In 1831 Catherine McAuley, Mary Ann Doyle and Mary Elizabeth Harley professed their vows as Sisters of Mercy. It has been 181 years since the Order’s official founding and I’ve been a Mercy Associate for 20 years. I’m not Roman Catholic; I’m Anglocatholic. We all count who serve with their gifts.
Catherine never isolated or insulated herself or her community from the miseries of Dublin’s poverty. She felt the Spirit of Godde-Goodness was calling her to serve, especially the poor and the broken. She would be, as would the other women who joined her, a steward of the gifts God gave her of compassion, organized effort, and leadership.
Her leadership style was one that balanced freedom with authority. The order, like most women’s religious orders, is based on, and held together by charism—spiritual gifts. Charism is a different kind of glue than the glue of obedience that binds us in institutional loyalty based on doctrine and dogma.
Theologian Roger Haight said, “Spiritual nourishment is of higher value than institutional loyalty. If you’re not fed, leave and go where you are nourished.”
For all these years, the tradition of Mercy has carried on its mercy ministries in many healing ways: education, health, spiritual guidance, and works of mercy for justice and peace. Think nuns on the bus.
Judy Collins wrote a song dedicated to the Mercies who saved her life and freed her to use her own charism in song.
“Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can’t go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who’ve been traveling so long.”
Catherine McAuley hasn’t yet made it to sainthood. Godde knows why. Maybe no direct miracles attributed to her. Now I ask you!
Today is 12/12/12. It won’t come round to an even dozen like that
again for 100 years. Let’s hope it won’t take that long for us all to have mercy for real, and for Catherine to get beatified.
Hooray for foundations—garments as well as loving acts, both quite merciful.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Sunday, December 9, 2012
2012.12.09 Breathtaking/Breathgiving
Some things take your breath away. Could be death, danger—or awe.
One such "thing" is Jesus of Nazareth, a man who lived and taught the God of love so fiercely, with such boundless compassion, that they called him the Christ, a word whose root meaning is salve, a healing ointment. Think salvation.
The other is oxygen.
At a recent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY, I talked with two brothers, both on oxygen. One of them I'd known about and one of them was newly encumbered. I felt sad for them, and scared for me. I have lung disease and dread one day having to drag around a tank and have tubes to force oxygen into and through my nose so I can breath. I'd been told things like: Avoid oxygen as long as you can. Resist it. Don't do it till the doctor threatens death.
But these brothers gave me hope. Oxygen, they told me, rather than a death sentence oxygen meant new life. Oxygen was a beginning, not an end— metaphorically, a manger not a cross. Travel was possible, eating obviously was, as well as good humor, garrulousness, and a spritely step.
The way these monks spoke of their disability and their oxygen would've sounded counter-intuitive, or at least nuts, if it weren't so authentic— joyful not doleful. They weren't playing a pious role.
The click-clicking of the oxygen machines in the silence of chapel prayer suddenly sounded to me like applause.
********
I've prayed for years to the tune of a hymn, Breathe On Me Breath Of God. I use my own text and prayed in hope, with fear in my heart. Now I can pray it in hope, with hope in my heart.
Breathe in me, breath of God,
healing my lungs disease,
so that I may in purist love
breathe in and breathe out with thee.
Breathe in me, breath of God,
for when my life is done
and my sweet lungs lose all their power,
my last breath and yours are one.
One such "thing" is Jesus of Nazareth, a man who lived and taught the God of love so fiercely, with such boundless compassion, that they called him the Christ, a word whose root meaning is salve, a healing ointment. Think salvation.
The other is oxygen.
At a recent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY, I talked with two brothers, both on oxygen. One of them I'd known about and one of them was newly encumbered. I felt sad for them, and scared for me. I have lung disease and dread one day having to drag around a tank and have tubes to force oxygen into and through my nose so I can breath. I'd been told things like: Avoid oxygen as long as you can. Resist it. Don't do it till the doctor threatens death.
But these brothers gave me hope. Oxygen, they told me, rather than a death sentence oxygen meant new life. Oxygen was a beginning, not an end— metaphorically, a manger not a cross. Travel was possible, eating obviously was, as well as good humor, garrulousness, and a spritely step.
The way these monks spoke of their disability and their oxygen would've sounded counter-intuitive, or at least nuts, if it weren't so authentic— joyful not doleful. They weren't playing a pious role.
The click-clicking of the oxygen machines in the silence of chapel prayer suddenly sounded to me like applause.
********
I've prayed for years to the tune of a hymn, Breathe On Me Breath Of God. I use my own text and prayed in hope, with fear in my heart. Now I can pray it in hope, with hope in my heart.
Breathe in me, breath of God,
healing my lungs disease,
so that I may in purist love
breathe in and breathe out with thee.
Breathe in me, breath of God,
for when my life is done
and my sweet lungs lose all their power,
my last breath and yours are one.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
2012.12.05 Tabernacle
Formidable
dull, brass immensity
immeasurably plain
intrusion
House where the blessed flesh
and sacred blood—containers thereof—are
secure against invaders, the hungry of soul
locked
It stands on the threshold of a hitch in time
the present immense
it doesn’t know it is about to
change
from a cold monstrosity—invention
of exclusionary politics— to a
pulsing throbbing quivering sacred heart
unlocked
Are there, or were there, locked hearts in your life? Enclosures of trapped love? You have a key, don’t you?
dull, brass immensity
immeasurably plain
intrusion
House where the blessed flesh
and sacred blood—containers thereof—are
secure against invaders, the hungry of soul
locked
It stands on the threshold of a hitch in time
the present immense
it doesn’t know it is about to
change
from a cold monstrosity—invention
of exclusionary politics— to a
pulsing throbbing quivering sacred heart
unlocked
Are there, or were there, locked hearts in your life? Enclosures of trapped love? You have a key, don’t you?
Sunday, December 2, 2012
2012.12.02 Advent Invitation
I’ve followed many a shiny
star
into many a stinking stable
to find it
empty
Leaving, I look back—
Wait!
A streak of light
on a strand of straw
bids me stop,
look,
listen.
LGB 2012
star
into many a stinking stable
to find it
empty
Leaving, I look back—
Wait!
A streak of light
on a strand of straw
bids me stop,
look,
listen.
LGB 2012
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
2012.11.28 Who Wears Prada?
I just saw on alternet a great photo and small story about a bunch of men parading along an avenue in Toronto in stiletto high heels. Yeah for men in Canada!
This is experiential solidarity with women in a clear physical sense. These men grimaced occasionally, but they are demonstrating while they teeter along. They are men against violence against women.
They are part of a movement called the United Gender Movement.
Native American wisdom counsels that if you want to know someone or find cooperative ways to make peace, you have to walk a mile in another person's moccasins.
Maybe two blocks or so in Prada shoes—the devil's footwear to be sure, aka women's fashion designed by men, or nasty dominatrices—is a beginning.
(I saw some Prada heels on line for $1495.00. Yes, I did.) Think how much money we'd have to put towards those "entitlements"—or are they gift/bribes? Neither. They are benefits people and businesses bought and paid forward for. Godde helps those who need it.
My take:
1) United Gender is the only way to act to help Spirit create peace and justice.
2) Women really ought to think about joining in this effort, doing their part by REFUSING to wear such footwear (if you can even call it that) .........unless of course we see this steel stiletto as a potential weapon of defense.
NOTHING WILL HEAL (not heel) GENDER INEQUITY UNTIL WOMEN AND MEN CHANGE IT TOGETHER!
Amen.
This is experiential solidarity with women in a clear physical sense. These men grimaced occasionally, but they are demonstrating while they teeter along. They are men against violence against women.
They are part of a movement called the United Gender Movement.
Native American wisdom counsels that if you want to know someone or find cooperative ways to make peace, you have to walk a mile in another person's moccasins.
Maybe two blocks or so in Prada shoes—the devil's footwear to be sure, aka women's fashion designed by men, or nasty dominatrices—is a beginning.
(I saw some Prada heels on line for $1495.00. Yes, I did.) Think how much money we'd have to put towards those "entitlements"—or are they gift/bribes? Neither. They are benefits people and businesses bought and paid forward for. Godde helps those who need it.
My take:
1) United Gender is the only way to act to help Spirit create peace and justice.
2) Women really ought to think about joining in this effort, doing their part by REFUSING to wear such footwear (if you can even call it that) .........unless of course we see this steel stiletto as a potential weapon of defense.
NOTHING WILL HEAL (not heel) GENDER INEQUITY UNTIL WOMEN AND MEN CHANGE IT TOGETHER!
Amen.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
2012.11.25 All Things Holy
What seems holy right now is the truce in Israel/Palestine. Having just been there, I apprehend the land itself and can feel its concrete meaning—more than in a distant hymn or a prayer. The poster above hangs at St. George’s College on the site of St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in East Jerusalem. It sums up Divine holiness for me.
We celebrated our 26th wedding anniversary on Friday. We know we’re OK because we still love and spat with regular verve. It’s what keeps us together. Dick gave me a hilarious card with two love-bears on the front making eyes at each other. "You know, the secret to a happy marriage is how often you say those three little words…” You open it and see the two romantics whisking out the door with the caption "LET'S EAT OUT!" We did, delighting in good food, good conversation—Holy Healing Meal.
I'm hobbling on a broken foot bone, using a cane, and wearing a romantic and ugly gray air-cast boot. (Tripped on the sidewalk coming home from yoga, of all things.) No drive and no walk makes me grateful for a very active and loving husband—Holy Matrimony.
My card for Dick pictures a cute little monkey :"If we were monkeys, I'd pick the bugs off your fur." Open it: "And if we were bugs, I'd help you hide."— Holy Humor.
Poem by Ursula LeGuin, “Every Land”—Holy Writ.
The holy land is everywhere.—Black Elk.
Watch where the branches of the willows bend
See where the waters of the rivers tend
Graves in the rock, cradles in the sand
Every land is the holy land.
Here was the battle to the bitter end
Here's where the enemy killed the friend
Blood on the rock, tears on the sand
Every land is the holy land.
Willow by the water bending in the wind
Bent till it's broken and it cannot stand
Listen to the word the messengers send
Life from the living rock, death in the sand
Every land is the holy land.
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
2012.11.21 Thanks Given for a Book
BOOK REVIEW
Religion Gone Astray. What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith
by Pastor Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon, and Imam Jamal Rahman
2011, Skylight Paths, Woodstock, Vermont, 170 pages.
“We have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep......”
When as a college student I first found and fell in love with the Episcopal Church in 1958 the congregation said this line every Sunday from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s General Confession. I called it the sheep clause and loved it because it rang true. I had run amok in so many ways, some of them by own foolishness and some by ambush. And so had everyone else!
Religion Gone Astray is a seminal book for the future of the religious enterprise, because it takes erring and straying beyond the individual and into the institutional. Religions are like sheep:each one prefers and guards most zealously its own pasture, its own group, its own images of divinity, and its own practices. Because these things are precious they are worthy of defense and feel crucial to survival—at significant cost.
The interfaith vision of this book touches on the costs of too much safety-in-the-fold devotion, precisely in the paradox that the more we defend the more we offend. While all religions and their scriptures, at God’s command, issue calls to provide for strays and aliens, most of them are so bent on caring for their own well-being they don’t find out what other religions are about. There are blinders on each sheepfold.
As I joined the Christian sheepfold I knew there was a place for me, and somewhere there was a God who cared about the whole, including the strays, the lost, the foolish, and the headstrong. As a Christian I could be lost and found. Nice!
Over time, however, I began to wonder if Jesus in the parable of the Lost Sheep returned the strays to their own comfy group, or did he simply challenge them to find God wherever they’d landed?
This book has affirmed my suspicions about the challenge underlying this cozy parable. Exploring the core belief of each major religion the authors make confession to God and each other on behalf of their religions’ sins (my word) and the challenges each faces to save the souls of each religion.
All religions put faith in a God who cares about each AND all at the same time. These authors try to be a bit more like God. They stick to their ongoing interfaith conversation, develop deep affection for each other, and deepen their own faith —without fighting for it.
The authors expose four ways in which each religion has gone astray and lost touch with God, self and neighbor:
Exclusivity: staking claim to a One and Only Truth
Violence: justifying brutality in the name of Faith
Inequality of men and women: domination politics to preserve patriarchal power
Homophobia: denying the legitimacy of homosexuality in practice and in being
Chapters explore these four religious errors. Each includes a personal reflection, a look at how institutions and scriptures have strayed into practices that keep the people of the one God apart, scholarly commentary, core teachings and healing, and particular spiritual practices from each tradition. It is readable, accessible to all, and there's no bloviation in it!
One of my favorite practices, comes from the advice of a Thai Buddhist who taught Imam Rahman to say Neti! Neti!— which means, Not this! Not this!—to keep violent thoughts at bay. (I use it to keep judgmental thoughts at bay.) Violence in religions arises when extremes are taken as the whole, dualities advanced as the one correct picture, and violence-advocating verses in scripture are preached as the whole truth about God.
Judaism’s core gift is Oneness AND Jews also hold onto choseness; Islam’s is Compassion above all, AND Muslims hold the Qur’an to be superior; and Christianity offers Unconditional Love AND claims that only One Name saves.
Go figure:)
I find these authors most honest and credible when they write about inequality between women and men in their religions. They laugh at themselves: three straight patriarchally stereotypical men offering insights about equal inclusion of women and homosexuals in their “club.” They admit that each religion has been spiritually truncated by the exclusion of women’s voices. And they sight ways in which change is happening. This book is one effort.
My only regret is that I wish these authors had done more with language about God, particularly those troublesome masculinizing pronouns that keep deity clothed in masculine language. We can no longer afford to have an exclusively male deity, even in languages like Hebrew that have gendered nouns. Our God is so much more than the biggest and best one of us. Does not Divinity deserve our strenuous effort—an interfaith jihad for gender inclusive language, yes, even pronouns?
My personal image of Godde is a Being of beings fully feminine and fully masculine. Abstract images like light or even wisdom, leave me..... not cold but lukewarm.
According to the authors of this book, “Religions go astray when they contribute more to human suffering than they do to human healing.” There will be evil, and we will do evil, but we can not BE evil.
I recommend this visionary book for individual and group study in and among any and all religions.
Religion Gone Astray. What We Found at the Heart of Interfaith
by Pastor Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon, and Imam Jamal Rahman
2011, Skylight Paths, Woodstock, Vermont, 170 pages.
“We have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep......”
When as a college student I first found and fell in love with the Episcopal Church in 1958 the congregation said this line every Sunday from the 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s General Confession. I called it the sheep clause and loved it because it rang true. I had run amok in so many ways, some of them by own foolishness and some by ambush. And so had everyone else!
Religion Gone Astray is a seminal book for the future of the religious enterprise, because it takes erring and straying beyond the individual and into the institutional. Religions are like sheep:each one prefers and guards most zealously its own pasture, its own group, its own images of divinity, and its own practices. Because these things are precious they are worthy of defense and feel crucial to survival—at significant cost.
The interfaith vision of this book touches on the costs of too much safety-in-the-fold devotion, precisely in the paradox that the more we defend the more we offend. While all religions and their scriptures, at God’s command, issue calls to provide for strays and aliens, most of them are so bent on caring for their own well-being they don’t find out what other religions are about. There are blinders on each sheepfold.
As I joined the Christian sheepfold I knew there was a place for me, and somewhere there was a God who cared about the whole, including the strays, the lost, the foolish, and the headstrong. As a Christian I could be lost and found. Nice!
Over time, however, I began to wonder if Jesus in the parable of the Lost Sheep returned the strays to their own comfy group, or did he simply challenge them to find God wherever they’d landed?
This book has affirmed my suspicions about the challenge underlying this cozy parable. Exploring the core belief of each major religion the authors make confession to God and each other on behalf of their religions’ sins (my word) and the challenges each faces to save the souls of each religion.
All religions put faith in a God who cares about each AND all at the same time. These authors try to be a bit more like God. They stick to their ongoing interfaith conversation, develop deep affection for each other, and deepen their own faith —without fighting for it.
The authors expose four ways in which each religion has gone astray and lost touch with God, self and neighbor:
Exclusivity: staking claim to a One and Only Truth
Violence: justifying brutality in the name of Faith
Inequality of men and women: domination politics to preserve patriarchal power
Homophobia: denying the legitimacy of homosexuality in practice and in being
Chapters explore these four religious errors. Each includes a personal reflection, a look at how institutions and scriptures have strayed into practices that keep the people of the one God apart, scholarly commentary, core teachings and healing, and particular spiritual practices from each tradition. It is readable, accessible to all, and there's no bloviation in it!
One of my favorite practices, comes from the advice of a Thai Buddhist who taught Imam Rahman to say Neti! Neti!— which means, Not this! Not this!—to keep violent thoughts at bay. (I use it to keep judgmental thoughts at bay.) Violence in religions arises when extremes are taken as the whole, dualities advanced as the one correct picture, and violence-advocating verses in scripture are preached as the whole truth about God.
Judaism’s core gift is Oneness AND Jews also hold onto choseness; Islam’s is Compassion above all, AND Muslims hold the Qur’an to be superior; and Christianity offers Unconditional Love AND claims that only One Name saves.
Go figure:)
I find these authors most honest and credible when they write about inequality between women and men in their religions. They laugh at themselves: three straight patriarchally stereotypical men offering insights about equal inclusion of women and homosexuals in their “club.” They admit that each religion has been spiritually truncated by the exclusion of women’s voices. And they sight ways in which change is happening. This book is one effort.
My only regret is that I wish these authors had done more with language about God, particularly those troublesome masculinizing pronouns that keep deity clothed in masculine language. We can no longer afford to have an exclusively male deity, even in languages like Hebrew that have gendered nouns. Our God is so much more than the biggest and best one of us. Does not Divinity deserve our strenuous effort—an interfaith jihad for gender inclusive language, yes, even pronouns?
My personal image of Godde is a Being of beings fully feminine and fully masculine. Abstract images like light or even wisdom, leave me..... not cold but lukewarm.
According to the authors of this book, “Religions go astray when they contribute more to human suffering than they do to human healing.” There will be evil, and we will do evil, but we can not BE evil.
I recommend this visionary book for individual and group study in and among any and all religions.
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