[Published 2006 originally.]
Time to celebrate! March is women’s history month. I’d like to list a few women who’ve greatly influenced me in my ongoing journey to become more authentically human.
1. My wife, Carol Elaine. I’d have to write a volume or nothing.
2. My mother, Lucile Hanford Trott, a strong and intelligent woman who gave us poetry, flowers, and love.
3. Dawn Mortimer, Jesus People USA pastor and dear friend and co-worker who I’ve suffered with and caused suffering to over the years.
4. Toni Morrison, whose novels (particularly Song of Solomon and Beloved) become increasingly meaningful to me the older I get.
5. Andrea Dworkin. WHAT?! Yeah, yeah… I know. If you want to know why I include her, some clues exist on my other blog, Are Men Really Human?
6. My daughters, Tamzen and Tabitha. They’re grown now, but their first years in which I was a single dad raising them changed me–my priorites and my loves–profoundly. At least, I hope so. I dare to hope they may have been better for having me as a dad, but the jury’s still out on that one.
7. Dorothy Day. Hey, she lived communally, did journalism / writing, struggled (sometimes unsuccessfully) with purity, and made it her life’s mission to serve the poor. Mother Teresa’s amazing but Dorothy is accessible. (Try her autobiography The Long Loneliness…)
8. The many women in our Jesus People USA community who, through their lives of discipleship and service as they fully exercise their gifts, make my own life richer.
9. My Aunt Marian Long, who met Christ during the charismatic movement of the late ’60s, and who helped spark a revival in the Highwoood, Montana area that influenced nearly my entire family as well as dozens of others who still walk with Christ today.
10. And last, but NOT least, Mimi Haddad, Chelsea Dearmond, and the rest of the folks at Christians for Biblical Equality (they’ve got a great book sale going on for this special month… and no, I don’t get a cut!)
I know I’m missing folk… I may add more as the month continues. We’ll see…
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