Becca Stevens's Blog, page 4

Anniversaries & Baptisms

Two sweet happenings from the past few days…

30 years today. This marker lives somewhere between a blink of an eye and a lifetime of gratitude. Thank you my dear beloved, Marcus Hummon. I love you!

One of the great joys of being a long term priest in community is getting to fall in love with babies of people you married! Love you sweet, Luci. Love you, Ali & Robert (the parents).

#drford

"Working" and breathing and knitting as I watch the hearings. Lessons so far include remembering to not compare one another's stories---just listen and honor the one telling their story. No matter how professional people want to be ---it's still awkward and painful. I want to hug her. #drford

A New Emancipation Proclamation

Recently, I have kept returning to the idea of Emancipation. My hope for sexual assault survivors, who are willing to speak their truth amidst their pain and hard work, is that there is healing. Not just for themselves, but for this culture that would still rather keep the secrets of abusers than hear the cry of those assaulted.  

My prayer is that through their sweat and tears, there is a new emancipation for young women, and a greater sense of freedom for survivors. My unwavering belief is that always love is the most powerful force for change, and that today, we have to change to love the world more fully. As I was working on these reflections, it was announced that The Senate will hear from Dr. Ford. Whatever happens, her testimony has already had a profound effect.  

Rachel Held Evans recently wrote ,"The same religious leaders who told me as a teenager that premarital sex was a grave sin that would ruin my life forever have declared that no one can fault a 17-year-old boy for a little attempted rape." My wish in writing this reflections is that you join with me in my hope, my prayer, and my belief that if we can not grow weary of hearing the truth, our world can change and more women can find freedom.

The Emancipation of Slaves was a movement that cost folks their lives and livelihood, as well as fueling war and hatred. There are studies, articles, and heartfelt programs that have linked human trafficking of women as Modern Day Slavery. While they are not parallel issues, in some fundamental ways, there is a need for Emancipation of Women who have been raped, bought and sold, imprisoned, addicted, and told they are subhuman.

I have spent decades with women who are survivors, which means I get to work with women who feel the power and freedom of emancipation. They have suffered the universal issues of violence against women on their individual backs and borne the injustice and humiliation of a culture that tolerates the buying and selling of other human beings. In this humbling work, I mostly have to take a wide turn around political analyses and stay fairly close to the ground in order to witness what freedom looks like.   But over the years I have learned through legislative work, through news feeds, and being in hundreds of churches, that the the buying and selling of women has religious, political and economic fallout. 

I have never met a woman walking the streets who has not been raped. Long before we criminalize those women inside of prison walls, they already have known the short side of justice, the backside of anger, the underside of bridges and the dark side of our country that still turns its back on child sexual abuse, criminalizes juvenile runaways, accepts the violence of the human construct of "poverty: those teenagers face, turns away as they find dates, resort to stripping, get trafficked, and then enter into the marriage of the sex and drug industries. 

I believe that until all women, especially young women are emancipated from that heartbreaking scenario, none of us will be free since all our freedoms are tied together. This hope for emancipation is why Thistle Farms has partners in more than 50 cities and partners all over the globe.  Without a more powerful network and a shared marketplace women will remain vulnerable to nameless Johns, abusers, and dealers. Economic freedom is critical to the emancipation of survivors.  

Shelia McClain, Senior Case Manager at Thistle Tarms and 2007 Graduate of the Residential Program describes the work we do beautifully. She spends her life helping women still trapped in the life and on the streets find a place of healing:

“We are part of a larger movement—locally, national and globally—to change a culture that believes in the buying and selling of human beings. Each day at Thistle Farms, we devote ourselves to the healing, empowerment and employment of survivor-leaders who have overcome trafficking, prostitution, addiction and abuse. Nationally, we support 50 survivor-led communities in 26 states as they offer sanctuary to an additional 180 survivor-leaders, and globally, we partner with 26  social enterprises that support the employment of over  1700 survivors around the world.”

–Shelia, Magdalene Senior Case Manager & 2007 Thistle Farms Graduate

Emancipation is like a vision of a mountaintop that keeps us all going on the paths in the valleys of struggle. What I am clear on is that the issue of slavery and the issue of human trafficking are linked by a complacent society that is willing to tolerate the way we treat our sisters because we either buy into the myths that they choose it, or that they are happy, or that things will change without our action.

None of the women that I have served ended up on the streets by themselves. It took broken systems, dysfunctional families, and complacent communities to help them get there. It makes sense that it will take those same communities, no longer complacent to welcome them home.

Women do find freedom.   

Video: "Lighting the candle everyday at Thistle Farms is our Ritual"

Lighting the candle everyday is our practice, our ritual, at Thistle Farms. Thanks to everyone who came out to the Education Workshop today and who are lighting the way for the next woman coming off the streets too. #loveheals

Video: "Thistles were the last wildflower..."

Becca was recently interviewed for a filming project. Here, she talks about the beauty she found in the thistle and why they’re so important to Thistle Farms…

“I wanted to name the whole place ‘Thistle Farms’ to celebrate the women, their ability to survive, their persistence, but also deep beauty and their softness, like the thistles.” —Becca

(Be sure to turn up the sound to hear!)

Heart of Dating Podcast

Becca was recently interviewed by Kait Warman for her Heart of Dating Podcast (original post here). Click below to listen…

We Can Do Better Than Being Civil

Civility seems like a low bar for our common life together, and yet it also seems that often we can’t even reach that. We struggle to be kind to one another in arenas of public discourse, and as we near the two month mark until midterms, I can feel the stress rising around me. 

The cynicism and anger smoldering under a veneer of civility is ready to crack because of inauthenticity peeking through. We have to truly want with our whole hearts to show loving kindness to whomever we deem the “other." It is the hard work of our times: to stand for justice and proclaim our truth, but to do it with authentic love for one another. 

I am grateful for American civil religion and what it has tried to bring to discourse and public life for decades. But I long for more than that in my life, and I imagine you do too. I long to be recognized and in that recognition, feel loved. I long for someone to be willing to listen to an idea, rather than simply seeing if I agree with them. I long to love people and to listen to them as well, And for that I need to feel safe.

So this morning I want to offer a prayer that for today we can do better than being civil, we can look with love and feel compassion for the people we will be in line with, the people we will sit across the table from, and for those in passing cars that didn’t drive like we wanted them to.

Let us love one another like they are the face of God.   

Beauty & Love in Brokenness

I love stained glass. I love the artistry, the history embedded in small fragments we piece together, and how it calls us into prayer. But when I walked into a church recently, I felt a sadness as I read all the names etched in memoriam, remembering those who could afford such beauty or the better known saints.

I started recounting all the sisters of the community of Thistle Farms who have died as saints and survivors of some of the oldest pain the world inflicts on young women. If I could create a stained glass, I would make a field of wildflowers with thistles and healing plants. There would be sunlight pouring down, and I would piece together all the names I could recall.

I would write Jane Doe for the women buried out at the city cemetery. I would place the stained glass above the altar in the sanctuary as a reminder of how we break God's heart when we abuse each other and how there is beauty and love in brokenness.

It's About Friends

The Thistle Farms Global team visiting the Moringa Madres in July 2018

It's about friends.

I have been thinking a lot about how we have grown Thistle Farms and Thistle Farms Global into a movement for women's freedom. It didn't happen by finding a life coach, a mentor, a spiritual director, or visionary. Those all are virtuous relationships, but not how I have experienced growth among the leaders and survivors over the past 21 years. It's not how I have grown as a writer, pastor, or entrepreneur.

It came from people willing to walk beside each other as friends. No one said, "go right" or "go left." They said "if you go right or left, I'll go with you and if we need to turn around we can." It's taken us to places we could have never imagined or been brave enough to go on our own.

Friendship is critical in justice work. Its bonds and generosity allow all of us grow together. I am so grateful for the love and trust of friendship.

#ChurchToo: Reflections on Willow Creek

The latest incarnation of #metoo unfolded recently at a megachurch in Chicago, and my thoughts have been with the woman who brought her dark secret to light. I am in awe of the strength it took for her to reveal abuse perpetrated by such a highly respected pastor. 

Church power structures have long tried to make the victims the problem, but that lie is being revealed for what it is. When any institution, including the church, operates as if normal rules do not apply to them, they open themselves up to sexual abuse. It is inevitable

The stories coming from Willow Creek confirm what so many women within church walls have known forever: being sexually assaulted within a sanctuary carries additional confusing burdens beyond the universal trauma of violence. The burdens include worrying about breaking up congregations, knowing the minister is revered, and holding a deep desire to live faithfully with the ideal of forgiveness. 

I know. I was a victim of sexual abuse by a church leader. After my father, a beloved pastor, was killed by a drunk driver, I became a target for a church elder who preyed on the most vulnerable. I was six years old when the abuse started. My first memory of assault happened during a spaghetti supper in the fellowship hall. The assaults continued over the next three years, but I kept it a secret from everyone. I believed it was my burden and my duty to forgive. And move on.  

Women have been assaulted by pastors and elders in every denomination and in every generation. I envision them applauding Pat Baranowski and the other brave women of Willow Creek who have come forward. I can almost hear the murmur of prayers offered by women who have suffered in silence for generations. They are strengthened by truth being revealed and praying that younger women will be spared the burdens of abuse and silence. I’ve said those same prayers. 

Shortly after I was ordained I opened Thistle Farms, a sanctuary for women survivors of trafficking, assault and addiction. Our community’s mantra is simply #loveheals, and the healing I still needed became clear. It was time to tell my story and acknowledge some of my oldest wounds. I found the courage to confront my abuser. I offered the secret story back to him – as well as to a community of women bearing their own trauma, resentment, and fear. In giving my story back, in finding loving communities that respect the dignity of all people, and in doing the work of helping others, I have found real freedom and forgiveness. 

I applaud the women who break up dysfunctional communities with the ploughshare of truth. I applaud communities which speak out about sexual abuse within sacred walls. And I respect the guts it takes for survivors to say, “#metoo.” The hallowed and hard ground of abuse within the church requires us all to begin a complicated and delicate walk towards healing. Abuse survivors who come forward need allies. They need spaces to speak the truth – where the only question is “tell me what happened to you.” Women’s stories, like those revealed at Willow Creek and like mine, can transform brokenness into compassion. They can transform blame for victims into support for survivors. 

I pray that more women and men find the freedom to move from silence to acknowledgement of #churchtoo – as they support survivors on a path of healing. Healing is close to the heart of God. Truth makes the wound visible. Love heals.