Here is the pitch I came up with for Career Women of the Bible:
The Bible says a woman should be a wife and mother. A woman’s place is in the home. But is this what the Bible says? Yes, women were wives and mother, but biblical women were also prophets, judges, merchants, and queens. These are the Career Women of the Bible.
What do you think? What would you change?
In yesterday’s post I wrote that I was using different names for God. One of those I stole from Julian of Norwich. Julian wrote about God as Mother in her writings, Divine Revelations of Love. She prayed to “our Father-Mother God,” and I use her name for God most when I pray. When I pray The Lord’s Prayer, I begin, “Our Father-Mother God who art in heaven…” When I say grace, I pray, “Father-Mother, thank you for this food.” I believe that it is valid to address God as Mother (as well as Father) because of all the mother imagery used in Bible for God: God is pregnant, gives birth, and breastfeeds. God also hides Israel under God’s wings like a mother hen. I also believe God can be addressed as Mother because of Genesis 1:26: God created both male and female in God’s image. Mother and other feminine names can be used for God because women image God. Here is a different version of The Lord’s Prayer that we prayed in church last Sunday:
Eternal Spirit, Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,
Source of all that is and that shall be,
Father and Mother of us all,
Loving God, in whom is heaven:The hallowing of your name echo through the universe!
The way of your justice be followed by the peoples of the world!
Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on earth.
With the bread we need to today, feed us.
In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.
In times of temptation and test, strengthen us.
From trials to great to endure, spare us.
From the grip of all that is evil, free us.For you reign in the glory of the power that is love, now and for ever. Amen.
What do you think of using feminine names for God? What do you call God?
We’ve been singing a wonderful hymn in church the last few weeks. Author Brian Wren wanted to show that “aspects of the divine are revelaed in our maleness, femaleness, youth, and age in a moving, growing matrix of life in God.”
“Bring Many Names”
Bring many names, beautiful and good,
celebrate, in parable and story
holiness in glory,
living, loving God.
Hail and Hosanna!
bring many names!
Strong mother God, working night and day,
planning all the wonders of creation,
setting each equation,
genius at play:
Hail and Hosanna,
strong mother God!
Warm father God, hugging every child,
feeling all the wonders of creation,
caring and forgiving
till we’re reconciled:
Hail and Hosanna,
warm father God!
Old, aching God, grey with endless care,
calmly piercing evil’s new disguises,
glad of good surprises, wiser than despair:
Hail and Hosanna, old, aching God!
Young, growing God, eager, on the move,
saying no to falsehood and unkindness,
crying out for justice,
giving all you have:
Hail and Hosanna,
young, growing God!
Great living God, never fully known,
joyful darkness far beyond our seeing,
closer yet than breathing,
everlasting home:
Hail and Hosanna,
great, living God!
(c)1989 by Hope Publishing Company
I have been exploring a variety of images of God in the past couple of years particularly God as mother. I am going to start writing of the images of God I am praying, and how they are changing me, how I see God, and the way I pray.
The picture is Farid de la Ossa Areita’s God, the Mother.
For those of you who have expressed interest in reading my M. A. thesis, Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: A Theology of Single Women in Ministry, it is now in PDF format, ready to download.
A couple of articles on religion from The Washington Post caught my eye today. The first talks about the Coptic Christians withdrawing from Muslim society in Egypt. This is so sad to hear. Christians and Muslims have lived side-by-side in peace in Egypt for centuries. The one thing that struck me is that when Christians and Muslims live in the same neighborhoods, they are good friends. There are no violent clashes. It’s the Christians and Muslims that have separated themselves into separate enclaves that are clashing. In an article I wrote for Credo magazine, I said, “When we make friends outside of our own group–Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists–it is harder to consider an entire group an enemy” (p. 23 in upcoming November 2008 issue). We cannot consider a whole group of people an enemy when we have friends, and they put a human face on that group. Here is an excerpt from Egypt’s Coptic Christians are Choosing Isolation:
Sidhom said he has a simple rule for predicting where Muslim and Christian violence will break out. In a community where Muslims and Christians still live and work together, he said, there will be no problem.
At another auto parts store in Shobra, where Copts and Muslims intermingle, Copt and Muslim clerks laughed at the idea of religious strife.
“Any wedding, funeral, they will be there,” Hussein Mohammed Negem said of his Christian friends. A black bruise on his forehead showed Negem to be a Muslim who regularly bows his head to the floor in prayer.
Nagib Emed Aziz George, a Christian shopkeeper from next door, smiled as he leaned on Negem, his arm and chin propped on the Muslim man’s shoulder.
The worst thing about this is that Jesus taught that our worst enemy is our neighbor, and we are to love them and care for them (see The Good Samaritan, Luke ). This goes directly against the second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn’t matter if you agree with their religion or not, we still love them as Christ loves us and loves them.
The second article is about a Jewish pilgrimage in Morocco:
While religious tensions flare in Jerusalem and beyond, in Morocco, Jews and Muslims say they nurture a legacy of tolerance and maintain common sanctuaries where adherents of both religions pray. Decades of emigration to Israel by Morocco’s Jews and terrorist bombings in Casablanca that targeted Jewish sites haven’t diminished the draw of these annual pilgrimages.
During the festival that began Friday, visitors prayed and feasted around the shrine of Abraham Ben Zmirro, a rabbi reputed to have fled persecution in Spain in the 15th century and then lived in Safi, where he is buried with six siblings.
A half-Jewish, half-Muslim band played local tunes during a banquet, including a song in French, Arabic and Hebrew with the line: “There is only one God, you worship Him sitting down and I while standing up.”
The pilgrims were joined Sunday by Aaron Monsenego, the great rabbi of Morocco, who prayed alongside the regional governor and several other Muslim officials at the shrine’s synagogue for the good health of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and his family.
“It’s very important for us to pray altogether,” Monsenego told The Associated Press.
People of different faiths can come together, worship together, pray together, and live together. But first we have to listen to each other and actually get to know each other. And above all: respect each other!
MJCIV posted this prayer on Street Prophets. This prayer in in M’s daughter’s book god bless the gargoyles by Dav Pilkey.
God bless the rain and the stormclouds that bring it
God bless the music, and the voices that sing it.
God bless the ones who sing everything wrong.
God bless all creatures who do not belong.
God bless the hearts and the souls who are grieving
For those who have left, and for those who are leaving.
God bless each perishing body and mind,
God bless all creatures remaining behind.
God bless the dreamers whose dreams have awoken.
God bless the lovers whose hearts have been broken.
God bless each soul that is tortured and taunted,
God bless all creatures alone and unwanted.
From Kimberly Roth at Jesus Manifesto:
I am a daughter of Eve.
I am a daughter of the woman who plucked fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it seemed good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom (and was also kind enough to share with her husband).
I am a daughter of the curse.
I am a son of God.
Through faith, I have been clothed with Christ Jesus and am neither male nor female but Christ, Abraham’s seed, living in me through the Spirit.
I am a son of the promise.
<snip>
Why is it that women in vocational ministry seems to be Christianity’s final frontier?
Ok, God, we can accept those Gentile believers, and we can even give up our slaves… but you can not be serious about that female thing?! Surely you’re not going to let Eve off the hook that easily. Did Jesus put you up to this? Do you have any idea how long it took us to live down that whole Deborah thing (and don’t even get me started on her friend Jael…)?
There seems to be a lot of fear surrounding what would happen if women were released to run amok in ministry, at least down here in the Bible belt. Children would be abandoned, meals would go unprepared, men would be disrespected in their own homes and left to pick up their own dirty underwear. Chaos would ensue. Theology would be twisted beyond recognition. Salvation as we know it would cease. Sunday school is one thing, but the entire Body of Christ… that’s just too much to consider.
I grew up with this attitude. It took God a long time to convice me that yes God could call me into leadership positions, and that it was okay that I DID NOT want to be a traditional wife, and do not want to have children. God used women like Deborah and Jael who were not typical wives, and the Bible does not even mention if they have children. God also used women like Mary Magdalene and Lydia–single women who were not linked to men, other than Jesus. God also used Priscilla and Aquilla who worked side by side making tents and pastoring churches. It’s been a long, and at times hard, road. I know I need to write about it. I have said that I would. I guess I need to start writing. I always put off telling my story. I guess I don’t think it’s that important. But may be it is important. May be I need to tell my story, so I can tell other women’s stories. I know that is far past time for Eve and her daughters to be redeemed.
How do you feel about telling your story?
What do you mean: “Theology Is Not a 4-Letter Word”? Of course it isn’t. But a lot of people in the Christian tradition treat theology that way. You hear a lot about it, but it’s not something one should talk about in polite company. Theology is seen as a scholary discipline that has very little (if anything) to do with our everyday life. But theology has everything to do with our daily life.
Theology is our relationship with God, and how we talk about our relationship with God. Theology talks about who God is, how God acts in our world, and God’s relationship with God’s creation. Theology is our relationship with God–both our personal relationships and our corporate relationship as a community of faith and the universal church. Theology is where we see God at work in our homes, neighborhoods, and our world.
All of life is theology because all of life is from God.
I was sitting in the swinging chair enjoying the spring Phoenix day. It wasn’t too hot, and the breeze was refreshing. And I was feeling guilty. Why? Because I wasn’t doing anything. I wasn’t working. I wasn’t being productive. I was on vacation and feeling guilty for being on vacation. How American is that? It took me a whole day, but I finally did it: I stopped feeling guilty about taking a break and resting. I found out what true rest, true letting go feels like. Or may be I remembered how to let go and rest.
Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth in six days and then rested on the Sabbath. Keeping the Sabbath and not working one day a week is one of The Ten Commandments. It is also the commandment that’s most often broken by Chrsitians and non-Christians alike. We can wax eloquently all we want to about not taking God’s name in vain or not committing murder, but bring up keeping the Sabbath, and the room gets very, very quiet. Why do some branches of American Christianity insist that God created the earth in six literal days, but then fall silent when it comes to taking what God did on the seventh day literally?
And on the seventh day God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation (Genesis 2:2-3).
Why is it so hard for us to stop and rest?
On of the reasons is that we have believed the lie that we are what we do. We believe the myth that what we do is who we are. So we work. We perform. We jump through hoops. One of the reason for keeping the Sabbath is to remind us who we really are: children of God. The Sabbath also reminds us that everything we have comes from God. God provides for all our needs. The Sabbath is for remembering: remembering who we are and remembering who God is. God rested on the seventh day, and God commanded us to do the same. If it is okay for God to rest, then it is okay for us to rest as well.
In fact, it is imperative to rest. We need a day where we let go of the worry and stress and our work, and we trust God to take care of us.
The last three Sundays I have rested. In fact, I’ve even been taking naps. I rested, and I did not feel one iota of guit.
What about you? Do you take time off? How do you rest?
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An Update Merry-Go-Round
It was a night I will remember for a long time, probably until I die. Tracy and I were on vacation visiting friends in Gilbert, AZ (a suburb of Phoenix). It was a gorgeous desert evening. The temperature was just right: not too hot and not too cold. As we began dinner we enjoyed the crimson-drenched clouds at sunset. As dinner continued we watched the bright full moon slowly come out from hiding behind the clouds. The food was incredible. We were at a Burmese restaurant in Scottsdale called Little Rangoon. It is owned by a husband and wife team: she cooks, and he mans the front. The food was served family style. We had lots of little bites from lots of different dishes: duck spring rolls, fermented tea leaf salad, samosas, lamb, duck, mushroom trio stir fry, giant coconut fried prawns, coconut chicken curry, garlic noodles, and lots of rice. Dessert were these wonderfully light semolina cakes that were perfect. Then the owner gave us these wonderful banana fritters on the house. There were eight of us, and the conversation flowed and undulated on all sides of the table. We ate, we talked, we laughed, we shared. At the beginning of the meal, six of the seven had been strangers to me. By the end they friends and family. Nothing brings people together and brings out community like a good meal.
I was reminded of this again this afternoon. A former colleague and I discovered recently (thanks to LinkedIn) that we both live in Chicago. We met this afternoon for lunch. It had to have been three years since we talked to each other, and we spent a delightful lunch catching up. We ate, and we talked. An old friendship was reborn.
They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people (Acts 2:46).
I think the early church knew what they were doing by making eating together a vital component of their life together. Of course this was nothing new to them. Eating together was a vital component of Jewish and Middle Eastern life (still is). The people who ate with you, ate with your family, became part of your family. While they were a guest, you did anything to defend and protect them from threat. At this time “devout Jewish families following temple worship would share meals together as symbolic of their social and spiritual solidarity” (The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10, p. 73). Eating together to build and maintain community was nothing new.
I like the emphasis on eating together that is coming out of the missional and emerging movements. It used to be if it wasn’t tacked onto a formal church service, then it wasn’t “spiritual.” It was somehow not sacred or holy if it didn’t happen after the Sunday morning or evening service. I think that’s wrong. I think eating together is a sacred and spiritual experience in and of itself. Something happens when a group of people eat together. Defenses come down, chatter turns into conversation, and people start to open up, share, and just be themselves. Strangers become friends. Enemies can sit together, pass the plate, and may be listen to each other for the first time.
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Tables of Love