Shawna Atteberry

The Baker Who Also Writes and Teaches

Fluttering ideas

Ideas are fluttering around in my head, but none of them are forming into anything close to a coherent article. I am still thinking on how to connect women being created in the image of God when both our society and church environment discount, belittle, and ridicule much of our bodies. I have been reading, writing, and thinking theology for over ten years, and I don’t know where to start. It doesn’t help that I haven’t figured out what to do with my own body. I’m gaining weight. I’m not happy. I have always had a love/hate relationship with my body. I have learned how to love more than hate, but it has taken a long time. And I still have long ways to go. I know this needs to be done, and it will probably be turned into a book. I just need to give the idea time for form and become something substantive. Of course, I’ll keep reading and researching. I’m always reading and researching.

I’ve also had two short story ideas flittering around. Neither of them have gelled enough to begin on either, as well as several ideas on clinical depression. I suffer from clinical depression, so I would like to help and inform other people who live with it. Many, many ideas, but nothing is taking real shape so far. So I will keep reading and researching.

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Writing Excercise

We were given an object and told tell why this was the most important thing in the world to us. I was given the 1 birthday candle.

“My Last Birthday”

I kept it in a box in a very safe place. Everyone would laugh if they knew, but I didn’t care. It was from my last birthday. Not the last one I had–it was just my last birthday. It was the last cake my mom baked for me. From the last time she gave me a present. It was all I had left from that day, and it was silly, but I didn’t care. Mom had bought it, and Mom had put it on my cake. It was a candle–the one, and it was all I had left of my 14th birthday–a week later Mom died. That was my last birthday.

I would really like to develop this into a short story.

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"A Walk in the Park" Ficlet

Whoever thought up the cliche “a walk in the park”? What kind of park were they talking about? Had to be different than the parks here. I was hiding behind a tree on the edge of the park. The sun had just gone down behind the trees on the other side in furious shades of red and orange. I really had tried to make it here and through the park before the sun went down. It was trecherous during the day. But now…I swallowed. I needed to use what little light I had and not waste it. Twilight would not last long.

I stayed off the path keeping to the trees. Watching my steps, I kept my breathing low and moved quitely, staying low behind the shrub and bushes between the trees. My ears were alert to any sound. The shadows lengthened as the twilight gave way to night.

I was more than halfway through the park when I heard the chuckles. I took off at a dead run for the trees that marked the western boundary of the park. I ran as hard as I could. I heard running behind me, and the chuckling turned into manical laughter. I told myself not to look and to keep running.

Their footsteps were getting closer. My legs ached and my lungs were burning. I kept running and kept my eyes on the treeline in front of me. The pouding came closer and closer. I was almost there. I ran between two big trees and didn’t stop until I was right under the light at the end of the street. Once there I turned and looked back. There was no one behind me. I stood under the light for a few minutes and caught my breath. When my breathing was back to normal, I finished the walk home.

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Enough of the critical voice

I journaled this yesterday:

Articles are seeming like a waste of time with how much time it takes just to research to pitch let alone actually write the article. I’ve been trying to put together a query letter–just a query for the last week! I probably should just go ahead and write the article just for all the time I’ve spent on the idea. I wonder how much I would’ve gotten done on the novel in that amount of time? I don’t know. Right now I feel like I’m wasting my time.

What I read today:

If I were ten pounds thinner, I’d be tempted to put my suit on and join them. But not today. Someday soon.

I stopped mid-sentence. A light went on inside of me, revealing a dimension I’d never noticed before. I’d never noticed it because it’s always been with me, a part of me, like a heart or a kidney. It’s grown as I’ve grown.

Inner chatter. Negative inner chatter. A spoiler’s voice. Sentences that begin with, “When I _____” and end with then I will ________.” And “If I ________, then ________will happen.”

I mentally turned around in my brain only to see an invisible line stemming from that thought to a million others like it. What I couldn’t do. Why I shouldn’t do it. What wasn’t up to par. What wouldn’t ever be good enough or strong enough. So many random thoughts, and very few were life-giving or accurate. All of them caused me to live “edited.” Not to try. Not enjoy. Not to move with confidence. . . .

This had been life of late: the real forfeited for the imagined, the actual for the anticipated. I was sure that on some level this was all an insult to God. He gave me the “present moment.” I eschewed it in favor of something else, somewhere else. He gave me my body, anomalies and all, and I had somehow come to the conclusion that it wasn’t good enough. . . .

God created us all in His image. He created us individually to be a part of both a central and an individual purpose. When we feel uncomfortable in our own skin, it’s as if we are saying that God made a mistake. We are not right somehow. The end result is that we are then judging God–His handwork–and then we are God and He is not (Margaret Becker, Coming Up for Air, pp. 39-40).

What I journaled after the reading:

I relate to this. Actually I live this. The “When…then” and “If…then” commentary has been with me my whole life. Like Maggie I have no idea how many times I have let myself be robbed of something because of this thinking. This is happening right now in my writing. If I do a little more research….When I have two more experts…then I’ll send in the query. I just need to send in the query. I’ve done the research; I have experts; I know the topic–I just need to send in the query and put myself out there. I need to stop putting my writing life on hold. I have the talent; I have the skills; I have the knowledge–I just need to do it.

I knew this was going to be a lot of work and take time, but this is not the first time I’ve done something that takes a lot of time and is a lot work: college, seminary, ordination, working my way up from editorial assistant to associate editor.

I have always wanted to write articles as well as books. I’m just scared now, and I’m letting fear dictate what I do. With books I can put off possible rejection for another year. As soon as I send this query letter, possible rejection can happen in a few weeks. I know there will be rejection. In fact, I have one more magazine that I can pitch this same subject to with a couple of variations. It is time to stop being afraid and what I want to do. It is time to do what I am called to do. I have always been a writer from the time I was writing short stories on Mars in the third grade. It’s time to trust God, trust the gifts he’s given me, do my best work, send out queries, and see what happens. The query letter to Discipleship Journal will be sent today, and I will let you know when I send it.

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A little fiction

This is a short-short that I wrote a few months ago.

“The Places Between the Spaces”

She walked through the door of the bar. It was your typical Irish pub–all wood with brass rail. It probably looked like every other Irish pub in town, except this one was two blocks from her apartment. A nice stroll. She pushed her way to the bar ordered an Irish Cream and milk then sat down at the table between the bar and the front window. It was the only table in the place–there wasn’t a whole lot of space. But the little round table with its two chairs fit perfectly in the corner. What was she thinking coming here on St. Patrick’s Day? Not that it mattered: every bar in the area would be crowded tonight. She mindlessly watched people walk by as she looked at her drink. She wondered which ingredient they put the green food dye in: the milk or the Irish Cream? She took a sip of the green drink, leaned back in her chair and continued to watch the people walk by. Every now and then a cold gust of air tickled her legs. She must be sitting by a vent, although she couldn’t figure out why the air would be cold. It was March–not cold, but still chilly. One would think the air would still be heated.

It had been a long day at work. Even with the huge, very loud crowd yelling over the very loud band, it was good to be here. The last thing she wanted to do was sit in her apartment alone. Who knew? May be she’d get hit on. Stranger things have happened after all.

The cold air hit her legs again, but this time it kept blowing. The gust had become a breeze, and it was coming from the side of the bar. Why the hell would anyone put a vent there? Someone had left part of today’s paper in the other chair. She grabbed it and dropped to her knees. May be she could block part of the air flow. As she groped along the bar, her hand suddenly slipped through a hole. A really big hole. What in the world? It was pitch black–why couldn’t she see inside the bar area? The partition wasn’t that thick. She should see the legs and feet of the bartenders who were trying to keep up with all the orders, but there was nothing but darkness. The cold breeze was blowing her hair off of her face. She started to crawl forward.

She didn’t know where she was, but she knew it wasn’t the bar. She remembered her grandmother telling her about the “spaces between places”: spaces where ghosts, spirits, sprites, and all sorts of “the otherwordly kind” lived. The blackness ahead of her was turning into a shimmering green. As she entered the green light, she saw a beautiful redheaded woman lying on the floor of the bar, her throat slit, a large pool of her own blood under her. It was the bar, but now it was empty, dark and cold. She and the dead woman were the only two here. She swallowed and began to back out. The green went back to darkness then her feet hit her chair. She slowly stood up and sat down. She polished off the rest of her drink in one gulp. She wasn’t planning on getting drunk when she came here. But then she wasn’t planning on finding out a woman had been murdered here by finding a space between the places either. She stood and caught the attention of one of the bartenders, “An Irish whiskey, please.”

I am interested to see what this little short will turn into once it’s had time to develop.

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Someone didn't do all her research

Hugo Schwyzer made me aware of Charlotte Allen’s “Liberal Christianity is paying for its sin” in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. She makes this claim: “It doesn’t help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches.” Mainline churches are far from being “pioneers” in ordaining women. She goes on to imply that ordaining women is one of the sins of liberal Christianity. She also makes a wide sweep of suggesting that only denominations who ordain women are also the ones who ordain homosexuals and are pushing for same-sex unions. I wrote this letter to the editor:

As an ordained female minister with the Church of the Nazarene, I wonder if Charlotte Allen did any research on women and ordination before she wrote “Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins.” The Church of the Nazarene has ordained women since its beginning in 1903. In fact, the American Holiness movement that we come from ordained its first woman 1856. The Salvation Army has ordained women since its beginning in 1865. In fact, Catherine Booth would not marry William until “he saw the light” that women could be preachers and pastors. She wrote Women’s Ministry or Women’s Right to Preach the Gospel. William and Catherine’s daughter, Evangeline, who was an ordained minister, went on to be General of the Army as well. All of these denominations today are conservative theologically. They do not believe in same-sex unions or homosexual ordination, and they are growing worldwide. Ms. Allen made some good points in her article, but she cannot claim that women’s ordination is a factor in men leaving the church, nor lower church attendance. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary on that. She can neither claim that because a denomination believes in women’s ordination that those same denominations also believe in gay marriage and ordination. The Church of the Nazarene, The Wesleyan Church, The Free Methodist Church, The Church of God (Anderson), and The Salvation Army ordain women, but they do not support gay marriage or ordination. Ordaining women is not a sin: it is a biblical tradition that goes back to Miriam, the sister of Moses, who was a prophet during the Exodus, and there are denominations who have always recognized that God does call women to preach and pastor, and we have been ordaining women for 100 years or more.

Sincerely,
Rev. Shawna R. B. Atteberry
The Church of the Nazarene

You can go here to read Catherine Booth’s Female Ministry or A Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel.

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All Grown Up?

Total cereal has a new commercial. A daughter discovers her mother’s old hip huggers, and says to her mom, “You used to fit into these?” The rest of the commercial shows the mother eating Total cereal while the daughter parades through the kitchen in the mother’s old jeans. At the end of the commercial the mother says, “I want those back,” and in the final scene we see the mother in jeans she wore when she was a teenager. Because every woman should be the same size she was when she was 15. Right. Diana Blaine has dealt with this very topic in two of her recent blog entries. In A Sad State of Affairs she observes that our culture’s obsession with keeping women as girls has gone from removing hair from our armpits and legs to removing pubic hair in pornography. Women are expected to stay in a state of perpetual girlhood through being skinny and hairless. In another post, Emergency, There’s a criminal in my living room! she evaluates the latest Yoplait yogurt commercial where the actress is trying to frantically hide her body with a red raft. When we finally see her we discover her to be a thin woman who looks great in her “little, itty-bitty yellow polka dot bikini” thanks to Yoplait. As Diana notes, she’s so thin, you can see her ribs. It’s not only secular feminists who have noticed this. In her book Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction, Margaret Guenther notes that most female bodily experiences are taboo:

Considering how inseparable woman’s physical being is from her spirituality, it is striking how much of her bodily experience is taboo for open discussion. Menstruation remains a secret topic, with most public mention in negative terms: does woman’s cyclical nature make her unstable and unreliable? Menopause is seen as either comic or pathetic, an exception being Margaret Meade’s joyous prayer of thanksgiving for the energy and zest of post-menopausal women. Pregnancy and birth are usually relegated to the women’s magazines, despite Luke’s exemplary theological treatment of the subject. And rarely addressed, in spiritual terms, is women’s own deep dislike of their bodies, their dissatisfaction with certain features, and their pervasive sense that they need to lose weight–literally to diminish themselves. . . . Since women’s most powerful and formative experiences are often the hidden, secret ones, they may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and hence too homely for theological reflection (pp. 124-5).

Menstration, menopause, pregnancy are all taboo, even now. All of these bodily experiences mark us as women–grown-up, mature, independent–not girls nor teenagers. In my first post I wrote that I want to be comfortable with my body being a historical and theological record as the Korean women were. Again we see how our society tries to wipe clean the historical record of women’s bodies by insisting that fitting into the jeans one wore as a teenager is worthy goal to go after and attain. To be perfectly honest I have no desire to starve myself back into the size 5 jeans I wore over 20 years ago. I like being healthy and being at a healthy weight (not to mention my size 12 jeans are much more comfortable, thank you very much Total).

It disturbs me to see how our society encourages women to harm themselves to stay skinny, and that cosmetic surgery is becoming fairly normal. What disturbs me more is that the church is not dealing with this theologically (As Guenther noted this is too homely or insignificant for theological thought). This topic was brought up on on the CBE Scroll recently where it was also noted that our skewed view of women is now going worldwide with Asian women having breast enhancements and surgery to make their eyes larger. Neither the poster nor the commenters could think of the church or Christian culture actively engaging in helping women navigate our way through the unhealthy girlishness of our society.

As I have been typing this I have been trying to think of an answer or something to help, but right now I don’t have much. But this is definitely one of the areas I want to work in and write on. I know it needs to start with women being made in the image of God. What does that mean for women? How can that kind of theology help to correct the thin teenager model and exchange it for a theology of mature womanhood imaging God? Hopefully, there will be more to come.

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Reading is part of the job

“A writer must also read. Voraciously. The things others have done will serve as points of departure for his own work. He must read the classics and the daily newspaper, slick magazines and old yellowing pulps, handbills passed out by street partisans, the backs of cereal boxes” (William Ruehlmann in Stalking the Feature Story). So why do I always feel guilty when I’m reading? There is always this niggling voice in the back of my head that I’m a writer, and writing is what I should be doing. But as Ruehlmann stated I must also read.

This quote is in the book The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing in “The Mystery of Ideas.” Jack El-hai goes on to say that there is always more to the story than is being reported and has some questions to ask of a piece that has drawn your attention:

  • Who are the people most affected by this news? Who stands to gain and lose?
  • What person or group is at the center of these events?
  • How have the personal qualities of the people involved affected the outcome?
  • How and why did this happen? What might these events lead to?
  • Has this happened before?
  • What’s the problem here, what are some possible solutions, and who might be able to provide those solutions?
  • How does this news make you feel? Why?
  • Why should anyone care about this? Who would care about this?
  • Is this news part of a trend? (pp. 43-4).

El-hai goes to say that a writer’s job is to ask the questions that intrigue you the most and then go with them and see where they lead you. The writer’s own curiosity will give him or her ideas for new stories that may have only been touched on in the original story. Part of my job is reading, and doing what I’ve always done: read whatever I can get my hands on. Now I need to start asking questions and see where my reading takes my writing.

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The purpose of this blog

After six and a half years within Chrisitan publishing first as an assitant editor of devotional material then as an associate editor of adult Sunday School curriculum, I am now embarking on a new career: freelance writing. As I have been researching and studying possible markets to write for Sacred Journeys: A Woman’s Book of Daily Prayer has been helping me to clarify what I want to write. Here are some excerpts from what I prayed last week:

When I first went to meet my birth mother and listened to the stories of her hard life’s journey, I felt that something in my deepest being was broken open. It was like the experience of baptism: something was washed away and I felt truly free. Through this ill, seventy-two-year-old woman, my mother, I felt that I was encountering the power of the despised in my people’s history. “Hyun Kyung,” I said to myself, “you have studied theology for more than eleven years. For whom have you done your theology? Why did you want to do theology? You always thought you studied theology in order to empower the oppressed people in your country. But face it! Have you really paid attention to the culture and history of the poor in the development of your theology? Have you been willing to learn from them? With whom have you spent most of the time in order to formulate your theology–the poor or the intellectuals in academia? You have tried so hard, consciously and unconsciously, to prove yourself, your intelligence, to the dominant theological groups using the language of those very groups.”

For Asian women, theology is a language of hope, dreams, and poetry. It is firmly based on concrete, historical reality but points to the mystery and vision that calls. Asian women from the future and the depth of all that is. The power of this vision and mystery carries Asian women through the han and impasse. It enables them to keep moving, flowing with the rhythm of the universe even when the heartbeat of the universe seems to be destroyed by human greed and hatred. Theology as a language of hope, dreams and poetry is not a luxury for Asian women. It is an active healing power in the midst of despair. Theology as a vision quest is not an escapist, other worldly addiction of the oppressed. It is remembering the original wholeness of creation and activating the dangerous memory of the future.

Who are the theologians in emerging Asian women’s theology? If Asian women’s theology is people’s theology and popular theology, then every Asian woman who believes in and reflects upon the meaning of the goodness of creation, the radical egalitarian values of Jesus Christ, and the coming of God’s justice in her midst–and tries to live out that reality–is a theologian. Asian women have expressed their theology through their prayers, songs, dances, devotional rituals, drawings, and the way they live in the community. They are the theologians who are carving out oral theology and non-verbal theology from body languages. The majority of such women have not received formal theological training from traditional educational institutions.

[Korean women’s theology] starts with women’s storytelling. Women from various backgrounds gather and listen to one another’s stories of victimization and liberation. Educated middle-class women theologians are committed to inviting or visiting poor farmers, factory workers, slum-dwellers, dowry victims, and prostitutes and listening to their life stories. Storytelling has been women’s way of inheriting truth in many Asian countries because the written, literary world has belonged to privileged males. Until the turn of the century many Asian families did not teach girls how to read and write. Women sustained their truth, which was distorted by the definitions of the male literary world, by telling stories mouth to mouth. The power of storytelling lies in its embodied truth. Women talked about their concrete, historical life experience and not about abstract, metaphysical concepts. Women’s truth was generated by their epistemology from the broken body. Women’s bodies are the most sensitive receiver for historical reality. Their bodies record what has happened in their lives. Their bodies remember what it is like be a no-body and what it is like to be a some-body. . . .

When women hear other women’s stories, they cry, experience anger, and console one another. The boundaries between storyteller and listener become softened. Listeners feel the oppressed women’s pain deeply; their hearts are touched and transformed when other hearts reach out for healing on the personal and political level.

–Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology in Sacred Journeys, p. 280-2.

These were some of the reflection Questions that went along with the readings and my answers:

  • What does theology mean to you?Theology means knowing God and how he works in our world. It means talking to other people about God and how God works in all of our everyday lives. It’s correcting the misconceptions we have about God, and the misrepresentations of him as well. It’s letting people know that they are not alone, that God walks with them through everything.
  • What images, stories, dreams, experiences and visions help define your theology?Dancing, sunsets, hugs, community. It is many people coming together to more fully reflect the image of God.
  • How does theology help you to keep moving through the greed, hatred, and despair of the world?It gives me hope that things can change–that God hasn’t left us to our own devices. It gives me hope that since he has called me, that I can a be a part of that change, and part of bringing God’s kingdom on earth, no matter how small my contribution may be.
  • What does it mean to you to claim the title of theologian for yourself?It means that I am serious about talking about the places where God’s grace intersects with our world. It means that I take the incarnation seriously, and that I believe God is in our world and in us, reconciling creation to himself.
  • How do you express your theology?Most of my theology is expressed in my head, but I want that to change. Like the Korean woman, I want to embody and live my theology. I want to talk about “concrete, historical life experience and not about abstract, metaphysical concepts.” I want to be comfortable with this idea that “women’s bodies are the most sensitive receiver for historical reality. Their bodies record what has happened in their lives.” My body has recorded what has happened in my life, yet my culture tells me that the historical record of my body is not to be left there–it must be tightened and trimmed and tucked. I am to cover the historical record of my body. The lines that map out where I’ve been, and the mountains and valleys of my body are to be done away with in preference to the eternal child. Part of my theology needs to be reclaiming my own body–the way Christ is incarnated in my body, and let “the historical record of my body” speak for itself.

As I have been thinking about what I want to write and why, I keep coming back to theology, but not the abstract, metaphysical meanderings normally associated with the word. In fact, the scholary and academic journals I used to drool over in college and seminary don’t interest me. I don’t want to do theology for other academics. I want to do theology for the ordinary people. Theology combines two Greek words: theos–God and logos–word. Words concerning God–how we talk about God. How we talk about who God is and how he works in the world, and how we have a relationship with him. Words about God that help us live our day-to-day lives with jobs, spouses, kids, being single, aging, becoming grandparents, losing jobs, going to school, and trying to figure out when the hell the we’re going to get to the grocery store with everything else. How does God fit into all that? How does God come and have a relationship with us in this life. That’s what I want to write. That’s who I want to do theology for. That’s what theology really is. If it doesn’t connect to our everyday, ordinary lives, it is philosophy, not theology. That is what I want to write.

This is going to be a place for me to work through some of this rough stuff until it solidifies into actual article, essay, and book ideas. It will also be a place where I respond to what I am reading and studying, so there will be book reviews as well as reviews and thoughts on news, TV shows, and movies.

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