Conscious-ness is a Choice

It’s happened to me since I was in high school. At least that’s when I first began to really notice it: the rolling eyes, shaking heads and sometimes, the blatant arm reaching out to turn up the volume, drowning out my words. I care about what’s happening in our community, state, nation and world. I always have and I naively thought that as I grew up, gained in numbers and maturity, advanced into adulthood, that others would too.

How wrong I was. Even when I worked in D.C. in the Clinton Administration, the after-hours conversation was almost always focused on gossip, who was sleeping with whom, how it was benefitting their career and how else we could find our way to the top of the heap. It was pure power and the yearning for it that drove that crowd. I was disgusted and disillusioned.  My quest continued.

“There must be a group of people, an organization, an institution that cares about the world”, I hoped, “about what’s happening to people, the poor, the disenfranchised, the gender inequities.” I turned to my church (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) and spent 4 years in graduate school earning a Masters of Divinity (ya, I know… 4 years for a Masters! Don’t get me started) and became an ordained pastor.

I reasoned it this way. Having grown up in the church, I had taken a particular interest in Jesus and his focus on justice, equal distribution of wealth and his actions to even things out. I had come to know a radical Jesus, and so, I thought, the church could be the avenue through which consciousness, awareness and action can take place.

Wrong again. Really wrong. Members of the congregations where I was pastor did not want to engage their faith, their music, their pews, church or parking lot with the realities of the world. They did not want to hear Jesus, God, Bible or spirituality connected to what was going on in the newspaper, on the radio or TV in anyway. There were a few exceptions, but overall, the message was strong and clear. “Preach what people want to hear” and “Make me feel good about myself and my life”. Period. End of discussion.

It is work to live conscious. It is critical to live conscious for the benefit of our world, our nation, our communities and for our sons and daughters. Living in a bubble of our own making does not give us the information, challenge or wonder we need to progress, move forward and improve our society and world.  

I stand in the same place I did so long ago in high school. Eyes continue to roll when I speak about what I most care about: women valuing themselves from inside their own good core. Women don’t want to be Conscious about the realities facing women today as much as men want to pretend its all better and everything is fine. I disagree with both approaches. It is more urgent than ever for women to choose to live Conscious.

In an earlier blog I wrote about how we are obsessed with being busy. “Busy-busy-busy” we buzz as we move through the motions of our day. We hum it to confirm that we are living right, good and correct. The busier we are the better we must be doing. What is the saying we love to quote? “Idle hands are the devils tools?” So we buzz from one task to another while patting ourselves on the back.

To pretend that the chores, errands and responsibilities of our daily lives excuse us from interacting with the issues that face our society, particularly those concerning the equity of and opportunities for, women, means to live ostrich-esque; burying our mind deep in the proverbial sand.

We need to wake up. Consciousness is a Choice. It is discipline. It is the willingess to face truths that are ugly, uncomfortable or hard to hear. Like the fact that “According to Pentagon research, a quarter of all women who join the military are sexually assaulted during their careers.” Like the fact that rape remains the number one under-reported crime in America. Like the reality that women still make less than men do for the same work. Like the truth that the majority of our religions are male-centered with a male deity watching over, giving blessings and discerning prayers.

Like, like, like…. Obviously there is much more that could be said. The number of women and girls who struggle with an eating disorder, the studies that continue to find young women are still not raising their hands to ask questions in any sort of equal ratio to boys, and so it goes.

It’s not necessarily fun to be Conscious. When we choose Consciousness, it complicates our lives. It makes it messy. We can feel overwhelmed and impotent.

Wrong. We can make a difference. Simply by choosing to be Conscious, you are making a change in the environment of apathetic complicity. Simply by opening your mind to hear the realities that face women today, you are taking up space in the matter and requiring the truth to be told.

I think the need for Conscious Action is more urgent now than ever before. I believe that for all the progress made on other justice and equality issues, the rights for women and progress toward gender equality has turned backward and lessened over the last two decades. I want to change this. I want to be honest about the truth that we live in a system that does not equate the presence, power, worth and value of women with that of men.

I believe in a new vision; a new way for women to discover and rediscover, reawaken and shake-open their inner good-core, sexy-power and authentic beauty.

I see a movement of feminine energy that is dynamic; that arouses a sense of wonder, intellect and connection beyond our selves.

I see a new way to gather, to connect, network with each other and the world.

I hear words of ritual, appeals for hopes, desires, safety and calm that are feminine centered, gender neutral, said in poetry, music or as daily mantras.

I want to rewrite, reshape and reform the world of spirituality for women, to women and with women.

A Conscious, Feminine Centered Way of Living in Spirit, Mind and Body.

Join Me in the Movement.

Dear Sister,

I know you. I am you. I have lived with you, sat and counseled with you. I have sung next to in choir and encouraged you from outside the dressing room at the clothing store. I have listened to your pain, the stories from childhood that continue to haunt you. I have written prayers for you, appeals to the healing balm of truth that you are good, you are treasured and you are valued. I was with you when the wounds from long past flared; when your dad ignored you and the kid in class called you fat or when that boy told another he wished you were as good looking as your sister. I touched the hurt deep inside and together we took it out, learned from it and found ways to reimage it with love. Self love. Love for you from you. Love of all that you are because you are good. You are a goddess woman.

Our culture, traditions and religion don’t make things easy for girls and women. The idea of male preference, male domination and male superiority leaks from nearly every pour of our institutions, organizations and systems of belief.

Just today I heard a story about a woman serving in the military, raped by a colleague serving in Afghanistan, ignored and re-victimized by the authorities. The perpetrator went unpunished. The report listed many more similar incidents.

Media attention clamors over the group of all male religious leaders who have gathered together in Rome to elect another male leader to the position of highest and holiest, to lead a world-wide community of followers, more than half of whom are women.

In religion or out of it. Claiming the name of feminist or rejecting it. Loving traditional worship and music or wanting alternative options, it doesn’t matter. Women yearn for something more… for a deeper, intimate and consistently loving connection than what we can find in the options our male-driven society offers us.

We need another way. I know. I am one of you. I have been with you, walked, listened, taught and counseled you.

We need another option. A way to add to the religion we love. A different set of poems and prayers to integrate with those from our tradition. An alternative voice offering information, energy, challenge and ideas of truth, beauty, love and life.

In or out of religion, in love with the church or healing from wounds inflicted by it, living by reason or faith – women need an alternative.

Come Circle-Up with other Women and begin the journey. Give me a bit of your time and I will abundantly gift you with beginning steps along the new way, to apply to your daily life and to remind you, always, how good, valued and needed you are.

For Northern California Women! Circle-Up with me and other women next Saturday, March 23rd in Lafayette, 10 – 2pm. You will be received, dear sister, with a gracious welcome, beautiful space, nurturing ritual and inspiring, mind-enriching content. We will be together in safety, self care and celebration of women. For this Saturday, you are my special guests. Please do invite friends and family to come along. Over the next two months, these workshops will give opportunity for filming, interviews and giving voice to the too-long silent desires of women.

Circle up with me individually. Come with me on guided meditations written just for you. Speak openly in a safe, nurturing, one-on-one environment that is totally built for your good core blossoming. Watch your life shift with self-love and respect, clearer desires and hopes and concrete ways to get there.

Circle up with other women and join your beautiful, wildly competent and imaginative minds with theirs. In a MasterImagine group, I create ritual practices especially for the group, its focus, goals and hopes of what needs and wants to be created. Groups can range from parenting, finding a balanced life, self-love and love for others, finding and releasing passion, to professional satisfaction and purpose.

Create your own Circle Up of Women. Use meditations written especially for women gathering together, watch short video blogs of teaching, leading and wondering together and spend time in your own circle reaching further in and discussing. Engage with the ritual practices for a new way of a feminine-spirit life and discover how to integrate them with your traditional religious practices.

Rockin' 47!

Today I am 47 years old. 47 sleep and wake-up cycles. Forty-seven openings to the new day and emerging sun stretching out its long limbs of warmth. Today I celebrate the profound mystery and mess of life lived for 47 years.

Happy Birthday to me!

“Forty-seven” rings in my ears, it reverberates in the womb of my center. I hear it call to me, sometimes shouting and other times whispering. The loud voice declares “You rock” and I wonder from which decade that worn out phrase comes? Was it the 70’s when I was still a young kid with the future stretching endlessly in front of me? When I was adorned in the macramé vest made by my mom, and the shag haircut that replaced my long, thick flowing locks that proved to be the home of too many rats’ nests? “It has to go” my mom had said. I cried too much and too loud for beautiful hair to stay. “We’re going to get that cut,” and off we went to sit in a chair where I emerged an hour later looking like someone I didn’t know. The next morning lining up on the playground at the start of another first-grade day, Ms. Cox didn’t recognize me either. “Oh Amy!” came the exclamation. “Your hair!” Yup. I had changed. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Maybe it was the 80’s, the years of high school, homework and unspoken humiliation. Anyone looking on thought I had it all: cheerleader, popular friends, good grades. Reconnecting with high school colleagues now, none of them agree that I was an outsider with the wrong clothes and ugly body, feeling as if I was missing a vital piece of information. “What was it?” my forty-seven year old voice whispers. If I can pinpoint what I felt I lacked in high school, maybe I can find it now, when I still feel the pressure of living up to, proving my worth, worried about what others think. “Go deep,” my years of wisdom urge, “be honest and clarify your longing so you can give the secret to your children, so they will never feel lost, alone or unwanted.”

Deep. Where is that? Deep in the recesses of my choices, or the way I felt when a boy I like gave me attention? Or when my best friend settled into our friendship the way it feels to slip on that worn, loving sweatshirt? Deep down into the core of my being? To that place where I hid the secret that I was a bad girl, a sinner, a daughter who could never live up to where the eyes of her father hit each time he looked at her? Ah yes, there, that’s the spot.  “Go” my years direct, “to the profound origin of my affirmation, to where I went when I was looking for the answers.”

For decades that was God, Heavenly Father, Him, His and He. I wanted to please, to be good, to make myself in His image, like the Bible says, like I heard in church from the lips of my own father. But I wasn’t in His image and never would be, no matter how hard I tried, how earnestly I prayed or how intently I worked to cover up my womanly curves. Later the two would merge: Dad and Father, Father and Daddy. They became intertwined and soon included other men in my life: Pastor ________, Teacher ___________, Youth Sponsor _____________, Brother ______________ and finally boy ____________, boy _______________, and boy ________________.

“That was not rocking,” I say from my 47 years of knowledge, enlightenment, feminism and courageous acts of power. I have earned the right to state boldly the presence of patriarchy in my family, my church and religion and now, everywhere in my country, culture and world. I no longer wish to live up to anyone’s idea of who I am or ought to be, or what it means to be good, bad or otherwise. When I go down to dig this time, I will bring along a shovel of substance that will, I tell my 47 years, finally unearth the remaining remnants of the patriarchal lies. “I will get them out” I affirm. “Tomorrow, they will be gone.” That is the secret, I understand. “I am good, I am brilliant, I am beautiful – without any God, man or affirmation from another.” I am good because I am me.

“You rock!” must be from the 90’s, when I began this journey away from dependence on the admiration from men and women. It was then I began to allow myself to actually “rock”, to move my body without inhibition or fear of being improper or overly sexed. Learning the truth of the existence of a male-centered religion, culture and world began the to-and-fro that eventually would release me from its grip. “That is no longer you” I hear now from the core of my good self. “Now,” the voice grows in strength, “You rock!”

I do. Today, I rock. I rock hard! I proclaim my good core that I know will direct me where I ought to go, take actions that will create more good and make choices that create life, love and progression of thought. Today I know I am bigger, louder and stand taller than I ever have in my life! Even when I fail.

Today I embrace my stumbles, fall and failures. 47 years of being cautious, careful and worried about what effect a straight-up failure would have on how people see me is enough. Today I commit to not only embrace the letdowns and missteps, but to announce them! “They are mine!” I roar. “It was my good core efforts and belief in all that I can become that helped me risky vulnerability to be seen by women who need what I have to offer! It was my wisdom and skill that gave me the tools to build the ramp up which I have been rising, allowing for a fall at all!” The tone from my 47 years builds in momentum, energy and passion. “I will not be quiet or shushed!” it declares, remembering the endless battle with my strong, loud, charismatic voice.  “No more of that,” I agree with my 47 year old rockin’ self!

I am the Good-Core Goddess! I am loud! I am bold! I am open to all the universe has for me! I am a woman on a mission: a womanpreneur who will risk it all to show myself to the world and give what I have learned and earned throughout these years of work, joy, study and play. I will put my Good Core Goddess self out-there to be received and I will not be shy, afraid or deterred. When I fail, when no one attends, when the room is empty, when my TEDx numbers do not go viral, when my workshops are not full, I will keep moving. I will offer it again. I will speak again. I will write again.

Forty-seven years of knowledge, wisdom, love, sex, tears, agony, loneliness and all the grit and gratitude of life and I have arrived! “Stand tall” my inner Good Core declares, “as high as you can reach, as loud as your voice can go and as bold as you know you are worth. Rock it!”

Get Knocked-Off!

Blog – February 22, 2013

I almost got knocked off.  It’s happened to me before, and it can be disconcerting, especially when the road you are on promises unknown twists and turns.  I wonder if this is what the Apostle Paul felt like as he strode down his road right before the vision of the resurrected Christ knocked him off?

But Paul was certain. He was clear about the road he was on and the mission he intended to accomplish. Paul was all about persecuting the communities of people who had come to follow the teachings and way of Jesus. We call them Christians now, but then they were Followers of the Way. Paul didn’t much like them. He was a serious Jew; a zealot if you will. The idea that Jesus, a Jew himself who had been turned over to the Romans for crucifixion by Jews, could be the long awaited Messiah was preposterous, heretical, and blasphemous.  Paul, or Saul as he was then named, knew his was the true message and he was walking with it on the only right road that existed. He knew he was right.

That is, until he got knocked off. Bam! A flash of light and that was all she wrote: off his feet, blinded and without any sense of direction.

When there is only one right way, getting knocked-off can be the worst thing to happen to you. When you are walking down a path, confident you know every crevice and pot-hole & have all the answers about its twists and turns, sure where the road leads, then getting knocked off of that certainty can be quite a blow.

That’s what happened to Saul turned Paul. He got knocked off because in all his blustering certainty, it turns out he was wrong. The direction he had been going was incorrect, the mission to enact mistaken, and the entire way in which he understood the world, false.  Saul wasn’t right at all.

When there is only one right way, getting knocked-off can also solve all your problems. If there is only one way to get from point A to point B, where you went wrong is easy to pinpoint, allowing you to move from a wrong idea to the only right one! Praise be God! For Christians everywhere Paul is a hero, a divine example of coming to one’s religious senses because as we all know, there is only One Right Way.

Right?     Wrong.

Paul is supposed to stand as a testament to the power of the truth, the right and absolute only way of Jesus the Christ, but I think this misses the real message and meaning of Getting Knocked Off! After the unexpected light blinded Saul’s vision, he was taken to what we might consider “re-education sessions” with a dude named Ananias. The end result being that Saul gets knocked from one absolute no-question-about-it-this-is the-right-road of belief to another. He literally got kicked from making the mistake of not thinking for himself to doing the same thing on another road. He went from the absolute of Judaism to the absolute of Jesus Christ.

Religious stories are powerfully seductive because of their over-simplicity. Give me simple! Show me directly! Point it out to me as clear as it can be and don’t leave any holes through which I may have to peer or question. Outline the boundaries, specify the do’s and don’ts and put up signs along the RIGHT Way I am supposed to follow.

Simple, uncomplicated, straightforward: that’s what we want.
What we want is not always what we get.  Sometimes it’s not even what we need.

When I was a young woman struggling to find my way, I would beg God to show me where He wanted me to go. I remember walking alone on a path near my college campus, praying, talking, urging God to respond. Nothing. I finally stopped, looked up to the sky and screamed “Send a God-Damned letter then would you! Tie it to a rock and fling it at my head if you want, just show me the way!”

It never came. I was never hit in the head, struck by a white light nor did I receive a direct text from God telling me where He wanted me to go. I never had the good luck of Getting Divinely Knocked Off. Then again, maybe I came out ahead. Getting divinely knocked off one’s path is not the same as Getting Knocked Off by one’s own accord. Engaging our minds, asking questions that aren’t easily answered, being willing to listen to a different point-of-view are all elements that can result in a Good Knocking Off!

What if Saul-Paul’s Knocking Off story is really about the power of new ideas, risking being wrong and the willingness to go down a different path? What if Getting Knocked Off ones way is understood as life giving rather than frightening, blinding or disorienting? What if we live willing to Get Knocked Off and we do the exercise needed to sustain ourselves through it?

The Saul-Paul story has one big hang-up that doesn’t fit this scenario. Paul moved from absolutely right to absolutely right. He didn’t get Knocked Off to then go exploring. Instead he got knocked off by a divine bully who wanted to use Paul’s power for His own supernatural ends. Paul’s story isn’t about human minds engaged in the world of realities, listening to the needs of the other or wondering how to improve it. It’s about the One Right Magical Supernatural vs. the Other One.

Getting Knocked Off can be a great thing, which is why when it almost happened to me again today, I saw it as a gift, an opportunity & a chance to wonder if I am on the right track. Years ago when I first Got Knocked Off, I finally stopped begging my “One Right Supernatural Being” for direction & instead began to determine my own.

Getting Knocked-Off is a source of power that opens up the world & encourages you & me to depend on our Good Core and enjoy the messy complexity of life!

Jesus: More FAT than fear!

I want to live FAT all year! FAT Tuesday ought to be a world-view-way-of-being.

Fat Tuesday! I love the name. It fills up my mouth when I say it. I can almost taste the whipped cream and chocolate overflowing the edges of my entire being. Today FAT is good.  A day when abundance is celebrated and for a moment in time, we give ourselves permission to go for it! Why shouldn’t it last?

Oh yes, Lent: the season of depravity, giving-up, minimizing and living pinched.
Lent exemplifies the practice of scarcity, which I know all too well. I have lived from the place of “not enough” my entire life and I am sick of it.

Where does it come from? Why is there so much “not-enough-ness” in our lives? Why do Lent? The “church line” is: give up something for Lent because Jesus gave up his life for ours. Oookaaaay. He gives his life & I give up wine, ice-cream or Facebook. That makes sense.

Not.

What is the real reason the Church wants you and me to feel deprived and wanting?

For the sake of the moment, let’s suspend the question of whether Jesus actually lived or not and behave as if the story of his life & death is true. I think we’ll find something compelling.  

A quick jaunt through some of the Jesus stories will demonstrate that Jesus is more FAT than fear. 

First, look at Jesus and the woman caught in adultery.  The crowd brings her to Jesus, insisting he weigh in on her fate, reminding him the Jewish law says she ought to be stoned. In the gospel of John (8: 1 – 11) Jesus responds “straightening up”. Think standing tall – filling up the space with all his fullness. He then says, “Anyone of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”  No one does. In the end Jesus tells her that he does not condemn her either.

Totally FAT! To a woman who by religious law(!) was decreed as being only worth killing, Jesus says “No! There is MORE GOOD here!” Even when we screw up – make an unhealthy choice or just do something unthinking or stupid – we have MORE GOOD in us! Our poor choices do NOT define us!    FAT Tuesday!

How about the Wedding in Cana (John 2: 1–10)? The best wine is saved for last. Why serve it if you’re not going to get play from it?  When the guests have already sauced up and won’t know the difference, who in their right mind serves the best? The one who lives from Abundance! Giving GOOD isn’t about looking good or making status. It’s about living from the plenty of ones’ GOOD heart, love and hope. Abundance is an Unreasonable and Irrational way of living and seeing the world. It is FAT Tuesday everyday!

What about the story of Jesus healing a paralyzed dude? (Mark 2:1-12, Matthew 9:2-8, Luke 5:17-26) A guy is paralyzed; his friends bring him to Jesus but can’t get to him, so they creatively go through the roof. Anyway, Jesus tells him “Your sins are forgiven” and the guy gets up and walks away.

Do you get it? The man was paralyzed by his sin – unable to move, breath, rejoice, dance, run and celebrate because he was consumed by worry, anxiety and fear of his sin - of his “not- enough-ness”.

I get it because I’ve been there. In my TEDx Talk I share how my scarcity seed got started. It took root when I began to notice boys and have all those GREAT FAT Feelings of desire. Instead of dancing in them & getting FULL from them; rather than standing up TALL in these new feelings, I was consumed with guilt and shame. I knew that what I couldn’t STOP thinking about, the church called sin. That’s when I got fat. Not the good Abundant FAT, but the kind of fat that comes from the weight of shame. The fat that is opposite of the FAT Tuesday FAT. The fat that requires me to look for my worth and value outside of me. This is the fat of a young girl understanding that without the divine blessing from the male God, she is small, minimized, unworthy and deprived of the GOOD. This is Lent and it is controlling. It is why the Church practices it. It keeps us entangled in the ritualized dogma that convinces us we cannot be good without it. To give-up what we love & like keeps us hooked into the belief that we don’t really deserve the FAT GOOD. But we do.

The ULTIMATE FAT Tuesday Abundant Act from Jesus, is how he died.

Lent tells the story like this: Jesus “gave it up”, sacrificed & suffered. So should you.

No. Jesus, full-on standing tall, straightening up, looked the religious leaders of his day in the eye and said “No. Not today. You do not get to tell me who is worthy and who is not. You do not get to define value by degrees of sin or forgiveness. ALL are GOOD. ALL are WORTHY and ALL will be released from the worry of missing the good mark .” Jesus died boldly and in the FAT Abundance of our human GOOD!

The Jesus message actually is that you can’t miss the FAT GOOD because it is ALREADY in you! We do not need or require a church, a god, a man, a high social status…to be GOOD. We already ARE!

Jesus didn’t take anything away – he ADDED!

This Season of Lent, don’t give something up. ADD something! ADD something beautiful, comforting or tasty to your life.

ADD an extra walk or run each day.
ADD a piece of dark chocolate each night.
ADD the permission to read a good book that has nothing to do with anything but is a good story!
ADD talking sweet to yourself, like you do a lover.
ADD the mantra: “I am GOOD and have in me the power to make more GOOD for myself and others!”

ADD away and live FAT!

Making Good Trouble!

At a recent women’s retreat I was asked to state my intention for my work and my business. What was I going to be about? What mantra was going to inform my work? We stood in a circle – as women have done since ancient times – holding hands and preparing to go into the night after a first day of intense learning, meditation and work. “Don’t give it too much thought” the leaders said. “Say what comes to your mind. Give your inner wisdom (what I call your inner good core) a chance to speak.”

I fussed a bit mentally. “What would I say? Will it sound good? How will mine compare?” Then I began to listen to the other women, to really listen: to hear them. I got caught up in their vision of making the world a better place and suddenly it was my turn. I opened my mouth and this is what came out.

“To make good trouble and make good money doing it!”

I have always made trouble, gotten in trouble, been labeled as a trouble maker. This has been attributed to me when I’ve pushed the boundaries beyond the established, accepted rules.

As a Pastor I stirred up trouble when I wondered why, if we all agreed that God wasn’t actually an anthropomorphized male person, did we continue to use only male language to describe “Him”? As a way to engage in the insistence of the members of the church that “nobody actually believes God is a man” I suggested we use a rotation of personal pronouns to describe “Her” as often as “Him”. That was a no-go. I then decided that I could use She, Her, Mother in my preaching and sermons. They were my work, my analysis of scripture and they reflected the direction I believed Godd was taking me.  Some people appreciated it; more, actually than not. Still, those that were the keepers of the “truth and the way” did not. Trouble. 

I have made trouble because I asked questions where it was common knowledge no one did. Those items of belief and assertions of “absolutely right” were what I could not easily accept. It didn’t make sense to me why my friend at school was going to go to hell because she wasn’t baptized. It seemed utterly wrong that I was born with a naturally bad seed inside of me called “sin” and that no matter how much I loved God and Jesus, I would battle against it my whole life. That after we die, if we believe in the right religion and keep the right rules, we would be saved – and those who didn’t, wouldn’t – seemed cruel and unfair. As a devout young Christian, these accepted ideals did not seem to reflect God’s love or Jesus’ actions. So I asked, pushed, and wondered. It was then I received the label of Trouble.

More honest-to-Goodness Trouble followed in my years as a college student. When I was President of the student body I worked an entire year to get my all-white school that stood in the middle of a gritty and diverse urban center, to look at the question of racism. In the end a Presidentially Commissioned Task Force on Racism was established (President of the University, not student body!). Today that task force has expanded into a university department that deals with issues of race, diversity  and equity.

Good Trouble plants seeds.

After working in West Africa in the Peace Corps, I returned to my Alma mater as Director of Student Activities. More Good Trouble: STARR (Students Taking Action Against Racism) was formed. Along the way I met one of the few Black students at the school. He had come to the university to play basketball and one day stuck his head in my office out of curiosity. He later confessed to me that he wanted more than to be another Black BB player. He was a funny, energetic, smart guy who needed some support off the court. I gave it to him. He decided to run for Vice-President.

The good trouble came a few days later. Students, who had been planning their campaign for a year and believed they had it locked up, were furious this outsider was in the race. They blamed me. “I only encouraged him to run” I remember saying. “He has to win.”

The next week I was called in to meet with the President of the University. A racial harassment suit had been filed against me. I was being accused of racism against my own race.

Good Trouble indeed. The Black student won the race, worked well with the other student who was elected President and together they made inroads into what had been a previously all-white student body government.

Good Trouble bears good fruit, even as it requires sweat, toil and persistence to do so.

After I became and ordained Lutheran pastor, I quickly realized that I, myself, was a member of an oppressed group: women. I had talked about it before, of course. Thelma & Louise had been my favorite film. I considered myself a feminist. Yet it was not until I stepped into the role of Pastor that I became aware of the deep-seated and all encompassing power of Patriarchy.

It is time for some more Good Trouble and this time, Patriarchy is the target. Simply using the “P” word makes women and men squirm. Most deny its presence, paving the way for one of the biggest lies that permeates every aspect of our existence. It is in our economic structure, our religions, our workplace, homes and relationships. It harms women and girls, boys and men. 

It is time to plant some Good Trouble, train to sweat, toil and nurture and reap some crazy GOOD fruit!

Red Lipstick, Goddess & Kick-Ass Shoes!

Back to red lipstick, Goddess, jewelry and kick-ass shoes. Yes indeed, I have been given a gift of re-membering myself, of returning to that portion of my spirit, physicality and intellect that had begun to sink deep into my own feminine divine nature, but which I turned away from and tried to forget.

In 2008 I had let it go. Literally, I packed it all up, flipped closed the lids fastened to the sides of the clear plastic boxes and locked it away. To the deepest recess of my garage they went, and that’s saying something. They disappeared forever to be buried beneath my broken heart, bitter anger and exhaustion.

In my book Religion Made Me Fat, I tell a portion of this story. It is the one that begins with Jesus as the divine Christ and my exploration of his interaction and role with women.

As a female pastor I was having a hard time – bah! I was dying inside - because of the way in which the church treated women. It wasn’t just the hierarchy of male superiority, or the use of the male language in sacred ritual, or the out-and-out rejection of even considering the occasional use of She or Her instead of He and Him. It wasn’t only the fact that more times than I can count on one hand, couples who I had been preparing to marry backed out when their parents discovered I was a woman, or the statements that were made about my pregnant-pastor-self sullying the holy altar while I was with child.

It wasn’t even that after years of working my ass off and doing, being and creating profoundly positive change, increasing membership, tripling volunteers as well as financial giving, the old pillars of the church colluded against me so that I would not be voted in as Lead Pastor. I needed, they told me, “A good strong male Pastor to ‘help’ me along the way.” All of that was bad, hurtful, soul-deadening and wickedly harmful to my female strength of self. It percolated within my breasts that stubbornly insisted on outing me as a woman while the church defiantly wanted to pretend I was really a man. I was angry, hurt and starving from lack of good affirmation of my gender. So I began a deeper search within the stories of the one person I most loved, most deeply, honestly admired: Jesus.

How had he related to women? Was it biblical fact that Jesus insisted women were less than men, that only men could follow him and be leaders along side of him? Did Jesus agree with the misogynistic world view that men were closely associated with the realm of heaven, divinity and intellect and women with the dirty, shame-filled earth? I went looking.

And what did I find but the Goddess! Awakened was I to truths that I had never before known. Embarrassed that after living, working, breathing and experiencing on this earth for 30 plus years I had not known about the long history of the Goddess tradition, Goddess centered villages and matriarchal communities. How did I not know about this? Why is it that all I had been told was that God was man, Jesus was man, Peter was man, Mary the mother of Jesus was a virgin (how did that happen!?) and Mary Magdalene was a whore? How?!

I screamed inside and often out loud. I wept, sobbed and pounded my fists on sofas, pillows and the strong chest of my confused but loving husband. I was mad. Pissed. On fire with rage at the church that I had known my whole life and had trusted to tell me the truth but that had ultimately betrayed me. The divine isn’t just male. It hasn’t always been that way. The Bible couldn’t be the only document of human history because communities existed LONG before it came to be.  I fumed.

Religion Made Me Fat is the story of how I finally let go of the weight of all those lies: that my body was dangerous, my sexual desires dirty, my non-Christian friends damned and all the other untruths I had learned over four decades of being in the church. It is not the whole story though, of why I let go of Goddess. That story, as much as it mimics the leave-taking of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as an ordained pastor, is different.

After leaving the church, along with 50+ family units, I founded and led an experimental community of people trying to “do religion” differently, without the bad habits of the large, organized, religious entities. We wanted to do away with righteous exclusion, male hierarchy, judgment of sin and instead release into the power of Jesus’ justice and message of equality, especially toward women. We wanted to be rid of the bad habit of gossip, cliques and whispers behind the backs of others.

It was a wonderful three-year-and-some-months journey where much good was birthed. Along the way we learned a tremendous amount about what it meant to be free and outside of the doctrine and dogma, the pension plans and church conferences so that we were able to ask real questions. We eventually changed our name from Way of Christ Community to Way of Compassion because we understood we no longer believed in a divine Jesus, but rather chose to focus on the human story of a radical guy with a big heart and courageous choices. Goddess became as welcome as God and pagan ritual, Native American spirituality, Buddhism and other thought leaders taught us about the world and our own good selves. I was in love with Goddess, the dark womb within me that had the power to create life – not just my children – but the womb of the Great Woman that is fertile with possibilities.

The community bubbled with energy and dynamism. And then I began to feel it. It was just as John Irving wrote in The World According to Garp. The UnderToad was subtly and quietly pulling me down and under. I didn’t know where it was or what form it took, but months before it happened I had felt it. What I did not know and the force that hit me so damn-fucking hard that I buried the Goddess away forever, was when the UnderToad revealed itself to be the woman who had been my closest, best friend for 8 years.

It’s an old story. Two women become close. One leads the other to find her inner power, voice and strength. The other begins to change, grow into her own power and not accept everything as it had been told her. That woman’s husband gets nervous, anxious and eventually angry. Stories are made up. Private conversations between the two friends get perverted and the jealous, scared man lashes out, threatens the woman who leads other women (and men) to find their great inner power. He tells his wife, my friend, that she must choose between me and him. He is manipulative. He is cunning. He spent months priming other weak members of the community to collude with him that I was dangerous, narcissistic and a cult leader bent on emasculating men and reducing my father.

I was crushed. Broken. Defeated. I felt betrayed by Goddess, by women and our weakness to go along with men and believe they are the originator of our worth and blessing. I curled up in a ball, shoved the Goddess and all my spiritual expansion into those boxes and walked away.

Since publishing Religion Made Me Fat last July, I have slowly been returning to Goddess, meditation and the good, amazing, strong power within me. Last weekend at a Great Work Retreat with Amy Ahlers, Christine Arylo and Shiloh Sophia McLoud, I fully climbed back into the lap of Goddess. It is a relief and a love affair I shall never again doubt, neglect or give up on. I now know that to love Goddess is to love me; it is I who am divine, I who house the good capacity to produce love and me whose crazy brilliant mind will think, create and be an artist for women’s power and good.

I am back to all that I LOVE about women: red lipstick, expressive jewelry, sexy curves, strong thighs and wills, creative, artistic risk taking, great shoes and beautiful, gorgeous me. 2013 is the Year of the Sexy Goddess Warrior Doing It! The “It” is my Great Work: guiding women on the courageous journey to unlocking their natural inner good-core that has been suppressed and depleted by the systems of patriarchy. The how will be in gathering women together in a variety of ways and opportunities. Stay tuned! I will be coming near you – especially if you wish to be part of losing the weight of patriarchy and living in your beautiful, big, inner good core. Contact me below if you want me to come to your area and we will make it happen!

For now, enjoy your favorite color lipstick, play with your womanly dress-up, sweat and make your curvy body strong and healthy! Love your Goddess in You!