When I started this journey, I though somehow that the amazing women of history I wanted to write about would be just like Wonder Woman; a perfect blend of power, beauty, and niceness. But they were not … the women who changed the world were just like you and me. Real. Flawed. Broken.

Join me on a journey to meet these women. And, in turn, discover what you have in common with the women who changed the world. You might be surprised!

For more, read Susy’s story “I’ve Got Something Wonder Woman Doesn’t” in Kyria.com, a new digital mag by the folks at Christianity Today.

Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book (Susan Love, MD)
A good all around manual on breast cancer and treatment. Recommended by my doctors and my surgeon.

Just Get Me Through This: The Practical Guide to Breast Cancer (Deborah A. Cohen)

A personal and practical account by a woman who went through breast cancer. Really helpful for chemotherapy hints and tips.

Breast Cancer Husband: How to Help Your Wife (and Yourself) Through Diagnosis, Treatment, and Beyond (Marc Silver)
My husband read this (I did, too). Really good and practical, too.

Thanks for the Mammogram! Fighting Cancer with Faith, Hope, and a Healthy Dose of Laughter (Laura Jensen Walker)
A good book by a breast cancer survivor that helped me to laugh at hard things. The book is out of print but you can buy it used on Amazon.

**************************

Susy Flory is the author of So Long Status Quo: What I Learned From Women Who Changed the World (Beacon Hill). She wrote a book about being a strong woman; now, with a recent diagnosis of breast cancer, she has to live it.

I loved my comfy couch, and my safe life, for a long time. But at some point it became like a trap, like a safe warm cocoon that I couldn’t break out of.

Do you remember when you were a kid and you longed for summer vacation? During those long hot days of school just before break you dream about summer and can’t wait for school to be over so you can sleep in, play with friends, relax, and enjoy yourself. Then summer comes, and it’s wonderful, and you get to do those things you were dreaming about, but after a while it goes on too long.

You get bored, and there isn’t much of a routine or purpose to your days, and all of a sudden you can’t wait for school to start again. Do you remember that feeling? That was my safe-on-the-couch life. I yearned for something more. I was ready for an adventure.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged regularly. I used to be over on Typepad, with a blog called Unmasking the Goddess: A Christ Follower Looks Into Goddess Spirituality. I blogged actively for a couple of years, and met some amazing people along the way. Now it’s time to get back to blogging. This time, I’ll be writing about amazing women who changed the world, both past and present.

I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I was in school I didn’t get to study much in the way of women’s history. But now’s my chance to get to know these women, and I’m going for it. And you’re invited to join me.

And if you have any suggestions for women who changed the world, or women changing the world, I’d love to hear them.

"Why shouldn’t we work alongside Jesus to restore men and women to harmonious partnership with one another? Is it because it’s completely impossible, or is it because we don’t realize that Christ wants to help?" (from Ruby Slippers)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this four-part interview series with Jonalyn Grace Fincher, author of Ruby Slippers. She truly is one of the brightest, sharpest, and most fearless voices speaking into the ongoing discussion about what it means to be a Christian and a woman. In January, one of the pastor’s wives at my church will be leading a four-week small group study on Ruby Slippers; Jonalyn has crafted some good
discussion questions for the end of each chapter. If you happen to live in CA’s East Bay Area and you’re interested, we’d love to have you! For more info, just send me an e-mail at susyflory@3crosses.org. Now, here’s the last of my interview with Jonalyn….

Q.  You said something in chapter 8
of Ruby Slippers that I have never
heard before: “When Paul said there is neither black nor white, upper or lower
class, male or female, he distinguishes himself as the first person in the
history of our planet’s literature to argue that all human beings are equal.”
Wow! That statement floored me. I think we forget how revolutionary Jesus and
his ideas were. With Paul’s statement in mind, how can we Christian women live
out this revolutionary idea in a godly, gentle, and mature way without ruffling
feathers in our marriages and churches?

A. I’m glad gentleness does not
mean we stop thinking, speaking or writing. Gentleness means we know that our
dignity and value is not hinged on people understanding or even respecting
us. We can be gentle and fierce. We can be gentle and silent. Our gentleness
must be guided by God’s wisdom.

    God has recently shown me that
the best way to live out this revolutionary idea is to value the women
in our
lives we don’t get, women who feel distant or are so easy to dislike or even
hate. I’ve found that the worst enemy
of women is often women. We need to
battle our prejudice against our own sex first.

    Knowing, valuing and loving women
has become my first order of business. If I don’t like women or if I don’t
trust women, how can I expect to love all those so different from me. I must
first make peace with who I am, with my own ethnicity, my socio-economic
statues, my gender before I can embrace those who are different from me. We must live as if all people are equal
souls, even if they’re the types we used to love to hate.

Q.  What’s next for you Jonalyn? Is
there another book in the works, I hope?

A.   I’m glad you want to read more.
That’s so encouraging!

    I want to write
about women’s
tendency to pre-judge one another before valuing them. I’ve been
around
too
many women who are threatened by me and who shut the doors of
legitimacy or
support in my face because I’m too young, too thin, too articulate, too
inexperienced, too whatever. I don’t
fit the kind of woman they want to meet and support. That’s a problem
in them, but it’s also a problem in me. I have that same sort of
tendency to
pre-judge those who are different, the disabled woman, the single
woman, the
pastor’s wives, the perfect homemakers, the models, the old women, the
young teeny-boppers,
the missionaries, the house-keepers. It’s time for me to write and grow
into seeing how God values all of
them.

    So the next book project is about
meeting these women we love to hate, getting to know why we hate them and how
we can move into respect and love. The working title is Walking in Her Shoes. I’m
excited to walk with God into this new territory.

"Feminine guidance is abundant today; it is regularly updated into modern
stuff like what the hot girls wear, what the sexy women do in bed, and what Martha Stewart does for her Halloween parties. The church has prescriptions for femininity too–only ours are usually more dogmatic and romantic than popular culture’s versions … A dose of small-group Bible studies, a teaspoon of Dr. Laura, and a tablespoon of Oprah, some zest of Beth Moore, and voila, this is our femininity. We use this concoction of femininity to measure ourselves, our friends, and our foes. Femininity becomes a corset that we stuff our souls into and hope the hooks don’t bust open and reveal who we really are." (–Ruby Slippers)

Wow…this is such a great interview, I don’t want it to end! This is part 3; one more post after this, and we’re done. But you don’t have to be! You can pick up a copy of Ruby Slippers and begin your own journey into true female empowerment, God’s way. Today author Jonalyn Fincher touches on the idea of the sacred feminine as portrayed in The Da Vinci Code, as well as whether God has female characteristics. The latter is controversial both in and out of the church. In fact, many women who choose the path of goddess worship cite the church’s history of repressive patriarchy. Read on to see what Jonalyn has to say about God’s gender…

Q.  Pagans and goddess worshiping
groups often look back into history with a longing for a time when the goddess
reigned, all was peace and harmony, and matriarchal societies reigned. Is this
an authentic picture of ancient history? Was Dan Brown right when he claimed in
The Da Vinci Code that the early Jews and Christians worshiped the
sacred feminine?

A.  I am not an expert in history or
sociology, so I cannot claim to know that matriarchal societies existed or that
they were peaceful and harmonious. It
would surprise me if women had a superior ability to rule men mainly because I
believe both sexes have fallen from their Edenic archetypes.  We both fail
at leading. One easy trap for
feminists to fall into is to assume that masculinity is what’s wrong with the
world. I’d nuance this diagnosis by saying “Fallen masculinity is what’s wrong
with many parts of the world.” But if
women were in charge, we wouldn’t be much better. The problems would just
change. I believe God got it right in
Eden when he put a Woman and Man in charge, together. That, I believe, should
be our goal, neither elevating nor denigrating one sex over the other.

    Probably the most disturbing
aspect of The Da Vinci Code to me was
how it highlighted the female body to the exclusion of the female soul.
Femininity became reduced to a womb, orgasm a way to experience God. Women became a vessel for sexual pleasure,
not a human being with a unique soul that could reason, choose and feel in a
way that contributed to all humans. The sexual rites in the Gnostic practices
alarmed me, not because I don’t like sex, but because Brown’s story confused a
sexual high with a spiritual high. These are not necessarily linked. You can have sex without spiritually
connecting
with a person. It’s usually
called f*$#ing because it is screwing or messing with their body and in the
process devaluing them body and soul. A
woman’s spirituality is not something you can engage with merely by having
sex. A woman’s spirituality is bound up
with her entire being (body and soul). Sexuality is only one aspect of femininity, a great one, a good one, but
only one slice of the woman’s soul. I
would have appreciated a fuller understanding of what it means to be a woman
than her sexual organs.

Q.  If women are created in the
image of God, and we are female at the soul level, does that mean God has
feminine qualities, and is He portrayed as such in the Bible? If so, then does
this mean it’s okay for Christians to worship the sacred feminine? Is the
sacred feminine just another side of God?

A.  I believe all good feminine
traits in women are reflections of God, but the same would be true of all good
masculine traits. And yes, in the
Bible, I’ve found several places that God is portrayed with distinctly female
characteristics. One of my favorites is in the New Testament when Jesus says,
“Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born
again” (John 3:3). The Jewish male
teacher, Nicodemus, is listening and he just doesn’t get it. I think that was partly because he felt it
was an insult to ascribe such an earthy, messy experience like labor to God
Almighty. I also think it’s because Jesus is using a wholly new picture to
describe the work of saving a human soul. “Born again” has been so overused we forget that it is an essentially
female picture. I think it was tender of God to show the world that when a
woman labors to give birth she is experiencing something that God relates to
when he labors to give birth to a new life. God finds the female experience just as valuable in communicating who God
is as the male experience.

This does
not, however, mean that God is divided into a sacred feminine side anymore than it
would be fair to say there is a sacred masculine side. We don’t worship bits and pieces of
God. God is not divided, God is not
body, God is not gendered. God is spirit, he doesn’t own any reproductive
organs, he is not limited to an embodied existence. Therefore, to worship the sacred feminine is as harmful as
worshipping the sacred justice of God. We don’t want to confuse God’s
attributes with who God is. We must not confuse the characteristics of God with
the persons of God, the trinity of divinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit who
cares deeply that we know him. Women
reflect God no more and no less than men reflect God. To worship God as a male
is wrong, as it is to worship God as a female. Both genders act like arrows or mirrors to reflect, “This is a little
more of what God is like.” But neither
gender has fully captured the original essence of God. This is, again, why we
need one another.

In my next post, discover the Bible’s revolutionary equality statement, as well as what’s next for Jonalyn.

"…The
word God used to describe woman is a word more often used to describe the
delivering, warring, protecting, supporting, shielding, capable, brilliant help
of God Almighty. It is a sunbeam that
traces our image to the Triune God." (Jonalyn Grace Fincher)

Here’s more from my interview with Ruby Slippers author Jonalyn Fincher,
as she grapples with the question of what it means to have the soul of a woman. Does the Bible teach that women are second class citizens, forever doomed to the role of lowly helper? Read on…

Q.  Traditionally, the church has
looked to the story of the creation of Eve as Adam’s helper to establish gender
based roles where men are to lead, and women are to follow and support. Is this
an accurate interpretation of Scripture? Are women to always follow Eve’s lead
as a secondary creation, an after thought, a “helper”?

A.  It’s disappointing to me how
often a text from the New Testament, “But I do not suffer a woman to teach nor
to usurp authority over the man but to be in silence. For Adam was first
formed, then Eve” (KJV, II Tim 2:12-13) is read back into the Creation
Narrative in Genesis. I’m particularly
bothered at how easily Gen 1-3 is preached or taught as a God-ordained system
of patriarchy. From my reading, I do not see any teaching that men are to lead,
to be in authority over women, or to be the spiritual head from these
passages. I see that Man was made first
and I see that God thought Man’s aloneness was not good. I see Woman’s creation
as part of making the world good. She was the first provider and protector, providing
companionship to Adam and protecting him from loneliness.

I find it helpful to always
balance Gen 2-3 (the zoomed in creation account) with Gen 1 (the zoomed out
creation account). If you focus
primarily on one account you can become imbalanced by the overall message. What
is that message? It is that Man and
Woman were both necessary to make God’s image fully known, both charged with
taking dominion and subduing the earth both equally shameless as they stood
before each other and God fully naked and fully human (Gen 1: 27-30 and Gen 2:7-9,
18, 23, 25). The fact that Woman was
created second is only a problem if we import our man-made (modernistic,
fallen, competitive) ideas onto the text, ideas that say first is always the
best, the superior, the primate, the leader, the boss. The God of the Bible isn’t preferential to
“firsts”, not first-borns (God regularly chooses the second born in a
primogeniture society to be his favored see Gen 4:1-5 Abel over Cain, Gen 25:23
Jacob over Esau), not first created (Woman was chosen to bear children and
bring the
Son of God into the world), not first begotten (the Son is not more
God than the Holy Spirit), not first is strength or wealth or privilege (God is
near the weak, the poor the underprivileged). God did not find Woman an after-thought. He found her a necessary part
of what earth needed (Gen 1:27).

As far as woman created to be a
“helper”, there is a wealth of meaning to what helper means in Hebrew (ezer). Our English word “helper” doesn’t
really nail it. Suffice it to say the
word God used to describe woman is a word more often used to describe the
delivering, warring, protecting, supporting, shielding, capable, brilliant help
of God Almighty. It is a sunbeam that
traces our image to the Triune God.

Q.  Many of the women who are embracing goddess spirituality point to
the church’s ill treatment and repression of women. Was this part of God’s
plan? Where did we get off track?

A.  God never intended his people to
abuse one another. I imagine his pain
when he watched the Jewish people suffering during the Holocaust or the
unnecessary pain women were forced to endure labor as anaesthesia was withheld
from them during birth to “enforce” the curse. God hates abuse. But we cannot
judge a thing by its abuse, especially the church.

Part of the reason I’m so
impressed with Christianity is due to the way its founder, Jesus, treats women.
Put Christ up against any other major religion’s founder, Mohammed, Joseph
Smith, T.C. Russell or Siddhartha Buddha and you find his dignity for a woman
body and soul to surpass all of the others in life and teachings. Most
religions either magnify the male over the female or the female over the male,
or they emphasize body over the soul or the soul over the body. I find refreshment in the Creation Story of
the Bible because God created men and women to both need one another in body
and soul. It affirms my
intuitions, my
reason and my experience.

The reason the church and any of these groups
“got off track” is due to either exaggerating differences between the sexes to
the point of devaluing the gender (usually women) who were different, or
flattening the differences so that we don’t need each other. We will not value
someone unless we recognize we need them. Valuing a different ethnicity or
gender is just political genuflecting unless we realize we are deficient in
something this group offers. If we
really believed women, for instance, would bring necessary insights to
preaching or decision making we would not have to make laws forcing companies
or churches to hire them. We would
promote them out of sheer concern to “get the bigger picture” and to understand
reality more fully.

In the next post: Jonalyn on The Da Vinci Code, and God vs. the sacred feminine…

"Christianity…endowed the human female with a soul."      (Simone De Beauvoir, quoted in Ruby Slippers)

There’s a buzz growing about a new book called Ruby Slippers: How the soul of a woman brings her home. A blogger friend of mine recently voted Ruby Slippers the best nonfiction book of 2007. Why? The author, Jonalyn Fincher, fearlessly tackles the core question of what it means to be a woman,
helping us to sort out the truth from the competing voices telling us that femininity is all about glass slippers, romances, modesty, submission, and babies. Yes…there is more! What does it really mean to be feminine? What are God’s ideas about womanhood? What does it mean that Jesus redeemed women as well as men?

Although she’s a busy writer and speaker, I recently caught up with Jonalyn for a few questions…

Q.  Hi, Jonalyn. I’m so glad you agreed to answer a few questions for my blog. First, your bio calls you an “apologist.” What does that mean?

A.  Well, apologist just means someone who defends something.
It comes from the Greek “apologia”
meaning “to give a reasoned statement or argument, to give a defense.” Paul
uses the word specifically in I Pet 3:15 “always be ready to give a defense (apologia) for the hope that is in you,
but with gentleness and reverence.” You can be an apologist for pretty much
anything (soccer over basketball, vegetarian fare over meat, or in my case
Christ as the best thing going for planet earth).

Q.  To be honest, I often skim quickly through books but your
book, Ruby Slippers: How the soul of a woman brings her home didn’t let
me do that. I found myself dog-earing pages, underlining, writing notes in the
margin, savoring every word, and sharing your ideas with my friends at work.
There is so much to think about, work through, and delight in within the covers
of this book. Can you tell me a little about where this book came from? Why did
you write it?

A.  Thank you, it’s such a compliment
that you took time to read it so closely. The work of writing Ruby Slippers
started way back when I was in high school, I took a class on the human soul
(yeah, it was a night class mostly for adults) and I fell in love with one
phrase the professor said, “Your soul does more
than go to heaven.” I wanted to
know more about the soul. I had caught
the philosophy of mind bug. Ruby Slippers combined that academic
interest with another desire. I wanted to undo the confusion and ambivalence
about femininity. I wanted to
understand what it meant to be human in female form. I wanted to engage with
God about why he had let Paul write stuff about women being the glory of man
(what did that mean?) and that woman were not permitted to have authority over
a man. It seemed at best confusing and at worst chauvinistic of God.

At core, this book was about me
seeking God out, trying to figure out what God thought about women and our
souls.

Q.  One of the things that really caught my attention about
your book Ruby Slippers is the suggestion that women are female not just
in body, but at the level of the soul. This was a new idea to me! First, what
is the soul? How is it distinct from our biologically based emotions and
personality? And second, why do you think a woman has a female soul, rather
than a DNA-based femininity?

A.  This question deserves a lot of attention and more space
than we have here. But here’s a short version. The soul is the essential you, the immaterial you that survives your
body’s change, deterioration and even death. I believe our soul grows our body. Our soul acts as our body’s CEO,
unifier (which is why a corpse deteriorates at death, the soul has left) and
informer. The soul is what makes us
unique from any other human (twins have the same DNA but different souls). The soul uses our body’s
brain to interact
in this world. Our soul is not identical to our brain. The how’s and why’s are part of the ongoing
discussion of Philosophy of Mind. In
popular culture terms, you could say the soul is the spiritual part of being
human. The soul, not just our body,
holds all our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, choices, desires. The soul explains why God can think, choose,
feel and desire, without a body. God thinks, chooses and feels with his
soul.

  In Ruby Slippers
I talk about how we are intricate strands of body and soul fabric, woven by
God. Our soul permeates our bodies like
salt dissolved in water. This enmeshed
view of the soul in the body is over a thousand years old and philosophically known
as Thomistic dualism. According to this
view any body difference impacts our souls, too. When I applied this to women, I came up with a wonderful
revelation: Our soul-infused body is never generically “human.” Humans are only
male or female. There is no such thing as a generic human. And it makes sense
to me that the physical differences of sex (chromosomes, sexual organs,
hormones,) make essential differences on our soul’s capacities (mind, will,
emotions, spirit) and therefore on our essential selves. How can a body difference not create a
substantial difference to who we are? All our experiences are mediated by this
body which in turns informs our soul. And since our experience is gendered from conception, our souls are
incapable of non-gendered existence.

More from Jonalyn in the next post…

Wisdom shouts in the streets.
She cries out in the public square.
She calls to the crowds along the main street,
to those gathered in front of the city gate:
“How long, you simpletons,
How long will you fools hate knowledge?
Come and listen to my counsel.
I’ll share my heart with you
and make you wise.  –Proverbs 1:20-23

 Q.  Those in the goddess tradition often cite the mention of wisdom, or Sophia, in the Bible, as proof of an ancient goddess tradition. Can you explain what the Scriptures mean? (I’m specifically thinking of the beginning of Proverbs, where Wisdom is personified.)

A.  God is often talked about in
metaphorical language in the Bible, and Woman Wisdom is such a metaphor. It is,
however, a very powerful image. God is also described as a baker woman, and a
woman seeking a lost coin. Feminine images, like masculine images for God, do
not mean that God is gendered. God is above all human categories and we can
only talk about God in metaphorical ways. The best way to
understand the nature
of Woman Wisdom in Proverbs is to see how Jesus claims this identity as his
own. He clarifies the metaphor by being Wisdom in the flesh. Obviously, Jesus
was not a female, but neither does he shy away from feminine language in
identifying himself. He was not afraid of the feminine. Further, the early
Christian understood Jesus as being the Sophia, or the Wisdom, of God.
Ultimately, a Goddess is no better than a masculinized God. Both reduce God to
a stereotype.

Q. 
Can you talk a little bit about “the inward journey?” Is this something Christians should strive for?

A. The inward journey in itself is not
ultimately fruitful, partly because we deceive ourselves about what we find
there. However, with the light of Jesus as our guide, he can show us ourselves
if we are willing to stop long enough to listen. Most of us could use a good
dose of contemplative prayer. Our lives are
too noisy for us to hear our lives
and what God is saying to us.

Q.  What is The Damaris Project? Why did you start it?

A.
The Damaris Project is simply a
place for women to get resources to help them start meaningful conversations in
their communities. There is need for conversations that deal with the real
issues of life of concern to women. Many of us don’t know how to start those
conversations. It feels awkward when it ought to be fun! The Damaris Project
helps you start conversations through printed resources called the Damaris
Salon, available through our website.

***************************************************************

If you’re looking for a contemporary Christian woman’s take on goddess spirituality, try Barger’s Chasing Sophia. It’s both personal, and profound.

I’ll end with a quote from the last chapter of Barger’s book:

"Like the serpent in Eden, the world continues to offer a source of wisdom independent from God. Jesus–the Wisdom of God–was unrecognized by the world … As we continue to follow Jesus–our Sophia and our Sage–we will discover that our search for wisdom ends with us–ordinary people acting in ordinary ways and in ordinary places, living as wisdom bearers for the world."

 "Women are looking for new ways to know themselves and to connect
with God, two forms of knowledge that are intrinsically linked. Many
have left traditional religion in frustration that it didn’t reflect
their real lives, turning instead to alternative spiritualities that
purport to honor women’s experience." (from www.lilianbarger.com)

"Chasing Sophia is a wise guide for the many women who find themselves
forging a spiritual path between traditional church and the rejection
of it." –Diane Connolly, editor of ReligionLink.org

Is there a Christian spirituality for women whose faith feels at odds with their feminism? Can women follow both Jesus and the goddess?  Get some answers in this, the second part of my interview with Lilian
Calles Barger, author of Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus.

Q.   What did you find attractive in goddess spirituality? Why are many women
exploring this mystical path?

A.
Goddess spirituality takes women’s experiences seriously. In
particularly their embodied experience.
The transitions of a woman’s life are validated as significant. First menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause are celebrated. Even infertility is recognized as significant. These are powerful experiences that shape women’s lives. In a culture in which women’s bodies are medicalized and objectified this is attractive to many women.


Q. Are
there women who follow Christ and the goddess at the same time? Can these
two paths be reconciled?

A. Goddess spirituality and the way of
Jesus are ultimately irreconcilable. The way of Jesus is rooted in Hebrew
religion, which claims that there is one and all-powerful deity, Yahweh. Hebrew religion is monotheistic while
goddess religion is polytheistic – a goddess for every women. Closer
examination will reveal that the goddess is really none other than yourself.
The God of Jesus is one God who is creator and outside of us and to whom we owe
our allegiance.

Q.  When
you encounter women who see God as a “distant, harsh patriarch who have no
use for a woman,” what is the best approach? Is there a way we can help
show them there is more to God than patriarchy?

A. I would not refer to God as Father
to a woman who has not experienced God as such. That would be a
mistake and
unnecessary. I would draw from the vast storehouse of images for God in Hebrew
scripture. God is creator, as strong tower, a shepherd, the Almighty, a refuge,
a rock, and forth. People need different things at different times and it’s
still all God.

The best way to show that there is
more to God than patriarchy is to show that God is not a validation of
patriarchy or, I prefer, male rule. What alienated women need to see is both
women and men who are free from male rule assumptions and living full human
lives.

Part 3 in my next post, along with some info on The Damaris Project, a new way to reach out to women seeking truth.

“I
know many women who have left the church for Goddess worship and Wicca,
or who have abandoned the Bible for the Gospel According to Mary. I
will be giving every one of them a copy of this book, which
provocatively suggests that the Christian story can address women’s
longings they have for a spirituality that is at once feminine and
Christian.” — Lauren F. Winner, author of Girl Meets God

I’ve been reading a fascinating book called Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus. The
author, Lilian Calles Barger, is a Christian author and speaker who is creatively and constructively addressing the rise in goddess spirituality. A little about Barger, first, and then the first part of our interview.

When she was eight years old, Lilian immigrated to the
United States from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with her parents, who
wanted greater educational and economic opportunities for their
children. Since then, she has been a student of American culture. Lilian’s ongoing interest in the culture, paired with her
faith-based upbringing, compels her to ask difficult questions
regarding issues of faith and spirituality and how they relate to
contemporary culture. Lilian created The Damaris Project
in 1997 as a place of dialogue where women can talk about spirituality
in new and relevant ways. The Damaris Salon has become the vehicle for
that dialogue.

With The Damaris Project, she works as a researcher, cultural
critic, writer and speaker on the
intersection of the teachings of
Jesus and contemporary issues. Today she is considered an expert in
feminist spirituality and theology, and she continues to be an astute
observer of social trends.

Q.  You
wrote “The popular goddesses of today are fun and sexy symbols of where
women are now, speaking for women and identifying with our contemporary
experience. …I found the goddess to be too familiar for my spiritual
comfort” (Chasing Sophia, p. 29). What are some of the key differences between historical
goddesses, and the goddesses women worship today?

A. Goddesses of the past were not
concern with any individual woman, but rather functioned as social reinforcements
for women’s place in the society. Their lives in the pantheon mirrored women’s
lives and they in no sense empowered women who were at the bottom of the social
hierarchy.

Let’s not romance the past which was often bloody and dangerous for
women. It still is for many women
in
the world.

The goddess of today is a feminist,
a woman with her own self-determined life. This was a non-existent in ancient
societies. Ancient and contemporary goddesses are completely different in how
they function religiously and what they evoke in the devotee. Both are
creations of the society from which they emerged. We do create gods and
goddesses after our own image.

Q.  Frederica
Mathewes Green has written about the feminist movement and its strong
element of anger and bitterness. Does the pursuit of the goddess sometimes
evolve out of a woman’s anger and hurt? How can the church address this
more effectively?

A. First, I want to say that sometimes anger can be a good thing. Anger is
response to injustice. We don’t have to be Pollyanna about injustice.
Yes,
sometimes women will seek an alternative spiritual path because
they
are not able to resolve their anger.

I don’t really think the church is going
to
address this as an institution, but I think you and I can. We start by not
making excuses for injustice or covering up wrongs done. We clearly name
it
and
reject it. Then we move on by finding something worthwhile to
do in
the world.

There is no better cure for hurt and anger than constructive action.
That’s the only way to disempower any system that has hurt us.

More on goddess spirituality, from Lilian Calles Barger, in my next post…..