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Full Acceptance or Just an Exception


By Lydia Istomina (first published by GCSRW )

What prevented The United Methodist Church from amending the original phrasing of Paragraph 4 earlier? The amendment is about female leadership in The United Methodist Church and the age of our leaders. Let’s leave social justice, democracy, and inclusivity aside for a moment and approach the problem from economical and performance standpoint.

A recent study by Duke University shows that only 11% of women serve as “senior or solo pastoral leaders.” Ironically, the beginning of my ministry was with a “new start” congregation that became a fast-growing church. I became a poster-child for The United Methodist in Eurasia. But now, after 20 years of serving small American congregations, I do not see a way for me, as well as for many other clergywomen, to get even near the glass ceiling without divine intervention.

In 2008, there were 82 women who were senior pastors of churches with a membership of more than 1,000. In 2010, there were 94 women leading large churches. The survey found that 9 out of 10 lead women pastors of large membership churches were the first women to lead that church, as in the case of Grace Olathe UMC in Kansas.

Is the church scared of women’s sexuality behind the pulpit that it causes the church push a clergywoman to find a job outside of the church? Kira Schlesinger blogs about how often women clergy hear that they were “too pretty” to be a pastor. The still patriarchal Church continues viewing women as “desirable” or “disposable” objects. Could it be that out of the fear of sexual harassment lawsuits, The United Methodist Church keeps women away? Continue reading →

Blogging

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View from the Hammock – blogs in English

Взгляд из Гамака – Russian

Frogology: My Life Credo

“Frogology” is my invention, my theory of life. The fairy tale of the Russian writer Garshvin comes to mind. It is my favorite story, Ligooshka-Puteshestvennitsa, or “Frog the Traveler,” with a moral lesson.
I was exactly like the frog when I decided to learn to “fly” high. The ambitious little frog bravely approached some geese one day and asked them to teach her to fly. The geese found a simple solution for the little frog’s dream: a stick.
 The frog was asked to take that stick into her mouth; then the two strongest geese lifted her up into the blue sky on the stick. At first, the little frog kept her mouth shut. She observed the earth from the sky and was amazed how tiny everything looked compared to her; she was bigger than even her swamp.
The freedom made the froggy’s head spin. No one from her relatives and friends could ever even imagine how high she could fly. When the geese made a circle before leaving for a foreign land, they flew over the swamp. By that time the little frog got braver and attempted to tell her superiors how to fly. She forgot about the stick! At the moment when all her relatives and friends looked up at her, she fell into the swamp.
I fell, and I fell hard.  I lost everything and had to start from zero.
My second hypothesis of “frogology” came out of a scientific experiment that was also done on frogs. Place a frog into a pot with boiling water, and as you would expect, the frog immediately leaps out of hot water. Who wouldn’t! The paradox was in the same frog’s behavior when it was placed in cold water first, and then the water was gradually heated up to the same boiling point. The frog remained still, oblivious to the heat.
I applied this experiment to human life and found some similarities to us slowly being boiled, but noticing little. We were all like hard-boiled Soviet zombies, not only ignoring the misery but even enjoying it. My American friends would come to Russia to visit  and look at us Russians like we were insane, “Why don’t you ask for political asylum?”
“For what reason? I am not a Jew.”
“Economic! Ecological! Political! You name it! You have all the reasons to ask for political asylum!”
“Then the whole country should emigrate.”
Americans, as well as other foreigners, wanted to jump out right away when submerged into the Russian boiling pot, but we stayed there for life because we were unable to see the gradual degradation and inevitable death from where we were. The problem is that frogs like their swamp that is always warm and familiar. We don’t see much of a difference, because all the changes happen gradually, from one generation to the other.
When I first came to America, I realized that people around me were afraid to express their opinion no less than in the Soviet Russia. They don’t even notice that the water is already too hot. Americans are afraid to step on somebody else’s toes as if they will be physically persecuted for that. Creativity is choked, simply because people are more concerned about not sticking out their heads. Americans never had genocide like Soviets had under Stalin, Germans under Hitler or Cambodians under Pol Pot. What did they fear?
It was my turn now to ask, “How, in this whole world, did you learn to keep your mouths shut? Why fearing?” I learned that “once bitten; twice shy.” People are afraid of conflicts, especially in the church, letting same leaders control congregations for decades, rather leaving than learning new ways.
When Americans complain that they have countless immigrants and have to feed and educate us on their tax money, I want to argue, “You need us for our fresh perspective. We can save you as you saved us! And maybe together we can save at least something that can be still saved.”
My coming to Kansas City was exactly like that scientific experiment, a frog thrown into the already-boiling water. I felt everything with my skin: racial prejudices, social classes,  and county lines that separate the ghetto from affluent neighborhoods. If I had grown up in the Midwest, I would have missed lots of things.
“Frogology” is my invention, my theory of life. Thank God for the thin skin, and for my opinion in spite of the stick. Continue reading →

Don’t Move Up The Hierarchy – Move Across It

Ron Ashkenas,  Forbes Contributor

The author writes about simplifying organizations in a complex world.

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Like it or not, most of us think about career success in terms of moving up the hierarchy. Let me illustrate with a story:

I once worked with the new CEO of a well-known global firm that was barely breaking even. The CEO’s mandate from the board was to improve profitability. To do this, he planned to institute global manufacturing platforms so that product “families” would have the same core design no matter where in the world they were sold. The reduced-cost savings would be in the tens of millions of dollars.

This initiative would take a couple years of hard work, so the CEO tapped the president of the North American Division to take the lead on a full-time basis. This person, let’s call him Bill, had been with the company for many years, understood the engineering and supply chain issues, and was well respected by everyone.

Ron Ashkenas, Forbes Contributor 

Continue reading here http://www.forbes.com/sites/ronashkenas/2014/03/14/dont-move-up-the-hierarchy-move-across-it/

Where Were My Eye Balls?

My parents used to travel back and forth from Russia to visit my sister and me before moving to America for good. My mother gradually adjusted to the high level of services in this country and quickly learned the benefits of being a customer. She couldn’t believe her eyes – people were actually polite and attentive! What she liked most was that she had the right to return or exchange low-quality items – something almost unthinkable for her!
One day, she came back to Russia and found out that my Dad brought home expired yogurt. Mom didn’t even want to listen to my father’s reasons – that it was not America, and nobody would take the dairy products back – she sent him back to the store anyway.
“Where were your eyeballs?” the sales clerk yelled vulgarly at my father, looking down at him.
It became our family joke for years: “Where were your eyeballs?” We say it every time we remember poor Russian services and compare them with the exceptionally polite and considerate customer service here. My mother liked shopping in America until one day we went to buy a mattrass for her.
We found a nice mattress store and purchased two new mattresses sealed in plastic for a little more than $700. The joy ended right there. My mother and I noticed a strong mildew odor in her bedroom as soon as we furnished it. Would you think of a new bed if you have a strong suffocating odor? I wouldn’t!
I checked every corner of our new place, I sprayed bottles and bottles of Febreze, but the mold was getting only stronger. The bedding was my next suspect. I washed it, and washed it, and I washed it again but, every time I entered the room, I smelled the mold again.
My mother got nasty headaches, but I was not able to be attentive to her, having my own problems increasing day after day. My throat swelled and I lost my voice for weeks to come, and I didn’t even sleep in the room. For a public speaker to lose her voice is the same as for a jeweler to lose her fingers. I make my living through my voice. That was scary.
Only by accident did we discover that the problem was neither the bedding nor the apartment but the mattresses.
“It is America – not Russia!” I told my mother. All we needed to do was to see the storeowner. I soon could tell that the owner “stopped liking my face.” This was not just the obvious observation of his attitude, but his own words. He told me that he didn’t like my face as soon as I explained why I wanted to return the mattress.
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I felt I had the right to be heard, even if he stopped liking me. I still believed that any storeowner would naturally try his best to satisfy his or her customers. Instead, we experienced déjà vu: before our eyes, the American man suddenly transformed into a rude and arrogant salesman (too familiar to us, Russians), who yelled and screamed and laughed with a victorious sound.
“Get out of my store! You threaten me with Problems Solvers, you lie to me. You come from nobody knows what country, speaking nobody knows what language! I sold 50,000 mattresses and never had a mildew problem. You are the only ones who came back! Get out of my store!” He suddenly looked angrily and hatefully down at my mother, who sat innocently in the armchair, not having a clue about what was going on, and yelled again,
“Do not sit on my furniture! Get off my furniture! Get out of my store! Get out of my store!”
He was so angry I had to call the police, not knowing that the owner could behave as he wished on his property. That was explained to me later by the city police officer.
“Arrest her! Arrest her for trespassing!” he didn’t stop yelling, even in front of the police officer.
“I can’t,” said the officer.
“I’d rather be arrested,” I said and offered to turn myself in, envisioning how my friends would picket the mattress place. I knew I would win. It is not Russia; my dignity is preserved in America. After we left the store, my mother complained: “Where are the new mattresses? Did the owner agree on exchanging them?” I hugged her and smiled, “Where were our eyeballs, Mom?” She looked at me with sudden understanding, and we both laughed through tears.