A frigid wind sent snow dancing and swirling through the streets of Washington, DC, that Christmas Eve. Shopping carts and paper bags loaded with years’ worth of collected string, cans, broken umbrellas, and other street items had been dragged in out of the cold and were parked in the foyer of the church that served as an overnight shelter. The women who owned them were finishing a dinner of soup and bread, made special by dozens of sugar cookies that had been baked and decorated by the church’s children. Continue reading “An Upside Down World”→
Once again…still…our eyes and hearts are riveted on tragedies afar and close at hand: terrorized families in flimsy boats on the other side of the globe fleeing desperately toward what they hope is safety; a tide of killings at home brought into sharp focus by young people demanding that black lives matter. We hunger and thirst for a world in which peace, dignity, and justice prevail.
When I’m tempted to despair, I remember the spring of 1991. It was a time that seemed hopeless to me. Three teenagers I knew were senselessly killed—one stabbed, two shot—on the deadly streets of the Washington, DC neighborhood where I lived. Hundreds of women and children died when U.S. forces bombed the Amariya shelter in Iraq on Ash Wednesday. Continue reading “Hope”→
Girls hold certificates stating their new official names during a renaming ceremony in Satara, India, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2011. Almost 300 Indian girls known officially as “Unwanted” have traded their birth names for a fresh start in life. Given names like “Nakusa” or “Nakushi” _ or “unwanted” in Hindi _ they grew up understanding they were a burden in families that preferred boys in Maharashtra state. (AP Photo)
This month, we are beginning a year long monthly series on biblical women. Women from around Turtle Island will be honoring the women in scripture with poetry, art, storytelling, and love. This month, Joyce Hollyday starts the series with Jephthah’s daughter. If you are interested in contributing to the series, email lydiaiwk@gmail.com.
By Joyce Hollyday
Judges 11:29-40
Her name is lost to us—excised by the male chroniclers of faith history who understood that to name something was to give it power. And she was about as powerless as anyone could be. Jephthah’s daughter. Young, naïve, and female. Defined, possessed, and controlled by a violent and volatile warrior-father who ended her life in a ritual murder.
So, why launch a series on biblical women with such a tragic tale? Because Jephthah’s daughter is with us still. Her story is present among us in every form of male control: in the assumption that those of us who marry men will take their names and those who choose women must be “set straight”; in domestic violence and discriminatory pay; in denial of education and forced child marriages; in genital mutilation, sexual slavery, and female infanticide. Continue reading “Sacrificed: The Story of Jephthah’s Daughter”→
By Joyce Hollyday. First published on her blog http://seekingcommunity.ca in 2012.
Tuning in to life’s rhythms
A Sunday school teacher was asking her young class about Easter. A 5-year-old boy piped up, “That’s when Jesus comes out of his tomb, and if he sees his shadow, we have six more weeks of winter.”
This story may not be funny or make any sense to you, because I don’t know if you have this bizarre holiday in Canada; but yesterday in the U.S. of A., we observed Groundhog’s Day. And by “observed,” I mean we totally ignored it except to ask at the end of the day, “Anybody know what Punxsutawney Phil saw today?” Continue reading “The Lessons of Groundhog’s Day”→
Joyce Hollyday is a co-founder and co-pastor of Circle of Mercy, an ecumenical congregation in Asheville, North Carolina as well as Word and World. She served for fifteen years as the Associate Editor of Sojourners magazine and is the author of several books, including Clothed with the Sun: Biblical Women, Social Justice, and Us and Then Shall Your Light Rise: Spiritual Formation and Social Witness.
I walk through the opening as the steel door clangs open and head toward the vending machines with my fistfuls of quarters. Nothing new, unfortunately. The same sugary, neon-colored sodas, salt-laden chips, and dry, mystery-meat sandwiches on bread as thin and tasteless as cardboard, wrapped in cellophane. But these will be my friend Wiley’s only chance at lunch. The prison doesn’t serve lunch on Saturdays. Continue reading “What Are You Thankful For? Gratitude as a Way of Life”→
“The one who finds wisdom finds life. To find wisdom, we need to look toward women clothed with the sun, who shine their light on our path and beckon us forward. They are in the Bible. They are among us as modern witnesses to the resurrection. And they are each of us, for we all carry a pearl of wisdom to add to life’s treasure.”
In mid-September of 1998, my dear friend Jeanie Wylie-Kellermann learned that she had an aggressive brain cancer and a medical prediction of less than six months to live. The news was devastating to her two young daughters. Six weeks later, on October 25th, 8-year-old Lucy grabbed an onion out of the pantry, placed it on the dining room table, and announced, “Today is Onion Day.” She answered the quizzical looks of her family with, “Well, with all this dying going on, we have to have something to laugh about.” Continue reading “Onion Day”→
By Joyce Hollyday
By Joyce Hollyday
Radical Discipleship 