It’s the feast of Mary Magdalene. How appropriate, a woman besmirched for centuries of Christian history as a prostitute (no where in scripture btw!) She was a woman whose reputation was scarred and still is in some circles just because of patriarchal interpretation of her healing by Jesus of “seven demons.” Maybe she had been sexually abused and suffered dissociative disorder? Apparently some male interpreters assumed she was a sexual sinner. A common projection I’d say!
BUT many in the church knew better. Mary Magdalene was declared a saint, a woman identified in John’s gospel as given the call through a vision of the risen Christ to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection to her brothers, a woman restored to dignity by Christian feminist theologians who recognize her as the apostle to the apostles—a prophet in her own right, whose day should be celebrated in all Christian churches and seldom is even if it happen to fall on a Sunday. The beat goes on.
Back to Joan Chittister: highlights.
-In 1827, public use of the microscope allowed people to see what they had always suspected was there but only as locker room talk: THE OVA. Imagine! Heretofore it was thought and taught that seed, read semen, was deposited into women and made life all by itself.
-Men make about 25 million sperm for fertility. Women make about 250 eggs. 25 million sperm to chase one little egg around. And a lot of the little sharpshooters miss the mark! No wonder they want guns.
-But if you think sperm makes life on its own just collect some—somehow— plant it in your back yard and see if anything grows.
-We struggled for years to get the male pronouns out and now they’re putting them back in. “Give ‘em pronouns and they’ll want ordination.” Is this a likely suspected rationale from male hierarchy? (In the Episcopal Church a simple italicizing of he made it inclusive of she. It all depends whose pronoun gets subsumed under whose.)
-It seems that pink and blue souls are flying round out there like balloons—but one of them leaks!
-Medical school shelves are lined with shelves and shelves of books written to prove blacks are inferior, most of it based on facial features.
-Women, made to believe in their own inferiority, have been complicit: It’s always been that way. I’m happy. My husband lets me go out alone.
-Sexism also warps male development. Under the guise of privilege and superiority men are expected to : pay, provide, produce and be perfect. If a man decides to quit his job and try something new or something of his passion, a sexist woman may remind him coyly that her sister’s husband has just bought her a “mc’mansion” somewhere. What do we still tell a boy about crying, about fear, about becoming the little man in the family after a father dies or leaves, about taking care of his sister five years older than he is, about not being in touch with feelings when he’s been trained not to be??
-Mothering became a lifelong vocation and process; fathering a one shot event.
-Philosopher John Stuart Mill said women could be educated yes but to preserve the social order and maintain social standards set by men. There went educational policy and curricula were organized for women to study tatting, scripture, homemaking and the like. Why? Because they thought/taught that too much learning could render a woman sterile. (Pedagogy designed to keep ‘em barefoot and pregnant—and powerless.)
- The transformation of patriarchal thought is not about male-bashing or even blaming. True feminism is not about male-bashing either.
-Telling the story in another way is about the reconciliation of theology, science, ecology and feminism. It is about cooperation and re-rooting ourselves in a new world view. To become wholly human must be a wholly human endeavor with each and all involved wholeheartedly.
Final installment tomorrow.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Nurture and Challenge Your Spirit With Joan Chittister: Part I
Hundreds of excited, chattering women poured out of the lecture hall at Regis College last Monday, and headed like lemings for the ladies room.
Inspired by the prophetic call they had just heard from Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B., prophet not yet martyred, the women, seeing the usual long line stretching out from the door of their gendered destination, spilled over and flooded the men’s room without hesitation.
We had been told we needed to create a new world, because patriarchy was killing all of us and our planet. And we had heard that we needed to cooperate in order to do this effectively, men and women together—no blaming or shaming.
Women flooding the men’s room made me chuckle. How many times have I stood in long lines watching men next door whip in, pee and whip out—no line? What was wrong with female bladders, or was it the hauling up and down of our clothing instead of a simple zip zip?
But this day the unabashed action of women seemed to me not to be about either bladder desperation or long-awaited revenge or even, god forbid, the famous organ envy Freud made part of the female psyche. No, this felt like a sign of spiritual empowerment—eagerness to abandon rigid and divisive categories for the sake of a gospel of interconnectedness, inclusion and mutuality.
As we all filed happily into the stalls-with-doors, one woman suddenly gave a little shriek and lifted her event program to the side of her face while gesturing with her pointy finger. I glanced over to see a man standing at a urinal. (Now who the heck invented such insults to male modesty?) The woman made a giggly half-hearted attempt to stop the territorial invasion but the women kept coming, undaunted.
Now perhaps I should tell you more about the instigator. Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun, member of the order of the Benedictine sisters in Erie, PA. She is also a prolific author and sought after speaker. She, or better said Godde’s Spirit through her, invited this revolution. Chittister’s talk was titled “God, Women and the World: Telling the Story Another Way.”
The event was sponsored by Sacred Threads, an organization of spiritual companioning for women through programs and gatherings for education, sharing and re-imagining.
Chittister, after disclaiming a “too effulgent” introduction, requested house lights so she could see her audience:mostly women, mostly edging into aging, likely mostly Roman Catholic, and all white—alas, but why not? We whities have been both fodder, enablers, and chief benefactors of patriarchal policy, the target for Chittister’s demand for justice.
I have spelled Godde in the Christian feminist way throughout. I don’t know how Joan Chittister would spell it but I know she loves Godde by whatever name. I have put quotation marks around her own exact words and parentheses around mine where possible.
Gazing out at hundreds of faces Chittister told us that this event began as an invitation to come to a coffee break affair with about thirty women. “This is the largest coffee break in history!” I suspect, however, that the original idea inflated after the inviters heard how much this might cost and also how important it was that this message reach large crowds. (Today’s prophets may get silenced but so far their voices continue to reach droves as the, Roman Catholic at least, hierarchy implodes.) Sacred Threads responded, did the good work of promotion, and we grew.
I can not do justice to the hour and a half talk, packed with humor, resource and stats, so I will give highlights I loved. Some of them might not be absolutely correctly noted in spite of my compulsive note taking. Sacred Threads will make a DVD of this talk available for lending purposes, and it will also be available through Joan Chittister's company Benetvision.
In a way Chittister’s ideas were not new to me nor certainly is feminist theology and ecofeminism, but it was lovely to hear such a big celebrity voice in religion asking:
"How can one be a Christian and not a feminist?"
-The creativity required for big change calls for making right hand turns from the left lane—regularly.
-Saints see just what everyone else sees, but see it differently, according to Jonathan Edwards.
-It’s time to make the connections between male-dominated disciplines like theology, philosophy, science, psychology, sociology, education, et. al. that have conspired to make patriarchy successful, ie. it’s no accident that two-thirds of the world’s poor are women. IT’S POLICY.
- According to an essay by Lynn White, the Judaeo-Christian ethic justifies domination policies and thought, not just for humanity but for nature and animals. For example, water is there for my use therefore I can dam it. Animals can be used to research for cosmetics. And in Genesis, the earlier-written story about human sin and hubris in Genesis 2 was placed second, while the grand and beloved later-written Creation story in Genesis 1, “In the beginning.......”, was placed first. Why? It glorifies rank ordering. (The created order is policy disguised as poetry.) We are carefully taught to think in superior and inferior categories.
-Life is not a ladder but a weave, a process of changes. (Quakers call the process unfoldment.) But man (understood but NOT written to include woman) ends up as the crowning glory and gets to dominate nature. Now the Caribbean Sea is being raped, just like so many women in their own homes continue to be raped with the idea that the marriage bond is really bondage. (Latter is my addition as someone who has worked to try to prevent and educate about domestic violence, a clear product of a patriarchal world view. )
-On the creation of Eve: Ezer kenegdo which appears 30 times in scripture is never translated “a helpmate fit for man, Adam" except in Genesis 2:18. What a great ecclesiastical scam. The Hebrew words mean “a power equal to Adam.” How different does that sound from a helpmate FIT for Adam? (No wonder we women have trouble getting ordained!) Does no one notice that there could not have been an Adam without an Eve?
-As to the rib: Adam is ha adam, Hebrew meaning the stuff of humanity. Not until Eve is created do they become full human beings called Adam and Eve. Note!
-The patriarchal world view is sinfully partial, incomplete. “We are thinking with half the human mind and it shows.”
-”Everything written about us was written without us. And they call it theology!” The “us” would include women, Native Americans, African Americans, aborigenes, homosexuals, Iraquis, on and on.
-Science came along to support theology’s platform. Galileo wasn’t arrested for his science but for his theology. “They never even looked in his telescope!”
Read more Chittister wisdom tomorrow on this blog site.
Inspired by the prophetic call they had just heard from Sister Joan Chittister, O.S.B., prophet not yet martyred, the women, seeing the usual long line stretching out from the door of their gendered destination, spilled over and flooded the men’s room without hesitation.
We had been told we needed to create a new world, because patriarchy was killing all of us and our planet. And we had heard that we needed to cooperate in order to do this effectively, men and women together—no blaming or shaming.
Women flooding the men’s room made me chuckle. How many times have I stood in long lines watching men next door whip in, pee and whip out—no line? What was wrong with female bladders, or was it the hauling up and down of our clothing instead of a simple zip zip?
But this day the unabashed action of women seemed to me not to be about either bladder desperation or long-awaited revenge or even, god forbid, the famous organ envy Freud made part of the female psyche. No, this felt like a sign of spiritual empowerment—eagerness to abandon rigid and divisive categories for the sake of a gospel of interconnectedness, inclusion and mutuality.
As we all filed happily into the stalls-with-doors, one woman suddenly gave a little shriek and lifted her event program to the side of her face while gesturing with her pointy finger. I glanced over to see a man standing at a urinal. (Now who the heck invented such insults to male modesty?) The woman made a giggly half-hearted attempt to stop the territorial invasion but the women kept coming, undaunted.
Now perhaps I should tell you more about the instigator. Joan Chittister is a Benedictine nun, member of the order of the Benedictine sisters in Erie, PA. She is also a prolific author and sought after speaker. She, or better said Godde’s Spirit through her, invited this revolution. Chittister’s talk was titled “God, Women and the World: Telling the Story Another Way.”
The event was sponsored by Sacred Threads, an organization of spiritual companioning for women through programs and gatherings for education, sharing and re-imagining.
Chittister, after disclaiming a “too effulgent” introduction, requested house lights so she could see her audience:mostly women, mostly edging into aging, likely mostly Roman Catholic, and all white—alas, but why not? We whities have been both fodder, enablers, and chief benefactors of patriarchal policy, the target for Chittister’s demand for justice.
I have spelled Godde in the Christian feminist way throughout. I don’t know how Joan Chittister would spell it but I know she loves Godde by whatever name. I have put quotation marks around her own exact words and parentheses around mine where possible.
Gazing out at hundreds of faces Chittister told us that this event began as an invitation to come to a coffee break affair with about thirty women. “This is the largest coffee break in history!” I suspect, however, that the original idea inflated after the inviters heard how much this might cost and also how important it was that this message reach large crowds. (Today’s prophets may get silenced but so far their voices continue to reach droves as the, Roman Catholic at least, hierarchy implodes.) Sacred Threads responded, did the good work of promotion, and we grew.
I can not do justice to the hour and a half talk, packed with humor, resource and stats, so I will give highlights I loved. Some of them might not be absolutely correctly noted in spite of my compulsive note taking. Sacred Threads will make a DVD of this talk available for lending purposes, and it will also be available through Joan Chittister's company Benetvision.
In a way Chittister’s ideas were not new to me nor certainly is feminist theology and ecofeminism, but it was lovely to hear such a big celebrity voice in religion asking:
"How can one be a Christian and not a feminist?"
-The creativity required for big change calls for making right hand turns from the left lane—regularly.
-Saints see just what everyone else sees, but see it differently, according to Jonathan Edwards.
-It’s time to make the connections between male-dominated disciplines like theology, philosophy, science, psychology, sociology, education, et. al. that have conspired to make patriarchy successful, ie. it’s no accident that two-thirds of the world’s poor are women. IT’S POLICY.
- According to an essay by Lynn White, the Judaeo-Christian ethic justifies domination policies and thought, not just for humanity but for nature and animals. For example, water is there for my use therefore I can dam it. Animals can be used to research for cosmetics. And in Genesis, the earlier-written story about human sin and hubris in Genesis 2 was placed second, while the grand and beloved later-written Creation story in Genesis 1, “In the beginning.......”, was placed first. Why? It glorifies rank ordering. (The created order is policy disguised as poetry.) We are carefully taught to think in superior and inferior categories.
-Life is not a ladder but a weave, a process of changes. (Quakers call the process unfoldment.) But man (understood but NOT written to include woman) ends up as the crowning glory and gets to dominate nature. Now the Caribbean Sea is being raped, just like so many women in their own homes continue to be raped with the idea that the marriage bond is really bondage. (Latter is my addition as someone who has worked to try to prevent and educate about domestic violence, a clear product of a patriarchal world view. )
-On the creation of Eve: Ezer kenegdo which appears 30 times in scripture is never translated “a helpmate fit for man, Adam" except in Genesis 2:18. What a great ecclesiastical scam. The Hebrew words mean “a power equal to Adam.” How different does that sound from a helpmate FIT for Adam? (No wonder we women have trouble getting ordained!) Does no one notice that there could not have been an Adam without an Eve?
-As to the rib: Adam is ha adam, Hebrew meaning the stuff of humanity. Not until Eve is created do they become full human beings called Adam and Eve. Note!
-The patriarchal world view is sinfully partial, incomplete. “We are thinking with half the human mind and it shows.”
-”Everything written about us was written without us. And they call it theology!” The “us” would include women, Native Americans, African Americans, aborigenes, homosexuals, Iraquis, on and on.
-Science came along to support theology’s platform. Galileo wasn’t arrested for his science but for his theology. “They never even looked in his telescope!”
Read more Chittister wisdom tomorrow on this blog site.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Transitions: Holy Fodder
Transitions are holy fodder.
Think big, like the French revolution, poverty and squalor being fodder for new life en masse. Without this fodder they would never have stormed the Bastille (an event remembered today, July 14) demanding political change, liberation and food.
It was a revolution and a resurrection distinguished by violence, desperation and marked by cries for liberté, fraternité and egalité—spiritual basics of communal health.
Think small, like not being able to locate your favorite hanging hoop earrings buried in the chaos of cartons it’s too hot to unpack. Can I live like this for some time and find my soul without my order, my structures? Chaos has been fodder for finding deeper harmony, letting go of my usual need to get it all organized so I won’t feel stressed.
Can there be roses with a trellis? For a while they rise up indeed!
Fodder at its root is from the German word for food, but fodder can mean anything that primes your pump, gets your juices going, provokes explosions like cannon fodder, or helps you look elsewhere for manageability, finding it in surprising places like laughter, your husband’s voice, a squirrel dancing from limb to limb.
Transition is a low key word for all this but when you’re in one, which can be almost daily for some people, it can be fodder for defeatism or for choosing life in the midst—and everything in between.
Transition times are between times, times when you are so disoriented that you make space for Godde to enter your fret and chaos in spite of yourself.
Transitions are times for soul work, because things come up from the depths. Ideas you aren’t even thinking about just arise from spirit, the depth dimension of your psyche. I call this the voice of Godde within because it is not my own voice; it always provides wisdom I have never thought of; it leads me to choose to see things or live things in a new way; and finally it gives me hope.
And, as St. Paul says, hope never disappoints.
Think big, like the French revolution, poverty and squalor being fodder for new life en masse. Without this fodder they would never have stormed the Bastille (an event remembered today, July 14) demanding political change, liberation and food.
It was a revolution and a resurrection distinguished by violence, desperation and marked by cries for liberté, fraternité and egalité—spiritual basics of communal health.
Think small, like not being able to locate your favorite hanging hoop earrings buried in the chaos of cartons it’s too hot to unpack. Can I live like this for some time and find my soul without my order, my structures? Chaos has been fodder for finding deeper harmony, letting go of my usual need to get it all organized so I won’t feel stressed.
Can there be roses with a trellis? For a while they rise up indeed!
Fodder at its root is from the German word for food, but fodder can mean anything that primes your pump, gets your juices going, provokes explosions like cannon fodder, or helps you look elsewhere for manageability, finding it in surprising places like laughter, your husband’s voice, a squirrel dancing from limb to limb.
Transition is a low key word for all this but when you’re in one, which can be almost daily for some people, it can be fodder for defeatism or for choosing life in the midst—and everything in between.
Transition times are between times, times when you are so disoriented that you make space for Godde to enter your fret and chaos in spite of yourself.
Transitions are times for soul work, because things come up from the depths. Ideas you aren’t even thinking about just arise from spirit, the depth dimension of your psyche. I call this the voice of Godde within because it is not my own voice; it always provides wisdom I have never thought of; it leads me to choose to see things or live things in a new way; and finally it gives me hope.
And, as St. Paul says, hope never disappoints.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Images of Spiritual Empowerment: A Walk in the Park
When we moved from our neighborhood in Gloucester I knew I would miss the children, their squealy squawky voices at play or at war in the driveway sand pile across the street. Or the older children with the same voices playing street hockey or hide and seek in the bushes below our window.
I worried that in the city we would be too adultified.
No need to worry. We live in N. Cambridge near many parks where children and elders and middlers walk, run, play, rest, sit under trees and read, nurse babies on a bench and occasionally pass by and entertain briefly with one-sided invective on cell phones.
(Have you noticed the versatility of the F word? It can be a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. It can also be used to punctuate—period, comma the occasional semicolon to pause and emphasize the non-dangling participle gerundish F...ing rest of the run-on sentence.)
This morning I took a walk in our park, Danehy Park. I walked on a stained glass sidewalk, which is better than bleeding my head on a stained glass ceiling trying to establish gender justice in the Church.
On this sidewalk bits of colored glass are embedded into the pavement shining up at me as I walked. The path circles an athletic field with a track for running in a more intense way than my amble.
This sidewalk I thought is perfect image! For a woman like me and many others who have and still are getting stitches in their head from bumping up against invisible ceilings.
This stained glass sidewalk lifted me up, supported me. It didn’t resist my steps but gave me solid undergirding. To walk this path you need sneakers or wheels not stilts or wings. This is an image than ceilings designed to exclude the powerless and protect the powerful.
I walked on the stained glass path with hope for a just future as it extended out before me glittering, inviting, beckoning. It's an image of grounded power an image of outstretch not stopcold.
As I strode along I saw a little girl maybe four on a mini big wheel. She was happiness in the flesh, in the lead followed by her father. She pedaled with verve and squealed with joy as she took her little vehicle racing down the hill and into the water geysers for a bath. I suddenly got the spirituality of transport, the transcendent joy of pedaling, riding horseback, driving, piloting, traveling a track or just plain flying along in your Nikes.
I remembered my own children’s Big Wheel glory days. I understood the early fascination and awe a car of one’s own evokes in most young ones. My ten year old granddaughter has already picked hers out.
It’s like the power of the Holy: a tremendous, irresistible force—a power fraught with both danger and mystery. A power that enhances your own power and also lifts you beyond yourself to greater heights. Not for the faint of heart.
Finally, I settled by the majestic Willow trees, giants that suck water from deep earthen wells, draw it up into the heights and them weep it out returning it to the earth from whence it came. Take and give back
Another power image. This image is of a power that is shared, taken and given over and over for mutual nourishment. It represents the power of loving connection, the power of relationship.
When I returned home to kneel before my home altar I thanked God for divinity:children, cars, trees, feet and stained glass sidewalks.
I worried that in the city we would be too adultified.
No need to worry. We live in N. Cambridge near many parks where children and elders and middlers walk, run, play, rest, sit under trees and read, nurse babies on a bench and occasionally pass by and entertain briefly with one-sided invective on cell phones.
(Have you noticed the versatility of the F word? It can be a noun, verb, adjective or adverb. It can also be used to punctuate—period, comma the occasional semicolon to pause and emphasize the non-dangling participle gerundish F...ing rest of the run-on sentence.)
This morning I took a walk in our park, Danehy Park. I walked on a stained glass sidewalk, which is better than bleeding my head on a stained glass ceiling trying to establish gender justice in the Church.
On this sidewalk bits of colored glass are embedded into the pavement shining up at me as I walked. The path circles an athletic field with a track for running in a more intense way than my amble.
This sidewalk I thought is perfect image! For a woman like me and many others who have and still are getting stitches in their head from bumping up against invisible ceilings.
This stained glass sidewalk lifted me up, supported me. It didn’t resist my steps but gave me solid undergirding. To walk this path you need sneakers or wheels not stilts or wings. This is an image than ceilings designed to exclude the powerless and protect the powerful.
I walked on the stained glass path with hope for a just future as it extended out before me glittering, inviting, beckoning. It's an image of grounded power an image of outstretch not stopcold.
As I strode along I saw a little girl maybe four on a mini big wheel. She was happiness in the flesh, in the lead followed by her father. She pedaled with verve and squealed with joy as she took her little vehicle racing down the hill and into the water geysers for a bath. I suddenly got the spirituality of transport, the transcendent joy of pedaling, riding horseback, driving, piloting, traveling a track or just plain flying along in your Nikes.
I remembered my own children’s Big Wheel glory days. I understood the early fascination and awe a car of one’s own evokes in most young ones. My ten year old granddaughter has already picked hers out.
It’s like the power of the Holy: a tremendous, irresistible force—a power fraught with both danger and mystery. A power that enhances your own power and also lifts you beyond yourself to greater heights. Not for the faint of heart.
Finally, I settled by the majestic Willow trees, giants that suck water from deep earthen wells, draw it up into the heights and them weep it out returning it to the earth from whence it came. Take and give back
Another power image. This image is of a power that is shared, taken and given over and over for mutual nourishment. It represents the power of loving connection, the power of relationship.
When I returned home to kneel before my home altar I thanked God for divinity:children, cars, trees, feet and stained glass sidewalks.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Spiritual Coping
You think I’m going to say pray, pray and then pray some more. I am—sort of.
First agree to stop talking about the fact that you’re moving and you’ve now moved. You’re in. All your stuff is in with you but you can’t find any of it so you find one thing that make chaos seem orderly and focus on it. (Keep talking to yourself. Safer than talking to your spouse who will always listen, support and understand, then lovingly try to tell you things you already know, things only prayer, patience and the Godde within can remedy.))
I found two things.
The first was the eggs. They were where they were supposed to be, nestled in their cardboard carton on their very own designated shelf in the brand new still clean fridge.
Two of them fried would be delicious but where is their pan? Never mind. These aren’t just any old eggs.
They are laid by “the girls,” chickens parented by a beautiful lesbian couple who gave us the special eggs as a retirement gift. Each egg has a message on it neatly written in black indelible pen. Here are some of the messages: Enjoy retirement. We will miss you.Try me.Thanks for all you’ve given. Fry me. Feel ALL the feelings :) :( You will be forever in our hearts.
Now that’s prayer! You don’t need a pan now. You can’t eat these prayers just yet.
The second thing my traveling eye fell upon was a book we picked up in the best bookstore in the world
Porter Square Books. And it’s in our new ‘hood.
The book is called The Complete Psalms: The Book of Prayer Songs in a New Translation It’s by Pamela Greenberg with a Foreword by Susannah Heschel.
In her introduction Greenberg writes that this translation was an "impulse of shiru l’Adonai shir chadash, the imperative to sing to God a new song." Just what I needed. I’m singing a new song every day now and the Psalter contains every song the human heart can sing—all of it soul-true and all of it offered to Godde.
So I sing a prayer one a day whether it meets my mood or not. That’s no matter because it is not for me but for Godde.
Heschel in her Foreword speaks of her father Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, great Jewish scholar and man of prayer who said: “The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. to worship is to join the cosmos in praising God."
The wise Rabbi also said: “To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul . . . To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”
Today the eye of my soul caught this phrase from Psalm 66: “Go and look at the works of the Creator.”
So I do. Then I look back at the chaotic surround of post moving and see that Lo! the coffee pot is perking away and the pot is full of the healthfully decaffeinated brew of coping—best with honey consumed in the sun’s morning light.
First agree to stop talking about the fact that you’re moving and you’ve now moved. You’re in. All your stuff is in with you but you can’t find any of it so you find one thing that make chaos seem orderly and focus on it. (Keep talking to yourself. Safer than talking to your spouse who will always listen, support and understand, then lovingly try to tell you things you already know, things only prayer, patience and the Godde within can remedy.))
I found two things.
The first was the eggs. They were where they were supposed to be, nestled in their cardboard carton on their very own designated shelf in the brand new still clean fridge.
Two of them fried would be delicious but where is their pan? Never mind. These aren’t just any old eggs.
They are laid by “the girls,” chickens parented by a beautiful lesbian couple who gave us the special eggs as a retirement gift. Each egg has a message on it neatly written in black indelible pen. Here are some of the messages: Enjoy retirement. We will miss you.Try me.Thanks for all you’ve given. Fry me. Feel ALL the feelings :) :( You will be forever in our hearts.
Now that’s prayer! You don’t need a pan now. You can’t eat these prayers just yet.
The second thing my traveling eye fell upon was a book we picked up in the best bookstore in the world
Porter Square Books. And it’s in our new ‘hood.
The book is called The Complete Psalms: The Book of Prayer Songs in a New Translation It’s by Pamela Greenberg with a Foreword by Susannah Heschel.
In her introduction Greenberg writes that this translation was an "impulse of shiru l’Adonai shir chadash, the imperative to sing to God a new song." Just what I needed. I’m singing a new song every day now and the Psalter contains every song the human heart can sing—all of it soul-true and all of it offered to Godde.
So I sing a prayer one a day whether it meets my mood or not. That’s no matter because it is not for me but for Godde.
Heschel in her Foreword speaks of her father Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, great Jewish scholar and man of prayer who said: “The beginning of prayer is praise. The power of worship is song. to worship is to join the cosmos in praising God."
The wise Rabbi also said: “To live without prayer is to live without God, to live without a soul . . . To pray is to take notice of the wonder, to regain a sense of mystery that animates all beings, the divine margin in all attainments. Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”
Today the eye of my soul caught this phrase from Psalm 66: “Go and look at the works of the Creator.”
So I do. Then I look back at the chaotic surround of post moving and see that Lo! the coffee pot is perking away and the pot is full of the healthfully decaffeinated brew of coping—best with honey consumed in the sun’s morning light.
Friday, June 18, 2010
MoviPrep
We’re down to the countdown, the last few days before moving and retirement and enjoying some elegant last suppers with non-parishioners. One especially elegant one with our favorite musician, Mark Nelson and his marriage partner, sousaphoninst baritone and marine, David Oliver. Mark is as versatile and creative with food as he is with notes!
The day before the moving van comes and we are truly deprived with only our bed, clothes for the morrow, dop kits and Ms. Wise our cuddly, guardian mini-owl who will travel with us to our new home piloting from her seat on the dashboard, we will have to be ready—or not.
Yesterday I murmured to accomplice in marriage, Dick, “I want to go back to Egypt!” (Remember the biblical story of people of Israel who in faith followed Moses out of their servitude in Egypt and ended up in the wilderness for forty years whining to go back to Egypt where at least they had meat to eat and daily bread? Luckily God sent quail and manna.)
Food as bodily sustenance and spiritual assurance.
Manna is a weird substance but it contains all the minimum daily requirements of fruits and veggies and it’s not hoarfrost! God in the biblical story “rained bread from heaven” in the form of a fine flaky substance like coriander seed or cotton balls. It tastes like wafers in honey, very sweet—as fine as cotton candy that disappears in your mouth.
Manna is a special blessing which of course moderns have packaged, marketed and sold to pious foodies. Some refer to it as American popcorn, because manna is just as mysterious though less noisy in the making.
But to the ancients manna was a gift from God—unexpected but perfect like a childless over-aged person who suddenly becomes pregnant. Manna was not quite bread; however, quail was definitely meat!
Even the bitchiest prayers can be acknowledged, satisfied and become blessings.
So I email my friends and tell them to SEND MANNA...or at least some Kentucky Fried ersatz quail. A former parish warden dropped off some chicken wings at the door to pass for quail but the neighborhood predators, cats and squirrels, got to them first.
And another friend sent a hilarious column Colonscopy Journal by Dave Barry. He tells all and tells it with graphic humor. The best, as we all know who have had this treat(ment), is the preparation potion you drink for colonic purgation called MoviPrep, aka GoLightly. The names are like sheep’s clothing for wolves that explode inside you as they ravage, eliminating any and all refuse.
MoviPrep has become my new name for preparing to move. The process of culling your stuff doesn’t go lightly; nor does it prepare you for anything but pain.
Your stuff is precious even if you can’t remember what a lot of it was or is. Pitching and doling resembles amputation. And you know how you can feel a missing limb for days, months, years. The car and the beloved eight-foot sofa that just won’t fit were the worst! Cried like a baby in heat.
Humor helps because tears of laughter blend well with tears of sorrow. In fact today this little ditty popped into my brainless mind: Love and sorrow. Love and sorrow. Go together like there’s no tomorrow. Dear sisters and dear brothers, You can’t have one without the other. Pathetic, no? But truisms usually are and we need to keep this one because nowadays love and marriage aren’t as inseparable as we once thought.
So we are in MoviPrep, the wilderness in between—the place where we have set all these prescribed/appropriate (hate that word!) boundaries about no contact with parishioners (the need for them to detach you know) and basically having no friends or feeling as if you have no friends.
So every morning we wander and wonder.
This morning I poured orange juice over my cereal. It tasted lousy but it took me several mouthfuls of the noxious blend to realize it wasn’t milk and Cheerios.
Then later I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy two shower curtains for our new abode in Cambridge since cleanliness is next to youknowwho-ness, and came home $224 poorer—a few little items.
On the continuing subject of Last Last Suppers, we’re moving-prepping right along, We should be losing weight with all this stress and strain but instead we’re gaining from all the sumptuous caloric last suppers.
But honestly we don’t mind because we’re crying it all out in grief or losing it in sweat from heavy lifting.
Is there good news? Mmmhmmm. We love our new digs and our new landscape and the one neighbor we’ve met who hooted at us from her top floor window. And I suppose after it’s all done we will feel lighter and cleaner as you do after the colonic purgation of MoviPrep—ready for a post-colonscopy pigout.
Emptying and fasting is good in spiritual traditions. But so is lavish "delighting in fatness" as the Bible puts it— and abundance of life , God's desire for all Creation.
So, though I swear this won’t be us, immediate accumulation of more stuff!
The day before the moving van comes and we are truly deprived with only our bed, clothes for the morrow, dop kits and Ms. Wise our cuddly, guardian mini-owl who will travel with us to our new home piloting from her seat on the dashboard, we will have to be ready—or not.
Yesterday I murmured to accomplice in marriage, Dick, “I want to go back to Egypt!” (Remember the biblical story of people of Israel who in faith followed Moses out of their servitude in Egypt and ended up in the wilderness for forty years whining to go back to Egypt where at least they had meat to eat and daily bread? Luckily God sent quail and manna.)
Food as bodily sustenance and spiritual assurance.
Manna is a weird substance but it contains all the minimum daily requirements of fruits and veggies and it’s not hoarfrost! God in the biblical story “rained bread from heaven” in the form of a fine flaky substance like coriander seed or cotton balls. It tastes like wafers in honey, very sweet—as fine as cotton candy that disappears in your mouth.
Manna is a special blessing which of course moderns have packaged, marketed and sold to pious foodies. Some refer to it as American popcorn, because manna is just as mysterious though less noisy in the making.
But to the ancients manna was a gift from God—unexpected but perfect like a childless over-aged person who suddenly becomes pregnant. Manna was not quite bread; however, quail was definitely meat!
Even the bitchiest prayers can be acknowledged, satisfied and become blessings.
So I email my friends and tell them to SEND MANNA...or at least some Kentucky Fried ersatz quail. A former parish warden dropped off some chicken wings at the door to pass for quail but the neighborhood predators, cats and squirrels, got to them first.
And another friend sent a hilarious column Colonscopy Journal by Dave Barry. He tells all and tells it with graphic humor. The best, as we all know who have had this treat(ment), is the preparation potion you drink for colonic purgation called MoviPrep, aka GoLightly. The names are like sheep’s clothing for wolves that explode inside you as they ravage, eliminating any and all refuse.
MoviPrep has become my new name for preparing to move. The process of culling your stuff doesn’t go lightly; nor does it prepare you for anything but pain.
Your stuff is precious even if you can’t remember what a lot of it was or is. Pitching and doling resembles amputation. And you know how you can feel a missing limb for days, months, years. The car and the beloved eight-foot sofa that just won’t fit were the worst! Cried like a baby in heat.
Humor helps because tears of laughter blend well with tears of sorrow. In fact today this little ditty popped into my brainless mind: Love and sorrow. Love and sorrow. Go together like there’s no tomorrow. Dear sisters and dear brothers, You can’t have one without the other. Pathetic, no? But truisms usually are and we need to keep this one because nowadays love and marriage aren’t as inseparable as we once thought.
So we are in MoviPrep, the wilderness in between—the place where we have set all these prescribed/appropriate (hate that word!) boundaries about no contact with parishioners (the need for them to detach you know) and basically having no friends or feeling as if you have no friends.
So every morning we wander and wonder.
This morning I poured orange juice over my cereal. It tasted lousy but it took me several mouthfuls of the noxious blend to realize it wasn’t milk and Cheerios.
Then later I went to Bed Bath & Beyond to buy two shower curtains for our new abode in Cambridge since cleanliness is next to youknowwho-ness, and came home $224 poorer—a few little items.
On the continuing subject of Last Last Suppers, we’re moving-prepping right along, We should be losing weight with all this stress and strain but instead we’re gaining from all the sumptuous caloric last suppers.
But honestly we don’t mind because we’re crying it all out in grief or losing it in sweat from heavy lifting.
Is there good news? Mmmhmmm. We love our new digs and our new landscape and the one neighbor we’ve met who hooted at us from her top floor window. And I suppose after it’s all done we will feel lighter and cleaner as you do after the colonic purgation of MoviPrep—ready for a post-colonscopy pigout.
Emptying and fasting is good in spiritual traditions. But so is lavish "delighting in fatness" as the Bible puts it— and abundance of life , God's desire for all Creation.
So, though I swear this won’t be us, immediate accumulation of more stuff!
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Last Last Suppers
Our last two suppers before we retire and move, one on Friday and one on Sunday, were held in the parish church sanctuary. Both were overseen by Christ, Host of the Christian faith; both were holy banquets.
We and all honored guests arrived Friday night to see the entire sanctuary set up as a feast, our penultimate last supper. Space had been made for milling and spilling. Tables and the altar itself were laden with every kind of delicious food and our choir’s baritone soloed as bar tender serving wine and soft drinks. Acolytes in black circled and weaved their way in and out with serving trays and little paper napkin/purificators (the name for the white cloth used to wipe the chalice as it is passes from communicant to communicant at Communion.)
A grand swell of organ music like a shofar summoned the people to be seated for a tasteful, funny and dear program. No one had to say “The Lord is with you.” We knew it. We all sat in prayer with unbowed heads. The parish comic acted as emcee; a parishioner guitarist, his young son at his feet playing air guitar, played his favorite Beatles song; and a poet with eloquence read “Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. The wardens, a boy one and a girl one, gave brief tributes as Dick and I reached for the Kleenex.
Carol presented a beautiful book stand made by parish woodworkers to serve as perch for a huge Memory Book in which every parish individual or family created a page. Usually one puts a Bible on such a stand but for now this Book will be our bible of remembrance and thanksgiving. It represents a people who know how to be eucharist, how to give thanks for all things, how to remember and honor the best and the worst of times, and above all how to come regularly to dine at God’s holy dining room table for better or worse to receive the grace of God. The Church at its gracious unconditional best.
Rick presented us with a purse. I half expected him to lift up a small purse like the one Queen Elizabeth always has draped over her arm. But instead he held aloft an envelope. Suspense rose as in the academy awards while he slowly opened the envelope and announced in solemn tones, “There’s a check here for $42.50. Oops, move that decimal point over two.” The Magi never had such treasure, such richness of heart.
Dick and I gave our celebrative thanks. I don’t remember what either of us said, only that I asked Jesus to hold onto my tears so I could speak my gratitude without blubbering. But we both choked up.
To be known just as you are and loved just as you are is grace.
It was tribute enough to see that all our teaching and preaching over the years about being a eucharistic community, about bringing God into the middle of our lives on Sunday and every day, of not being afraid to let the sanctuary be holy all the time and filled with Spirit and joy whatever event was going on there. Just like a cathedral!
The second last supper at the parish was the regular Sunday liturgy for the third Sunday after Pentecost. Many of the same people returned for the second banquet, the altar still dressed up for a celebration. We priests wore red vestments, the color of the Holy Spirit— She who would not be called He.
The Sunday Mass/Holy Eucharist was as alive and vibrant with Presence divine and human as it was on Friday night and, for me and my personal Jewish roots as well as the roots of Christianity, connected Friday Shabbat holy meal with our Sunday Eucharist.
The reading from the Old Testament (I Kings) was a long story about King Ahab lusting over the vineyard of Naboth who refused to sell in spite of over the top royal purchase offers. Never mind, said Ahab’s wife Jezebel, I will get you the vineyard. She did by an elaborate ruse that included murder. Naboth dead the vineyard was now Ahab’s. What some women will do for their husbands! BUT of course God intervened with disapproval and Ahab and Jezebel suffered dire consequences for their crimes. There are consequences for everything and I can believe that God’s justice in the human soul sparks human action and conscience.
The lector read the whole drama with particular animation and a bass voice. Half way through the amazing but sadly true to human nature plot he interjected without missing a beat, “I’m not making this up you know.” And the people, already full of amused shock and awe, broke into open laughter. The place was alive, alert and authentic, as down to earth and true in fact as all Old Testament stories.
The gospel reading was from Luke 7, the story of the woman sinner, reputed to be Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had healed of seven demons. Grateful for her wholeness she anointed him with perfumed oil of blessing as she kissed his feet and wiped them with her hair. A romantic gesture to be sure. Still, I can imagine someone feeling such gratitude and humility after healing by whatever means. But today such an extravagant gesture would be eschewed by doctors, therapists or clergy— bad professional boundaries.
What price boundaries when love is the message? I wonder.
I couldn’t resist a little post-homily (Dick's) addendum: Notice who gets to go down in history over centuries with the bad reputations! I had to keep up my feminist rant. Later I thanked everyone for their amused acceptance of my politics. For some it was to humor me; for some it was genuine appreciation, and for a few I’m sure it was teeth-gritting tolerance. Still I felt loved. Even when I met a former parishioner in the elevator at the hospital who asked me, “Is he gone yet?” I could tell him “not quite” and chuckle, he having no idea who I was as a priest, woman, spouse of the "real" priest.
Later as I presented the children with Bible quotes. I told them these wouldn’t mean much now but to keep them and one day they would dig them up and discover some spiritual wisdom. The Word in the words. I have heard many adults in this work tell me that they had received such a quote at Confirmation or something and years later found it hidden in a dresser drawer and suddenly light shone.
After the Holy Eucharist banquet was over and everyone had been fed Dick and I offered brief closing remarks. I thanked for many things, most importantly for this community having given me over the years an opportunity to blossom and grow into the fullness of myself as a woman priest. With very few exceptions I have never felt like a sidekick or some kind of subsidiary priest at St John’s. It is a gift of unimaginable blessing to me.
My exit line went something like: This parish is full of amazing creativity, musicians, artists, poets, dancers, writers, orators, woodworkers, liturgists and the unsung beauty of just plain good humor and kindness. I firmly believe that the arts will restore the world to its natural beauty and god-given goodness But now........get out there and recruit some corporate types. You need money.”
Then Dick with his own art of oratory made an elegant tribute, presented a flow chart of who will take care of what, said fear not in many ways, announced the end of his rectorship and our priestly ministry here, then said with a brief sob. “We will no longer be your priests and pastors, but we will always be your friends.”
We should have sold little tissue packets for an almighty sum as a last fund raiser as Dick suggested on Friday!
Dick then read a formal proclamation that officially turned full ecclesiastical authority over to the wardens until such time as the 21st rector of St. John’s parish church was elected to begin a new chapter in the life of Christ at St. John’s.
As our gift to the parish we had framed and gave them a blessing we have frequently used. Dick graciously invited honored guest, the Rev. Claude G. Hopper, the only grasshopper with a clerical collar, ordained as an Episcopal priest by the late Blair McElroy, to join us. Claude hopped between us as we said the final blessing together.
Life is short.
We do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
And the blessing of God Almighty, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you always. AMEN.
PS Just one more holy banquet, a festive coffee hour with just the right amount of too much food.
We and all honored guests arrived Friday night to see the entire sanctuary set up as a feast, our penultimate last supper. Space had been made for milling and spilling. Tables and the altar itself were laden with every kind of delicious food and our choir’s baritone soloed as bar tender serving wine and soft drinks. Acolytes in black circled and weaved their way in and out with serving trays and little paper napkin/purificators (the name for the white cloth used to wipe the chalice as it is passes from communicant to communicant at Communion.)
A grand swell of organ music like a shofar summoned the people to be seated for a tasteful, funny and dear program. No one had to say “The Lord is with you.” We knew it. We all sat in prayer with unbowed heads. The parish comic acted as emcee; a parishioner guitarist, his young son at his feet playing air guitar, played his favorite Beatles song; and a poet with eloquence read “Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver. The wardens, a boy one and a girl one, gave brief tributes as Dick and I reached for the Kleenex.
Carol presented a beautiful book stand made by parish woodworkers to serve as perch for a huge Memory Book in which every parish individual or family created a page. Usually one puts a Bible on such a stand but for now this Book will be our bible of remembrance and thanksgiving. It represents a people who know how to be eucharist, how to give thanks for all things, how to remember and honor the best and the worst of times, and above all how to come regularly to dine at God’s holy dining room table for better or worse to receive the grace of God. The Church at its gracious unconditional best.
Rick presented us with a purse. I half expected him to lift up a small purse like the one Queen Elizabeth always has draped over her arm. But instead he held aloft an envelope. Suspense rose as in the academy awards while he slowly opened the envelope and announced in solemn tones, “There’s a check here for $42.50. Oops, move that decimal point over two.” The Magi never had such treasure, such richness of heart.
Dick and I gave our celebrative thanks. I don’t remember what either of us said, only that I asked Jesus to hold onto my tears so I could speak my gratitude without blubbering. But we both choked up.
To be known just as you are and loved just as you are is grace.
It was tribute enough to see that all our teaching and preaching over the years about being a eucharistic community, about bringing God into the middle of our lives on Sunday and every day, of not being afraid to let the sanctuary be holy all the time and filled with Spirit and joy whatever event was going on there. Just like a cathedral!
The second last supper at the parish was the regular Sunday liturgy for the third Sunday after Pentecost. Many of the same people returned for the second banquet, the altar still dressed up for a celebration. We priests wore red vestments, the color of the Holy Spirit— She who would not be called He.
The Sunday Mass/Holy Eucharist was as alive and vibrant with Presence divine and human as it was on Friday night and, for me and my personal Jewish roots as well as the roots of Christianity, connected Friday Shabbat holy meal with our Sunday Eucharist.
The reading from the Old Testament (I Kings) was a long story about King Ahab lusting over the vineyard of Naboth who refused to sell in spite of over the top royal purchase offers. Never mind, said Ahab’s wife Jezebel, I will get you the vineyard. She did by an elaborate ruse that included murder. Naboth dead the vineyard was now Ahab’s. What some women will do for their husbands! BUT of course God intervened with disapproval and Ahab and Jezebel suffered dire consequences for their crimes. There are consequences for everything and I can believe that God’s justice in the human soul sparks human action and conscience.
The lector read the whole drama with particular animation and a bass voice. Half way through the amazing but sadly true to human nature plot he interjected without missing a beat, “I’m not making this up you know.” And the people, already full of amused shock and awe, broke into open laughter. The place was alive, alert and authentic, as down to earth and true in fact as all Old Testament stories.
The gospel reading was from Luke 7, the story of the woman sinner, reputed to be Mary Magdalene, whom Jesus had healed of seven demons. Grateful for her wholeness she anointed him with perfumed oil of blessing as she kissed his feet and wiped them with her hair. A romantic gesture to be sure. Still, I can imagine someone feeling such gratitude and humility after healing by whatever means. But today such an extravagant gesture would be eschewed by doctors, therapists or clergy— bad professional boundaries.
What price boundaries when love is the message? I wonder.
I couldn’t resist a little post-homily (Dick's) addendum: Notice who gets to go down in history over centuries with the bad reputations! I had to keep up my feminist rant. Later I thanked everyone for their amused acceptance of my politics. For some it was to humor me; for some it was genuine appreciation, and for a few I’m sure it was teeth-gritting tolerance. Still I felt loved. Even when I met a former parishioner in the elevator at the hospital who asked me, “Is he gone yet?” I could tell him “not quite” and chuckle, he having no idea who I was as a priest, woman, spouse of the "real" priest.
Later as I presented the children with Bible quotes. I told them these wouldn’t mean much now but to keep them and one day they would dig them up and discover some spiritual wisdom. The Word in the words. I have heard many adults in this work tell me that they had received such a quote at Confirmation or something and years later found it hidden in a dresser drawer and suddenly light shone.
After the Holy Eucharist banquet was over and everyone had been fed Dick and I offered brief closing remarks. I thanked for many things, most importantly for this community having given me over the years an opportunity to blossom and grow into the fullness of myself as a woman priest. With very few exceptions I have never felt like a sidekick or some kind of subsidiary priest at St John’s. It is a gift of unimaginable blessing to me.
My exit line went something like: This parish is full of amazing creativity, musicians, artists, poets, dancers, writers, orators, woodworkers, liturgists and the unsung beauty of just plain good humor and kindness. I firmly believe that the arts will restore the world to its natural beauty and god-given goodness But now........get out there and recruit some corporate types. You need money.”
Then Dick with his own art of oratory made an elegant tribute, presented a flow chart of who will take care of what, said fear not in many ways, announced the end of his rectorship and our priestly ministry here, then said with a brief sob. “We will no longer be your priests and pastors, but we will always be your friends.”
We should have sold little tissue packets for an almighty sum as a last fund raiser as Dick suggested on Friday!
Dick then read a formal proclamation that officially turned full ecclesiastical authority over to the wardens until such time as the 21st rector of St. John’s parish church was elected to begin a new chapter in the life of Christ at St. John’s.
As our gift to the parish we had framed and gave them a blessing we have frequently used. Dick graciously invited honored guest, the Rev. Claude G. Hopper, the only grasshopper with a clerical collar, ordained as an Episcopal priest by the late Blair McElroy, to join us. Claude hopped between us as we said the final blessing together.
Life is short.
We do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
And the blessing of God Almighty, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit be upon you and remain with you always. AMEN.
PS Just one more holy banquet, a festive coffee hour with just the right amount of too much food.
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