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Below is the video and script for my thesis project, a 30-minutes chapel service called Nameless, held Monday, March 3, 2014.

Juliana Bateman– Samson’s wife (Judges 14)
Natalie Renee Perkins – Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:34-40)
Ranwa Hammamy – Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10)
Ashley Birt – Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:15-26)
Jessica Christy – Job’s wife (Job 2:1-10)
Shamika Goddard – the witch of Endor (1 Sam 28:3-25)
Emily Hamilton – the woman from Tekoa (2 Sam 14:1-22)
Sandra Rivera – widow of Zarephath (I Kings 17:8-16)
Lindsey Nye – guard
AJ Turner – the narrator
Zach Walter– the rhythm

longer view

As people enter, Lindsey will be seen guarding the Tomb of the Unnamed Woman.

 Zach will be lightly playing a military beat on the cajon.  

 

AJ:

Samson told his father and mother, “I saw a Philistine woman at Timnah; (Juliana perks up) now get her for me as my wife.’ But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, because she pleases me.’ His father and mother did not know that this was from the LORD; for he was seeking a pretext to act against the Philistines.

As he returned to Timnah, a young lion roared at Samson, who tore the lion apart with his bare hands. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman, (Juliana perks up again, a little) and she pleased Samson. After a while he returned to marry her, and he turned aside to see that there was honey in the carcass of the lion. He scraped it out into his hands, and went on, eating as he went.

His father went down to the woman, (Juliana a little less enthused) and Samson made a feast there as the young men were accustomed to do. When the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. Samson said to them, ‘Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can explain it within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments. But if you cannot, you shall give the same to me.’ So they said, ‘Ask your riddle.’ He said, ‘Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.’

But for three days they could not explain the riddle.

On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, (Juliana visibly and audibly annoyed) ‘Coax your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’ So Samson’s wife…

Juliana:

Sheesh.

AJ:

  …wept before him, saying, ‘You hate me; you do not really love me. You have asked a riddle of my people, but you have not explained it to me.’ He said to her, ‘Look, I have not told my father or my mother. Why should I tell you?’ She wept before him every day that their feast lasted; and because she nagged him, on the seventh day he told her the answer. Then she explained the riddle to her people. The men of the town said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down,  ‘What is sweeter than honey?  What is stronger than a lion?’

And he said to them, ‘If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.’

Juliana:

Seriously?!? (stands, begins ranting)

AJ:

Then the spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and …. (Juliana confronts him) … WHAT?

Juliana:

“Samson’s wife” this and “Samson’s wife that.”

AJ:

That’s who you are… isn’t it?

Juliana:

I have a name! Without me, this whole stupid vendetta against my people wouldn’t be close to fulfilled. Without me, there is no story.  Samson gets a name. Even his second wife, Delilah, gets a name. What’s MY name?

(AJ is visibly shaken with the realization, sits)

Juliana:

All I did was fall in love with a handsome foreigner. I didn’t know I was going to be used. I didn’t know I was going to be accused of being unfaithful and deceitful just to further some warrior’s tale. The least you could do is the courtesy of a name. What’s my name? WHAT’S MY NAME?

(whisper, in time with drum) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Ashley:

I supported my husband Lot when he asked us to leave my home. Of course I turned back to look once more on Sodom, the town I loved. I sacrificed my life for my husband and daughters, whose own future was uncertain in these terrible times, whose lives I could have protected. But you only call me Lot’s wife. What’s MY name?

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

headstonesRanwa:

I saved a Hebrew child in an act of civil disobedience, knowing my father had ordered all the Hebrew children to be killed. I raised him like my own son, and risked further exposure when I let him go to his people to lead them out of Egypt. Without Moses, there is no Exodus. But you only call me Pharaoh’s daughter. What’s MY name

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Jessica:

I lost everything too. I lost my home, my friends, my children, my livelihood too. I stood by my husband Job through all of the pain and suffering. I was angry at God too, but I also remained faithful to my husband and to my God. But you only call me Job’s wife. What’s MY name?

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Shamika:

What people forget is that Saul came to me. He sought counsel, and even though I eventually recognized him, I saw how terrified he was, and I not only helped him seek wisdom from the spirit of his father, I fed him. Without me, Saul might not have become a great ruler. But you only call me the Witch of Endor. What’s MY name?

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Emily:

I stood before King David to lobby him on behalf of Joab. I alone was strong enough to stand before the king, using my wits to political advantage. And I wanted to – I wanted to ask this king why he had planned destruction of the people of God. I was a powerful political voice for my time, but you only call me the woman of Tekoa. What’s MY name?

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Sandra:

I was a widow without family or means, the poorest of the poor, when Elijah arrived in my town. He demanded of me a meal, when I could not even feed myself or my young son. Yet this man was compelling, and I did feed this stranger, who went on to become a beloved prophet and miracle worker. But you only call me the widow of Zarephath. What’s MY name?

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Natalie:

My father was returning, triumphant from battle. How could I know he had made a vow to God that would put my life in jeopardy? I only wanted to welcome him home, but he blamed me for bringing him low, when I was the one to be sacrificed. I lost my life because of my father, but you only call me Jephthah’s daughter. What’s MY name?

(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?

Lindsey:

(stops marching as guard) What of all the other unnamed women? The widows? The wives? The daughters? The sisters? The lovers? The sick? The faithful? The outspoken? What of their names?

All:

  (joins whisper, which now gets LOUDER) What’s my name? What’s My Name? WHAT’S MY NAME?

SILENCE.

Natalie moves to “her” headstone, places a rose, and sings “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”. At end, Zach begins to drum a heart beat.

 

Kimberley:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, to remember these women.

These women – who walked among us.

(Juliana places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)

These women – who lived and breathed, who loved and lost.

(Ashley places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)

These women – who played as young girls, who learned to cook and sew, who learned to love their family and their God.

(Ranwa places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)

 These women – who felt and thought and sang and prayed.

(Jessica places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)

 These women – who made choices.

(Shamika places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)

These women – who were chosen.

(Emily places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)

These women – who are only known in relation to someone else.

(Sandra places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone; Lindsey sits near the tomb of the unnamed woman.)

  These women lived in a long ago time in a far away place… but they have been living in me for nearly three years. Their stories – their heartbreak, their pain, their suffering, and their joy – have filled my thoughts. I want to stand next to Lot’s wife as she makes her final goodbyes to the home she loved. I want to comfort Samson’s wife as she finds herself torn between the men of her family and the man she loves. I want to hold Jephthah’s daughter to shield her from her father’s shocking pronouncement. I want to stroke their hair and hold their hands and call them by name.

But we have lost their names, and with them the fullness of their stories.

In this holy book, this Word of God, women are largely unnamed, unnoticed, unremarkable.

But let us be clear. God didn’t do this. This is not God’s problem. We did this to each other. Over centuries and millennia, through tellings and retellings, through writing and redacting, through additions and deletions, women’s names got left on the cutting room floor.

What we are left with is a text that along with serving as inspiration, is a model of how we are to live with each other. This model, which says it’s okay not to name women, even women without whom the story wouldn’t happen. This model, which says it’s okay to withhold names as long as the woman has no family or no means of support. This model, which says it’s okay to rape and dismember, as long as the woman is a concubine. This model, which finds no reason to name daughters who don’t obey… or daughters that do. This model, which says women do not actually get counted, but simply come along, among the masses. This model, which says even powerful and influential women don’t need to be remembered by name.

You might think that God is okay with it. But God didn’t do this. We did this to each other.

And God’s not okay with it.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who gave their lives in the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, or in the name of women’s suffrage, or in one of the many devastating wars we have fought, or in back alley abortion clinics.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who cross the borderlands and give up their given names in order to escape the notice of INS officials.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who are losing their lives while protesting in the streets of Turkey and the Ukraine and Venezuela.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who have been sold into slavery or the sex trade.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who have been raped and who are shamed into hiding the truth of their trauma.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who sleep on the steps outside our buildings and whose basic needs cannot be met by a system that is increasingly ignoring them.

God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who serve us and care for us and protect us every day – the woman at the front desk, the housekeeper, the visiting nurse, the beat cop, the barista, the cashier, the soldier.

These women have names. They have stories. They have influence. But they too are in danger of not being remembered, of joining the unnamed in the great cloud of witnesses.

But we don’t have to keep the cycle going. The scribes and clerics gave us this sacred text, full of women placed in only one particular part of the story, known only in relation to someone else, known only for a place where they existed, known only by the terror of their texts. These scribes and clerics gave us a model we must reject. What happens when we actually speak their stories? Phyllis Tribble suggests that we must speak for these women, to “interpret against narrator, plot, other characters, and the Biblical tradition – because they have shown … neither compassion nor attention.”

Imagine if we give them our attention – how much harder it would be for us to accept some of the situations the Bible describes for us. What if we knew that Jephthah’s daughter was musical and had learned new songs to play for her father when he returned from war? What if we knew that the widow of Zarephath had been known to bake the best bread in town, back when there was plenty? What if we knew that Pharoah’s daughter found out she could not bear children of her own yet loved them desperately? If we had stories like these, suddenly, we might not accept the fate of these women – we might not accept that they weren’t that important to the stories in which they appear, and we would not accept that we should not call them by name. Just as we cannot accept the damage and disregard namelessness does to women today.

Today, let us make a change.

tomb  Dearly beloved, let us pray.

God of many names known and unknown,
hear our sorrow as we mourn these unnamed women…
in their death, we are all diminished…
their stories are alive, but all is not well.
Hold us as we take one step today to right this wrong,
to stand for these women,
to hear their stories and bear witness to their power,
to feel their presence and confess their present reality.
God, be with us in our struggle to make sure everyone is known,
to show even the long forgotten their inherent worth and dignity.
Bless us, God, with ever opening and softening hearts
as we remember the women.

Amen.

 

We will never know the names of these unnamed women in the Bible – those are lost to history. But there are names of women who have touched our lives that should not be forgotten. They are mothers, and aunts, and cousins. They are teachers, and counselors, and neighbors. They are activists, and preachers, and thinkers. We have all been touched by the lives of incredible women, without whom our own stories would not progress. Let us celebrate and name those women – let us turn this tomb of unnamed women into a space of remembering women and their names.

Folks are invited to write these names on stickers we pass out, and place them on the tomb. Meanwhile, the beat changes from heartbeat to an Afro-Caribbean rhythm.

As people gather, Ranwa leads us in Israel Naughton’s “I Am Not Forgotten”

named 

Kimberley offers a loving benediction.

 

 named with bread and roses

named - mom

 

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Today begins Thirty Days of Love – a month of reflection and action centered around the idea that love is the ultimate guiding force. Across the denomination, people are meeting, learning, reflecting, and doing, guided by our Standing on the Side of Love campaign.

Some of us are also writing.

About a month ago, the UU Bloggers Workshop was created as space for support, learning, and collaboration. We thought, we shouldn’t just help each other become better and farther reaching bloggers – we should have public conversations and coordinated explorations. Thirty Days of Love seemed a perfect first such collaboration. Over the next thirty days, bloggers will write and reflect about love and our way forward to create the beloved community – with posts collected here for easy browsing. Together, we’ll take on this big, incredibly expansive compulsion to do good in the world – that crazy little thing called love.

I get to go first.

____

In reality, Unitarian Universalists are talking about love all the time; many of our congregations use an affirmation each week that begins “Love is the doctrine of this church.” Easily half our readings and hymns contain the word love. More contain “compassion,” which seems to be the preferred word these days. But I like the word “love.” It’s both simple and complex; it’s particular and all encompassing. Love is central to all of the world’s religions. It is a guiding force for our exemplars and pioneers. Love is everywhere – in our practices, prayers, and in our sacred texts.

handsIn fact, one of the most famous passages in sacred texts is about love is found in the New Testament:  I Corinthians 13.

We hear this passage all too often, most often at weddings. It’s poetic, yet as CS Lewis says, it has become so commonplace that it has lost its potency. But a closer look shows that this, perhaps the most famous passage in the New Testament, tells us how we are with each other and how we act in the world.

This passage is a digression of sorts:  In this first letter to the Corinthians, Paul is addressing a number of divisive issues that are coming up in the church, including the question of “spiritual gifts” as a measure of one’s worth. Paul addresses them this way:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

For the Corinthians, and indeed most of the early Christians, the spiritual gifts were signs that God was working in their lives. These gifts are not unlike our own – where they embraced prophesy, healing, and speaking in tongues, we embrace prophetic witness, reason, and generosity.

Now these gifts themselves are fine – in fact, just as Paul preached on them to his flock, we preach on our gifts. They are important ways in which we move through our days, putting our faith into action. Some of us are great at hospitality, others at caring for one another, others still at speaking with a prophetic voice, or using intellect to understand the world. But the problem in Corinth – and the danger among us – is when the gifts become a sign, a shibboleth if you will, that divides the believers from the non-believers, the good UUs from the bad. The gifts are not the thing. They are useful to encourage and develop, but they are not THE thing.

The thing… is love. Without love, Paul says, “I gain nothing”… and frankly, neither does anyone else. Love is what allows our gifts to function.

And what a thing it is:

Love is patient.    Love is kind.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way.
It is not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Paul may not be able to tell us exactly what love is, but he sure knows it when he sees it.

How many times have we gotten irritated when our justice endeavors run into road blocks? Maybe the volunteers don’t show up. Maybe we don’t get the donations we expected. Maybe the people we’re helping don’t seem to appreciate it. There’s a sign that we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we limited ourselves? Expected the worst, so we didn’t go the full distance? There’s a sign that we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we been so angry at the injustice in the world that we’ve become paralyzed?  There’s a sign we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we been so proud of our own actions that we look down upon those who don’t – or can’t – do as much justice work? There’s a sign we may not be acting out of love.

How many times have we simply gotten burned out? There’s a sign we may not be acting out of love.

I told you it’s not easy.

But love is permanent. It is eternal – and as the song says, there is more love somewhere. Paul emphasizes this point in the next three verses, which I have tweaked a little for our own time:

Love never ends. But as for our prophetic witness, it will come to an end; as for speaking truth to power, that will cease; as for intellect, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we reason only in part, but when justice and inclusion is complete, the parts will come to an end.

He then continues with two somewhat puzzling thoughts; first is this:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I reasoned as a child, but when I became an adult I put away childish things.

My first thought always is “really? I can’t be a kid anymore?” But Paul is saying that we should put aside the petulant, smug, judgmental, and boastful side of promoting our gifts. We don’t want to be that way… and most of the time I don’t think we are… but it’s a danger, and one we should remember. When we act as adults, we put love first.

The second puzzlement comes in the next verse:

For now we see in a glass darkly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part, then I will know fully even as I have been fully known.

Mysterious, and yet: glass in the first century wasn’t clear – they hadn’t quite perfected that yet – so “seeing through a glass darkly” is seeing something obscured by grainy, opaque glass. In other words, we can’t see everything, or know everything. Our knowledge is NOT the be-all, end-all. Because, remember, if I have not love, I am nothing at all.

Put it another way: we can’t know every effect of everything we do. We can only act in love, with our best and highest intentions. Maybe you don’t know the effect your actions will have, but if you do it as an act of love, that is enough. And when you show love? People are not just helped and healed themselves. The also know you in ways you can’t anticipate. They see your generous heart, your kind spirit. They see your passion and compassion, your earnestness and forthrightness.

Paul concludes:

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three. And the greatest of these is love.

No matter what else is going on, it’s all about love. Love is where we begin – whether it is with each other, with the Divine (however we define it), with our families, our communities, or our world. Without love, anything we do is half a loaf. It’s ineffective. It’s uninspiring. It can cause bitterness.

I think about how large corporations are forced to pay for things like cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico after an oil spill… when philanthropists give large amounts of money just for the tax breaks – and those acts always feel empty to me. Yes, the money is important to solve the issues, but if they walked through the world in love, they maybe wouldn’t have caused the problems in the first place.  What if we shared love from the start – not just when things get bad, but pre-emptively?   Maybe that’s what Paul is getting at. and what all of our songs and activities and organizations for social justice are about too: starting from a place of love so that the world is better nurtured from the start. In her book Blessing the World, Rebecca Parker implores us to “Choose to bless the world.” She writes,

The choice to bless the world can take you into solitude to search for the sources of power and grace; native wisdom, healing and liberation. More, the choice will draw you into community, the endeavor shared, the heritage passed on, the companionship of struggle, the importance of keeping faith, the life of ritual and praise, the comfort of human friendship, the company of earth, its chorus of life welcoming you. None of us alone can save the world. Together—that is another possibility, waiting.

Together, we must share love, because it IS the greatest gift of all. Ultimately, it is all we have. It burns in us – it is our pilot light, which we can keep low and hidden under a bushel… or we can turn up so it is a beacon bright and clear – a beacon stoked by hope and faith. Everything else may fade away,  but first and always, we must love.

 

 

 

 

 

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I love words.

I love their power to evoke emotions, actions, ideas, images. I love how a carefully crafted phrase can roll gracefully and deliciously like a warm cinnamon bun, or jar us like an unexpectedly bitter orange.

And more, I love that as Unitarian Universalists, we delight in words, and all that they can evoke. We memorize quotations from great thinkers and doers, we wrestle with words long laden with pain, we use as many words as we can to understand our world and the Divine. We continue to find new ways to describe the expansiveness of our extravagant welcome. We continue to explore theological and philosophical ideas in our deep-seated earnestness to understand the understandable through reason and fact.

This is why I am a reader. I want to see how others are thinking about things, describing things, wrestling with things. I love those moments when a phrase catches me and lives in my mind for hours or days or weeks. My vast collection of books are filled with post-its marking pages, sections highlighted, words underlined, and occasionally a conversation with the author scribbled in the margins.

This is also why I am a writer, and why I continue to blog, whether I have one reader or thousands. I love using words and playing with words to explore the joyful, thoughtful, and painful. I love writing papers for my courses. I frankly even loved writing the essays for the Regional Sub-Committee on Candidacy (but don’t tell anyone).

I am also a talker. I’m one of those people who best processes ideas out loud. I make decisions best when I talk them through with someone. I love class discussions and small group discussions and Q&A sessions. I love preaching and teaching and leading workshops.

Yes. Words matter to me. To us. Our fourth principle, the responsible search for truth and meaning, relies largely on words.

But are the words we say to each other enough? Is it enough to read each other’s blog posts and sermons, to absorb books and podcasts, to relish in the reading and the talking, to let words rule? What of the UU who says “worship is my least favorite part of being a UU”? What of the UU who says “I dislike music in a service. I’d rather just hear a sermon and some readings”? What of the UU who says “I don’t want spiritual experience, I want to do social justice”?

If we followed their lead, we probably wouldn’t need to come together for services.

If we followed their lead, we could sell off the beautiful buildings and instead build server farms where we host blogs and online books and occasional chats.

If we followed their lead, we would stop being a religion.

Obviously, I am not saying we don’t need all the words and intellectual stimulation. But I don’t think it’s enough.

In 2009, I chaired our congregation’s Stewardship campaign; part of our campaign included a call for pledges of  Time, Talent, and Treasure. In our planning, we all agreed that members should be willing to make an investment in all three, but what did Time mean, exactly? Was time the hours spent in Sunday services and at church-wide events? Or was it okay if someone didn’t come to church but attended a small group ministry once a month? Do we ask for a commitment to the one hour a week that everyone shares (as opposed to the many more hours we share in small groups, committees, task forces, etc.)? What of the people who feel like the Sunday worship was a waste of time – a wasteland of intellectual stimulation?

To them I say that worship still matters, whether you think you’re getting anything out of it or not.

Without worship, we are nothing more than an intellectual social club with a service focus. Without worship, we forget how to enact the deeper parts of ourselves, which long remember the rituals of our ancient ancestors. Without worship, we become isolated, away from the interconnected web of which we are a part. Without worship, we lose touch with the sacred.

And more…without all the elements of worship – sights and sounds, touch and scents, words, music, movement, and silence – we are missing ways to access our own Divine spirit, as well as that which we define as Divine that is outside ourselves. We can think about, write about, talk about, intellectualize about this spiritual dimension all we like. But that thing inside us – the divine spark, the soul, the spirit, the human consciousness – that thing needs to be activated and engaged for us to really understand. There’s a scene in The Matrix, where information is uploaded to our hero’s brain:

The scene doesn’t stop there. Lawrence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, takes Keanu Reeves’s character, Neo,  into a room where they actually fight.

Engagement matters. And for most of us, we find that the habit of weekly worship provides the best chance we have of that engagement. And it’s not just about our individual selves getting engaged; it’s about the group experience. For several years, I was what they call a solitary practitioner in the pagan tradition. I held rituals, by myself. I meditated, sang, danced, incanted, by myself. And half the time, I gave up before I had finished, because it felt empty or I felt silly. When I was in ritual with even one other person, suddenly there was meaning. A shared experience. A connection. What I read and studied suddenly became real.

It’s this connection that then leads me on to act. just being with other people in scared space makes me want to be a better person, more engaged, more connected. They don’t tell me to, I feel it. I sing it. I smell it and touch it and taste it. All the books and blogs and discussions in the world cannot replace that.

So what do we do about it? How do we create communities that have room for all of it, such that  even the woman who dislikes worship can find and make meaning?

I think back to the question my stewardship team wrestled with – what we mean by Time. As we reimagine what congregations look like, when and where they meet, we need to recognize that every opportunity to gather is both an opportunity to engage our intellects and to worship. And this is more than lighting a chalice before a committee meeting starts. It’s about action – doing something besides talking (like singing or meditating to start the meeting), or taking an intellectual idea and physically applying it to the world (like going down the street and showing the homeless woman you value her inherent worth and dignity). Every time we gather, we should be making meaning, engaging our minds and our bodies. Every time we gather, we should be engaging in worship – in making worth and meaning.

This isn’t easy. it’s one thing to say that the Buildings and Grounds Committee are “stewards of our sacred space” – it’s another to make taking out the trash a spiritual endeavor. It’s one thing to say the pot-luck should be a communing of our spirits – it’s another to let go of the random gossip and griping and actually show care for each other.

But it can be done. We need all the words – and touches and tastes and actions and images – we can get our hands on. Our souls demand it. Our denomination’s future depends on it.

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New York City drops a ball; Key West drops a drag queen in a ruby slipper.
New York City drops a ball; Key West drops a drag queen in a ruby slipper.

Here are my bold predictions for 2014:

A popular celebrity will die unexpectedly; another will cause a scandal; a third will come out (to the shock of some and to a “duh” to others); the midterm elections will “send a message”; a weather event will cause deaths; so will gun violence; a well-known fundamentalist will blame something they don’t like on the gays; the top ten movies will fail both Bechdel tests (for women and for race); some politician will be caught in a compromising position; laws will be passed that will enrage someone; people will spew anger and hate; some will lose jobs and homes; others will become richer and more entitled; we will all be sure this has been an extremely unique year in the news and nothing has ever been so bad.

On the other hand, I also predict love will spark; babies will be welcomed into loving arms; people will take small and large steps toward their dreams; some will write books; more will read them; some will write songs; more will sing them; someone will kick a bad habit; someone else will pick up a healthy one; someone will feel more compassion and act on it; another will finally get off the couch and make a difference; someone will finally feel secure; people will smile and laugh and spread joy; others will hold and comfort and provide solace; love will win.

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A few weeks ago,  I attended a Women at Union dinner in the home of Dean Mary Boys; during the evening, 15 smart, capable, and energetic women shared stories and raised questions about bringing the lessons we learn at Union about creating community, asking hard questions, and general ideas about liberal theology back into the world – a world that for some is conservative in thought and dubious of women in religious authority. Now I am an unabashed feminist and have been since learning about “women’s lib” and the ERA as a young teen in the mid-1970s. I think it is vital that women’s voices are not just acknowledged, but heard as contributing to the whole conversation, not just the feminine aspect of it. Sadly, there are still times even at Union where the fact that women have anything to say at all on a topic is treated as surprising, and more often are treated as “from the feminist perspective” – thus safely contained on the sidelines so that the serious men didn’t have to let it soil their serious theological discussion.

Yet when I raised this concern, some women in the room seemed worried that I wasn’t preferencing women’s voices, or not making it notable enough that a woman’s voice was even in the room. There was, from some, a sense that women’s voices in religion was still so new it had to be pointed out and treated as precious. Now I recognize my own privilege here, raised up by the sisters of second-wave feminism and enmeshed in a denomination whose women’s voices have been (by and large) honored as vital additions to the whole of our faith (with noticeable emphasis in the last 30 years). I also recognize that even in that privileged space, there is work to be done as regards women; for instance, I have growing concerns that the increase in female ministers means a diminishment of ministerial authority and reduced salaries, that “minister” joins “teacher” and “nurse” in the realm of “women’s work” and thus gets sidelined. I also worry that as the number of women in theological scholarship grows, the more anxious other theologians – even those considered liberal or progressive – will get about new directions of thought and will seek to contain them in the box marked “feminist.”

harknessThese thoughts bring me to Georgia Harkness, an early 20th century theologian who fought exactly these attitudes. I encountered her in a class on American Theological Liberalism, taught by Gary Dorrien. To Dorrien’s credit, Harkness is not treated as special because she is a woman. She is not an afterthought; rather, in a lecture and chapter on those who brought 20th century liberal Christianity to the people,  her voice is as important as the voices of Harry Emerson Fosdick and Rufus Jones. And in fact, Harkness did add to this important part of the conversation, namely: how do we make these theological advances real to the faithful? Her book Conflict of Religious Thought was intended to popularize the more esoteric ideas of Brightman and Hocking. And, at least among her colleagues (Brightman, as well as Niebuhr, Tillich, and Mays, among others), she was seen as one theologian among many.

And yet, it was clear she was a woman in a man’s world. Harkness noted in the early 1920s that “Practically every avenue of leadership today is open to women save for the Church.” Her life’s story is an all too familiar one – from being excluded from certain educational programs, to her not being fully ordained as a minister, to the not-so-subtle put downs about her appearance and manner – all indignities suffered solely because of her gender. That Harkness was able to meet fellow male theologians on intellectual grounds at all must have been a relief to her.

Yet, like many who came before and have come after, being a member of a marginalized group and having the opportunity to be heard compelled Harkness to speak up on the role of women. Enduring decades of both implicit and explicit sexism in the field of religion likely kept her ire up enough to speak out rather than stay silent. Her writings in the Christian Century and her speech at the Oxford Conference in the 1920s may have fallen on deaf ears at the time, but they were certainly notable for their explicitness about the subjugation of women in the field of theology and religion. It was indeed a vital move for the advancement of women that she take on this part of the establishment; I wonder how much of her work for the cause of women eclipsed her more intellectual and philosophical work.

And so, back to the first part of this reflection, my question is this: is Georgia Harkness a notable personalist theologian of the 20th s a woman, despite her being a woman, or along with being a woman? And, perhaps more importantly, why is she not as notable as other members of her cohort? Why are her books no longer in print? Why is it that I only just learned about her?[1]

And so it goes; for all the progress we have made in feminism – the goal of which is equality of genders – we still have far to go.

 

 

[1] If nothing else, I wish I had known about her book The Dark Night of the Soul when I went through my own a decade ago.

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When I first formed Word Alchemy five years ago, it was with an eye to being able to work anywhere in the world. While I was comfortable in upstate New York, I quickly set my sights on working on a tropical island, and I would joke about working “the Nassau Way”… complete with wifi and electricity that extends to the hammock near the water and an administrative assistant well-versed in bookkeeping, organization, and daiquiri-making.

I dreamed into this further as I worked with Ray Patterson and his brilliant strategic life visioning process. And for Christmas 2009, Carl Eeman gave me a poster of that hammock by the sea. When I got the poster, I taped it (I thought temporarily) over a framed print of “Night with her Train of Stars” that hangs on the wall across from my bed. Since that Christmas day in 2009, I have looked at that poster every day I have been in that room. This is my view:

dreamonmywall

Since then, of course, I heard the call to ministry and am well on my way. Part of being on my way is seeking an internship position in a congregation for the year after I graduate from seminary.  As early as this past August, I started haunting the UUA’s Internship Clearinghouse… and was delighted to discover a new teaching congregation in Key West, Florida. Key West! That seemed so fantastical… yet what an opportunity! While other congregations began to fill the page, I found myself not willing to let go of my initial thrill, and added Key West to the sites I applied for.

Now I will admit – at some point, in the midst of interviewing with some large congregations with well-established intern minister programs, I began to think Key West might be too small and too green. And then I heard someone at another seminary say “everyone is applying there!” and I figured the pool would be too large and I would get lost in the mix anyway.

I am happy to say I interviewed at all the sites I applied for.. but after each of the first three, I felt a little uncomfortable, doubtful, and worried. I knew I’d be happy at two of them but it was clear I wasn’t a really good fit.

And then I talked to the intern search committee in Key West. It was an incredibly fantastic conversation. I heard places where my gifts would meet their needs … and of course where their strengths would teach me and help soften my growing edges. We laughed together, we spoke in first person terms, we engaged each other. And when I hung up I thought “this is it.” I then heard from my references that they’d had amazing conversations with the committee as well.

On Wednesday, December 18th, Rev. Dr. Randy Becker and board president Joy Taylor called to offer me the position as their intern minister, starting August 1, 2014… and now I am a part of One Island Family, the Southernmost Unitarian Universalist Congregation.

A day later, I traveled back to Round Lake for the holidays, and as I sat on my bed, I looked and saw that poster.

The dreaming… the imagining…the visioning.

Made manifest.

Sure, not precisely as I imagined it five years ago… but five years ago, I knew I wanted to live and work on a tropical island. And in about seven months, I will be doing exactly that… in a more meaningful, heart-felt, missional way.

Can dreams come true? Bet on it. And if you are open to how they will manifest, they may surprise you and be even better than you imagined.

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As I entered my 50th year on this planet, I realized that it is my Year of Jubilee; it is certainly going to be an exciting year; I have several major creative projects coming up, will receive my M Div, will start an internship, and who knows what else? So many possibilities are on the horizon.

I am discovering each day what this Year of Jubilee means… there are biblical and historical Jubilees, which I’ll write about at more length. But there is also a personal aspect, which – at least to start – is a time of letting go, returning, delving into who I am and all I am meant to be.

I’ve decided to collect insights and inspiration on a Tumblr, cleverly called Kimberley’s Year of Jubilee. There I’ll put photos, quotes, songs, and thoughts about this journey. This blog will largely remain focused on Unitarian Universalism and UU ministry; the Tumblr will let me keep this year’s exploration delightfully collected in one place.

I hope you’ll join me in both places for the adventure to come.

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self talkA few days ago, a dear friend rightly called me out on a bit of negative self talk. And while the moment passed, it’s been sitting with me since. I know that I’m a lot better about self talk than I used to be – I recognize my gifts and talents and don’t measure myself against others the way I used to. But still, I can get pretty down on myself, especially when it comes to things I think I should have more control over.

And I know negative self-talk – even in little bits – can erode confidence. This is the last thing I need, knowing I am applying for internships and seeing the RSCC soon. I need to believe in myself, authentically and realistically.

So starting today, and at least until October 31, I am on a focused mission to eliminate negative self talk and say something nice about myself out loud, within earshot of beloved friends, each day… and post some sort of affirmation about my self on Facebook. I’m not going to brag, or say things that aren’t actually true – or even things I suspect might be true but can’t be sure of yet. I simply wish to speak the positive truths that I know about myself, to myself.

I am either going to become more confident and breathing into the fullness of who I am – or an insufferable fool. Either way, by Halloween I suspect I’ll know something about myself.

And so it begins….