wfn.org | Clergy women helped to ‘unload their wagons'

["Office of Communications"<wshuffit@oc.disciples.org>]

Date: March 17, 2000
Disciples News Service
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
Contact: Clifford L. Willis
E-mail: CWillis@oc.disciples.org
on the Web: http://www.disciples.org

00a-10

	ATLANTA (DNS) -- Seventy women "unloaded their wagons" here March 4-6 at 
the African American Clergy Women's retreat at the Simpsonwood Retreat 
Center just outside Atlanta. 

	The Rev. Susan Street Beavers, retreat director, said event organizers 
took great care to offer an opportunity for busy women to unburden 
themselves, and find spiritual renewal.  "This was not a workshop, this 
was a retreat," she said. The weekend theme encouraged each participant to 
"Unload Your Wagon."  

	Participants included Disciples clergy women, Christian Women's 
Fellowship leaders, chaplains and other clergy and lay persons.  The event 
was sponsored by African American Clergy Women, but the diversity of 
participants enriched the event, according to Street Beavers. "The group 
knit together and became a sisterhood. We were able to cross cultural 
barriers.  We shared our stories. We took off our masks and revealed our 
inner selves. We walked hand in hand and shared each others' lives," she 
said.  

	A variety of presentations included one which examined social myths about 
women in general and about women of different racial and ethnic groups.  
Presenter Marcia Y. Riggs, associate professor of Christian Ethics, 
Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Ga., maintained that the myths, 
which assign broad personality distinctions according to race or 
ethnicity, work to isolate women from one another.  

	Riggs' presentation helped participants "explore our biases and 
misunderstandings and helped us learn how to build relationships with one 
another," said the Rev. Nancy Chamblee, Lexington, Ky., a participant and 
member of the retreat planning committee. 

	Nettie Fisher, PhD., an Oklahoma City psychologist examined the social 
forces that pressure women to take on more than their share of stressful 
emotional and physical activity -- creating what she calls a "driven 
woman."  Masseuse Lucia Smith was on hand throughout the weekend, helping 
"driven women" to let go of life tensions.  

	Participant Jean Vaughn summed up her experience poetically.  

	Here in this place of the tall, tall trees
		I uncovered my spirit. 
		I felt it under the "stuff" in my wagon. 
		I revealed it by unloading all those hindering things,
		Here in this place of the tall, tall trees. 

	The retreat planning committee included: Effie Blair, Ft. Worth, Texas; 
Nancy Chamblee, Lexington, Ky.; Mary Ann Glover, Elyria, Ohio; Hannah 
Hurdle-Toomey ; Vivian Poindexter, Memphis, Tenn.; and Lois Artis Murray, 
Indianapolis, Ind. 

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