I'm still processing what happened this past weekend. I can't put everything into words and I don't think I'm supposed to. But the word that keeps coming to mind as a descriptor is belonging. The woman caught in the act of adultery set the stage for our retreat. She was alone, living up to a society's definition of who she was supposed to be. Ripped out of bed -- the man playing the victim no where to be found -- dragged to the new teacher in town. "What say you?" They demanded.

And so these women this past weekend had been dragged through the mud that society offered them. Messages like:

• People only see my mistakes
• The painter sent me away because she couldn't paint acne
• I have never let myself get angry
• I fix everyone else
• I'm not articulate, so I don't speak-up
• I'm so sick of fakeness

The society had demanded something different of them too.

These sentences are just a small taste of what these woman carried with them into the weekend. They came from all different walks of life and backgrounds and cultures. One brave 19-year-old was the first to share on Friday night and share she did, even though she was the youngest. You see, our retreats are different (to say the least). I teach, sure, but so does everyone else, and not by offering advice, but by offering themselves.

For some it was the first taste of being with women sands the unsettling looming spirits of competition, comparison, complaining and condemnation. These spirits would occasionally rear their heads, but instead of staying put in the shadows ever present, we named them. We acknowledged that these spirits haunt most circles of women. In naming them, they left, because they didn't know what to do in the light.

These women were then able to find belonging with each other and with themselves because they were now able to recognize what was in them all along -- their wisdom, their voices, their strength, their beauty.

The image of the Divine imprinted upon them.

Society's version of perfection whether in bodily form or in deed (or both) is not what is required of them. They are only required to be themselves. I am awestruck on every retreat by how many people are against other people being themselves. Isn't the church called to be made up of people? People with different gifts, loved and created uniquely be a gracious God? ...They demanded something else.

I was cruelly brought back to society today when on the street corner there were yellow and black signs silently screaming at cars in the intersections: "Repent! The end is near!!" "God is going to judge the world!!" No grace in these sentences blown up on posterboard; blown way out of context.

Yes, I believe in the Bible. Yes I believe in God being the judge. But THAT is the key: God is the judge -- not me. And I would rather spend my time loving and listening than standing on a corner (looking ever so solemn and downtrodden, my husband pointed out) trying to... I don't even know what they were trying to do. All I know is the impression given on their faces and the images of the women's faces I spent the weekend with speak of fear extremely differently. One group is bound by their fear and tries to scare everyone else. Another group is no longer defined by it.

I don't serve a God I am scared of -- I serve a God I'm in love with. Why isn't this God more available? Maybe because the spaces we have created are scarier than the true I AM.

So we created a safe space where anyone could belong-- one where it didn't matter the baggage you brought. These women were embraced with love, listened to each other, covered their hands in paint and threw the stones that had been thrown at them into the water because the true Spirit moved. This movement brought us together and bound us as soul sisters.  No longer bound by darkness, but even if it remained dark for some, there we sat because every woman was exactly where she was supposed to be. And you can't know where you are going until you know right where you are, who is with you and who you are. Thanks be to God.