For the SITS Girls 31 Days to a Building a Better Blog challenge, I just updated my About Me page. (Yes, I know it’s been horrible and outdated or a long time, but it’s no longer the scary-talking-about-myself-in-the-third-person page it was. I promise.) Please take a look and let me know what you think.
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Fre-smile by Frerieke
The last couple of days have not been good. I’ve basically gone catatonic when I’ve tried to work Monday and Tuesday. Monday I went back to bed and slept all day. Yesterday I zoned out in front of the TV. Last night I grabbed my journal and began being an investigator, trying to find out what was going on with me. Then I heard “What stories are you telling yourself?” I had to stop and think for a while. These are the stories that I have been telling myself:
I can’t do this. I never finish anything. It’s too big. Who do I think I am? I will be ridiculed. This book comes out and everyone will know I am a fraud.
I decided this story needed a little reality check editing. In The Life Organizer Jen Louden says, “Delineating between facts and stories is one of the most powerful life practices you can develop.” We need to find those facts and tell a new story. Here’s my new story:
I am writing Career Women of the Bible, and I’m almost finished with the book proposal. I have finished one book proposal: Spiritual Direction 101. I have finished a book, Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: A Biblical Theology of Single Women in Ministry. So what if I’m ridiculed. Heaven knows I’ve ridiculed enough books and authors. It’s all kharma. If some of it comes back to me, I will be kind, and extend love and grace. I am not a fraud. I know what I’m writing about. I have both the education and experience. I’ve lived intimately with the women of Bible for the last few years. I know them, and they want me to tell their stories. My women need their lives written into being, so people can see who they really are instead of the empty caricatures we get at church.
I’m going to write this and hang it up where I work. Are you having trouble with stories? Are there some stories you want to share with us? May be we can help each other change the stories that no longer serving us.
One of my favorite hymns says:
“Let us bring the gifts that differ
And, in splendid, varied ways,
Sing a new church into being,
One of faith and love and praise
“Sing a New Church” by Dolores Dufner, OSB
Can we write a new story into being in splendid varied ways? Write a new community into being full of love, support, and the occasional kick in the pants?
Photo by Frerieke.
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I always mean to blog more and start posting regularly. It still hasn’t happened. I’m really really bad about procrastinating. From my adventure a couple of weeks ago with the Reading Deprivation Week of The Artist’s Way, I found out I am a Pathetic Procrastinator who needs accountability. To that end I’ve joined The SITS Girls on BlogFrog in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog Challenge. I’ve owned 31DBBB for six months, and the furthest I’ve gotten is Day 5 on my own. My goal is at the end of the 31 days to complete the book and be posting regularly.
The Day 1 challenge is to write an elevator pitch for your blog. This is one or two sentences that describe what your blog is all about. I’ve had my pitch in the About Me box on the side column for awhile, but I’ve decided to tweak it. Here’s the new one:
I empower women to be the leaders Godde calls them to be at home, work and church by exploring the Divine Feminine and stories of the women in the Bible. I also use my experience and spiritual direction to help them discover new facets of Godde and their own leadership abilities.
I’ve been wanting to talk about the Divine Feminine more, but I hadn’t taken the time to work out how it would fit into the purpose I already had for this blog. It fits in so naturally, I wonder now why I procrastinated for so long. This also gives me a chance to explain the terms I use for Godde on this blog. First up: why Godde and not God? Godde is combination of God and Goddess to show that God transcends gender: Godde is neither male nor female and both male and female since Godde created both men and women in the image of Godde. I believe that Godde is Mother as well as Father, and instead of using the standard Lord that’s used to translate Yahweh in the Hebrew Scriptures, I use Sophia-Yahweh. I will lean more towards feminine references to Godde on my blog as masculine references are just about all you hear in church and society to refer to Godde. I use exclusively feminine pronouns for Godde for this reason as well. You’ll be seeing Sophia and Mother a lot on this blog, and I hope it doesn’t offend you. I hope it will help you to see Godde in new ways and start to walk on new paths with this Godde who cries out like a woman in labor to bring forth her people and nurses them at her own breast (Deut. 32:18, Psalm 22:10; 131:2; Isaiah 42:14; 49:15; 66:13).
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Pentecost by Nora Kelly
I have new post up on Examiner.com for Pentecost: Expanding our view of Pentecost. I talk about the painting to the right.
As always let me know what you think. I hope everyone has a happy, lively, vibrant and Spirit-filled Pentecost. May the Spirit surprise you in new and wonderful ways.
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It’s been busy here, which is why I haven’t had a chance for coffee the last few weeks. My biggest news is that I’m now the Chicago Protestant Examiner for Examiner.com. So I’m getting the hang of reporting and actually covering things that are happening now and talking to living people instead of researching things that happened over 2,000 years ago and interviewing people in my head. It’s a change. 
I am feeling really good. Joining the gym has really helped. Swimming and practicing yoga just sets me right. I love how both are a melding of meditation and movement. My time with my personal trainer is good as well, but I don’t get the spiritual practice on the machines the way I do in the water and yoga poses.
My biggest thing right now is time management: figuring out when and how long to work on various writing projects: The Book, Examiner, other freelance work, and being an editor on The Christian Godde Project (really need to get back to translating Luke), not to mention all the research that goes with each. Plus all the daily life stuff: running errands, cleaning, laundry, showering, eating, sleeping, etc. etc. Not to mention The Hubby appreciates it when I talk to him on occasion. 
My in-laws and a nephew are coming to see us in June, so that means we have a lot of cleaning out, organizing and cleaning up to do in the next few weeks. They’ll be here during the Printer’s Row Book Fair (every bookaholic’s best dream and worst nightmare), and I will be preaching at church that Sunday. My father-in-law wants to hear me preach. I’m a little psyched about it, but I’m sure it will all be fine. The Old Testament passage for that Sunday is Jezebel. And I love Jezebel. Wondering how much fun I can have with her even in a liberal Episcopal Church. We’ll see.
This weekend is pretty quiet. Tomorrow is cleaning and writing. I also need to make a trip to the grocery store for odds and ends. Then Sunday is Pentecost. I’m looking forward to that. Ooh, that reminds me: I need to start reading Acts 2:1-21 in the Greek, since I will be doing that Sunday morning. We will have the Acts passage read in several different languages in the service: English, Spanish, German, French, and Greek, and who knows what else. Last year each person started reading a few verses full voice, then read quietly while they walked through the sanctuary, then the next person picked up and read then walked. By the end of the reading, they were people reading the passage in different languages all over the congregation. It was so powerful. I’m not sure that’s they way we’ll do it this year, but I’m sure it will still be powerful.
I hope everyone has a good weekend and a blessed Pentecost!
Sphere: Related ContentI’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.
Sphere: Related ContentHey all, I have new article up on Examiner.com. The Feast of the Ascension: Does it really have to be spiritual vs. physical.
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