thoughts on femininity and community

The Lord has been instilling in me a renewed vision of femininity. I would like to share some of the particulars that have struck me in the last few years: how my view of who I am as a woman in Christ has grown by his grace, and how that can and should affect the community in which I live.
I struggle not to be defined by misguided notions of femininity held by secular and sacred factions alike. Sadly, the secular feminist movement, moving far away from who we are in Christ, focused on proving that women are of equal worth to men. When we do away with God and with our unequivocal equality in Christ, we find we have to work to build our own reputations. Ironically, religious perversions of “biblical” femininity have this same performance mentality at their root, requiring of us that which should naturally flow out of our relationship with Christ and renewal by his Spirit. We have lost our understanding of our inherent value in our desire to prove that value. All too often this manifests in a struggle with submitting to our design, looking for something bigger and better to achieve, and bucking any authority that stands in our way. By God's grace, however, I am beginning to look at his desires for womanhood from a better perspective. As his daughter, an heir to his kingdom, I am under His good authority--the authority of the Author who has written my role and knows me better than I know myself.
This renews my understanding of scriptures like Proverbs 31. I once rebelled against it, perceiving it as a strangling list of expectations and rules. In order to be “a good Christian woman”, I had to execute the actions described--and all in my own strength. Through a deeper understanding of the gospel and the power of the Spirit to equip me to do “every good work”, I respond differently. What a rich proverb it has become in my mind, full of vibrant descriptions! Instead of being clothed with business and troubled by the list of things to do, she clothes herself with “strength and dignity” and “can laugh at the days to come.” But her concern is first for her family and her household (for whom she provides food and scarlet clothing), and she nurtures them in a way that receives renown in the city. This woman lives a life of industry, yet joy; and she receives great praise for it.
I think what we see in the wife of noble character is a woman who has found her calling and delights to follow it. We observe no mandates in this passage of how she must perform and what she must accomplish. Her work flows out of the fact that she has been loved. This woman is a wife, which means someone has set his love upon her. Her response is an outpouring of love and compassion towards others: her family, her servants, and ultimately her community as “she opens her hand to the poor and reaches out her hands to the needy.”
I recently had my eyes opened to the way we handle the needy of the world--so unlike the wife in Proverbs. The impetus for this new understanding came with our impending move to seminary. We were clearing out the unwanted stuff that inevitably collects in one's home. In our trips to Goodwill and the Salvation Army, the nature of our fractured society was once again displayed. At these ministries, we can drive up, drop off our “donations” to a kind person who smells tolerable and smiles. We are removed from the “untouchables” who make us uncomfortable. Another way we have distanced ourselves from the reality of people comes in the form of grocery shopping. I want to assure you that I am neither criticizing the charitable organizations mentioned above, nor am I bashing the grocery industry. Rather I am trying to reconnect us once again to our communities. We forget that farmers produce our fruits and vegetables. These are people who work hard, and frequently reap far less than what they sow. They are dependent upon the land, and are often driven to the end of themselves by it. But, however dependent we are upon them for our daily bread, we have distanced ourselves from them and continued to fracture community instead of building it (as is our cultural mandate).
Unfortunately, in the United States, much of the time we naturally isolate ourselves, and not only from the “untouchables” of society. Community, even of like-minded people, is risky in and of itself. Tension and conflict are just under the surface of our interactions due to our fallen nature. As long as we do not feel uncomfortable or challenged in our way of doing things, we'll be fine. We willingly sacrifice true community, true intimacy to our idols of comfort or control. Or we bury ourselves once more in those seductive duties and roles to excuse our distance and indifference. I have things to do around my own house that keep me from pursuing others: my children and husband to care for, groceries to buy, meals to plan, laundry to fold, dishes to wash, etc. Gradually I become a machine operating on automatic to complete my list of duties. As I do, do, do, and lose my sense of who I am in the sight of God, I also lose touch with those around me, and begin to live my life disconnected from fellowship, a vital means of experiencing God’s grace. I also fail to show compassion those who are truly in great need, and this convicts me deeply.
Another of the meaningful images to me in the Proverbs 31 passage relates to that of the garden. “She considers a field and buys it; out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.” My husband and I had the opportunity to plan our first garden together. We considered it over the winter, and began to prepare a compost pile, a framed bed, the plants we hoped to grow. I researched, gobbling up every scrap of instruction on composting, raised-bed gardening, organic gardening, and planting that I could find. I read a book that I found incredibly inspiring (see Confession of a Suburban Homesteader) by a woman (steeped in feminist philosophies) who had attempted to feed her family from what she grew, with little supplementation. In her book, she also discussed the planning and planting of a community garden, and from the start I was floored by the idea. A piece of me began to warm to, and be inspired by, the beauty of her expression of herself. I began to look around my neighborhood and saw for the first time how much land was available. I began to recognize more and more how little we do to cultivate it, and at the same time how little we do to cultivate community beyond our immediate neighbors and those we meet at the park with children in our children's peer group. We regard land and relationship in the same light: for recreation, and entertainment purposes alone. For the Christian called to be in the world and show His light, we must have a different view of God's world. Something in me (i.e. our shared trait of being image-bearers) was like this woman who was passionate about taking care of the environment. I wanted to sink my fingers into the soil, shoulder to shoulder with other women--cultivating and being a good steward of both land and community at once.
So what does this mean for us? I believe we must recognize the boundless love the Lord has for each of us. I submit that this has both individual and corporate application: first, as individuals, we have unique design that we must discern and from which we must act. I would like to assert that we women have a particular call to nurture and cultivate relationships. This leads to the second application: we must cultivate community, encouraging and building one another up, reflecting His love into others’ lives, Christian and unbeliever alike.
I want to be a real woman; real as is defined by the God who designed me. I want to hold fast to the knowledge that I am a daughter--a loved and chosen one. He has created and crafted me with a beauty and unique femininity. He has bestowed me with gifts so that I might use them to bring glory to him and minister to others. I want to be in real relationships, not those that merely add to my comfort or my resume. As a woman, I picture particularly a community of women encouraging each other in their duties as well as in their creative outlets. I want the gaps to be bridged, both between my concept of self and the Lord's vision for me and others, that I might more accurately reflect the God I serve....for I want to be like him.