Episode 275 - Tiffany Bluhm

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Buscetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as Lear, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Okay, Tiffany. I feel like we probably should have hit record, like at least five minutes ago. I've just had so much fun already. [00:00:49] Speaker B: We brought the funk. [00:00:50] Speaker A: We did. [00:00:51] Speaker B: We brought it. We brought it. [00:00:52] Speaker A: We'll keep bringing it though, so I'm not real worried about it. There's. It's not gonna be. There's no scarcity of funk. I think that's gonna be in this conversation. I'm really pumped because I just finished your book, the Women we've been waiting for this morning. I have been utilizing it like an actual devotional. [00:01:13] Speaker B: That is the hope. [00:01:14] Speaker A: Technically. [00:01:15] Speaker B: That is the hope, Alexis. [00:01:17] Speaker A: I know that's what it technically is, but. Meaning I've been starting my mornings with it, so I think you might it. Hopefully it will bring you joy to hear because I kind of need. This is very joyful. We have a brand new puppy and. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Right. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Which is joyful. And also a lot of work. A lot of work. She's like a velociraptor, is what my husband said. Like, she's, you know, she's everywhere, all over the place. Her name is Delilah. Delilah didn't make the book, but maybe next time. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Maybe next time. Maybe next time. So that might be a hard one to redeem, but I would do my best. Hey. [00:01:54] Speaker A: I mean, we're gonna talk about some. That I'm like, yeah, bring it. This is your full redemption stories. So Delilah and I have been sitting in our. We call them the relaxing chairs in our den. And she's up at 5:30 every morning. And so I'm up at 5:30 every morning, and it's. She's calm until someone else comes downstairs. Oh, so we just. [00:02:15] Speaker B: When it's just you and her, she's like, chill as a cucumber. [00:02:17] Speaker A: She's chill. And we just sit. She sits right next to me. You know, I get my coffee started and stuff. And then we've been reading the Women we've been waiting for Delilah. And I have. And it has been a real joy, and I have loved it and I've learned a lot, and I'm just really Excited. So first I will say we're talking today with you as the author, but you've done something that I think is really unique, where you wrote the vast majority of this book, but then you brought, also brought in a lot of women who were contributors to this. So can you start like maybe where was, where did that idea get birthed in the, in the process of thinking about where this book would go. [00:02:56] Speaker B: Yeah, well, this is my sixth title and I switched. I've done thick Bible studies, I've done normal trade books, just chapter books. And then to move to a devotional was a great format for me because I had so many ideas I wanted to weave under the banner of self care for communal flourishing. And as I was kind of, you know, getting all my ideas on paper, I thought, man, it'd be so fun for my readers to be introduced to the women that I'm listening to and learning from. And they're a combination of clergy, women activists, authors, liturgists, and just this beautiful mashup of women out there doing the dang thing who I feel are the ones I'm proverbially marching alongside as we offer our unique contribution to the Christian movement. By the way, it took a minute to get my publisher on board with that idea. [00:03:54] Speaker A: Oh really? [00:03:55] Speaker B: Because most multi author books are. Every single entry is a different author. And I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going to write, you know, 30 or not 30, 28 out of the 40 entries. And then we're going to have, you know, guests pop in and contribute. So everyone gets a break from me every fourth or fifth day. [00:04:17] Speaker A: I loved it. I loved the different voices, the different contexts that the women are coming from. It was really cool. And to be truthful, it was, it was, I would say it all was so seamless though for me as a reader that there were times when I looked back and I was like, wait a minute, is this Tiffany or is this someone else? You know, so it felt, it felt really great to read that and have, and have all of these women contribute based on, you know, like what, what do they know? Not just what is their expertise, but what is their lived experience. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:04:49] Speaker A: I think that also speaks to that communal flourishing that you're talking about. I kind of want to jump right in there because you start the book off, I was kind of like, it was almost an exhausted amen when I'm reading the beginning because it's like this girl boss, meritocracy. I'm like, I can't do it. [00:05:12] Speaker B: I'm not here for that, and I cannot do that. This idea of self care. And listeners, I'm going to break it all down for us. This movement of self care has been hijacked by capitalist machines bent on draining our pocketbooks and making us feel inferior and that a purchase will solve our problems. Or we have chalked up self care as escapism. Alexis when we binge watch the real lives of Mormon wives, we're like, oh, that's self care I just took. And I'm like, girl, that's not self care. That's disassociation. You know, like there's a difference here. So I define and for our purposes and time today, and of course for the devotional I define self care is taking care of yourself in a world that dehumanizes you. It is taking care of yourself without earning the right, as if you must accomplish something wild and extravagant in order to do so. In order to do so, it is enacting boundaries and deciding how and what you will allow to happen in your life. And the holy imagination you're allowing others to see of what life could look like. So it is outrageously radical. It is so upside down. Kingdom vibes. And I use women in modern history, all minorities or women with disabilities and women in scripture, like you already alluded to, the lesser known women in scripture. And I give them the shine and platform they deserve. We're talking about the wailing women, Vashti. Like these women that we've been like, oh, oh, like, oh, really? They're. They become accessories to other stories. And then that is such a disrespectful way to read the text. And of course, we know the Bible was written by men for men. So being able to, to look and dive into the context of how incredibly honoring these women were to themselves, that led to communal flourishing. Because good self care, true, actualized self care is going to be good for everybody. [00:07:16] Speaker A: That's right. That's right. It is going to be good for everybody. And I think that's one of the places that. Because I think I want to start. And I checked this and so this is the place where I felt like I want to start with. This quote actually did come from one of your contributors. So we're going to, we're going to definitely get. We're going to hit a lot of places today. But it was, there was something in this Ida B. [00:07:42] Speaker B: Wells story that was by Kayla Craig, I believe. Yes, it is. [00:07:47] Speaker A: And I want to read this little quote because I think it's a. I felt like it would Be a good place to kind of have in the back of our minds or even kind of. For me, it's like guiding what I'm thinking about as I went through this devotional, but also our discussion today. And so for those of us who don't know Ida B. Wells, I want you to elaborate on who she was a little bit. But, um, this. There's this quote that Kayla says. Though it's easy to lionize historical leaders like Ida, in doing so, we ignore the fullness of their humanity. And I'm like, this is so good, because every time I think about Ida, every time I read something about her, she really is. She's this hero. She is this, you know, lion and the faith and in social justice, and she's an activist, and she's all of these things. But we can lose. Like, what did it actually cost her to do this? How was she practicing self care for, you know, human flourishing? And then, you know, what about us, too, as we. We seek to kind of keep all of these plates in play? You know, what does that look like for us to honor our own humanity and the humanity in. Specifically in other women that we see around us who were, like you said, we're walking with. We're working with them. So I just. That was. That was really meaningful for me. [00:09:16] Speaker B: Yeah. Listeners, I am so excited to share a little bit more about Ida B. Wells. She was a journalist. She was a Crusader during the mid-1800s when it felt like there was no way forward for the black population in America. Our brothers and sisters who really, really believed that they were worthy of dignity, respect, equity, and equality, and that was robbed from them in a place that they called home. And so the way she continually fought for that, but still was so honest with herself, she knew her life's work mattered, but she also was gentle with herself. And I think when I think of the through line between all of these women that are Featured in all 40 days, and multiple women are featured in each. Some of them have multiple women in each entry. This idea that gentleness for yourself is something you must treasure because it's not necessarily offered by the culture at large. And so many of us are forged by what America has asked of us and the societal expectations that we live under in our time and place in history. And on top of that, adding in your cultural identity, like Ida. Like Ida did. And so being able to honor your journey and how imperfect it is. And one of the things when I think of. When I think of Ida, she was so misunderstood in her time and place. Called militant, aggressive. And she was doing the dang thing. And her, like her 20s, you know, I'm talking about. She wasn't in her 40s when she started crusading against rampant, ugly, nasty, vile, evil racism. She was, she was like early 20s, 25, when she sued a railroad for not allowing her to access a first class ticket. So just thinking of how young some of these women were in history when they refused to take their place, that society wrote for them, and they chose to stand up and honor themselves and invite everyone else to honor themselves as image bearers. [00:11:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what you're talking about, is the self care that says, I recognize who I am. You don't get to tell me who I am by not allowing me to be in a certain space. And then that speaks to our communal flourishing. That says, if Ida is worthy of that, then so is the person next to Ida, and so is that person's neighbor, and so is that person's child. And so, you know, and so it just. It just continues. But sometimes we need the example. [00:12:03] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And it's just that invitation to know ourselves. It's that invitation to address our own trauma and pain, to be able to have a grasp on wholeness and a grasp on healing that is our portion in this life and in the here and now, to make that become a reality and very practical ways. [00:12:27] Speaker A: You started the first day with a woman who has, Honestly, real honest, she has caused me a lot of agony over the years. But in more recent years, I will say this. Let me just. Let me just be blunt. In my fundamentalism, she caused me a lot of agonizing. Okay. [00:12:46] Speaker B: Because how do you make sense of Rahab? And how do you make sense of Rahab? [00:12:51] Speaker A: But since then, I have grown to love Rahab. Like, I'm feeling teary just thinking about Rahab's story, her descriptions, yours added to that. For me, Rahab, gosh, when you talk about like an accessory, yeah, that's a perfect example. [00:13:18] Speaker B: And when we read that text, we. She does become an accessory to the Hebrew spies to colonize their promised land. And we are quick to define her by her deficits, by her disadvantages. We do that to all minority women and women with disabilities, but we really do it to Rahab. We come out swinging. She was the prostitute. She was low class. She was this and she was that. And in reality, she was the breadwinner for her home. She was the matriarch. She ensured that her family was taken care of. She on the outskirts of the city. Because she was low class, she was perfectly positioned to commit treason against her own people who did not take care of her there. When you think of, you know, she had no labor rights, a union to join for, like, this was her opportunity to push back against the man. You know, like, this was her moment and she was willing to commit treason. And she's one of the first to prophesy about this, about this Hebrew God and name what these fearful men couldn't even necessarily name for themselves. And she is grafted into the sociopolitical order, her and her family, and of course, into the. To the lineage of Jesus. So to see her as this, like, incredible negotiator and gifted woman who could see things that other people couldn't see, be able to use her position to her advantage. It is so hard for us to believe that God would use messy people. It's so hard to believe that God would use, quote, unquote, unsanctified people. And that's exactly what he does with Rahab. And it's why I started out the entire devotional with somebody who we are like, oh, Scarlet Letter, this girl, she. She dared to hide the spies because she, you know, she was already a sneaky girl. We already have these preconceived notions of this woman and in reality, the likelihood that she sold her body to feed her family. Like, she had people to take care of and she was not going to let them go hungry. Like, she is such an admirable woman that we can learn so much from. And I just, I can't get enough of it, quite frankly. And I think she's the perfect picture of self care. She was. In her case, treason was self care. Let's just real talk, Alexis. This is not flannel board Sunday school descriptions of women in scripture. I come out swinging and I come out spicy, and I, And I, And I come with receipts. I did my research and to. And to start and learn and sit at the feet of rehab was really transformational for me. So not only was I already so excited to research and really dive deep and give and offer a fresh perspective of these women in history and biblical history, but really offer something that we really haven't grappled with before. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Let me. Let me just comment on something that you said because I think it's true. And then I. Okay, so I'll. My turn to be spicy for a second. I think it's true that we find it hard to believe that God would use messy people unless they're men with privilege. Oh, say it Girl, nobody finds it hard to believe that God would work through King David. No one finds it hard to believe that God would work through that sexual assaulter, raper, rapist, murderer. Like, right, right. No one finds because he's a man after God's own heart. [00:16:32] Speaker B: I've struggled with David. I wish I would have put that in there. [00:16:35] Speaker A: When I say I struggle with rehab, I struggle with David, too. [00:16:39] Speaker B: If I ever get to release a second volume, we're gonna. We're gonna circle back the wagons for you. [00:16:43] Speaker A: But you know what I'm saying? Like. Like, I think. I think you point this out and it really is. To be a woman is to be vulnerable in so many ways. And that is one of those ways is like, our messes become amplified. You know, our messes become on display. Our. You know, our. These things that even aren't messes are categorized in that way. Sometimes when men do them and they're looked at as being admirable. I'm just saying, real talk here. We're talking about workplace, we're talking about ministry, we're talking about, you know, all of these kinds of things. And so I think to look at these women. And I also want to say with Rahab, all of those things that you say about her, it's, you know, and she was grafted in. She ends up in the lineage and all this. Like, what if we looked at her through this lens that you're trying to provide for us? And we said. Because we know those intellectually, but I think a lot of times we dismiss them and say, oh, it's in spite of. [00:17:43] Speaker B: Yes, right. [00:17:44] Speaker A: Oh, look at Rahab. Oh, she was there. Even though she was a prostitute, even though she lied about this thing, even though she. Whatever. But what if we looked at her through what you were saying and saying she did what she could to provide for her family. She was a negotiator. [00:17:59] Speaker B: She had her eyes open, capable. Yeah. [00:18:02] Speaker A: She was aware of what was happening sociopolitically in that moment, you know, and what if we looked at her and said. And then she extended, like, she trusted in a God of people that she. That weren't her own people? That's a lot of. [00:18:22] Speaker B: That's remarkable. It's remarkable. Can you imagine you and I going to a foreign land and willing to commit treason against our own on behalf of a people, place, culture and norms, practices that we weren't aware of in the. And. And she had so rightly assessed the situation. That's what's wild. She had so rightly assessed the situation that Besides, like you said, besides the mental furniture of. Yep. She was grafted into the lineage of Jesus. All these things in the moment. That wasn't her story. We know that after the fact. But in the moment, she's like, I'm about to commit treason against my own people. Like, this is bananas. And it was. And it was. It was the right move for her. [00:19:03] Speaker A: So it was the right move. Okay, now I'm really. I'm feeling like the ball's rolling here. I will tell you, I wanted. Okay, so Hagar was the first name on my list. If we get there, we get there, is what I'm going to say at this moment. But Vashti, I was hoping you'd bring him. [00:19:18] Speaker B: Vashti. Yes. Okay. So I was so excited to research Vashti. I've personally never come across her in any Bible studies and never. She gets. She again becomes the reason there is vacancy in the palace. And Esther, of course, gets all the platform and the shine. And we've all been told at one point in time, if you grew up in purity culture for such a time as this, so, you know, there's a whole. There's a whole twisting of Esther's story. And I propose that both offer incredible forms of leadership and not to dismiss one at the expense of the other. And so. And I spend the entire time of that entry just on Vashti, simply referring to Esther at the end. But the reality is our stories might not end well. That is really what I also want to paint. I am not offering this false gospel that everything is going to bend your way if you follow Jesus. That has led so many of us to heartache and loss. And Vashti is such a beautiful example of that. When I talk about self care and honoring your boundaries and enacting boundaries, she models that so very well. So in her time and place, in the Midrash, the. The Jewish. The Jewish text, it is said that she lost her own father at a. A large royal party and a. A candelabrum fell on his head, killing him when she ran in. When she heard the screaming and shouting, she runs in, she looks at the head of a table where her father normally sits and instead is a different king of a. Of a neighboring kingdom. And she now becomes under his care and she is promised to his son, King Xerxes, so that. So what incredible context that we have from the Jewish scriptures to understand Vashti's story. And here she is years later at another royal party, and it goes poorly for her once more when her drunken Husband, who is king of the land from east to west, he wants to show his power and dominance by parading his wife in front of his drunken party guests. Now, many scholars suggest that he wanted her naked in front of them, parading. And I think that, you know, flannel board, Sunday school, that was not included for obvious reasons, but I do think. But it tracks. Like what? Like, oh, she had. We're so presented that she just had to be in her bonnet, that she didn't want to hang out with her husband because he was drunk. And it's so much more than that. And I'm so discouraged that we aren't given a little bit more context of this woman. Now, also, I want to note that in that time and place, it would not have been appropriate for her to be in the company of men at all. So she was in her chambers with her girlfriends, hanging out almost every day. She hardly saw her husband, let alone his friends, let alone other men. And then she's supposed to be paraded around in her birthday suit. No, no, no, no. And girlfriend's like, not on my watch. I'm not doing it. So she tells her husband's little cronies that she's not down to appear. And the best part is they're like, what if husbands across the land do the same? What if women stand up to their husbands? That's why she's banished, is the fact that she could influence other women. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Can we? [00:22:43] Speaker B: It wasn't even that she said no to him. It was the idea that she. Girl. Alexis, what is this about? The fact that she might have influenced over other women. Dare we call her the first influencer? I don't know. But this idea that she had actualized power and they were not okay with a woman having power, and that's why she's banished. And. And we don't know what happened. We don't know what banishment, what. We don't know how that would have ended for her, but the reality is she modeled such tenacity and will that it's to be admired. You know, we have this more dominant leadership of Vashti, and we have more pragmatic leadership of Esther, and both are needed in the lives of women. And I would never want us like we do with Eve and Mary. You know, we pit them against each other, and. And I would hate for us to do that here, because both offer incredible forms of leadership to. To model after. [00:23:44] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember which entry it was in. I just remember the theme. So forgive me, but when you're talking about that kind of pitting them against one another. I was thinking about Esther. Okay, follow me here for a second. I'm thinking about Esther, you know, going into the situation. So imagine now the context that you've just provided for us. And we have this, you know, jerk of a king who's, you know, wanting his naked wife to, like, run around for his friends, and then he banishes her. And then it's like, oh, now it's time for a new queen. [00:24:13] Speaker B: I'm not signing up for that. Right. [00:24:15] Speaker A: Like, yeah, I do totally. Like, it's some beauty pageant. And look how much she was pampered and all the stuff. You're like, she's walking into something no woman wants to walk into. Right. But, oh, oh, you know where it was? It was. Oh, when you were talking about the women in the Exodus with Moses who came, the daughters who had no inheritance. Right. So it's similar. We see this and we see it now still with us. Right. How do we act inside of broken systems? You know, so it's like sometimes you see Esther walking in and. Yes. Is she heroic? [00:24:47] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:24:48] Speaker A: Does she have this pragmatic leadership? 100%. This was not a fairy tale, though. [00:24:53] Speaker B: No. My goodness, no. Right. [00:24:55] Speaker A: They're right outside of this broken system, and she's doing what she can for her people the same as the three or four daughters of the guy that dies. I didn't write it down, so now I'm not flipping through it. But that to me, spoke volumes. And we see it everywhere in the book, and when we're looking for it, it feels really. It feels really encouraging. [00:25:20] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's wild how defiance and pushing the envelope, and I know defiance in women is not very kosher, but Vashti refused to appear before the king and Esther dared to. And both of them were acts of defiance, and both of them were acts of self care in honoring their limits and honoring their desire and honoring the world they wanted to live in. And you, you really nailed it when you say it was pushing in a system that was not built for them. And that's what I argue of all 40 entries of, like, women are consistently pushing in a system that was not built for them in mind. You know, you mentioned Zelafahad's five daughters in. In ancient Israeli history, especially in the time of the Exodus, only men were grafted into land rights, and your heritage was directly tied to land rights. You think of, you know what? I'm going to make a connection that people can go research on their own. But you think of redlining and how we've treated the black population, the Chinese population in America, and how we've robbed them of legacy when it comes to land and inheritance. And it's this. We're proving the same point here in the sense that when these women went before Moses, they were saying, hey, we know that you only have it written in law that men of the second generation who've been in the wilderness will guarantee land rights when we get to the promised land. And you know what's wild here? You could look at this at, like, three steps forward, two steps back for. For the women's movement in the sense that they said, would you make an exception if there is no brother and our father has passed? Would you? They're not asking, hey, can all firstborn daughters have equal land rights? They're saying, hey, would you just make an exception? And so not only do we see a firstborn daughter, we see second born, third born, fourth born, and fifth born, five daughters who inherit land rights. And I love that when Moses goes before the Lord to bring this petition, the Lord, oh, this is so good, girl. I can't even. I got chills. He said, give the daughters what they ask. Give the daughters what they ask. And it was just so beautiful, this idea that women were like, I am going to diplomatically work within this broken system, and I'm not going to be discouraged by the minimal progress I can make, because progress is still progress, and I'm going to praise it. [00:27:44] Speaker A: Yeah, this one's a. This one I'm going to ask about next is a tough one. And I forgot to see if it was your entry or someone else's, so forgive me. [00:27:55] Speaker B: Well, I'll decide if I'm going to answer based on that. [00:27:59] Speaker A: It's a tough one, but you're like, I don't think so, but. Okay, so I'm thinking about broken sister systems. I'm also thinking about being vulnerable as a woman, but I'm also, with this entry, thinking about what happens after. So, like, the redemption of the story or let's not forget what happened or things like this. Tiffany, I comfort women. [00:28:22] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I feel comfortable speaking to that. That's Angie K. Hong. She's a liturgist and worship leader out of North Carolina. I was so blessed when she chose the comfort women. Ooh, Alexis, the comfort women. So During World War II, an estimated 200,000. 200,000 women and girls from Korea, China, and other Asian countries were kidnapped by the Japanese military and forced into sexual slavery and availability to soldiers and they had no agency, they had no way out. And this use of women as mere object by these men, so not of God, and rejects them as image bearers. And Angie connects that as these are women that we've wanted to forget. These are women that many of us haven't even learned about. This was my first time learning about them when she wrote about them, and I was so grateful. But she, she connects it with Christ's death and resurrection. And I want to include the passage that she includes to really connect these dots for us at Second Corinthians 4, 10, 12. And it says, we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then death is at work in us, but life is at work in you. I was so struck by this acknowledgment of wounds and the wounds we hold in our body and that those are seen by Jesus and that those are known by Jesus, and that how imperfect Jesus body was. It wasn't smooth, glowing or unblemished. She writes, he reappeared, still bearing the scars of death and marks of humiliation. He held them up for Thomas and everyone to see. The marks were a part of him now. He spoke with them and through them for 40 days before finally going home to heaven. So this idea that our wounds are, yes, we want healing, yes, we want wholeness, but they're still a part of our story. They're still a part of our story. There our scars are not reason to feel shame in what's happened to us. They draw us nearer to the broken Jesus. [00:30:49] Speaker A: And what I was also struck about in that entry, I hope I'm, I'm not conflating some of them, but this surviving women after the fact who came back and said, let's like, we, we want reparation, we want recognition for what happened. And, and I think that, that, you know, it speaks to those, yes, those scars are always going to be there, but there is a real, There's a bravery. I keep going back to this bravery and vulnerability, but there, there is a real courage in that to, to. Because I would say for me, there aren't a lot of my scars that I want to be like, yeah, let me just bring those out. But doing it for, as you keep reiterating the communal flourishing, if we hide these things, the surviving women knew this is doing no one any favors to hide the sins of these men. We need to. We need to say that what happened so that we can commit to doing our what we can to not let atrocities like these happen over and over and over again. [00:32:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I believe it was the early 90s, more than 40 years after what had happened to these women. Women from several countries came forward and monuments were built, and their greatest hope was remembrance so that, as you said, it will not be repeated again. I also feature the grandmothers, mothers and daughters of those of Japanese descent in America and the internment in the west on campgrounds, and how it was their daughters and granddaughters who pushed for reparations and received reparations and refused to let the US Government overlook how they had treated their mothers and grandmothers. And at the time of internment During World War II, the average age was 15 to 30 of women interned. And so these women had no. No one coming for them, no one rescuing them, and even the smallest things. Alexis. They were burning family heirlooms for fear that they would be seen as traitors to the US government. They. Over $400 million in damages to Japanese households across the United States, all on suspicion from Executive Order 9066. [00:33:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I am grateful. My daughter, a few years ago was given the opportunity in a history class of hers in middle school, actually. They have a lot of choices, and Japanese internment was one of those. And so I felt just really grateful that she, at that real tender age, you know, of. Yeah, she was probably 12 or something, you know, had the opportunity to learn about it, but she. They did it in such a way that she was reading, you know, as you said, average age 15 to 30. So she was reading, like, memoir from a girl who was similarly aged. To her when her family was going through this. And. And this is part. This is also part of what you do in the devotional is we. We feel those things because as I mentioned at the beginning, we don't take the heroic, you know, part for granted. These women are human. They were human. They. They bring with them all of their humanity. [00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:16] Speaker A: And it's. It's just very. It's just very real. Okay, I. I wanna. I wanna go there now to Hagar. [00:34:27] Speaker B: Oh, yay. [00:34:29] Speaker A: She is. She is one of those women. It was wild to me because I remember I was gone. I was going through Morning Devotional several years ago, and I was going through Genesis because I love Genesis. [00:34:47] Speaker B: It's just. [00:34:48] Speaker A: It's just one of my favorites because there's just so many good stories, you know, I mean, it's just. It's just so many good stories. I particularly love Joseph, but that's a, that's a totally different thing. [00:34:57] Speaker B: Oh, same. I don't know why I'm so deeply drawn. I'm like, how have I not written a Bible study on this guy? But yes, I love it. Very, very drawn to. [00:35:04] Speaker A: I love that whole story. But Hagar, it was like, it was like in this moment, I saw her in a way that I had never seen her before. And really, if I'm real, I saw Sarah in a way that I had never seen her before. [00:35:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:35:21] Speaker A: And then of course, come to find out, I'm looking around and I'm like, oh, women, specifically women of color have been writing about Hagar's story for a long time and they already knew what I was just, you know, figuring out. But it was great to, to continue reading about commentaries, you know, from women who had already seen in Hagar's story. What was like light bulb moment. Yeah, you know, for me. But I think specifically for me, it. I was, I was struck that first time by the power dynamic. [00:35:56] Speaker B: Ooh. Oh, interesting. [00:35:58] Speaker A: With Sarah. [00:36:00] Speaker B: Yeah. The power dynamic between a jealousy woman and the woman she forced to do what she told her to do and then got even more jealous and upset when what she hoped to happen happened. It's a pretty win. It's not great. Sarah doesn't come out looking great in this. And, you know, I really appreciate that you spoke to. Not only did you look at Hagar differently, but you looked at Sarah differently because again, going back to flannel board Sunday school Alexis, I do not remember Sarah having such a hand in disrespecting and rejecting another woman. Like the way she treated another woman and the way her proximate power was used against her own kind is so unacceptable. And here we have this enslaved Egyptian woman forced to lay with Abram. And surrogacy was very common in Mesopotamia, but it wasn't by choice that Haggard did this in the first place. So here she is carrying this baby that she did not ask, ask for. And then to be rejected by the house that demanded she carry this baby, I think is just. It's disgusting. It shows you how wild it is when we get a hair brained idea about what we think and how we think God should act on our behalf and how we will plow through anybody who gets in our way when, quote, unquote, God's idea becomes our idea and how dangerous that can really be. So I really love bringing that into our modern day of how even female politicians harm their Constituents and just being able to see how women can harm women and this is not okay. And being able to, like you said, point out rightly so we do not repeat this, and so we do not deceive ourselves into allowing us to harm other women. [00:37:42] Speaker A: Tiffany, you had a couple of entries that made me that I was thinking about whenever you. Whenever you were talking about that, because it's really hard. I just want to say, like, as a woman especially, you know, we started off with, like, this girl boss, meritocracy, and sometimes it can feel like, oh, my goodness, we're in this together. Right? You know, like, we are. [00:38:03] Speaker B: Right. [00:38:03] Speaker A: You know, and anyway, some of those dynamics can sometimes get a little bit fishy. I thought of an entry that one of your contributors wrote about Afghan women and Western feminism and all that stuff that I'm still parsing. So I'm just going to like, like, put a pin in it and say that exists. This was a great entry, but I'm wondering, can I. [00:38:25] Speaker B: Can I speak to that? Yeah, I really love. That's by Dr. Sarah Shabon. She. Her area of research is in women's movements in the Middle East. She is one of the most brilliant women I have ever met. Hence why I invited her to contribute. But I am so obsessed with her work because it points to this idea of intersectional feminism, and it is this invitation for all women to thrive in their contexts rather than. Whereas white feminism. White feminism says, I want to have what my brothers and my dads have at the expense of women of color. Whereas intersectional feminism says, I understand what flourishing looks like for me, and I want to ensure that you flourish in a way that honors your context, not what I believe that you need. So an example that Western women might say, as we think the hijab might be oppressive. And in reality, I believe it was. 1979 was before that the hijab was a sign of protest to where it was a sign of protest. And then it became mandatory by the new regime, and now it has become a symbol of conquest. And so just being able to rightly understand somebody else's history also. I'm getting there, Alexis. Oh, girl, I'm getting fired up. This idea that we rob other women of their agency. We've kind of already talked about this with. With agency and how we read into the text the disadvantages of women. But so often in the Western world, when we think of Arab women, when we think of South Asian women, we think meek, mild, they can't stand up for themselves. They need us. They need our Voice. They need our advocacy. In reality, these women know protest and defiance in their context and in their world in ways that we. We don't even get. And so it is being able to respect women in their context and root them on and uplift them in a way that doesn't demean them in the process and become a charity case. [00:40:24] Speaker A: Yeah. No, that's so good. And you took us like, right where I was like, okay, I don't know if I can go there. So you did, so thank you. [00:40:31] Speaker B: Oh, good, good. [00:40:32] Speaker A: But. But I thought we kind of have the flip of that with the midwives in Exodus help. Right. Because they are the ones really. They have power that is kind of hard to grasp in that situation. They have power there. But I think what you said there applies to this so. Well. It is. They were women who were doing that. Well, they were saying, let me empower these Hebrew women in their context. They were aiding them. They were, you know, they were. They were empowering their families. They were helping them. They were doing things that was needed in their context, not to lord it over them. They were servants of them. They were coming in as servants of them. And anyway, I want to talk about that because again, we have another place where this system is messed up. [00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:34] Speaker A: And the women come in and work inside of that messed up system. [00:41:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And women were the collateral damage. I mean, I'm a mother of two boys. And when I read Shipper and Pua, as a mother of boys, it especially hurts my stomach. You know, it makes me. It makes me so outrageously sad. What was asked of them. They were trained to usher in life. And here Pharaoh says, I want you to usher in death. And they refused to do that. And so guess what they did. They did the same thing they did before. They kept ushering in life. So for them, nothing changed except what they had been trained to do now became an act of defiance against the government. Which is a wild, wild thing to think that a helping profession would become an act of defiance against their local government. But that's exactly what it was. And they revered the God of the universe more than the king of Egypt. And I think that is. That led them to such love and care of women who weren't like them, which is so beautiful. Now we're not. We're not so simple to think that other women didn't do this. There were other midwives in that time. They obviously weren't the only two midwives in all of Egypt. And so the idea that there were so many baby boys that died but they did what they could. They did what they could. And I, I think this really speaks to your individual agency because it can, like you said, there's broken system. And so we could say, well, my little, my little contribution doesn't mean that much, but you have to live with yourself. This is a matter of showing up to be the person that you would hope others would, would treat you with respect and kindness and being able to honor your own limits and your own convictions more than an institution is really what we see here with Shipra and Pua and, and they, their, their, you know, tool of defiance was a birthing stool, which is pretty, which is pretty, pretty wild. I think you, you know, you, you take that and bring it into a modern day. And I think of what happened in the fall of 2022 when Mahsa Amini in Iran died in police custody because they claimed that a little bit of her hair was showing out of her hijab. And so Muslim women, mostly Gen Z Alexis, started rioting and protesting in the streets and they started wearing all white. And they created an app that would communicate where the mor police had checkpoints. And this is merely for control, the control of women's bodies. This is what happened with Ship Rampuit. It was all about the control of women's bodies. And this is what happened in our modern day just a couple years ago, the control of women's bodies. And so when I, when I, when I bring up these, these pieces and this understanding in scripture, it is this reality that women are the most oppressed people group in the world. That's a well researched fact. But when you think of what we are still going through, but how we can still stand up for each and we can still push the movement forward on behalf of our sisters, it really is a beautiful thing. [00:44:37] Speaker A: Okay, we're going to land it, Tiffany. And I know this sounds, this is weird, this is a weird place to end it, but I want to ask you to kind of bring us home with the title of the devotional because I will tell you who says spoiler alert in devotionals? I'm going to say spoiler alert in this. We're it, Tiffany. [00:45:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:45:02] Speaker A: Like every time, literally every time I picked up this book or thought about, oh, I need to finish this, you know, I'm talking to Tiffany, the title came to my mind and it was such an encouragement, it was an affirmation for me because I was like, I'm her. Yeah, like I'm the woman I've been waiting for. I'm the woman We've been waiting for. You're the woman that we've been waiting for. And just another tiny thing is when you said, like, oh, the systems are broken. What can I do? Yeah, but what if we all ask ourselves that? [00:45:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Amen. And this idea that we can stand on the resilience stories and victory and triumph and rage of the mothers who've gone before us, us, their story is our story. We can glean from their strength. And so it is. Ariana Rivera, she is one of the contributors. She said it's an ode to our mothers and blueprints for our daughters. And this idea that understanding, we're it. We are the women we've been waiting for. What do we do with that? Oh, I could get. I'm just getting a little choked up talking about it because it really is so beautiful. And I. Oh, forgive me, Alexis. I posted on the. On the day of the release to my email subscribers. The irony is not lost on me that I've never met my own mother matriarchs, but I wrote a book about them. I wrote a book about all of our matrix and mothers. And no matter what table was set for you, you can still set the table for others. No matter what you sound sat down to eat in your life, you can nourish others. There is a way forward when you step up and partner with the divine for a holy imagination of what could be in your place and space. The way we live. Breathe. Parent lead. Negotiate. Defy march Feed is history. We are making history right now. This. We are the women that they're going to write about in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 years. It is us. It is you and I. It is you and I. We might not think our contribution is going to move the needle and we are dead wrong. We're dead wrong. You think any of these women knew that the contribution they were going to make to human history? Yeah. The answer is no. [00:47:26] Speaker A: I love it. Tiffany. I'm so excited. Again, the title is the Women We've Been waiting for. A 40 day devotional for self care, resilience and communal flourishing. This has been so great. Thanks so much for chatting with me. [00:47:41] Speaker B: Thanks for having me. [00:47:42] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit us at. That makes total sense. Dot.