Category: Uncategorized

We’d like to thank our long time layout whisperer Mary Jane Shearer for all the work she’s done to put together Femailings throughout the years. We have greatly benefited from your creativity and attention to detail! We’d also like to thank Kathy Gingrich for her editing work on Femailings over the past few years. Thank you for stepping in and taking Femailings to new places. We are deeply grateful for the skills you both have shared! 

We live with a pandemic of patriarchy which elevates aggressive, egotistical masculinity, and scorns vulnerability and intuition, diagnosing them as “feminine” and weak. We grieve that these diseases are flourishing in the Church of the Brethren. We have identified a few areas that we are ready to help treat. And we see health and vitality that we are eager to celebrate.

Our summer/fall line-up of events are treatment and celebration. Read on and mark your calendar! View and download the newest Femailing. 

July 3: Annual Conference networking session at 5:30pm Eastern
July 15: Speaking Truth to Power panel (Susan Boyer, Tabitha Rudy, Kathryn LaPointe and Rebekah Flores): stories of barriers to leadership at 8pm Eastern
August 24: Leadership in the CoB Workshop
October 5: From Nomination to Election session
Also in this Femailings:Introducing Carla Gillespie, our newest steering committee member
Calling In the AC Leadership Team
This Femailing was edited by Anna Lisa Gross. And we thank her for offering her gifts.

We are looking forward to spending time with you virtually again this year! 

Recently, the members of the Steering Committee notified Church of the Brethren denominational and Annual Conference leaders of our strong objection to the use of the racist metaphor underpinning the published work of Dr. Tod Bolsinger. Our objections to the book rest on the elevation of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery Expedition as a model of Christian leadership. At the invitation of the Annual Conference Office and with initial endorsement of his book, Canoeing the Mountains, Dr. Bolsinger is scheduled to speak five times at Conference. 

We encourage you to read the letter  in its entirety, reflecting on how we, individually and collectively, confront bias against marginalized persons. Together, we can make change!

We received a response from the leadership of Annual Conference. Please read the following. 

What does the feminist movement mean today?

The scope has widened to include equality for all groups and a call for proactive diversity because we recognize that our human community needs full participation. Womaen’s Caucus continues to work for equality and diversity so that together we may move reality closer to Jesus’ vision for a new world.

Through education, Womaen’s Caucus

• will build understanding of the intersectional issues facing women (e.g., sexism, economic inequalities, violence, reproductive rights) and the conditions that influence them; and
• will help persons and organizations develop the needed skills to remedy the dynamics of power and injustice that contribute to gender inequality.

Through personal support, Womaen’s Caucus

• will provide safe spaces for women to speak the truth about their life experiences and offer resources of support;
• will bear witness to the strengths and courage of feminists within the church; and
• will work toward social transformation with like-minded groups inside and outside the Church of the Brethren.

Through advocacy, Womaen’s Caucus

• will seek broad-based participation in activities intended to achieve gender equality;
• will speak loudly within the Church of the Brethren, calling it into accountability around issues of gender inequality; and
• will act boldly to change practices that limit opportunities within the church for all persons to live and serve equally.

October 2020 Download

Our theme, “It’s the end of the world as we know it” invites us into a process of  reflection and action as we cope with mounting layers of acute grief and deferred loss,  then rise up as we seek to engage and celebrate community in new and meaningful  ways. 

Without a doubt, many would agree 2020 has been a challenging and stressful  year. Living with a pandemic in our midst has brought changes to familiar and ordinary  activities such as grocery shopping, educating our children, meeting friends in  restaurants, attending in person worship and visiting our friends and loved ones,  whether they be in hospitals, nursing homes or our neighborhood. It’s also been a  year of change within the Church of the Brethren. Annual Conference did not meet.  Many church camp were closed or had reduced programming. Several congregations  across the denomination have chosen to “break” with us and form a new corporation,  Covenant Brethren Church. District conferences are being held virtually. 

Through it all, Mary Scott-Boria invites us to pray for the heaviness of the past  four years and celebrate our kinship and inclusion in the beloved community as  together we work for racial equality, justice and the things that make for peace. Ruth Nalliah shares her dream for a more inclusive and authentic church. Laura Hammonds  shares affirmation of her faith through poetry and prose. Check out the QR code on  page six which links to her poem on the Womaen’s Caucus website.    

 Christy Waltersdorff’s Pentecost Sunday sermon reminds us of the importance  of breath, and helps us reflect on the trauma of George Floyd’s death and asks the  provocative question, “So when did the Church stop breathing?”  

The Womaen’s Caucus steering committee invites us to grieve our losses, and  then take action to create a new way of being the Beloved Community. Two newly  formed partnerships are providing tools and training to help us move forward:     Caucus Podcasts continues the conversation on Speaking Truth to Power  through our partnership with Messenger Radio; and Womaen’s Caucus and On Earth Peace are working together to challenge  sexism and racism in the Church of the Brethren. Matt Guynn and other facilitators will  lead a webinar on nonviolence, the social dynamics of nonviolence and briefly  introduce the 6 principles and 6 steps of Kingian Nonviolence. A link is provided to  register for the upcoming event on November 10th. Anna Lisa Gross reminds us  “birthing” involves “breathing” and “pushing” and it is our hope these two resources  aid us in creating positive change in the Church of the Brethren. 

The Steering Committee wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas  and a Blessed New Year. Stay healthy! Be well, and one last thing, VOTE!    

As Womaen’s Caucus and Supportive Communities Network work for justice and healing in the Church of the Brethren, we have invited On Earth Peace to facilitate an exploration of the power and possibility of Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation as a method for interpersonal and group conflict, and nonviolent social change organizing. During this session, we will explore the meaning of nonviolence (a rich conversation in our pacifist tradition!), consider the three social dynamics of nonviolence, and briefly introduce the 6 principles and 6 steps of Kingian Nonviolence. 

This will be facilitated by Matt Guynn, Dr. Mary Lou Finley and Dr Joan May Cordova. 

*gathering tools* to *shift the culture* to *build the church of the future, now*

Workshop Registration

Please register to join us! This workshop will take place Tuesday, November 10th at 4:30 PT/7:30 ET and is a 90 minute session. 

Please send us an email with your name and KNV Registration in the subject line – womaenscaucuscob@gmail.com

If you tried to register before 10/27 at 3pm, please email us, our form wasn’t working properly. 

Friendship

by Laura Hammonds

Spring

We drink more coffee than a dozen writers,
dance in the car, and
move towards the trilliums in bloom.

We touch the smooth, silvery bark of maples and birches:
a woods at once canopied with new-yellow-green leaves
and carpeted with short, white flowers.

We smell damp dirt in the humid hills of hardwoods,
navigate the drier outsides of sticky, chocolaty paths,
tread timidly in tennis-shoes, through wetter spots, where tires have been.

Summer

We rock on a shaded, cement back-porch, sip cans of cool, fizzy, fruity water,
watch a tiny piney-squirrel sway atop a neighbor’s birdfeeder,
listen to the brown birds in the oak complain, as he snarfs the small seeds: their supper.

We see the beach’s wet pebbles beneath our rain-boots, or,
under sun-burnt feet, nearer the water’s edges, far from your orange towels, and
walk warm, wet dunes with nothing in our pockets but heart-shaped rocks.

We search for darkness on gritty, grey, gravel roads,
the meteors shower from the Milky Way in sparks, far from your black truck and the high corn,
the buzz and sizzle of the thick, electric wires above spook us back to the city.

Fall

We look over tall and dry grasses to the chilly blue Lake, which is building sandbars for no one,
hear the crunch of scattered leaves in the drifts of sand
that sit on the rickety boardwalks and blow past the boarded up bathrooms.

We write papers or poems in a grocery’s café, by wide windows, during a premature dusk,
buy thin potato chips and crème filled long-johns , or,
break over refrigerated California sushi rolls, chicken salad croissants, and red grapes.

I open your card, the one with penciled outlines of your heart-shaped rock collection,
a Longfellow poem inside about arrows and songs and friendship,
your gift: a bag of gifts: sixteen, or more, and all just for me, and all just for my birthday.

Winter

We wear wool scarves you knitted last spring,
walk past the white-roofed, red barn, in snow, ankle-deep,
my small boot-print in yours, through flakes and frozen pinecones.

We talk inside an atrium full of plants,
the scrape of chairs echoes in the space and cloudy light,
people in tight suits, sweaters, and sometimes heels, peer down from their glass elevators.

I sit to write you a December birthday poem:
something that will say:
I hope I bring a fraction of the joy to your life that you bring to mine.

Dedicated to Jaim, in celebration of his birthday (2018)

If you’d like to contact that poet:  miss.laura.hammonds@gmail.com 

July 2020 Download

In this issue you’ll find three articles in a section of call and response that delve into nuanced discussions of approaches to institutional history, “Just because we share history doesn’t mean we share an interpretation of history.” 

Debbie Eisenbise, a panelist from our virtual luncheon, writes “True inclusion and power sharing will not occur unless there is systemic reform” in her article “Defund Dysfunction.”

As you may be aware, Womaen’s Caucus wrote a letter to General Secretary David Steele, Moderator Paul Mundey, Moderator-elect David Sollenberger, Annual Conference Secretary Jim Beckwith, CODE Representative Cindy Sanders, Bethany Seminary President Jeff Carter, Brethren Benefit Trust President Nevin Dulabaum and Annual Conference Director Chris Douglas. We are still discerning how we are called to speak truth to power so watch for follow-up!

We are pleased to introduce you to our newest Steering Committee member, Carol Lindquist. 

We also gathered a list of books, websites and podcasts that open us up to ways scripture speaks truth to power. 

Ways you are invited to respond: 

We’re compelled to continue these conversations. Would you like to engage?

How do you rescind power or share power with others in a church context?

How are you called to speak truth to power? How has truth been spoken to you?

How does historical trauma impact your daily life? What does it mean to carry a silent history? 

The letter requests that denominational leaders ask themselves the same questions posed to the panel, sharing their personal responses with one another as a way of auditing their personal influence on the lives and faith of the persons they lead. In addition, the Caucus identified three ways that the work of the panel is influencing the work of the denomination.

Letter to Church of the Brethren Leaders

Virtual Luncheon 2020

Friday, July 3rd we hosted our panelists Gimbiya Kettering, Debbie Eisenbise and Madalyn Metzger. These three wise, fierce, faithful, patient and passionate church leaders, writers and speakers shared with us their personal stories of speaking truth to power. They also spoke the much needed truth to us. We need visionaries who are grounded both within the church and beyond the church,who call their church and world to Jesus’ radical love. The panel moved us to thought and action. 

We invite you to view the recorded session in the Living Stream archive. 

Womaen’s Caucus is grateful to the work of Living Stream CoB and Enten Eller for supporting allowing the use of their systems and tech. This event would not have been possible without them! 

Donate to Living Stream and help continue these fruitful online spaces.