Mark’s gospel reminds us that any and all gifts—sacramental liturgies, music, scriptures, even personal gifts within our own flesh, we receive from God. The paradox is this: gifts we praise the most we must give away in order to retain their deepest value. We can experience God’s gifts yet we cannot own, control, or possess them.
I can’t help but notice, as I think about my own racism, that many women I’ve followed and admired are women of color or lesbians—or at least women who barked at the edges of tradition and made their way from the “outback” of religious tradition into the center where they continue to ruffle the feathers of patriarchy in the church. They are gifted prophets, prophets of transformation, my chosen prophets, ancient and modern, few of them white, all of them healers of my natural, learned, and inherited racism, all of them saints and sinners.
* * * *
Who is not a saint and a sinner? Ask anyone to tell the truth about both, and you’ll get some kind of definitional sleight of mind, or else denial, usually of the saint category, or, as a last resort, a humble nod and shrug, feigning modest sainthood. No haloes appear. Could it be that sin makes a better God-story?
Scene LVIII. Mary Virgin, Mother of the Church, Theotokos
One of the most famous and ill-reputed female heroes of the biblical and church tradition is Mary, the mother of Jesus. She has many names, most of them honorific. Mary was a real woman, a woman who “miraculously” found herself with child, aka pregnant, while she was “betrothed”— engaged, not yet wed. She didn’t lie about it, but listened to God’s voice guiding, not condemning, her from within. Nevertheless, the Church, in its embarrassment at scriptural transparency, elevated her to a place of great esteem, made her a virgin blessed forever, and virtually eliminated any masculine role for both conception AND parenting—unless you want to put faith in God as both sperm donor AND Heavenly Father forever.
See how patriarchal religious politics accomplished and set in cement the following sins:
-impugned the female body as a conception machine
-settled on Mary Magdalene as the scapegoat, creating The Magdalene Syndrome, the ugly, unjust brush with which many women are tarred—some innocent and some errant and unforgiven. (see Spiritual Lemons blog post, 8/1/21)
-enslaved sexual activity within marriage
-put celibacy on a moral high holy ground
-made marriage a sacrament, not of blessing but of control
-outlawed divorce, birth control and abortion, further imprisoning women
-contributed to poverty, overpopulation, despair, and crime
-made sure Divinity was advertised as transcendent, almighty, and masculine
-locked the image of God into parenting titles
Women today, and historically, including my own grandmothers, have empowered themselves to change patriarchy in church and state by asserting their gifts, offering their bodies and their voices. They continue to be silenced and abused for their efforts, but they do not stop. I long for the day when the church will let Mary step off her pedestal, relinquish her virginal holiness, and preach her Magnificat to churches and seminaries.
Scene LIX. My Grandmothers
Eleanor Sampson Gillespie, my paternal grandmother whom I called Grahmmy, gave up her aspirations to be an opera singer in order to get married and have children. She boasted long and often about being one of the first women in her family to graduate from college, in this case Vassar, class of “aughty-aught” (that’s 1900). She fulfilled her “assigned” vocation well with six children, four sons and two daughters, all of whom called her Ma. My dad, Scottishly named McDonald, was #5, sandwiched between two sisters, not always comfortably. Ma was an imposing presence, pigeon-chested like any proper diva would be. She had a beautiful singing voice, and most evenings after dinner she would assemble her “boys” gathering them around the piano to sing. She sang along with gusto. A family “opera.”
Marguerite Gordon Hall Adams, my maternal grandmother whom I called Ga, and occasionally Goggie or Gagarrhea, if I was angry, defied her family and eloped with her beloved when she was eighteen. Ga grew us in Medford Massachusetts, born into a well-to-do family and living in a large house, let’s say small mansion. She met and fell in love with a man by the name of Avon Franklin Adams, an impresario who imported musical talent from Europe to this country, specifically to New York City, quite bereft in the 1920s of classical musicians. He brought violinist Jascha Heifitz and Alma Gluck, soprano and concert singer, to name just two—both Jewish.
A.F. Adams’s Jewish identity horrified the Hall family. So the young couple eloped! They were married in Manhattan at the non-denominational Church of the Strangers, established in 1868 by the Rev. Charles Alexander Force Deems. He was a Methodist elder who moved to New York City from North Carolina to pastor the Church of the Strangers on January 1, ’91 (that’s 1891).
I can’t tell you how fascinating my research was to establish my grandfather’s Jewishness, and therefore my own. He died when my mother was just twelve. She was the youngest child of four, born in1912 when Ga was forty-five, and her father’s favorite. It was apparently mutual, yet she kept the secret of his Jewishness for reasons of her own at which I could only guess. I wish I could have met him. I remain proud of my heritage.
Scene LX My First Patient in Alcohol/Drug Rehabilitation.
My experience in parish ministry was, frankly, exhausting. I had trained in and worked in chaplaincy ministry in two general hospitals and one drug/alcohol rehabilitation hospital in Connecticut. To be a chaplain is a gift I give wherever I am.
Chaplaincy is a more expansive ministry than parish ministry. A chaplain does not have to comply with, rely on, or “sell”, any one set of religious principles. There are many people who are hospitalized and in need of someone to listen to all their fears, pains, and the deep needs of their souls. They may want to talk to a pastor of their religious preference, and yet many simply long for a listening and compassionate ear, perhaps a prayer or a blessing if this is what they wish. Chaplains by intention transcend religious boundaries. They may have their personal commitments, but they do not wear these on their sleeves. This was especially important with the addiction population, some of whom were openly hostile to religion while their recovery program required that they at least remain open to the idea of a power greater than themselves to support them in their quest for sobriety.
The first patient assigned to my counsel and care at the treatment center was a young black woman I will call Rochelle. I went to meet her in the detoxification unit and she screamed at me: “Get the hell outta here, you fucking white religious freak!” I was terrified and split. My supervisor was sympathetic but would not change the patient assignment. I would be Rochelle’s counselor for four weeks. Four! I needed a higher power more than Rochelle!
I wondered if there was a trigger, other than the pangs of detoxification, for Rochellles’ hostile outburst. As I wondered I fingered the small gold cross I wore around my neck. Bingo! She had probably reacted to the Jesus image. It was a gift to me from my second husband and I still treasure it because it has no corpus on the tiny cross but simply an empty space. That said a lot to me about God’s desire to free us from suffering and pain, not to impose it. We did enough of that all by ourselves. I resolved never again to wear that cross while I worked at this treatment center. My resolve failed.
I’m not sure exactly how this happened, but I remember wallowing in the Serenity Prayer, the prayer recovering people often use at their meetings.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference. AMEN
While I focused on the serenity to accept what I couldn’t change, that is, Rochelle’s animosity toward me, I could stop wearing my cross. I could make myself look completely neutral and safe. I could. But I didn’t.
When Rochelle was discharged from the detox unit and released into the ongoing program of education and counseling support to help her sustain sobriety, she came to my office. I had my cross on. God, grant me the serenity just to shut up about our first meeting. I did. Rochelle poured out her story to me and I listened with compassion. Whew! I had gotten away with the cross. But just as Rochelle was getting ready to leave the session, she pointed to my cross;. “Oh, that is such a beautiful little cross, so small and is it empty?” “Would you like to see it close up,” I offered. She did. I removed the cross and handed it to her. She held it and fingered it briefly. I resisted a tiny temptation to give it to her, thank God. She returned it to me with a big grin and a thanks. I did not resist the temptation to consider myself a hot shot chaplain, but I did remember to fondle my small cross and thank Jesus for his corpuscular “absence” from it.
