Posts by kathyescobar

it’s a helluva lot of people being influenced

Posted on Jan 13, 2012 in church stuff, crazy making, equality, ex good christian women | 33 comments

it’s a helluva lot of people being influenced

when it comes to church, i firmly believe that the “best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.”  at the same time, i think it’s sometimes worth calling out its inconsistencies when it comes to the so-contrary-to-the-non-oppressive-ways-of-Jesus as a reminder and to gain resolve & clarity on why we feel so passionate about change.

yes, i recognize “the church” is a flawed system made up of imperfect human beings.

it also has an incredible ability to influence people.  it possesses a wild amount of power to sway us certain directions.  many often believe lock, stock & barrel what leaders say from the pulpit, TV screens, books, and most any other medium where someone is “teaching”.  we assume the ones talking must know what they are talking about and just go with it.

their charisma is intoxicating.  their clarity and certainty is comforting.

when it comes to issues of equality and inequality, this means a helluva lot of people are being influenced to believe in complementarian theology and practice.  so many sit in the pews and nod their head when they hear about biblical manhood & womanhood and how men just need to step up and be the head of their households and women just need to support them properly. book after book gets written about this topic; the truth is that on the whole–the ones that sell like hotcakes–are those that adapt this hierarchical theology to contemporary culture in a slick, inviting way.  don’t even get me started on mark driscoll’s new book & ed young’s new gimmick (i couldn’t bring myself to include the links).

but like it or not, people are listening. these guys are strong, clear, certain, charismatic communicators.  and thousands and thousands and thousands of men & women are following them.

they are influencing a helluva lot of people.

when i was on a megachurch staff years ago we pulled together a really challenging premarital workshop that was egalitarian & honest & real.  we tried not just to talk about budgets and the number of kids each person wanted.  we shared from ephesians 5:21 (submit to one another out of reverence for Christ), the part of the passage no one ever starts with. i remember all those sweet young couples in there going “huh, i’ve never heard this before.” there were a lot of other things we explored together, but the point is this–the message was new and liberating.  i am still proud that even for a short season we offered another angle.

a chunk of months after i left the staff i saw the premarital workshop being advertised again for the next round of soon-to-be-marrieds.  the wording, the content, and the leadership had completely changed and the new focus was on exploring “biblical manhood & womanhood” and “God’s given roles for marriage.”

we all know what that means.  yeah, it doesn’t go down too good for the women. or the men either, actually.

it broke my heart, but i wasn’t surprised. now, many years later, i feel sad when i think of the thousands of people being influenced by this usually subtle & sometimes direct teaching.  not only in premarital workshops but in the daily grind of church culture where men are in charge, women are serving their butts off, and the power differentials Jesus tried to knock down continue to get perpetuated.   mega-churches influence thousands of people.  add the smaller churches who espouse the same theology and all of the books & seminars & bible studies being written and sold by people with power, and it multiplies exponentially.

it’s a helluva lot of people being influenced.

i’m sad for all the awesome women who are sincere and want to do the right thing before God and will read all kinds of books & go to all kinds of groups to learn to be a good christian women and always come up short.  i know the feeling.

i’m also sad for all those men who will never be able to lead strong enough to be valid christian men and for all the ways they lose out on a strong and equal teammate.

mostly i’m just sad that many people don’t know that there are other options and ways to view the scriptures.  i do not know one mega-church that actually teaches egalitarian marriage. i am sure they exist, but i believe they are very rare.  many will say “we value women” and “we believe in equality.”  but the truth is that deeply embedded in the cultural norms, teaching, and ethos of their bodies is a particular way of interpreting biblical roles for men and women that continually keeps women underneath men instead of in equal, free relationship with each other.

our best hope is to continue to be the change we want to see.

we can create smaller missional communities that teach a better way.  we can play our part in restoring sexual brokenness and being people of change and hope.  we can encourage women to lead more freely. we can model the beauty of equal marriage.  we can blog our hearts out about equality and justice.  we can learn how to bravely practice cross-gender friendships and write challenging pot-stirring books.  all of these things are helping turn the tide, and that is beautiful.  i may be a bit more skeptical than some, but i do believe major shifts are happening, and that’s always how we get to a new place. i think it can happen faster if more brave leaders use their power, influence, and charisma to directly influence change.

there will always be those who hold deeply to their interpretation of the scriptures that support male headship.  i respect that.  but there is a far wider population who only believe it because that is what their pastors, leaders, books, radio & TV shows, and podcasts tell them to believe.  so many have never looked at it from another angle because no one in power has showed them another angle.

God, whether we influence a small amount of people or a lot of people, help us be brave and use our power & voices & lives to show another angle from which we can serve you and others better and actively participate in turning the tide.   

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let go or be dragged

Posted on Jan 10, 2012 in ex good christian women, healing, mommydom, relationships | 21 comments

let go or be dragged

i ran across this american proverb a while back & then a dear friend gave it to me on a magnet for christmas:  “let go or be dragged.”

it is so appropriate in more ways than one, and now i see it first thing every morning when i get creamer for my coffee.

i need the reminder.

as a parent, as a leader, as a friend, as someone healing from woundedness, one of the greatest gifts we can learn is the art of “letting go”.  letting go doesn’t mean giving up.  it doesn’t mean not caring.  it doesn’t mean not being engaged or connected.  but it does mean taking our grip off of things so tightly.

it means learning how to be less codependent.

it means trusting God is at work in ways we can’t see.

it means respecting our limitations.

it means practicing becoming better human beings.

it means being very aware of how much power we give to things in the past or the present that we have absolutely no control of.

when i think of church woundedness, “let go or be dragged” comes to mind.  when i was hanging on so tightly to the past, i was the one suffering. i was the one pissed off. i was the one in misery.  the people & systems who hurt me were perfectly fine. they had moved on but i couldn’t seem to. i was being dragged around by them even though they weren’t even doing the dragging!

when i think of parenting teens, it is also oh-so-appropriate.  i personally think parenting is one of the trickiest spiritual & personal formation opportunities in our lives. it is butt-kicking sometimes, just how easy it is to get hooked in to unhealthy, nutty dynamics as a parent.  there are times when i am trying so hard not to get sucked in and next thing i know, boom, i’m being dragged all kinds of places i never intended to go.

when i think of leadership, in whatever shape or form some of us might find ourselves in, this thought is a helpful guide.  the struggle with people-pleasing is real for many of us, even if we don’t want to admit it.  we care when people criticize.  we take things more personally than we should.  we can’t stand it when people disapprove or disagree.  one of the biggest learnings of 2011 for me was practicing the art of letting go as a leader.  of realizing that there are so many things beyond my control and i have to trust God & people & the bigger story instead of operating out of a place of desperation or fear.

when i think of journeying with people in the midst of hard stuff, this is also critical.  learning what’s our responsibility and what’s another person’s is really difficult when a lot of pain & struggle is involved.  gaining greater understanding of our responsibilities & also limitations is a skill that requires God’s tangible help and active-spirit-at-work-showing-us-the-way.

so this year i am going to keep practicing what it means to let go.  to take my white-knuckled-grip off-of-all-kinds-of-things-that-i-can’t-really-control-anyway-even-though-i-think-i-can.  to stay engaged & present & “in” without getting yanked and dragged into all kinds of places i don’t need to go.

what about you? what do you need to let go of this year?

 

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the catch-up list

Posted on Jan 7, 2012 in church stuff, down we go, dreams, healing, incarnational, injustice, women in ministry | 1 comment

the catch-up list

wednesday my four youngest kids went back to school after a great winter break.  yesterday i dropped my oldest son off at the airport and sent him back to college on the east coast.  now it’s catch up time!  i have all kinds of posts swirling around in my head and  january is going to be wrap-up-what-i-started month.  here are a few things i wanted to share before i dive back into real life next week:

  • one word – i decided to participate in this for 2012.  in the past i’ve had five and end up never remembering any of them!  here’s a post i wrote for the refuge blog that has some ideas if you haven’t already thought of one yet.  my 2012 word is:  focus.  oh yeah, that’s the right word.
  • honoring doubt – my monthly contribution to sheloves magazine is on one of my favorite topics from down we go: honoring doubt. i hope we can keep creating safe spaces to honor doubt.
  • convergence – i couldn’t go last year because of a family trip but am planning on being there this year, march 2-4 in portland. this year’s theme is:  staying power–presence & possibility as leaders.  if you haven’t been before, it’s a really wonderful gathering of strong & passionate women.
  • synchroblog – we are starting off 2012 with a new teammate  & a survey to help gather ideas for the upcoming year.  if you are a blogger and want to be challenged to write on a variety of topics at the same time as other bloggers, all are welcome.
  • with communities - my awesome friend john martinez created a log-in-so-there’s-greater-safety-and-connection site for incarnational community cultivators who could use some support, input, encouragement, and connection with other people who believe that prepositions matter and are trying crazy stuff, too. check it out here.
  • walking wounded: hope for those hurt by the church – my friend phyllis mathis & i are hosting a 4 week online group for those of you out there who are painfully disillusioned by a faith or church experience.  our october 2011 gathering in denver was great for those who could pull it off, but this is a chance for others to participate, too.  because of some schedule conflicts, the date got moved to february 6th 2012.  go to live it to the full to register & for all the details.  if you or someone you know could use some healing, hope, laughter, and intention on getting unstuck, we’d love to have you join us.  this little video is sort of serious (i promise we’ll laugh and have fun, too) but gives an idea of what we are doing.  thanks for passing it on to friends who want to save some money on therapy and get some traction on healing in this new year.

i hope your year is getting off to a good start. i am looking forward to what’s ahead! peace, kathy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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happy 4th birthday, little blog.

Posted on Dec 31, 2011 in just because i thought it was fun, the carnival in my head | 11 comments

happy 4th birthday, little blog.

4 years ago today  12.31.07, i was holed up in my house over christmas vacation starting this blog & joining facebook for the first time.  wow, did those 4 years go fast.  i am so thankful for the relationships i’ve made here, many of you i’ve now had the privilege to meet in real life, too, and i can’t say enough how grateful i am for all i continue to learn out here.  when i first started blogging i made a commitment to blog once a week for one year to see what happens.  that evolved into two years, then three years, and now it’s time to re-evaluate for a fourth year.  every time i wonder–should i keep it going or call it a day?

blogging is an extremely vulnerable exercise.  so many things can be misconstrued, used against you, misinterpreted.  i can’t tell you the number of times the minute i hit “publish” i have felt panic.  but i have also learned something really important through this discipline–it doesn’t really matter.   it’s just too much brain damage to think through that all of the time.  the much more important thing–and why i started this blog in the first place–was to practice staying current and freely sharing (from my heart not my head) my experience, struggles, passions, what-i-keep-learning, and dreams about life & church & relationships without editing all the time.

i hope to continue in 2012, at least as far as i can tell right now.  i do know that i’m pretty buried with day-to-day life at the refuge, which is more important than this blog & pretty hard to juggle along with my pile of kids!  but i will just keep doing what i can do and leave it at that.   i don’t have any big commitments here other than to actually wrap up some of the things i-had-hoped-to-post-in-2011-but-never-got-around to-because-it’s-always-so-nutty-here,  like the 8 ways to shrink a church series, a few more view from the margins interviews, and some stuff that got stirred up at our walking wounded weekend (i would love to have you join us for a 4 week online class starting the first week in february, too, if you are hurting & on the outs and would like to feel less stuck–the date changed because of some scheduling things on our end).  i want to keep exploring the ideas in down we go, too, and in the first part of 2012 really would like to hear more what some of it has stirred up in your practices.  well, that’s plenty to keep me busy.

if there’s anything specific you’d like to process in this upcoming year, let me know! email me or put it in the comments.

meanwhile, here’s a quick round-up of the top 10 posts of 2011 around here:

#1. why sometimes i get sad – my story of getting dumped as a baccalaureate speaker when some conservative pastors found out a female pastor was speaking.  just.plain.weird. yeah, we still have a long way to go on this issue.

#2. yep, i guess i’m a heretic – and yep, none of these things are all that heretical when it comes to being a Jesus follower, in my opinion, but unfortunately a lot of systems have been hijacked by a lot of rules. i guess a lot of you are heretics too!

#3. while the world is crying out for hope, we’re talking about theology – my theory is that we’d much rather talk about theology than actually have to practice it because it’s a lot easier.

#4. cross-gender friendships – men & women can learn to live alongside one another as friends, brothers & sisters.  it just takes courage & practice & God’s help.  in april i’ll be part of a gathering in chicago exploring this topic hosted by my friend dan brennan.

#5. Jesus school: not the most inspiring in town – this is an old post & i think about it all the time, how hard but good it is to be in Jesus school.

#6. rising up from below – sometimes i go a little prophetess.

#7. white privilege, male privilege, straight privilege, economic privilege – it’s good for us to remember how much it exists.  it’s not bad that we have it; the question is how are we going to use it?

#8. pericardiums – love hurts.

#9. loving God in lots of different ways – i am so happy that so many different people in various contexts used this material in groups & churches to explore how we connect with God.  i loved this material & glad it made its way into other people’s hands & hearts.

#10.  a nifty chart for the journey: stages in the life of faith – this post continues to be one of the most popular & i think it’s because this chart really helps us identify where we are on the spiritual journey, especially when we’re going through a lot of shifts, and what “going through the wall” looks like. it’s in down we go, too, in one of my favorite chapters–welcoming pain.

lots of love and peace to all of you. thanks for reading & have a fun new years eve! be safe.

 

 

 

 

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pain relief not pain removal

Posted on Dec 28, 2011 in incarnational, jesus is cool | 16 comments

pain relief not pain removal

*this post is part of the christmas synchroblog centered on Jesus came: did you get what you expected?  i hope you all had a good christmas. ours was sweet & simple & really nice. i’ve been really unplugged all week and have enjoyed the quiet.

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for advent, i wrote a post about hoping to be open: present, humble, vulnerable this christmas season.  when i look back on it now, just over a month later, it makes me laugh.  vulnerable is definitely the right word for the past month; i think i cried every day for a couple of weeks during advent!  one of the hazards of this kind of living is when we risk our hearts, it will sometimes get trampled on.  it’s part of the cost.  and even though i’ve been in this place before and know the feeling, i can’t completely avoid the pain of feeling used and hurt, and doubting this is all worth it.

thankfully, the amazing Jesus-with-skin-on-people-in-my-life helped carry me through.

the past few weeks have felt a little more sane, a little more balanced, a little more clear.  but at the same time, just as relief came, a new overwhelming feeling arose–the amount of needs in every direction.  it’s nothing new, really, but maybe in my “open, present, vulnerable” season i felt it more.  or maybe it’s because the holidays bring extra pain & struggle & need to the surface. the degree of poverty & pain & loneliness all around was just extra intense and caused me to question so many things. i found myself asking:

“does what we do even matter?”

“why even bother when the systems around everyone are so deeply grooved toward inequity and oppression?”

 ”maybe getting an inspiration high really will sustain people more than the little bit of tangible love we are able to pass on?” 

“why in the %(#&!^!*!(! do people keep giving their money to church buildings when their money could help exponentially with basics  like beds & dressers & gas & food & warm clothes to families who really need it?”

“God, you’ve got some people who really, really need hope right now.  can you please help?”

the last one is the one that lingered.  and i was reminded of what teresa of avila said:

“Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

even though Jesus came into the world as a human and knows our pain and suffering and promised us life would be hard & harsh but that in him, we could have hope & joy & peace & love in the midst, i often forget.

i think the trouble is i actually long for pain removal.  the absence of pain. the abracadabra kind of pain removal that some parts of my faith experience once promised.  pray harder, hope more, surrender more, and it will be “gone”.  i know better by now, i really do, but still, if i’m really honest, i keep wanting (and in weird crazy ways still expecting) pain removal.

what i got instead was a reminder that hope this side of heaven is about pain relief.

maybe that’s a piece of what the incarnation is about.  pain relief.

we can’t remove pain.  God doesn’t seem to remove pain, either.  in fact, he chose to enter directly into it to provide relief in the midst.  hope, healing, love, joy, mercy, peace.

and it most always seems to come through a weird combination of flesh & spirit.  

hope, mercy, and love don’t drop out of the sky.  they usually come from experience.  from interactions.  from real in-the-flesh relationships.  from presents that get delivered even though we know they won’t make one bit of difference next month.  from a hug that might be the only human touch someone receives all week.  from a kind word when harsh ones are usually the only ones heard.  from a hot meal around a messy kitchen table.  from simple hellos to long, drawn-out conversations about deep wounds.  from eyes meeting eyes and hearts meeting hearts.

these little things provide pain relief.

they won’t take away reality.  they won’t change systems that will keep working against people.  they won’t pay the bills next month.  they won’t immediately mend a broken heart or get someone a job or heal a chronic illness or reconcile a failed marriage.

but they will provide some pain relief, a cup of cold water, a healing balm, a sweet fragrance.

on christmas eve when we were singing o holy night (by far my favorite carol), i felt these words stir my soul:

“truly he taught us to love one another, his law is love and his gospel is peace. chains he shall break, for the slave is our brother. and in his name all oppression shall cease.”

i have been thinking of this since christmas eve.  i keep wanting big oppression to cease. i keep wanting all the chains to break that keep people stuck. i keep wanting freedom & comfort my way.  really, i keep wanting pain removal.

but i was reminded this season, yet again and again, how the small things make a difference.  that our hands and feet and hearts and eyes and ears matter.  that when we intersect with each other in love, chains break and oppression ceases, if even for that moment.  that Jesus is alive & well & moving & healing & transforming & revealing love in us and through us and with us. 

yeah, in all kinds of ways, i got some pain relief this christmas. thank you, God. i hope i was able to pass some on, too.

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other bloggers writing on the same topic, enjoy:

 

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