Today's school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut (a small community right next door to where one of our children teaches and some of our grandchildren attend school) means that 20 TWENTY! young children are dead, and 6 adults. The children were babies, kindergartners. It's a massacre of holy innocents. I write through blurry tear-filled eyes.
My Godde!
More information will flesh out motives and patterns and all that BUT for now....... so what! All we can do is sob.
I want to know where the HELL our Congress is? Why the HELL wasn't the ban on assault weapons reinstated? Why the HELL is it legal in 33 of our states to purchase deadly assault weapons of mass destruction with NO license or identification? How the HELL can we justify a whole war in the Middle East over the possibility of concealed weapons of mass destruction, when we can't even keep them out of our schools and away from our babies? In short, what the HELL is wrong with us? What the HELL is wrong with this country with its grandiose vision for peace-keeping?
People want to blame God at times like this. "Where was God when this happened?" they whine.
I ask: Where the HELL was humanity?
I'm grateful our President had the nerve to invoke God, prayer and scripture. God is "close to the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds" according to Psalm 147. That's where the HELL Godde is.
People today blat on about being secular humanists. Well, OK, then let's get going and humanize the HELL out of ourselves.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
2012.12.12 Mercy, Mercy, Mercy Me
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.
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.
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.
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