Militias, the Church, and Christians

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I’ve been told that I am obviously not a Christian because I watch movies. Because I believe women can be pastors. Because I don’t take Mass in a Catholic church. Because I’ve read Brian McLaren and N.T. Wright. Because I voted for Obama. Because I am not a Calvinist. I’ve had friends who have been told that they are obviously not Christians because they have tattoos, because they are Gay, and because they don’t go to church every Sunday.

KICKASSGiven the fine tradition in the church of adding such litmus tests to the Gospel, I found it fascinating to hear from diverse sources last week that the Hutaree militia (a self-described Christian group) obviously could not be Christian. I find the group disgusting and disturbed, but the question of if they are Christians haunted me. I understand the tendency to get defensive and want to distance ourselves from groups like this. No Christian wants people like these to define us to the world. But at the same time I’m hesitant to proclaim from on high that they obviously aren’t Christian.

These were people who had a literalistic dogma based faith. They believed their faith rested on their belief in and confession of a certain list of doctrines, especially Dispensational views of the end times. They believed in the literal interpretation of scripture. They believed that their lives should be committed to moral living and opposed to sin. As they state on their website, “We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren’t. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming.” To that end they hated the government, especially our current government, and decided that violence was the best way to uphold their moral convictions. Sure, I think they are messed up, but my issue is, if I say that they are not Christians, then I have to say the same regarding other so-called Christians who believed in similar ways (like anyone who participated in the religiously violent American Revolution or English Civil War). In fact, if this group isn’t Christian, then most American Christians today can be written off as “obviously not Christian.”

On one hand, I don’t think following Jesus really has much to do at all with affirming a set doctrine, a literal interpretation of scripture, a public confession of Jesus, a life of culturally defined morality, and church sanctioned violence. But that is the message that you will hear in countless churches on any given Sunday. Seriously, how far removed are armed guards in churches and pro-military rallies in churches from the ideals of this militia? They all use violence to impose their worldview upon others. Which Jesus explicitly forbid his followers to do. Jarred McKenna at the God’s Politics’ blog affirms the dichotomy of Jesus and violence when he refers to the association of the term “Christian” with “militia” as shameful, and wonders how Christianity ever came to be associated with something so anti-Jesus. The Hutaree group may have promoted a somewhat culturally taboo form of that violence, but other Christians will defend the “God-ordained” need for and their right to violence regularly. I truly don’t see much of Jesus in this civil religion of most U.S. churches today, but even so, I am uneasy saying they just aren’t real Christians.

But it’s a tough call. If a Christian is a person who follows Christ, I assume that implies that person follows the disciplines Jesus demands of his followers. Jesus himself tells us the only people who are his true followers are those who when “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matt 25). And in Isaiah (1 and 58) we even read that God detests our worship gatherings, ignores our acts of piety, wearies of our songs and rituals, and turns his head from our prayers unless we are seeking justice, treating our workers rightly, giving shelter to the immigrant and homeless, and helping the oppressed. By these biblical standards I think I could count on one hand the number of people I know who can actually be called Christian. In fact many Christians I know actively work against things like helping immigrants, providing healthcare to the sick, and making sure all people have food to eat (or they are advised to run away from churches that do such things).

As Brian McLaren points out in reference to this militia incident, a faith that promotes violence and ignores Jesus misses the point. Jesus instead “provides us a living alternative to the confining [violent] narrative in which our world and our religions live, move, and have their being too much of the time” Too many of our churches have succumbed to the siren calls of this world – replacing following Jesus with sets of doctrines, cultural rules, nationalism, and sanctified violence. This militia group simply took that proclivity to its natural end. That sort of religion has nothing to do with being a Christ-follower. But at the same time, as McLaren points out, Jesus looks at those who do violence (to others and to him) and says “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

So I can only be left with grace. When even the most pietistic and committed “Christians” don’t actually look like Christ-followers, it seems like all we can really have is grace. Grace is bigger than our pointing fingers. And it extends far beyond out trivial additions to the Gospel. For if there is no grace for this messed-up system we call the church, then God help us all.

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Making a Difference

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Do you ever wonder what difference acts of justice really make. “Why bother changing my light bulbs to CFLs?” “Can buying fair trade really help farmers?” “Do my consumer choices really matter?” In other words, how big of an impact can one person really have?

I address these questions (and then point out why I think those questions miss the point) in a new post I have up at RELEVANT Magazine’s Reject Apathy Site. So if you’ve ever wondered about what sort of impact you can really have, I suggest you check out my post and then share your thoughts!

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Follow Jesus

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And so we come to the Friday called good. The day we are asked to celebrate the day God died. What strikes me today is the ordinariness of this day. Even on a day of heightened sensibility, life still moves on. The crucifixion seems far away, the events powerful and yet removed. It reminds me of these lines from W.H. Auden’s poem Horae Canonica in which he tells the events of Good Friday hour by hour –

The wind has dropped and we have lost our public.
The faceless many who always
Collect when any world is to be wrecked,
Blown up, burnt down, cracked open,
Felled, sawn in two, hacked through, torn apart,
Have all melted away: not one
Of these who in the shade of walls and trees
Lie sprawled now, calmly sleeping,
Harmless as sheep, can remember why
He shouted or what about
So loudly in the sunshine this morning;
All if challenged would reply
-’It was a monster with one red eye,
A crowd that saw him die, not I.-
The hangman has gone to wash, the soldiers to eat;
We are left alone with our feat.

the crucifixtion - haitiToday I should be in mourning, marking the death of God’s son, repenting of my complicity in the act. But life moves on around me nonetheless. I will drink my morning coffee, I will fix dinner tonight, I will take my children to the park. Good Friday will have to be remembered in the ordinariness of everyday life.

But isn’t that as it should be? That the death of Christ should influence and change everything? That enacting the ritual of the everyday should be imbued with the significance of Christ? That there is something different about changing the diapers, cutting the grass, or doing the dishes because of this death?

At first glance, those habits seem so ordinary as to be meaningless. In the shadow of cosmic redemption dramas, our daily actions seem so pointless and boring. Yet at the same time in light of the call that cosmic drama gave to each of us, those actions now take on new meaning. They become part of the drama, a way of identifying with the story. Acts of remembrance and service and hope.

Nothing is ordinary anymore. The world was wrecked and rebuilt, and even if we can’t always remember why, we walk in that changed world that is now charged with significance. And we call it good.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image – “The Crucifixion – Haiti”

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Safe Community

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I can just picture the scene here. On Thursday, the disciples arrive in the Upper Room they have rented for the Passover and immediately they start positioning for the best seats (or reclining pillows as it were). In this tradition the most prominent and important people sat near the host. And here are the disciples just arrived and already debating about who would sit where.

In case one wonders where they were getting their delusions of grandeur, consider that they had just returned from an itinerate preaching tour. In general they had been welcomed and accepted. And as they started performing miracles and doing healings they developed a certain form of popularity. People liked them, they were rock stars.

They wanted to be liked, wanted to draw crowds and develop followings. They had some idea that they were in Jerusalem with Jesus because something big was about to happen – something important that dealt with the kingdom – and they were excited. And here they were having an exclusive holiday meal with their leader and they start bickering about who is considered the greatest.

I have to assume that Jesus got a bit frustrated at this point. All week he had been talking about giving up power and lifting up the oppressed and now they start bickering about who is the greatest. Talk about missing the point. So he says to them – “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who exercise authority over them call themselves Benefactors. But you are not to be like that. Instead, the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

Jesus as always turns things upside-down. Unlike most pep talks that focus on winning and showing how superior you are to everyone else, Jesus encourages them to serve. He tells them not to be like those who seek power and lord it over others. To not gather a following that idolizes them. But instead tells them if they are in positions of power they should be using it to serve others – to be a community that cares for each other. Jesus then models that community by breaking bread with them and by performing the lowest form of service – that of washing his disciples’ feet. Even he – the leader they follow is not establishing a kingdom to rule over but creating an ethos of love and service.

This act of communion, of serving one other, should remind us of the sort of community we should be – one that turns the hierarchies of this world upside-down and values service and love more than power and prestige.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image – “Christ Breaking Bread – Navajo”

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Listen To and Obey God

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I find the events of Wednesday of Holy Week to be humbling. Basically they reveal how much the disciples, Jesus’ closest and best students, still struggled to integrate his teachings into their lives. They were his followers, they were supposed to listen to and obey him, and yet they still messed things up.

This is the day that one of Jesus disciples got fed up with how Jesus was doing his thing and decided to be a catalyst for more extreme action by betraying Jesus. Perhaps Judas the Iscariot – one of the Sicarii or dagger-man, a splinter Jewish extremist group that promoted violence and murder as a means of overthrowing the Romans – was fed up with Jesus’ creative nonviolence. His political views eschewed how he listened to and obeyed his teacher. He wanted a swift rebellion, and perhaps thought the only way to spark such action was to betray the very man he claimed to follow.

This is also the day when a woman broke her treasured alabaster jar of perfume over Jesus’ feet. The disciples, conditioned to Jesus’ teachings about serving the poor, were offended at her extravagance, asserting that the perfume could have been sold for money to give to the poor. Jesus though admonishes the disciples and called her act beautiful. The disciples had become so wrapped up in the literal interpretation of his words that they missed the spirit of love and devotion that his teachings were based on.

So it humbles me to realize that even Jesus’ closest followers didn’t always get the listen to and obey Jesus thing right. How could I be so arrogant to assume that I even barely have it figured out? But it is also comforting. Jesus still loved his disciples and stuck with them – even though they messed up over and over again. I know I let my biases, my cultural proclivities, cloud how I hear and follow the words of Jesus. But I also know that Jesus loves me anyway, and that even my imperfect attempts to listen to and obey him are sufficient.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image – “Washing Jesus’ Feet – India”

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Embrace Imperfection

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On the Tuesday of Holy Week, the Bible records Jesus telling his followers what the Kingdom of God is like. But of course, in his typical fashion, he turns everything upside down. What the world treasures and values has no place in God’s Kingdom – what the world deems acceptable and perfect is often empty and corrupt.

So he tells us that in the coming kingdom, people will be living their lives in their normal pursuit of the things the world values but when the Son of Man comes they will see how hollow and full of pain that way of life truly was. The rulers of the nations of the earth will fear the coming of God’s Kingdom because it means their power-plays and oppression of others will come to an end. For in God’s Kingdom, it is when we embrace imperfection and upside-down living that we find joy and abundant life.

Jesus compares this abundant life to a great banquet thrown by a King. The rich and powerful of the land shun the invitation to join in on this King’s upside-down way of life. But true to form, the King extends the invitation to the poor and the suffering of the land. The oppressed and the powerless are treated as honored guests in this Kingdom. The old corrupt ways of the world have no place there.

And he tells the story of an absentee landowner that gave his workers talents (money). When he returned he punished the one worker who refused to break the Jewish law against charging interest on his money. Jesus says in the oppressive spirit of the world, yes, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, but that is not the way it is supposed to be. The landowner may have punished the worker for sticking to his values, but to Jesus it is these very value-driven people who he will welcome into his kingdom – those who when he was hungry gave him something to eat, when he was thirsty gave him something to drink, when he was a stranger invited him in, when he needed clothes clothed him, and when he was sick looked after him.

To live in the Kingdom of God, it is required that we embrace imperfection. That we resist the siren calls of wealth and power (earned at the expense of others, the destruction of creation, and the oppression of the poor). That we turn the world upside-down and value the things Jesus values instead – caring for the suffering, providing healing for the sick, food for those who hunger, and welcome to those without a home. Everything our culture rallies against we must swallow our pride and embrace. Everything the world scoffs at as imperfect, we must treasure for that is the Kingdom of God.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image “The Poor Invited to the Feast – Africa”

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Radical Inclusion

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Matthew 21:12-13
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them,” ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The Temple was the center of worship for the Jews. In the scriptures, we are reminded over and over again that true worship is more than rituals, fasting, and sacrifices – it is also about helping those in need, treating people fairly, and welcoming all. So after “triumphantly” entering Jerusalem and reminding people that the Messiah comes to serve and welcome all nations, Jesus proceeds on the Monday of Holy Week to the Temple. But as he enters the temple he sees systems set in place for aiding in sacrifices that apparently were taking advantage of the poor – overcharging them and cheating them on exchange. I’m sure as the scattered Jews trickled in for Passover some people saw them as easy targets to be exploited – all in the name of worship. And Jesus is outraged. He comes in, turns over the tables, and says that stuff about how this should be a house of prayer but it has turned into a den of robbers.

The house of prayer passage Jesus references here (Isaiah 56:7) is one of inclusions – of welcoming the nations. Not just the scattered Jews, but all nations. But in reality, at the Temple it was often more common for exclusions to be upheld. Jesus saw the discrimination against poor and foreign Jews and showed his displeasure. But others were regularly not allowed to fully worship in the temple either. Only Jewish men were allowed inside the Temple proper – women, children, and gentiles were only allowed in the outer courts, and eunuch’s were not even allowed to step foot on temple grounds. But Jesus welcomes even the most despised into God’s Kingdom – giving them a special place. The Messiah extends his grace to all – tearing down barriers of nationality, race, gender, sexuality and ability symbolically in the later rending of the curtain in the Temple and literally in the tangible acts of his kingdom.

In his indignation, Jesus affirms the idea that a place of worship be a “house of prayer” that welcomes even those society typically rejects. Those who seek to worship should not be excluded on any account. For Jesus, his church should always be radically inclusive.

This week I will be cross-posting the reflections I wrote for Journey’s IFC’s blog relating the events of Holy Week to our church’s value statements. Some of these have appeared in different forms here at onehandclapping in the past. Image – “Jesus Drives the Merchants from the Temple” – Nicaragua

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A World Water Week Warning

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I grew up in the water world. My dad worked for the water department in Dallas and served as director of Austin water and wastewater. He was the water readiness White House consultant in preparation for Y2K, served terms as President of the American Waterworks Association, and now volunteers his time building wells and bathhouses in impoverished Mexican border towns. It was educational always having the inside scoop on the local water world. I knew when areas of town were quietly asked to boil their water. I knew when environmental groups sent him personal death threats for daring to extend water service to the suburbs. I knew when requests from “Middle Eastern University Professors” for the full schematic of the city water system had to be reported to the FBI. And I always dreaded “take your kids to work” day if that was a day he was visiting the wastewater treatment plants. So it’s been interesting to hear him talk about the looming water crisis that he says no one in the water world has any clue how to fix.

It’s World Water Week and the focus is on how to provide clean drinking water to people around the world. More than 1.4 million children die from drinking-water-related issues every year — clean water is a necessity for life. But even as the awareness of the worldwide need for clean water grows, few people realize the growing toxic menace in our own tap water. But the truth is that pharmaceutical drugs and personal care products increasingly are found in our water systems. Few or no discharge standards or monitoring systems currently exist to regulate these items. But trends occurring in local rivers and lakes — fish dying, mutating, or changing sex en masse — have sparked scientists to look into what is actually in our water. The culprits — drugs and medical wastes, contraceptives, anti-depressants, blood pressure medications, antibiotics, perfumes, musks, soaps, cleansers, sun screens, and thousands of other chemicals now manufactured for human use and health care. These are chemicals our water works systems don’t test for regularly and so they aren’t removed from our wastewater. But they are impacting our world in a big way.

We think we are “getting rid” of those old pills we flush down the toilet, or we don’t care about the hormones we pee away. Maybe if we thought about it, we’d assume that these things are removed by wastewater treatment plants. But there aren’t even systems in place to test their presence in our water, much less federal standards regulating their levels. So into our local waterways we pour antibiotics and endocrine inhibitors causing superbacteria to breed and schools of fish to literally change sex (leading to no more baby fish). Then we return this water to our treatment plants where these chemicals are still not dealt with before they return to our drinking water. We are exposing ourselves to low levels of antibiotics, Prozac, and estrogen on a regular basis. And the health implications are only beginning to be understood. What happens to young boys who are raised on a cocktail of estrogen? What about people suffering from blood clots for whom hormone therapy could equal death?

Solutions are difficult. Drug and cosmetic companies lobby hard against any regulation of their products and dispute any studies showing possible harmful effects of these chemicals. It would be impossible to restrict people from dumping pills down the toilet, or from merely using the toilet to eliminate their chemically laced bodily wasted. Testing standards would require the government’s involvement (which the lobbyist are fighting against), and developing treatment plans would cause the cost of clean water to skyrocket. (And just fyi, bottled water has all the same problems.) So you can see why the water world fears this impending crisis.

We promote charity causes to help dig clean water wells in other countries, but our very affluence has turned our own water into an untreatable toxic mess. The world water crisis is scarier than we think.

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Silence, Women, and The Annunciation

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Today is the Feast of the Annunciation – March 25th an exact nine months before the mass celebrating the birth of Christ. We women know that pregnancy, like life, is messier than that – rarely following some to the minute timetable. I, for one, doubt that Mary would have traveled during the usual period of confinement, and was probably confronted with an unexpected early labor as the result of her travels. But we women weren’t the ones to set these dates.

What I find interesting though are a couple of the posts I have seen today on the nature of the annunciation itself. Quiet posts, it seems, almost if they were whispered, afraid of their reception. “What really happened,” they ask, “when that angel visited Mary to bestow on her that seed of the divine?” What generally happens when a man decides he desires a woman in that way is the answer they imply. But to speak such a thing in reference to a holy event is often unthinkable. It is less taboo to evoke the Greek tradition of mythology, recounting the ravishments of the poor maidens one god or another took a liking to. But the unspoken question remains – is Mary simply standing-in for Leda’s encounter with a divine winged being – “A sudden blow: the great wings beating still above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed by the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.” (W.B. Yeats)

Part of me wants to just deny what it may have meant to have been propositioned by God. I’ve even argued on this blog in years past that I just can’t believe in that sort of God. I’ve willed myself to reject Rossetti’s painted portrayal of a frightened Mary (seen here) and take Mary’s response of “I am the Lord’s servant, May it be to me as you have said” as a sign of strength. I had to believe that the soul that sung the Magnificat joined in willingly in this act of creating new life, and perhaps I still do believe it. But I struggle with the knowledge that this is a topic the church tries to avoid. Why is the question only raised in hushed apologetic tones? Why can’t we stop being silent about the ways women, especially biblical women, have been used just for their bodies?

I am currently reading Azar Nafisi’s memoir Things I Have Been Silent About regarding her years growing up in Iran before the Islamic Revolution. In reflecting on her cultural traditions, she commented that in Iran, memoirs and histories only focus on great deeds and events. When her father published his memoir, all personal anecdotes and reflections were expunged as insignificant. But those stories were actually the substance of life, leaving the remaining narrative of seemingly heroic events hollow. She then decided to write about the things she had been silent about – the daily joys and vicissitudes of real life. And these stories included the personal experiences of the rampant sexual abuse of children common in a culture of severe sexual repression. These children were silenced by their guilt even as victims. In the name of protecting the glories of a great religion, the truth remained generally untold.

But of course the truth is that sexual abuse surrounds us. One in four women report being sexually abused at some point in their lives. And given that most women I know who bothered to report such abuse were laughed at by the authorities, I assume the actual statistics are far higher. Most of us are taught early on to shrug it off, “boys will be boys, they can’t help themselves…” and so forth. Christian groups try to hide incidents of rape in their midst, and I know a Christian publisher who refused to print a story of date rape at a Christian College because it would be too inappropriate for their readership. The Catholic Church is finally having to deal with years of sexual abuse by their assumed representations of God on earth, but it is too little too late.

We have been silent about the sexual abuse of women in the church. Our stories (our bodies) have been dismissed as insignificant. Our Bible stories reduce women to mere sex objects, useful as pleasure providers or wombs. They gloss over the rape and trafficking incidents as if it was natural for men to simply use women in such ways. We are taught that it is our fault if a man decides to abuse us. And perhaps like Mary, some women have learned that when confronted by a powerful man claiming to be God’s messenger we have no choice to but to meekly say “may it be to me as you have said.” When the stories don’t get told, or are excused away, the environment simply remains ripe for the abuse to continue. Perhaps I too need to stop convincing myself that there isn’t terror in the annunciation and simply be willing to hear that side of the story.

So on this day honoring of the Annunciation (be it a remembrance of blessing or violence), I offer a poem to break the silence. Nicola Slee, writing in response to Phyllis Trible’s book Texts of Terror ( a book which looks at some of the terrible deeds carried out against women in the Bible), in it exhorts us to continue to read and not to dismiss those stories, and to use the horror we feel to fuel our prayers. I encountered it recently at Sally Coleman’s blog in her posts addressing the practice of “corrective rape” of lesbians in Africa and a recent incident in Brazil where a doctor was excommunicated from the church for performing an abortion on a 9 year old girl who had become pregnant after being repeatedly raped by her stepfather (he faced no such discipline). May it help us break the silence.

Should we remember Hagar, Tamar, Jephthah’s daughter, and
Lot’s?
Should we tell of their wretched lives to our daughters?
Should we speak on our lips the tales of torture, misery, abuse and
violence?
Would we do better to consign them to silence?
We will listen, however painful the hearing,
for still there are women the world over
being raped
being whipped
being sold into slavery
being shamed
being silenced
being beaten
being broken
treated as worthless
treated as refuse.
Until there is not one last woman remaining
who is a victim of violence.
We will listen and we will remember.
we will rehearse the stories and we will renounce them.
we will weep and we will work for the coming of the time
when not one baby will be abandoned because of her gender
not one girl will be used against her will for another’s pleasure
not one young woman will be denied the chance of an education
not one mother will be forced to abandon her child
not one woman will have to sell her body
not one crone will be cast off by her people to die alone.
Listen then, in sorrow.
Listen in anger, Listen to the texts of terror.
And let us commit ourselves to working for a world
in which such deeds may never happen again…

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Convergence and Direction

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Life’s been crazy around here recently, so I am just now getting the chance to sit down and reflect on what went on at Convergence. It was great to go be a part of a gathering of Christian women leaders and hear the stories of how they have all committed their lives to serving God and others. There was a lot of pain there as many of the women still face hatred and oppression just for being a woman faithfully serving God, but there was also a lot of hope and encouragement. In some ways I felt a bit out of place there since at the moment I feel rather directionless in my life, but the environment was a good one to help me start processing some of those questions about direction.

What really stood out to me was the theme of the weekend as represented on the objects placed on each of our tables. Each table had an old object on it (light fixture, shoe, cigar box…) that had been re-purposed to grow plants. So each of these old unexpected objects had new life emerging out of it, and we were asked to meditate on the objects at our table and share what they were saying to us. The thing is, is that when I looked at the objects at my table, I didn’t see life there. There were plants there, but my first thought was that this life isn’t sustainable – these plants could not survive for very long. Flowers clinging to life amidst rocks placed in an old potato ricer or felt hat will soon wither and die. The water will drain out too quickly and there are no nutrients to feed the plant. They looked pretty, even quirky and appealing, but there is no way life could survive in these objects. While others shared about their call to cultivate life in unexpected places or even to follow a call to somewhere they never thought they would go (and in truth the objects at other tables looked far more sustainable), all I could think of was that these representations of life could never survive.

Then in our time of worship, we sang these words – “Why do I stay where it feels safe when you keep calling me to come out?” I realize that I do this all the time. I like to stay where it feels safe – or at least where it feels known and I assume it is safe – but these places don’t always help me grow. They look like pretty places to be planted, but in truth they are not environments that nurture life. The death might be slow, but the environment is hostile nonetheless.

But of course I stay. I feel like I am running if I leave. Or that I am selfish to consider what is healthy for me. Or that I just need to strengthen myself through adversity. Or that relationships are more important than fighting for what I need to survive. The environments might be outright abusive – telling me that as a woman my only worth lies in my service to my husband and kids, telling me that I should not be writing (and therefore teaching men), or telling me that by being intelligent and serving God I must hate God and the Bible and am in need of discipline. Other environments are more subtle – like those who constantly debate around me if as a woman I am created in God’s image or if I am in sin for following God’s call in my life. The look of surprise on someone’s face when I tell them I have served as a pastor or that I’m considering going to seminary. The assumption that I will take care of food and hospitality and not the content at an event. Or even being in a church where the voice of women is never heard no matter how theoretically supportive it is of women in ministry. And I struggle wondering if I am called to be a light and voice into these places or if they are slowly sapping the life out of me?

So Convergence really made me take a step back and ask these hard questions. Am I in a healthy place to cultivate life? Can I grow good things where I am at, or am I just struggling to survive? What direction should I be heading in order to be faithful to the gifts and calling God has given me? I know it’s not really safe to stay somewhere just because it is known if it is not a life-sustaining environment, so I am seeking direction (which is far easier said than done). It’s hard, but I am grateful for the push at Convergence to really work through these questions and start trying to get to a more healthy place.

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