9.20.08 Update: This is now up in essay form as well…just scrolll down.

This is something that came to me today. It will be up in a day or two as a text post. But for now, I think it wants to be just sound. I’m sorry it doesn’t look prettier. If anyone can tell me in simple terms how to change the code so this is an embedded file that doesn’t have to open in a new window I’d appreciate it. Until then, thank you for listening as-is. Oh, and please say nice things, or at least that you listened. Podcasting still feels tender-new to me. Tak.

Click this to listen: 001_a_004_rachelle-mee-chapman_choosing-the-beast_2007_01_25

Choosing the Beast

I sat in silence for the first time in a long time today. No YouTube background noise, no music, not even the warm tumble-thump of the dryer. Just the candles and a tub full of warm water, and the sounds of my noisy mind slowly settling into stillness.

There is a way of holding still without becoming stiff that only happens for me in the womb like waters of a bathtub. As I have no bathtub here, this stillness is a much longed for and uncommon occurrence. Today, in my borrowed claw foot basin something came to my side. A realization:

The choice to love, to really love, is incredibly, ridiculously brave.

It is not a surrendering of self. But rather, a time when you scramble a bit to find your footing, and then stand in your own power and look the Vast Beast in the eye and say, “I choose this.” I choose this thing that can both protect me and tear me apart; that can and will bring me my most enthralling joys and my most excruciating and unanticipated pain. I choose the risk. I choose the possibility of endings. I chose to be as simpatico as old souls and to be equally, heartrendingly misunderstood. I choose to be at intervals rashly taken advantage of and unexpectedly worshipped. I choose this terror and this beauty. I choose love.

There are many times when we step into this place of love in naiveté—in the blithe flush of new crush and happy mutual adoration, blissfully unaware of the awe-full power we are inviting into our lives. We do this when we marry; when we choose our children; when we accidentally fall in love with a jubilant soul, with the idea of beauty, with wanting to be a writer or a painter or a poet; with a country we did not even know was part of our bones. When this happens, we live in that place for awhile with ease and contentment, unable or unwilling to see the depth of the pact we have made, not acknowledging that some part of our soul was the currency used in the bargain. Sometimes this joyride continues through the long luxurious length of our journey. But more often the fearful awesomeness of what it really takes to sustain the choice to love looms in front of us and we find that we must be very brave. Brave enough to say, “I choose this still.” Brave enough to stay the course, to maintain the bond even when it becomes painful to do so. Brave enough to say I will bear the ache of watching you grow up, of watching you be sick, of watching you grow old. I will bear the confusion over what to do, over how to love you best. I will love you through this whirlwind, through this firestorm. I chose this beast called love.

I am in a place right now where I must very intentionally choose to love: to love people who are far away; to love my challenging tween and teen; and most challengingly to love my own ill and tired self. And I am watching others commit brave acts of love: surrendering to a first love; watching someone die; tending to a baby soul born at midlife; loving someone through the sickness part of “in sickness and in health.” These acts, these making of stands on the high ground of love are so real, so raw, so terrifyingly powerful they make me want to shield my soul from the solar-flare burst of it all.

But I won’t. I don’t. Instead I stand in the choosing. I stand in the heart of the flame and I try to remember, “if you are never afraid you can never be brave.” And then, I chose love.

This is my dreamboard for September’s full moon.

I believe: time around the dinning table is sacred; lighting candles on the windowsill is ritual; a flock of friends in a cozy home is essential.

Since moving to Denmark 9 months ago we have been lonely. A lot of our time has been spent adjusting to a new culture and just learning our way around, so at first we were okay with the solitude. Hiding out with our nuclear family was sort of novel and refreshing those first few weeks, but now it’s “ikke sa godt.” (not so good.) When we first came here I was burned out from over-hosting — too many dishes, too many personalities, too much dirt tracked across the living room floor. It was good to rest for awhile. But now we are ready to gather a little flock in our home. Flock gathering is kind of my superpower.

We are accustomed to being the hub for friendly gatherings, and I have sent out an invitation for monthly gatherings in our home through the Fall and Winter. I’ve also invited a group of women to come dreamboard around my dinning room table each month. Monday is our first one and I made a dreamboard in advance, because I know my hostessing energy will be too bustle-y to make mine on the actualy night. So here it is — my dream of a tiny flock of lovlies in a cozy home. The words on the left are in Danish and mean “welcome,” “sacred,” and “cozy.” You can see the whole thing better here.

Well, shall we say “Amen, let it be so”? I think so. I do indeed.

Click here to listen to this post, or opt to read it below.
_______________

Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek God
Look to the rock from which you were hewn,
and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham and to Sarah who bore you;
For they were but two when I called them,
but once I blessed them they multiplied.

God will comfort Zion; God will comfort all her waste places,
God will comfort all her mounds of ruins.
I will transform her dead ground into Eden,
her moonscape into the garden of God,
a place filled with exuberance and laughter…

This was the lectionary reading from Isaiah this Sunday. When I heard it read aloud in the clipped Danish accent of Hanna, my sister in liturgical ministry, I was immediately transported back to Stonehenge, where I lay my hand upon an ancient heel stone. It made me think of my ancestry, held in ancient stories, and of my—of our—deep connection to the earth. These words and this memory released inside me a wellspring of gratitude for the very real connection I have to such an ancient heritage.

When I returned home and read the text again, I was struck by the feminine language that Isaiah uses for Zion. This is a word which has many meanings, but perhaps most meaningfully to me is how it holds the idea of homeland–the physical or metaphysical place in which we find our source, our identity and our solace. It encouraged me to know that this ancient statement of true things, this old poet’s tongue, still stands. It is an affirmation to me and to my soulsisters, known and unknown, who are feeling as though bits of them have been converted in mounds of ruin–who feel as though they are living in wasted places.

As my dear Jen always says, “Whatever you do hold on to hope…that this is not the end of your story.” Our sisters, our mothers, our ancestral Sarah’s, have been holding on to the hope that the homeland of our hearts and hearths would be comforted—would be made into gardens like unto Eden. Whatever you do today, in whatever way you can, hold on to hope—like a seed in your palm, like the scrap of a fortune cookie paper cupped in your hand. For this is not the end of our story, but the very place from which it is born. Amen. May it be so.

click for more podcasts: Beaches and Bodies, The Care and Keeping of Sacred Stories.
click to learn more about Sacred Sunday.

They exist without permission.
They are hated, hunted and persecuted.
They live in quiet desperation amongst the filth.
And yet they are capable of bringing entire civilisations to their knees.

If you are dirty, insignificant and unloved then rats are the ultimate role model.
-Banksy, Wall and Piece

Street rats are not pets. They are not white and fluffy. They do not purr. There is an evolutionary pecking order that says things that live in garbage heaps do not get to come indoors. We ascribe to this, most of us; we follow the wisdom of survival. We succeed.

The teacher I love says:

“Fuck it. Fuck the pecking order. Put it on its head. The first shall be last. The last shall be first. The street rats will reveal wisdom to the bichon frises.”

(It’s a loose translation.)

This is who we are supposed to be paying attention to—those who society views as rats—to the dirty and the disenfranchised, to the unwelcomed and the unwanted. We think we are called to be with these who live on the uncouth edges of our metropolis because they need us–because we of the 9-5 paycheck and the college degree have the method and the means to bring them out of the sewers and into the light.

But the truth is, we need them. The truth is, we need each other.

I have these friends Deborah and Ken. They are a generation ahead of me, wise elders with children my own age. Ken and Deborah have been pastors for years now, at least a decade, maybe two. When they started it was all about name-it-and-claim: church buildings the size of basketball stadiums and prosperity gospel paving their way with streets with gold. And they were good at it. Their kingdom had no rats.

Then one day, they left. They didn’t know where they were going, only that where they had been wasn’t it. Ken left his suits behind and shaved his head. Deborah started the nubs of dreadlocks. They moved to Portland. They fell in love. With whom? Homeless people – the kind of ragged corner dwellers most people consider to be just above street rats. Teens with ragged hoodies and holes in all their clothing. Kids with nicotine staining their fingers and rancid socks on their feet. Men who hadn’t had the chance to bathe in days, who lived in sub-basements they accessed by squeezing between boarded up holes.

Deborah and Ken didn’t sees street rats. They saw miracles. People who looked out for each other and tried to keep things safe. Kids who made art on scraps of cardboard, and the rough surface of the pavement. Souls which made music and wrote poetry. Individuals who were, undeniably, both tragic and beautiful.

Within the lives of Deborah and Ken, these rats have caused a revolution. There is no more mega-church, there are no three pieces suits. Instead there’s couple just getting by; a lack of insurance and retirement funds; and a group of people –with and without homes—trying to make sure everyone can get by. There are sandwiches, and coffee; blankets and art supplies; advocacy with the police and rides to the shelter–and there are two 50-something grown-ups ready to hand out parental-style love. Sometimes all of this is inside, and sometimes it is under a bridge, or on a street corner, or in an alley – but wherever it is, it is, in my opinion, Kingdom Come. The street rats have turned the kingdom on its head.

Could we live like this—as people who could learn from the invisibles–either because Jesus asked us to, or because our souls are asking us to? The next time we see a rat, could we avoid looking away? Could we avoid standing on the chair and wacking it with a broom? What if, together, we watched the rat instead, and saw where it went? What if we saw how hard it worked to survive, or how prolific it managed to be even in the midst of hardship and squalor? What if we ask him or her to teach us, to be patient with our ignorance, to show us a new way? Could we get a new perspective? Could we help ourselves and others? Could we have a rat as our role models?

Support Ken and Deborah’s “friends without homes” at Home.PDX. Learn more here. Visit the site. Donate!

As I mentioned in this post, I believe we each carry sacred stories. Stories that shape us. Stories that heal us. Stories that guide us. And just as these stories shape the teller, they also have the power to shape the listener; bringing those who have ears to hear companionship, drawing them closer to shalom.

Katrina sent me this story in response to the post “God Sticks and Shame Caves, which has moved many of you to tell your tales. She is someone I trust, whose wisdom is not theoretical but lived–hard won from experience and reflection. I’m grateful to Katrina for guest posting today, and feel confident that her story will give many of you hope and inspiration for the journey.

Sensuality Recovered
Guest Post: Katrina

I was staffing at a women’s retreat a few months ago, and a woman who had been an exotic dancer in a younger life and who was trained in various “tantric healing” techniques led us in some fascinating processes. She told us her own story of being lured into prostitution as a young girl, and of her escape, as well as her journey of fully embracing herself as a sexual, sensual woman who has truly freed herself from shame. She led us in a long exercise of breathingand meditation designed to cleanse us of our own shame, whether assigned to us by ourselves or others. We held hands and talked each other through a variety of memories: from the disquieting sensation “not feeling pretty enough” to the violence of rape and molestation.

After some tear-shedding and embracing, the energy in the room was lighter, freer. From that perspective, we moved into movement and dance, and eventually into sensual dance. Many of the women were overweight and/or middle-aged, and there was, at first, palpable resistance. The facilitator told us stories of how sensuality has been taught in other, older—surely wiser–cultures. It was the women, the elder-women, who had taught the younger women how to move, how to dance, how to be sexy, how to feel sensual. It was not the pressure of the media or the men, or the market forces felt by women to compete for scarce resources of desirable mates. We marveled at the thought… what if sensuality could be like treasured knowledge, passed down at the appropriate time from woman to woman, like sacred family recipes or heirlooms?

We were all instructed to get a chair. Yes, we were going to do “chair dancing.” (i.e., using chairs as a prop for dancing, see Cabaret or Flashdance for suggestions…) We began to use our new props with some hesitation and awkwardness. Thenthe facilitator did something brilliant. She instructed us to blindfold ourselves. With our self-consciousness visibly muted and with a little help from some encouraging music, we were transformed into smokin-hot middle-aged goddesses. Then the blindfolds came off, and we gathered in a circle and danced for each other. We danced individually, in pairs, in groups, with and without chairs, sarongs, and other props. We encouraged each other on to be as sexy as possible, sexier than we thought was possible, egging each other on with whoops and catcalls. Women who would barely dance an hour earlier were “shaking what their mommas gave ‘em” with joy and abandonment. The women who left that night were not the same women who came in. They had regained, or perhaps even discovered for the very first time, a treasure buried deep within themselves: their own sensuality. Not the crude sexuality of an X-rated film or the performance of a stripper seeking tips from bachelor party participants, but the sensuality that represents our true sacred, feminine, creative selves. Through our dancing, we had celebrated ourselves as women created in the image of the Divine, and declared this creation “good.”

Katrina has gracious agreed to write a follow up post with her thoughts on connecting the dots between this experience, what she was taught as a young person, and what she is teaching her teenage daughter. Check back next week, or follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know when it has arrived. Thank you for your presence here. -Rachelle

Follow this Series:

This I Believe: Why I’m not Teaching My Kids Abstinence

Thoughts from the Comment Gallery: Abstinence, Kids, and Faith

God Sticks and Shame Caves

Beyond Fear, Encouraging Each Other Towards Escape

The Care and Keeping of Sacred Stories

There are things I believe in at bedrock level—ideas I cannot imagine myself without. The kind of stuff you feel like you might carry around in your genetic blueprint.

Yet as strong as my passion is for these ideas, I know the list could change – the list has changed. There are definitely fewer ideologies I feel confident of these days. But if anything, the ones that remain have become stronger, more distilled with age.

These are them, these are they. If I could wear them on a t-shirt I would.

In case you are interested. In case you’d like to know more.

*8 Things: I Believe

1. “You have to use art to preach”

2. “God does not have a penis.”

3. “Make dialogue, not debate, your primary language.”

4. “I heart pagans.”

5. “Gentlemen, kindly own your own shit.”

6. “Christianity is extending the loving hand of Christ to the world.”

7. “Jesus got ‘jacked.”

8. “I speak patriarchy, but it’s not my mother tongue.”

Click here to listen to this post!
editor’s note: the closing blessing in the audio version is attributed to clarrisa pinkola estes as below

Since I’ve let the cat out of the bag regarding what I truly believe about sexuality and faith (or at least some bits of it) women are finding me anyway they can. Through the comments and contact info on this site, via facebook and twitter, even in my flickr mail. Not to argue with me, or to tell me I’m wrong. But to give me the gift of their stories. Stories about receiving messages of shame regarding their bodies. Stories of regret regarding about not having sex, or feeling bad about it when they did. Stories of pain and loss and confusion. And best of all, stories of recovery and hope.

Dear ones, we must to do something about taking care of all these precious stories.

My soulsister Jen Lemen has embedded the importance of stories deep in my being. Like her, I am “helplessly in love with the idea that stories can change you and me forever.” Furthermore, this I believe: it is within our power to allow our stories to shape us for the good, to bring us healing, and to draw us towards shalom.

I am still relatively new to this world of stories and am I’m learning to harness their redemptive power. Still, I am sure, that together we can we can hold these stories “in all tenderness,” and let their power sing from the rooftops.

So here friends, is what I know right now about telling stories:

• Embody your stories. Write them in a journal; capture them in images torn from magazines and picture books; jot them in lines of poems; create them in smears of color; or distill them into lists of words. Just sit down with a pen, or a keyboard, or a paintbrush and say “I don’t know, I don’t know…” until the knowing comes and the story flows. The first step is acknowledging they are real, that you are real.

• Name your stories. Give them titles and subtitles. Let them have a one-word identifier. Line them up in a number system. Naming is powerful. When we name something we can better hold it in our hands. When you hold a story cupped in your palm you can decide to continue holding it like a treasure –or you can let it slide past your finger tips and release it: to let it guide others; or to let it companion other story holders who have otherwise felt alone; or to watch slide away past your finger tips, because you no longer need to carry it.

• Speak your stories outloud. Let your voice sound out into an empty room. Tell a friend over tea. Record yourself on you cell phone’s voice mail. Giving voice, literally giving voice to your stories can be in turns affirming, empowering, releasing, and healing.

There is more here, waiting to be formed into words and continued into practice. There’s something about what to do with painful stories. How to say “this really happened.” How to know “I am bigger than this story.” How to let your painful stories catapult you onto bigger, better tales. I can’t quite get it into words yet, but it’s marinating. In time—with your help, with your stories and comments and ideas and intuitive know-how—we will find it together. In time, it will come.

Will you do this work with me? Will you be brave –a little or a lot—and let your stories sing? Start writing. Start blogging. Start painting. Start giving birth to the poet on your tongue. Start making lists of words you do not understand, drawing lines–literally, on the page with a marker, drawing lines–between things you did not know were connected. Start commenting. (Use a pseudonym if you want. I’ll screen all the comments. I won’t let anyone yell at you. I’ll do my best to keep your story safe.) In the worlds of my soulsister, “Something healing this way comes.”

I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you and that you will work them, and water them, with your blood and tears and laughter ‘till they bloom, ‘till you yourself burst into bloom.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about fear, and how it can hold us in really terrible places. I’ve lived most of my life in some level of fear – not usually severe, but enough to keep me from adventures until I was well into my 30s. I’m sure part of it is innate personality, and part of it is being raised in America, which is largely founded on fear, but a big part of it stems from the Conservative/Evangelical American Christian Church which raised me in a climate of fear and shame.

Now before you go getting all up in arms, be assured that at the time, I loved growing up in church. In my traditional Christian years there were many things that were beneficial and good for me. Somehow, in spite of the overemphasis on personal holiness, I did learn to look out for others. I was captured by the concept of transformation – the idea that healing, change, and forgiveness were always available and can change the world. Also, I was nurtured by the rhythms of the liturgical year and holy celebrations. I felt grounded in a long history of faith and forbearers. I had a good sense of call and a passion that lent energy to my work and to my living. At times I even had euphoric experiences of the presence of the Divine, which I will never forget. And sometimes I felt so happy to be celebrating with a community, so sure that I had a place to belong, that I thought my heart would be split from the joy of it.

But even in the midst of all those things, the emotional memory I carry with me most –at least at this stage of my life—is the pervasive feeling of shame I carried throughout my religious life, and the accompanying fear of doing something shame-full that came with it. Right now, when I think back on my life in the church, this feeling of shame and fear is a filmy substance stretched tight across my heart –an emotional thumbprint of angst and self-disappointment. My chest tightens and my throat constricts with anxiety. It is very visceral, very real, and it does not good to just close my eyes and hope it goes away.

I’ve been thinking about this personal reality for years now–literally for years—trying to assess how it came about; trying to imagine if there was or is any way of being in church without this experience. I don’t know the answer to that yet, but what continues to astonish me is that I lived in it for so long. I’m not a young woman. It’s not like I’m 20 years old and leaving my parent’s church for the first time to find out there are other things out there. I’m nearly 40 years old, and I’ve spent a good twenty of those years studying theology, working in various religious institutions, and writing about spirituality. But it’s only in the past—what—year? 18 months?—that I have really said goodbye to the institution that has caused so much damage. (It’s only recently I’ve been able to walk back in there from time to time without feeling like they were “pulling me back in”.) I’m a pretty strong person. I don’t naturally tend to tow the line. So what kept me in there so long?

Shah Afshar at Shawshanked Redemption has some thoughts on the matter. In his post Whatever Happened To Honor: Part II, Shah writes about Martin Seligman’s theory of “Learned Helplessness”, a phenomenon that occurs when one is in a situation which continually causes them pain. In Shah’s words, what Seligman found was

Subjected to repeated punishment, animals and humans come to believe they have no control over what happens to them, whether they actually do or not. In Seligman’s original experiment, dogs given repeated electrical shocks would prostrate themselves and whine, even when escaping the abuse lay within their power. [Emphasis mine]

Shah goes on to detail what kinds of behaviors cause Learned Helplessness, and why they allow the institution to continue to function in its status quo. The thing that most captured me about the Seligman’s experiment was this:

It was noted that the only way to get the helpless dog out of its cage was to send in another dog that had never been shocked. With the gate left open, upon receiving the first jolt of electricity, the new dog would bolt out of the cage and by doing so, it would teach the helpless dog to get out as well.

Now, as a writer I’m aware that in the literary tradition, using any metaphor relating ‘human’ to ‘dog’ is not an especially good one. But if we can get around our metaphorical habit for a minute and not associate being dog-like to being something negative, then I’d like to say this:

I’d like to start being a new dog—specifically the one that comes to the scared dog in the cage. Now, I’ve been shocked. Plenty of times I’ve been shocked. And sadly, because I was a church leader and a pastor, I’m pretty sure I’ve shocked others. (This is one of my deepest regrets.) But lately, I’ve been feeling a little bit healed up from the shocks, and I think, maybe, I have enough energy to run in and out of the cage.

That’s what I hope my blog (and maybe someday my book) can do. This is what I hope my writing can be: the redemptive action of dashing in and out of the cage, of demonstrating with energy and eagerness that there is a way out. Maybe even a way out that doesn’t require us to give up our spirituality, or our faith—maybe we can even hold on to Jesus, if we want to. Who knows? It’s possible.

When I wrote about this in my latest manuscript proposal (especially request by a publisher, who, sadly was never heard from again), I put it this way:

My main intent is to provide a map for the journey towards a new expression of faith. When we move into previously unexplored territory we sail into places where the sea charts read, “Here there be monsters.” But the monsters we fear do not exist. A bit of illumination along the unknown edges can reveal that there are no vicious creatures lying in wait, but only new, wide open places to explore.

I have been sailing these seas for a while now, and have begun to discern a pattern in these currents. There is a process to this faith re-formation, and it is possible to retain and rebuild one’s faith in the midst of this sea change. People should know the experience they are having is not a random and isolated event. There are stages in this journey that can help them find their way. Furthermore, there are traveling companions, and tools to help readers reconnect with the God in a way that is true to their spiritual core.

Unlike the early adaptors who traveled before them, the current generation of postmodern seekers does not need to feel alone and lost in foreign seas. Those of us who have already sailed these waters can be good with-mates. Help is at hand.

I think that’s true. I think it can happen, you and I holding hands and moving out and forward and into a newly imagined future. I believe we can do it. Don’t you?

Play us out boys…

God Sticks and Shame Caves
More thoughts on what we teach our kids about sexuality.

As I wrote in my previous post, I’m not teaching my kids that abstinence until marriage is the best, only, or even necessarily the most preferable sexual option in the universe. Abstinence Only was taught to me as a child, and while it did keep me from joining the statistics on teenage pregnancy, the side effects of this puberty-long fast were pretty damaging.

Since beginning this conversation, I’ve experienced a virtual mind-flood of memories and ideas which have been floating around trying to organize themselves into a cohesive whole. Slowly they are settling into a couple of themed collections. Today’s Memory Collection: Messages of Shame.

Liz Hurly and the Ta-Ta’s of Death
In the first memory that’s been nagging at me to be told, I’m sitting around a conference table at a region-wide gathering of pastors for the denomination in which I am a minister. It’s a moderately conservative denomination and the particular congregation I have been hired to work at is urban, hip, and more willing to flex than most of the others in the area. I am the only woman in the room and several of my colleagues, most of whom are middle aged white men, are uncertain-to-down-right-sure as to whether or not I should be there. The leader of the meeting is on the fence at best, but to be fair, he is making tentative attempts at including the new girl in this fraternity of long-time buddies.

We have come to the portion of the meeting where the pastors share any new resources they’ve discovered. One man in particular is highly energized by a new sex-ed video he has been showing to his Jr. High youth group. He is relaying his favorite part of the video, in which the young, male, youth leader holds up a poster of Elizabeth Hurley and says something like this:

“Do you see this woman? This is a sexy, smokin’ hot woman. She has great legs. She shows a lot of cleavage. Her clothes are skin tight. Do you know who she was dating? Hugh Grant. And do you know what Hugh Grant did while he was dating her? He had sex with a prostitute. What does that tell you? I know what it tells me. It tells me that being with a woman who is smokin’ hot in the eyes of our fallen society only drives us to want more. Being with someone provocative like Elizabeth Hurly, just drives us deeper into sexual sin.”

Yes ladies and gentlemen—Hugh Grant engaged in prostitution not because he has issues; not because he was sexually addicted; not because he failed to respect his girlfriend or the woman he paid to have sex with, but because Elizabeth Hurly’s cleavage is dangerous.

I was having a hard time believing my ears. Here was a couple whose common law relationship had lasted longer than most of my college friend’s post-graduation “Christian” marriages. In spite of Grant’s truly bad betrayal, he and Hurly repaired their relationship and later their friendship to such an extent that even after their break up Hurly asked Grant to be the godfather of her child. Their relationship—at least the portion of it related to us in popular magazines—turned out to be a pretty stunning example of forgiveness, reconciliation, and compassion. But forget all of that, the real thing to remember here is that this woman’s ta-ta’s drove a man so wild with desire he had to pick up a prostitute.

If only she had worn more turtlenecks.

I held my tongue as the meeting went on, trying to formulate my thoughts in a way that would let me express them without being tagged as an “angry feminist” (a neat semantic trick which effectively prevents a woman’s story from being heard.) I waited to see if an appropriate opportunity would come up to shed some light on the topic.

Eventually the meeting moved into a discussion period where the staff could advise each other on things that were providing sticky in their individual congregations. One of the men raised a problem he was having at his church – the women wanted to introduce liturgical dance into the morning service. He wasn’t sure about this. Liturgical dance certainly didn’t speak to him, and he wasn’t sure there was a point to it. In an attempt to engage me in the conversation, this man turned to me and said, “As a woman, what do you think Rachelle?” My reply was something like this:

I understand that you don’t connect with liturgical dance. It’s not something that speaks to everyone. It’s not something that particularly speaks to me. But I think you should invite the women to introduce it to your congregation and I’ll tell you why. It will allow women to use their bodies as an expressive instrument in the midst of their community, and it will indirectly convey a message that women’s bodies are not inherently sinful. Women get the message in church quite a bit—that there is something wrong with their physical selves, that their bodies are dangerous and sinful. Can I give you and example?

I went on to explain how sex-ed video that had been mentioned might be consumed by the teenage girls. I pointed out how it took the burden of error off the shoulders of Hugh Grant, and planted it firmly on the um…shoulders…of Liz Hurley. I mentioned how this message – that women’s bodies were a temptation to men and should therefore be restrained, covered up, and hidden from view as much as possible, was a common message in the church. I explained that the only time women were mentioned as physical beings was in some story about how tempting they were, or perhaps to instruct them on a less revealing dress code while singing in the worship band. I explained how healing it is for some women to engage their bodies in dance, and how holistic it would be to introduce that option into their worship services. I tried to help them capture the idea that the dance of a few women might bring healing to many in their community.

The room was silent. Not the kind of silence that accompanies disagreement, but the kind that happens when a group of like-thinkers is introduced to a totally new concept. I think the word I’m looking for here is:stunned.

God Sticks and Shame Caves
This story about Liz Hurly came back to me of late while watching this Jon Stewart clip about the success (or lack thereof) of government funded Abstinence Only programs in schools. (Warning: this clip is NSFW and in the words of Ira Glass “does mention the existence of sex.”) In this footage, a female sexual health educator who had traveled with one of the abstinence educators testified that reluctant girls were repeatedly pulled to the front of the class and shown a dirty toothbrush that “looked like it had been used to clean a toilet.” The instructor then continued to say, “If you have sex before marriage, you are like a dirty toothbrush.”

So glad to see my tax dollars at work. (1.3 billion dollars over the past 11 years)

Jon Stewart’s response to this and other parts of the abstinence only assessment reports was to say: “Of course, we all know that! Boys have a God Stick and girls have a shame cave.” Now obviously, this was a joke and Jon was employing exaggeration to make a comic point. But I’ve got to tell you, he’s not far off. This is the message many young women receive when they are taught that the only acceptable course of action is for them not to have sex until marriage. Even if they are in love. Even if they are mature. Even if their body is screaming otherwise. Even if they don’t marry until 25, or 35, or 45.

True, in these abstinence programs, boys are also taught to refrain from sex before marriage. But somehow they are not shamed the way girls are. For instance, it’s not that boys that are not hauled up front of the class and told they are a dirty toothbrush. The language is different for boys than for girls. Boys “sow their wild oats.” Girls are “fallen women.” Boy’s may “lose their virginity,” but the girls “lose” their virginity tothe guy, who then gets to claim that he’s “popped her cherry.” It’s all just so discouraging. And speaking of how we use language, here’s one more story…

Bye Bye Miss American Pie
In college I read a piece about premarital sex in a religious magazine. The article began by telling a story. A group of girls were meeting in a dorm room. They were gathered around one girl’s bed, pouring champagne and toasting her success at having ‘lost’ her virginity the night before. In the article, this story was meant to be disturbing – it was pitched as being a sad way for these young women to behave, another example of “the world” celebrating sin rather than living a life of piety.

At the time I was well entrenched into my conservative religious world. Still, I can remember thinking, “That doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, that seems like a pretty good rite of passage to me.” Twenty years later I still think it’s not a bad idea. But I’d change the language. What is this crap about “losing” one’s virginity? Did it fall out of your purse when you went to pay the check? Did you forget it with your umbrella on the bus?

In the case of consensual sex one doesn’t ‘lose’ one’s virginity. One moves from being a virgin to being someone who has had sex. “Loss” connotes something regretful. It doesn’t have to be that way. We don’t have to lay that guilt trip on our girls—or on our boys for that matter. We don’t have to start our young people off on their sexual history with a tick in the losses column. We could, perhaps, celebrate his or her budding maturity. We could, perhaps, use language which honors moving into a new stage of sexual, emotional, and relational development. We could, perhaps, create a reality in which it is possible to have sex for the first time (married or otherwise) without a sense of loss, but rather with a sense of pride.

It’s just and idea. I’m just saying.

There’s a scene in the film Real Women Have Curves where the teenage heroine Ana, played by America Ferrara, decides to have sex for the first time with a boy she cares for and admires. They are graduating from high school and will not see each other anymore. She’s not fooling herself about that. She’s looking at the situation very clear-eyed, realizing that there will be no romantic movie ending. They will drift apart. They will find other people. But in the now, in the well considered now, Ana wants to be with him. While they are together in the bedroom, Ana gets up and walks to the mirror. She says something like “This is me. This is what I look like.” The moment is so real, so honest and confident. I remember being quite struck by it.

Since seeing that movie, I have logged more than a decade raising children—raising girl children, as a matter of fact. Now, years later, that scene floats up through my memory. I consider it and I decide, if my children have that kind of confidence, that kind of assuredness, that kind of certainty the first time they have sex, I’ll be a happy mom.

What about you? What kind of stories have shaped your sexual identity?….What have those stories given you to carry—a shame cave? A glass of champagne? Something in between? ….What kind of stories do you want to give your children about themselves as sexual beings?….What language will you use to talk about their bodies and their virginity (or the lack thereof?) The comments are open!

This is a repost from a series I began back in April about what we communicate to our children about their sexuality. I’m putting it up again now because I’d like to return to the topic and I thought it might help to bring new readers up to speed. At the bottom of this post are links to the follow-up posts that I’ve already written–which rely heavily upon the great input received in the comments. I’ll be posting the next installation sometime in the next 24 hrs. If this is a topic that rings with you, I hope you’ll jump into the discussion. Thanks for reading. - Rachelle

What I Think About Kids & Abstinence

“Don’t you remember at church, when they told us it was better for us to come home in a pine box than to lose our chastity?”

-Sarah Henrickson (18) to her brother Ben (16)
Big Love

I grew up in the church. The conservative evangelical church to be exact. Sundays and Wednesdays were spent at the Lutheran Church, and Monday-Friday at the Assemblies of God private school (chapel three times a week, Bible class every day, choir, and optional 7am prayer meetings.) If you’ve ever seen the fantastic dark-comedy Saved, then you have seen my life. It’s like a hidden camera reality show based on my high school, only with better hair.

Growing up, the message I received was that the absolute worst thing you could do was to have sex outside of marriage. It was worse than getting drunk. Hell, it was worse than DRIVING drunk. Sex, actual intercourse, was totally forbidden. All the other bases were either totally verbotten or pretty damn bad. Oral sex. Very Very Bad. Groping of all kinds. Bad. Making out in your boyfriend’s car. Not great. Kissing. Tolerated –but not on school grounds, of course, or you would be given a two day suspension. Holding hands? Well, okay, but only holding hands; certainly not putting your arms around someone’s shoulder. Anything and everything you might do with someone of the opposite sex was cloaked in shame. Tickling? Shoulder rubs? Boy-girl stunts in cheerleading? It was all highly suspicious. (Do I even have to mention that doing anything with someone of the same sex was completely off the charts? You might as well pick up a ‘go directly to hell’ card.)

We had sex education, once, in fifth grade. It was mostly to make sure everyone was in the know about getting your period. I suppose the boys had a similar filmstrip about unwelcomed erections, but I’m not sure. It was the 80’s and AIDS education was huge, so even in Christian school you got a little mention of condoms. You never actually saw one, no one ever demonstrated how to use one on a banana for instance, and they were definitely NOT distributed in health class. The main idea was, “Abstinence is the Answer”, and everyone from teachers to pastors to parents was 100% on-message. And the teens, well, everyone had to sign on. (Or at least pretend to.)

Over and over again the messages we received were distilled in our hormone-soaked brains down to this one echoing refrain:

“Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.”

I recall one youth group session in which a cartoon was placed on the overhead projector. It showed a pit dug into the ground with a ladder in it. Each rung of the ladder had a physical act on it. The top rung was holding hands, the next one down was kissing, then making out, petting…you get the idea. The last rung, in the bottom of the pit? Yep. Sex. This kind of illustration was pretty common, and usually came along with a sermon about how “your body is a temple” – followed by a round of fast food and artificially sweetened cola. One of my favorite variations of this youth-group sex scenario was told to me a few years ago by a fellow seminarian. He told me, in all seriousness, that he was teaching his youth group that “Sex is like a wild, vicious, hungry lion, and you DO NOT want to go putting your head anywhere near that lion’s mouth.” (How he got away with using “sex” and “head” in the same sentence in a room full of teenage boys without the place exploding into laughter is beyond me.)

I know that the intentions of my teachers, youth group leaders, pastors and parents were good. I know they were trying to protect us from getting in too deep, too fast. I know they wanted to save us from harm, hurt, and, I suppose, hell. But the reality is, all they did for me was create a space in which to grow shame, guilt and dysfunction. And oh, how it grew! Here’s a short list of the messages I carried away from my abstinence experience:

-Every physical impulse you have towards a boy is wrong–probably even sinful.

-All the natural, normal parts of growing up and falling in love –physicality of any kind—are wrong and unnatural.

-If my body want this, then my body is bad. (This combined with the typical magazine spreads with size 0 models and pimple-free skin, and you can see what that did for a teenage girl’s body image.)

-If you don’t plan for sex, it’s not as bad of a sin. (Therefore, don’t own birth control or condoms.)

In spite of this, there were boys who got lucky and girls who went all the way. There were girls swept off to the Crisis Pregnancy Centers and expelled from school—or worse yet, allowed to stay but banned from all extracurricular activities–like going to the basketball games or walking down the aisle at graduation. (The boys on the other hand, never seemed to get into much trouble. I don’t recall any of them getting kicked out or shamed out of leaving.) And if anyone ever had an abortion, well, they kept it as a dark secret, and went through the experience without any help or counseling.

Because of my experience in abstinence programs– and because of the way my experience was echoed again and again in the shameful tears full-grown women brought to me during my tenure as a pastor –I am not raising my children under the banner of abstinence. Being physical and having sex are natural normal parts of growing up. We are physically and chemically programmed for it. We are culturally conditioned for it. It is a part of our healthy emotional development. I want my children to grow up in an atmosphere that acknowledges this reality—one that is shame free, where their bodies are seen as being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made,” and where their hearts can be trusted to lead them in the right direction. My intention, my deep hope, is to raise them in such a way that they will carry with them these messages:

-Your body is amazing. You can trust it to tell you what you are physically ready to do.

-Your heart is your guide –you can trust the wisdom of your own intuition in making choices.

-Sex is something you move into one step at a time. Each step is good. Each step is appropriate. You– and only you–get to choose when you are ready for that step.

-As a romantic relationship grows deeper emotionally, it’s natural for it to grow deeper physically.

-Planning for sex and being prepared to protect yourself and your partner is smart, responsible, and essential.

-You have the right to say NO. And conversely, you have the right to say YES.

Rather than telling my kids “Sex is a terrible, awful, shameful thing you save for the one you love.” I want the messages I give them to be able to be boiled down to this:

“You are capable of building a relational history you can look back on without regret.”

A friend of mine bequeathed that turn of phrase to me. We were drinking margaritas and talking about sex. (What else do you talk about after you’ve had a couple of margaritas?) She was telling me about her major high school boyfriend, and being in love, and what her parents and his parents thought about them having sex (or not). She said, “I never wanted to have sex in the car. I always wanted to build a sexual history I could look back on without regret, and I didn’t think I could do that if I had sex in the back of his Camero.” That’s pretty self aware, don’t you think? Pretty well-reasoned for a seventeen year old. Build a history you can look back on without regret – or at least, with as little regret as possible. I think, all told, that’s the best we can do. That’s what we humans can hope for: safety, respect, and a collection of memories held without shame.

So when it comes to sex and all its accoutrements here’s my parenting pledge:

-I promise to make talking about sex as natural and open as possible. (We’ve already got quite a track record.)

-I promise to help you access birth control and protection. (Yes, even for the masculine kids in the family.)

-I promise to help you assess what your heart and body is ready for, if you want to talk to me about it.

-I promise to give you accurate information about your body and its needs, to the best of my ability.

-I promise not to shame you for wanting physical contact with someone you care about.

-I promise to do whatever I can to make sex a wonderful, beautiful, joyful thing you give to the one(s) you love.

What will you teach your kids about sex? Any conversational tricks to share? Stories that worked out well? Do tell…

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