I often name what I do as conscious feminine leadership in ecclesial settings (un)consciously hostile to the feminine. I’m even learning to say it aloud in the settings hostile in this way. My own seminary, for instance, or church populations that never quite know what to do with me as a preacher’s wife in a very present/absent relationship with my husband’s congregation. Surprisingly, no one has ever really asked me what I mean.
No one has wondered with me about possible judgmentalism, for instance, one of today’s venial sins. How this assessment of the behaviors of “others” as unconscious demeans what could be a critically reflective but simply "differing perspective." Except how does one sustain a perspective that disempowers and silences half of the human race? Perhaps I am being judgmental, but I figure calling it (un)conscious is as hospitably gracious as I could be. There is grace in being unconscious of something you’ve simply not felt for yourself before. That happens to all of us, all of the time.
No, I think no one has wondered with me about this because becoming more conscious isn’t a value shared by many in our civic scenes. Folks might hear the words I say, in other words, but they are not listening, nor do we/they value listening toward complexity. For now, this suits both external and internal purposes in my environment. I get to speak truthfully of my experiences without much confrontation; “others” get to carry on with what the community seems to find most comfortable.
Why confront when people refuse readiness, even lashing out at you for mirroring things they don’t want to see/know? I have consciously chosen my own compromise-behaviors, after all. In my own sacred work of inviting the archetype of Circle where’er it be welcome, I’ve learned again and again that social systems will not alter behaviors in any collective fashion. For whatever reason, this work is to be done one heart at a time, one consciously-awakening person at a time. Awakening to the possibility that how we gather could change, how authority functions in our world could soften, how communities could be reorganized to assist in healing more than in initiating-isolating leaders in transactional professionalism and inherited traumas, refused by fear-mongering models redressing decline, etc.
My own adaptations within collective religious settings (rather ingenious, if I do say so myself) allow co-existence with my own embodied integrity. Using “Godde” (which is pronounced the same as “God,” spelled as a “middle way” with Goddess). Remaining silent when the congregation prays its liturgies, confessions, so to honor for mySelf the feminine silenced in word and action.
Yet I wrestle with uselessness, sometimes hopelessness, that anyone will come to care about the wounded feminine in each of us. Resistance is common. Curiosity is rare. Refusal can enrage me if I am surprised by it.
Wryly smiling, I’m at least less and less surprised by the ecclesial refusals all around me.