First time holding the real live book in my hands.

I’m a relative newcomer to the RevGals and to blogging.  When I started Snow Day two years ago and announced it to a former-student-turned-colleague she replied, “How 2002 of you.”  Yeah, yeah, I know I’m late to the party.

In 2005 when RevGals began officially, many of the Gals were keeping their blogs anonymous.  As editor and contributor Martha Spong remembers in her There’s a Woman in the Pulpit essay, “The Worst Communion Ever,” many only knew one another by blog names.  In 2013 when I participated in a summer writing workshop at Collegeville there were two other RevGals in our twelve-person workshop that week.  Each of them had been part of the group and reading along on the blog for years.  One had gone on the first continuing education cruise.  They talked about the other women in the RevGals group like they knew them.  At the time, fresh to blogging and to the group, I was surprised by this.

By last year when I made a trip to the Festival of Faith and Writing, I had met a few RevGals through Facebook and chimed in on the posts asking who’d be going to the Festival and might want to meet up while there.  It still surprised me when, trying to leave early and discreetly from a Festival lunchtime chat hosted by RevGal Ruth Everhart, she spied my nametag, stopped mid-sentence in her presentation, and blurted out, “You’re Deborah Lewis!” Since I was at a writing festival, I wondered how many people in that room were thinking I must be someone they should know, the Deborah Lewis, famous writer.

I’m pretty sure no one did.  But versions of that moment are part of the fabric of the RevGals community.  Seeing one another for who we are – pastor, writer, mother, sister, queer, straight, at wits’ end, thriving, faithful, revolutionary – seeing one another for more of who we are than we can often share in our day-to-day ministry is at the heart of this community.  In long-held traditions like our weekly “Ask the Matriarch” column on the website and in less formal Facebook group posts and prayers, we can plop down in a comfy chair with a cup of something good and ask anything.  We can listen when someone’s had a horrible encounter and we can offer a word of compassion.  We can pour it out without worrying too much about sounding pastoral or professional.  We can be our whole, wonderful, wise, working-for-Jesus, womanly selves.

My essay, in print. Damn, that looks good.

Of course this is exactly the kind of group that would put together an excellent book full of reverent and funny reflections, encouragement and honesty, about this calling we share.  Ruth Everhart’s wonderful essay, “Swinging,” opens the book with the faithful family call and response of “stupid-heads” during a languid front porch afternoon.  Stacey Simpson Duke’s “I Rise Before the Sun” quietly affirms the beauty and necessity of engaging some place other than our ministries, as she realizes, “Knitting is a valuable practice on its own terms, which reminds me that I am a valuable person on my own terms, and not just because I do valuable things.”  (Full disclosure:  Stacey is a dear friend and my former seminary housemate but I would love her piece even if our friendship didn’t pre-date our RevGals connection.)  Jan Edmiston contemplates “What They Will Remember,” urging pastors to consider our own need for full lives and healthy practices, for ourselves and for the pastors who come after us.  Katie Mulligan claims to have been “reluctant” to write her poetic and inspired “Queer,” so I can only give thanks that she let it out in all its biting, funny, compassionate, injured, healed, prophetic glory.  When she writes “I am called to dance by the one who delights in me” it’s an invitation to join in.

I am delighted with this book.  I gobbled up There’s a Woman in the Pulpit as soon as it was available on Kindle.  I immediately went to my own essay (“The Weight of Ash”) and snapped an Instagram picture.  I marveled at seeing my words on the screen and, the next week, I breathed in that wonderful new book smell when the paperback arrived in the mail (and snapped some more pics).  But I already knew what I had written.  What kept me up late into the night were the words of my sisters, the RevGals.  I recognized some and was introduced to others, but through a long night of dive-in reading, I recognized in every one a kindred spirit, a sister and a colleague, another writer trying to put together a few words to reflect the mystery of God and the strangeness and the many blessings of the call we all try to follow.

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Disclaimer: I have written one of the essays in this book and I received one free copy as my contributor’s compensation.   Other than that – and some pride and excitement – I have not received any other compensation for this blog post and review of the book.

Get your book!  There’s a Woman in the Pulpit: Christian Clergywomen Share Their Hard Days, Holy Moments & the Healing Power of Humor is available from Skylight Paths or at Amazon via the RevGalBlogPals site.