The bishop was delivering a terrific sermon on healing presence and demons, until he suddenly veered off on a theological path I couldn’t follow—not that I didn’t understand what he said, but I just didn’t think it sounded like the God I’d met many many years ago who listened me into life.
The biblical story was highly symbolic and desperately real.A man gone crazy, socially ignored and relegated to the tombs where he cried and flung himself and rocks about. He was out of his mind. Jesus appeared and was not afraid as all the man’s neighbors were. Jesus listened the man into his right mind. That’s a short summation of the potential of healing listening to restore mental, emotional, and spiritual health.
The bishop spoke about research that indicated mental illness as one outcome of absolute social and economic powerlessness—no control over one’s life and choices. No dignity whatsoever. Such poverty can literally drive one crazy.
The call of course was for disciples to offer compassionate listening presence to help mend the world with individuals, but also to challenge large systems whose policies and practices create severe polarities between haves and have nots.
Think Occupy Movement. Think the one and the 99 percent in America.
Disciples of healing help with their bodies and minds, and they help by opening their wallets to build programs to narrow the chasm and assist the human rights revolution.
Instead of AMEN the bishop veered. He told the large congregation gathered in the cathedral for our annual convention that no one was there because they chose to be there. They were there, each one, because God had chosen them to be there—to worship God, to catch inspiration, and to join the mission for the mending of our broken system.
Suddenly I veered too. I wondered if God chose the people who sat outside on the cathedral to catch the patches of sunlight and warmth to be there? I wondered who God chose to do the work of justice, peace and love, and why God didn’t choose more people to be here in church with their compassionate hearts—and their wallets.
Why didn’t God choose all the other people roaming the fair city on this lovely Saturday especially if there were a shortage of disciples? And what if the crazy man had rejected Jesus’ approach, had not chosen Jesus?
In short I felt a little manipulated by this dangerous theology of forced choice that set God up as the decider and the chooser as if human freedom were not part of the process. It made God sound manipulative. It seemed to compromise the partnership between grace and freedom.
I met God when I was three and I didn’t feel chosen at all, just loved, accompanied, heartened, and listened to, like Jesus listened to the demoniac. I didn’t feel unique or special.
As I grew up I thought my meeting God was intimately connected to my choice to seek refuge from the parental cocktail hour.
I love my husband and I can’t, for the love of us, tell you who chose whom first or when. Or who initiated the movement. As I grew into my first love affair with God, the issue of who chose whom first was moot.
It seems to me that the demoniac and Jesus chose each other, or were magnetically drawn together almost simultaneously. Lo! Dispelling demons became a joint venture.
This is why I prefer the theological vocabulary of love and connection over the vocabulary of choice/chosen because love is about mutuality and choice is about power.
To be honest, I trust, with humans and with God, the mutuality of love over the power of choice.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
2011.11.02 Keeping Madeleine's Commandment
After Madeleine L’Engle adjured me NOT to become a little man after I got ordained, I faced a few hurdles in carrying out her word of wisdom.
The adornment hurdle surmounted, the next hurdle I faced in my obedience efforts was what I call how we do business together?
As a parish priest I thought the way to lead was to meet with parish leaders for conversation, encourage prayer, and come to consensus about action.
Whatever policy and decision we made we all would support and help implement, including fielding the growls and ongoing recalcitrance-for-its-own-sake.
This is a process way of getting things done, and in fact a women’s way. Women tend to talk things over together, sometimes too much. Through the experience of being connected, listening and sharing, a path to successful action is created. One talks, another listens, the first speaks more, a third comments until all of us are on board and everyone knows the experience of the others and of the group.
Sometimes I confess it seems as if we all talk at once, we all listen at once, we all understand at once, and we all come away knowing self, other, Other, task at hand, what to do and what was said. Men think it’s insane, but it’s only different.
This way sounded good to folks but the parish culture was not used to it—a secret I didn’t know. They were used to talking a lot, then having the priest make the decision, reinforce it, take responsibility for it—all alone.
Here’s an example:
1)Complaints about noisy kids in church.
2)I brought it to the vestry and staff leaders
3)WE deliberated and prayed over a couple of months and made a fair policy then wrote it down to be communicated with everyone and appear in the weekly worship bulletin.
4)WE agreed to support the policy as a parish policy for the sake of the whole
5)I fielded a confrontation from an angry parent.
6)THEY, or most of them, expressed sympathy and compassion for the mother/complainant.
7)OUR policy became MY policy.
8)I took the issue back to the leadership group and met reluctance in the name of Christian charity for the parents, not something we had not discussed. I got a partial buy-in only.
So it went. I felt lonely, angry, betrayed, hurt and foolish. My style of leadership had been sabotaged because I DIDN’T TURN INTO A LITTLE MAN, making most decisions autonomously from his own authority, not as dictator but as a buck-stops-here leader.
I should have let them call me MOTHER. I debated preaching naked—pin-up style!
The adornment hurdle surmounted, the next hurdle I faced in my obedience efforts was what I call how we do business together?
As a parish priest I thought the way to lead was to meet with parish leaders for conversation, encourage prayer, and come to consensus about action.
Whatever policy and decision we made we all would support and help implement, including fielding the growls and ongoing recalcitrance-for-its-own-sake.
This is a process way of getting things done, and in fact a women’s way. Women tend to talk things over together, sometimes too much. Through the experience of being connected, listening and sharing, a path to successful action is created. One talks, another listens, the first speaks more, a third comments until all of us are on board and everyone knows the experience of the others and of the group.
Sometimes I confess it seems as if we all talk at once, we all listen at once, we all understand at once, and we all come away knowing self, other, Other, task at hand, what to do and what was said. Men think it’s insane, but it’s only different.
This way sounded good to folks but the parish culture was not used to it—a secret I didn’t know. They were used to talking a lot, then having the priest make the decision, reinforce it, take responsibility for it—all alone.
Here’s an example:
1)Complaints about noisy kids in church.
2)I brought it to the vestry and staff leaders
3)WE deliberated and prayed over a couple of months and made a fair policy then wrote it down to be communicated with everyone and appear in the weekly worship bulletin.
4)WE agreed to support the policy as a parish policy for the sake of the whole
5)I fielded a confrontation from an angry parent.
6)THEY, or most of them, expressed sympathy and compassion for the mother/complainant.
7)OUR policy became MY policy.
8)I took the issue back to the leadership group and met reluctance in the name of Christian charity for the parents, not something we had not discussed. I got a partial buy-in only.
So it went. I felt lonely, angry, betrayed, hurt and foolish. My style of leadership had been sabotaged because I DIDN’T TURN INTO A LITTLE MAN, making most decisions autonomously from his own authority, not as dictator but as a buck-stops-here leader.
I should have let them call me MOTHER. I debated preaching naked—pin-up style!
Sunday, October 30, 2011
2011.10.30 Keeping Madeleine's Commandment...Continued
The next hurdle I faced in my obedience efforts not to become a little man after I got ordained was what I call the earring crisis.
I started out eager, panicky, and utterly cloying in the first parish I served after I was ordained a deacon transitioning to priesthood. I was all prepped to serve God and the rector obediently—also Madeleine’s commandment.
It didn’t start off well. The rector had NOT told the parish I was coming on board. Or rather he told them by addressing the congregation and asking them if they knew what an ordained deacon was and what role a deacon played in the ministry of the Church. Everyone looked blank.
So he introduced me by name, invited me to stand, and held me up like a poster child for the diaconate. Then he started a round of welcoming applause. The congregation joined in, because how could they not?
I stood there in my shiny new white alb, my face as red as my new Christmas-tree-bulb red deacon stole draped over my left shoulder and down over my left hip (just the opposite of Miss America’s sash!) And me with no ramp to parade!
I don’t know if his passive aggressive way of communicating was about being a man or not but I decided he modeled a way NOT to communicate.
At the coffee hour a statuesque woman came up to me, put her hand on my arm and asked “Did you know we didn’t know you were coming?” I told her no I didn’t know, and she patted my arm in a deliciously matronizing way, smiled and said, “It’s OK we’re all here.” I felt tears puddling up but didn’t let them escape. She became my deacon, my woman minister, and my “mommy” in that parish from then on, a model of how to be gracious and also direct—a woman perhaps.
The next week an epiphany happened. In the parish’s cobwebbed suggestion box there appeared for the first time since forever a handwritten suggestion: THE PRIEST SHALL NOT WEAR DANGLY EARRINGS.
I gave it to the male rector. “This is for you,” I said. We laughed. I was too scared and servant-ish to be more confrontive and direct with him about his wiles, as was my goal. That would take time. After all I was a woman!
I wore dangling earring most Sundays at the altar—a little flaunting and a little pride in proclaiming my femininity.
Or you could say it was a way to keep Madeleine’s commandment.
I started out eager, panicky, and utterly cloying in the first parish I served after I was ordained a deacon transitioning to priesthood. I was all prepped to serve God and the rector obediently—also Madeleine’s commandment.
It didn’t start off well. The rector had NOT told the parish I was coming on board. Or rather he told them by addressing the congregation and asking them if they knew what an ordained deacon was and what role a deacon played in the ministry of the Church. Everyone looked blank.
So he introduced me by name, invited me to stand, and held me up like a poster child for the diaconate. Then he started a round of welcoming applause. The congregation joined in, because how could they not?
I stood there in my shiny new white alb, my face as red as my new Christmas-tree-bulb red deacon stole draped over my left shoulder and down over my left hip (just the opposite of Miss America’s sash!) And me with no ramp to parade!
I don’t know if his passive aggressive way of communicating was about being a man or not but I decided he modeled a way NOT to communicate.
At the coffee hour a statuesque woman came up to me, put her hand on my arm and asked “Did you know we didn’t know you were coming?” I told her no I didn’t know, and she patted my arm in a deliciously matronizing way, smiled and said, “It’s OK we’re all here.” I felt tears puddling up but didn’t let them escape. She became my deacon, my woman minister, and my “mommy” in that parish from then on, a model of how to be gracious and also direct—a woman perhaps.
The next week an epiphany happened. In the parish’s cobwebbed suggestion box there appeared for the first time since forever a handwritten suggestion: THE PRIEST SHALL NOT WEAR DANGLY EARRINGS.
I gave it to the male rector. “This is for you,” I said. We laughed. I was too scared and servant-ish to be more confrontive and direct with him about his wiles, as was my goal. That would take time. After all I was a woman!
I wore dangling earring most Sundays at the altar—a little flaunting and a little pride in proclaiming my femininity.
Or you could say it was a way to keep Madeleine’s commandment.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
2011.10.26 Being IN Your Writing
A friend wrote to say she was thinking of starting over with her reams of pages toward a novel she has wanted to write, and will some day get write—or right.(My humor)
Writing is easier than organizing I find, mostly because it’s more fun. It gets your juices up. The drone and drudge is getting it organized and into a structure that makes it shine and make sense—like a trellis for beautiful roses—for its beholders.
I recommended starting afresh and just giving it 2-3 hours a day. This is advice I’d never be able to follow. I hate the idea of scrapping it all and starting again. Admit I have done it with some chapters and do it daily as I cut and paste.
As to time, there is an isolation that comes with being an artist of any kind. It’s wise only to devote a certain amount of time each day...then go out and play.
I'm fresher in the a.m. but I find I don't get to it till after 1 or so by the time I do my prayer time, yoga stretches, walk, emails, breakfast and morning paper, maybe a phone call, and try to be nice to my beloved.
I call this pre-crastination: doing NOW what might wait till LATER, or tomorrow. As opposed to pro-crastination: doing LATER what might or should be done NOW.
Take your pick about where manyana (couldn’t figure out the tilde) fits in for you.
Everyone says I do it backwards, that writing should be priority and come first. But pre-crastination works best for me. I hate having undone “essentials” related to my mental, emotional and physical needs/wants hanging over my head.
When I write I like to feel free, to be totally devoted to it. I find when I get INTO it and it sparks I‘m not alone at all but full of life energy coming through my words. I am IN my words rather than my words being IN me.
I find it essential to have a writers group, or take a class or two. You need company for the journey and help for the task. Hook up, as they say. The encouragement is so important, as is the critique and accountability.
Start slow, small and beautiful, close to the hem of earth where Spirit roams and broods.
Writing is easier than organizing I find, mostly because it’s more fun. It gets your juices up. The drone and drudge is getting it organized and into a structure that makes it shine and make sense—like a trellis for beautiful roses—for its beholders.
I recommended starting afresh and just giving it 2-3 hours a day. This is advice I’d never be able to follow. I hate the idea of scrapping it all and starting again. Admit I have done it with some chapters and do it daily as I cut and paste.
As to time, there is an isolation that comes with being an artist of any kind. It’s wise only to devote a certain amount of time each day...then go out and play.
I'm fresher in the a.m. but I find I don't get to it till after 1 or so by the time I do my prayer time, yoga stretches, walk, emails, breakfast and morning paper, maybe a phone call, and try to be nice to my beloved.
I call this pre-crastination: doing NOW what might wait till LATER, or tomorrow. As opposed to pro-crastination: doing LATER what might or should be done NOW.
Take your pick about where manyana (couldn’t figure out the tilde) fits in for you.
Everyone says I do it backwards, that writing should be priority and come first. But pre-crastination works best for me. I hate having undone “essentials” related to my mental, emotional and physical needs/wants hanging over my head.
When I write I like to feel free, to be totally devoted to it. I find when I get INTO it and it sparks I‘m not alone at all but full of life energy coming through my words. I am IN my words rather than my words being IN me.
I find it essential to have a writers group, or take a class or two. You need company for the journey and help for the task. Hook up, as they say. The encouragement is so important, as is the critique and accountability.
Start slow, small and beautiful, close to the hem of earth where Spirit roams and broods.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
2011.10.23 Message and Vision
I recently received one of those love-engendering emails that circulate around. A story of a woman who had rescued then nursed back to health a fallen squirrel.
In the squirrel’s recuperation period, before it would be set free to be a full wild squirrel, the woman’s dog had pups.
The photos series showed various shots of the newly healed squirrel joining into the mothering, nursing, bonding process, curled up cozy with the puppies. Adorable and of course it made me smile and sigh and yearn.
But then an intruding thought said, What about photo shopping? This all could have been done easily by inserting squirrel shots into the puppy mélange. The endearing and meaningful photos could be virtual, not real. Ah, technology.
Suddenly I had a quick flurry of something like a million butterflies let loose in my gut and I wondered what I could trust. What is really real?
I decided to go with the message of love among vastly different species and the vision it bespoke for us humans—if only we could dare to snuggle up next to neighbors instead of building walls and fences.
Photo shopping MAY be a medium by which Spirit reminds us that it is the centrality of the divine message and vision that is important to notice, photo-shopped or not.
In the squirrel’s recuperation period, before it would be set free to be a full wild squirrel, the woman’s dog had pups.
The photos series showed various shots of the newly healed squirrel joining into the mothering, nursing, bonding process, curled up cozy with the puppies. Adorable and of course it made me smile and sigh and yearn.
But then an intruding thought said, What about photo shopping? This all could have been done easily by inserting squirrel shots into the puppy mélange. The endearing and meaningful photos could be virtual, not real. Ah, technology.
Suddenly I had a quick flurry of something like a million butterflies let loose in my gut and I wondered what I could trust. What is really real?
I decided to go with the message of love among vastly different species and the vision it bespoke for us humans—if only we could dare to snuggle up next to neighbors instead of building walls and fences.
Photo shopping MAY be a medium by which Spirit reminds us that it is the centrality of the divine message and vision that is important to notice, photo-shopped or not.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
2011.10.19 Bodies Beautiful
All this flap about Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown exchanging gender-ish pleasantries with political agenda.
Whose body to vote for?
I believe that one should always write and speak from one’s own lived experience. I also believe that everyone who reads or hears you will place her or his interpretation onto your words.
That’s happening in droves over the trivial politics-as-usual ribaldry in the body politic.
Hence my interpretation is this: It’s possible that Scott Brown meant that it was a good thing that Elizabeth Warren didn’t have to take off her clothes to meet her expenses—not because her body wasn’t much to behold or wouldn’t make much, but because she was spared the humiliation of having to go naked for money.
What he did with his body wasn’t shameful. It was just a symptom of a society possessed with sexual uncertainty and puritan angst. I’m glad his physique could help him out. That’s not sarcastic.
In an unjust society you do what you have to do to survive without destroying someone else or yourself.
When I go to a store, as little as I possibly can, to buy a clothing item I hate to stand in front of the mirror and take in a close-up of my body in the full length mirror. It’s not ugly or gross but my shame sees me as ugly.
(I hate even worse when a salesgirl pokes her nosy nose into the dressing room to chirp, "How are you doing Ma'am?") Shame again.
In Eden the first recorded post-apple feeling was shame—of their nakedness!
Our shape-obsessed American culture of advertising has not yet figured out a way to love our bodies with grace.
We Christians have not yet found a way to belove our flesh and know God incarnate— Divinity that actually deigns to indwell ALL flesh in ALL shapes and sizes.
Toni Morrison's preacher-woman adjures her listeners: WE FLESH!—and it is good.
Until we figure this out we will NOT love our differently-sized neighbors, our Godde, or ourselves.
NO body shames God.
Whose body to vote for?
I believe that one should always write and speak from one’s own lived experience. I also believe that everyone who reads or hears you will place her or his interpretation onto your words.
That’s happening in droves over the trivial politics-as-usual ribaldry in the body politic.
Hence my interpretation is this: It’s possible that Scott Brown meant that it was a good thing that Elizabeth Warren didn’t have to take off her clothes to meet her expenses—not because her body wasn’t much to behold or wouldn’t make much, but because she was spared the humiliation of having to go naked for money.
What he did with his body wasn’t shameful. It was just a symptom of a society possessed with sexual uncertainty and puritan angst. I’m glad his physique could help him out. That’s not sarcastic.
In an unjust society you do what you have to do to survive without destroying someone else or yourself.
When I go to a store, as little as I possibly can, to buy a clothing item I hate to stand in front of the mirror and take in a close-up of my body in the full length mirror. It’s not ugly or gross but my shame sees me as ugly.
(I hate even worse when a salesgirl pokes her nosy nose into the dressing room to chirp, "How are you doing Ma'am?") Shame again.
In Eden the first recorded post-apple feeling was shame—of their nakedness!
Our shape-obsessed American culture of advertising has not yet figured out a way to love our bodies with grace.
We Christians have not yet found a way to belove our flesh and know God incarnate— Divinity that actually deigns to indwell ALL flesh in ALL shapes and sizes.
Toni Morrison's preacher-woman adjures her listeners: WE FLESH!—and it is good.
Until we figure this out we will NOT love our differently-sized neighbors, our Godde, or ourselves.
NO body shames God.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
2011.10.16 WWJS?
It was past my bedtime when the text bleep came in, bedtime being a relative thing and wholly retrogressive—earlier and earlier the older you get. But you turn on the light for a precious granddaughter named Izz.
“Hi Grammy,” the text message read, “What language did Jesus speak? Mom doesn’t know either. xxoo Izzy.”
I’m not too old to text but my device has teensy letters on its phone-like, not typewriter-like, key board. So I got under the light and texted back: “aramaic but the new testament is written in greek. how was your dance?” (Didn’t bother with caps but found the ?)
Text back: “It was goo.” Followed immediately by, “I mean good.”
End of soundless conversation with a beautifully curious 11 year old granddaughter.
Why in the world was she thinking of Jesus? The family doesn’t go to Church although they did for a while and they come willingly when they visit. Their northeast US secular world isn’t geared to religion, Jesus, church.
The next day, Sunday, I called to inquire, being as curious as the girl who asked, and the cat I just looked up and spotted paroling my back fence, on a squirrel prowl.
“I don’t know,” was the answer I got. Of course I pushed her a bit. “I was just thinking, wondering about it and Mom didn’t know so I called you, ” she said. “OK I was just curious,” I said.
Exchange of love you and byes.
I was curious, also wondering if Jesus might have planted a calling card in her heart. It gets lonely being a religious Christian these days in liberal land. But Jesus, or Christ, speaks to the ears of our hearts sometimes and if he were here now he might even be a secular humanist who believed in God.
WWJS, What would Jesus speak?
I don’t know, but Socrates said, WISDOM BEGINS IN WONDER.
Stay wondering. Be curious Izz. It won’t kill you, or the cat, but it might make you wonder odd but good things. Might even make you wise, or wiser than you already are.
“Hi Grammy,” the text message read, “What language did Jesus speak? Mom doesn’t know either. xxoo Izzy.”
I’m not too old to text but my device has teensy letters on its phone-like, not typewriter-like, key board. So I got under the light and texted back: “aramaic but the new testament is written in greek. how was your dance?” (Didn’t bother with caps but found the ?)
Text back: “It was goo.” Followed immediately by, “I mean good.”
End of soundless conversation with a beautifully curious 11 year old granddaughter.
Why in the world was she thinking of Jesus? The family doesn’t go to Church although they did for a while and they come willingly when they visit. Their northeast US secular world isn’t geared to religion, Jesus, church.
The next day, Sunday, I called to inquire, being as curious as the girl who asked, and the cat I just looked up and spotted paroling my back fence, on a squirrel prowl.
“I don’t know,” was the answer I got. Of course I pushed her a bit. “I was just thinking, wondering about it and Mom didn’t know so I called you, ” she said. “OK I was just curious,” I said.
Exchange of love you and byes.
I was curious, also wondering if Jesus might have planted a calling card in her heart. It gets lonely being a religious Christian these days in liberal land. But Jesus, or Christ, speaks to the ears of our hearts sometimes and if he were here now he might even be a secular humanist who believed in God.
WWJS, What would Jesus speak?
I don’t know, but Socrates said, WISDOM BEGINS IN WONDER.
Stay wondering. Be curious Izz. It won’t kill you, or the cat, but it might make you wonder odd but good things. Might even make you wise, or wiser than you already are.
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