Protect the Vulnerable
For Lenten Season, members of the Juniper Formation Leadership Team and community have been sharing daily reflections through the Daily Ripple app and Substack. This week’s reflections are written by Rev. Candace Woods (she/her).
Protect the Vulnerable
Isaiah 40:11 (The Inclusive Bible):
Like a shepherd you feed your flock, gathering the lambs and holding them close, and leading mother ewes with gentleness.
In this week of Lent, we are given texts of tenderness, gentleness, nurture, and pleasure. It feels needed, both in the context of where we are in our Lenten journey, and in acknowledgement of the current state of the world.
This text from Isaiah imagines God as a kind and protective shepherd who centers the needs of the most vulnerable–the tender lambs and the nursing ewes. This God leads with gentleness. This God understands that strength is found in ensuring that the vulnerable are cared for.
Oh, that we would be leaders who would do the same. Who would find purpose in centering the needs of those being targeted. Who would use our strength to protect the vulnerable.
What act of care can you take today that would center the needs of the most vulnerable in your community/family/context? Maybe you’re the most vulnerable–how can you take action that centers your needs? How can you look to God and your community for care and protection?
Chosen Family
Psalm 68:5-6a
A parent to the orphan and protector of the defenseless is our God, who dwells in holiness! God creates families for those who are alone, and leads captives to freedom.
A deep gift that I’ve found in queerness (even before I named my own queer identity and was simply in relationship with queer folks) is the reality of chosen family. For so many of us, biological families are not safe places for community or care. We are misunderstood, stigmatized, not seen in our fullnesses.
And so we create families where those things are present. We find people who welcome and delight in our lives. People with whom we are safe to be ourselves. And the Psalm says that creating families for those who are alone are good, Godly, holy things.
These families are connected to freedom and liberation in this text. Isolation can be a captivity. But freedom is found in families where care, acknowledgement, and fierce loyalty are cultivated and created.
Who are your chosen family members? How can you engage them with care today? If you can’t name any, what step would you like to take today toward building a chosen family?
Provision
Psalm 68:10b-11 (The Inclusive Bible):
In your goodness, O God, you provided for the needy. YHWH gave the command, and the women who carried the good news were a great throng.
I was recently recommended an excellent podcast about revolutionary Nigerian musician Fela Kuti.
Episode 4 tells the story of Kuti’s mother, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, and the incredible women’s union that she founded in Nigeria in the 1940s and whose collective power eventually led to the fall of the ceremonial colonial ruler. These women used songs and picnics and festivals as actions to build their power in their fight for dignity and equity.
Great throngs of women and children and queer folks and countless other marginalized groups have long worked for the good news of equity, dignity, and justice. For those in need to have what they need. For those who have been stolen from to be made whole.
May the God who provides in Their goodness empower each one who carries the good news of liberation. May each person have what they need or have the bravery to fight for it.
Whose needs are you working toward meeting today? How might the God who provides invite you to be a part of the provisioning?
Thank You
Romans 16:1-2 (The Inclusive Bible):
I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchrea. Welcome her, in the name of our God, in a way worthy of the holy ones, and help her with her needs. She has looked after a great many people, including me.
Content note: sexual violence
For all of his complexities and challenges, at least Paul thanked people, and specifically the women who were central to the ministries of the growing church.
There are so many women and gender diverse folks who are the heart and soul of today’s churches and movements and institutions. And it is the norm that their work and energy is unseen, unheralded, unappreciated. Not just that, their work is often used by, credited to, or usurped by men in power.
The news of Dolores Huerta’s abuse by Cesar Chavez this past week underscores this reality. Huerta gave the farm workers’ movement her life, her talents, and her ideas (the chant “si se puede” is her creation). And, we now know, she sacrificed relationship with 2 of her children, fathered by Chavez in acts of violence, in order to protect the movement.
This Lent, may we reckon with the violence that has been done to gender marginalized people in the name of protecting leaders, pastors, processes, movements, and yes, even the Church herself.
Who do you need to thank? Whose voice do you need to celebrate? Who might you need to apologize to for stealing an idea, or not paying justly, or not listening to their concerns or complaints?
Matthew 26:6-8 (The Inclusive Bible):
Now when Jesus was in Bethany…a woman approached Jesus with an alabaster jar of very expensive ointment. She poured it on his head while he reclined at the table. The disciples, witnessing this, were indignant. “What a waste!” they said.
Pleasure often feels like a waste in moments of crisis. In this text, Jesus is aware that he’s riled the religious and political leaders and that there are likely consequences coming down the pike. He’s taking time to eat a relaxed meal and then he’s gifted with the luxury of an expensive jar of oil being poured over his body. The disciples are shocked–maybe by the overt sensuality of the moment or maybe, as they assert, by the moral uppitiness of believing that they knew better about how the richness of that gift “should” have been used.
In the current moment, pleasure and sensuality are also often seen as a waste of time or resources. The urgency of fighting facism, war, transphobia, racism, etc. feel (understandably and deservedly) present. And also, as someone on the internet recently said, “No one having soulmate level sex is starting wars, know that much.”
Pleasure, connection, joy, falling in love, etc. are not distractions from the work we are doing. Rather, they are the antidotes to the systems of violence, disconnection, despair, and hatred that we are fighting.
Even now, what pleasure and joy are you cultivating in your life? How can you embrace the ridiculous gift of love and sensuality and bodily good as a continued act of resistance?