Women of the ELCA

I love reading the dictionary and learning new words. Now I’m on to acronyms that are popping up with the expansion of social media, quick references like BFF for “best friends forever” or LOL for “laughing out loud.”

The other day I was reading Ebony magazine, a long standing magazine that doesn’t necessarily appeal to a younger audience. Ebony recently started running a side-bar entitled “Word of the Month.” The word in the August issue is FUD mongering. This is the explanation:

“FUD is an acronym for fear, uncertainty, and doubt; FUD mongerers are those who create FUD, e.g., overzealous politicians and some religious fanatics. “

Politicians and religious fanatics are not the only people practicing FUD. There are FUD makers all around us. The question is as a “community of women” are we FUD makers? An even bigger question still: are we FUD followers?

Fear, uncertainty and doubt have no place in a disciple’s daily life. We stand sure in the redeeming and reconciling love of God through Christ Jesus. FUD’s triple threat is time consuming and unproductive. It takes a lot of energy to keep FUD going once it has been introduced. It stirs lots of questions for me, now that it has a name. I wonder how it survives without factual data. Why is it so easy for people to take up with such negative thinking and activities?

Thanks to Ebony’s “Word of the Month” I’ve been given another opportunity to look at my actions and behavior in light of my daily discipleship and the call to act boldly.

What’s your FUD reading today?

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

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A well known Kenyan proverb states, “When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers.” The direction of the current deficit debate drives the painful meaning of this proverb into the bones and hearts of women and children living in poverty. Millions of women depend on their social security checks each month for such human basics as food, electricity, and shelter. As the average Social Security benefit for a woman over 65 is $12,000, her entire annual income would be eaten up by the Medicare cost-shifting indicated in the House-passed Ryan budget.

It is women and children who will suffer the most regardless of how the elephants fighting in D.C. finally exhaust themselves (and our country). Women have so very far to go! This week marked the 163rd anniversary of the First Women’s Rights Conference held in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848. It was 72 years later that women in the U.S. won the right to vote (August 26, 1920). Women aged 18-64 (17 million women) make up three quarters of adult beneficiaries of Medicaid as a male-only gang of six offers possible budget compromises. Because of poverty, 70% of people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid are women. Women and children living in poverty hang by the thinnest of threads.

Some taking our current fiscal measurement say it is already too late to make a difference before the August 2nd deadline. Others appear to want to see our government and country fall so they can claim this was something other than the biggest partisan blood-letting of our country.

What can you do? First, find the email of your own elected congress people by typing into any search engine:  “*your state* congress representatives.” Tell them to solve the problem or lose their jobs. For goodness’ sake, they are working *for* us. Second, tell the President what you need him to do. Ask your representatives and the President to protect poor women. Please, ask them to protect the children. Also, visit the National Council of Churches’ Poverty Initiative to find links to make your voice heard in other ways.

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

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The following blog was written by Jenny Michael, the newly elected president of Women of the ELCA. She’ll serve for the 2011-2014 triennium.

Newly-elected president Jenny Michael (r) gets some instruction from former president Carmen Richards (2005-2008)

Spokane has been put on notice! The Holy Spirit now resides at the Spokane Convention Center and Women of the ELCA is here in the form of spiritually powerful women. We have been welcomed by Bishop Martin Wells of Eastern Washington-Idaho Synod, and we joined Bishop Jessica Crist from the Montana Synod in our opening worship. Bishop Crist encouraged us to be fully present during our business sessions because “it matters!”

The opening of the convention sets the stage as we begin to live out our gathering theme this week, “Renew, Respond, Rejoice!” Now, I know what you are thinking … how could plenary business sessions during a convention be the harbinger of the kind of spiritual centeredness that resonates within our gathering theme? However, I want you to consider what this theme is really calling us to do.

We are called to “Renew.” Delegates have traveled from 64 different synodical women’s organizations. They left their families, jobs and daily responsibilities in order to invest themselves in the renewal of our organization. This rekindling comes in the form of memorials, resolutions and constitutional amendments. But it also comes in connections, conversations and commitments that bind us together for another triennium. This renewal is an essential component of the success of our organization.

We are called to “Respond.” During this convention, 21 women (myself included) were called to leadership for this organization by serving on the churchwide executive board for the next three years. Through the affirmation of the voting body, these women have been asked to serve faithfully to support the vision and future of this organization. And they responded with a resounding “YES!”

We are called to “Rejoice!” While I admit that some of the delegates may want to rejoice that the plenary sessions are finally at an end, all the delegates should celebrate and rejoice that we worked diligently to make every voice heard. By faithfully committing ourselves to this work, we have reaffirmed the mission and purpose of Women of the ELCA.

Now, in the gathering, our sisters in Christ will join the delegates along with special guests and speakers for a time of renewing our spirits, responding to God’s call and rejoicing in fellowship with one another. But, looking back at the triennial convention and what it will mean for the next triennium, I can most assuredly say that we, as delegates to the Eighth Triennial Convention of Women of the ELCA, have gotten a head start on the celebration!

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A friend of mine teaches in a Catholic school in one of the most affluent suburbs in the Midwest. Parents drop their children off in Range Rovers in the winter and Mercedes convertibles in the summer. Spring breaks are spent in Tuscany and Paris, not pedestrian locales like Florida.   

These are smart, well-educated, driven and accomplished people. So some of the attitudes about life, goals and values that she has picked up from the girls she teaches are a little disturbing.

Last year she taught a week-long unit on Title IX in conjunction with a non-fiction book called In These Girls Hope Is a Muscle, which is about an all-girl basketball team in Amherst that took the state title one year. Her eighth-graders found it confusing. They couldn’t understand why the girls in the book cared so much about winning and why they continued playing sports in high school, even wanting to play in college. Not a single one of the eighth-grade girls she taught was going to play anything in high school.

Why? Here were their answers: “Boys don’t like girls who are better at sports than they are.” “Boys don’t like athletic girls.”  “I’m going to go to college and work a few years doing whatever, and then get married anyway.” None of their moms worked, except for fun, so they figured they would have lunch, go to yoga, shop, decorate their houses, that kind of thing.

And it isn’t as if their moms aren’t smart, educated women. One of these girls’ moms, for example, has a master’s from Stanford. She’s not using it because she can afford to stay at home with her children, but clearly, she had some goals for herself and valued education and accomplishment, so why this wasn’t being passed on to her daughter was a mystery indeed.

My friend and I—and these girls’ moms—are of a generation where it would never cross our minds to care whether boys liked girls who were more athletic than them. Heck, we took great pride in being able to kick their butts! And we were molded to go to college, study hard, stand on our own two feet and not depend on anyone else.

So what’s happening here? You could dismiss it as perhaps peculiar to this social class, but I’m not so sure. Do you see this happening around you? Are we backsliding on raising girls who are independent and have goals for themselves beyond finding the right guy and then staying home with the kids?

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With yesterday being Independence Day, I found myself singing some tunes from the musical “1776″ as I worked around the house. Ever since my high school performed that musical in 1976, I’ve loved the witty songs and clever dialogue. Thanks to “1776″ I learned more about Abigail Adams and came to appreciate the sacrifices she made for her husband, family and our country. She was one amazing woman!

And that leads me to my summer reading list, where Woody Holton’s biography Abigail Adams tops the list. Keeping with that colonial theme, I’ve added Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation, by Andrea Wulf, to the list. What with preparations for the triennial convention and triennial gathering keeping me busy in the first half of the summer, my reading list is a bit smaller than usual so that it’s manageable. I’ve added three books for upcoming book club discussions: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot, Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks and The Grace That Keeps This World by Tom Bailey. I’m rounding the list out with The Goddess of Fried Okra by Jean Brashear, selected purely because I love the title!

So, what’s on your summer reading list?

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I’m sure of it. You’re getting ready for something. It might be a family reunion. Maybe it’s vacation Bible school. Perhaps it’s a new job or a much-needed vacation. Maybe you’re even getting ready to serve as a delegate at the upcoming 8th Triennial Convention … or getting ready to travel to the Triennial Gathering. Whatever it is, you’re engaged in some preparations: packing, losing weight, creating sample crafts, whatever. While you’re doing all those things, are you also preparing spiritually for the event or activity?

You want to prepare yourself so that you are able to be most open and accepting to God. So our preparations aren’t just “spiritual.” We need to get enough sleep in the days leading up to an event. The more rested we are, the more receptive we can be. We eat well, avoiding junk food, and drink enough water every day. We exercise daily. When our physical self is operating at its best, we can more easily focus on spiritual matters, and we’re ready to respond to the nudging of the Holy Spirit, wherever that nudging may be taking us.

We continue our preparations in prayer, asking for God’s guidance and presence. We pray that we might be open to new experiences and opportunities, open to where the Spirit might be leading us. We pray, too, for those who walk with us, those who support us, those whose lives we will touch.

There’s nothing novel here. Your parents, a close friend or even a Sunday school teacher prospbably taught you these things. At least for me, I realize I need to be reminded of them all the time. Spiritual preparation isn’t a once and done thing. Some days we’re pretty lousy at it. Thank God we get to start all over again each morning! How great is that?

Do you have a particular spiritual preparation that helps you prepare for a situation or event? Please share it here in the comments.

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