Slowly, yet deliberately,
I touch the painful place.
I don’t know why;
I just need to.
Is there a strange kind of comfort in acknowledging the
pain?
The wound?
Strangely, the rollercoaster slows.
I hear the words,
“Pay attention. This is your life. This is Sacred.”
Mary Ann Bigelow, Spiritual Director, first published in Presence International Journal for Spiritual Direction
When I was twelve I perched on the lip edge of hormonal torrents, geographic moves, the feeling memory of a childhood wound, and the intense awareness of cruelty to others who are in some way different and tormented for it, and by it. I opened my whole self wide to the wound of whiteness, femaleness, and shame. I call this cascade my “racism” wound. I call this holy.
Scene V. Carol Lee
Carol Lee was my best friend in Westhampton, L.I. where, before the Connecticut move, we summered to get away from big-city heat. We had been spending summers at a farm in upstate New York, where I had my own pony, but my parents, I’m assuming, were climbing, so we switched to THE Hamptons—another move for which I would hate them. I was afraid more than anything of being a snob. I’d heard my mother and her women friends talk with disdain about “snobs”on Park Avenue. Thank God we lived on Lexington Avenue and were not therefore snobs. I happily claimed that we were not snobs, because we were in WESThampton not EASThampton. A similar claim would make us not elitist and therefore not snobs.
But of course I didn’t figure all this out when I was twelve. I just overheard stuff and picked up the nuances of class. I wanted to be Carol Lee’s best friend as much as she wanted it. We became fast friends, and friends make everything better. So do bikes.
I didn’t think of my parents as rich, mostly because my father always, always worried about money. He worked in advertising on Madison Avenue, yes. He advertised soup while my mother advertised me and bought me clothes galore. Sometimes I overheard their arguments about my mother’s extravagance and felt guilty about my clothes—but not guilty enough to dissuade my mother. Still, I figured my parents must have been pretty rich, because in Westhampton they joined a private beach club. I fell in love with the ocean and its waves. I could swim all the way out to the floating raft which had a diving board. Once I drifted out too far and had to be rescued. I did not think I had to be rescued but the lifeguard did. It was uber-embarrassing to be rescued, yet it was a small “whew” too.
I have an August birthday. My parents were going to give me a party. Did I want it at the beach club or at home? I chose the beach club, and excitedly told Carol Lee all about it.
Life turned cruel.
There was a hitch. The beach club was only for white people. Carol Lee was black. I did not understand. The ocean didn’t care. I told my parents they should ask for an exception. They didn’t. Nor did they tell me what to do. I was just so furious. I had to choose between Carol Lee and the damn beach club. For the first time, or the most conscious time, my life choices became my fault and my responsibility. That’s the moment I became a deal-maker: I chose the beach club and demanded another party for me and Carol Lee. I got my two parties—one more populated than the other, and my best friend was hurt. So was I. We stayed friends, but it was never the same. I don’t remember how I told her. I do remember that I did not tell her about the beach club’s rules.
I was swathed in smoldering inner pain I did not understand. Carol Lee wasn’t a “servant” Nor could I blame Russia as I had with Olga or the NYC Puerto Rican influx. This was me. This was my conscience. I was learning morality—and diluting it with compromise.
There had to be a better way to do things I loved and have the friends I wanted.
Scene VI. Snowy White Land—Colorlessness
They say white is not a color or is a non-color. That makes me feel colorless, bland, like white rice—little taste or substance. I always ordered brown rice in a restaurant, but that was mostly to be different from my too-adoring mother who favored Minute Rice—all white.
My parents joined what would come to be called “white flight”—white people moving out of the city to the suburbs, Darien, Connecticut to be exact. Darien must have had the same rules as the beach club. There weren’t many colored girls in my New York private school. Of course not. It cost money. I knew that, because my father tried and failed to persuade my mother to send me and my younger sister to a public school. That suggestion, apparently, was horrifyingly “black” and not for us. The public school in Darien wasn’t very colored at all, so I puzzled about color lines as I grieved.
I grieved the city —its colorfulness. I didn’t know the word “diversity” then, but I knew I felt the absence of color.
I blended into this white-on-white culture. I guessed that whiteness alone was supposed to make me feel safe and secure. It didn’t. What did make me feel safe was finding a best friend whose skin was whiter than mine, and who had white blonde hair to match. Most importantly, she actually understood the “facts of life.” We bonded immediately.
Academics also helped, because I was smart. Meritocracy was the way of it then. Who could imagine life without grades? I loved A’s. They were my way to self-esteem. I was learning to run things with my mind—majoring in thinking. As to emotions, they were hidden but painful because now I did not fit in physically. I needed boobs, maybe a waistline—a little stature. I needed to menstruate—right away if possible.
What is the most rational thing that a young girl of thirteen—failed immigrant to suburbia, entering junior high school, lost in a sea of boys and boobs—could do? (Luckily, I have no photos of myself at this time.)
To be continued.
Sunday, June 21, 2020
Sunday, June 14, 2020
2020.06.14 My "Racism"—A Brief Anecdotal History, Part One. Hard Learnings.
I do not feel qualified to write about racism as an abstract idea outside of my own experience. So I write about racism—mine. My initial thoughts in triplicate:
I’m not racist.
I don’t think I’m racist.
Maybe I’m racist.
I have put quotes around “racism” in my title, because it took more than race to shape my “racism.”
From the dictionary first: "Although ideas of race are centuries old, it was not until the 19th century that attempts to systematize racial divisions were made. Ideas of supposed racial superiority and social Darwinism reached their culmination in Nazi ideology of the 1930s and gave pseudoscientific justification to policies and attitudes of discrimination, exploitation, slavery, and extermination. Theories of race asserting a link between racial type and intelligence are now discredited. Scientifically it is accepted as obvious that there are subdivisions of the human species, but it is also clear that genetic variation between individuals of the same race can be as great as that between members of different races." -OED
It is always easier to be reflexive, to hop onto the latest popular bandwagon of moral awareness. It is much harder to be reflective, to integrate positive and negative experience into a whole system of thoughts and feelings. I call the reflective way, spiritual intelligence—or wisdom. It always starts with experience. My reflections are still very much alive emotionally.
Scene I. Dinah and Lou
Growing up in the 1940s, I lived in a New York City apartment on the upper east side where Dinah was our laundress, and her teenage daughter Lou babysat for me. I spent time with Dinah in the basement where the laundry was. Lou and I raced around playing hide and seek while Dinah scrubbed the clothes and ironed them all—our clothes not hers. I loved Dinah and Lou and assumed easily that they were family. I worried that they lived in the basement, which was concrete and ugly. I was reassured that they had their own home on 125th Street—31 whole blocks away. When Lou babysat she took the subway home. Once my mother gave her fare. I never asked about nor noticed the color of Dinah’s and Lou’s skin. However, I never understood why I couldn’t go play at their house. I was learning to be white—sort of.
Scene II. Olga
Olga, the new student in my private girls school in New York City, was Russian. There was something a little “wrong” about being Russian, and Olga’s accent. These identifiers made her prey. Some of us fourth grade girls used to chase her down a few city blocks and and taunt her. She was a fast runner. I was a bully. I was leaning about shame and shaming.
Scene III. Fred
My dad, the fourth of six children, grew up in Morristown N.J., an affluent suburb or Manhattan. He and one older brother were the only two who moved “away from home”—all the way into the big city. I didn’t know the word heresy yet, but this was family heresy. Every Sunday there was, what I’d soon learn to call a command performance—attending THE family Sunday dinner. We gathered around the big table. After “dinner” Ma, a would-be opera singer and the matriarch, would gather “her boys” round the piano for singing. That’s when I got bored and snuck into the kitchen to talk with Fred. Fred was a funny, wonderful, and handsome black man who, when Ma stomped her foot onto a hidden button under the table, would appear like magic. “More potatoes, Fred,” she’d say, and Fred returned to the kitchen and brought forth potatoes. Fred was like a waiter in a restaurant—a live-in waiter. He lived in “the servant quarters” somewhere in the large house. I wanted to visit Fred, but the “servant quarters” were off limits. Again, I did not understand why I couldn't pop in on Fred, but I was getting the idea that Fred, like Dinah and Lou, was somehow separate. I didn’t associate that with skin color, probably because the other “servant”, Nettie, was white. I was learning about class.
Scene IV. Puerto Rican Girls
At eleven, I was old enough to walk with a friend to the RKO movie theater at 86th Street on Lexington Avenue just eight blocks from where I lived. One afternoon my friend and I were walking home from the movies and were accosted by a group of Puerto Rican girls. They yelled, screamed, grabbed our scarves, and pulled our hair. I was terrified. We broke free. I ran faster than I thought I could. My parents feared Puerto Ricans’ taking over our neighborhood. I feared them too. Soon we would move to Connecticut. I used to think that if I hadn’t told we might have stayed in the city I so loved. I was learning about ethnicity.
I never forgot that mighty and grand theater and how mighty and grand I felt being on my own.
All these learnings were rules, unspoken yet obvious to everyone—except me, a budding non-conformist. It wasn’t long before I would be deeply stung—unexpectedly thrown off kilter when at twelve I faced a draconian choice I was too young to manage. To be continued next week.
I’m not racist.
I don’t think I’m racist.
Maybe I’m racist.
I have put quotes around “racism” in my title, because it took more than race to shape my “racism.”
From the dictionary first: "Although ideas of race are centuries old, it was not until the 19th century that attempts to systematize racial divisions were made. Ideas of supposed racial superiority and social Darwinism reached their culmination in Nazi ideology of the 1930s and gave pseudoscientific justification to policies and attitudes of discrimination, exploitation, slavery, and extermination. Theories of race asserting a link between racial type and intelligence are now discredited. Scientifically it is accepted as obvious that there are subdivisions of the human species, but it is also clear that genetic variation between individuals of the same race can be as great as that between members of different races." -OED
It is always easier to be reflexive, to hop onto the latest popular bandwagon of moral awareness. It is much harder to be reflective, to integrate positive and negative experience into a whole system of thoughts and feelings. I call the reflective way, spiritual intelligence—or wisdom. It always starts with experience. My reflections are still very much alive emotionally.
Scene I. Dinah and Lou
Growing up in the 1940s, I lived in a New York City apartment on the upper east side where Dinah was our laundress, and her teenage daughter Lou babysat for me. I spent time with Dinah in the basement where the laundry was. Lou and I raced around playing hide and seek while Dinah scrubbed the clothes and ironed them all—our clothes not hers. I loved Dinah and Lou and assumed easily that they were family. I worried that they lived in the basement, which was concrete and ugly. I was reassured that they had their own home on 125th Street—31 whole blocks away. When Lou babysat she took the subway home. Once my mother gave her fare. I never asked about nor noticed the color of Dinah’s and Lou’s skin. However, I never understood why I couldn’t go play at their house. I was learning to be white—sort of.
Scene II. Olga
Olga, the new student in my private girls school in New York City, was Russian. There was something a little “wrong” about being Russian, and Olga’s accent. These identifiers made her prey. Some of us fourth grade girls used to chase her down a few city blocks and and taunt her. She was a fast runner. I was a bully. I was leaning about shame and shaming.
Scene III. Fred
My dad, the fourth of six children, grew up in Morristown N.J., an affluent suburb or Manhattan. He and one older brother were the only two who moved “away from home”—all the way into the big city. I didn’t know the word heresy yet, but this was family heresy. Every Sunday there was, what I’d soon learn to call a command performance—attending THE family Sunday dinner. We gathered around the big table. After “dinner” Ma, a would-be opera singer and the matriarch, would gather “her boys” round the piano for singing. That’s when I got bored and snuck into the kitchen to talk with Fred. Fred was a funny, wonderful, and handsome black man who, when Ma stomped her foot onto a hidden button under the table, would appear like magic. “More potatoes, Fred,” she’d say, and Fred returned to the kitchen and brought forth potatoes. Fred was like a waiter in a restaurant—a live-in waiter. He lived in “the servant quarters” somewhere in the large house. I wanted to visit Fred, but the “servant quarters” were off limits. Again, I did not understand why I couldn't pop in on Fred, but I was getting the idea that Fred, like Dinah and Lou, was somehow separate. I didn’t associate that with skin color, probably because the other “servant”, Nettie, was white. I was learning about class.
Scene IV. Puerto Rican Girls
At eleven, I was old enough to walk with a friend to the RKO movie theater at 86th Street on Lexington Avenue just eight blocks from where I lived. One afternoon my friend and I were walking home from the movies and were accosted by a group of Puerto Rican girls. They yelled, screamed, grabbed our scarves, and pulled our hair. I was terrified. We broke free. I ran faster than I thought I could. My parents feared Puerto Ricans’ taking over our neighborhood. I feared them too. Soon we would move to Connecticut. I used to think that if I hadn’t told we might have stayed in the city I so loved. I was learning about ethnicity.
I never forgot that mighty and grand theater and how mighty and grand I felt being on my own.
All these learnings were rules, unspoken yet obvious to everyone—except me, a budding non-conformist. It wasn’t long before I would be deeply stung—unexpectedly thrown off kilter when at twelve I faced a draconian choice I was too young to manage. To be continued next week.
Sunday, June 7, 2020
2020.06.07 Trinity Sunday
Today, for Christians, is Trinity Sunday. To keep it simple, Trinity means Diversity within Unity, neither compromising the other— all of it divine.
The Trinity is a vision to emulate, especially at this time in the United States of America—a time when we are struggling to be united and free of our original and ongoing sin of rank-ordering our common humanity according to skin color, sexuality, social class, ability, political leanings, mental health, or religious preferences. We are murdering each other, thanks to this sin-sick practice.
I do not need to rehearse the events in history or just last week; nor do I need once again to remind us all about the purposeful misinterpretation of the Creator’s charge to humanity to care for all creation. Dominion does not mean domination, unless rank-ordering is the ethic, a practice that destroys Oneness, Diversity and Goodness.
As a therapist and spiritual director and priest I know that deep wounds interrupt the flow of Life itself. There are many ideas out there about what America’s wounds are. Racial injustice tops the list right now. I agree, yet I think the deeper wound is that we Americans are afraid.
-afraid of ourselves
-afraid of each other
-afraid not to be great
-afraid to be great
-afraid to weep rather than shout,
-afraid even to touch our wound.
To heal our wound we—together— must touch it, hallow it, give it belonging, a voice, bless it, talk about it in conversation, pray it, make it holy. This is spiritual intelligence. This is Trinity.
P.S. Happy 86th Wedding Anniversary, Mom and Dad.
The Trinity is a vision to emulate, especially at this time in the United States of America—a time when we are struggling to be united and free of our original and ongoing sin of rank-ordering our common humanity according to skin color, sexuality, social class, ability, political leanings, mental health, or religious preferences. We are murdering each other, thanks to this sin-sick practice.
I do not need to rehearse the events in history or just last week; nor do I need once again to remind us all about the purposeful misinterpretation of the Creator’s charge to humanity to care for all creation. Dominion does not mean domination, unless rank-ordering is the ethic, a practice that destroys Oneness, Diversity and Goodness.
As a therapist and spiritual director and priest I know that deep wounds interrupt the flow of Life itself. There are many ideas out there about what America’s wounds are. Racial injustice tops the list right now. I agree, yet I think the deeper wound is that we Americans are afraid.
-afraid of ourselves
-afraid of each other
-afraid not to be great
-afraid to be great
-afraid to weep rather than shout,
-afraid even to touch our wound.
Slowly, yet deliberately,
I touch the painful place.
I don’t know why;
I just need to.
Is there a strange kind of comfort in acknowledging the
pain?
The wound?
Strangely, the rollercoaster slows.
I hear the words,
“Pay attention. This is your life. This is Sacred.”
Mary Ann Bigelow, Spiritual Director, above words first published in
Presence, International Journal of Spiritual Direction, March, 2020
I touch the painful place.
I don’t know why;
I just need to.
Is there a strange kind of comfort in acknowledging the
pain?
The wound?
Strangely, the rollercoaster slows.
I hear the words,
“Pay attention. This is your life. This is Sacred.”
Mary Ann Bigelow, Spiritual Director, above words first published in
Presence, International Journal of Spiritual Direction, March, 2020
To heal our wound we—together— must touch it, hallow it, give it belonging, a voice, bless it, talk about it in conversation, pray it, make it holy. This is spiritual intelligence. This is Trinity.
P.S. Happy 86th Wedding Anniversary, Mom and Dad.
Sunday, May 31, 2020
2020.05.31 Pentecost. Whose Birthday Is It?
Pentecost is NOT the birthday of the Christian Church as many have been taught. Pentecost is a much bigger, grander, and far-reaching bomb of a holy day.
Think Mystic Flame, Mystic Wind, Cloven Tongues. Think crowds in the hundreds, Jews gathered to celebrate the 50th day after Passover Shavuoth—liberation and plenitude. Think crowds of thousands— Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, Gentiles and Jews alike—all assembled, eager to experience Divinity. The huge guest list itself is the meaning of Pentecost in Acts—all drawn to the hearth of God's heart.
We dare not downsize this Spirit, nor confine it to certain sacraments administered by “fatherly hands.” Nor can it be claimed by any one religion or national group. It is the Spirit of deepest contact with the Divine, believers and non-believers. Pentecost is the birth of Internationalism—the spirituality of Democracy.
In 1918, theologian, Vida D. Scudder, said that Peter’s first sermon, carried a democratic message: “To you is the promise and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord God shall call . . .” The struggle between nationalists and an international ideal was very much part of the story of the early church. How big will we be? How far is our reach? Who is part of this institution and who is not?
Peter, a nationalist, was overcome by the Spirit, which gave him breadth of vision. Nevertheless, he went right on opposing Paul and insisted on circumcision as a condition until the Spirit re-programmed his institutional tapes and shook his soul alive. That’s the goal of Pentecost. Even proper Anglicans get permission to shed decorum and explode with exuberance.
Flowing from this Pentecostal Spirit are gifts. The first is Tongues. I once heard a woman speak in tongues in a parish church. To my shame, I silently condemned her as mentally ill, simply because I, sane and sensible, could not understand her language.
I was abashed to read Scudder’s interpretation of The Gift of Tongues as the Gift of Sympathy. Sympathy? Yes, feeling for the feelings of another. Tongues means to understand without language. It is the gift of knowing-by-soul, not by words. Habitually, we translate everything into our own language to validate it. I remember my thrill when I first read something in Spanish without translating it into English as I read. Tongues signifies that every stranger and alien, through the pentecostal Spirit, understood God’s revelation in their own language without translation.
When I went to Spain to live with a family, people talked so fast I couldn’t understand a word they said, in spite of my big fat college degrees! I felt scared and left out—alone. Too embarrassed to ask them to slow down, I just listened and watched until I caught the energy, the animation. I felt the people before I comprehended all their words. When I came home my mother asked me what the people were like, and I said: “People are people, the same everywhere.”
Habitually, I break things down, analyze meanings, develop my own arguments and opinions. That’s fine, but there is also a wordless language. Ask any baby. They all speak in tongues. And we listen, babble back, caught up in a transcendent moment of nonsensical connection.
To transcend one’s body is orgasmic. It’s not a sustainable state. For a moment you are both inside and outside yourself, experiencing a mystic self-transcendence, speechlessly beyond the comfort of intellect. Some of us cry out—O God—in such moments.
When I went to a bullfight in Spain, I felt this transcendence. The howling crowd swayed side to side, following the energy of both toro and torero. To parse it was impossible. To make it mentally accessible impossible. So I lost my mind. I swayed with the rhythmic pulse of Olé. I had no objectivity, so I simply got lost in pentecostal exuberance. My olés were for the bull, but it didn’t matter. The crowd rose and fell in one piece—as one, just as Jesus advocated.
Try not to be offended that I put Jesus, and sex, and and the cruelty of bullfights together. All analogies fall short of Pentecostal immensity. Beyond the birthday of one religion, Pentecost summons us to recognize and realize the intimate transcendent oneness of all living things.
In church Christians gather to receive humble wafers and hear: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” possibly with the addition, "may it keep you in everlasting life” These words are not death sentences; they do not mean we have to die or fly off to heaven to be with Christ. They mean that right now we are embraced by Infinity—IN God.
Pentecost, the Holy Spirit Presence, I believe, is always, always these things:
-unitive not divisive
-expansive not contractive
-connective not disruptive
-inclusive not exclusive
-impartial not partisan
-potent not passive
-creative not destructive
-international not national
-interdependent not autonomous
Think Mystic Flame, Mystic Wind, Cloven Tongues. Think crowds in the hundreds, Jews gathered to celebrate the 50th day after Passover Shavuoth—liberation and plenitude. Think crowds of thousands— Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Pamphylia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, Gentiles and Jews alike—all assembled, eager to experience Divinity. The huge guest list itself is the meaning of Pentecost in Acts—all drawn to the hearth of God's heart.
We dare not downsize this Spirit, nor confine it to certain sacraments administered by “fatherly hands.” Nor can it be claimed by any one religion or national group. It is the Spirit of deepest contact with the Divine, believers and non-believers. Pentecost is the birth of Internationalism—the spirituality of Democracy.
In 1918, theologian, Vida D. Scudder, said that Peter’s first sermon, carried a democratic message: “To you is the promise and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord God shall call . . .” The struggle between nationalists and an international ideal was very much part of the story of the early church. How big will we be? How far is our reach? Who is part of this institution and who is not?
Peter, a nationalist, was overcome by the Spirit, which gave him breadth of vision. Nevertheless, he went right on opposing Paul and insisted on circumcision as a condition until the Spirit re-programmed his institutional tapes and shook his soul alive. That’s the goal of Pentecost. Even proper Anglicans get permission to shed decorum and explode with exuberance.
Flowing from this Pentecostal Spirit are gifts. The first is Tongues. I once heard a woman speak in tongues in a parish church. To my shame, I silently condemned her as mentally ill, simply because I, sane and sensible, could not understand her language.
I was abashed to read Scudder’s interpretation of The Gift of Tongues as the Gift of Sympathy. Sympathy? Yes, feeling for the feelings of another. Tongues means to understand without language. It is the gift of knowing-by-soul, not by words. Habitually, we translate everything into our own language to validate it. I remember my thrill when I first read something in Spanish without translating it into English as I read. Tongues signifies that every stranger and alien, through the pentecostal Spirit, understood God’s revelation in their own language without translation.
When I went to Spain to live with a family, people talked so fast I couldn’t understand a word they said, in spite of my big fat college degrees! I felt scared and left out—alone. Too embarrassed to ask them to slow down, I just listened and watched until I caught the energy, the animation. I felt the people before I comprehended all their words. When I came home my mother asked me what the people were like, and I said: “People are people, the same everywhere.”
Habitually, I break things down, analyze meanings, develop my own arguments and opinions. That’s fine, but there is also a wordless language. Ask any baby. They all speak in tongues. And we listen, babble back, caught up in a transcendent moment of nonsensical connection.
To transcend one’s body is orgasmic. It’s not a sustainable state. For a moment you are both inside and outside yourself, experiencing a mystic self-transcendence, speechlessly beyond the comfort of intellect. Some of us cry out—O God—in such moments.
When I went to a bullfight in Spain, I felt this transcendence. The howling crowd swayed side to side, following the energy of both toro and torero. To parse it was impossible. To make it mentally accessible impossible. So I lost my mind. I swayed with the rhythmic pulse of Olé. I had no objectivity, so I simply got lost in pentecostal exuberance. My olés were for the bull, but it didn’t matter. The crowd rose and fell in one piece—as one, just as Jesus advocated.
Try not to be offended that I put Jesus, and sex, and and the cruelty of bullfights together. All analogies fall short of Pentecostal immensity. Beyond the birthday of one religion, Pentecost summons us to recognize and realize the intimate transcendent oneness of all living things.
In church Christians gather to receive humble wafers and hear: “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” possibly with the addition, "may it keep you in everlasting life” These words are not death sentences; they do not mean we have to die or fly off to heaven to be with Christ. They mean that right now we are embraced by Infinity—IN God.
Pentecost, the Holy Spirit Presence, I believe, is always, always these things:
-unitive not divisive
-expansive not contractive
-connective not disruptive
-inclusive not exclusive
-impartial not partisan
-potent not passive
-creative not destructive
-international not national
-interdependent not autonomous
Pentecost is not the Birthday of Christianity.
It is the Birthday of Creation.
Sunday, May 24, 2020
2020.05.24 Ascend?
I heard a sermon once, delivered boisterously from a skyscraper pulpit by a preacher of great surety and voice who announced to the congregation of neck-craning hopefuls below: Christ is the one God and all our prayers go through Him—and Him alone.
And there you have it, I thought.
This was an Ascension Day Eucharist at an Episcopal parish. There was time after the service for comments or questions. I had a sinking feeling. This preacher was not the type to be questioned. Still, one timid soul (not me) asked: “Well, must Christians always pray through Christ?”
The answer came quickly back: “Well, you could try to access God in other ways, of course, but your prayers won’t be valid.”
Guillotined!
Besides thinking the guy was an arrogant Christian jerk and a spiritual egomaniac, I gnashed my teeth. I wanted to rip this preacher’s face off, or at least have a snatch at his clerical stole. Who was he to set limits on God? I thought to argue with him or send him a curt note about his pastoral bullying, not to mention his bad theology. Instead, I stuffed my face at the spread of sweets—and more sweets—offered for guests in the parish house, and later let fly at my priest-spouse who responded (expletives deleted) and cracked the old Ascension joke about Jesus still in orbit in outer space.
But I wasn’t satisfied. I prayed, wondered, and re-read the Ascension story in Acts. I knew it wasn’t factual, yet, once I quieted my snarky dismissal of Christian excess, I found the visual image compelling—Jesus’s last recorded act, a full-bodied rising, his feet hidden in clouds and his arms extended in blessing, or farewell.
The image pursued me, dragged me into a Pauline net of awakening—unforgettable blow to the soul, which is the point. Would I be, or am I, one of the goggle-eyed hopefuls gathered here below gawking at the disappearing savior? Historically, perhaps, but now? I’m not a clinger. Or am I?—secretly of course. I could never pray to such a Christ image, I thought. And then tears filled my eyes, followed by these words: Don’t leave me.
I’ll spare you a boring rehearsal of my abandonment issues, and all the reasons why I trained to be a bereavement counselor. If I were one of those people who were alive when Jesus was I would have holed up in terror and confusion in the little room to which his followers fled in Jerusalem. What now? I have often invited retreatants to sit quietly together and envision themselves in that upper room. What would they feel or think or say? A few quickly spoke of the Resurrection—too quickly. One once said, “Holy shit!. Most stayed silent, and some cried their way through a halting conversation.
The writer and pastor, Frederick Buechner came to mind. His wisdom was always to follow your tears, for you never know where they will lead. In his book, Listen to Your Life, he wrote: “See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
I’d always thought: If only I could just swallow my distaste for the ecstatic grandeur and glory imagery for Christ, I’d be closer to God-in-Christ. I’d accept the almighty, king, judge, son nomenclature. But the words get in the way. I can't see through them. So I follow my tears, knowing they are for the historical Jesus who would agree and who often shunned glorification. But he is gone—risen and ascended.
I pray: Jesus, I know you’re risen and it’s all good. I know you’re here spiritually, but I need you in the flesh NOW. To hell with all the Christology. I need you to descend again, to shed your transcendent almighty masculinity—here and now. If there is a Second Coming, I need it NOW. Amen.
This is probably one of the dumbest prayers I’ve ever uttered. I know better. But so what? I laughed, which broke through my doldrums.
I thought back to the offensive preacher and decided he would invalidate all my prayers, not to mention my tears. I knew he would think of himself in the ascending posture—above-it-all, knowing it all, just like all that imagery. I could not follow him.
I stared at the the Ascension image until it got blurry and I saw through it. I had to stare at a Crucifix a long time to see through it to resurrection. Oh, I can easily do it with my mind, but my heart only sees cruel injustice and sorrow—even on the empty cross, which only dodges the horror of crucifixion—unless you see through it. Looking at is not the same as seeing through.
So it is with the Ascension image. My mind sees all the obvious Glory of magnificent divine overcoming, but when I stare deeply my heart sees through the glory to the pain of soul-binding loss—an image of soaring joy and plunging sorrow.
Can I love both and find in both my life, my own full and fragile life? I will try.
And there you have it, I thought.
This was an Ascension Day Eucharist at an Episcopal parish. There was time after the service for comments or questions. I had a sinking feeling. This preacher was not the type to be questioned. Still, one timid soul (not me) asked: “Well, must Christians always pray through Christ?”
The answer came quickly back: “Well, you could try to access God in other ways, of course, but your prayers won’t be valid.”
Guillotined!
Besides thinking the guy was an arrogant Christian jerk and a spiritual egomaniac, I gnashed my teeth. I wanted to rip this preacher’s face off, or at least have a snatch at his clerical stole. Who was he to set limits on God? I thought to argue with him or send him a curt note about his pastoral bullying, not to mention his bad theology. Instead, I stuffed my face at the spread of sweets—and more sweets—offered for guests in the parish house, and later let fly at my priest-spouse who responded (expletives deleted) and cracked the old Ascension joke about Jesus still in orbit in outer space.
But I wasn’t satisfied. I prayed, wondered, and re-read the Ascension story in Acts. I knew it wasn’t factual, yet, once I quieted my snarky dismissal of Christian excess, I found the visual image compelling—Jesus’s last recorded act, a full-bodied rising, his feet hidden in clouds and his arms extended in blessing, or farewell.
I’ll spare you a boring rehearsal of my abandonment issues, and all the reasons why I trained to be a bereavement counselor. If I were one of those people who were alive when Jesus was I would have holed up in terror and confusion in the little room to which his followers fled in Jerusalem. What now? I have often invited retreatants to sit quietly together and envision themselves in that upper room. What would they feel or think or say? A few quickly spoke of the Resurrection—too quickly. One once said, “Holy shit!. Most stayed silent, and some cried their way through a halting conversation.
The writer and pastor, Frederick Buechner came to mind. His wisdom was always to follow your tears, for you never know where they will lead. In his book, Listen to Your Life, he wrote: “See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”
I’d always thought: If only I could just swallow my distaste for the ecstatic grandeur and glory imagery for Christ, I’d be closer to God-in-Christ. I’d accept the almighty, king, judge, son nomenclature. But the words get in the way. I can't see through them. So I follow my tears, knowing they are for the historical Jesus who would agree and who often shunned glorification. But he is gone—risen and ascended.
I pray: Jesus, I know you’re risen and it’s all good. I know you’re here spiritually, but I need you in the flesh NOW. To hell with all the Christology. I need you to descend again, to shed your transcendent almighty masculinity—here and now. If there is a Second Coming, I need it NOW. Amen.
This is probably one of the dumbest prayers I’ve ever uttered. I know better. But so what? I laughed, which broke through my doldrums.
I thought back to the offensive preacher and decided he would invalidate all my prayers, not to mention my tears. I knew he would think of himself in the ascending posture—above-it-all, knowing it all, just like all that imagery. I could not follow him.
I stared at the the Ascension image until it got blurry and I saw through it. I had to stare at a Crucifix a long time to see through it to resurrection. Oh, I can easily do it with my mind, but my heart only sees cruel injustice and sorrow—even on the empty cross, which only dodges the horror of crucifixion—unless you see through it. Looking at is not the same as seeing through.
So it is with the Ascension image. My mind sees all the obvious Glory of magnificent divine overcoming, but when I stare deeply my heart sees through the glory to the pain of soul-binding loss—an image of soaring joy and plunging sorrow.
Can I love both and find in both my life, my own full and fragile life? I will try.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
2020.05.17 A Near-Perfect Graduation Speech
I have attended many graduations, some my own, some my children’s, some my grandchildren’s, some my steps, and others I had to attend. I have heard many graduation addresses—most lumbering, long, and forgettable. I have never been invited to address a graduating class. If I were, here’s what I’d say:
You have been told many times how great you are, how great your school is, and how happy we all are for your graduation. I have no more words, so I just offer one piece of practical wisdom, one prayer, and one blessing, slightly revised by me.
THE WISDOM: Stop! Sit down! Shut up!
THE PRAYER:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
THE BLESSING: Life is short. We do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind. And the blessing of Love Almighty be with you this day and always. AMEN.
(Attributions: Luke Timothy Johnson, New Testament professor, on prayer; Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer; Henri-Frederic Amiel, Swiss moral philosopher.)
In my mind, as I stepped down from the podium, leaving everyone stunned, then jubilant, I would mutter a small prayer: And for godssake, and your parents’, do not get drunk-to-oblivion or pregnant tonight. Oh, in case of a pandemic lockdown, flip your tassel and the bird at once.
You have been told many times how great you are, how great your school is, and how happy we all are for your graduation. I have no more words, so I just offer one piece of practical wisdom, one prayer, and one blessing, slightly revised by me.
THE WISDOM: Stop! Sit down! Shut up!
THE PRAYER:
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
THE BLESSING: Life is short. We do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds of those who travel the way with us. So be swift to love and make haste to be kind. And the blessing of Love Almighty be with you this day and always. AMEN.
(Attributions: Luke Timothy Johnson, New Testament professor, on prayer; Theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, Serenity Prayer; Henri-Frederic Amiel, Swiss moral philosopher.)
In my mind, as I stepped down from the podium, leaving everyone stunned, then jubilant, I would mutter a small prayer: And for godssake, and your parents’, do not get drunk-to-oblivion or pregnant tonight. Oh, in case of a pandemic lockdown, flip your tassel and the bird at once.
Sunday, May 10, 2020
2020.05.10 Mothers' Day Spiritual Wisdom Bouquet
Dear Mom,
Did you love me too much?
Is there such a thing, really?
No, there’s not, they say.
Yes, there is, they say.
All things are possible with God, they say
Love me as I have loved you, Jesus says.
Which is it?
No matter.
We loved as we did, loved as we didn’t,
many kinds, many ways—again, forever,
always.
I love you, Mom,
Me
A prayer for good humor
Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest. Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it. Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place. Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.” Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others. St. Thomas Moore
****
THE VOICE OF GOD
Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured by a hot bath,
says God from the bowels of the subway.
but we want magic to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace the suffering.)
The voice of God does not pander,
offers no five year plan, no long-term
solution, nary an edict.
It is small and fond and local.
Don’t look for your initials in the
geese honking overhead or to see thru
the glass even darkly.
It says the most obvious crap—
put down that gun, you need a
sandwich.
Mary Karr, poet
****
On this Mother’s Day, we give thanks to God for the divine gift of motherhood in all its diverse forms. Let us pray for all the mothers among us today; for our own mothers, those living and those who have passed away; for all the mothers who loved us and for those who fell short of loving us fully; for all who hope to be mothers someday and for those whose hope to have children has been frustrated; for all mothers who have lost children; for all woman and men who have been our substitute mothers and we who have done so for those in need; and for the earth that bore and provides us sustenance. We pray this all in the name of God, our great and loving Mother. Amen.
- by the Rev. Leslie Nipps, Women’s Uncommon Prayers (Moorhouse Publishing, 2000)
****
Jesus, I love you when you’re angry, for so am I
I love you when you fiercely love the children, for so do I
I love you when your mood strikes terror, for so does mine
And just as quick as anger’s flash
Your swift embrace the flow of grace restores
I pray my will be yours.
- Lyn Gillespie Brakeman
****
The Rev. Roy Parker, OHC
Did you love me too much?
Is there such a thing, really?
No, there’s not, they say.
Yes, there is, they say.
All things are possible with God, they say
Love me as I have loved you, Jesus says.
Which is it?
No matter.
We loved as we did, loved as we didn’t,
many kinds, many ways—again, forever,
always.
I love you, Mom,
Me
A prayer for good humor
Grant me, O Lord, good digestion, and also something to digest. Grant me a healthy body, and the necessary good humor to maintain it. Grant me a simple soul that knows to treasure all that is good and that doesn’t frighten easily at the sight of evil, but rather finds the means to put things back in their place. Give me a soul that knows not boredom, grumblings, sighs and laments, nor excess of stress, because of that obstructing thing called “I.” Grant me, O Lord, a sense of good humor. Allow me the grace to be able to take a joke to discover in life a bit of joy, and to be able to share it with others. St. Thomas Moore
****
THE VOICE OF GOD
Ninety percent of what’s wrong with you
could be cured by a hot bath,
says God from the bowels of the subway.
but we want magic to win
the lottery we never bought a ticket for.
(Tenderly, the monks chant, embrace the suffering.)
The voice of God does not pander,
offers no five year plan, no long-term
solution, nary an edict.
It is small and fond and local.
Don’t look for your initials in the
geese honking overhead or to see thru
the glass even darkly.
It says the most obvious crap—
put down that gun, you need a
sandwich.
Mary Karr, poet
****
On this Mother’s Day, we give thanks to God for the divine gift of motherhood in all its diverse forms. Let us pray for all the mothers among us today; for our own mothers, those living and those who have passed away; for all the mothers who loved us and for those who fell short of loving us fully; for all who hope to be mothers someday and for those whose hope to have children has been frustrated; for all mothers who have lost children; for all woman and men who have been our substitute mothers and we who have done so for those in need; and for the earth that bore and provides us sustenance. We pray this all in the name of God, our great and loving Mother. Amen.
- by the Rev. Leslie Nipps, Women’s Uncommon Prayers (Moorhouse Publishing, 2000)
****
Jesus, I love you when you’re angry, for so am I
I love you when you fiercely love the children, for so do I
I love you when your mood strikes terror, for so does mine
And just as quick as anger’s flash
Your swift embrace the flow of grace restores
I pray my will be yours.
- Lyn Gillespie Brakeman
****
The Rev. Roy Parker, OHC
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