Book
Talk
Editor's note:
Usually this space is devoted to reviews of recently published
books; but from time to time, we feature personal reflections on
books that have been around for awhile. Recently, while
participating in the Women's Leadership Institute at Hartford
Seminary, Linda Bieze wrote out her personal thoughts about an
assigned book that has had a considerable impact in the lives of
many women. EEWC Update invited her to share her reflections with
us.
The Dance of the Dissident
Daughter:
A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred
Feminine
by Sue Monk Kidd (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996)
Much that Sue Monk Kidd writes about her
journey from complicity as a "good daughter" of
patriarchal Christianity to her rebirth as a daughter of the
Feminine Divine resonates with me. I have traveled much of the
same path as she. But often our paths also diverge. I think we are
both headed in the same direction, towards the same goal, but some
of the ways she traverses seem foreign to my experience as a
Christian feminist.
Kidd divides her journey into four parts,
which she uses to organize her book. My experience and hers are
most similar in Part One: Awakening, especially when she
describes the "feminine wound" that each nascent
feminist must feel in some way, "the original sin of being
born female," as Anne Wilson Schaef expresses it. For me, as
for Kidd, this was reinforced by church, family, society, and
culture. Like Kidd, I struggled to form a feminist critique of
church and culture to help myself be reborn as a whole person, to
be cleansed of that sense of original sin.
Our paths went different directions, however,
during Initiation, which is the title of Part Two. Having
rejected the authority of God's Word in the Bible, and instead
taking as her ultimate authority "the divine voice in my own
soul," Kidd finds the Feminine Divine speaking to her in
ancient Goddess myths and her own dreams and interpretations of
them. Jungian psychology also plays an important role in her
initiation.
For me, initiation involved connecting with a
group of Christian feminists, Daughters of Sarah in Chicago, and
learning to use a feminist hermeneutic to read God's Word in the
Bible-to discover the "texts of terror" there but also
to discover Sophia, Shekinah, sister-disciples, and the feminist
Jesus. Goddess myths and my own dreams have never seemed to speak
Divine truth to me, but Jesus' life and teachings-a brief, shining
period of clarity on Earth-help me re-vision the
patriarchal Old Testament and Church.
While Kidd finds her Grounding (Part
Three) in Goddess, creating worship rituals and, it seems to me,
creating Goddess in her own image, she also wends her way back to
Goddess as revealed in the Bible. Monk's distinction between
pantheism ("the Divine as encompassed by the universe")
and panentheism ("the Divine as expressed by but also larger
than the universe," p. 159) seems to put too fine a semantic
point on the question.
Nevertheless, Monk and I join paths again when
we find healing for the Feminine Wound in female community, in
telling our stories, in mindfulness, in transfiguring our anger,
and in forgiving. Monk chooses to be "a loving
dissident" towards the Church, "[t]o dance the dance of
dissidence," which can be done "from the inside or the
outside," (p. 192). For me, this echoes Sister Joan
Chittisteršs remark at the 2000 EEWC conference that Christian
feminists often find themselves called to be "defecting in
place" within the Church.1
While Monk constructs her own form of worship
and re-imagines Goddess from outside the Church, I find myself,
more often than not, defecting each Sunday right in my pew at Hope
Church in Framingham, Massachusetts. Sometimes I like to think of
myself as "the burr under the saddle" of my church and
denomination.
The last stage of the journey is finding Empowerment.
While I agree with Monk as to what female power is-"a potent,
forceful power, yes, but one that is also compassionate, that
enables others as well" (p. 199), once again, she and I part
company in how we find this power. Hers comes from personal
symbols and her own mythology of "buffalo medicine." I
am still searching for my source of full Empowerment, but I think
I will find it in a Word from God(dess) rather than in a symbolic
element from Creation.
1See also Defecting in Place: Women
Claiming Responsibility for Their Own Spiritual Lives by Miriam
Therese Winter, Adair Lummis, and Allison Stokes (New York:
Crossroad, 1995).
Linda Bieze lives in
Arlington, MA and works as a senior development editor for a
college textbook publisher. At the summer 2000 meeting of the EEWC
Council, Linda was elected to serve as our organization's next
Coordinator. Her term begins in January, 2001.
Letters
about Books
Ed. note: Rather than
writing a book review, EEWC members may sometimes prefer to use a
"letter to the editor" format to tell us about a special
book. Two such letters have arrived for this issue. Other readers
are invited to send in "letters about books" to be used
as an occasional feature for future issues of EEWC Update.
To the Editor:
I'd like to recommend for reading a book
recently published by Harper Collins, Nine and Counting: the
Women of the U.S. Senate by Catherine Whitney.
This largely biographical book is both
refreshing and informative. Quoting from the book cover:
"These nine women demonstrate how ordinary women can overcome
barriers and achieve extraordinary goals. . . . Their backgrounds,
personal styles, and political ideals are as diverse as the United
States itself. Yet they share a commonality that runs deeper than
politics or geography."
These women "serve as role models for
young and old." I loved reading about their approach to
problem solving and mediating-and about young children running in
the halls of the Senate building.
With the last election, this number has
increased. Reading this book may encourage others to keep the
trend going.
Florence Brown
Hadley, NY
To the
Editor:
An EEWC member recently sent me Joan
Chittister's latest book The Friendship of Women (Erie, PA:
Benetvision, 2000). It is a visually beautiful book because of the
art of Marcie Bircher. This book will look great on our coffee
table.
But as I read through the 67 pages I was
struck by Chittister's marvelous writing style, her research, and
even more by the wealth of wisdom on every page. She so skillfully
outlined eight special attributes of women's friendships as
exemplified in the lives of select women of the Scriptures.
As I read through each of these, I kept
thinking of friends of mine who have lived these roles in my
life-by being a model for growth, helping me confirm myself as
Self, supporting me in hard times, bringing a wealth of experience
to our friendship, being present when I needed a presence,
accepting me as I am, nurturing me, trusting me, and loving me
without end.
Reading The Friendship of Women has
brought into focus some of the gifts of friendship that I have
been given and for which I am deeply grateful. In addition, it has
provided affirmation by making me appreciate that I too have been
a good friend at times. And it has made me realize that I want to
"be there" even more.
I recommend this book to our EEWC members and
friends. I think it speaks directly and beautifully to what many
of us have experienced in our connectedness through the years and
are still experiencing (or want to) as we meet and make new EEWC
friends.
Jeanne Hanson
Wichita, KS
Š 2000
Evangelical and Ecumenical Women's Caucus
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