{"id":23142,"date":"2019-05-30T18:18:13","date_gmt":"2019-05-31T01:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=23142"},"modified":"2019-05-30T18:18:13","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T01:18:13","slug":"a-recovery-of-the-feminine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-recovery-of-the-feminine\/","title":{"rendered":"A recovery of the feminine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve benefited from reading Emma Percy\u2019s fresh book on clergy, even though I\u2019m not ordained nor in pastoral ministry. Her work exposes how the way we view life is often diminished by an entrenched, gendered perspective; masculine models predominate in pastoral ministry. Flipping things around allows for the exploration of creative solutions of problems that would otherwise confound us. Traditional models, especially in the past twenty years in Western culture, have celebrated the CEO-model, inspired by a business context, or the celebrity-model, inspired by Hollywood. These are highly inadequate images which have been infected by our materialist culture. As a result, we have \u201cpastors\u201d whose main purpose seems to be to sell books, drive television ratings, or host conferences, rather than doing the simple, often unassuming and unheralded, work of pastoring.<\/p>\n

By utilizing the metaphor of mothering, Percy reveals the beauty of a pastoral vocation which recovers some of the integrity of this calling. She states,<\/p>\n

\u201cParish ministry, like mothering, is a way of life. Its rhythms do not conform to traditional boundaries between work and home, on and off duty, public and private space \u2026 Those who move into these practices learn to move to a different beat, to know that the interruptions are as central to the meaning as the organized and planned elements. They need to develop an attentiveness which enables them to respond quickly to a change in pace, the urgency of a cry for help or the slowing down to delight in the wonder of ordinary miracles. Clergy learn to weave the ordered organizing necessary to provide the places that sustain people with the openness to chance surprise and unplanned encounters.\u201d[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

A mother is there at all times. It is a way of life, bleeding into every encounter in the parish, not to rescue but to orientate children towards maturity. It often is expressed in subtle, insignificant ways \u2013 through listening, through presence, through attending, through patiently waiting.<\/p>\n

Others seem to agree with this recovered emphasis. Nicola Slee writes in Theology<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cPercy applies insights from motherhood to the practice of ministry \u2026 She offers helpful and nuanced discussions of humility and power, forgiveness and trust. She highlights the work that clergy do in offering comfort, cherishing relationships, practising embodied ways of communicating, multi-tasking, homemaking and housekeeping as well as weaning and managing change.\u201d[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

I had a helpful, grassroots reminder of what \u2018mothering\u2019 entails this week when visiting my son in Toronto. He is a stay-at-home dad to my granddaughter, a bright and convivial fifteen-month old. We don\u2019t see them much due to distance, regretfully, but I had two hours with them. We stuck little stickers on a page of colouring. We read Alligator Pie<\/em> several times with funny voices. We piled blocks in rows, by colour and by size. We sang \u2018You are My Sunshine\u2019. The time was spent focused exclusively on this little girl, with adult conversation fragmented into sidebar spurts.<\/p>\n

Measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of such time spent with a small loved one is, frankly, irrelevant. Yet capitalistic-infected orientations to ministry are tempted to reduce pastoring down to souls saved, people counselled, sermons preached, prayers prayed, and programs started. Pastoring as mothering, instead, nurtures and attends to the other, creating space for maturation and growth.<\/p>\n

Despite my whole life in evangelical or charismatic churches, the time I felt most truly pastored was, surprisingly, a decade ago within a Catholic parish by my local priest. Unlike former pastors in my life, this one was not concerned with seeker sensitive services or being relevant. He just plodded along day-by-day, administering the sacraments, opening the doors of the church to those in need, doing visitation in the hospital and the seniors\u2019 home, lingering after masses in the sacristy if anyone wanted to follow up with a word. Following a liturgical calendar and rhythm freed him to be present to those in need, including me.<\/p>\n

I was in a dark place, but the priest patiently waited with me. We had very few conversations around my own depression, but his constant welcome and consistent presence eventually freed me up to find a measure of healing. When I sat with him, I felt at home. I\u2019d say he was acting as a mother would.<\/p>\n

Recovering a sense of the feminine in church life, including in the pastoral role, is critical to healing the woundedness of our harsh postmodern, alienated landscape. We all need mothers. Let\u2019s find them in our pastors.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=h3eypsqkcUY<\/p>\n

_______________________<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Emma Percy, What Clergy Do, Especially When It Looks Like Nothing <\/em>(London: SPCK, 2014), 163.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Nicola Slee, \u201cEmma Percy, Mothering as a Metaphor for Ministry.\u201d Theology<\/em> 118, no. 6 (November 2015): 452\u201353. doi:10.1177\/0040571X15595911g.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve benefited from reading Emma Percy\u2019s fresh book on clergy, even though I\u2019m not ordained nor in pastoral ministry. Her work exposes how the way we view life is often diminished by an entrenched, gendered perspective; masculine models predominate in pastoral ministry. Flipping things around allows for the exploration of creative solutions of problems that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[964],"class_list":["post-23142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-percy","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23146,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23142\/revisions\/23146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}