When I was Ordained, I Wore a Girly Dress

Not everyone understands the pressure of gender expectations in a field dominated by the opposite sex. It is difficult to balance wanting to be accepted and taken seriously with being yourself.  I have been told not to appear too feminine when I speak in front of a church. To those who think this, I might as well tell you that I will do the exact opposite. I will dress appropriately, of course, but I will embrace who God has made me and not attempt to hide it. I am a woman. And I'm not ashamed of it. I wear bright and girly dresses, colorful makeup, and adorn my hair with flowers.  I can speak the Word while wearing red lipstick. I can stand and preach just as well in high heels. I can care for others all the better in my girly dress because I feel free and can be myself, not hiding who I am under a mask others have asked me to wear. Here is a poem that I absolutely love. It expresses this problem, the pain, and the joy better than I can. It is called "When I am Ordained, I Shall Purple." And as you can see below, I did exactly that.

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When I am Ordained, I shall wear Purple

by Mia Smith
When I am ordained, I shall wear purple
with killer heels and bright red lipstick
And I shall go round preaching from the Bible

The liberating truth that Jesus calls women
and tell those who say otherwise that it is they,
not I, who are bad theologians. I shall sit down with fellow clergy when we are tired of fighting for equality
and going the extra mile with grace when we are put down,
And we will make up for it:
by encouraging one another as Scripture says,
and praying for those who abuse us,
and rejoicing that we are suffering
(but just a little bit) for Jesus,
And we might even eat some chocolate. I will adopt the ordination name “Junia”,
and remind those who object,
that there may be a boy named Sue somewhere in the world,
but there probably isn’t.

But now we must face the world,
Who think we are traitors to our sex
For working for the Church
And face our brothers and sisters who think
We are being unbiblical
And face those in our Churches
who have failed to notice the pain this week has brought.
And we will go in the strength of Christ.
We will not turn our backs on our calling
Because God is not finished with the Church,
And He is faithful. But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am ordained, and start to wear purple.

Living Like a Lily of the Field: Part II

It is a difficult discipline not to buy things and own things in a society that is all about having more and more. Here are some tips I have found and some practices I am working on. 1) Don’t go to the mall.  Casually window-shopping or even just walking through my favorite stores does nothing but convince me that I need more.  Advertising really is pretty convincing, isn’t it?  I love fashion, for example. When I go to the mall, I see all the things I would love to have. But the cycle never breaks. There never seems to be a point where I have enough clothes or dress well enough. So I just avoid malls altogether.  Even going to Target or going to the grocery store can be fraught with these perils. It is essential to be very intentional when going anywhere you spend your money (have a budget and a list in hand!).  Additionally, your philosophy of money and material possession needs to be continually flushed out. Aristotle said that the unexamined life is not worth living.  Take some time to examine your relationship to your possessions, to money, and set goals for yourself.  It can be anything from a simple budget to a vow of poverty, but making a conscious decision is indispensable.  2) Make repurposing and recycling a lifestyle.  Instead of buying new clothes, for example, I swap with friends, shop at garage sales and thrift stores, or refashion items I already own but haven’t worn in a while.  This is a great practice because it also teaches patience. Often, I have to wait for a while until I can cross something off my list. Recently, I was looking for curtain. It took a month of stopping at garage sales before I found some. My need for instant gratification has been very challenged! 3) Find great ways to put your money to use that does not involve buying more things.  I was literally struck dumb a few weeks ago when a couple handed me a check for several hundred dollars for groceries and said to expect another one next month.  I told them that this was way too much money to just be handing out to people! My friend responded that she had disciplined herself to not want things. She said, “Why would I buy some more stuff when I can help you guys buy groceries or support a missionary?” Well, that certainly does put things in perspective! Why should I spend a small fortune keeping up with the latest trends when I can give micro-loans to women in the Middle East or pay to send women to school in Afghanistan? Moreover, what if that small fortune I was spending on clothing was contributing to lining the pockets of sweatshop owners, destroying the environment (and again, hurting the poor), and weighing me down spiritually?  This perspective makes choices much easier! 4) Find heroes, authors, and friends who inspire you to do more and reach your full potential.  Mother Teresa, Shane Claiborne, and Gandhi are some people I continually look to for inspiration on these issues.  I also have friends who are very serious about these issues, like my husband and many friends.

            In light of all these reasons, I decided to make up a new tradition for me, my family, and my future family to follow. Instead of being thankful for all the things I have on one day and then the next spending tons of money on things I was fine without the day before, I am going to find as many things in my house to get rid of as I can. Not only for the sake of myself but also for the sake of others.  I can then donate these items or give them to people who I know are struggling or need something. This is my new Black Friday tradition, which is the next step up from the “buy nothing day” I usually celebrate. This is a healthier and more appropriate way to spend the day after Thanksgiving! It is a sad symptom of our culture when you see the news covering the thousands of people who have been camping out for days, who trample fellow human beings, and the usual report of injuries and even death by the end of the day. I hope this tradition catches on. I think it would be better for everyone.

            Shane Claiborne in the book Red Letter Christians (which I highly recommend) retells the biblical story commonly referred to as the Rich Man and Lazarus. He pointed out how the walls and gates the rich man built to keep people like Lazarus at bay not only hurt the poor but it also hurt the rich man. The poor man suffered from lack of food, shelter, care, etc. but the rich man also suffered, even though he does not realize it until the end of the story.  The walls he built kept him away from the people he needed to be in community with in order to be in true communion with God. Having too many possession and holding on to them too tightly ruined his life. In fact, in the story he asks if Lazarus can go and warn his brother about their lifestyle and that it needs to be changed because it is keeping them from God and from others.  Possessions and the love of those possessions are what broke the two greatest commandments: love God and love your neighbor.  I know that few people would identify themselves with the rich man in this story.  One of the jarring parts of the story, however, is that the rich man himself was shocked at these accusations. He believed he was following God’s commands. How many of us are actually the rich man in this story? Probably more of us than would care to admit.

I will leave off with this final paragraph from Red Letter Revolution: “In John 10: 10, Jesus says he has come to give us life to the fullest, not guilt to the fullest. So I’m interested in that life— and so are a lot of other folks— because we often settle for something far short of life to the fullest. We opt for survival, security, and comfort rather than the cross and suffering love of Jesus. We choose the American dream instead of the gospel dream. But the freest people I know are the folks who have learned to live like the lilies and the sparrows. Once a reporter said to Mother Teresa that he couldn’t do what she did if he was paid a million dollars. She answered, “Yes, for a million dollars I wouldn’t do it either.” I think Jesus is showing us that there is a pearl, a prize, worth leaving everything for. So it’s not about what you’ve left, but it’s about what you’ve found.”

Living like a Lily of the Field: Part I

This month I have been posting a different thing I am thankful for each day on Facebook.  Even on bad days, it was a wonderful practice to stop and think of one thing that brought me true joy and happiness. While reviewing that list, I realized not a single one on my list was any possession I owned.  A summary of my list: my husband, family, friends, church community, and my dog. One of my all-time favorite reads is Mother Teresa’s A Simple Path.  She says that the opposite is in fact true – the more “things” you have, the unhappier you are."When you don't have anything, then you have everything."  I’m going to agree with her on this one.  

            Over the last few years, I have been moving steadily through different phases in order to achieve a more simplistic lifestyle.  For a while now I have been going through the “buy only used items” stage (except for things like toothbrushes…).  There have been a couple of reasons for it. First, since my husband and I are both in grad school full time, we make next to nothing.  Grad school is a great way to cut your spending habits.  Second, I have become increasingly concerned about the ecological impact the American standard of living is having on the world (for goodness sakes, we use a quarter of the world’s resources and make up only 4% of the world’s population).  Besides being concerned with the environment for its own sake, the people who will be most affected by these types of decisions are the poor – in this country and all over the world.  Third, the more information I have about where most of my stuff comes from, the heavier it sits on my conscious.  I should not and cannot help sustain large populations of people (especially children!) who are put into dangerous and terrible situations in sweatshops to make a shirt for me (Mother Teresa says,"When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed."). Fourth, the money can be put to better use than buying another thing I don’t need. There are quite a few more, but these are some of the major reasons I am working on scaling back my lifestyle.

            I think some of my heroes like Mother Teresa were on to something with their vow of poverty.  An example that always jumps to my mind when I think of simplicity is a trip my friend and I took a few years ago. We were going to be gone for several weeks, so I packed my suitcase to the brim. It was exhausting lugging around a huge suitcase, digging through tons of things to find my toothbrush, and I couldn’t help but scatter things everywhere as I tried to find something in my bag.  I didn’t think too much about it because that is just simply how a person travels.  One day, though, we filled a backpack each with a single change of clothes and a few basic things. We locked our suitcases in a storage room at a hostel, and we took off to go exploring. We rented mopeds and just went wherever the wind would take us. To my dying day one of my favorite images will be my friend on her moped in front of me with her backpack on, with the Mediterranean Sea on one side and tall hills topped with ancient ruins on the other. We were gone for a few days and one of the best parts of that trip was how little stuff we had. We could go and do what we wanted because of how little held us down.  When I think of living a life free of clutter, useless items, and freedom, this is the image my mind conjures, not a life that is somehow lessened because I own fewer material possessions.

Living in Another World

Today I was fortunate to hear one of my heroes – Shane Claiborne – speak at school. I have heard him several times but listening to him is addictive. You can feel that he believes with every fiber of his being that another world is truly possible - a world that is based on love and grace instead of greed and violence (and compliance and apathy in the face of injustice).

"Maybe we are a little crazy.  After all, we believe in things we don't see. The Scriptures say that faith is "being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Heb 11:1).  We believe poverty can end even though it is all around us.  We believe in peace even though we hear only rumors of war.  And since we are people of expectation, we are so convinced that another world is coming that we start living as if it were already here." (Shane Claiborne)

There are not many people who stir this passion in me but when you do meet them it touches your very soul. The last few weeks in a Bible study I am leading I have been blessed to meet lots of new people. We were discussing barriers that stand between us and true intimacy in our adoptive family – the church. One suggestion was that we are afraid to be vulnerable to one another. This hit home. I don’t mind sharing other people’s burdens but I am reluctant to share mine…even my husband has to fight to let me let him help me. I decided to be brave and shared what a tight budget we have. I feel this every week when I go to the grocery store and have to be so careful what we can buy. Throw in all my weird diet issues and it is difficult to leave the store satisfied. I was really embarrassed to share this (and I am working on this, hence why I am sharing it on my blog) but I did anyway because I love the image of the church being a true community and a family. The next day I opened my mailbox and there is a check for a whopping $250 for groceries from one of the amazing couples I shared this with. I just sat down and cried. At that moment I once again felt that overwhelming emotion and desire for this new world and new ideal. We can create pockets of the kingdom of God among friends, families, and neighbors. I felt it with this group of people and have felt it elsewhere too. It’s something I want to create no matter where I am or what I am doing.

"And I think that's what our world is desperately in need of - lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about..Mother Theresa always said, 'Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see.  Find you Calcutta.'"

Where is my Calcutta? Or yours? There are people struggling everywhere. We must slow down enough to help others with their loneliness, their hunger, their anger, their worries, and the injustices that plague so many.  I have to stop myself and wonder, why am I working so hard to be successful according to a definition that does not really matter? I want to stop and look at where I am. Is this where I want to be? Because I can do and be absolutely anything I want. The question is whether I am brave enough to trod a road less traveled.  The only thing stopping me is myself.  

Lord, here I am. I am afraid of what to do next and how to get there, but I am much more afraid of looking back on my life and seeing that it meant very little.

The Simple Way - check this out!