Regaining courage...

"No coward soul is mine,
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere:
I see Heaven's glories shine,
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear."
~Emily Bronte

Longing for Mother God

I have experienced a number of restless nights this past week and on one of these occasions I found myself fighting with God. I wouldn't equate this experience to Jacob's physical battle (which, in my mind, is likely to have been metaphorical anyway). Instead I felt this insane intense need to verbally attack God while Brian and the girls were all sound asleep. Now, I feel the need to report that this is not a typical behavior, but on occasion I feel the need to expel my emotions in spoken words. And on that night I was frustrated.

I'm still not sure who to direct this anger towards. Maybe it's not the kind of anger that can be directed towards a "who"...maybe it's more suited to be attributed to a "what" instead. What preceded this midnight brawl was a relational experience that brought my mind to the book of Job. I have always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with that particular book of the Bible. I have found great comfort in it's presence in the Bible - it showcases the utter despair associated with suffering that makes no sense. On the other hand, I have also wanted to hurl my Bible against the wall when I can't quite make peace with God's words to Job beginning in chapter 38. God begins his response to Job with these words:

"Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.  Who marked off it's dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were it's footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?" (Job 38:2-7)

It dawned on me the other night why this particular book has left me feeling extremely ambivalent. I realized, maybe not for the first time, that experiencing God primarily as male has not only hindered me from developing a deeper connection to God, but it has held my theological imagination hostage for far too long. You see, as a woman I have been on the receiving end of similar tirades from men who believe they are superior many times over in my life. I have experienced the violence of others in a world married to it's hierarchies. And up until recently (as in the last 3 or 4 years) I have been conditioned and trained to perceive God as a masculine figure (a masculinity that is defined by culture of course). After all, "HE" is above and beyond all of creation...right? (side note: so fascinating that in a culture that has had repeated love affairs with hierarchies, we often focus more upon God's transcendence than Gods immanence.)

But this is where I caught myself, I uncovered the nasty trap that I keep falling into. In a certain sense, my experience of the world, or more specifically, my experience of certain men, has led to my own projection of attributes...or attitudes upon God. What if I projected feminine attributes (again, acknowledging the cultural-constructions at play here as well) upon God? How would this impact my experience of the text, my reading of the story and relationship between God and Job. I had a conversation about this particular dynamic with a girlfriend the other day and as we attempted to imagine the tone of this conversation between God and Job things began to shift substantially. We envisioned God as a mother assuring her child of the goodness and the beauty that surpasses the sufferings of the world. She's not shaming her child or putting him in his proper place in the cosmic hierarchy. Instead, she is painting a picture of the beauty of creation in a time before his arrival.

I am a product of a certain cultural context where God has been primarily viewed as masculine. I'm now longing for a season of life where I can see God through a feminine lens. Don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting that we trade one culturally-constructed projection for another, but I have been reminded this week of how much our own experiences, our own notions of power, our own ideals and perceptions, influence how we perceive God. In any relationship we seem to struggle with letting the other simply be just that...an other, which in essence requires acknowledging the other as a mystery.

When little girls grow up to become objects

Well, my first week at attempting to stick to a rhythm of regular weekly blogging didn't exactly happen the way I had intended it to. Imagine that. Kierkegaard's quote, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," haunts me most days of my life. But here I am, a few days late, with something to sort out.

Last Friday (the day I was supposed to be blogging in this space) I took the girls to go watch their favorite uncle jump out of an airplane at about 12,500 feet in the sky. They had the day off of school and my dad happened to be in town so we decided to finally take the plunge and watch my brother (the other sibling who seems to suffer from middle-child syndrome) get his adrenaline-fix for the day. After a lengthy drive and enduring the hour or so it took for him to prepare his gear and board the plane, we witnessed the five minute descent to earth and vicariously experienced our own adrenaline rush. Here are a few pictures from that day.

The girls were mesmerized by the number of fellas all suited up and ready to take the leap of faith.

Faith was taken by the entire experience.  She was waving frantically to Brandon at this point when she could still only spot him through the binoculars.

Bailey and Faith have both now declared that as soon as they're 18 they'd like to jump with their uncle. By that point, he might just be an instructor. But beyond just updating the blogosphere on the recent happenings in my life, I've actually been pondering a few things related to gender (surprise, surprise) since this experience. When we loaded up on the back of the trailer that transported the jumpers to their plane and proceeded to drop us off near the landing zone, I couldn't help but notice that there was not a single female jumper. In fact, during the entire duration of time that we spend at this facility, I only saw a single female jumper. And there had to have been upwards of 75-100 males geared up and ready to prove that they were men (I'm joking about that last comment...sort of).

So I was wrestling all day with the question, "Why?" Why is it that men are more drawn to these types of death-defying adventures? I began to remember what it was like when I was a little girl unbound by gender stereotypes (to a certain extent). I was considered to be a tomboy from about the age of 6-10. And I hate that term actually...because it seems to suggest that I behaved in ways that were culturally deemed more appropriate for boys. I played soccer at recess. I even liked to spit on the soccer field while I was playing. I spit so much that I acquired the nickname "Shauna Llama," given proudly by my childhood best friend, Colin (yes, my best friend was a boy). I rarely did anything with my long wispy hair, other than pull it back in a half-brushed ponytail. I couldn't wait to get home from school so I could ride my bike on the dirt mounds we had constructed in an open field behind our neighborhood. When I was 9, I helped construct a bike jump utilizing a wagon, a few rocks and a long piece of plywood. Colin dared me to jump first. The scars on my knee still remind me of this once fearless and tough young girl.

I often wonder about this young girl still today. Where did she go? What happened to her? Is she still in there underneath all the junk our culture piles atop women (and men for that matter)? And what was it that prompted such a significant shift at the age of 10? In Mary Pipher's book, Reviving Ophelia, she explores this very shift:

"Simone de Beauvoir believed adolescence is when girls realize that men have the power and that their only power comes from consenting to become submissive adored objects. They do not suffer from the penis envy Freud postulated, but from power envy."

I always knew I was an early bloomer...I guess I hit adolescence at the age of 10. My heart aches to know that little girl who had not yet consented or surrendered to being a submissive adored object because she didn't know of any other way. It's not that I long to regain that sense of adventure, or to somehow recover the strength to passionately pursue my own desires so that I can simply jump out of an airplane. No...it's so much more than that. I want that little girl to shed everything that keeps her from running toward her dreams or hinders her from being the first to test the bike jump.

The beauty of a life well lived...

Before I begin with what I really came here to rant write about, let me first say that life is starting to take shape out here. I have officially opened up a private practice (as you can see below) which is the largest piece to the puzzle of my life in Colorado thus far. To help subsidize my income in these beginning stages of growing a practice, I am currently doing some very part-time work for TCON, the nonprofit I traveled to Uganda with years ago. Lastly, I am also developing a relationship with a local nonprofit called Pomegranate Place and am discovering new ways to be involved in their mission to offer resources and connection to women throughout the Denver area.  Having my hands in so many different pots on top of keeping up with my three active little ladies has left me feeling a bit discombobulated. So I'm trying to establish some sense of rhythm and routine...not rigidity and the death of spontaneity...but rather, establish just enough of a sense of ritual to not feel like I'm crazy. Setting aside specific time to blog will be part of the establishment of rhythm, and considering I will now be blogging on my Emerge Counseling website as well, I have decided to blog once weekly in this space...and Fridays seem like the best day to do just that!  Who knows...the quality of my writing and thoughts might even be better after taking the time to really ponder on things throughout the week.

And now, on to what I really came here to address.  I was listening to a popular radio station yesterday where every weekday afternoon two of the radio show personalities host a "mate-debate."  In these debates they have a couple call-in to the show to each deliver their respective sides to an on-going argument they have grappled with in their relationship. On this particular show the couple were fighting over whether or not the wife should breastfeed their soon-to-be-born infant.  The wife indicated that she did not want to breastfeed because she had already sacrificed so much of her body in just being pregnant and she didn't want to "ruin her boobs" as well.  The husband said that he would love her boobs no matter what and that he thought she should stop being selfish and breastfeed because it is what's best for the child. The main issue in the debate was whether or not the decision should solely be the wife's simply because it was her body, or if the man had any right to be a part of the decision.

It was a painful conversation for me to listen to as caller after caller utilized their few minutes of airtime to berate the wife for her selfishness or to berate the two male radio personalities for even suggesting that a man had a right to have any say in the decision.  Aside from my own opinions on a woman's right to make choices for her own body, or on the benefits of breastfeeding both physically and psychologically (for both the mom and the baby), ultimately where my mind wandered to was how sad it is that we allow arbitrary and culturally-bound definitions of beauty to so significantly influence such weighty decisions in our lives. Who decided that the impact on the female body of developing, carrying, birthing and sustaining a life is anything less than beautiful?

art

A friend posted this find on facebook and I just had to share it here!  The beauty of connection portrayed in an absolutely breath-taking way.


Nuit Blanche from Spy Films on Vimeo.

Emerging

It's official...I've started a private practice.  Check out my website!

Growing pains

It's been a long time since I've desired to write poetry. This morning I received this quote from a dear friend:

"Joy in God is a way of living out and finding ever richer ways of being in communion with others, within the demands of concrete and changing situations and ecologies of relationship. It is surely joy in God, but it is also joy in oneself, in others, in the world. Joy as intensification of one's being in communion spills over into, and is experienced in, every relationship. It is the mode of participation in delight in the abundance of God for the world." ~McFayden "Bound to Sin"

It was this quote that seemed to trigger an all too familiar sense of loss coupled with longing this morning. And so on this day, poetry is all that can come forth.

It is that familiar pain,
sensation, faint murmur
the kind of thing that one
can only feel when at first
she acknowledges its existence
but in this she allows
the sensation, the longing
to morph from abstraction
to the reality of form
it crawls from the belly
up into the chest cavity
and clenches, then softens
then clenches again
let go, she pleads,
all the while knowing
it is impossible to escape
this now named longing
it is associated, attached
to their faces, their names,
their stories, their touch
which unleashed freedom,
delivered mercy,
birthed life in abundance
it has maneuvered its way
through her whole being
this sense of loss
and longing mixed up
with disarming gratitude
She looks all around
for something to soothe
this combination
of joy and sorrow
but it seems futile
for she is now alone,
all alone.
Alone.
Left to sit
with the memories,
the chorus of their voices
as they speak life into
her lonely soul.