Women are dangerous

Throughout my life, I have struggled internally in the company of women.  I have known beautifully spirited women who were kind to me and dear to me in every way possible, but I have spent most of my seven decades waiting for the shoe to drop in pretty much every relationship.  The hidden agenda that will get revealed. The constant occupation of mistrust in every conversation.  The determined inner dialogue that promises rejection.

Part of that probably stems from messages I received in my home which were reinforced by the society around me. In our home, first and foremost, the job of a female was to serve the males in the family. My earliest memory was when one of my three brothers wanted another helping at dinner.  I believe when he turned towards me, I said he could get it himself.  My mother’s reply was swift and forceful.

As long as there is a woman in this house, he doesn’t have to.

As I grew older, I learned from my mother’s comments that not only were  men to be served but also that women were dangerous.  They were not to be trusted. They were manipulative. She made fun of them behind their backs, and she continued her pronouncements about the expected roles of men and women throughout my childhood.

In this perfect storm, I avoided female relationships and focused on serving men,  becoming. one of the now 81% of women who, in this current time,  have experienced sexual trauma. Repeatedly. And the sad thing is, with my skewed idea of what a woman’s true character was, I hid myself from the very tribe who could have been the one to aid in my healing and help me find my voice.

All of that is changing now in this desert wilderness.

Moving here, I gave away my former selves defined by my occupation and my upbringing like the clothing and possessions that went into the boxes to Goodwill.  I made an intentional decision to show up unadorned by previous expectations or cultural indoctrination.

I wanted to give just being myself a shot.

Somewhere in this journey, I ended up in a group of powerful, centered, compassionate, women writers.  On my first day in the group, I remember how deeply I felt all the old voices invading my spirit.  I was on edge, certain if I came with the “real me,” I would face rejection. I even tried quitting once, to no avail. The lure of their creativity and authenticity was too strong. So I kept those voices at bay and breathed deeply through that first class and the ones to come, determined to not succumb to presenting a false self in order to stay safe.

In the process of letting go of that old self, I found a tribe.  These writers, these women, these warriors, literally steal my breath when I hear their words, and I weep in gratitude at their presence in my life.  Ripped from the lies of my childhood, I embrace their femaleness, their raw courage, their strength in adversity and their innate capacity to hold a heart as gently as a newborn.  And over these many months, I have discovered something that has reshaped my thinking.

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Women are dangerous., but not in the way my mother taught me.

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We are dangerous when we find our voices and feast on ideas grown in metaphor and nurtured in soft light. We are dangerous when we help each other navigate the hazards of our own wilderness, taking special care to point out the hidden snares.

.And we are dangerous when we stand huddled together, tightly circled around the campfires of our shared healing Light.

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Sister Wild Horse

By Jules Donnelly, Artist/Writer

Looks like change is swirling around us. 

I am all at sea and i don't know how to row. 

I will bring wooden spoons and you can bring a boat 

withthefullmoontiedtotheback. 

We would drift on liquid glass and count the shooting stars. 

We would pick ripe words from the overhanging branches and 

piece them together to make sentences brimming with honey and jalapeños. 

Then returning to land as all wild horses must.

Remembering. 

We are more than warriors. 

More than the 

grocery list

of surgeries 

between us. 

More than the axe chops we've taken.

We are more than what they said we'd be.

Gone farther than what they said we could. 

Beamed brighter than most imagined. So.

I feel the need to be clear. I should be perfectly clear.  

My Stepfather says I have a big mouth. 

I say my mouth has found its words.

I say i am brave. We are brave enough. 

We are not through. We are not finished. We are brave enough to live each day.

With all we've got. For as long as we've got.

We can be gloriously quiet or courageously loud. 

Either way is great.

I'm here to tell you that everything is perfectly fine. However, 

I cheated. Only peeked really.

But I saw them there. And that's the perfect part.

Written there in the Book of Life

breathed by God.

Our names are written there. Us.

Sisters Wild Horse.

Wild forever.

 - Written for my friend M.L. Wild forever!

Something about a hymn

Having had no experience with church until my mid forties, the idea of singing hymns together in community was foreign to me.   But I loved arranged music in general and joined the church choir just to experience the feeling again of being in a group making music. Shortly after joining choir, we began a “blended service”and, assigned responsibility of leading a team, I set about trying to find hymns that could be adapted to guitar and drums to add to newer worship music which I had grown to love.

To help you visualize how long ago this was, there were no hanging screens on which to project the words..   In fact, our first screen was cobbled together with Home Depot insulation boards and a few coat hangers, barely one step above a sheet hanging from a wire. There was also no way to connect the song lyrics on the computer to enable projection on our “screen.” Without the electronics of today, a person was assigned the “job” of flipping the overheads as the song progressed, a job which was much harder to do correctly than it sounds.

The production of those overheads was my job. All of the words had to be typed by hand and printed on overhead transparencies for one person to switch out as they sat at an overhead projector in front of the room.  Because I loved “technology” and chose the music each week, it was my job to type the lyric sheets.

The church hymnal was thick with choices, so I would look for themes and then pluck out the notes of hymns, and finally, after choosing one, I would type the words. Almost none were familiar to me, so I became a student of the words.  But here’s the thing. I am a two finger typist.  So in order to type the hymns, I had to semi-memorize each line and understand it before I could type it.

From the first hymn I started typing, an unexpected thing would happen.  I would get a few lines in and begin to weep.  It was like I was typing the words on to my very heart and their imprint was deep and became almost immediately permanent. The words would invade my spirit, and I would sing them as I typed, feeling this sweet release and comfort as I did. I would even find myself bursting into song in everyday situations, treasuring each word, each turn of phrase, each truth revealed.

Those words would become real to me in the midst of a spiritual crisis only a few years later.

Our church entered into a time of deep turmoil.  Decent leaders were being sabotaged and reputations were being destroyed.  At a small retreat center on an island off the coast of Washington, a small group met with someone skilled in trauma in churches to help work our way through.  One of the difficult conversations sent me over the edge, and I fled alone to weep for the unnecessary destruction of people dear to me.

I sat alone on a rocky beach in the thick mist of morning, the waves lapping quietly at the shore.  In utter despair, thoughts of ending my life gnawed at the edges of my soul. This was my first faith community. I loved them. But darkness had overcome good, and my world was shaken. With no journal to write in to try and find clarity, I opened to the empty pages in the back of my Bible and wept so deeply I thought my heart would burst.  I simply could not handle this life anymore. I truly felt like I wanted to die.

A loud explosion of sound from the gulls overhead drew my gaze abruptly up and towards the sea. I stared at the seemingly infinite, measureless expanse of water shrouded in fog and imagined how many drops it contained.   As I sat being drenched in the soft mist, I thought about the droplets that were falling to the earth in the light fog.  I wondered how many drops there were and imagined counting them as a way to still my reckless thoughts and calm my spirit. While contemplating the number, a new thought suddenly entered in, crowding out the voices of destruction and despair in my head.

Even should I be able to count them all, the number would pale by comparison to God’s love for me.  

As the mist soaked my skin, that promise seeped into my soul, and the words of a hymn flooded over me as though the sea itself sang.

Could we with ink the ocean fill,

and were the skies of parchment made;

were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill,

and ev’ryone a scribe by trade;

to write the love of God above

would drain the ocean dry;

nor could the scroll contain the whole,

though stretched from sky to sky.

Tears of consolation flooded over me and washed away my tears of despair.  That ragged day, when my woundedness seemed beyond healing, the True Balm of Gilead came to sing words of boundless love and of abundant life over me in the midst of turmoil. I glanced at the pages of my Bible, now wrinkling under the mist’s moisture and wrote these words that remain to this day.

I know longer know where I end and You begin.

I have known many a dark dawn in the decades since Love sang over me with words from the sea.  But the memory of the gift of consolation from the inspired words of a hymn that day has remained, sustaining and strengthening me daily.

O love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure—

the saints’ and angels’ song.

Change of vision…

One thing you need to know is that I really don’t scare very easily.  Being a road musician with a bit of a biker following taught me that.  I have had knives pulled on me simply for saying hello.  I have watched grown men set their shirts on fire while listening to our band play “Old Flame” by Alabama.  And never a proponent of violence to solve problems, I once tried to prevent a biker in an alley from beating up a cowboy while we were packing out equipment.

His girlfriend, who was apparently the jealous type, grabbed me by my labels and threw me up against a brick wall, noting another try at peaceful resolution would result in my own beating. But the next night, they all showed up at the gig with an official club hat and pin, and in a touching little ceremony, announced my honorary membership because I was, to quote the source, “a woman with balls.”

So you can imagine, with this experiential skill set, there was little about working with middle school students that was intimidating to me when I became a teacher. In fact, over the years, unusual personalities were often deliberately placed in my classes because I was “good with those kinds of kids.”  And perhaps I was.  At least until a transfer student came into my classroom in the middle of the year and filled me and my classroom with fear.

This young man entered in all black, a trench coat, a permanent sneer, and a defiant personality. In his first day, he mumbled incoherently, refused to answer questions, glared at everyone in the room, and spent much of his time trying to pop pimples on his face, directing the contents around the room.  And he let me know that he had absolutely no respect for me, which I sensed was something to do with my gender.  And it went on day after day.

I did something I had never done in my career.  I asked to have him removed from my class.

Of course, I had good reasons, right? I explained to the counselor that if anyone was ever going to bring a rifle into a school, this would be the person.  I reasoned that perhaps a male teacher would get a different response.  I tried everything I could think of, but her response was always the same.

But you are so good with these kinds of kids.

I am ashamed to admit that after my last failed attempt to get him removed, I walked down the empty hallway after school and in my frustration, I cried out to God Why? Why? Why?  I complained that the whole community spirit I had worked on so hard was being destroyed.  I worried all of our safety was at stake. And I begged God to do something that would get this student removed from my class.

As soon as that prayer was lifted, it was like the world took a breath.  Everything around me became still, and then I heard an audible voice of calm strength and certainty.

Who do you think put him there?

That stood me up. I had never considered that he was there for a reason, and I realized any change in this young man’s environment had to begin in me.  I decided from that moment on, I would imagine that Jesus had come to take up residence in this young man, and I would treat him accordingly. Literally, the first thing everyday when this student appeared, I would look into his face and welcome him as though Jesus himself had entered the room.

And a funny thing happened.  When I started receiving this young man in love and not fear, his classmates began to do the same thing.  It felt like that room started to become blanketed in love.  Weird and strange things still happened, but our response completely changed as a community.  He became accepted.

One day a few months later, my radio broke.  It mattered because I played classical music for the class when we wrote.  This young man came up to my desk and quietly said, “Seawell, I can fix that for you.”  And he did, almost completely dismantling it first.  When he was done and music poured out, I seem to recall the class cheering him on.  He became “the guy who fixes things.”

And not the guy we feared.

Living now as we are in a world so willing to demonize “the other,” I have found myself thinking about this young man.  I wonder if it wouldn’t change all of our hearts just a little if we could look at someone who is different and not react in fear.  I wonder if simply saying, Jesus, I see You there, might give us all the opportunity to embrace the sacred business of loving extravagantly as though each person we meet is Jesus himself.

Because in reality, they are.

And it took an adolescent and a change in vision to teach me that.