I received an inordinately heart-felt, gracious, seemingly uninstigated note of gratitude from the President of my seminary yesterday. It’s almost always a blessing to receive affirmation for what one offers in a community of service, education. I am thankful when I am seen and heard in what I hope to offer. Part of the anticipation for my next book coming out--as I know so many women and church-wounded folks who will appreciate my truth-telling. Even so, I also expect it to become summarily trounced by folks for whom it was not written–academics, scholars, etc. I wrote the manuscript for myself first, to finally come clean and speak truthfully about these last ten years or more, beckoned by the F/feminine within and beyond me. Today I smile because the book may just protect me from the grasping and fear of my current community on the cusp of some substantial leadership changes.
Something in my gut nudged me today, curious about such a lengthy thank you note, seemingly out of the blue. So I reached out via text to a spirit-friend who has been in some life-transition discernment. He has played a fundamental leadership role in my current community of service, even as the divisions widened in the UMC and now UMC/GMC denominations, even as his leadership in the new Global Methodist Church created dissonance and division with the current Board (if no longer the faculty, given we’ve learned how to depend upon one another). In something of a Hail Mary, I crafted a proposal for a collaborative executive leadership model to maximize the use of gifts of both President and current Dean to become Co-Presidents, to minimize the denominational division creeping into the community by means of a Board unwilling to take the risks necessary for such a proposal. Eighty-something year old white men are not adept at imagining things they’ve not thought of first, particularly if offered by a woman (no matter how charming I might have been, at first). Has it just dawned on the President that he will have few allies on the faculty for whatever will come next…? Is that the instigation of such a note, out of the blue?
Part of me feels ungrateful for even naming such suspicion. The larger other part of me, however, recognizes the patterns in higher education systems, led largely by disempowering masculinized persons driven by fear upon the cusp of change. The first ones such “leaders” come to are often the strongest women in the system, hoping for her/them to take on the train-wrecks their pride has created.
Everything in my body tells me this is what’s coming, this is how the system will approach me, asking for my gifts to lead in a higher education system that refused my vision and my soul-driven work.
I will pray about it, of course. I will hold my suspicions in the “aversion” basket, listening for deeply grounding “attachment” observations, listening for the movement of Spirit. Perhaps this work will even push me to dive further into the forgiveness work I am about, leading me to name and release the visceral anger at the summary refusal of what I offered in September. There is no small urge of 'I told you so,' which is satisfying if not sanctifying.
I cannot imagine a world in which NO is not the answer to any questions of executive leadership asked me in this system. I can no longer value its constitution, even as I have been able to be me in contributing within it.
I consider higher education to be declining for good reason, with almost the sooner the better behind it. It requires dualistic thinking and linear rationalization. It prioritizes masculinized thinking over collaborative listening. It is not a good business model. I yearn to be as useless to capitalism as I can, even as I recognize I am of its ilk, its divisive "successes" for some of us. I’ve long left this educational-community's theological presumptions behind, particularly the authority of Scripture and the focus upon historic tradition toward understandings of fidelity to Godde. To be clear, I honor the historic tradition(s) because that is where I come from and Truth is Truth. I honor my elders and proclaim the Oneness of Godde in a renewed and renewing Trinitarianism. But I don’t let this historic grasping/fear decide or provide the categories nor answers to the questions of faith presenting themselves to us today. I serve in this community as I attempt to love unconditionally, with forgiveness learning at its heart, but the "community" is not a community. Higher education never is. That we continue to look to it to shape leaders for building religious community is habit, not sacred Word. Those in higher education today have little emotional intelligence within which to deepen relational learning anyway.
An elder in my life has observed (which I find compellingly accurate): We live in an adolescent culture, with few initiated adults, able/willing to take responsibility for living new gifts into old models declining, even dead. My own language, in my own context? Seminary education today is creating spiritual adolescents to curate declining institutions. This is what our current modeling does, which won't change in my lifetime. I am okay with that, have surrendered into the Great Turning, the sacred bewilderment of unknowing in such systems. I am not one who can or will change such systems.
So...How long must I--will I be welcome to--serve in such vineyards? I dunno. I can be myself in this system because I am tenured and can speak relatively freely (if not impolitically). Old wineskins. My Work is modelling new collaborative, forgiveness, unknowing wine, as long the old wineskins can bear the dissonance of my presence.
I wonder how long that will be...?