There is a tattoo on the back of my right shoulder. Etched permanently into my skin, the already-fading ink reads "Don't let them tame you." I got it in late July 2015 at a time in my life when all felt completely wrong with the world. The year of voluntary service I had felt so profoundly called by God to do had ended poorly; sleeping on a friends house and lucking into an apartment had left me vulnerable and exposed on the precipice of homelessness; and for the first time in my then-nineteen years, I was without a church home. Mad at God, hurt by the church, and done with a personality of goodness from following the "right" church rules, I walked into a tattoo parlor, sticky with the day's construction, and booked an appointment for later that evening. The physical sensation of the needle felt refreshing amidst the emotional pain in which I resided. A week ago I was installed as a pastor in a Mennonite congregation. Accompanying it has come stability, belonging, and profound responsibility. Who I am as a young pastor has the power to shape the way people view themselves as Christians. This is heavy. While I am in the midst of figuring out who I am as a pastor, I am also still sorting through who I am as a person intent on honoring the baptismal commitment I made to God and remaining authentic to the spirited and fiery young woman who bowed to the wildness which chose her. Exacerbating these deliberate questions of faith, too, is the conviction that my "philosophy of life"--whatever that may be--remains a philosophy, That is, it is lived. Over the past two and a half years, as I have learned a theology that pulls my radical love of the world into the root of all radical love for the world--God--I have also dipped my toe into tangible ways in which to live out this radical love. Beginning with the Christmas story in Revelation 12, I have found within scripture a stark response to the Empire Beast Systems of our world. This response-coached by joy-wrestles with injustice, occasionally bows to sorrow, and comes back swinging with hope. Remembering the landscape of Galilee, it looks around, eyes resting on the local, to square its shoulders, entering God's restorative work one breath at a time. Questions I have asked along the way of entering this work have been as follows: What gifts do I have to offer to the world? What gives me energy and passion? What injustices are in need of these gifts? In asking, first, what gifts I have, I, perhaps, fall into the individualism trap of modernity. However, after years of Anselm's Theory of Atonement telling me I was created so sinful that God had to send His son to die for my sins, I have sufficiently flipped it off enough times to realize that I am a gift lovingly given to the world. (Take that theologies of shame *dab*). To give this giftedness back to the one from whom it came by offering it to Her Holy Presence which abides in those around me, is all I can ask to do with, as Mary Oliver so poignantly calls it, "[my] one wild and precious life." Additionally, in speaking of agency, I remain a tad astounded that I am a pastor. Certainly, it feels incredibly "right" yet the God of life has one wicked sense of humor. Yet as I began to ask these questions, and contemplate the answers as of now, I have realized they are entirely "unfeminist." So, nineteen-year-old self, I am rewriting the definition. In my coming to these answers, I have, conventionally, sought the rabid individualism of which third-wave feminism preaches. Yet I have also carried with me the stories of Biblical women, saints from the middle-ages, reformation era martyrs, and a few heretics along the way. These women--bold, brilliant, unapologetic in their radical love for the world (themselves included)--have inspired and allowed me to reclaim the sassy and fierce "Lizzie" within the "Elizabeth-consecrated to God." Working with a camper whose pain hovered over him like a cloud, I realized that my thick glasses are perfect for seeing the giftedness under deep-soul-pain and peering back into the education system which left me a marginalized elite at the expense of so much creativity (mostly of others). Waking up early to bake and incorporating food into every possible class project, has made me accept that I love to be in the kitchen, carrying culture and salvaging the economy of the home from capitalist tendrils. And as I look lovingly at the first block of what will one day be a quilt, I know that I am on my way to being damn good at loving people patiently, with great creativity, unending warmth, and the firm reminder that there are some lies of how to love that I can lay to rest. All of this--my growing love of youth and questioning of the ways in which we all learn, my unequivocal desire to partake in the radicalizing of the home economy, and my willingness to place that which is over to a power higher than I--rests within my ability to think and respond critically to the situations around me and collectively, is who I know myself to be right now as a gift to the world. And yes, they are the traits of a good Christian woman who wants to be a mother, homemaker, and caretaker. I have fought for twenty-two and a half years to avoid those labels. So why, that broken girl in the tattoo parlor is asking, are you using them now? I am called, always have been and always will be, to love radically the world. There have been years when this love has felt impossible. With each passing day, it is becoming home. I have no idea if I am going to be a parent in the "conventional sense." I do know, however, that in my life--as a woman, as a pastor--I will make room in my home and my heart (if not my body) to accept the gift of life that children are and, in doing so, accept the narrative of God's abundance. By seeking, perhaps through "career" and certainly through back-aching work, to make radical the economy of that which is local, environmentally sustainable, and closing of the circle between lives, I am choosing to live the narrative of God's abundance. And in caring for those around me--ministering it really is--I am begging agency and grace for those to whom I care. None of this--from teaching my youth about gift economies through a pumpkin I walked to my instructor's house to pick up, to (perhaps, one day) thinning carrots with a baby strapped to my back--feels tame. Indeed, the joy, acceptance, and intentionally which has both shaped and resulted from this figuring-out (which, will never become a "figured"), feels like a downright radical, grinning with my middle finger up, response to the Empire Beast Systems from which the Jesus-philosophy has worked so hard to save us. And, once I throw in a few more tats and maybe some home-brew, I might even be able to call it downright wild.
1 Comment
Sondra Kaufman Tolle
12/10/2018 09:56:01 am
Hi Lizzie! Thanks for letting me know how you are doing today my friend! Blessings and much love as you continue this adventure in life!!! Sondra
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Elizabeth SchragAdventurer. Biblical and Theological Studies major. Borderline Vegan. Rebel with a cause. Archives
March 2017
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