Becca Stevens's Blog, page 6

"Be Quiet So That I Can Hear:" A Sermon on Silence

Deuteronomy 18: 15-20

Mark 1:21-28

I know it’s important to know when to be quiet. One time when one of my kids was little and had done something horrible, I was explaining in detail why he was in trouble. He finally turned and said to me, “Be quiet so I can hear.” It is true for all of us who have had the gift of parenting that kids are really the best teachers in the world. He was saying, “Be silent. I want to hear what is going on in me. I want to know how to grow and how to do what I need to do.”

The lesson from Deuteronomy is to learn to be silent. The lesson from Mark is that in the midst of a busy Sabbath day in Capernaum the vortex of chaos is thriving. Everything starts spinning out of control. There is so much noise and someone in the front of the temple is spouting nonsense. People must have been thinking—be quiet so we can hear. Jesus knows it is both the demons within and without in this world and it is not of God.

He does his healing work by saying, “Be silent.” For the love of God, be silent. And with those simple words, healing began. Jesus spends the rest of his day healing anyone he can through both words and deeds—Peter’s mom, people coming through the door in the evening. Then he goes to a lonely place to be quiet. This busy day ends with his going to a lonely, deserted place.

Why? So, he can hear again.

And so, it is that preachers have been trying to figure out how to preach on silence. St Francis preached that the best deeds, the best preaching of love, is done not in words, but in the way we are together.

I want to share two vignettes about how I have been preached to—not in words:

Several years ago, one of the women from Thistle Farms went with me to Texas to share her story of healing and hope in the community of Thistle Farms. She, like most of the women, was abused early on and hit the streets at a young age. One of the joys of getting to do this work is being on a woman’s first trip, the first time a woman sees the top side of the clouds, the first time she goes into a community and says, “Guess what? Women heal and women recover. It works.” It is exciting and wonderful. This particular woman started on the plane ha getting knots in her stomach, thinking her words are not going to be sufficient. She started editing. She missed dinner that night at the hotel. I think I heard her read her version of her story three or four times.

The next morning, she got up and said, “I rewrote it and I want you to hear it again.” I was like, “Dear God. It’s beautiful, you’re amazing, it’s perfect, you’re great. The words are awesome.” But she became more nervous. When we arrived at the community where she was to speak, I got up and I said, “This is making me nervous. I think it will go much better for her and for us if we just go ahead, cut to the chase, and give her a standing ovation now.”

She stood up, then everyone stood up with her and started applauding. She started weeping, we all started crying, and it was a big love fest without any words. The words were so much less important than her witness, standing up there being able to say, “Here I am.” And that people could love her.

Two weeks ago, my husband and I had the privilege of being theologians-in-residence at Episcopal High School.  Whenever I go to a high school, specifically part of the story I tell is my own story of sexual abuse that started in the church, and I think it’s an important story. I don’t go into detail. I talk about there is healing and that part of the power of sexual assault has to do with silence.

As communities, we need to hear the stories well. We need to be there for each other. When people are little, they don’t have those words, but as they get into high school, they learn those words for their own bodies and their own lives and how to begin to speak that with power. So, I told my story and that night one of the chaplains said, “It was really powerful what you did today and what you said was beautiful. How did you heal from all that?” I said healing was a process, and that I had a lot of sickness still in me when I started Thistle Farms/Magdalene, and it was kind of hard. That I would get triggered a lot and I knew I had to go back to confront my abuser and to go to a therapist. He asked, “What was that like?” And I told the story of going back to my abuser.

I looked over and my husband, to whom I have been married for 30 years, was crying. I don’t know if you know what that is like. To know that you have been with someone for 30 years and they can weep for you, but it is very humbling. He could not have preached love more powerfully.

Think about all the times in your life when someone finally said, “Be silent” and you were able to find the gift of silence. Stop all the noise, the senseless demons within and without us in this world and feel feelings –whether someone clapped for you or somebody wept with you, or maybe it was that you finally just took a breath and allowed the spirit to speak. This is a busy day. There is a lot of noise in our world, and there are a lot of people chattering away.

So, if you take anything away from this—take this: speak the words of God when you need to. Preach through your deeds. And every now and then, for the love of God, be silent.

#hereweare: The Beloved Community

The Circle at Thistle Farms (Photo Credit: Peggy Napier) 

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'" 

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

The prophets always start with #hereIam, but as they proclaim justice in the world, they move to #hereweare.

The work of justice is a community endeavor. Micah, Amos, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr. all spoke of the work of community in pursuing justice for all. This applies to our Circle as well.

None of the women of Thistle Farms made it to the streets or prison alone. It took a bunch of failed systems and communities to help them get there. So it makes sense that it takes a community proclaiming #hereweare to welcome them home.  

Next month marks the 200th anniversary of the great American prophet Frederick Douglass's birth. His great, great great-grandson Ken Morris, said, "If Frederick were alive, he would tackle the modern-day slavery issue of Human Trafficking."

At this time of year when remember those who have paid the way and given their lives to the work of justice like Douglass & Martin Luther King, Jr., I am so grateful to be able to say #hereweare. Each day we take part in this work and pray for justice, we honor King's vision of a Beloved Community, and help welcome the next woman through the doors. 

Love is the most powerful force for change in the world. We need each other. We need this Beloved Community to keep going and to be able to love the whole world one person at a time. 

2018: #EmbodyLove

Photo Credit: Peggy Napier 

There is a new word out there in the waves called Bodyfulness (think Mindfulness). I believe the idea is to connect being present in our bodies with wholeness and peace. Maybe one of the ripple effects of #metoo is understanding what embodiment means. 

We all need to be safe and grounded in our actual body if we want to be at peace in our work or home life. 

Our bodies remember everything and differentiating our bodies and our minds is of little consequence, as we realize our minds live inside our bodies. I think an important theme for us this year will be about taking care of our individual bodies and our collective body. I thought a tagline to use is #embodylove.

This figure of speech means we ground love into the very core of who we are. If we embody love, then peace joy and justice will flow naturally from us.  If we can't embody love, we will still be acting with fear and shame. There are lots of things to think about with this idea, but I just want to get our wheels turning. 

Love,

Becca

Pray Globally, Love Specifically: My Christmas Message for 2017

A mother and child in Ristona during Thistle Farms' visit in Spring 2017

'Tis the season to pray for love and peace all over the world.  Such a prayer is inspiring, but it's hard to imagine loving the whole world. Maybe it is easier at Christmas to Pray Globally, but Love Specifically. I believe the only way to love the whole world is a person at a time. Once we love specifically, then we can extrapolate that, so it is wildly comprehensive.

The work of loving the world has taken the community of Thistle Farms--a movement for survivors of trafficking and addiction--all over the globe for the past twenty years to specific women and communities. In each setting, we sit in a small circle with women survivors and listen and hold on to one another. Our first partnership was with 30 women farmers that survived the genocide in Rwanda. Then we began working with groups in more than 30 states, and 20 countries.

Over and over, we fall in love with the individual women we meet as we engage their story and live into their hope. From those individual women and specific communities, we have learned about the universal issues of sexual assault, the violence and vulnerability of poverty and the common way women carry trauma. From loving women and communities we begin to see the exponential growth of love, and that made it feel possible to contemplate that we can truly love the whole world in way I'd never imagined before.

Thistle Farms’ latest partnership took us to the Ritsona refugee camp in Greece this past summer. There we met a small group of women willing to venture into a new justice enterprise that weaves the life vests and blankets they escaped from Syria with into welcome mats. It was a humbling and hopeful week of watching new weavers bind hope into a pretty desolate place. The Ritsona refugee camp is home to more than 1,000 refugees and while we were there the data indicated that 23 babies had been born in the camp the past year.

The camp itself is an abandoned and dilapidated military compound with crumbling and peeling green walls over dusty dirt giant sunken area that serves as the center of the camp. There is dust everywhere inside the chain link camp surrounded by olive groves and grape vines. While the women in the new partnership began weaving, I spent hours wandering through the camp and trying to take in the massive trauma and weight of the collective story I was witnessing.

The heaviness of the air felt thick with evaporated tears. You could witness deep relationships, funny moments and all kinds of creativity, as well. But, it was too much to try and understand the power of the wake of war in people wandering through the camp and lining up for every possible need they might encounter. They stood in lines for water, showers, a simple hammer or nail to fashion a bench out of discarded pallets, or diapers, and while they walked and stood with stoic patience there were glimpses of deep anger and grief.

As we began our work on the second day, I noticed a young mother with an infant stroller walking along the perimeter. Her hair was covered by a blue scarf which resembles icons of Mary I remembered from youth. As I walked near her, I couldn’t see the tiny infant born in this camp as a refugee in the world, because his mother "Mary" had covered him in a thin, swaddling cloth, shielding him from all the dust and heartbreak. And, from an ancient place that women have been singing about since the song of Hannah in the book of Samuel, the words to "The Magnificat" rose in me. 

This ancient song was offered by Mary to Elizabeth when they greeted one another and the voice crying in the wilderness leapt in Elizabeth’s womb in the presence of the Prince of Peace in Mary’s womb: 

My soul magnifies the Lord

And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior;

Because He has regarded the lowliness of His handmaid…

He who is mighty has done great things for me…

He has scattered the proud in the conceit of their heart.

He has put down the mighty from their thrones,

and has exalted the lowly.

He has filled the hungry with good things,

and the rich He has sent away empty…

Watching the young mom and her infant, I marveled at her brave naiveté and wondered if she thought this swaddling cloth could shield her baby from the brokenness of this world, the violence of war, the horrors of politics, or the longing for home. But as the scene made its way from my eyes and into my heart where sight transforms into vision, I could see that this tiny veiled, innocent child is so wise and holy that he can teach us again about what it means to love the world. All of the sudden the enormity of the task of taking in the whole world of refugees, which can leave us overwhelmed, numb, confused, and scared, vanished as I just stood there like the shepherds hovering near Jesus’ manger and fell in love with the baby.  

I loved the wonder and mystery of him and loved everything about this gift wrapped like hope for the whole world. This baby, born in an occupied nation is a refugee-like Jesus fleeing to Egypt. This wonderful and life-giving child knows nothing yet but love from his mother, who like Mary was poor and powerless. Both of these women draped their child in bands of cloth and saw themselves as blessed by the child.

This Christmas I want the image of that one baby in that one camp for that one moment to offer us the whole promise of peace and love at Christmas.  

Let yourself for a moment love that baby and by loving that baby, love his mom.  

And maybe for that moment, as we love the baby and his mom, we can love the people who love them.  

We can love the people who pulled the mom, great with child, off a boat, whose voyage was as treacherous as a donkey making its way to Bethlehem.  

We can love the doctor who like the innkeeper let them find shelter safe enough to deliver the child.  

Then maybe we can love all the people who cared for the doctors and rescuers and keep widening the love circle to the not-for-profits and people, who will love this mom and baby and care for them daily. 

Then we can keep following those concentric ripples until the world is within the circle.  

This baby shows us a way to love the whole world, which is Christ’s greatest longing for us.

In the beginning was love, love as tender and vulnerable as a baby, and was enough for the whole world.  

 

 

 

 

Thank You For An Amazing Year: Reflecting on 2017

 

I love this time of year and watching the generosity pour in from all over the country.  It is amazing to behold. I keep getting notes from folks on staff asking, "Did you know this or that amazing person did something to support this movement for women's freedom?"  

Such acts of kindness and love remind me in the face of an often-depressing news feed just how loving and thoughtful this world can be.   

News From The Network of Sister Organizations: Word continues to be great. We just spoke yesterday to Magdalene Chicago and have set a goal for them to open in 2018. They have so many things going for them. Our Education & Outreach Department have tons of more news, including the beautiful new Magdalene Omaha home, where a recent Magdalene Graduate is working as the Executive Director. 

News From Global: Things are going inspiringly well, and we are crushing the goals and numbers.  Our commitments in 2018 include focusing on Moringa Madres and making a trip in July of 2018.  We are just beginning to tap into the possibilities of Moringa and are connecting to another tea blender to form a new partnership. Healing, powerful and delicious is the goal! 

When we opened the cafe one of the four principles (in addition to story, hospitality and healing) is Chado, the Way of Tea.  I hope we serve and make more tea in 2018!  In addition we are going to turn The Welcome Project into an LLC to make opportunities more stable and functional for the refugees.

"Love Heals" News: My son Levi recorded a song called "Love Heals" that he wrote with my husband Marcus. Alison Krauss has agreed to record a duet after hearing the demo. More details to come! 

News About Travel: My assistant and I are making the final notes to the draft of all the trips for spring 2018. There are lots of requests from folks, and we are doing our best to balance it all.  We can't wait to see everyone on the #thistleroad.

I love this community so, so much. It's the most amazing group of folks with a commitment and vision that I hold dear.

Thank you for an amazing year.

 

Photo Credit: Peggy Napier 

A Fine-Oiled Community

Photo Credit: Peggy Napier 

I remember when Thistle Farms first bought the building on Charlotte Ave. It was shortly before the flood in Nashville in May 2010. When my husband Marcus drove me over to look at the location there was just a huge mud yard on the side of the building. 

But there was one Thistle growing up out of that mud, and I took it as a sign. 

As I was entertaining a group at the Cafe recently (Thank you to Trish, the Cafe Events Manager) and Kristin, my Assistant) and bussing a few tables myself, all I could think about was what a well-oiled community Thistle Farms has become in every department.  You can see professionalism, growth, charity and love exuding as effortlessly as the lavender wafting through the vents.

That afternoon, there were groups of women laughing and talking during a break and even a group from the Nashville Sexual Assault Center learning about how to serve survivors. It is amazing to behold and I'm so proud to be a part of it. Everyone is a testimony to how love heals. From the oils that we lavish this world with to the amazing food to the kind words--it all is healing.

Thank you to everyone who made that day possible. We're only hitting our stride. 

Love, 

Becca

We Need Each Other: A Statement about the Las Vegas Tragedy

History tells us that when a community is struck by unthinkable tragedy there is the common thread of gathering. 

Community is the binding force that holds us together when violence and injustice wants to pull us apart.

Amid the wailing and questioning, there will be altars erected and strangers holding on to each other. We need each other to get through the hardest days and darkest nights. We need to remember that love is the fiber of that common thread and hold on for dear life. God bless all the victims, all their families and all those grieving with them. 

"The Moon Will Dos-à-Dos with the Sun:" A Reflection on the 2017 Eclipse

On Monday, August 21st, 2017, we will all look up from life on the ground and gaze into the heavens. The unfolding of light turning to darkness in the middle of the day will captivate our imaginations and spirits. The moon will dos-à-dos with the sun in an elaborate orbital dance that takes place light years apart, transpires in minutes, and serves us a full course feast for celebration. The idea that the distance between the sun and moon is in perfect proportion so the moon covers its larger sister is a calculation that simply testifies to the miracle of creation. 

Last week a friend gave me a small purple carrot on the side of the Harpeth River while we were taking a break from canoeing. As I had never eaten a purple carrot, a root vegetable intricately woven in the depths of the earth, I glanced down and noticed how the inside looked like a microcosm of the universe with a starburst center radiating in gold, orange, and reds into a dark sphere. Popping that star-burst into my mouth I felt the sheer delight of tasting the universe in my mouth. I felt that same delight just a few weeks earlier watching my three sons skipping flat stones along a glacial stream on an island off the coast of Canada. 

The cold turquoise waters, cascading from a mountaintop, along with fine silt from copper and quartz, had flattened rocks to skipping perfection. On the second day around noon, the boys set down their rods and began the dance of a child, a rock, and water, counting the with pride the number of ripples and how far the rock traveled. Despite all the trouble and heartache in this world, it was a delight how for a moment they could lay everything down, skip a rock and laugh. Delight in a carrot, a rock, and an Eclipse, is a mortal joy that lives beyond contemplation and awe. It sweeps us up in wonder and invites us to a place where the eternal and temporal meet. Such a cosmic meeting awaits us not only on Monday, calling us to ancient truths and into the future as it sweeps across the sky, but can reach us anywhere if our hearts are open.

If you have ever seen a solar eclipse, you can’t help but feel excited. The first time I saw a partial eclipse my classroom made a homemade box with a pinhole and mirror to peer through at the end, so we could see a teeny dark reflection of the phenomenon. I couldn’t fathom how it was unfolding and seeing it backwards through that box made it more confusing.  I remember the moment I put the box down and looked directly at the haloed sun. I just looked for a second; I knew I was breaking all the rules, but I couldn’t help it. Some 40 years later, I still carry that moment with me. In my mind, I could picture the earth rotating. Then I could add the moon orbiting the earth in a tight dance. I could even then put the earth spinning the moon orbiting in a big circle around the sun. But when I tried to put myself on a dot on the earth as it spun and the moon orbited and it all circled the sun, the vision I was trying to hold in my mind’s eye became too much. Putting my small self into the picture of this vast expanse of interstellar space on this fragile earth our island home felt impossible to calculate.

There has always been wonder and delight when the earth turns dark in the middle of the day. The stories in scripture, history, and lore, fill volumes. It is said that Nat Turner had a vision in 1830 during the eclipse that it was time to rise. History recounts that Lawrence of Arabia carried an almanac that predicted the eclipse at the turn of the century and he used that knowledge to storm Aqaba. During total eclipse of 1919, it is said that science changed forever. In that moment, Einstein’s theory of relatively, just a hypothesis that star light gets bent when it travels through massive bodies, was proven true.  The eclipse was part of the unfolding plan of our creator God in the stories of faith, mystics from the 13th century to Annie Dillard have marveled at the wonder of God’s unfolding creation. 

Let us take time to not only behold the sun, but hold the promise that the stories of our lives are also being changed forever as we look towards something so momentous.

We are looking into the past as we gaze at light formed thousands of years before, we are looking at our present with more humility and courage, and we are looking into the future. We will all carry the story of the eclipse of 2017 with us. We will see in that brief delightful moment our futures sweeping by as quickly as the moon before the sun. 

We might tell the story with a prequel. It was the summer of 2017. It had been a hot summer full of trouble that included Neo-Nazis and white supremacists orchestrating horrific demonstrations, a political climate full of scandal, terrorists ramming cars across the globe against innocent people, refugees stuck in overpopulated and underserved camps, prisons overflowing and an opioid epidemic sweeping the nation. But then we will share the event itself…

On a hot summer day in August, we closed businesses and schools. People left their desks and computers and went outside. Collectively we stopped and stared through coveted glasses, not easy to procure, at the magnificence of the dance of the universe taking place before us. We, not even a dot in the scale of what was passing before us, took it in and delighted. We don’t know the story yet. 

Maybe I will tell my future grandchildren about that day and how when I stared at the sky I dreamt of them. Maybe all the mothers and fathers who have lost their children this year to violence, addiction, racism, disease, will recount years later the connection to their beloved children that are part of the stardust of creation in those precious moments. Maybe the disciples of peace and justice in this world will recount the inspiration they gained from the moment when they felt part of something bigger than themselves, as love woven into the fabric of creation and vowed to keep going enveloped them.

So, as you take delight on Monday, imagine all the people looking up with you. Imagine a collective prayer throwing its arms around the world like Saturn’s rings. Hope and pray for peace, which may feel as small as the moon, but sometimes can shadow great fiery storms as big as the sun. 

In that moment feel your smallness, see our connections, and pray for peace and love in the whole wide world. 

 

"God's Green Earth:" A Poem from Love Heals

Image Credit: Peggy Napier 

 

In celebration of my new book Love Heals coming out on September 5th, I wanted to share some of my favorite passages on here with you. Let's start with a poem: 

The story of faith begins with the unfolding of God's love over the earth. Love is written into the very fabric of creation. Throughout Scripture we read about love's healing power, from the first vision of a garden with a tree of life until the last vision of a kingdom where that same tree stood, with the leaves that were made for "the healing of the nations" (Revelation 22:2). Today we can imagine the roots of that tree running under our feet, calling us to remember God's healing power all around us and in us...

God's Green Earth

There are days when hillsides blush in tenderness

And moments when valleys are unshadowed. 

There are seasons when streams roll with justice

And all creation blooms where it is planted. 

There are times when we feel God's pulse

Through lapping waves, clapping trees,

And the woodpecker's happy drumming. 

There are mornings when we feel the sunrise

Like warm tea on the backs of our throats.

There are spaces where even weeds

And crawly things call us back to grace. 

That is when our hearts sing "alleluia" 

As we fall in love with God's green earth. 

(I can't wait to share this book with you. So excited. Thank you to everyone who has preordered it.)

#LoveWelcomes: A Guest Blog

A Syrian Refugee preparing materials to be woven into a welcome mat 

This blog was written by Regina, a Survivor-Leader, Magdalene Graduate, and founding member of the Thistle Farms community. In April of 2017, Regina went to Greece with Becca and the Welcome Project Team to help start a new social enterprise for Syrian Refugees. The following is Regina's reflection on her experiences in the camp. 

I am very grateful for the opportunity to continue the work that started in this community long ago. I am amazed that Survivor-Leaders in the community of Thistle Farms continue to light the candle, not just for the addicted and abused women still walking the streets in our own backyard, but also for the Broken Hearted All Over This World. As a witness to this, our community--that God birthed through Becca--took the Spirit of hope, faith and love across the ocean to a refugee camp in Ritsona, Greece.

Wooden looms, strips of fabric ripped a world away in preparation, life jackets cast aside on the ocean by refugees from Syria after surviving the treacherous journey from their homeland to the camp became the seeds that helped a group of eight displaced and impoverished women turn into a social enterprise right before my eyes.

People that felt hopeless found healing love from our community. Light, laughter and love was palatable in their weaving. It's an awesome feeling to know that this grace we've been given can be passed on, even when circumstances seem insurmountable.

I'll never forget the faces of those women or the hope that began to show in their eyes when they realized that we were there to help them produce a livelihood for themselves through something that up until then had brought death to them all in one way or another. They now have a positive outlook on something tragic and designed to destroy.

After coming back home, I find myself tired, emotional, and full of the joy that comes from having witnessed that The Welcome Project's confession #lovewelcomes made good on its promise. As of this post, there are nine women weaving and healing their community, and I am humbled by the chance I was blessed with to give back once more in gratitude for all I have received. 

I have been a Survivor-Leader for twenty years now, and I believe in this justice work more than I ever have because I know the community of Thistle Farms welcomes anyone who is lost, broken, and searching for a way to the Circle. And, in the end, we believe that through community we all can find our way home.  

Now you can join the #lovewelcomes movement too by preordering your own welcome mat here.