Women of the ELCA

A popular book’s title describes the conundrum: Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.

We Christian women know Luke’s account of Jesus stopping in Bethany to visit with Mary and Martha only too well, often seeing ourselves as living a Martha life. We are the ones teaching Sunday school, preparing the Sunday fellowship spread, keeping the church kitchen clean and sparkling, planning the committee agenda … the list goes on. Many of us extend our Martha-ness into other aspects of our lives too … in the classroom or in the office or boardroom.

Had you noticed a simple phrase at the beginning of the story? “…Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.” Martha was a bold woman. She went against the culture and custom of her time—she owned a home. And Jesus went against culture and custom to stop and visit at the home of a woman. We often overlook Martha’s boldness to focus on Mary’s boldness in taking a disciple’s role (also not a role that culture or custom gave to women at that time).

So there’s a sting when Jesus seems to prefer Mary’s contemplative approach over Martha’s busyness. “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” Yet Jesus has validated Martha too, by simply being with her in her home.

It’s not an either or situation. It’s not the active versus the contemplative life. We are all called in the fullness of our lives to move beyond the culture and custom of our time to live a life in service to Jesus.

On our church calendar we commemorate the lives of Mary, Martha and Lazarus of Bethany this Thursday, July 29. Let’s leave behind the Mary-Martha conundrum, agreeing to move beyond the culture and custom of our time to live a life in service to Jesus.

Linda Post Bushkofsky is executive director of Women of the ELCA.

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In the midst of reviewing seed grant applications for the Raising Up Healthy Women and Girls initiative, my survivor friend and sister in Christ died. She battled breast cancer for almost six years and was a real warrior to the end.

She was a health care provider, and many of her co-workers came by her room over the last days she spent in the hospital, bearing witness to how over those six years, whether she was in remission or in treatment, she encouraged other cancer patients to take control of their lives—all while caring for her family, doing ministry and working until the end. She left two girls, ages 13 and 9.

My aunt died a week before my friend, and I think about her often and how my cousin Judy is getting along. She and her mom had a special bond.

It’s that bond that makes me wonder, how are these two young ones, really?

I know how my adult women friends have struggled to get through those first weeks and month without their moms. How does the village of women step in and be there for these young girls to see to more than just their physical needs? Sure, they have their dad, but what about those things that only mom can fix or understand?

Have we really prepared ourselves as a community to raise up girls when a woman can no longer carry on?

I have said many times that I will be there for the girls in my life, and I meant it. But I have always seen myself in a supporting role to their parents.

How to I make good on my promise? Has anyone been in this place? Any words of wisdom?

Valora K Starr is director for discipleship at Women of the ELCA.

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[A note on terms in this post: a burqa is a complete, total covering that conceals everything; a woman’s eyes are concealed behind a veil. A niqab covers the face as well but has an open slit for the eyes. The head scarf that most of us Americans see Muslim women wearing is called a hijab.]

All over Europe, most notably in France and Belgium, governments are considering laws that would ban burqas and niqabs in public. The proposed bans in Europe are motivated by the opinion that these garments are degrading to women and signs of their submission to male authority in their families or households—and that flies in the face of the secular values of European society. The proposed ban in France is likely to pass in the French Senate in September and become law.

I’m definitely not a fan of the burqa and am not so wild about the niqab, either. I tend to side with the opinion that they are oppressive, but then my American sensibilities about religious freedom suggest I might be hesitant to take steps to ban them, as this survey found.

Modesty is a key principle of Islam for both men and women, and so some women, though a minority, no doubt regard these garments as expressions of their religious conviction. This is a choice I don’t get, but if a Muslim woman freely chooses to wear such a garment, is it an encroachment on her religious rights to tell her that she can’t?

On the other hand, the extremely conservative variety of Islam that mandates wearing such garments is an ideology that does not believe in a woman’s right to do much of anything, like drive a car or go out in public without a man. So how much of a free choice is it, really?

I’d like to think that such bans might help liberate women who really do feel oppressed. A woman could use it as a doorway to living more freely because, well, that’s what the law says, and unless she is supposed to never leave the house to go to work or go shopping, she and her family would just have to comply. (Or maybe her family would just never let her leave the house, which would make things worse, wouldn’t it.)

So what do you think? A free expression of religious conviction or a symbol of oppression? And should anybody’s government get in the middle of it by passing laws?

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Liberal, conservative, moderate… orthodox, traditional, progressive,  contemporary…  we use our labels and our jargon to say who is worthy, who is not, who has it right and who doesn’t.

I think we like to dwell on labels because we simply do not believe: We don’t believe there is anything that we can actually do about human suffering, so we argue about how God feels about the gay couple next door. We don’t believe there is a solution to hunger and poverty, so we talk about whether or not women are supposed to be ordained. (Still? Yes, still.) You can really start a ruckus by calling God “She”—go ahead, try it!

One fellow not too long ago nearly spat in my face, “I would rather stand on God’s word!”

“Standing on the word of God” is often code for taking God’s word literally. What bugs me most about this idea of taking God literally isn’t the fact that the holy writs were discovered, collected, translated and compiled by men of power and a particular class (though I invite you to think about these things as you read the word of God).

No, what bothers me the most about biblical literalists is that they rob God of being creative, poetic and metaphorical. This approach doesn’t bring God down to the level of humans—it takes God lower than us, because when any of us refuses to allow God to speak metaphorically, creatively or poetically, we are rejecting the artistic nature of God, rejecting one of the many ways God can speak to us.

A child that colors outside the lines is more a reflection of God’s nature than the pompous and certain nature of assuming to know exactly what God meant in every verse of the Bible.

Does thinking that way make me liberal,  traditional, moderate, progressive or contemporary?

Inez Torres Davis is director for justice, Women of the ELCA.

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This month, my four siblings and I celebrated our parents’ 60th wedding anniversary with an Alaskan cruise. Sixty years—that’s quite an accomplishment.

In my family, we can boast long marriages. Both sets of grandparents stayed married until their deaths. I still look at photos of my maternal grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary. (That one sticks in my mind because I had a college assignment to get an article published somewhere, anywhere, for an automatic “A” and my letter to my grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary was published in a denominational magazine.)

My oldest brother and sister have marriages that have lasted more than 30 years (closer to 40 I think; I should ask) and another older brother has been married more than 20 years, though he did go through a divorce. (He likes to say he’s been married 32 years; 22 to his current wife, and 13 to his first wife.) That just proves marriage is not easy, as anyone who has gone through it or is now married can attest.

I got married late in life and now have been married 13 years.

But wait.

I have another sister, a younger sister, who has been with her partner longer than I’ve been married. They are in a “lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationship” as the ELCA Social Statement on Human Sexuality calls it. They love each other. They share a home they built together. They share three dogs, but no children. Honestly, they are perfect for each other because, like in most marriages, the strengths of one partner make up for the weaknesses in the other.

My sister and her partner are stalwarts in their accepting, deep South Episcopal church; one serves on the vestry, and the other, a true extrovert, visits the sick and makes dinners for the homebound. They love their church.

And I have a lot of friends who are in “ life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.” Some have children, some do not; some are devoted to a church, some are not. But none are officially married. They can’t count their years together and celebrate big anniversaries except in spirit.

It breaks my heart every time we get the updated list here in the office of churches that have chosen to leave the ELCA because of the adoption of the social statement–which acknowledges that we don’t all agree on whether my sister and her partner are breaking biblical laws.

We already don’t offer them the right to marry.  Let’s at least not begrudge them a place in the church they love so.

Terri Lackey is managing editor of Lutheran Woman Today magazine.

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I heard Bishop Hanson deliver the keynote address to the Lower Susquehanna synod assembly a couple of weeks ago. He was asked, “How is the ELCA doing?” He answered, “I believe the ELCA is suffering from a very contagious virus called NOSTALGIA.” 

Definition of nostalgia: A bittersweet longing for things, persons or situations of the past.

The problem with nostalgia, Bishop Hanson further explained, is that you’re longing for something that actually never really existed. Nostalgia can be a way to escape the challenges of the present.

But why long for the past when you can, and should, celebrate the possibilities of the future instead?

Women of the ELCA is susceptible to this virus as well. Are we living in the present and looking to the future, or are we saying to one another, “Oh no, what will the women’s organization look like in 10 years?” 

My questions to you:

• Are there women in your unit who are resistant to looking forward but instead just keep wishing things were still the way they used to be? 
• If your unit functions differently than it used to, is that a bad thing? 
• Is your women’s unit suffering from this virus called nostalgia?

Emily Hansen is director for stewardship and development, Women of the ELCA.

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A whole lot of folks have been talking about The Secret, the book by Rhonda Byrne. This is not surprising, since the idea that we can control what is in our lives by telling the universe what to do is deliciously narcissistic. 

But The Secret gets it wrong from the get-go. It is based on the Law of Attraction, which, very simply stated, argues that your thoughts control your outcomes. You attract into your life what you think about, whether it is good or bad.

Control your thoughts? The speed of unconscious thought is too fast to monitor or control—that is why it is called “monkey mind” in Buddhist mindfulness practices. And I don’t want to be in a universe that bends and runs to every thought I have, let alone all the thoughts we humans have collectively!

It is not the Law of Attraction but the law of greed that The Secret espouses. And this is the part of The Secret that really disturbs me: It encourages us to focus on ourselves rather than see how we are part of a larger world in which we have real purpose.

The Secret states, “Everything that is coming into your life you are attracting into your life” (p. 4).  This premise thereby judges victims of rape, incest, abuse and disease as having attracted such horror.

Poverty has nothing to do with any “-ism” or social and economic injustice: “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts” (p. 98).

And there is no need for comprehensive health care as much as there is a need for all of us to practice The Secret. After all, The Secret tells us that “You cannot ‘catch’ anything unless you think you can, and thinking you can is inviting it to you with your thought” (p. 132).

The Secret also says that our resources are unlimited. So I guess I can stop recycling and I can stop advocating for environmentally friendly legislation and stop signing those petitions. And since I can think myself to perfect health and body, pass the potatoes and the gravy, please!

The Secret meets us in the shallowness of privilege and entitlement, but it drowns in the depths of  ideas like Mahatma Ghandi’s “be the change you want to see.”

There is also this statement from Paul: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”

It is not enough to think differently, we must act differently.

Because the only way to get different results is to do something differently!

Inez Torres Davis is director for justice, Women of the ELCA.

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For many of us, Psalm 23 is the quintessential comforting word when facing death. I’ve always appreciated Marty Haugen’s “Shepherd Me, O God,” which is based on this psalm. “Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life,” goes the refrain. It is true that we are born to die, and Haugen’s words capture that so beautifully because in dying we will have new life in Christ.

The Holy Spirit is singing these words in my heart right now. A 14-year-old boy, a friend of my godson, committed suicide last week. James was a good musician and actor. He was active in scouting and in his church. In fact, he took his life while on a mission trip with others from his congregation.

His death generates so many questions. What drew him to this drastic solution? Were there signs that those closest to him missed? Could anything have prevented this? The suicide of a 14-year-old boy with such promise makes no sense.

Meanwhile, the 28-year-old cousin of a friend is dying of liver cancer. Daniela is a single mom raising two children. She has worked hard. She loves life. She loves time spent with her children and her extended family as well.

This cancer raises so many questions. Why a single mom? Why a young woman? Who will care for the children? Will they remember their mother and her sacrifices? Terminal cancer in a 28-year-old single mom makes no sense.

There’s a lot on this side of God’s commonwealth that makes no sense. Wars, poverty, violence, racism, along with suicide and cancer. You can probably add several more items to this list from within your circle of family and friends. None of these will ever make sense, and for people without faith in God, that reality can be devastating.

But for those of us who are people of faith, we can take comfort in the promise that we will have all of eternity to talk with God and get answers to these questions that haunt us today. Shepherd us, O God, from death into life.

Linda Post Bushkofsky is executive director of Women of the ELCA.

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