Both of these women are on the fringe of their Society, one being supposedly beyond childbearing years, who discovers she's going to have a child and the other a very young woman, probably a teenager not married, who also finds that she's going to have a child now in their day. Elizabeth's barrenness, as she says, is a sign of divine disfavor and marry at the same time could be stoned to death for the discovery by the community that she is with child and not married out of your own experiences in ministry. How does this passage speak to life today for women?

What do you think are the experiences that women can get? Where can they connect in this passage? And what have been your experiences in your life's work?

Want to start?

Well, I spent 10 years working in the Monroe County jail, very often with women who, because of their lifestyles or whatever circumstances, found themselves on the fringes of society. I think that the passage, the cultural onus placed on Mary and Elizabeth because of these pregnancies makes me slow to judge other people that how can I know all that is going on in the life of an individual? The second statement I would make that very often people are pushed to the very edge of our culture and society.

And it seems to me that this passage and the whole Christian message is asking us to extend our embrace to the very margins, because Mary and Elizabeth taking away all of the layers of culture and tradition that have developed around them, were on the margins. And look how the church has embraced them. Oh, yeah. Now that our task, I think, in this day and age is to embrace the people that Society and often the Christian church would want to push right to the margins that is so antithetical to this passage into the scriptures.

Stephanie, this is a this is a passage that celebrates all women for me. I think we're all marginalized. I think we're all pushed to the edges. And I think our culture continues to encourage women to push each other away rather than embrace one another.

When I when I hear women critiquing and picking at other women because of how they're raising their children or, you know, I hear my own mother talking about, you know, these liberated women, you know, and it just it grabs my soul because I'm one of them, you know, and how they don't have the time for their children anymore.

And I have a child and I say we're trying so hard to balance, you know, share with us your wisdom, help us to be, you know, women today and doing all that we need to do to be fulfilled and also to do the things that, you know, would celebrate what you feel is valuable and important. I think that this is a real calling to women to look at these two women who come together and support and love each other and and uphold each other and hold each other and calling us to do the same for one another and to stop pushing each other to the edge by empowering one another, by sharing our wisdom. And and as far as saying, you know, really celebrating each other and not, you know, looking for the things that divide or judging each other so harshly, but but knowing that, you know, we all have gifts and if we would stop pushing each other way, then maybe women would be able to be in a position where we should be today of equality and empowerment and really utilizing what God has given us to to share the word and to be about the work and the ministry.

You know, Rose, the just one little thought and everybody can draw their own conclusion. Isn't it interesting that Marie carried within her the body and blood of Jesus and how ever, however. Each of our respective traditions, all of which are a face of God, understand Eucharist and communion. It doesn't logically follow, therefore, that women today cannot present the community with the body and blood of Christ, since it was Mary was the first priest in the fullest sense of the term.

The other passage, as Stephanie is married and has a child and you, Rose, have three, I have none. And but still within that passage there is a profound message for me as a Christian woman that whatever gifts God has given me, when I give those back to the community, birth takes place and new life takes place and the gospel is extended. It would be a wonderful passage for all women during this season of Advent to just sit with it, kind of asking yourself what is coming to birth within you?

What are you able to give birth to? That is life giving for the community or for yourself or, you know, for those closest to you exploring that for an individual? I think for a woman especially, I think is a very important aspect of the passage. I want to go back to something also that Stephanie was referring to. And and that is why do you think it is so difficult for women to be supportive of women? I have experienced that in my own life. And that's what originally attracted me to this passage was here are two women being supportive of one another rather than immediately critical or judgmental of one another. And that, to me, is a very important aspect of being part of the Christian community, is that there's the place to go for support and not an affirmation.

Not everything you do is right to try, but just that that supporting me for who I am. And how do you respond to that? Which one of you?

Well, I, I feel that among women, particularly younger women, there is evidence of low self-esteem and studies have been done about young adolescent girls when people can actually see a change in their behavior, when they acquiesce to the other more male dominated school setting curriculum and Society when one experiences. This is my personal opinion. One one experiences a lack of self-esteem. And when one is not led to believe they are of equal worth, made in the image and likeness of God, then there can be a tendency as the oppressed to turn around in your lack of self-esteem and do that to others. I think we have a tremendous challenge. I'm helping Hyland develop additional programs around women's health and I believe we need to do more around adolescent girls and adolescent health and adolescent self-esteem so that they feel that they are fully made in the image of God.

Then there won't be the need to turn or toward another with a lack of respect. Thank you.

I think the other piece, too, is that there is what I've experienced is some resentment that the younger women have. It's so much easier than women had it 30 years ago that things are more accessible to us educationally, that there's not the pressure on us to graduate high school and, you know, to marry and to raise the children and to stay home and do it right. And that there are more options to us. And so I my experience has been that some older women have really had the sense of resentment rather than saying, why isn't it great where you're able to be? But, you know, they've come they've raised their children, they've gone and pursued their career. And as one woman told me recently, well, you've been in your career field, you know, since eighty four. I've been in it, you know, since eighty seven. And look how much further you are. And look where you will go. Places I will never get to go because I started so much older and there was such anger in her voice and such pain. And you know, I, I felt great sadness for her.

But I also said then why can't you just celebrate where I'm going and where your daughter will go and your granddaughter? And rejoice in where women are able to move and and celebrate that you're able to be where you are today.

Oh, thank you both. I want to thank the Reverend Stephanie Sauvé and Sister Barbara Moore for being with me today. If you would like a tape of this program or a list of the books that were referred to and the reading list to continue your faith journey, please write to me at Women and the word post office box one eight zero one three Rochester, New York, one four six one eight until next time. I'm Rosemary Mitchell and this has been women and the word. Thank you for being with me.

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Good evening and welcome to women and the word with your host, Reverend Rosemary Mitchell, a program where women interpret scripture, discuss theology and reflect on their spirituality. And now here is Reverend Mitchell.

I'm Rosemary Mitchell. And this is Women in the World, Women. And the word is a 30 minute program of biblical interpretation and theological dialog with outstanding biblical scholars, theologians and women of faith. If you enjoy our program, let the station know. And at the end, I will let you know how to order a tape of this program and a reading list to enable you to continue your spiritual journey of faith. Today's program is Part three and a series on women and the birth of Scripture is Luke. Chapter two, verses one to seven. Let's listen for God's word for us today, I am reading from the new revised standard version of the Bible. In those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while cornealious was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David, called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting his child while they were there. The time came for her to deliver her child, and she gave birth to her first born son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in the manger because there was no place for them in the end. Today, my guests are the Reverend Jane Arsdale, director of Camera and Community Ministries, and Carolyn Mickum, the director of the Family Resource Network. Thank you for being with me today, Carolyn and Jane. Jane Shorebird, a biblical interpreter in her commentary on Luke's gospel, reminds us that this gospel has been called the gospel of the poor and that the gospel writer Luke had a concern for the poor, marginalized and oppressed people and that that is apparent as one reads his gospel. What do you think of that in light of this portion of the Nativity story?

Which one of you would like to go? Well. I think that paying to to travel such a long way to pay taxes, to bring a person who is with child, without a place to stay, to be dependent on others, for hospitality, for more than hospitality, for protecting that unborn child and then that born child. I do not think that this is very different than what is happening now. I think it is very relevant to Rochester. There are twenty three thousand poor children, children in poor families growing up in Rochester. There are eleven thousand poor families in Rochester, eighty four percent of whom are headed by single women. So the amount of poverty in Rochester and the housing situation of those who are family is very serious. My experience is that the mobility rate is incredibly high. So setting out to find faith and to be welcomed, because most of the parents with whom we work are many of the parents with whom we work on public assistance. And there are many landlords prefer not to work with DSF because they can be vouchered so they can be sure they'll get their money. It may be a few months late and they may get occasionally hassled around it. But the question of where do you find lodging for the vulnerable family is very relevant today.

Thank you, Jane.

Well, you said everything that I would have said if I'd been first, which is wonderful because I can echo many of the same things.

I was actually thinking about how Mary truly exemplifies society's most vulnerable and unmarried pregnant woman, and she was pointing to what we understand from scripture. She was very young and that made her more vulnerable. And the fact that Joseph, when he found out she was pregnant, wasn't too interested in maintaining the relationship, made her even more vulnerable. And then, as you said, as they travel to a distant place, they were really dependent upon the hospitality of a stranger. And I think that many of our families in this community, especially young women who are pregnant or who have more children, are dependent upon stranger for help. And they really are at the whim of government or churches or community institutions, really at the whim of those institutions, either survive and do fairly well or they don't succeed at all.

And many of them for lack of family support or parental guidance or a system that that encourages and help them develop their own, their own sense of self-worth so that they can do something besides get pregnant, a very young age. So I was just thinking about the vulnerability of the whole family and how that's not much different from people that we see every day.

The the safe, comfortable place. The inn is not where the Christ child was born. And what is the significance for people of faith when we read that there was no room in the inn and that the Christ child is born and stable and laid in a manger? I was interested in reading some of the Bible commentaries where they talk about that the Christ child is not born in the state of the book, that God chose a different path or the the child of God to be born.

What do you think about where what the significance is of the. Want to go first thing?

Well, actually, it's it can be very discomforting to think about that, especially if we decide that we really want to follow in Jesus's with that, then for me, the challenge is to continue to see things that are more simple, that are not lifted up, to be involved in a way that may not necessarily be among the most affluent or to have the best kind of equipment or to make do with what you have. And I take that pretty seriously. The business of Jesus with humble beginnings and how that may be word for everyone.

Well, I. I feel as Jane does, I think one of the reasons it's so important to have respect for every person is that, in fact, the unique gift may come from the table. But in our society, we engage people really. Oh, we sort of thought people, the people who come from the end and the people who come from the table and study after study has shown that children who go to school and are labeled as disadvantaged, rather poor, et cetera, et cetera, the expectations for them are less.

And I recently read the 1855 autobiography of Frederick Douglass and the extraordinary impact that this man had on educated people who could not believe that I could become an unbelievably eloquent human being in both speech and writing ability. So it's very easy to categorize people, and I think we need to have a lot of respect.

For the manger and the table that reminded me actually of how we often think that we find Christ in a and what we might typically think of as a holy place in the church or or even out in nature, when the truth is that we might find Christ standing in line for a hot lunch, that we might find Christ in the face of a little kid who is really excited about something that she brings to show her teacher or the person who works with her with her homework.

I think it's really significant. I think finding Christ or seeing the face of God in another person, that's something that could be a little scary for people because then that might mean that something will be demanded of us. And that's not something we always want to embrace, that something will then be demanded of us either have to look at myself and who I am, or I will have to do something that I might not really want to do right now. So it's really challenging. Do you think in this passage that there's a danger that we will romanticize poverty in the past? Do you think that there's somehow looking at poverty and being oppressed and marginalized is like just, oh, this is that incredible something we can hold up everything, think?

Well, anybody who I don't think either Jane or I would romanticize poverty. So anyone who is tempted to do that has should come go and visit Cameron or one of the Family Resource Center, and they will soon be disabused. Me, when I was a child, there was a hidden way across the crowded ways of life. And in these little I call them oases or little pockets of warmth and friendliness and acceptance of the crowded ways of life. KROT and if one who does not live in poverty is ever tempted to romanticize it, I think experience and exposure and listening to people who are in the midst of it will to set us straight. I couldn't agree more. I would thinking as you were speaking about the people who are really moved by what they see when they come visit us or say how rewarding this work must be for you to be helping so many people. And I end up having to say some time, but it's not rewarding. It doesn't give me a sense of pride.

It makes me feel more urgent because poverty isn't pretty. It's just not it's not pretty to walk into somebody's house and see that they don't have any furniture in their living room, or to know that for the last five days of every month, there's no food in the refrigerator and that we're feeding children three nights a week at supper time because families don't have enough food. And we serve as many as 90 kids now. And that's not pretty and it's not glamorized. And what is served as a constant reminder to me that there ought to be more somehow that I, as a middle class white American citizen, could be doing to make life easier for poor children and for you in your work at Kameron Community, Jane, and your work with the Family Resource Network.

Carolann, where do you find God? How do you and you talk about that, where you find God, the God in your times at work?

I think that sometimes it's very difficult to find God. Some days it's not easy.

But I have a tendency to find God in the present and in there and there in the silliest thing sometimes, or at least it seems that way. And that's also where I find hope and I've learned to be able to measure it in Mm. Of change that I see in a person. But just to share a story which I thought was very humorous because I often end up saying, my God, where are you in the eye and how are we going to continue. It was a particularly sunny day early last summer and I have sitting in my window in my office, I have a cross that came from a church that closed a few years ago. And I also had hanging from the light fixture in my office, kind of a fluttering marble that looked a little bit like an angel. And there was I looked up in front of my desk, which was. Piled high, as usual, and I was really concerned about finances, which is also another usual circumstance. And all of a sudden on the wall where I had never seen More Light before, there was a huge rectangle and in a rectangle with the shadow of the cross and this fluttering thing moving in front of it.

So it reminded me of God's spirit. And I laughed and laughed and I said, OK, I get the message. And then it duplicated itself. That same white pattern duplicated itself in another place on the wall. And I know that sounds silly, but it was a real gift to me, a lighthearted, humorous way of saying you're really not alone, Jane.

Remember that the cross is behind you and God buried it with you. And and that's the place where I find it. I find God often when somebody will stick their head in my door and say, I just want to say hello to you. And I find out that they've been a treatment program for eight months and they hadn't been around for that reason or whatever. I find God and and those kinds of gifts and also in the faces of folks from our neighborhood who are willing to to put their own time into working in our kitchen or beginning to tutor children. Some are working in the clothing distribution.

And when I see their faces shine because they are contributing something, I think I think well, I it's an interesting question for me, because it would I would say on a daily basis, it was easier to see God, to feel God, to experience God when I was in an actual center. So for six months now, I have been working with committees and. Systems and trying to bring about shared systems and dealing with computers and all these things, the the the financial struggles brought to a mega level, because each of the center, as Jane said, is under such financial vulnerability that our only hope we will either stand together or fall separately. When I was at its center, I, I often could see and experience.

That sense of. Spiritual awareness and connection.

Now I find which I found them to, I, I find it in my preparation so that I have to prepare myself every day I do. I am able to do that with through meditation so that I in some sense have to take it with me. And I find it in the face that you cannot gauge what. The merit of what you're doing, you cannot gauge if it is God's will in the short run because the messages you get back are based on other people's yardsticks, not the yardstick of faith. So you have to constantly bring yourself remind yourself there's another yardstick. And if you try to align yourself with that yardstick, I think in that is where the faith and the the realization of God's plan comes in. So I find it less I have to dig for it more as I deal less with people and more with.

Oh, yes, I think that's true for a lot of folks.

I would be really interested and I think our listeners would be interested if each of you in the few minutes that we do have left at each of you, would talk about how it was that you felt close to your particular ministry and what exactly your ministries are about now. What is Family Resource Center but the network about and what is Cameroons all about? Well, I think it would be really wonderful to hear how you yourself got to this place. What's the mission?

Well, I would say mine, a lifelong I my father was a Methodist minister and I grew up in the south in Virginia. I was born in 1932 at the height of the depression I had. My father really wasn't was a product of his environment. But he understood his major message throughout his ministry was the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. And of course, in a society as dedicated to racism as Virginia was when I was a child, that was not the necessary or, you know, which meant rich people. So that had certainly had an abiding influence on me. Then my own experience of parenting, which I have found probably the most rewarding part of my life, and I was a full time parent, which was ordinary in my day and more and more extraordinary. But I had a lot of challenges in parenting, a lot of challenges, some of which I didn't feel I did very well. And at a later time in my life, I became involved first in the in the struggle against the Vietnam War and from that then into working on behalf of changes in the criminal justice system. I worked for the Judicial Project Commission in Rochester, went into Attica prison. I was involved in the aftermath of the Attica uprising. And I felt so called to address the situation of people in the criminal justice system, went to work at the Division for Youth saying, oh, maybe there would be more of a chance to make a difference if you were working with teenagers, was there for a very short period. And I thought, oh, much too late, though. Teamed up with a sister, Saint Joseph's sister, Patricia Friend. And we started on a journey that took us 18 months to try to figure out what would what would work with family, because I found the families of teenagers who come in contact with the criminal justice system tired, played out angry high school. Where were you when we needed you? Now you're here telling us to do this and that. Where were you in the meeting? So this idea of family resource centers came out of that. So many things. And I feel through many years of not having enough money, having enormous struggles, that it has to be the path because it had this movement has endured and we now have six family research centers in Rochester and we are assisting people in outlying districts who want to start them. So I feel it was not one clear I didn't have a road to Damascus, but I had certainly a path that I say I feel I have the.

Privilege to follow. Oh, thank you, Jane. It's about your journey.

My journey actually began in Michigan, which is where I'm from originally. I came here almost 13 years ago specifically to attend the divinity school of Goodman Street. And when I moved here with all my earthly possessions and a 10 year old son, I thought I was being called to a hospital chaplaincy. I work in hospitals and felt very comfortable in my medical surroundings, and I wanted to provide that kind of pastoral care. But as I often laugh with my friends and say our first semester was so crammed with assignments and responsibilities that I didn't have any time to think about my calling so God could speak to me about it. And and it happened in a strange way through coursework, actually, when we were forced to get into the city of Rochester our second semester and to attend some arraignments in court and to visit Attica prison and to understand who it is, largely through the influence of Judicial Process Commission, as you already said, Carol. And to really understand who it is who gets arrested and convicted and does time in prison, and that is people who live in poverty and people who are not European, American, not white people. Those are the majority of who fills our prisons, not because they commit more crimes, but because they have fewer resources in order to help them get lesser sentences or whatever. Anyway, I was very moved by that and also by becoming acquainted with the Catholic Worker movement who runs places like St. Joseph, south of Hospitality on South Avenue. And and I began to feel God speaking to me to try to speak on behalf of people who don't have a voice, people that are outside the doors of the traditional church. And I really wondered what shape that ministry was going to take. And toward the end of my second year at the divinity school, I literally stumbled into a board meeting where a ministry was being formed between Presbyterians and American Baptists located on the west side of the city, right off Lisle Avenue in a notorious neighborhood which is working hard to be revitalized. Hammerin Community Ministries was a vision of American Baptists and Presbyterians working together to provide ministry of the neighborhood, which was seen as underserved by community agencies. And so I helped them ask questions of the people in the neighborhood. What are your needs for ministry if we opened a form of outreach work in this neighborhood? What are your needs? And people were speaking about the needs of children and how there was nothing for their little children to do that. There were few resources when when things were running out at home. And on that basis of of talking with neighborhood residents and writing proposals to those two denominations and and waiting for God to speak to us as a board of directors and me as a as a part time seminarians working at Camron part time, I began to move us in the direction of working with children first and we began to feed people. We have a real multiservice ministry, which is sponsored by now several churches of different denominations, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. And I should at least say you see alien Methodists and so on. And we really work to not only meet immediate needs for people, but also to let them know that they are children of God. Great.

Thank you. Our time is just about out up. Thank you to Carolyn McLoone, the director of the Family Resource Network, and Jane Arsdale, director of Camer Community Ministries, for being my guest today on Women in the World. If you would like a tape of this program or how to get in touch with Carolyn or Jane and their ministries and a reading list to assist you in continuing your faith journey, please write to me at Women in the World Post Office Box one eight zero one three Rochester, New York, one four six one eight. My next program will be a women's service of lessons and carols, a selection of readings and music from a women's perspective. For Christmas Eve, it will be a one hour program to be broadcast at four thirty pm on Christmas Eve. I hope you will join me for that special Christmas program. Until then, I am Rosemary Mitchell and you have been listening to women and the word. Thank you for being with me.

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