23S Week 1: The Power of Radically Inclusive Women-Centered Spaces

A brief history of WomenExplore:

In 1973 Brita Stendahl started the Theological Opportunities Program as a way of giving the wives (and other interested women) a taste of what their husbands were experiencing at HDS.  She was assisted by a small advisory committee of women.  Many of the women who attended TOP went on to divinity school, not necessarily at Harvard, in their own right.

In 1978 Elizabeth Dodson Gray took over as "Coordinator" (her title) and radically transformed the program. At first she opened up the Advisory Committee to any woman who had attended TOP.  Liz developed a feminist method of taking the issues that were on the minds of the women in the Advisory Committee and developing a series of ten topics under a common theme.  Naturally the range of topics continued to broaden.  TOP was fortunate in having access to expert speakers from a wide range of fields in the Boston area.

A second innovation that Liz introduced was to ground each topic by starting the session with an "existential focus" in which a member of the Advisory Committee speaks about how the day's topic comes from her life.  This enhances and gives more meaning to the main speaker's lecture.

Elizabeth Dodson Gray remained at the helm as Coordinator for 32 years with the invaluable assistance of her devoted husband David. (Harvard certainly got their money's worth!)  A number of smaller sharing groups associated with TOP came and went -- today we have "Reflections".  Liz and David faced a number of upheavals over the years, the greatest being separating from Harvard and becoming an independent non-profit in 2003.  This meant that Liz became "Executive Director" and required the creation of a Board which had the responsibility of overseeing the Executive Director and ensuring that all financial dealings were above board. From the point of view of most of the TOP participants an even bigger upheaval came when TOP needed to find alternative accommodation, which it did at the University Lutheran Church in Winthrop St.  No longer located in the HDS Liz set in motion a process for finding a new more descriptive name for the organization. Finally Liz and David retired from TOP in 2010, but continued to attend the lectures for some time.  (At their retirement "garden party" Liz and David were presented the Donella Meadows Award by the Club of Rome (USA). This coveted award is given to highly outstanding individuals who created actions in a global framework toward the sustainability goals Donella Meadows, lead author of the influential book The Limits to Growth, expressed in her writings.)  All of these changes took the work of many committees to come to fruition.  Doing everything by consensus is not necessarily the most efficient!  

Since 2010 WomenExplore has had three executive directors, each brought her own talents to modernizing the organization and all brought more volunteers into the running of WE.  We also moved our base to the Democracy Center in Mt Auburn St.

The latest upheaval WE faced was the covid-19 pandemic.  We postponed the Spring 2020 series, which was about to begin, while we found our footing in an on-line environment.  Being on-line is a mixed blessing.  We can afford to offer the lectures cost-free since we no longer pay rent and it is easier and less time-consuming for us to be present at a meeting.  The downside is that we have lost the personal interactions which inevitably take place at in-person events.  At the end of a lecture instead of fifteen different conversations taking place simultaneously we can only have one, one where people need to raise their hands to speak.  We have sought to mitigate this somewhat by incorporating some in-person events into the series and in the times between the series.

Where next?  Only time will tell.

Focus: Muna Killingback, Tracey Hurd and Maria Behnke, prev exec dirs WomenExplore

Tracey Hurd (3rd ED) was unable to attend due to an unexpected work situation:

I come here after years in primarily academic settings—as a former Scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Center, program director at the Unitarian Universalist Association, and faculty member at Boston College. The dual commitment to learning broadly about issues in the world today, and deep thinking about how those issues touch our own lives, drew me in. I attended a session with a friend, and came back again and again. I am honored to be part of a program that is so full of possibility and transformation.
I served for a very short time at WomenExplore but always hold the collective and Elizabeth Dodson Gray dearly in my memory. Elizabeth’s deep trust in women, her commitment to expansive feminist thought, and her lovely grittiness were inspirational. I am grateful to have known her, for being welcomed at WomenExplore, and for the truly incredible individuals who have carried on the vision of Theological Opportunities/ WomenExplore forward with the same thirst for knowledge, truth and justice that Elizabeth held. I am very glad to have met you all.

Maria Behnke (4th ED) is working now as a Montessori teacher and both her director and co-teacher have called in ill.

She says:

Please send my regrets and love to the group.  I owe so much of my success to WE and being ED changed my life in the most profound ways imaginable.

Focus talk by Muna Killingback, WE's second executive director

Lecture: Timothy Patrick McCarthy is an award-winning scholar, teacher, and activist who has taught at Harvard University for more than two decades. Educated at Harvard and Columbia, Dr. McCarthy holds a joint faculty appointments in Harvard’s undergraduate honors program in History and Literature, at the Graduate School of Education, where he is core faculty in both the Equity and Opportunity Foundations Curriculum and the new online Master’s Program in Education Leadership, and the John F. Kennedy School of Government (HKS), where he is Core Faculty and Director of Culture Change & Social Justice Initiatives at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. At the HKS he was the first openly gay faculty member and still teaches the school’s only course on LGBTQ matters, he is faculty affiliate at the Center for Public Leadership. A historian of politics and social movements, he teaches courses on equity and justice, brave communication and leadership, and race, gender, and sexuality.

 

Film on abortion talks:

https://whatisessential.org/the-abortion-talks

Timothy McCarthy:

https://www.malindalo.com/blog/2021/6/15/daughters-of-bilitis

Timothy McCarthy:

https://www.pangyrus.com/politics/may-our-hope-persist-a-love-letter-for-my-niece/

The above is a love letter I wrote to and for my niece Malia.

I published it in 2015 but am giving it to her at her 8th grade graduation this spring.

Documentary film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97Rp4L4XyUs

Women’s Political Council Flyer for Montgomery Bus Boycott:https://www.crmvet.org/docs/mbbleaf.pdf

Socialist Origins of International Women’s Day: https://daily.jstor.org/the-socialist-origins-of-international-womens-day/

Timothy McCarthy:

https://soundcloud.com/memorial-church/timothy-patrick-mccarthy-oct-31-2022-morning-prayers?in=memorial-church/sets/morning-prayers-at-harvard-4

No Trailer Anymore - Tralier:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGrcsBJQCpPPCPTPzCNxhDwXRXt?projector=1

25 Years of TOP

Here is a republication of the press release issued on the occasion of TOP's 25th Anniversary in 1998. Read this to see how TOP has evolved and continues to evolve to meet the needs of the women it serves.

Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of TOP

— by Elizabeth Dodson Gray

One of the Divinity School’s unique programs, known as the Theological Opportunities Program (TOP), is celebrating its 25th anniversary this fall of 1998.

To celebrate their 25th anniversary the Advisory Committee has planned an exciting fall lecture series entitled "This Is The Time For Women," with major lectures by Federal Judge Nancy Gertner, Jill Ker Conway, Clare Dalton, Jean Baker Miller, Christiane Northrup, Elizabeth Dodson Gray and Carolyn McDade.

The anniversary series this fall begins Thursday morning, September 24th at 10 AM in the Braun Room at the Divinity School.

TOP WAS BEGUN IN 1973 by Brita Stendahl and a committee of interested women. At that time it was a reformulation of the earlier "Ladies Lectures" (lectures on Thursdays in April), which began in the late 1950s during the deanship of Douglas Horton.

In 1973 the lectures were redesigned as a spring and fall Thursday morning lecture series, intended to appeal to all those who were seeking and searching for just what the title says, "theological opportunities" in their lives and in their thinking. To the lectures were added mini-courses, taught by HDS faculty and only available to TOP participants, to provide for deeper and more intense theological reflection and inquiry.

It was a gateway for laywomen into the Divinity School, and numbers of women in the years since 1973 have gone through this gateway into regular enrollment as students at HDS.

Through the years, the mini-courses faded away, but the lecture series every fall and spring have grown in the fall from 4 sessions to 8 and in the spring to 10 or 11 sessions. The Advisory (planning) Committee, led since 1978 by its coordinator, feminist theologian and author Elizabeth Dodson Gray, has grown from a small committee of 10–12 to its present strength and diversity of 45–50 women. It is open to all who choose to join in the planning Thursday on afternoons after the fall or spring lectures.

THE LECTURE TOPICS HAVE SHIFTED from more conventional and traditional religious inquiries to questions that arise out of women’s life experience, for example, from "The Dynamic God and the Transformation of Biblical Symbols" to "What Does Love-As-Self-Denial and Love-As-Sacrifice Do to Women?"

During the deanship of George Rupp the Theological Opportunities Program was encouraged to find its speakers (there are no honoraria) from the wider Harvard community as well as the Greater Boston Area, looking for speakers to lawyers, legislators, authors, environmentalists, psychologists and psychotherapists as well as to academic professors and theologians.

Attendance ranges from 90 to 160 people for each lecture. There have been visitors from Iceland, Japan, Pakistan, Jamaica, England, Holland. Registration data shows that more that 1700 different women and a few men have attended in the last 10 years, and it is estimated that between 3500 and 4000 attended in TOP’s first twenty-five years.

In connection with the 10th anniversary series in 1983, the position of "existential focuser" was developed. This is a short (15 minute) speech which precedes the major lecture, and its purpose is to root or ground the topic of the morning in the life of one woman from the planning committee, who can speak about how that morning’s topic has been crucial, for good or ill, in her life.

After the major lecture, there is a question period, a short break at noon, and then a participatory discussion so that all who attend can have an opportunity to share their life-experience on this topic. Occasionally the subject of the morning is illuminated through a panel of 3 or 4 speakers who can witness to the diversity of perspectives on this question.

Because the morning experience, which begins at 10:00 AM and lasts through 1:00 PM, has a variety of speakers, questions and discussion, the morning is now best described as a half-day conference, and the 1998 fee is $10 per session, with a 20% discount for series subscribers.

The planning of the lecture series is at the heart of the TOP program, but through the years the creativity of TOP has generated other manifestations of its life. First came the support group which meets every Thursday morning when there is not a lecture, both summer and winter. This small, more intimate group has a "go-around" ritual, which encourages each woman to focus on the question, "What am I feeling about my life today, or this week?" The support group has itself initiated a process of telling Spiritual Journeys to one another.

But the generativity of the group has also birthed a monthly Sunday afternoon discussion group, Conversations Over 50 (only over-50 can attend), which focuses on the unique questions which women in their 50s through 80s have about their lives. Out of this Conversations group came for a time another smaller discussion group about "End-of-Life Decisions."

IN 1988 THE TOP GROUP WROTE ITS OWN BOOK, Sacred Dimensions of Women’s Experience, based upon the fall 1985 lecture series of the same name. Co-written with articles by 29 TOP women and friends, edited by coordinator Elizabeth Dodson Gray, and published by Roundtable Press, the book has been hailed as a significant milestone in feminist theology.

The Very Rev. Dr. Lois Wilson, then one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches, wrote: "Sacred Dimensions of Women’s Experience is an important book. It is one of the few theological books I know that addresses the meaning of the sacred out of the experiences of women. I could hardly believe it when I went through the index and found ‘myself’ there, having experienced (along with other women) housework, falling in love, giving birth, caretaking, raising children, creating a home. Naming the sacred in our own experience is an absolutely essential theological task for women." On the book cover, as lushly vivid colors swirl around, the words of Rosemary Radford Ruether are quoted: ". . . we are engaged in a new revelational encounter with the divine in and through women’s experience. . . . "

One participant, Priscilla Hinckley, has written: "Two important things happen at TOP: (1) lay women bring their issues of spiritual concern arising out of daily life to the Divinity School and explore them with students and professionals in the religion field; and (2) the program offers a supportive setting for an ongoing search into the meaning of female experience through the instrument of telling our spiritual stories to one another in small groups which meet at other times during the year.

"The presence of such a lay group within a theological school—bringing to the seminary the existential concerns of people in the pews, in order to think together with students and teachers—is, we think, unique in the United States."

Dieter Georgi, former HDS professor of Biblical Studies and long-time faculty advisor to TOP (now at the University of Frankfurt in Germany) has his own perspective as a professional theologian:

"The Early Church was first and most of all a lay movement, and women played a founding and stabilizing role in it and in its theological reflections. The same has remained true with all the major revitalizations of church and theology, not the least in the Reformation. . . . All good professional theologians to this day depend on intensive dialogues with the laity, sensors for the inspirational powers of the praxis of life, its social structures and its tendencies. Theology is supposed to condense and point these messages and test such pointed condensation in further exchange with the laity.

"Women have always played an important role in that ecclesial, social and theological evolution, even during the high times of patriarchy. . . . TOP has made the area circumscribed by Interstate 495 (more or less the range of its participants) into a home-base for lay theology, competing with the Wittenbergs and Genevas of yesteryear."

TOP PUBLISHED FOR ITS 25TH ANNIVERSARY a 120-page booklet, Weaving Communion Deep Within Life’s Grace. Eighty individuals wrote of their experiences with TOP over the years, and it is illustrated with their art and music. The booklet begins with these words:

"We thought we were doing a lecture series. But we became a women’s faith community, a place of learning but also of transformation, a safe place that validated our feelings and encouraged our unfolding, a place for tears of pain and tears of gladness.

"We created this place for one another. Over the years all of us together created it, and it has given us gifts beyond measure. But perhaps the most precious of all gifts, it has given us the experience of ourselves—empowered, authentic, full-voiced—the selves we are becoming."

DESCRIBING THIS WOMEN’S FAITH COMMUNITY, the coordinator says: "We are women who are Jewish, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, Unitarian Universalist, Quaker, Greek Orthodox, Buddhist, post-Christian and Goddess. We are single, married, divorced, remarried: we are heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian. We are daughters, sisters, wives, mothers, and grandmothers. Most but not all of us are white. Most but not all of us are middle-class. We are teachers, clergy, housewives, psychotherapists, businesswomen, authors, composers, singers, gardeners, caregivers. A few of us have been senior corporate executives."

GEORGE RUPP, THE FORMER DEAN OF HDS and currently president of Columbia University, writes in the booklet:

"I have always been struck with how deeply TOP has affected the lives of participants. I am sure the three paragraph ‘verbal snapshots’ that are being collected will bear moving testimony to this impact. But along with its role in shaping the lives of individual participants, TOP has also served as a significant stimulus in the Divinity School as an institution.

"Preparing a talk for TOP has not infrequently provoked a process that in turn led to a new course or an article or even the germ of a book. . . . I am confident that the twenty-five year challenge to relate scholarly preoccupations to concrete experience has been salutary for the Divinity School community, and I hope and expect that this challenge will continue in the years ahead."

— by Elizabeth Dodson Gray