kathyescobar | kathy escobar.

plant new trees.

Posted on Feb 3, 2012 in church stuff, crazy making, equality, ex good christian women, injustice, leadership | 9 comments

“then God said, “let us make human beings in our image, to be like us.” – genesis 1:26, NLT

this past week i saw a flurry of facebook posts about john piper’s latest words about masculine christianity. i am pretty out of the blog-reading circuit because there are only so many hours in the day and mine are jam packed with people & kids & more kids & more people. at the same time, i love that challenging conversations are happening and social media is a powerful tool to raise awareness.

i did not listen to john piper’s presentation or link to the blog post. i don’t have the stomach or time for it, but i got the cliff notes version from rachel’s blog. i like her idea of helping people consider other views of God that aren’t specifically masculine. i have no trouble with God being masculine. the trouble i have is assuming God is primarily masculine because Jesus was a guy and chose 12 male disciples and then building entire systems upon that thought, utterly dismissing a whole other half of God’s image and essence. along with that half, i am certain we’re missing a whole lot of other things about God that we have been afraid to explore because the systems & churches we have been part of have kept God so contained.

john piper makes caricatured roles for men and women, over-simplifying the image of God placed in each of us. this denies not only women of their fullness, but men as well.

whether we want to admit it or not, piper’s theology is deeply embedded into most of standard evangelical christianity. it just is. men do certain things and women do other certain things. if each sex would just step into “God’s intention for them” (“appropriate” social roles), everything will work just fine and everyone will be “free.”

when God created humans, God made us in in the fullness of God’s image. not half, not part. yes, we are unique and different, and that’s why we need each other to more accurately reflect the fullness of God’s image. the body of Christ is a reflection of God. if that’s the case, then why is half missing, devalued, and thought of as less somehow?

change in “the church” is coming. a holy stirring is happening and many people are starting to call it for what it is–oppression, sexism, and a fear-based theology that perpetuates injustice. however, it has become so innate that merely trying to shake it out of our system isn’t going to cut it. we’re not a few awesome blog posts away from changing these deeply grooved systems of injustice.

when we start thinking about change, there are two natural reactions to it that we think of first:

1. prune off what’s not working. if we can prune some of these injustices out of “the church”, we’ll be okay. this is the idea of changing systems by making some adjustments here and there that will shift things. raise awareness, start to think differently about it, help leaders become more sensitive to issues of equality, influence change from within.

2. raze the ground completely. knock it all down. it’s flawed, it doesn’t work, it harms people. the whole thing is so jacked up that we just need to walk away from it entirely.

i feel strongly that alone, #1 just won’t work. i’m not saying that some systems can’t be changed from within but i think it’s a pretty brutal road and will require leaders who are willing to shrink their churches & ministries, pay some serious emotional, spiritual, and financial costs, and lose all kinds of things they are used to gaining. honestly, that’s just not super likely on a wide scale. human nature & self protection will strongly work against such courage. pruning also dismisses the magnitude of the problem. we’re talking about deeply grooved systems of injustice that go back to the beginning. the root system is strong; a little tweaking isn’t going to bring full equality for anyone.

i also believe that blowing the whole thing up isn’t really an option. it works for some people. they believe in certain scriptural interpretations & hold dearly to their tenents. i may disagree, but i don’t think that means there aren’t valuable things that happen for people through their churches and so scrapping the whole thing isn’t really fair or respectful.

i think there’s a much better option:

plant new trees.

trees that have the roots of equality from the very beginning.

trees that gain nourishment from a free-er gospel and soil that is enriched with freedom and hope instead of fear and absolute certainty.

trees that have men and women and rich and poor and educated and undeducated and black and white and gay and straight all tangled up together from the beginning.

trees that are tended to gently and naturally instead of pumped with unnatural growth agents & pesticides that try to advance the progression of development to “catch up faster” to other churches that will always have the advantage of time and power on their side.

trees that get their strength from the beatitudes not their latest and greatest how-to-grow books and conferences.

trees that are well-watered by people who are tired of talk and are ready for action.

trees that over time will flourish and bring shade and fruit and all kinds of other goodness for generations to come in the communities & cultures where they are planted.

a diverse ecosystem of trees that more accurately reflect the fullness of God’s image.

these trees can be all kinds of shapes and sizes–individual relationships, groups, churches, ministries, organizations–little pockets of love & freedom cropping up all over that influence people and model a better way, a free-er way, an equal way, a more “oh, that’s what Jesus looks like” way.

yeah, pruning won’t cut it. razing isn’t an option. let’s get planting. i have a feeling some of you are really good gardeners.

* * * * *

here are a few other links i wanted to highlight:

many of you have probably read it, but if you haven’t check out rachel held evans’ post this week: they were right (and wrong) about the slippery slope. i slipped off the slope a long time ago and sometimes tell those that wonder, “yeah, i completely slipped off the slope and somehow found the most solid ground i’ve ever stood on.”

our walking wounded online class starts monday february 6th. registrations are possible until then, so if you or someone you know want to be part, you can sign up at that link. it’s going to be good! i also am not sure when we’re planning on running it again so now’s the right time if you’re on the fence.

i wrote a little post for provoketive magazine last month that i forgot to share called stories that matter.

lastly, i posted this on facebook & it made some pretty good rounds, but if you missed it, here’s the trailer from my awesome friend pam hogeweide’s new book, just released at the end of january–unladylike: resisting the injustice of inequality in the church:

practicing friendship

Posted on Jan 31, 2012 in healing, incarnational, relationships, spiritual formation | 18 comments

* this is part 2 to the last post: let’s be friends. oh wait, we don’t know how to!

i wish learning new things were as easy as taking a class, watching a youtube instructional video, or reading the perfect how-to book that provides all of the answers. for fixing kitchen sinks, it probably works. for cultivating long lasting intimate friendships with others, not so much.

there’s no clear instructional manual for these kinds of relationships because they are complex. at the same time, the Bible has solid guidance on how to better love each other. colossians is one of my favorite books for that. when my kids were little, we used to have the NIV kids club videos & cassette tapes (yes, my kids are getting old) that were all about “singing the Bible and having fun.” i can pretty much sing the whole chapter of colossians 3 to you if you ever want a laugh! when it comes to friendship, though, there are some excellent words in there. the passage that comes to mind today is “therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience” (v. 3:12).

compassion. kindness. humility. gentleness. patience.

these are important ingredients to sacred friendships. they help cultivate grace, love, and acceptance, which are what so many of us long for in our relationships.

here are some practical ways i think we can nurture these qualities in relationships with others and bravely enter into new friendships–men with men, women with women, men & women together.

be honest about our fears. the more we can say out loud “um, i don’t know how to do this very well”, the better. it’s so much better than trying to pretend we’re good at something we’re not quite yet. in our community, we have so many people learning how to be friends for the first time we talk a lot about it out loud and just call it for what it is. honesty creates compassion because we can relate, we know the feeling, too.

lower our expectations. even though i love to dream big, i also believe in small baby steps of change rather than always expecting (and often demanding) giant leaps for ourselves & others, too. if we don’t shift our expectations, we can become mad all the time because things aren’t going the way we want them to be. meaningful friendships take a long time to cultivate. they don’t come quick, especially in the midst of our brokenness & busy-ness. this is why patience is such a necessary ingredient.

take responsibility for our own stuff. this is humility, a willingness to look at our own log instead of focusing on others’ specks. it requires soft hearts open to God’s spirit & getting honest about the patterns we might tend to bring into the friendship. as we acknowledge it to ourselves & God first, we can then be honest about it with our friends–”i am sorry that i….when i get scared, i sometimes act that way.” this helps us practice becoming safer people.

remember, everyone’s human, just like us. it’s a magical, beautiful thing that somehow God can bring broken, jacked up people together in love & unity. it really amazes me. but at the same time, our messy human-ness is always going to be at play. we will get hurt. we will get annoyed. we will get confused. we will get uncomfortable. the beauty is in respecting not only our humanness but others’, too.

don’t always do everything in groups. groups are great. community is awesome. but sometimes it’s really important to spend quality time together that doesn’t have all the wackiness of group dynamics. i think we can hide behind it, too, always going to “men’s groups” or “women’s groups” but never just hanging out in a more intimate setting. make time for it. it’s always worth it. eye to eye, heart to heart makes all the difference over the long haul & helps us become more comfortable in our own skin in the relationship.

get some help when we need it. this is one of the things i love most about our community. we practice friendship and get help when we need it. this looks like getting a few more people in the conversation to talk about how to do friendship better, what’s working, what’s not, how we can help honor each other more deeply, where we get stuck, and how to keep moving toward healthier connection. it’s what the body of Christ is supposed to be about, helping encourage and challenge one another!

check in. every relationship is different, but i do think that regular check-ins can be helpful in developing friendships. how are we doing? how are you feeling in relationship with each other? what’s working? what’s not? in developing cross-gender friendships, it’s extra important.

adopt a philosophy of “practice”. one of my favorite phrases is “we’re just practicing.” we expect ourselves to have so many things in this world nailed down when the truth is we are just learning & trying & practicing as best we can. to get better at something requires practice; it also means we will flub things up and blow it and need to get back on track. this helps with conflict in relationship because we can be honest and say “i’m practicing how to actually engage in a conflict with another person and not have it be devastating!” sometimes, too, we may practice with people who we end up not being able to be in long-term relationship with for all kinds of reasons. that’s okay. every time we make ourselves vulnerable and risk in relationship, we are practicing & learning & growing. that’s what matters.

i am sure there are many others, but these are some off the top off my head. when i read back over these, i can really see compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience embedded in each of these practices. yeah, without these, meaningful friendship just isn’t possible.

what are some others you would add?

God, help us become people who cultivate compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience into our friendships.

let’s be friends. oh wait, we don’t know how to!

Posted on Jan 24, 2012 in equality, ex good christian women, healing, incarnational, leadership, relationships, spiritual formation | 17 comments

“there is nothing on this earth to be more prized than true friendship.”

- st. thomas aquinas

remember that book, “all i ever needed i learned in kindergarten”? sure, some of what we learned when we were five would be helpful to us as grownups. but i’m also going to make a supposition that even by age five, weird friendship stuff may have already seeped in. some boys stop playing so freely with girls. the power dynamics of who rules the playground kick into full swing. cliques form. the weak are often already culled out. it looks different for everyone, and there’s no question we are a lot purer when we are five than when we are 35, but the same fact remains–friendship is hard!

cultivating healthy, strengthening, encouraging, equal friendships is an art, not science. and a very lost art at that.

in fact, i feel quite sure an honest poll would reveal that most people don’t have the kinds of friendships they long for. that most don’t really know how to do them in a way that works long-term. that some feel as inadequate now as we did when we were in junior high, even though they fake it better. that many don’t even know what healthy friendship is supposed to look or feel like. and that it seems there’s never enough time to develop them. i am also going to take a leap and say that in the christian world, it’s even worse. there are countless other weird dynamics at play in christian friendships that even further complicate what’s already complicated.

i know the feeling. i used to stink at real friendship. i’ve always had a lot of friends. i am a loyal person and have always hung on to friends–both male & female–through thick and thin. but it wasn’t until i was in my late 20′s that i started to become comfortable enough in my own skin to actually be the kind of friend i wanted. the kind that receives instead of just giving. the kind that is honest & raw instead of holding back all the time. the kind that makes a really concerted effort to nurture the relationship instead of expecting it to drop out of the sky.

18 years later, I’m still learning. it’s not the easiest thing for me to do. at heart, i like independence, not interdependence.

and real friendship requires interdependence.

a give-and-take. grace. intention. vulnerability. risk.

in church, we are taught a lot about believing, knowing, and worshiping certain things and acting certain ways. even now, with a lot of focus on missional living emerging in many churches, which i think is a good thing, a crucial ingredient is usually often missing– how to just be a friend.

an honest friend.

an equal friend.

a vulnerable friend.

a long-haul friend.

there are a lot of forces working deeply against friendship (not just cross-gender friendship but all forms–men with men, women with women, and across ages & differences, too.)

power. we know how to be under people or above people but rarely do we know how to live beside them. it’s a natural force of our Genesis 3 human-ness. often without thinking, we look for someone to control us or someone to control. if we feel “less than” or “more than” others it messes with real freedom. this is so unconscious for us that we don’t even know we’re doing it.

shame. sometimes we are scared to be fully known because if people really knew us we’re quite sure they wouldn’t want to be friends anymore. we give part of us but not all of us because full honesty is too risky. but honest sharing with a friend who can honor it brings one of the greatest rewards of friendship–the experience of grace. also, some people feel embarrassed that they never learned how to develop healthy friendships and it feels weird & awkward to be trying now. (it’s never too late, i know that for sure!)

independence. many have learned through damaging past experiences that “the only person we can really trust is ourselves.” and even if we don’t trust ourselves, we at least know what to expect. a “trust God and God alone (by yourself)” mentality is especially pervasive in christian circles.

fear. we don’t naturally like to make ourselves vulnerable . we don’t like to get hurt. and somehow we know we will if we get too close to another person. our natural tendency to avoid pain is always at play. i’ve lost a few friends along the way, and it hurts. a lot. but it was still worth it in the end because of what i learned through them. in cross-gender friendships, fear is even higher because for the most part people say it isn’t possible without sexual weirdness.

yikes, those are some strong forces working against us! when i look at this list, though, i have hope. i have seen it up-close-and-personal in my life & many others–healthy friendship is so possible! but much deeper than only my experience, these four things–power, shame, independence, and fear–are what Jesus calls us to break down so we can get to the better thing–love.

humility, grace, trust, and peace are all part of love and antidotes to power, shame, independence, and fear.

that’s really what friendship is–loving another human being more freely, more purely, more honestly, more fully. and being loved by another more freely, more purely, more honestly, more fully. it’s about loving and being loved.

and that, my friends, is scary stuff!

we’d much rather talk about almost anything else. and do most anything else.

and it’s probably why we need to focus on it the most.

i think a task for the body of Christ is to begin actively showing people how to be friends in all kinds of shapes & sizes. men with women, men with men, women with women. to break down systems of power and honor what it means to be equals, created in the image of God. to find ways to really heal from shame instead of just talk like we have and become more free & healthy human beings. to learn what it means to be interdependent instead of independent or codependent. to have courage to push through our inadequacies & fears and stumble & bumble into new ways of living together as friends. friends with God, with others, with ourselves. they are all mixed up together.

oh there are so many beautiful things to learn alongside each other!

what are you learning about friendship these days?

* * * * *

ps: next post is part two and is a little more practical, but i wanted to get this out while it was swirling around in my head.

pss: my friend dan brennan is an advocate and teacher for sacred friendships. he continues to call people to break down the walls that divide us and bravely engage in deep, intimate friendship with one another. in april the first sacred friendship gathering centered on cross-gender friendships is happening in chicago; i feel privileged to be sharing there and would love for you to come be part of this important conversation! if you can’t attend but would like to help someone else have a chance to go, scholarships are greatly needed so that as many people as possible can be challenged to consider the practice of deeper friendship. also, they are pulling this off as a labor of love on a shoestring budget, so let dan know if you can help!

linear: never was, never will be

Posted on Jan 18, 2012 in healing, relationships, spiritual formation | 15 comments

* this post is part of the january synchroblog, a bunch of bloggers writing on the same topic. this month is being hosted by provoketive magazine and is centered around the theme of hope. the provoketive link list is at the bottom. that’s a lot of hope!

* * * * *

Even before I became a Christian I had the crazy idea embedded inside of me that life was supposed to be pretty clear and easy if you did certain things. Maybe it was growing up with a single mom who struggled and scraped and believing that “if I got a college education, it wouldn’t be like that” or “If you don’t rock the boat, you can keep everyone happy.” The message of “Do this that and you can get this or that” was engrained in me from early on, and this was long before I became a Christ-follower. I sort of think it’s human nature.

Once I made the leap toward Jesus in my early adult years, the message was actually more strongly reinforced, only with a little twist of adding “God” to it: “If you do these things, believe these things, memorize these things, God will _________.”

Really, this kind of thinking makes an assumption that life is supposed to look like this:

It’s ladder-like living where we keep moving forward and don’t look back. One rung after another after another, somehow expected to forget what’s behind us and keep pressing forward to what’s ahead. With enough faith, forgiveness, prayer, and fortitude, we’ll keep rising higher and higher and getting better and better. It’s formulaic and if you just do the right things, the right things will come together.

Yeah, it didn’t work so well for me. As much as I secretly long for “linear” my life was anything but. In fact, my life has always felt a lot more like this:

Look familiar?

About 16 years ago I heard a very wise woman named Jan Frank speak at a women’s retreat. I have no idea what she’s doing these days, but I will always remember this imagery. She shared that even though we long for life to be linear, and to be healed quickly from things in the past or negative messages about ourselves, it just doesn’t work that way. Rather, over the course of our lives we will continually hit our “stuff” over and over again, but each time at a new place.

The model she shared looked like this:

The spiral is bringing me hope right now. Sometimes longing and hoping and wishing and begging for life to be linear can be so frustrating. I don’t want to still be saddled with the same messages I have struggled with for years. The ones that all-roads-lead-to for me are “I’m not enough” and “I’m really on my own.” As much healing work as God has done with them, as much as I know they are not true, as much as I can put them in their proper place, they still show up in my heart and my head and relationships. Meanwhile, I keep consciously and unconsciously expecting them to be done, in the past, and happily moving up the next rung of the ladder.

But I am reminded, yet again, as this new year begins that life is so not linear. It never was and it never will be. I am going to hit my woundedness again, and again, and again over the course of my life, but each time at a little different place. Instead of expecting the messes to be gone and being angry at myself and God for not taking care of it as quickly as I’d like, I am learning to lean into God’s ongoing transformation in my life. I will continually bump into these core messages, especially during times of trial and challenge, and each time God will work to heal and restore yet another layer that needs tending to.

Linear expectations of ourselves, of God, of other people tend to lead to shame, self-hatred, and anger. I think a lot of our church experiences have subtly and directly taught us that linear living was possible. In this model, we always fall short and end up feeling bad about ourselves. It eventually leads to hopelessness.

Thinking that life is just a chaotic, crazy roller coaster ride with no rhyme or reason to it isn’t very hopeful, either.

Accepting the spiral-ness of life leads to freedom, hope, and peace. It lets God off the hook and helps us notice “Yep, there it is again, rearing its ugly little head, trying to teach me something” instead of being royally ticked that we’re still struggling. This infuses me with hope.

Hope that I’m not a total screw-up.
Hope that there’s a bigger story unfolding.
Hope that God is always at work, transforming, rebuilding, renewing, restoring.
No matter how many times I hit the same stuff.

Hope is remembering that every time I bump up against my weaknesses and painful parts of my story, it is at a new place, there to teach me something really good about what it means to be human in need of God’s help and hope in a messy, broken world.

Yeah, life is not linear. Never was and never will be.

* * * * *

more hope here:

dreaming & making what could be, be.

Posted on Jan 16, 2012 in church stuff, dreams, equality, incarnational, the refuge | 11 comments

in honor of martin luther king, jr. day, i thought i would post a little excerpt about dreams from my book, down we go: living into the wild ways of Jesus. it was originally inspired by a post i wrote in 2007 for the refuge blog called “we have a dream”; then i modified it in 2009 for communitas collective & shared a re-dux in 2010 in honor of MLK day two years ago. last year, when i was writing the book, it went through another revision. each time i read it i am reminded that part of making what could be, be begins with dreaming.

however, the kingdom isn’t going to just drop out of the sky. we are going to have to be active participants in creating it. it is hard. it is uphill. it is against the grain. but it’s possible. and what Jesus challenges us to as his followers.

so here you go, some of my own little church-faith-life dreams, capital letters and all, from pages 85-87:

Making What Could Be, Be.

As a dreamer, I like to imagine what could be.

Despite some of my cynicism about church systems, I am still an idealist. Change is possible; otherwise I would have given up a long time ago. I am still foolish enough to think that our wild “God dreams” are possible. I think when Jesus said “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), he meant that the Kingdom was possible now. I also know it’s possible because I see it every day in small and beautiful ways. I see the marginalized, forgotten, neglected and abused finding love and hope through healing community.

For a lot of us, it’s hard to dream. Almost every time I challenge people to dream it stirs up fear and trouble. We’ve hoped before and had many of our dreams dashed, mocked and called unrealistic or impractical. Many have tried to make their dreams a reality in systems that rejected them, and they’ve lost a lot of hope. The thought of opening hearts back up again is too scary. Others are in the midst of living out dreams and are finding how hard they can sometimes be. Often we can think of all the reasons our dreams won’t work, so why even try?

But here’s why I think we should try. These Kingdom ways aren’t supposed to be a pipe dream, or an elusive, unrealistic and unobtainable idea that we know will never happen. Jesus’ ways of upside down living require imagination and hope. They require crazy people willing to live out what’s embedded deep inside their hearts, regardless of the cost. They require courageous women and men who risk their money, time and pride to go against the flow of the powerful status quo and create little pockets of love that reflect Jesus, rather than the world. They require humble disciples, followers of Christ, who try as best they can to heal the sick, feed the hungry, care for the poor, love the unlovely, and pass on hope in places where there is none. Most of all, these Kingdom ways require people with eyes to see more beauty and hope in the often ugly, messy, downward journey than on the predictable, comfortable upwardly mobile path.

The other night I was with some Refuge friends at our house talking about dreaming. Even though I want people to dream big, I also want people to dream small. To value simple ways we can move toward more of Christ’s love, life and hope in this world. I shared with my friends how many years ago I dreamed of the kind of community I am now part of—one that was inclusive, authentic and healing, and valued generosity, equality and the practice of love, above all. In my dreams, it looked completely different. Trust me, it was a lot prettier, easier, bigger and brighter. Yet, even though my original picture was different, the flesh and bones of what I had hoped for has come true. I’m experiencing it in real life. I am grateful but also not afraid to keep dreaming for more. I want others to have a chance to taste and see, too.

So I keep dreaming, trying to play my small part in the bigger story.

When I stop and allow myself to really imagine, I dream that we’d be people who took Jesus’ words seriously. We can’t just talk about it, but we actually have to be forgiving, loving, sacrificing and humble. I hope we are people willing to give away our stuff, care for the widows and orphans, die to ourselves, hug lepers, love our neighbors, lay down power and make peace with our enemies.

I dream that all people would feel valued, regardless of our differences. I hope we become people who refuse to let color, socioeconomics, gender, theologies, shapes, sizes, or social abilities get in the way of seeing the image of God and respecting each other’s worth, value and contribution to this world. I hope we will continue to find ways for women, men, white, brown, poor and rich to work equally and fully alongside one other as brothers, sisters, leaders and friends.

I dream that the divide between “us and them” will continue to crumble.

I dream that Christ-followers will form into an underground army of advocates, that we will stand with the marginalized, oppressed, poor and unlovely, and will risk our pride, position and power so that someone with none could get a little.

I dream that damage from the past and present will not paralyze us from living out who God made us to be; instead, we’d use our story to help another person.

I dream a whole bunch of us will find ways to create little pockets of love in places that desperately need them so that we will be known by the world as “those crazy people who never give up on the hurting, the lost, the oppressed and the outcasts.”

Never be afraid to dream.

these are some of mine. what are some of your dreams, no matter how big or small?