A Culture of Fear?

I have been doing ALOT of school work lately. In the spare moments in between reading and assignments I steal moments of pleasure and get to read magazines. I love them. I want a lot of them but only have small moments to read a few of them. This month I have been working on ideas about hip hop culture and bought the new issue of Bust because I love it and it also had Eve on the cover.

The issue is interesting because it had an article about a woman who rode her bike from Winnepeg to Texas all by herself in less than two months. The one question she heard repeatedly was 'aren't you scared?' She explained that she was scared because everyone offered her a scenario that freaked her out. The only thing that was was a problem on her trip was that a racoon attacked her bag but not a scratch happened by another human being.

The question was raised of why are we so afraid? Why do we fear the unknown to a crippling degree?

I have been reading a book entitled After God by Mark Taylor. He offers that if we approach life within a post-modern context that we would discover our creativity and the ability to live within a space of unpredictability as well as being insecure and often times random. I think fear gets displaced in this setting. Why are we so afraid and why does fear limit us so?

I had the chance to lecture at a Women's History class at Pasadena City College. In the class I got the chance to offer hope for women and men to look at their gifts and talents as they encounter feminism. In the class I heard a bit of fear. Fear that change would disrupt their lives and that would not be a positive things but almost a negative. Change and fear work hand in hand often times. I think I am wrestling with this idea because fear and change are wrestling inside me. I graduate sooner than later and that promises that things will have to change and I will need to find a new way to use my time.

What do we do to ease our fears?
How do we move ahead without being chained to our fears?

These are my questions...what are your thoughts?

freedom.

I have been reading all day. The last couple of hours I have been reformulating some thoughts I have had for some time ago and they were shoved or shelved for a later day. I am in the midst of understanding some thoughts in Job that are taking to me some new places in my thinking but over all reaffirming what is happening in my mind and thoughts.

It is time we move from our many traditions.

This being said I know that now i need to defend it. I need to stand firm behind my overwhelming thought. This can no longer be a statement that we mention but really stand behind this and begin to move. Our traditions are weighing us down. We are hurting ourselves more than we are helping the church.

I am using the church because it is the last institution that is usually the one to move.

i use the church because it is archaic.

we can no longer go backwards. We can not stand with the feet of our forefathers. We can't because it destroys us, rather than to help us. We can't stand there with our feet in the ground saying that the traditions help us. Do they? Really, do they?

Our movement needs to be forward rather than back. I am sick of being in churches that do things without questioning anything. I am tired of emerging churches that look like they value art but they steal from the culture, add a few Jesus' or Christ's and call it spiritual. The culture is already spiritual. We have lost that in the church.

The church feels like a clubhouse where only members can come. It was like that Berstein's Bears book that I always read where the cover had Brother bear in a tree house where there was a sign that said NO GIRLS ALLOWED. Now we can let girls in but they have to play by there rules. I am bored by these rules. I don't want to play by them so I will go some place else. I will go where it is better. I will go where people are accepting of me. Because these places exist. They exist because the church failed. I am bored by it making me feel bad, unloved, unreceptive to grace.

I don't want to make a new denomination. I don't want to make a new building. I want to make something that is a safe place. There is some places that need rules there are others that need to be explored. We need to take our blinders off. We need to be bold and we need to be allowed to change.

We need to stand up for freedom, and originiality, we need to be bold and free. We can't stand there and take it. We are better than that. so we why do we allow ourselves to hurt and humilate? Why are we running after power and influence? Why do we think that I (we) are the only ones in the world that God is using. Wake up. Realize that we are not. It's time to move on. We are allowed to. God grants us freedom? Did we forget this? Did we forget that God gave it to someone else as well? That is community. That is what we are made to do.....

Equality

I don't think I was born a feminist. I think I was born into a family that my parents shared responsibilities for raising two twin daughters that wanted to swim, dance, or play basketball all the time. I don't think I was born with the intention to carry the banner for women but it all changed as I began to change to ask the question why?

I think that there are certain small moments that stand out in my childhood and teenage years that I look back with a small smile and my heart warming. I am grateful that I was allowed to ask that question of why. I somehow found myself in a very traditional Christian undergraduate University. There I was beginning to find out what it 'meant' to be a Christian but I found it that it didn't suit me so well. I remember wrestling with simple textual verses that tried to explain that women needed to be kept silent in the church and or they could not preach in the congregation. I wrestled because I wanted to believe the 'truth' or what was so conceived as the truth. I was told this is the way that it has always been.

For such a long time I was wrecked, I began to carry anger and I was so violently angry towards those that didn't believe in equality. I knew that women and men needed to be on the same playing field. That the argument that they can raise the families, wash the laundry, cook and clean, were not something that I could ascribe to. I couldn't wear that on my skin. I was ready to burst. I was ready to see so much more than the word had to offer. I began to realize:

What always has been isn't always what is.

I began to wrestle. I didn't start with verses but the whole chapter, than on to book, and now am at the point that when I engage with the text as a whole. Instead of why I am beginning to understand the what. What does freedom mean? What does togetherness really entail? What does it mean to wrestle with the questions together? I am sad when we want to separate the male and the female. That a man has a dominance or power over the woman. What I see is the perverseness of power and the desire for strength and influence. We are missing out on the togetherness and what we can learn from one another in a communal whole. Why do we separate the strengths? I don't think a healthy feminism is female over male and certainly we have seen what happens with male over female. Something ends up missing. Something becomes separated.

I think we are missing out on the beauty of wholeness and what it means to strive to work together. I meet some really healthy relationships where the couple works together. There is no keeping score. There is no one upping, or keeping tabs. I am ready to move in all my relationships with the vision of community and grace. This is struggling with people, hearing what they have to say, wrestling with traditions that define us as human beings. We put these labels on ourselves. Are we wiling to redefine the labels?

This week has reminded me of why I am a feminist and that I am made to fight for the voice of women. I feel really blessed in this gifting and really hope and pray that the path laid out for me is a quest that I am able to endure. I hope that I can be a part of changing definitions, to live in a space that is ready for change, for definitions to be revised, and the partnerships to be strong in time.



Unity and Equality are so important. When we see one another as the same, as equal, we will begin to see those that are so different than ourselves as so much the same.

Through the eyes of a woman

I don't know if I grew up a feminist but I know that this is a title that I use or other people know me as.I think I understand my obsession of feminism as I look at some of the movies I watched (Mary Poppins) or family structure (my father did my hair ever morning for all of elementary school while my mother went to work). It's a huge part of who I am and it's funny how the name became stamped on my heart and life. I became a feminist because I was oppressed in a Christian context. Because of that I was able to move on and find my freedom not only in my Christ but also in my womanhood.

Today my friend Jenny and I spent the say touring the feminist art exhibit, entitled WACK at the Geffen Contemporary Museum of Art, part of the MOCA in LA.


This was my second of hopefully three times to visit the exhibit that I think is absolutely fascinating. This exhibit is the first feminist exhibit of all women artists. It surprises me that it's 2007 and only now we are celebrating the work and achievements of women. My first encounter was with my friends Grant and Josh.

We had a great time and it was intriguing to bring a male perspective into what I was thinking, feeling, and reacting. Grant is a friend who knows quite a bit about art so it was lovely to have his thoughts and knowledge of the pieces and the layout of the show. It was a lovely afternoon where I felt like I stepped into something that I was always meant to step in. As I encountered the art my soul felt at rest and at ease because it was resonating with the images that so much of it has encountered with brokenness and the agony of silence.

One of my favorite pieces is Yoko Ono's Cut Piece


This piece really strikes me as the basics of human nature and human interaction. I think watching the video is worth the time and your interactions with it makes the meaning that much richer. Other pieces that I really enjoyed were ads that juxtaposed real woman that were taken years before the ads were introduced. I loved this piece where a woman's face was being tied up with string and towards the point where it seems like suffocation there are scissors that cut the thread. There were also a couple of pieces that had to do with what ads show and what are really underneath the clothing of the models. A piece that showed the struggle of women trying to work in the art fields that are dominated by men. There were so many pieces that spoke to me.

Because this was the second visit I choose to spend time at spaces that I really enjoyed and moved past the pieces that either I didn't relate to or didn't connect with. I love this exhibit and feel so lucky that this is in Los angeles, just a train ride from my home. I left rethinking the same questions I have been asking myself and others for awhile...what is beauty? Who defines it? What defines it? Why do we give it so much worth?