Religion's Male Preference: Let's Be Honest

Bravo to Sheryl Sandberg risking to live Full of Herself!

I am proud of the controversy stirred up by her best selling book “Lean In”. If you’ve seen her famous TED talk, you’ll recognize much of the book. It expands from those points and offers pages of well researched studies and statistics.

I am so pleased about the fray the book has pulled from the mythic tapestry we have laid over the subject of gender equity. We need some messiness around the topic of what it is honestly like for women in the work force, and in the structures and traditions of our society.  For too long young women, middle-aged and older, have ignored the reality that today, still, in 2013, women are less valued than men. It’s time we talk about it, even when we don’t want to.

This is not a new idea. In fact, it’s knowledge we’ve had and swept under the rug by the very gender stuck with getting rid of dirt we don’t want to see: women. In agreeing to do the clean up for Patriarchy, women have ourselves to blame for being stuck with our hand on the broom handle: and not because we can hop on it and fly away.

In reality, our wings have been clipped, to keep women solidly on the ground of undervalue and underachievement and we have been part of making it happen.

In 1991, after I returned from serving 23 months in the United States Peace Corps, I accepted a job at my alma mater, a university in northwest Washington as Director of Student Activities. Among the speakers we hired during that time was Naomi Wolf, author of the then famous “Beauty Myth”.

As Ms. Wolf sat around a lunch table with me, female faculty and students, she told us about her next project: Women in Leadership and the lack of young women college students who wanted it. Traveling the nation, speaking and listening to women, she was shocked and dismayed to discover that the majority of women had little to no desire to put themselves out as leaders.

I listened with rapt attention. I nearly had to sit on my hands so that I wouldn’t jump up screaming “I want to! I want to lead! I’ve wanted to be President since grade school! I want to be that leader! I have always wanted to be the leader! I do! I do! I do!”

I did and I didn’t. I was President of my university student body; I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in West Africa; I worked in the Clinton Administration; I became an ordained woman pastor. In all these professional roles I reached for justice, founded organizations that sought equality and changed the governing rules of institutions. I have been a leader; strong, smart, assertive, demanding, committed and charismatic. And I have been crucified for it, by men and women alike.

I was first told I had been crucified on the altar of religious patriarchy while living as an intern in Jerusalem. My American supervisor was a frightening, small and insecure man who despised me the minute he greeted me and my husband at the airport. As months went by it became clear that not only would he not be one of the supportive male mentors Sandberg had throughout her career, but the opposite. His goal was to tear me down. Because of his blatant misogynist actions, I was removed from my position in Israel. As one woman said, “You’re being crucified for being a strong, smart woman who refused to take shit.” 

Through my ten plus years as an ordained pastor, I learned that there is a religiosity of male preference and female diminution; God ordained the hierarchy of men over women. This moves the discussion beyond Sandberg’s assumptions, stereotypes and traditions and into a far more complicated source of the inequity: the divine. God, via Bible and other religious holy books, is understood as elevating men and placing women under their rule, while at the same time warning of women’s sexual prowess and a need to be governed, directed and protected by men. As a result, if a woman pastor is outspoken, ambitious, assertive and insists on remaining a woman, being the powerful woman leader “Lean In” hopes for, becomes a religious struggle.

I love being a woman. I love my red lipstick, high platform shoes and pencil skirts. I like my curvaceous body and long, dark curly hair. As a pastor, I didn’t want to tone down or reject my sexuality. I enjoyed the power of my sharp mind and charisma and my easy ability to speak, motivate and inspire. I was and am a natural leader and the young woman who could barely contain herself in the presence of Naomi Wolf didn’t contain it as a pastor, which led to the end of my leading in organized religion.

In the church there were not male colleagues who gave me a hand up or encouraged my voice. There were not women who joined me in my quest to create an equal place for honest female leadership in the church or in exploring gender neutral language and naming of the divine. In the church, the type of powerful woman I was and would not reduce, was not welcomed. The divinely ordained teaching that women are beneath men is ingrained deep in our collective psyche and is the root of all the weedy blossoms of gender inequity. 

“Lean In” nudges up to the truth that most women who do want to be leaders don’t often make it, but it never fully digs down deep as to why. Religion is not mentioned once as a part of the problem. Sandberg gets a lot right in “Lean In” and still, there is much she does not even broach. Finally, it needs to be said that women do want to lead. There are other women, young, middle and old, who like me, can barely contain our desire to do so. The reality is, however, that the “right timing” or “well placed mentors” along the career route that Sandberg experienced, are rare. For many of us who are in male dominated professions, being a strong woman leader can be the death knoll of our very intention to do so. Simply wanting to be the woman leader is not enough to make it happen, and not only because of conflicts between motherhood and marriage, but because of the deeply seeded belief that women should not rise so high.

We need this book. We need this discussion. We need to disagree, feel uncomfortable and courageously look at our complicity in the reality of what “Lean In” reminds us: women are not equally valued, do not have equal opportunity or choice. Together we need to unearth the roots of Patriarchy, face the truth of religion’s role in it, and move forward to replant the ground of our practices with seeds of balance and equity.

Living Like It's Your Last

I don’t know if it’s because I am an avid, fairly serious runner, but the terrible events of Monday in Boston have reached in to my gut and yanked, pulled and jostled me. I am deeply sad.  I am angry. I am consumed with a blankness of incomprehension. Searching through the reason of my intellect I cannot locate anything that makes sense. There is no seeming pay-off for this random act of terror. It stands without any philosophical undergirding or idea that might, even in its terrible wrongness, at the very least, give some sort of explanation to the standing query of “why?”

What happened Monday in Boston is simply and profoundly, ugly. It is meanness at its most sincere; literally ripping apart the lives and bodies of people gathered to run, cheer and challenge. For no apparent reason, life was harshly interrupted.

So yesterday when I received an urgent text from my husband that one of our 10 year old daughters needed me to take her to the doc, that she had had an accident, I reacted from the anger and sadness I felt about the Boston event. I was amped for a sudden, surprising happening that could change our life forever.

It didn’t. She had tripped and fell hard into a tree root that hurt her elbow. She will be fine (exhale). She will run again. She will laugh and she will be whole.

We will never know when those unexpected occurrences that change our life or end it, will be. We don’t know. It is out of our control. In that knowledge is total and complete Full-dom! Fullness of absolute freedom to live with outrageous passion, energy, and full-tilt for this thing we call life.

When my dad was sick and in his final weeks of life, we talked about the idea of living everyday as if it were your last. We laughed a little and scoffed more because we agreed that if we were to actually do that, we would disregard much of what we do and replace it with what we love and enjoy most. “If I were to live like it was my last day,” I had said, “I would never go into work again”.

But wait, maybe it’s not so silly. Looking back to that talk almost two years ago, I had been in a job I disliked that produced heaps of stress in a toxic environment. It was not a place that nurtured the fullness of my professional capacity and worse yet, it depleted me in every way.  If it really was my last day living, no way would I keep working in that awful place. Even more, as I walked confidently out the door, I would have said what I thought without couching it in safe, inoffensive language.  

That is what I ought to have done. It would have been the right, healthy decision. I didn’t do it because I had been caught up in the perceived sense of safety and the idea that my fullness, my good self, was defined by my work and career. I was unwilling to walk away from a position beneath my wisdom and capacity and move instead into my own, good, fully capable self because I was not living full of me. Instead I was filled up with societal expectations and the unstable voices of others who, in their lack of full living, sought to reduce me in mine. 

Living full of yourself is trusting in you. It is taking the risk of listening to your good wisdom and experience, to your gut, your hopes and your needs more than any other.

The question, “If this were my last day, what would I be doing?” can serve as a Full-dom check: Am I living fully into who I honestly am and truly want to be? Am I filled up with my desires, loves and hopes? Am I using my full self to fill up the world with beauty, justice and joy? If the answer is yes, than celebrate! If there are any “no’s” than good, honest reflection is in order.

Knowing that any day could be our last, that life is unexpected and in reality, operates largely outside of our control, is a deep breathe of fresh, healing and invigorating air. It releases us to eschew all that holds us down and back in our lives. Actually, it nearly demands it.

“Stop!” truth says. “Stop spending this precious life being mean to yourself. Stop telling yourself “I can’t, I’m not enough”. Stop allowing voices of others to determine how you think about yourself. Stop giving in to expectations that are limiting to you. Stop yielding and get out there! Fly! Be Free! Stretch those arms wide and reach BIG! Reach for your full, big, unique self and fill up with the beauty of who you are and the truth that this world is here to explore, to love and to mend. Get those legs moving and run! Run into the fullness of possibility and do not take no for an answer.”

Life is yours to command, until it isn’t. And then, my darling lovely dear, it is too late. Now… today… it is not.

Awake and Aware: Guns, Schools and Violence

Conscious living is a choice, albeit one that many people in our culture choose not to make. To live consciously is to live awake and aware. It is to engage with the happenings, events, choices and questions that take us beyond the confines of our own personal crib.

When you intentionally seek information that is not directly about what’s happening in your home, your day-to-day life, your relationships and finances, you are living aware. When you decide that the world is complex, big and filled with nuances, ideas and truths that sometimes contradict one another and require an open mind to digest, then you are living awake.

Living awake and aware is one critical aspect of living full of your good self. First, to choose to live full of yourself is to disregard the traditional teaching that to do so is wrong. I can hear the voices echo in my mind and memories. “You are too full of yourself young lady!”

My great work is to loosen our cultural knee-jerk agreement with this idea: that living full of yourself is somehow bad, wrong, sinful, prideful and arrogant.

No it isn’t.

Living full of yourself is exactly what we ought to be working toward and teaching, empowering and assisting our children to do. It’s what the world needs: more women (and men) who claim and affirm their good, unique, powerful skills, intellect, and insight and who use it to make more space for everyone to flourish.

Conscious-Checks are good for the full-soul and the truth that the world is bigger than what we see and touch each day. Conscious-Checks encourage us to apply the Fullness of all that we are to the betterment of our world, society and community.

Conscious-Check for April 15th (no, not taxes) is an appeal to apply the fullness of your mind, reason and compassion to the issue of guns, education and violence.

My kids love the TV show Glee. Since we do not watch television during the week, it is a ritual to record it and watch it together on Friday or Saturday night. Last Saturday the program began with a warning that this segment would include violence in schools. After checking in with my kids and establishing ground rules (the pause button gets to be pushed whenever someone needs to stop), we proceeded. Most of the show was typical Glee – love, friendship, music and quirky side-stories – until a gun-shot rang through the halls. Until the students clamored for safety and huddled in corners. Until close-ups of terrified faces filled our TV screen. Until one character was shown standing on top of a toilet seat silently crying to herself, alone and afraid.

My kids cried. They hid their eyes. We hit pause. We talked. They shared how afraid they were of that happening in their school, of the truth that the shooting in Connecticut was still on their minds. They didn’t understand why adults loved guns so much. We talked about hunting, about their grandpa who hunted pheasants, about our beloved neighbor who is an avid hunter. “I still hate guns,” one twin stated. “All of them."  “Why do they have to be so easy to get” the other asked?
“Why,” my 13 year old wanted to know, “can’t President Obama protect us from these things?”

Why indeed?

Living in fear of guns in our schools does not create space and opportunity for our children to become full of their good intellect, responsibility and care for the world. Watching the leaders of our nation not negotiate, not discuss and not find ways to eliminate the easy access to assault weapons, is not demonstrating the fullness of what it means to lead for the sake of the whole. 

We can do better. We can help our kids discover their full, good, strong character and express their opinions to their leaders. We can role model the behavior of a fully involved citizen and call our congressperson, senator and the white house to urge passage of strict gun regulation. We can write a telephone script with our kids and help them call too. We can open this discussion up among our peers, colleagues and families. If we can’t pass stricter gun laws, at least we can make sure the issue of gun violence and easily obtainable guns is not allowed to disappear or be ignored. We need to fully keep the conversation going. No matter what.

Is Living Full of Yourself a Sin?

One of my female students asked me yesterday, "Isn't living full our yourself bad? I mean, I was taught not to prideful or arrogant. When I hear "Living Full of Yourself", that's not a positive.

I agree. The idea of being filled up with the good of your own good self has been preached, taught and directed as negative, a sin.

In Greek "sin" is "hamartia", which literally means "to miss the mark". When pleasing God, following God's law and living in a way that meets God's expectations is the mark, anything we do that takes us away from that is considered sinful. I suppose in that sense, if one believe that our whole being, our thinking, feeling, smelling, tasting and touching selves ought to live for one being only, God, then I guess getting filled up with our own good self could be missing the mark.

But wait! If you do believe in God and wish to follow God's ways, it is God who gave you life, right? God who made you who you are, yes? I grew up seeing different versions of the "God don't make no junk" poster around the homes of fellow Christians. If God is your creator, the one who gave you all of your unique blessings, skills, intellect and quirks, than wouldn't God want you to be filled up with them?

If you do not believe in God, or are working your way beyond traditional belief, roadblocks remain. In the habits and traditions of society, we come to understand that women ought to live for everyone else. We are the caretakers, the nurturers, the ones who sacrifice. Society and religion together give women limited roles that define us, telling us who we can and cannot be. To be filled up with our feminine characteristics, sexuality, intellect and power is not the kind of woman our culture promotes and greets.

It's true, even if we don't want it to be. Women, we are often our worst enemy! We judge and poke at other women, especially those who grow into power or seem to be living beyond what a "good woman or girl" are supposed to.

To live full of ourselves means a lot of things. It means first believing in your inherent worth and value. That right now, in this moment of reading these words, you know and claim you are good. Beyond good, you are of value. You are worth being around, listening to, laughing with and learning about. Right now, without any other voice affirming it, without any other entity agreeing, you are amazing.

From there, from that precipice, the juicy, explosive, sweet energy that is uniquely women's, flows out and down from our center, opening up more and more space for love, ideas, problem solving, playfulness, affirming and arousing sex, and ultimately a deep connection with the divine.

Living Full of Ourselves is the opposite of bad, negative arrogance. As my student decided to name it: Women Full of Themselves Positive Pride. And so much more!

Living Full of Ourselves!

When I was little I dreamed big, fat, unruly dreams. Do you remember those? I know you had them too: those wandering fantasies that led us into great adventures and allowed us to dance in the fullness of our hopes. Those dreams where there were no limiting interruptions of “You want to do what?” or whispers that warned of failure and looking silly or insipid. No, when we were young, we were yet undamaged by the conditioning of our culture. We were still pleasantly full of ourselves.

I recall that little girl and your little girl too, and I invite her to be present again. We need her freedom, her complete willingness to believe in the possibility of everything and the way in which she so profoundly believed in all of her! It’s time for women to affirm and be full of ourselves!

When did it happen? When did we learn that being full of ourselves was prideful and bad? That somehow being full of ourselves challenged the idea that we could love, honor, hear and follow the direction of another? That being full of ourselves meant that we had no ability to allow space for another?

How wrong those ideas are. Being full of yourself is the surest way to giving space and freedom to another. Being full of your good core self gives you the confidence to open up to the good core of another and will be the energizing dynamic that assists the flourishing of others. When we are full of ourselves we are honestly able to engage all the good qualities that are unique to who we are, and see those that are particular in another.

Being full of ourselves is the deepest, most profound connection to the divine within you and to the energy of all that is around us. Becoming Full of Ourselves is the way to loving your body, your mind and your spirit. It is the way to connection with your sisters, lovers, mothers and friends. It is the practice of breathing big, expanding arch ways of opportunity that beckon you to adventure, to new ideas, deepening old loves and knowing yourself more lovingly than ever before.

Follow me on this new way and find out how to Become a Woman who is Full of Herself!

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!

Dear Mr. President!

Dear Mr. President - 

Great party yesterday! I am proud to have you as my leader-in-chief. I do not agree with all of your choices, which is as it ought to be. The idea of “Yur either wit’ me or agin’ me” defeats the foundational strength of our democracy: desire for complete agreement is misplaced.

When we disagree and have the respect and regard for the good in each other we make our most profound movements forward as a people. To disagree with the idea of another while also affirming their good core enables you to be open to listen & compromise. Before you know it, we have a discussion grounded in reason and the common desire to make more good for more people. We become problem solvers who share a powerful core good.

This is the good stuff of what our democracy is all about.

I think we have lost our way. To loosely quote Brian Williams from NBC during yesterday’s inauguration, “If you have kids home from school today for the MLK holiday, get them in front of the TV. This is a chance to watch Americans behaving well, which we haven’t seen for some time.”

We are a nation divided, Mr. President, and not simply because we have different ideas about the role of government. We are divided because we do not rehearse, repeat and affirm that as human beings we all share a basic core good that will give us the power to make this nation and world a better place for all: with or without any religious affiliation.

• We do not regularly claim boldly and publically that inside every human is a core of good that we share together.
• We routinely do not assert this as a shared truth for those who disagree with us or who claim a different way, truth or path.
• We do not, then, take responsibility for our actions or lack of action.
• We relegate the prayed-for-goals of cooperation, compromise, tolerance, respect and regard to a blessing from a Divine Being who yesterday in the inauguration was described by you and many others as “God” who is a Male He, Him and Father.

The majority of you who stood at the impressive podium at the Capitol:

• Used God as the reason our nation is a place of freedom and possibility. “He” gave it to us.
• You also seemed to agree that the way in which humanity came to exist is through the decision-making process of God; the Father who birthed humanity. Hmmm.
• None of you made reference or tipped a hat to the reality that there are “fellow Americans” who choose with intellect and critical thinking, not to engage in a religious faith tradition. 
• Finally, the Benediction said it all.  A few lines is all that is needed to see the message delivered. It’s in the refrain:

 “We pray that you (God) will bless us with (God’s) presence because without it….

• hatred and arrogance will infect our hearts. But with your blessing we know that we can break down the walls that separate us.
• distrust, prejudice and rancor will rule our hearts. But with the blessing of your presence, we know that we can renew the ties of mutual regard which can best form our civic life.
• suspicion, despair, and fear of those different from us will be our rule of life. But with your blessing, we can see each other created in your image, a unit of God's grace, unprecedented, irrepeatable (sic) and irreplaceable.
•  we will see only what the eye can see. But with the blessing of your blessing we will see that we are created in your image, whether brown, black or white, male or female, first generation or immigrant American, or daughter of the American Revolution, gay or straight, rich or poor.

You get the point. Unless we have God’s divine blessing of God’s presence we humans are not going to be able to do anything good.

If God is not around, then we are going to be infected with hate and arrogance. We will mistrust each other and be filled with prejudice. We will be suspicious of each other while afraid of anyone who is different from us. We will only “see what the eye can see” – which I guess means the outside appearance of ones skin color, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic status.

Wow. It’s a good thing God has been blessing us or we would be a nation that doesn’t listen to each other, that has absolute ideals about what is right and who is wrong, and gasp (!) would have various groups of people using God’s name for competing truths about who is actually created in “His” image or not.

This Benediction accomplishes two things at one time: It removes us mere humans from the responsibility of actually making a commitment to do those good things that build a good society and two; it rejects that all on our own we have the power to do it.  

I wonder who will Fact-Check this Benediction. Will we be watching to see if in fact God has blessed us? What will be the measure? If we pass immigration legislation that what?... allows illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship? Will that be evidence of God? If we overturn DOMA, does that mean God has finally decided (after all these years) to bless us?  What are we to conclude if DOMA stands, if Roe v. Wade is overturned, if women continue to be underpaid for equal work, if Black men continue to be the largest ethnic group to be locked up… what then? Can we boldly proclaim God has refused to bless us and then, “Oh well,” there’s nothing we can do because we humans don’t got what it takes to make it happen without God?”

I am profoundly sorry that among the beauty, pageantry and good tradition of the most powerfully good country, there was a distinct message that (a) we are a Christian Nation with a (b) Male Deity who has (c) chosen the U.S. to give Freedom and (d) without whom we as humans cannot make any moral shift to a higher ground of acceptance, equality or compromise.

Perhaps the most disconcerting facet to all of this is that most Americans don’t care. There will not be anyone following up on this Benediction or measuring if God is actually with us. That is, until a group of Americans do so with a vengeance of righteous validation for whatever their position is that purports the “real truth” of what it means to have God “bless our nation”.

It is a dangerous game we are all playing: invoking the Divine Being as the source of our life, freedom, wealth and all that is Good while ignoring the ramifications of what that actually means when segments of society do take is seriously.

Why not begin practicing that We Are Good? You and me, fellow Americans, fellow citizens, community peeps. We got the Good and all the powerful capacity to meet the demands of our future. With a religion or without one – all humans have the good to get it done.

Declare that We are Blessed with our own Good presence and insist that our Core Good show up so we can get this ball rollin!

All of the Time!

If the revelation were a stick it would be dangerous. The impact with which it hits me shakes me so profoundly that I cannot do anything other than look at the truth. I am unkind to myself.

“Have an affair with yourself”, I said. “Love you the way you love your lover”, I opined. I have taken this work seriously, and have been nearly devastated at what I have found.

I have a vivid memory of the first years of passionate love with my husband. I also recollect a few years ago when I was honestly and frighteningly tempted to have an affair with another. I remember what I so freely gave away:  attention, compliments, strokes, desire and yearning to be near them.

To have passionate love for me as I would a lover is a metaphor that has shone light on that which I have not before seen so clearly. Thinking of all that I gave, and still give to another - it is striking how much I do NOT give to me.

While realizing this distasteful reality I have also received several interesting comments on my book, Religion Made Me Fat. These are from Christians who are angry, disappointed and sorry for me because I no longer have God, and who assert that I must be, without question, miserable, afraid and confused.

There is a shared core in these journeys.
1.    To find self-love as powerful, intoxicating and freeing as when another loves us.
2.    To move the location of our good from being on a cross, in a Christ, God, Church or system of belief to inside of our naturally good selves.

Both locate the power of good, of love, inside of us. Both claim that power is potent and can be used to create more good love and power.

Both share this obstacle: We are uncomfortable with too much self-love and don’t really want the responsibility that comes along with loving our core-good.

My TEDx Talk, Asserting Human Good, is a 16-minute romp into this idea that is both a mind-blowing paradigmatic shift as well as a blasé concept with no apparent teeth.

Blasé because I have found since giving the TEDx Talk that most people initially reject the idea that they are not good, or that God is the good in them, or that our cultural understanding is based on the idea that humans are born into sin and cannot get rid of it ourselves.

They reject it until the idea of ones own power and therefore responsibility to use it, gets too big and they run for the cover of don't blame me, I can't do it or I am not enough.

The angry Christians who write to me, feel sorry for me and know that I am sad, confused and miserable because they want to believe this must be true for me. They need it to be true. If I can be happy, content, contributing to my community and world, and do it all without God, the foundation of their belief falls apart.

What is that foundation? Wait for it…  “You must have God to be good.”

It is God, Allah, Yahweh who gives us what we need to finally make it through the pearly gates or otherwise get on that welcome wagon into the proverbial heaven or celestial palace that awaits the “good and faithful” after death.

God makes us good, not us. God gives us what we need to be “enough” for God – and for the religious, that’s ultimately what it’s all about.

I interacted with one of the Christians who told me I was miserable and explained how grounded, content and free I felt. I said that I was helping people & proud of the work I am doing. They wrote back: “It does not matter if you help people or what you do in life. What matters is your salvation, if you are fit for Christ.”

Right. Back to my TEDx Talk. It’s the Doctrine of Original Sin and the foundational belief that without a God, humans cannot be good enough to do anything really good because the ultimate prize isn’t making the world better – it’s getting into heaven, making the celestial grade and being stamped with “Approved”.

There are other clues that the majority of people in our culture are being dishonest about what they really believe about their good capacity.
•    The many Facebook reply’s that say “God is good!” when someone posts a win.
•    The posts that say “I’m sure God is going to make this a good day!”
•    The license plate that reads “I am Good in God”
•    The call, response used by hundreds if not thousands of churches; Leader: “God is Good!” People: “All of the time!”

What would happen if we changed these few examples with the idea that humans are good?
•    I post on Facebook: “Wow, just finished my book!” and then post “I am good!” or a friend replies “You are good!”
•    How about a license plate that says “I am naturally good!” or “I am good in me.”
•    A call response that says “You are Good!” and the people respond “All of the time!”

This is the stuff of the mind-blowing paradigmatic shift. If we truly, honestly and genuinely believed that as humans we are first good, and, have all the capacity we need right now to make more good, we would live in a different world.

This is where I want to live and it is the world I seek to create for my children, for you and yours. It will be a struggle; not just because of the engrained idea that on our own we cannot do and be good, but also because we are dishonest about believing that truth. And, we’re afraid. We fear too much self-love and the responsibility for our own life, and the improved life of our community and world.

Fear is not more powerful than our good, and our challenge to passionately love ourselves begins with claiming that good.

Start today. Make your own call/response to repeat in your head. “I am good! – All of the time!”

I think it is time to take the true leap of faith and believe not in that which we cannot see, but in our own good, lovely, complicated, incredible selves. All of the Time!

A Passionate Affair

I don’t think many of us genuinely do.

For me, I know that how I was raised had a lot to do with it. I think that’s true for most of us. We are shaped and sculpted by the environment in which we live. My father was a 100% German and my mom a Scot; quite a combination in terms of the tradition of stoicism.

The unspoken rules went something like this: You don’t compliment or speak highly of your children in public and if at home, it is restrained. You don’t talk appreciatively about yourself; bragging is next to sinning. You are not prideful in any way, about yourself or your kids.  The concept of self-love, self-regard and self-respect were cloaked with tight lips and what I would later call false humility.

It took me years to understand why other adults would rave about how incredible a singer I was, or what an astounding public speaker I was or how naturally I motivated and led people, while my dad and mom would remain quiet. It hurt then, as a kid. Now as an adult I realize that I have internalized this terrible habit of not bragging about myself, ravishing myself with love or in some way giving myself what I am more-than-willing to give others.

Many of us do not genuinely, deep down inside of our good selves, purely and passionately love ourselves.

This needs to change.
Old habits die hard.
I am finally committed to doing it.  I am going to risk falling in love with me.

One week ago I told my tribe - all of you amazing and incredible core-good peeps - that I was starting an affair; with myself. I don’t say this in jest. You see, there was a moment in my life when I was tempted to do just that with someone other than my husband. It’s a complicated story as most of them are. I am writing it now, not sure what form it will eventually take. At this moment, I want to give you some of the wisdom from that time in my life.

Here is one piece: we have affairs, are tempted to do so, to get charged and excited by people other than our partners and spouses. It is not because our partners and spouses are lacking. It’s because we think that we are lacking. We simply don’t love ourselves enough.

I think the main reason men and women fall into affairs is not because we are so passionate about the other person – but rather – we are passionate about how that person sees us. It is a selfish act in more than one way. Selfish in terms of dishonesty toward our committed partner and selfish in that we aren’t really valuing the one with whom we are cheating. We are valuing the way they make us feel, which is rooted in the truth that their unyielding passion for us gives us a vision of ourselves for which we deeply yearn.

It’s not necessarily that our spouse or partner isn’t giving it to us, it is simply that they are involved in the complicated tasks of the life we have built together. Through all of what has occurred over the years, for a variety of reasons – mostly due to the bad habit of not bragging about, liking and loving ourselves – we don’t feel strong, good, worthy or desirable.

We are out of shape in the self-love, self-regard and self-respect areas of our life. Women are especially vulnerable to this because we have been taught by society, culture, religion and perhaps family that it is the job of a woman to put everyone else before us. Our role in life, we are told, is to sacrifice for our husbands, sons and lastly, our daughters. We are to give so that they can have a good life.

Nope. No more.

To give from our good core to our children, spouses & partners, friends and colleagues we must first give to our good. We have to focus as much time on our needs, our wants, our fantasies, dreams, experiences as we do on those of others. The analogy to having an affair is a good one because it is in these relationships where we are most passionate about the other. It almost seems as though we have found a perfect person. We overlook any flaws and simmer in the pleasure we find in their presence.

This is how we ought to behave to ourselves. I mean it! When we do, we will be far less tempted to find the attention and love of ourselves from another. We will give it to ourselves, and then have such capacity to give it to our spouses, children, friends and community.

Thus, we need to desire ourselves. We need to love our bodies, feel how we react when we are pleasured. We need to talk to ourselves about how beautiful and sexy we are, about how much we want to be with ourselves. We need to share a good story with ourselves, take ourselves out for drinks and a play, go for a walk with ourselves or steal away for a few hours doing something indulgent with ourselves.

We are worth it. You are worth it.

Brag about yourself this weekend. Tell one other person something GREAT about you. Like yourself this weekend. Take yourself to one place you’d like to go, one walk you want to take or bookstore you want to peruse. Love yourself this weekend. Give yourself pleasure and explore your own good body. Feed yourself good food and rub yourself with lovely body oils.

Have an affair! With You!

Yes! Not the What but the Who

How do we know what we want to be when we grow up?

The New Year offers the space and time (if we take it) to jump into such a question and dig down deep.  On this eighth day of January there remains plenty of time in these beginning days of 2013 to reflect and get into your core good.

I have an infuriatingly lucky older brother who knew exactly what he was meant to do on this earth. At 13 years old he knew he wanted to be an architect and that is what he became. And a damn gifted one too.

It did not happen like that for me. I have regularly struggled with “what” I was meant to do in this world and “what” form it would take.  My resume has been described as richly diverse. I have accomplished much, earned an advanced degree, traveled the world, been an ordained pastor, university instructor and non-profit founder and leader. Still the question haunts me: “What” are you AmyJo?

You know how it goes. You’re at a party or gathering and you get involved in a conversation with someone you don’t know. After exchanging names the next question almost always is “So what do you do?”  Our identity is intertwined with how we earn a living. These days it precedes almost all other aspects of how we define and understand ourselves. It is what we pay attention to; we use it to measure and size-up if we want to remain in conversation or move on.

When I was a pastor I especially despised the question. The reaction was the same 100% of the time. “So, what do you do?” the stranger would ask. It was no matter where the exchange took place; a bus, at a party or social gathering, at school functions. When I responded with “I’m a pastor” the questioner would offer a furtive “Oh”. Awkward silence followed. The parties or social gatherings were the worst. People would assume they now had to watch their language or put down their glass of wine, even though I was holding one myself.

After leaving the ordained ministry (a story I tell in my book Religion Made Me Fat), I still dislike the question. It pierces an insecurity I have held since I began to wonder what I would become when I grew up. “What do you do?” is a query that leaves me flat and afraid. Afraid that what I do isn’t enough and doesn’t measure up, and flat because there is so much more to me than any one thing, position or post I have ever held professionally. There is a part of me that wants to shout with the joyful energy of freedom, “I don’t do anything but what I want to do! I am all that I should be right now!” Followed with an arm pumping, “Woop! Woop!”

But I don’t. My habit has been to play along with the game, talk about my teaching, my coaching, my new business. Until now. Until today. Until this eighth day of January 2013 where I am proclaiming “Yes!” I will break this habit, change the rules of my life and make my own game!

To begin, I am letting go of the question “What do you want to be or do” and replacing it with “Who do you want to be?”

“Who” do I want to “be” is an entirely different question. Imagine if you were back at that party. You’ve introduced yourself and shaken hands, and then you ask “So, who are you?”

Ha! It would be such a great question to ask! It matters not “what” they do, but rather the import is on “who” they are. What is it that makes them tick? What do they love? What do they think is beautiful? How do they love, make decisions, solve problems? Do they drink from abundance or are they pinched by scarcity?

“Who do I want to be?” is the question for my 2013.

Amy Ahlers, the incredibly gifted Wake-Up Call Coach, offered the question as rooted in our state of being. It isn’t what you want to get or attain. It isn’t where you want to go or something you wish to complete.

This is a question grounded in a different soil than the well known clay of expectations, production and making things happen. It is into these that we plunge our measuring devices that create measurable targets of losing 10 pounds, taking a painting class or buying that dream car, boat, or purse. These aren’t bad goals. It isn’t wrong to want and desire things or to extend our skills and knowledge. We definitely know it’s good to take care of our bodies. Yet there is a distinct difference between these goals that come from the familiar ground of societal do’s and don’t's and those that arise from our own core good.

Living into our good is the key access point to our contentment and it starts by claiming the power of our natural inner good core. From here everything else - all that is human - stems, grows and blossoms. It is not determined by any other being, organization, book or custom. Your good life comes from your good core.

Who do you want to be in this next year?

Let me offer a few examples.

• This year, I want to be a woman who is confident in her great work and in claiming the great life intended for me.
• This year I want to be a relaxed mother who enjoys her kids; playing while guiding and loving them up with my own core good while affirming theirs.
• This year I want to be a sexy, energized lover who listens to, laughs and plays with my husband.

You get the idea. Claiming your inner wisdom-core-good that is full of creative, brave power is the first step to begin listening to that power.

The process is easy. So easy it will make you laugh, perhaps even doubt. But don’t.

• Just do it.

• Say it.

• Repeat it.

• Make it your truth.

I am good and have in me the power to make more good for myself and others.

It is this one sentence that will activate your good and get you in tune with “who” you are and “who” you want to be. Make this sentence your New Year’s Resolution and then add the question: Who do I want to be in this year? The confidence you build in your natural goodness will guide and direct you and you will hear your truth.

Busy to Distraction

When I was a pastor, my colleague who had been at the congregation 15 plus years when I arrived, was always running. His cell phone was constantly barking at him; clipped to his waist it rarely stayed in the holster longer than a few minutes. When we had scheduled meetings, he’d fly-in at the last minute, out of breath with phone moving from ear to holster.  At the end of it, he’d head out immediately to his “next important meeting,” phone always (always) being pulled toward his ear as he walked out the door.

It was intimidating. That is, until I discovered that this person actually did very little. 

This experience, combined with my personal history of growing up in a house that praised busyness while deriding anything seemingly sedentary, got me thinking. Why does it appear that we love being “crazy busy?”

We live in a culture obsessed with constant movement, packed schedules, and being “busy, busy, busy!” Whenever I hear anyone say that word more than once-in-a-row, I can’t help but hear the voice of the Magician in the TV production of Frosty the Snowman. You know the scene, the long-legged, top-hatted entertainer & scumbag is trying to ignore Santa, so he says “No time to talk, busy, busy, busy” as he zooms over hill and yonder, away from the truth of his reality and his choices.

It’s an insightful metaphor. Somehow we have been trained to think of ourselves and others as worthy, good people the more “crazed and busy” we are.  Regularly, when I greet someone with the words ‘How are you?’ I am met with rolling eyes, shaking head and appropriately stressed smile. “Oh my gosh,” the person says, “Crazy! Things are so busy… one thing after another.  So hard to keep up.” Or another of my favorites is,  “This week has been so chaotic!... I barely have time to breathe!” And another that tops the list is “Oh man, I am just running all the time…” Each of which leads to an exhalation of dramatic breath followed by, “What about you?”

It’s almost a comparison of who can out-crazy-schedule the other.

The problem (and I do think it is a problem) isn’t that people are busy with schedules that are full, productive and life-giving. The way in which we talk about our days isn’t with affirmation of the goodness coming from the “running around” or “chaotic days”. It approaches a sort of badge of honor that we wear proudly to prove that we have earned something. What? Is it our worth?  A mark of success?

I think it is a problem because we have convinced ourselves that the more we fill up our days with appointments & events and the louder our phones screech with announcements of Facebook likes, Twitter RT’s and text messages, the more value we have as a person. I come to this conclusion because when queried with “How are you?” people are not saying “I am really good. I have a full day and a lot of time consuming connections, and I love it.” They’re responding with harried, heavy breathing and shaking heads. I also am convinced it’s a problem because in the midst of all this “running around” we are not collectively getting healthier. We clearly are not getting good aerobic or anaerobic activity from being “on the go”. We are getting fatter with ever growing incidence of diabetes and heart disease, blood pressure and other diseases due to being overweight and out of shape.

A final reason I think our “Chaotic days” are a problem is because, like the Magician, we use the busyness to get ever further away from the reality of our true selves. Slowing down means more time to think, reflect and feel ourselves. Are we happy? What is happy? What do I really want? What do I honestly think of myself and why? Why am I choosing to work at what I am doing? Why am I in this relationship? What does it mean that I am a ___________ (fill in the blank, Christian, Muslim, Atheist)? Why do I laugh at jokes deriding homosexuals? And on and on.

When our days are “filled” with “one thing after another” we don’t have to face those uncertainties, questions or ponderings that are part of a life-aware. To be present in the moment of our days means to engage fully with the realities in which we exist, whether they be friendly or challenging truths, a healthy, grounded and happy person faces them. The distractions from an overly packed, smart phone yelping life enable you and me to get further away from that work and therefore, a much less honestly full life.

Let’s begin this New Year with a resolution to be less like the “busy, busy, busy” of Frosty’s Magician and commit to being open to making honestly core-Good magic within ourselves & to share with others. To talk more about this work, give me a holler below or on Facebook, Twitter or my website. Use these oft-times social distractions to slow it down and blaze a new trail for 2013!