Andrew, Elizabeth
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- | Thank you so much for agreeing to do this, Elizabeth, | 0:04 |
if you could say your name. | 0:07 | |
- | Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew. | 0:08 |
- | Thank you so much, and are you lay or clergy? | 0:10 |
- | I am lay. | 0:13 |
- | Yes, and what denomination? | 0:14 |
- | United Methodist. | 0:16 |
- | Great. | 0:17 |
When and where were you born, Elizabeth? | 0:18 | |
- | I was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1969. | 0:21 |
- | Really, interesting, I didn't know that. | 0:25 |
Where did you go school, graduate, divinity school, | 0:27 | |
any of those? | 0:30 | |
- | I did undergrad at Carleton, | 0:31 |
and I did a graduate MFA in creative non-fiction | 0:33 | |
from Hamlin. | 0:36 | |
- | Very cool. | 0:40 |
What work or ministry were you doing at the time | 0:41 | |
of Re-Imagining? | 0:43 | |
(laughing) | 0:45 | |
- | I was, | 0:46 |
I was, um, newly out of retreat ministry, | 0:47 | |
where I had been working for three years, | 0:51 | |
and moving into self-employment as a writer. | 0:53 | |
So at that point, I was doing a lot of freelance jobs, | 0:57 | |
including gardening and data entry for Re-Imagining. | 1:02 | |
- | Wow. | 1:06 |
Do you remember how many hours that was | 1:07 | |
or what that was like? | 1:10 | |
- | I think it was really small, | 1:11 |
I think it was 15 hours a week, yeah. | 1:12 | |
- | And you said it was data entry. | 1:14 |
What were you, what was it exactly? | 1:16 | |
- | It was mostly maintaining the database, doing mailings. | 1:18 |
- | Yeah, okay, good, good. | 1:21 |
And what did you do after Re-Imagining, | 1:23 | |
what kind of work, ministry? | 1:26 | |
- | Well, um, | 1:28 |
after I left Re-Imagining, I think that, | 1:32 | |
I think I was there for two or three years. | 1:39 | |
And I think that that was my last real employment, actually. | 1:42 | |
(laughing) | 1:47 | |
So I went into freelance teaching and writing | 1:50 | |
from there. | 1:54 | |
- | Why don't you say that, your books that you've written. | 1:56 |
They're wonderful. | 1:58 | |
- | So, um, | 1:59 |
I'll give you kind of the big picture | 2:02 | |
'cause the books really are just a small | 2:04 | |
source of my income. | 2:05 | |
So, the first book that came out in 2000 | 2:06 | |
was Swinging on the Garden Gate, | 2:10 | |
which was a spiritual memoir that was reconciling | 2:11 | |
my sexual identity, | 2:15 | |
my bisexuality with my Christian upbringing. | 2:17 | |
And the second book that came out was called | 2:21 | |
On the Threshold, which was a collection of personal essays | 2:23 | |
about home and making a house into a home, | 2:26 | |
and home is a metaphor for, | 2:31 | |
homemaking is a metaphor for the spiritual life. | 2:33 | |
Also in 2005 I published a book called | 2:37 | |
Writing the Sacred Journey, | 2:39 | |
that's about writing spiritual memoir. | 2:40 | |
And then most recently, | 2:44 | |
in 2014, I published a book called Hannah, Delivered, | 2:47 | |
which was my first novel. | 2:51 | |
So that's what's been going on in my writing life. | 2:53 | |
I left Re-Imagining and started teaching, | 2:57 | |
actually, I was probably teaching at the Loft | 3:01 | |
while I was at Re-Imagining, | 3:03 | |
but then I really amped up my Loft teaching, | 3:05 | |
so I taught creative writing at the Loft | 3:08 | |
for, well, I'm still there, so for more than 20 years now. | 3:10 | |
I did a lot of freelance teaching around the community, | 3:17 | |
so, at churches through the Re-Imagining small groups, | 3:22 | |
or faith labs, I guess they're called, | 3:28 | |
at UTS, at Hamlin, | 3:31 | |
and now I'm doing more | 3:36 | |
retreat leadership, so I lead writing retreats through | 3:42 | |
the Christine Center in central Wisconsin | 3:46 | |
and through the Madeline Island School of the Arts, | 3:48 | |
and a lot of my work these days is at Wisdom Ways, | 3:53 | |
where I really am beginning to frame the writing/teaching | 3:56 | |
as a ministry, finally, | 4:00 | |
and setting up a spiritual memoir program where, | 4:03 | |
where, | 4:09 | |
new and serious writers are | 4:11 | |
fostered in developing their writing practice as a | 4:16 | |
spiritual practice, so. | 4:20 | |
So, yeah, it's all kind of a, | 4:23 | |
a big piece, I still do a lot of work one on one | 4:28 | |
doing writing coaching privately and, | 4:32 | |
and most of that coaching is | 4:36 | |
some, it's either working with writers who have some | 4:39 | |
pretty spiritual content in their work, | 4:43 | |
or working with writers for whom writing is a journey | 4:46 | |
of discovery, and so there's always, like, | 4:52 | |
a personal growth element to, | 4:54 | |
to the work, that it's not just developing a literary craft, | 4:57 | |
it's also about deepening the, | 5:00 | |
deepening the life, so, | 5:05 | |
so, yeah, my work is very much at the intersection between | 5:07 | |
spirit and creativity. | 5:11 | |
- | How wonderful, you've done such exciting things, | 5:14 |
it's great, oh, that's wonderful. | 5:16 | |
Do you know, or how or when, | 5:18 | |
you first became aware of feminist theology? | 5:20 | |
- | I do, in fact, I was just writing about that | 5:23 |
the other day. | 5:24 | |
I took a course my junior year in college from a woman | 5:25 | |
named Jeannie Wirpsa, who was a visiting, | 5:29 | |
no, I don't know if she was visiting, | 5:32 | |
I don't know, but she was down at Carlton, | 5:35 | |
and it was a liberation theology class, | 5:36 | |
and | 5:39 | |
we did a whole unit on feminist theology as part | 5:41 | |
of that class and that's when I | 5:44 | |
was first introduced to a lot of, you know, Mary Daly, | 5:46 | |
and Rosemary Ruether, and a lot of the classics, | 5:49 | |
and it was that class that really instigated | 5:53 | |
my feminist awakening, so, I, you know, | 5:57 | |
I can even pinpoint the moment. | 5:59 | |
(laughing) | 6:01 | |
- | Really! | |
- | When the film was peeled back from my eyes! | 6:02 |
- | Oh, what was the moment? | 6:05 |
- | Oh, well, it was, um, | 6:08 |
we were put into small groups to talk through some | 6:10 | |
of the material, and, | 6:14 | |
and my small group always met at the student union, | 6:17 | |
and, | 6:20 | |
I, you know, I love the liberation theology stuff, | 6:24 | |
but when we came to the feminist theology I actually | 6:27 | |
took a lot of issue with it, | 6:30 | |
and I think it was more actually because I grew up in a | 6:34 | |
liberal United Methodist church that was very small | 6:36 | |
and very loving, and had a whole | 6:39 | |
parade of inept white male pastors, but for the most part, | 6:44 | |
it was like this really | 6:49 | |
loving experience, | 6:51 | |
and | 6:55 | |
to come into | 6:56 | |
these texts that were very angry and | 6:59 | |
critical of Christianity was incredibly painful, | 7:02 | |
and I, in the small group, | 7:07 | |
threw a fit about it, and I just really reacted, | 7:11 | |
it was like, you know, | 7:14 | |
my experience in the church was loving and nurturing, | 7:15 | |
and I was a leader in my church, | 7:18 | |
and how dare these people criticize my church, | 7:21 | |
and then there was this senior in the group who said | 7:25 | |
something to the effect of, | 7:28 | |
you know, Elizabeth, love, in particular, doesn't | 7:33 | |
negate the fact of systemic oppression. | 7:39 | |
(laughing) | 7:42 | |
You know, I and I was, like, pissed off! | 7:45 | |
(laughing) | 7:48 | |
But afterwards, | 7:49 | |
it was so clear that she was right, | 7:51 | |
and so I just remember leaving the student union that night | 7:53 | |
and standing on the steps, and, like, the campus was dark, | 7:57 | |
and thinking, everything's different. | 8:01 | |
(laughing) | 8:03 | |
- | Wow. | |
Oh, I'm so glad you told, that's a powerful story! | 8:06 | |
- | It was, it was a powerful moment. | 8:08 |
I've been writing about it because I've been thinking about | 8:10 | |
kind of the evolution of consciousness, | 8:15 | |
and those moments of awakening, and how, um, | 8:17 | |
how, | 8:20 | |
you know, that was a moment of coming into critical | 8:22 | |
thinking, really, but I think even something | 8:25 | |
deeper than that, that it was a moment of kind of detaching | 8:29 | |
my, | 8:33 | |
my ego and my personal experience from | 8:36 | |
from, my delay to see it, the bigger reality. | 8:41 | |
So, um, so yeah, that was the start. | 8:45 | |
- | Wow. | 8:49 |
That's great, oh, that's so good. | 8:50 | |
Well, let's talk about the Re-Imagining community, | 8:52 | |
and could say some about your relationship, | 8:55 | |
you talked about doing data entry, you mentioned faith labs, | 8:57 | |
could you say a little bit more about that, what you did? | 9:01 | |
- | Well, I'm trying to remember, | 9:04 |
so what year was the first conference? | 9:06 | |
- | '93. | 9:09 |
- | '93, so I would've been | 9:10 |
24. | 9:13 | |
- | Okay. | 9:14 |
- | And, um, | 9:16 |
so my first experience at the conference was that, | 9:18 | |
I was living in uptown, and my aunt, | 9:22 | |
who's a United Methodist pastor in upstate New York, | 9:24 | |
came out to Minnesota for the conference with a | 9:28 | |
group of friends, and they all slept on my floor. | 9:31 | |
(laughing) | 9:33 | |
- | This is the '93 conference. | 9:35 |
- | Yes. | |
- | Yes. | 9:36 |
Sure. | 9:37 | |
- | That would, | 9:38 |
yeah, so it would have been, that would have been, | 9:40 | |
it would have been, that's sort of the right timing. | 9:42 | |
So, | 9:45 | |
I didn't actually go to that conference, | 9:48 | |
but I got to experience it all secondhand as my aunt | 9:49 | |
and her friends just came home and, yak, yak, yak, yak, yak. | 9:53 | |
And then one time I picked them up at the conference, | 9:56 | |
and I just kind of snuck in and walked around the, | 9:59 | |
you know, the display area. | 10:02 | |
And, so that was, like, it was exciting, | 10:04 | |
and there's all this energy around it, | 10:08 | |
and I, because my, | 10:13 | |
I have two aunts who are United Methodist pastors, | 10:15 | |
and my mother is seminary educated, so, | 10:17 | |
I grew up with lots of theological conversation | 10:20 | |
around dinner time, | 10:22 | |
and, so, it just felt like, | 10:25 | |
the next step of that, that, | 10:30 | |
my aunt and her friends would be having these kind | 10:33 | |
of conversations and all excited about this conference. | 10:35 | |
So then, I think that, | 10:39 | |
I think I only went to one or two of the conferences. | 10:44 | |
And so most of my, | 10:50 | |
most of my experience with Re-Imagining was as an employee. | 10:52 | |
(laughing) | 10:55 | |
- | Interesting. | |
Well, this is a good perspective, yeah! | 10:56 | |
- | And, um, | 10:59 |
and then I, you probably remember more about the faith labs | 11:02 | |
than I do, 'cause I do so much freelance teaching, | 11:06 | |
I don't really remember how many faith labs I did, | 11:09 | |
or what I did, | 11:12 | |
I don't know. | 11:14 | |
- | I've gone several times, | |
and I'm trying to remember what it was. | 11:15 | |
I think it was about the idea of spiritual memoir writing, | 11:16 | |
as spiritual, that's what I recall. | 11:19 | |
- | Journaling. | 11:22 |
- | Journaling, yeah. | |
That kind of thing, yeah. | 11:24 | |
So, what do you remember, | 11:26 | |
what was it like being an employee? | 11:28 | |
(laughing) | 11:30 | |
- | Well, um, | 11:32 |
wretched? | 11:37 | |
(laughing) | 11:38 | |
- | Wow. | 11:40 |
- | I mean, no, that's, data entry stinks! | 11:41 |
- | Oh, of course. | 11:43 |
- | You know. | 11:44 |
- | Yes. | |
- | And we're in the basement of the church center, | 11:45 |
and it was a horrible office, you know, | 11:48 | |
there was never enough money, | 11:50 | |
our computers were outdated, the, | 11:52 | |
the, um, | 11:55 | |
database was outdated, you know, | 11:59 | |
when we did mailings we were still putting stickers | 12:02 | |
on envelopes, and I mean, it was horrible. | 12:04 | |
(laughing) | 12:07 | |
- | Oh, yes, yeah. | |
- | And, you know, like, | 12:09 |
of course it's great to be around all these fabulous women, | 12:16 | |
and that's really exciting, | 12:21 | |
and I really believed in what we were doing, | 12:22 | |
which makes a job like that bearable. | 12:26 | |
I do think I was there for two or three years, which, | 12:29 | |
that's kind of amazing. | 12:31 | |
But, um, | 12:33 | |
but at the same time, | 12:36 | |
if you've ever worked for a small nonprofit that's | 12:38 | |
run by women, it can be really challenging. | 12:40 | |
Because there's all sorts of | 12:43 | |
dynamics around, consensus, and, | 12:48 | |
and it's also been my experience, | 12:51 | |
having worked for a number of small Christian organizations, | 12:53 | |
that, like, there's all sorts of | 12:56 | |
ironies, like, you know, underpaid employees, | 13:00 | |
and it's hard to be an underpaid employee | 13:04 | |
in an organization when you feel, you're like, | 13:07 | |
there's kind of this attitude, | 13:10 | |
well, you're doing this for a good cause, | 13:11 | |
so of course we're gonna pay you poorly. | 13:13 | |
(laughing) | 13:15 | |
- | Right, yes! | |
- | So I remember, I can't remember the name | 13:17 |
of the woman that I worked with, I took her place, | 13:19 | |
Lisa? | 13:23 | |
She was a redhead, um. | 13:25 | |
But she was also miserable there and. | 13:28 | |
(laughing) | 13:30 | |
So. | 13:35 | |
It was just a job. | 13:40 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | It was a job with cool people. | 13:42 |
- | Right, right. | 13:43 |
But I can see why all of that would be so hard, really. | 13:45 | |
(laughing) | 13:48 | |
Exactly. | 13:49 | |
- | And also, you know, like, | 13:50 |
I had a whole other career that I was launching, | 13:51 | |
that was really where my heart was, | 13:54 | |
and it was really just to pay some bills. | 13:56 | |
- | Exactly, yeah, yeah. | 13:58 |
Well, it is good to have your perspective on things. | 14:00 | |
Well, | 14:04 | |
one of my questions is, | 14:07 | |
and I hope you give an honest answer, | 14:08 | |
how did feminist theology affect the structure | 14:10 | |
and function of the community? | 14:11 | |
Do you think it did? | 14:13 | |
- | Oh, that's an interesting question. | 14:15 |
- | Yeah! | 14:17 |
- | Yeah, 'cause I really was not involved in the, | 14:17 |
you know, I was not involved in the | 14:19 | |
structure and functioning. | 14:21 | |
- | Right, right. | |
- | I was not involved in any decision making or any of that. | 14:23 |
But, um, | 14:26 | |
that's, that's funny, you know, I was so young, too, | 14:30 | |
so I don't really like, trust my perspective. | 14:33 | |
Well, I mean, it was like having 12 bosses. | 14:41 | |
(laughing) | 14:44 | |
- | Oh, gosh, wow. | 14:45 |
- | Yes. | 14:46 |
- | Yes, yes! | |
- | It kinda sucks! | 14:50 |
- | Yes! | |
(laughing) | 14:51 | |
- | I've since worked for so many other | 14:54 |
women and feminist organizations where, like, | 14:58 | |
I really have come to appreciate the | 15:04 | |
healthy balance between strong leadership and | 15:11 | |
consensus making, and, um, | 15:15 | |
and I don't really, I don't know what was happening | 15:18 | |
at the governance level of Re-Imagining, | 15:22 | |
I just know that it was very hard to work for those people. | 15:25 | |
- | Yeah, yeah! | 15:28 |
Well, you mentioned the term consensus, | 15:30 | |
in what way was it that you weren't getting clear direct, | 15:31 | |
you know, say a little bit more. | 15:34 | |
- | Well, I mean, I think the, | 15:35 |
so, it was an organization made up of volunteers. | 15:40 | |
- | Right. | 15:43 |
- | And I think that, | 15:44 |
I think that we were the only employees. | 15:46 | |
- | I think you were, yeah, you were! | 15:48 |
- | Right, so, | 15:49 |
so, there was, who is the boss, | 15:52 | |
who is the person that I'm really accountable to, | 15:54 | |
you've got all these volunteers coming in, | 15:58 | |
asking for this or asking for that, | 16:00 | |
there's no, no sense of | 16:02 | |
leadership around administration, right? | 16:07 | |
(laughing) | 16:10 | |
- | Yes, yes. | 16:11 |
- | And so, | 16:12 |
so, | 16:14 | |
you know, even if there was great, who knows, | 16:17 | |
if there some great consensus or some great leadership | 16:22 | |
around planning | 16:24 | |
the | 16:27 | |
conferences, | 16:28 | |
it sure didn't show up in the office, and so, | 16:29 | |
so, yeah, it just. | 16:34 | |
- | So, I'm trying to picture this, | 16:37 |
I'm picturing like one person would come in and ask you, | 16:37 | |
can you do this, another person would come in, | 16:39 | |
is that the kind of thing? | 16:41 | |
- | Yeah, it's the different, | 16:42 |
different requests from all over, and, | 16:43 | |
and, | 16:47 | |
I really don't remember, | 16:50 | |
I think most of what we were doing was just mailings. | 16:51 | |
- | Yeah. | 16:56 |
- | You know, like, taking in new | 16:57 |
members and putting them into our, into the computer, and. | 16:59 | |
- | Were you responsible for getting out the quarterly | 17:04 |
newsletter, the quarterly publication, was that part of? | 17:05 | |
- | Well, we worked with Nancy, | 17:08 |
yeah, I worked closely with Nancy, and that, | 17:10 | |
she was wonderful, I really have, | 17:12 | |
really good, strong memories of her, | 17:13 | |
because she was very clear. | 17:17 | |
(laughing) | 17:18 | |
Professional. | 17:19 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | She had done, she had worked in publication, | 17:24 |
she'd worked as a writer, | 17:28 | |
but she had published things before, too, so she just, | 17:31 | |
she had a schedule, and expectations, | 17:33 | |
but yeah, we did all the printing and the mailing of that, | 17:36 | |
and, | 17:39 | |
but I think she did all the layout. | 17:41 | |
- | Okay, yeah. | 17:44 |
- | That's my memory. | |
- | And you would have had to send in all the stuff | 17:47 |
for conferences, sent out to, | 17:48 | |
for conferences, registrations, that kind of thing, | 17:51 | |
memberships. | 17:54 | |
- | Yep. | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 17:55 |
Yep, interesting. | 17:58 | |
- | So, yeah, it was interesting, it was, I was, | 18:00 |
I was kind of a gopher. | 18:03 | |
- | Yeah, yes. | 18:04 |
With 12 bosses, boy. | 18:06 | |
(laughing) | 18:07 | |
Well, | 18:10 | |
probably it didn't, but I'll ask it anyway, | 18:12 | |
did your involvement at Re-Imagining change your | 18:14 | |
perspective on feminist theology or the church? | 18:16 | |
- | Hmm, well, you know, | 18:20 |
change my perspective on feminist theology, | 18:24 | |
well, yeah, I guess it did. | 18:26 | |
It, like, um, | 18:28 | |
in a couple ways. | 18:31 | |
Like, I've always been a theological thinker, | 18:38 | |
and so, | 18:41 | |
it was really stimulating to be part of a community of, | 18:44 | |
where, you know, where that was happening. | 18:50 | |
- | Yes. | 18:52 |
- | It was also really interesting to watch | 18:53 |
that, watch the community fade. | 18:57 | |
- | Yes. | 18:59 |
- | Because I had also just come out of three years | 19:02 |
of living in Christian community, | 19:03 | |
and I was very interested in community. | 19:06 | |
And so, even though I never really felt like I was part | 19:09 | |
of the Re-Imagining community, | 19:12 | |
to see how, | 19:17 | |
just how communities function and how there's a lot | 19:21 | |
of idealism around community building, | 19:23 | |
and how the reality is very difficult to sustain. | 19:25 | |
So, so, there's, you know, there's just this, | 19:31 | |
there's always this interesting | 19:37 | |
dichotomy between theological conversation and | 19:40 | |
what I experienced as I lived spiritual life, | 19:45 | |
and, | 19:48 | |
I think that, | 19:52 | |
I think by experiencing Re-Imagining, in some ways, | 19:56 | |
clarified where my place is, | 20:01 | |
as much as I love theological dialogue and, | 20:04 | |
and I'm very informed by theological ideas, | 20:09 | |
and feminist ideas, | 20:13 | |
my real | 20:17 | |
passion and what really brings me life has more | 20:21 | |
to do with a lived, grounded, incarnate experience | 20:25 | |
of the spirit, as opposed to inhabiting the realm of ideas, | 20:29 | |
and I think that, that, | 20:33 | |
my work at Re-Imagining helped me clarify that, | 20:36 | |
oh, there's all these great ideas, but, | 20:40 | |
when the rubber hits the road, | 20:45 | |
what does it really look like to | 20:48 | |
manifest a feminine divinity | 20:54 | |
in this life and this body, and this, | 20:58 | |
in my relationships in my home. | 21:01 | |
That, like, to me, that was a much more rich terrain, | 21:03 | |
and so, so that's where, that's the direction I went. | 21:09 | |
- | And, and, just to make sure I'm understanding you, | 21:13 |
did you feel like Re-Imagining was a lot about the | 21:15 | |
theological ideas and not so much the lived spirituality? | 21:18 | |
- | Well, yeah, I mean, | 21:23 |
I felt like it was very much about ideas, | 21:23 | |
it was also very much about the church. | 21:25 | |
- | Yes. | 21:27 |
- | And, um. | |
And, you know, I am | 21:28 | |
a churchgoer through and through and, | 21:31 | |
for me, | 21:35 | |
being church is part of my Christian calling, | 21:37 | |
so I, I definitely | 21:40 | |
am an insider in that sense, and at the same time... | 21:44 | |
I think it comes out of being a lay person and, | 22:02 | |
and, | 22:09 | |
having, so the church that I belonged to then, | 22:12 | |
and I still belong to is Prospect Park United Methodist, | 22:16 | |
it's a small church, | 22:20 | |
pretty feminist from its beginnings, | 22:22 | |
well, not from its beginnings, but, you know, like, | 22:24 | |
really has had pretty good theology all along and, | 22:26 | |
and, so, there wasn't a lot to push against, | 22:30 | |
and, | 22:34 | |
and so, while, while I think, you know, | 22:42 | |
reading feminist theology in college and afterwards, | 22:45 | |
and then learning what I did at Re-Imagining, | 22:48 | |
while it clarified a lot of stuff for me, | 22:51 | |
it wasn't revolutionary at that point. | 22:53 | |
And it also was not, | 22:57 | |
it was very much in keeping with what I was experiencing | 22:59 | |
at church. | 23:02 | |
So, | 23:03 | |
so, | 23:06 | |
in that sense, it wasn't | 23:09 | |
lighting any new fires for me. | 23:15 | |
- | Yes, yes. | |
- | And, um, | 23:18 |
I think that there's just | 23:26 | |
part of me that, that | 23:29 | |
needed to, that went from, | 23:33 | |
and if I'm thinking about the timing right, | 23:37 | |
I think I was a lay leader about the same time | 23:41 | |
that I was working for Re-Imagining, | 23:43 | |
and, um, | 23:46 | |
and, | 23:51 | |
that whole real work of really being community. | 23:54 | |
(laughing) | 23:58 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | You know, like, what does a, over decades, like, | 23:59 |
these are the people that are gonna be at my | 24:03 | |
memorial service, like, that real, you know, again, | 24:06 | |
like, | 24:11 | |
feet on the ground, | 24:12 | |
manifesting | 24:15 | |
Christ's body in this group of people. | 24:17 | |
Like, what does, like, that, | 24:20 | |
that was actually more the space of my, | 24:21 | |
the venue for my faith. | 24:25 | |
- | That makes sense. | 24:27 |
- | So. | |
- | Elizabeth, I'd like to dig into that more, | 24:29 |
because given your knowledge about community, | 24:30 | |
your experience of community, | 24:33 | |
both at the retreat center and at church, | 24:34 | |
what would your reflections be | 24:36 | |
on the Re-Imagining community, and how it functioned, | 24:38 | |
and how it sort of, how it's kind of died, I mean, | 24:41 | |
yeah, what did you, what did you notice about that? | 24:44 | |
- | Yeah. | 24:48 |
You know, the community's a big mystery to me, | 24:59 | |
and, um, | 25:01 | |
and it's, you know, | 25:04 | |
it's like one of the perennial questions in my life is how, | 25:05 | |
how do we be community for each other? | 25:08 | |
And, um, | 25:10 | |
and, | 25:13 | |
you know, in some ways Re-Imagining, in hindsight, | 25:14 | |
seems like a flash in the pan. | 25:16 | |
You know? | 25:19 | |
It was the, | 25:21 | |
it was, | 25:23 | |
kind of this | 25:25 | |
flash of | 25:27 | |
great radical ideas, it was this, you know, | 25:29 | |
flash of great women coming together, | 25:33 | |
and finding commonality, and, like, | 25:38 | |
really using their voice in | 25:43 | |
a new way. | 25:47 | |
But I don't think it ever really | 25:51 | |
figured out how to be community. | 25:54 | |
- | Yes. | 25:56 |
- | And. | 25:58 |
You know, like, I was part of a little third wave group | 26:02 | |
that Rachel started up. | 26:05 | |
- | Oh, you were, okay. | 26:07 |
- | Yeah, I had forgotten about that. | 26:08 |
(laughing) | 26:09 | |
- | Oh, okay, yeah. | |
- | It had so little impact, but, um. | 26:10 |
But, | 26:14 | |
you know, it was, it almost felt like we were | 26:16 | |
trying too hard, like, um. | 26:19 | |
I don't know, I don't know what it is that, that really, | 26:29 | |
really bonds people together. | 26:36 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | You know, I think, I think, um. | 26:39 |
You hear about consciousness raising groups among women | 26:42 | |
in the '60s, | 26:45 | |
and how, how | 26:48 | |
important that was, and how, | 26:50 | |
how the deep bonds that happened in those groups | 26:52 | |
as people kind of came into themselves | 26:55 | |
in community | 26:59 | |
over great periods of time and, | 27:02 | |
I don't know that there was ever, like, | 27:08 | |
real space enough to, for, | 27:10 | |
for the people who were involved in Re-Imagining to really | 27:14 | |
bring themselves as, | 27:18 | |
into relationships that deeply, or, | 27:21 | |
you know, a lot of it was the exchange of ideas | 27:25 | |
and how much of it was really sharing the lived faith, | 27:28 | |
I'm not sure, | 27:34 | |
I don't know if that would have made a difference, | 27:35 | |
or | 27:38 | |
like the faith labs that I did, those felt, you know, | 27:43 | |
pretty much the same as any other sort | 27:47 | |
of educational programming I've done, which, you know, | 27:48 | |
you build the little community in the class, | 27:51 | |
and it endures for the length of the class, | 27:53 | |
and then it's over. | 27:55 | |
- | Right. | 27:56 |
- | Which, it doesn't say that that's not a valuable | 27:58 |
community, it really is, but, um. | 28:00 | |
Yeah, I mean, what exactly is community, I don't know, | 28:10 | |
I don't really know. | 28:12 | |
- | When you get it all figured out, let me know, okay? | 28:15 |
(laughing) | 28:17 | |
- | It is all, the whole phenomenon of that fading off | 28:19 |
is really interesting to me because, | 28:23 | |
because it's true that feminine images of God are much more | 28:25 | |
integrated in our culture now, and, | 28:29 | |
you know, yeah, there's always gonna be | 28:35 | |
conservative pockets of the world where | 28:38 | |
talking about God as she or even, like, | 28:40 | |
gender-neutral terms about God are gonna be offensive, but, | 28:43 | |
but, | 28:49 | |
these days, I feel like if I'm reading a book about | 28:51 | |
theology or spirituality that uses a, | 28:53 | |
a masculine pronoun, that kind of stands out to me, | 28:57 | |
like, oh, wow, haven't seen that for awhile. | 29:00 | |
You know, so I kind of feel like it did, | 29:02 | |
and who knows if it was the conference, you know, | 29:04 | |
or just the evolution of | 29:08 | |
our, | 29:11 | |
you know, us as people, but I feel like, | 29:12 | |
the work happened, which was a beautiful thing. | 29:15 | |
And at the same time, it's like, | 29:21 | |
so not happened, you know, | 29:25 | |
and I don't even think that, | 29:27 | |
what is it that, | 29:32 | |
I actually think that the really profound feminist work | 29:38 | |
of, um, | 29:43 | |
changing the church is not gonna be theological, | 29:47 | |
it's gonna be about, | 29:50 | |
it's gonna be, | 29:52 | |
it's gonna be institutional, it's gonna, like, | 29:57 | |
be about kind of tearing down the institution | 29:59 | |
as we now see it and reconfiguring it | 30:01 | |
in a completely different way, | 30:03 | |
and so I think, in part, | 30:06 | |
there are some limits that the institution places | 30:09 | |
on what's possible, that, | 30:12 | |
that has | 30:15 | |
restricted | 30:17 | |
the depth of change that | 30:22 | |
can happen as a consequence of that kind | 30:26 | |
of theological movement, | 30:29 | |
I feel like I'm not being very articulate about this, but, | 30:30 | |
but I just. | 30:32 | |
- | Well, say some more about what would need to happen, | 30:40 |
I'm intrigued by this. | 30:42 | |
You know, it's sort of like the question, | 30:43 | |
one of my questions was what would Re-Imagining look like, | 30:45 | |
and I don't mean Re-Imagining the community, | 30:46 | |
but what would, what does it look like today, | 30:48 | |
what needs to be re-imagined? | 30:51 | |
- | Yeah. | |
- | What needs to happen? | 30:53 |
- | Yeah. | 30:54 |
- | What do you think? | |
- | Church needs to be re-imagined. | 30:55 |
And that's where I'm so excited about working at | 30:56 | |
Wisdom Ways right now, because I think it's happening there. | 30:58 | |
- | Oh, say some more! | 31:00 |
- | I think it's like, | 31:01 |
I think that Barb Lund has her finger on the pulse of, | 31:03 | |
of what's emerging. | 31:08 | |
- | That's great, and what is that? | 31:10 |
- | Well, it's a, um, it's a, | 31:12 |
it's centered in body wisdom, it's very feminine, | 31:21 | |
it's | 31:27 | |
non-denominational interfaith, beyond faith, | 31:29 | |
so, wildly inclusive. | 31:34 | |
It's | 31:37 | |
absolutely | 31:39 | |
working outside of power structures. | 31:47 | |
(laughing) | 31:50 | |
It's | 31:54 | |
you know, I wish I could remember what the | 31:57 | |
charisma is of the Sisters of Saint Joseph, | 32:00 | |
because it's really powerfully | 32:02 | |
at work in Wisdom Ways, but, | 32:04 | |
but it's something to the effect of meeting the spirit | 32:07 | |
where it's coming alive out in the world, and serving it, | 32:11 | |
and so, so, | 32:14 | |
what I see happening is that, | 32:16 | |
at least, in Wisdom Ways ministry, | 32:22 | |
is that they see the spirit coming alive | 32:24 | |
through creativity, | 32:28 | |
that that's really the place where people who are, | 32:31 | |
for the most part, leaving the church, | 32:34 | |
and still being seekers, or, you know, coming, | 32:36 | |
they're seekers, having never been part of the church, | 32:39 | |
and where do they connect with what's life-giving | 32:41 | |
through creativity, and so, so then, | 32:45 | |
so then, like a writing class, | 32:50 | |
creativity becomes the means for deep listening, for growth, | 32:52 | |
for connecting with what's sacred, | 32:57 | |
and then connecting with each other through the | 32:59 | |
art making, so, it's a really different, um, | 33:02 | |
source for like, | 33:09 | |
for participating | 33:13 | |
in the sacred. | 33:15 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | And it's, | 33:19 |
you know, Barbara does such a great job of | 33:20 | |
staying outside of | 33:26 | |
all of the | 33:31 | |
hierarchies that come with being clergy and, | 33:33 | |
all the church hierarchies, | 33:38 | |
she has like stepped outside of all that, | 33:39 | |
and really creates an atmosphere where | 33:42 | |
everyone's a seeker. | 33:45 | |
- | Wow. | |
- | So, | 33:48 |
at least, that's my perspective, you know, | 33:50 | |
she'd be an interesting person to speak to that, | 33:51 | |
but I think that there's this new, | 33:54 | |
the hunger there for spiritual connection is | 33:57 | |
stronger than ever, I think, in our culture, | 34:00 | |
and more than ever, church isn't serving that, | 34:04 | |
and so, a lot of the feminist theology is still | 34:07 | |
kind of speaking to that structure that's dying. | 34:10 | |
I mean, that's really not totally true, I mean, | 34:17 | |
there's some amazing, | 34:19 | |
amazing work happening now, but, | 34:22 | |
but I think to, | 34:26 | |
oh, another thing that I think is really shifting is | 34:29 | |
with the environmental crisis, and, you know, | 34:33 | |
this new, very women-centered reverence for the Earth, | 34:37 | |
and the Earth is | 34:41 | |
the body of God. | 34:43 | |
(laughing) | 34:45 | |
That, | 34:47 | |
that, | 34:49 | |
church, | 34:51 | |
you know, | 34:53 | |
that church is the natural world, | 34:55 | |
and that that is our place of worship, | 34:57 | |
and that it has to be in order for us to save our world, | 35:00 | |
and so, that also is | 35:04 | |
something that I see really, | 35:11 | |
I see Wisdom Ways grappling with a lot, and, | 35:14 | |
so, | 35:17 | |
yeah. | 35:19 | |
(laughing) | 35:20 | |
- | That's wonderful, that's great! | 35:20 |
- | You give me the chance to ramble along. | 35:22 |
- | Oh, and I'm loving it, this is great! | 35:23 |
It's very interesting rambling, let's see, yeah. | 35:25 | |
Well, | 35:30 | |
I guess I will go back to, this is great. | 35:32 | |
What would you say is the, | 35:35 | |
the greatest legacy of the, of Re-Imagining? | 35:37 | |
- | For me, or for? | 35:40 |
- | Both. | |
What is most significant to you and in general, both, yeah. | 35:42 | |
- | Well, you know, I think that, | 35:51 |
I think probably the most significant thing for me, | 35:56 | |
that's interesting that this comes to me, | 35:58 | |
because it really is about community, it's really, | 35:59 | |
it's feeling not alone, | 36:01 | |
I had this experiential | 36:06 | |
participation in a bigger group of women, or people, just, | 36:13 | |
you know, | 36:18 | |
taking in | 36:21 | |
the feminine God. | 36:24 | |
I think that's a huge gift to have had that. | 36:29 | |
So, so, | 36:33 | |
you know, I can't imagine what it would be like to | 36:37 | |
be asking questions about | 36:41 | |
the nature of God, or, you know, | 36:45 | |
about, | 36:48 | |
even, even, | 36:49 | |
reading feminist theology without having had that lived | 36:51 | |
conversation, that was a pretty amazing thing. | 36:55 | |
And so, like, once you have that, | 36:59 | |
it's like you know that that's possible, and so, | 37:01 | |
then you just, you know, | 37:06 | |
you have those conversations everywhere, or at least I do. | 37:07 | |
(laughing) | 37:10 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | All the time. | 37:11 |
- | That's wonderful! | |
- | Oh no, it's great, I'm really fortunate for that. | 37:14 |
So, I mean, I guess what I would hope the broader legacy is, | 37:19 | |
is that that's happening for all those people | 37:22 | |
who participated in that. | 37:24 | |
- | Yes. | |
- | You know, and I think about someone like my aunt, | 37:28 |
who was the pastor in upstate New York in a small town | 37:30 | |
with conservative parishes and, | 37:33 | |
and she felt isolated and lonely for her whole career, | 37:35 | |
and, | 37:41 | |
so to come to something like that was just | 37:45 | |
amazing for her, and then, you know, | 37:48 | |
she and I continued to have conversations, so, | 37:51 | |
so, | 37:53 | |
it is like this, | 37:56 | |
it is groundbreaking in the sense that | 38:00 | |
these conversations happen. | 38:04 | |
- | Right, yeah, yeah. | 38:06 |
I have one other very specific question, | 38:09 | |
and that is, we're working on a Re-Imagining website, | 38:11 | |
do you have any ideas about what would be helpful | 38:15 | |
to be included, how people would find out about it, | 38:18 | |
who it would benefit? | 38:21 | |
- | So, | 38:26 |
would it be mostly archival, or would it be, | 38:28 | |
would it actually be active? | 38:32 | |
- | Yeah, it's going to be both, probably, yes, yeah, yeah. | 38:35 |
So, it would be active, | 38:39 | |
so what kind of things would be good to, to include? | 38:40 | |
- | Yeah, it would totally depend on like, | 38:45 |
what your mission would be, really. | 38:46 | |
- | Yeah. | 38:48 |
- | So, are you asking what mission? | 38:49 |
(laughing) | 38:50 | |
- | Yeah, no, | |
I think it would be, part of it, | 38:52 | |
I think a lot of it would be, it is archival, | 38:54 | |
so we have the, | 38:55 | |
the gatherings on there, and a lot of the materials, | 38:58 | |
but then I think what people are talking about, | 39:02 | |
and it's still in process, would be things like, | 39:04 | |
a lot of it would be networking, | 39:07 | |
and pointing to other resources, | 39:08 | |
and pointing to what's happening now. | 39:10 | |
And so, people who are interested in that before, | 39:12 | |
where could they go? | 39:15 | |
- | Yeah. | 39:17 |
Yeah. | 39:18 | |
- | I kind of sprung it on you, | 39:29 |
so if you don't have ideas now, that's okay. | 39:30 | |
(laughing) | 39:32 | |
- | It's really, um. | 39:33 |
- | Do you think that maybe it really doesn't have a role? | 39:37 |
Do you think there's other things that are out there? | 39:40 | |
- | Well, I mean, I think it does have an archival role. | 39:41 |
In terms, you know, in terms of being, like, a, | 39:45 | |
a hub, like a hub for information, or, you know, | 39:50 | |
a connective place, | 39:53 | |
I imagine that there's a purpose for that. | 39:57 | |
Yeah. | 40:03 | |
I'm not jazzed by it. | 40:09 | |
(laughing) | 40:10 | |
- | No, I can tell! | |
And that's fine, that's fine! | 40:11 | |
Yes! | 40:13 | |
- | To me, the question is, it's like, is that enough, | 40:15 |
is that an organization then, or is it just a website, | 40:17 | |
and, like, what are you creating here, | 40:21 | |
what world are you creating, | 40:23 | |
are you creating a world that's just, just, like, | 40:25 | |
connected from things that happened in the past, or, | 40:30 | |
or is there some way that you want to | 40:34 | |
generate | 40:36 | |
something new from this, | 40:38 | |
and, um, | 40:40 | |
yeah. | 40:45 | |
- | Yeah. | |
Those are all good questions. | 40:46 | |
I mean, I think some of it would be, | 40:48 | |
for example, there are plans in the next few years | 40:49 | |
to do things, so kind of letting people know about that, | 40:52 | |
and things, but, you know, those are, | 40:54 | |
those are important questions | 40:56 | |
that really need to be figured out, yeah. | 40:57 | |
I think a lot of it, the initiative, was at archival, | 41:01 | |
that we need to add that, yes. | 41:03 | |
- | That's important, that's really important. | 41:05 |
- | Yeah. | 41:06 |
Is there anything we haven't discussed | 41:07 | |
that you would wanna say? | 41:09 | |
- | Well, you know, this one memory keeps coming back to me, | 41:16 |
so I'm gonna just, should I? | 41:19 | |
- | Yes, please do! | |
- | I was, I became quite good friends with | 41:22 |
Jeanne Audrey Powers, through these years, | 41:25 | |
and I just have this lovely memory of her | 41:30 | |
at one of the conferences, | 41:35 | |
she always took it upon herself to sit down | 41:38 | |
at the table with the reporters, | 41:40 | |
and especially the conservative ones, | 41:43 | |
and introduce herself, and get them coffee, or whatever. | 41:46 | |
(laughing) | 41:51 | |
And then have these really lively conversations, | 41:52 | |
and I just, | 41:54 | |
I so, I so love Jeanne Audrey, and really, | 41:58 | |
it's something I never, ever would have done at that point, | 42:03 | |
maybe not even today, | 42:06 | |
and, yet, in some ways, she, | 42:10 | |
she, | 42:13 | |
I think she was kind of radical, | 42:17 | |
even among the Re-Imagining group, in that she saw, | 42:20 | |
she did relationship building. | 42:24 | |
She always knew their names, she knew whether they had kids, | 42:26 | |
you know, she actually had conversations with them, | 42:30 | |
and I think that that's just, like, | 42:33 | |
this amazing thing that happens so rarely | 42:37 | |
in our world today, you know, | 42:40 | |
it happens less frequently today than it did | 42:42 | |
however many years ago, and, um, | 42:46 | |
that sort of | 42:49 | |
bridge building | 42:51 | |
really stands out in my mind from that. | 42:54 | |
- | That's a great memory. | 42:56 |
That's really important, yeah, yeah. | 42:57 | |
Elizabeth, you had such an important perspective, | 43:00 | |
and some real good thoughts, thank you! | 43:03 | |
(laughing) | 43:05 | |
Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. | 43:06 | |
- | Yeah, it was fun. | 43:08 |
Item Info
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