One Alumni and Her Blessing

Are you sick of posts about graduation? I hope not because I am going to add one more. Except this time it is from the perspective of an alumni. (Check out Jason Lief's post and Jeff Munroe's post for some other graduation thoughts.)

On Sunday afternoon I boarded my plane in NYC to head "home" to Michigan to celebrate the graduation of my spouse Jim Kast-Keat. Besides the pride I feel for Jim I am also incredibly proud to have graduated from Western Theological Seminary. So today I dedicate my post as a blessing from this alumni to her alma mater. Alma mater in Latin means "nourishing mother" and the theological and pastoral nourishment I received from the professors and staff at Western was indeed nourishing and transformative.

My best friend and I made the commitment the first week of seminary that we were there for transformation. We were not there to appease people by the "correct" theological answers or to regurgitate for an exam only to forget what we retained the following year. No, I went to seminary seeking theological and personal transformation. When I walked across the stage in May 2011 I know I accomplished my goal.

Faculty and staff at Western Theological Seminary, I bless you. You pour out your lives.  Be it Tom Boogaart's Prophets class where I felt like I was going up to the mountain top and met God every class or Carol Bechtel's class where I learned to be anchored in the Psalms or Tim Brown who was the first person to tell me I need to preach or Leann Van Dyk who is an incredible Dean and one heck of a smart woman or David Stubbs who was so moved by the theological writings that he read them like poetry or Jim Brownson who is deeply committed to the Gospel of Jesus or the accomplishment I felt when I passed Robert VanVoorst's Greek class or the way I better understood the person I am in Jaco Hamman's class or the insightful questions Ron Rienstra asked me which helped me decide to be ordained in the RCA or Paul Smith's leadership on my intercultural immersion trip to Oman or the brilliance of Todd Billings or the way I am now realizing how much I love church history because of Chris Kaiser and Dennis Voskuil's teaching in my life. You all (and all the other staff and faculty) poured out your life for me and my colleagues and I couldn't be more grateful. You loved me, you challenged me, you pastored me, you empowered me, and I learned how to be the pastor I am today because of the time I spent at WTS.

I consider my role as alumni to be a bridgemaker. I am from the Midwest and currently have an East Coast vibe. I know the worlds of Michigan and New York. I love and appreciate them both. My theology has changed and opened up and so has my compassion for a variety of view points. I am adamant that some things need to progress forward but I also know we are all on a pilgrimage and change is a process. I keep in contact with current students who need a different perspective than West Michigan alone has to offer and offer some solidarity for students who bravely utilize their theological and pastoral imagination. (This summer I am so jazzed to welcome a current WTS to West End Collegiate Churches intern with us. I will do everything I can to support her in her ministerial journey and then send her back to WTS to finish up her training. I love being part of the East and Midwest unity.)

Choosing to go to seminary at Western Theological Seminary is one of the best decisions I have made and I bless Living God for the way I was formed. 

So Western Theological Seminary,
May God bless you and keep you,
May God's face shine upon you and be gracious to you;
May God lift up God's countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Thank you.

Body Art

N.Y. Adorned “Tradition” from Evan Owen Dennis on Vimeo.

Click to read more ...

Let me Introduce You

Once upon a time a blog began. Twelve different people would write about what it means to be Reformed, daily. Little did the writers know that this small blog would catch on and inspire others to begin a blog about being Reformed in daily life, too. Who knew it was so cool to be Reformed!?

Check out what my friends have started: That Reformed Blog.

Maybe you are interested in what the Reverend Tim TenClay might have to say about the Lord's Table and the conversations around inviting and fencing?

Or maybe you are interested in Pastor Jill Vande Zande's honest reflection on bullying in her life in her post Whether I Like It or Not?

Perhaps you are interested in what my friend, Pastor Wayne Bowerman, has to say about the focus of The Reformed Blog in his post What's In A Name?

The Twelve readers meet That Reformed Blog. I think we could be friends.

Women and God Talk

I remember when I first chose feminism. Or to put it in a more Calvinist light, I remember when feminism chose me.

My Conversion

It was my first year of seminary and I was soaking up everything that was being taught in my Theology and Worship Class. I was new to the Reformed world so I didn’t know the right things to think or say. I was driven by questions (and still am). In class we were reading Daniel Migliore’s book Faith Seeking Understanding. It was in this book that I was surprised to find the topic of Feminist Theology. I didn’t get how God and feminism went together then. I found energy ignited in me. I went to the back of the book and kept reading the definition of Feminist Theology over and over, as if to realize it was real. Could it really be there was a thing as Feminist Theology?

Later that year I decided to write a paper on the traditional views of atonement in light of Feminist Theology. I discovered a gem of a book, Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics that lead me to a meeting with Western Theological Seminary's Dean of students who happened to have an essay represented in the book.

I believe in conversions. I believe we go through multiple conversions in our life. This was the beginning of my conversion to feminism. (Or perhaps more of an awakening to the feminist I had always been.) After talking with the Dean I wrote my paper (and got an A, in case you were wondering) that helped me realize that I enjoy talking about God through a feminist lens. But not just any feminist lens: a Reformed Feminist lens.

A Reformed and Feminist Theologian

My twitter bio proudly states that I am a Reformed and Feminist theologian. This can sometimes confuse people. Pop-culture Reformed theology is represented by people like Mark Driscoll and John Piper. While these might be names people connect with the word “Reformed” (or “neo-Refomred,” to be more exact), they are most likely not the names they would connect with the word “Feminist.” So when I say I’m Reformed and Feminist some are confused because Driscoll berates feminism. 

I have multiple encounters on twitter expressing how beautiful Reformed and Feminist Theology is. Just like Feminist Theology, Reformed Theology chose me. When you are chosen by theologies and you recognize the grace that they offer, you can’t help but respond by choosing it back.

There are different flavors of Feminist Theologies but if I were to create a Venn diagram of them their broad connection points would be that they are both soaked in grace. When I use more female related images for God or highlight the courageous stories of women in our Scripture it is grace for women and men. This equality for all of us is grace, a free gift of God that we already have, just waiting for us to realize it and live into it.

Feminist Theology offers the possibility to heal people’s images of God that have been male dominated which have squeezed out many opportunities for women to see themselves in our Biblical texts. This doesn’t heal just women but liberates men as well! It opens up new possibilities of grace when you begin to see your body, your spirituality, and your agency finally talked about theologically. And that’s the business I’m in: grace.

A Caution

It’s irresponsible for a feminist to say she speaks for all feminists. Just like it’s irresponsible for someone who is Reformed to say she speaks for all Reformed people. Feminism can sometimes be critiqued as being for white, educated, middle-class women. This is why we see the rise of Womanist and Mujerista Theologies privileging the stories of African American and Latina women. These are needed critiques that are all in conversation with each other.

When we talk about God we need to be mindful about how many times the God we talk about is male. If that’s what are we are implicitly saying, what are we explicitly communicating? I know for me, my well-meaning pastors growing up didn’t realize they were preaching about a God that I connected with less and less because I could not see how my body, my spirituality, my agency was represented in a particularly male dominated theology. Be mindful, cautious even, of the stories we are telling and what they say about men and women.

Going Deeper

What about you? Are you Reformed? Feminist? Both?

How do you see these circles of thought intersecting with one another?

We can go deeper together in the comments below but if you’re looking for a bit of extra reading on the topic, I recommend the following:

• Feminist and Womanist Essays in Reformed Dogmatics
• Feminist Theory and Christian Theology Cartographies of Grace by Serene Jones
• (Wo)manifesto an article by Carol Howard Merritt
• Mujerista: Definition by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz

Or check out this great mini-documentary on Womanist Theology:

The Mind's Extremity

I often look to honor the words of women in my personal prayers and within my congregational prayers. Too often women's words are forgotten or dismissed. Women's Uncommon Prayers has been a helpful resource. There is a poem in the book that is joining me as we finish the Lenten journey. I've been sharing it with the different groups I lead and would like to share it here, too.

Lent: The Mind's Extremity

Into this late winter time
Lent erupts its Wednesday ash;
black dust darkens our sky.
Return. Return.
We follow the lightless fire
down to a place
beyond the mind's extremity.

Lent leads us down to buried time,
down the mountain
onto fenceless plain,
a dry savanna where all demons wait.
Lent's unwilled free-fall
plummets us through remorse
and clotted dreams,
into the scarred haunts of hurt,
blame, damage, loss.
We are released into ourselves, alone.

Lent returns us into depths 
deeper than the dead are deep
where we come into openness: two crows
on the bare branch of a single tree ---
black carrion birds,
guardians of a slate gray sky.

A cold lightning arcs down
into silence and dim light.
Moment by fearful moment
its sharp pulse flashes
in terror and prayer to the breath's end --
in dust we are returned
to the place where no secrete are hid.

Here the Spirit's slow alchemy
melts every easy expectation,
and a final expanse opens
its felt presence
to the edge of visibility.
We are returned to the rim
to look outward toward the cusp
of a new place.

---Ms. Rosamond Rosenmeier