovery, more suspense. This interest between the sexes is in part responsible for our love of movies where the guy and girl meet and navigate their relationship. What will they become? How do they see each other? Who are they individually and separately?

All humans come with a body predisposed to offer love in one of two ways, we give either female or male love. Instead of calling this our sexuality, since sexual can refer to the sex act or our gender, I'd prefer to talk about how we give to others in either feminine or masculine ways. So, how does a man love? What makes his love different than a woman's love?

The answer, I think, will constitute our femininity (or masculinity) and I believe begins when we realize how our souls are wrapped into this body we have, with male and female parts, hormones, experiences.

I believe men and women in the church easily believe that women can tempt a man beyond what he is able to resist (the vice versa is also true), so rules to guard marriage and prevent temptation get set up. Rules like, "Never be alone with a woman (including offering rides, meeting for a meal in a public place, meeting for a project)." Perhaps this feels safer, and sometimes it is.

But when do these rules prevent the divine alliance of masculinity and femininity from learning how to relate in sexually honoring ways. Sometimes stringent male-only and female-only activities keep men from personally knowing any women in their lives, save family members and spouse. It also inflates the mystery between the sexes, which, in my opinion, balloons out into misunderstandings, unBiblical Mars-Venus ideology and even provides more room for fantasizing about our co-workers. It's easier to project upon a mysterious man the ideals we want, isn't it?

Nothing cures a fantasy like a dose of the real person, in a friendship. When I've grown attracted in a base way to the bodies of friends' husbands, I used to think I had only one option: get away from temptation. Cut off friendship with him and maybe even with his wife.

But there is another option, I've found learning to know them better can actually douse my sexual fires with a cold splash of water.

My only rule of thumb: I do not let myself grow close to a married man without first growing even closer to his wife. Out of these friendships I learn about his masculinity, his person-hood that will be inevitably more flawed than who I made him out to be. He's not particularly patient with his children; he runs away from confrontation; he is more fallen and more human than I could have believed.

I believe this was Jesus' way of being so close to women, without giving into the temptation (he must have felt) to make love to them. He knew the dance of personal intimacy without sexual innuendo. This is how I want to treat the men in my life.

My Article for Kyria

2009-10-29T15:50:00.000-07:00

Today's Christian Woman is no more, but before you exclaim in alarm, Christianity Today has a new digital magazine (or digizine) for women.

It's called Kyria, a word that in Greek means "honored woman." It's brand spanking new, which is probably why I got a chance to write an article for the first issue. :)

I originally titled my article"Women and Their Wonderful Bodies" but they've changed it to "What our Bodies Tell us about our Identities" which makes sense give the 1st issue is all about BORN IDENTITY.

I wrote about the chance women have to wonder why their bodies are wonderfully made. You'll find a poem by George Herbert nestled in the article, too.

To read it, and see the nifty graphic design of this new digizine visit Kyria THIS month.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about the magazine and the case for women's bodies being wonderful little numbers.

Meditation on Turning Thirty

2009-09-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

The mist is slipping over the mountains like silk this morning. When I awake to see it and I know I am thirty years old today.

Laying in bed, I listen to an elk call, a bugle that sounded at first like the ice cream truck. What is the ice cream man doing at 6am patrolling this forested neighborhood?

Then, I remember where I am, Thorp Mountain, nestled in Grouse Creek Park, Steamboat Springs, Colorado. The sound is the elk attracting its mate for the season. If you've never heard an elk call during their mating season (rut) listen here.The time of new life comes in the fall for the elk. (Picture at right is taken from our property in the Spring, but it gives you an accurate feel of the quiet stillness of the aspen forest)

I lay on my back for about 30 minutes and pray about the new life in me. “Jesus, let me feel the baby move this morning.” I’m at 16 weeks; I've heard the heart beat; I've passed the anxiety of wondering if the baby will survive. I feel the miracle of growth every time I look at my swelling tummy, the amazement that the little one (a little bigger than an avocado now) is still alive and well.

The quickening is supposed to begin around this time, but most new moms don’t feel the baby until the 18 or even the 20^th week. Still, I wanted to try to feel the little fledgling in my Fincher tummy.

I lay there for a long time, feeling nothing, feeling discouraged and a little anxious. Then, I noticed a prickling feeling, sort of like a tiny baby was tap-dancing with cotton slippers on my belly.

At first I thought it was my heart beat, but then I slowly moved my fingers up to my neck to check my heart and it’s steady thump-thump was not the same as the tap dancer.

I held my breath to feel it again and there it was, like the baby was doing a light waltz across my stomach, so imperceptible. But clear enough that I now know what to feel for.

No wonder I’ve been waking up each morning at 6am, this is the baby’s doing. Dance time.

I’m enormously gratified that our baby likes to dance.

Thankful for this early morning birthday present, I climbed down the ladder to let the puppies out for breakfast. I heard four more elk bugle calls. Lucy ate all but the bottom most layer of her food and I have a letter from Grandma Taylor and a package from Mom upstairs waiting for me to celebrate my birthday--little jewels of surprise. But I want to savor them, so I eat a slow breakfast and work on my email.

Dale is still asleep and I'm glad I haven't woken him.

Last night he danced with me and sang an ode to my 29 years.He sang about the last decade. How we’ve lived in 4 different houses, graduated from two different schools, started a non-profit, wrote books, acquired five pets, traveled, got pregnant.

The thirties will be a decade of raising a child.What a difference and yet, I hope some things stay the same. I love my life.

In thankfulness for this morning and for my life so far, for the life within me in this child, around me in my husband, the three Ladies, Sprout the faithful mouser, I want to share a poem I read this morning. It expresses this morning's joy.

"For Your Birthday"
by John O'Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us

Blessed by the mind that dreamed the day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.

Praise be your father and mother
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be,
Blessed be those you have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind
In the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown,
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing--day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul;
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart;
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being.
p. 51-52.

Selah

God knit me, he knits this child, he hold us all together.

Caster Semenya- Let Me Be a Woman

2009-09-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

I've noticed the unhelpful, speculative chatter about Caster Semenya, enough that I wanted to share a few thoughts I've written elsewhere (Ruby Slippers) and give followers of Jesus a moment to pause. Especially in light of confusing posts such as "Do all Hermaphrodites Automatically God to Hell?"

The short version of Ms. Semenya's story: her running talents have pushed her to the forefront of competition as recently as last month in the World Athletic Championship where this South African track star, finished a full eight seconds ahead of her competition in the 800 meter, a race I trained for in high school. It's a doozy, the hardest long sprint I've every done. Interestingly, her speed is not unheard of in women. Ms. Semenya's time, 1 minute 55.45 seconds is several seconds behind the current world record, held by Czechoslovakian, Jarmila Kratochvilova, 1 minutes 53.28. I don't believe Kratochvilova enduring the same kind of treatment that Semenya faces.

The International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF), responding to accusations that Ms. Semenya looks masculine and is way too fast to be a woman, required the 18 year old to undergo testing (a gynecologist, an endocrinologist, a psychologist, an internal medicine specialist and an expert on gender issues) to determine her sexuality. The testing indicates that Ms. Semenya has normal female genitals, but internally has testes, and no womb or ovaries. She looks female on the outside, but produces more testosterone on the inside. The situation is not as unheard of as you might think. People with ambiguous genitalia make up a real, living, breathing percentage of our population, about 1 in every 2000 births in the United States. Read more specific statistics.

In response some were quick to use the inaccurate label of "hermaphrodite," which refers to pepole who have fully functioning genitals of both sexes. Since, Ms. Semenya has already endured the testing to determine her gender and exposure to the prying eyes of the public I feel it's necessary to speak up about her situation here, as carefully and charitably as I can.

First, let's get our terms more accurate. A person born with reproductive or sexual anatomy that do not fit clearly into typical male or female categories is an intersex person, not a hermaphrodite. For more read the front page at the Intersex Society of North America. One common and tragic characteristic among intersex people is their inability to have children. Sometimes they do not know why, some intersex people live and die without ever knowing they have anything ambiguous about their sexual identity. I find this fascinating and helpful in understanding Ms. Semenya.

In Ruby Slippers, I make a big deal about the main characteristic that joins all women together--the female body. Femininity isn't based in our high heels or acrylic nails, but it is owning a female body. And all women know that to own and glory in the body they've been given is hardly an easy task--I don't care how beautiful, athletic or svelte you are--it's tough. We don't believe Psalm 139, not entirely.

Ms. Semenya has the additional task of owning a body that has male genitalia inside. Can you imagine the task?

And yet, she's doing it, rather boldly and with much more pizzazz than most teenage girls.

In a recent appearance on the cover of the South African magazine, You, Ms. Semenya wears make-up, a dark dress, jewelry, and yes, that's fingernail polish. All marks of femininity today in our culture. The fact that she wears culturally chosen symbols of femininity does not turn her into a woman, but it does mean something significant to us, she has chosen to identify herself as female. It means she wants her body bedecked in feminine marks. And this takes courage and ownership, especially in light of what the world knows about her internal organs.

Ms. Semenya has reached the age where she believes she knows her gender identity. Intersex children are often forced to endure genital amputation to clarify their sexuality before leaving the hospital. The reason? Most parents aren't happy about bringing home a baby who isn't clearly male or female. Intersex people today advocate parents to protect their child from the emotional and physical scarring of reconstructive surgery in infancy and recommend parents raise each baby individually, either with a sex chosen or not. However, at adolescence, most intersex children develop and see themselves as either boys or girls. The case in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl gives a helpful story of what happens when medical intervention botches up a human's gender.

And Ms. Semenya is not an exception in knowing her sexual identity. At 18, she shares that she has been raised as a female and seems to want to be treated as a female, an understandable request given that her body, sans surgery, looks like a woman's. I'm not very sympathetic to the charges that her muscles are so masculine given how many swimmers, runners, soccer players I've seen whose bodies seem just as muscular as Ms. Semenya's.

Whether the IAAF or even doctors completely agree with her, Ms. Semenya as an intersex person, has chosen her gender identity. Surely that should give us pause before we start referring to her as "he/she" or "hermaphrodite."

I've read blogs that claim that the Bible has nothing to say about intersex people. Perhaps this is because we're looking for the wrong words. It's true the Bible never mentions intersex or people with ambiguous genitals. But, then, the Bible never mentions the "Trinity", "Providence" or people who want to practice monogomous same sex relationship. However, we still believe the Bible has something to add to these discussions.

As I've written elsewhere,

There is an important, but often ignored question about the intersex person (a person born with ambiguous genitals), or more derogatorily called hermaphrodite, person. Intersex people are often permanently damaged because doctors and parents force a sex on them at infancy, even though most will gravitate toward one gender by adolescence. So how should we respond to those intersex persons whose genitals remain perpetually ambiguous? I would say Christians ought to be the first to validate them as full human souls with all their capacities intact, though with marks of the fallen world on their bodies. Perhaps this is what Christ meant when he said in Matthew, “For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb” (19:12). (Ruby Slippers, p 92, ft 30).

The fact that Ms. Semenya cannot bear a child is a mark of living in this fallen world. It will be something she will have to grieve as she grows into her adult years. But it is not something I would have wished her to discover in the limelight.

However, in light of competition and attacks on her right to the gold medal, perhaps the real problem is the athletic community. Perhaps we've insisted on certain lines (male/female) in order to enjoy the thrill of watching a foot race. I can foresee problems arising on both sides. Let's say intersexed people can choose how they want to be identified for the sake of racing. What would prevent intersex men from choosing to compete as women? I suppose their honesty alone? Culturally fluctuating standards or gender? If they appear on the cover of a glamor magazine?

Regardless the problem looms larger and larger. But what about Ms. Semenya? As my husband says, "We've hyped up organized sports so much that they automatically give a person recognition, honor, fame that we don't think to question them as an institution. Instead of questioning the athletic organizations, we're much more interested in questioning this woman."

The IAAF will not be meeting and releasing its results until late November. Regardless of what they decide, I'm convinced that Jesus would want us asking the human question first, the athletic one second. Whether she can compete, keep the medal are significant questions, especially given the meaning we imbue into such events. However, I want first to recognize Ms. Semenya as a woman who wants to be known as a female person who is fully human. She has made it clear that she wants us to see her as a human God made. In her interview she says, "I am who I am and I am proud of myself. God made me the way I am and I accept myself.”(picture: Ms. Semenya with her grandmother)

I, for one, am happy to oblige.

Lust- Alive and Well Among Women- Part II

2009-08-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

One evening on a Carnival Cruise my husband and I watched the evening show. The final dance was a spoof of the YMCA group which began with two male dancers stripping down to nothing but their skivvies. I watched more curious than lustful. There was not camouflaging or support happening as they hopped all over the stage. I found it biologically more amusing than tantalizing.

Turned on

But don't misunderstand me for being so virtuous, it's not because naked men just don't do it for me. When I've stumbled upon completely naked men in magazines (I distinctly remember finding one in a European fashion magazine in my London trip abroad) I found myself both aroused and fascinated that THAT was what a penis looked like. It wasn't easy to turn the page.

I've also heard the opposite from those "cigar-filled rooms of men" about how valuable non-sheer lingerie is. Why? "leaves more to the imagination." So I think the desire for fully naked or partially naked men (or women) is quite personal.

In a study by Queen's professor and female sexologist, Meredith Chivers, we get a secular look into what turns men and women on. Chivers measures male and female arousal both objectively (through measuring blood flow to significant sexual organs) and subjectively (volunteering arousal by typing in). She monitored them as they watch videos of gay and straight humans and monkeys having sex. She found that men were turned on by their preferred orientation (so heterosexual men by heterosexual sex) and by lesbian sex. But men were not turned on by their non-preferred orientation (so gay men were not aroused by heterosexual sex). However, women were aroused no matter what human sexual coupling occurred, women with women, women with men and men with men. Neither men or women were aroused by the monkey's sex. Women, Chivers argues, can be aroused by more diverse stimuli then men.

So does this mean all women are really potential lesbians? Not necessarily. As Marta Meana, professor of psychology at Nevada University explained, "The female body looks the same whether aroused or not. The male, without an erection, is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion of sex." This suggestion sends a charge through both sexes.

A beautiful woman appeals to women as well, her body reminds women that we can be desirable, appealing to our narcissism. So putting a lovely woman on a billboard appeals to both sexes, not just those "red-blooded males."

In various studies, it appears that when it comes to arousal, women are turned on when they feel desireable. There is a power that flows through women if they feel desired. When viewing pornography men spend most their time looking at the woman's body, while women look equally at the man and woman. Take a moment and see how you respond to this picture of a couple kissing. Notice how the camera captures more of the woman's experience of feeling desired than the man's.

On a more somber note, this longing to be pursued hosts even darker, dangerous desires. According to the Journal of Sex Research, 1 in 10 women have reported fantasizing about sexual assault at least once a month in a pleasurable way. Why? The heat of being wanted so deeply eclipses the man's violation of her body that women think this might be enjoyable. The irony is that these women are controlling a fantasy of losing control. Of course in their minds the rape is pleasurable, or rape on their terms and nothing like the actual encounter of a man raping them.

Women, it appears, must face this tendency we have, this affair with self-love, perhaps more than men. We want to be THAT sought after. More on the problems of this to come.

Interesting, how important feeling desired is to women. On a more hopeful note, if a man loves and desires a woman, communicating that to her, he can turn her on. I would also argue that when a woman desires a man, he is also aroused. Love is a skill men (and women) can acquire, with God's help, even he doesn't have guns like Brad Pitt and even if she doesn't have a figure like Angelina Jolie.

For more on a secular picture of what turns women on, read Daniel Bergner's full article in The New York Times Magazine, "What Women Want." If you find the article worthy of more discussion, send me a comment.

Overall, I found Bergner's article interesting, helpful in pointing out the distinction between bodily arousal (happens to women even in rape) and consent, but he failed to note the difference between arousal and healthy, mutually satisfying sex, a question to which I will turn near the end of this post.

Women's Lust- Is it Different?

A girlfriend once told me that the way girls lust is different from guys. Girls want to get the guys attention, while guys just want the girl. Women are more often thought of as trophies or possessions or accessories, but perhaps this is what they want (in a fallen way).

I recently watched Twilight, a poor adaptation of the book as my high school friend informs me, but nonetheless a monstrously big hit among teens. The male lead, Edward, a mysterious, somewhat obsessive, hotty vampire wants to possess the female lead, Bella. No one finds this strange. In fact the idea that he craves her blood is sort of sexy, right?

I personally find that gross, but I think most romantically inclined women (a pack I once ran with) find the obsessive desire of a man tremulously irresistible. A man who literally craves you is a man who will always turn you on, hence Edward, actor Michael Welch's, breathtaking rise to notoriety. For more on Twilight see "When Perfection is Un-Human".

But do men also get turned on if a woman desires them to the same degree? What if Bella had wanted to suck Edward's blood, if Jane Eyre had wanted to possess Mr. Rochester, if Anne of Green Gables had wanted to own Gilbert Blythe? Somehow this isn't what I think most men find alluring.

I defined lust in my previous post as desiring sex for someone not your spouse. Whenever we think of lust we tend to think only in sexual terms, much like Jesus focused in on adultery "in our hearts" (Matthew 5:27-29). But lust has a few deeper dimensions.

In this post I want to push out into the margins of the meaning of lust among different people, to know how lust grows and why we don't easily recognize it in women.

Lust and Coveting

Last night, my husband, Dale and I were driving home from a day in Denver when he came up with a new angle on the 10 Commandments. These laws are all linked to the consequences of covetousness, to wanting something that doesn't belong to us. They each spring from a firm doubt in God's ability to get us what we need.

We steal because we covet our neighbors stuff, we worship other gods because we covet other gods' blessings, we lie because we covet a better reputation or the easy road over the truth. We commit adultery because we covet our neighbor's husband.

There is, in fact, is no command about lust, only about adultery and covetousness. Exodus 20:17, "You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Two definitions from the New American Heritage Dictionary:

Covet - to feel blameworthy desire for that which is another's, to wish for extensively and longingly (from the Latin cupiditas, desirous)

Lust - intense or unrestrained sexual craving, an overwhelming desire or craving, an obsessive desire.

With these definitions, lust appears to be only a slice, the sexual slice, of the covetousness pie. And while some, my father being one, have found it difficult to imagine a woman burning with lust, isn't it easy to imagine a woman struggling with covetousness? Just glance at a picture of the ladies in Sex and the City to realize how much we crave. Just one word: shoes.

So do women covet sex, too?

Covetousness with Lustful Tinges

Kelis' song, "Milkshake" helps me understand how a woman's coveting of power and attention might be another form of lust. In "Milkshake" Kelis proves that she's got the biggest and best bag of sexual favors. If you haven't heard the song borrow a young woman's iPod. I find it tantalizing, clever and debauched. Here are a few choice morsels.

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

I know you want it,
The thing that makes me,
What the guys go crazy for.
They lose their minds,

I can see you're on it,
You want me to teach thee
Techniques that freaks these boys,
It can't be bought,
Just know, thieves get caught,
Watch if your smart,

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard,
And they're like
It's better than yours,
Damn right it's better than yours,
I can teach you,
But I have to charge

My aside, the song is catchy, but then embedded in the chorus you come to this verse:

Oh, once you get involved,
Everyone will look this way-so,
You must maintain your charm,
Same time maintain your halo,
Just get the perfect blend,
Plus what you have within,
Then next his eyes are squint,
Then he's picked up your scent,

So Kelis is still stuck doing the mincing femininity steps without missing a beat in her striptease, trying to keep her halo and still dole out some milkshakes. Kelis is a woman who honestly finds her stilettos liberating! She wants power, attention, but ultimately, she wants to rank higher than other women when it comes to getting a man to her backyard. She wants to be the most desirable. But perhaps this is because being desired turns her on.

Her new song, "Bossy" reveals even more. She reminds us that SHE'S the one who brings all the boys to the yard, she's the one whose tattooed on his arm, so she has a right to be BOSSY! But nearly every scene in the music video has a woman giving up her comfort, her dignity, her cleanliness, her sobriety, her freedom for a guy's sexual pleasure. Kelis says this is the price for the chance to be bossy.

The cover (at right) feels ironic to me. How can a woman in THAT shoe really dominate a man? And yet, women do dominate men wearing shoes like that one.

I've noticed that women who want to dominate men like this, get dominated by the system they've created. Men who want a woman like Kelis aren't particularly concerned with treating her as an image bearer of God. And women who want to boss their men aren't as concerned with sex as they are with power.

And yet both are forms of coveting. The woman covets the power. The man covets the woman's body. You could even argue as many Christians (often men) do that most women's lust is a disguised desire to be loved. And if they cannot love, then they'll just dominate. It's Genesis 3:16 all over again (as Kelis' album cover seems to indicate--by the way what's with the heart dotting her "i"?).

Then they'll argue that men lust simply because of all that testosterone. Lust is even expected from men. Kelis fits this diagnosis, she wants to be possessed, she wants a guy, sure, but for the money, for the boss-factor, for the power, maybe for the security. So maybe deep down she's looking for love?

But I'm still not convinced that all female lust is just coveting love or power. The lust I've experienced and I know others have too (check out the comments from the last post) is about sexually wanting a man, in bed, with you, right now. I appreciated Deborah's comments (last post) about how often female lust awakens later than men's and how our lust, while still visual, can also contain other components, like a rich fantasy life, a desire for what the man represents or a fatherly figure we missed.

On that note, it's easy for women (and I'd argue men) to have one night's stands because we can superimpose our imaginings onto the man we've chosen. For instance, if a woman met a men who reminded her of James Bond (Daniel Craig, of course) and slept with him that night, she could more easily imagine him strong, capable, witty, dangerous and intelligent simply because she knows LESS about who he really is. I find it much more difficult to fantasize that my husband is James Bond simply because I know who Dale is. I know he is the man who did the dishes the night before and who will probably forget to clear his desk of clutter the next day. I know we'll both tackle some new problem tomorrow and I know he is much more to me than James Bond.

I'd imagine that the anonymity of a one night's stand, or a chance encounter with an old romance, or an affair, leaves enough missing pieces for women to project the type of man we crave, not who we really have sleeping next to us.

So, in light of the many raised eyebrows I continue to receive from bringing up this topic of women and lust, let's venture a bit into why are so many lusty women silent? Why don't they talk about lust as much as men?

Different Consequences for Lust

When a woman lusts for a man and makes good on her desire, sleeps with him and goes home, she has a different physical experience to process than a man. I'm not saying a man is not harmed by flagrant sexual affairs, nor that the emotional and spiritual significance of hooking up only hurts women. However, women have more to face on the sexual disease front, the pregnancy front (the pill and condoms are not 100% effective), the infertility front and the hormonal front than a man. Even the most natural sexual act (sans condom) puts something inside a woman that could impregnate, disease or sterilize her, whereas the man is not automatically taking anything into his body.

Since a woman puts up more capital when she acts out on her lust, perhaps she learns to mute or is taught to silence her lust early on. More to lose, so it's just not worth it. Also, in our culture lust is a male thing, something several commenters noted in the previous post. Lust proves a man's virility, his "red-blooded-ness", so if you're a lustful women, you're basically more manly... Too much testosterone perhaps? And who wants to be a manly woman? Not too many girls grow up with that goal. No wonder we silence the lust inside us.

A helpful article diagnosing the church's tendency to overemphasize lust as a male problem was written in the journal "Mutuality" (Spring 2009), by Naomi Eden. "Sin Does Not Discriminate" talks about the "gendering" of certain sins in church culture so that women are believed to be less sexually motivated. So women are to dress modestly to keep men from lusting (modesty isn't something men have to think about), but women's own lust, sexual addiction and pornography go unaddressed. Eden asks people in the church, "Please do not act surprised if a woman is or has struggled with sexual sin in the form of pornography or extramarital affairs. This woman needs to hear that she can be renewed."

Healthy Sexuality

In the last post's comments Tasha asked about healthy sexuality. Given that lust is one of the ways we covet another person's sexual attention, healthy sexuality must strip itself of covetousness. Healthy sexuality must include a knowledge both of self and a desire to know the other. Healthy sexuality will by its nature make me very vulnerable to receiving all of my husband and giving all of myself in return. This is a lesson Dale has taught me time and again.

Dale and I notice that good lovemaking invites us to avoid these two extremes: subjugation on one hand and selfishness on the other. The extreme of utter subjugation may happen with either sexual partner. If the woman is completely bent on giving herself in bed while ignoring her desires as irrelevant, she’s missed the necessary element of self-love. For instance, when a wife approaches sex with the attitude, "I'll do whatever pleases you and never share my sexual hopes"; or when a husband works to steer clear of the aggressive, animal stereotype of his tribe by overcompensating to make sex all about her. This posture robs the lovers of satisfying each other because they stop thinking of themselves as worthy of being satisfied. Without communicating what she loves her husband to do, to say, to express sexually, she is not giving her full self to him (perhaps this is because she does not sexually know herself, but that is another issue all together). Love, ultimately, is a giving of oneself away, not by negating the self but by exposing the self and all of its passions. Letting a man practice out his sexual hopes on your body without communicating your desires is not full love. If a woman's sexual desires remain locked, or worse dead, in marriage then this woman is not loving her mate.

The other extreme is an attitude that is more stereotypically male, though from The New York Times Magazine article (i.e. women's narcissim and self-love) that women have a deep urging to say, as well, "I want THIS, sexually, in marriage so I will require this out of my mate." This demanding posture refuses to listen, either patiently or repeatedly, to the instruction, hope and differences of her spouse because her satisfaction is not mutual by one-sided. Demanding one type of sexual encounter without inquiring, as a scholar, into the body and mind's delights of our spouse means we fail to know and therefore to love our mate.

Interestingly, this is how God loves the world. He sacrifices, but so that his own desires will also be fulfilled. In laying down his life in Jesus, he lets us know he’s doing it, not only for our sakes, but for his. He wants the world to be reconciled to himself. We may be confused because of our church clichés and mistakenly think that true love is self-effacing, deny self and all that. But true love desires the best for ourselves too, especially in cooperation with another. This is the dance of the Trinity.

Tasha went on to ask, "Is it possible for a spouse to lust after a marriage partner by simply seeing the other as a means to their own end/happiness?"

Given that lust is a type of covetousness, I would say that whenever a husband or wife uses the other solely as a means to achieve personal gratification (either through demanding or hiding one's own desires), then love is missing in their relationship. I would not, however, call this lust. I would call it covetousness, a craving for something other than the body and soul of another person. So, as I pointed out in the last post, when a woman seeks sex only for the sperm in her husband's body because she craves a baby so deeply, then this woman is coveting her husband's sperm and not enjoying what she does own, namely his body.

Upon reflection and further research, I think a better word for this phenomena would be "baby covetousness" not baby lust.

Whenever I desire Dale sexually, even if it's to fulfill a deep sexual craving in me, I am not lusting. Why? because his body formally belongs to me. Paul says it nicely, "The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife." I Cor 7:4.

Before marriage, his body belongs to him. After marriage, we swap ownership rights to our bodies. I do not believe I can lust for something I know naturally, honorably and properly own.

Vanquishing Lust

In chatting with married women after posting my first blog about lust, I asked some, "Can you husband's body turn you on, simply by looking at it?" Every one answered, "Yes."

In fantasizing about a man not our husband women, like men, are tempted to imagine that another body is turning us on, too. Women, like men, must respect the role our eyes play in slipping us down the road of coveting our neighbor's husband.

Here's an idea of what we can do about coveting a man's body, attention, power for ourselves.

A few months back I was lunching with a friend at a local restaurant. We were deep in conversation when I became vaguely aware of a marginally attractive man walk in with a woman and an elderly man and sit across from me. Without missing a beat in my conversation, I glanced up and took him in. He wasn't as attractive (to me) as Dale, of that I could tell immediately. However, he seemed focused and clean and kind--all lovely qualities. And I was drawn to that.

Instead of being able to merely admire, I caught myself (minutes later) trying to catch his eye. In between my sentences with my friend I was stealing glances, lingering my eyes longer than I needed. Then, right dab smack in the middle of a sentence, my awareness kicked in. I became conscious of what I was doing.

I was lusting after that guy. I wanted him to notice me, and I wanted to let our eyes rest into each other and I wanted to distract him and I wanted to check him out a lot more. Why? well it wasn't to tell him about Jesus.

Typically in situations like these, my first response is some serious reining in and self-talk. Something like, "Jonalyn, that's wrong. God doesn't want you to think of him like that, stop it right now." You know the ol' accountability line.

But, since I've been reading Letters by a Modern Mystic which has been teaching me to invite Jesus into everything, I steered around my blamey self talk and prayed instead, "Jesus, I invite you into my lust."

And I went back to my conversation with my friend.

Then, in a flash, something changed, not about the man (he was still tempting to look at), but about my eyes. I felt like light had cracked open in the restaurant and I was seeing things clearly.

A lull in our conversation gave me a chance to lift my head and really look at that man across the restaurant. He was sitting with a man, perhaps his father, and a woman, presumably his wife. I felt his presence as a son, a brother, a father, a husband. The last one completely changed me.

I do not struggle with lusting after my family members, nor those who I clearly see in familial roles to me. I see them as friends, members of my family and therefore easily respect them. In that moment, after uttering a prayer, Jesus came into my lust and reformed my eyes to see the man as a human, made in God's image.

My desire for him as an object to possess melted and I saw him as someone worthy of my respect. I know I could have bumped into him later and not been afraid to look at him.

Often, accountability guidelines for ending lust focus on guarding our eyes from even looking or noticing beauty. But this feels Gnostic to me, a method of denying the inherit beauty in healthy men (and women's) bodies. I want to be free to notice beautiful men and I want Dale free to notice beautiful women. This allows me to thank God for his creativity.

Once I grabbed Dale's arm and pointed at a nondescript guys' amazing legs, "Oh my goodness, see that man's calves? They were HUGE!" And he'll notice and we'll talk about how men with calves like that would have been chosen to be the leaders in of Scottish clans and how so many men do not have calves like that and how gladiators would have HAD to had big calves just like that guy's. It's actually pretty fun.

We'll do the same if a woman with gorgeous legs walks by. Neither Dale nor I have stunning gams, but we love noticing others who do. And in the process, my lust isn't incited. I'm observing the art of God around me and sharing it with my husband. God called us very good. I'd have to agree.

If we find our admiration turning into covetousness, I'd recommend this relational approach of inviting Jesus into the moment. Asking for Jesus to abide in us reminds me of Jesus' words, "Watch and pray so that you will not enter into temptation." Matthew 26:41

No matter where you struggle with lust, invite Jesus to abide in you. Jesus is stronger than I've been or any other method I've tried.

Lust- Alive and Well Among Women

2009-06-10T15:06:00.000-07:00

When we were in Laguna Beach, Dale and I grabbed breakfast with a good friend of ours, a young, smart, finely-featured single guy named Gabe. He told us about a recent experience he had endured at a local bar. Several women, friends of friends, came up to him and enjoyed seemingly harmless chit-chat back and forth.

Upon learning that no, Gabe was not dating anyone and yes, he was straight, the young women began jockeying in earnest for his attention. When one of the more buxom females slapped his butt, Gabe protested, “Excuse me, but that is my butt.”

“Oh, you know you like it!” she responded.

At this point in Gabe's story he told us he had no idea what to do. He didn't like it, but he didn't know how to protect himself. I told him how invasive and horrible that must have been. Dale said, “That’s sexual harassment!”

I asked him if this had happened before.

“Yep,” Gabe said. “Girls have grabbed my crotch, one girl, I thought she was a good friend I could trust, but,” he cut another bite out of his Belgium waffle. “She just kept coming up to my dorm room only at night. This one time she told me she wanted to mess around. I told her I wasn’t interested and she said I didn’t really have a choice because she would accuse me of raping her if I didn't have sex.”

Lustful Women

Gabe is not an anomaly. There are many men who endure the lusty side of women, namely because lots of lusty women exist. Women's attraction to the male body is a widely experienced but little publicized nugget of truth. Need a few examples? "The Naked Truth about Woman 's Lust." For the short version just remember when Obama walked the beaches topless, and the way females responded.

In the Middle Ages, church priests informed their parishioners that women were naturally more lustful, carnal, insatiable, and visually stimulated. Men were naturally spiritual and motivated by pure reason. For a popular example see the sexually voracious wife of Bath in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. In these olden days, the proverbs spoke of oversexed wives whose husbands couldn't give enough sex to keep them satisfied.

Hence, the church fathers' instruction for women to cover their heads for even angels, Tertullian explained, would be tempted to sin by seeing a virgin unveiled. His explanation of 1 Cor 11:10 continues, "She has the burden of her own humility to bear . . . For what is a crown on the head of a woman, but beauty made seductive, but mark of utter wantonness,-a notable casting away of modesty, a setting temptation on fire?” (De Cultu Feminarum, book 1, chap 14).

Isn’t it curious how opposite we think of lust today? Among most people, but more so Christians, it just seems common sense that men are the carnal, lustful, insatiable, visually stimulated ones. When I read Shannon Ethridge's book Every Woman's Battle, she says men are visually stimulated, that men give love to get sex, but that women give sex to get love, end of story. In high school chapels we were told that a guy thinks about sex once every 30 seconds.

Men-- the red-blooded oversexed humans has wriggled into Christian folklore as fact. In Walt (M.D.) and Barb Larimore's book His Brain, Her Brain, you can find tongue-in-cheek drawings of brain differences between men and women. As Barb Larimore explains, the male brain's largest section is the "24/7 Sex Hemisphere." The woman's "Family and Friends." (p 42-43).

I know it's meant as a joke, but talk about unhelpful stereotypes!

One thousand years ago, however, the church father's would have drawn the woman's brain with this 24/7 sex thoughts section and man with a much larger purity and reasoning capacity. Another well-meaning, but unhelpful guide in building mythology about women, For Men Only, by Shaunti and Jeff Feldhahn, explains in the chapter “With Sex, Her ‘No Doesn’t Mean You” this Truth #3: “Your Body (no matter how much of a stud you are) does not by itself turn on her body” (P. 133). Personally I beg to disagree. I know how much a man's body can turn a woman on... ask any woman you know about how she feels in Abercrombie and Fitch.

But with all these Christian sources written by journalists with statistics (the Feldhahn couple gathered stats from 300 women) and doctors (Dr. Walt Larimore) no wonder many in the church are convinced that all men pursue, crave and fantasize about sex much much more than women.

Today, we're convinced either by our marriages or by what we read that all men pursue, crave and fantasize about sex much much more than women.That's why Playboy sells more than Playgirl, right? That's why men talk about struggles with porn and women don't.

Well, I have news for you. The internet has made porn much more accessible without public shame. I consistently meet girls and women addicted or dabbling in porn. And these are only the brave ones, courageous enough to ask for help. The internet filter review from ChristianityToday.com documents these helpful statistics

Breakdown of male/female visitors to pornography sites: 72% male & 28% female.
70% of women keep their cyber activities secret.
17% of all women struggle with pornography addiction.
Women favor chat rooms 2X more than men.
1 of 3 visitors to all adult web sites are women.
9.4 million women access adult web sites each month.
Women admitting to accessing pornography at work: 13%
Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.
In a survey conducted by Today's Christian Woman's online newsletter, many women admitted to intentionally accessing Internet porn. While some women wrote in to explain they'd accessed these sites to better understand what was luring their husbands.

From my personal experience of my internal desires and listening to women who confess privately to me, I know women who have had affairs, women acting out on their sexuality. And many of them are Christians. Women are just as red-blooded as men. Many women love sex for the sheer pleasure of being with an attractive man's body, women think about sex and many women find themselves lusting after other men. I think the rate of adultery where every man has to have sex with a willing woman should indicate that women are just as susceptible to this vice. (Photo: Steve Baccon)

What is Lust?

Lust, as defined by philosopher and spiritual formation director Dallas Willard, is the desire to have sex with someone you have not married. This is also Jesus' definition in Matthew 5:27-29, looking on another human with a desire to commit adultery with them in your mind's eye. I believe Willard would say that it is impossible to lust after your own marriage partner. When a woman lusts after a man she is imagining sexual interaction with him, it could be kissing, cuddling, oral sex or any other form of sexual engagement.

In Romans 1, Paul writes that God gave both men and women over to their lusts. As friends of mine in lesbian communities have pointed out, the absence of men does not mean faithfulness improves. Infidelity is just as rampant among lesbian couples, if not more so, as it is among heterosexual couples.

How Do Women Lust?

I am one of those women who have found myself struggling with lust. I am not addicted to pornography, but I am distracted to lust after well-built men. This is something Dale and I talk about as he struggles against lust as well.

When a beautiful man or woman passes us on the street or monopolizes our time after a speaking event we both code awareness to each other. We use our eyes to say, "Yes, this is a beautiful body in front of me, but no worries. My appetite has been cultivated for you."

Talking about the beautiful people around us allows us both to safely confess and grow into desiring each other. It also means our temptations are never alone faced alone. If you're reading this, male or female, and feel like you're facing lust alone, let me highly recommend XXXChurch as well as emailing someone to talk safely with. If you need recommendations for a counselor in your area for you or someone you know, please request that I email you by commenting below.

In our marriage, we also leave room to admire another man or woman and even point them out to each other without arousing suspicion about lust. When I do find myself lusting for another man, I will tell Dale. Years ago, after harboring fear and shame and deeply buried disgust for myself in my heart I confessed to him. Dale responded so well, "Would you like to pursue counseling about it? Would you like us to cut off communcition with this person? What can I do to help?"

This is a perfect response, but then, I've married a good man.

Baby Lust

Women don't always want a man's body for the sake of pure sexual delight. I've noticed how many women lust for men because males provide 1/2 the necessary ingredients for babies. I've heard husband confide to us that they know their wives make love to them only because they're hoping to get pregnant. Others share that since having kids their wives are completely uninterested in sex, even decades later. There are many women who are willing to fight for their right to have a baby, even at the cost of the man they married.

Having read the story of Jon and Kate Gosselin in their New York Times Bestseller Multiple Bles8ings, just a week before the story of their failing marriage broke, I had underlined several passages that concerned me. Kate Gosselin lived like babies were her God-given entitlement. In her book she talks about overwhelming desire to be pregnant, to feel life fluttering within her womb, to weaken her husband's armor (since he was content with their twin daughters). She speaks of pregnancy as a right, beating down her husband for months with arguments to try in vitro fertilization again. She writes,

"I sensed a crack in his (her husband, Jon's) armor. He was softening. He knew only one thing in the world would fill the aching void I felt, and that one thing was downy soft, sweet-smelling (most of the time), and had the power to light up the whole room with one toothless grin. Finally, he agreed to go through it all again--just one more time." (p 21)

Some women might applaud this. But, as a woman who has and still feels this aching void for a baby, I can testify that this is also another form of lust, not necessarily sex-lust, but baby-lust. A grasping demand to have something (even a very good thing like a baby) that God has not provided. This does not mean that I am, automatically against in vitro. I have dear friends who used this method and I believe for God-honoring reasons.

However, I believe this baby-lust is part of the reason the Gosselin family suffers today. For other reasons see "The Gospel and the Gosselins." While I commend them for choosing to keep their 6 fertilized zygotes, I do not think Kate's motivation for children was pure from lust

I am a woman who has experienced the finger-tingling amazement at life fluttering in my womb without the joy of holding that baby in my arms. And as a woman who longs for that again, I can also say that it is still possible to bow my head to God's ability to give me what I need when I need it. To live in deep dependence on God to show me what being a woman means with this man, with all my red-blooded desires intact, but steered to love well and fully.

My love for Dale, my desire for him, my delight in making love to him are not grounded in my hopes to get a baby. And love, for the husband in your life, for the friends God has given, for the tasks and people God has directed toward you, beats lust every time.

Depending on the response, I'll be writing another post on this subject.

Making Spiritual Small Talk

2009-05-22T07:02:00.000-07:00

All religions offer a way to redeem and rebuild humanity. I had lunch last week with a Muslim woman in Malibu who has found that the practices of Islam offer her a place to "fit", a spiritual home to feather. When I asked her about particular questions, the kind that keep philosopher types up late at night, she dismissed my questions. She didn't want to talk about the problem of pain, instead she said, "I just try to remember God in every moment of my day."

Her words surprised me as something few Christians find themselves trying to do. I'm reading a wonderful simple devotional called Letters by a Modern Mystic by the missionary to the Moros (a Filipino Muslim people group) Frank C. Laubach and his modernization of the ancient practicing of the presence of God (a la Brother Lawrence) has led me to want to do the same thing. I do, by the way, HIGHLY recommend Laubach's short book. It's a jewel, perfect for slipping into your purse and whipping out during long lines at the grocery store. He has helped me want to bring Jesus into every moment of my day. Laubach puts it like this,

What right have I or any other person to change the name of these people from Muslim to Christian, unless I lead them to a life fuller of God than they have now? My job here is not to go to the town plaza and make proselytes, it is to live wrapped in God, trembling to His thoughts, burning with His passion. And, my loved one, that is the best gift you can give to your own town (p 13).

I shared my new practice of inviting Jesus into every moment with my Muslim friend and she didn't bat an eyelash. According to her, we are all inviting God (by whatever name) into our spiritual lives. This is, in her mind, the measure of a spiritual person, their relationship with God.

So I ask you to weigh in on how you would define a spiritual person. I find that in defining "spirituality" I want to include things like the fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23), the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, the power of Jesus over this broken, ugly world. Everyone can talk about God in their lives, but how many have the power to break old habits, experience shalom-like peace, know the long path of long-suffering? I cannot find these in my own life apart from Jesus.

How would you define spirituality? How do you think others define spirituality?

As Dale and I work on our first book together, Coffee Shop Conversations: Making the Most of Spiritual Small Talk, we've been thinking about different ways to talk about the God we love and how he became flesh and dwelt among us. We realize that most people enjoy talking about their spiritual journey, if you can ask the conversational questions and if you do most of the listening.

Last week I was making a necklace with a young woman in a local jewelry shop. We began a conversation that started when she asked if I knew about an old TV show and when I said I didn't I explained,

"I was raised in a very conservative Christian home, no TV," I said.

"Wait, you didn't even have a TV? Did you have a telephone?" she asked.

"Of course!"

"We didn't even have a telephone, we were out in the sticks. I got left out of so many things." We commiserated, but also shared about how much we valued the push to be more imaginative with our playtime. We talked about her family, why her mom pushed the family to go to church right after her little sister was born.

"Why then?" I asked.

"Now I realized it was because their marriage was hurting, I think she wanted us to have, you know, a moral foundation." She said. I took mental notes of how this is what most people believe God and the church offer--lots of moralistic rules.

"Were you glad for that?" I asked.

"Yeah, I mean it kept me from being as bad as I could of been." We started talking more deeply about what she did and what she could have done, the conversation becoming more personal, details that are part of her personal story. As I kept asking questions, she openly told me about how once the pastor's son was forbidden from dating her because she wasn't good enough for him.

I raised my eyebrows.

"I couldn't believe it!" She said,"I sat listening to this guy every week in church and I thought, what a creep. Such a hypocrite! So since then I've pretty much kissed the church goodbye."

"I know what you mean," I said, "Don't get me wrong, I love God and I just can't get enough of Jesus, he's wonderful, but I'm very angry with how people use God to abuse other people. There's a name for that," I told her. "It's called spiritual abuse. My husband has endured more spiritual abuse at the hands of people claiming to speak for God than anyone I know. But, he still loves Jesus. It's really amazing to me."

She was listening closely. She shared more about the little darts thrown at her by religions people. I said, "That kind of stuff leaves a mark, doesn't it?!"

Our conversation moved to her sister, her current life, our necklace projects. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her how she has reconnected with God, but I would have had to force an awkward moment to make it happen. I look forward to asking her, next time I visit.

If you've had any spiritual conversations in the last few months, I'd love to hear about new ways you've shared how Jesus is good news. I maintain that he offers the world the most powerful solution to every evil dart from the enemy of our souls. But how we communicate that is as varied as we are.

Let's hear some conversational tips!

Off-roading and Quilts

2009-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

Last week I went on vacation with Dale. We set off toward Moab, Utah for some outdoor adventure. My mom and dad joined us for our 2nd annual Moab reunion. While the guys did some all day Jeep trips, my mom and I pushed our limits rock-rappelling, rafting the Colorado River and then we joined up with my dad and my husband to Jeep around the ruddy cliffs. Later I even tried some rock climbing.

Moab leaves you feeling much stronger, braver and dustier than when you arrived.

After our adventuring with my parents, Dale and I reunited with a group of Rubicon Jeep owners (all members of the incredibly time-consuming, incredibly helpful Rubicon Owner's Forum 0f which my husband is a part). We took on trails , learned more about dusty sandstorms and team work in the few hours we had together than you can ever learn from reading a book.

In the slower moments (aka scouting out how to work over the next obstacles) I read So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore a thought provoking easy read that a friend had urged me to check out (Now I want to pass that word along to you--it is excellent!).

One of my favorite things about Moab is seeing friends each year in the same place, around the same campsite, doing the same trails together once again. This picture of the Jeep tilting is from the trail "Cliff Hanger" and don't worry he didn't tip over.

This year one of my highlights was reuniting with a woman named Dee and her husband, Bob. She and I first met 2 years ago when we were on the same off-roading trail, our husbands driving their khaki Jeeps, us alternatively reading and cheering them on. Dee initially impressed me with her hunger for reading and her curly auburn hair, so of course we hit it off. I imagine Dee is probably my mother's age (I haven't asked her), but that didn't create a gap between us. She's a ravenous creative, making more gourmet meals and quilts (finishing them by hand) for fun and then just giving them away. A truly inspiring sort of person.

After first meeting them in 2007, we learned that Bob and Dee could be called spiritual seekers. Bob had a background in the Jehovah Witnesses. But, after our 2007 Moab trip Dee and Bob met Jesus. This is another amazing story. Short version is another couple in the Rubicon group introduced them and they liked him so they invited him into their lives.

So when we re-united in 2008, Dee pulled me aside, told me she had guessed there was something deeper in me when we first met, told me about her love for Jesus and then asked me to sign a copy of Ruby Slippers she had brought along. I was both honored and slightly amazed at her enthusiasm to read a book written by a young girl on womanhood. Her eagerness was a huge compliment.

Another year passed and I didn't hear from Dee, as is usual for us Jeep enthusiasts between trips.

So last week I looked for her in Moab morning Jeep meetings (this is when all the Jeep drivers meet and discuss which trails they're going to hit). She found me in the crowd of Jeepers, gave me a big hug and told me she had something to give me. I followed her to her camp site and she pulled out a large white trash bag. What on earth? I thought.

I opened it up and found a kaleidoscope of reds and whites. Dee announced, "It's your Ruby Slippers Quilt." I could not believe her handiwork, the lovely design. It's just beautiful. I gave her a hug and then began poring over the details.

Home again, I've found a spot for my Ruby Slippers quilt, right dab smack in the middle of our bed, to remind me that no matter how small sales numbers look, there is a woman named Dee who was touched by my work enough to create this for me with her unique gifts.

Intelligender?

2009-04-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine alerted me to a new website: Intelligender where you can purchase the test to determine the sex of your baby as early as 10 weeks.

Besides the Downey Bottle Blue and Pepto-Bismol Pink of their color scheme, I found the site interesting, even if they used "gender" a bit sloppily. Gender in the academy refers to the non-biological, usually socialized aspect of boy/girl differences. Sex, in the academy, refers to the biological differences. So technically it's "Intellisex" but I wouldn't market that either.

Why would parents want to know their child's gender at 10 weeks? How much of an edge does this early knowledge provide? Most parents discover their baby's sex around 20-28 weeks. So one big benefit is 10 more weeks to create your baby's gender specific wardrobe and nursery. But at what cost?

I'd like to know what you think about a site and test like this. What benefits does it provide that I'm not seeing? Any concerns about their marketing pitch?

The Quiet Work of Mothers I Know

2009-04-13T14:29:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, on Palm Sunday, I was in the Dallas area speaking for the Salvation Army's Youth Council, a state-wide youth retreat. Afterward, I visited with a long time friend of mine.

Erin and I reminisced about our childhood, the ease and convenience of Sunday school girl friends, how easy it was to get together every Sunday after church. We laughed over her son's antics and growing vocabulary and shared amazement at his young brilliance. For instance, he will point out something he likes, then wrap his chubby arms around his torso and hug himself and say "Hug!" to express his approval and delight in what he has just pointed out.

Erin and I talked about the difficulty and joy of growing up, taking responsibilities of cultivating young lives, young families, young non-profits.

Erin lives far from her family, her husband is currently working 70+ hours a week so childcare primarily falls into her lap. She shared with me how M.O.P.S. provides an oasis for her to get free childcare, community with other mothers and good teaching each week.

I watched her take time to let her son turn on and off and on and off and on and off a light because he loves lights magic power and she loves him. Not because she was particularly thrilled with another interruption or with the endless light flickering session. Here's a picture of us in her son's nursery. Erin had just finished changing his diaper.

When I took time to browse her library, I heard her talking through a book with her son. He is 1 1/2 and my friend is already commenting how she wonders if she'll have what it takes to keep teaching him.

To me, she's working wonders already in the 15 hours each day she pours herself into her son. Erin is pregnant with her second and she told me she's quite interested in how she'll do this with two. I have no doubts of her competency, her ability to be attentive and to love her children well.

Erin's work takes place without signage, no bill-board or website, no promotional page of quotes of people who've been grateful for her work. No one flies her out to do her work, instead Erin stays in one place, in one home, working deftly, magnificently behind the closed doors of her house. There is no audience, no honorarium she hopes to receive other than her son's chuckle and another eager series of lights going on and off and on and off. And perhaps a hug and kiss.

Erin's work is quiet work. It is work that goes largely unseen, except perhaps on Mothers Day or when her husband comes home after his 16 hour days. And yet, Erin does not buy into the idea that mothering is the only work that is valuable in her life. When her son naps or on her weekends, Erin runs an online company designed to assist other people who suffer from Crohns Disease. She whips up new recipes and posts commentary about how her doctor's morbid diagnosis became something she thwarted with a careful and healthy diet. For more see her site "No More Crohns".

In her resilience and no nonsense approach to living fully, using all she has to offer in her mothering and her business, Erin reminds me of another mother I know. Caryn Dahlstrand Rivandeniera who has written a book I've been longing to tell you about.

It's called Mama's Got a Fake I.D.: How to Reveal the Real You Behind all that Mom (Waterbook, Spring 2009). Now I know I've written some controversial posts about motherhood in the past, about how I do not believe God has sanctioned Stay at Home Motherhood (SAHM) any more than he has sanctioned Work Outside of the Home Motherhood (WOHM).

As a followup to those discussions, I want to point out Caryn, someone I recognize as superior in knowledge about moms, someone who agrees with me in part, but not in whole.

Let me share a few quotes I love and let those mothers in my audience decide if this book would be worth squeezing into their schedule:

First, her book is dedicated to her three children "To Henrik, Greta, and Fredrik. Mama loves you like absolute crazy" I loved that!

Second, she claims to be a traditional at-home mom, "In many ways I'm a traditional at-home mom: I'm there when the kids wake up, take naps, eat lunch, watch cartoons, drink their chocolate milk. I carpool; I cook dinner; I play games on the floor; I bake like a champ. " But . . .

"those things don't give others the complete picture of who God made me to be. Same thing with every other mom. God gives important gifts to women that have nothing to do with conceiving, birthing (or adopting) and nurturing children. We have God-given talents, passions, and interests that a mom badge just doesn't bring to the fore."

She goes on to talk about how church is very lonely for some moms, quoting testimonies from women who've written into the Christianity Today's blog called Women in Leadership, a blog Caryn serves as managing editor.

One woman writes, "In many churches they still try to push the June Cleaver prototype on women as the "biblical" model." When a sample group of mothers was asked to name the setting in which they struggle most to be known and to fit in as their real selves, the number one answer was "with other moms." Church was a close second. See Caryn's chapter 5, "How Moms are Left Homeless in God's House." Now clearly this isn't the experience of all mothers, it is certainly not the experience of my friend, Erin, who finds her M.O.P.S. group a wonderful source of hope. But Erin also had stories of other mommy groups that felt fake, frustrating and very high performance.

Caryn's book serves as a good reminder that some women want to be known beyond their mom label. But many churches tell women that they are mothers first, barely whispering that they are made in God's image in other ways as well. If a woman bucks this they can easily be named selfish, career-demanding, poorly suited for mothering adequately (as I have been told). But Caryn points out, "Is it selfish to want to be known more fully? I think something else is at work, and it is this: Christian women often earn an A-plus in self-condemnation while completely missing the class on honesty and transparency."

Then she gives this zinger: "God created us to bear his image in all of life, not just in one area." She marks out the ways God reveals himself to us, so many, complicated, zany, dramatic, vibrant, loud and quiet ways. God makes himself known. We, Caryn argues, need to make ourselve known, too.

"I love being a mom, but I hate being ID'd as one . . . when being a mom looms so large that it obscures everything else God made me to be, other people are not seeing the real me . . ."

Then she comments on the selfishness accusation:

"We also need to clear away any nagging feelings that our concern with our identities is somehow selfish and lacking in godliness. This isn't true . . . Scripture shows us that getting to know ourselves and making ourselves known has its foundation in God's self-revelation."

He's a one of a kind God and he made us one of a kind people. I've written elsewhere about how hard female friendships are for women. Perhaps this is due in part to the diffuculty women have in discovering themselves. As Caryn puts it, "Any authentic relationships is based, in part, on a clear understanding of a person's true identity."

With that Caryn launches into discovering the you that God created you to be with chapters like "Being a Mom Makes you Much MORE" and Seven Tips for Discovering the Real You. In reading I found a story that reminded me very much of my own story of losing our first child in an early miscarriage (p. 14).

It was the first time I read of someone else calling me a mother. When I called Caryn and asked if this story was based on mine, she said, "Oh that's totally you, I remember thinking how you have a mother's heart when I read your blog posts on your experience. You were so fierce in the ways you wanted to protect your child. That's the heart of a mother, Jonalyn." It affirmed something in me that I've longed to hear.

She goes on to explain "How Moms Keep Losing Their I.D.'s (and why we need them back!)" including "How Designer Women Got a Generic Label", "Why God Cares About Who You Are" with a tremendously transparent story of how she was rebuked for sharing her passion for helping women understand their identities with this response,

"Remember, Caryn, God gave you these kids for a reason. You've got to stop worrying about you. You can do that later. You need to worry about them now."

Caryn points out, accurately to my mind, that so many Christian women cannot understand how a mother could love her children like crazy and still want to do more than devote herself to them 24/7. How much freedom are we allowing in the church for alternative models? As Caryn puts it "in our zeal to honor moms, we tend to dishonor women." She challenges us to refuse to sneer at moms who do things differently than we do for "if we sneer at moms who don't fit our view of what a mom is or does, we sneer at Jesus."

One of the most valuable sections of Caryn's book are her Seven Secrets to Finding Your Real I.D. with tips like "Getting over the Guilt" and a guide to "Interview Yourself" with pages of open ended questions to discover who you really are and why "find your identity in Christ" can be both helpful and non-helpful. Throughout, Caryn relies on Scripture to make her case. One of my favorite moments was when she cited Matt 5:13-16 from The Message, "You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept . . . By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God." She gives mothers ways to tell others about who they are. She recommends when pepole ask moms about what they do that they respond, "I'm a mom and ______ (gardener, antiwar activist, lawyer, writer, preschool volunteer, runner, etc)." This reminds the non-moms of the world that being a mom doesn't preclude you from having other gifts and interests.

Some tips I took away from Caryn's book are her humor, she is so accessible with her fun stories of the joy and frustration of being a mom. I also loved her tips about how to approach moms. She said that there was a time when moms were considered INTERESTING in their own right, such as the Proverbs 31 woman who didn't try to hide her accomplishments, even from her own kids. She recommend asking mothers, "Tell me about yourself" rather than "Tell me about your kids." She asks moms to ask themselves, "What makes me feel like I'm firing on all cylinders?" and feel free to answer that with something other than motherhood. Caryn is an fantastic blogger (The Mommy Revolution), author, editor and a woman I count a dear friend. She's also a terrific mom.

And this leads me back to my friend Erin. I love watching Erin mother her son, it brings out a tenderness and attentiveness in her I haven't seen. She formed a young person who is a laugh out loud fun person to be with (as you can see us clowning around in the pic). But Erin's motherhood adds to the unique person I already love, the zany, movie-making, dramatic, witty, enterpreneurial, persistent loyal treasure I value for so many reasons.

Here's to the quiet work of moms I know both with their children and in the unique ways God has gifted them. Thanks for being a mom and a _______.

Thank you for showing the world more of what God is like!

Book Review: Find Your Way Home

2009-03-25T13:52:00.000-07:00

There are few short devotional books I like, even fewer that don't tweak my theologian side as being too wimpy for anyone who wants to think deeply about God. But a few weeks back I was sent a book to review and I'm happy to say that though it is short (you can read it in 1 hour) and devotional it is not theologically wimpy.

In December of 2007 I wrote a blog, "The Human Side of Prostitution: Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy" reviewing a novel based on a real group of women, "The Sisters of Bethany", a unique Dominican Third Order of the Congregation of Saint Mary Magdalen. These were some wicked unique nuns, women who were previous felons, prostitutes, drug-addicts now committed to Jesus and transforming themselves and their culture. Reviewing Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy was such a pleasure, because I knew behind the fictional story's inspiration were real women living out lives of redemption after imprisonment. But this was all long ago, an order founded in the 1860's in France.

Well, through this new devotional book, Find Your Way Home I have found a modern day group order of women, here in the United States who are very similar to these Sisters of Bethany. Founded in 1997 in Nashville, TN, Magdalene helps women who have come out of lives of prostitution and drug addiction. The women of Magdalene have come out of correctional facilities or the streets, they have survived lives of abuse, prostitution and are experiencing a no cost, safe, disciplined, and compassionate community in which to recover and rebuild their lives.

Magdalene is a two-year residential community founded not just to help culture but to create culture itself. Their story and rule for living is simply written out in Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart. This short book was written by the Women of Magdalene with Reverend Becca Stevens, Magdalene's Founding Director in short chapters listing out their 24 Rules for living in community.

As I read through the 24 Rules, inspired by Benedictine values, that govern the women of Magdalene's lives I was reminded of several things.

Ready to Change Themselves and You

First, these are women who have taken the bold step of changing from abused and abusers to daughters of God. Their journey begins and ends with God. They firmly believe that love heals.

When Dale and I were in Seattle last month we visited a homeless shelter that helps men get off the streets. The founding director taught us something significant. He said he often hears men say, "I want to get off the streets." The director, a previous addict himself, will offer commiseration (it IS cold on the streets, isn't it?), he has learned that these words do not mean change is forthcoming. It's only when he hears them say, "I want to change my life," that his ears perk up.

Find Your Way Home holds many first person stories, staccato paragraphs of women who were ready to change their life. I read from their words about the cycle of poverty, how difficult it is for the homeless to forgive others and themselves. One woman admits to being invited to Magdalene multiple times, attracted because women from this groups were giving her bags of toiletries and snacks, treating her, a stranger, with love. "The problem was, I couldn't stay clean. It would take me almost another year to give up the drugs, but I am so thankful God didn't give up on me." This going-the-long-distance love is something most church-attenders and small groups would benefit from experiencing, even if just through reading this short book.

The women's honesty would blow open most nice Bible studies. Let me give you one glimpse in a woman of Magdalene's own words, "I know the sweetness of grief and the feeling of tears against my skin. I also know that I will still sacrifice just about anything to be accepted by a man. But knowing that my body and spirit are connected at least give me permission to treat my body and every other body in the world as a great gift from God."

Embedded Bible Verses

Second, while I found consistent Christian ideas peppered throughout the 24 Rules, I did not find any Bible-quoting nor any mention of Jesus. As an apologist for Jesus I thought this worthy of mention. I began taking note of specific Biblical ideas, delighted to find so many God-honoring, true ideas woven into the Rules for life and stories from women. This was the Bible made flesh in a community of women in Nashville, Tennesee.

Here are a few Bible ideas I found.

"I have forgiven the man who abused me when I was a child. I can pray for him and hope for wholeness" an incarnation of Jesus' command to love your enemies and pray from them.
"We are God's children in flesh and spirit" reminiscent of John 1:12-13
"We give drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, comfort to the sorrowful, clothing to the naked, and companionship to the imprisoned and dying. We wash one another's feet" all commands of Jesus.
"In loving our neighbors we are meeting God" a version of Matthew 22:39 "love your neighbor as yourself" that feels slightly Hinduistic to me as we are not actually God, but we bear his image.
"I knew that God had new plans for me" echoing Jeremiah 29:11
"On my best days I know even this broken mess of a body is a temple of spirit" a version of I Corinthians 3:16 and 6:19 that says our bodies are a temple of the Holy Spirit.
My favorite was "we know we are our sister's keepers" a reversal of Cain's avoidance, "Am I my brother's keeper?" in Genesis 4:9.

This spiritual sensitivity with hidden Biblical truths can be a useful guide to helping any person coming out of addiction. It outlines the importance of a Higher Power and prepares them to meet Jesus. Sharing spiritual truths without Jesus can, however, be a dead-end since Jesus' power is necessary to heal us, fully. I can see Find Your Way Home being a good start to spiritual conversations with a friend, especially if she is already concerned with social justice for women. It would be a great way to introduce someone to the Biblical ideas that have power to change real lives today. Just keep an eye out for the Biblical nuggets inside.

Setting up a Rule for Living

Third, this book would be a helpful guide for anyone attempting to set up a series of rules for guiding victims of addiction into healthy life. Inspired by the Benedictine rule, the women have developed guidelines for living with proven working power as they are the guide for everyday interaction and deep-seated community among the Women of Magdalene. Some of the 24 Rules particularly welcome to me like, "Unite Your Sexuality and Spirituality" a much-needed Jewish truth that we are made to be embodied souls, "Consider the Thistle", and "Walk Behind." The personal stories of women from Magdalene are proof that women are finding change, as one woman wrote, "It is not a problem to be lost. It is only a problem if you think it is impossible to find your way home."

Overall, Find Your Way Home made me very glad. Here is a group of women finding hope to leave addiction and find a home, a community, worthy work and meaning in their lives. If you're interested in helping the Women of Magdalene open more homes, you can buy this book as all the proceeds go to Magdalene, or you can visit their ingenious Thistle Farms, a non-profit company where women of Magdalene make all-natural body-healing products. I mean if you've every bought Bath and Body Works, you have to check them out. I've just put in my first order.

Next time I travel to Tennessee, I want to visit Thistle Farm named for that often overlooked flower that blooms where most would die.

Lynching Today

2009-03-06T16:23:00.001-08:00

Please be forewarned, this is a heavy one.

Last night I attended a Theater Dance Production where I saw much talent and a lot of skin.

Some dances were sensual, some merely sexual. One in particular stood out to me where a posse of women (teens?) danced around one man to the music of Timbaland and Ludacris. I believe the songs were "Bounce" and "The Potion". At one part the women enacted a violent sexual act with the music sounding much like a woman gasping for breath as she was being choked again and again and again.

After the number I leaned over to my friend, Emily and told her I had three major issues with the whole thing.

Most of the moves were not interesting. I mean if you want to watch women and men bumpin' and grindin' just go to any club. The ones I've been to in my teen years gave me enough pelvic thrusting to leave me rather bored with the unoriginalness of it all. Isn't dancing an art? Shouldn't it be creative beyond club moves?
It was sexier than sex, which means it's not real enough to be rooted in the ways of romance between a real man and woman, which means it's a farce, a deception, a lie. And I have a problem with anything that smacks of lies because it finds it's source in the Enemy of our Souls, the Father of all Lies. The reveling in this kind of dance is the kind of thinking that destroys marriages, prevents intimacy, keeps women invulnerable and men silent and stony. There's no life here.
Women were re-enacting abuse with the man on the stage. They were charading being backhanded, sucked dry, flayed, suffocated, slapped and abused. If the dance was meant to show the pain of evil, it might have been redemptive because it accurately portrayed a reality in this world: woman are abused. But there was no mourning going on, more of a promotion of this kind of sexual/violent encounter. It looked almost cool. Every woman or teen in the production was dressed in a gangsta outfit, baggy pants, one leg up to below the knee, plenty of midriff, sidewayz baseball caps, that sneering, I don't give a @%$*! attitude. They all looked tough, as if they still had control of their body and their heart, even while the guy slapped them around. There was a bit of glory in the manhandling of their bodies, and an attempt to sexify the physical abuse. I cannot enjoy seeing my gender abused and I cannot call that sexy.

So I went home last night rather discouraged that women would want to dance like that.

Today dawned rather solemnly as Dale and I had plans to attend a funeral of a young friend of ours, a twenty year old from our town named Stephen Thomas.

But everyone called him Chongo. Addicted, heartbroken, stony and guarded, Chongo was a guy we ran into regularly around town when we were out past 10 pm. I always felt sort of awkward around him, like he was too cool for me and that whatever I said was not clear enough or interesting enough. I didn't know how best to love him.

We knew those who were mentoring him. We knew he had recently accepted Jesus. We also knew that sneer that often met us when we said hello. He was downright unkind and rude to Dale several times. And I'm fairly sure the reason he talked with me is because he found me mildly attractive.

Chongo overdosed last Saturday. His life snuffed out. His apprenticeship for electrician work, his recently gained GED, his sense of humor, even his sneer that masked his pain are gone from this earth. His funeral did not comfort me. The evangelistic message fell flat on my ears, except in one point.

Buck Chavarria, a jewel in our town, was one of the mentors in his life. He and his fantastically matter of fact wife, Tara, are good friends of ours. Together they run Christ for Life Sk8 Church, a local ministry that works with the kids most of us have given up on. He and Tara serve the kids on drugs, the high school drop outs, the runaways, the vagabonds, the true ragamuffins of our society. They feed them dinner every week, hang out with them at the skate park and help them know what love looks like.

Buck shared at Chongo's funeral one line that has stuck with me this evening. Facing a crowd that spilled out into the foyer, Buck, his black hair greased back in his faintly punk/rockabilly style explained the ways things were, "Chongo didn't know he was loved by you. He had a hard time believing people would love him. I think we all have a hard time believing all the people who love us."

Those words echoed in my soul as I thought through my day. I had spent the last few hours picking up hot Starbucks coffee, coordinating soda and water bottles and driving them to the reception for after wards. I had lugged crates of coffee up stairs through doors, sweating with the effort. All the while I was thinking, what if I had spent this much effort trying to love Chongo when he was alive?

I know I listened to him and complimented him and tried to draw him out. But he was so closed, in so much deep pain. I remember a time when Dale and I were speaking for Sk8 church when Chongo was asking us questions. He was, for a moment, really relating to what we were saying. He asked us something and we tried to take him a step deeper, but he couldn't follow us. I was frustrated with how he gave up. I was frustrated that we couldn't explain the concept of Jesus and his love better. And since that day I would feel a sense of inadequacy around Chongo, hoping I could share anything, even listen, in a way that showed him I cared.

At the church I looked out on the audience of people who all claimed to love Chongo. I mean, that's why we were here, right? Why didn't Chongo feel loved? Why did he seek refuge in substances to alter his reality? Why couldn't he break out of his addictions? Why couldn't he take our love?

I felt the immense wound of this world so intensely.

If you could have met Chongo, you'd see a lack of willpower, a sense of frivolity and meaninglessness. But this was a mask. Every now and then you'd see the pain in his eyes. On the table at the church were many of Chongo's childhood pictures. In a picture taken when he couldn't have been more than 2, I saw something in his eyes. His eyes were dewy, I imagine he had been teary right before being plopped down for the photo shoot. But the expression in those eyes, open, wide open, they radiated such a heart wrenching sensitivity, one that, as I looked at pictures of him growing up, dulled into a sneer, a protective, hardened, even dazed look. The hope and sensitive spirit in him had been dying before he did.

Buck shared about Chongo's kind side during the service. But it was a side Dale and I rarely got to see. As fellow friends, perhaps some who had hosted the party where Chongo had OD'ed filed out of the sanctuary, I was overwhelmed with their grief and hopelessness.

I came home, put on some soft music, lit as many candles as I could find and grabbed the biography of Rosa Parks I've been pouring through. I read two pages before I came upon a horrible lynching story of a young man, Emmett Till, when he was fourteen years old. His body was found in the Tallahachie River, his eye gouged out, his skull crushed, a bullet in his brain and a 75 pound cotton gin barb-wired to his neck. The lynchers were found not guilty.

I put the book down and marched over to my computer and began to write this.

Times have changed since then. In 1954, some white men were the perpetrators against some black men. Today, we don't have to read about horrendous lynchings, but we are still hateful, cruel to some of the people closest to us. I don't know the particulars in Chongo's case, but I have read enough and spent enough time online chatting with teens during Soulation Ask LIVE and after speaking events to know that teens are being destroyed from the inside out. Smoking, using, cutting are only symptoms of their soul's pain.

Often this is due to parents who will not face the truth, who live as people of the lie, who would rather sweep the painful picture of gouged eyes under the rug. It hurts too much to know what painful things we do to one another--often so unintentionally.

Soul pain is the most insidious method the evil one uses, for we cannot immediately see it, tend it, heal it, unless we study each other's eyes. And even then, we know how to mask our pain.

Today we hear about young men and women destroying their souls. Their spirits so abused by others (mothers, fathers, siblings, friends, themselves) that they have no will to feel or live or know.

Today, teens are lynching themselves; the signs are rampant. They starve themselves, they cut themselves, they fall into abusive relationships where they have no will to break away, they grow passive in school, their eyes no longer carry any sparkle or sensitivity to give me hope, the women glory in their lithe, supple bodies, magnifying their sexual powers far too soon, captured by their own powers of captivation.

And these children and young adults are the walking dead among us. And they are very, very hard to love. Their lives are snuffed out as they continue, numbly, to exist. Mostly their choices are meaningless and their lives feel controlled by someone else. Most of the teen addicts are living in ways against their will, for their wills have been rendered useless against the power of the evil one. He bends his will to make the image bearers of God grow passive, listless and powerless to find the good stream of living water.

At the moment, I cannot bring myself to think of solutions, I can only meditate on Buck's words that we are loved. We are loved, though few of us know it.

Spiritual Gifts- The Right Fit

2009-02-12T19:33:00.000-08:00

When I got married I received something I had wanted for a long time, something I had put on my registry, a beautiful KitchenAid mixer. But after setting up house, I realized I had no idea how to use the bulky contraption. It looked professional and impressive, but I already had a simpler electric, hand mixer. So I found myself in the unhappy position of owning a gift I was unsure I wanted.

Sometimes a spiritual gift feels like an expensive KitchenAid mixer. We want to have one but we’re not sure what to do with it once we have it. It’s an embarrassing and awkward to long for a gift, then to get it and let it sit idle. I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that after six and a half years of our marriage I still don’t know how to use my KitchenAid for more than mixing. I’ve heard I’ve been told its uses are amazing, but I haven’t experienced it.

Pink and Blue Spiritual Gifts?

Often I’ve mused how much more practical and comfortable it would be to have the gifts of serving instead of the gifts my spiritual inventory tells me I have: teaching, exhortation, prophesy. If I had the gift of serving I imagine myself supporting my husband’s speaking ministry on the side-lines, preparing sustenance (like healthy snacks on the road) and encouragement (sweet notes tucked in his suitcase) without the distraction of writing, speaking, preaching in my own right. I puzzle at how to fit my spiritual gifts into the church.

At times it feels like I’m in the wrong body, like a man should have gotten my bundle, not a woman who loves kids and homemaking. But, no mater how hard I look, I cannot find any evidence that the Spirit reserves some gifts just for men. 1 Corinthians 12: 4-11 shows us that the Spirit of God has the power, the freedom and the joy to distribute “to each one, just as He determines.” If he determines it, then he must provide the grace to juggle a multifaceted life. So far he has along with some other sweet gifts like joy in my work.

In both complementarian (ministry roles differentiated by gender) and egalitarian (equal ministry opportunity for both genders) camps, theologians believe God gives to both men and women all formal spiritual gifts listed in Scripture. New Testament Professor and complementarian, Craig Blomberg, writes,

“Virtually every Bible student today agrees that when these terms (teachers, administrators, leaders, evangelist and pastor-teachers) are used as spiritual gifts, women may receive and exercise them just as powerfully as men may.”[1]

The Spirit doesn’t dole out his gifts in pink and blue: a man may have the gift of helps or service (Samuel to Eli in I Sam. 3) and a woman may have the gift of teaching (Priscilla to Apollos in Acts 18:26) or leading (Deborah) or prophesying (Huldah, 2 Kgs. 22:14). Spiritual gifts are given as the Spirit of God chooses. And often God chooses to give his gifts without regard to my plans, but with a deep regard to use me with my femininity in his kingdom.[2]

Lately, I’ve found myself in a church where instead of an invitation to use my gift of teaching to benefit all men and women, I’ve been requested to help with women and children. For the last year, I’ve volunteered for the nursery and taught the women’s groups. But this summer my husband and I came up with a new idea; we’ve decided to open our home for a weekly Bible study for all people,. We have families attending, young teens asking questions, their parents giving input alongside their children, church leaders, pastors, elders, presidents of local non-profits, friends all having a voice to share and we get the chance to teach as a husband-wife team. No leadership in my church officially sanctioned this activity, but all, even the all-male elder board, are excited about the work we’re doing: a Bible study for the common good. I’m still praying that the more hallowed places of teaching, like the pulpit on Sunday mornings, will be opened up for women to exercise their gifts for the common good. In the meanwhile the body still needs to be built up. The Spirit is still giving abundantly for what we need; we just need to take our creative cue from him.

Make it Fit, or Else . . .

Somewhere in Sunday school lore I learned that you must use your talents for God and if you didn’t, just like that stingy, lazy servant in the parable, God would take your talents away. No matter that Jesus was talking about gold talent not spiritual talents (see Matt 25:14-30), the pressure was on. Find your gift, make it fit you and the church.

The very idea that I could lose my spiritual gifts was an awful pressure. It would be like finding at my door one morning the generous givers of my KitchenAid Mixer demanding it back because I neglected to fully use it. That’s not what I’d call a true gift. A gift is a releasing of ownership, transferring the joy of owning to someone else. Some might say a gift is a matter of stewardship, but a gift is more a matter of grace. Romans 12:6 links spiritual gifts with grace, “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” “Gift”, in Greek charisma, comes from the same root as “grace”, charis both of which God gives lavishly, freely, graciously, without ticking off how many people you’ve touched with your gift.

In Junior High I heard that we should discover our spiritual gift as soon as possible by taking a Spiritual Gifts Test. It sounded accessible and easy. A natural test-taker, I easily discovered a smattering of gifts that matched my personality and seemed to make sense. Some of my friends didn’t fare as well, their tests coming back all vanilla. In the end many lost confidence in this whole spiritual gift thing, feeling they didn’t belong, couldn’t compete, like God only handed out pre-fabricated gift, or gifts that didn’t fit them—all revealed through a man-made test. Meanwhile I learned that smart little girls could appear more spiritual.

Limited by the List?

I gravitate towards spiritual hierarchies, the comfort of knowing my gifts are spiritual not merely natural. I liked knowing that I had some gifts that were accredited by the Spirit of God. Accreditation feels so official, so secure and permanent. But God isn’t stingy with his gifts, he gives them irregardless of good test-taking skills.

I’ve found the lists gleaned from New Testament passages (Rom. 12:4-8; I Cor 12:7-11; I Cor 12: 28-31; Eph. 4:11; I Pet. 4:10-11) are more like starter-kits, designed to get our creative juices flowing. They are not the final masterpiece. The rest of Scripture doesn’t give me tidy, predictable ways for understanding the Spirit’s work. When the Spirit first fills people in the New Testament, he’s like a violent wind, unpredictable and rather life-altering. The Spirit’s gifts range from speech to a donkey to prison breaks (Numbers 22:28, Judges 15:14). He’s hardly limited by our list.

The first time the Spirit is recorded as filling a person is not for a preacher or even a leader like Moses, but Bezalel from the tribe of Judah, an artist. God gives him “wisdom, understanding, knowledge and all kinds of skill to make artistic designs” (Ex 35:31-32). James says that every good and perfect gifts comes from God (Js 1:17). Just a little digging and we can find a cornucopia of spiritual gifts, many given to women to build up God’s people: the gift of good food (Abigail, I Sam 25:18), the gift of artistic skill (engravers, designers, embroiderers, weavers, Ex 31:34-35), the gift of dance (Miriam and the Israelite women, Ex 15:20-21), the gift of gatekeeping (women at the tabernacle, Ex 38:8), the gift of patronage (benefactresses, Luke 8:3, Rom 16:2), the gift of overseeing house churches (Mary, Acts 12:12; Lydia, Acts 16:14-15; Nympha in Col 4:15).

Customized for Us

The only pattern I’ve been able to make out in God’s gift-giving abundance is that he gives to fill the gaping holes in his people, his church. So his gifts are ready-to-use, powerful, customized, things we will want to use because we all need them right now.

Let’s keep a sharp eye out for the creative work of the Spirit in our lives, a Spirit like the wind, changing out new gifts according to the need. Like when we get a new pair of shoes, instead of wondering if they’re comfortable we have to put our feet into them and walk around, the best way to see if your spiritual gift fits you is to try it on. What is the Spirit is pouring into you in this moment, filling you to walk into the needs around you?

"The Right Fit" first appeared in a different format in Today's Christian Woman, September 2008

[1] Two Views on Women in Ministry, ed., James R. Beck (MI: Zondervan, 2005), 152.

[2] To read that journey thus far see my Ruby Slippers: How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home (Zondervan, 2007)

A Weekend with Messianic Jews

2009-01-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

I got to dance.

This last weekend, the Soulation speaking team (read: Dale and me) flew to Atlanta for the Young Messianic Jewish Association's (YMJA) Annual Youth Leaders Retreat. We had already been prepped with the request to call Jesus by his Jewish name, "Yeshua" and to do "what we do best" which in this case was train the leaders to answer their teens' heart and mind questions.

Followers of Yeshua, not Followers of Christ

The Yeshua bit was, as we've come to realize, a way to love our Jewish brothers and sisters better. The phrase "Christ-killer" has been a weapon used to destroy Jews for centuries, so any way we could indicate our belief that Jesus was in fact, a Jew, and that many Jewish people did follow him (his entire band of disciples for instance) is a way to honor the Messianics we know.

We arrived late Friday evening and after fighting Atlanta traffic found ourselves wandering around the synagogue unable to find the way in. It looked a bit different from most churches we had attended. Then our contact found us, and smilingly ushered us inside.

Where are we?

At first I thought Beth Hallel Congregation looked fairly normal, until I saw an elderly man with glasses on, one glass covered with blue star of David stickers. A bit unnerving, like a retired Judeo-pirate. Later I discovered he was the congregation's cantor, a man honored with giving the closing blessing. By then, the star on his glasses was not as stunning to me as his voice, raised in chanting prayer to God.

I didn't really realize I was anxious until I started feeling tangible relief that so many women had dress slacks on. They weren't all wearing skirts and some of the men weren't even wearing their yamikas. Maybe it would even be okay if I accidentally said, "Jesus." I relaxed a bit as our contact continued to help me understand the meaning of the service.

Believers in Yeshua

As we rose to sing, I felt their love for Israel soar. One song used the word Yeshua. As the believers around me rang it out, they began to raise their hands. That's when my eyes filled. To hear so many Jewish people, many with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's blood in their veins claiming they had found their Messiah, undid my composure. My heart rose with joy with them, but I could not sing my throat was so tight.

Coming Home

There is something about Messianic Jewish people that makes me feel I have come home.

Perhaps it is due to a dear friend, Ellen, who mentored me from my early teens, a New York Jew who found Yeshua. Perhaps it is because of my love for the Jewish Scriptures (the "Old" Testament) and how these stories have built my understanding of who God is. Perhaps it is my love for genealogy. Perhaps it is my love for apologetics. When Messianic Jews claim that their God has a specific name, God of Israel, a God with a specific history with a specific people group, all the "well when you say God and I say Krishna we actually mean the same thing" stuff disappears. This is a God who will not be confused with Allah, the Jehovah Witnesses Jehovah, the Mormon's one-time physical God, the Buddha, Krishna or Kali, Brahmin, Zeus, or the Goddess.

Perhaps I feel at home among Messianic believers because they know that God's determined choosing of the Jewish people is regardless of their qualification, their willingness, even their obedience. Perhaps it is because of the Jewish music that moves me more than any praise song chorus or hymn can. Perhaps it is because the Messianic Jewish people are, to use one of their own comparisons, sort of like an island of misfits, a motley crew of different sorts of people, with so much variety and yet such freedom for each other. Perhaps it is because every time I meet with Messianic Jews, I am loved, very well by them. They remind me why I follow Yeshua.

Beauty in Dance

Saturday morning we began our program in earnest. But, before I was even able to start speaking, we sang. I watched their praise band sing and the women join in a circle up front and dance. It was a movement of both grace and unity, no one spotlighting dancer, no leader, no followers, all moving in unison in a circle. This was a dance without sexual undertones, this was dance young and old could join. And as they danced they were a visible manifestation to me of a people who continue to worship even as they know pain.

Dale and I began to weep. Good grief, I thought, this is no way to professionally begin a talk, all drippy mascarad and wet nosed. But the, well, I have no other world but beauty and pursuit of God felt so deeply precious to me, like a true sacrifice. For, as I came to know much more this weekend, Messianic believers pay a high price for following Yeshua.

The Price

Jews don't want the Messianics for they have accepted the one Jew who the Christians have used to persecute, even torture and kill the Jews for centuries. Accepting Yeshua as Messiah is the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate capitulation to the Christ-ians, the final disregard for the Jewish distinctive pain and practice.

And Christians, I'm afraid, do not accept Messianic believers either. If we express interest in Jewish feasts or meaningful rites (like how Lord's Supper can have a bit more pizazz if you bring in a "Jews for Jesus" guy to explain the Passover). Often we like Jews because we want to know more about God, not because we want to know more about his people. And Messianic Jews pick up on this. They know how many are attracted to their movements to get at something "old and ancient." They can see those who have come more to play dress up, than to identify and own the Jewish identity and burden and suffering. Jewish Messianics regularly experience the way Christians want to know about Israel because it is a key to understanding the end times, sort of like a missing puzzle piece. But rejoicing over the completed escatological picture that you have so cleverly put together is completely different from rejoicing over the intrinsic meaning and value of that puzzle piece. It's worth celebrating, as much as the lost sheep, the woman's lost coin, the father's lost son.

A Place to Dance

My Messianic sisters taught me how to dance this weekend. Not right way. After our first talk on "Developing a Strong Believing Worldview" we long break where we spent 3 hours talking back and forth, sharing questions and puzzles we both had. I found these Messianic believers so good at being patient with sustained dialog, there was a steadiness to learn for each other. I felt listened to and thereby loved. I learned why there is so much misunderstanding of the Messianic Jews and I discovered more beautiful puzzle pieces: why the Messianics do not focus on ethnicity, but on following Yeshua, how there can be such little hierarchy of Jews over Gentiles. Then it was time for supper and then our evening talk. During the singing portion, and against my better judgment I accepted Mara's invitation to dance with the women.

I lept into the weaving and circling group of women, attempting to keep up, to raise my hands to sway and glide and in the process getting all my footwork messed up. One woman broke from her place in the circle, came over to help me. She took my hand, another counted the steps for me. When the dance was over a more seasoned Messianic Jew named Rachel took me outside to show me the steps. And by the last day, I could dance. It looked much like this (but without any fancy costumes!)

I have not worshiped God like that in years.

Prayer

Sunday came and the women met separately from the men because Dale and I had prepared separate talks for each group. To date this was the most open gender talk I've experienced. Their open confession and the beginning of healing flooded the room. I felt I was taking their hands and counting the steps with them into another dance. This one of identity and owning the bodies God had given them. And then during the last time of singing women who had not yet danced stepped forward and joined the circle.

I danced among them.

I felt healing surrounding us.

At the end of our sessions we gathered to pray for the leaders. Then, unexpectedly the youth leaders circled us and laid their hands on Dale and I. They prayed for us, for Soulation to flourish, for us to become more appropriately human, for us to love the many spiritual babies God has given us. I was weeping all over Dale's jacket by the time they finished blessing us.

This weekend has left me so spiritually full that though my body is exhausted from travel my soul is rejoicing. Something is happening on earth, something larger even than President Barack Obama's inauguration, something I'm so thankful to know about it, to have experienced.

See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.

The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. (Song of Solomon 2:11-13)

What Makes a Woman True?

2009-01-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

This post is devoted to introducing a new initiative to you called the True Woman Manifesto, written by Nancy Leigh DeMoss (think radio "Revive our Hearts") . While I do not believe the manifesto adequately represents all true women, I do think you ought to be aware of its purpose and power. Much of it I agree with it, while some of it I do not. Perhaps it is the title that bothers me the most.

I believe it's important for you to read the True Woman Ma nifesto. Take time to discover if it's name is appropriate and why you could or could not sign it. I'd welcome your comments in response and your thoughts to this question: What makes a woman true?

When I look up femininity in wikipedia I find that it can mean qualities that people deem best suited for women and can include any of the cultural trappings including, but not limited to, superficiality, corsets, heels, makeup, long necks, bound feet and cleavage. Now I believe there are some key, essential attributes to femininity. I'm not convinced Scripture teaches them clearly enough to codify. But DeMoss and others do.

Read the True Woman Manifesto.

After perusing the Manifesto, check out this adept critic of its content at a fellow blogger, site:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

While I know John Piper is a much beloved theologian, it's his gender theory I cannot agree with, particularly how he believes that because women are distinct from men, they should not be in any authority position where men will heed their leadership. For Piper, the spiritual buck stops with men. I believe that if women are so amazingly distinct and complementarian to men, why not create churches and homes that are complementarian all the way up the chain of command? Why not use women's distinct gifts for every decision, every leadership opportunity? Why not use the helper God provided to man?

I believe the current crisis in masculinity is a direct result of the strain men accept (often without women lifting a finger) believing God placed ultimate responsibility on their human shoulders. When men and women believe males are directly responsible for all spiritual health in church and home, the body is operating with 50% capacity. Strain and eventual injury is the result. God originally created woman to be helper, an ezer. But helping is impossible if we come under the husband’s spiritual authority and the final buck of spiritual leading falls to the men.

The godly man that I partner with in life and work reminds me that there are some men so confirmed and confident in their masculinity that they can realize their need of woman, just as their forefather Adam, recognized his need of woman. Unless the first Woman could shoulder responsibility with Man, she was not a help at the beginning. This pyramid model for home and church (the same one endorsed in the True Woman Manifesto) shrugs off the community of the body, where every members is needed, the weaker, the stronger, all to fulfill the role we have been gifted to find and fill.

Piper's words:

I regard the True Woman Manifesto as a faithful, clear, true, wise—indeed—magnificent document. What an amazing thing it would be if hundreds of thousands of women signed on with their heart to the True Woman Manifesto.

—Pastor John Piper
This is where Piper and I disagree. Do you?

An Interview with Tosca Lee

2009-01-07T19:47:00.000-08:00

As promised, an insider's look into the woman who wrote Havah: the Story of Eve, a book I relished (read review), a book Publisher's Weekly starred in their review.

"A passionate and riveting story... Lee’s superior storytelling will have readers weeping for all that Havah forfeited by a single damning choice."
- Publishers Weekly

I first met Tosca Lee when we both sat at a poorly attended book signing in Colorado Springs. The authors had more time to mix and mingle among themselves than with any fans. It was an unforeseen perk. I had already seen Tosca's book cover, but when I saw that it was a story of Eve, the tractor beam pulled me right in.

When I began to talk with Tosca, I discovered that she was not the typical writer. Right off the bat I was monstrously curious about one line in her biography, "Tosca Lee is a sought-after speaker and first runner-up to Mrs. United States 1998." You better believe I peppered her with questions.

I'd never met a true beauty queen, or a runner-up for that matter. But Tosca endeared me to her pretty darn quick when she told me, "You should run for Mrs. United States." When I laughed and she just looked at me seriously, I thanked her profusely.

Still, I have to admit I had plenty of prejudice about these beauty pageantry types, especially after Miss South Carolina's exhibition a few years back.

Here are the words from a woman who's been on the inside, a fellow-writer, and a woman I'm proud to call my new friend.

J: What got you into beauty pageants?

I was eating dinner at my mom’s house and one of her dinner guests who volunteered with the production of the Mrs. Nebraska pageant, said, “Hey, Tosca, you should run for Mrs. Nebraska.”

I laughed at him.

Now, you need to know that he was saying this to a woman who was one of those Smart Girls growing up—the kind that a boy would sooner copy homework from than ask on a date. I was short most of my early life, a half Asian girl in the middle of a 95% white school in Nebraska in a time when Christy Brinkley was on the cover of every fashion magazine. It was so not cool to be ethnic when I was growing up, or to be into the arts in a state that lives and dies on sports. And while the American definition of beauty changed around the time that I was in high school—by then I sprouted up from the short kid that I used to be--I was still voted Most Likely to Become a Librarian my senior year. If that tells you anything. ;)

I went on from high school to Smith College--the liberal feminist college famous for alums like Gloria Steinem, and first ladies Nancy Reagen and Barbara Bush (our class of ’92 t-shirt said, “There’s got to be a better way to get a woman into the white house.”)

So by all accounts, the pageant was a stupid idea.The more I thought about it, though, the more intriguing it was. The fact that he had mentioned it at all moved the idea from the outlandish to the possible. I was curious to know if I could do it. And If I’m honest, I think a part of me also just wanted some validation as someone who could be “beauty” material.

2. How did your college studies feel harmonious or incompatible with competing for Mrs. United States?

On the one hand, I had friends who really questioned my decision to take part. This is not what women from Smith College do. I kinda wondered if they were going to sic the National Organization for Women on me. On the other hand, my definition of feminism has always been that a woman has choices. She can work or not work. She can have children or not have children. She can go to school or not. She can compete in a pageant or not. The definition of feminism, to me, is not just about equality or equal pay, but about being able to exercise the full range of her intellect, her spirit, and her femininity.

3. What were the female friendships like among the contestants?

I met some of the coolest new friends. To this day I keep in contact with Cynthia (Mrs. Ohio), who won the 1996 Mrs. America title, with Annie (Mrs. Hampshire) who was also my roommate, and Christy (Mrs. Hawaii). I made a great friend in Deanna, (Mrs. Tennessee) in the 1998 Mrs. United States pageant, and also several great friends competing on the state level. I’ve also inherited a whole sisterhood of Mrs. Nebraskas—those before me and those who have won the title since—who have become good friends.

Sure, there was some cattiness, too, but that’s more a reflection of competition and life in general than the pageant system, if you ask me.

4- What moved you out of pageantry into writing?

I had already established myself as a professional writer several years before I entered my first pageant, having written on the staff of Smart Computing Magazine, authored two computer books and freelanced for several years. It was harder to get much writing done especially with the 1996 Mrs. Nebraska America title (I was by then working on a novel); I made some 60 appearances that year on behalf of charities and community events, and also started a speaking career that would help launch me into my consulting job a few years later.

I always say that a pageant is a very strange means to a good end—after all, aside from the national pageant, I never appeared in a swimsuit, and only attended a couple events in evening gowns. Most of my year was spent raising money for causes (I raised $8000 for breast cancer with my own Mrs. Nebraska golf tournament), meeting kids and talking to Girl Scout groups, taking part in events for the American Cancer Society, the Heart Association, Alzheimer’s groups, local fairs and state-wide events like Nebraskaland Days, doing interviews on the radio and TV about each of these causes. By the time I became an author, I had good experience with the media, which helped a lot.

In 1998 I ran for Mrs. United States, mainly because by the time the Mrs. America experience was over and I sort of understood the whole thing—it was over. Having not grown up doing pageants, that was my first national experience. So in 1998 I competed for the Mrs. United States title mainly to flex what I had learned about presence and interview and reaching out to people—even from stage in 5” heels. Seriously. I won first runner-up and when it was over was ready to move on to something new.

Once the pageant titles were behind me I had more time to pursue my own projects—one of which became my first novel, Demon. I also started my consulting job with the Gallup Organization a few years later, too—about the same time I started modeling professionally as a hobby. Strange dichotomies, I know, but modeling, consulting, writing and pageantry have all managed to inform one another in my life.

Five Inch Heels.... wow.

Meeting Tosca made me all the more eager to get back to writing my next book, "Walking in Her Shoes", a project that has been put on the backburner as Dale and I finish up our book on "Faith and Friendship." In the meanwhile, I would love to hear your thoughts about women, pageantry and competition.

Check out more about Tosca Lee and her new book, Havah at her website.

Havah: The Story of Eve- Book Review

2008-12-26T09:41:00.000-08:00

In writing Ruby Slippers, I often imagined what life would have been like for the first women, what her experiences would have been of God, of Man, of the earth. For to understand Eve is to understand much of who we are as women, East of Eden, today.

Would she have been stronger? Would she have been fuller, richer, more fitted to this earth than her daughters feel now? Was did the judgement do to her?

Every once in awhile you stumble upon a book that holds all the hope and imaginative power that you longed for. I have found Eve's story in Tosca Lee's new novel, Havah: The Story of Eve. As sumptuous as Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, but distinct in that Lee is theologically accurate (she does not depart from the Biblical text--something so rare and exquisite to find in a well-written novel today). It is so good that I urge you to go out and borrow, buy, but by all means read this new book.

The story is rich with dignity for the first woman, Havah, a name Lee uses for Eve, a name that sounds like the gasp and exhalation of breath. Lee gives us the story from her perspective, how she awakes for the first time and is known by God and by Man. It is replete with her sense of being needed on earth, with the mutual partnership between the first man and woman and the total effacing power of the first judgment on their lives.

This book begins with these words,
"I have seen paradise and ruin. I have known bliss and terror.
I have walked with God."

This is an Eve that knows God, not just mediated through Adam's words, but through her own experience, her own walks and runs (as you'll see) with God. Lee draws on historical research, theological insight, apologetic depth to show us: how woman was meant to be, the romance between equals, the way the first Adam reflected her first love, God himself. How Havah could say after Adam "I knew then he was as much mine as I was his." How all creation constantly hummed with communication to one another. How man and woman could speak without words.

Lee walks us through Eden where we can understand how the serpent could have beguiled her so well, the attractiveness of his words, his wisdom. She shows how the Man was with her when she ate and how he could have eaten along with her. She explains the sinless hunger for each other's bodies and souls in the first time a man and woman made love, made a home together in Eden.

And it's all in a novel! So that means it was a delight to read. I scarfed it down in a week, making furious notes, noting how much really changed by the judgment. I particularly appreciated how subtly Lee shows us the beginning of sin in human society, relationships, how men began to use their wives and failed to see them as co-image bearers. How idolatry crops up, how Havah and Adam are afraid to speak of what they had lost. All of it, the first sacrifice, the first murder, the first marriage are understandable, relatable, horrible and yet we do not feel angry, only the pain and depth of the sin. We are living beyond the valley of Eden, we are thick in the sin, her judgment. In so many ways we are living Havah's story today.

And yet, a pin-prick of light remains in Havah's life, when Adam, even in his last days, buries his head in her neck and whispers, "I can still taste the earth of that valley in you." She is the last piece of paradies to her, and he to him. And yet for most of the novel, their silence, their broken communication will rend your heart. It clawed at all that I longed for for them, it tortures you as you read of their life outside the valley of Eden, this unbearable weight of separation. The two can rarely be one flesh. When Havah, in the last, pages, dies, still outside the garden where she was made to live in forever, you glimpse a hope. But I will leave that for you to discover.

Read this for a refreshment of how we were first made to walk, how we now limp and how we all hunger for the redemption of everything we know, our bodies, our souls, our relationships, our earth.

My favorite scene was near the beginning with Havah learns she can run with all the eagerness and bold self-knowledge of a woman who needs neither modesty or restraint,

"I raced across the southern hills, leaping rock and shrub and stream. I was a great runner. I lifted my knees high as I hurdled shrub and bush and stream. Laughter bubbled up from my belly as I took to the foothills, past the grazing onager. It brayed after me, and the sound was like laughter. I knew the adam watched me from below, and that the exuberance of my legs and quickness of my breath accelerated his heart. I knew, too, when he launched after me, but he was no match for my start or my speed. Only Levia, the lioness, was my equal.

I bounded down the hills toward the valley floor. It was midday, and the sun was hot upon me, and its rays loved me, warming the dark honey of my skin, beading sweat between my breasts and among the hairs at my nape. I was small-breasted then, lean as the new colts.

See me! My soul shouted. Watch me run! I ran through the valley like the wind through the meadow in spring. I was tireless, euphoric at my great strength and with the One who had given it to me. I ran faster and faster--faster than I have seen any woman or man run since.

In my soul I heard laughter--first of the adam, from where I left him in the meadow--but more brightly and keenly--of God. Then--oh, great mystery, such a moment! There came a rush of wind and warmth that was not the sun. It was at my shoulder, in my ear and my face: the One that Is, running alongside me, his laughter honey in my ear" (Havah, p 38).

It made me hunger for my God and ache for the redemption of all things.

Stay tuned for next time, an interview with Tosca Lee.

The Economy and Dancing with Dale

2008-12-17T18:17:00.000-08:00

Men and women are facing the economic recession differently. Where men are hurting, women are finding their jobs holding, opportunities expanding. Last week, The Boston Globe's Robert Gavin wrote that the recession is predominately male (see "Losing Jobs in Inequal Numbers"). The job lost might be white or blue collar. Over 1 million men have lost their jobs, but 12,000 more women are working.

As a woman who loves her brothers, her fathers, her sons in the body of Christ I want to do something with this knowledge.

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. In honor of him and the many men we love beyond their ability to provide money for us, I want to focus on something unique about men. I want to show the way men provide themselves to us. I want to spotlight the way one man has given the best gift to me, a gift that is distinct from providing money, the gift of himself.

We've been married nearly 7 years, Dale and I. I've been regularly dazzled by the depth of this man, who he is, how he shapes me, how he is taught and changed by me, how love twines our lives together.

And love helps me both know and receive Dale for who he is, not what I long for him to be. I mean, the same guy I wake up next to, the man who travels and speaks alongside me, is the man who fails, listens, grumbles, creates, argues and loves me. Can I receive his gifts to me, the gifts that have much more to do with Dale's soul and body working in love than they have to do with money . . . .

Take our non-profit, Soulation. Dale runs almost everything. He is our accountant, travel-agent, resident researcher, sound technician (until recently he edited all our talks), video operator, web-technician, he updates our calendar, our new biographies, our pictures, he files for our non-profit status, he navigates the IRS law to ensure we're both writing off all true tax-deductible receipts, he writes all the code for our website (he'd say he's just a great copy-paster, but I know he has to hunt up that code somewhere and find the beginning and end--no small task for a novice and then integrate it into our Soulation site).

Dale intentionally invited me to do Soulation with him, wanting to share the spotlight with me on the stage, allowing his airtime to be cut in half because he believes in partnership on the road. This gift is beyond the diamond in my engagement ring.

In our home, I watch Dale keep spaces clear because he knows how clutter plagues my creativity. He shares in the task of walking our brood of corgis, the Ladies. He cleans alongside me, he researches and fixes items around the house, and keeps up on new projects. This gift is more than a cruise to the Mediterranean.

Take our friendships. Dale is an amazing conversationalist. I have a litmus test that if you cannot get along with my husband, you can't get along with anyone. He is full of grace and understanding, he knows how to listen, well. This gift means we can enter a room as a couple and find friends swiftly and pleasantly. This gift means more to me than a pair of deliciously sexy shoes.

In our marriage, I can trust that Dale really knows me, my interests and he knows how to add them to his own. He has watched and really liked the classics I keep adding to our Netflix list, he will switch plans last minute to go to a

restaurant I'd prefer. He consults me about absolutely everything, not that we always agree, but we always discuss it. Dale refuses to be less of himself in our argument, like when we talk about how I want to have children and he believes we must wait for the sake of helping care for souls in this world. I feel known by my husband, known and understood and this is why I can find deep satisfaction in what I do and who I am loved by, even here on the eve of the 1st anniversary of losing our baby.

I have a marriage where more has happened, more doors have been opened for me than I could have ever dreamed up.... and to think I almost married someone else.

Dale's only real fault is that he won't dance with me in public. And we go round and round about it. How I wonder if in my aging years, if God takes him from me, will I be one of those elderly women who sign-up for the community dance class, where I will be matched up with a young, pimply college student trying to earn some extra bucks teaching old ladies how to dance. Will my dancing debut find me with knees cracking and my figure sagging.

I've told Dale about my wonderings. And it troubles him every time we pass a senior citizen center that offers dance classes. He doesn't like the picture.

But, I tell him, you're the only thing keeping me from learning to dance now. And I roll him one of my insistent, pleading looks. He sits unhappily, unbudgingly.

And I sigh, dramatically. But soon lean over and kiss him on the cheek.

I really do think he is the world's best man.

This Christmas I want to learn to see our sparring matches about everything that matters to us, about philosophy and religion, about emotional health and investing, about designing our Retreat Center and Soulation and corgis as our dance.

Soul dancing with Dale...

As Christmas draws near, let me play the herald's role and sound the clarion call to women everywhere to honor the partners God has given them, to measure a man's success, not by his job, or by how well he meets our expectations, but to measure the man by his soul. May this recession help us accept the gift of the men who love us.

Tidbits in My Tummy

2008-12-08T08:51:00.000-08:00

Syndicated from Gifted for Leadership

Food, glorious food! It’s the time of year for eating. I imagine most of our Thanksgiving turkey gobbled up and the leftovers transformed into dishes like Real Simple’s recommendation: turkey barbeque sandwiches.

Food and Power

Food has power over our health. Earlier this week my husband, Dale, re-lived the poisonous side of food. His favorite meal, pizza, was ruined. It was, unfortunately, during the wee hours of the morning, at the start of our long drive from Los Angeles to home in Colorado. The food poisoning he experienced completely overhauled his body, leaving him weak, annoyed by the embarrassing inconvenience.

Food has power to unite us. Earlier this year Dale and I started a house church with another family. We have three rules, we eat together, we pray together and we share spiritual and financial resources together. The church has since doubled in size. Every week we rotate who will host, who will provide the main dish and who will cook up our “soul food.” So far, I’ve learned more about how to follow Jesus, more about love and unity than I’ve learned in years spent in my church pew. Even the kids participate.

Food and Gossip

One week after discussing gossip during house church, I was giving piano lessons to the youngest member, a ten year old boy named Peter. He told me a story about an annoying neighborhood dog, imitating the dog’s yeowl so convincingly that we both burst into giggles. Then, he paused and sheepishly looked up at me. “I guess I’ve just gossiped about him.” I explained that I wasn’t sure gossip applied to dogs, but I was glad he cared about speaking unkindly about others.

Our house church’s conversation of gossip took place in one of our first meetings. It was while we were polishing off these amazing crème brûlèe desserts. We ate and struggled together to come up with a definition for gossip. One teen daughter defined gossip as saying anything behind a person’s back that you wouldn’t say to their face. Two of the fathers agreed that gossip was that speaking when you’re not part of the problem or the solution. I read a few verses to share a Biblical idea of gossip.

One from Proverbs has since stuck with me, “The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to the inmost parts” (18:8 and 26:22). We batted around that “choice morsels” phrase trying to live in the metaphor. One twenty-something, made the observation that “choice morsels” of food go down into our bellies and are then distributed throughout our bodies. Just like food actually becomes part of us, so gossip becomes part of us. Gossip is often delicious. But like poisoned pizza: tasty when it goes down yet runs havoc through our veins.

When I gossip it changes me. What may have started as a small misunderstanding grows larger the more I share it. I become more vested in my point of view. Since that house church meeting, I’ve been using the Tasty Moral Test to watch my motivations before I speak of another person.

Tasty Morsel Test

1- Am I hungry for a treat or for a meal? I’ll often share or listen to something because I’m excited about a tasty little nugget, not because I’m really hungry to help, hungry to forgive, hungry to lay down my life for this person.

2- Will this knowledge sit in my soul as poison or nourishment? Once I share or hear this, will it help me love and sustain the people involved? Or will it leave me with a sour taste about them, poisoning my ability to help them?

3- Will I roil, churn and want to belch this stuff out? Crude as it may sound, one tried and true test for gossip is how quickly I want to unload it.

We need hearty soul food. With Christmas pressure to ramp up family and ministry activities we will be sorely tempted to put tasty little tidbits in our souls. Let’s nourish our souls with meals that sustain us so that we are healthy enough to share

When Perfection is Un-Human

2008-11-21T18:40:00.000-08:00

There is a raging new interest in vampires this weekend, at least for those inclined to go see the new movie, Twilight, Stephenie Meyer's story that in book form sold 1.3 million. These 'paranormal romances' or 'urban fantasies' spin around human females falling in love with supernatural beings (vampires, gods, fairies, werewolves) .

The Perfect Man
I have not seen the movie, but I'd like to point out that a common theme exists in these vampire romances. The heroine is captivated by the perfect man: lovely body, rich, well-dressed and someone better than her, a man both strong and consuming. This is a formula the Bronte sisters introduced in the characters of Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) and Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre). Men who were passionate, gifted in lifting their beloved into irrational, but sumptuous heights of erotic love. Men who were powerful, rich, darkly handsome, mysterious, even controlling sometimes cruel, but so dang sexy. They were irrisistible.

Old-Fashioned Romance
And so is the vampire of today's tween and teen fixation. Laura Miller in the Wall Street Journal's article "Real Men Have Fangs" notes that vampires offer "old fashioned romance in the arms of an alpha male." Vampires are permitted some old-fashioned controlling and overprotective vices. Vampires are centuries old (this was news to me) and perhaps haven't adapted to the modern notions of equality between the sexes. And they are, after all, superhuman, so they can offer and demand more than a 'mere' human male should or even could now a days. Vampires let women enjoy a romance from the era of Jane Eyre, while living in the 21st century. As Laura Miller admits "the nagging longing to be plucked from the ashes and exalted by an exceptional, masterful man remains hard for contemporary women to exorcise."

The Daughters of Eve
Miller's words point to something that still plagues the daughters of Eve. "Your desire shall be for your husband and he will rule over you" (Gen 3:16). As modern and updated as we look, we still slide easily into living this reality. As I've said elsewhere, if this is a judgment of God then we do not need to enforce it. We'll find this state of things everywhere we look: women longing for their man and men ruling women, and neither interested in fixing the problem.

I have a theory that popular literature (be it Captivating or Twilight) feeds this zeitgeist by (respectively) dressing it up with Bible verses or entrancing us with eroticism. Both underscore our conviction that this is just the way men and women behave, these are the longings we have been dealt--and God means us to live this judgment. (For my argument against this conviction see the last chapter in Ruby Slippers).

Unequals
Deep down I believe most women struggle with a desire to be exalted by a man mysterious and otherworldly (be it Lydia's Wickham, Jasmine's Alladin or Bella's Edward in Twilight), a man worthy of joining, uniting to, a man stronger, better than us. The female captivation with men who are "out of our league" tells me more about the state of women's souls, than the reality of the number of good men on planet earth. It tells me that we're more in love with our version of romance, than we're in love with a real man of flesh and blood and soul.

My concern, here, is that these longings are not worthy of the image-bearers of God that we are. We cannot dream of a romance between "unequals", and then expect a marriage of mutual love and respect, of partnership, unity, sexual satisfaction and enduring warmth. If we expect that a man with the prowess of a Mr. Rochester or a vampire-powered Edward will appear in our lives, we can safely assume that 20 years into our marriage we will find ourselves much more like Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice than Mrs. Elizabeth Darcy.

The Perfect Woman
Across the Pacific Ocean, Japanese women are less concerned with concocting the perfect male hero and more attracted to embellishing the perfect female form. The latest fashion has women idolizing the old-world styles of European royalty, leaving their homes be-decked in fully costumed princess attire, frilly dresses, stiletto slippers with ribbons, tiaras, elbow-length gloves, huge bows embellishing their long, dyed hair curled in Pre-Raphelite ringlets. This style, hime gyaru or princess girl, can cost $1000 per outfit. Princess use tricks of the trade like speaking in soft chirpy tones, applying mascara to fake eyelashes and curling hair both outward and inward to get more volume. The appeal: a bit of escapism from the stress of work coupled with the longing for a happy-ending fairy tale. This style is for those who want to be, in the words of hime model and salesperson, Keiko Mizoe (pictured above), "perfect, gorgeous and feminine."

This is the femininity of style without the femininity of soul.

Beyond Human
You might guess that after endowing your own look with so much precision and premeditation, you would not deem most men worthy of a second glance.

So dress the part and this makes you worthy of a prince? (Similar sentiments float in our world during prom dress shopping) As one aspiring Japanese princess says of this style, "Their cuteness is beyond human, I'd like to be like them."

Interdependence
If we want feminine to be as simple (and complex) as elaborate embellishment, if we crave male heroes who make us feel bewildered by their perfection,prowess and masterful "handling" of us then we do not know what Man and Woman were created for in the first place. If we think the dance between the sexes is about our moves and clothing and the endless flirtation, then we forget that Woman was created to Help and Man created with Need.

We are interdependent in a way that will always speak of our vulnerability, not a game of cat and mouse, not a party to dress up for, not a seduction to dabble with but a created need that cannot be filled unless we acknowledge it with sobriety and grace. For the sake of men and women everywhere, we cannot lose touch with what our humanity, our gender, our sexuality means. "In the Lord woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman" (I Corinthians 11:11).

Our Real Selves
The Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, writes in his preface, No Man is an Island that "the life of the spirit puts us in the fullest possible contact with reality--not as we imagine it, but as it really is." True spirituality makes us aware of our real selves, and places these real selves in the presence of God.

What becomes of the women that Jesus wanted to redeem when she shrouds her body (and even her soul) in fashion that minces her steps? I have seen how woman's visions of romance limit her gifts being used in the body of Christ. I have watched my own dreams of a princess-type marriage breaking the community between two equals into a hierarchy of the leader and the submissive one. I believe much of our adolescent hankering for a man of perfection leads to the embittered comments of wives who've found they've married a mortal, a human, a man.

Whether you be 17 or 73, let's get into the fullest contact with reality, not as we imagine it, but as it really is. If you are united to a man, let's rejoice that he is human, and not superhuman. If you have crazy messy hair and wear jeans and sweatshirts (as I do tonight), rejoice with me that I am fully human--walking into my full humanity with Jesus as my companion.

A Litmus Test
Let me offer a final test to ponder on in the days to come. If a fashion, idea or romance mocks either the limitations or realities of our humanity, it is not worthy of imitation. Jesus never mocked our limitations, instead he embodied them, so that being human would be, once again, something glorious.

Distraction and Hope

2008-11-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

There is this deep flurried, distraction feeling in my soul tonight. I just raced to the post office 21 inquiry letters rubber-banded in the passenger seat next to me, requests for Grant Applications from 21 different Foundations around the country. The sun was flushed with pink, but I could barely enjoy it.

Soulation is about to, hopefully, expand. We have hopes . . . like a travel budget to let us speak to the inviting parties that cannot cover our travel expenses, we hope to get more of our talks online for free, we hope to open our Soulation Retreat in the next 4 years, we hope to get the city permits and our neighbors permission, we hope to be able to pay our volunteers. A lot is determined by those letter that I popped into the mail slot, praying, "Spirit help us" as I saw them slip and disappear.

Thomas Merton says that hope empties our hands so that we might use them.

I feel Jesus' words in my life tonight, "Blessed are the meek, the poor in spirit" Why? Well the meek inherit the earth (a lovely thought when I think of the land we hope to cultivate for a cultural and spiritual center) and the poor in spirit? They get the kingdom of heaven.

I'd like nothing less.

My hands and mind have been very busy with hopeful projects this week. That dull, steady ache is growing in my temples. Today has been a very full Soulation day.

I feel empty and full of wondering. Not just about Soulation and our future plans, but about our country, about our first African-American president (something I'm pleased to be witnessing) who claims a more staunch pro-abortion record than any we've known. God give us protection to continue to be a culture that values life, regardless of the laws.

There is much work to be done, and yet much work is being done, all without my effort. His grace is poured out.

The sky was rosy tonight, and the corgis ran with abandon into the melting snow and my husband cuddled with me this morning luring me to stay longer in the warmth.

For chapstick and lemon verbena lotion
For a morning of writing
and Lady Victoria's brown eyes

For warm fires and hope to rest
For sealed and sent letters
and a door held open
For layers
and silk longjohns

For Dale's cup of tea
and a friends impromptu visit
For emails received
and sent.

Lord, I give you thanks.

Now, can I inherit the earth soon?

Helping other Women- Ruby Slippers Review

2008-11-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

I picked up a Starbucks cup that had this pithy, gutsy little quote from Madeleine K. Albright (Former Secretary of State and Ambassador to the U.N.)

The Way I See It #287

"There is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.”

Have you ever felt like this? I have.

I want to share with you a woman who has helped me and who has reminded me of the two women who gave me a leg up (my editor and agent--you know who you are!). Thank you for helping another woman!

This, syndicated from Chaos-Jamie, the blog of Jamie Driggers.

LONG LOST TWIN
"Oh, man. I started this book and thought, "My, my it's my long lost twin. Her heart is (or was) just as dark as mine is!" (She uses the word "eyes" but I think we mean the same thing.) The whole judgy woman admitting that we are always comparing ourselves to every other woman in the room. (Did I just type that?) Not just physically, but mentally, emotionally. And after we've sized the other woman up, turn the criticism upon ourselves.

This is why I hate to pool. If I'm not envying someone else's abs, I'm envying their parenting skills.

GUTSY PUBLISHER
ANY-way I found myself thinking I needed to buy this book for every woman I know. If there are two of us willing to admit to these problems and a publisher willing to print the problems right out there in black and white, it can't just be ME.

As an aside: There were a couple sections in the middle where she almost lost me with the gender equality stuff, but by the end I could see where she was going. Should you pick up the book, hear her out. You might not agree with every word, but the premise is sound. I'm not even sure I don't agree with her, but I've been shoving my self and my thoughts into a certain box (or corset) for so long it might take a while for my thoughts to settle enough to say whether I am fully in her boat.

HOWEVER, there are also gorgeous chapters about finding and feeding our feminine soul, whether or not that soul is quiet and gentle--(once you get past the psycho-babble of why our feminine soul needs finding and feeding...and I use the term psycho-babble in its most loving sense. It's like Bringing Up Boys. I know I need to let my boys be boys...quit telling me why and tell me how! Many, many people need to know why before they can understand how. I know I have a problem. FIX ME!)--and as most of you know, quiet and gentle are words that decidedly do NOT fit me.

And oh, does she end it well."

Jamie's review makes me glad I've chosen this woman against woman problem for book number TWO, Walking in Her Shoes, which is all about women's dark eyes/hearts for other women and how to overcome prejudice with friendship. Walking in Her Shoes is out looking for a publisher this fall!

Halloween Musings

2008-10-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Dale and I are in the midst of a 2 1/2 week road trip, making speaking stops and conference stops and putting some serious miles on Dante, our inferno red PT cruiser.

Tonight we made our home away from home at the Gray Goose Inn. As soon as I got out of our car, tired and stiff, I was startled by a floating old woman's head with stringy gray hair. My movement triggered the pre-recorded shrieking to begin along with red eyes and convulsing shakes. I was startled and then grossed out. (I know most normal people would just laugh at it all, but I couldn't--see below) She was rising out of a grave, a bloody hand also surging out of the soil. I looked up at the Gray Goose Inn, the Victorian trimmings completely creepyfied by this ghostly, red-eyed woman.

I grabbed Dale's hand (this is one of the unhappy inheritances of sheltering in my childhood--even corny scare tactics work on me--even at age 29) commented on the eerieness, shook myself and marched to the front door with him.

I'm sure the twilight didn't help at all when a happy looking Jack'o Lantern began howling and then laughing at me. I jumped and peered with annoyance into the leering face, some electronic gadget was working well inside. I wanted to smash the pumpkin as we listened to it cycle through 2 series of shrieks and laughs until the door finally opened.

I felt so glad to be inside.

What puzzles me is that people buy these spooky things, they think it's fun, part of getting into the "halloween spirit", I suppose. And I'm the type of girl who LOVES having any excuse to dress up (just ask my family). But the spooky, scary stuff you can keep.

After walking passed two voluptuous female mummies, seeing several lovely family portraits shrouded in spider webs and stopping before dipping into some snacks (the bowl of candy corn sported a stump of a hand in the center) I felt certain I had stumbled into Disney's inspiration for their Haunted Mansion. I kept hoping our room would be un-Halloween-ified.

My hope was not in vain. I sit and write this safely sealed away from spiper-webs and curvy mummies and shrieking witches in this "Room #5" a room with green ivied coverlets and gray gooses on the wall.

Dale made the comment that Halloween really is a pagan holiday. When I see people poking fun at scaring people and intentionally paying money for bloodied, shrouded, twisted looking maniquins, I have to agree.

I wonder if anyone else feels as weirded out and out-of-place as me? I wonder if the way I feel tonight is the way early Christians felt all the time....vulnerable, surrounded by pagan ideas that dehumanized their friends and family. Did they see friends coming back from the temple with hair shaven off and cuts on their body, proof of their devotion to Artemis? Did they witness the degredation of a sister turned into a temple prostitue? Did they watch as neighbors purposefully invested in acts that twisted their humanity?

I feel like, tonight, I can taste the alien-like feeling early Christians must have felt. It makes me glad that Halloween comes only once a year.

Blog Tour- Part 1

2008-10-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Angela Breidenbach posted this interview titled "Ruby Slippers, A Chat, and a Spot of Tea" on her blog F.A.I.T.H. You might enjoy reading her thoughts on Ruby Slippers, below syndicated from her blog.

"I recently had a lot of fun getting to know author/apologist, Jonalyn Grace Fincher. Here's a little bit different interview to help you get to know her. I think it's perfect because curling up with her new book, Ruby Slippers: How the soul of a woman brings her home
(from Zondervan), and a cup of tea is the perfect way to honor your femininity. And that is what her book explores.

I like her writing style. Jonalyn uses great analogies and real life examples to show the differences in our male/female responses as well as our cultural issues. I loved the story of the redeemed wedding dress!

Here's one question that really made me pause: Do you think you will interact with God in heaven as a woman or as an androgynous soul?

Eeerk. Really made me think." (To read the rest, which mostly covers a conversation about tea, visit F.A.I.T.H.)

How would you answer this question?