Out of the Craziness
Topic: Power
Crisis creates craziness.  Or what we see as the unpredictable, something that doesn't make sense until we look deeper.  Then, we learn to make sense out of the craziness.  And that's where creativity happens!

Re-Defining "the World"
Topic: Aliens

Some people call it "separating the sheep from the goats."  Yet I don't see their application of the concept with biblical origins to apply.  I do see the original meaning to be very useful to what I'm about to say, though.  About the need to separate ideas and behaviors that are congruent with what rings true for me after much soul searching.

Sometimes that will be old ideas that still ring as true as any bell.  Over time, some of those old ideas become like a gong, as I start to understand myself and the world in a different way. 

Or as any good therapist would say, as reality becomes clearer.

As a kid, I was taught to see "the world" as anyone who didn't believe like people in my church and home did, which was the way most people in my family and southern culture had seen things for centuries.  In other words, it was the "wierd people" or the outsiders. 

What I currently understand as sweet and fair, what I see as really caring, what I see as valuable--these are not necessarily the things I was taught to see as good.   The old southern culture and it's accompanying conservative theology, that managed to spread like a virus across our land and globe, didn't/doesn't care much about anyone growing and maturing to the point of finding functional ways to stand up to the status quo.  Yet many of my generation have found ways to develop our own set of cares.  Finding ways to be the exception whenever we find opportunity.

Today, I understand "the world" to be ways of thinking and talking that are not life-affirming.  It's very likely that what I understand as "the world" will have some degree of alteration in the years to come.  Unless I get to be an old lady, too set in my ways to change.  Heaven forbid!

The Old and the New
Topic: spirituality

Last week, as I read Susan Shaw's new book, God Speaks to Us, Too, then went back and re-read parts it, words from 2 Corinthians 5:17 seemed to pop into my head from nowhere.

"Old things are passed away.  Behold, all things are become new." 

That's what has to happen every day in my life, as I embrace the process of being committed to the journey of transformation.  Being transformed by shock and trauma, because it has forced me to re-evaluate all things in such a transforming way that  no longer am I so petrified to think outside the box that had me boxed in for so many years!

Yes, God does speak to us, too.  All of us.  Anyone who thinks otherwise needs to get a new understanding of creation.  And the spiritual process of re-creation.

Making Hay While the Sun Shines
Topic: coping

"We better make hay while the sun shines," my mother often said as she scurried around in my childhood, trying to accomplish what she had planned for the day. 

"Making hay" is on my mind a lot this week in the wake of the release of a new book, by Dr. Susan Shaw, Director of Women's Studies at Oregon State University.  The book tells the collective journey of a "short list" of women--150 of us were included as informants with Southern Baptist roots.  Shaw shows how we have each struggled to find autonomy while hammering out ways to best  cope with the challenges and demands that the denomination has implanted and sometimes continues to evoke in the lives of women.

It feels odd, in a way, for me to be included in a book entitled God Speaks to Us Too:  Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home, & Society.  Especially since Ron and I left the SBC eighteen years ago!  Yet, I'm so pleased that my voice has found a new way to resonate in this, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. 

"Your leaving will be a burnt offering," my physician friend Madelaine Beerens said to me in 1987, in the heat of the case that had already caused us so much suffering, as the likelihood dawned on us that we would feel forced to resign from the largest evangelical mission board in the world, because we refused to quietly allow a sexual predator's behavior to be swept under the rug as the Board sought to find ways to suppress the story and to orchestrate organizational damage control. 

I like what Susan Shaw chose to say about my 1982 predictions that what was being labelled as a fight about "inerrancy of the Scriptures" was not a fight about "inerrancy" at all, but about the "women's issue." 

Of course, at the time of that realization, I had no idea that my own life would soon change dramatically because of an issue that is so vital to women's issues, as well as children's--the issue of abuse.  Nor did I know that what started out as being limited to the issues of collusion with sexual abuse, especially as it plays out in the faith community, would grow to include domestic violence.

What I wish the author had found room to include is a statement about my work since 1993, when How Little We Knew was published.  I'm also very sorry that there is no mention of the two adolescent victims in our case, for they were my greatest concern back at the time of our resignation in 1988.  Of course, as a writer who  has attempted to tell bits and pieces of many others' stories, I realize just how difficult it is to weave individual storeis together to make a powerful collective story. 

Shaw has done well in capturing the powerful collective story, even as she has done honor to those of us on her "short list" of autonomous women with SBC roots.

For more on the book, and to have a look at the first review, go to http://www.amazon.com/God-Speaks-Us-Too-Southern/dp/081312476X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207656792&sr=1-1

The Good Rush of Activism
Topic: Aliens

While activists often feel like aliens, and sometimes are treated like aliens, in the way others question why we do what we do. 

Recently, I found http://protest.net/activists_handbook/   It's a site that provides a handbook for activists.  I encourage you to visit it, to devour it's many messages.  Here's one of them:

"When people tell me that I'm crazy to work for others, I remind them that not all gain can be stored in a bank. I tell them that I can't live in this country with a clear conscience unless I'm working to make it better. I tell them that people I know are directly affected and I want this world to be better for both them and for my fellow humans. I tell them that the feeling I get as I realize that I'm changing things is a rush.

"Take a few minutes and think about what you care about, and why you do. Do so on the way to work, during commercials while watching TV, right now or any time you have a minute or two. It'll help you be more sure of yourself, and when you're approached with 'why do you do that?'  you'll be able to answer. "

"Knowing" the Future
Topic: coping

On a soy commercial this morning, I caught a jewel of a thought.  One that I never want to forget:  "The only way to know what the future holds is to live through it."

Deep inside of me is a sense of hope that something good will come out of the rubble that we often see in this life.  I hope for things I literally cannot even visualize.  Sometimes a very elusive future, believing that somehow it may be better than I can imagine. 

Looking ahead is what keeps me focused on taking care of myself.  When I focus on the past, I find myself looking for the many good things that have happened, sometimes simply because they've happened.  At other times, because of the rather unconventional decisions I  have made along the way. 

Many of you have contributed so much to past outcomes that have been better than I ever dreamed.  I move forward, embracing life and the struggles of it, because I believe in the future.

The Role of Anxiety
Topic: Making Changes

Functional anxiety is wonderful.  Necessary, too, unless we plan to be turtles feeding on the grass around us.  Foster it.  Embrace it.  Feed it.

Dysfunctional anxiety makes us gripe and yell about things without addressing the root causes.  It lets off steam, but often alienates everyone around us.  It ignores the fact that some things can't change today or even in our lifetime. 

By contrast, functional anxiety finds a good plan for accomplishing what can be accomplished.  It does not move without some sense of a plan and purpose.  That purpose may be to bring about a calmness with ourselves.  Or it may be to make massive changes, one person at a time.  Seldom are massive changes made otherwise.  Especially with the participation of the institutional church, with it's tendency for loving the status quo. And especially with social issues.

A Failure to Evolve
Topic: Power

Rev. Michael Dowd, a UCC minister who is author of a new book "Thank God for Evolution," has much to say on the evolving that all of us do as individuals, as well as the evolving of civilizations, and the concept of cosmic evolution as it all relates to both science and religion.  It's a delightful text that is challenging my own development of critical thinking on several levels.

On p. 148 of the book, he talks about the problems of what he calls "sex scandals."  Some of what he is referring to could be called just that.  Other incidents would be more accurately termed professional sexual abuse.  He attributes the problems to the tendency of peopole in power to live in a regressed state that is fostered by the "Lizard Legacy."

"So long as religious and political leaders continue to ignore our evolutionary heritage, and thus do not put in place structures of internal and external support that can withstand the high dosages of testosterone that high status and power necessarily confer, then there will be no hope for a less calamitous future."

While the insight offered by this statement can be useful, I want to make it clear that we dare not boil the problems down to single explanations when problems are as complex as the ones that concern us.  Still, the "Lizard Legacy" could be used to spark some good conversation, especially with those who need a place to start a discussion.

It leaves me wondering:  What could we call the legacy that explains collusion?

A Tip for Wise Activists
Topic: Making Changes

While being aware of the strategies of fearful people, be careful about jumping at every opportunity you see.  You may soon burn out early or find yourself too exhausted or anxious to be effective. 

Be careful of those who label you uncaring because you choose your activities wisely.

Nobody can be all things to all people, even in a group of activisits working for the same causes.

More Tactics
Topic: Making Changes

Further tactics to curtail any hope for progressive change are these:

1. Dull the senses of everyone, especially the thinking people.  Be sure to start with the young.  You'll want to dilute mental challenges so much that  the motivation and energy to engage in critical thinking is eroded.

2. Play on the emotion while you distort truths by focusing on irrelevant facts.

3. Punish and isolate independent thinkers of all ages at every opportunity.