“I’m guessing you mean something other than the free breakfast we get at the Hampton Inn.”
This time I was rewarded with an airy peal of laughter, and soon we settled into a natural, friendly dinner, which Flora had prepared herself.
What I loved about Flora’s teaching style was how she wove into the conversation little anecdotes and tidbits from history. For example, once, at a state dinner, a guest of Eleanor Roosevelt mistook the finger bowl for a beverage, picked it up with his hands, and began to drink. Without blinking, Mrs. Roosevelt picked hers up and drank as well, a gesture Flora believed represented the essence of good manners.
“It’s not about doing everything right,” she explained. “It’s about basic human decency, putting other people ahead of yourself.”
After a second glass of champagne, I was having an easier time holding my knife and fork Continental-style without looking like a baby bird about to attempt flight. I’d also learned how to properly put a napkin in my lap (with the fold toward the table), write a thank-you note (within a week of receiving the gift), and accept a compliment (without dismissing it in feigned modesty). By the end of the night, I was sitting up straight, maintaining eye contact, and accepting compliments like a pro.
But had I achieved a gentle and quiet spirit?
The trucker who cut me off on the way home would probably have an opinion about that. He cost me five cents.
Deliver me from timidity of spirit and from storminess . . . From all heedlessness in my behavior, deliver me O Lord.
—FROM GERTRUDE’S
FOURTH SPIRITUAL EXERCISE
As October drew to a close and the Tennessee hills lit up with one last blush of color, it became clear to me that the Jar of Contention wasn’t really working.
Sure, I’d kicked some bad habits. I was complaining less, listening more, and getting pretty good at changing the subject whenever it turned to gossip. I’d even managed to go an entire day without putting a single penny in the jar. But my spirit remained restless.
Comments and e-mails about the project continued to pour in, and it soon became clear that the reaction-based culture of Facebook, Twitter, and twenty-four-hour news could easily turn someone like me into a one-stop freak show. Positive feedback sent my spirit soaring while negative comments made me defensive and angry. I hated that people I didn’t even know had such a powerful effect on me and that a single comment from “Anon1” or “MilwaukeeDad” could keep me up at night.
Contemplatives have long taught that mastering the volatile human spirit is the key to serenity. “It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles,” the Buddha taught. “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who captures a city,” says Proverbs 16:32 NASB. In our increasingly fragmented, chatter-filled world, the quest to live and think deeply requires concerted acts of self-control. Staying grounded means growing some serious roots.
So in a last-ditch effort to master my not-so-gentle spirit, I decided to explore something I’d been meaning to try for a while: contemplative prayer.
Now, as a rule, evangelicals shy away from mysticism and meditation, as these practices can feel a bit too passive and introspective for our activist-driven, free-for-all religious sensibilities. But I’d been cheating on the low church for about a year now—observing the church calendar, reading the Book of Common Prayer, and sneaking off to St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church to smudge ashes on my forehead—so trying out a little structured prayer suited me just fine. I’d done some research on Lectio Divina and centering prayer and decided to start there.
Lectio Divina, or “holy reading,” isn’t really about reading at all; it’s about listening. It’s about approaching the text as you would a sanctuary and inviting God to inhabit the words. Techniques vary, but one usually begins the Lectio Divina by slowly reading through a passage of Scripture, making note of any words or images that stir the soul. This is followed by a period of silent meditation. The same passage is read again, and the cycle can be repeated as many times as desired. Some liken this method to a meal, in which one feasts on the words of God, first by taking a bite (reading), then by chewing (meditation), then by savoring (prayer), and finally by digesting (contemplation). The idea is to pay attention, to isolate and enjoy each flavor of the text.
Similarly, centering prayer helps quiet the spirit so that it is calm and deep enough for truth to leave a wake. In centering prayer, one chooses a sacred word or phrase upon which to focus. This serves as a sort of starting point, an anchor to which to return should distractions upset mediation. The ultimate goal is to transcend all thoughts, feelings, images, and perceptions in order to simply rest in the Reality that is beyond words. The method has been practiced by Christians for centuries, particularly in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
I decided to practice contemplative prayer every morning for a week, using “peace” as my centering word and selections from the Psalms and Proverbs for Lectio Divina. I threw in some basic breathing exercises to help me concentrate and resolved to conclude each session with a meditation from St. Teresa of Avila, the legendary Spanish mystic and first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church:
Let nothing upset you,
Let nothing startle you.
All things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins all it seeks.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.
Teresa was said to experience such prolonged periods of ecstasy that she occasionally levitated during Mass. The challenge for me was to get through twenty minutes of prayer without falling asleep or giving up. When the whole family works from home, even the bedroom feels like an office. Just when I’d get started, the phone would ring, the dryer buzzer would sound, or Dan would knock gently on the door and say something about needing a five-pound bag of sugar for a video shoot. But on the few days that I managed to achieve coveted repose, something powerful, perhaps even mystical, happened.
I guess I’d always assumed that cultivating a gentle and quiet spirit would be counterintuitive for me, that meekness was a worthy goal for that other kind of woman—the kind who didn’t care about theology or politics or changing the world. But the images and words that flooded my mind during prayer each morning were far from docile or weak. Instead, meditation filled me with a sense of security, strength, and unyielding resolve.
As I prayed, it felt as though my feet were extending through the ground, growing into long, winding roots, while my torso stretched like a trunk, my arms and fingers extending like branches. With every prayer and every silence the image of a great tree returned to me again and again until I found myself sitting up straighter, breathing in deeper, and looking up.
I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe God was trying to tell me that gentleness begins with strength, quietness with security. A great tree is both moved and unmoved, for it changes with the seasons, but its roots keep it anchored in the ground. Mastering a gentle and quiet spirit didn’t mean changing my personality, just regaining control of it, growing strong enough to hold back and secure enough to soften.
What they forgot to tell us in Sunday school is that the “gentle and quiet spirit” Peter wrote about is not, in fact, an exclusively feminine virtue, but is elevated throughout the New Testament as a trait expected of all Christians. Jesus used the same word— praus, in Greek—to describe himself as “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). Gentleness is one of the nine fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:23), and Paul told the members of the Philippian church, “Let your gentleness be evident to all” (Philippians 4:5).
Far from connoting timidity or docility, gentleness is associated with integrity and self-control, particularly in the face of persecution. The readers of Peter’s epistle would have immediately recognized praus as the same word they used to describe a wild horse that had been tamed or a torrent of wind that had softened into a breeze.
“Blesse
d are the praus,” Jesus said, “for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.
—MATTHEW10:27
Overcast and sixty-three degrees. God couldn’t have been too concerned about the eighty-nine cents in my jar of contention to let me get away with that sort of weather when he could have arranged a blizzard.
By this point I’d been reminded about a million times that the Bible didn’t explicitly command contentious women to sit on their roofs, and that rooftops in the ancient Near East would have been flat and habitable anyway, but I was determined to engage in some kind of public display of contrition for my verbal misdeeds.
So after lunch on November 1, Dan pulled out the ladder and
the camera, and I spent an hour and twenty-nine minutes on the safest corner of our roof, reading over my list of transgressions, practicing a bit of centering prayer, and watching a small herd of cats mill about the neighborhood.
We live down a narrow street in a quiet part of town that was developed in the 1970s and includes a hodgepodge of little homes, ranging from split-levels to ranchers to Cape Cods. Only six cars passed during my lunch-hour vigil, and this included a mail truck from which a bored-looking employee of the United States Postal Service waved languidly back at me, unimpressed.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I’m a writer.”
Either she didn’t hear me or she sees things like this all the time.
It occurred to me in that moment that perhaps “gentleness” wasn’t the worst virtue with which to start my year of biblical womanhood after all. It forced me to confront some of my uglier tendencies and reminded me that the next eleven months would require the strength of a great tree. I found myself reacting less and listening more. I held back, chose my words more carefully, and protected people’s reputations by avoiding gossip. The change wasn’t dramatic, but I started handling others with just a little more gentleness, a little more care, keeping in mind that we all have fragile days from time to time.
The criticism would continue. Storms of nasty comments and pointed critiques would blow through. But my roots were growing deeper.
This was a project I believed in. I may have been too broken and narcissistic and petulant to take it on . . . but then, most creative people are.
READ MORE AT RACHELHELDEVANS.COM:
“Strange Ways to Lose a Body Part in the Bible”— http://rachelheldevans.com/body-part
“The Ducking Chair”— http://rachelheldevans.com/ ducking-chair
DEBORAH, THE WARRIOR
“Hear this, you kings! Listen, you rulers! I, even I, will sing to the Lord . . .”
—JUDGES 5:3 UPDATED NIV
The book of Judges is one of the most violent and disturbing of Scripture, replete with gory accounts of war, plunder, child sacrifice, dismemberment, disembowelment, and rape. Set in the aftermath of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan, the book recounts the tumultuous relationship between the Israelites and the Canaanites, as the two engaged in nearly constant skirmishes and raids against each other, but also in the exchange of culture as they intermarried and worshipped each other’s gods.
Frustrated by Israel’s lack of faithfulness, “the Lord raised up judges” to provide leadership for the kingless people (Judges 2:16).
One such leader was Deborah.
As both prophet and judge, Deborah exercised complete religious, political, judicial, and militaristic authority over the people of Israel. She was essentially Israel’s commander in chief, said to issue her rulings from beneath a palm in the hills of Ephraim.
With tensions with the Canaanites rising, Deborah summons a warrior named Barak and orders him to organize a resistance among the tribes of Israel against Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army.
Barak is doubtful.
“If you go with me, I will go; but if you don’t go with me, I won’t go,” he says (Judges 4:8).
“Certainly I will go with you,” Deborah responds with a hint of mockery. “But because of the course you are taking, the honor will not be yours, for the Lord will deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman” (V. 9 UPDATED NIV).
Sure enough, under Deborah’s leadership the Israeli army defeats the Canaanites, nine hundred chariots strong, and the disgraced Sisera flees to the tent of a woman named Jael, whose husband had a trade alliance with the Canaanites. Loyal to Israel, Jael waited until Sisera had fallen asleep in her home and then promptly exhibited her gentle and quiet spirit—by driving a tent peg through the guy’s skull.
Victory belonged to Israel, and it came at the hands of two women.
November: Domesticity
* * *
Martha, Martha
She watches over the affairs of her household.
—PROVERBS 31:27
TO DO THIS MONTH:
□ Cook through Martha Stewart’s Cooking School (Proverbs 31:15; Titus 2:5)
□ Clean through Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook (Titus 2:5)
□ Host a dinner party (1 Peter 4:9; Hebrews 13:2)
□ Host Thanksgiving dinner (1 Peter 4:9)
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but you can’t buy any sort of hard liquor in Rhea County, not even wine.
So when Martha Stewart’s braised short ribs called for an entire bottle of Côtes du Rhône, to be reduced about a million times into a “rich and unctuous sauce,” I was faced with the decision to either make the forty-five-minute drive to the nearest liquor store in Hamilton County or move on to the next recipe in Martha Stewart’s Cooking School—orange braised rabbit.
Rabbit? Now, where on earth was I going to get a rabbit?
Fortunately, Martha’s version of beef bourguignon, the French classic popularized in the States by the incomparable Julia Child, was Rhea County approved. Instead of burgundy, Martha’s “beef and stout stew” called for 16 ounces of Guinness, which you can easily pick up at the local Wal-Mart because local legislators don’t seem to mind if the county’s citizens get drunk on beer, so long as it’s not on Sunday.
The fact that Martha’s beef stew recipe appeared complicated yet doable was just one reason I chose her as my guide through a month of domesticity. The elevation of homemaking as a woman’s highest calling is such a critical centerpiece to the modern biblical womanhood movement, I figured no one less than the Domestic Diva herself would do. Besides, you have to admire a woman who can build an empire on crafts and apple pie, know enough about trading to commit securities fraud, go to jail for five months, and then come right back to cooking soufflés and decorating gourds on TV as if nothing had happened, casually mentioning that she learned this or that knitting pattern “at Alderson,” like federal prison was just another Bedford or Skylands.
Furthermore, I loved poring over the pages of Martha Stewart’s Cooking School and Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook because they read like textbooks.
“This book has been designed and written as a course of study,” Martha explains in the introduction to Cooking School, “very much like a college course in chemistry, which requires the student to master the basics before performing more advanced experiments.”1
She takes the same approach in Homekeeping: “Consider the ’Throughout the House’ section of the book as a master class on how to clean,” she wrote. “Here you will find simple, clear instructions for the basic techniques needed to clean any household object or surface. The five fundamentals—dusting, wiping up, sweeping, vacuuming, and mopping—that constitute the core of any weekly household schedule are covered in ‘Routine Cleaning,’ with detailed descriptions of the best tools and equipment for each task.”2
Martha didn’t assume I knew what I was doing, but she didn’t talk down to me either. A lot of women absorb their homemaking skills through osmosis, watching their mothers and grandmothers over the years, taking mental notes along the way. Not me. The perpetual student, I require a book and highlighter.
Martha’s array of charts and photographs, sidebars and endnotes felt familiar and calming to me. I could study detailed, step-by-step illustrations on how to bone a leg of lamb or polish silver, gaze at beautiful pictures of brightly colored soup garnishes and herbs set against pristine white backgrounds, and learn all about the science of bleach, the secret of poaching, and the history of bouillabaisse. Martha even includes “extra credit” sections at the end of each chapter for overachievers like me. All I’d have to do is whip up a little compound butter here and lemon curd there, and I’d be a regular Julie Powell in no time.
I just hoped my efforts would be domestic enough.
The importance of homemaking in the contemporary biblical womanhood movement cannot be overstated, and proponents tend to use strong, unequivocal language to argue that the only sphere in which a woman can truly bring glory to God is the home. This position is based primarily on an idealized elevation of the post–industrial revolution nuclear family rather than biblical culture, but proponents point to two passages of Scripture to make their case.
Proverbs 31:10–31, which, among other things, extols the domestic accomplishments of an upper-class Jewish wife, and Titus 2:4–5, in which the older women of Crete are encouraged by the apostle Paul to teach younger women to “love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, and to be busy at home” (emphasis added).3
Dorothy Patterson, in chapter 22 of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, concludes from these two passages that “keeping the home is God’s assignment to the wife—even down to changing the sheets, doing the laundry, and scrubbing the floors.” Ambitions that might lead a woman to work outside the home, says Patterson, constitute the kind of “evil desires” that lead directly to sin.4
A Year of Biblical Womanhood Page 4
