Women of the ELCA

On the day before Halloween, I put summer clothes into storage and pulled out winter things. I was using the de-cluttering advice of “rid your closet of anything you haven’t worn in a year,” so I filled three grocery bags with items to donate. Later that day I added my three bags to some other things we no longer needed and headed to the local Goodwill. Apparently everyone else in my town had decided to do the same thing that afternoon.

I navigated the packed parking lot and finally found a spot. Feeling pretty good about our family’s paring down, I grabbed our items from the trunk and headed into the store’s designated area for donations. I couldn’t believe what I saw. The donation area was full to overflowing, with more being carried in from every angle. As I got my donation receipt and headed back to my car, I watched people bringing in bags upon boxes filled with the flotsam and jetsam of their lives.

What did all this stuff represent? Was the huge plastic snowman lawn ornament all that was left from a holiday celebration that went sour? Were the elderly woman’s clothes and jewelry cast off after her solitary death, a burden for a family member to discard? Did the books, CDs and DVDs come with unfulfilled dreams?

A picture formed in my mind. So many of us lead lives cluttered by far too much stuff, so much stuff that we carry it to Goodwill by the carload. Some of the stuff weighs us down. Some of it gets in the way of healthy relationships. Some of it leads us to the brink of financial ruin.

So here we are on Black Friday, the second act in what some have dubbed the American season of excess (the first being the gluttonous meals we all consumed yesterday).

Last year shoppers spent $890 million on Cyber Monday, the Internet version of Black Friday. Really? Given that, it seems we really don’t care that 13% of people in the United States live in poverty or that nearly 1 in 4 children in the U.S. live in homes that struggle to put food on the table.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that we boycott Christmas. But spending inordinate amounts of money on things we really don’t need while others go hungry doesn’t ring true with Mary’s Magnificat that we Christians will sing again this season. I’m just saying.

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“ELCA Missionary Stories: Thanks be to God!” an article in the November 2010 issue of Lutheran Woman Today, invited readers to participate  in ELCA Missionary Sponsorship’s “Operation Thanks-Giving.”  

Sixty-seven congregations, Women of the ELCA  groups, Sunday school classes and individuals accepted the invitation to participate, sending in 2,706 cards to be distributed to ELCA missionary households as random acts of appreciation. This means that each missionary household could be sent a first packet of 14 cards; a second packet of cards will be mailed before Christmas. Thank you!

Most of the cards are handmade.  Some are minimalist creations; others feature the extravagant use of puffy stickers, feathers, glitter and layered construction paper.  Some are signed with the block letters of a toddler; others feature the script of an elder.

Hannah Griese, a 2009–2010 Young Adult in Global Mission serving in South Africa, is thankful for the cards she received:  “I was a recipient of several cards from Operation Thanksgiving,” she writes.  “They came at a time that was quite difficult–my first major holiday away from home. I kept these and other cards posted during the year. These cards, created and sent by friends and strangers, were the concrete expressions of love and support.  They held me up throughout my year of service, reminding me that we do not labor alone but work together to bring Christ’s love to the world in many ways, big and small.” 

I invite you to extend a personal “Operation Thanks-Giving” into the New Year and throughout 2011:

• Give sustaining financial gifts to ELCA ministries you care about; give “where needed most,” give to the operating budget, give without strings.
• Don’t wait to be asked; offer help.  
• Take the road less traveled: When you’re pleased, fill out a customer service card, send in a letter to the editor or ask to be transferred to the supervisor.
• At the end of the year, when you volunteer your time and give a charitable contribution, take out your calendar and circle the dates to do the same throughout 2011.
• Pray unceasingly, giving thanks for the hands that do God’s work.

 This post was written by Sue-Edison-Swift, a frequent contributor to Lutheran Woman Today magazine.

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In the centuries before the camera was invented, artists were mostly men. Most of them came from upper class families, and their patrons were men from even higher classes. The subject matter of their paintings were Greek and Roman myths, biblical narratives and historical events.

But when the camera was invented, the power of art was put into women’s hands. The distinction between what was and wasn’t appropriate subject matter for art, and who could or couldn’t be an artist, began to fall away.

For this and many other reasons, it took close to a century for critics to acknowledge photography as a legitimate art form.

As a student of art history, I was introduced to the work of a woman who some historians argue was the very first photographer: Anna Atkins. What is certain is that Atkins pioneered the cyanotype printing process. She was a botanist (her most famous work is her documentation of algae and moss) and believed that the process allowed for a more accurate documentation of the details of plants. Atkins defied all sorts of social norms with her work: She was a scientist and an artist, two professions usually closed to women.

What the Women of the ELCA banner project seeks to do is to reclaim Atkins’s process and use it to create a beautiful–bright blue!–witness to the work of women in our churches.  I invite you to send to me a photograph that you think captures the theme of the 2011 Triennial Gathering: Renew, Respond, Rejoice!

The goal is to create banners that will be a testament to the work of women in our churches. Photographs could include shots from a recent Habitat for Humanity build or your church’s most recent class of confirmands! The submitted photographs will be printed on fabric using the cyanotype process and sewn together into banners that will be used during the gathering.

I will print each photograph twice–one for the banner and the other as a gift for the church that submitted it. There will be a space at the triennial gathering for all of us to come together to embroider and embellish the prints, but you do not have to attend the gathering to participate by sending a photograph. My hope is that this project will be an opportunity for us to create together a witness to the work of our churches!

So get your camera out, or send a photo today! Click here for all the details.

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I am a church lady. I travel for my job. I can’t say I dislike flying, but I don’t I enjoy it, either. I have gotten used to it.

I choose my travel attire based on getting through TSA security screening. My shoes slip off to get through quickly. My rings and dragonfly pin do not sound the detectors at Chicago’s O’Hare but trip them elsewhere, and since this draws attention, I always slip these into my purse. I pack in a way that makes my walk through security quick and uneventful—no bells sound.

Nevertheless, I am “randomly” selected for additional screening an average of once every three flights I take. “Ma’am, could you please step to the side for additional screening?”

Things were bad enough with pat downs, but now the grope has been introduced.

A TSA same-gender worker can now feel up into my crotch area and over my breasts with their palms and fingers, along with my more public parts, searching for a bomb or weapon. Only at the airport have I ever had to assume a position for a body search. I have never broken any laws anywhere that have ever required a frisking or the legally empowered and enforced placing of a stranger’s hands on pretty much any part of my body. This doesn’t seem right.

The grope is happening at the same time full-body scanners are being installed in airports across this nation to the tune of billions of dollars, never mind the fact that bomb-sniffing dogs can do as good a job as these full-body scanners (if not better!!).

If I reject being seen down to my skin by someone sitting in a backroom, presumably alone and presumably with technology incapable of recording images, and presumably without comment, I will immediately be subject to the aforementioned TSA grope.

And I wonder what other liberties will be taken from us and what other invasions of privacy we’ll have to suffer … for our own good, of course!

What do you think of all this? Are you bothered by virtual strip-searching and legally-empowered strangers groping you in uncomfortable places so that you can get on a plane?

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I love the writer Nora Ephron, even though I suspect she’s a bit of a snit. I love her because she plucks ideas straight from my brain, puts them on paper and makes big bucks doing it. If I can’t make the money, she might as well.

You might know the 69-year-old Ephron as the screen writer of When Harry Met Sally and director of Sleepless in Seattle and Julie & Julia. Or perhaps you read her first book, I Feel Bad About My Neck. She has a new book out called I Remember Nothing.

Here is something I could have written because my memory is wretched; but alas, she wrote it first.

“I have been forgetting things for years—at least since I was in my 30s. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time; I have proof. Of course I can’t remember exactly where I wrote about it or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to.” (Read this quote and the complete interview on NPR, which I heard just this morning.)

Ephron is nothing if not politically incorrect. And yet, I still love her work. Peppered within her slams against aging are nuggets of pure gold—wisdom that comes only with being a bit older and more experienced.

One piece of advice she offers in her new book is: Do it (whatever it is) now.

“You do get to a certain point in life where you have to realistically, I think, understand that the days are getting shorter, and you can’t put things off thinking you’ll get to them someday,” she says in the NPR interview, adding, “If you really want to do them, you better do them. There are simply too many people getting sick, and sooner or later you will. So I’m very much a believer in knowing what it is that you love doing so you can do a great deal of it.”

What do you love doing?

What are you putting off as you wait for  . . . a child to get into first grade . . . your kids to graduate and leave home . . . a better job . . . retirement?

Get out there and make some memories.

Even if you forget them later.

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Sadly, violence in the name of religion is not new. If the Crusaders had had weapons of mass destruction, would they have used them? I don’t doubt that they would have. While religions do not have a corner on violence, violence has sometimes been justified by religious leaders. Is it any wonder that there are people who reject religion outright? I am sometimes challenged by young people who say they have no faith affiliation. They are quite clear–for them, more important than any religious group’s words or dogma are their actions.

No religion is exempt from the criticism about violence. What distinctions can we make between the Christian slave ships that took Africans into slavery in the New World and the current talks between Taliban officials and the Karzai government of Afghanistan about women’s rights? The only difference is the time and the specific population whose lives are being determined by force.  If these talks go unchallenged, more women in Afghanistan will die. It looks like this will happen before our eyes, if we watch, or behind our backs,  if we turn away.

In early October, Jennifer Rowell, head of policy and advocacy for Care International in Afghanistan, expressed alarm in The Washington Post, stating that “The greatest concern is the policy of reconciliation and reintegration (of militants) … In the reconciliation process, women’s rights are a card on the table … I’m afraid they will be the first thing to be sacrificed in the negotiations…”   It sounds like the negotiation and reconciliation of men who disagree will be made on the backs and heads and hearts of women.

These secret negotiations are happening now.  It looks like the rights and safety of Afghan women will be sacrificed. We are talking about truly basic human rights: things like the right to mobility, the right to medical treatment, and the right to education. Time magazine did a photo essay and article about the plight of Afghan women in its July 29, 2010 edition.

In her book, Paradise Beneath Her Feet: How Women are Transforming the Middle East, Islamic writer Isobel Coleman shares examples of how the feminist movement is gaining momentum in Middle Eastern countries such as Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Women of faith are rising up with a healing holiness in the Middle East. We can join them in the struggle from here. Tell your representatives to Congress that you expect them to stand for human rights for all in Afghanistan.

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When I was growing up, the public library and my piano teacher were both located in a town about a 20-minute drive from my home. Each Saturday morning my mother and I would set out, first stopping at the library, then to my piano lesson. How I loved that Victorian-home-turned-into-a-library! I had long since exhausted the books on the shelves at home, including an ancient encyclopedia set and a collection of Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. With the library’s offerings, I was off traveling to ancient Mayan ruins or solving a mystery with Agatha Christie or time traveling with Madeleine L’Engle. Imagine my delight to discover as an adult that L’Engle wrote adult fiction too!

I still love books today. Recently I greedily consumed the Stieg Larsson trilogy. I simply couldn’t get enough of Lisbeth Salander! I’ll pick up anything written by Gail Godwin, Nora Gallagher, Barbara Kingsolver or Lorna Landvik. Back in 2002 I started keeping a record of each book I read along with a paragraph summary critique. It soon struck me that I was reading almost exclusively female authors and most of the novels featured women’s relationships with one another. I don’t think that’s just an occupational hazard!

Anyway, here’s what I’m reading now. It kind of drives my introverted, focus-on-one-thing-at-a-time husband crazy, but I’m usually reading several books at a time.

For All The Tea In China by Sarah Rose
Jesus Freak by Sara Miles
The Hot Flash Club by Nancy Thayer
Abigail Adams by Woody Holton
The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin

I’ve got a long list of books queued up, both traditional paper ones as well as e-books. Even so, I’m always open for new recommendations. (My last recommendation came from my orthopedic surgeon!)

So what are you reading now? And does your unit of Women of the ELCA have a book discussion group?

(As an aside, I have to say that while I like the feel of a traditional bound book, e-books are great, especially when traveling. I’ve got 20 books on my iPad right now, taking up a mere .01 GB of space. I’d never travel with 20 books, but I know with e-books I’ll never go wanting. By the way, have you discovered all the e-books that are free because they are in the public domain? What a treasure trove!)

Linda Post Bushkofsky, an inveterate reader, knows that all her reading makes her a better writer. She is executive director of Women of the ELCA.

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I am very close to my sister.  Recently, she went on a mission trip to Zambia for two weeks.  An exciting adventure for her, but I thought to myself, “two weeks without speaking?!” We usually speak once a day. So it was a real change for me during those 14 days when she was traveling. 

While she was gone, whenever something amusing or interesting or annoying would happen, I would pick up my phone to dial her number and then realize … oops, she’s in Africa–her cell phone doesn’t work! There was a real void when we couldn’t talk.

I’m a happier person when I talk to my sister, and it turns out that I’m not alone. A study I read about recently in the New York Times shows that having a sister does make you happier.  Those sisterly conversations that I depend on are deep discussions, talking about our life, work, love, and family–sometimes serious, sometimes silly, but always important to me.

And isn’t that also why we are part of the women’s organization?  The friendship and support we receive from our fellow sisters in Christ is deeply connected to our wellbeing in mind, body, and spirit. These meaningful relationships are often at the core of who we are as women. 

So, do you think people who have sisters are happier?  Have you found that to be true in your own life?  Or do you have friends who are so close that they feel like sisters to you?

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Did you know that of the more than 5 million Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, about two-thirds are women?

And did you know that 6.7 million women represent 60 percent of family caregivers to those living with the disease?  

Maria Shriver has been making guest appearances on all the morning talk shows lately, making a case for The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Takes on Alzheimer’s, conducted in collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Association. For her, the fight is personal because women are disproportionately affected and her father had Alzheimer’s.

The statistics for women are daunting and can sound almost sound hopeless. This report connects depression, stress, and the early onset of type-2 diabetes to Alzheimer’s and, as Maria put it, this is the next fight for “women warriors.”

Women of the ELCA’s health initiative, Raising Up Healthy Women and Girls, is a way for us “women warriors” to get in the mix. A primary goal of the initiative is to educate women and girls so that today’s health issues are not repeated for generations to come.

Although The Shriver Report begins with gloom and doom, it is full of immediate actions:

1. Know the signs. The Alzheimer’s Association has developed a list of 10 early signs of the disease.

2. Know how much stress you are feeling. This is important because stress is connected to heart disease and higher blood pressure.

3. Connect with caregivers. Do more than offer assistance. Insist. Many women are juggling work, family, and care for those living with the disease. They may be too overwhelmed to ask for help or accept it at the first offering.

4. Talk to girls and younger women. Alzheimer’s is generally diagnosed after age 65, although warning signs can occur many years earlier. Studies suggest that better health habits early in life (12-20 years) would prevent or drastically reduce the onset.

5. Be a warrior. Get involved. Host a Healthy Heart Fair and let the action begin!

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