Snake Oil

Becca Stevens calls herself a snake oil seller. She takes natural oils, mixes them with a good story, sells them in an open market and believes they help heal the world. Becca is the founder of Thistle Farms, one of the most successful ventures in the U.S. of a social enterprise whose mission is the work force, and its residential program, Magdalene. The women of Magdalene/Thistle Farms have survived prostitution, trafficking and addiction and the natural body care products they manufacture–balms, soaps, and lotions–aid in their own healing as well as offer it to those who buy them. The book weaves together the beginnings of the enterprise with individual stories from Becca's own journey as well as 20 women in the community. In Snake Oil, Becca tells how the women she began helping fifteen years ago have been the biggest source of her own healing from sexual abuse and her father’s death as a child. Wise and reflective, Snake Oil offers an empowering narrative as well as a selection of recipes for healing remedies that readers can make themselves.

Eulogy for Katie Garrett

January 22nd, 2013

Catherine Stevens Garrett was born on Independence Day in 1956. She took that birthday to heart and grew up with a beautifully independent spirit that always rooted for the underdog. She was a clear and willing debater for the causes of civil rights and equality for everyone. Fiercely competitive in board games and cards, she taught her four younger siblings early on that if she looked at your cards, that's not cheating, it is your fault you didn't hold the cards close to your chest. Born in Scottsville, NY, she was the oldest daughter of Joe and Anne Stevens. Our family moved to Nashville when she was 10.

I remember one day not too long after the move all of us racing through an old trolley car in Centennial Park which had an open plank with an exposed nail. Katie fell on it and badly damaged her knee which required tons of stitches, caused a pretty big scar on her knee, and required that she be interviewed by lawyers from Centennial Park. The story was that Katie had not learned to speak southern yet so when they asked her if her mom carried her to the hospital, Katie replied, "No. My mom carried me to the car, then drove me to the hospital." She was precise about language, just another sign of her intelligence and wit. She was invited to join Mensa, didn't have to go to the movies since she could read a book in about the same time, and she loved sciences. She met Andy Garrett at John Overton High School when she was 16 years old. Katie has always loved family. And Katie loved Andy devotedly and with passion. They married when she was eighteen, moved around the country while keeping a close circle of friends here in Nashville especially Danny, Elizabeth, Tom and Babs. Her crowning achievement in her life was easily the gift of her three, beautiful and smart and funny daughters--- Andrea, Kelly and Mary. They are her source of pride and joy. She was a senior chemist at Environmental Science Lab and loved her work. She loved the precision of a lab and working on environmental issues.

She had a clear voice that could cut through all the junk and speak her truth in love. Her voice was so clear that when we sat down on Sunday night to plan Katie's service, we could hear her telling us exactly what to do. It only took us about 10 minutes because as soon a topic was brought up, a daughter or Andy or one of her siblings would say, "No, she would hate that", or "Yes, Mom would want that." Once we got past the business of her funeral, the circle of love and grief moved on to topics that Katie really cared about. We were free to gush over her two new grandbabies, Rylee and Ella. Then we could listen to Regan pick up Katie's story-telling mantle and describe with humor and grace all the things she remembered about her grandma. And then we could all laugh as we listened to Ryan say "I'm just saying..." before he launched in to a story. In that circle one by one people started remembering the story, Katie's story. It's the story of the charitable sister who always helped us at Thistle Farms in a pinch, the story of the loyal friend who practiced her love in deeds. The story of the wife that even after her husband had his own close call with death last year, could never talk about her life without him. The story of a proud mom who loved watching her children grow. She was beautiful and didn't have a vain bone in her whole body. She would give you the shirt off her back without a thought. As the stories that reflected these traits circled around the room, the thing that made me so sad was how much she would have loved it. The stories woven from the pictures scattered across the table rose like hope in the room. We could all hear her voice, feel her love that could never be doused by death, no matter how quickly or hard it swept in. It was a holy communion grounded in the hope of resurrection and the truth that love never dies. You could feel Katie's spirit leading the evening.

In addition to inviting Thistle Farms, the bath and body care company run by women surviving lives of trafficking, addiction and prostitution, to her company every year for a luncheon, she helped Thistle Farms get clean water for the products, secure a donation from the lab of a dozen tables and came to teach us how to use our still to make essential oils. Watching her work in front of the machine all day was amazing. She helped me see how changing things incrementally made a big change in the quality and quantity of the essential oil. She packed about 20 pounds of rosemary into the basin and started heating the water to steam the plant. After a couple hours the 20 pounds were reduced to a couple milliliters of oil -- the best and most healing qualities of the plant. Today that image of Katie, the scientist standing before that machine, a tool of healing and justice, is my symbol of her resurrection. So much has been laid aside. So much of the burden of her life is done. So much good stuff that feels like it was new growth coming this spring has been set aside. And what is left is the essence of her that was lived out like a sweet beatitude. She believed this gospel offered for her today. She believed that when you distill it all down, we are blessed in our sorrows and in our poverty. She believed that love was the essence and she carried that out every day of her life.

To honor the life and gift that was Katie, to take meaning for how we should live in the face of her death, means we should live and hold these beatitudes close. We should, like Katie, give drink to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, food to the hungry, comfort to those in sorrow, be a champion of prisoners, a nurse to those who are sick, and to bury those we love with too much fuss and with tenderness.

This is the faith she lived and died holding close to her heart. The essence of Katie is with us in spirit and truth and love. It is what will allow us to return this beautiful child of God to the earth and make our song alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Making the Path Straight: The Journey of Social Enterprise

By Becca Stevens

When I was young, I learned to pray, “Jesus, Lord, my friend and guide, please be always at my side.” It was comforting to imagine Jesus holding my hand and guiding me on my way so I would never get lost. As I grew up, the road felt more precarious. I didn’t seem to be able to find a clear guide; there was not a simple fork in the road where I got to choose a sweet, snow-covered lane.

In fact, like many people in ministry, I felt compelled to forge a new path. It began in 1997, when I (and others) took the first steps to found the not-for-profit Magdalene community in Nashville, Tenn., to serve women who have survived lives of addiction, prostitution and trafficking. We opened up a single home and invited five women to come and live in community at no cost for two years. We didn’t take any public funding and avowed that we wanted to be a witness to the truth that love is the most powerful source of change in the world.

One important part of the early journey was to be clear about the mission. Our model was simple, influenced by the sixth-century Benedictine Rule, grounded in hospitality, reverence and love. As a community, we created 24 spiritual principles for living together and published them in a collaboratively written book, “Find Your Way Home.”

But though the mission felt clear, the path of leading this community felt uniquely narrow and unsure at times. There have been times I barely navigated the confusion that settled in on me like a thick mountain fog. One of the first residents, Julia, relapsed about 18 months after we opened the program. She fought against the pain and abuse she had suffered, but less than two months after her relapse, she was tortured and murdered by a john in the cab of a semi truck.

It was heartbreaking, and made me question my ability to lead this community. And it wasn’t just Julia’s story that was painful. All the women served by Magdalene had traveled down roads more perilous and broken than I could imagine. On average, the women who come to live at Magdalene were first raped between the ages of 7 and 11. They had seen the undersides of bridges, the short side of justice and the backhand of anger long before they saw the inside of prison walls.

The dedication and determination needed to travel this path meant that I had much to learn. I needed to learn to ask for financial and professional help. I needed to work on healing my own woundedness from being sexually abused as a child. I needed to commit more of my life to this calling.

About five years into the work, it was clear that it was time to create another new path. We were growing more concerned about the economic well-being of the women in Magdalene. So we began a social enterprise. Thistle Farms -- named for the tough weed with a beautiful purple flower that the women use to make paper -- produces all-natural bath and body care products to promote healing and offer steady employment.

Starting a business meant that I was on a steep learning curve again. Running a bath-and-body-care company wasn’t what I prepared for in divinity school, and I had to learn about branding, marketing, sustainability and management.

When we first began, for example, I didn’t know that having employee manuals and strict manufacturing procedures would reduce stress in the workplace. I didn’t know how to talk about love and still be seen as relevant in the marketplace.

I now have a clearer lens through which to read the Gospels -- I can read stories like the Good Samaritan and see myself as the guy in the ditch who has been rescued by many good people. The work has also helped me see that the imperative moral issue facing the church is the suffering of others. I can see the stranger as God and feel the transformational power of love.

Learning how to lead a social enterprise and a residential community has been the greatest gift I could have asked for as a pastor, and I didn’t even know I needed to ask for it. I didn’t know that without this work, I would have been lost in my vocation.

The work is not just transforming me and the women I am serving. It is also transforming the wider community. Both the products and the women who sell them are educating others on the myths of prostitution; they are teaching that women do recover, that longer prison sentences and more prisons are not the answer, and that there is a crucial need for more residential communities.

No one does this kind of work alone. To forge new paths in ministry is truly a community endeavor. Throughout the past 15 years, volunteers and staff with needed expertise have repeatedly come along -- often just in time. Right when we needed to expand our line of products, a chemist walked through the door. Just when we sought to gain access to a national chain, I ran into a friend who knew the president of the board!

Residents and graduates of Magdalene help lead the company, as well as learning skills in manufacturing, packaging, marketing, sales and administration. Thistle Farms now has products in 220 retail outlets and serves as a best-practice model in the United States, reminding ministries they can hold tightly to their core values and still be successful as businesses.

We now are hoping to share our expertise to help even more women. This year we have welcomed more than 700 people from around the world into our immersion day programs to show other communities how to replicate our model. We have formal partnerships with four other women’s social enterprises. In the past year, the women stood before audiences at more than 300 events, articulating our mission and courageously sharing their personal stories. If you visit the 11,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and studio, you will see a communal vision that is still forming. We are only partway down the path, and we pray every day together for the grace to keep walking in community.

I have never found that simple fork in the road that I imagined as a child -- thank God. It has been all the twists and turns that have helped me find the place that feels just right to me. The view from here is breathtaking and fills me with gratitude.