(I am working my way through Sandi Amorim’s Spotlight Questions. When she asked what was effortless and life giving for me, I answered: “Definitely reading. I love to sit down and get lost in a book. I love to learn new things. I’m always reading seven or eight books at the same time. I just love books. That leads into my love for writing and wanting to give the same blessings to my readers, my favorite authors have given to me.” It reminded me of this article I wrote for Christians for Biblical Equality’s E-Quality Newsletter.)

I’ve always lived in other worlds. As soon as I learned to read, I began devouring books. If I could understand most of the words, I read it. I was always asking Mom what this word and that word meant, and as a result, Mom soon taught me how to use a dictionary. I was in glasses by the time I was ten. There is no proof, but I think because I read so much, my eyes didn’t think there was anything beyond the length of my arm (or the tip of my nose for that matter). By the time I finished sixth grade, I had read the Little House on the Prairie books, A Wrinkle in Time trilogy (back then it was a trilogy), The Chronicles of Narnia, every Judy Blume book, and too many Nancy Drew books to count. In fact, I would sit down after breakfast on Saturdays with a Nancy Drew mystery and have it finished by supper. Of course, writing stories did not lag far behind learning how to read them.

Role Models

The first time I saw the power and potential of a girl, and later a woman, was in Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time books. Meg was strong and held her own ground. She did not have special powers and she was not a super-hero, but she did what was right. Her love for her family always compelled her to do the right thing, no matter what it cost her personally. Meg showed me that regardless of your age, you could change the world for the better.

I lived in books filled with girls and women with whom I could relate. I grew up with a complementarian model of who a woman was supposed to be, but I never fit in that mold. I was neither quiet nor submissive, and I was not very proper. I was competitive, opinionated, aggressive, and willing to defend my beliefs. In books I found woman like me, women I wanted to be like.

I will never forget meeting Eowyn in The Two Towers and journeying with her through Return of the King. She was the first woman I met who was also a warrior. She defied the customs of her time, went into battle, and fought for what she believed in. She was the one who destroyed the King of the Nazguls. In Eowyn, I found a sister.

Seeing Humanity in Others

But fiction has done more than just show me what women can do. The genres of science fiction and fantasy also help me to understand what it means to be human. There is a great potential for truth-telling in these genres. I think that is because the worlds in science fiction and fantasy are not “our” world. Because it’s not “us,” “our” culture, “our” world, we can say things that are not readily received in other forums. Over the years, these genres have confronted the prejudices of our world, battling discrimination based on sex, religion, and ethnicity, and going even further to ask, “What does it mean to be human?”

In Children of God, Mary Doria Russell weaves the stories of human and alien through religion. On the world of Rakhat, there are two species: the Jana’ata and the Runa. The Jana’ata will eat the Runa for survival and to maintain the population. Two of the human characters in the book are a Jewish woman, Sofia Mendes, and her autistic son, Isaac. Joining them is Ha’anala, a member of the Jana’ata. Sofia teaches them the Jewish faith. The biblical views begin to change the way Ha’anala looks at her world, and the way she sees the Runa. She realizes all of them are created by Godde. When she is older, she forms a group where the Runa are treated as equals, which becomes a catalyst for starting change in her world. Meanwhile, Isaac has limited speech and dislikes noise. He wants silence and clarity. He works continually on a hand-held computer, looking for what he calls clarity. At the end of the book we find out what he was working on: a symphony. John Clute noted that Isaac “understands the world solely through song, memorizes the genetic codes of the three races into three intercalating tone-rows, and harmonizes them” (Excessive Candour, issue 63, which is no longer online thanks to SyFy’s name change). He calls his composition “The Children of God.” The humans, the Runa, and the Jana’ata are all Godde’s children. The book ends with a question: Where will these three races—all children of Godde—go from here? Children of God makes us think: what does it mean to be made in the image of Godde? To be Godde’s children? Do we really consider those who are “other” (different races, cultures, religions, or ethnicities) as Godde’s children? Would we use and exploit other people if we saw them as children of Godde, or would we radically change the way live as Jana’ata did?

Neil Gaiman creates London Below in Neverwhere: A Novel. A whole world lives beneath the streets of London in old tunnels long forgotten. London Below is populated by those who considered misfits by the inhabitants of London Above. The residents of London Below are seen as homeless, dirty, and destitute. The people of London Above do not even see them; they look right past them. The dwellers of London Below have to talk to them to be seen, but once the conversation is over, the London Abovers forget all about it. Those who reside in London Below are unseen and forgotten people. This challenges the reader to examine how we see people. How do we view those who are considered “misfits”? Do we look past them? Do we see them at all?

Both of these books remind me of the core church doctrine that every single human being on the face of this planet is made in Godde’s image. What do we do with this doctrine, once it is truly realized? Are we able to handle the responsibility this places upon us? What about those we take advantage of, simply because we can? Are there certain people who are invisible to us, who we look through on the street? Fiction has challenged me, throughout my life, to encounter these hard questions, and ask what it means to be human. Godde not only created every human being, but Godde created them in Godde’s own image. I must constantly remind myself to remember this, to live out what I believe.

Male and Female in the Image of Godde

Lately these questions about humanity have morphed into an examination of what it means to be made in the image of Godde as males and females. What does it mean to be a woman created in the image of Godde? What does this look like in our everyday lives?

I’m not sure I’ve found the answer in fiction. But I do know one image from a book that points me in the right direction: Eowyn and Merry in The Return of the King. They ride into battle together, fight together, and defend each other until they are both down. Eowyn does kill the King of the Nazgul, but she could never have done it without the help of Merry. When I think of men and women, made in the image of Godde, this is what I see. Brothers and sisters standing side by side, fighting the evil in our world that would belittle or ignore any person made in Godde’s image, and building Godde’s kingdom together.

This article was originally published in Christians for Biblical Equality’s E-Quality Newsletter, Winter 2008.

Women and Fiction: Writing the World Right is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Touching God: Experiencing Metaphors for the Divine
Ellyn Sanna
© 2002
Paperback, $12.95

Touching God is like sitting down with a really good friend who makes you look over the last few days or weeks of your life and see them in a different way. The two of you are talking about your mundane lives then she says something that makes you see a daily occurrence in a whole new light. Sanna makes you look at the things that make up your daily, routine life such has food, light, housekeeping, children, and friends and helps you see Godde. Taking everyday objects and activities and making them metaphors to describe Godde is nothing new–Jesus did the same thing in parables. Throughout the Bible daily activities are turned into metaphors to describe this invisible Godde we are in a relationship with. Things and activities we are familiar with give Godde the human skin we need to touch her and know she is with us. Metaphors like:

• Godde is light.
• Godde is a rock.
• Godde is bread.
• Godde is a housekeeper.
• Godde is a spouse.
• Godde is a friend.

Keeping each metaphor firmly rooted in her daily life and relationships, Sanna unpacks how we experience Godde through these symbols in the 21st century. She is good at taking the things of everyday life and giving Godde the flesh we all crave.

Being the descendent of Italian Americans who love to cook and eat, my favorite chapter was the one on food. The chapter begins with one of the most creative and imaginative retellings of the Feeding of the 5,000 I have read. Beyond the obvious connection with the sacrament of communion, Sanna reminds us that at the heart of seeing Godde as food is remembering the connection between food and our physical well-being. Food has become everything from an addiction to a reward in American society, and our obsession with food revolves around what we can’t have and shouldn’t have. We have forgotten that we need to food to live, just as we need Godde to live. Yes, human beings shall not live by bread alone, but we will not live at all without bread. Sanna believes we need to remember and think of our meals as blessings of abundance and generosity instead of calorie counting to help us remember the same abundance and generosity we receive from Godde.

After recently posting about the importance of homemakers in the Early Church, I was very pleased to see a chapter comparing Godde to a housewife in Touching God. Sanna begins with the parable in Luke 15 that normally gets looked over when we talk about Godde looking for lost things and lost people:

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:8-10, NRSV).

Remembering lessons from Sunday School Sanna says:

I don’t remember a time I didn’t know that God was the Good Shepherd searching for the lost sheep, and my Sunday school teachers made quite clear that just as the father ran out to greet his prodigal son, God welcomes us when we come back to him. God is a shepherd, God is a father; I was familiar with these metaphors. But no Sunday school teacher ever spelled out the parallel metaphor that is clearly there in Christ’s story: God is a housewife.

I don’t remember hearing anything about Godde being a housewife in my years of Sunday school and church either. Though I have heard many sermons and Sunday School lessons about Godde the Shepherd, and Godde the Loving Father. Those three verses between these two parables are conveniently skipped over, so we don’t have to demean Godde by showing Godde doing something as menial as “woman’s work.” Although, as Sanna points out, in the biblical time being a homemaker/housekeeper was not considered demeaning labor. Women were responsible for the processing of and allotment of all the food the family needed. Women’s work also fueled the ancient economy with their continuous spinning and weaving of cloth for clothing, shelter, and housewares. And as I pointed out in my post about Martha, Sanna also explains that rich homemakers ran small businesses.

One of the things that I adore about this book and Sanna is her penchant for picking up the dictonary and looking up what words really mean. This is how I found out that menial did not always mean inferior or demeaning. Menial “comes from the Latin roots meaning ‘to remain, to dwell.’ This sense of stability and permanence surely means that our household chores reflect aspects of the divine nature, ‘with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning’ (Jas 1:17, KJV).”

The next time I am cleaning the bathroom or mopping the kitchen floor my mantra is going to be: “Godde is a housekeeper too. Godde is a housekeeper too.”

The most challenging chapter, and the one I resisted the most will probably be the one other readers will have trouble with as well: Seeing Godde in the poor. Sanna herself notes:

We are attracted to most symbols for God. Metaphors from nature may be intimidating at times, but they are still beautiful; in most human metaphors for God we catch a glimpse of something loveable and sympathetic, some human quality we recognize and appreciate. But the poor make us uneasy. People who lack food, proper hygiene, and education are seldom pretty; how can we see God’s image in such ugliness and despair?

Even though Jesus was born in poverty and was a poor man all his earthly life, we have problems with seeing Godde as poor, seeing Godde in poverty.

When we catch a glimpse of God in those who are poor, we are not meant to sit back and simply admire it. Other divine metaphors may speak to us through their essential beauty; we can meditate on these symbols’ attributes and learn more about the nature of God–but there is nothing divine at all about human suffering and need. The poor are not blessed because they possess some wonderful spiritual quality; instead, they are blessed because God hears their cry….They are a challenge to our smug self-sufficiency, a voice that demands our response.

The question is will see Godde in the poor and act? Or will we turn away to the more pleasant symbols for Godde and ignore that this was the life our own Savior chose while walking the earth?

I recommend this book to anyone who wants to recognize Godde’s presence in their ordinary, mundane lives. Godde is there, but we so often don’t take the time to look, search, and meditate on the many different ways Godde shows up in our day. Touching God will help you to slow down and start looking for the many metaphors and symbols in your own life that will help you see Godde all around you everyday.

I have also reviewed Ellyn Sanna’s new translation of Julian of Norwich’s Showings: All Shall Be Well: Divine Revelations of Love by Julian of Norwich.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Anamchara Press agreeing to post a review of it on my blog.

Book Review: Touching God is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Women at the Time of the Bible by Miriam Feinberg Vamosh

Women at the Time of the Bible
Miriam Feinberg Vamosh
Paperback
$19.99

Women at the Time of the Bible is an indispensable guide of the ordinary lives that ordinary women lived in the Bible. Author Miriam Feinberg Vamosh has lived in Israel for 40 years, and she is a tour educator who specializes in pilgrimages in the Holy Land. In addition to writing, she also lectures. This is a well researched book that is perfect for the regular person who wants to know more about the daily lives of their spiritual foremothers.

Feinberg Vamosh literally puts us in the shoes of Biblical women as she shows us their lives in beautiful prose and amazing full-color pictures. The chapters include:

• The Household: Home, Hearth and Beyond
• It’s Never Done: Women’s Work
• Under Caring Wings: Motherhood
• Ladies who Lament: Professional Mourners
• A Teacher for Life: Women and Learning
• Standing out, Speaking Out: Women’s Leadership

She also covers betrothal and marriage, how women worshiped, and the final chapter is on women who lived at the margins of society: prostitutes, mediums, seductresses, and loners. Each chapter ends with a portrait of a woman who personifies the chapter. The portraits are well written narratives of women like Martha, Sarah, Rahab, and Abigail showing us new insights into their lives.

The full color pictures on each page of the book help the reader to see how these women lived, and pictures of present day nomads show, that in some places, life has not changed much from biblical times. Feinberg Vamosh has firmly anchored this book in archeological finds, history, sociological studies, and the biblical accounts to help us step into the ancient world of our foremothers.

My only quibble with the book was the price. I ordered if off Amazon.com, and I was expecting a bigger book for the price of $19.99, but the quibbling was soon silenced as I began reading the book and marveling at the pictures. Take it from me: the book is worth the price.

What are some of your favorite books about the women of the Bible? Any book open your eyes to see these women more clearly and show you something new on their part in sacred history?

One Year Ago on ShawnaAtteberry.com: A book every woman needs on her shelves is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Earth Afire with God: Celtic Prayers for Ordinary Life
Anamchara Books
(c) 2011
Paperback $12.95

I love Celtic prayers. I love their simplicity, their humility, and their earthiness. I love how they take the mundane tasks of life seriously. Nothing is too humble or ordinary to be prayed over in the Celtic tradition. There are prayers for rising, kindling the fire, washing the clothes, and gathering food. All of life is sacred and lived in Godde’s presence.

In Earth Afire with God, Anamchara Books has collected Celtic prayers from the past and updated them to reflect modern life. The staff of Anamchara Books also wrote their own Celtic prayers to add to the collection. The vast majority of the prayers come from Alexander Carmichael’s Carmina Gadelica, the largest source of Celtic prayers we have reflecting over 1000 years of oral prayers and traditions from Celtic Christianity. The prayers are divided by sections like “Morning Prayers,” “Journeying,” “Enfolding Your Life in God,” and “Celebrating the Seasons,” making it easy to find a prayer for a specific situation. The arrangement of prayers within each section have a nice flow from ancient life to modern life as shown by these two prayers from the “Working” Section.

“Prayer for Starting the Work Day”

Lord Jesus, who worked at lathe and plane, with hammer and with nails,
Bless and sanctify the tools I use this day.

Lord Jesus, who worked beside His earthly father, Joseph,
Bless and watch over me and those with whom I work this day.

Lord Jesus, who knew the cares and frustrations of toil,
Bless my work.

Lord Jesus, who knew the rewards and satisfaction of toil,
Bless my work.

Lord Jesus, whose gifts of talent and ability sustain my working life,
Bless my work.

In strength and with confidence I begin my work today.
In strength and with confidence may I accomplish all I must do.
To the Glory of God my Creator, I dedicate this day.

“Workplace Prayer”

The job I do today, Christ does it too.
May my workplace be bright with His joy.
May the Trinity be pleased with each task I do,
Creator, Child, and Spirit
And may the bright angels hover ’round my desk–
Dear presence–each hour of the day.
Let every e-mail I send go forth in truth and blessing.
May I speak only words of truth and blessing
On the phone and to my colleagues.
May no dealing of this day
Give shame to the bright people of Heaven,
The holy cloud that watches all.
May I not forget them, nor the stout Earth that gives me strength,
Nor You, fair Lord.

Earth Afire with God is a good book for those beginning their journey into Celtic prayers. It’s a good beginning point to see what Celtic prayer is like. It is also a good book for those of us who have prayed Celtic prayers for years because of its modern language, and the new prayers should inspire all who read to try their own hand at writing prayers, of any style, to the Godde who makes every facet of our lives possible. This is an excellent book of prayer that should bring any pray-er closer to Godde.

Book Review: Earth Afire with God is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

All Shall Be Well: Revelations of Divine Love
Julian of Norwich
Written in modern language by Ellyn Sanna
(c) 2011
Anamachara Books
Paperback $19.95

Julian of Norwich is one of my favorite writers and saints. Julian was an English anchoress who lived from 1342–1412. An anchoress was a person who chose to be imprisoned for Godde. Anchoresses were nuns, already devoted to a life of prayer and contemplation, who decided to go a step further in their spiritual discipline. They chose to be a living burial, radically living dying to the world in a very visceral and practical way. Anchoresses lived in rooms attached to the church, which they never left; in fact, their rooms had no doors. An anchoress’ room had three windows: one looking into the church where she could hear services and receive communion. The second window opened to her servant’s room where she received her meals. The servant would also run errands and clean for the anchoress, who devoted herself exclusively to prayer and spiritual counsel. The third window opened out to the world, and to this window people would come to ask questions and receive wisdom from the anchoress. People of walks of life–rich and poor, peasants and royalty–would come to anchoresses for guidance and spiritual counsel. This was how Julian lived.

Julian lived in a very tumultous time in England during the Middle Ages. Bubonic plague (The Plague) swept through England three times during her life. It is estimated that Norwich lost half of its population to The Plague. England was also embroiled in the 100 Years War with France, which lasted through all of Julian’s life. It was a time of religious upheaval in England. In 1384 Wyclif translated the first Bible from Latin into the vernacular English, so that the laity could read the Bible themselves. The pope condemned him as a heretic, and the local clergy did not believe people could know Godde and have a relationship with her without the mediation of the church. One group of Wyclif’s followers were burned in a pit within a mile of Julian’s cell. The Church zealously believed the only way to Godde was through the clergy, and that there could be no way for the people to relate directily to Godde. In the midst of all this upheaval and violence, Julian received a vision from Godde where she was told: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” These words Julian held onto for the rest of her life and lived.

In 1373 Julian fell ill and was so close to death a priest came to administer last rites. As she thought she was dying, Julian had a series of mystical revelations she called showings. She spent most of her life meditating on and writing about these showings. She wrote them in the English of her time instead of Latin because she believed her showings should be passed on directly to people. Julian’s Showings (or Revelations) were the first book written by a woman in English. After her death, nuns found her writings and kept them hidden because of the charges of heresy they could bring along with death to those who held such inflammatory writings. Julian’s book was finally printed in 1670, well after the Protestant and English Reformations had taken hold, and common people having direct access to Godde was no longer a heretical belief.

This new edition pays tribute to Julian’s belief that her writings be in a language people can read and understand. Ellyn Sanna’s new translation in modern English is a gift to those of us who love Julian’s Showings, but did not like slogging through the previous translations that kept in tact most of the Middle English the book was originally written in. You can see a huge difference in the opening two paragraphs:

THIS is a Revelation of Love that Jesus Christ, our endless bliss, made in Sixteen Shewings,or Revelations particular.

Of the which the First is of His precious crowning with thorns; and therewith was comprehended and specified the Trinity, with the Incarnation, and unity betwixt God and man’s soul; with many fair shewings of endless wisdom and teachings of love: in which all the Shewings that follow be grounded and oned.

Here is Sanna’s updated language:

This is a revelation of love that Jesus Christ, our endless joy, made in sixteen showings (sixteen particular and unique revelations).

The first of these showed me that His crown of thorns was precious and valuable, and along with this image came a unique understanding of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the unity that exists between God and human beings. This showing and all the others that followed contained many lovely perspectives and lessons on God’s wisdom and love; all sixteen showings are grounded and unified by this same viewpoint.

Sanna also takes words that no longer have the meaning they carried in Julian’s time and replaces them with the equivalent in today’s English. The big word she replaces is passion. The Passion of Christ refers to the suffering, torture and death of Christ on Good Friday. Today passion no longer means long-suffering and enduring through trial. Sanna replaces suffering with endurance, which carries for us the same meaning passion carried with Julian. The thing I like the most about this updated translation is when Julian speaks of Godde or Jesus as Mother, Sanna uses the pronoun “she.” In the original text Julian speaks of Godde’s and Jesus’ motherhood using “he,” but I think “she” adds consistency and gives the modern reader the same shock that Godde and Mother gave Julian’s original readers.

I am a great lover of Julian because she first showed me it was OK to call Godde Mother. I resisted calling Godde Mother even when I experienced her as that. When I discovered Julian’s writing and discovered both Godde and Jesus referred to as Mother since the 14th Century, my resistance melted. I later discovered medieval writers often referred to both Godde and Jesus as Mother, and this terminology was nothing new. Here are two of Julian’s Mother passages from Divine Revelations. The first describes the Trinity using both Father and Mother language, and the second describes Christ as Mother.

Our High Father, God All-Strong who is Being, knew and loved us before time existed. This Divine knowledge, alongside a deep and amazing love, chose with the foreknowledge of the Trinity the Second person to become Mother. This was our Father’s intention; our Mother brought it about; and our Protector the Holy Spirit made it firm and real. For this reason we love our God in whom we have our being. We thank and praise our Father for our creation; we pray with our entire intellects to our Mother for mercy and understanding; and we ask our Protector the Holy Spirit for help and grace.

*                                                    *                                                  *

Our Mother by nature, our Mother by grace, wanted to become our Mother in all things, and so Christ planted the seeds of Divine action in the humble and gentle soil of the Maiden’s womb. (Christ showed me this in the first showing, where I saw how humble this girl Mary was when she conceived the Divine.) In other words, the High God, Sovereign Wisdom, put on flesh and mothered us in all things.

…The word “mother” is so sweet and intimate that it cannot truly be used to describe anyone except Christ. Motherhood is the essence of natural love, wisdom, knowledge–and motherhood is God. God is as much in the physical process of labor and delivery as God is in the process of our spiritual birth.

This new translation of Julian’s Revelations is both a wonderful resource and devotional reading to have on your shelves. Now there is a translation for modern people which follows Julian’s true intent: that anybody be able to read her words and experience Godde’s love and grace for themselves. I love this new edition, and it will be sitting on my shelves for years to come.

_____________________________________________________________________

Remember, if you sign up for my newsletter, you’ll be able to get discounts on my upcoming E-book, Women Who Didn’t Shut Up and Sit Down. The first issue will go May 2. This newsletter will only be letting you know about new products and discounts.

Book Review: All Shall Be Well: Divine Revelations of Love by Julian of Norwich is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics
Bruce Sanguin
(c) 2010
Paperback: $22.95
Digital: $12.95

This Planet of Pain
Matthew 23:32–56, Mark 15:21–41, Luke 33:26–49

Now we open
to the story of the Crucified and Risen One,
arms stretched out
across the chasms of fear,
pulling factions into his own broken body,
closer to his pierced heart,
so that this planet of pain
may one day claim as its own
the love flowing out from that
sacred, broken heart.
Yes, pull us in, Spirit of the Living God,
into the Heart of our hearts,
that we might once and for all
lay down our arsenals of fear
and take up our tools
to build the kin-dom of God
for the sake of all creation.
Amen.

This prayer is one of the prayers for Good Friday in Bruce Sanguine’s latest book, If Darwin Prayed: Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics. Sanguine, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and pastor of Vancouver’s Canadian Memorial United Church, wanted “prayers for worship and spiritual practice that are written from the perspective of the great evolutionary story of the universe.” But evolutionary thought is still in infant stages in both theology and liturgy. Sanguine wondered:

What was born of necessity soon became a weekly discipline of joyful creative expression. I wondered what prayers in support of the new cosmology and evolutionary spirituality would look and feel like: How would we pray together if we took the science of evolution and the new cosmology seriously—if we saw the presence we call God intimately involved with the modern scientific realities of the universe, the planet, and human beings? How do we translate Paul’s intuition of a Christ who is cosmic in scope and sovereignty into prayer form? How do we pray into the mission that emerges when we bring this lens to bear on the text? What fresh insights might emerge from the ancient biblical texts if we brought an evolutionary lens to the task?

Sanguine decided to start writing his own prayers to fill this void in liturgy. The result is an incredible prayer book that challenges us to expand our understanding of who Godde is, who we are as individuals and the church, and how we are connected to, not only everything on earth, but everything in the universe. I have always been fascinated and awed that the human body is made of the same building blocks as stars. Reading and praying prayers that acknowledge and praise Godde for making us of stardust resonated deeply in me, such as these lines from “Everywhere Light”:

Forgive us
that even as we carry around
the entire universe in our bodies,
and in our luminous minds,
we look elsewhere for sacred revelation.

Forgive us:
despite knowing that each carbon atom in our blood
and firing neuron in our brain
came from ancient stars,
somehow we can ignore our own radiance.

I also loved all the different ways Sanguine describes Godde as both male and female, as family and cosmic, personified and the Ground of All Being. Sanguine challenges us to think about the little boxes and small definitions we limit Godde with and encourages us to explore new ways of describing Godde and knowing her. “The Happy Communion” is a perfect example of helping us see the Trinity in a relationship with each other and us instead of a hierarchy:

Holiest Mystery,
Community of Love,
Creator, Christ, Spirit,
Three in One,
you in Christ,
Christ in us,
and everywhere, Spirit,
connecting, caressing, cajoling
us into the image of wholeness
tattooed on the heart and the soul
of every living thing.

If Darwin Prayed is a much needed prayer book exploring how Christian faith and science, can not only get along, but together show us new ways of seeing Godde, humanity, the world, and the universe. I hope to see more theological and liturgical sources come out in this strain. I want more prayers and songs that show the modern view of the world and universe as opposed to the ancient model of the domed universe: hell beneath, earth in the middle, and the heavens above with Godde outside of it all. I want to see more liturgy and prayer that shows the universe as vast, expansive, all of us connected with everything, and Godde in the midst of it all with us and creation.

#SpeakEasyDarwinPrayer

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from SpeakEasy agreeing to post a review on my blog.

Book Review: If Darwin Prayed is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Sophia's Book of Hours

Sophia’s Book of Hours
Rev. Laura M. Grimes, PhD
Copyright 2010
Spiral Bound: $24.99
Ebook: $20.99

For those of you who like to pray The Daily Office of morning, noon, evening, and night prayers, there is now a Book of Hours that uses feminine names and pronouns for Godde: Sophia’s Book of Hours. For each day of the week there are Psalms, prayers and Scripture readings along with the three Lukan canticles: The Benedictus (morning), the Magnificat (evening), and Nunc Dimittis (night). Sophia’s Book of Hours is adapted from The Book of Common Prayer. In addition Laura also uses some gender-neutral names for Godde as well as giving the prayer a list of alternate names for Godde as well as alternate versions of the Gloria said or chanted after the Psalm of the day and the canticle.

Each Psalm and canticle is broken into two or three lines with an asterisk (*) midday way through the verse. This allows for them to be chanted in either Anglican or Gregorian chant tones. The morning Scripture readings are taken from The Hebrew Scriptures, noonday from the New Testament, evening from The Hebrew Scriptures’ Wisdom Literature, and the night prayers are Jesus’ seven “I Am” statements from the book of John. There are also Leader and People parts for the offices to be prayed in community settings such as church services, retreats, or in prayer groups.

As with Sophia’s Rosary, Laura has written Sophia’s Book of Hours to be versatile for many different settings whether community or individual. This prayer resource invites us into seeing Godde in new ways, and ourselves in different ways as we worship this Godde who will not be limited by our human language. I think it also does a great job of giving women a glimpse of what it means to made in the image of Godde as the feminine face of Godde is front and center in this beautiful prayer book. It opens our imagination to look beyond the so-called traditional gender roles that are enforced on women to see the ways we image Godde in our lives and presents vistas of what being a woman made in Godde’s image really looks like.

Rev. Laura Grimes

Laura holds a doctorate of theology from Notre Dame, and she is an ordained priest in the Independent Catholic Church. She was ordained as a bishop by the Sophia Catholic Communion in 2007. She pastors the St. Junia the Apostle Chapel. She lives in Dayton, Ohio with her husband and two children. You can find out more about Laura on her site, where you can buy her books. She has been working on using gender inclusive language in the church for both people and Godde for years, and she plans on putting out more resources for liturgical and prayer use. She has also recently released Sophia’s Rosary for those who like to pray the Rosary (my review is here).

Book Review: Sophia’s Book of Hours is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

Yesterday The day before yesterday (this will post at 12:16 a.m. argggg) I posted the first five books in my 10 favorite books that empowered me to be the woman Godde created me to be, and that I think will help other women become all Godde has called them to be. Here are the final five books.

Theology

The books in this list are scholarly and use a lot theological jargon, but I think they are worth the time it takes to read.

She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse by Elizabeth Johnson

This is the book that showed me I could explore the Divine Feminine and remain a Christian and true to my biblical roots. Johnson is the one who introduced Sophia into my religious life: Spirit-Sophia, Jesus-Sophia, and Mother-Sophia. This book showed me that women’s experience of the divine was just as valid as men’s (i. e. normative) experience. After reading this book I started seeing how women’s experience of Godde was marginalized and neglected.

In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza

For me Schüssler Fiorenza picked up where Johnson left off. Schüssler Fiorenza dives into how women’s roles and experiences were marginalized, suppressed, and lost to history. Her reconstruction of early Christianity focusing on female disciples and apostles, and the roles that the Bible and sacred history hint at, flesh out a “theological reconstruction of Christian origins.” This book continued to show me how much of Christian history is that: his. It made me realize how desperately we need to balance out our religious experiences, traditions, worship, and Godde-talk with women’s words, women’s experience, and re-discovering the Divine Feminine.

Reading the Women of the Bible: A New Interpretation of Their Stories by Tikva Frymer-Kensky

If you only have one scholarly, wordy book about the women of the Bible on your shelves, this is the one. Technically the Bible we’re talking about here is the Hebrew Scriptures. Frymer-Kensky was a Jewish scholar and Middle East Historian par excellence. As far as I’m concerned no one could pick apart of piece of Scripture in the Hebrew, put it back into English, then add the historical, sociological and cultural background and make me wonder what I can learn from this woman and how can I apply this to my life. In fact, the last chapter is “Mirror and Voices: Reading These Stories Today” helps us start thinking about how these women’s stories can possibly change our own lives and culture.

Unfortunately Dr. Frymer-Kensky passed away in 2006 after a four year battle with breast cancer. Her first book In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth would be #11 on this list. After reading her two books, I was devastated to find out that would be all I would read. I would love for her passion for Scripture, helping us see the hard truths we don’t want to acknowledge, and the hope of change her work still gives people to live on in a few more books. If you light candles to honor those who have passed on, please light a candle for Tikva.

Discovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context by Carol Meyers

As In Memory of Her reconstructed early Christian origins, Meyers book seeks to reconstruct the ancient Israelite culture the creation stories in Genesis spring from. Discovering Eve, published in 1998 seeks to show what women’s lives in ancient Israel were like as a result of recent archeological finds at the time. Rural villages had been unearthed, and with them, glimpses of women’s lives. Meyers sees Eve as an archetype: Everywoman in the Bible. She shows us what the typical woman’s life would have been like when the Genesis creation stories were being told orally from one family to the next, one tribe to the next. Starting with the typical life and working backwards to show how Adam and Eve as the ideal Everyman and Everywoman came to be and why the Israelites were living in a dry, arid land where eeking out enough crops to live on was so hard instead of living in the water rich Eden.

Meyers also gives an incredible translation of Genesis 3:16 that would revolutionize how we think about women and their roles in the home and society if anyone was interested in an accurate translation of the verse:

I will greatly increase your toil [work/labor] and your pregnancies;
(Along) with travail [physical work] shall you beget children
For to your man is your desire,
And he shall predominate over you.

Meyer’s theory is that not only will the women’s pregnancies increase, but the physical work she does will also increase. Meyers also makes the observation, that in context, the husband only predominates over the women, so that she will have children. Large families were needed to farm the dry, arid land, but with the large infant mortality rate (half of all children born did not live to their second birthday), and mother mortality, the woman would be hesitant to have sex. The husband could rule over her in this for the work that needed to be done to survive. Meyers points out that we no longer need large families to survive, and with modern birth control, the husband predominating over the woman is now a moot point. I think it’s a moot point since Jesus: Jesus came to reverse the curse, including this one. But Meyer’s additional reading of this verse, strictly in the verse’s context is absolutely brilliant.

Worship

The Saint Helena Breviary: Personal Edition

I will always be grateful to the Episcopalian nuns in the Order of St. Helena for this gender inclusive prayer book. The nuns chant the Daily Office: four services of prayer through the day that include Psalms, readings from the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament, and prayers. The nuns grew tired of the masculine-only language for Godde. Over a number of years they wrote liturgy and chanted; this breviary is the result. It’s imaginative language and poetic meter help me to see Godde in new ways.

Hopefully in the future there will be more resources for fairly orthodox Christian women using Divine Feminine language for Godde. A good friend of mine is creating a Sophia Daily Office (which I hope a publisher will have the guts to pick up), and I am working on The Christian Godde Project. We are translating the New Testament using Diving Feminine names and pronouns for Godde to begin to balance out the male language only versions (Heaven help us).

If you know of prayer, worship resources, or liturgies using Divine Feminine language, please leave them in the comments.

All book links are affiliate links.

Empowering Women: My 10 Favorite Books, Part 2 is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

This is for the Day 2 Challenge, Write a List Post, for 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge at The SITS Girls on BlogFrog.

For my list post(s) I have decided to give the 10 books that empowered me to be the woman and leader that Godde called me to be. This is the first post of two. I will post the second part including theology and worship books tomorrow.

Practical Books

All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today by Letha Scanzoni and Nancy Hardesty

This book was instrumental in helping me claim my life as my own as a leader in the church and as a single woman who didn’t know if she wanted to get married and have kids. I did get married, but I chose not to have children for the simple reason I am not called to be a mother (and The Hubby is just fine with being Uncle Tracy, thank Godde). This book gave me that option as a Christian woman. Scanzoni and Hardesty systematically take the reader through the Bible pointing out where mistranslations, mis-interpretations, and neglect have been used to caricature the women of the Bible as wives and mothers and nothing else. They lay solid biblical and theological groundwork for why women were created to be more than wives and mothers (without diminishing those roles: they are important!), and they illustrate how women were merchants, business women, spiritual and political leaders in The Hebrew Scriptures and The New Testament.

Ten Lies The Church Tells Women by J. Lee Grady

Grady, the former editor and now contributing editor for Charisma Magazine, systematically goes through the lies that most women grew up with in church:

• • • • God created women as inferior beings destined to serve their husbands.
      • A woman should view her husband as the “priest of the home.”
      • Women who exhibit strong leadership qualities pose a serious danger to the church.
      • Women can’t be fulfilled or spiritually effective without a husband and children.
      • Women shouldn’t work outside the home.

Grady goes through each lie telling how he has seen it effect women in many churches through the years, and giving women solid, conservative, biblical positions to stand on if and when Godde calls them to be leaders in their church or calls them to a secular vocation outside of the home. If you’re on the conservative side this is the book I recommend you start with. Grady has a high regard for the inerrancy of the Bible, and conservative women won’t feel like he is manipulating Scripture or putting traditions and world cultures ahead of the Bible.

Harlot by the Side of the Road by Jonathan Kirsch

This is one of my all-time favorite books, period. This book began when Kirsch, a Jew, decided to start reading The Hebrew Scriptures to his son at bedtime. He was amazed at the stories they hit not too far into Genesis: a drunk and naked Noah. He went on to discover adultery, gang rape, incest, and war. He didn’t remember any of this from when he learned the stories as a child, so he began investigating the forbidden tales of the Bible and out came this wonderful book. These are the stories that all of us who claim The First Testament as our holy scriptures want to leave out. Here are a few of the chapter titles to give you an idea of the forbidden tales he uncovers:

• Life Against Death: The Sacred Incest of Lot’s Daughters
• The Woman Who Willed Herself into History: Tamar as the Harlot by the Side of the Road
• The Bridegroom of Blood: Zipporah as the Goddess-Rescuer of Moses
• God and Gyno-sadism: Heroines and Martyrs in the Book of Judges

This well researched book is very accessible to readers who are not scholars and theologians. Kirsch helps us see some of the women in the Bible who have been considered as sexually loose or whores in a new light. He also helps us to see how we, as people of The Book, can start navigate the abuse and violence of our world in a biblical context.

History

Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

Here’s what people don’t realize about women working and financially supporting their families: women’s work drove the ancient economy. Women’s work, weaving and textiles, fueled the ancient economy of trading. The money women made from their looms was their own to manage how they saw fit. Women have always worked to support their families. It’s just in the first 20,000 years almost everyone worked from home (with the exceptions of soldiers and traders). Men used to work from home to support families too up until Industrial Age divided work and home into two separate spheres. Wayland Barber shows how women’s work made trade and ancient economy go round. I found the history and her research fascinating. It is also a very accessible book: you don’t have to have a specialized vocabulary or a degree in history to read this book. Here are two of my favorite excerpts.

We also have many letters that the traders’ wives wrote to them from far away in Ashur, the capital of Assyria [Syria]–letters not just about how the family was getting along, but also about business matters. For at least some of the wives, daughters, and sisters were in business for themselves, acting as textile suppliers to their menfolk six hundred miles away in Anatolia [Turkey] and taking considerable profit therefrom to use for their own purposes (p. 169).

In the early layers of the Late Bronze Age sites in Israel…we suddenly begin to find locally made clay imitations of Egyptian fiber-wetting bowls, developed for just this purpose [splicing and twining linen]. The appearance of these humble textile tools, used only by women, alerts us that this is a time when women had just arrived in Palestine from Egypt in considerable numbers and settled there–and there is no other such time that we have found. Thus out of the several points in Egyptian history that scholars gave suggested for the date of the Exodus, the women’s artifacts tell us that this one (around 1500 to 1450 B. C.) is the archaelologically (sic) most probable layer to equate with their Exodus from Egypt (p. 254).

A Woman’s Place: House Churches In Earliest Christianity by Carolyn Osiek, Margaret Y. MacDonald with Janet H. Tulloch

This is a more scholarly book but well worth the time it takes to read. Osiek, et. al. unearth the structures of ancient households and the churches meeting within them during the first 300 years of Chrisitianity before the Christian religion was legalized and churches began to be built. One of the reasons given that women should not be pastors and bishops is that a woman’s sphere of influence should be the home. But the early churches met in homes where the matriarch of the family ruled. The authors show how much responsibility women had within in their homes and how much power they wielded within their homes, which translates into women having power within the churches that met in their homes.

All book links are affliate links.

Thank you to Elizabeth Ferree at The Life of a Home Mom for giving me the idea for this list post! (She’s @homemom3 on Twitter.) Actually I took two of her ideas for a list post and crunched them together, and it got me excited to write this post. This is a first time in a long time I’ve been excited about writing a post. Thank you Elizabeth! And thank you to The SITS Girls for putting together the blog challenge, so we can encourage and inspire each other!

Empowering Women: My 10 Favorite Books, Part 1 is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry

If one grew up Evangelical and/or Fundamentalist in the 1980s and 90s then one knew about why Dayton, TN was so important. It was there in a court of law that creationists who believed that Godde created the earth in six literal days beat the atheist evolutionists in a court of law. In her first book, Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions* Rachel Held Evans recounts growing up as a fundamental evangelical in Dayton, the home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, which is how Dayton got its nickname: Monkey Town. As Held Evans explains in her book this was the start of Evangelicals coming into the modern era determined to be able to give a scientific and rational answer to any question atheists could raise against the Bible because of William Jennings Bryan’s weak answers on why he believed everything in the Bible was absolute truth. Evangelicals determined that in the future they would have the answers.

Like many Evangelicals and Fundamentalists (myself included) Held Evans grew up learning how to answer any question an atheist could pose that would question Godde’s existence and the veracity of the Bible. They also learned how to turn the questions on atheists and agnostics that basically backed them into a semantic corner. Since the atheists couldn’t empirically prove there was not a God that left room Godde’s existence. All the questions were answered except the questions young Americans were asking, and for that matter questions young Evangelical and Fundamentalists were asking about their faith. Questions such as “Why would a loving Godde send his or her own creation to hell when they never had a chance to hear the Gospel?” Questions like “If Godde has predestined who will go to heaven and who will go to hell why evangelize at all?” Which leads to the question: “Do I really want to serve a Godde who predestines most of her own creation (made in Godde’s own image) to hell?” Like Held Evans I never bought the “We all should go to hell because we’re such awful sinners” line. If humanity were so depraved and so far gone why would Jesus even want to die for us?

Evoloving in Monkey Town is the book that several Evangelicals (including me) could have written about questioning the Christian faith and Godde, and the painful process it is to be broken down to nothing and starting the slow and tedious process of rebuilding faith in this Godde. It is not easy to hold one’s life-long beliefs to the light then start walking down the rocky path in deciding which beliefs are biblical and godly and which beliefs are  something that have been added on. Held Evans is brutally honest in how hard the process is, and how hard it will continue to be. There are no easy answers in this book.

It is refreshing to see more books coming from Evangelicals and evangelical publishing houses that deal with questioning faith, and that faith has its roots in doubt. It is also nice to see Evangelicals picking up N. T. Wright’s points that works are a vital part of faith. Not because works save, but because obedience to Godde is formed and shaped by works of love, compassion, and service. All Christians need to remember James’ words to the churches he wrote to in the first century: “Faith without works is dead.” Christians can harp about faith all they want, but it is only through works that faith is clearly seen.

I would recommend this book to Evangelicals and other Christians who doubt what they were taught about Godde and faith. I would also recommend it to non-Christians who don’t understand why Evangelicals and Fundamentalists get so upset about pluralism, creationism, abortion, and homosexuality. Held Evans gives an excellent history of Evangelical/Fundamentalist thought and how it’s gotten to where it is today. This book is a good read for anyone questioning their faith or wondering why some Christians cling so tightly to their beliefs.

I received a copy of this book Zondervan Publishing Company agreeing to review it on my blog.

*Affiliate links

Book Review: Evolving in Monkey Town by Rachel Held Evans is a post from: Shawna R. B. Atteberry