Day 666 Tuesday, January 11, 2022

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. Joy Is Not Made To Be A Crumb

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate.

Give in to it.

There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.

We are not wise, and not very often kind.

And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.

Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,

that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.

Anyway, that’s often the case.

Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.

~ Mary Oliver

Do you hesitate when you feel joy, like, amidst all the suffering in the world, you should resist?

I wore my JOY REBEL shirt this week and I found myself explaining to my students why I chose it, and what it means. Do you ever feel like a joy rebel?

It’s hard for me to remember that “joy is not made to be a crumb” when I see how many people struggle, and despite whatever I’m dealing with in the moment, I know for sure that there are many, many more who wish they could trade my problems for theirs.

And I look around at my students struggling to grow up, to hold onto the innocence of childhood and figure out how to be a kid as they are approaching adulthood at an earlier and earlier age. They feel anxiety, fear, confusion. Far too often joy is left out of their day.

Perhaps, as Mary Oliver suggests, MY way of fighting back is trying my best to share a bit of joy in the 50 minutes we spend together in class every day - to show them

I SEE them,

I HEAR them, and

I VALUE them.

It may not be much in the big scheme of things, but it makes me feel like a joy rebel for sure.

The real joy in life is definitely in what we give.

Announcements for Today January 11, 2022

Announcement #1:

From Victoria: Liturgy Committee Meeting Scheduled for

Tuesday, January 25th from 3:00 to 4:30

Join Zoom Meeting (Everyone Welcome!)

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/5193158573

Passcode: 1234

Meeting ID: 519 315 8573

(This notice will be republished in the days to come)

Please call or Email Victoria with questions:

Larry, Bill Boorman's partner is asking for someone interested in housing Bill’s cat at their home until Bill returns from the hospital. It would be greatly appreciated. Larry just can’t do it. If someone can do this, please contact Victoria and I will let Larry know, so he can arrange a way to get the cat to them.

Announcement #2:

TODAY! Future Church: "Women Erased" series.

Our next presentation is Tuesday, January 11, 2022 at 5pm Pacific Time. Our presenter is Dr. Beth Allison Barr who will speak on the notion that women and men are of equal dignity but hold different roles and authority in the church. She demonstrates how this notion subjugates women in the church.

Here is the zoom link to join:

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86562232209?pwd=eWMwNXgxUy9CV21zVGdrZ1VmQXkvUT09

Passcode: 655499

Meeting ID: 865 6223 2209

(Copy and paste the URL into a new page if you are having problems with the link)

Dr. Beth Allison Barr states that the reason we think women cannot be in authority is simply because we've taken five or six verses from the New Testament and we have used those verses and read the entire Bible through them, through that lens. And these are mostly the Pauline verses: women be silent, women submit to your husbands, etc. If we step away from those verses and actually put them in the context of what Paul was doing — and then put that in the context of the entire Bible — what we see is that while patriarchy exists in the Bible, that God is actually always fighting against patriarchy, that he's always raising women out of it. He's always giving women authority in surprising ways, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And that if we look at the historical context of what Paul is actually doing in the New Testament, there are serious problems with reading Paul as telling women that they have to be silent and under the authority of men for all times.

In her new book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, historian Beth Allison Barr traces cultural sources of patriarchy that have all but erased women's historical importance as leaders of the faith.

Barr is a Southern Baptist and a pastor's wife. In an interview with NPR, she described the day she realized that "what we found in the Bible about what women were supposed to do did not match with what my church was saying women were supposed to do." Eventually, she and her husband left that congregation — no longer able to tolerate the contradictions, she said.

We look forward to being with Dr. Beth Allison Barr and all of you!

Russ Petrus and Deborah Rose

Co-Directors

FutureChurch

info@futurechurch.org