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.
by Heather Plett | May 11, 2005 | Uncategorized
I suppose it has something to do with the fact that I work for an organization that focuses on responding to hunger. Almost every day, I look for ways of creatively communicating hunger-related issues in ways that will resonate with Canadians and convince them that they should care about the 800 million people going to bed hungry every day.
Whatever the case, these days I find myself more and more concerned with finding a better balance in my life – between the things I want and need, and between the things that really matter in life and the clutter that gets in the way. In the last few months, there have been a few reminders why this is important. My trip to Africa was a big one – it’s hard not to notice the huge difference between the way they live and the way I do. Only an un-caring person would walk away from that and not take some personal responsibility for their suffering.
But it really started long before I went to Africa and long before I got this job. A few years ago, Marcel and I took a step back, re-evaluated what was important in our lives, and decided to make some changes.
In a culture where great importance is placed on acquiring more things, we found ourselves getting caught on the same hamster wheel as everyone else. “Make more money to buy more things” the ads scream at you. Buy more things and then you need more money to maintain that lifestyle. Make even MORE money and start letting your things control your lifestyle. Get a bigger house, send the kids off to daycare, buy a bigger van to pull the boat and the camper you just bought, get a better job, work more overtime, spend less time with the kids… you get the picture.
At some point in the vicious cycle on that hamster wheel, you either decide to commit yourself entirely to its endless motion, or you get off. A lot of people decide to keep spinning. We decided to get off.
The first thing to go was Marcel’s job. He’d been miserable for quite awhile and found he had no desire to stay in the transportation industry, even if it meant more promotions and more money. He longed for the education he’d never gotten. We weren’t sure we could survive on one income and somehow be able to afford his tuition, but we decided to take a risk. If he arranged his classes around the kids’ schedules, we wouldn’t need a babysitter very often and our daycare bills would go down. The added bonus would be that our kids could spend a large majority of their time with their parents.
It wasn’t easy at first. We had to give up some of the luxuries of our lifestyle – less meals at restaurants, get rid of the cell phone, more second-hand clothes, less vacations, no more cable TV. But before long, we recognized the benefits were outweighing the costs. The kids were happier when they got to come home from school instead of going to daycare. We were spending more quality time as a family because we weren’t rushing around as much. We ate more wholesome food because we had more time to prepare meals rather than grabbing something quick after a long day at work.
The next step was my job. That was another big decision. I was offered a dream job at a non-profit organization, but we just weren’t sure I could take the pay cut it required, plus lose all the benefits of a fairly long career in the government. Once again, though, we decided the risk was worth the pain. We found more things to cut, and I took the leap. Again, the benefits far outweighed the costs. I was much happier, felt fulfilled in my new job, got great opportunities, and my whole family benefited when I came home at the end of the day with less stress and no “on-call” cell phone attached to my hip like an albatross.
These days, we’re facing more steps in our downsizing process. With the current cost of gas, and the consciousness that we are not doing the environment any favours by driving a big vehicle, we’ve decided to sell the van. We’re shopping for a car. Again, there will be costs. We’ll have less space to haul around our stuff, the kids will probably fight more because they’ll be stuck sitting next to each other in the back seat. And along with the van, we’ll also have to get rid of the “toys” we pull behind it. The big camper will give way to a small pop-up camper or tent. The boat will go.
Some people look at us funny these days. Alot of people, along the way, have told us we’re nuts. “You’re going back to school? But you’re almost FORTY!” “You’re quitting a good government job? Are you CRAZY?” “How in the world do you plan to live on only one income?” The kids have felt the pinch, too. Their friends get to have more cool toys, go on more exotic trips, live in bigger houses, have new clothes instead of hand-me-downs, get involved in more activities – it’s not easy to sit back and watch other people have all the fun, especially when you’re a kid.
Despite all of that, I don’t regret any of our decisions. In fact, now that we’ve taken a few major steps along the way, and I’ve seen the rewards, I actually look FORWARD to getting rid of the van, the camper, and the boat. I feel lighter already – like I’ve just thrust off a layer of winter clothes and can dance barefoot in the grass again.
There’s no way to define the value of all the things we’ve gained. I didn’t realize the stress of our old lifestyle until it was gone. Now, when I watch parents dropping off their kids at daycare, I feel a weight on my shoulders when I remember how much that used to hurt.
I notice it most when I come home from work. I come home happy because the stress of my old job is gone. Marcel is happy because he LOVES school and feels fulfilled like he never has before. The kids are happy because they’ve been home with their dad and haven’t spent the last few hours at daycare. Supper’s usually cooked because Marcel likes cooking and has more time for it now. It’s all good.
No, we can’t go to Australia for our vacation this year, like some of our daughters’ friends have. And no, we won’t be buying a bigger house, even though our little kitchen drives us all crazy. And no, we won’t be able to go out for supper this week, because it’s not in the budget. On top of that, there are many, many times when we’re not sure we can stretch the dollar to the end of the pay period.
I have to tell you, though, life is good.
