2020.04.19 Cupcake

I first met Cupcake fifteen years ago in a memoir writing class. Her first read-aloud memoir piece had us all laughing out loud. She wrote about walking along some street in Boston when construction workers called out to her, “Hey Cupcake!” This classic wolf whistle put a spring in her step. With superbly sarcastic wit, Cupcake riffed on the many possible meanings of that appellation. I’ve called her “Cupcake” ever since.

One of the early class assignments was to design a cover for our memoir-to-be. Cupcakes’s cover, as I recall, showed an empty chair, such as one that would be placed at a dining room table. The chair was an image that evoked her feelings of isolation and exclusion in her family of origin.  Cupcake had hoped and prayed that her mother would, one day, set a place for her at the family table at which there was a place set for everyone but her. The mystery of why such cruelty happened is not mine to know, but I do know that Cupcake today would make sure that everyone, even a stranger, would have a place at her table and in her heart. 

I once told Cupcake that there was always a place for her at the Holy Communion altar-table of God. Like clockwork, every March 25th on the anniversary of my ordination as an Episcopal priest, Cupcake sends me a card to honor my anniversary. That would be lovely enough, but she also always includes a check! Usually it’s for $35, but this year it was for $50—possibly a raise for my advanced age.

A retired Boston school teacher who lives alone with two small dogs who don’t talk back or bite, Cupcake has a robust sense of humor and a gigantic heart—not extroverted but authentically truth-bound, a quality of soul ironically common in people who have survived profound early wounding. A lover of detail, Cupcake will often mention the orange dress with the flared skirt I wore on my ordination day underneath my liturgical vestments—myself a flirtatious potential “cupcake” at heart.

I recently asked Cupcake why she remembered my ordination anniversary in such a consistent way. She wrote this:
Psalm 110 tells us "thou art a priest forever."  Celebrating your anniversary is a small statement of who you are to me - Episcopal priest, counselor, teacher and friend. When I missed a writing group one day, you called to see how I was. My dog had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and I asked you to pray that God would give me the grace to get through the situation. And you did and I did.
When I heard of my ex-husband’s death, you were the only person who asked how I was doing. No one else has ever even hinted of his significance in my life.
I remember your ordination because you are always priestly to me.
I remember your ordination because Maya Angelou exhorted us to "try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud." 
You are my rainbow. 
 

I felt undeserving of all that praise until I remembered the popcorn. I’d once commented on how much I love popcorn. The next thing I knew a large carton full of individual bags of popcorn arrived at my doorstep. Too much! But this is Cupcake, a hopeless gift giver, generous to the point of embarrassment. Her joy in giving quickly erased my discomfort in receiving, along with my shrinking from the gift of praise. Cupcake knows how to keep Easter going, no matter what.

If Cupcakes’s own Roman Catholic tradition permitted the ordination of women priests, she would be one if she so desired. But she needs no pope, or archbishop, or brother priest to formalize what God has already planted in her soul—a priest forever in God’s sight.

Thank you, Cupcake.

2018.03.25 Why Wave Palms? Fake News?

We wave palms for the same reason we wave placards and posters and signs: to protest massive political and spiritual indifference to the needs of the smallest among us—our children.


In 1988, I was ordained priest, on March 25th. Thirty years ago my day as was the Feast of the Annunciation: Mary’s big day. She is remembered in biblical tradition and in the hearts of women of faith for her decision to listen to God’s request for help. Her assent destined her to a life of agonizing pain, heart-wrenching sorrow, and love.  She is often remembered with roses.  On my day roses adorned the sanctuary.

This year in 2018 her day and mine, March 25, is Jesus’s big day: Palm or Passion Sunday, often called The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. We wave palms—green, supple, fresh—and shout Hosannas. Like Mary’s day, this day was for Jesus his willingness to risk his life to confront  political and spiritual indifference to the needs of the least among us, especially children. His decision would mean spiritual betrayal, wrenching disappointment, and agonizing death.

On the surface, all three days were celebratory, triumphal. Great victories were cheered: Mary’s safe birthing and rearing of a Messiah; Jesus’s entering Jerusalem to confront the imperial powers with the need for justice and peace; my ordination after eleven years of rejections, in part because of my being a woman—in the wrong place at the wrong time. Each apparent victory was incomplete, shadowed by ambiguity at best—how monumentally paradoxical:  The less triumphal we act the more triumphant we are.  Or, the more triumphal we act the less triumphant we really are.

My ordination procession looked and sounded triumphal but . . .  I was scared witless and a bit numb—worried that the bishop, who strode behind me with his huge long crozier (ersatz shepherd’s crook), would reach out, crook my neck, and toss me out of the fold. My other worry was that the bishop might have to leave suddenly because he had a ghastly, sniffly cold. Would he sneeze in the middle of his crucial lines, without which I would not be a priest: “Therefore Father, through Jesus Christ, your Son, give your Holy Spirit to Lyn; fill her with grace and power, and make her a priest in your Church.”

I’d struggled through a long, hard, painful process to get to this day. The personal triumph was that I had not given up when I felt defeated. I had stayed the course against significant odds—my own flaws and the church’s prejudices.

I never blamed God. In fact I felt that God’s Spirit was present in the slow ongoing process of healing and reconciliation between my broken heart and the Church’s broken rules.

The less triumphal we act the more triumphant we are.

Did Jesus feel triumphal as he entered Jerusalem? He knew that his vision had stirred up crowds. He knew this was a life-threatening protest with a small number of believers. He knew this was a public political protest punishable by execution. Was it divinely ordained?  God does not desire the death of anyone. Jesus’s death was nothing to wax triumphal about. So where’s the triumph and when?

It would be an act of sheer Divinity that Mary’s motherhood would be remembered, lauded and written into holy scriptures as  a miracle to reverence. It would be an act of sheer Divinity, one that took many restless years to take root in the hearts of crestfallen followers, to turn Jesus’s actions into a triumph, a miracle of truth called Resurrection.

And my ordination? It made me a priest.

It also began a process of many restless years—discerning the fullness of my priesthood, with God’s help. The traditional track for priests, to be a parish rector, was not the way for me to be a priest. Rather, I was to be a non-stipendiary Sunday-only priest of Word and Sacrament in parishes. This sacramental ministry remained central.

But full triumph?  I continued to feel like a failed priest, as if my whole vocation was “fake news” until I saw that I was a priest at the altar and in my office. The three sacramental functions of a priest —bless, consecrate, absolve—transferred easily, sometimes formally, into people’s ordinary lives through my profession as a pastoral counselor, spiritual director, and writer. Occasionally, the traditional route for priests feels alluringly triumphal, but not the realized triumph.

May the triumphal massive March For Our Lives, led by teens all over the world, come to full triumph in unlocking the prideful partisan resistance of adults that we all may work together for life-saving change. Will this be an act of sheer humanity/divinity miracle?  I pray so.  Amen.

2013.07.31 Call To Disobey—Another Reformation?

There is a great rummage sale going on in the Roman Catholic Church in Austria–and it’s spreading like an inchoate brushfire—not wild but steady.

Because all things are interconnected this affects all Christianity at the very least.

According to many observers of developments in Western Christianity, every 500 years there occurs an enormous transformative change, something like a grand rummage sale in which everything is emptied out of the attic and basement. Some treasures are tossed, some refurbished and renewed, and the rest—rummage.

The name for this “rummage sale” so far is The Great Emergence; the name of the last “rummage sale” was The Reformation, tellingly also cradled in Germany.

EVERY GREAT RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT MATTERS TO/AFFECTS ALL RELIGIONS.

Helmut Schüller, a parish priest who represents the Austrian Priests’ Initiative, Call To Disobedience, founded in 2006, spoke recently in Dedham, MA. I went to hear him chiefly because I am supportive of the ordination of women in the RC Church and I remember the pain of being found unfit in one's Church, by virtue of gender—also I love the idea of being called to disobey Church doctrine and practice for the sake of justice and the inclusivity Jesus practiced and preached.

The Austrian priests involved number 430, which is 15% of all priests in Austria; 70-80% of other priests agree but are afraid to join on. No sanctions against the movement have been levied. Schüller said that it is crucial that the clergy become involved to add official impact to the call for reforms. He added that the Eucharist should never be used as a political sanction.

Women in the Episcopal Church would not have been ordained back in the 70s without the support of some male bishops. The most effective reformations work because of collaboration, and in the Church the best collaboration happens in communities of prayer, word and sacrament. Isolated actions are too easily ignored.

Schüller’s group strongly advocates for a new image of the priest, rather than consolidating and closing parishes as a way to deal with the shortage of male priests.  He noted that the present hierarchy of authority is: 1) God 2) conscience 3) external authorities. (Now there’s an attic treasure to keep.)

The Austrian group is fueled not just by discontent about abuses of power or a shortage of priests but by a re-discovery of Vatican II documents in which most of the changes were already proposed. Schüller said that the whole system of Church structure must change—and that women must be brought into the center of ministry.

He spoke to a gathering of about 600 people, gathered in a non air-conditioned UU Meeting House in sweltering July heat. An RC deacon from the sponsoring church, St. Susannas’s, introduced Schüller and quipped that we owed a debt of gratitude to Boston’s Cardinal O’Malley for the fabulous publicity he’d spawned by notifying St. Susanna’s that the event could not take place in their parish church.

Reforms called for include:
    -Open the office of priesthood 
    -Advocate an end to the narrow exclusivity of the celibacy requirement
    -Open communion
    -Restore the dignity of the baptized; allow competent trained laity to preach
    -Recognize all Christians as CITIZENS of the Church, not just sheep. I say: baaa-yes to that!
    -Create a healthy system in which congruent behavior is the norm for clergy
    -Allow “Priestless Eucharistic Celebrations” for a Liturgy of the Word with distribution of Communion when priests are in short supply, to fulfill the Sunday Mass obligation.
    -Revise and rework the language of prayer and faith. The newly imposed Roman Missile represents a step backwards. The German version is in preparation.  Give the people and their priests a say workig together to write liturgies.
   
Schüller observed that modern society had made advances and the Church should exercise the same moral authority. Example: UN declaration that every human being should have a full chance to develop her/his own life.

There was much more but these are the basics. I was impressed with Schüller’s charm, wit and passion in the presence of great hungry crowds and stultifying heat. Many of the usual questions were asked and he fielded all questions with skill and humor. My favorite: If the Church did everything exactly the way Jesus did it, we’d all be fishermen! (This in answer to the rigid literalist official stance that Jesus picked male disciples, therefore.........)

The Austrian Priests will meet in October with priests from other nations including the US to plan to further the Initiative. I wonder if a busload of nuns will arrive!? :0) 
   
“Disobedience is irritating and provocative and we’ll keep it up,” Schüller concluded to a roar of applause.  

So what does this matter to me, all Christians, and people of other faiths???  Well................

Roman Catholicism is the largest  religion in the world (1.2 billion members.)
Transformation there will affect ongoing and needed transformation and revitalization in all religions and in Christianity in particular—and perhaps in secular societies as well

This movement could open the way to fruitful interfaith and ecumenical dialogue, much needed for the healing of religion for the sake of spirituality.

The question that faces Western Christianity in this era is: Where will religious authority reside for this next period of time before the next rummage sale?

My vote goes to Christ Sophia, the world-traveling, ambassador of goodness and divine grace, the Great Connector. 

She’s removing the toxins from the institutional “Kool-Aid.”

2012.09.09 Back To Church

“It is a mistake to believe that God is primarily concerned with religion.” 

I read this quote recently in May Sarton’s book A House by the Sea. She attributed it to an archbishop of Canterbury but omitted his name. Even Google didn’t know. Hence, the wisdom stands on its own: “It is a mistake to believe that God is primarily concerned with religion.”

“It is also a mistake to believe that God is negligently concerned with religion.”  (This author I know because it’s moi, more properly, I.)

Defending religion? What hubris!  What I really want to do is jump in the currently popular spirituality pool with the cultural gang.  But I need religion and the church, for better or worse.  

I got religion in church, an extracurricular activity I’d flirted with for years and found boring so I fell in love with cute priests and flirted with the trappings. Still, I couldn’t stop wondering—and wondering what really is the point? 

When the time came for my authentic midlife crisis I’d sunk into moral turpitude— Ok I exaggerate here. Still, only something divine was persuasive enough to drop-kick me back into life-in-God. Call me lost, depressed, stuck in a role, “called” a term the church overuses, whatever,  it really doesn’t matter. I just had to find my first “lover” God, the one I’d met as a young child.

There was no FaceBook then and it didn’t make sense to go God-hunting in a library, City Hall, a bar, or on a bed, though I tried all these options: reading the Bible compulsively from cover to cover, changing my political party, alcohol, sex. At last I rediscovered the Episcopal church, the one that had the most sensory appeal, the one that had colors, smells, bells and human bodies that weren’t screwed to the pews—and, I noticed,  hope for women to be ordained.

Religion in a church community gave me something to DO, a VOCABULARY, and a way to THINK. These structures enhanced what I already FELT about God. I didn’t agree with everything but at least I had something to argue with. I met Jesus on directed religious retreats. As I prayed in silence and into the depth only solitude can allow, Jesus coached me into the radical idea that God’s Love lived inside me, so close I ate, slept and breathed it.

The Episcopal religion gave me a lot of grief and patriarchal baloney about women’s roles. It also gave me guidance without guilt, gravitas with flexibility, sin and  grace, elegant prayers to say in a community, a Big Book Bible, rich in stories that read better than any racy spellbinding novel and were, mercifully, lame on self-help, sacraments, and backbone theology—the bend but not break kind. 

Finally, my church gave me ordination to the priesthood.

God IS concerned with religion. Maybe not primarily, and maybe out of frustration over human meanderings. But it mistaken to believe God is not concerned with religion. In fact, Godde may just be leading the charge for change in the churches of all religions.

Memoir Musings Part Six: Why?

Theologian and prolific author of religiospiritual (my new word, like it?) books Reinhold Niebuhr once said that clergy should have morning coffee with the New York Times in one hand and the Bible in the other. Today I actually did that by mistake. I was reading about the swine flu pandemic panic in the NYTimes and looking up a biblical reference almost simultaneously. Skimming through the gospel of Mark looking for something else my eye fell on the story of the demoniac who had so many “demons” he called himself Legion and challenged Jesus to heal him. Jesus tapped into his healing powers, cast out the guy’s “demons” (all of them) and sent them scurrying into a herd of swine grazing on the hillside. The swine, now bedeviled, ran crazed over the cliff and into the sea. So you see . . . it was Jesus’ fault that we have swine flu. If he hadn’t cast the toxins into the swine we’d be fine!!!

One of the things that confronted me regularly while I wandered around in the middle of my life went something like this: Are you crazy? Why do you want to be ordained? You won’t make much money and you are anatomically incorrect! Wisdom can clang.

The question made sense though. The law had changed to admit women to the ranks of Holy Orders. (This is a term reserved for those who are ordained clergy. I find it offensive. Are we to presume that the lay order of ministry is not holy?) But attitudes had not changed to keep up with legal requirements. I got caught in the gap, really chasm, between law and attitude. So did many other women.

The clergy club had been exclusively male for so long that women’s ways and wiles sent shock waves of Richter proportions rippling. Continuing this journey could be more difficult than getting through losses (deaths of sister and father, recalcitrant asthma and puffed cheeks from steroids, divorce, rejection by Church, cat dies too!) So why did I want this thing so fervently? Ridiculous my mother would say. And indeed it was so.

I only had one answer and it wasn’t enough to cause the walls of Jericho to come tumbling down for me as the song says and the biblical story relates.

Here’s why I wanted to be ordained a priest, not necessarily a rector (parish CEO type) but a priest of Word and Sacrament as the Anglican tradition defines the ministry of priesthood, the particular way priests are called to love God and people. Here it is in a nutshell: my first "ordination."

When I was three I was afraid of a glass, not just any glass. This glass was triangle-shaped, had a long stem, was filled with clear liquid and two enormous green cross eyed olives that stared out at me with menace as my father twirled the stem between his thumb and forefinger. He looked at his glass with all the affection I wanted for myself. The glass commanded all his attention and my mother’s too. The cocktail hour happened every night. I knew from a book that it was supposed to be the children’s hour, so, driven by longing and anger I snitched Ritz crackers from the cocktail tray and sought refuge under the big dining room table with the cross beams joining its legs and the cloth to the floor. There I placed the crackers on the cross beams and began to chatter-preach to my four imaginary friends and a fourth friend I called God. My friends talked back and didn’t listen, but God listened to all my woes and tales of my adventures and mysteriously communicated to me that I mattered—a lot. I was a child gathering a community and distributing Ritz crackers under a table to invisible communicants, one of them God. My nightly ritual seemed Ritz-cracker holy to me, the kind of meal I could cook and serve and love doing it.

The rest is commentary.

(If you are enjoying and following this series I hope you will comment and thanks to you who have. I plan to post most every Wednesday. I know it's Tuesday but I'm off to visit my home town, NYC , for a few days.)

I remain a Facebook resister but am tempted by tweet/twitter—such cute avian words.