`GOSPEL ON THE GROUND'
Episcopal priest shares lessons gleaned from her global women's ministry
Episcopal priest shares lessons gleaned from her global women's ministry
C aring for hurting individuals in the community is most effective if one commits to it like a fun, interactive children's dance. The Rev. Becca Stevens offered this analogy as she encouraged Oklahomans to do the “Hokey Pokey” on a recent Friday night at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, 127 NW 7.
“You put your whole self in, you put your whole self out. You put your whole self in and you shake it all about,” a crowd of
about 100 people sang as they danced around.
Stevens, keynote speaker of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma's 2019 Bishops' Lecture Series, said people who want to help the less fortunate often hesitate to put their whole heart into it.
Like the Hokey Pokey, a person can't just put their left arm in or their right foot in and get the kind of results that comes from putting one's whole self in — making a true commitment, Stevens said.
“The problem begins when we don't put our whole selves in. There's bifurcation in our lives,” she said.
In his introduction of Stevens, the Rt. Rev. Ed Konieczny, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, described her as a “courageous visionary” responding to the needs of survivors of trafficking, prostitution and addiction.
“Becca has been described as a pioneer, a visionary, a mover and a shaker. She's described as living and doing the gospel on the ground. She's a living example of how love can heal the world so we are excited to have her here tonight,” Konieczny said.
Creating a haven
Stevens, an Episcopal priest based in Nashville, Tennessee, and author of the book “Love Heals,” said she learned to love and truly commit to supporting women survivors of trafficking, prostitution and addiction when she started Thistle Farms in 1997 in Nashville. It is a global movement now, but it began when Stevens opened one house as a safe haven for women survivors.
“It wasn't a treatment center. It's not a shelter. It's not a religious organization. It's not a divergent from courts, it's just a home and it's a home that you and I would love to live in,” Stevens said. Five women showed up. “They radically changed how I understood ministry, how I understood my own healing journey. It was beautiful so we just kept opening houses,” she said.
Women were given the opportunity to stay at the home for two years, rent free. She said she soon started a justice enterprise where women survivors made body care products such as soap and lotions to sell. She said Thistle Farms currently has about 50 sister communities in the U.S., offering an estimated 300 long-term beds for survivors in need of healing and hope. In 2008, Thistle Farms started a “share-trade” global marketplace, giving women in other countries around the world an opportunity to be part of the Thistle Farms movement in their own villages and communities.
Stevens, herself a survivor of sexual abuse, said the story of sexual assault is universal whether it happens in Oklahoma, Nashville, Rwanda or Ecuador, but “individual women bear that story on their backs and these small beautiful pockets where women do this work has been life-changing for me,” she said.
All in
The priest said she learned in her travels that people dance for different reasons, some to tell their stories or their traumas and some just dance for fun like the Hokey Pokey.
The audience laughed when she said the dance sums up her theological understanding.
“I thought how beautiful it was, the idea of approaching our life and our faith beginning with putting your whole self in,” Stevens said.
She said cynicism, doubt and fear of one's own inadequacies may keep people from wholeheartedly committing to helping others by joining mission work or starting a not-for-profit ministry but these barriers can be overcome if individuals remember how to incorporate the youthful nature of their past into their present reality.
“Can you bring your idyllic self into this work? Can we bring our doubting selves into this work? Can we bring our inadequate selves into this work? Can you remember your high school self and how you brought that self along with you? And how you brought those broken parts of the high school self or the child self. How do you bring that fully into this life of faith so that we are putting our whole selves in?” Stevens asked.
“I think it's important. I think that's how we get to where we don't want to numb out or get cynical.”
Space to `begin'
Dorris Walker-Taylor said Stevens' whole-self premise and the love and support she received at Thistle Farms changed her life when she arrived at one of the homes in 2009.
Walker-Taylor said Thistle Farms leaders didn't ask her what she had been doing but instead they asked her what happened to her. Their compassion and lack of judgement helped her to tell her story about having witnessed her father's murder at the hands of a troubled family friend when she was 12. She said the violence and trauma set her on a cycle of drug addiction, living on the streets and stints in jail.
At Thistle Farms she was given her first job there pouring lip balm, then she graduated to packaging. These days, she is Thistle Farms' event director, and she charmed the Oklahoma City crowd with her exuberance and sincerity.
Stevens said Walker-Taylor was just one of many women whose lives have been transformed through Thistle Farms.
“We literally hold a space for people to begin their journey. We all get lost. We all get uninspired. We all get in despair sometimes,” she said.
“Our job really, in the justice work that you're doing so beautifully in this community, in the churches that you're running; all of it is to help people wake up, to show up like you've done so beautifully tonight, to grow up and say none of the women got to the streets by themselves and none of them are coming off by themselves. We have to grow up and be a welcoming community and invest our time, talent and treasure.”