In the absence of blogging I have rediscovered the art of journaling. I have journaled volumes from the time I was a teenager. Since the onset of the digital revolution, I have journaled little. Instead, I have blogged, which has given me a wonderful outlet for writing as well as connecting with others, something my journal has never been able to provide.

Writing is a solitary experience. Blogging helps take the edge off the isolation. And yet the public nature of blogging means I am creating content with an audience in mind.

Journaling is a private transaction. It is much more raw and uncensored. When I journal I do not hold back as I do (and must) when I blog. I do not edit. It is streams of consciousness writing. Whatever bleeds from the ink onto the page is bleeding out of Me.

There are physical aspects to writing with paper and pen that the screen and keyboard cannot mimic. The blots of ink on my fingers, the cool flatness of the paper as my hand glides down the page, the sound of the scratch as I turn something from nothing…Writing is magic.

I have missed my blog because I have missed You. There are no reader comments for my journal. When I close it and place it back on the shelf, it remains there, my thoughts captured like clouds in a jar and no one else will see the rain that’s come down upon those pages. Journaling is a ritual for solitaires.

Like much of my creative process, there is conflict. I struggle in remembering why I blog. I have been on the verge of blog suicide several times over the years, and This is Not That. I do not wish my blogging voice to die.

As I journal and think more about my writing struggles, I realize something that other writers before me have spoken of : The need to write for Me no matter the medium.

I think 2013 is meant to be the year of ink for me. Ink for my journaling — and blogging like I’m writing with ink for the digital hemisphere.

I’m not sure where uncensored blogging will take me. I may likely lose some readers as I jump into the wild river of unknowing. It is likely that I will blog less about topics on church and women’s equality. I will probably blog very little on spiritual themes as these are familiar territory for me. I am lusting for the wild lands. I need to let my blog become a quest and just journey on, leaving the safe meadows behind.

Journaling has given me a few expeditions into uncharted thought trails. As a writer — and a blogger! — I must follow where the words flow and stop damming them up out of inhibition. Blog gurus say to write what your readers want, to pay attention to your demographic and stay in the sweet spot. I can’t be caged like that.

I concerned myself lately with “taking my blog to the “next level. ” (whatever that means!) 2013 is going be my year of Ink.

Thank your readers and the critics who praise you, and then ignore them. Write for the most intelligent, wittiest, wisest audience in the universe: Write to please yourself. –Harlan Ellison

I know I’ve been offline a while– Christmas, art fever and Life– but I just has to get the word out you about Unladylike.

40% OFF THIS MONTH ONLY!

The print copy is now available for only $8.99! We’ve been wanting to offer the Kindle version for 50% off, but for some mysterious reason, we cannot get Amazon to reset the price. I will keep you posted about that.

As an indy writer, I work hard spreading the word about Unladylike, my first book whose message is to challenge the unequal treatment of women in the world of church. I have enjoyed great reviews and wonderful emails from readers around the world on almost a weekly basis. Unladylike is finding her way despite the lack of Big Publisher clout and distribution. For this I am SO PROUD and grateful!

People often ask me, “How many have you sold?” I have felt shy about saying when I know quite a few authors who have sold thousands of books through traditional channels. As an independent, I am no where near their sales marks.

I read a statistic that claims over 1500 books are published in the US everyday, many of them self published. The average of sales for a self-pub book is less than 100.

Unladylike, which has been published through what is known as assisted self-publishing, is getting close to 1000 sales in just one year. For an unknown author whose book has no national distributor, this is SO GOOD!

Unladylike has been promoted through sheer word of mouth. I tweet, blog and Facebook about it and then my amazing readers pass it on. That is how my obscure book is selling close to ten times the average of other Indy published books!

As of today, Unladylike sales hover around 720.

I want to tip over that 1000 mark.

With your help, we can get Unladylike to more readers. I cannot do it alone.

This is not a money making pitch for me. Like most indy writers, I’ll be keeping my day job for a while! :)

So pick up a copy of Unladylike. Pick up two since she is on sale through December. Better yet, help me spread the word that she’s on sale this month. Together we can tip Unladylike over 1000 sales!

CLICK HERE FOR UNLADYLIKE ON AMAZON.

What goals do you have that I can help you with? Give a holler!!

Yet my faith is free of church

Church informs my faith

Yet church does not.

I am free from The Church

Yet

I Am The Church.

How about you? What are your yets? Are you dechurched, unchurched, rechurched.…done with Church?

(collage art by Me)

Sometimes people ask if my art is for sale. I have sold a few pieces over the years, but it’s usually by happenstance. Like many creative people, I am more interested in the creative process than in attempts at marketing.

I started doing collage art about 5 years ago. Slowly but surely my own style and preferred techniques and colors have emerged so that many of the cards and walk hangings I make receive complements.

It is a constant struggle for me with creative endeavors and time management. Heaven for me is going to be a timeless place for creativity in the company of friends, family and the Creator!

Making art is good for my soul, though I do miss the camaraderie of blogging. Why can’t I manage to do it all and have it all?! Anyone know the secret to that?

What about you? Creating collage art is good for my soul. What’s good for yours?

I am not a non-essential doctrine. Neither are you. We are breathing, living representatives of the Creator whom I call God.

“Why not just leave and find a church that does practice equality and let go of all this hollering?” some have asked. “Why focus your energy on this?”

Because I have bought into the idea that women and men who follow Christ are meant to reflect the image of God through true collaboration and spiritual unity.  The complementarian view of women does not accomplish this; it distorts the nature of God and the nature of the kingdom of God come down through the flesh and blood of Jesus. The way churches treat women does not match how Jesus treated women.

So why not just leave?

Many women have. The presence of women in the church is slowly dwindling. I cite a Barna study in my book that, though it does not explain why, indicates that church attendance of women is down about 11 percent.  Yet women who do leave, like the many I know, may have physically left the institution of church, but they have not left the faith and a huge tenet of the faith is how we gather together and encourage one another in the ways of Jesus. This is why it matters.

It is not enough to leave as an act of protest against the injustice of Christianized sexism towards women. There is a growing company of women who with the fiery zeal of suffrage workers of the past, are determined to see the patriarchal grip on the church broken and crushed. It matters to us because the way of Jesus matters. The issue of women in the church is not just an issue of theology, but an issue of justice. Women are not a non-essential doctrine. I am not a non-essential. Neither are you.

NOTE : TO THOSE CRITICS WHO SAY, STOP WHINING AND JUST FIND A NEW CHURCH >YOU HAVE MISSED THE POINT< 

The apostle Paul wrote that we are new creations in Christ, that old things pass away and new things come. Or put another way, the old things keep on passing away and the new things keep on coming. It is a continual process. And it’s not just a process for individuals. The church is a collective. Old things keep passing away in the church and new things keep on coming.

This is why it matters : the old guard of patriarchy is on it’s deathbed. The new guard of male/female collaboration and equality for women in our faith tribes is being ushered in. There is a day coming where women will not leave their faith tribes in order to be the person God created them to be. Women will help the Church be the Bride she is meant to be, as we move forward into who we are created in God’s image.

And that is why it matters.

I made this collage last night with paper from an old hymnal and other paper sources. I distressed with Tim Holz distress ink and with glazing.

I love to do collage art. Especially lately. In my writing cave I have an assortment of art supplies, of old magazines and scrapbooking paper bundles, of distress inks and paints and glaze and ephemera galore. Last night I had a spot of time, and with my renewed rigor to take care of my soul, I gave that time to myself to create.

I never know which direction a collage will take me. I don’t know how it will look when it’s done and if you asked me, “What are you making?” I’d answer, “I don’t know ’til I’m done.”

This is the process of artistry. The artist  has to show up and start doing the deal to discover what the deal is. The art emerges as the artist surrenders to the creative process. It’s kind of like truth telling. You don’t know what the chain reaction is going to look like until to reveal the truth.

In her brilliant book, The Artist’s Way, writer Julia Cameron says this:

The act of making art exposes a society to itself. Art brings things to  light. It illuminates us. It sheds light on our lingering darkness. It casts a beam into the heart of our darkness and says, “See?” 

I  love that. Art casts light on our darkness. This reminds me of the description of the creative process described in the first pages of the Bible:

Jesus was a heretic in how he treated women. He was considered heretical for other things too—like claiming to be the Son of God—but I choose Jesus as my HERetic of the Week because of his counter-religious engagement with women in the temple and women in the culture.

The church needs to treat women like Jesus did. Imagine the outcome if women throughout Christendom began to live in the freedom of who God made us to be?

My fave story of Jesus behaving like a heretic is the story of the woman who busted in on the party at Simon the Pharisee’s house.  A nameless woman, described only as one who had lived a sinful life, comes uninvited and falls at Jesus’ feet. She cleans his feet with perfume and tears, wiping them away with her hair (so her hair was down, which I believe was considered unbecoming a lady in that culture).

Simon of course judges Jesus in the scene for allowing this woman to touch him which was scandalous on several levels. Her reputation was one issue, but so was her gender. It was improper for a holy man like a rabbi to have any kind of physical contact with a woman, especially in public. Jesus broke both cultural and religious propriety in one fell swoop. (This story can be found in Luke 7:36–50)

Another heretical moment recorded about the life of Jesus was how he handled the Martha/Mary conflict.  After the scripture below begins an excerpt from my book, Unladylike. 

Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, “Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me.” But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:38–42)

For much of my Christian life, I supposed that Jesus affirmed Mary because of her submissive posture at his feet. I cannot count the times I’ve heard sermons on this story teaching about worship and devotion, about how Mary’s good part was in being a submissive follower. But it is much more than that.

David Hamilton explains that the phrase, “seated at his feet,” was a common expression used “to show the formal mentoring relationship between a rabbi and his disciple.”124 Mary broke rank with her culture by staying with the men, by putting herself in a place of learning at the feet of Jesus, when women at that time were clearly meant to remain detached from the world of men and learning. She had no authority in her religious context or cultural context to be a rabbinical student of Jesus.

Martha defended the traditional role that women were meant to occupy. She appeals to Jesus to compel Mary to remember her place in serving rather than learning. But Jesus won’t hear of it. He affirms Mary’s choice to learn with and among men. Jesus honored her personhood as he did all women he encountered. Jesus lacked the sexist attitude that prevailed against women.

Dorothy Sayers writes this:

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man—there never has been such another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never at them, never flattered or coxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them either as, “The women, God help us!” or “The ladies, God bless them!”; who rebuked without querulousness (complaining) and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious.

There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could possibly guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything “funny” about woman’s nature.

(end of excerpt)
Say it Dorothy!!  Love how she frames this and makes her point that Jesus treated women like human beings. Not as the second gender.

Jesus was a heretic. He spoke openly with women, invited women into friendship, he healed them and told stories packed with spiritual wisdom that included metaphors common in a woman’s world  (such as the yeast in the bread parable).  Jesus defied cultural and religious social codes, drenched in patriarchal injustice, to elevate women to human status.

We forget that Jesus caused all kinds of trouble, agitating the Jewish doctrine police with his unorthodox approach among females. Surely this was evidence enough to prove that he was a quack, for how could a holy man do such unholy things as speak with women and treat them as if they were men?

I’ve said it before, I ‘ll say it again : the way churches today treat women does not match how Jesus treated women.

If Christ were here today I like to imagine him causing a ruckus by forfeiting his week on the preaching schedule to have a woman preach instead. Or by asking a woman instead of her husband her thoughts on a passage of scripture. I’m certain that if Jesus walked among us that he would once again be labeled a heretic for his defiance of religious conformity. He was not as polite as the blue-eyed Jesus pictures would suppose him to be.

Share this with another!

What kind of heresy do you suppose Jesus would get in trouble with were he walking among us today?

Collage art by Me!

I get emails week after week from women who have read my book, Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church. They tell me their stories of how they are unraveling their identity from the grip of patriarchal Christianity—not from Jesus, but from a version of faith that keeps women in second-class status.

There are other women I know who are not comfortable that I use the word oppression. It’s a heavy-duty word. It kept popping up in the writing process of Unladylike which worried me. Maybe I’m being too harsh? Too dramatic? Women sold in slavery, that’s oppressive. But a woman told she can’t preach? Is that oppressive, too?

I met up with a group of wise, older women I know. We get together every few months to sort out together the things we are reflecting on. We call ourselves the Patina Sisters.  At one gathering at my friend Jane’s house, I threw it out there as we sat around the fire pit in Jane’s garden. “Am I going overboard using the word oppression? Is it an overstatement?”

The group lit into conversation pretty quick. “No, I don’t think so. I felt oppressed when I was told in seminary I couldn’t be a pastor because of my girl parts,” said one woman. “And what is oppression?” she continued. “It’s when power is used against someone to hold them back from being who they are. There are all kinds of acts of oppression. Some are just more obvious than others.”

We talked at length, my Patina Sisters and I, about the covert presence of oppression almost invisible in many churches we were familiar with. Such as the many big churches in our area that do so much good that the banning of their women from the pulpit or positions of spiritual authority seems mundane in comparison. It can be quite a mind shift for a woman in a social-justice driven church to realize that she is being oppressed in her beloved faith tribe

How can a woman know if she is being oppressed or not? In the spirit of comedienne Jeff Foxworthy’s famous You Might Be a Redneck comedy routine, I want to give you,

You Might Be an Oppressed Christian Woman If …

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if women are blocked from pastoral roles in your church.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you only see men in preaching from the pulpit.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if when you want to talk to your pastor about a concern you have, he asks to see your husband instead.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if your church teaches you that God created you to submit to male leadership.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you think it’s ok that women submit and that God created you to serve men’s leadership.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you are convinced that your life is not fulfilled unless you get married and have children.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you don’t trust your own opinions, but seek validation from male figures to affirm your ideas.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you are concerned that you are self-centered just because you’d like to teach or preach.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you feel secret shame for wanting to have more voice in your faith community.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if when you do speak up about equality and are hushed you retreat back into your feminist closet.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you feel guilty for wanting equality with men.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you feel like a failure because you are not a submissive woman or wife.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you worry that your loud personality is unbecoming for a woman of God.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you dumb yourself down in order to not outshine the men in your church.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you think the Bible teaches that women are designed to serve male leadership rather than live as equal partners.

You might be an oppressed Christian woman if you are reading this and think that equality is a heretical doctrine that is polluting the church.

If you think you might be an oppressed Christian woman I hope you’ll do something about it. You don’t have to remain oppressed. There is a holy wind of change gusting up across the globe, the church included, where women are being agitated to shake off being less than because of their vaginas. It is unjust. It is oppressive. It is not how Jesus treated women. The way churches treat women today does not match how Jesus treated women.

I hope you’ll pass this on!

What other You might be an oppressed Christian woman  would you add to this list?

If you are interested in writing a blog post, EMAIL ME with a request for guidelines. I’d love to hear from you!

****

When Charity pitched her story idea to me, I loved it right away. She writes about how our perceptions of one another are not always kind or even accurate. That resonates with me. I have to admit that I’ve misjudged folks many times and failed to see our commonality.  Read on  and discover how Charity found out how appearances are not always what they seem. 

It was my first bachelorette affair, and it was the whole storied deal: party bus, champagne toasts, and a couple of girls who went whoo-hoo! at a pitch frequency that made me want to lobotomize myself with the penis straw in my drink.

The bride-to-be was my friend Angelica. She befriended all sorts. During college we had bonded over our rejected fundamentalist heritage, sharing a disillusionment that eventually gave way to a more tenable  hope. Angelica was my kind of Christian. But Angelica’s oldest friend from her evangelical days, fellow-bachelorette-partier-Sarah, was not. She was a tall, thin, worship-leading goddess with lively Rapunzel locks.

Sarah liked Mark Driscoll and cited Fox News. Her  husband was a model. (Really!) Like many women with nothing in common, we treated each other with passive-aggressive judgment.

At the bachelorette party there was lingerie, there was wine, and there were male genitalia party favors. My gift to Angelica was a book: The Joy of Sex by Dr. Alex Comfort. I had come across it while doing research for my own upcoming nuptials (which included anxious Googling of, “What does a normal vagina look like?”)  I told you—I  grew up evangelical.

“Oohh,” said Sarah, when she saw the book cover, “Is the author related to Ray Comfort?”

(Ray Comfort is  the Thelma to  Kirk Cameron’s Louise on the evangelical circuit. He probably had some part in training the street evangelist who last harassed you.)

Ray Comfort. I laughed. It came out loud, and a little more mean than I intended. Sarah’s half-smile faded. Oh no, I thought. God let her miss that obvious bit of derision. And forgive me for being derisive. It’s just she’s such a skinny conservative bitch.

I didn’t see her again until Angelica’s wedding reception, where we exchanged thin smiles and sat back-to-back at different tables. As I held hands with my soon-to-be husband, Sarah and her husband were having a tense exchange. I watched him leave the ballroom while  she went after him.  In her haste, her skirt rumpled and rode up her legs exposing the garter belt atop her thigh-high fishnets.

I’d heard that Sarah had married young, and that they had been having a hard time.I looked down at my fiancé’s hand.God knows what they might be dealing with, I thought as I considered my own upcoming wedding.  My heart softened a bit for a bit for Sarah.

I recognized myself in Sarah.

I felt something unexpected as I watched her walk away,  as her marriage and her garter belt became exposed  at the reception: Identification.

We were both raised evangelical. We both were purity-raised girls trying to navigate our femininity in a pornographic world. Desperate to do right by God and man, we looked to authorities to temper our vulnerability.

I recognized myself in Sarah. We were  two Christ-following  women fumbling our way through love, sex and faith.  She was doing the best she could  just as I was.

We were  different in many ways, but in the deepest parts of our identities and  hopes, we were, after all still sisters in Christ. Evangelical or not.

****

Charity (Jill) Erickson works from home running an online business alongside her husband Lance and her schnauzers Zeke and Boaz (they are very good accountants.) Find her blog HERE where she uses gentle cultural critique  through the lens of feminism and  through the lens of Christ. Her tag line is, “I’ve been a bad evangelical.”

Big THANK YOU to Charity for being my guest blogger today. Remember, you can too. Just email me!

Does Charity’s story resonate with you as it has for me? She found something to identify with “the other” and in doing so her perspective changed. What are some other ways that help us let go of judging one another? Would love to hear your thoughts!!

Read on and meet Angelina and Sarah, two woman of courage who did not allow their gender to remain muted by the culture nor the church.

*****

IN the 19th century lived the Grimke sisters, two women activist writers who opposed slavery despite their southern upbringing. Angelina and Sarah Grimke became fiery abolitionists in a time when there existed Christian churches that defended the practice of American slavery. Angelina wrote a pamphlet, “An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South,” to persuade women to adopt an abolitionist perspective:

But, perhaps you will be ready to query, why appeal to women on this subject? We do not make the law which perpetuates slavery. No legislative power is vested in us; we can do nothing to overthrow the system, even if we wished to do so. To this I reply, I know you do not make the laws, but I also know that you are the wives and mothers, the sisters and daughters of those who do…

These words were penned more than a hundred years ago out of a sense of outrage. Angelina Grimke would not ignore her fellow Christians who acted indifferent to the injustice of slavery. Her pamphlet called for women of faith to arise and let their lives and voices help break the yoke of American slavery.

Her pamphlet was considered so inflammatory that in her own hometown the postmaster burned all the copies. But she did not back down. Instead, Angelina and her sister Sarah took their message of abolition on the road speaking to mixed crowds everywhere they went.

In the culture of their day, women were not public orators, let alone speakers who called fire down on the political and religious oppressors who upheld slavery. The clergy could not contain themselves and so issued their own pamphlet to warn others against paying heed to the Grimke sisters. They condemned “women reformers and preachers, issuing a caution regarding any female ‘who assumed the place and tone of man as public reformer … her character becomes unnatural.’”Angelina eventually became the first woman to speak to a government legislature when she presented an anti-slavery petition signed by 20,000 women to the Massachusetts legislature.

The Grimke sisters are a shining example of how women can resist injustice that flourishes within the halls of Christendom. We can take our cues from this pair in finding tangible, practical ways of resisting Christianized inequality. We need not wait for something to happen. We can each initiate change all on our own.

(excerpted from Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church)

Click HERE to read more about the Grimke Sisters.

What do you think about the tag team of abolition and suffragist activism?  What do we see coupled with the women’s equality movement today?  Would love your thoughts!