Embodied. Lee Ann M. Pomrenke

       Solidarity

      “You did that good deed of adopting a child, and now God is rewarding you with one of your own!”

      I blinked at the church lady. There were so many things to address, I did not know where to start. I went for human agency, with a gritted-teeth smile. “This pregnancy was not a surprise. We chose to adopt first, then to try making her a sibling.”

      I also could have dived into theology: Is God really that involved with whether we conceive? We say that children are a blessing, but does that mean that people who cannot conceive are not blessed, or have not pleased God in some way? What about the fifty percent of pregnancies that are unintended—some conceived in violence, some of which cause great hardship for the mothers—how is God feeling about them? For heaven’s sake, do you think I waited for or value our first child any less than the one I will birth? By the way, you do not say things like this to other families at our church or in the neighborhood, do you? I had so many topics to handle, but in the handshaking line at the end of a church service, practicality won.

      In the moment I assumed that the fact-checking answer had a slightly higher chance of changing the story the church member was telling, than the faith-related questions. Yet there are bound to be opportunities to dig into all these thoughts in my life as a clergy mother. Incidents like the brief conversation above are opportunities not just to explain my personal actions, but to challenge all of our assumptions in healthy ways. Being a pastor and a mom makes me and my family obvious case studies for many topics related to God and families (since we are already front and center and being discussed anyway). Sometimes the issues are practical, but frequently they beg for solid theological wrestling.

      Certainly people talked about male clergy’s families before women were commonly seen in pastoral leadership. Yet somehow the PKs of male pastors did not reflect to the same degree on their father as they do on a mother, and the church’s historical use of mostly father images for God and male clergy for centuries enabled us to skirt the edges of these conversations. Now that clergy mothers are here in numbers, one of our many gifts to the church is instigating conversations by simply existing, such as:

      • What is church for, in the lives of families with children, teens, and young adults? Why do we want them to experience belonging in church, and how do we pursue that?

      • Do we expect or allow our clergy to give their personal relationships as much attention as they need? Is the model of professional ministry we have been operating with healthy for everyone?

      • How does God really relate to us? Is it only as we associate culturally with fatherhood, or also the intimate, mutual impact of mothering?

      We are all having bits of these conversations on the fly, but with close reading of the Bible and clergy mothers’ experiences mixed in, this book is designed to spark deeper understanding within our congregations, including more frequent recognition of God’s mothering activities among us and the experiences of solidarity that recognition can offer. What is the point of solidarity? It is significant to feel “seen,” to know that others understand your experience, so they can fully empathize. Yet solidarity is even more than a feeling of togetherness. It is community that empowers us not only to keep going and survive, but with each other’s determination and collected wisdom, to build power together. To stand in solidarity at a protest is to show with our bodies that we are neither small nor insignificant. To show up physically, acknowledging how people behave around our bodies, is a testimony to how people treat the image of God reflected in us. To show up with our voices and our stories is a testimony to God’s ongoing, loving actions standing with those of us in need of mothering, and those doing the mothering.