In most of my previous posts (few as they may be) I’ve referred a book called Under the Tree of Life: The Religion of a Feminist Christian by liturgical scholar Gail Ramshaw. I found out about this book from the Feminarian, who wrote a post that completely sold it, literally. That post sums up the enthusiasm and effusiveness I feel in reading the book. It really is that good. I second everything the Feminarian says and so will move on to some other discussion of the book.

It’s a very personal book — Ramshaw doesn’t ever write as though she’s creating the definitive feminist Christianity, but I can’t tell you how encouraging it was to read that there is at least one woman who has been successful in that endeavour. My feminism is one thing that, if it cannot be incorporated into faith, will force me to abandon Christianity for good. So it’s good to know that the two are not incompatible.

It’s so hard to grow up in a religion that negates you. This is something I felt from a young age, reading articles about how to prepare oneself for one’s future husband in Brio magazine. In the evangelical circles in which I grew up, it’s not talked about, the fact that the bible is not woman-friendly (to put it mildly) on a fundamental level. In an organization where the leadership is primarily male, this isn’t exactly surprising, I suppose. Pastors just don’t get this, I think, to a large extent. Since they’re male, they don’t readily know what it’s like to read the bible and have these masculine metaphors, vocatives, and pronouns thrown up, constantly, wearing you down and leaving a woman with a portrait of humanity and divinity both that reflect so little of her. It’s not their fault on an individual level. Most of the pastors I have personally interacted with have all been quite progressive in their view of women and their role in the church, my own father included.

Here’s how Ramshaw summarizes the woman-oppression of the Christian faith as it is practiced pretty much everywhere:

So here is the rug that women have been swept under: God is referred to as he. God is named Father and called King. We are saved by the man Jesus. Jesus chose men as apostles. Males are the thinkers and the leaders in the church. Men are essentially more human than are women, yet men can image the divine as women cannot. Eve was our evil mother, Mary an impossible goal. Women are created for sexual activity, which is unavoidably sinful. Women are to emulate Jesus by serving others. The church licenses social strictures on women, who are to obey male authority. (40)

I don’t know if other ladies will feel me on this, but all of this sums up the source of the pain that I have felt trying to latch on to Christianity. It’s like this secret pain that they don’t talk about at church. They have those Bad Girls of the Bible bible study books, but they don’t have a study book called Your Holy Text Negates Your Validity as a Human Being: Discuss. I wish they did. I wonder how many other women feel this? Maybe not that many others. I don’t know. But I’d like to try and talk about it. Not just with women, of course. I’m a firm believer that men are partners in the feminist struggle, and I think that there are plenty of men who would have the same kind of “a-ha” moment when they realize what it’s like to be a Christian woman.

Back to Ramshaw. The first half of the book is more gender-focussed, and the second half branches out into broader theological territory. One thing I loved about the book was when she outlines beliefs that would have scandalized a, say, 16-year-old me. Like, that she doesn’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ or in heaven. It thrilled me, for some reason, to be reading things like that, reading Christian ideas that don’t jive with the mainline interpretation. The church failed me as a child in the sense that there are only certain questions you can ask. Mainline evangelicalism claims to welcome seekers and questioners, but they really don’t; there are only a few questions you’re allowed to ask, and “What if Jesus’ physical body didn’t actually rise from the dead?” isn’t one of them. I don’t know what I believe about the bodily resurrection or heaven, but I relish the opportunity to hear a completely different, yet still Christian, viewpoint on those subjects.

Ramshaw’s theology is firmly rooted in the community ethic that’s resonated so strongly with me over the past couple of years, and that informs her ideas about the body — the body as self and the body of Christ and the body as sexual. She writes about metaphor, and how it’s OK to toss out some of the old ones, and make some new ones, too.

Some biblical metaphors I will pick up, hold in my hands, and see that the silverplate has worn off, the base metal is showing through. These I shut away in the drawer, or throw away altogether. But others, I discover, are sterling. (38)

I came to the realization earlier this year that I personally cannot worship a male God. I think most people in my faith community would agree that God is neither male nor female, but if that’s the case, why are all our prayers to Father God in invocation of his wisdom? Why is this masculine pronoun so freaking omnipresent? Why is “Lord” so freaking omnipresent? In my own personal religious life (as I practice it outside the faith community), there are no gendered pronouns or vocatives. It’s a matter of what metaphors are right for me. Father God may work for you, and I wouldn’t dream of denying your right to use it (OK, actually, I might dream of a day when no one used gendered vocatives, but it would just be a daydream). All I know is that if I’m going to be Christian, there has to be some give in that area. I have to find some new metaphors,

As the title suggests, a favourite of Ramshaw’s is the tree of life. There are so many trees in the bible, and each of them illuminates, however dimly, a facet of God. Some criticize Ramshaw for too easily giving up the cross (which she doesn’t — she just loosens her grip a little). She says that she needs both the cross, and the tree. I imagine the image of a great tree which, when you squint a little, reveals the axes of the cross within its trunk and branches.

The shared symbol system doesn’t beam down from God, offering immediate fruits and granting peaceful shade. No, we have to tend it, prune it, prop it up here and there, protect it from tree-eating beetles. (143)

I find myself clinging to this idea a bit. The idea that we can change, the idea that the religion can change and still be alive and strong and true to its roots. Maybe its a bit of a pipe dream, but what isn’t?

I’ve been thinking about prayer.

In all my religious activities, I’m looking for new ways to approach the sacraments and conventions of Christianity instead of reverting back to the way I always did things growing up. I’ve been reading Gail Ramshaw’s Under the Tree of Life: The Religion of a Feminist Christian and had some thoughts piqued by a chapter on prayer, but I don’t think there’s room in this entry for rumination on that, so I’ll have to save my reactions for another day.

What actually sparked this particular entry was a post (an old one, but hey, cut me some slack, I’m new) at semplice. Jonathan writes:

meditative prayer is no different than eastern meditation for all practical purposes. some will argue, and i think correctly, that the object in the meditation is quite different for christians. we would meditate on god or god-like things whereas a buddhist or hindu would not.

I actually wonder if Christians can learn a lot from Buddhist meditation and indeed Buddhist teachings in general. The goal of Buddhist meditation is to be, essentially, as present and in-the-moment as possible, to focus only on the activity in which one is currently enagaged. There is a book on Buddhist meditation and knitting, which may seem strange to many (especially those of you don’t realize that knitting is cool and awesome. If you are one of those people you are wrong, just like the people who don’t think that Dolly Parton is totally awesome are wrong). It makes a lot of sense to me. Traditional Buddhist meditation focusses on the breath as a focal point for bringing the consciousness to the present, and Tara Jon Manning suggests using the stitch as the same vehicle for mindfulness. I find knitting to be incredibly relaxing (that is, when I’m not working out the math on a sweater pattern or reading the pattern wrong and decreasing ever second row when it should be every third or…) but Manning takes the point that often, while knitting, we let our thoughts wander, to the TV show we’re watching or to our work problems or to the other minutiae of life that can get oh so aggravating. She suggests that we can train our minds to focus on the present, the simple act we are performing by wrapping yarn around needle, and as such do far more to still our spirits.

So what does that have to do with Christian meditation? The knitting part, not much. It’s just that I find it so difficult to not talk about knitting that it found its way into the entry all on its own.

I think Buddhist meditation techniques are quite applicable to Christianity. I think this because I read in the bible that God first introduces godself only with the name “I Am.” That’s it. An expression of being and being in the present.

I’m reminded of a popular poem, a posterized version of which can be found at your local Christian temple of commercialism. It’s by Helen Mallicoat, and its title is “My Name Is I am.” What the hell, may as well post it in its entirety (copyright be ignored, for now, I hope Ms. Mallicoat doesn’t mind).

I was regretting the past and fearing the future. Suddenly my Lord was Speaking:

“My name is I am”

He paused.

I waited. He continued.

“When you live in the past with its mistakes and regrets, it is hard.

“I am not there. My name is not I was.

“When you live in the future, with its problems and fears, it is hard.

I am not there. My name is not I will be!

“When you live in this moment it is not hard. I am here.

My name is I am.”

The poem is a bit trite, plenty androcentric and naturally a little questionable (This moment isn’t hard? I can think of plenty of “moments” that are really bitch hard, thank you very much). However, let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater and consider instead the main message: that is, let’s confine our linear existence to this particular temporal junction. We are linear beings; God is not. To me, “I Am” is the ultimate representation of that. It’s the only way our linear minds can understand the concept of a nonlinear existence, for the “I Am” to supercede even the was and is to come.

Existing in the moment, I think, opens up the soul to eternity. For me, thinking about the past or future inevitably involves a complete retreat into my own brain along with a significant amount of self-obsession. When I have attempted Buddhist-style meditation, I have found it difficult and overwhelming. To exist in the moment is to break down the barriers between the self and the eternal.

I don’t know what prayer is anymore. I don’t know if the kind of prayer that my mother does diligently is the kind for me. But as someone who wants to start praying again, I wonder if this kind of meditative practice might be a good way to start, a good way to enter the presence of God by entering the present.

Thus ends the obtuse and pretentious segment of today’s post. The moral of my story is, Maybe Eastern Meditation Isn’t Evil and also Meditation Is Really Hard and also I Have No Idea What I’m Talking About.

But wait! One more thing.

a zen driving meditation that I have used.

Before starting the car,
I know where I am going.
The car and I are one.
If the car goes fast, I go fast.

A non-deist mantra, to be sure, but helpful in its own way. Very good for rush hour traffic, I find. Also makes you a safer driver, and in this winter season (at least, it is for my half of the world) I wish nothing less for you and yours. Cars are deadly. Be safe.

If the idea of using a non-deist mantra like that queers you out, by all means, go ahead and work Jesus in there… and no, “God Is My Co-Pilot” doesn’t count.

My brother is a youth pastor-in-training. (His default year at bible college after high school took, where mine didn’t.) I don’t know for which class it was (Pastoral Theology, perhaps?), but this week he had to attend a service at a synagogue. He eschewed the three-hour sabbath service in favour of a Thursday-night minion.

My reaction to bible college exercises like this one is mixed. On one hand, I can’t say it would be better for Christian Leaders of The Future to not have any first-hand experience with other religions. On the other, I find a single field-trip to be inadequate and smacking of tokenism.

Maybe I have a bad taste in my mouth from when I went to bible school in another city and went on one of those field-trips myself — not because I was required to, but because some friends of mine were taking Religions of the World and I thought it would be fun to tag along. And it was, in a train-wrecky sort of way. It was a trip to a mosque, back in those innocent pre-9/11 days. I dutifully veiled my hair and covered my ankles and wrists and listened with great interest as a friendly and open middle-school teacher gave us the tour of his house of worship.

It was all going well, until some rabble-rousers whom I didn’t recognize (seminarians, perhaps?) started barraging the gentleman with questions about the divinity of Christ and such, all of which he fielded with a good nature. It was somewhat embarassing for many of us who had attended the pre-field trip meeting, however, at which we were instructed not to get all aggro and confrontational towards the people who had graciously allowed us to visit their gathering-place and expose themselves to the prying eyes of self-righteous bible school students.

I was embarrassed for myself and my fellow Christians, so after the interlopers were finished with their assault I lobbed a friendly one, asking about the challenges of observing the Muslim faith in a society that does not exactly make it easy to pray five times a day, much less wash thoroughly before doing so.

The trip was educational — I did learn a good deal about the practice of the faith, at least as it was done in that particular community. But at the same time, now, years later, I feel embarrassed for my brother, visiting the synagogue on a Thursday night for what is a much smaller, more intimate family service. I won’t speak to my brother’s thoughts or opinions, and I don’t want to imply that he’s like the obnoxious questioners that came along to the mosque. Somehowe, though, I still find the whole situation slightly offensive — the idea of the Christian student visiting a synagogue as though to be able to say, “Ah, yes, I have sampled this faith and have indeed found it to be inferior to mine.”

I’m being overly cynical, I know. And as I said, I don’t think it would be better for bible school students to never attend other houses of worship. So I guess there’s no way to make me happy. My discomfort with the practice of the World Religions Field Trip, I think, stems from a knowledge of the way most bible school students think. (Especially ones at Calvinist institutions like the one my brother attends.) Maybe it’s just that part of me misses the days when I was sure that Christianity was The Only Way. Being sure about stuff is easier.

This morning I went to a different church than usual. I went with Jane, a woman who I’ve know for since I was five and she was seven. Now we’re in our twenties and she’s a nurse and I’m an independent music magazine editor and she is a committed Christian and I am… getting there. Anyway, we both attend the church in which we grew up, but it turns out that Jane has also been attending an additional church. I can’t fathom having enough energy or being enough of an extrovert to go to two services at two different churches, but I suppose Jane likes to make up for lost time since she has to miss quite a lot of Sundays due to the unforgiving schedule of a health-care worker.

She’s been going to a hip new church that’s not called a church at all but rather “Soul Sanctuary.” Very popular with our age-group, apparently. A few twenty-somethings had left our church for this one, Jane said. Our church is thriving — lots of kids, lots of teenagers, lots of 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s but very few 20s. Jane feels this quite acutely, being the oldest of the twenty-somethings who go to our church. And there are quite a few of us — we have a college & career small group that draws 10-15 — but not quite enough for Jane. She’s very social. I guess misanthropic introverts like me don’t notice it as much.

So we went to Soul Sanctuary and it was very nice. Chairs were wide and padded, lighting was comfortably low, worship band (boys on guitars and drums, girls on vocal and keyboard, band leader male) was quite good. After the singing time they take a break for coffee, tea, and pastries, and then go back to the seats for the sermon, which, somewhat counterintuitively, is about an hour long. But you don’t notice the length when your bum is comfortable and you have a cup of tea in your hand. And I have to admit, I’ve always wanted to go to a church where I could consume a hot beverage during the service.

However, I quickly realized that I won’t be leaving my current and long-time church for this one. Soul Sanctuary is very nice, but the differences between it and mine are purely cosmetic, aesthetic. When I was a teenager, this would have wowed me and I would have been all, “Soul Sanctuary is the best EVER!” But they’re just practicing the same kind of androcentric evangelicalism that I grew up with. The metaphors are all the same, the discourse is the same, essentially.

The sermon, preached by a man wearing one of those headset microphones that clips on your ear and sits over your cheek like they wear in musical theatre productions, was good enough. The pastor was preaching in relation to advent and exploring the incarnation of God in Jesus, whose birth we are preparing to celebrate by maxing out our credit cards. He preached from the book of John, and described how that book reaches out to the Greeks, explaning the arrival of God on earth in terms they could understand, using the philosophical concept of logos as a basis. The Greeks, unlike the Jews, were not expecting a Messiah and therefore needed birth of Jesus explained to them in terms that would resonate with their own culture and way of thinking.

In other words, the Jewish metaphors for God didn’t work for the Greeks and so early Christianity provided metaphors that did. And now, two thousand years later, we’re still using the same metaphors. God the Father/Son/Holy Spirit, God as Lord, God as Father. Prince of Peace.

I’ve been reading Gail Ramshaw’s Under the Tree of Life: The Religion of a Feminist Christian and am finally starting to create a feminist Christian spirituality of my own. I left the church and Christianity over two main issues: the way Christian texts are exclusive and even hostile to women, and eschatological confusion (the latter is a topic for another day).

I thought it was ironic that this man — a good guy, I’m sure, but very much in the mold of pretty much every other white male pastor I’ve known — was preaching about the inadequacy of certain metaphors to some communities and the value in the new metaphors in a church built around those same old metaphors. Like Gail Ramshaw, I don’t want to throw out the old metaphors entirely. I just want some new ones.

And I don’t want to be too harsh on Soul Sanctuary, because it’s obviously working for a lot of people and I’m sure all the people involved are genuine and loving and all that. And I shouldn’t judge a church on one visit. But these were the conclusions I drew today, based on the stuff that’s been rolling around in my brain of late.

This Christmas season, I’m giving myself what I’ve always wanted: a spirituality/religion blog. Actually I haven’t always wanted a spirituality/religion blog but now I do. Lately, I’ve been devoting a lot of study and thought to Christianity after taking a five-year hiatus from the religion, faith, whatever you want to call it. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find so many progressive Christian blogs, but I was, and happily so — once again, the magic of the internets creates a discursive community that could not have existed without the world wide web. I hope to add my voice to the discussion

I called this blog Steeples and People because that’s the crux of what’s drawing me back to Christianity — community, one that just happens to gather under one roof (it’s got a sort of pointy top with a cross on it, does that count as a steeple?). Also, given that I was raised Christian, with a clergyman for a father no less, that name recalls some of the things that formed my early path. The stories and songs and games that filled the Sunday school classrooms where I sat on miniature wooden chairs in itchy white tights and lacy dresses, folding my hands into for prayer and to make the shape of a steepled chuch, fingers for people, wiggling like we kids did during the service, back when kids had to sit through the service and didn’t get whisked away for exciting children’s programs in the basement. This is the church, these is the steeple, open the doors, here’s all the people.