Colossians Remixed 2

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This post is part of my ongoing response to the questions I posted as part of this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat over at the Emerging Women blog. (read my other responses – here).

So Question #2 –

Empires are defined here as (1) built on systemic centralizations of power, (2) secured by structures of socioeconomic and military control, (3) religiously legitimated by powerful myths and (4) sustained by a proliferation of imperial images that captivate the imagination of the population. In comparing how both the Roman and current Western empires maintain the status quo of privilege and oppression the authors give the examples of “most major corporations use the equivalent of slave labor to produce clothing, toys, tools and some foods. Most of this labor is done by people in Asia, Latin America or Africa. While cash-crops farmers include both men and women, the majority of those who work in sweatshops, on coffee plantations and in the sex trade are women and children. … although our culture does not openly subscribe to an ethos of patriarchy, racism, and classism, the effects of the global economic market create the same kind of societal dynamic that was present in first-century Rome.” (p 59-60). I want to ask the same questions the authors then ask – “In the face of an empire that rules through military and economic control, what is the shape of a community that serves a ruler who brings reconciliation and peace by sacrificial death rather than military might? If the empire elevates economic greed and avarice into civic virtues, while Paul dismisses such a way of life as idolatrous, then how does a Christian community shaped by Paul’s gospel live life in the empire?” (p61).

Start calling America an empire and you get in trouble (even if you are the Vice President). Granted I’ve heard dispensational interpretations of Daniel’s vision that insist that Rome never fell so we are therefore still living in that fourth empire waiting for the seventieth week pre-trib rapture and all that, but even then the spin was pro-America.

I agree with Walsh and Keesmaat that America is an empire in the tradition of Rome and I don’t think that’s a good thing. The very raison d’etre of empire is power which directly contradicts the way of service and love preached by Jesus. But the systems and values of empire creep into the lives of its people, even those who ostensibly profess other values. Under the Roman empire the apostles had to combat warped values like it being okay to use people as slaves if it increased your profit or made your life easier; if you didn’t like another people group or wanted resources off their land, you liberated them of such land; sexual promiscuity and gluttony being considered natural indulgences of one’s appetites; and women being seen as mindless sex objects. But of course that’s all different today, right?

What really gets me is the subtle replacement of the values of the cross with the values of empire. The propaganda machines that push the virtues of the state have swayed Christians so that now civic virtues are promoted and Christian virtues questioned. When I can sit in a church and hear sermons in support of capitalism, preemptive war, racial discrimination, and sexism and fail to hear the words of Jesus actually preached, empire has won. When we sing hymns in praise of our country and think that forcing our children to say creeds of allegiance to an idol is a form of Christian witness, empire has won. When it is more important to be patriotic than care about the children we blew up, then empire has won. We have been taken captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.

So how do we live in this empire? How do we love and not fear and yet challenge that which promotes evil? How can we (and I am very much included in this) stop pointing fingers at individual sins and actually think about how we’ve bought into (been indoctrinated into?) the values of empire? Can we stop trying the mesh or replace the values of the Kingdom with the values of the empire? Basically can we take a step back and ask why? Why do I believe/buy/promote this? Is this really a good thing? Does this fit into Jesus’ message? What is Jesus’ message anyway? How do I need to change?

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Colossians Remixed 1

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Over at the Emerging Women blog, I am hosting this month’s book discussion on Colossians Remixed by Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat. I read this book about a year ago. At the time it was the first “deeper” book I had read after a year and a half of “mommy brain” syndrome. It helped wake me up and get me passionate about life, faith, theology, and justice again. I had heard Brian Walsh speak at the Emergent convention and knew I wanted to hear more from him. You can read more about the book over at the EW blog. I highly recommend it as a glimpse into how emerging believers interact with scripture (or is it how scripture interacts with us?)

Anyway. I started the discussion over there with a long series of questions. I’ll wait and see how the discussion unfolds over there (who knows if anyone even read the book or wants to participate), but I’m going to answer respond to my own questions more in depth here. So here we go with question #1 –

1.The question of interpretation. What is your reaction to this quote? “Reading is always from somewhere. We always read from a particular historical, cultural and geographical place. The question that we must ask is, how do we “place” ourselves, how do we discern the times and spirits that invariably influence our reading of a text like Colossians? What are the questions, crises and opportunities that we necessarily (and legitimately) bring to this text?” p19

I’ve touched on the issue of Biblical interpretation a lot here. I think by now that it’s fairly obvious that I’m not a literalist and that I do acknowledge that Biblical interpretation does in fact exist. The question is, are we aware of our lenses and biases when it comes to reading this text?

Honestly, until I read Colossians Remixed, I had never given much thought to this particular epistle. It wasn’t a trendy youth group devotional book like Philippians. Nor is its list of household codes (wives submit and all that) as popular as other similar passages. I know I read it. It fit the follow Christ, don’t sin, and women submit pattern I was used to hearing oh, just about everywhere. No big deal. What’s the point. Moving on.

I never stopped to ask what were the people like in Colosse and how am I like them? I ignored the shadow of the Roman Empire that we are so quick to acknowledge in the stories of Christ’s birth and death, but which seems to fade away in our ultra-individualized readings of Paul. And the admonitions to let no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy and to put to death the earthly nature were used as direct challenges not to actually think or engage with this scripture or any scripture at all for that matter – since thinking necessarily involved hollow philosophies and earthly habits. For those same reasons, historical exploration of the original context wasn’t really needed either. God is the same today as he was yesterday and will be tomorrow – so obviously this text will mean exactly the same thing to us 21st century American Christians reading it in English as it did to 1st century believers hearing it read aloud in Greek. End of story.

That is how I had previously encountered Colossians.

Then I discovered a whole new set of lenses. What if we thought about what these people faced as oppressed citizens of an empire? What if we explored how the language in this letter directly challenges the common language of empire? And what if we opened our eyes and saw the empire that we are living under?

That woke me up and changed my reading of Colossians. As I engage with the rest of the questions, I will explore some of the points that stood out to me as I looked at Colossians from a fresh perspective.

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Nestle Acquires Gerber

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So I guess Gerber is will now be on the list of products I won’t buy. Nestle, known for its human rights violations and unfair business practices, now adds Gerber to its list of brand names. This purchases now makes Nestle the largest supplier of baby foods in the world. The acquisition is of course being applauded by mammon worshipers but is met with despair by human rights groups and mothering advocates.

Just one more reason to go organic and make baby food from scratch. You know you aren’t feeding your baby toxins and sugars and you aren’t supporting trafficking of child slave labors. Now I just need to care more about living morally than the ease of being lazy.

“When we become dependent on unsustainable and oppressive structures for our daily bread, not only do we make a mockery of the Lord’s Prayer, but we have become docile subjects of the empire rather than free citizens of the kingdom.” – Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat, Colossians Remixed

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Poetry Reflections – “Spelling” Part 3

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“Spelling” Part 3 – Birth

Read the poem – here

And Part 1 and Part 2

Regarding how women can have a voice, Virginia Woolf once said that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” In other words, to write, to have a voice, a woman must not be dependent on anyone or anything. This was a radical statement because it meant women would assume a role other than the traditional one of the woman as the mother/wife. In fact, by Woolf’s definition, being a mother/wife and a writer were mutually exclusive events. Atwood challenges that distinction. As a young woman, she had adhered to Woolf’s ideas, and had tried to prepare herself for the modern writer’s life of wearing black, smoking cigarettes, living alone, and never owning an automatic washer-dryer. She soon questioned the necessity of that existence, got married, had kids, and wrote. Her response to Woolf’s idea was, “as for writing, yes. You can do it at home”. That statement is explored in “Spelling”, as she writes the lines,

“and I wonder how many women
denied themselves daughters,
closed themselves in rooms,
drew the curtains
so they could mainline words.

A child is not a poem,
a poem is not a child
There is no either/or.
However”

Those first lines seem to be a direct reference to Woolf, as the women followed Woolf’s advice to separate themselves from the world. Yet Atwood uses the phrase “to mainline words” to describe what the women were doing in those rooms. To mainline is slang for injecting a narcotic directly into a vein. To be consumed by writing and the need to express what one has inside of herself. I’ve seen the same habits in mothers – complete surrender to mothering their children.

Atwood blames the addiction to words as the reason why women did not have children. She asserts that poetry cannot take the place of a child, but admits that a child does not fulfill a writer who desires to create poems. Her solution is an integration of the two- not having to chose either the child or the poem. To embrace both as expressions of who one is. But it’s never really that simply is it?

Atwood ends that section with the provoking word ‘however’. She then gives the examples of the women who were silenced that I discussed in Part 1. After years of suppression of women, history cannot be so easily brushed aside by her merely making the decision to have kids and write. There must be something beyond that, which she describes as-

“at the point where language falls away
from the hot bones, at the point
where the rock breaks open and darkness
flows out of it like blood, at
the melting point of granite
when the bones know
they are hollow & the word
splits & doubles & speaks
the truth & the body
itself becomes a mouth.

This is a metaphor.”

Birthing- bringing life into this world. The intensity of the sexual body is beyond normal definitions of language, but still creates ‘the word’. Atwood has ‘the word’ splitting and doubling, a description of the first stages of human growth and an image of how a voice can spread its message. This word then “speaks the truth & the body itself becomes a mouth” as the woman’s voice is heard through her creation. Words, that her daughter learned to spell using red, blue and yellow letters made of synthetic plastic, do hold power, but that power pales when compared to the intense, sexual, elemental power which teaches one to spell using the natural reds, blues, and yellows of “blood, sky, & the sun.”

For a woman to have a voice she must accept birth. Birth that is organic and painful and raw. For some, to accept that her body is a mouth and the physical act of childbirth is a valued form of creation. But also that she must be reborn – born again if you will. Born into her full identity as a person. Born into a new way of being where her whole body, her whole self, can speak the truth. To be content in being a woman and in being herself. To use her voice no matter what oppression she faces. To support new life in all of its forms.

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Poetry Reflections – “Spelling” Part 2

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“Spelling” Part 2 – Identity

Read the poem – here

Read Part 1 here

Margaret Atwood’s poem “Spelling” starts

“My daughter plays on the floor
with plastic letters,
red, blue & hard yellow,
learning how to spell
spelling,
how to make spells”

The idea of making spells connotes the mystical nature of language. Spells can refer to power over the physical or spiritual realm as well as power over (or of) words. To some spells were stories that enchanted and captured the imagination (good spell= good story =good news=godspell=gospel). For others it was a means of expressing understanding of the world or even power over that world.

The ability to spell – to use words was not always granted to women. Many thought that women had no use of literacy. So the ability to spell, to make spells, to use the power of language was denied to them. How can one have a voice and bring forth that which is inside of them if they are prevented from utilizing the very tools necessary to have that voice?

Atwood closes the poem this with –

“How do you learn to spell?
Blood, sky & the sun,
your own name first
your first naming, your first name,
your first word”

In some cultures the act of naming was like a spell. A name held power, it held the identity of a person and was not to be used lightly. For centuries women have been denied this identity – they have been denied having a name. Upon marriage they take on their husband’s name and are often known by just that name. At marriage, I exchanged my father’s last name for my husband’s. But I am not Mrs. Michael Clawson as if I am merely an extension or possession of his. I have an identity, I have a first name, I am my own person.

A few years ago, I read an editorial in Christianity Today by an African-American man who was offended by people who called him by his first name. He asserted that under racism, slavery, and segregation those of African descent were denied titles and respect and called only by their first names like children. He wanted to make it known that he wanted to be respected as a person and called by his formal name. As a woman, I sympathized, but came to the opposite conclusion. I wanted to be called by my first name because it was the closest thing I had to my own identity. I didn’t want to be referred to as another’s possession or appendage. I am Julie and feel the most respected as a person when people address me as such.

Identity as an individual, as in “your own name first”, must be established before one can do much else. It is hard to have a voice if one is not allowed to be a distinct person. It is after a woman establishes identity as her own person that she is able to voice her first word. And with that word comes the freedom to learn to spell – to use language, to make spells.

I want to make good spells, to tell good stories, to use language in powerful ways. I want to have power over the physical and spiritual realms – to speak prophetically, to affect change in the world, to heal the broken systems, to bring hope to the oppressed, to spread the goodspell. I had to learn that it was okay for me to have that voice. That I didn’t need permission or an invitation to speak up. That the ideas and passions inside of me could be birthed no matter who I was. It took me awhile, but I learned to spell.

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Raising Standards for Workers

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“McDonald’s Corp. agreed on Monday to pay a penny per pound more to field hands who pick the restaurant chain’s tomatoes — a minuscule-sounding raise that still won plaudits for bringing attention to long-suffering agricultural workers.

The high-profile deal, brokered by former President Jimmy Carter, will put more money in the pockets of underpaid migrants, who toil in the Florida sun to fill 32-pound buckets with the tomatoes McDonald’s uses in its salads and chicken sandwiches.”

Read the full story here

This represents a potential 70% raise for many workers who currently earn under $200 a week and will end up costing McDonald’s only around 1 million. I know that there are still serious issues involved with this situation, but it is a step in the right direction (that being justice, fairness, and respect for all people) It’s going to take big companies like this to set the precedent for others. Granted its easy for McDonald’s to say we can afford to acknowledge that our workers might be real people with real families and real needs and that we will try to treat them a little less like crap. For others worship at the alters of capitalism and saving a buck will continue to be used as justification for treating people unjustly. But when the trend setters actually start setting decent trends, perhaps progress can be made.

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Poetry Reflections – “Spelling” Part 1

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“Spelling” Part 1 – Denial

With this post, I start a series of reflections on some of my favorite poetry. I have always loved poetry and have found that many poems speak into my life spiritually. I’m starting with a three part look at Margaret Atwood’s poem “Spelling.” (I suggest you read the full poem here first). I first encountered this poem in high school and have returned to it at different stages in my life over the years. It is a feminist poem in that it explores what it takes for women to be treated as human and have a voice. In this first section I want to explore the denial of that voice.

“I return to the story
of the woman caught in the war
& in labor, her thighs tied
together by the enemy
so she could not give birth.
Ancestress: the burning witch,
her mouth covered by leather
to strangle words.”
– From “Spelling” by Margaret Atwood

In these images of terror against women, Atwood expresses how women are denied two of the most basic ways in which they can have a voice – reproductively and verbally. When I first heard of the Nazi’s tying women in childbirth legs together, I remember feeling just sheer horror. Having experienced childbirth I can further grasp the insanity of being denied the freedom to birth that which has no option but to be born. To prevent the ability to birth denies life. It kills the woman and the child. It silences the act of creation.

Many other feminist writers see childbearing as being the ultimate conquest of a man over a woman. Childbearing and child rearing being roles that many women have been forced into overtime. In fact many women sought out the cloistered life as the only available alternative to a forced marriage (and potential avenue for a life of the mind). But the option remained to be ruled by a husband/father or by the church. A woman’s life was not her own. And so some feminists rebelled against childbearing. Yet Atwood sees it in a more positive light. The child is a part of the woman – a manifestation of a woman’s creative powers- an act of creation itself. A way to use her voice. And here she describes the enemy silencing that creativity by tying the women’s thighs together. Historically, that enemy was the Nazi’s, but the term here also refers to men in general. Men are seen as the enemy who have silenced the creative works of women for years. Creativity not just in the creative act of giving birth, but the act of creation through words and images as well.

Atwood then turns the image to “the burning witch”, who was denied the freedoms of speech and creation as well. Women who threw caution and convention to the wind and chose to use their voice were considered abnormal. That fact and the implication that by letting one’s voice be heard through writing one was rebelling against Christian doctrines (women must remain silent and all that), resulted in such expressive women being branded as witches. The lucky one’s were then confined and suppressed with a scold’s bridle while the unlucky were forever silenced through burning or drowning. In this way generations of women were threatened and terrorized into silence. While the enemy in the first example seemed to suppress women out of a cruel hatred, the witches were suppressed because they were feared. The abnormal, the other, was feared by the men in power because they did not understand it. Due to this suppression, women’s literature and women’s voices remained virtually silent for years.

Women need a voice because of the power that is possessed by language. Virginia Woolf encouraged women to use that power and their voice by urging women to write. She told them “to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast.” This writing would give the woman a place in the world. Atwood too explored the power of language. She once wrote that “a voice is a gift; it should be cherished and used, to utter fully human speech if possible. Powerlessness and silence go together.” Women had been forced into silence for centuries and had therefore been made powerless. Like having their legs tied together in childbirth or gagged in torture, to be suppressed into silence forces women to deny a vital part of who they are. They are forced to keep inside of them that which needs to be birthed.

But what does it mean to have a voice, to have the power of creation available to you? In parts two and three of this series I will look at how the poem defines how women can have a voice and break that silence.

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Summer Conferences

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Here are the spiffy cool conferences I’ll be attending this summer. You know you wanna come too…

 

Jubilee USA Grassroots Conference here in Chicago. “The conference will include speakers from the Global South, skill-building sessions for grassroots economic justice activists (advocacy, media work, engaging congregations, etc.), and workshops that will deepen participants’ understanding of debt and economic justice issues. And of course there will also be down time for networking and having fun with global economic justice activists from around the United States.”

Because I’m all about having fun with global economic justice activists, no really, I am… It sounds like a great conference and a good way to learn more about involvement and advocacy.

and then there’s the –



 

“A church of 10,000 people that meets in a mall…
A small urban community that meets in an art gallery…
An African-American church on the south-side of Chicago…
Web communities that connect tens of thousands of people…

What do all of these have in common? They are all emerging faith communities discovering what it means to be missional in their own unique context. AND they will all be represented at the first annual Midwest Emergent Gathering, July 20-21 in the suburbs of Chicago, IL. Come learn from Tony Jones (Emergent Village), Denise Van Eck (Mars Hill Bible Church), Spencer Burke (theOoze.com), Nanette Sawyer (Wicker Park Grace), Doug Pagitt (Solomon’s Porch), and Alise Barrymore & James King (The Emmaus Community) and other missional practitioners from a wide diversity of backgrounds as we learn together about “Creating Missional Communities”.

Contribute to the conversation as we discuss, network, and learn in community together via fast-paced mainstage sessions, interactive workshops, and unstructured times for dialogue with old or new friends. Whether mainline or evangelical, emerging or traditional, high church or de-churched, you will find inspiration and ideas to help you and your faith community become more effective agents for the mission of God in this hurting world.”

Doesn’t it sound great. (okay, so yes I’m part of the planning team and need to promote it, but I still think it sounds great and am looking forward to attending!). I will be hosting an Emerging Women affinity lunch during it which anyone is welcome to attend.

If anyone is planning on attending these events let me know so we can hang out.

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Control and Letting Go

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I hope I am never like this.

I understand the concept of a concerned controlling parent. I understand when a parent doesn’t want their teenage daughter going to parties where they know that there will be drunk teenage boys who think their dick is God’s gift to the world. I understand not letting them go. And I understand (if not agree) with the parents who control their kid’s lives by enrolling them in every sport, tutoring club, and music class they can think of. They push/control their children because if their children succeed by the world’s terms then they have succeeded.

But this is just sad.

I was at the gym taking a shower after my workout. There was a mom and her daughter in there as well. The daughter looked to be at least 8/9th grade. The mom controlled this girl’s every breath. Here’s what I overheard.

Moms in shower and daughter’s in the next shower (the daughter started her shower a few minutes after the mom)
Mom: You need to rinse out your swimsuit.
Mom: Did you hear me?
Girl: yes.
Mom: did you rinse out your swimsuit?
Girl: Yes.
Mom: Be sure to rinse your hair twice to get the chlorine out.
Girl: Yes, mom.
Mom: Don’t use too much shampoo. All you need is a little bit. Just about the size of a dime. Only use that much.
Girl: Okay, mom.
mom finishes her shower
Mom: You need to hurry up and get out.
a minute later
Mom: You need to get out now. Watch your step, the floor is slippery. No, walk over here.

The girl had to be in at least Jr. high, had she never taken a shower before? Or is the mom just such a nag that she has to supervise her daughter’s showers? Let the girl grow up already. It reminded me of a family I knew who made their high school age daughter take naps. Naps! She wasn’t even allowed to read during that time. This crosses the line of loving concerned parent into psycho controlling freak. I wonder if the girl will ever be allowed to make her own decisions (you know hard ones like how to take a shower). Or will she jump off the deep end like so many over-controlled kids as soon as she gets the chance?

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