Heroes not Helpmates: Female Olympians, Showing Us Something New That is Really Something Old

by | Aug 9, 2016 | religion, Sherry blogs, spirituality, Wild Woman Archetype

A woman doesn’t become a hero overnight and she doesn’t do it alone. It takes a village to make a hero in the form of an Olympic athlete. A village of men and women working together to make something spectacular occur in one rare and gifted human being. But that’s not the point, the thing about watching women set some of the world’s greatest records in this year’s summer Olympics is simply that we are not accustomed to seeing women shine so brightly on center stage and we don’t know what to say.  Even seasoned commentators  seem to stumble, searching for excuses as to how this can be happening, preferring to lay the proof of her success on the shoulders of the (perceived) real hero, her male counterpart.

Quite simply, we are seeing things we never saw before and it’s magnificently stunning.

We’ve known it all along, that women are heroes, leaders, strong, wise, and the equal of men, not the same, that is, but equal, nonetheless. But these facts have remained hidden in plain sight. Even in the Bible, there is a whole class of women warriors hidden in the pages, but with just a little digging, we can find at least six scripture references to the class of warrior women in the ancient Hebrew culture who led, fought, strategized and prophesied in Yahweh’s army. Perhaps we are just now able to welcome them onto the scene of religion, though they have been there all along.

As we learn to see the world through the eyes of women, we see our world changing, both the old and new. This is scary for a lot of people, but it need not be. Things are changing in our world largely due to the perspectives female leadership is bringing. New perspectives are often frightening when we’ve lived so long in the old. Take the Bible, for example, it’s been the bestselling book in America for a very long time, the cornerstone of the “swearing in” of legal court procedures, and yet many popular Biblical interpretations support perspectives that promote practices of violence against women, sexism and silencing as the norm.

Depth Psychologist, C.G. Jung said that in order to understand the American psyche, we need to read our Bibles. This is also scary because many oppressive biblical ideas about women became the foundations upon which our culture was constructed. While I’m a female pastor and search for new perspectives on the old, old stories to inform faith in the 21st Century, I try and remember that the Bible didn’t invent patriarchy, but many interpretations of Bible portray a system in which women were conscripted to become subservient to males as a form of moral, civil and religious practice. In other words, Bible culture often promotes a world view like Etta James sings about in the old blues song: “it’s a man’s world but it would be nothing without a woman or a girl.”

But there is a way forward, a kind of third way, something Jung was popular for promoting. The tension between the opposites, and we’re seeing it now in our world and we can see it in our religion, too, if we’re willing to open our eyes and hearts to a new perspective, accepting not only a woman’s leadership, but learning to see the world through her eyes, backwards and forwards.

We can still do Bible and believe in women’s identity, it’s not an either or situation, we don’t have to isolate ourselves from society to adhere to a morality system built for the first millennia BCE, and we don’t have to ditch our Bibles to see something new.

As woman becomes more and more the hero, the champion, the lead character in her own story, we begin to see our old, old stories differently, too. The women in the ancient stories who led men, became warriors and war strategists, and through their leadership, accomplished heroic acts on behalf of God, become more present on the pages that undergird our faith world  as women become more prominent leaders in our world, too.

Jung also said that what is needed in our time are new narratives from old stories. If we can learn to read our lives through the eyes of the women who are leading us forward, with the seeds of new life in their hearts,  we just might see things we never saw before, the future just might be brighter than we think.

 

 

 

 

“I Don’t Shine if You Don’t Shine…”

“I Don’t Shine if You Don’t Shine…”

by | Feb 11, 2013 | Sherry blogs

chagall mosesWhere was Moses when the lights went out? In the dark. My brother and I would squeal with laughter as kids even though we had heard this joke a hundred times, it was, perhaps, my grandfather’s perfect delivery that prompted the laughter or perhaps the anticipation of the spookiness that was sure to follow — the perfect, complete and utter back-lit darkness of the rural, West Tennessee bottomlands.

Moses may have been in the dark, but his face was shining. Way back in those gossamer pages of the family Bible, and, of course, way beyond them, too. Like an interstellar headlight from the ancient world. His face shone so intensely that he had to cover it with a veil, for him or for them or for God, who knows? The Hebrew word  like so many other Hebrew words for so many other things could have also meant “horn,” but shine sounds better than horn. I like to think of them as horns or shafts of light.  Marc Chagall thought the horns painted well and he painted them over and over again in his Story of Exodus series.

Chagall travelled from Russia to Palestine when he was commissioned to paint the Old Testament. Though he had hoped to see the Bible there, he instead said that he dreamed it. I love his perspective, he once said, “Since childhood the Bible has fascinated me. I have always thought of it as the greatest source of poetry of all time. I have continued to seek out its reflection in life and in art. The Bible is like a musical vibration of nature, and I have tried to communicate that secret” (The Biblical Message of Marc Chagall, p. 15).

moses 6The Bible as reflection, as musical vibration and as secret revealed.  These images drive me to go deeper into the stories of text, I find myself there in those gossamer pages, in that ancient living word, far beyond the cultural constraints of manipulative interpretation.  It is there that I can dream a world of compassion, of justice and truth, it is there where I can meet God and  gain the courage to lift the veil of this heavy, human existence. It is there where commandments are transformed into covenant and believers are transfigured into love.

I quote a line often in my sermons from a Killer’s song called, “Read My Mind,” the line is, “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.” What if we really approached life this way, encouraging one another to embrace the light within, the gifts within and helping one another develop those gifts in order to truly shine?

Like so many artists throughout history, it is that musical vibration, that great poetry of the text that motivates me to create. I find it to be gracious space with a language all its own that transforms me, inviting me to shine as I extend that same invitation to others.