Hopes for My Daughter

I’ve just returned from 3 days with 12 clergywomen who are exceptionally smart, healthy, beautiful, and privileged. We are cognizant of and grateful for our privilege: we each have a college education and advanced degrees, families and friends who love us, roofs over our heads, more than enough food to eat, and (sometimes admittedly threadbare but still steadfast) faith in God.

This is what I want for my daughter.
Yes, I want my sons to have this too, but there is something about women-friends that makes life especially durable and endurable. We pray for each other. We share and steal ideas from each other. We feed off each other in the best possible way.

I hope for my daughter:

• friends with whom she can confess, drink, eat, and swear who also know when to be holy and still


• funny friends


• friends who are equally energized sitting in the presence of a brilliant teacher and sitting in a country-western bar listening to somebody sing “Hey Good Lookin, Whatcha Got Cookin?”


• friends who would stop a literal or ecclesiastical bullet for each other
  

As my daughter grows up, she continues to stand on her own. And yet I hope she always knows that someone is there to catch her too, being the church on behalf of The Holy One.