2012.02.10 A Famous "Cliché"

“Old Marley was dead as a doornail. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”

Writers take note. These are two sentences in the opening paragraphs of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.(The quote above is taken from the screen play for the movie version starring George C. Scott, fyi.)

The punch of the point, however,is more important than assignation and is written in a, heaven forbid, cliché. (It might not have been in Dickens’s day but he alludes to it as such.)

A cliché today would be enough, especially on the first page in the first sentence, to render one’s manuscript “dead as a doornail” indeed and buried in the slush pile.

A doornail is a stud set in a door for strength or as an ornament. Useless, hackneyed, overused, trite, lackluster AND lifeless? Maybe, but don’t you have doornail days? As a writer those are days when my every word is dry, zestless, blah, and every sentence deader than a doornail.

Thank you Charles Dickens for giving me the courage not to be so afraid that every darn word I put on the page MIGHT be a cliché or some other sin inviting death.

Write free as a bird, happy as a clam, cool as a cucumber!

2012.02.05 Keeping Madeleine's Commandment

Commandments don’t end I’ve discovered. They are such powerful words of wisdom that you are compelled to stay aware of them in order to pay attention as their nuances unfold.

When Madeleine L’Engle told me not to become a little man after I got ordained priest I only half knew what she meant. As I grow, read, age, and wrinkle, I discover that the surface attentions like earrings at the altar or red shoes in church while celebrating Mass, even at Pentecost for the HS, are the easy parts.

I remember my feelings of shame when the parish where I was Priest Associate for several years in the ‘90s prayed every Sunday for “our priests, Father Erik and Lyn.” Road rage is about being edged out or held back, whether it is rational or not. I launched immediately into prayer rage.

When you start to mess with major symbols like language you run into more that resistance. You get laughed at as happened to me at a clergy day two years ago when the Chairwoman of the Episcopal House of Deputies dismissed my questioned concern about exclusive language as “hardly the point.”

Let’s get on with important ministry, saving the world, feeding the hungry, etc, etc. Inclusive language is a surface and trivial issue. I agree only that it is not a new issue, however it is a deeply unresolved issue. I admit I’m still beating that drum because it's not dead yet.Language after all is our most powerful symbol, no? And we use words as much as actions to speak of our religious faith.

What is more to the point than the deification of masculinity through pronouns? Don’t
misunderstand me I love men, even married a couple and have beloved sons, stepsons and grandsons, but that is not the point. The point is how we speak of God.

Forgive me if I get preachy and commandment-tempted myself: As long as we worship an exclusively male God, a deity dressed in patriarchal garb, we will be a Church afraid to love.

BTW Jesus was a great man. Christ resurrected however, is gender-free— and the more divine for it.

2012.02.01 And God Said What?

A friend sent me a Geranium Farm post (12/22/11) by the inestimable Episcopal priest Barbara Crafton, author of Geranium Farm the almost daily e’mo,a communiqué replete with grounded spiritual wisdom.

Crafton is full of humor and usually good theology. But this time I disagreed.

She wrote about scrooge-like pettiness and ridiculed her own fretting about where to place her teapots in the kitchen, a worry that inspired a small marital bit of rancor.

Then she heard an inner judgment that came to her “with the accent of steely love I recognize as the voice of God, cutting through my fantasies of gracious living” while others have no home.

“And you’re worried about teapots?” the voice said.

I’m sure Crafton means that she was humbled, maybe ashamed or embarrassed. I wondered about steely love. I’m probably a theological softie but I don’t experience God speaking to me in ridiculing ways. If I did I might have trouble trusting and loving such a God. I have plenty of inner self-ridicule that puts me in my place. Would a gracious God pile on more?

I once had a wise Jesuit spiritual director who said, “If you hear God being negative towards you personally it’s probably not God.”

I’ve held onto that wisdom. The voice of God doesn’t make my soul cringe. I do, but I don’t think God would. I might feel humbled by God or awakened and challenged, but not scorned.

What I believe is that God loves and cares about silver teapots. Or let's say God cares about my anxious fretting about this and that trivia, as much as the larger issues like poverty.  

“That’s insane,” said a friend.

Perhaps so, but to me that is how God is different from us,how the divine heart, unlike the human heart, can contain all our trivia in equal measures to receive loving care.

I find that image of God so holy, so inhuman, I hardly dare take it in.

Frankly, it’s easier to believe in the divine judge than the divine lover. Easier but not so faithful.

2012.01.29 Holy Spirit...How Does She Do It?

I heard an unusual comment recently, a compliment to the rector of a neighboring parish from one of the parishioners. The woman said, “He’s great. He’s not a pulpit hog.”

I also heard from a woman priest colleague that it was nice to see girls on the altar, not dancing of course, at a notably conservative patriarchal parish that’s trying to be more open. My friend has also been invited to preach and celebrate there.

And then I heard from a colleague woman priest and friend that the bishop who had 35 years ago turned me down for ordination had told her that being against the ordination had been the biggest mistake he’d ever made.

These tiny epiphanies felt hopeful that the Church will continue to chip away at patriarchy and full inclusion of every person in the worship and politics of the institution. Am I delusional?

Make no mistake the current political field in this country is NOT about just the economy, it is about women—keeping them in their traditional places, or not. You could even say barefoot and pregnant and confined to a role. The climate is contentious around money (who has it all and who gets to keep it all) and misogyny, or is it gynephobia. Kept money and kept women. The way out of a deadlock I think is to empower women to make their own choices and to exercise their own gifts for the common good, family and beyond. The progressive Church, oddly, is doing better than the government.

I’m firmly committed to the idea that as many different voices as possible should grace ALL our "pulpits" and altars and podiums. It builds community, neighborliness and peace. Christians are far from uniform in their styles of worship, politics, and theology. We desperately need to talk. We need to cut through assumptions and get to know who we really are. We only live next door for heaven’s sake.

I’ve been trying to promote such connections for years including interfaith ones. The miles between us are short but the walls are thick and so parochial it’s shocking.

I tell you I do wonder how Holy Spirit, She whom I call Sophie, works things for the best even when it all looks lousy and hopeless to us.  

But She is a mysterious masseuse of relational connective tissues. And you know how long it takes those muscles and joints to loosen up and let go—and then pop back tight, over and over. It’s worse than muscles to get people to let go, and even worse with religious people.

Get a massage—full body and spirit.

2012.01.25 Aging With Faith

“The older I get the more I believe and the fewer beliefs I have.”

This is the wisdom of the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, retired bishop of the diocese of Newark, author and theological provocateur. He recently spoke at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge and I zeroed in on these words.

Wise and true I thought. And my mother who today would have been 100 years old would have loved it, she who mostly thought religious doctrines were “for the birds.”

I admit however that, although I do have more faith and care less about beliefs as intellectual tenets, my mind is rarely clear of theological ideas, all new to me, all brilliantly alluring, and all illuminating my faith and inflaming my heart.

This morning I woke up thinking that the Holy Trinity was a trifecta of energy—Creativity, Empathy, Travelocity— a race in which all three finish first, as one. Corny/silly, but it woke me up joyful.

I could only wish such a trifecta assault on our country so bogged down in the morass of contention for its own sake.

President Obama in his State of the Nation speech last night spoke of strength hidden in the nation’s depths. He again envisioned, begged for, cooperation. Is it too late to access it? He is a visionary who has grounded and become pragmatic.

Who could argue with common sense ideas like tax equity in this time of radical and dangerous economic inequity? How ingenious was it to compare the military strategy, command, to stick together for the sake of the mission no matter what, with what politicians must do now?

We shall all have to sacrifice, god forbid, competition, pride, greed, misogyny, and war. I have faith in the people to cast their secret ballots in the direction that makes sense, no matter what their leaders urge.

I’m sure that before too long I will tone down, and dull out, and store all my smart-ass faith wisdom in my one small faithful heart, there to be reduced and contained and claimed by Godde when I die.

But for now I’m filled with re-imagined beliefs.

Happy Birthday Mom.

2012.01.18 American Dream?

The American dream of liberty and justice and all good things available to all citizens has turned to pablum, spooned out to the unawares, and the ignorant, and the too-busy-scraping-basic-livelihood-together-to-notice.

The so-called dream has become a lie.

There is less available than ever before to a greater number of citizens than ever before.

Paul Krugman in his NT Times commentary on Jan 16, Martin Luther King day, wrote: “Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in 'quiet rooms.' There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. [They said it about women, too, and still are.] Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams.”

James Forbes, retired minister of the Riverside Church in NYC, said without hesitation years ago when asked what he thought the next great sin America would have to face: CLASSISM.

Years ago too I saw a cartoon image that stayed with me. It pictured a fat cat capitalist type with a top hat and dressed in a tux. In the top of his tipped hat were a small bunch of people cheering and waving money around, while numbers of others spilled down over his belly landing on the ground below. Splat! 99% of us is falling fast.

Studies indicate that the more economic inequality a society has the less mobile it becomes. People can’t move. And stasis is death.

The Occupy Movement has called attention to the problem most recently. I pray its fervor doesn’t fade away.

What will the Church say? Not a whole lot I’m embarrassed to note. This is no time for religious people to be squeamish about the word SIN. One of the better definitions of sin is disconnection from the good in God, self and neighbor.
Our country is living, no wallowing, in SIN. And the Church is seemingly allergic to its mention.

Republican Mitt Romney calls for a retrieval of the SOUL of America. What is that?

I only know one path to get back in touch with one’s lost soul and that is to pray, turn back or repent, and ask forgiveness of God, self and neighbor BEFORE we seek ways to change—sell a few homes, for example. But this can only be done in company with other citizens of church and society. And it starts with confession.

Please let’s STOP dreaming!

2012.01.22 Aunt Florence

When Aunt Florence comes into a room she has a neon effect. It’s her smile. It crinkles her already well-creased 101 year old face with sheer welcoming pleasure. And you’re sure she loves you without reserve.

I’m sure she has her moods and her toughness. I’ve just never seen them because I never met her till I was approaching my sixth decade and she was in her ‘80s. She isn’t even my aunt and she isn’t even my husband’s official aunt. She was his mother’s best friend for many years and that counts for extreme aunterly love, something some biological aunts often are unable to provide.

The first time I met Aunt Florence we were on our way to Harrisburg PA. to see the real aunt and stopped in New Jersey so I could meet the surrogate. She lived in the same house where she and her late husband, Uncle John, had raised two children. We have photos of Dick’s mother, Aunt Fran to Florence’s children, playing with Florence’s daughter.

Aunt Florence welcomed me with no obvious reserve. After all I was the “other woman” after Dick’s divorce— and a woman priest. Florence had been against the ordination of women priests. I don’t know if she changed her mind on that but I knew she wasn’t against me.

The lunch was simple, tuna fish sandwiches I think, but she set her table with elegance as if for best company.

After our first meeting I wrote Florence a note to ask if it was all right to call her Aunt Florence, too. You know the answer.

In time Aunt Florence moved to MD to live with her daughter. We’ve traveled to see her a few times and this last time, December 2011, we made an unplanned trip because Aunt Florence had just been diagnosed with a malignant tumor. She didn’t want treatment only good care and hospice, and the same loving family that already surrounds her. We went to see Aunt Florence before she died.

Do you know how hard it is to say good bye for ever to someone who is alive and looks well, has no pain, is vital and vibrant?

She told us that what had kept her so alive were the children— grand children and great grandchildren. They’d flock around her like birds all chittering at once. She was gracious with each and all and even did some tutoring till she reached 100 and had to slow down a bit.

Then how surreal to have the usual Christmas phone conversation 2 weeks after the last farewell. And who knows? Given Florence's resilient spirit she might make 105.

Her prayer request was like most people’s: to die peacefully in her sleep. And that Dick would be at the graveside to say prayers when her ashes were committed in the same N.J. plot where her husband is buried.

There is ample room for such goodness in the soul of God.