Getting Psyched Up to Wear a T-Shirt

This Saturday I will be participating in the third annual Charlotte FemmeFest.  Last year, 6 months pregnant, I also had the opportunity to share my writing at the festival, which celebrates women in the arts and benefits women in the community, including the "Center for Hope" homeless shelter for women and children.

Choosing what to read at public events is always a kind of game for me: I want to engage my audience, and every audience is slightly different.  But more and more, I also want to challenge them.  However, I am, by nature, a non-confrontational type of person.  I mean, really, I get nauseated at the thought of a face-to-face debate.  I feel ill equipped to write (or deliver) anything with a controversial or political charge.  So what's a self-proclaimed pro-life feminist to do?

After mulling it over for the past couple days, I'm pretty sure I'm going to make myself a Feminists For Life inspired t-shirt:

Why wear an FFL shirt and not just a regular pro-life shirt if that's the message I want to promote.  Simple, it's a festival that celebrates feminism.  And I'm sure there will be plenty of women there who feel as conflicted as I had before discovering FFL.  I have always been pro-life, but I also identified with feminist philosophy -- at least the "old school" variety.  What Susan B. Anthony and the other founders of the feminist movement started with fighting for women to have the right to vote was more about giving a voice to the voiceless and empowering the defenseless than anything else.

Anyhow, like I said, I'm the non-confrontational type, and I'm not sure how I'll be received in my "anti-choice fanatic" garb.  So I was still undecided until I read this blog post by Bryan Kemper.  If abortion is so "OK," why would a man have to pressure his wife to get one?  If "mainstream feminism" with all the "it's just a blob of tissue" rhetoric is so "good for women," why would a woman who has had an abortion be in such heart-wrenching pain?

And that is only one story told among the thousands daily in this country alone.  But for that one woman and her alone, I'm ready to make a t-shirt and wear it too.





Oh, what am I reading?  I'll figure that out later.  But I can bet it will include something of the joys of motherhood!

Peace,

Julie

Lent: a New Beginning

Today, Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent for various denominations of Christians, including myself as a Catholic.  It marks 40 days before the beginning of the Easter celebration. 

In addition to beginning preparations for Easter, today begins the Spring 40 Days for Life campaign for 2010.  I began participating in 40 Days for Life about this time last year, though I was subscribed to the email list for some time before that campaign had started.  I have to say, this ministry has truly impacted how I approach the issue of abortion, at least inside my own head.

I think that I, like most people, have generally thought of abortion in abstract terms.  Though I've always been on the side that sees abortion as being wrong, it's only been recently that it has truly become a concrete issue for me.  Part of that solidification of the issue is due in great part to 40 Days for life and the lives that have been saved -- both, from death and the emotional trauma caused by abortion.  It is a wonderful, blessed thing when a mother walks away from an abortion clinic with her child still alive within her.  But it is even more powerful when, months later, that mother returns to the abortion site to stand peacefully in prayer with her baby in hopes of saving just one more mother and child.

We live in a physical world, with things to smell and taste, touch and hear.  But we are not limited to these physical things.  Can you touch love?  Can you taste hate? Can you smell LIFE? Only in the poetic sense.

The truth is, our experiences are based not only in the body, but in the mind and spirit as well.  BUT we cannot live ONLY in mind or spirit.  We are innately physical beings.  And so, it makes sense to me that a mother with her child -- abortion survivors, the physical embodiment of prayers answered -- should help make the issue more real to me, not just some lofty concept. 

These are PEOPLE.

*****

I invite you all to join me in this season's 40 days of prayer and fasting.  If you're looking for something to pray for, I suggest "an end to abortion and a resolution of the social issues that drive women to seek it."  If you're looking for something to give up, try some of your time: see www.40daysforlife.com to find a location near you to visit and pray at.