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I had my first ever, official media interview last week. It felt major. I mean, I’ve been practicing for this moment since I was seven and figured out that hair brushes were the universal stand-in for microphones. I propped myself in front of the mirror for hours, practicing my Julia Roberts-horse laugh whilst answering questions about my professional goals (to star alongside Christian Slater in Kuffs 2) and giving advice to other little girls about how to make it in the biz (lots of practice and a premature perm). So it caught me off guard to be stumped by a question I’ve thought about for years: “What can the Church do to better address gender in its day-to-day life?”

Earlier in the interview, I had mentioned the upcoming anthology I’m co-editing, Talking Taboo (White Cloud Press, Oct 2013) and how it was hard for many contributors to even admit that sexism is still an issue in our churches. When I told an older colleague some of the subject matter tackled – the challenges of women in leadership, the pressure to be both virginal and sexy, the decision to have or not have kids – she let out a big, melodramatic groan, “Ugh. Still? Those are the same old issues we were talking about when I was your age.”

So it felt passé to say what’s already been said but seldom practiced, that the Church can start addressing gender in the places where it has the most freedom to improvise: in the liturgy, in the sermon, and the life of the congregation.

The point has been made by those more articulate than I that using only masculine language in the liturgy is not just oppressive but inaccurate, especially when so many of us are quick to admit God isn’t male or female. One feminist friend recently shared, “It’s the biggest roadblock to worship.” If liturgy means the work of the people, than why aren’t we making damn sure it represents all of us, each and every blessed time? Just go ahead and change the lyrics to that old hymn already. Write the prayer of confession to include imagery in Scripture oft left-behind. And address what you’re doing with a note in the bulletin to quell the fears of all those folks who’ll think you’ve turned liberal. Tell them you’re trying to be truer to tradition.

It’s already been argued that who is in the pulpit is as important as what is said there. Would you believe that the first time I heard a female pastor mention US Weekly in a sermon illustration I started bawling? This is how rare it is to see and hear myself in the pulpit, whether the pastor is a woman or not. Most Sundays I’m doing the busywork of translation – sports analogies, odes to fatherhood, and militaristic triumphalism are filtered out as I mine for the gem of the Gospel. Sometimes I leave only with dirty diamonds weighing me down. It’s not hard if you’re a man to get a woman’s opinion before you preach, and vice versa. It’s a small step but it can make all the bleary-eyed difference.

Perhaps the one new sentiment I had to offer my interviewer, one that I don’t often hear articulated, is the need to reorganize congregational life so it isn’t split so starkly between things women do together (meet on weekdays mornings to make prayer shawls) and things men do together (gather on weekend mornings for financial seminars). I’m not saying we need to get rid of gender groups altogether, but why can’t men come to knit and women learn how to invest? I even saw one church invite “anyone who identified as a  woman” to its women’s group. You don’t have to make a decision on the morality of those folks who aren’t strictly male or female (and really, few of us are), but you may as well reflect the reality that they already exist in most churches, maybe even yours.

With research coming to light that women are leaving the Church faster than men, I’m at risk of losing some great women of faith in the pews beside me if we don’t start getting a little more creative and a lot more persistent. It’s hard for a feminist to walk into a church. To be fair, we have our own inner work to do. But  I’m not asking anyone to rewrite Scripture. I’m asking that we believe that it breathes new words on us even now.

“I know what it means, and that’s all that matters,” I reasoned like a high school sophomore.  I remember the piece up for critique, a short description of a young, forlorn girl, not unlike the melodramatic actress-in-training I imagined myself to be at that age. And I remember the comments of my 10-grade English teacher, Mr. Kahn, who shared, “It doesn’t matter how clever you think you are if no one gets it.”

I defended myself to him; surely, there was only so much a little thirty-year old man with suspenders and a bow tie could understand about life. Then I pouted in front of my locker ; why, oh why, did everyone else have to be so dense to true talent? And finally I relented and wrote another draft; even if I were brilliantly misunderstood, I was smart enough to know that being misunderstood was like taking a lonely trip through the Heart of Darkness. And getting a B+ for it when you returned.

Now double the age, I realize how precious feedback is for my craft, and character. The trouble is most of us aren’t schooled in giving and receiving feedback, not withstanding a few school projects where you had to grade your classmates without any bias against that goody-two-shoes. Some of us only give it when asked. Others are quick to offer it unsolicited. Some only focus on the positive, while others point out only what can be improved. And then there are those like me who love giving it, why thank you for asking, but are hesitant (okay, cat-in-a-bathtub terrified) to receive it.

Receiving feedback needs to be like sorting the laundry, a metaphor I picked up from the new book from Sherry Surrat and Jenni Catron called Just Lead! (Jossey-Bass, 2013); as you would with whites, colors, and delicates,  so too do you sort other’s feedback into the good, tough, and ugly pile. It is good when I get an email from my boss about a marketing video I made saying, “And the Academy Award for best film editing goes to…!” It was excruciatingly tough when a writing mentor I idolized in graduate school wrote, “Adverbs drain all life from your prose.” And it was just plain rude when a man came up to me after sharing my testimony in church at sixteen and said, “I stopped counting the number of times you said ‘like’.”

Although my laundry was more likely to be thrown in the cold cycle and forgotten for days, something clicked for me a few months ago. While saying goodbye outside of a local coffee shop, a new, more seasoned, writer friend offered to send me his manuscript for a book slated to publish this fall. It arrived in my inbox hours later with the note, “Really would be grateful if you have any thoughts about what needs to change.”

It struck me as a vulnerable move, audacious, and maybe even a bit simple-minded to trust a near stranger to give feedback. I felt the weight of his gift. It took only a few spaztic emails before I had sent out the book proposal I had been working on to friends and colleagues. This seemed mature.

Now, as the comments start to roll in, I’m feeling mostly grateful with a side of embarrassed. But I keep taking the giant risk of looking human and becoming, God-forbid, understood.

I always knew I was a girl, marked from puberty by a cyclical sort of life that set me apart from my male peers. What I hadn’t always realized was that the patterns of my life were also given shape by my whiteness, a whiteness that was often unmarked, unnoticed, unapologetic.

I’ve been floored and hammered into pieces this past year about the inordinate injustices against black men in our penal system. I tore through The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press, 2012), quoting atrocities to my husband at night while my feet warmed under the comforter. Feminism had always felt personal; I could speak out of my wounds. Racism had felt more distant; only recently have I been poking at the wounds of my privilege – fear of chaos, vulnerability, and “the other.”

What better time than Lent to confess our helplessness, and shame, and willful ignorance of a broken system? Below is a startling devotion written by a new friend of mine, Marcia Owen, Executive Director of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham. May it grip you as it did me today, on the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” when those who sought civil rights for blacks were met with billy clubs and tear gas.

—

Fifty years ago Southern white people of Duke admitted six black students. It was a just act and a mighty confession. It was a confession of white privilege created by black indignity and of white wealth created by black poverty. It was the university listening to the heart of God.

In 1963 I was a white, seven year-old girl living in Duke Forest with my parents and brother. Eight years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional my school was all white, except for the janitor. Duke families from all over the world lived in my neighborhood but no American black family was among us.

My family was United Methodist and our exclusively white congregation confessed sin collectively, out loud, every Sunday, with greater guidance during Lent. “I have not loved my neighbor.” “I have not heard, seen, or responded to the suffering of others.” We confessed these generalities knowledgeable of sit-ins, boycotts, and endless evidence of racial discrimination. The adults studied Jeremiah, Romans, and John’s Gospel and still we did not profess to God the sins of our segregation or renounce the profits we gained from our privilege. It was clear to me then that white people feared their crimes against black people more than they feared God.

In this season of Lent the people of Duke have another confession to make and a just action to take. Let us confess that we have not seen, heard or responded to the indignity of punishing blacks for crimes equally committed by whites. The mass incarceration of our black brothers and sisters, primarily for drug offenses, has replaced the enforcement of Jim Crow laws. The “War on Drugs” is being waged in black and poor neighborhoods with the indifference of their white neighbors.  In 2013, let us lament that 82% of Durham prisoners are black and, once released, will be prohibited from working at Duke.

I pray that the people of Duke will once again act justly and transform our prejudice into promise. Like the first six black students admitted to Duke, I pray we will address the needs racism creates in our community and open the doors of employment to six formerly incarcerated individuals whose qualities, gifts, and character will uplift us all.

I pray that we obey the Justice of God’s Love.

(Submitted by Marcia Owen on 2/5/13, and Printed with Permission.)

I want to remember us as we are now, fat full of love.

Because we haven’t always been this way.

It was ten years ago that we met. I joke that I spent our first year of dating trying to break up with you. Not funny in the right kind of way, I would tell my friends, all cheese and no grit. You were annoyingly happy. I thought I was better suited to a poet’s gloom.

When I tried to break up with you, you would cry and I would relent. Okay, okay, we can give it another go. Just please don’t talk so loud or kiss my ear like that.

It was I, wouldn’t you know, that said I thought you were the One. You said, “Thank you,” and I quickly took it back, for the first time feeling like I didn’t have your heart, that your kindness couldn’t be twisted into pity. I should have known you weren’t just a puppy dog trotting behind me, waiting for affection.

You had never said you were in love with someone before. And then you said it. And I freaked. With your ring leaning lopsided on my middle finger, I told our pre-marital counselor that I didn’t know if we wanted the same things; I wanted freedom, to write for magazines and to take road trips through California. I thought you only wanted me.

The Reverend told me to take my ring off my finger until I was ready to commit.

I left it on. And we eventually moved to California. It was I who cried this time and you who relented.

When we came back East and bought our first house, you told me it wasn’t the end; we didn’t have to become boring or insular or all those things television tells you people grow up to be. Just because we had all this stuff now and a yard full of buried brick didn’t mean we couldn’t pick up and go when the Spirit moved. The Spirit moved me to Seattle without you.

We were in the therapist’s office before I left. As expected, you charmed the therapist with your shiny eyes and deep laugh while I was sure I was coming across a pursed-mouth shrew. The truth was I was feeling a bit lost again, trapped in monotony and questioning my own perseverance. I didn’t want to be  ”just fine.”

I think about these ten years and about how each time I thought of bailing out I instead plunged deeper. When I asked you why you stuck around so long, you just said, “I knew there was something more.”

This is the more.

Risotto cooked over the stove with strawberries and mushrooms and cream, while I distract myself in the other room. Catalogs on the console table that you beg me not to read, so that we can flip through them together. Doctors appointments made entirely on your own, your body cared for as if it were mine.

And then there were the Easter lillies on the table when I came home from a long work trip, one bud open and the rest bowing in anticipation of what is yet to come.

I’m having a “junior moment:” one of those fits born not from years of experience but instead from the entitled belief that I (already) have something worth saying. To you. Old people.

I realize that even the phrase “old people” sounds derogatory. Perhaps because calling one young (whether in looks or spirit) is a culturally-cemented compliment. It’s as if being old signifies the loss of a great gift rather than the acceptance of a new one.

Ageism is particularly pesky in the church.  Just last week, I ventured into a new member’s class at the church I’ve been attending for eight months. Only a hop, skip, and a Whole Foods away from a college campus, there seems to be a disproportional  number of younger folks in the congregation. Sure enough, a quick look around the crossed-legs and folded-hands in the parlor confirmed that most of us couldn’t have been over 30. The exception was one elderly couple seated on the couch beside me.

Incredulous, the old woman leaned forward and asked, “Did I just walk in to the nursery?”

I stared at her, stone-faced, and thought better than to respond, “And did you just walk out of the home?” (It wasn’t one of my finer moments, granted, nor was it conducive to trying to be the body of Christ and all.)

The rest of the room responded in muffled laughter. If my filter weren’t so trained, I assume my little retort wouldn’t have been received with such grace. I assume someone would have at least uncrossed their legs.

Is it because the Church is already versed in hierarchy that the the elder and junior one is naturally enforced? Is it because of passages like 1 Peter 5:5 that admonish “you who are younger: accept the authority of the elders”? In a recent sermon on this passage, I heard advice given to the youth in the congregation to look to their elders for wisdom; I didn’t hear that their elders could expect a different sort of wisdom from them.

I’m coming off a weekend spent in the desert of Arizona where I’m being trained as a program facilitator for the Center for Courage & Renewal. Foundational to our work is the idea that we all have an inner teacher. If that sounds suspicious to the more evangelical crowd, consider it like the Holy Spirit. The point is, even though I’m the youngest in the cohort,  my colleagues treat me with dignity because they know I have wisdom that comes not from my exegetical skills or my ministry experience or my theological expertise. Instead it comes from who I am, how I see the world, and how God speaks to me in it. They treat me not as if I am the future of the organization but like I am a part of the living organism right now (a topic I’ve written on in relation to youth ministry elsewhere.)

In contrast, I recently heard about a divinity school professor who scolded his students: “You don’t know even know the right questions to ask until I give them to you.”

True to biblical form, there’s more to the story in 1 Peter. Later in v. 5, it reads, “Everyone, clothe yourselves with humility toward each other. God stands against the proud, but he gives favor to the humble.”

To be sure, I can imagine my humility will grow as I age and sink into my own skin. But I also take heart in knowing we all are humus or “of the earth.” I’d rather share something in common with you old folks rather than be pitted against you.

Because you know I can win a mean handy of Rummy.

It’s been well-reported that clergy suffer from stress rates higher than most. Now comes the news, released last week from the American Psychological Association, that Millenials (young adults age 18-33) also report being diagnosed with stress levels above the national norm. It makes me wonder about the amalgamation of the two: is there a perfect storm of stress brewing for the young adults training to become clergy and congregational leaders?

The short answer? It’s highly likely. The long answer? It doesn’t have to be so.

After a handful of conversations with divinity school graduates from top-notch institutions, I started to get the funny feeling that some of us are trying to “un-learn” the habits our education formed in us. It seemed our theological education had the nasty effect of actually deforming our mental health and spiritual vitality. And from where I’m standing, I can identify three culprits to blame: 1.The culture of expertise, 2. The divide between values and practice, and 3. The dearth of stress-relieving resources.

Let’s pause for a moment  while I climb up on my soap box.

The culture of expertise is not a new phenomenon in most professions. But it can be a particularly dangerous one when conveying information about God. Even the notion that someone could “Master Divinity” was laughable among classmates. Sill, it was a strange temptation.

In one of my required courses, the professor would stride in each day to his podium, take to reading his notes, and dismiss the class without honoring a single question. (I heard he was more amiable in smaller classrooms.) I wondered if the potential for critique made him nervous or if he just didn’t think the open forum was productive for a class of our size. What it did convey to me and my peers was that certainty was more important than inquiry – an impossible and stress-inducing standard for any young pastor to meet and model.

Of course, there were plenty of well-intentioned professors who tried to convey the humility with which we were to undertake our work. On the first day of orientation, the Dean suggested we each tape an index card to our mirror with the quote, “It’s about God, stupid.” But there was a disconnection between the motto professors preached to us and the coursework we were given to practice. It wasn’t just about God, it seemed, but about coping with the onslaught of reading and writing assignments that gave little room for us to practice the “ministry of availability.” Marriages were put on hold. Friendships were limited to one-hour time slots. Church attendance was inconsistent. We were learning how to live what authors like Parker J. Palmer and Brené Brown have termed “divided” lives between the faith to which we aspired and the workaholism, perfectionism, and productivity we practiced.

There was precious little time for praying and Sabbath-taking and discerning our vocation. More than a few of my classmates who had once thought they might become professors or pastors soon changed their minds when immersed in the day to day work of academic or congregational life. Our school required us to attend a spiritual formation group and retreat our first year of study, but, for the most part, it seemed up to each of us to “hustle” for the support we needed from professors, pastors, or a (declining) denominational structure that many of us no longer fit.

Our work continues to be, according to the new report, the highest cause of Millenials’ stress. (Our unemployment rate is almost twice the national average.) We need safe spaces like divinity schools and congregations and retreats where we can admit our limits and claim our gifts. This will mean resisting an overreliance on our own expertise (do we use theological jargon at the expense of translatable encouragement?), regularly checking our values against our practices (do we believe in the life of the church but not attend one regularly?), and spending time in community with others who are modeling for us how to live wholeheartedly.

Because what if being a young, faith leader wasn’t the perfect storm for stress but revival?

Okay, I’m getting down now.

I refuse to watch as more than a billion women experience violence on the planet.

I’m joining V-Day in a global strike to demand an end to the violence. It’s time to rise  up and dance with somebody who loves you.

We’re not even through the first song – Ne-Yo’s Let Me Love You – and I’m sweating. I’m also sort of laugh-grinning and wouldn’t be surprised if I soon turned the corner into cough-crying. This is Zumba, and I’m having a spiritual experience.

“Doesn’t she remind you of Jesus?” my friend yells when I do a rainbow-like arc with my arms and lung backwards. I can see it on my friend’s face, too, her freckles popping off her skin so that I want to reach out and touch one. This is the Spirit in 3-D.

Our dance instructor does remind me of Jesus. I don’t have my glasses on, but I think she’s Latina, her hair a box-cut bob filled in by squiggles. She’s wearing a blue t-shirt over baggy sweatpants and what look to me like 80′s high-tops. And she is glowing. Of course her name is Joy, like Jesus was the Christ or the Messiah, a name that prophecies the effect of her presence on us all.

Joy starts each choreographed move with an inviting glance, slowing stepping side to side while pointing in the direction of her limbs. She is teaching us our dance number, discipling us in measures. It’s only after we’ve learned the basics that she begins to nod – like you’ve done good, and then clap – like you know it’s about to get real, before finally turning each move into an exaggerated, body-shaking, spasm. This is the Spirit off the chain.

I’ve never been much for liturgical dancing but, I wonder, as I look around the room at my fellow Zumba-mates – old women, fat women, brown men, white men, young girls with juicy booties and gangly ones with jiggly arms – why can’t church be more like this?

I mean, what if church were so joyful that people were paying $10 a pop just to show up for an hour of instruction in the Spirit?

In a brilliant TED talk from conductor Itay Talgam, he dissects the style of six orchestral instructors – some too strict, others who expect their pupils to be mind readers. But it’s the one who leads with joy that inspires. Talgam explains, “[A conductor's] happiness does not come from only his own story and his joy of the music. The joy is about enabling other people’s stories to be heard at the same time.”

Yes, I think, this sounds right. This is the spaciousness with which I want my pastors to lead – reading Scripture without that predictable, steady inflection, giving sermons that provoke a “go tell it on the mountain” aftershock, feeding the hungry with silly notions about who’s really receiving the blessing.

Because Jesus is in Joy.

And when Ne-Yo sings, “Girl, let me love you, and I will love you, until you learn to love yourself,” I imagine a whole congregation of saints doing the YMCA point and pump straight at me.

*This Valentine’s Day, Eve Ensler of Vagina Monologues fame is calling on the people of the world to dance as part of the One Billion Rising initiative to combat domestic violence. I’ll be making a video and uploading it to the blog on Thursday to raise my voice and shake my booty in support. Wouldn’t it be foolish if you did it, too, and shared your link in the comments section?

Seeking a friend after marriage has been tricky, especially the unicorn of them all – a “best” one, because every wife knows that her husband should be her best friend, followed by her mom if they’re on good terms or maybe even a charming brother. But if you ask me, these people are kind of disqualified from the title because they’ve already got a place in the inner circle. If you ask me, we need to spread our love and tantrums around.

It was easier finding a best friend when I was single. I was available and needy, and eager to feel chosen. The signs of friendship were easier to read then, too, like when I had to write a name down for my college’s rooming lottery or make a dinner reservation before the Sadie Hawkins dance. This created for some high-stakes drama, feelings were hurt and people were excluded, but I also knew who felt the same way about me and who just wasn’t that into my AIM emoticons.

Now that I have a live-in partner, I don’t call you every day to just see what you’re up to, I don’t assume we’re doing something on a Friday night without emailing a few days in advance, and I don’t give you “first-run versions” of my problems unless Rush is in a staff meeting and Mom turned her phone-off, and I am about to have a first-rate, hypoglycemic meltdown. I’m a little less available and a little less needy than I once was for a best friend. I assume you are, too.

But you know what’s still there? You know what I miss from knowing that you’re waiting to see the new Nicholas Sparks movie with me or that you’ve already blocked off my birthday two months from now? It’s the eagerness to be chosen.

I’ve been told God chooses me, but sometimes I think of God like that kid who puts Valentines in everyone’s slot. It’s nice but not always surprisingly after a while. I waited twenty-two years for a man to choose me (and I, him), but now there’s not much I can do to make him choose me more.  The adrenaline of the chase has leveled off to a smoldering simmer – still hot but less noisy.

Of course, a best friend looks different now. I think of Mindy’s reasoning from last week’s episode of The Mindy Project: “Best friend isn’t a person. It’s a tier.” And maybe she’s right. I find myself using the term loosely for people from different stages of life: “best friend from high school” or “the girl I roomed with all throughout college” or “the maid of honor at my wedding.” But, then again, maybe we were right when we exchanged those yarn-tied friendship bracelets and matching lock and key necklaces from Claires.

Call me available, needy, or eager, but most days I want a real-life person here in Durham. I want someone who puts me at the top of her list and I put her at the top of mine, so I can just know already and drop this politically-correct adult bent towards inclusivity at the expense of intimacy.

I want to know that I’m chosen. That you’re waiting for my call. And that you carry a candy bar in your zipper pocket, always armed for the front-lines of one of my first-rate, hypoglycemic meltdowns.

At the start of each new year, a close friend of mine picks one word that will be her mantra, one word that will sum up her aspiration and quell her anxiety. This year, it’s sabbath.

I don’t mean to be irreverent but it just happens that way. So when she asked me what my word for the year was, I took a few days to think about it before coming back to her and asking, “Can I have two?” I chose epic fail.

And then I asked her if she had a laptop so I could show a video clip that summed up my point:

To be honest, I don’t think about failing all that often. Not because I don’t do it but because dwelling negatively on the past only brings me regret and a nervous tummy. But when I saw this cat, this cat who tried to jump to the next big thing it could set its eyes on, I realized this would  be my mascot for the year. This would be the year of epic failure.

It’s a wonder I buffer myself from the skinned knees of failure. I couldn’t even tell you how I have “epically failed” in the past year. I’m reminded of a piece of art in my brother’s house that says, “To hit it big, you have to risk it all.” I prefer sure bets.

But for the past few months I’ve started to try my hand at bigger pots and already failed a few times. I applied for a freelance job as a magazine editor and got to the second round of interviews before getting the heave-ho (It might have had something to do with the fact that I missed the deadline after bragging about how I was so good with them.) I got booked as the main speaker at a youth ministry event that was later cancelled due to low registration. And with every intention of going out to lunch with folks after church, I’ve chickened out twice now to return home and eat turkey roll-ups and apple slices.

It’s important that you know this. And it’s important that you know when I get ready to take another leap, wiggling my tail like a cat in anticipation. One project  already in the works that I’m proud to announce is an anthology I’m co-editing with Enuma Okoro called Talking Taboo: American Christian Women Get Frank about Faith (White Cloud Press, Oct 2013). My first book. An epic risk.

I’m over at that same friend’s house a few weeks ago, the one who likes her words-of-the-year, and we’re preparing dinner when I offer her a glass of wine. She declines, and I wonder, but I’m trying to be polite. Later she shares, “I don’t know why everyone’s so secretive about it, but we want you to know that we’re trying to get pregnant.”

The thing is, she and her husband could fail, and we’d all know it. Maybe we wouldn’t be able to hide the sympathy in our eyes or maybe we’d say something glib in our awkwardness. But maybe they won’t fail.

Maybe I won’t either.

“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.” – John 15:11