What's Required? Girl Rising

I had set aside this weekend to host a young friend and her two small children. We were going to visit thrift shops, picnic at a nearby lake, splash in the pool at the Y down the street.

But she called to say she had a new, much needed job. 

So she spent the weekend cleaning hotel rooms, her kids spent the weekend in a relative’s concrete back yard, and I’ve headed off in my kayak.

It hardly seems fair.

But then, much about life is far from fair.

When I was a kid, my grandmother often said, as she sent me off to school: “To whom much is given, much will be required.”

I had no clue what she meant.

We lived in a wealthy suburb of New York, where most of my friends had maids or nannies, two cars in the driveway, vacation homes. By seventh grade, or ninth at the latest, most of them would be in private school, at all the best academies.

And I wore hand-me-downs, helped my grandmother drag the shopping cart to Gristedes, a mile away, and tried not to let too many friends know that she watched other people’s kids and did ironing for neighbors to make ends meet.

Given?

Really?

Yet, the more I see of life, the more I understand what she was saying. I went to great schools. Lived in towns with wonderful libraries. Grew up in a state that made higher education possible for anyone willing to study. Never doubted that I could go to college, even grad school, if I wanted.

I thought of all that as I went with friends this week to watch Girl Rising, a powerful, troubling documentary about nine girls in nine different countries. Each story was written by a writer from the girl’s country, in conversation with the girls themselves, and each was filmed in a way that caught the hopes and struggles of the individual girl . 

Beautiful Suma of Nepal, bonded into labor at six, taught to read by a social worker after long days of work, survived by writing lovely, haunting songs of sorrow. 

Sokha, Cambodian orphan living and working in a city dump, searched for bits of metal to sell, a throw-away child in a throw-away place, until rescued and given home, school, future.

Buoyant Wadley of Haiti: she was seven when the earthquake destroyed her school, and defiant when told only children with money would be able to continue to learn.

Yasmin, of Egypt, tells a police officer the story of a violent attack. She knows where the attacker lives, and could lead the officer to him. Her mother cries for justice, and the officer, though sympathetic, shakes his head sadly: “In this world? No.” That cry for justice, and it's denial, echo in my mind.

Azmira of Ethiopia. Village elders told her widowed mother to marry her off at thirteen, but her older brother intervened, insisting she have the chance to continue in school. Every girl needs a brother like that.

Ruksana lives with her parents and two sisters in a makeshift home on a city street, dreaming of beauty, wondering why some people live in worlds like those she glimpses on tv, while police smash their simple dwelling and leave them homeless in the monsoon rains.

Mariama of Sierre Leone has two mothers, a father, and her own radio show. Joyful, confident, determined Mariama.

The two girls who linger with me are Amina of Afghanistan, and Senna of Peru.

Amina, “a girl masked and muted,” tells a story of servitude and repression. From the age of three she was carrying water to wash men’s hands, scrubbing, serving, working in silence. Sold as bride to her twenty year old cousin when she was just eleven in exchange for money her family spent on a used car for her brother.  Her first son was born nine months later.

Amina was one of two girls whose names were changed, and for safety reasons weren’t able to show their faces, yet her great sorrow, fierce anger and deep determination came through strongly, as did her accusation of all who live in freedom and fail to speak on behalf of those who suffer in silence.

Don’t assume, she says with feeling, that this is a religious issue. Women of her country, of her faith, lived in freedom before, and enjoy freedom in other countries now.

Child marriage and bride prices were banned in Afghanistan in 1921. For decades women were free to go to school, to hold jobs, to move about in freedom. Since 1996, Afghan women have been pawns of patriarchal power, facing violent enforcement of repressive restrictions.

I know almost nothing about the political realities that shape Amina’s life, that hold her in bondage. Does that excuse me?  "Your silence," Amina says, "has already spoken for you."

I find myself trying to see my world through her eyes: small children free to play, teen girls not yet burdened with pregnancy, women able to move and speak in freedom.

And I find myself wondering about that convoluted sentence my grandmother used to say: “To whom much is given, much will be required.”

I didn’t know at the time that she was quoting Jesus, speaking in Luke 12:48. She would have known King James version: "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required."

What have I been given?

Education, opportunity, freedom, resources. 

Time, money, information.

What’s required? How?

The other story that haunts me is that of Senna, young teen from Peru.

Girl Rising: Life in the World's Harshest Town

Her story is set in La Rinconada, a gold-mining town high in the Andes, reportedly the highest city in the world, a thousand feet higher than the highest peaks of the Alps.

Her town, according to her, has more prostitutes than children. No running water, no sewage.

Her father named her for Xena, Warrior Princess, although he couldn’t spell the name. He never went to school, but wanted her to learn all she could. After he was injured in a mining accident, her mother and sister went to work cracking mining waste, looking for small remnants of ore, while Senna convinced the owner of the public outhouse to pay her for coming early every morning to clean the stinking holes, so she could work, avoid the lure of prostitution, and still remain in school.

As she lost her father to depression, then death, Senna discovered poetry and began to write her own.

Watching her, her determination, her struggle, I found myself wondering, as I wonder often: Why was I born here, in a beautiful place, with good health care nearby, excellent schools, clean bathrooms, green lawns?

I sit in my air-conditioned house, watch the hummingbirds visit my honeysuckle vine, wonder why I have the right to vote, to work, to drive, to read. To wear what I want, go where I want. 

I have the world at my fingertips – literally. FIOS internet connection. Functional HP laptop.

I find myself wondering, as I review the  movie, rethink the girls' stories: what are you asking?

10x10act.org, the organization that created the film in partnership with CNN and Intel, has started a fund for girls’ education. Donations to the fund are distributed between seven other partner organizations, including CARE USA, World Vision, Partners in Health, Room to Read.

It costs sixty dollars a year for school fees and uniforms in many places.

A year of teacher's college can cost less than a thousand dollars. 

So yes, money is required.

But more than that.

The 10x10 website suggests book groups, advocacy, hosting a screening, taking time to learn more.

Carrying those nine girls’ voices with me, I find myself humbled, thankful, hopeful, sad.

I want justice for each of them. In this world. Soon.

And I want choices, and beauty, and safety, and love.

Schools. Teachers. Books. Pens.

How much would we need to give to make that possible?

This is the last in a series on women and girls: 

• Talitha Koun. Girl Rising, July 15, 2013 

• Freedom is Indivisible, July 7, 2013 

• What Do Teenage Girls Need? June 30, 2013 

• Sweet Taste of Freedom, June 23, 2013 

• Courage, Hope Generosity, June 9 

• With All Your Mind? June 2

Talitha Koun. Girl Rising

There’s a movie I’ve been wanting to see, Girl Rising. It will be showing this week, on Wednesday, at the Phoenixville Colonial Theater. If you’re in the area, come see it.  

"One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world."

It’s about nine girls from nine countries who face the challenges too many girls face: child marriage, sex trafficking, slavery, abandonment, staggering poverty.

This past Friday, the UN celebrated the 16th birthday of Malala Yousafza, the teen shot in Pakistan last October for daring to speak out against the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education. Malala spoke to the gathered world leaders “as one girl among many”:  

"I speak not for myself but for those without voice ... those who have fought for their rights -- their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be educated."
 
"In many parts of the world, especially Pakistan and Afghanistan, terrorism, war and conflict stop children to go to their schools. We are really tired of these wars. Women and children are suffering”  

In Malala’s home nation, only one in three women can read a newspaper or write a letter.  

And one in four girls is married before turning 18.   

According to a 2012 study by World Vision, the number of child brides continues to rise:  

“One in nine girls around the world is forced to marry before her 15th birthday.

“Those who are subjected to early marriage are more likely to experience domestic violence, forced sexual relations, poor reproductive health, and lower levels of education, according to the report.

“Early marriage poses a serious challenge to extremely hard-won development gains in least developed countries . . .And yet, in the face of these facts and the widespread condemnation of the practice, early marriage continues to flourish.”

I’ve been reading in the Gospel of Mark, and a passage from Mark 5 has been troubling me. Jesus, traveling to heal the daughter of a church leader, encounters a woman “who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years." After spending all she had on a series of doctors, “instead of growing better she grew worse.”

The woman reaches out in the crowd to touch Jesus’ cloak – a forbidden act. Woman touching man; unclean, untouchable person reaching out to share her uncleanness. Jesus stops, wants to know who has touched him (you can read the whole story here). She falls at his feet, “trembling with fear,” and explains her humiliating story. His response is gentle, affirming, and deeply compassionate: “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.”

The story continues with Jesus’ arrival at his original destination, but the girl he’s come to see is dead. 

No matter. 

“He took her by the hand and said to her ‘Talitha koun!' (which means, 'Little girl, I say to you, get up!')"

Set aside discussion about whether miracles happen. Mark’s description is matter of fact, and as precise as he can get it. No respected religious leader of the time would call a woman breaking the rules “daughter.” No ordinary man could see the depth of the woman’s misery and meet her there, so gently offering freedom from that suffering.

And that little Aramaic sentence Mark gives us: apparently he thought the heart of it would be lost if he translated it into the Greek of his text. “Talitha koun”: sweet little lamb, dear little girl, treasured little ewe child, hear my heart and rise.

As I’ve been trying to understand more about the suffering of women around the globe, I’ve carried those words with me: daughter, be freed from your suffering. Sweet treasured girl, rise up.

Several years ago Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas Kristof, authors of  Half the Sky, tried to quantify the misery of women: 

“More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.

"The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.” 

 And this: 

“In the nineteenth century, the central moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.”  

In a chapter entitled “Family Planning and the ‘God Gulf’” WuDunn and Kristof discussed the deep divide over funding for abortion, contraception, condoms, even sex education.

“One of the great scandals of the early twenty-first century is that 122 million women around the world want contraception and can't get it." 

That number, according to the UNFPA (the UN Population Fund) is now close to 222 million, but funding for the UNFPA and for clinics that offer contraception and prenatal care has become a political football, with groups opposed to abortion insisting on cuts to UNFPA funding, even though the organization “does not support or promote abortion as a method of family planning.” 

Numbers can’t convey the story, but sit with these statistics a day or two:    

• About 16 million adolescent girls give birth every year – most in low- and middle-income countries.
• Worldwide, one in five girls has given birth by the age of 18. In the poorest regions of the world, this figure rises to over one in three girls.
• In low- and middle-income countries, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are a leading cause of death among girls under twenty: more than 70,000 each year.
• An estimated three million girls under twenty undergo unsafe abortions every year.
• Globally, only 50% of women received the minimum recommended prenatal care – just four visits with a skilled caregiver. 20% receive no care at all.
• One third of all women have no skilled help during labor and delivery.
• More than 2 million young women live with debilitating, untreated obstetric fistula -   caused by teen pregnancy and inadequate obstetric care.

Numbers, I know, but each number represents a little constellation of suffering, a story of powerlessness, fear, physical and mental pain. 

I’ve read much of what groups like Concerned Women of America have to say against the UNFPA, and I’ve spent time reading the Fund’s materials on abortion, family planning, training of midwives, International Guidelines on Sexuality Education.

As I read, I find myself thinking about the Pharisees, and their outrage over perceived violations of the law. 

And I think of Jesus, and his compassion for the suffering women of Mark 5. 

Maybe it’s time to get past the arguments about gender equality and family planning, and focus on girls, and the women they’ll become: women trapped in a cycle of powerlessness and poverty, or women who know they have value, who dare to learn, and dream. 

As I said, I’ll be watching Girl Rising on Wednesday. Join me if you’re in the area.

And be thinking about how to join Jesus in saying  “Daughter, be free from your suffering.” 

Little girl, rise up.

What Do Teenage Girls Need?

Recent conversations with friends about experiences in our teens and early adulthood reminded me of an article I wrote for Youthworker exactly a decade ago. It's appeared online in several places, (in 2007 and 2009) but it occurred to me that it would fit well with recent posts about girls and women, so I'm re-posting it here. And I find myself wondering - since I'm no longer a youth director - how can parents, grandparents, other adults find ways to give girls the things I describe? 

What do teenage girls need? Ask ten girls and you’ll get ten different answers. But a ninth grade girl recently said something that set me thinking. She was emoting about how frustrated she was that so many of her friends had stopped playing our youth group’s active games. “They just sit on the side. They feel like everyone’s watching them. They feel like the boys don’t want them to play, and they feel like they’re in the way.”

So what do they need? “They need for the female leaders to get in the game and encourage them to come play.”

Life is more complicated than that. So is youth ministry. But it’s a good place to start. Teenage girls need permission—permission to play, permission to speak, permission to set their own boundaries, feel their own feelings, stumble along the way. And if their youth leaders don’t give them that permission, too often, no one will.

Permission to Play

I was talking to some girls one evening at youth group when I noticed a group of guys starting a casual game of hackey sack. It started with two of our young male leaders kicking the sack back and forth, and soon there was a circle of boys eagerly joining the game. I noticed, too, that there were several girls watching, not
talking, just watching, as if they wanted to play. I finished my conversation and walked over to the circle. “Can I play?” The guys hurried to make room for me, while I looked over my shoulder to the girls who had been watching. “Hey, Amber. Heather. Come and play too.” “We’re not any good at it.” “Neither am I. Play anyway.”

In our active games too often girls are the spectators. Or cheerleaders. Or they play the Vanna White role—props, accessories. How can we structure the games so everyone takes part? How can we equalize abilities? Sometimes we play two games: one labeled “competitive,” one labeled “relaxed,” so there’s a place for girls who feel they can’t keep up with the bigger, stronger guys. Or we play games like Human Foosball, where everyone is anchored to a specific spot on the floor, so the bigger, faster players can’t swoop in and take the ball from those who aren’t as competitive. We encourage our guy leaders to make sure they’re passing to everyone, to set an example for the boys watching them. But most of all, we try to have a female leader in every active game, so there’s someone giving permission to play and inviting the girls to take part.

Permission to Speak

Girls also need permission to talk, which sounds a little strange considering how capable most girls are of talking. But in a group, especially a mixed group, watch the dynamic. Girls often lose confidence mid-sentence, as if they’ve suddenly forgotten what they were going to say. They start off on a point, pause, and say, “Never mind.”

Too much of this has to do with how often girls are interrupted. Repeated studies done in schools, universities, businesses, and other group settings show that females are interrupted far more often than males. It would be nice to think that male youth leaders are more sensitive to this than the average American male, but I’m not sure that’s the case. In groups with other professional youth leaders, I’ve found myself (often the only female) cut off repeatedly. It’s not hard to start thinking that I’m being interrupted because I’m female. And it’s not hard to start thinking no one wants to hear what I have to say. If I’m feeling that, how much more are the girls in our youth groups feeling the same?

When interrupted, I’ve wondered why no one jumps in to say “Hey, I want to hear the rest of what Carol had to say.” That’s a skill we try to teach our leaders. And we encourage our students to do the same: if someone’s interrupted, wait until the interrupter takes a breath, then say “Interesting point. But first I’d like to hear the rest of what Sarah was saying. It sounded really worth hearing.”

It’s easy as leaders to steam-roll along, making our own points, keeping the discussion going, without paying too much attention to the group dynamic. But it’s worth the effort to watch who says what, to give girls permission to speak, and to affirm their right to be heard, whether they’re wresting with interruptions or with their own flagging confidence. When they trail off, uninterrupted, we can still push for them to finish the thought: “What you said so far sounded really helpful. Can you say a little more about that?”

Permission to Feel

It’s easy to think “well, if girls feel left out of games, or cut off in conversation, that’s just their imagination.” Is it? Too often girls are told that what they feel is their imagination, or they’re just too sensitive. “You shouldn’t feel that way.” “There’s no reason to get upset.” The heart cry of many girls is that someone, anyone, believe they’re feeling what they’re feeling. If peers have a huge influence in the lives of teenage girls, this may be the biggest reason: at least they understand the power of each other’s emotions.

It may be that teenage girls feel more strongly than any other group alive. Hormones, huge physical changes, fear of the future, exquisitely fine-tuned social awareness, anxiety about crushing expectations, epidemic lack of sleep—all contribute to make many girls emotionally volatile and easily upset. Yet to dismiss their emotions is in many ways to dismiss them. To say “oh, that’s just your hormones” is to minimize them and the things that most concern them.

As I listen to girls, one of the saddest things I hear them say is, “my parents don’t believe how stressed/anxious/afraid/unhappy I am.” Girls whose parents say, “my daughter never tells me anything,” tell me, in tears, of attempts to share their hurts with their parents. Those parents would be amazed at the depth of anger their daughters feel when they’re told, “You don’t really feel that,” or “You’re just saying that as an excuse,” or, “Is it that time of month?”

What happens to those feelings girls are told they don’t or shouldn’t have? They go underground—to resurface in eating disorders, self-injury, deep depression, or the kind of rage that acts out in substance abuse and promiscuous sexuality. How much better to acknowledge the depths of girls’ feelings, to give room for them to be expressed, to look for appropriate ways to relieve them, and to beg parents to do the same.

Permission to Set Boundaries

Parents also need encouragement in affirming their daughters’ rights to set boundaries. Too often girls are taught to be “nice,” which means putting the needs of others above their own. Assertiveness is valued in boys, but questioned in girls, which gives both guys and girls a skewed vision of what it means to be “Christian” and leaves them at greater risk of inappropriate sexual activity.

A parent recently came to see me after a school dance. Her ninth grade daughter went with a “Christian boy,” and the boy made physical advances the daughter wasn’t interested in. The girl told him to stop, told him he was making her uncomfortable, then went to find her mom, who was checking coats. She explained what was happening and asked to be taken home, but her mother told her she couldn’t, that she would hurt the boy’s feelings, that she should be nice about it and handle it the best she could.

The mother was wondering if she’d done the right thing. No. She hadn’t. Her daughter was struggling to establish boundaries, and she was undermined by the person who should most affirm her. Fortunately, that mother apologized to her daughter and agreed to be available in the future any time her daughter needed a ride home in a similar circumstance.

But what are we doing to tell girls that they can say no, that they have the right to set boundaries, that when they don’t want to do something they can choose not to? Not just in the realm of sexuality, but in everything. What are we doing to say that being “Christian” isn’t the same thing as being “nice”? And how are we encouraging guys to set their own boundaries?

Permission to Stumble

From where I stand, it looks like there’s still a tragic double standard at work. Boys will be boys, but girls who mess up find themselves quickly labeled and easily dismissed. The church should be the place where this is least so, yet from what I see of youth groups, there is plenty of space for boys who “wander,” but little tolerance for girls who do the same. The girls themselves are perhaps the reason for this: they inhale an impossibly high standard, struggle under the anxiety that they won’t be able to meet it, then turn with scorn on girls who fail.

Adolescence is hard. The competitive, hurried pace of American life is hard. The Christian life is hard. Purity is hard. Dealing with stress without falling prey to alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs is hard. And when girls decide it’s all too hard, too often they’re judged harshly by those who should be most sympathetic.

As we introduce girls to Jesus, we should make sure they see the side of Jesus that the women of his day loved so deeply: his ability to see beyond the failures, the sin, and the brokenness. Jesus reached out to the woman at the well, to the woman caught in adultery, to the woman with an issue of blood, to women who were cut off, ostracized, untouchable. We need to help our girls see his deep love and forgiveness, and we need to model that same love and forgiveness.

The more I see the deep needs of adolescent girls, and the more I learn of Jesus, the more convinced I am that he is the model of ministry our girls most need. He included women in a way that the men around him found alarming. He listened to their deep needs, even when they were afraid to put those needs into words. He wasn’t disturbed by their deepest emotions, even when others found those emotions frivolous or shameful. He encouraged women to rethink their roles, to put obedience to him over being good hostesses or “nice” people. And he reached out to women no one else would touch. He gave women permission to be whole, complex, valued people. If only we can do the same.

Sweet Taste of Freedom

I spent last weekend in a place that changed my life.

I first arrived there on a hot Sunday evening in June, 1975, suitcase and bed roll in hand. I was a thin, painfully shy, quietly angry nineteen-year-old, between sophomore and junior years of college.

I was feeling stuck in more ways than I could count: constrained by family circumstance, constricted by fragile finances, unsure about major, direction, or why I’d signed on to spend my summer in a muggy, unfamiliar place in a muggy, unfamiliar state.

I’d promised I’d never go back to the little Christian camp I’d been part of for the last dozen summers. I’d seen God’s grace and provision there, and I loved the expansive view of Catskill mountains, bright New York sky, rolling cow pastures. But I’d also seen more than I needed of a social construct that said “no” to me at every turn, while guys I’d grown up with were handed privilege and opportunity they hadn't earned, sometimes didn't even want.  

I was tired of being treated as "less than".

Title IX had passed three years earlier, and that June regulations on enforcement were about to be released, but in my little world it was still the case that the least capable, least committed man would be given deference before the most capable, most committed woman.

My plan, that long-ago summer, had been to find an exotic job in an exotic place, and never set foot in a Christian camp again. I needed an adventure, an opportunity to grow. I needed someone to trust me, and I needed a way to shake free of the simple-minded script my culture had drafted for the female follower of Christ.

But the internet had not yet been invented, and exotic jobs were hard to come by. I applied for everything I could find and by the start of May had only one option left: go home to share my grandmother’s mobile home and hope for a job in the local Rite Aid.

I had been invited to apply for a job at Sandy Cove, had ignored the invitation. Another Christian camp? No thank you. 

But just days before the end of the spring semester, I sought out the director to see if there were any openings left.

Canoe instructor.

And two or three weeks of out-of-camp canoe trips.

Maybe some backpacking? And could I help lead an experimental three day horse trip?

Looking back, I marvel. Who would I be if that avenue forward hadn't opened?

I don’t have room to tell all I saw, learned, and still treasure from that summer and the next. The exhilaration of heading out into open water with ten girls, six canoes, and one fellow leader.

The excitement of ten days on the Appalachian Trail with two women I admired and a dozen counselors-in-training. 

The amazement when confronting challenges along the way: they trust me to do this? Me?

The growing sense of freedom in a setting where girls and young women were allowed, even encouraged, to be funny, loud, competitive, in charge.

My months at Sandy Cove were among the most formative of my life, and certainly the most freeing. 

Two years ago I was invited to the first ever “Camp Sandy Cove Girls Camp 70s Staff Reunion.” I said no – for many reasons: I only worked there two summers. It was over three decades ago. I hadn’t stayed in touch. I don’t do reunions. Ever.

But God has been teaching me much about what it means to have my life woven into the lives of others, and when invited to the second annual reunion, last year, I overcame misgivings and went.

And went back again, this year, for the third annual reunion – now more “retreat” than reunion.

Even now, when we gather, there’s an unexpected sense of freedom: freedom to laugh, sing old camp songs at odd times, jump in and lead, or sit back and watch. During a rowdy, creative team game, the group competed without apology, challenged the leader, stretched the rules, improvised freely.

Not all who gather know each other, since some were there during different summers, or worked in different parts of camp, but with new friends and old, the protocol of superficial conversation is easily suspended. Conversations move quickly to issues of substance: What has God been teaching you? What’s been hard? How are you growing?

One of the group challenged us all, last January, to work toward a 5k run, a way to invite us to examine our stewardship of physical health. When do fifty and sixty-something women talk honestly about weight, exercise, ways we use food to deaden frustration, stuff down our sadness, hide from our failures? Yet there we were, chugging up and down hill, some walking, some jogging, a few dancing circles around the rest, while conversations bloomed, about disordered patterns of eating, about places we’re stuck in our efforts to get fit, about ways those who are strong in this can help and encourage those who are weak.

And we’re all weak, aren't we? Women I was in awe of, years ago, are quick to share their places of struggle. Conversations turn freely to areas of need, acknowledged failure, places of doubt, discouragement, uncertainty.

And we’re all strong, aren't we? In a setting where there are no pre-assigned roles, gifts bubble up to serve the group, and everyone has something to offer.

This morning, looking around the circle gathered for a simple chapel service, I found myself giving thanks for the witness of so many strong, joyful, fiercely faithful women.

The funniest women I know were in that circle.

Some of the most adventurous.

Some of the most fit.

Some of the most generous.

Certainly the most encouraging.

How many lives have been touched by gifts brought to light during those fruitful years of girls-only ministry?

How many lives are touched even now by women in that circle: teachers, coaches, pastors, camp directors, lawyers, writers, nurses, mothers, grandmothers, faithful friends.

And then there's the larger circle, the women who weren't with us, readying their own camps for the first week of the season, training indigenous missionaries and pastors on distant continents, serving and caring in ways too many to mention.  

But here’s the question that traveled home with me:

How many other women, other gifts, have been smothered, stifled, shoved aside, in a Christian culture that even now measures women as “less than”?

What enriching perspectives have been thoughtlessly dismissed?

How much creativity and joy has the church, and surrounding world, lost?

Savoring the freedom of a lovely weekend, remembering the freedom of those summers in the seventies, I find myself wondering how to carry that freedom with me, and how to offer it to others, not just women, but men, children, teens, adults, those who follow Christ and those who see the Christian faith as a narrow box to be avoided at all costs.

In a paternalistic, legalistic, highly-authoritarian world, Jesus said "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

I catch glimpses of that freedom, and I want more of it. Not just for myself, but for all of us: freedom to be the people we were made to be, to use the gifts we were given to use, to shred the predetermined scripts and enter the adventure God has in store for those who follow him.