Awakening.
(5:00 pm EST) I’m at 31,000 feet in the air, somewhere over Indiana (I think), on my way to Minneapolis. I’ve been reading Sue Monk Kidd’s book Dance of the Dissident Daughter – and I can’t wait another moment until I start journaling what I’m coming across. So here I am – laptop in hand, with only 78% left on my battery power, hoping desperately that the power will last long enough for me to write down what’s on my mind and heart.
This book. I can’t even begin to describe my reaction to it. It seems as if it’s been written specifically for me. Lately I’ve been so thirsty inside – it’s as if I have this great spiritual thirst inside that has long been neglected. For a long time, I put aside all my feelings of spirituality – mainly out of a self-protection reflex, I think. Internally I felt so badly wounded by the actions of people, spiritual leaders even, who I loved and thought loved me (and my family) back. And after we were so badly betrayed, I transferred much of my hurt onto the Divine – rather than making the people that caused the pain the ones actually accountable.
It took me almost 2 years, but I’m pretty much over all of that. Which brings me to now – to my spiritually thirsty heart. Before tackling Kidd’s book, last month I read Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner. Admittedly, I initially picked up this book because I was intrigued by the similarity of its title to my weblog title. This book outlines the transitions of a woman from the world of orthodox Judaism to Christianity. I’d highly recommend it! As I read that book, I was amazed at the similarities between the author and myself in our journeys of faith. She’s also a member of the academic world, so she knows firsthand the problems encountered in clashes of the mind and spirit. We also have similar interests in our reading choices, and there were times that I could have sworn she lifted a page or two from my own personal life.
But even as much as I enjoyed reading that book, I still couldn’t bring myself to completely agree with her evangelical views of Christianity. I’m finding that my faith is moving away from the evangelical, convert-and-save-as-many-sinners-as-you-can type of faith to one that is more contemplative. I’m not willing to subscribe to the beliefs that the Bible is the sole inerrant word of God – nor am I willing to say that Jesus is the only way to the afterlife.
Just mentioning those two views of mine probably places me in the “heretic” category of many people I know back home – people that I have looked up to my entire life, and people who don’t understand me or the transition I’m going through now.
Which brings me back to Kidd’s book, Dance of the Dissident Daughter. You know, I was immediately drawn to that name – mainly because I feel as if filling that role nowadays. I’m the daughter that has moved 2500 miles away, I’m the one who’s selfishly pursuing her own academic dreams, as well as the one who doesn’t check the “Christian” box on her spiritual survey anymore.
So far, I’ve only read the first section of Daughter – entitled, “Awakening.” After reading the first page, I quickly discovered that this is the type of book that requires a pencil in hand – marking down the passages that stick out to me. Skimming over what I’ve read, I don’t think I’ve gone 2 pages without underlining, starring, or writing on a page’s margin.
Before I move onto the second chapter, “Initiation,” I wanted to record what I was thinking about its first. Sue Monk Kidd grew up in the Southern Baptist tradition. She was married to a Baptist minister/professor and had 2 kids. She wrote for a Christian magazine, and was known for her books of Christian literature (I’ll haveta look up what specifically she wrote). When she was around 38 years old, she experienced her “awakening” to the Divine Feminine – and this book is the recorded experience of that journey.
There is so much within these first 100 pages that I want to mention – but I know that I could never do them the justice of experiencing and reading them for yourself, so I’ll try to hit the highlights of what spoke out the most to me.
For my entire life of being in the Christian church, I’ve had issues with the ways women are treated both within the Bible and in the Church itself. Serious issues and reactions I buried deep within my heart whenever I was told to swallow my negative reactions and “have more faith” or to accept the submissive role the Bible lays out for me. Kidd has had similar problems, and I think it’s these passages that reverberate the most with me.
Christianity, by its very nature, is a religion that is male-centered. It’s a belief system that is “named, shaped, and directed” by men. Read this:
At church girls fare no better. A young girl learns Bible stories in which vital women are generally absent, in the background, or devoid of power. She learns that men go on quests, encounter God, and change history, while women support and wait for them. She hears sermons where traditional (nonthreatening) feminine roles are lifted up as God’s ideal. A girl is likely to see only a few women in the higher echelons of church power.
And what does a girl, who is forming her identity, do with all the scriptures admonishing women to submission and silence? Having them “explained away” as the product of an ancient time does not entirely erase her unease. She also experiences herself missing from pronouns in scripture, hymns, and prayers. And most of all, as long as God “himself” is exclusively male, she will experience the otherness, the lessness, of herself; all the pious talk in the world about females being equal to males will fail to compute in the deeper places insider her.
YES. Exactly. How many times have I cringed at these sermon series outlining “great men of faith?” or sung the words of “Faith of our Fathers?” Just how many hymns sing of the great faith of women like Deborah, Ruth or Mary? Not many.
How many times have I silenced myself whenever I’ve deeply felt this inequality? Too many, unfortunately.
Kidd goes on to describe what she calls the “feminine wound.” This is created whenever we internalize the experiences that label women/femininity as “lesser than.” I think this happens more often than we realize – both within the culture of the Church and the larger culture that surrounds it.
As she uncovers these deep feelings of inadequacy that she’d long condoned within her faith, she goes through a type of crisis – one that I totally can relate to. She writes:
Mostly, I didn’t want to believe I could have been wounded by my own faith. I didn’t want to acknowledge how it had relegated half the human population to secondary status and invisible places. I didn’t want any of this to be true.
Again, been there. Usually whenever these feelings start to swell in my heart, I immediately try to contextualize or even trivialize what I’m feeling. Kidd did that too:
Trivializing our experience is a very old and shrewd way of controlling ourselves. We do it by censoring our expressions of truth or viewing them as inconsequential. We learned the technique from a culture that has practiced it like an art form.
How many times have I silenced myself for fears of being labeled as “one of those feminists” or been afraid to speak aloud for fears of being laughed or scoffed at? Kidd goes on to set six categories of archetypes that women often place themselves in order to deal with the patriarchy that surrounds their everyday live. These are: the Gracious Lady, Church Handmaid, the Secondary Partner, the Many-Breasted Mother, Favored Daughter, and the Silent Woman.
Obviously, the one that spoke the most to me was the role of Church Handmaid – and this quote specifically: “I think that sometimes a childhood place can lean so heavily on your growing up that later, when you are grown, you find it has become part of your internal geography. This church was such a place.” Not only does this quote explain my internal struggles in justifying my new spiritual path, but I also think it explains why I took my betrayal at SCC so personally.
Here’s another point that I think Kidd makes very effectively. When she defines patriarchy, she’s very careful to point out that the enemy here isn’t all men or masculinity itself. She writes that “It’s important to emphasize that patriarchy is neither men nor the masculine principle; it is rather a system in which that principle has become distorted.”
Yes. She goes on:
In a similar way we’ve accepted the widespread attitudes and effects of patriarchy as givens. They are so much a part of the world, we start to thing that’s just the way reality is.
Sound familiar? It reminds me of the same reactions I get whenever I start to rail against unethical labor practices and sweatshops. It’s the old defeatist argument that I CAN’T stand and won’t accept. You can make a difference, because all it takes is for you to stop and make a stand. Even a little stand is better than none.
But back to this spiritual struggle. Kidd writes that “[f]orming an honest feminist critique of our own faith tradition is not an easy thing to do. Betrayal of any kind is hard [Ed. don’t I know it!], but betrayal by one’s own religion is excruciating. It makes you want to rage and weep. It deposits a powerful energy inside.”
She’s preaching to the choir at this point, as far as I’m concerned. I know exactly what she’s writing about. How many times have I gotten disapproving side looks for a bumpersticker on my car that reads “Goddess Bless” and then felt the need to apologize? Why should I feel anxiety for believing that there can be a divine Feminine force in our universe? I shouldn’t, but I know that my culture is partially to blame for these feelings of inadequacy – feelings that are fostered by the patriarchal notions of distrust of the feminine and a hostility toward anything outside the Judeo-Christian norm.
Toward the end of this opening section, Kidd writes about the moment when she decided that she could no longer subscribe to the main tenets of the Baptist faith. She decided to leave that church, and to pursue a different spiritual path.
This is probably my favorite passage encountered so far:
This is a stupendous moment for a woman – when she decides to live from her own inner guidance. It is, however, excruciatingly hard for a patriarchal daughter to accomplish. She may have to do it, as I did, in stages.
What is held over her head is condemnation, even damnation. We’ve been led to believe that leaving the circle of orthodoxy means leaving the realm of truth. Typically the church has considerable stake in our staying tin the orthodox circle. It knows if we claim ultimate authority as something in ourselves, as some inchoate voice in our own souls, it has lost all power over us. We have rendered ourselves independent, outside its control. We have stepped out onto our own path. For some reason it scares people senseless.
It [terrifies] me just pondering it.
I changed the “terrified” to the present case “terrifies” because that’s exactly how I feel sometimes. I know that I am questioning the very foundation of everything I’ve ever been taught – but I also know that I could never go back to the old ways, short of a lobotomy of the spirit.
(I’m at the end of four pages on WordPerfect, and am now running dangerously short on battery juice. I should cut this off, soon.)
I’ve decided that I’m going to stop silencing myself. Do you remember, last week, when I remained silent when racist/homophobic jokes where going on? I don’t want that to happen again. Granted when a situation like this happens, I will use discernment, so I won’t always be flying off the handle – but I’m not going to silence or dismiss these passions (“misdirected” or not) that mean the most to me.
It’s time for me to speak up – and in the process, maybe break a couple cages. It’s a thought that is both exhilarating and terrifying – not to mention a little lonely.
Descending now.
