Posts by kathyescobar
power is not like pie.
friday night my amazing & wise & passionate friend pam hogeweide was at the refuge for a really fun event centered on her book unladylike: resisting the injustice of inequality in the church. a listening party, it was a chance for women & men to share stories and process some of these tough issues of the oppression of women in the church. it was an amazing night & stirred up all kinds of loveliness. over the next few weeks i’ll try to write a few things that jumped out at me from what pam & others shared throughout the evening. pam didn’t specifically share this content, but a comment someone offered made me think of it, so i’ll start with this:
it’s all about power.
patriarchy in the church, in the world, isn’t just about male-centered leadership in our church system. it’s about who’s got the power because in our human-brains-who-have-to-bent-on-making-it-all-make-sense, it must be clear.
and making it clear means that we have to make it finite.
we think of it like a limited resource.
we think of it as being a certain size.
we think of it like a pie, with only so many pieces to slice up.
we think that when someone gets more power, that means someone else has to get less.
this is why when we think of men and women leading alongside each other, or any other underrepresented group stepping into greater leadership in some way, shape, or form, we default to needing to step aside to make room for others. we default to leaving the table so that others can sit at it. we default to silencing our voices so that others can use theirs.
some of that is true–when moving toward greater equality those with power will have to make some shifts to allow others to step into theirs. but if we’re not careful, we will end up in the same place we were before, where power shifts to a new group of people and the others are silenced and feel resentment and hurt.
in the kingdom of God, there’s another possibility.
power is not like pie at all.
instead, it’s more like loaves & fishes.
there’s this wild and beautiful and miraculous thing that can happen when we share it together. it multiplies. and multiplies.
on our little wacky refuge team, i have seen this in action. the more we are all more fully present, alive, engaged in who we are–male, female, in all our strengths in all our weaknesses–the more free we are, the more alive we are, the more the kingdom of God is reflected in community together. it’s been hard over the years because of a misperception of power as pie. if we live with the idea that there are only so many slices, then someone’s going to go hungry.
it doesn’t have to be that way. we need to re-think power. and respect that power diffusion doesn’t limit power but increases it.
the ways of God are not the ways of this world. that’s much of our problem. we have limited God. and we’ve shortchanged each other. our default to only living under or over another instead of alongside has jacked with our hope. we have adopted models of leadership in our churches that don’t require faith or relationship. we have adopted models of living together in community that are based on fear . we have adopted a spirit of scarcity instead of abundance.
and our ways have caused us to become controlling.
underneath control is fear.
systems of patriarchy are built on deeply grooved systems of fear and a belief that power is like pie, with only so much to go around.
Jesus came to break down these systems of fear & control & self-protection and liberate us all.
i completely understand that the world needs organizations where power must be limited, defined, and protected. that’s how it goes when there is work to be done and money to be made.
but the church should be different.
it should not reflect the power structures of the world. it should not be built on a spirit of fear and control but on a spirit of love and relationship and equality.
yes, we come with a bunch of different abilities and disabilities, and we are not all the same. it’s easy for us to say “it’s not possible”, that power issues are too complex and we’re in too deep to ever change it. but i’m one of those nutty people who is crazy enough to believe it’s possible.
i am seeing what can happen when we stop seeing power as pie and start trusting God to multiply what we’ve got and feed us all. when we stop seeing only so many seats at the table and keep adding in leaves. when we create spaces for men & women, black & white, gay & straight, rich & poor, to live alongside each other with equal value. when we empower each other in any way we can, respecting that we can’t expect everyone to be “fully alive” at the same time but what we can do is fan whatever life we can into flame.
yeah, in the world, power is like pie.
but in the kingdom of God, it’s much more like loaves and fishes, where all may eat and no one has to go hungry.
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be yourself, everyone else is taken.
* some of you have already read this post; it was a guest post for lisa colon delay’s blog series on spiritual guidance for bloggers in april. i wanted to post it here in its entirety for my archives. i know a lot of you might not blog, but i think we can easily replace “blogging” with “anything-we-are-trying-to-do-that-is-hard-for-us-to-feel-free-in”. that could be our faith or a vocation or a new passion or a relationship or a whole host of other things. the same principles apply. i am more convinced than ever that learning to be comfortable in our own skin is the work of our lives. have a great weekend!
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“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken” – Oscar Wilde
I first discovered what a “blog” was in 2006, when we planted The Refuge, the wild little faith community I am part of. Honestly, I had never heard the word before; I had been immersed in a hectic ministry role that was very insulated from the wider church conversation and I just wasn’t online. This transition from mega-church to small-church-plant was a messy one for me. I was in a lot of pain from my experience, so I reached out online after stumbling across some blogs while searching for church website ideas. I felt an instant and immediate sense of relief when I discovered I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t alone in some of my feelings. I found others with similar stories & similar church dreams.
The men and women I read were honest, bold, raw, and pure.
They weren’t selling anything, trying to push their agenda, or attempting to make-people-come-over-to-their-way-of-thinking.
Rather, they just told their stories. Shared their experiences. Responded to other people’s comments with simple kindness and respect. And above all, they remained honest about what they were wrestling with and learning along the way.
Reading their blogs gave me hope.
They inspired me.
They pointed me toward God (even when they were wrestling with God).
They challenged me to think.
January 1, 2008, I started my own blog and dedicated myself to two simple commitments:
1. Write as honestly and purely as I could without editing or trying to worry about what other people might think.
2. Write once a week for one year.
It’s been a wild ride, and I have learned so much through the process over the past 4 years.
Out of everything, I think blogging has helped me learn to become more comfortable in my own skin, with my own voice, with who I am.
I think that is a very holy and sacred experience on our spiritual journey–learning to find safety and security in who we really are.
Not who someone else is.
Not who we think we should be.
But in who we are.
I am someone who has always struggled with the message that I wasn’t enough somehow–not spiritual enough, not quiet enough, not domestic enough, not skinny enough, not organized enough, not-whatever-enough.
Blogging definitely intersected with this message, initially making it even worse.
In the first few years of my blog, I had so much internal anxiety about not being good enough, funny enough, theological enough, wise enough, or concise enough. Whatever “enough” it was, I wasn’t.
But something began to shift in the past several years as I continued to find my voice and become more comfortable in my own skin out here.
I began to realize that the world doesn’t need another _________ or __________ or __________ (Insert name of any bloggers you are jealous of, and my guess is they are wrestling with similar feelings and go a little psycho about the same insecurities).
What’s missing is me.
Not because without me the world would stop spinning or the blogosphere would come to a screeching halt.
But because everyone else is taken.
I think God wants us to learn how to become comfortable in our own skin, to be who-we-are, and not try to become someone else.
Blogging is a great place to practice this.
Making peace with who-we-are requires the ongoing-work-of-the-Holy-Spirit. I doubt and question it all of the time. I obsess before I hit “publish” and freak out about not being more like ______ or _______ (insert name of other blogger also obsessing about the same thing).
I need God’s help to remind me: “Um, Kathy, just so you know, in the big scheme of things, it’s just a blog post. And one other thing: it’s a great place to practice just being you–with all your strengths & all your weaknesses. Just you.”
And then I hit “publish” and take a deep breath and am reminded yet again, this is what transformation looks and feels like.
This is how we get more comfortable in our own skin. This is how we learn to offer ourselves grace. This is how we become “us” and not someone else.
Yikes, it’s hard to learn! But blogging is a great spiritual practice that can help integrate this important truth into deep places in our hearts.
Yeah, my spiritual guidance for all us bloggers is this: Be ourselves. Everyone else is taken.
Read Moreof logs and stones
“let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” john 8:7
“why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” luke 6:41
“do to others as you would have them do to you.” luke 6:31
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i have been reflecting a lot about these words from Jesus this week in light of our conversation about equality.
i think they are possibly the least-applied-passages-that-could-actually-change-the-church in the Bible.
honestly, it’s a little comical, how much time and energy has been spent picking apart passages about homosexuality, of which there are few, and women in leadership in church, of which they are even fewer. book after book and blog after blog have been written about those ones, that’s for sure.
i wonder how come we prefer those to Jesus’ powerful words in the sermon on the mount? how we’d much rather talk about who’s right & who’s wrong than live out the beatitudes? how we’d much rather spend time & energy defending what’s a sin and what’s not a sin than feeding the hungry or loving the lonely?
umm, i’m pretty sure of that answer (and i’m not certain of much): it’s a helluva lot easier.
laying down stones, worrying about our own logs & treating others how we long to be treated is some seriously heavy lifting. one of the things i love the most about the 12 steps & recovery is that people are focused on our own stuff, not someone else’s. one of the most important rules of the process is to stick with our own struggles, our own hopes, our own work and do what we can to stay on our side of the street as best we can.
it’s really quite beautiful. and freeing.
and really hard to do in human skin that loves to control.
control is a way to protect ourselves, to distract ourselves from the bigger work of looking at our own painful patterns that keep robbing us of life, of love.
but offering ourselves in humility is what Jesus told us we needed to do–to worry about our own logs instead of anyone else’s. to worry about the inside of our cups not the outside. to offer mercy instead of sacrifices to satisfy the law. to love our neighbor instead of judge our neighbor.
my theory is we’d much rather talk theology and ministry theory than be spiritually transformed ourselves. it’s a great distraction.
spiritual and personal transformation is painful. loving our neighbor is easier said than done. loving God & ourselves, sometimes even harder. reading blogs & defending positions is a piece of cake. looking at the logs in our own eyes–pride & control & ego & self-protection & a whole-bunch-of-other-character-defects–isn’t nearly as fun as defending a couple of Bible verses to the bitter end.
i also wonder for all who love using the Bible in every conversation, how come not much time is spent on passages that challenge us on greed? or power and control? or comfort and pride? or sacrifical love? or humility?
those ones aren’t nearly as fun to rattle on about because they are seriously convicting in our own lives, not just the lives of others.
i get the irony here of me being a hypocrite, of pointing the finger, of throwing stones in a blog post but that’s about not doing that. and i guess in this moment i would say “yep, i often am”; but i’m being convicted, too.
i can’t help but think that the world is crying out for hope while we’re talking about theology.
people are starving while we’re feeding on blog debates.
women & children are being violated while we’re haggling over whether a woman should be called “director” or “pastor.”
refrigerators are empty & electricity is getting turned off for people while we’re giving money to pay for flat screen TV’s.
if we layed down our stones and worried about the sin in our own lives, i have a feeling we’d be having radically different conversations out here.
if we tended to the forest in our own eye and didn’t give the speck in our brother’s another glance, i have a feeling we’d be plenty busy.
i think Jesus told us these important words for a reason. he knew we’d much rather throw stones & worry about others’ specks than be radically transformed.
the church has so much it can learn from the 12 steps and the incredible wisdom of the beatitudes. they embody an attitude of humility & mercy & meekness & purity of heart instead of an attitude of pride & judgment & control & division & finger pointing.
they help us lay down our stones.
they help us focus on our own logs.
they help us let go of needing to be in control or be “right.”
they help us be set free.
free to follow Jesus instead of defend Jesus.
free to learn instead of have all the answers.
free to listen instead of talk.
free to love instead of hate.
God, help us lay down our stones & worry about our own big ol’ logs so we–your body here on earth–can be wonderfully transformed.
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love’s the thread & it’s stronger than we think
i love the book of colossians; i’ve shared here before that when my kids were little we had the NIV kids club cassette tapes (yes, we’re old) and i can pretty much sing all of chapter 3. each of these verses is a separate song:
“13 – therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselveswith compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 14 – bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. forgive as the Lord forgave you. 15 - and over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”
in the wild and crazy conversation last week about equality, the verse 15 song came to mind–“over all these virtues put on love, which binds them together in perfect unity.”
my friend & copastor at the refuge, karl wheeler (who just started a new blog–check it out because it’s going to rock, details below), often says that we mistake unity for uniformity. this is so true! we think that when we are all on the same page, we have unity. but that not true unity; instead, it’s homogeneity that was never the idea. the kingdom of God is about holding our differences in love.
real unity is honoring our differences and being bound together by love.
it’s the virtue that binds us all together.
one of the things i most deeply respect about life in our little wild refuge community is that we do not agree on everything. we don’t have a statement of faith that automatically discerns who believes what (you can read what we do have written down; it’s one of my most favorite things we’ve ever written) and weeds people out. we don’t espouse a “here’s what we are sure God says about this or that” or a membership class that people need to sign in on before they can be part. when it comes to some of these tough issues of our faith, we are all over the map, with far left & far right and everything in between all tangled up together.
it’s honestly one of the prettiest things i’ve ever seen.
rich & poor alongside, even though life is so different from each other. educated & uneducated alongside, because people are people no matter how much schoolin’ we’ve had. liberal & conservative alongside, because love supersedes political viewpoints. gay & straight alongside, even with different views theologically. married & single alongside, because we need each other desperately. men & women alongside, because friendship is a way to practice & learn the ways of love.
we don’t see each other through any of those labels. we see each other as human beings, created in God’s image, all with the most important thing in common–a desire to love & be loved.
when it comes to last week’s conversation, i want to highlight an important point about our life together. our gay friends aren’t here making sure everyone agrees with them & our straight friends with a more scriptural conservative bent aren’t trying to prove anything. the same is true about any of our other differences. the reason this works is because love is the thread that binds us all together. as a leader in this community, that’s what we work our asses off to try to cultivate: a culture of safety (not of comfort but of real safety in a loving, challenging christian community).
and in a true culture of safety, we can disagree.
in fact, disagreeing is good. when we don’t allow room for seeing things differently then we are in danger of creating more pockets of conformity and not living humbly in the tension of being uncomfortable. our discomfort & differences force us to rely on God’s spirit to help us let go & trust & learn & wait and love more freely.
the world doesn’t need more pockets of conformity. there are plenty of those to go around.
what we need are more brave expressions of little pockets of love & freedom, where Christ’s restoration of human dignity and value is at the center despite our differences. where humility is practiced in a very active way. where submission, one to another and not just one-way-that-works-for-those-with-the-most-power, is embedded into the fabric of life together.
but even though i think the refuge is awfully pretty (it’s ugly to the un-Jesus-trained eye, though, i promise), it is also a very tricky space to hold.
some have left over time, frustrated that we hold the tension between differing views on the Bible & theology. they want us to draw lines in the sand and make things clearer. some get annoyed at having to make friends with people who aren’t like them. others really want better music & teaching & comfier chairs & something a little more predictable.
we refuse.
because we think there’s much more to learn about the ways of Love through our differences and discomfort than through our we-all-think-and-believe-the-same-thing and church-is-about-being-comfortable default.
my hope for the movement in the body of Christ and community cultivation is not that we sway everyone over to a new side on any of these issues and then all camp out together. that would be way too easy (and is what i fear these hot topics will tempt people to do). my hope is that we find a way to be together in our differences. to create a culture of true safety that bravely lets go of telling-others-what-to-believe-with-utter-certainty-on-one-biblical-interpretation and instead wrestling with these hard realities of life together. to see God’s image in each other and have that be enough to keep us united even when we might see the scriptures or life or a whole host of things different from each other.
love’s the thread that binds us all together in perfect unity.
it’s stronger than we think.
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ps: karl’s blog is called church dreamer. check out the about page & his first blog post, Jesus hates flatscreens. oh yeah, it’s going to be fun.
unless we’re all free, none of us are free.
“freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.“
- martin luther king, jr.
most of you know i’m a nut case for equality. you hear me talking a lot about gender equality but that’s just because it’s a critical starting place. when half of the population of the world is thought of as “less than”, we’re in serious trouble. in a church that is supposed to be the free-est, most liberating place in town, we’re in even deeper trouble. christians should be leading the way on equality in absolutely every area, yet we all know that on the whole, we are lagging behind, stuck in white privilege & imbalanced power & segregation and all kinds of things that are not reflective of the kingdom of God Jesus called us to create.
equality isn’t just about gender. it crosses into race, sexual orientation, socioeconomics, and any other ways we are divided that strip people’s dignity.
it’s not a side issue or a pet project equality is a core issue of an active faith and one that as Christ-followers we are called to participate in creating. here, now.
the fight for equal rights has never been a simple one. all over the world, there are wars & battles & movements calling for change. people are sacrificing all kinds of things on behalf of change, even their lives. i believe passionately that we re called to be dignity restorers and champions of equality in every way, shape and form. toni morrison says “the function of our freedom is to free someone else.”
i am supposed to use any freedom i have to help free my brothers & sisters who aren’t free yet.
yeah, unless we’re all free, none of us are free.
this week was a historic week in our country in the movement toward marriage equality. i always say it’s easy to be against equal rights when we have the ones we want. i love that our president stepped out in a big and bold way to advocate for change that’s been a long-time-coming in this country.
it was brave.
i hope it calls all of us to be brave, too.
the reason it’s so risky to stand on behalf of change in a public way is because we’re scared. we’re scared of what other people might think. we are scared we’ll lose our jobs. we are scared we’ll lose our ministries. we are scared we’ll lose others approval. we are scared we’ll be bullied alongside the outcast.
and the truth is that we might.
but it’s worth it.
because unless we’re all free, none of us are free.
galatians 5:13-15 says: “for you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. but don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love. for the whole law can be summed up in this one command: “love your neighbor as yourself.” but if you are always biting and devouring one another, watch out! beware of destroying one another.”
i am so tired of all the destruction, all the ways christians have used the Bible & power & control to separate, divide, and strip others’ dignity.
but i firmly believe the solution is not in looking at how jacked up the system is and spending energy there. it’s fun to rant & rave about it, but the truth is that ranting and raving won’t change anything.
what will change things is when we begin to vote with our feet (and in ballot boxes) and refuse to be part of churches & systems & groups that oppress. period. they aren’t going to get our money or our time or absolutely-anything-anymore and i don’t care how good their music, teaching, or kids program is.
when we risk our reputations and speak out for equality and freedom.
when we actively participate in setting others free. that means creating little pockets of love & freedom where equality is practiced & dignity is restored.
our freedom is all tangled up together. our dignity is all tangled up together. our hope is all tangled up together.
Jesus shows us what love looks like–laying down our life for our friends. this means we will pay a cost on behalf of love. i am reminded of what cornell west says: “justice is what love looks like in public”
it’s time for change. so many are starting to rise up from below. there’s a holy stirring. a hunger and thirst for justice and righteousness. we are done sitting passively in our fear & complacency while our brothers & sisters are marginalized, oppressed, and stripped of their dignity.
the cost to us will be great.
we’ll lose our reputations, jobs, respect, friends, appearances of theological credibility, and a whole-bunch-of-other-things-that-are-worth-losing-on-behalf-of-doing-what’s-right.
so that’s why i’m writing this today. to say strongly and clearly that i stand on behalf of my brothers & sisters and their fight for freedom.
because unless we’re all free, none of us are.
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