Jonalyn Grace Fincher has been described to me as one of those women who is breaking ground for the church's understanding of women today and is a part of a very small circle of women who are trailblazing this issue today. Women such as Dr. Sarah Sumner formally of Asuza Pacific Seminary in California, the first female to earn a phD in divinity, author of books such as Men and Women in the Church. Or Ruth Haley Barton, author/speaker/innovator, who has written books such as Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership and Sacred Rhythms. Or what about women like Nancy Beach, teaching pastor at Willow Creek and creative arts director there, who wrote a groundbreaking book all women in leadership in the church have been waiting for - Gifted to Lead, discussing the art of leading as a woman in the church, lifting the glass ceiling for women and empowering them to lead and know their full potential.Usually this discussion of the role of women is something that is studied and understood by those who have a seminary education and solid theological training, but the rest of us, the ordinary women, have been left out of that conversation. Finally there are women like Fincher who have that seminary training, but are now putting it into language we as everyday women can understand, wrestle with, and be empowered with, as her book Ruby Slippers: How the soul of a woman brings her home has been dubbed a theological slant on Captivating. But it is much more than that. Jonalyn has something incredibly important to say to us -- men and women, about the unique gift deep within - the gift of the feminine soul. She has something life-giving and true to say. Something we desperately need to hear.
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"Our femininity shouldn’t be like Cinderella’s golden slippers—we shouldn’t have to contort ourselves to fit someone else’s understanding of what it means to be feminine.
(In the previous section of the book, she expounds upon the original version of Cinderella, in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, where the familiar glass slipper is actually a golden pair that is, of course, very small, pinching shoes that don’t really fit, much like how many of us women can really, as we’ve all tried to force ourselves into a brand of femininity that just doesn’t fit.)
Could there be a kind of femininity that is life-giving, not juveniles or overly idealistic, something not constricting, but freeing to our souls? Something Christ might be able to help us find.
Think about one more pair of fairy-tale shoes: the witch’s ruby slippers that Dorothy wears in MGM’s movie, The Wizard of Oz. These slippers are like our femininity, something we’ve been given that we’re not always sure we want. When Dorothy puts them on, Glinda says, “There they are and there they’ll stay.” These shoes weren’t what Dorothy was expecting—they are the main source of her continual problems. The Wicked Witch of the West will stop at nothing to claim them because they’re powerful. This is where the magic comes in; the ruby slippers cannot be removed unless Dorothy is killed. Dorothy is unaware of her ruby slippers’ potential; she has no clue that they’re the answer to her deepest problem and her life’s quest.
Dorothy’s story is like our own.
After all Dorothy’s efforts are spent, after she’s played an unintentional part in murdering the evil witch, after her friends are disillusioned and traumatized by their unsuccessful journey, Dorothy learns she’s always had what she needed to get safely home.
She learns that she didn’t need to work so hard, that her to-do list was way too long. Getting home is surprising simple and close.
In our journey for Christian womanhood, how many girlfriends have we seen give up? How many women drop off along the way, disillusioned with the fake Emerald City and the empty powers of the wizard? For all we’ve seen and experienced, femininity seems a beautiful glitzy present, full of sparkle and attraction, but a sparkle that attracts more trouble than its worth. we don’t know the gift of our ruby slippers; we’d rather keep marching the yellow brick road, find companions to help along the way, and disregard the particular gift we were given upon entry into this world.
We still own a gift nearer than any task we complete or family we build up. We own a gift within, a gift we’ve carried since conception, and yet a gift few of us have plumbed to tap its potential. It is our feminine soul. the corsets we wear—the constricting stories about womanhood that many of us have been told since our earliest days—are neither life-giving nor true. What is our true femininity might be able to free rather than imprison us? What if our femininity pointed us back home?
Home is where we belong.
We really can be freer than we are; our souls tell us there is something to reclaim, something Christ must redeem in us. Home means acceptance. Henri Nouwen, a Catholic monk and mystic, wrote that home is where he can hear the voice of God saying, “You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests.”
Home is where we are safe and therefore most alive. Home is where we are free from the Wicked Witches of the East and West and North and South. Home is where we are released from our own ego condemning us in what we have done. Home is where we relax with the gift we have been given, glad to know and accept and use it. Home is where we return to the God we alienated, the God who still, surprising, wants us, the God who made us, the God whose image we bear. Home is when we discover how to fit into his kingdom.
We need to find what lies in these ruby slippers. We don’t have to earn it or march along the winding yellow brick road to find it.
We have it now.
Femininity is something we get to grow, not gain. Author Rob Bell said it well in Velvet Elvis: “We achieve and we push and we perform and we shop and we work out and we accomplish great things, longing to repair the image. Longing to find an identity that feels right. Longing to be comfortable in our own skin. But the thing we are searching for is not somewhere else. It is right here."
Femininity is embedded in us, just like masculinity is embedded in men. Our femininity is like a seed in us waiting to be watered; we get to find out what we are and watch Christ redeem and grow our femininity into a green sprout, then a slender sapling, and finally a mighty oak. The work, if you could call it that, is to enjoy owning and growing what you already have: the gift of these ruby slippers."
- Jonalyn Grace Fincher, Ruby Slippers
