Women of the ELCA

I don’t have many mystic inclinations, so I was surprised when I stood within the ruins of Marienthron, the Cistercian cloister in Nimbschen (Germany) where Katharina von Bora lived as a young nun. I felt a real connection with Katie in that place. There her faith was shaped, and then challenged, as she read Martin Luther’s writings that sparked the Reformation. Because she agreed with Luther, she stole away from that place, under cloak of darkness, willing to risk her life for leaving a religious order. Talk about taking risks on account of the Gospel!

On this Saturday, 512 years ago, Katharina von Bora was born. She was only 10 when she first entered Marienthron. It would be 14 years before she would flee the cloister. As a young woman at Marienthron did she dream about her future days? I can’t imagine she could have fully envisioned the woman we know she became. Did she see herself as a wife, mother, farmer, healer, brewmaster, innkeeper, confidant? Could she have imagined the public ridicule and criticism that would accompany her marriage?

There’s much about Katie that I admire. She overcame adversity as a child. She became educated. She bucked a religious system that offered few opportunities for women. She took risks on account of the Gospel. She stood her ground despite ridicule and criticism. She cared for those in need. She wasn’t shy in offering her opinion. She was a frugal entrepreneur.

We make a lot of fuss about Katharina von Bora Luther today, and for due reason, I believe. I think, however, that Katie would be a bit embarrassed by all the attention. At the same time, I think she’d be honored that Women of the ELCA seeks to raise up new leaders that emulate Katie’s life of faith. That’s a birthday legacy worth celebrating!

Who’s the bold woman in your life that could be supported by Women of the ELCA and its varied ministries? Make a gift today in her honor to the Katharina von Bora Luther Fund. Your gift will help Women of the ELCA raise up new leaders inspired by Katie.

Linda Post Bushkofsky is executive director of Women of the ELCA. A resource she wrote, Katharina von Bora Luther: A Bold Life of Faith, is available as a free downloadable PDF.

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Are you searching for a community of women who make a difference together? Are you interested in joining a Bible study group, promoting the health of women and girls, or developing your gifts and talents to serve your community?

Women of the ELCA welcomes you to an organization whose mission is mobilizing women to act boldly on their faith in Jesus Christ. We support intergenerational relationships among women through Bible study,  mentoring and opportunities to serve.

Our community of women has been supporting one another in our callings for nearly 25 years. We are committed to living out our mission and purpose by supporting women on their spiritual journey through our programs and events, awarding grants to organizations and ministries, providing scholarships, celebrating bold women and much more. 

Find out more today! You’ll be surprised at what you’ve been missing. Visit www.womenoftheelca.org.

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I remember the day Coretta Scott King and Stevie Wonder, along with a host of others who had done their part to complete the 15-year journey, stood behind President Ronald Reagan as he signed the King Holiday Bill into law on Nov. 2, 1983.

“This is not a black holiday; it is a people’s holiday,” said Coretta, because service was at the heart of the movement and still is at the heart of his dream. Dr. Martin Luther King lived out his faith in the public eye, and as he served others and advocated for justice, he left a model for us today. Coretta wanted to make that clear from the very beginning.

Twenty-five years later the holiday could be viewed as just another day off, but instead it is still a day full of hope, with people serving and sharing Dr. King’s dream with a new generation.

For people of faith, this holiday gives us a collective chance to step up our game, to reflect and do something, to roll up our sleeves.

How have you honored Rev. King’s vision this week?

How do you live it every day?

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I was in the train station a few weeks ago and saw an advertisement for a personal organizer on the bulletin board:  “For only $50 an hour, I will organize your rooms, drawers, closets … ”  All of the rip-off tags with the organizer’s phone number had been taken. Apparently there are a lot of people out there willing to pay a stranger $50 an hour to to organize all their stuff. I had a good laugh and forgot about it. 

Then, sitting down to read The New York Times a few days later, I saw an article about a personal organizer in New York City. She charges $150 an hour. At  first it was a somewhat entertaining article, but it actually became a very sick view into the world of excess and waste. Multiple garbage bags full of toys, clothes, youth trophies, etc. were all thrown in the trash. Not one mention of donating items to other people or agencies. 

And this particular organizer’s thoughts on childhood memorabilia were downright disturbing!

“There were the notebooks, now touching artifacts, filled with the earliest handwriting of the couple’s 8-year-old son, Lucas. “Everybody’s going to learn how to read and write,” Ms. Reich said. “You don’t need the evidence.” 

Wow.  Followed by:

“Candy Land? Between sporting events, music lessons and charity galas, who has time? Goodbye!” 

So, what she’s really saying is, who has time to sit down and play a board game with your child when you’re getting dressed up for a black-tie event?  Her clients bought into all of it. And don’t even get me started on the closet of handbags she helped one particular client organize.  A closet of just handbags!

What does this article say about how much meaning we put into what we possess? And in whose eyes do we see worth–through the eyes of a personal organizer?  

What’s your approach to the “stuff” in your life?

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 “When you put a match to a tree, the forest will catch fire” is what my grandpa would say when folks were “trash talking.”

We teach our children that words are powerful and can hurt others. We preach to little people to think before they speak and to consider the feelings of others. Meanwhile, the adults around them are throwing tantrums. We are having our way, speaking our minds, drawing crosshairs on elected leaders and threatening each other across party lines, in our communities and workplaces, even our church bodies.

America is doing more “trash talking” than ever before. So why are we so surprised that we have an elected leader and several others, including a little girl, gunned down in the street? So what if the shooter, Jared Loughner, is “deeply disturbed”—does that absolve the rest of us from our responsibility to take a step back and examine the tone in which we speak to one another and consider whether it’s good and right and constructive?

Is it okay to just keep trash talking as long as I don’t shoot you?

Whatever your politics, I hope you can agree with our President on what he said Wednesday at the memorial service: “Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”

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Boldly share your faith with every woman you meet this year! This is exciting and easy for some women, but many of us are not sure where to start.

One easy place to start is by sharing how the mission and purpose of Women of the ELCA is being accomplished today. Here are a few things to share to help you get started:

• We provide free discipleship resources that help women grow in faith.
• We promote women’s complete health–emotional, spiritual and physical–through the Raising Up Healthy Women and Girls initiative.
• We award grants to organizations and ministries making a positive impact on the health of women and girls.
• We provide scholarships for women in ministry.
• We provide a place for women to connect through Facebook, Twitter and Café, our online magazine for young women.

 You may have your own stories to share of how we as a community of women live out our faith.

How will you share your faith this year?

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“Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.” Colossians 4:2 (NIV)

Prayer. It’s a simple word that conjures up many meanings.

There are the spoken prayers we offer in the liturgy, like the prayer of the day and the post-communion prayer.
There are the often quickly said prayers before a meal.
There are the gut-wrenching words that come in desperate times.
There are the spontaneous exclamations of joy and thankfulness.
These are prayers offered with words.
But prayers can also be offered with dance, music, movement, even sighs.

When I was young, offering prayers at meals and at bedtime was fairly routine for me. As a teen, I naturally expanded my prayers to include petitions before exams and significant events, like taking the driver’s test.

As a young woman, I became part of a prayer chain and would stop my activities to pray when a request was received. And over time I’ve come to embrace Martin Luther’s words, that “prayer is everything the soul does in God’s word.”

I’m not always voicing a prayer petition, but I truly see all that I do as being part of my constant dialogue with God. I am quite cognizant of the corporate and personal prayers I voice to God, while I am less cognizant, but still aware, of the many other ways in which I dialogue with God.

When I drove a portion of the Pacific Highway in Oregon I stopped twice to simply stand in awe, taking in the grandeur of the vast ocean and the breaking waves on one side and the verdant mountains on the other. I didn’t voice a word. I just stood there, contemplating the creator and the creation.

As we begin this new year, may you find ways each day that you may be in dialogue with God without ever using words. Do not limit your experience with God to that which can be translated into words.

How do you devote yourself to prayer?

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I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Not anymore. I figure any time I see where and how I can improve myself, I should just do it. And there has always been more than enough to attend to!

The idea of taking inventory on an annual basis is frightening. My goodness, I hate to think of what I might find!

I am oh-so-comfortable with the Confession and Forgiveness part of worship as a way to hone in on my often unexamined, bad habits. I am not talking about the things that God has to search my heart to find; I am talking about the evidence all over my hands and across my face. It took me half a lifetime to realize that everything shows on my face.  You can tell if I am happy or sad, confused or disappointed, angry or tired just by looking at me. Oh well.

This also confused me because yesterday’s failure would break into today’s new start! So I try to practice mindful living—being present in each new moment. I have learned a good confession allows me to release the past and work for better things in my present.

So I don’t know what you may have started out with on January 1, and maybe you are still going strong. I don’t want to discourage you!  I just want to remind you—just in case you feel like you have already failed—that every day is a new day, and there is nothing that can keep you from trying again and again to succeed at something or other at which you have continuously failed.

Not a thing keeps you, a Child of God, from having a fresh start—endlessly!

Falling short is never the problem—falling short is actually a given. But how we care about and for ourselves when we fall short makes a huge difference! I have developed the habit of saying that God always has us fall forward. This is my way of saying that no matter what our failure may be, God is always moving us toward a healing future and aiming us forward into the adventure called life.

So keep your head up!

God bless you.

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by Gabriela Contreras

Traditions are important in many families. The Latino traditions that my family carries out as we celebrate the arrival of the New Year are ones of travel, hope and renewal:

• Washing and sweeping the steps of your front door symbolizes the releasing of the old and making a pathway for the new that is to come.
• Packing a suitcase and exiting and re-entering your home 12 times symbolizes safe travels and the wish to travel more in the coming year.
• Eating 12 grapes, one for each month, while making twelve wishes in the hope that they will come true.

But as I look forward to the New Year and the hopes for new possibilities of what this new year is to bring, I can’t help but think about those unexpected, unplanned and unwished for events that took place in my family life in 2010:

• divorce of a family member
• a family member’s custody battle
• the loss of a loved one

And yet, through it all I am comforted by those joyous occasions:

• the oath ceremony of my husband’s new U.S. citizenship
• my daughter’s graduation and easy transition into high-school
• a promotion
• family coming together in the midst of a tragic loss
• the birth of a child

“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

Romans 12:12

As we celebrate the New Year, my wish for you is that your joyous celebrations be plentiful and that God’s steadfast love and grace be upon you during your difficult times. Trust that God will lead you through the shadow of darkness and into the light of the Holy Spirit.

Happy New Year!

What traditions did you honor as you brought in the New Year? What do they symbolize?

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