Felling the Veil

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be posting excerpts from my upcoming book Femmevangelical: The Modern Girl’s Guide to the Good News.

Femmevangelical uses stories, devotionals, meditations, theological study, church history, brain science, cultural exploration and much more to reveal the different evangel that religion left behind:  a gospel of Jesus and vision of the coming realm of God that feminists of faith can follow and work together to bring into reality for the good of women and girls around the world…and everyone on the planet.

The book is for all the women (and men!) who have searched for themselves in the Greater Story and had to take on an ill-fitting and even soul-killing role to be included. It is for anyone who seeks a devotional companion not written to prove a theological statement or uphold a religious institution, but to prove and uphold your potential and worth. Femmevangelical is a devotional book meant to support the risk, hope, and faith it takes to follow your instincts and fulfill the real gospel: using our lives to create the world in which we were truly made to live.

“This is the Good News”

[In this chapter, I tell an embarrassingly funny yet bracing story about the time I realized my absolute, uncontested belief in the strict fundamentalist evangelical tradition of my upbringing was crumbling…my first experience lifting the veil of religious ideological inculcation, if you will. Or even realizing there had been a veil keeping things dim all along…]

This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet. —Rumi

Veils have for thousands of years been used to cover the heads and faces of women. Veils served to temper the lust of men who looked upon us, whose excuse from the trouble of respect and self-restraint trumped our basic human need to be seen, trumped our right to see clearly through our own unobstructed eyes. Veils historically were to be lifted from the maiden only when she, as brokered bride, was fully transferred to the custody of her betrothed, her head. Veils were to make palatable a female presence in a house of worship, a symbol of modesty and subjection to her lord, who was not God, but her husband (1 Cor. 11:4–10).

Rumi’s veils seem to be a metaphor for anything that holds us back from reaching the heights we were made for, whatever hides the flying triumph of who we really are, or obstructs our higher vision.

I cried like a scolded child when the first veil came down that night on my cold, dirty foyer floor. But, over time, I realized this had to happen, no matter how desperately my rigid religious upbringing tried to stop it. As I grew stronger and took more risks, more veils fell, each revealing a hint of a secret sky I couldn’t see before. Now, each time another falls, I discover more space in my sight line, inviting me ahead. Many more must come down before I can truly be seen and known, and truly see and know the people and world around me. A cycle of scary risk, uncomfortable exposure, and new perspective brings revelation.

Together in this book, we will let a hundred more veils fall. We will aspire to let go of the life and faith defined for us. We will refuse the well-worn path, the ancient and narrow street, and take our first steps without feet. We may be strangers now, but to point one another upward and outward to the space waiting for us to fill it with flight is what it means to be women of faith.

Jesus promised that a new realm was in sight for those who would seek it, for those with eyes to see. He announced his mission by saying he had come to release the oppressed, to recover sight for the blind, to restore vision, set the prisoners free from captivity, and proclaim the jubilee (Lk. 4:18–19). To endlessly fell the veil is the work of God. It does not matter who or where we are right now, or what lies and false limits are holding us prisoner. The world needs us. We will have help. This is the good news. This is love.

Pre-order Femmevangelical at: Chalice Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble