Shawna R. B. Atteberry

My poem, Daughter of Mary Magdalene, has been published on The Ooze website.

“Kitchen Mage”
Creating magic
Waving my spoon over pots
Ingredients become a feast

“Wheat Bread and Pumpkin Cake”
Warm, spicy smells
Wafting from the oven.
The scent of fall.

“Thanksgiving Snow”
Deep gray and steely
The lake echoes the clouds;
Snow swirls and twirls down.

“Holiday (or the day after Thanksgiving)”
A day to be a bum
Sprawled on the bed, watching TV
Guilt nowhere to be found.

All poems ©2007 by Shawna R. B. Atteberry.

I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon. Instead of being at Cafe Mediterrea from 2:00-4:00 p.m., I will get there between 3:00-3:30 and leave between 5:00-5:30 p.m. I know I’m behind in responsidng to comments, but I have not been on the computer much due to the holidays. I have a lot of writing and church planting things to due this week, so posting and responding may be a little sparse.

I would like to thank everyone for their comments on Made in the Image of God: Female both here and at Emerging Women. I’ve glanced through them, but I have not had time to process and answer. But I will. It may just take a couple of more days.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and here’s prayers for all us who have to go back to work tomorrow after four days off. To be honest I’ve really enjoyed being unshackled from the computer and reading books and writing on paper. A friend and I have been writing haikus over the holiday weekend, so there will be poetry popping up this week. Does it feel weird to anyone else that today is NOT the first day of Advent? I’m kind of thrown with it being two Sundays after Thanksgiving instead of today. I keep wanting to put out Advent wreath…

Shawna

Singing Owl tells us: Ah, the day after Thanksgiving–groan! Fortunately, I love Thanksgiving leftovers.

Thanksgiving is the American holiday when the greatest number of people travel somewhere else to celebrate. I am posting this from my son’s home in Minnesota where we are recovering from the food shopping and the preparations and the meal and the clean up. It is difficult to think of anything requiring much energy today, and I am enjoying my sweet baby granddaughter, so I will keep it simple. For those of you not in the USA, I apologize for the nationalistic tone of this Friday Five!

1. Did you go elsewhere for the day, or did you have visitors at your place instead? How was it?

We stayed home and had a nice quiet dinner. We thought about inviting a few friends, but my husband is suffering some side effects from the medication he’s on for the liver infection, so it was just the two of us.

2. Main course: If it was the turkey, the whole turkey, and nothing but the turkey, was it prepared in an unusual way? Or did you throw tradition to the winds and do something different?

Turkey sheperhd’s pie with a mashed sweet potato topping, dark wheat bread, and pumpkin chocolate cake.

3. Other than the meal, do you have any Thanksgiving customs that you observe every year?

Not really. If we had spent Thanksgiving with my family, we would have watched some football amidst the chaos.

4. The day after Thanksgiving is considered a major Christmas shopping day by most US retailers. Do you go out bargain hunting and shop ‘till you drop, or do you stay indoors with the blinds closed? Or something in between?

I stay home. The curtains are opened, but I am not going anywhere!

5. Let the HOLIDAY SEASON commence! When will your Christmas decorations go up?

Since we’re staying home for Christmas, I have decided to do the traditional decorating I’ve always wanted to do. I will put up the Advent wreath, calendar, and a few decorations on December 2. The Christmas tree and the rest of the decorations will go up December 24, and then I will take it down on Epiphany, January 6. I’ve always wanted to do this, but normally we are not in town for Christmas, so I put everything up the first Sunday of Advent and take it down on Epiphany.

Gifted for Leadership’s most recent post is What Our Feminity Means. Here is an excerpt that sums up the entire post:

The benefits of modesty aside, femininity became a new way to behave, a role I played, a corset I wrapped around my soul and tightened down to get approval. Femininity quickly became something I did to get what I needed or wanted in life. It was something to use, not something I owned.

I don’t think this is what God intended when he created Woman. In Genesis 1 God wanted to splash more of the Trinity onto Earth. So God made Man and Woman to mirror his image (Gen 1:27). Femininity in its truest, original sense was one way God’s image appeared, and this image was not weak, catty, emotionally crazy, or inferior because God is none of these things. Femininity wasn’t a role Eve played to get what she needed; femininity was part of who she was. Even after Eden, as broken image bearers, we reflect God. If a child is humble, she mirrors her God. If a man is gentle, he mirrors his God. If women are feminine in the original sense, we reflect our God.

My main problem with this is that “feminine” and “femininity” are social and sociological constructs, not biblical or theological terms. Genesis 2:26-28 states:

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

God did not make “masculine” and “feminine” in God’s likeness. God made Male and Female in God’s likeness. And what does this image and likeness look like? According to these verses it means that man and woman subdue the earth and rule it as well as being fruitful and multiplying. Both the man and woman are commanded to have a family and to have a vocation.

In Genesis 2, we found that God created a human being and placed the human in the Garden of Eden. God decided that it was not good for the human to be alone, so God made an ezer cenegdo for the human. After the ezer is made there is now man and woman. What exactly is an ezer? Outside of Genesis 2, it appears 20 times in the Bible*. Seventeen of those times, ezer is used to describe God. In each instance military imagery is used to describe God coming to help Israel against its enemies. I found Psalm 146 particularly fascinating:

1 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!
2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
5 Happy are those whose help [ezer] is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,
6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10 The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD!

After telling the congregation not to put their trust in human leaders, the psalmist proclaims: “Happy are those whose ezer is the God of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah!” (author’s paraphrase). The psalmist then goes on to describe how God helps Israel: God executes justice for the oppressed, gives food to the hungry, sets prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down, and loves the righteous. God watches over the strangers, upholds the orphan and widow, and brings the way of the wicked to ruin. God’s help is not to dominate the people, but to lift them out of poverty and hunger, to set them free from oppressors and oppressive debts (most people in prison then were in debtor’s prison: they could not pay their debts). God helps the orphans and widows: those in society who have no one else to help them and be strong for them. God uses God’s strength and power to help those that no one else will help because they are seen as weak, poor, and marginal. Again we see military imagery used to describe God as Israel’s ezer or helper.

Carolyn Custis James does a wonderful job of exploring the word ezer and its military connotations in her book, Lost Women of the Bible: Finding Strength & Significance through Their Stories, in the chapter on Eve. She translates ezer as “strong helper.” Woman was created in the image of God to be a helper to the man as God was a helper to Israel. But this does not make her superior to the man. That’s where the second word of the phrase comes in: cenedgo, which means standing or sitting face to face. It means equal. So the full translation of ezer cenedgo is a powerful helper equal to. Woman was created to be a powerful helper equal to the man the way God is a powerful helper to God’s people.

Man and woman are created in God’s image to image God in our world. Psalm 146 gives a description of what God is doing in the world. God is not only fighting enemies and saving God’s people. God is also taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. This means that both man and woman should be doing the things God does to image God to our world. This includes fighting systemic and spiritual evil, but it also includes tenderness and compassion toward those who are poor, needy, and those whom society overlooks.

I want to look at two women in the Bible; one in the Hebrew Scriptures and the other in the New Testament. Deborah is the woman of Hebrew Scriptures that I want to look at. We are introduced to Deborah in Judges 4. She is a prophet and judge, and she leads Israel. The Israelite people come to her with the problems and disputes, and she mediates God’s will as Moses had once done. She is married, but she is a working woman. God has called her to be a prophet and judge, and she has answered. When God commands Israel to go to battle with their enemy Sisera and the Canaanites, Deborah summons the military commander Barak, and tells him what God says. But Barak will not go into battle without God’s representative, Deborah. Both Barak and Deborah lead Israel’s armies into battle. Here we see a man and a woman working together to fight the people’s enemies and obey God’s words and will. And irony of ironies is that Deborah’s husband, Lappidoth, is probably in the troops following his wife.

Deborah, Barak, and Lappidoth do not resemble or act according to the societal constructs of masculine and feminine, but they are obeying God and building God’s kingdom side by side. Leading men into a battle is not considered “feminine” in Western society, but Deborah was obeying God. God called her to lead her people and protecting them from their enemies. She was an ezer who was imaging God in her every word and action.

The next woman I want to look at in the New Testament is Priscilla (or Prisca). Priscilla ran a business with her husband, Aquilla. They made tents together. They worked in Corinth with Paul where they heard the Gospel and were saved (Acts 18:1-3). Later the couple would meet Apollos who had heard only of John’s baptism and not heard of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension or the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When Priscilla and Aquilla heard him, they took him aside and “explained the Way of God to him more accurately” (v. 26). They also lead a home church when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans (Romans 16:3-5). It is very odd during this time for a wife’s name to be mentioned before her husband’s, and yet four times Priscilla’s name is put before her husband’s. Many scholars believe that she was the dominant one in ministry: the teacher and pastor of the churches that met in their home.

Again we see a man and woman working side by side making a living and building God’s kingdom. There is no mention of what is masculine and what is feminine. They work together as the team God created them to be.

I think being made in male and female in the image of God has very little to do with modern notions of femininity and masculinity. It has everything to do with faithfully imaging God to our world by obeying God’s callings on our lives and working together–both men and women–to build the kingdom of God on earth.

*Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7, 26, 29; Psalm 20:2; 33:20; 70:5; 89:19; 115:9-11; 121:1-2; 124:8; 146:5; and Hosea 13:9.

The New Revised Standard Version is used for biblical quotes unless otherwise noted.

The picture is Thomasz Rut’s Insuspenco.

Crossposted at Emerging Women.

“My First Mammogram”
Tender and supple
Squeezed flatter than a flitter
My first mammogram

© 2007 by Shawna R. B. Atteberry

I’ve been tagged for this meme. Here are the instructions:

1. Write down five things that you’re thankful for.
2. Tag five friends who you’d like to see participate in this meme.
3. (Optional) Include a link to this post (at John Smulo’s blog) and encourage others to place a link to their completed meme in the comments section of this post so we can keep track of the thankfulness running around the blogosphere.

5 things I am thankful for (God is a given, and too easy an answer on Christian blogs):

1. My Husband.

2. Family and Friends

3. That I have opportunity to start a church and pastor again. I miss it.

4. Being able to write.

5. My Cat–yes, I’m a crazy cat lady and proud of it!

If you want to play considered yourself tagged and please post a comment, so I know you played. Also remember to leave a comment on John’s blog as he’s the one who started this.

The picture is of Victoria aka The Diva, and when cat hair tumbleweeds are rolling over the floors, I call her The Hairy Beast.