for my son

I am a feminist for the sake of my son.

Owen is not yet two years old, but so much of his personality is already clear.  He has a great sense of humor, and he loves music. Before I even start the car, he's asking for the music to be turned on, and he already has preferred CDs and preferred tracks on those CDs.  He'll cry if I don't skip past the songs he dislikes, and he sings along with his favorites.  

Owen is sensitive, much more emotional than my firstborn is, more likely to dissolve into tears at a disappointment or a perceived slight.  He's cuddly.  He likes to play in our toy kitchen, pretending to cook and clean. He has a little bear he calls "baby," and he sometimes pretends that baby is hurt and needs kisses and cuddles. Like my husband, my son is deeply compassionate, quick to notice others' pain and to bring comfort to them.

Our culture is harsh toward sensitive boys.  In her national bestseller Stiffed, feminist Susan Faludi reports on what happened to men and "manhood" in post WWII America, and it isn't pretty.  Betty Friedan in the sixties wrote about how media had pushed a "commericalized, ornamentalized" femininity that objectified women, boxing us into narrowly prescribed gender roles.  Faludi finds that the same thing has happened to men, arguing that now "men and women both feel pushed into roles that are about little more than displaying prettiness or prowess in the marketplace."  The end goal for men, in a world of "superathletes, action heroes, and Viagra studs -- is seen as a new horizon of amped-up virility, a technologically enhanced supermanhood."  I worry about these kinds of pressures dampening the sweet, strong compassion I see in my son.

I'd like to say that the church rejects such damaging culturally-constructed definitions of manhood, but that is often not the case.  In fact, sometimes church culture seems more attached to cultural constructions of manhood than pop culture is!  In the church we see Mark Driscoll mocking "effeminate" male worship leaders and praising cage fighters. In the church (indeed, from Owen Strachan, the head of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood), we hear that to tell a little boy that it's ok to play with a doll is an "unbiblical and socially disastrous teaching on sexuality and gender." Strachan goes on to say that "boys playing with dolls is foolish" and a sign of Satan's influence in our world.  Strachan can take my son's baby when he pries it from my cold, dead, mama-bear claws.

Feminism is about interrogating and dismantling the oppressive power structures that rule our world, structures that hurt men as well as women. It's about honoring and protecting the essential humanity of each individual, rather than ceding to media-driven role expectations -- roles created in large part by companies hoping to turn us into greater consumers.

I'm a feminist because I want my son to see all people as valuable human beings, created in God's image. I want him to reject culturally constructed ideas about what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine" and to embrace biblical truth about what it means to be human, male and female, created in the image of a loving God. So I'll teach him to love, respect, nurture, and protect; to dance, weep, subvert, and sing.  I'll teach him how to turn swords into plowshares, and I'll warn him that power and domination are not the ultimate ends of manhood.  I'll tell him that the Bible does have a few things to say about what it means to be a man; and that it has a lot more to say about what it means to be loved, transformed, and made holy. I'll tell him the Kingdom is coming, and that it's here.

I want the church to be about these same tasks, dismantling evil power structures and critiquing the consumer-image our culture tries to bind us into, and I pray we as a church learn to do that better.  

In the meantime, I'm a feminist for the sake of my son.

F is for Feminism

The meanings we ascribe to words change, sometimes drastically, from one generation to the next.  I think the popular definition of "feminism" has undergone just such a substantial shift in meaning and connotation.  Otherwise, how can you explain the fact that my husband and I absolutely identify as feminists, while my parents never would? Yet all of us believe in equal political, economic, and social rights for men and women.  All of us believe that men and women are both made in the image of God, with equal dignity and worth.

For my parents, and many people from older generations, feminism has a radical connotation; its strongest association is with Roe v. Wade.  But for the majority of people my age, feminism means something different. In popular American culture, feminist no longer equals feminazi or bra-burner; instead, a feminist is a person who believes in the full humanity and personhood of women. In popular American culture, feminism wears the strong and gentle faces of Leslie Knope, Liz Lemon, and Mindy Lahiri, the awkward and confused  face of Hannah Horvath, and (debatably) the ditzy sweetness of Jessica Day. It's got the powerful mantle of Oprah.  It's sometimes wearing a hijab.  It's getting a microloan and starting a business to feed her family.  It's adopting the special-needs baby girls from China. It's teaching Sunday School. It's men who choose to mentor women at work (appropriately), and men (like my dad) who teach their daughters to glorify God with all their hearts, minds, and strength, according to the gifts they've been given rather than by filling a prescriptive, cookie-cutter role.

Because of this generational shift in definition, I believe the church isn't doing itself any favors when it sets up feminism as an enemy of faith and family.  When we call feminism a threat without carefully defining our terms, we may actually be misrepresenting the gospel to those who listen.

Over at Christ and Pop Culture today, I'm sharing my first feature piece.  It's about feminism, what it means today, and how it relates to our faith.  Would you read it and let me know what you think?  Am I right that the popular definition of feminism has undergone a significant change?  Or do we define feminism differently not because of generational divides, but because of cultural divides?  Subcultures?  Families of origin?

image credit

I'm also excited to announce that some of my internet friends want to talk more about this, and so next week they're hosting a synchroblog. Follow the hashtag #femfest on twitter to find a variety of perspectives on feminism, including personal stories, definitions, connotations, and questions, as well as discussion of why feminism is/isn't important.  The link up begins (and you can and should join in!) at Love Is What You Do on Tuesday, February 26.

Do you trust your feelings?

Do you trust your feelings?

I usually don't. The voice in my head says things like

Feelings change, but the word of God endures and

Guard your heart (which I always took to mean reveal nothing and let no one in) and

How you feel about it doesn't matter, what matters is what's true and even

Girls are emotional, flighty and fickle - don't be a girl.

I first began to wonder if I should trust my feelings more when I was in college. In a unit on feminism, I read about Women's Ways of Knowing.  Could there be legitimate other ways of knowing, I asked myself?  As legitimate as Reason, the way of the Enlightenment?

Lately I've been wondering again about the interplay between reason and emotion and Holy Spirit in decision-making.  I tend to write off my emotions as just hormonal, but Jack never lets me get away with that.   So how do I listen to them?

This week my feeling about one of our big decisions underwent a 180 degree change overnight, for no clear reason, and I'm wondering why.  I'm wondering if I need to trust my feelings, and how to do that.  I'm wondering if I need to talk back to the voice in my head:

Yes, feelings change, but the word of God can speak truth to us in our changing feelings.  You don't need to be afraid of expressing feelings because they might someday change.

Yes, guard your heart, by not embracing filth, by not betraying your own soul, but by embracing all the good people God has put in your life.

Yes, truth matters, but how you feel is a truth, and it matters too.

And who are you to define femininity, and to define it so negatively?

Lately I've been thinking that my refusal to trust my feelings is also a refusal to listen to God.  That maybe God speaks to us through feelings, too, and that maybe there is no such thing as pure reason. That maybe one reason I've been so afraid of feelings is that the churches I've gone to have been so male-dominated.

Do you trust your emotions?  What do you think? (Or maybe I should say how do you feel?)

culture and context in corinthians

I am a student of cultures.

Or, to put it bluntly, I have a Master's Degree in Intercultural Studies, y'all. I've lived in four countries, Asian, European, American; I've visited nine others. I've been working cross-culturally in one way or another for eight years. Cultures require a lifetime of study, but I'm on my way. One thing I've learned is that what seems obviously good in one cultural context can be obviously bad in another.

Here's an example: in an American classroom, if one student lets another copy her homework, this is bad. We are individualists, and we believe work must be done independently for it to be honest. In Vietnam, though, if a student allows her friend to copy her homework, she has done a good thing. Vietnamese are community-oriented, and the "class" of students is a tightly-knit group of people who take every class together for four years. Their success or failure is as a class, and to deny help to a member of your in-group is not only offensive, but selfish and wrong.

Or take saying thank you. When a friend invites me over for dinner, after eating, I thank her and compliment the food. In Vietnam, if a friend cooks for you, and you say thank you, you have insulted her! Saying thank you is like saying, "We are not really intimate friends; I will formally thank you because it is my duty to do so."

I could go on and on about how right and wrong are contextual (if you want more, try Adeney's Strange Virtues). Cultural context is vital to understanding our relationships with people; but it's also vital in understanding the Bible.

One of my favorite guides in understanding the cultural context of the Bible is Ken Bailey, who has a PhD in New Testament and has spent forty years living and teaching in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and Cyprus. He writes in both English and Arabic, and has a strong understanding of Middle-Eastern historical context, contemporary context, and literary style. (I've written about his insight into the nativity story here.) Today I want to share what he says about 1 Corinthians 11-14, especially the passages that are sometimes used to argue that women should not teach in church.

The Literary Structure of 1 Corinthians

Understanding the literary structure of 1 Corinthians is a must. Bailey argues that the book is carefully composed in the structure of Hebrew parallelism:

I. The Cross and Christian Unity (1:5-4:16)
  II. Men and Women in the Human Family (4:17-7:40)
    III. Food Offered to Idols (Christian and pagan) (8:1-11:1)
  IV. Men and Women in Worship (11:2-14:40)
V. The Resurrection (15)

The section we're looking at is section IV, which is structured thus:

1. Men and Women Leading in Worship: Prophets and How They Dress (11:2-16)
  2. Order in Worship : Sacrament - The Lord's Supper (11:17-34)
    3. Gifts and the Nature of the Body (12:1-30)
      4.The Hymn to Love (12:31-14:1)
    5.Spiritual Gifts and the Upbuilding of the Body (14:1-25)
  6. Order in worship: Word - Prophets and Speakers in Tongues (14:26-33)
7. Men and Women Worshipping: No chatting in church (14:3b-40)


See how carefully constructed that is, with 1 and 7 paralleling each other in topic, as 2&6 and 3&5 do?

Chapter 11 - Women Can Pray and Prophesy (but should dress appropriately)

In chapter 11, Paul has already noted that both men and women were leading in the church services in public prayer and prophecy. And apparently women in the church had understood "all things are lawful to me" to give them to freedom to lead the services without covering their heads. When they exercised this right, problems emerged.

Christian women from a Jewish background came from a culture that affirmed that self-respecting women would cover their heads in public. Prostitutes, however, did not cover their heads in public. For a woman to be in front of the church without her head covered was distracting in the same way that to have a scantily-clad church leader on stage would be distracting today. Paul's response - and this is important! - is not to say, "Women, get off the stage and stop prophesying!" It is to say, "Women, cover your head so you don't distract others from God's word!"

If, then, Paul has already affirmed women in church leadership in chapter 11, why does he in chapter 14 tell women to be silent in church? This too, requires understanding the context.

Chapter 14: A Chatty Congregation (language, accent, attention span, oral learners)

Corinth was the largest city in Greece and undoubtedly the most diverse. Greek was the only common language, and while most men had at least enough Greek to function on the job, women who worked mostly at home were less fluent. The languages spoken at home would have been numerous.

"Added to this," Bailey writes, "was the problem of accent. Often when a public speaker is functioning in a second language, even when the speaker is fluent, there can be great difficulty in communication due to the accent. When a speaker's words and phrases are not understood, a low buzz can break out as listeners ask each other, "what did she say? What was that word?"

The short attention span for simple people (like modern television addicts) was most certainly another problem...

I have preached in village churches in Egypt where the women were seated on one side of the church and the men on the other. There was a wooden partition about six feet high separating the two sections. I preached in simple colloquial Arabic, but the women were often illiterate and the preacher was expected to preach for at least an hour -- and we had problems. The women quickly passed the limit of their attention span. The children were seated with them and chatting inevitably broke out among the women. The chatting would at times become so loud that no one could hear the preacher. (These villages had no electricity and no sound amplification.) One of the senior elders would stand up and in a desperate voice shout, "Let the women be silent in the church!" and we would proceed."

Can you imagine, then, what the church in Corinth must have been like?

"Paul had just affirmed that the Corinthians were getting drunk at the Lord's Supper and that the prophets and tongues speakers were all talking at once! It seems that some of the women gave up and started chatting. Who could blame them? Yet all needed to work together to create the required decency and order necessary for meaningful worship."

Let me share one last cultural insight Bailey offers.

"Middle Eastern society is predominantly an oral culture...People process information by talking more than by sitting quietly and reflecting. This can be observed at many levels of society. A university professor will have the attention of the class and turn to write something on the blackboard. The moment he or she pauses to write, the entire class breaks out talking. They are not inattentive or rude, they are simply turning to a fellow student and chatting about the subject...They are simply verbalizing the information they have heard in order to better absorb and retain it."

Conclusion

Paul is concerned with order in worship. The prophets are told to speak one at a time, or to be silent. The speakers in tongues are told to be silent unless there is an interpreter. And the women are told not to chat in church, but to save their questions for later.

Paul, whose friendship with and respect for women like Junia, Phoebe, and Priscilla is well-documented, is not teaching that women must always be silent in the church. Instead, women leaders are to lead appropriately, and women in the congregation are to participate appropriately, all for the building up of the Body.

Understanding the cultural context is vital. You can tell those teenagers in the balcony to put away their cellphones and stop giggling - to be silent in church! - but that woman on the mic? Let her speak. Today I'm linking up with Rachel Held Evans in her Week of Mutuality, dedicated to discussing an egalitarian view of gender. The goal is to show how scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all support a posture of equality toward women, one that favors mutuality rather than hierarchy, in the home, Church, and society.

my journey towards mutuality

Today I'm linking up with Rachel Held Evans in her Week of Mutuality, dedicated to discussing an egalitarian view of gender. The goal is to show how scripture, tradition, reason, and experience all support a posture of equality toward women, one that favors mutuality rather than hierarchy, in the home, Church, and society. Rather than digging into debate, I simply want to share the story of my journey towards egalitarianism. Later this week, I hope to post on 1 Corinthians 11 and on how I define feminism.


My parents have a beautiful, loving marriage of thirty-three years. Despite fairly significant differences in the way they approach life (Mom’s a vegetarian, for example, while Dad’s as red-blooded a carnivore as they come), they are loyal to each other in every way. They love and serve God. They make decisions together, and they treat each other with kindness and respect.

They are also pretty fierce complementarians. They believe that God designed different, but equally valuable, roles for men and women in the home and at church, that these roles are hierarchical, and that the truth about God and his church is best displayed in a marriage where the husband is a servant-leader and the wife submits to him as his helpmate. They taught me how to defend this position, and they taught me that it was the only legitimate interpretation of Scripture.

----

Buckled in the eighties minivan, we pass a church marquee. The pastor’s name, printed right there on the sign, in front of God and everybody, is a woman’s name. I mock it, the same way I mock Michael Dukakis with the neighbor kids in the backyard – that is to say, I mock it out of total ignorance. A female pastor?! Well, they clearly don’t believe that Scripture is God-breathed! Hope somebody leads them to Christ!

At Walnut Valley Christian Academy, we have a four-year class called Worldview. Spring semester, freshman year, we read Expository Preaching by Haddon Robinson. For final projects we prepare sermons. I am nervous, and overcome stage fright by imagining myself as Hilary Clinton (true story). I preach, to my co-ed class of ten, on Daniel, and Mrs. Fuqua gives me an A+.

Sophomore year I self-identify as a feminist. We study How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Fee and Stuart, and we write in-depth papers on small portions of Scripture. I don’t want to be bored with the project. So I choose “that passage” from 1 Timothy 2. You know the one. “I do not permit a woman to teach, or to have authority.” I read the commentaries we have at home. I conclude that while some of Paul’s principles did seem to be cultural rather than timeless, the fact that he referred to pre-fall Creation order (“for Adam was formed first, then Eve”) to make his case seemed to indicate that these were in fact guidelines for all time. However, I decide that the way he combined “teaching” and “exercising authority” meant that the only role specifically barred from women was that of head teaching pastor. I feel my conclusion is a little arbitrary.

Meanwhile, I take on about every leadership position open to me in the church. I lead small groups of junior high girls every Tuesday night. I am a counselor on retreats. I exhort the whole youth group, boys and girls, about our besetting sin of materialism. I testify in front of the church (the mega-church) about the value of community. In college I join a similar church, but almost immediately I find the college group oppressive. There is a clear ladder of spiritual superiority, a clear moral mold. I ditch, and help lead the youth group instead. The first time I lead a small group Bible study for girls, my co-teacher looks at me amazed. “I think you have the gift of teaching,” she says.

I go to southeast Asia, and I see God do miraculous things. I begin to wonder if the gift of apostleship (church-planting) is open to women, because a new church is being born around me, in the middle of a spiritual desert.

Then a church from my hometown asks if I’ll send a video message for the Father-Daughter Banquet in February. It’s not my church, and I’m not sure why they’ve asked me, but I agree, and carve out time to record. I speak about the things I appreciate in the way my dad raised me, connecting his parenting to appropriate Scriptures, and encouraging the fathers at the banquet to imitate my dad’s example. I send the video off and forget about it.

Until a few weeks later, when I hear that things didn’t go so well. In fact, some men in the audience, some male leaders in the church, think my video was wrong. Not that what I said was wrong: but that I, as woman, said it to men.

I thought that's what they had asked me to do.

A little bit heartbroken, I kind of go, “to hell with it,” and keep doing the work God has put in front of me.

------

Despite all this, I never really explored egalitarianism until this year. Perhaps I was hesitant to make a fuss. But I’ve grown increasingly ecumenical in my theology, and a solid half of the people who mentored me spiritually in my twenties were egalitarian. We rarely spoke of it, this belief that hierarchy was a result of the fall, and that embracing the kingdom of God included embracing the mutuality of pre-fall creation, but it was clear in the way they lived. When we joined an Episcopal church, I felt I should be conversant with the theological arguments for women in leadership. I read How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership, and it was interesting. When I read Finally Feminist, though, my jaw dropped, because this was an honest, compelling way to understand Scripture, and one I had never heard.

Though I’ve always been a feminist, a part of me did not want the egalitarian case to be so convincing. I didn’t want to disagree theologically with my parents, especially on a subject that is pretty foundational for them, and for most of the Christians I grew up with. Beyond that, for me the freedom and fullness and possibility of egalitarianism is scarier, and harder, than the clearly defined roles in complementarianism.

But what interpretation is easiest for me to live with isn’t the best evaluative question. Which one is the truest to Scripture?

This is how I lean, now. I lean towards mutuality. I know, like any good student of expository preaching, that you can’t make a watertight case either way. Intellectually, though, I think Finally Feminist is the best interpretation of these scriptures that I’ve found, and it makes sense in my life experience, too. I’m wondering if it might be time to make a fuss about it.

The Princess and the Three Knights: a book review

I promised a full review of Karen Kingsbury's picture books, and (this time, at least), I'm keeping my word.

"I have nothing against princesses, when they are done right. But I do tend to get up in arms when the story told - especially by Christians - to my daughter features a beautiful, silent, passive, nameless teenage princess who needs only a man chosen for her to marry in order to have a happy ending.

Stories matter, and in this formative period in which my daughter can remember the words to a book after hearing it only once or twice, I'm careful about what she hears, especially if she's hearing about God. That's why I find The Princess and the Three Knights (Zonderkids 2009), by Christian romance novelist Karen Kingsbury, so troubling."

Hop over to the Christianity Today Women's Blog, Hermeneutics, to read the whole thing, and chime in with your own experiences or critiques there.

a princess problem, part one

This morning I was a scientist studying lions and a magic doctor healing giraffes. I was a three year old girl holding a baby jaguar; I was a "halt-man" (which is exactly what it sounds like); and I was a pony running through a candy forest. I was friends with a lion, a little girl, another pony, and finally, a princess.

She put on an ancient nightgown. "I think this twirls," she said, experimenting. "I must be a princess!"

Time to engage in some research. "What do princesses do?" I asked.

"I don't know," she said. "They organize things."

Then,

"Sometimes," she continued, "people think I'm a princess."

"Why do they think that?" I asked.

"Because they think I'm pretty," she said nonchalantly, and then with passion, "Chase me!" And we're back to tag, running in circles around the house, the all-time favorite activity.

I have nothing against twirly skirts, telling our daughters that they are beautiful, or fairy tales with happy endings. I like love stories, including my own, which, incidentally, began a long time ago in a faraway land and involves a strong man with kind eyes.

I have nothing against princesses, when they are done right. And I think even Disney does them right, sometimes.

But I get all up in arms when the role model suggested - by Christians - for my three year old daughter is a beautiful, silent, passive, nameless, objectified teenage princess who only needs a man chosen for her to marry in order to have a happy ending.

Oh, this book gets my heart rate up. I've tried to ignore it for a year now, but it keeps showing up. And I looked at reviews online and they're all positive! So I am compelled. I'll tell you more about this book (and its counterpoint for boys), and why I - not to mince words - hate it, in a few days, when I calm down. Or even if I don't.

on approaching thirty

Before graduating from highschool, I had to write a paper outlining my plans for the next decade. Here's what I had in mind at seventeen:

"After I receive my {college} diploma, I will buy an old VW bus, fix it up and put stained glass windows on the sides, and drive across America for one year...

I will fly across the ocean and backpack across Europe for a year, staying in youth hostels. Since I'll be on that side of the ocean, I'll spend a year or two doing graduate work at Oxford. Then I'll return to my homeland and meet up with my compatriots Anna and Mollie in Chicago, where we'll share an apartment and I'll finish my graduate work at the University of Chicago. If I marry, I'll do it in Chicago. After a few years there, I'll settle in New England and open a bookstore/teashop modeled on Shakespeare and Co. in Paris. The shop will become the new haven for young writers, and while there I will write my Pulitzer Prize winning novel. Because of my fame, the local college will ask me to teach one honors writing class, which I will gladly do. Some of the students in that class (some may be my own children) will graduate and take over my shop when, around the age of forty-eight, I will sell all of my worldly possessions and move to Africa or South or Central America and spend the rest of my days a barefoot missionary."


Let's just pause for a minute to consider my hubris. Alright. Moving on.


The rest of the paper went on to admit that I couldn't possibly know what my future would hold, but that I expected in whatever it held, I would be called to "walk in a manner worthy of the Lord" (Col. 1:10).

Although I admitted that God controlled the future, not me, I still knew what I wanted. Adventure, exploration, freedom, and grand success in academic and literary and business endeavors. Marriage and motherhood were, at most, peripheral to my plan.

I'm sure that if you had told me at seventeen that thirty would find me a stay at home mom of two small kids in a painfully small midwestern town, I would have grimaced.

Here's how it happened. I took college to be a time for ideas and learning and personal growth, not a time for preparing for a career. Whoops. After college, I spent two years teaching English in Southeast Asia and earning an MA from Wheaton. (Teaching was a career, incidentally, that I had ruled out at the age of eleven, when I decided that getting attached to a class of kids every year and then saying goodbye to them every year would be too emotionally draining. It turns out that it is sad, but the truth is there are a fair amount of students you are happy to say goodbye to at the end of a year, too.) And then a year hanging out with the love of my life in southern California (and teaching some English). We married, and spend a year in Arkansas (still teaching English), and three years in Seattle, living in community with international students (and, yes, teaching English). We had a baby, and moved to Indiana, and had another baby, and now here I am. Five years under my belt in a career I never intended to have, and two babies underfoot, living in a town that covers less than four square miles of land.




A few years ago I read the memoir "Leaving Church," by Barbara Brown Taylor. I copied down these sentences:

"You only need to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be, so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live."

This was, as I recall, part of her commentary on Matthew 16:25, and it rang true to me.

It rang true because in 2004, after being sure that I was supposed to be in Vietnam, I was placed in Cambodia, and spent much of the year lying flat on the dirt floor basement of my heart.

It rang true because when we moved to Seattle, I worked in a coffee shop for a while, and to get there every day I walked past the majestic University of Washington, thinking about how for a while I thought I was supposed to be Dr. Lepine, university professor.

It rings true now, because although I love my specific and concrete life here, with my two kids and my husband, in the abstract it's not a life I would have chosen; it's not who I ever "thought I was supposed to be". And because when I am alone in the house with two kids both crying their heads off, or when I am up for the fourth time in the pitch black early morning hours, in the longest shortest time, in those moments I am lying flat on the dirt floor basement of my heart.

But I'm here to learn a lot of things. Maybe I'm learning some humility, how to lose my life and find it, and how to "make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands." Maybe I'm learning how to recognize God in the quotidian mysteries, in the Benedictine rhythms of motherhood
. Maybe I'm joining in the creative nature of God by creating babies and veggie stir-fry and quilts, by telling stories and painting with watercolors and making up silly songs and dances. Maybe I am making all things new by doing loads of laundry and getting dirty dishes to sparkle again. In each of these tasks, I'm - hopefully - participating in God's plan to bring restoration to a broken world.

As Barbara Brown Taylor wrote in her most recent book, "To lie flat on the ground with the breath knocked out of you is to find a solid resting place" and "While none of these displacements was pleasant at first, I would not give a single one of them back. I have found things while I was lost that I might never have discovered if I had stayed on the path."

When I was seventeen I knew what I wanted, but I admitted that I couldn't know what the future held for me. What I really meant by that was, "I don't know what will happen in the future, but I am pretty sure that I will be awesome in it."

I ended up somewhere entirely different than I anticipated, but, most of the time, I love it here.

Now, when I picture myself in the future, I don't even really know what I want. Now, When I confess that the future is uncertain, I think what I mean is that some of the time, maybe most of the time, I am able to trust God with the future, and able to believe that he will transform me in it.

But I still can't believe that I'm almost thirty.

baby names

It's fairly common to name daughters for virtues, or fruits of the Spirit. Faith, Joy, Hope, and especially Grace (which is in the top 20 most popular baby names for girls, and has been for a while) are common, and I've also known Peace and Charity.

But I can't think of a single popular boy name (in English, or in the western world - I'm curious to know if the pattern follows in other cultures or not) which is also a virtue or fruit of the spirit. No one names their son Courage, much less Peace.

What does this mean? Is it a sign that we have feminized virtue?

Is it sexist? Do we willingly objectify our daughters, but give our sons personal names? Do we cheapen masculinity by separating it from true virtue? Do we reduce virtue by making it only feminine and not masculine?

44 of 52

This book was interesting, though not extremely well-written. The author weaves together so many ideas that the connections among the ideas are not always altogether clear. To say that it deals with "women and a spirituality of the body," as the subtitle reads, is a good indication of how broad and vague the conclusions can be.

That said, I did find a lot of worthwhile and engaging strands of ideas, whether or not they were woven together well. The book is primarily about the modern disconnect between body and soul, and how that affects women in particular. Barger argues that the incarnate God, Jesus, offers a solution to this disconnect and the problems caused by it, and encourages us to embrace our bodies by embracing local communities, geographic place, and bodily presence, "based on faith that an invisible kingdom is being made visible in the bodies of the men and women who actively follow the crucified and resurrected one."

(ps - this book was for a book club I've been invited to join! We met last night, and it was wonderful. A book club where members actually read the book! And take notes! And have strong, well-reasoned opinions! Finally a group in which I'm not the dorky over-achiever.)

38 of 52

I really loved The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd's first work of fiction) when I read it six years ago. Honestly, I think I might have read some of her other books - The Dance of the Dissident Daughter or The Mermaid's Chair - but I can't remember at all.

This book might also be mostly forgettable. A kind of memoir/travelogue in the vein of Eat, Pray, Love, co-written by Kidd and her daughter, the book deals with life transitions that women face. As Kidd and her daughter (Ann Kidd Taylor) prepare for a trip to Greece, Kidd is facing menopause and the realities of aging and death. Taylor, struggling with depression, is trying to find her calling in life. Heavy on introspection and light on plot, the women travel through Greece, and later France, and meditate on Mary, Joan of Arc, and the women of Greek Mythology - particularly Demeter and Persephone - as a way to come to grips with their own lives.

Although I wasn't in love with this book and I found some of the feminist spirituality (you could hardly call it feminist theology) a little shaky, I did - as a daughter, and as the mother of a daughter - find the women's relationship and interactions compelling, and I did find myself thinking about some of their stories after I finished the book.