In our nation, and perhaps in the world and in our churches, we are trying to move from rigid positions of EITHER/OR to supple positions of BOTH/AND.
I think of piano playing. You can’t play music that soothes souls with rigid fingers. You also can’t make peace with inflexible minds and hard hearts.
The process of getting to BOTH/AND is painful, like any enormous world view change. It’s a time when EITHER and OR fight more vociferously, even viciously. Both are afraid.
I remember when my children would fight over who had more favor or love. They never put it that way, but if they got anxious about parental attention, which happened more than a few times (some of it through parental fault and flaw) they competed for the love they all already had in full and equal measure. Today I'm proud about how they have grown up and into each other.
On a larger scale we get war and more war in our politics, on our streets, among our religious perspectives, in our homes, and in our families—not just with foreign lands. These latter only become convenient scapegoats for looking deeply and honestly at ourselves.
The temptation is to hop on one side or the other and stay there believing yourself loyal and devoted when really you’re only a loyal-ist. Peace is a higher value than victory.
Now we hear radio talk show celebrity,chauvinist of conservative patriarchy, Rush Limbaugh curse a female college student for testifying to Congress about wanting her health care insurance to cover contraception. By Limbaugh’s rhetoric she can be EITHER a “slut/prostitute” OR a “pregnant madonna.”
The fight is on and the battle ground is a woman’s body. Once again.
Women, especially Roman Catholic women, don’t want to call this a women’s liberation issue, a feminist platform. It is politics they say. It is about health care they say. It is about religious freedom and the economy. Yes it is all that, AND......
I ask: on whose body is legislation about birth control coverage visited? Do men take contraception pills? Do men get pregnant? Not yet. So is this an EITHER/ OR fight disguised by new language? Is it a gender justice issue in essence? Certainly it’s a patriarchal power issue.
I don’t agree with some religious traditions that disallow blood transfusions for the sake of purity of creation. I also think practitioners of such faiths should have their choice even if it means their choice leads to their death. That doesn’t mean insurance companies would stop covering blood transfusions, or that you and I would stop donating our healthy blood, does it?
When will we enjoy a society and a church that is BOTH/AND, women and men together for the common good? God AND humanity cooperating for the good of all creation? Heaven-in-earth and earth-in-heaven?
In this BOTH/AND vision, Church and state institutions BOTH take their lumbering free time to make changes for justice AND individual people are free to make their own moral choices.
I guess any vision begins with one, or a few.
Wise, brave U.S. Senator, Olympia Snowe, moderate Republican of Maine fits that bill for me. Fed up with partisan politics and gridlock (EITHER/OR impasse,) Snowe walked away. She will not seek a fourth term, believing she said that she can do more good outside the halls of power, traditional change agents.
Brava Olympia Snowe. And thanks.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
2012.03.08 International Women's Day & Madeleine L'Engle
I honor the late Madeleine L’Engle, author and theologian, on this International Women’s Day. She was international in travel and cosmic in her ideas.
Madeleine L’Engle, when I was trying to get ordained priest in the Episcopal Church USA back in the late ‘70s, gave me a commandment I’ve never forgotten and still keep. She stood tall in height and put all her soul stature into this word: “Now, my dear, when you get ordained, and you will, do not become a little man.” Amen, I thought.
I’ve written about keeping Madeleine’s commandment before, but this year her classic “A Wrinkle in Time” turns 50 and I’d like to pay tribute to one of my mentors. I need a hero.
It took me a record time to get ordained at a time when the church had just voted women were “fit” to be priests. After I finally made it in 1988, Madeleine’s words rang in my ears. At one time in my 20s I thought I might like to be like a man just for power-in-the-world. But that passed quickly and gratefully for the sake of bearing wonderful children who filled my heart then—and now.
I’d read L’Engle’s book “A Wrinkle in Time” more than once myself, and later to my children. It took almost as long to get published as it took me to be ordained. Madeleine submitted it to 24 publishing houses before Farrar, Straus and Giroux took a chance on it that paid off. “Wrinkle” has over 10 million copies in print and won the Newbery in 1963.
All those rejections and she already had six books to her authorial name! I have two, the first of which Madeleine, with a provocative prompt, helped me jumpstart at a writer’s workshop. I have more rejections than I can count. Madeleine never lost faith in herself, her story or her voice. I hope I don’t either.
Our connections known and unknown continue to delight me in wonder.
Like me Madeleine was graduated from Smith College, she in 1941, I in 1960, she cum laude, I phi beta kappa. We both wrote out our ideas and feelings in journals from a young age and both loved the Bible. Madeleine wrote a great blurb for my book Spiritual Lemons.
An advanced theological thinker, Madeleine was adamant that there really was no such thing as a book for children, that children had deep thoughts and questions and spiritual longing the same as adults. I can attest to that as one of those children who badgered God, and her parents, with about every mysterious question possible—and never stopped.
We both were born and grew up in New York City. We both had religious imaginations early on and our earliest views were shaped by sky scrapers beyond whose majesty we sought the heavens. She was an Episcopalian and I became one. For me that was about finding a church that had sacramental worship and more hope for being inclusive.
When Madeleine was my spiritual director she talked a lot about the silliness of religious divisions, the pretension of clerics, and the necessity of a deity fit for the cosmos. No corseted divinity, she’d say. And of course there is universal salvation. Of course, I’d agree without hesitation.
And, although Madeleine might not have called herself a feminist, I did. One of “Wrinkle’s” worst offenses, according to some critics was that the book had religious (Christian) themes (far too sophisticated for children) AND a female protagonist who isn’t sweet or pretty and loves science and curious quests. “Wrinkle” is full of insights from quantum physics, intergalactic space, and fractals—mysteries of science and of theological cosmology.
I wasn’t that good at science but I was good at being a girl, and the protagonist of my yet unpublished memoir is a woman. It’s a quest story full of mystery—grace and earthiness all together.
Meg Murry in “Wrinkle” is insecure, plain, bossy, stubborn, and compassionate. I’m four out of those five. Meg sets off on a quest into space, time traveling through the universe, to save her father who is captive on a strange planet. I once thought I could save my father from a planet called alcoholism.
Madeleine L’Engle shared many ideas with me and gave me a portion of her spirit. I am nowhere near her in talent, faith or fame. I don’t aspire to that. I’d just like one more book.
Madeleine died in 2007 and just yesterday I heard her voice on NPR reading from a section of “Wrinkle.” It gave me a boost.
Thank you Madeleine L’Engle.
Madeleine L’Engle, when I was trying to get ordained priest in the Episcopal Church USA back in the late ‘70s, gave me a commandment I’ve never forgotten and still keep. She stood tall in height and put all her soul stature into this word: “Now, my dear, when you get ordained, and you will, do not become a little man.” Amen, I thought.
I’ve written about keeping Madeleine’s commandment before, but this year her classic “A Wrinkle in Time” turns 50 and I’d like to pay tribute to one of my mentors. I need a hero.
It took me a record time to get ordained at a time when the church had just voted women were “fit” to be priests. After I finally made it in 1988, Madeleine’s words rang in my ears. At one time in my 20s I thought I might like to be like a man just for power-in-the-world. But that passed quickly and gratefully for the sake of bearing wonderful children who filled my heart then—and now.
I’d read L’Engle’s book “A Wrinkle in Time” more than once myself, and later to my children. It took almost as long to get published as it took me to be ordained. Madeleine submitted it to 24 publishing houses before Farrar, Straus and Giroux took a chance on it that paid off. “Wrinkle” has over 10 million copies in print and won the Newbery in 1963.
All those rejections and she already had six books to her authorial name! I have two, the first of which Madeleine, with a provocative prompt, helped me jumpstart at a writer’s workshop. I have more rejections than I can count. Madeleine never lost faith in herself, her story or her voice. I hope I don’t either.
Our connections known and unknown continue to delight me in wonder.
Like me Madeleine was graduated from Smith College, she in 1941, I in 1960, she cum laude, I phi beta kappa. We both wrote out our ideas and feelings in journals from a young age and both loved the Bible. Madeleine wrote a great blurb for my book Spiritual Lemons.
An advanced theological thinker, Madeleine was adamant that there really was no such thing as a book for children, that children had deep thoughts and questions and spiritual longing the same as adults. I can attest to that as one of those children who badgered God, and her parents, with about every mysterious question possible—and never stopped.
We both were born and grew up in New York City. We both had religious imaginations early on and our earliest views were shaped by sky scrapers beyond whose majesty we sought the heavens. She was an Episcopalian and I became one. For me that was about finding a church that had sacramental worship and more hope for being inclusive.
When Madeleine was my spiritual director she talked a lot about the silliness of religious divisions, the pretension of clerics, and the necessity of a deity fit for the cosmos. No corseted divinity, she’d say. And of course there is universal salvation. Of course, I’d agree without hesitation.
And, although Madeleine might not have called herself a feminist, I did. One of “Wrinkle’s” worst offenses, according to some critics was that the book had religious (Christian) themes (far too sophisticated for children) AND a female protagonist who isn’t sweet or pretty and loves science and curious quests. “Wrinkle” is full of insights from quantum physics, intergalactic space, and fractals—mysteries of science and of theological cosmology.
I wasn’t that good at science but I was good at being a girl, and the protagonist of my yet unpublished memoir is a woman. It’s a quest story full of mystery—grace and earthiness all together.
Meg Murry in “Wrinkle” is insecure, plain, bossy, stubborn, and compassionate. I’m four out of those five. Meg sets off on a quest into space, time traveling through the universe, to save her father who is captive on a strange planet. I once thought I could save my father from a planet called alcoholism.
Madeleine L’Engle shared many ideas with me and gave me a portion of her spirit. I am nowhere near her in talent, faith or fame. I don’t aspire to that. I’d just like one more book.
Madeleine died in 2007 and just yesterday I heard her voice on NPR reading from a section of “Wrinkle.” It gave me a boost.
Thank you Madeleine L’Engle.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
2012.03.04 Grace for "Dummies"
The first thing to say is that with grace there ARE no dummies—although I think the dummy brand is kind of a cute way to let most of us plead ignorance and still learn the basics of things we’d like to know but not be experts about, or perhaps forgot.
Because I’m a Christian priest (Episcopal) the idea of grace to me is theological, that is grace comes from Divinity aka God/Godde/Alla/Yahweh/Adonai, blah blah, yadda yadda, and etc.
Grace has a transcendent dimension but we experience it in earthly fleshly ways.
Grace has a few identifying marks.......
-it’s unconditional (you don’t ask for it, deserve it, or get to return it...
kind of like grits on your plate in the south
-it’s a surprise, unexpected, feels weird
-it offers a choice whether to receive it not knowing its worth, or turn away
-it takes time to understand
-it is usually mediated ie. comes to you through another person, your own mind,
a piece of nature, the arts, worship, music,a book, a sacrament, or, yes, your religion
-it evokes feelings of awe, wonder, and gratitude
-it lets you in on how little you know and that you are not in charge
-it’s momentary and passing
-it causes you to feel BOTH completely known and completely loved, at the
same time
This latter experience is rare in itself. Most often we think things like, “They know me but they don’t love me” or “They love me but if they only knew me they wouldn’t.”
Grace is one way Godde breaks through our compulsive ways of thinking and doing and offers new perspectives, untangles impossible knots, unsticks the stuck, or just plain delights.
Recently I felt such delightful buoying. A small curly-headed boy of about six sat at breakfast in a restaurant. He was dwarfed by about 8 adults at a long table. No one paid him much attention as he eagerly spooned his cereal and talked loudly regardless. He looked up, caught my eye, broke into a smile that could puncture the densest of cloud covers, and shouted out the good news: “We’re here with our WHOLE family.”
I grinned and gave him a thumbs up and thanked God for his little life and the grace he gave me.
Because I’m a Christian priest (Episcopal) the idea of grace to me is theological, that is grace comes from Divinity aka God/Godde/Alla/Yahweh/Adonai, blah blah, yadda yadda, and etc.
Grace has a transcendent dimension but we experience it in earthly fleshly ways.
Grace has a few identifying marks.......
-it’s unconditional (you don’t ask for it, deserve it, or get to return it...
kind of like grits on your plate in the south
-it’s a surprise, unexpected, feels weird
-it offers a choice whether to receive it not knowing its worth, or turn away
-it takes time to understand
-it is usually mediated ie. comes to you through another person, your own mind,
a piece of nature, the arts, worship, music,a book, a sacrament, or, yes, your religion
-it evokes feelings of awe, wonder, and gratitude
-it lets you in on how little you know and that you are not in charge
-it’s momentary and passing
-it causes you to feel BOTH completely known and completely loved, at the
same time
This latter experience is rare in itself. Most often we think things like, “They know me but they don’t love me” or “They love me but if they only knew me they wouldn’t.”
Grace is one way Godde breaks through our compulsive ways of thinking and doing and offers new perspectives, untangles impossible knots, unsticks the stuck, or just plain delights.
Recently I felt such delightful buoying. A small curly-headed boy of about six sat at breakfast in a restaurant. He was dwarfed by about 8 adults at a long table. No one paid him much attention as he eagerly spooned his cereal and talked loudly regardless. He looked up, caught my eye, broke into a smile that could puncture the densest of cloud covers, and shouted out the good news: “We’re here with our WHOLE family.”
I grinned and gave him a thumbs up and thanked God for his little life and the grace he gave me.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
2012.02.29 Blogoir I
Once upon a time I broke into life with the help of my mother’s pain, sweat and sorrow, and before that my father’s sperm.
Mom had planned to “give” my father a boy, a son (the holy status of sonship is the Bible’s fault—well, also the patriarchal culture’s) who looked just like him and would be named Michael McDonald.
I arrived in obvious feminine form and messed up her plans. But she “adored” me anyway, sometimes too smothery much.
My birth year was 1938, a teetery year between wars but one full of hope for prosperity and a brand new line of Buicks, soon the car of choice for my family. The date was August 7, only 6 weeks before the 1938 hurricane blasted New England, especially Long Island. After the damage was fixed we spent many summers on Long Island, the Hamptons no less.
Being born on a Sunday earned me the legacy of the rhyme, “The child that is born on the Sabbath day is blithe and bonnie and good and gay.” This descriptor did not fit my developing nature—somber, serious, solo, and shy. The rhyme described my mother who tried to bequeath me her own personality, but you really can’t manipulate a “miracle” can you?
My birth place was Manhattan in Leroy Sanitorium, a hospital name that later caused me to ask about my sanity. Spelling is everything.
I have a photo of myself in utero. You can’t see much of me through my mother’s expanded belly. She looks happy with a cigarette in her hand. She’d had 3 miscarriages before I made it out whole, a joy to behold, beautiful, a miracle. I really looked like a squished pink frog covered with black hair.
Love can see through absolutely anyone and make her beautiful.
I managed to look like Dad who gave me my name Lynda Hall Gillespie. But after that it was all down hill. I was as different from Mom as a dill pickle from a jelly donut.
Up to three all adoration was mutual, but at three the pinafore wars began. My mother had a pinafore obsession and I was already an overalls kid. The only good things about pinafores was their wings.
Mom, in spite of the miracle status and the perky personality she’d conferred on me, called me a sour puss. There’s photographic proof of that, too: Mom all smiles and me all scowls. We’re dressed alike in pinafores.
Miracle status didn’t work for me. It took an act of God to naturalize me. It also took a helluva a long time.
Mom had planned to “give” my father a boy, a son (the holy status of sonship is the Bible’s fault—well, also the patriarchal culture’s) who looked just like him and would be named Michael McDonald.
I arrived in obvious feminine form and messed up her plans. But she “adored” me anyway, sometimes too smothery much.
My birth year was 1938, a teetery year between wars but one full of hope for prosperity and a brand new line of Buicks, soon the car of choice for my family. The date was August 7, only 6 weeks before the 1938 hurricane blasted New England, especially Long Island. After the damage was fixed we spent many summers on Long Island, the Hamptons no less.
Being born on a Sunday earned me the legacy of the rhyme, “The child that is born on the Sabbath day is blithe and bonnie and good and gay.” This descriptor did not fit my developing nature—somber, serious, solo, and shy. The rhyme described my mother who tried to bequeath me her own personality, but you really can’t manipulate a “miracle” can you?
My birth place was Manhattan in Leroy Sanitorium, a hospital name that later caused me to ask about my sanity. Spelling is everything.
I have a photo of myself in utero. You can’t see much of me through my mother’s expanded belly. She looks happy with a cigarette in her hand. She’d had 3 miscarriages before I made it out whole, a joy to behold, beautiful, a miracle. I really looked like a squished pink frog covered with black hair.
Love can see through absolutely anyone and make her beautiful.
I managed to look like Dad who gave me my name Lynda Hall Gillespie. But after that it was all down hill. I was as different from Mom as a dill pickle from a jelly donut.
Up to three all adoration was mutual, but at three the pinafore wars began. My mother had a pinafore obsession and I was already an overalls kid. The only good things about pinafores was their wings.
Mom, in spite of the miracle status and the perky personality she’d conferred on me, called me a sour puss. There’s photographic proof of that, too: Mom all smiles and me all scowls. We’re dressed alike in pinafores.
Miracle status didn’t work for me. It took an act of God to naturalize me. It also took a helluva a long time.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
2012.02.26 Waiting for a Snap Day
I’ve been waiting for a day to open out, snapping cold, brilliant, sun-dried, and billowing like a freshly laundered sheet on the line—clean and pure white.
I’m waiting for a snap day. I want it spread before me.
The weather has been weirdly warm for mid-winter—distinctly New England February grey, nonetheless. Everyone smiles and says, isn’t it warm and nice. Then they hesitate, grin a little shyly. They, like me, have heard of global warming and all sorts of apocalyptic terrors and wonder.
I’m waiting for a snap day to snap the weather out of its gloomy gray and to snap me out of my energyless drear, precipitated by a rejection of my memoir manuscript. The literary agent who read it wrote an encouraging, gracious, hopeful even complimentary letter. While grieving I couldn’t quite trust that part—like the hope of resurrection in the middle of a funeral.
I looked for Godde.
My adult children brought me God in their outpouring of love, not just for poor mom but for me as a writer, woman and priest. They asked to read my book and I’m honored. Perhaps my labor is for them anyway, as it once was in their birthing. They started at the center of my body and they remain at the center of my heart, sharing it with Godde.
Then, gazing listlessly out the window immobilized, I spied a sudden flash of gray, a dash of movement. I watched five small squirrels racing and tumbling all over each other in the large tree right outside my window. Was this another batch of babies emerging out from under the garage roof next door? These grey squirts were playing. They must be kids. They were wild and amusing and lifted my spirit an inch or two.
The little squirrels were not taxed. They brought me God. I knew because my heart jumped.
Then Lo! A snap day dawned. Today. Sunday/sun day—Godde’s day, or one of them. Snap!
It takes a great leap of faith to believe in God—and an even greater leap to believe in yourself, to create, to put your faith into some work and then put it out there.
Once at a writers’ conference I attended the leader/author asked me, “Do you ever write about anything but God?” I hesitated, so sharp did his question feel, and so silenced my mind.
“Yes,” I said, then, “No. Is there anything else to write about, really, deeply?”
I had an answer then, so I know I will find one now.
And I, like my father used to say, will “snap to it.”
I’m waiting for a snap day. I want it spread before me.
The weather has been weirdly warm for mid-winter—distinctly New England February grey, nonetheless. Everyone smiles and says, isn’t it warm and nice. Then they hesitate, grin a little shyly. They, like me, have heard of global warming and all sorts of apocalyptic terrors and wonder.
I’m waiting for a snap day to snap the weather out of its gloomy gray and to snap me out of my energyless drear, precipitated by a rejection of my memoir manuscript. The literary agent who read it wrote an encouraging, gracious, hopeful even complimentary letter. While grieving I couldn’t quite trust that part—like the hope of resurrection in the middle of a funeral.
I looked for Godde.
My adult children brought me God in their outpouring of love, not just for poor mom but for me as a writer, woman and priest. They asked to read my book and I’m honored. Perhaps my labor is for them anyway, as it once was in their birthing. They started at the center of my body and they remain at the center of my heart, sharing it with Godde.
Then, gazing listlessly out the window immobilized, I spied a sudden flash of gray, a dash of movement. I watched five small squirrels racing and tumbling all over each other in the large tree right outside my window. Was this another batch of babies emerging out from under the garage roof next door? These grey squirts were playing. They must be kids. They were wild and amusing and lifted my spirit an inch or two.
The little squirrels were not taxed. They brought me God. I knew because my heart jumped.
Then Lo! A snap day dawned. Today. Sunday/sun day—Godde’s day, or one of them. Snap!
It takes a great leap of faith to believe in God—and an even greater leap to believe in yourself, to create, to put your faith into some work and then put it out there.
Once at a writers’ conference I attended the leader/author asked me, “Do you ever write about anything but God?” I hesitated, so sharp did his question feel, and so silenced my mind.
“Yes,” I said, then, “No. Is there anything else to write about, really, deeply?”
I had an answer then, so I know I will find one now.
And I, like my father used to say, will “snap to it.”
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
2012.02.22 Ash Wednesday
Today is the day of ashes, the day Christians begin the season of Lent
-a time to remember who we are in Christ, both human and divine
-a time to be humble—right-sized, not too grand and not too small— failed and flawed, also good and glorious
-a time to know we are very good, not very God
-a time to scrape the barnacles from our souls, hearts, minds, and bodies; to forgive and begin again the movement with Jesus toward a Jerusalem of truth and trust
-a time not to avoid the Gethsemane of agony, the sorrow and pain of sin; and a time not to linger or get stuck in that Gethsemane
-a time to grieve and a time to hope in the enormous span of divine mercy alone....swift to save, slow to anger, and abundant in steadfast love.
We want to, but it’s no good for Christians to ignore sin even though the word is out of favor and mostly misunderstood.
I remember when years ago I was asked to offer a class, optional of course, for high schoolers. The young people were interested in religion and God, but not the bad judging kind. The biggest question they had was : HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SIN?
I told them the simplest thing I could think of: YOU FEEL IT.
This led to a lively discussion centering on conscience as a gift from God to help us move along, not towards moralism but to spiritual wholeness. An inner guide to help us connect with goodness in ourselves, God, and our neighbors whenever we forgot it.
All of them good? Yup—even those you hate, the bullies and the nerds, the popular stuck-up ones, etc. etc. High school culture can be a cruel petri dish for vulnerability and growth.
The students and I had the most fun laughing about how you could break a big fat rule and know it wasn’t sin because you didn’t feel bad about yourself—like breaking a rule for the sake of helping someone you really cared about. One young man skipped Mass to help a friend with some homework AND didn't confess. Sinner?
Or...sometimes you could feel sinful and guilty when you didn’t sin at all. One teen concluded she apologized too much for nothing. "It’s like I feel like I AM sin but I’m not!” she said. Many identified.
On Ash Wednesday we Christians smear ashes on our foreheads to remind us of our vulnerability to all kinds of sin, real or imagined. We say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Not morbid, simply true.
Lent is a time to be aware of sin AND a time not to get mired in it.
-a time to remember who we are in Christ, both human and divine
-a time to be humble—right-sized, not too grand and not too small— failed and flawed, also good and glorious
-a time to know we are very good, not very God
-a time to scrape the barnacles from our souls, hearts, minds, and bodies; to forgive and begin again the movement with Jesus toward a Jerusalem of truth and trust
-a time not to avoid the Gethsemane of agony, the sorrow and pain of sin; and a time not to linger or get stuck in that Gethsemane
-a time to grieve and a time to hope in the enormous span of divine mercy alone....swift to save, slow to anger, and abundant in steadfast love.
We want to, but it’s no good for Christians to ignore sin even though the word is out of favor and mostly misunderstood.
I remember when years ago I was asked to offer a class, optional of course, for high schoolers. The young people were interested in religion and God, but not the bad judging kind. The biggest question they had was : HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SIN?
I told them the simplest thing I could think of: YOU FEEL IT.
This led to a lively discussion centering on conscience as a gift from God to help us move along, not towards moralism but to spiritual wholeness. An inner guide to help us connect with goodness in ourselves, God, and our neighbors whenever we forgot it.
All of them good? Yup—even those you hate, the bullies and the nerds, the popular stuck-up ones, etc. etc. High school culture can be a cruel petri dish for vulnerability and growth.
The students and I had the most fun laughing about how you could break a big fat rule and know it wasn’t sin because you didn’t feel bad about yourself—like breaking a rule for the sake of helping someone you really cared about. One young man skipped Mass to help a friend with some homework AND didn't confess. Sinner?
Or...sometimes you could feel sinful and guilty when you didn’t sin at all. One teen concluded she apologized too much for nothing. "It’s like I feel like I AM sin but I’m not!” she said. Many identified.
On Ash Wednesday we Christians smear ashes on our foreheads to remind us of our vulnerability to all kinds of sin, real or imagined. We say, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Not morbid, simply true.
Lent is a time to be aware of sin AND a time not to get mired in it.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
2012.02.19 The Feminine Mystique Turning 50
It would have been easier for me to get ordained in the Episcopal Church back in the late 70s when I started naively out on that track—an aisle that turned into a maze—if I’d been a man, not been the mother to four children, timed my calling so it didn’t collide with my wild midlife awakening, and not read Betty Friedan.
I’m not bitter about the struggle or sexist attitudes in the church, and have written about the many graces that came my way including a few amazing male bishops! Also part of the maze was my own grievous chaos that daunted my patriarchal uptight church. It daunted me, too!
Bette Friedan, a Jewish woman and a graduate of my alma mater Smith College, was not on anyone’s list of required reading for those feeling called to ordination to the priesthood. Nevertheless she found her way into my restless heart right alongside God, and the two cooperated within me to move me along against seemingly impossible odds.
Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique" published in 1963 when my first child a daughter was born, begins: "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?'"
That question would end up sparking a second wave of feminism in the United States, would permanently transform the American social fabric, and the book would come to be seen as a pioneering moment in American history and one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.
Betty’s silent question hit me with arrow depth. So did the silent question God-in-me asked one day in the midst of whatever number batch of chocolate chip cookies I was making in my own suburban kitchen: Why are you doing this?
The two questions precipitated a quest toward a vocation I’d longed for and lingered around since childhood. It took me a record 11 years (usually 4), two bishops (usually 1,) and the kind of “patience” the biblical Job gets credit for but never had to get ordained.
I have no regrets. Adversity strengthened my resolve and my vocation. And I continue to squawk, occasionally too loudly,about gender justice and call myself a Christian feminist. (My dear 1963-born daughter gets lovingly impatient with me.)
However I do wonder if today women feel Friedan’s vague “sense of dissatisfaction” as they continue to struggle to balance careers and child-rearing in a still patriarchally ordered church and society. Or are too many of us too affluent, or maybe too guilty, in this country to feel the “strange stirring” toward empowerment and equivalence?
I’m not bitter about the struggle or sexist attitudes in the church, and have written about the many graces that came my way including a few amazing male bishops! Also part of the maze was my own grievous chaos that daunted my patriarchal uptight church. It daunted me, too!
Bette Friedan, a Jewish woman and a graduate of my alma mater Smith College, was not on anyone’s list of required reading for those feeling called to ordination to the priesthood. Nevertheless she found her way into my restless heart right alongside God, and the two cooperated within me to move me along against seemingly impossible odds.
Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique" published in 1963 when my first child a daughter was born, begins: "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?'"
That question would end up sparking a second wave of feminism in the United States, would permanently transform the American social fabric, and the book would come to be seen as a pioneering moment in American history and one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century.
Betty’s silent question hit me with arrow depth. So did the silent question God-in-me asked one day in the midst of whatever number batch of chocolate chip cookies I was making in my own suburban kitchen: Why are you doing this?
The two questions precipitated a quest toward a vocation I’d longed for and lingered around since childhood. It took me a record 11 years (usually 4), two bishops (usually 1,) and the kind of “patience” the biblical Job gets credit for but never had to get ordained.
I have no regrets. Adversity strengthened my resolve and my vocation. And I continue to squawk, occasionally too loudly,about gender justice and call myself a Christian feminist. (My dear 1963-born daughter gets lovingly impatient with me.)
However I do wonder if today women feel Friedan’s vague “sense of dissatisfaction” as they continue to struggle to balance careers and child-rearing in a still patriarchally ordered church and society. Or are too many of us too affluent, or maybe too guilty, in this country to feel the “strange stirring” toward empowerment and equivalence?
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