by Heather Plett | May 19, 2005 | Uncategorized
My friend Linda wrote a great post about becoming a pastor. It’s given me lots to think about.
I go to this awesome church where people are authentic and honest and compassionate and flawed and faltering and doubtful and all kinds of other things that make us human, and we’re SO lucky to have Linda become one of our pastors. She’s already been a leader for quite awhile, and I’ve been very lucky to serve with her. She ROCKS!
I’m also taking a “step of faith” and becoming an elder. Some of you may have read my post “elder, shmelder” and know that I have serious doubts about my capacity to be a spiritual leader. Linda and I stand together in our doubts, and yet we’re both taking a step forward because we believe we have something good and valuable in our giftedness and that we can serve the church with it.
No, the doubts haven’t gone away. I still struggle with the place of the church in today’s world. I still struggle with all the hypocrisy I see. I still struggle with the crap that doesn’t make sense. Why are people killing other people in the name of God? Why are people swaggering around with superior attitudes because their religion somehow lifts them up above the common man? Why would God accept the faltering and flawed faith of Christians and reject the earnest heartfelt faith of all those other believers – Muslims, Hindus, you name it? Why are people using the Bible to justify racism and sexism and war and hatred of so many flavours? Why would so-called “Christian” nations be so greedy and gluttonous and hoard so much wealth that millions are starving? Why is there so much in the Bible that just doesn’t make sense?
Maybe I should resolve some of those questions in my mind before stepping into the role of elder. How will I provide “spiritual leadership” if there’s still so much that doesn’t make sense for me? I don’t know.
I think it was Madeleine L’Engle who said we have to learn to “sit with the questions”. That’s something I’ve been learning along my journey – that questions are okay and that the grey areas aren’t necessarily bad. A black and white world doesn’t have as much depth if you can’t see the shadows.
So here I am, making a tentative step forward into my new role. Because maybe, just maybe, my comfort with the questions is just the kind of leadership that’s needed for authentic and honest and compassionate and flawed and faltering and doubtful people.
by Heather Plett | May 18, 2005 | Uncategorized
I am the proud new owner of thisbike! (You’re right, Cuppa, Treks are lovely bikes!)
Something about a shiny new bike makes me want to genderize (is that a word?) it. As in… “SHE’s a beauty. SHE rides like a dream. I think I’ll take HER for a spin.” Not sure what that says about me, but you can read into it what you want 🙂
I’m ecstatic! It’s my early birthday present to ME!
And in another random, and completely unrelated thought, this morning when I went to make my tea, I saw the word “Sunbeam” on the kettle, and my mind did a crazy and unanticipated leap back to that old Sunday School song “I’ll be a sunbeam for Jesus.” Ich! Where do these thoughts come from? (It’s not just MY thoughts I’m questioning, but the thoughts of whoever decided THAT should be a song.) Now I just KNOW that song will be stuck in my head for the rest of the day!
Maybe today, I’ll be a sunbeam for TREK! 🙂
by Heather Plett | May 17, 2005 | Uncategorized
It was supposed to be my moment of glory – my crowning achievement as a novice biking enthusiast. I’d trained for it – spent many, many hours biking all over the city and into the country. I’d bought a new bike for it – a beautiful Miele Italian racing bike. I was ready for it. More than ready. I was pumped.
It was called the Tin Man Triathlon (I suppose the name is a take-off of the Iron Man). In 1988, I had signed up with a couple of friends to enter the relay – one of them would do the swimming leg, the other would run, and I would ride my bike for 40 grueling kilometres. I was rather pleased to be the only woman on the team. I was in better shape than I’d ever been before, and this was supposed to be the moment I’d redeem myself – I could be an athlete after all! I could hardly wait to put my beautiful bike, and my finely tuned biking legs to the test.
The race was slated for Saturday. On Thursday night, my world turned upside down.
It was nearing morning when the man entered my apartment. Probably around 4:30 a.m. The apartment was hot, as it always was that summer. I’d slept with the windows open – it was the only way I COULD sleep. When I woke up, there he was, standing over my bed with a pair of scissors clenched in his raised hand. In the split second it took me to focus my eyes and register what was going on, I knew that this man had climbed through my open window and was here to hurt me.
He was there for nearly 2 hours. Part of that time is a blur. Most of it, I try not to conjure up in my mind. I don’t want to remember the way his fingers felt on my naked body. I don’t want to relive the terror of approaching death when he tried to choke the breath out of me, angry that I wasn’t more willing to satisfy his sexual deviance. I don’t want to see flashbacks of the naked woman tattooed on his dirty arm. I don’t want to bring back the smell of him – old alcohol, body odour, and solvent. I don’t want to see his ugly naked lust.
Somehow, I convinced him to leave, after he’d taken all he could from me, and left a shell of who I was before. Somehow, I found the strength to get dressed and run the half-block to my friend’s house. Somehow, I survived the hospital visit, the doctor’s examination, the clipping of my pubic hair for evidence, the police investigation, the months of anger and hatred.
Somehow I survived all that, but I didn’t survive the bike race. I tried. I drove out to the town where it was being held, with full intention of triumphing over what had happened, and racing anyway. But as I drove, I knew I couldn’t do it. My neck muscles stung with the memory of his hands. Every time I closed my eyes, my mind raced back to jagged dark memories of him. My hands shook on the steering wheel of the car. I knew I couldn’t hold a bike upright for 40 kilometres.
Why do I write about this now, 17 years later? This week, as I shopped for a new bike, I remembered the anticipation I felt the last time I bought a shiny new bike. I remember the excitement I felt preparing for the race. I remember the feel of the leather biking gloves on my hands.
That man took a lot from me in those two hours. Though it took me a long time to recover, I’ve gotten to a point where I hardly ever think about it anymore. But this week, as I look forward to my first new bike in 17 years, I find myself angry that, along with everything else, he took my chance to race in the triathlon.
Perhaps, when I get my new bike, I’ll sign up for another one.
by Heather Plett | May 16, 2005 | Uncategorized
We were consumers this weekend. In a good way – not in a “acquiring more material possessions for the sake of building our empire” way. We bought a car – or at least we put a deposit on one and will pick it up later this week. This is all part of the downsizing process. We traded in the gas-guzzling van for a fuel efficient Chev Impala. Here’s hoping we made a good decision. (If you have one and think it’s a piece of crap, PLEASE don’t tell me about it!) We’re not too fond of the colour – bright red – but at least we won’t easily lose it in a parking lot 🙂
And then, on Saturday, I bought a new bike. I’d saved up for one this Spring, but then the money I’d saved had been whittled down by other more pressing needs, so I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get one. (One of our adult-sized bikes was stolen recently, and the other one is falling apart. I’d been hoping to ride to work this summer, but didn’t have a decent bike to ride.) I got a pleasant surprise on Friday – a cheque arrived in the mail for some extra back-pay I’d been owed from my years in the government. Turns out it was just enough to buy a bike 🙂 Seems like one of those little whispers from God – “here’s a little gift. Go buy what you want and be happy.”
The problem was, I’d decided to skimp a little on the bike by buying a cheaper one at Canadian Tire and saving the extra money for some of the other things I need (like new pants). Well, I brought home the shiny new bike, took one ride around the block, and then Marcel took a spin. Within moments, he was calling me from inside the house… “Um, Heather, you’d better come out here.” When I stepped out on the front step, it became fairly clear that my decision to buy the cheaper bike was ill-advised. The gear shift thingy that moves the chain from one gear to the next (sorry, I’m not too well versed in bicycle terminology) had completely snapped off when Marcel tried to shift gears. On closer inspection, we realized that most of it was made of plastic! Can you imagine? Plastic parts on a bicycle? And this wasn’t even the cheapest bike at the store! (Yes, I returned the bike and now intend to go to a REAL bike store for a better product, despite the higher cost.)
I know I sound like an old-timer when I say “they just don’t make things like they used to!” I could go on a real rant about how so much stuff is made to be disposable these days, so it’s cheaper to buy a new thing than fix the old one, and we are forced to perpetrate the consumerism and excessive waste that has come to define our culture… but I won’t. I’ll just say “Here’s hoping the car fares better than the bicycle!”
(Look for me soon in my hot red car or shiny bicycle doing my part to reduce fossil fuels!)
by Heather Plett | May 13, 2005 | Uncategorized
Recently I read Dance of the Dissident Daughter by Sue Monk Kidd (thanks for the recommendation Cuppa!). It’s quite fascinating and a lot of it resonated with me. It’s the story of her personal journey away from a traditional Christianity to a place where she honours the Sacred Feminine. Though she’d been a pastor’s wife and an inspirational writer for many years, she says she reached a point where she was confronted with the patriarchy of Western Christianity, and she just couldn’t stomach it any more. She no longer wanted to be viewed as a second-class citizen in the eyes of the church or in the eyes of God.
I don’t think I’d go as far as she did – I don’t want to reject Christianity and create some new, nebulous faith for myself that honours a rather undefined God – but I do welcome her attempts at painting a different picture of God than what’s been painted through the lens of Western Christianity. I think approaching God as a blend of masculine and feminine certainly has its merits. I found myself wishing, however, that she’d related her new understanding back to a new kind of faith that’s still rooted in the truth that God revealed through the Bible and through Jesus. She does that to a certain degree (she talks about the feminine character of God articulated in the Bible as “Sophia” or “Wisdom”), but a little less than I would have liked. That’s not a criticism of the book or of her, though – her journey is her own, and I don’t expect it to be the same as mine. I’m just glad she chose to write about it.
More than anything, it made me want to return to the Bible for my own exploration – to find out how to interpret God through a different lens than I’ve accepted all these years. The night after I finished reading the book, my prayer took on a slightly different tone when I envisioned a Mother/Father God receiving my words and thoughts. It felt good.
Today, I read Real Live Preacher’s post about his longing for a place where his feminine side is welcomed and valued and where he feels the freedom to be okay with who he is and who other people are. I’ve also been reading posts from various people about how they’ve felt boxed in by various labels. There’s a common thread running through all of these writings – a desire for less boxes and more fluid definitions.
I have known a lot of people, male and female, who don’t fit tidily into any category of “masculine” or “feminine”. In my own marriage, for example, we’ve found a very comfortable place where we’re living out a bit of a role reversal in the eyes of our society – I’m the “bread winner” and he’s the “caregiver”. It works for us – there are things in my character that fit more in a traditional “masculine” definition, and there are aspects of him that have shades of what might be defined as “feminine”. That doesn’t mean that one of us is weaker or stronger, it just means that we don’t fit into the boxes well.
I wish we could find a way for that to be more okay. In this post-feminist era, why can’t we focus more on valuing ALL aspects of a person’s character (or God’s, for that matter), not just those that line up with their gender? I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re all the same and that gender doesn’t matter. Yes, there are differences between males and females, but those differences don’t matter in the grand scheme of things, nor does one have more value than the other.
If a woman wants to seek a “non-traditional” role for herself, or play hockey or whatever, why not? We shouldn’t make a big deal about it. If a man wants to reveal his emotional side to his friends, or crochet doilies for a past-time, why not? On the other hand, if a person (male or female) fits very neatly into the traditional roles (eg. a woman feels delightfully fulfilled being a stay-at-home mom with a passion for baking cookies), than that’s okay too.
I once heard a quote from someone who’d been involved with the feminist movement who said the great travesty of the feminist movement was that it focused too much on giving women access to male roles/careers/etc. and neglected to put the same energy into creating value in those things that are traditionally female. That makes a lot of sense to me. Let’s find value in what makes each of us who we are rather than placing too much value on one thing or another.
You are free to be who you are meant to be, whether male or female, gay or straight, young or old, white or black. Your nature, your giftedness, your personality, whatever makes you who you are – it all has value.
God made us ALL in his/her image, so that must mean we ALL reflect something of his/her beauty whatever our gender or colour is.
