How did that happen?

                        I have a hard time alining my self with being a christian most times. Not because I  do not love Jesus or am not a follower of his way but because of what the word has come to be associated with. I was watching a show on PBS about our founding fathers and their struggle to write the constitution of the US and the times and reasoning around that. For a people who came from a land where the monarch and the church aligned under pain of death letting people worship as they wished was a bold dream never before given to a people. A boldness that was fallowed by an out poring of the holy spirit. Also accompanied by a crack down of the established churches of the time as they feared this freedom.

                      I know a few of the things fallowing the ways of Jesus has Effected the world. The right for women to vote and be heard in the public arena, fighting against abuse on women and children, end of slavery, the humane treatment of prisoners, care for widows the poor,  orphans , and the ill, stopping child labor in the US, the red cross and salvation army still care for the poor and those in war and disasters, the YMCA, and laws that are for all people where previously they had been power birth right influenced. So why is this such a contradiction to what it is seen as today. Where people shout at others holding offensive signs and are known more for what they are against than what they are for.

                                         I a world full of red faced talking heads shouting against this and against that . UGh who needs it. There is that annoying christian saying that goes if you stand for nothing you will fall for anything.  What about standing for love standing for the oppressed standing for people. I love people people are the best people I know. Since when does loving someone mean you have to agree with everything they say and do. If that is a requirement we would be very lonely people or just not know each other very well if this was the case.
                                      

                                         I look at the raging debate over gay marriage and all I can see is cherry picking of verses you do not understand mixed with homophobia that pushes people God loves further from him. How would you feel if you are constantly told someone hates you. If you were thinking about the person rather than who they love or how they do that the behavior see today would not happen. I look at the history of marriage and just less than a generation ago my marriage would be illegal, being interracial. I had an uncle who was with the same partner for years they loved each other so much you could tell even as a child I knew they loved each other it did not scar me to know this. If they had the choice I do think they would have gotten married it pains me to think they could not. Talking the religion out of it they are Americans they pay taxes my religious right should not stop them from having their civil rights.

                                   I am not sure that this did much as far as a post if I made any points or not or even if this is a coherent string of words it just has been simmering in me a long time. I long for followers of Jesus to be known for what he was about freeing the enslaved , loving your neighbor, and  the fierce rebellion against the oppressors. After all it is what they tried to kill him for.

Why am I still so surprised?

                                    I was watching "Who do you think you are?" on Friday and Helen Hunt was the person they were researching. She had found out her great great grandmother had been a part of the Christian Women's Temperance movement and had a big reaction to it. In our Day being christian has become more about being against stuff than for things. The image and things said on a large scale in our nation we deserve that reaction. Today it made political news that Jimmy Carter left the Baptist church because of their view on women and what that view breeds in that church culture. I mourn that Christ the One who came to bring freedom and healing has been seen so much as the one who brings bondage and harm.

                                      Later in the show when Helen looked into what the organization stood for she was very proud of what it did. The Women's Christian Temperance movements were where women had a voice before they did, they stood at a time of rampant alcoholism from wounded men coming home alcoholics from being traumatized by war and all kinds of abuse against women and children. bringing light to dark hidden places saying it was wrong.  This movement turned into the suffrage movement gaining women the right to vote be counted as worthy of their opinion mattering, helping men overcome addictions and find healing and getting children out of factories. So why is it over one hundred years later Women in the church looked at with unequal eyes?


                                       Our culture has had to do the job of seeing women as worthy and abuse as wrong. I'm tired of strong smart christian women having to make apologies for their brains and positions they earned and are qualified for in the church. I have been reading Bio's on church pages of the male and female pastors both are qualified with the degrees but only one has felt the need to make the descriptions of themselves into but I cook and garden too. Trying to prove that even though they're competent and deserve their job but they are girly too. It's the equivalent of the smart pretty girl acting dumb so the boys will like them. "But I love to garden and cook. Oh and chocolate, lets not forget the chocolate, not that I eat to much of it have watch my girly figure". Pay no attention to the degrees competence and brain behind the curtain. Why are there no strong women held up from the Bible in the church? or if they are, their strengths are muted on  how God used them, they  are shushed. Where are the volumes about Deborah the judge who ruled and lead the armies into battle?, or even the Proverbs women actually being a savvy business women of her day not the parts held up for women to emulate or passages that declared our equality saying that we are neither slave nor free male or female.


                                       It is not just the men-women. It is time we stop apologizing for our strengths or accepting the negative words assigned to a strong women. Humility is not saying "I am a worm, I am a worm" It's standing in the truth of who we are, good and bad,  accepting our skills and talents and not making them seem more or less than they are. We are more than capable to run more than potlucks and child care. Women's groups can be dynamic places where we tackle life and get real with the grit of it. It is time for the women to stand and be equal,  Why is this such a threat? I will never know. The mousy women that holds her toughts and minds her place while being a chef in the kitchen, Really? Is that our ideal?

                                   Why is it that there are never sermons on men manning up and accepting their wives,  girlfriends and daughters that are being capable and intelligent women that need support love and encouraging to stand in the shoes God gave them? There is all this back story being thrown at men about all they need is the respect of a women, really? I know a few women that want to be disrespected, and I do not think God said anything about respecting men as his goal. God says He loves them, God says He is no respecter of men. I think it's crap. I think respect is built into love in the true from on the word the dictionary defines respect as esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment. I think esteeming a person's worth and other things is mandatory in love. 

                                        Even in the way we talk about abstinence it is all about the women, every christian movie has a dad standing up and fighting for his daughters purity. Where is the movie about the son?  Or teaching respect for women.  Why is there no strong mother fighting to teach her son to respect himself and women? Not saying it is not happening but Why is that not being held up as an ideal? Why is it in every christian blog the end is for their kids even though they were strong headed as young kids it prepared them to be a missionary? Why did it not position them to take on other jobs a lawyer a  crusader for the rights of people with AIDS? being bullied by the system because none stands up for them, a Police Officer fighting for our community every day, or a Physical Therapist who helps those hurt get back into action or just a Therapist who helps heal the mind. 

                                             I think it's high time we the church start living and reading what the Bible actually says within it's culture rather than letting people tell us what it says within our own. As modern people we look at the passages about slavery and can detach from that as a cultural reference for the time it was written. we do that with so many things written there but pick a few things out to  be outraged about.  Not many keep a Kosher home nowadays.  I am not sure this post has strung together anything more than my frustration in seeing women diminish themselves to secure their position without intimidating insecure men. We all are stronger and better people when we lift one another up. there is enough for everyone, Your gifts, even if they are similar to another; your gifts with your twist on them and your bent, no one else can do what you specifically can do. We are made to fit together not by making one less so you seem to stand out but by shinning in our love.

                           

Everything is so important

   Everything feels so important lately. People starving in  Somalia walking 18 hours to just get somewhere for help leaviing children dead on the road cuz they are too weak to carry or bury them. London a blaze with riots with little solid reasons known behind it. In my state deep rip on our communities felt so close, the elections lost and won by just a few vote with corruption and fraud being raised. Even closer dear friends living in grief over loss and illness. My heart breaks and longs for something different in all these things, the overwhelming sense of grief and injustice hangs in the air in daily life tangible just under everything we see. It is so easy to sit in my comfy chair and turn it off or become numb to those suffering make them and other, you know. I am not like that, I am glad I am not there. They are outside my experience so do we tune it out.

                        Since I was a young girl nothing has felt more right to me than to fight for Justice for others. Learning about Apartheid in 8th grade all I wanted to do was to go there and fight for justice for the oppresed people. It has been the only thing I have ever felt I was built for.

                      The need is so great, the wave so overwhelming and the words seem to evaporate into nothingness in the face of so much pain. People say all I can do is Pray. All we can do? I think there is a fundamental image problem with Prayer. All we can do is ask the power that raised Jesus from the Dead into any of these world ending things. Jesus came to bring freedom to the enslaved hope to the lost and healing to a broken hurting world: there is a tension we live in the already and not yet. Jesus brought in the kingdom of God available to us all. But that kingdom is here and now and yet is to come. Not a contradiction but a real. We can not comand God, we can ask Him into a situation not to our will or our bidding but to bring the healing and life to it. When we pray there is always a response, always, never an exception, never. When I pray and I do not get my way I am inclined to say God did not respond, but this is an inacurate view. As we pray we invite change we invite growth we invite justice and light into the dark place in our lives or the lives of our love ones or those we may never know around the world. This may take longer than we are will to see or want that does not mean there was no response. What happens when we pray is we invite God to break through and make a change that would not happen if we do not ask. For His will for our lives or those of others to break into our reality making miracles and the supernatural or natural appearing things happen. I never got when people would say it was a natural ocurrance to explain away something extraodinary that happens that is a bit out of the ordinary. Nature is extraodinary,who would have thought a flower can break up a sidewalk? even if it is just how it works that is extrodinary!

                        People never understand why I am so passionate about Prayer and think it's boring and ineffective: But it is never either of those things It is not head down eyes closed stay quiet kind of Prayer, it is eyes open shouting, crying, doing daily life, and talking to friends while I pray kind of thing. Not to be a shame thing for those that do not, but for me it is how I deal with all the injustice and pain I see in the world otherwise it just is a tidal wave and we stand on the shore waiting to be swallowed or worse we become calloused or tune it out. I just can not see standing in face of so much and just turning my back. To see the pain in a strangers eyes and not ask God to intervene. I may never meet them but I know one thing, God loves them and mourns with them, or celebrates with them no matter their view of Him. Jesus love is not bound by all the rules man tries to put on him. the in and out club of church has nothing to do with how far and how wide the Grace will takes us further than an gymnast can bend. The question for me is Am I willing to let Jesus challenge me? Will I let him break my heart for others will I let him show me myself and how I am like the person that I can not stand at this moment? Will I be willing to stand with the hurting with out trying to fix it or change them but can I stand and love even those that I naturally would not?