ART & HARD TIMES: Alli Bobzien
Part 2 in a series
Happy Friday, and welcome to the second installment of ART & HARD TIMES, a weekly series I’m running through June about the art that helps us get through life’s ups and downs. Each Friday I’ll share a conversation with one of my friends, all deeply-thoughtful creatives and fellow Substackers, talking about a particular work of art that was meaningful to them during a difficult time in their lives.
This week, I’m excited to share a conversation with the great ! Alli (to steal brazenly from her official website bio) Alli is a freelance writer, a mother to two spunky girls, and a recent graduate of Fuller Seminary, where she achieved her master’s in theology. Cherishing a love of everyday spirituality, women in scripture, and the healing power of connection through words, she seeks to craft essays and prayers that engage and uplift. Her writing has been featured in America Magazine, Busted Halo, Jesuits.org, National Catholic Reporter, Mothering Spirit, Grotto Network, Christians for Social Action, Live Today Well Collective, and more. We became friends through the Jesuit Media Lab, and we’ve collaborated on a few things before this, including a live Zoom event about boundaries in creativity. I’ll include a lot more plugs to Alli’s work in the wrap-up section at the bottom!
Alli chose a work that some of you may be familiar with: the Bible (I think I spelled that right). Specifically, the stories of women in the Old Testament. Read on to find out how a grad school class transformed the way that she read those stories, and how they in turn shaped her story.
You took a unique approach to this prompt: you chose a grad school class called “Women in the Old Testament” that changed the way you read scriptural stories and how you saw yourself as a Catholic. Can you give me a little background about where you were when you took this class?
When I was around 30, I was balancing mothering a 3-year-old and an under one-year-old with completing my master’s in theology. Right before my second daughter’s birth, I had completed a class on chaplaincy and was sorely disappointed to discover that, without an ordination in my denomination, I was unlikely to attain a full certification as a hospital chaplain. At this point, I had already been feeling as though door after door was closed to me as a Catholic woman.
Raising my daughters in the Church had been a unique experience during Covid, and I worried what it would mean to raise two little girls in a church space that looked and felt predominantly male. Would they see themselves in the church? In the divine?
I recall feeling alone, as we all did during Covid, and deeply hurt by the limitations on women within the Catholic Church. While there were saints to whom I clung, particularly Teresa of Avila, I was living in Houston, TX with a dearth of progressive Catholics around me. Working on my graduate degree during the few hours I could snatch and staying close to home mothering my littles, I felt frustrated and drained.
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that grad school wasn't the first time you'd encountered the Bible. What was your relationship with the Bible, and particularly the stories of women in the Bible, before you took this class?
Haha, I had been reading and being read the Bible since I was very young. I was raised in a non-denominational church, and it was pretty weak on theology. We did read scripture, but most bible stories were interpreted through a narrow lens. Thankfully, the middle and high schools I attended had theology course requirements. I’m grateful for my schools’ theology classes, they instilled in me an understanding that scripture and theology are beautiful and formative but also deeply rooted in their historical context and the Jewish tradition. They broadened my viewpoints from the narrow interpretation provided by my church. I think the facets of scripture and how we interpret it was a large part of what pushed me towards a graduate degree in theology.
Growing up, women in scripture were side characters at best. Mary, mother of God, was deemed important but also held at arm’s distance because my schools and church were Protestant, and they didn’t want to appear too Catholic (joke is somewhat on them as I was confirmed in the Catholic Church while in college).
I was taught that women were meant to be led by men. Women’s roles, particularly in the Old Testament, affirmed this through their faithful adherence to the patriarchal structure. While this wasn’t what I saw at home, it was what was preached and taught. Women in the Bible were nice and kind and had babies who, if they were boys, went on to do great things. In other words, they were horribly boring.
How did you end up taking this class? And what made the experience so profound?
I ended up in the “Women in the Old Testament” course purely by accident (I forgot to register on my assigned day and this was the class I could complete online). One of the first texts we read, after having had a crash course in the historical context of ancient Israel, was Wilda Gafney’s The Womanist Midrash. I recall reading the chapter on Hagar and simply weeping. Gafney framed these women as important, worthy of our attention, and absolutely integral to our understanding of not only scripture, but also of God.
I chose Hagar’s story in Genesis chapter 16 as my research project for that course and dug deeply into texts such as Phyllis Trible’s Texts of Terror and John Petersen’s Reading Women’s Stories. I discovered the wealth of biblical scholarship that views scripture through the feminist and liberationist lens and it made me feel seen and understood by God in a way I had never experienced. While my heart had always known that God loved me, I had failed to feel that from scriptural narratives – in large part because of how women in scripture had been taught to me.
Through this course, I found myself reading about how Hagar was the first woman both to name God (making her the first female theologian) and the first woman to receive an annunciation. Again and again, I saw how women were key players in both the history of Israel and the movements of God. I loved how the Old Testament often used the outsiders, those whom society had no use for, to guide God’s people. God always saw the marginalized as precious and important.
You mentioned in our planning conversation for this interview that the heart of your story is “the idea that our lives are shaped through the lens with which we view art,” which is a beautiful and powerful idea. How did this new lens shape your life?
My dear friend
called this my ‘origin story’ as it is what kickstarted my love for exploring the stories of women in scripture and pushed me towards a vocation of writing. As I allowed these scriptural narratives to sink deeply into my heart, I discovered that my heart and mind needed healing from the patriarchal frameworks in scripture and religion. I began reading ’ Rewilding Motherhood then her next book Feminist Prayers for my Daughter.Reading Shannon’s work made me realize the community of women like me who were seeking spaces of belonging in the church, theology, and scripture. It instilled in me the desire to share all that I was learning in graduate school, specifically about women in scripture. I started writing for a collective called ‘Live Today Well’ and this community of women writers led me to some of my dearest friends. They have walked alongside me as I navigated the journey of writing as a vocation and living my faith in a way that honors the empowered women of scripture.
My creative pursuits led me to some fabulous current authors – many of whom I noticed wrote for the Jesuits. While I am skipping over a great deal, suffice it to say I began to feel like I had found my people within the church. People who were passionate about social justice, women’s voices in scripture and the church, and ensuring that all people were viewed with respect and recognized as children of God. Studying the stories of women in scripture and walking alongside them on their journeys, helped me to discover my own path – one full of justice, equality, creativity, and beauty.
You recently started a series on your Substack called Tending the Tapestry, reflecting on the stories of women in the Old Testament. How did you experience with this class inform the approach you're taking in this series? And what can readers expect?
I was so fortunate to have a professor (Beth Hayes) who was intentional about digging deeply into the historical and cultural background of these narratives while emphasizing how our understanding of the past influences our practice of faith in the present. My hope for this series is to similarly introduce my readers to not only the historical context and cultural textures of these stories, but also the impact they have on our faith life today.
Readers can expect each installment of the series to include a narrative from the point of view of women in scripture (inspired by imaginative prayer), a reflection that outlines the 'through threads' or themes in the section of scripture, and finally an invitation to personal reflection through prayer or meditation on scripture. It has been so fun to create this layout and my prayer is that the empowering stories of these women can strengthen the readers' tapestries of faith.
Things Seen & Heard
For more of Alli’s work, check out her website and, of course, her Substack The Pondering Heart. Subscribe now so you catch every new installment of her Tending the Tapestry series on the stories of women in the Old Testament: you can read the intro post here and Part 1 (Hagar’s Story) here.
The Bible, as I understand it, is available wherever books are sold, most churches, and probably your hotel room.
Check back next week for a conversation with yet another brilliant writer,
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