2013.10.13 Hope Speaks Softly (But It Does Speak)

Is it possible that Empathy is the quality of being human and divine at once, and that empathy will save the world?

Look left to see an image created by artist Johnny Carrera. The image is entitled "Empathic Resonance" and is clustered with other images penned onto sailcloth which hangs as if strung on a mast.

The lovely title of Carrera's whole exhibit is "Hope Speaks Softly (But It Does Speak). Hope is my favorite spiritual gift. Hope is neither naive nor wishful. Hope is clear-hearted and mindful partaking of the divine. 

Carrera's artwork was on display at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (the Mass MoCA) in North Adams, Mass.—a field trip not to miss.  

I was drawn to this little porcupine holding onto a string at the end of which hovers one lone star,  covered with what looks a great many of the porcupine's quills. I stood and stared at this image for some time and called my husband over to see it. He was less fascinated than I was, but that's the way the Spirit often works. We don't all get touched by the same things at the same time—except sometimes.

Gazing at the empathic porcupine I thought about the time when Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was being screened at congressional hearings before her appointment as an Associate Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2009.  Controversy arose and critique because Sotomayor identified empathy  as one of the qualities that makes a good judge. Why fear empathy? Maybe too soft, too womanish?  

Me being me, I thought of the New Testament's reporting of Jesus' famed Sermon on the Mount with its radical teachings, such as "if anyone takes away your coat give him your shirt also." But then Jesus ends with: "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." (Luke 6:31)

This empathic porcupine still had some quills left for protection. He or she did not send ALL the quills to the naked star above, just enough to show he understood what it might feel like to be alone and undressed. The image of course could mean many things but that is what it said to me.

Perhaps God doesn't demand or command regular radical martyrdom but that you do in fact what you would have someone do for you? Give me some of your quills, some shelter, some money, some food, some of what you have until I can get on my feet, and if I can't, keep on sharing your quills and get other quilled critters to share theirs. Thank you.

Such decisions, I know aren't easy and require empathic resonance. 

Yet, how else does Hope speak?

2013.10.09 Why Words Matter

Sticks and stone can break your bones, but words can break your heart. 

Last week I went to a daylong conference called Why Words Matter:Expansive Language and Liturgical Leadership. The day was jointly sponsored by Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), Sacred Threads (Regis College), and the Massachusetts Council of Churches (MCC) and attended by some 50-60 people, which was not a bad attendance for a beautiful autumn Friday in October. 

The Rev. Laura Everett, Executive Director of MCC opened the day telling a bit of her story of coming into Christianity. “I'd accepted a savior I somehow couldn’t be,” she said. Everett recognized the efforts made with inclusive language in the mid-70s. (Yes! I remember those efforts well.) She said that there were no women heads of churches, non-liturgical denominations she must have meant, because the Episcopal Church has women bishops and a woman Presiding Bishop. It’s worth noting  that on October 5, 2013, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America installed its first woman Presiding Bishop.

Nevertheless, Everett noted, liturgical language, the language of worship, still divides the Church. I’d say it’s time to look at the language issues again and was grateful for the re-start of this conversation.

The Rev. Dr. Stephen Burns, a presbyter of the Church of England who teaches worship at EDS, cited two dynamics at work in this renewed conversation. “It’s a different conversation from former conversations.”
CONTEXT. Expansive language means that our language system is ever expanding, an emergent design, you might say. It advocates that we must be aware of the worship context of liturgical space,  styles of worship, and practices. In other words, just changing language without awareness of the culture of a worshiping community could be too superficial and a naive strategy at best, a manipulation at worst.  
JUSTICE.  Consider the “other” when we use language to dismantle oppression. For example. how do we speak about our hierarchies? Erasing patriarchal language ought not to erase the history in which we are embedded. Burns said he eliminated all exclusive language, like addressing God as Father in his personal prayer life. “But then I had a son, and I was a father.”  Nothing can ever be either/or, I guess.

“Our prayer will carry us,” Burns said. 

There is no question that the whole issue is emotionally charged, and pastoral sensitivity is required.  Thoughts and ideas:  One hymnal provides both normative texts and new ones. Options are offered. Being uncomfortable is not the same as being unsafe. Traditional language also has the power to transform oppression and attendant feelings.  Think immigrants on a foreign soil. Think Israel in exile in Babylon.

An Episcopal lay woman, on the ECW executive committee, shared how “unsettled” she felt when she went to her granddaughter’s wedding recently in a yoga studio (context) and the celebrant presided at a Eucharist that had two settings/servings, one of bread and wine in honor of Christ, and another of honey and milk to honor Sophia. “I felt slapped up side the head,” she said and added that her shock motivated her to come to this day.  “Who is Sophia?”  This courageous woman was shocked and de-centered, yet willing to learn. Brava!

Inez Torres Davis, ELCA, commented that when speaking to the privileged one needed to include them with their pain and questions about tradition, heritage, and identity. “We are saying there might be another way, and everyone must be welcomed into the conversation. The purpose of the Divine after all, is healing.”

It is clear there is much more to do together.  The National Council of Churches Justice for Women Working Group has a “Words Matter” site (http://wordsmatter.org)

I was grateful for this day and all the participants. My small group at table #10 had a good time and some chance to talk about Sophia, Spirit of Wisdom, as well as our own practices and feelings. I went away well fed and eager to keep going, also wondering why no one mentioned the darn English pronouns —except me of course:0)

I leave you with a story to treasure. A Lutheran woman told the plenary group that when she was a child she’d wondered about the road to heaven being a “narrow gate” as Jesus said. She’d concluded: “Well, maybe God was very big so the gate just seemed very narrow to God.”

And a little child will lead them. Now who said that?

To come back round to my broken heart, strong language for the way I feel often whenever I hear masculinizing words for God, for Divinity:  broken heart language is strong because I have said and heard such words over many years, and as a priest, I often have to say them to be sensitive to my community context. I omit pronouns when I can and dodge the He-Christ by saying Christ instead of He.  Thus, my joy that the conversation about expansive language is being re-invigorated. It's kairos time.

You see, God met me under a table when I was a small child and I gleaned from that Presence, not only that God mattered but that I matter. Hence words matter, too!

2013.10.06 Rosary Prayers

“There are not enough rosaries to cope with living with you,”  So said my beloved spouse in a moment.

“I’ll buy you a new rosary,” I said and then broke down into such a fit of laughter I couldn’t control myself, which caused mister exasperated to break up too.

And so ended the spat, whatever it was about anyway. Splotch anything with clear laughter and it will turn to glory.

Rosaries are in fact very helpful coping tools with added spiritual benefits. Anglicans use rosaries as well as Catholics. They’re not just for old women to mutter and mumble with; they are a way to calm your self, to center and to refocus the cluster of worries that plague your mind.

The Episcopal prayer book has collections of prayers called Collects, one for every occasion. They’re like rosaries you say over and over. One favorite I pray daily and wherever is:  Most loving God, whose hope is that we give thanks in all things, fear nothing but the loss of you, cast all our cares on you who care for us; Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties that no clouds of this mortal life will hide from us the light of the love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you in unity with the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.   (Italics indicate my poetic licentiousness ie. God was Father, hope was will, in was for, and in unity with was and.)

When I went for my first MRI,  I prayed this Collect over and over to redirect any anxieties and not let a big old noisy machine hide from me the light of the love which is immortal.   

Hell, if they’d let me I’d have taken a beaded rosary in with me, but it might mess up my radiological pictures. Besides, rosaries don’t photograph well.

  

2013.10.02 Thy Will Be Done, According to Whom?

Monday evening we saw a film at Episcopal Divinity School. The film is the project of producer/director, Alice Bouvrie and entitled "Thy Will Be Done: A Transsexual Woman’s Journey Through Faith and Family" starring Sàra Herwig along with her mother, her ex-wife, her spouse, her daughter, and her pastor the Rev. Jean Southard. 

The film is a poignant, prophetic and tender witness to the kind of transformation that can happen when a 21st century “david” challenges any contemporary cultural or institutional “goliath.”  No one is left untouched; no one is left unharmed; no one is ever the same. A scene from the video: Sàra and a friend.

My husband and I went because we are both passionate about the ultimate value of spiritual diversity and the wholeness of all religion, particularly Christianity, in spite of itself.

Herwig opens the film with a statement of respect for those who kept her from ordination. "They believe their interpretations of scripture and their understanding of Christian faith is true." The rest of the story is the “but........”

What came through most strongly to me was the amazing grace of the supporting cast:
     Sàra’s mother whose painful perplexity and guilt were reinforced by the men in the family. Mom's love for her child superceded all abuses and all confusions.
     Sàra’s  first wife who married her when she was a man and imagined she could “love” him out of his depression and his compulsion to cross dress. She is now able to say that Sàra is “better” than Steve was, empowered and happier, the “black cloud” gone.
     Sàra’s daughter whose entire perception of reality was “flipped on its head”  when suddenly she had “no Dad.” With help she came to know that her “dad” was the same person s/he always was even if walking into the same public restroom together was “really strange.”
    Sàra’s pastor, the Rev. Jean Southard of First Presbyterian Church in Waltham, MA., whose husband is a cross dresser and an “out” professor at MIT, continued to support Sàra’s sense of vocation to full-time ministry and officiated at her marriage against traditional church protocol. Why? “The Church was not being Christian to her,” Jean said.  Simply so! Charges were brought against Jean Southard but, with legal help and three years of trials, she was acquitted, on a technicality no less: the Presbytery had not yet legally declared the prohibition against same sex marriage for ordained people at the time of the marriage of Sàra and Jen which Jean blessed. Sàra was a candidate for ordained ministry in the Presbyterian church at the time of her marriage.

Massachusetts really messed up lots of stuff!  I'm proud to live here.    

PCUSA (the Presbyterian in the USA)  still does not allow anyone in a same-sex relationship to be ordained, but they are asking for more education on the matter.

Rev. Southard is patient. “Also I’m retired now,”she said with a smile. She holds all institutions loosely and understands that they are made up of human goodness as well as human limitations. Without the church, she noted, who would guard and pass on the treasures of religious traditions?

The film's supporting cast took nothing away from the courage and witness of the main character,  Sàra herself, who traversed the muddy waters of profound personal and institutional change and never gave up on herself or on God.  All these women seemed to me like the women at the foot of Jesus’ cross or those who brought the biblical David along.  They never gave up and never abandoned. They represented the unconditional divine love Sàra had found in a Christian church in eighth grade, and herself never gave up on. They were the image of God in the flesh.  

Sàra Herwig has left the Presbyterian church. She made it to candidacy with a vote of 48 to 24.  Impressive. The vote came after an unusally long, grueling screening process. Sàra prevailed in spite of prevailing attitudes (ignorance really) and comments like, "God made you a man. Pray for healing."

Sàra did pray and felt God's presence still with her. But she was not able to find a congregation that would hire her.  “You have to have a job before you're ordained. It takes guts to hire me,” she quipped, adding, “It all comes down to sex and there is so much more to a relationship.”

I'd say God sees beyond genitalia and into souls.

The UCC (United Church of Christ) has plenty of its own hoops and hurdles but Sàra hopes to realize her ordained vocation in that denomination which has "more promise" for her.  “You can only hit your head against a wall so many times before you split it open. I'm moving on but in my heart I will always be a Presbyterian.”

We keep on keeping on. I did when I was struggling through ordination process in the Episcopal church in the early '80s. And I was just a woman!!  Some days I would question my sanity. I lobby for change and wait. Tempted to leave but I don't.

Sàra and her friends are hanging in too. We sigh and pray and wait. The Church is not useless. It just lumbers and slouches under its own weight until finally it opens up with a giant sigh of relief—then moves along.  



 

2013.09.29 Who IS She?

Last evening around the dinner table over a delicious meal, which is where most good, and bad, things in life actually happen, a conversation ensued about who or what is the Holy Spirit?

We gathered as five Episcopal priests and three Episcopal laypeople  a like-minded and well-spirited group. I don't remember which impish one of us brought up the HS but it was funny because I'd just read a blog on the site of The Companions of Mary the Apostle asking the same question.

The authors' research showed that the Holy Spirit was always pictured with wings. Why? Was she meant to be an angel? The other two divinities, Father and Son, of the Christian Trinity are never winged and have never been identified as female. Why the wings?

They wondered if the wings were meant to keep the HS, traditionally identified as Sophia, Wisdom of God, in line.  Angels have wings. Angels are messengers of God, but angels are NOT God.  According to the biblical wisdom in the book of Proverbs, this divine Wisdom was God's first act of creation, first, but NOT God. Hmmm.

Even Wikipedia or Google-god had no answers.

Why this Spirit-interest now?  Maybe because change is so speedy and unmanageable we long for something withOUT wings! 

Our dinner group waxed on with theological eloquence, poetic beauty, and bits of earthy humor.  We agreed on two counts: 1) We don't know whereof we speak, and 2)Theology is always catch-up ball. 

Myself, I wonder if "Person 3" of the Trinity, no rank order implied of course, has been traditionally pictured with wings because She is the most fleet and can go anywhere and get everywhere fast, in order to plant seeds of grace where they are most needed and with the greatest efficiency—leaving the stay-at-home "men" to mind the house. :0) 

2013.09.22 Pop Pope Brings Hope

Well, I’ve never been much for Beyoncé but I do chuckle at the pop-star stats Pope Francis I is piling up— more than Ms. "Gorgeous" sex symbol herself.

Some people retain their holy right or rite of caution, if not cynicism, but most are enjoying the fresh air of hope brought by the new pope. Hope is believing there is a future. Hope to me is the most valuable spiritual gift there is. It changes the world. You can't give it to yourself but you can embrace it when it comes your way and say: I live you for today.

To have a sane public religious voice that is not banging away with atheistic fervor, or braying about his or her own version of God, or being anti-religious for its own sake in a secular culture it precious—and bodes hope. 

We all know that organized religions has fallen head over heels in love with itself, so much so that at times it has been seditiously narcissistic, cruel, and deaf.  And  we know that there is nothing more lethal to the human soul than a huge institution with too much power under its almighty skirts. Poof! You could disappear.

Not one thing, not even an institution, is beyond transformation, however and however.  

Mama Catholic Church is emerging from her closet of tyranny and shame and dragging all religions with her. The Pope is a principle symbol of this great emergence. It's time to retell the world the basics again: the good news that God loves ALL living things, and that the grace of God and the good will of humanity working together are able to turn around, even a behemoth, or an ant, or a waif, or a wild consumptive weed, or a Scrooge-like Wall St. billionaire, with a belly protrusive and obtrusive, or a beautiful young woman who thinks she's ugly.  

There's much rich spirituality, wit, integrity and theological heft in the Pope’s interview with La Civilita Cattolica, the journal of the Society of Jesus in Rome and translated for America the Jesuit magazine here. It exudes hope and mercy. Link: http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview

Here are some facts that make me believe that something new is happening and bevel any tendency to skepticism I have in me...............
    -The Pope granted this interview and was transparent about every topic imagineable
    -The Cardinals, the hierarchy of power, elected him.
    -He is the spiritual leader of the largest religion in the world.
    -The media is paying attention, for once not to point out hypocrisy but to laud integrity.
    -He is very informed and enthusiastic about the spiritual power of the Arts, Creativity.
    -He identifies himself as a sinner and will not be talked out of that self-identification.
    -He says he used to be too authoritarian and swift to make decisions but now he is open: “A big heart open to God” the interview is entitled.  
    -He wants  the Church to be a big tent not a little cozy elitist chapel, like an ingrown toenail (my metaphor hot his).

     -“We must investigate further the role of women in the church.”
     -He says he has never been a “goody-goody” and never a right-winger.
     -This pope wants to think WITH the church.
     -He loved his grandmother whose prayers formed him.
    - He lives in humble quarters in order to be near the people. "I can't live away from people." The traditional papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace has too small an entrance “like an inverted funnel,” he said.

The Second Vatican Council seems resurrected in this Pope’s words. Some people are upset that he does not declare any big doctrinal changes or focus on issues about which there is argument (abortion, women’s ordination, open communion, gay marriage) My issues!

Francis is right to say that the church has become “obsessed”with such arguments and forgotten that it raison d'etre is to “seek and find” God in all things. We’re out of balance, he said. 

I did not feel reprimanded, just reminded.  No, it’s not doctrinal but that’s the point isn’t it?

And of course I loved this papal statement: we are not to “tame” problems but live on the border and be “audacious.” (A small permission to hang onto my own cheeky little voice.

HOPE ON!!

2013.09.18 Biblical Headlines?

Sometimes, just to help me avoid over-seriousness or grim piety, I poke fun at my religion. I try to imagine what a headline for some biblical story or teaching might be like using today’s jargon. 

In ancient times there were no newspapers, headlines, reporters, journalists or features.  The news traveled orally by word of mouth. And boy did it travel fast!  Even today news gets around like lightning via i-phones, texts, emails and old fashioned land lines!

Extra! Extra! Hear all about it................

Rabbinical type in Galilee stirs up crowds with ethical sermons. Desperate, authorities debate use of drones. 

Moses sees a bush on fire. Local FD unable to extinguish, affirms it’s eternal flame.

Betrothed virgin (name withheld) found pregnant. Paternity suit fails in juvenile court.  Identified Father did not appear in court. Charged with contempt. Virgin sent away to her cousin’s.

King David betrayed by son Absalom. King does not press charges, writes more psalms instead.

New Jewish sect claims Risen Lord. Evidence suggests the claim might be true despite lack of factual evidence.  Resurrection news reported by women called idle gossip—discredited due to sexism!

God diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. Only known cure is a new doctrine called Trinity.

Early Christians proclaim Good News: God is Love strong enough to conquer death. Most  ignore. A few disbelieve for joy.  Some call for persecution.  Still others plant a Church.

Tiny parish in Philippi  under archiepiscopal scrutiny for possible Christological heresy: Jesus could be = to God?

Grammar police arrest St. Paul for overuse of the semicolon. Judge reduces length of sentence.

It’s all myth, mirth, and miracle rolled into one big fat religio-spiritual Mystery! Laugh and love in the name of all that is Holy.