Flavor of the Month

Advent 2

2011-12-04T14:21:00.002-05:00

"A voice of one crying out

in the wilderness…"

How can anyone make

a pathway for God?

only with God's help.

and irony in every step

Advent 1

2011-11-27T09:55:00.003-05:00

A people who live in darkness…

cannot comprehend the light.

give me eyes to see

ears to hear

hands to help…

lead me out of the darkness O Lord.

Oregon Associates Retreat 2011 #4

2011-05-15T15:06:00.006-04:00

There is a story about a monk who came to Joshu (The Chinese Zen Master) at breakfast time and said, "I have just entered this monastery to learn about God. Please teach me."

"Have you eaten your porridge yet?" asked Joshu.
"Yes, I have," replied the monk.
"Then you had better wash your bowl," said Joshu.

Bowl washing… not the inspiring advice he was expecting. We live in a self-help show-and-tell culture. We want our lives to be meaningful, to make a difference… our faith to make a difference.

We have all the appropriate descriptions for what we want, we know the jargon: we want to practice mindful-living. We want to be fully present. We want intentionality, to be alive in our own skins. We want to live in the NOW. Well NOW for that monk was time to wash his bowl. But because that act had no special significance, wasn’t meaningful, it wasn’t even on his radar.

Of course there are always going to be times when we’re tired or unfocused, times when we’re too caught up and ignore the details.

But in our culture it’s more insidious than that. We quite literally don’t see or notice, or don’t pay attention… to the life that is right in front of us. We’re looking ahead to after the bowl is washed— that’s when we’ll get the payoff. As if there were a payoff.

We don't want to "just" wash the bowl — or whatever small, insignificant, trivial task we may be engaged in. We want to comprehend it. Or turn it into some sort of competition. I washed twenty-five bowls today. How many did you wash?

I am so guilty of this. For me it’s taking out the garbage. We keep our garbage cans in one of the closets. It’s a temporary situation because we haven’t finished landscaping the outside of the building. We need to buy a couple of those garbage can “houses” that you lock up so nobody can steal your garbage, go through the bags and make a big mess all over the sidewalk. (This is New York, even the garbage is under lock and key.)

So for now, the cans are inside the house, in a closet. Garbage days are Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Saturday is also recycle day. That means in addition to the big black plastic garbage bags there are also clear bags with bottles and cans and paper.

I seem to be the only one who can remember when it’s garbage day. We once had a maintenance man to do this work but now we don’t. It’s not a hard job: you pull the bag out of the can, tie it up and put it out by the curb. It just has to be done before 7:00 am. If you do it the night before, the bags get ripped open and the contents strewn on the sidewalk. So sometime between 6:30 and 7:00 am the garbage goes out.

If we forget the closet starts to smell. If Tuesday’s garbage waits til Thursday, some of the contents have been four days in the tomb and they stinketh. The bag is also heavier now; it won’t come out of the can as easily.

I used to do it every garbage day. But there was a worry that if that continued I’d go through garbage burn-out and get resentful. We’ve had some history with that in our convent… one sister will want to play the hero and take on more work than she can handle. The other sisters let it happen. She gets tired, bummed out that no one else is stepping up to the plate to help, then the resentment starts to simmer… it’s not pretty.

So we agreed that since one sister is breakfast cook on Tuesday and another on Thursday, that they would take over those days and I would do Saturday. Saturday. Saturday is our “sleep in” day. Saturday is recycle day… more bags to put out. See how that sense of competition creeps in? It’s insidious.

Each year I come out here and stand up in front of you and talk about something. Some of you say: “Oh, what you said— I needed to hear that.” Or “I’ve been struggling with such and such and your comments put it in a different perspective.” When that synchronicity happens it’s the Holy Spirit. It’s Grace.

Because the truth of the matter is this: with you, I’m preaching to the choir. You are already holy, faithful members of Christ’s amazing Body. I’m really preaching to myself.

I need to hear the words "let go of the old story" so God’s new story can emerge. I need to hear "It’s difficult to be a Christian. Embrace the difficulty." I need to hear going deeper in faith changes everything. So I won’t be dumfounded when everything changes. I need to hear that I am a fig tree with a measly harvest waiting for God and the day of reckoning to arrive. I need to say “yes” to my watershed moments.

Greg Levoy said this:
Wherever our most primal fears reside, our fears of the dark, of death, of being devoured, of meaninglessness, of lovelessness, or of loss changes— wherever those fears reside is good, because beneath them lie gems of wisdom— and maybe a vision or a calling. Wherever you stumble: on a tree root, on a rock, on fear, on shame, on vulnerability, on someone else’s words, on the truth— dig there.
Dig there and be ready to be surprised.

Friday I spoke about Jesus being busy, but never in a hurry. In the middle of his busy schedule (teaching, healing, caring) lots of people clamoring for his attention, the whole town gathered at the door— what did he do? He withdrew to a solitary place to pray.

His disciples couldn’t understand it. They were put out, hunted him down… Jesus! What are you doing here?!? Nothing!?! Don’t you want to be a good Messiah? Get back down there. People are counting on you. What will people think? Jesus, you need a time-management seminar—you could accomplish more.

Okay, so that’s a pretty loose interpretation of Mark’s Gospel. But even the literal translation sounds spot on: “Jesus, everyone is looking for you.”

It’s just another variation on “You have some nerve saying no.” We’ve all been subjected to that kind of thinking. We’ve also more than likely projected it onto others who said no to us. But there are problems inherent with this way of thinking.

There’s an assumption that worth comes from what we do or produce. If we believe that then we’re motivated to be indispensible.
We assume that withdrawal (whether it’s Sabbath time or R&R) is wasteful. And we should be guilty about it. The inner voice chirping in our ear — shouldn’t you be doing something worthwhile with your time?

What did Jesus say when the disciples said “everyone is looking for you”?

He said: “Then let us go somewhere else.”

Today we would say Jesus needed a “spin doctor.” But the bottom line is this: For Jesus, withdrawing is not optional. It is intentional and essential.

We may enjoy the adrenaline rush of being needed, but when we give in to the should of being all things to all people— when we give up the need to withdraw or rest or renew— we lose the rhythm of life that feeds our souls.

Jesus is saying to his disciples: Do you see that clump of people? Do you have any idea why I have any power in that clump? It’s because I regularly say NO. I regularly withdraw to a place where I listen to a different voice, my Father’s voice— about my identity.

What happens is… if we don’t say no when we need to, the no will come by default. And then we will end up saying no to the ones we love the most.

Oregon Associates Retreat 2011 #3

2011-05-01T12:40:00.007-04:00

I was talking this morning about Faith — how it is always about choices, but more importantly, about how those choices are specific.

For Jesus, for the first disciples and for all the brave souls throughout the ages, faith is and was a courageous choice for God. Today that’s us. We are the brave souls of our own age. Faith changes our lives, and our changed lives make all the difference.

I would be lying to myself and to you if I didn't say up front, transformation hurts. Some choices will limit our movement and require dying to self. As much as we may fight this notion: Faith was never intended to be easy or casual.

Our retreat this year comes on the heels of Easter. Something truly “magical and revolutionary” happened that first day. It transformed maybe what? At the most, say 100 lives. Then those believers told others, and pretty soon… a movement began. That movement sent evangelists to the far reaches and that produced a wonderful array of gospels, letters and stories.

Now it also produced a steady and tragic stream of power struggles, scheming bishops, beheadings and burnings, The Inquisition, heresy trials, European history marked by warfare and torture, and now, today in our own time, church wars for our right to declare other people wrong. For many denominations, even ours I’m afraid, Religious Content is what we fight about. God didn't call us to be consumers of religious content. And even though Mt. Angel has a lovely gift shop full of wonderful things, Christianity isn't about consuming religious products. And Christianity is especially not about consuming content that someone else created.

Christianity is about transformation of our lives. It’s about sitting with a blank screen of your own life and creating something, as best you can, and offering that something to God. It is about dreaming and imagining, working and worrying, serving and loving – making a difference with life.

Faith isn't something we can download to watch or to play. Faith is something we have the audacity to embrace, knowing it will compel us to become a “new creation.”

So as we come to the end of the Easter Octave we must remember: Easter Christianity is about people submitting their lives to the love and will of God. It is about receiving and giving mercy. It is about putting down weapons, or tethers, winning each day some small victory over greed, learning fresh each day to love our enemies, (and if we have no enemies at hand, to love those who annoy us.) It’s about showing up each day to join God's never-ending push for justice and peace.

Easter Christianity takes courage.

Courage, like love, is a decision, an act of the will. It’s not the absence of fear… no, Courage sees all the reasons to be afraid — from bad numbers in our checkbook and our parish enrollments, to bad leaders to bad enemies to bad luck. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it — courage decides to "walk through the storm with our head held high."

John’s Gospel says: The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. (John 1.10-11)

We can choose to be like that… not to accept him. But rather than reject Jesus’ radical call, I think we want to go deeper. We want to know the Word that has come into our world. We want to accept him. We want to know why Jesus came for us and what it is, if anything, we should be doing about it.

We want to submit to God — first by discovering what those words mean.
I like to think of myself as an open-minded, change-affirming believer, and yet I sense that the Word is way more radical and disturbing than I allow for, not to mention more enlivening and focusing.

In Luke it talks about John the Baptist’s willingness to submit his own agenda to God’s:

John answered all of them by saying, "I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. " (Luke 3.16)

Life is filled with sadness. We don’t admit that to each other very often. Beginnings require endings. Within the joy and zest of life is always the salt of tears. The stories about John the Baptist speak of a fundamental truth:
Much had to pass away for Jesus to emerge. His coming brought watershed moments to a battered yet proud nation, to a religious establishment that probably was a lot like ours today, to people in one village after another, to a group of followers and family, and to himself.

For Jesus to emerge, much had to end, and those endings were difficult. John's situation epitomizes the trauma: think of it: he had the brass ring almost, people from all walks of life responded eagerly to his hard work, some even hoped he was the messiah… and now he must step aside for another.

Can any of us really know who or what died in us yesterday in order for today to arrive? Or the joy that we haven't yet fully accepted, for fear of the watershed it signals?

We think of faith as a supplement to life, something new and wonderful that we add to what has gone before.

But in fact, faith is a watershed.
(Watershed: an important point of division or transition between two phases, conditions)

It is an ending. It is a time of things passing away. It is roads diverging and our having to decide. While that choice might bring great joy, it also brings much sadness. Our willingness to accept that sadness says something very real about our faith.
It’s difficult to be a Christian.

John said Yes in his watershed moment. Many say No. (Not only no, but hell no.) No more watersheds, no more change, no more pain of loss, no more sadness.

Still, the watersheds keep appearing. For there is no other way onward. Life always requires death.

Oregon Associates Retreat 2011 #2

2011-04-30T23:19:00.010-04:00

It's difficult to be a Christian. Looking up, down, out, in, looking at those we love and especially at those we don’t, looking at things ending and things beginning.

Nothing will get better for us until we embrace that difficulty and do the hard work of following Jesus through the specifics. To look for God in daily life, is to open the door, to step into the flood, to see what God sees, and then to decide whether to care. That decision to care or not is a defining moment of faith.

Take Morality For example: It’s sad: we live in immoral times. Not one of the Ten Commandments is widely in force. Graven images are common, especially in church. The Sabbath, no matter if yours is Saturday or Sunday… the Sabbath is the prime shopping day. Murder is carefully defined so we can allow for all kinds of ways to kill each other and still get away with it. And Coveting—well, that’s the heartbeat of advertising. Stealing and dishonoring are common. Bearing false witness is an Internet art form.

It would be funny except immorality hurts real people. At the level of an actual marriage among regular people, adultery can be devastating. Most marriages won't survive it.

And then there's money. We live some no-man’s land between grace and greed. No wonder Jesus told us to “love one another.” We can do it. I know Jesus' commandment – “love one another” – is within our power. We just aren’t very consistent.

Our Creed may encourage generalization, but the way Jesus taught suggests that "I believe in God" isn't enough. It needs to be, "I believe in God enough to submit my will to God today and to make this next decision with God in mind." Or, "I believe in Jesus and will follow his teachings and his model as I greet my family this morning, as I take my part in the workplace today and as I walk home tonight." I keep saying it. Faith is about specifics. It isn't enough to declare a general intention to be faithful. Faith manifests in specific decisions: Decisions about allocating time, managing money, responding to people, dealing with needs, monitoring our own personal morality.

Shallow religion is easy. Go to church, enjoy what you can, make a token commitment, keep your motor running. See God as a friend, Jesus as a kindly shepherd. Buy a cross, put a Bible on your desk.

Going deep in faith… changes everything.

Not only is it uncomfortable because A: we don’t like change, but B: because it takes way more effort and time. As God's fullness comes into view, the old ways of doing religion don’t work. Going deep in faith means that all those rich, deep and troubling nuances of Jesus become pretty disturbing. The real Jesus challenges us, holds us accountable, sets an impossibly high standard for ethical behavior. He demands openness and giving up of control. I don’t know about you, but that strikes terror in my heart.

Deep is dangerous. Shallow may be dull and lifeless, but it’s a whole lot safer. It takes trust to go deeper in faith.

Deep water happens everywhere, and our ability to swim in it comes and goes. We can be capable one minute and incapable the next. We make wise decisions, then dumb decisions. Not even the most perfect, seamless resume can hide the painful reality that we are flawed creatures. We hurt the ones we love, we squander opportunities, we fail.

Jesus told this parable: "A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none.” (Luke 13.6)

This is our relationship with God. Few of us, not even nuns, spend our days in fervent prayer. Even the most diligent Christians have jobs, families, duties as citizens. Most of us also treasure “down-time.” God knows we are distracted.

God waits in patience for us to remember who we are as children of God or, to use Luke's metaphor, as fig trees called to bear fruit. At some point, push comes to shove. We either live into our true identity or we slip into delusion and spiritual amnesia. We give or we take. We love or ignore. We serve others or serve ourselves. We bear the fruit that God created us to bear, or we take up space and yield nothing that is worthy.

At this point, to follow Jesus' parable, God makes one more attempt to get our attention. If that fails, God moves on. God doesn’t smite us, but God may lose hope in us. We have tried God's patience, and now God will turn to others. It would be a bleak moment when we realize God has finally stopped looking for us to bear fruit.

Jesus said, “So the owner said to the gardener, 'See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?'” (Luke 13.7)

Christian leaders were reshaping the reality of Jesus within years of his death, adapting his teachings to their own agenda, concocting words for him to have said, portraying God as whatever they wanted God to be. In their hands, Jesus went from anti-establishment prophet to ultra-establishment figurehead, from peacemaker to warrior, from subtle teacher of disconcerting parables to a partisan judge vowing death to the Church's enemies. The Jesus who loved everyone became filled with hatred, and his open circle became a closed hierarchy.

What, then, are we to make of a parable that portrays God as indignant and determined to hold creation accountable and Jesus as an advocate for patience – not infinite patience, but “one more year”?
If you visit ten different churches, you’ll hear ten different takes on this parable, each one tailored to its congregation. They will range from God's determination to hold us accountable to gentle images of an ever-patient friend.

On the one hand, Jesus' parables deliberately leave room for many different understandings.On the other, we need to hear what Jesus actually said. The distracted shouldn't listen for a God who waits patiently for them to pay attention. The prosperous shouldn't seek a God who rewards the elect. The oppressed need more than a God who is on their side.

At the center is the Jesus who actually was. When we find his authentic words, they sound like “tough love” in Luke's parable. God expects us to bear fruit. Jesus bargains for us, but only for another chance, not for a permanent exemption from accountability.

There is life in that reality. Only you can know where you stand in that cycle of patience and testing. But Jesus' parable assures us all that the moment of reckoning does happen. God comes “looking for fruit,” and either finds it or doesn't find it.

These may be harsh words this morning, but I think we need to be pushed and stretched. (Take exercise. I hate to exercise. I quit at the first sensation of "the burn," and as a result I just get flabbier.) If we consider the pain of growth wrong and blame and punish those who caused it, we make no difference.

If our faith makes no difference, what's the point?

Oregon Associates Retreat 2011 #1

2011-04-30T20:36:00.009-04:00

The theme for our time together this weekend comes from a sermon I heard earlier this year. The jist was this: Through God’s abundance we’ve been given so much… and two hands to hold it.

We have received and can continue to receive every day, but only if our hands are empty. If our hands are still holding on for dear life to those blessings, there’s nowhere to put the new ones.

The message of Jesus never much emphasized the receiving part… but he always spoke to the giving part. So we must learn to let go, to give what we’ve been given away. Thus the theme: hands to receive and hands to bless. Simultaneous receiving and blessing… that’s become my personal goal.

When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” (John 2.3-4)

Jesus made an assumption. In that moment when he replied to his mother, before he acted, he was relying on his preconceived notion of his time and what it would look like. He was tethered to a sense of timing. I can relate to that, can’t you?

We're all tethered to something. I don’t notice it in the always-on Internet world of New York, but I have become totally tethered to the Web. Free wifi in airports and hotels is important to me. Others who are not now, and will probably never be, internet users, are tethered to something else: yesterday's ideas or yesterday's systems.

It doesn’t really matter whether it’s wi-fi, or cars, or traditions, or world-views, roles, privileges – If you take them away, we feel lost. So this story of the wedding is a perfect story for us, to help us let go of our own tethers.

Our tethers don't define us. They might help us function and make us feel useful. But in God's economy, dislocation is often essential for stepping forward. Losing our grip on yesterday's assumptions and assurances is critical for doing what God wants today.

“Dying to self,” as Jesus commanded, isn't just about letting go of bad habits and self-centered ways; it's also about leaving behind those good things we thought we knew, things we worked hard to attain. It means putting aside old stories in order to claim God's new story.

Some theologians believe Jesus knew it all, had a perfect plan for his short three-year ministry, but this passage from John suggests he discovered his purpose and identity along the road. To do that, he had to let go of his own yesterday.

The miracle at Cana was more than magic with water. It was the miracle of Jesus cutting his tether and moving on. He lived his own eventual counsel: let God name the hour.

I think we want faith to be important, but too often it ends up being the ultimate add-on to life. We get an education, get the job, get the family, get the toys, and then we want to get faith. We get everything we want in life, and then we get right with God. Seems like a pretty good deal.

Then we discover the truth. The path to God goes by way of loss and bondage, not by accomplishment… by letting go, by keeping our hands empty.

We enter a wilderness, not a comfortable place. We hunger and then are fed. We fail to see and then are shown more. We feel lost and then are found.

We stand naked before life, not the heroes we wanted to be, not the flawless stars, and then God asks us to come closer to a tomb that is empty. Empty of everything except God's mystery. Our plans for the day are shot. Our dreams for life prove hollow.

Have you ever noticed that when we read the Gospels, Jesus is often busy (as in occupied, needed, pulled, demanded, pushed). But Jesus is never in a hurry. Is it possible that we can change the way we live, not by addition, but by subtraction?

Maybe this weekend we can practice being empty. Take some time to think about the things that clutter your hearts and minds: write them in your journal.

Do you need to be in a hurry?
Do you need to impress those around you?
Are you dissatisied with ordinary days and gifts of grace?
Are you preoccupied with all that's left undone?

When our identities are defined by what we do or have, or earn, or strive for, or require in order to impress, we have everything to lose. Maybe this weekend we can work on losing it.

Paul Tillich tells us, "You are accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not seek for anything. Do not perform anything, do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted." If that happens to us, we experience grace.

His words are a reminder that we can live and choose and commit "from acceptance" and not "for acceptance." I'm not doing any of this (Sabbath, prayer, rest, reflection, renewal) to impress anyone or earn stars in my crown in heaven. Life is full. This life. This moment. This relationship. This conversation. This encounter. The sacred present begins here.

2011-04-24T01:00:00.000-04:00

A Blessed Easter

waiting...

2011-04-23T14:30:00.002-04:00

2011-04-22T10:06:00.000-04:00

a new commandment

2011-04-21T08:39:00.002-04:00

Radical, wonderful, and even more difficult than the original ten that Moses received from the hand of God... because in truth, we don't love ourselves well enough to love one another.

But Jesus did not say love one another as you love yourself... he said love them as I have loved you.

waiting...

2011-04-20T12:41:00.003-04:00

Holy Week feels long, maybe the longest week in the year.

When I think of my own sense of foreboding, the helpless waiting... I can't help but wonder how much more painful it would have been for Jesus those last days before his time finally came.

What, it's only Wednesday? Tomorrow the downhill slide begins... with a feast. We've been in silence, keeping a vegetarian diet this week, but tomorrow evening we'll have meat again, and talk at supper... in honor of the last supper Jesus ate. Then we will all attend the Maundy Thursday ritual at one of the nearby parish churches.

And Friday we will fast. Feasting and fasting... living and dying... joy and sorrow. It's almost too much to bear.

glory?

2011-04-19T13:32:00.002-04:00

Explain the glory, God.

Every year it's like this. I get closer to Good Friday and my doubt overwhelms my faith.

I am not big on pain... mine or anyone else's. I am especially not big on unnecessary pain, and this whole Jesus died for my sins thing puts the blame on me. Me... and you... and every other sorry member of the human species. Yes, I understand how amazingly mind-blowing it is to worship a God who stooped to endure human form... to live and die as a human being. But some human beings die peacefully in their sleep. (At least that's what we tell ourselves.) Or they die quickly. Most of us do not linger for hours in agony, with other people watching our every sigh and groan, waiting for us to die so they can be "right".

I really do hate this week.

anointing

2011-04-18T13:26:00.006-04:00

Two Gospels tell the story of the anointing of Jesus.

In Mark's Gospel It is two days before Passover, the host is Simon the leper, the woman is not named and the oil is poured on Jesus' head. In John's Gospel, it is six days before Passover, the host is Lazarus (recently raised from the dead,) and it is Mary who produces the expensive perfume and pours it on his feet.

This is the kind of inconsistency that drives Bible scholars crazy... conflicting versions of what is apparently the same story. The truth will always lie somewhere in between. The point of the story, of course, has nothing to do with head or feet or when or where... or maybe even who.

And the point can change for us with each new reading, depending on what we need to hear.

This is the difference between the living Word of God and words on a page that are chiseled in stone, with one point, one interpretation.

Living with elderly sisters gives me a new spin on this story. Jesus said "You will always have the poor." He might just as well have said "You will always have emails to answer or dust bunnies to sweep." For NOW, be kind in the moment. Honor the interactions that express love, patience, service. You will not always have these opportunities.

palms and thorns

2011-04-17T11:21:00.005-04:00

Palm Sunday again...

and again we take the roller coaster ride of Jesus' last days on earth.

The older I get the more it means, maybe because I have loved more and lost more, loved more and won more, been beaten up and betrayed, and yes, on occasion resurrected. I have heard the call of a God who makes no sense by earthly standards and yet in every natural way... from the creation of the cosmos to the fresh shoots in spring to the dying of the stalks in autumn... makes perfect sense.

We are here to live and die, to be joyful and to suffer, to win and to lose. I have come to believe that those things are not two sides of a flat coin but integral parts of the multi-dimensional whole. Join me in the wild ride.

vocation vacation

2011-04-10T16:22:00.005-04:00

I've been on vacation. In Lent no less.

So, can a person truly take a vacation from who they are? (or in my case... who I have become?) Yes... No... I don't know. Maybe.

Yes, because when I'm away from the convent I only think about the building and the people I left behind occasionally. I was in a Publix supermarket, marveling at all the new products I'd never seen before... and stood in front of the yogurt case thinking "Sr. Leslie would love all these choices." But there are too many ounces in even the smallest container to get through airport security with a carry-on bag. Shoot.

Yes... because I have a tendency to use more four letter words (as in the four letter version of shoot) when I am in conversation with old friends who knew me when. Yes... because I don't always follow the Rule of Life specifics about the morning and evening prayer requirements. Yes... because when my friend says "Do you want to get a pedicure?" I say "Oh my! Absolutely! Thank you!"

Are there any nos to counter all those yesses? I have to think about that.

Okay, here's one: Church is necessary. Communion is necessary. I attended my grandson's confirmation on Saturday night, but since I am an Episcopalian, I could not receive the sacrament from his Roman church. I was so happy to attend my old parish on Sunday... to hear the glorious music, listen to a decent sermon, receive the Body and Blood of my Lord. There was a time in my life I would not call Jesus my Lord. I believed in a Jesus who was God's son, but that didn't necessarily make him my Lord. My big brother, maybe, my friend... what a friend we have in Jesus. But LORD? Puleeze.

That's definitely changed.

And His call to service apparently still sticks. I washed a lot of dishes and cooked a bunch of food while I was away. I made my bed every day except one. I worked on three and a half Lincoln Center programs that came across my email. Some work goes on. Prayer is constant, even when I don't do the prescribed ritual, and reconciliation comes naturally (most of the time.) I guess I am a nun after all. Who knew?

humility

2011-03-28T13:44:00.006-04:00

Ethnic food was unknown to me when I was growing up. My mother cooked meat/potato/vegetable meals... occasionally spaghetti, but rarely was a salad served. I ate my first Mexican food at Taco Bell when I was twenty-four, Chinese food... Indian food... Japanese... Thai... all came later. Finally I learned that Taco Bell is so NOT Mexican. I don't care. It was my first love and will always have a place in my heart. (and stomach.)

Now that I am a grownup, ethnic foods are my favorites. When I taste something delicious at a restaurant, I want to try it at home. Three of us rotate as supper cook on Sunday nights; yesterday was my turn, and I had a distinct hankering for Indian food. Specifically Saag.

Saag is chopped up spinach in some kind of mild spicy sauce, often paired with chicken or potatoes. Last night was guest night so the chicken was out... we do primarily vegetarian on guest nights, usually with meat on the side. So... the menu included chicken curry salad, vegetable vindaloo, coconut rice... and saag. I don't much care for aloo saag (the potato one) so I used chickpeas (saag chole).

I searched online and found exactly the recipe I wanted, but I was missing the correct spices. Would you believe you cannot find Garam Masala anywhere near here?!? I went to six grocery stores... no Garam Masala. So I made my own. (Not exactly authentic Garam Masala, but it was close... and worked.)

Then I got over confident and made Naan too. A disaster. It didn't puff up. It tasted okay but was really flat, tough and chewy. The apricot chutney was a hit, the vegetable vindaloo pretty decent... curried chicken salad... well chicken salad is chicken salad.

But the saag... was to die for. Okay so humility is not my strong suit. (It was to die for.)

winter

2011-03-22T15:06:00.004-04:00

Someone said it will snow here again tomorrow. (Groan) I am ready for Spring.

And yet... Winter is necessary in the cycle of life. I know that.

Nature's seasons of growth require periods of shutting down... resting for the next season of renewal. I know that personally I should learn from this. I don't have to do it all, I can rest... in between my spurts of growth.

But I have been conditioned to judge myself harshly for the fallow time. "When are you going to draw some more cartoons?" a friend asks. "I don't know," I say, "Maybe the cartoonist in me is dead." And I don't know. It's not for lack of inspiration or imagination. I have dozens of ideas gurgling... notes to myself on scraps of paper, snippets of dialog ready to put with drawings... all waiting... resting or dead, I don't know.

Nature has no judgements to make—she is one with what is. Life is life and death is simply death, each taking its place in the life chain of the planet. What dies renews the living. Death is not a waste in nature... it is an integral part of of the pattern.

faith

2011-03-20T16:38:00.005-04:00

This morning our celebrant chose to focus on the Old Testament story of Abraham.

She gave a deeper insight into the radical faith that he showed in picking up stakes and moving his entire household to totally unknown territory... based on a simple promise from a Deity he had never heard of before. Today travel and relocation are more commonplace. I've picked up stakes a number of times in my life... for the promise of a job, a mate, on the recommendation of a friend, for the hell of it. I think I was born restless, and moving is a great way to scratch that particular itch. But today we have mapquest and google and all kinds of ways to find out about where we're going. Not so in Abraham's day.

When she spoke to us of our own "unknown territories" she was speaking more of the spiritual journey than the geographical. We listen for the voice of a Deity we have never seen, attempt to hear the will of a God we know only by faith. There's a lot of desert wandering to do before the promise ever shows itself.

detachment

2011-03-16T17:17:00.003-04:00

Nature doesn't plant, then tend... nature just reseeds. And usually the plant puts out far more seeds than can ever possibly survive, showers them wherever they fall... with apparently no attachment to the outcome.

I don't know that, of course, it's how I project my understanding of the way nature works. But I can still learn from the projection.

Detachment is the lesson... seemingly always my lesson, letting go of my need to control the outcome.

loss

2011-03-14T16:05:00.004-04:00

I've heard there are three phases of faith:

finding life
losing life
finding life again.

The Greeks understood this to mean not just physical life but also the conscious self... personality, soul.

Some truths just have to be experienced in order to be understood. I think loss is one of them.

Losing helps you find your way again. Some days we have to lose the certainty of who God is and what God wants. We need to lose the certainty of what it means to be a Christian. I do anyway.

It's all context

2011-03-13T09:54:00.004-04:00

I once took a class that explored Bible interpretation through the lens of context. What is it we're really reading? A legal document? Poetry? What was the cultural context for the time certain passages were written? Was the country at war? Was the writer in pain? Were they actual letters? Were they cobbled together from a variety of sources: softened or blended to fit the listeners ears at that time?

How do we read those same passages today?

Our instructor emphasized that we read through the lens of our traditions, giving the following example:

woman without her man is nothing

Who's insulted by that? It depends on your context. It also depends on your punctuation:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.
Woman, without her, man is nothing.

prayer for the human race

2011-03-11T18:56:00.005-05:00

In the back of the Book of Common Prayer there is a special section called Prayers and Thanksgivings. That section contains an assortment of prayers for all kinds of things: for the world, for peace, for the church, families, little children, people in prison, those who are sick... There is actually a prayer for the Future of the Human Race. No kidding.

Some believe the Earth is doing her best to heave the Human Race off her back. Or that these natural disasters are her death throes, part of the climate change. Others are sure we are coming to the End Times foretold by a number of religions, not just ours. The Psalmist says: "the earth reeled and rocked, and the roots of the mountains shook... and the breakers of death rolled over us..."

Not a bad idea to have a prayer for humankind, no matter who or what we think is to blame for the devastation.

O God our heavenly Father, you have blessed us and given us dominion over all the earth: Increase our reverence before the mystery of life; and give us new insight into your purposes for the human race, and new wisdom and determination in making provision for its future in accordance with your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

Mercy

2011-03-10T14:03:00.006-05:00

Today's collect speaks of a God of Mercy. And the lesson from Jonah describes that mercy regarding the people of Nineveh. Jonah warned of destruction and the people took him seriously. They repented. God relented. Jonah was ticked off.

That's the rub. In the Psalms there is much talk of the God of Justice. And I take that a little more seriously than the merciful part. While I want mercy, in my heart I know I don't deserve it. And if I don't deserve it, then those other people certainly don't deserve it. That's how Jonah felt. His righteous indignation said: punish them all!

I'm glad God doesn't always listen to his prophets.

Wishing you a Holy Lent

2011-03-09T11:27:00.001-05:00

Lent already?

Actually Lent comes late this year; we had the full complement of Epiphany, not something you get often. Still, I'm never quite ready for Lent. I plan for it, think up all kinds of "resolutions" for it... what will I give up—what will I take on... or in this blog's case... what will I resume?

Sometimes even a week into it I'm rethinking my ideas about what will make my Lent a Holy time. What constitutes Holy anyway?

Balance seems to be my most pressing issue for 2011, so I will no doubt experiment with balance this Lenten season. If I give up too many things I face resentment at some point. If I take on too many, I will be too weary to enjoy them.

Everyone's path to and journey with God is different. Mine differs depending on the day of the week. This is just the first day of the forty. And forty is a long time.

There is a God and I am not It.

2010-05-09T22:30:00.001-04:00

Those were the closing words from our celebrant this morning.

I knew that. (that I am not It, not that he was not It...) But in his earlier remarks, he was talking about the old Paul Harvey radio shows and how the second half always began with "… and now for the rest of the story…"

He spoke about our various liturgical seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost. We observe the seasons year after year as if we didn't know the rest of the story, even though we do. His question was: while we know it, do we pay attention to it?

We are still in the season of Easter, and this coming Thursday is the feast of the Ascension. Jesus will leave his disciples. Again. In the Gospel reading this morning (John 14:23-29), Jesus said to his disciples: "I am going away and I am coming to you." A strange way to put it.

But the fact was, Jesus would be leaving. Again. And more than likely nobody was happy to hear about it.

He also said "If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father…" That kind of talk rankles. (I've been cruelly manipulated with language like that.) But the sermon wasn't on that passage. The sermon was about the "ministry of presence" versus the "ministry of absence."

He explained that we emphasize the ministry of presence in our faith… be present, Lord, in the breaking of the bread. But we don't talk much about the ministry of absence. Our celebrant made the point that Jesus had to walk away. The Holy Spirit would not come to the disciples as long as he stayed. They needed the Spirit's power… the Spirit's wisdom… to continue the work God had commissioned them to do. Much as he loved them, he had to let go and walk away.

Sometimes we have to walk away. As he put it: let go and let God. We can care, but we cannot fix. We can love, but we cannot protect. There is a God and I am not It.

Today is Mother's Day. My own mother had a tendency to use the same language (we attribute to Jesus) to instill what I'm sure she believed was appropriate guilt… "if you loved me, you would be glad… (fill in the blank) to spend time with me, to send me flowers, to give me a card, to call…" Her stature as a mother was measured somehow in the lavishness of my affections on Christmas, her birthday, and especially Mother's Day.

At the time, I resented the guilt and I resented the implications. But I've since found that she wasn't alone in her need to measure and compare. I've had friends regale me with stories of their kids' calls and visits and gifts… and then ask rude and pointed questions about my children's observance of these special holidays. More guilt, more implications… the implication seeming to be to judge how I rated on the mother-scale. The fact is, if I were to judge myself by my kids' response on those days then I was and am a piss-poor mother.

Yet when I met my older son at the airport last week, his embrace did not appear to be from duty or guilt. It was warm and sincere and it lasted way beyond the requirements for mother and child reunions. We were happy to see each other again and it showed.

My children do call me on the special days. If I'm not around to answer the phone, they leave a message. Occasionally I get a card. Once in a blue moon I even get a gift. When that happens I am amazed and flooded with gratitude… weepy even. Because it's unexpected. That's the secret I think. My own mother expected me to shower her with tangible evidence of my love. Love is intangible. You either know it or you don't. Somehow I know it. I may not deserve it, but I know it.

Oregon #2

2010-04-28T18:00:00.000-04:00

The following is the first part of the second meditation.

I’m willing to bet we have all heard this quote: Faith is a journey, not a destination. Most of us have experienced that journey for ourselves. It’s not always a pleasant sight. It’s not always a comfortable trip.

Explorers are people who live for the journey. They will tell you that the joy of discovery outweighs any risk of getting lost or changed. But feeling lost is scary. And being changed can make you wish you’d never gone down that road at all.

These are some of what I like to call the universal truths about our faith that we are often all too eager to forget. So lets take a journey of our own, as explorers, discovering some of these universal truths, to see if they actually do ring true for us.

First, The central assertion of our faith is that the way of the Cross is the way of life. Not that we have to be physically nailed to a wooden plank, but that we do have to die. Specifically, while we are still living, we have to die to self, and only by doing that do we live. Just about everything about our faith has an ironic twist, and this is just the beginning.

We can live for others, and only by doing that, we learn love. We can deal with life as it is — wounds, pains, storms, wars, injustices and our own shortcomings — and only by doing that, discover life as God intends it to be. We aren't called by the Cross to escape life, but to embrace it.

Escape life. I talked a little about that this morning. After all doesn’t it say in the Bible we may in this world but not of it?

Well here’s one example: How many of us have, at one time or another tried to put Jesus in the role of scapegoat? We load our sins on him. He’s the savior. That’s his job. What if we have it wrong? What if his job as savior means showing us the courage to confess our sins, to bear their consequences, to seek God's mercy, and to start fresh. New Life. New Life. Now that would qualify as Good News.

Here’s another quote: Faith is a journey of infinite variety. Some of us have learned over the years not to project our own faith experiences and preferences onto others. There are many paths to God and all of them are valid. But in just about every faith tradition, except maybe Buddhism, there will be someone in charge who says: Faith has to proceed a certain way, follow certain rules or achieve certain ends.

In Texas they say: “Well I’ll tell you what…” Well, I’ll tell you what: whoever says that is just a bully. Trying to take away your freedom in order to feel better about himself.

Some people think that God had called us to rule the world and the Bible is our instruction book for how we can do that. There are those who actually believe that. You probably know a few. In that scenario, We could set rules, write a manual on correct procedures, worry about orders of ministry and the shape of liturgy. Rubrics would be big. Black would be black and white would be white, and we would not have to be wallowing in all those gray areas of life. It might be nice, but not real.

For myself, I think Jesus said Yes to his call from God before he understood everything that call meant. In fact, may not have understood it completely until the night before he died.

As much as we try to make it so, we simply are not members of a perfect institution started by a perfect man. We, too, have heard a puzzling call. We are trying and failing, and learning as we go. We, too, are being sent to the frontier of our capability, way beyond comfort and safety. Way beyond our understanding.   

We, too, will figure it out and then realize that what we gave along the way was all that God ever wanted. Now that would qualify as Good News.

Oregon #1a

2010-04-26T08:00:00.003-04:00

The folks at the retreat seemed especially glad to hear I would be posting the meditations to my blog. (Just in case they were dozing) So here's the rest of the first address:

Then the devil led Jesus up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, "To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." Jesus answered him, "It is written, 'Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.'" (Luke 4.5-8)

We’re told in the Bible that these temptations all occurred at the end of Jesus’ time in the desert. (We don’t know what he was doing in the beginning… gathering wood, finding a rock for his head, looking out for snakes or scorpions… but at the end of his time he was more vulnerable than he’d been at the beginning. He was hungry. (Famished the Bible says) and he was no doubt grubby beyond belief, wanting a bath, a change to sweeter smelling clothes.

We know what that’s like. Early stages of crisis tend to bring out the best in us… later stages the worst.

Even in a given day, patience, compassion, and any ability to handle stress or adversity ebbs and flows. For me, an incident that hardly touches me in the morning can feel like a huge weight by the end of the day. So… when our patience ebbs and flows, what do we do? What’s the first thing that comes to mind?

Escape.
Run away from home.
Quit.

It's in those moments that we’re especially vulnerable, not only to our lesser instincts: irritability, frustration, condescension… but to the powers of darkness.

Satan offered Jesus escape. If he would just worship him, “all the kingdoms of the world” could be his. He could escape not only the wilderness, get a bath, change his clothes, but he could also escape the dreary oppression of his Jewish heritage. He could escape his own personal invisibility. He could escape everything that ties us down as humans.

Escape is the devil's deal. It comes up over and over again. If we’ll only forget our identity (our identity as children of God) and accept the easier path of evil, we can escape… all boundaries, all commitments, all worries, all consequences, all suffering.

We know the truth, of course. It never works out. We just trade in one misery for another… out of the frying pan into the fire.

Of course it doesn’t make the “deal” seem any less appealing. But our survival depends on remembering the truth. And that truth is the devil can’t deliver. Not just won’t, but can’t.

Jesus told us he was the father of lies. “Glory and Authority” haven’t been given to the devil. Those things stay with God.
So, whatever we think will help us escape: one more drink, an affair, a shopping spree, chocolate… cruelty… shunning anyone we consider lesser than… all those are just new bonds of oppression.

Even a retreat can promise escape. We’re in a special place, a “deserted place” because it’s empty of all our normal concerns. Some call it mountaintop (and not just because we’re up high, looking over the valley,) but because it’s away from our daily routine.

If your time here is blessed, it may be an intense experience, Maybe joyful even. But it may be sorrowful… because you can finally stop all the diversions and commitments that keep you on daily auto-pilot. When those fade into the silence, the real fears… the major concerns we’re normally not facing, can get our undivided attention.

So this time away, in this deserted quiet place, can be stressful. Or relaxing. It can be exhausting. Or energizing. And that’s because it’s about you. There’s no bills to pay, no office work, no meals to fix. We’re here. In the center of the universe.

But then, of course, it’s time to leave.

And when you get home your family didn’t share your experience. Your colleagues at work aren’t interested. You may want to share your experience so they can feel what you felt (whatever it was) because… Because you want to keep those feelings alive. For you. Nobody’s interested. It’s not that they’re hostile, or don’t care, they are just distracted.

More than likely, you’ll feel a sense of isolation. You grieve what you had because you’re losing it— bit by bit.

Now comes the frustration. You have to resume everyday life.

So, where is our faith in all this? That’s the dilemma. Since faith can seem like the ultimate mountaintop experience, that same experience causes a problem. It drives an emotional wedge between faith and life. As much as we pledge to and want to “venture forth in ministry” that ministry is probably back home. Back at work, back in the neighborhood, back on the very streets we have so enjoyed being away from.

What would Jesus do?

Well, we know what he did. He always came back.

He never stayed long in the deserted places or on the mountaintop. He kept moving, working his way back to the common ground of everyday life. That common ground is faith’s venue.

Thomas Merton wrote a lot about conversion of life. Conversion of life isn’t about attending retreats. A retreat may help, but only if we leave it behind.

So this weekend… here’s the invitation: come away to your deserted place and look inside. Ask yourself this question: What is it that you uniquely care about? What is the fire that is yours alone?

Jesus tapped into the fire burning in a few dozen men and women. He tapped longings that went deep enough to claim their lives.

So, for now, instead of reciting what the church tells us we ought to care about, lets just be explorers. And explore what we do care about. Let your longing, your yearnings… be your guide. That’s where God will meet you. That’s where you will meet God.

Now there’s a difference between escape and sabbath.
Sabbath is deliberately resting so you can go back. You press pause.
But that doesn’t mean the movie stops.

Jesus retreated to his deserted place. He pressed the pause button and gave himself the time he needed to recharge, to renew, to return to the world. It’s an art… this pressing pause. And we only learn by doing it.

Oregon #1

2010-04-24T16:45:00.002-04:00

Another blessed year with the Associates in Oregon at Mt. Angel Abby.

Here's an excerpt from the first address:

From Frederick Beuchner’s The Longing for Home:
…our stories are all stories of searching. We search for a good self to be and for good work to do…And in a world where it's often hard to believe in much of anything, we search to believe in something holy and beautiful and life-transcending, that will give meaning and purpose to the lives we live.

—from A Letter to Benjamin

In the Bible it says “there’s nothing new under the sun.” I think that’s true. All the ancient knowledge of the universe, and our place in it, our connection to God, our inter-related-ness… all that resides within us. But we are dense bodies… made of the stuff of the earth. The irony is that because we are made of matter, we forget that we do matter.

Somewhere in our subconscious is the belief that while grace is lavish and unconditional, it is also limited. Cross God one too many times, fail too often, sin too much… and God will decide to take His love back.
God may love us, but He might not like us, so we have to worry that someday His love will run out.

For some reason, we aren’t wired for grace. We need to prove something. It’s all wrapped up in our value being tied to our performance. How do we greet each other?

"What do you do for a living? What did you do today? What have you done for me lately?

Too often religion means we have to clean up our act, sit up straight, earn something… while all the time worrying that we’re fooling everyone. Public opinion is a big deal in our culture, and it’s too easy to believe our own press, good or bad.

But I think Jesus came to teach us to let go of the need to appear good. Instead, slow down enough to listen to the Word within us, to live in the mystery of who we are. If we’re preoccupied with protecting our image, being model Christians, excellent parents… then all that does is lead us into the “look at me” behavior that is just another form of bondage.

We have to quit trying to be saints. Faith isn’t about believing the right things. It’s about love. And grace. So how do we tap into that knowing? How do we quiet down enough to hear God whisper “I’ll never take away my love?"

What we bring to God is deeper than we realize. But it’s frustrating not to be able to name it. There’s an inkling… it’s about that same yearning, that same longing Beuchner speaks about, but we get stuck. So maybe we need to bring to God our search for the name… the name of our empty place, the name of our despair, the name of what would heal us.

We certainly bring our worries to God: get me a job (especially in this economy;) save my marriage; fix my car; help my children succeed. And we help God out by providing the answer, as if God needs reminding.

And when the problem doesn’t go away we blame God. Or someone else for getting in God’s way.

So if we ask God for a name… what is my fear? What is my pain? What is my emptiness? Then instead of waging war on everyone else, maybe we can see God calm the storm.

It’s not magic. And trusting in magic is another way to escape. Things change because of long, slow and small increments. Countless hours of prayer, countless times of saying “yes” to God, countless instances of kindness, or forgiveness. One day at a time. One day at a time to win the battle over fear. Fear is the enemy: fear of change, fear of failure, fear of losing control, fear of losing out… fear of praying and hearing nothing but silence, fear of death.

Faith is only small steps toward courage.

Wishing You a Blessed Easter

2010-04-03T21:50:00.000-04:00

In search of the hunger high

2010-03-29T19:15:00.000-04:00

I recently read the book First There Is a Mountain by Elizabeth Kadetsky. It's about yoga, specifically her journey as both journalist and yoga practitioner to study, in India, with the famous yogi, Iyengar.

There was a cryptic statement early on in the book about her missing the "hunger high". That got my attention, in light of my personal Lenten discipline to fast on a regular basis. Was there really such a thing as getting high from being hungry? (Inquiring minds want to know.)

But then I speculated on my ongoing inability to ever exercise enough to reach the stage where endorphins are supposed to make you feel all warm and fuzzy, as opposed to irritable and sweaty, which is my experience with exercise of most any variety.

Still… an intriguing thought.

It didn't happen. Maybe I never got hungry enough. I was definitely hungry enough to feel empty, to feel a hole in my abdomen wanting to be filled. I was hungry enough to feel light-headed and sometimes slightly nauseated, but certainly not high. I know what high feels like, or should I say I remember distinctly what high felt like back when pot was available and cool. And I know what an alcohol buzz feels like.

I never felt either one. Of course that wasn't the point of fasting. The point was to experience hunger. Unwanted hunger. To create a condition, if only approximately, of what it's like to be poor. To relate to poverty in a way that a white middle-class nun never really can. I'm not even sure if that was successful. After all, it was self-imposed; I was able to eat if I wanted to. And sometimes I was so busy, so involved with a project that I could have cared less. I generally get hungry when I'm bored. And this has not been a boring Lent.

I did lose some weight. But that was probably more the moratorium on bread than my one day of fasting a week. All in all, a bust.

And yet… I experienced how the street vendor smells of cooking food are kicks in the teeth when your stomach is empty. I felt the wistful longing to stop and admire pastries in the bakery window, knowing I could not go in and buy one, whether the reason was money or discipline. I felt more like sharing. That's something.

vocation

2010-02-28T14:30:00.000-05:00

This morning we had a rare treat as one of our long lost celebrants joined us again. Over a year ago he left New York, retired, on sabbatical, checking out life in a warmer climate… but to our surprise and joy, he's baaackkk! (At least for a year.)

His preaching style is legendary, yet this was my first opportunity to hear him. How one person can pack so much meaning into so few words boggles my mind... no wonder he is a legend.

The gist of his homily was the understanding of vocation. He used a quote from Parker Palmer: "It's not the life I want to live; it's the life that wants to live in me. I can relate. Although my family and friends were stunned, nobody was more surprised than I when I ended up in a convent.

The Gospel reading for today (Luke 13:31-35) describes the interchange between the Pharisees and Jesus, where Jesus tells them, "I must be on my way." ... that imperative to continue on the path that God had chosen for him, to be absolutely true to the vocation of who he was born to be… the Messiah.

Jesus was human, like us, with all the temptations, the weaknesses; yet as it is written: he did not sin. The crux of his sinlessness, then, could have been, must have been that willingness to be obedient. I never put much stock in obedience until I had to take a vow of it. Woot!

full circle

2010-02-21T15:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, I realize that Ash Wednesday was last week. (How could I forget?) But the church calendar and my own thought processes don't always mesh, and I've been thinking about the special symbolism of the ashes… not just the dust to dust part… that too; but the fact that the ashes come from last year's palms. The ultimate recycle.

There was a legend that after Jesus' crucifixion, the disciples went to the garbage dump and found the palm branches from the previous week's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. I can't remember whether the branches were already burning or if the disciples burned them themselves, but supposedly they covered their heads with these particular ashes as a sign of their mourning.

That may be an urban legend, but it makes for continuity. The same materials used to recognize and glorify Jesus one week, were used to mourn him the next.

Life is like that. Living involves that. One person's trash is another's treasure. So we save the palms and the palm crosses we made last year to celebrate Jesus' triumph, and a year later we burn them to dust to remind ourselves of just how mortal we are.

fallout

2010-02-18T13:15:00.002-05:00

schiz·oid (skĭt'soid') adj.

Of, relating to, or having a personality disorder marked by extreme shyness, flat affect, reclusiveness, discomfort with others, and an inability to form close relationships.
Of, relating to, or suggestive of schizophrenia. No longer in scientific use.
Informal Relating to or characterized by the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic elements: "This schizoid town is part resort, part sardine cannery" (Jean Anderson).

It's the third definition I was thinking of when I used the term in a meditation I wrote for Ash Wednesday. It never occurred to me that this would be offensive to anyone. But apparently many health care professionals were offended because they descended upon Episcopal Relief & Development with angry outcries.

This was not ERD's fault; it was my failure to be mindful. But as the publisher, they took the fall, and now must scramble to do damage control. They have issued an apology statement to all those who receive the meditations via email, because they take people's feelings seriously. When language usage is harmful then the responsibility must be accepted and addressed. My feeling is we both have done that.

In my life I have not ever been especially conscious of the politically correct way to do things. George Carlin is one of my heros, and he was probably the most offensive comedian to walk the earth; may he rest in peace.

And… I have to admit I'm still processing my feelings on this. People who know me (and like me) thought nothing of it. It's just the way I talk and my voice comes out in my writing. But people who don't know me, who have no reference point to hear my inflection… they are the ones I must worry about.

So now I'm second-guessing all the meditations I wrote. What else did I say that will offend somebody somewhere with a sensitivity to something I'm oblivious to? Time will tell.

This is definitely going to be a most interesting Lent.

Ash Wednesday

2010-02-17T14:45:00.002-05:00

One of our sisters is traveling today. I imposed her ashes right before she left for the train. Last year I was traveling. Every year is different. A friend of mine sent me an excerpt from the book A Hunger for God: Desiring God Through Fasting and Prayer by John Piper. I haven't read it but the passage he sent talks about how easy it is to fritter away ten minutes here, five minutes there, and by the end of the day you've not spent much time with God.

I can relate to that. Giving up the Facebook games freed up way more time than I care to admit. I loved those games. I enjoyed watching the bees swarm and pollinate the clover in Country Life; I loved deciding what to cook and how to decorate my cafe. I even liked all the stupid awards you get on Farmville; but harvesting and sending gifts and fertilizing friends' fields takes a lot of time. "Low maintenance" was what I promised myself, but I think cold turkey would have been easier. I've gone cold turkey on the really hard stuff though, so I'll keep with the plan. Besides, why penalize friends who did not give up Farmville?

Anyway, all that reacquired time translated into creative photoshop time. Here's what I came up with today:

Shrove Tuesday

2010-02-16T13:15:00.002-05:00

I am so ready for Lent this year... on so many levels for so many reasons. It may have something to do with the Lenten Meditations I was responsible for writing for Episcopal Relief & Development this year. Due to print deadlines they were completed last Advent and that was a challenge in itself... focusing on the end of the story while the rest of the world was preparing for the beginning. Anyway, all that writing certainly got me in the mood.

The point of Lent is to come closer to God. All the giving up (fasting and penance) and taking on (extra Bible study, working the soup kitchen)... those are just a means to an end. And the end is a moving target. Coming closer to God is elusive and hard to describe. It's different for everyone, even for those who think there is no God. Okay, that being said, it would be easy enough to rationalize not doing anything special for Lent. It's an option, certainly, and I'll admit I've used it in the past myself. I'm just not there anymore. I want to participate in this bleak desert experience, and in a way I've been too chicken to attempt in the past. So here it is: I'm giving up alcohol. And I'm giving up bread. And I'm shutting down the Facebook games for basic maintenance for the duration. Those are all things I enjoy, and each one in its own way gets in the way of my relationship with God. What I'll take on is still up for grabs, but that in itself may add to the desert experience.

Of course it's the night before and the road to everywhere is paved with good intentions. We shall see.

A lot of folks have pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. In times past, when the Roman Catholic Church ruled with a fist instead of a hand that blessed, you had to get rid of all the fat and sugar and eggs. You can make pancakes with all that.

But here in the convent we've discovered that a day of fasting after the sugar high means nasty headaches all around. It's hard enough to fast without a headache, so we've opted for the Mardi Gras (Louisiana Gumbo) dinner. Shrimp, chicken and sweet sausage mixed with all the requisite veggies... yum. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we fast.

Excuse me?

2010-01-22T16:45:00.001-05:00

As many of you know, we are building a new convent. The location is Harlem at 150th and Convent Avenue. We broke ground in June and hope to move in by mid August this year. The weather has been a bit better so we actually have three of the floors poured... things are looking good.

Except that we got a $3500 fine. The city wrote a ticket because our construction company closed off the sidewalk. The company had permission from the DOT to do this, and erected a walkway with barriers outside. If you live in New York you know exactly what these look like. If you don't here's a picture.

So... get this: the fine says we closed the sidewalk and did NOT erect a walkway. And a photo similar to this one was attached to the paperwork to prove it.

Huh?

So the subcontractor went to court (the one who put up the wall around the sidewalk and erected the barriers for the walkway.) Result: The judge wouldn't take his not guilty plea, wouldn't even look at the photograph. No... they want the construction company to go back to court to enter the not guilty plea. That's two court dates to prove something any moron can see in the photograph, and apparently the person who wrote the ticket, took the picture.

What is it I'm missing? Well, here's another photo to show that some people can actually read the sign and use the walkway.
Is this where your NYC tax dollars are going?

Hundreds Protest Global Warming

2010-01-05T21:30:00.000-05:00

A friend sent me this photo. One of our sisters who adores snow, (starts praying for it in August) would have been right there with these guys. Except... that this extreme cold is slowing progress on our new building. The workmen are doing what little they can, but their morale is as low as the temperatures.

dignity

2010-01-03T11:30:00.000-05:00

This morning our celebrant reminded us that one of the most important things the Incarnation of God came to prove and demonstrate, was... dignity. She elaborated... that the dignity of humankind was respected and valued so much that God became human. In spite of ourselves, in spite of the darkness, we were worth it.

When Jesus grew to manhood and began his ministry, he granted to all he met that same regard for dignity. To John, he granted the right of his own baptism. He granted Mary Magdalene the status of disciple because he recognized women as humans with value, not chattel. He saw his enemies as people worthy of his prayers. He recognized us only as lost, not evil.

She gave another example from the Broadway musical "South Pacific"... where the song by Lieutenant Cable explains that you have to be taught bigotry, you aren't born with it. So far ahead of their time in 1949, Rodgers and Hammerstein received a lot of criticism for their commentary on racial discrimination. They were accused of being Communists, a threat that would take hold and rampage artists and thinkers throughout the 50's and into the 60's.

How do we grant dignity to those who work for us?

to the poor?

to those we perceive as less intelligent?

It is a sad commentary that we still have so much to learn from the God who made us, who became one of us to give Himself as an example.

silence

2010-01-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

I have no intention of trying to blog every single day in 2010. There, that said, here it is... January 2nd and I'm at it again. On a roll? Probably not.

Today is a day of silent retreat for the entire house. What a decidedly lovely way to start the new year. We have that kind of total silence so infrequently these days, we had to post signs in the elevators and the refectory to remind everyone. I have my "in silent retreat" badge on to remind myself.

Yesterday we explained to all the aides and live-alongside folks that they were not to speak to us out loud today, and for the most part they have joined in and have been wonderful. I think it was an unusual challenge for them. One aide in particular has been shisshing her charges when they forget. Forgetfulness seems to be our enemy these days. There is no longer such a thing as The Great Silence in this house. Normally it begins after Compline, or in our case, at 9:00 p.m., and ends after breakfast the following day. Not here.

The best we can manage these days are occasional mini silences, and, while those are refreshing, it's like trying to squelch a forest fire with a plant mister. To go deep, to hear the still small voice, that requires a block of undisturbed quiet. It takes time to withdraw from chaos.

For some sisters a silent retreat day means not only no talking, but also no electronic noise or communication. They turn off their computers, their cel phones, their radios or ipods. For others the quiet is less defined. For me, I want specifically to eliminate all input except the Holy Spirit's. Output is okay for me... it's just another way to weed out the clutter that distracts my focus. Each sister must choose what works best to align her soul closer to God.

motivation

2010-01-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

A new year... a new decade... time for taking stock, time for making changes. It's what I love the most about New Year's, this motivation to look both back and ahead.

I tried to do it when the liturgical calendar changed, but without success. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord." it says in Isaiah. But Advent came and went last year. Even though I thought I would be prepared, I wasn't.

While it doesn't seem right that a secular holiday will hold more sway for me than the spiritual seasons, I will take whatever inspiration where I can get it... and run with it. Life is too short and my own gets shorter every year. I have no clue how long I have. None of us does. That knowledge can be both depressing and motivating. Today it's motivating.

Taking stock:

I spend too much time playing Happy Farm and Fish Town, even though I rationalize that these games are a way to relax and unwind. Maybe I need to rewind, not unwind. Time to look at that and either wean myself away or go cold turkey. Lent will be a perfect time for this if I don't get to it sooner.
I have let my own personal (creative) endeavors slip-slide away. Time to set a schedule to blog on a regular basis. Time to get back to the cartoons too. I miss those little boys. They give me great pleasure and satisfaction, not to mention they make my sisters laugh.
I noticed just this morning that my patience level has deteriorated (yet again). Maybe it's time to change the furniture around. That usually helps. That and weeding out stuff... from my closet, drawers, bookshelves. Weeding out is like getting a haircut. I feel so much lighter, less encumbered. Maybe it's some law of quantum physics the scientists have yet to discover, but getting rid of stuff actually produces energy. You think I'm crazy? Try it. No, really try it.
Okay this is a stretch, but I've been having a lot of bad dreams lately. I think it's time to write them down.
Just in case I've never mentioned it, here's a trivia fact about myself: five is my favorite number. I do everything in fives... latent OCD gene I imagine, but I believe it's basically harmless. So this will be number 5 in the stock-taking activity for today: I am way too bossy. This not-so-harmless-trait is going to take more work than I can even imagine. Acknowledgement is the first step. I did, I do. I'm done for today. Time to go empty some drawers... get rid of five things.

the dawn workers

2009-10-26T16:45:00.000-04:00

Matthew 20:1-16

For me, the story of the vineyard manager is one of the most intriguing parables in the Bible. We know the story: the owner goes out early in the morning and hires the available workers for his vineyard. He then goes out again at nine, noon, three, and finally five o'clock. It's only with the first ones that he negotiates the daily wage; the rest he tells he will pay what is "fair".

Everyone lines up at the end of the day to be paid… and that's when it goes all wrong. What was he thinking? One of the first rules of management is the privacy of salary. It's why Christmas bonuses come in sealed envelopes. You don't walk around handing out the money so everyone can see what everyone else got. Because obviously the ones who work the hardest and need it the most get the least. We know that. We call it seniority. Or hierarchy. Or whatever. It's well ingrained. I was here first. I get the perks.

Only not in God's economy. The first will be last and the last will be first. Not fair! we scream.

I can relate to both groups because I have been in both positions. I have been the first to arrive and the last to leave from my job and was still fired because of someone's ridiculous political agenda. In my religious community I came very late in life, yet have been accorded the same honor as those who entered in their teens.

Not fair, we whisper. But do we ask why? Why is it fair after all is said and done?

time is on our side

2009-10-13T10:00:00.002-04:00

Mark 10:17-31

Our celebrant Sunday was all over the place with his thoughts on the Gospel... maybe because it was one of those "hard teachings", the ones where Jesus tells us something we really don't want to hear. Sunday's Gospel was the one about the rich young man who wanted to know how to inherit eternal life. We've probably all heard it a million times: first, the man is reprimanded for calling Jesus good, then he says he'd already kept all the ten commandments. But then there's something like an aside: it says next that Jesus loved him.

We don't know why he loved him, but apparently there was something... some spark, some gesture, a look... and then Jesus said the worst thing the guy could have heard: Go sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor. And the fellow went away grieving because he was very rich.

Grieving. He didn't go away mad. That's telling, don't you think? Usually when I hear something I don't like, my reaction is to take offense. Who do you think you are to tell me what to do with my money, my life? And our celebrant seemed to think that was significant as well.

"Time is on our side," he said. Because there will be other opportunities. In elementary school it's called a do-over, and I've had enough of them in my life to agree. I quit college in my third year. But when I was thirty I went back to school and did it over and graduated. I mustered out of the Navy three months before I was eligible to sew on my third class crow. But six years later I joined the reserves, took the test again, passed again, and was able to eventually rise to the rank of second class petty officer. Do overs. They are everywhere.

We don't know what that young man did after he grieved. He may have thought about it and figured Jesus was on to something. Maybe not. The Bible leaves us hanging... but time was on his side.

reunion

2009-10-09T11:00:00.000-04:00

I attended an Insight reunion/seminar last weekend and reunited with people I haven't seen in twenty years. With some, it was like yesterday. I felt the same kind of connection as I recalled emotions we had shared in various hotel ballrooms. I personally was looking to rekindle some of the magic those early seminars had provided.

I wasn't disappointed. All the clichés about "you can never go home again" are true and then again, they aren't. I went home to a place I'd almost forgotten existed. "Self-help" workshops were incredibly popular in the seventies and eighties, beginning with Est and branching out to Insight, Lifestream, Life Spring, and others. The word cult was bandied about by those who had never participated in those workshops, because whenever something new or different or strange sounding is feared like that, divisions are created.

I remember my first seminar. Not every exercise or process that we did, but the way I felt each night when I went home… like I'd been put through a wringer. They talk about peeling the onion, and I was one onion that didn't especially want to be peeled. Throughout my life, I had carefully built a fortress of walls to protect myself and my image of myself. The walls were coming down and it was terrifying.

This kind of work is hard and perhaps it's not for everyone. But it was one of the best things I ever did. So the weekend reminded me of what it's like to be in a room with an assortment of people who have chosen integrity over the mask.

I have to admit, there was some concern on my part that the folks I knew twenty years ago would not understand (or would challenge) my most recent life choice/direction. And some did. What was evident was that my mask was still off and my "new" self was as authentic as whoever it was they remembered. Way cool.

Feast of St. Michael and All Angels

2009-09-29T08:45:00.002-04:00

And war broke out in heaven... Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. -Revelation 12:7-9

"And war broke out in heaven..." that is perhaps the most chilling verse in the Bible. For if war can break out in heaven, then what hope can we ever have for peace?

The thing about this verse is the timing... did it happen or will it happen? Or both? The Revelation to John isn't clear at all. No surprise there... prophesies and signs are never really clear until we can document them. We blame the Devil for our own original sin, for the seven deadly sins, for evil in general, but what if the Devil has nothing to do with the mess we've made on earth? What if we have nobody to blame but ourselves... our own human incompetence and greed?

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. Who will fight for us?

It's also no surprise (to me) that Michael is the patron saint of police officers. In their own way, they fight for the ordinary citizen's right to safety and peace. Two in my family are now in that profession. God bless them.

Oregon Again!

2009-04-23T21:15:00.004-04:00

What follows is my first retreat address from the Associates Retreat at Mt. Angel Abbey near Portland, Oregon last Friday evening. The second address was totally off the cuff, so I have no idea what I said. The third and fourth I have some notes for… so I'll post them eventually.

I had a long involved dream the first night I arrived in Oregon. I had not had any sleep the night before, and I had lain down to take a nap in the late afternoon. Only I slept through… the whole night. When I sleep long and hard like that, I dream.

In the dream some people were coming for a retreat and I was going to show an audio visual meditation. Some others had heard about it and brought the rector of the church, who in turn brought some church officials from another country. All this took place in the basement of the church where I work on Tuesdays and Fridays, so… as in a lot of dreams, everything was all mixed up. My conscious mind was probably still concerned with Friday’s pantry session that takes place in that same basement, as well as with the Associates' retreat that I was to begin that next night. So, in this dream, as in many dreams, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.

For some reason we needed batteries for the projector and there weren’t any. A few of us left to go buy batteries and got caught up in rush hour traffic, then an endless series of school buses and subway transfers… a wrong turn here, a blocked intersection there and every decision took us farther and farther from where we had started, farther and farther from where we wanted to be.

The emotions that were running high in the small group I was with, were anxiety, worry, fear…frustration, and anger.

There were about four or five of us in the group, and at some point, while we were waiting in a train station, someone asked about the retreat, and I gave them a little mini meditation on the subject of “embracing what is.” The truth was, I had no meditation on embracing what is (until I woke up from the dream that morning,) but it sounded really good (in the dream), and I’m always on the lookout for Holy Spirit input, so there it was.

It went something like this: When you get up in the morning you always have some expectations about what your day will look like. Certain things are supposed to happen. If you’re a scheduled person you probably keep a calendar. You know if today is a workday, a volunteer day, a play day. On my calendar, if it’s Tuesday I leave right after mass to go to St. Bart’s where I manage the food pantry. If it’s Wednesday, I’m the breakfast cook and the doorbell queen. That means I answer the door, listen to the phone messages. So Wednesday is not a day for me to schedule a doctor’s appointment or to go out grocery shopping.

But, even though we wake up with certain expectations, life will intervene. So the annoying interruptions, the unexpected crisis, the unannounced visitor will all (in some way) derail our best plans. What happens then?

Well, stuff happens.

It’s only in how we respond to the stuff that makes the difference. Now this thought is not unique… to either me, or my dream. Intellectually we each understand that you can’t change your neighbor. You can’t change the weather. You can’t change the fact that you cooked dinner for ten and fifteen showed up. Or that you cooked dinner for fifteen and five showed up. What you can change is your response. You can be angry. You can rail against the injustice. You can envision elaborate plans to punish whoever ruined your day with their incompetence, their thoughtlessness, their lack of attention to detail. Self-righteous anger is one of the first places we can go when stuff happens. But we also know that a steady diet of self-righteous anger is hard on the stomach and bad for the heart.

So, in my little train station meditation, I suggested they keep a little supply of one-word responses for each new day, and to pick one out of the stash first thing each morning when they woke up. The words that I suggested were all the usual suspects: gratitude, forgiveness, acceptance, humor… Holy and enlightened people have been suggesting these same words for centuries, nothing new here. Why then, is it so much easier to get angry or annoyed or irritated than it is to feel gratitude? Your best friend learns she has cancer. You’re supposed to feel gratitude? At what?… that it was her and not you? Of course not.

But in the context of my dream, when we were off in Timbuktu through no fault of our own, and those we left behind were tired of sipping their cold coffee and were no longer waiting patiently for us to return… the responses that all of us were giving forth were ALL related to either anger or fear. Some were actually yelling into their cell phones, looking for someone to blame.

Blame, now there’s a concept. Think about blame. Blame relieves accountability. That’s really all it does. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. Well, that part is absolutely right. Too bad we can't stop there.

If it’s not my fault, then who’s fault is it?!?

Finding out who’s fault it is, is big business in our culture. Really. Think about it. People spend extra years in college so they can get law degrees. So they can spend long hours at work in law firms so they can make big bucks in law suits defending and accusing each other’s clients, just so they can determine who’s fault it is.

“Your client was negligent. Left a wet floor, and as a result, my client slipped and fell down.”

“Well your client was blind or stupid, because he didn’t even pay attention or ignored the wet floor sign and walked over the place my client had just mopped.”

All that to determine who’s fault it is, when in many cases, if not most, it was an accident.

I said that all blame does is relieve our accountability; that’s not exactly right. We also blame someone to make the pain more bearable. Shame is perhaps the most painful of all the emotions human beings can feel. And if something is our fault, we’ve added insult to injury and we are ashamed. I’ll come back to this thought, but for now let me finish the dream.

I’ve had these anxiety dreams many times… always trying to get somewhere to fulfill some obligation, and obstacles are always preventing me from getting there. Some people can wake themselves up in this kind of dream, but not me. Maybe once or twice I’ve been able to stop and say “look, I’m just not going to make it in time for this meeting… or event.” And when I can do that, I usually wake up. But mostly I just keep plugging away, trying to get wherever it is I’m supposed to be. This was the first time I’ve ever been with other people trying to get back, and that was different. Seeing others reacting badly mirrored both my own internal turmoil and my own progress, if you will, from how I always used to react in these situations, and how in some ways the religious life has changed me.

So, as I said, I entertained my own little group with the word possibilities (which I must say they all loved immensely and thought I was very enlightened) and we all managed to arrive at some central meeting place in downtown Manhattan. The rector of my church was there and he was furious. Seething would be the best word to describe him. His important guest was from France and not at all happy about all the waiting they had been doing all morning. He had in his hand the day’s itinerary schedule, and he said, “Ah… Union Theological Seminary. Let’s see, we did that at 8:00. It was lovely.” And he scratched it off his paper. Well of course he had not seen Union Seminary at 8:00 because at 7:30 that we had all left in search of batteries for the projector… which had started this whole series of unfortunate delays. I was trying to decide if he was being sarcastic or if he just had a dry sense of humor when I woke up.

That was the dream. I cannot remember my dreams unless I immediately write them down, but since this one seemed to be speaking to me, I got up, found a pen and started writing. So, where is this going? This long-winded description of anxiety dreams and response words and in the midst of all that the concept of blame?

Well, originally I said that blame is a tool we use to relieve accountability, culpability when something goes wrong. And, I revised that to say it’s a tool we use to make the pain more bearable. Martha said to Jesus “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” We read those as loaded words. Martha blamed Jesus. Then Lazarus was raised. People were overwhelmed when Lazarus emerged from the tomb. And… they drew an erroneous conclusion from that miracle… that the blessing would go on and on and on.

Some scholars believe that the raising of Lazarus was the culminating factor in the Pharisee’s decision that Jesus needed to be eliminated. That this kind of miracle would only incite the masses to revolt, and that any revolt would lead to the inevitable destruction of the Jewish people. "One man’s death would be better than the death of many."

So, if you follow that very logical line of reasoning, Jesus could easily have blamed Martha and Mary for his subsequent arrest and crucifixion. It was their fault. The Jews didn’t kill Jesus. The Romans didn’t kill Jesus. Martha and Mary killed Jesus. The last words on the cross would have been: If you had not whined so much, I would not have raised Lazarus, and if I had not raised Lazarus, I would not be hanging on this cross. It’s all your fault.”

Jesus didn’t do that. Jesus understood, perhaps as no other human being has ever understood, that it was not about him. Down through the ages the church has made it about him, but he didn’t.

Heresy? Perhaps. Let me explain where I’m going with this, what I’m really getting at. When something doesn’t work, we find someone to blame. We externalize the frustration and find fault with someone, and then we imagine a savior. Not especially uplifting, but it’s a tool we use to cope. When Martha and Mary blamed Jesus for their brother’s death, they were speaking out of their pain, trying to make it bearable, externalizing their problem… and dumping the burden on Jesus.

This is what we do with God. A lot. From the Israelites whining in the wilderness to our modern ways of blaming God for every tragedy, we tend to relieve our own agony by blaming God. Then we stay there. And wait.

We wait for God’s response. If the agony ends, we thank God for favoring us, and we look for ways to make the favor permanent, so we won’t have to feel that same agony again. However, if the agony continues, or gets worse, we still may think God will rescue us once we find the perfect formula for appeasing God or honoring God. We make it, whatever it is, all about us. If I don’t get what I want, I blame God. If I do get what I want, then I imagine it will be forever.

This makes no sense, does it? There’s a lot we do, and keep on doing that makes no sense.

So, lets explore some of what we do (and don’t do) that makes no sense. Lets look at ways we limit God and limit ourselves by the way we’ve developed and interpreted the beliefs we hold so dear… look at possibilities for expanding upon some of those cherished beliefs… especially when they have lost their ability to uplift or comfort or sustain us in times of crisis and unrest, in times of agony or despair, in times of fear and trembling.

Alleluia

2009-04-12T09:30:00.001-04:00

The downhill slide

2009-04-09T10:45:00.000-04:00

The religious life is a strange place.

This is, of course, Holy Week, called that because we're leading up to the holiest day of the year for Christians: Easter... resurrection. I've read a few books this past year that have suggested that resurrection is the only reason to be a Christian, and I've read some that say the resurrection most likely never happened and so what? That Jesus' life, in and of itself, was a testimony to the inner being of God, an example for how we should be patterning our own lives.

I find I have not experienced a major crisis of faith over either viewpoint. I tend to lean on the side of "so what?" simply because I wasn't there, and so many stories of the encounters with the resurrected Jesus describe him as unrecognizable. By his best friends. That said, I also believe in a God who can and does work miracles when it suits God's purposes. The nature of those miracles seems to be what we all get in a snit over. Was he bodily resurrected? Maybe, maybe not.

He was resurrected. The power and intensity of his presence after the crucifixion glows from the pages of all the accounts of the sitings and interactions that people had with him. His teaching and example did not die with him.

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day we celebrate the Last Supper. We remember tonight that he ate one last hearty and joyful meal with his friends before the downhill slide into tomorrow. We remember that he washed the feet of his disciples as a servant washes the feet of their masters... that he was betrayed by one of his own. We remember that he gave a final commandment to those at table with him... to love each other in the same way he had loved them. We haven't kept that commandment very seriously. I certainly haven't.

Most of my Lenten meditation this year has been on the fifth Station of the Cross: The cross is laid on Simon of Cyrene. I have tried to imagine every emotion Simon might have had in being forced with this obligation: horror, suppressed anger, repulsion, resentment, fear, relief... I can only imagine how he may have felt. But I know how I feel when I'm stuck with a dirty job I didn't ask for. It's been a good one for me.

from hero to villain

2009-04-07T07:10:00.000-04:00

I've probably mentioned before that Palm Sunday, the way we do it in the Episcopal Church, has always been a sore spot with me. This might be because I was brought up in an assortment of Baptist-Congregational-Unitarian churches, where Jesus got the whole day to be the son of David, the hailed messiah.

When I was little we marched around the entire block in the Baptist church, around the pews in the Congregational church; I can't remember if we marched at all in the Unitarian church, but the entire service was given over to hosannas and palm waving.

Not anymore. Now we re-enact a "Passion Narrative" (one of the Gospels) and it's actually called Passion Sunday. We speed through the hosannas and boom! it's time to crucify him. All inside of minutes. That's just wrong.

And yet... as our celebrant preached on Sunday, it mirrors life. It mirrors the mob mentality. I don't like mobs. Crowds either. They can turn on a dime for no apparent reason. And so, Jesus goes from hero to criminal in a matter of minutes. How easy this turning.

Our celebrant also examined the concept of of scapegoating... distancing ourselves from our own accountability for whatever may be wrong with the world. Yesterday I saw a news report about Obama telling the truth about the American mentality (he said we have sometimes been arrogant) and the news reporter jumped all over it. As Jesus was well aware, telling the truth is a dangerous endeavor.

But one thing she said struck me as especially important for me this year. That in the Passion narrative, especially this year's version from Mark, we are allowed to walk through all the experiences of humanity. The drama of the journey lets us (if we are willing) see ourselves in the story. Of course.

The parable of the prodigal son has always been like that for me... seeing myself in all those personalities (I always identify first with the older brother... no surprise there.) But never in the Passion narrative. We are all Judas, Peter, Pilate... at different times in different situations. It's a good reflection for Holy Week, I think.

proof texting

2009-03-29T13:45:00.000-04:00

Hebrews 5:5-10

Our celebrant began his sermon with the opening lines of L. P. Hartley's novel The Go-Between: "The Past is a foreign country: they do things differently there." He was referencing today's lesson from Hebrews, in which over a third of the epistle quotes the Old Testament.

He launched into one of his erudite discourses, analyzing the points taken from the liturgy for Yom Kippur, providing a thorough examination of the rights and regulations of the tribe of Levi, the Order of Melchizedek and Abraham, all proving that it was certainly okay for Jesus to be the High Priest as well as the slaughtered sin offering.

He spoke of this quoting practice as it applied to the writer of Hebrews. The writer felt strongly that his listeners needed insight into exactly what God had done in Jesus Christ, but today we might label it "proof texting" (finding a piece of scripture that seems to support what you've decided you already believe.) He told an amusing anecdote of a fellow who brought a finished sermon to him and asked him to supply a Bible text to support his thoughts.

But our celebrant went on to explain that the opposite approach "anti proof texting" is where we simply ignore the scriptural passages that don't support what we've decided we already believe.

His implication was that both practices are lazy ways to approach an understanding of what God is doing in the world. They do not engage the text, they simply use or discard it. "Even disagreement is a form of engagement." he explained.

Ahhh now there's hope for me. I can tell.

expectations

2009-03-08T16:00:00.001-04:00

Mark 8:31-38

Our celebrant this morning focused his remarks on Peter, acknowledging that in the lesson previous to today's Peter was the only disciple to proclaim Jesus as "Messiah", seemingly the only one to get it.

How quickly things change... One minute you're flavor of the month, the next, you're Satan incarnate. But the point he was making was that Peter had certain preconceived ideas about what Messiah meant, and suffering and dying did not fit the job description. Expectations... such a problem. For all of us.

Our preacher took the concept further: how many times do we pigeon-hole groups (or individuals) with the sweeping generalizations of "they" always... fill-in-the-blank... ? We project our perceptions onto the other, and then can't handle it when they don't fit the projection.

We do it with God.

If God doesn't conform to our image of who or what God should do or be, we say things like "I could never believe in a God who would... fill-in-the-blank. How do we know what God does or does not do? He acts in ways beyond our human comprehension. But because it is all beyond us, that's just too hard to take. So we place finite limits on the infinite.

God-in-a-box. Doesn't work. Never has, never will, but we still keep trying.

commercial message

2009-03-05T09:15:00.003-05:00

I'm not usually one to endorse or advertise products, but a friend at Jade Music (their website is here) or here, sent me the artwork for a great deal they're having this month: for one week only you can download 99 "relaxing" songs for 99 cents, the deal of the day at Amazon.com on March 24th. After that week, the price for the mp3 bundle goes back up to $7.99.

For those of us who want to slow down during Lent, this could be a perfect way to get in the right frame of mind for that.

As a music publisher, Jade has a wide range of sacred and classical music, and this offer includes instrumental and chant music from their already published albums: Hildegard von Bingen, Bach, Vivaldi, Messiaen, Faure... the list goes on. If you want to hear some of their stuff go to youtube and you can listen to selections from their latest chant album.

traveling

2009-03-02T11:30:00.000-05:00

I have always loved to travel... it's just in my DNA. Born into a Navy family, I was traveling cross-country from the day of my conception. I married Navy men, I was a Navy woman. I've never lived in one house or apartment longer than a few years. I don't even hate "moving house" like most people; in fact, if I don't move house, I have to move furniture to give me the illusion.

So this whirlwind trip to Wyoming has given me the moving bug again.

Last night was the first night in a week that I've slept in the same bed twice. Not a problem, the bed-swapping... but the suitcase repacking has been another story. Each day I've had a new group to meet, a new set of materials to organize/bring to the table. And I keep mixing things up and forgetting. Some of what I need is always packed in my suitcase which is stored elsewhere in the back of somebody's car.

It has been a good exercise in letting go of expectations (my own of myself) and working with what I had on hand. My grandmother's words kept echoing in my ears... Yankees make do or do without.

I prepared a lot for this trip. In advance. I had little speeches, hands-on exercises, audio-visual meditations, booklets and handouts, gifts for the various hosts and hostesses... and then everything just didn't want to work the way I planned it. I could be very smug and say I "handled it well" but the truth is, I have no clue whether I did or not. I got through it. And the best lesson was that I trusted it would be okay, be enough, and maybe it was.

We can only guess at the ramifications of our interactions with each other. I do know I've been given more than I gave, whatever that was... and I've got one more gig to go until I get back on the plane Wednesday. But for now, I'm catching up with what's been going on in the rest of the universe while I've been traveling...

update

2009-02-28T06:00:00.001-05:00

I am NOT dead. I did not quit blogging, honest.

This Lent my goal is to explore new ways to approach the season. Not a problem.

I traveled all day on Ash Wednesday and didn't receive ashes until the evening. Thursday brought a parish quiet day that wasn't especially quiet, (my fault) but we had a lively discussion that I'm sure took many of us deeper. Then an afternoon of spiritual direction before traveling again. Friday brought more traveling for an afternoon with rectors of parishes, and today will be another quiet day at a different parish. Then it's on the road again. Jesus walked everywhere. At least I'm traveling by car.

Where am I? In Wyoming, the state that gives true meaning to the expression WIDE-OPEN-SPACES. Unless, of course, it's snowing. Then you're lucky to see two feet in front of you. We've had a good bit of the snowing part since I arrived on Wednesday, but for now the sky is clear, the sun has just risen and a new day begins.

Let us bless the Lord.

athletic training camp

2009-02-15T11:55:00.000-05:00

I Corinthians 9:24-27

Instead of preaching on the Gospel, today our celebrant gave his sermon over to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, what he termed "a terribly energetic passage".

When the lessons for today were first being read, I remembered I had once preached a sermon on these same texts... (if interested, you can read it here). Had three years passed so quickly? So... it was especially exciting to hear something new and different. This particular celebrant is both a Biblical scholar and a teacher; his sermons have a little of the lecture quality about them. I come away from his sermons knowing more about the Bible than I did before, yet feeling less adequate. I'm thinking that's not such a bad thing, especially as I prepare for several retreats I must lead over the next months. Humility has never been my strong suit, but it's a virtue I'm still trying to acquire. Not to be confused with humiliation... one doesn't necessarily follow the other.

But back to the sermon. In this passage, our preacher suggested, Paul portrays the Christian life as an "athletic training camp." He makes it (Christianity) come across as a competition. Everyone tries, but only those fit succeed. The best trained will come out the big winners while the less trained will be the big losers. And for that he added, we are all in big trouble. And to use the boxing metaphor, we all may as well throw in the towel.

Paul himself points out that we're all several laps behind him in persecution alone, so who can ever hope to pass him in the final lap? But we were reminded that this entire athletic metaphor was taken out of context. Today we only get a few of the verses, but the entire letter is to be read in the context of Christian freedom. Salvation is not a prize to be won; it is a gift from God. The point of staying fit and disciplined is to help others recognize the gift.

Paul points out in his letter that although (in Christ) he has been freed, he doesn't use that freedom. Instead, he conforms, especially if by doing so, he can lead others to Christ. "I have become all things to all people" he says. That made me chuckle. In my time I was brought up with a different cliché: You can't please everybody. So which is it? But that's another tangent.

The celebrant concluded with this idea: that we have a job to do: to invite others into this freedom in Christ. To do that requires a sustained and conscious effort. We do have to work hard, not to be saved, but to save others. It's a commitment to a calling, much like the athlete has a commitment to his or her chosen sport.

I thought about Paul's idea of freedom, and his willingness to lay it down for the larger purpose. He certainly must have modeled himself on the very one he worshipped. For Jesus, though in the form of God, did not cling to equality with God, but humbled himself, taking the form of a servant, and was born in human likeness. His larger purpose was to reunite us (humankind) with God, the creator. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

He's gone.

2009-02-08T11:00:00.001-05:00

Mark 1:29-39

Our celebrant this morning was explaining why Mark is her favorite Gospel. "It's the most troubling Gospel," she said. Most scholars believe it is the earliest Gospel, that the other three base most of their stories on what Mark had to report.

She said, "We've grown up with these stories, so we can explain them away. But in Mark, there is no explanation." She went on to say that today, the trendy way to view Mark's writings is from the context of empire... these are all empire stories that the people of that time already knew. Much as we associate politicians on the back of a train with Roosevelt and that earlier time when life was simpler and values were solid, the people in Mark's generation would have understood these stories by making the association between Jesus and Moses. Jesus comes up out of the water at his baptism... Moses was drawn from the water. Jesus journeys, incessantly. Moses journeyed (incessantly) with the children of Israel through the desert.

In the brief part we read in today's Gospel, Jesus has just called a few followers and they have gone to the house of Peter and Andrew. But his call to his followers is not what it seems. These men had families, they weren't young bachelors with nothing better to do. Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law of a fever, not a lightweight illness in that time. Then... a host of neighbors with all their sick relatives descends, and he heals them too. What must they have thought? Hallelujah? He's come to make our lives better?

Then... he disappears in the middle of the night. They have to go searching for him, and when they finally find him, and want to bring him home, (to do it all over again tomorrow morning,) he says No. I'm leaving. That was when it probably sunk in... just what "Follow Me." was going to be about.

Our celebrant asked "What about those who were left behind?" She was thinking of the ones that Jesus had touched and had probably changed their lives forever. What would they do with this new concept of love and justice and possibility? Especially now that the source had packed up and left them to figure it out alone? But my thoughts went to the ones left behind that were too late for the healings. They didn't get the memo the night before, but they were probably standing in line early that next morning, outside the door to Peter's house.

Where's the healer? When is he coming back?

Oh, you missed him.

He's gone on down the road to spread the good news to somebody else.

Too bad. You missed him.

disruption

2009-02-01T14:15:00.000-05:00

Mark 1:21-28

Today's Gospel is the story of one of Jesus' first public teaching appearances in the synagogue. As our celebrant reminded us this morning, he encountered every teacher's worst nightmare: a loud mouth with an agenda who disrupts the proceedings. This particular loud mouth also spoke the truth "you Holy One of God". Everyone was watching. Now what?

Although he was new to public speaking engagements, Jesus had the presence of mind to take command of the situation. And... according to the Gospel, apparently everyone was impressed.

Our preacher brought her analogy to the present. She commented on Obama's first full week in office, and how, as with Jesus, everyone was watching his every move. And a few were already making trouble, causing disruption. Back then they named it an evil spirit.

What about today? Whatever it is, we just cannot be content with listening to people who speak with authority. We have to take potshots, have to disrupt. What's that about? It certainly makes the role of leadership that more taxing, and the ability to stay on message now becomes one of the marks of a good leader.

The question posed then was this: what is legitimate criticism as opposed to just harping to undermine the process? She asked us to look at our own lives and examine how we behave... both as leaders and when we are not leaders... to look at the temptation to criticize. Is it legitimate? Or do we just need to bring them down a peg? Are we jealous? Jealous that someone else is actually good at what they do?

She spoke to the strife in the Anglican Communion... all the arguments over who could and could not be ordained and why, the interpretation of Scripture, the clinging to dogma. Much of the huge debate acting as distraction, disruption from the true mission of the church.

What are we jealous of... and why?

I am woman hear me rant

2009-01-30T20:15:00.001-05:00

Today was a tough day that started with an early morning subway ride across the city. By the time I got to work I was thinking of blogging a long list of rants against New York's rude subway riders.

It's amazing how inconsiderate we can be to each other in our use of mass transportation. Blocking the doorways for one: there was a young woman on the #1 train who was blocking half the entrance to the car from 110th Street to 50th Street (where she finally exited.) That's nine stops where people had to squeeze by her to get on and off the train. Now I can understand wanting to be close to the exit when yours is the next stop. But for nine whole stops? And that's only the ones I could count. She was blocking the doorway when I got on at 110. The MTA needs more money to run its operations—why can't they fine people for doing that? That... and holding doors, dropping your trash on the floor and blasting your headphones so loud they might as well not be headphones. I wonder how many of the ipod users of the future will have to wear hearing aids because of their blasted eardrums from their ipods? I wonder how much time that same person spends in a year untangling their ear pieces to those ipods? Inquiring minds want to know.

But the truth of the matter is you can't legislate manners. There's just so much you can make "against the law" before it gets silly. Rude people will continue to be rude because there are no consequences for their behavior. It is what it is. Get over it.

not a lot of hope...

2009-01-25T11:15:00.000-05:00

The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time... —Jonah 3:1

Our celebrant this morning mentioned that her class had studied the book of Jonah for their Bible study last year. Earlier she had been telling them about the minor prophets and the wonderful stories that you always hear in Sunday school, but never think to read the actual text. So to her dismay, they had picked the book of Jonah. Dismay, in particular, because of all the prophets, Jonah is perhaps the best example of one who just doesn't get it. While he converts an entire city, he himself is never converted. He saves them, yet despises his own life.

"There's not a lot of hope in Jonah," she said. But she went on to lay out the theme of today's readings: the call from God... and to look at that theme from our own 21st century lens.

What do we do about a call from God?

Jonah was called by God, Simon, Andrew, James and John were called by Jesus, yet unlike the four, who dropped everything and followed Jesus, Jonah tried to escape. Of course he didn't escape, and he finally begrudgingly did what God asked of him.

And it worked. The people of Nineveh repented. God changed his mind about the disaster he was going to bring, and he didn't do it. So... was Jonah proud of himself? Was he happy that his words had brought about such a dramatic conversion of all those people? Not on your life.

He wanted them to be punished. He knew God would be merciful if they groveled and it smacked up against his own bias of who God was and how God should act. "Just kill me now."

"Conversion is not just about us," our celebrant reminded us. "It's about a people ready to be transformed."

She related her experience in Washington at the inauguration last week, where she and her children waited in the bitter cold with two million others to essentially watch TV outdoors. Her kids wanted to know why they were standing in the cold just to watch TV, and she explained that it was not what being there was about.

It was actually about conversion, and the masses assembled there giving witness and approval (or at least acceptance) that we wanted more from ourselves, from our nation, from our lives... than getting rich, being thin and collecting more toys. She said that it feels like we have just been spit out of the belly of the whale. Now we get to decide how we will proceed.

Will we answer the call with enthusiasm and a willingness to see what God has planned for the future? Or will we be like Jonah... whining and complaining and arguing about everything that doesn't suit our preconceived ideas of how it should work?

"There's not a lot of hope in Jonah," she had said earlier. On the other hand, I find it more than hopeful that God uses even the most cantankerous, ill-tempered and unwilling people to do his work. It means there's hope for me.

moments in history

2009-01-20T08:45:00.000-05:00

Today is a regular pantry day. My volunteers were somewhat disgruntled that I didn't cancel today because they wanted to watch the inauguration on TV. I can understand that. But this year there are only four Tuesdays in February and we have a four-week schedule of clients to serve. I think Obama would approve of feeding the hungry, even if it is his big day in history. Jesus certainly would.

Every day is actually history, when you think about it. It's just that we don't necessarily mark it or document it as such. This morning I made history when I left for my day job before Morning Prayer. That was a first. Usually I rush out the door while the communion wafer is still melting in my mouth. But my brand new assistant starts her new (paid) job today, and in January there are extra things to be done before the pantry opens. Leaving early was a new thing today, so it's history.

As I walked the seven or so blocks from the Westside to the Eastside of Manhattan, I saw the most beautiful early morning sky. The sun had risen, but not that high, so the oranges were vibrant and intense. I'm not usually outside that early. I'm basically an indoor person, especially in winter, and our convent's views are mostly to the west. I haven't seen skies like that since I lived in Long Island City seven years ago. I thought about the DVD I saw recently "Into the Wild" ... about the scene where he watches the sun and the vibrant sky and thinks "It doesn't get any better than this."

My sky this morning gave me the same feeling. Random intersecting events collide with each other to create a moment in time... historically documented or not.

no regrets

2009-01-18T12:05:00.000-05:00

The word of the Lord was rare in those days, and visions were not widespread. —1 Samuel 3:1

This line from today's Old Testament reading made me chuckle and think to myself: Yep, and that word is even more rare in these days. It struck me too, that though it was Eli who recognized that it was God calling Samuel, what God actually had to say ended up not being such good news for Eli. Irony abounds throughout the Bible. Throughout Life.

In his sermon, our celebrant tied all of the readings together as a central theme: the call from God. He went on to explore the struggles we have with this thing we call "belief"... how do we deal effectively with the doubts of those around us, as well as the internal doubts we may harbor in secret?

In the New Testament lesson, Nathanael's prejudice gets in the way of his believing. "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Instead of being insulted, though, Jesus praises him for being so straightforward.

Our celebrant related two stories: one about Joan Chittister, OSB, the Roman Catholic nun and widely acclaimed author, lecturer and retreat leader. When asked, she said that even though she may go to her grave unsure about some things, those doubts did not diminish her devotion to Jesus.

In another story a religious scholar was asked about his belief in the afterlife... what if it really was all a lie? His answer is one that I would echo in my own experience. He said he would bet his life on it. And if it isn't true, he still wouldn't change a thing and would have no regrets.

Is there really life on the other side of the grave? Do I care? I'm pretty sure there are those who care a lot, but I don't think I'm one of them. This life is pretty awesome as it is. If belief in God and trust in Jesus serve to make my own individual experience of humanity one where I strive to be compassionate, kind, forgiving, generous... all those things I actually do strive for (and fall short of) then it's been more than worth it.

Change is coming...

2009-01-15T14:00:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday we celebrated the baptism of Jesus. It's always a curve ball for me. I'm still contemplating the visit of the wise men and wham! it's time to baptize a thirty year old. So much about our liturgical calendar puzzles me: we begin our New Year in late November/early December, we celebrate the Holy Innocents before the wise men's visit, we put Jesus in the tomb on Friday and celebrate Easter on Sunday... hardly three days in the ground by anyone's count. And yet other things seem pretty specific: The Annunciation is nine months before the birth... that's linear. Yet some of these wonky celebrations serve as a reminder that God's time is not linear, even though my pea brain likes to think it is.

Our celebrant on Sunday did a time-skip himself. he began by describing John the Baptist and then explored the differences between John and Jesus. John preached that change was coming. That you'd better get ready for it. Then he skipped to our time, our now... where change is still being preached and we're also told we'd better get ready.

But ready for what? Global warming? Economic meltdown? Violence? Hunger? War in the Middle East and Africa? Strife in the Anglican Communion? These issues don't seem especially new.

People went out in droves to hear John the Baptizer. Jesus went too, for whatever reasons we like to attribute to His motives. Our celebrant suggested that Jesus identified with John's message of change and wanted to be a part of it.

But hardly anyone was ready for the message Jesus brought. If He appeared today I doubt many would want to hear it either. God did a new thing in Jesus. New, radical, and against all understanding of fairness and common sense. We've tamed that message over the years, sanitized it, packaged it, revised it to meet our needs.

When will we ask what God needs? What God wants from us?

Three Kings Day

2009-01-06T06:30:00.001-05:00

The Feast of the Epiphany never happened, according to Bishop Spong in his book Jesus for the Nonreligious. He doesn't believe the slaughter of the Holy Innocents happened either, nor the miraculous birth in Bethlehem. Maybe not.

Maybe not in the linear historical sense, a sense I'm beginning to explore in my cartoons these days. But the profound truth... that strangers can recognize what the rest of us are too blind to see... that innocent children are the beneficiaries of deadly violence at the hands of power-hungry adults... that any birth, in and of itself, is the most ordinary and yet miraculous of events... these truths are contained in the stories we relate to explain the ridiculous belief that God, if such a Thing or Person exists, would choose to be mortal, even if only for a brief thirty-or-so years.

This belief, in and of itself, is probably the biggest miracle of all. What's a few wise men thrown into the mix?

resolutions?

2009-01-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

It wasn't until I read something on facebook (yes, I now have a face on facebook... long story) about someone making New Year's resolutions that it even occurred to me that I hadn't. Not only had I not made any this year, I hadn't even thought about making any. So what does that mean?

For one thing, it means the past week, the Christmas Octave, (for those in the liturgical know) and beyond... I've done just about the bare minimum. It's been a week of rest and reading good books. Never, since I've been in community have there been so many sleep-in days actually scheduled. It's a first.

This unexpected rest time came about organically I think. Nothing was premeditated. We had our usual Christmas week schedule intact, with Lauds and Vespers as the bookends for the days of possible social and rest times, excursions into the city for movies or other events. There was an overnight period of fellowship planned with the Melrose sisters the weekend after Christmas. None of that happened. They were just getting over the flu, plus one sister had broken her foot, was in a cast, and not yet able to travel. They didn't come.

We rallied once for a movie, three of us (plus the aide) taking the two elders in a taxi convoy to the Lincoln Plaza for "Last Chance Harvey" but otherwise it was just too cold for ventures out. Our cook was away for the holidays and we grazed our way through the refrigerator finishing up the leftovers. I cooked something most nights, but otherwise I rested.

Then the modified rest evolved... into full days of rest until Vespers. I cannot tell you what a difference it made. The sheer luxury of waking up in a freezing cold room and not having to jump up out of bed was one thing, but being able to turn over and snuggle beneath the covers and dream was the best gift I've received this year. (And I received some really good gifts.)

Today we are back on schedule, and unlike my silent retreat of a few weeks ago, I'm rested and ready for the change. Perhaps one of my New Year's resolutions will be to remember just how much I need to schedule rest and relaxation before I'm at the point of burnout.

New Year's Eve

2008-12-31T10:15:00.000-05:00

Our celebrant this morning gave us a mini-sermon that struck home...

"Today is a time to reflect, he said, "on the blessings of this past year, but also on the challenges we have survived and endured." It's a good way to put it... describing a year that for so many has been fraught with illness, loss, unwanted change and heavy burdens. War continues to erupt in all the usual places, the economy is still tanked, and even with a hopeful inauguration ahead in January, there's a lot of hard work and sacrifice before us to turn any of it around.

In my own little corner of the globe we've had our share of trauma, and our extended families continue to need prayers for health issues, job security and a little extra courage to face the challenges of 2009.

Our celebrant on Christmas Eve elaborated on the angel's message to "fear not..." because, as he said, "fear gets us nowhere." So true. So on this New Year's Eve, the message is similar: Fear Not. Look at all we have survived, all we have endured. Look at all the blessings we have received in the wake of all the change.

It's all a piece. And we are all in it together.

stood up

2008-12-28T10:45:00.000-05:00

When I was in college, occasionally instructors were late for class, and students were required to wait a certain length of time for them to show up, depending upon their status. If he (or she) were a professor, it was ten minutes. If a doctor, then twenty.

We waited fifteen this morning for our celebrant, who never did arrive. My guess is he forgot... there's a lot of that going around, especially here at our convent. But on Sunday, and on this, the first Sunday after Christmas, it was a bigger deal than usual. Our sister in charge of music had to forego all of the Christmas hymns she had planned, as we scrambled to make do with a modified "deacon's" mass. However, a couple of us had specifically requested a certain hymn, so after communion we all opened our books to 112... In the Bleak Midwinter... that haunting poem by Christina Rossetti.

At breakfast I was saying that there are actually two versions, although only one appears in the hymnbook. Except I couldn't get the tune we'd just been singing out of my head. So I searched on YouTube. Most everyone sings the Hymnbook version, but I found a couple of the other one I remembered. Here you go...

Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T19:00:00.000-05:00

In about an hour our "Midnight Mass" will begin at 8:00 PM. It is a concession for the elders who can no longer stay up til the wee hours and still function the next day. Neither can I, actually, and I am grateful for this relaxed schedule (well, okay, not exactly relaxed) but much less pressure than in Christmases past. Soon the celebrant will bless the creche and lay the baby in the manger. Here's what our baby looks like...

Blessings to you all

K.I.S.S.

2008-12-21T14:00:00.001-05:00

We're decorating early (for nuns) this year. Used to be Christmas Eve Day was the day for decorating the world.

But here today, we set up the creche in the morning, attached the wreaths to the cross and the front door and we'll start trimming the tree in another half an hour. All that to say that the last-minute flurry of things to be done will be a little less complicated for those of us actually doing the doing. Wahoo!

"K.I.S.S... or Keep It Simple, Sister" is our motto this year. We'll see how that goes. Over the years traditions develop in any family or community, and somewhere along the way those little extra touches that one person added one year become cemented in the communal memory and then that extra little something becomes a MUST DO.

Not this year. The creche and the tree are the priorities for decorating. Cookies for the Wassail Party on Christmas Eve are already in the works, we'll have a big dinner on Christmas Day, and that will be it.

Meanwhile, there are groceries to buy, laundry to be folded, and menus to be planned. Life is good.

December 14th

2008-12-14T13:40:00.000-05:00

It's Advent III already. (The one with the pink candle)

How did the time fly by so fast?

It's creativity week starting today. (relaxed schedule, large blocks of time...

time for cartoonz and art)

I'm the birthday girl today.

(Chinese take-out for supper... and wine!)

I think today must be a good day to be alive...

cosmic laws

2008-12-11T14:35:00.000-05:00

Some of the ironies of life on this planet are a joy to analyze but a pain to live through. They are what I call the ironic cosmic laws.

I was talking with someone earlier today and said, "There seems to be some law about taking time off... you have to work twice as hard both before you leave and after you come back to pay for it." That was always true (for me) in the corporate world, but it never seemed to be that way for my various bosses. They would schedule their vacations/out-of-town trips always when we were at our busiest, and I would work twice as many hours to make up for them being away.

Yet the law that says making up for lost time takes longer than if you'd been working steadily... what should that be called? It ought to have a name... like the law of thermodynamics or gravity or the Doppler effect... the law of inverse time-warp-expansion... something. Whatever we call it, it seems to be true. I took a week of retreat time last week and ended up working longer hours before and after, which leads to the next cosmic law of crash and burn.

I would not describe my retreat time at Holy Cross as a "mountain-top" experience. I've had very few of those in my life, and I definitely remember them. But the time there was certainly special, sacred, and obviously exactly what I needed. You'd think I'd come home rested and relaxed and blissed out to the extent that nothing much would bother me. WRONG.

Everything bothers me. Well most everything. I am irritable, easily annoyed and can't seem to find me feet now that I'm home. A week of silence with no major responsibilities has spoiled me... ruined me for a life of loving service. On top of that, the sisters who covered my back while I was away are tired. They want to slack a bit, get some relief. And I'm in no condition to jump in with a smile on my face or a song in my heart. What's that law called? It's not really crash and burn. Crash and burn is when you work so hard so long that you just wear out... emotionally and physically and spiritually. I've been in retreat for a week. Why should I feel like I'm in some post-traumatic-stress depressed state? But I do. Definitely.

Not much incentive for my sisters to send me off again any time soon...

How do you measure a year?

2008-12-08T11:40:00.004-05:00

Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear...
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure... measure a year?

Happy Anniversary to Me :)

closet hermit?

2008-12-06T18:30:00.001-05:00

For all the words that can be used to describe a retreat, for me (this time) the word has been seclusion. The desire, the palpable need for isolation has been creeping up on me slowly, probably without my even noticing... until this week... when my time could take almost any form I wished, (except talking of course) I found I had no wish to walk outdoors, to explore nature or even the bookshelves. I had no desire to eat my meals with other people, even when they were in silence. I ate alone and quickly, and came back each time with relief and gratitude to the two rooms and a bath which had graciously been provided for me to use.

Solitude in such a deep form is not necessarily available in community. We do things together... eat, pray, work, recreate. There is plenty of time alone, but it is broken up every day by times of togetherness. This is what I have not had this week: togetherness. Even in chapel there is an empty seat between me and the brothers. I am cut off, an observer. It should not have been a surprise that this would be exactly what I needed, but I wasn't prepared for how strongly I would guard and protect it for myself. At home I am much more available if someone needs me for something. Here I was a specter in the halls.

Tomorrow it ends. I'm not at all sure how that will be. Guess I'll find out tomorrow. :)

fuzz around the edges

2008-12-03T15:33:00.006-05:00

I'm always surprised when familiar things in unfamiliar places have more impact. Something about the slight jolt of not knowing exactly what will happen next keeps me a little more alert, a little more open to the present moment. After all that's where we supposedly meet God.

The story goes that God's name is "I Am." Not I was or I will be... So, we cannot meet in the past nor in the future. Only in the present moment. At times I think I have remembered God in the past... if time was linear before my birth. And I have had lucid dreams of seeing God in a time that is part of my linear future, but those probably don't count.

The special impact has affected me in chapel here at Holy Cross. Of course I am familiar with the Eucharist and the Divine Office, with the flow of how they go—but all monastic orders take the skeletons of these and flesh them out as they see fit. The chanting is different, the pauses and times of silence vary, standing and sitting are not the same. And I am up in the choir with the monks, not exactly anonymous. I am probably a little more than alert.

Alert in chapel, yes, but the rest of my day has fuzz around the edges. I am blurred by the wealth of so much time with no special obligations. I am knitting a scarf, reading two books, playing with art on my laptop. I dress in habit for Morning Prayer, Eucharist and Evening Prayer, but the rest of the day I am in sweat pants and my snuggly bedroom slippers. I feel rested and energized, but not ready to get any shows on the road. Nope, this is just fine the way it is. Here's something I was working on today... it's called hands to receive and bless.

long retreat

2008-12-01T10:15:00.000-05:00

[ri-treet] noun or verb
evacuation, flight, withdrawal—an asylum, (as for the insane...) a period of retirement for religious exercises and meditation... or

to withdraw, retire, or draw back, esp. for shelter or seclusion.

All of those definitions apply. It's been a long and arduous year. Not a bad year, by any means, but definitely busy. I'm ready for this.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine was rededicated yesterday and most of us attended. The place with packed with clergy, religious, visiting dignitaries. Even our two elders were there, which required the aide, Access-A-Ride, walker and cane, as well as someone to keep an eye out for mishaps and misplaced belongings.

We have had strong connections with the Cathedral from the very beginning of our order, even though it is not necessarily our parish church. The celebration was long and lovely, but attending the service meant I was very delayed in my departure to Holy Cross.

By subway, train and taxi... I finally arrived last night after dark, in the pouring rain. Talk about shelter. I was greeted with hugs and offers of food and a small glass of the last of their Thanksgiving wine... (they know the way to a girl's heart.)

I settled in to what seems like a palatial suite... a bedroom, bath and sitting room combined. There is a desk, wireless access, and a bookcase with some interesting titles, a little door out to a garden. I may just fast all week and never leave my suite. (Right.)

I slept late this morning and only woke up when I realized I was having anxiety dreams... dreaming about talking when I should have been silent, shopping when I should have been praying. The brain is a whacky instrument. My retreat plans are flexible but shopping at Woodbury Common never entered my mind. Yet in my dream, there I was, trying on some haute couture jacket that looked ridiculous on me.

I have not mentioned Advent, although I've been looking forward to that as much as I have this retreat. This year one of my images can be seen on Episcopal Cafe's website for the week of Advent I. Take a peek.

The day after Thanksgiving

2008-11-28T12:50:00.000-05:00

Yesterday at dinner we were explaining to a guest what we do here on the day after Thanksgiving.

We take the day as a silent retreat day. For some sisters that means catching up on sleep, for others reading or meditation, but for all of us it means no chatter in the elevator or in the hallways. Except for Morning and Evening Prayer, we spend the day in silence. One sister described it as a blessing and a privilege of the monastic life. She's right about that.

Unlike the frenetic shopping days of my past (especially when the kids were small), when hitting the K-Mart at 6:00 AM was the first order of the day, I have mostly puttered about in my office and cell. I am cleaning up, since I leave Sunday afternoon for my annual eight-day retreat at Holy Cross monastery. Packing, organizing and a last minute "to-do" list have taken up most of the morning, as I decide what books to read and creative projects to work on while I'm there. For me, retreat days always involve some sort of creative project, even if it's only knitting a few rows on a scarf or baby bootie. I will probably take some knitting with me to Holy Cross, along with my laptop and a slew of images I've collected for a Book of Hours project I want to work on.

But old habits die hard, and the day after Thanksgiving used to be the day I tackled my enormous Christmas card list, sometimes drawing and water coloring my own cards. My list now is less than a dozen, but I still think of today as the day to start.

2008-11-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

To all my family, far and near,
blood of my blood, heart of my heart...
wishing you Blessings today and forever...

minor rant

2008-11-24T12:05:00.000-05:00

When companies buy each other out, often the consumer is the one who loses. A few years ago, the great printer/copier mogul Xerox bought out another printer company Tektronics. I happen to be a huge fan of Tektronics printers. In the mid 90s I used a wonderful solid-wax printer at the ad agency where I worked, and when I began a free-lance business of my own, I bought the exact same model. That was January 1998. Each year I purchased the service agreement, because parts have a habit of wearing out and breaking down, and when I joined the convent I brought that printer with me.

I was working on a project for one of the sisters when it had a major meltdown, and the technician, although he got it running again, advised me to buy the new and improved model. He explained that the model I used was not new when I bought it, had been discontinued. Parts were hard to come by, and eventually it would die. That was the summer of 2002. Since the technology had improved and prices had dropped, (don't you love when that happens?) and I still had money in the bank, I followed his advice and purchased the new printer.

Then Xerox bought out Tektronics. Xerox has kept up the service agreement on this printer until this year. When the renewal didn't come in the mail I called them to ask why... and was informed they no longer offer a service agreement on my printer because it is obsolete.

Just like that. The printer works fine. But six years is the limit. My apple computer (a Power Macintosh 800) from 1998 still runs like a champ. I don't use it now for anything except scanning cartoons, but when I crank it up, it works. That's ten years of faithful service by a product who's company is still apple. Not that they would fix it if it broke today... probably not.

So what's my point? I'm not sure exactly, except that we expect our products to break, to have a limited shelf life now. And I still have tools my grandmother gave me that still work after a hundred years of service.

Christ the King

2008-11-23T13:45:00.000-05:00

Our celebrant mentioned that she felt it was fitting that Christ the King Sunday come at this time of year, when the nights are long and the days cold. "We need some hope, some light in the darkness—to be reminded of who is actually in charge", she said.

This week is the end of the church year; next Sunday we'll start all over again with Advent, when we focus directly on the bleakness of our world and our hope for some heavenly intervention that will bring us comfort and joy.

Wars still rage in several parts of the globe, starvation and disease are commonplace, if not here in the United States, certainly in Africa and other third world countries. Our own economic recession-going-on-depression is reason enough to look for meaning that doesn't come from money or possessions.

Today's Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46) speaks of a God who values acts of kindness and charity to the least likely suspects in which to see the face of Jesus. To serve those we don't even recognize as Christ... that is what God values.

growing old is hell

2008-11-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

My mother used to look me in the eye and say "Growing old is hell." She had been one of those heavy duty wonder-women in her youth, could lift heavy furniture with the best of them. Once a cousin marveled at how strong she was and called her "Tarzan" for the rest of his life.

Then she aged. Her health was poor, her strength was gone, her ambition went with it, and all the activities that had once been fun were gradually an ordeal. I would come over to her apartment to visit and end up washing the stack of dishes that were sitting in the sink. She had enough energy to cook, but not clean up afterwards. When she died, I found two dishpans full of dirty pots and pans under the bed in her guest room. She had not wanted me to know just how frail she was becoming.

I'm not there yet. I have a trick knee that gives me trouble from time to time, and a hip that rejects the cold damp weather, but mostly I'm healthy and still full of myself. I see small changes though. Irksome changes. Just recently I've noticed I've lost strength in my left hand. I can't open jars like I once could, not even with all the tricks I know. Damn.

As I've mentioned before, we have four elderly sisters living in the city, in varying stages of ability. One needs help just to walk around: to the bathroom, down the hall, to chapel. She uses a walker, but even with that she's wobbly and careens off the walls. So she is supposed to beep whoever is on duty, even in the middle of the night, to come and help her. She hates it. It upsets her to be a burden to her sisters... to have to wake them out of their rest to help her take seven steps to the toilet. So... she sometimes goes by herself and just doesn't tell anybody. We can tell in the morning if her walker is in a slightly different position, that she's been up in the night without help. Then the lectures begin. It's one of those lose-lose situations. Nobody's happy.

In December we will qualify for 24 hour care for her. It may help and it may not. Her sisters will sleep through the night, but she, who must rely on someone to watch over her, will still not regain her independence or sense of productivity. She will still think she is a burden.

I often get up in the night to use the bathroom... it's one of those growing old things. But I don't turn on a light. I'm barely awake, and have no trouble falling right back to sleep. How different that must be when it becomes a major production with a cast of characters. My mother had it right.

the low-risk spiritual life

2008-11-16T11:15:00.000-05:00

Today's Gospel reading (Matthew 25:14-30) is yet another of those parables I never liked. (You might wonder, if I hate so many of Jesus' parables, why I'm even a Christian...) Yeah, I know. Just consider it a Gospel mystery.

Our celebrant this morning gave one of the standard explanations for this parable. I've heard it before, but it's always good to be reminded of truth. I sometimes like to forget the truth, stretch the truth, bend it, make it suit my own desires. (What... nobody ever does that but me?)

"Why do you suppose," our celebrant asked, "Jesus was so rough on the one-talent-person?"
He went on to describe a typical one-talent-person... and came to the conclusion that most of us are exactly that. There are not so many gifted people in the world that are going to make the cover of Time, win a Pulitzer prize, or be remembered into the next century. Most of us are average. That's what average means. But the anonymity of being average can lead to the incorrect conclusion that whatever we have to offer is so small, it won't be missed.

I won't use my talent badly, but neither will I risk it. (After all I only have one.) So we play it safe, don't hurt anybody, keep a low profile, get by with minimum effort and minimum trust. He talked of the low-risk spiritual life: "where we neither sin nor love much, acting not with faith, but with prudence." These are the people Jesus is concerned with reaching in this story.

For myself, I always figured the poor guy got a bum rap. If telling your master you think he's "a hard man, reaping what you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter." isn't taking a risk, I don't know what is. "I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground. Look, there you have what is yours." That sounds pretty gutsy to me. But after all, he's backed into a corner by the other two highly successful (and talented) servants, what does he have to lose now?

I was afraid... That's the crux of the problem. We have too many tales of a wrathful and vengeful God that we forget the part about mercy. (Not that this story shows much mercy either.) But God is essentially saying that our faith in His mercy is what will produce it. That rings a bell, doesn't it? How many times does the word faith play a part in Jesus healings, stories, and rebukes? O you of little faith... if you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you faith has made you well. Seems like he's trying to tell us that faith, in and of itself, is mighty important.

So the point of the parable, then, is to use what we have, whether we have a lot or a little. Hoarding won't work in the Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, it will get you thrown out.

fifteen seconds of fame

2008-11-14T21:30:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know I didn't tell a soul what we were doing. (It was a secret sort of) But yesterday we helped celebrate Whoopie Goldberg's birthday on the TV show The View.

You do remember the movie Sister Act?!?

They were nice enough to send us a picture. Here we are:

If you want to see the show here's the link. We're in segments 2 and 5.

Choose Today

2008-11-10T12:05:00.000-05:00

Our celebrant on Sunday took his sermon from the Old Testament Lesson (Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25), rather than from the Gospel. I, for one, breathed a sigh of relief. I'm sick of that Gospel about the five wise virgins pitted against the five foolish virgins... I don't care how you spin it, there's just something wrong there.

I'm currently reading The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault. She mentions this Gospel and describes it as more of a koan than a parable, explaining that these teachings are not about the outer activities they describe, but are about inner transformation. Of course the wise virgins couldn't share their oil, she says, because the oil stands for some quality created inside us "by our own conscious striving." She also goes on to explain that we wouldn't get that connection unless we understood that Jesus is teaching from a specific Hebrew Wisdom Tradition.

Interesting. That falls right into place with another book I'm reading by John Shelby Spong: Jesus for the Non-Religious.

Both authors assert that Jesus cannot be fully understood until we place him in the Jewish context he was born into. Okay, I'm game for that. But... both books are also difficult reading for different reasons. Spong, already in the first chapter, has eliminated the wise men, the virgin Mary, Joseph, Bethlehem and all the singing angels. Just think of all the Christmas carols we'd have to scrap if we all agreed he's accurate in his assessment. Just think of all the amazing music and artwork over the centuries, not to mention my own lame attempts to portray these miracles. We'd probably have to eliminate Christmas too... and that's my favorite holiday.

Not that I don't believe Spong will give adequate and excellent examples of why Jesus should still be revered as God's son; I have complete faith that he will. I'm just too blown away at the moment by losing all the lovely mythology around the birth of the Christ, (whether it's true or not.)

But back to Sunday's sermon. Joshua charges the people of Israel: "Choose for yourself whom you will serve." And he gives them a lot of choices. There were nearly three thousand minor deities available to them in that time, a time when they believed that the power struggles in the heavenly realms directly affected the outcomes on the earthly plane. The more worshipers a god could command, the more powerful he or she would be. As I was listening, I realized just how awful a choice Joshua was asking at that time. The God of Israel, by His own admission, was a jealous God. God was a green-eyed monster? You read some of the Old Testament accounts and that's not too far-fetched. Makes you want to think twice if this is the one you will serve. Yet they all agreed. The faithfulness of Israel, whatever their motivations, has given us the world we now inhabit.

We too, have that choice. The words choose today ring the truest, though. It is a daily choice. Every day. Day-in and day-out. Saying yes once won't cut it. It has to be a vow renewed with every breath. Choose today whom you will serve.

High Hopes

2008-11-05T09:25:00.001-05:00

The words History in the Making have been true for much of my lifetime. Civil Rights, Viet Nam, a Man on the Moon... pocket calculators, the internet... and now another chance for a nation, our nation, once thought to be great and noble, to prove itself again to the world.

The country voted in droves. I even voted, and I have not felt the desire or need to vote in fifteen years. In my mind, Hope is what this election was and is about. We hope we can regain the dignity, the purpose, the ideals we say we uphold.

Time will tell, of course. But without that hope there is only apathy. And we (I) have been apathetic far too long. Did I mention this is the first election in which the candidate I voted for has actually won? That makes a bit of a difference in my attitude towards voting.

All Souls

2008-11-04T10:55:00.001-05:00

We have a tradition in our community on All Souls Day, (which we are observing today instead of two days ago): we read the names of every sister who has died in community, beginning with our founder Mother Ruth. Next come the names of all our relatives and close friends who have died... for example, my mother and father, grandmother and grandfather, etc... and finally the names of all who have died in the past year for whom we have said or sung requiems.

It's a long list.

Names that were high points of mourning several months ago suddenly bring tears again, even though they have not been specifically on my mind since we laid them to rest. Why go through all that? Why live in the past that cannot be changed, only remembered with pain or nostalgia?

Two reasons I can think of off the bat: one... these people were important to us. My litany of names may mean nothing to the sister standing next to me, but she holds me in prayer and comfort, just as I hold her when her names are read. It's something tangible we do for each other, we remember together, pay tribute together, pray for their souls together.

The second reason was mentioned in the sermon Saturday (the part I never got to in my post yesterday.) We ask the saints to pray for us, and we, in turn, pray for them. Is this foolishness or the mysterious reality of the timeless nature of creation? I cannot answer that for you, of course. (I can barely answer it for myself.) But I know that these people I have loved live on in me... some in my DNA, some in my memory, some in their teachings that moved me forward on my own path to God.

Remembering the dead is nice, but it is not enough. I thought of my grandmother today, who always worked the polls on election days. Both she and my grandfather were working class Democrats and took great delight in announcing at supper "I voted a straight Democratic ticket." If my aunt and uncle, the Republicans in the family were there, there would be heated discussion about choosing a candidate on his own merits rather than his party. I was a child, and listened to these discussions with little interest, yet they stayed with me... even as I voted today.

When Kennedy won the presidency my grandparents were dead. They would have had to choose between voting for a Democrat or not voting for a Catholic, and I have no clue which allegiance or prejudice would have won out. Today the issue is partly religious, but much more about race. Those who struggled hard in the 50's and 60's to bring Civil Rights to all of America see this election as a culmination of their efforts. My vote will be one that supports those efforts as well. My dear friend Robert Dubie was a freedom rider in the 60's. His was one of my names read at mass this morning. They live on in us. Of that I have no doubt.

reinventing the wheel

2008-11-03T08:35:00.001-05:00

I've heard a couple of good sermons over the past few days...

We don't usually have mass on Saturday, but one of our Bishop Visitors was here last week and it was All Saints Day, a major feast day in the liturgical year. A sermon about saints and prayer and time travel... pretty interesting stuff.

The lessons for yesterday, the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, most people probably didn't get to hear, as our celebrant pointed out. Most people in church yesterday were hearing Saturday's lessons because most churches were celebrating All Saints Day. Yesterday was really All Souls Day, which some will celebrate today, but we (in my community) won't celebrate it until tomorrow, because we have today off. (How's that for time travel?)

The Gospel (Matthew 23:1-12) comes smack dab in the middle of all the "Woe to You" warnings... Jesus warning the Pharisees and scribes about how they will be judged in the Kingdom of God. But in this passage he stops and says essentially, Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Just because the Pharisees aren't practicing what they teach doesn't mean their teachings aren't valid.

It's a good point to remember any time. Not exactly the same as Don't shoot the messenger, but in that vein. The third cliché that comes to mind in all of this is reinventing the wheel.

Both celebrants talked about our church's preoccupation with the past. When we celebrate the saints of Christian history, we dwell in their faithfulness and glories. What does it have to do with us? Our past is pretty flawed, our saints were pretty flawed... why not just ditch it all and start over?

Some are, in fact, doing this. Starting over. It's not surprising or fresh news that membership in churches and religious communities has dwindled over the past decade. Church attendance is down across the board. Monastic communities are dying out. Yet there are also movements to build new communities, based on new rules, new ideals. There is ample evidence that the hunger for spirituality is as strong as ever. But whatever is on the menu of the institutional church is simply not what people can swallow.

Everything has a life cycle. Joan Chittister wrote volumes about the life cycle of monastic communities. She had some excellent insights and warnings of her own when it comes to the need for transformation of stale and outdated practices and beliefs.

As a community, we begin again to grapple with our corporate identity, as we also remain focused on individual ministries and obligations. It's a fine line. The company of saints provide not just a background, but a "cloud of witnesses" for our struggles today.

quotes that cut the mustard

2008-10-23T11:55:00.001-04:00

"And when we would make much of that which cannot matter much to thee, forgive us." ~John Elbridge Hines

I came across this quote in one of Bishop Spong's newsletters. Somehow I got on his mailing list even though I have yet to read any of his books. We just acquired Jesus for the Non-Religious for our library, but another sister ~~has been hogging it~~ is still reading it.

A conversation earlier this morning caused this quote to jump out at me. (Really jump out.) Judgment is probably my worst stumbling block in my personal search for compassion. I realize I'm not alone in this, that I was taught from childhood that judgment was a good thing: it was how I compared myself to those around me, to what was expected of me, to what I expected of others... a simple formula to see how we all were doing.

But as I deepen into this new life, I keep finding that judgment, in and of itself, is like quick sand: You step in it and it's not that easy to step out.

What really matters to God? Does God really care that the Epistle candle be lighted first and snuffed out last? I was taught that those little details were important when I was trained to be the sacristan. When I see someone doing it backwards, or snuffing the candles one-handed while they reach for the books on the altar with the other hand, my first response is irritation, not gratitude. I do not think, "Oh thank you for putting out the candles," I think, "You are doing it wrong."

I am working on this, but it can't be from the outside in. Nothing will change if I continue to judge myself as wrong for judging someone else as wrong. It doesn't work that way. Forgiveness is the key. And as I am finding out, again and again... it has always been the key, will always be the key. So, thanks, Bishop Hines. (If you've not heard of him, he was Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church from 1965 to 1974, championing ecumenical and civil rights changes, and women's ordination, to name a few.)

profound platitudes...

2008-10-19T00:05:00.001-04:00

"The hurrier I go, the behinder I get." Someone said that in conversation the other evening, and I had to smile. I don't remember the first time I heard the expression, but it stuck with me, the way an irritating jingle from some old commercial will pop into your mind... and stick there. forever.

It doesn't fit me exactly (at least not right at the moment.) I'm treading water pretty well. Every so often I gulp a mouthful, but for the most part I'm still breathing. Still there are lots of things I'd like to do that there's no time for, and lots of things I'd like to do that I'm carefully carving out time for. Balance never was my forté and probably never will be, but with the help of a daily "To Do" list and a schedule that allows for small blocks of time between prayers, cooking, doorbell, and my work outside, I'm managing. I'd like to write more often, but am finding I have less to say, or at least not enough time to say it properly.

I was at a friend's profession Friday night. She and I actually joined this community as postulants together and we were comrades/combatants our first year. We were clothed in the same ceremony and then split up for three months when I went off to Wyoming on a special project. When I returned, we had a few more months together, but then she left us and went to another order. This happens a lot in the religious life. People move around. A Vocation is not just a call to serve God, it is a call to a specific community, and that's not as easy to discern as the God-wants-you part.

My friend and I have kept in touch sporadically, which isn't always easy either. She has her life and I have mine, but for the big celebrations it's always important to be there, for each other, as a witness to friendship, to commitment, to celebrate the joy of new directions and new growth.

The best laid plans of mice and men... another expression that sticks, and in the case of her Profession ceremony, was definitely on target. A traffic accident in the city caused two (of an expected three) associates-to-be to be stranded somewhere on the highway, so they missed their reception ceremony. The one who showed up was received. The next plan-gone-awry occurred when the preacher was likewise lost in transit, and the Gospelor was asked to preach an impromptu homily. He did an admirable job, reminding us that God is spontaneous, and probably not nearly as serious as we package Him... that we should be more playful when we approach our lives of service, because a sense of humor will get us through a lot. The evening's lesson from Ezekiel concerning the water flowing from the temple was a case in point: he explained that in the desert, water is power. But if we think of water instead as blessing, a blessing for all, not just those in control of the resource, we will approach our ministries in a whole new way. He spoke of my friend as a wonderful reminder to him that God is playful, and urged her to continue to remind us of that truth.

The service moved along and we were just starting communion, when the preacher arrived. My friend stepped out in front of the altar and said, "Wouldn't it be playful... if we heard two sermons tonight?" Everyone laughed. And so we did. Finally at the end, one of the other associates-to-be had also arrived, so we went through the reception ceremony again at the end of the service.

Spontaneity. They lived it Friday night and it was a blessing and a reminder to me. So much so, that when another friend, who lives with my sisters up in Brewster, asked me to ride back to their convent instead of staying overnight, I said yes... and surprised them with an impromptu visit.

Hard lessons

2008-10-08T14:00:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday I attended mass at my old church in Jacksonville, Florida. The new rector, who I'd just met two days before at the rehearsal dinner, sidled up to me and said "I don't really like today's lessons. Why don't you preach the sermon?" I laughed. I actually hadn't read Sunday's lessons yet, so I was curious to hear them, and then to see how he preached them.

Ah yes ... the vineyard owner, both versions: the original from Isaiah, and the one Jesus told as a parable. It's always good to hear his source material in context with the Gospel reading. I often forget Jesus drew from Torah for many of his stories. He didn't operate in a holy vacuum, making up everything he said from scratch.

The preacher began by talking about prescription drugs and their possible side effects... how Madison Avenue has made a killing with advertising for prescription medications of all kinds, (not just the ones to enhance your physical abilities in bed.) The theory is you'll go to your doctor and ask for the drug. If the doctor prescribes it, then you'll also get a large piece of paper with all the possible side effects: nausea, headache, diarrhea (he didn't use that word) and muscle pain. It comes down to the fact that you're betting that the meds will do their job without you having to deal with the side effects. His analogy was that everything in the lessons for Sunday dealt with choice and the side effects of those choices.

In the Isaiah vineyard story God built, planted and took great care to tend His vineyard. But instead of getting a nice crop of grapes, he got sour ones. In that version it's clear that Israel, the people, are the grapes. They've entered into a relationship with God based on a covenant, where both parties have made promises, have responsibilities. God keeps His side of the covenant and expects His people to keep theirs. But they don't. Instead they are wild grapes, a people who rebel and don't honor the relationship.

While the imagery is the same for the Gospel, it's now a case of vineyard owner versus tenants. Still, there's the underlying idea of covenant: it's his vineyard after all, and the owner expects to collect his share of the harvest. But... when he sends his servants to collect, the tenants beat them up, and some servants are actually killed. After all this, the owner says to himself, "I'll send my son. Surely they will respect him." But they don't.

Let me stop right here and spin off on a tangent. Am I the only person who's ever thought the owner is naive? These tenants have just killed his servants. He did nothing. They think the place is theirs. Why would they even hesitate to kill the son? I must be missing something historical, contextual, huge... because I don't get it.

Except of course, I do.

The analogy that God is patient and forgiving and loving and full of mercy, giving us the benefit of the doubt time after time is clear. But both these lessons have a warning. In both these stories, there's an end to the mercy. In the first, the vineyard is trashed and allowed to be overrun with weeds. In the second, it will be given to new tenants. In the early Christian movement, they probably thought they were the new tenants. A lot of us probably still think that's the case. But the truth remains that Christians behave with the same rebelliousness, greed and self-absorption as Israel did in Isaiah's time.

Our priest said, "These are hard lessons."

Why? Well, first of all nobody likes to admit guilt. "Not my responsibility" or "I didn't know." are two of the standard excuses when a catastrophe occurs. Take your pick... the latest debacle on Wall Street will do. "I'm not greedy like those guys. I'm just trying to get along in this dog-eat-dog world, make a decent living, give my kids a better life."

Except... we've all bought into some pretty lame substitutes for a better life. Our kids sit in front of TVs that tell them they'll be prettier, more popular more in... with anything and everything from designer jeans to the latest Barbie, and adults will be happier, more attractive, more successful... with a bigger house, a cushier car and prescription drugs to enhance our physical abilities in bed. We didn't have to buy that story. But we all did (and do) to some degree. So here come the side effects.

"The Kingdom of God will be taken away and given to others." In our day and age, how does that work? On Sunday, the priest had his own idea about how it happens. He thinks it won't be a drastic thing... more like erosion. Certain things lapse and ethics become lax. He wondered aloud how many people ask themselves "What does God want from me?" rather than "What do I want?" Not so many. I know that even in the convent it's an issue. We, who have given our lives to God are still plagued with the "I wants" instead of the "God wants" or even worse, we pretend that God wants what we want.

And yet, in times of disaster, it seems to me easier to hear the hard lessons, to swallow the medicine that will make us well again. We are a greedy people. Yet when that greed is paying off, who wants to hear it's wrong? Only when the house of cards begins to tumble do we buck up and get clear about our priorities. Maybe now is the best time to hear these lessons.

coming home

2008-10-06T10:30:00.001-04:00

They say you can never come home. Depends on how you define "home". I've had many homes in my lifetime and some were harder to come back to than others.

My home now is the convent. But that's not exactly accurate... my home now is a group of women who have chosen a life that's off the beaten path... a much simpler way of living than what I've found on this vacation.

Specifically I'm referring to the act of living and moving and being in a complicated world. My world now is way less complicated than it was before, not just in not having to decide what to wear in the morning, but in the intangible emotional choices.

I find I can no longer hold together the various strands of subtle innuendos and personality quirks, hostile grudges from past wounds, constant struggles to carry (and manage) the baggage of childhood. I say the wrong things in the wrong places. (Well, actually that's not new for me.) But it's different now, because for the most part, it's unwillingly and unwittingly done.

The women I live with have quirks in their personalities, of course. But we are more transparent. In the convent there's no need to posture or impress, no need for lots of words to describe the indescribable... and as a result, there's no need to posture or impress the outside world either.

So, for the most part, I have little or nothing to say. Except when I open my mouth to make an observation... and experience the backlash that it was the wrong thing at the wrong place and the wrong time. Then I'm awash in guilt for not knowing better, not remembering some topic was taboo ground, not discerning that one person needs assurance, while another needs to hear a truth nobody else will tell them. It's a complicated world and I no longer live in it.

So... I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight to my less complicated world. They have free wireless in this airport, and I'm taking advantage of the novelty of being plugged into my email (and the internet) in a public place. I've just experienced a hectic week of wedding preparations... parties and receptions and rehearsal dinners, the wedding itself, and the reception and another party yesterday. Each individual event was carefully planned and lovingly executed, the bride and groom are delightful people with a wonderful array of friends and family. But when you put all those events and people together, it was exhausting.

This coming week I'll be doing some of it all over again as my sisters and I prepare for another Life Profession next Saturday. Not so many parties, but certainly the excitement of the preparations will be the same. They've just announced my flight has been delayed another hour. More time to enjoy the novelty of free internet and airport cuisine.

on your mark... get set...

2008-09-29T08:35:00.002-04:00

When I was little I remember using a variety of procrastinating mantras... all were supposed to be preparing me for whatever I was about to do next. "On your mark, get set, go!" was from track (I think) and of course I never ran a single loop of track in my life. It's probably not even called a loop.

Another was: One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four - to - go! I liked that, you could drag out the inevitable for a long time with that.

The operative word, of course, was... go.

I'm getting ready to go. I leave for the airport tomorrow at oh-dark-thirty, and I'm going through all the preparatory motions of a lifetime of admonitions... don't leave home without clean underwear, don't take a long trip without cleaning your baseboards, never leave dirty dishes in the sink...

In mid-life I turned those rulings into an art form. I would wash and iron everything I owned and hang it all neatly in the closet. It took days and often a very long night before I could finally pack what I was actually taking with me and leave home. I'm not as compulsive now, but I still have the last load of clothes in the dryer as I write this. Of course I don't have so many clothes now.

My dear friend's daughter is getting married in Florida. My younger son and his family lives in the same city. My times there are always too short, but this time, especially, it will be hard. I'll be gone less than a week this time, and the "wedding of the century" (as it's been dubbed by friends) will take up a lot of that time. I've not seen my grandchildren in almost a year... but I will see them soon.

I have recently acquired eleven boxes of odds and ends, mostly books, from my life before the convent. All the kitchen things have been integrated into our convent or taken to the church pantry where I work. The books are a work in progress... our librarian is sorting through them to select what she wants for the library, the arts and craft books will go to the art room. But some are design and symbol resources, collected over a lifetime, and they are still in my office on a shelf near the computer. Mine!!!! I have to laugh at this reaction, because it's certainly not new. Even though I lived without these resources for six years, I find I still want them for myself. This too shall pass. My suitcase is full, not with my clothes, but with presents for family and friends... from this new hoard of goodies I'd forgotten I even had. It's so much easier to let go of those things. Just not the art resources.

set up

2008-09-21T11:00:00.000-04:00

(Matthew 20:1-16) Our celebrant reminded us this morning, that any time we hear Jesus saying "The kingdom of heaven is like..." (fill in the blank), he really means: this is what the world would be like, our world, if we acted according to God's purpose and not our own. And Jesus' mission, he said, was to bring God's kingdom to earth.

I always feel a little differently about that. Whenever I hear Jesus say "The kingdom of heaven is like..." I know to look out, because he's going to say something that makes no sense, does not seem fair, and will take me a whole lot of contemplation to finally get it. If I ever do finally get it.

Today's Gospel is a prime example. The vineyard manager goes out early in the morning to hire day laborers. After a bit, he sees he needs more help so he goes looking, and hires a few more. And again, and again throughout the day, right up until an hour before quitting time, he hires the last ones he can find. So far so good.

Then he sets them up. Really. He deliberately sets them up, calling them in reverse order to be paid. No sealed envelopes in this company, everybody gets to see what everybody else gets paid. Well look at that! Those guys who only worked one hour just got an entire day's wages. Wahoo! Whoopie! We're gonna get a bonus, nyah nyah nyah..

Only that doesn't happen. The final payout for everybody is one day's pay. Grumble, grumble, grumble. So what's with this? You give those slackers the same as us? And the vineyard owner says, "What? I can't do what I like with what belongs to me? You feel cheated? We contracted for a day's wage for a day's work. That's what you got. Take your money and scram."

Then he proceeds to rub salt on the wound by saying "Maybe you're just jealous because I'm generous." Okay. Intellectually I get it. His money, he can do what he wants. And if I had been one of the five o'clock workers I'd be ecstatic. Maybe feel a little guilty about the other guys with the sunburns, but nevertheless ecstatic.

But what about the dawn workers? I think they have a legitimate gripe. If they had been paid first and sent home none the wiser, wouldn't that have been easier to swallow? Of course word would have spread, but it's going to spread now anyway.

With my protestant-work-ethic-mentality, all I can think is if I can sleep til noon and I'll still be paid for the whole day, why should I kill myself to get there on time?

Our celebrant told a story from his own experience that helped with an answer. When he first came to New York, he had seen men early in the morning, waiting... They were mostly immigrants, day laborers, waiting for construction foremen to come by in their trucks. A truck would pull up and the driver would roll down his window and hold up two or three fingers, to indicate how many workers he needed. The men would start running. The first ones to the truck were the ones who got the jobs. Jobs were scarce. These men had families to feed. They could not afford to be picky, or late, or slow to move.

That's a good point. If the whole story is a metaphor for God's abundant grace... and the emphasis is on grace, then none of us can afford to be picky. Or late. Or slow to move. Our souls are on the line.

If the emphasis is on abundance, though, then gratitude is the only appropriate response. I may have been up since dawn today, but there were times when I grossly overslept. I cannot begrudge another that same grace.

curve balls

2008-09-18T09:45:00.000-04:00

I remember as my mother got older, she would need more time to get herself ready in the morning, more notice when something out of her normal routine would occur. I used to think it was funny. At the time, I could still be ready for work in twenty minutes, and would change plans at the drop of a hat, especially a beach hat.

But now that I live with so many older sisters, I see what a curve ball does to their psyches... it just upends them when something unexpected interrupts their schedule. One of our priests will be moving to Canada soon. One of our older sisters is from Canada, and this morning when he announced at mass that it might be his last time with us, he asked to see her before he left. (She often sleeps late and was not in chapel at the time.)

Simple request, especially since she actually was up when I went to check. But she was not dressed, and could not even contemplate getting dressed at that moment. She didn't want him to see her in a bathrobe, so... the answer was no.

He understood, because he has his own family Alzheimer situation, but I realized how careful we must all be now... not to promise anything that may seem reasonable to us, but will not be possible for the elders to accommodate.

On the other hand, the two of us who are the "responsible ones" this week, are experiencing our own curve balls. First it was the phone system... down. DSL... down. That's finally been fixed. Our Home Health Aid, who helps with both of the two eldest, will be taking one to the doctor, so we'll have to be more vigilant about the other who will be left unattended. I'm on beeper this week, which means I'm not supposed to leave the house, but I also must pick up milk and eggs from the Farmer's Market and our CSA share. Sister has three directees and I have one, a new one... and I'm supper cook. We will be running on empty by nightfall.

How many times?

2008-09-14T15:00:00.001-04:00

(Matthew 18:21-35) This is the parable about forgiveness. Peter asks Jesus how many times must we forgive someone who hurts us? Seven? And... (depending on which translation you read,) the answer is either seventy-seven or seventy times seven, which would be four hundred and ninety. Either way, the answer certainly implies a bunch of times. That goes against the grain in our society. Someone who keeps forgiving and forgiving and forgiving is usually seen as a pushover. There's an expression: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me. That puts the burden on the victim to make sure the consequences fit the offense... an eye for an eye and all that.

But today's Gospel has left a bitter taste in my mouth for other reasons. Ever since I participated in a Bible study class in my early years as a novice, I've had doubts that Jesus actually said this.( Not the part about seven times seventy, but the part about the king going back on his word and tossing the "wicked slave" into the torture chamber.

Here's why: One of our group posed the question: If the human king in this parable is the stand-in for God, and God can just take back his forgiveness in anger... where does that leave us? I'd never thought of it that way. I'd always thought it was just a story, an object lesson, like my Nana would say the boogyman would get me if I didn't behave. You don't forgive your neighbor and God will get you.

But her question brought up a lot of discussion at the time. In this particular story, the king has already forgiven the first slave his debt. Period. It's only when the other slaves turn him in for not forgiving his own debtor that the king goes berserk and has a hissy-fit... puts all the debt back and sends him to be tortured until he can pay it. This is nonsensical. If the man is in the torture chamber, he's not going to be working off his debt. It's vindictive. Is our God vindictive?

Our celebrant this morning took a different tack. He opened with the acknowledgement that some things are easy to forgive and other things really test us. As he spoke, I thought of all the people who lost friends or family members on 9/11/2001. How each anniversary brings it up all over again... the pain, the loss. Some have been able to forgive, some may never be able to.

He spoke of "the grim burden of not being able to forgive" and I thought of the expression "carry a grudge" in light of his words grim burden. Of course. We carry it. The torture chamber is one of our own making, even though in the parable the king imposes it as a penalty. Perhaps the penalty has always been in place as part of the human condition, and until we can learn the simple but maddeningly difficult lesson, we will continue to blame and accuse and expect payback. And, when it is not forthcoming we will live tortured lives. And even if there is payback... the death penalty for murder, for example... it will never be enough. An eye for an eye never replaces the first eye.

But he went on... "We should always be forgiving," he said, "because we are always in need of forgiveness." Now that's different. Way different. It's different because it comes from the heart of who we are, no matter how wonderful we'd like to be. And it's is not a threat from a vengeful God, it's a statement of compassion and hope, instructions from a God who wants to help.

Forgive, not because we have been forgiven, but because we'll need to be forgiven. And soon. He asked just how high each of us rated forgiveness. As compared with justice in a world full with violence and evil. That's a sticky one. Both are two sides of the same coin if we are to improve the human condition globally. But our celebrant believes that forgiveness is central to all of it. I agree.

In Memorial

2008-09-11T10:30:00.000-04:00

I have a friend who's writing a book about 9/11. Well, I'm not exactly sure it's about 9/11, but it's about depression in the aftermath of great disasters, and she saw a lot of depressed people in the aftermath of that one. She was my spiritual director at the time, and we met every month.

It's been seven years today. I can still remember where I was and what I was doing when I was rocked by the news. I say rocked in retrospect. At the time I was calm. I am usually calm in crisis situations and only fall apart later.

The problem with my reaction to 9/11 was I could never fall apart... not in the weeks or months that followed, not when I was finally forced to go down there and look at the big hole in the ground, still smoking. I felt something... horror, I think, when I saw scraps of paper still clinging to fire escapes east of Ground Zero, months after the attack. Last year I actually contributed to another friend's art project with that image... the view of a fire escape from below, with a scrap of debris, the actual debris, hanging from one of the rungs.

Seven years and I am finally beginning to feel something.

I'm almost finished with the book Three Cups of Tea. If you haven't read it yet, (It's been on the Best Seller List, for goodness sake!) It's about one man's passion to bring education to the poorest and most remote villages of Pakistan. Greg Mortenson was in Pakistan when the towers fell. He'd been traveling to and from there for years, building schools one village at a time. He had first hand knowledge that it was not Muslims, nor the people of those countries who were the extremists who had done this.

I was sickened by a lot of what happened after 9/11... fundamentalists crying Armageddon, politicians swooping down on New York City, suddenly their city, to wave the flag, promise retaliation and justice for this heinous crime against our people. I couldn't help thinking: what about our own crimes against the marginalized people of the planet? Wasn't this act of deliberate destruction a symbol that we were not especially innocent? That somebody felt they needed to get our attention regarding our increasing wealth and comfort at everybody else's expense? But that was certainly not a popular opinion then, and is still not. This is America: Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Except it's the white race that's been free and the other races expected to be brave. For the first time in history a black man has the opportunity to become president. If some crackpot doesn't try to kill him. Crackpots abound. They do not all wear turbans.

not now and not me

2008-09-07T10:45:00.001-04:00

...Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"
and then again: "Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?" (from Exodus 3:1-15)

Our celebrant reminded us this morning that the whole idea of meeting God face-to-face is not necessarily the pleasant and profoundly uplifting exchange we (naively) think it will be. No, she said, encounters with God happen in unexpected places, at unusual times and in odd ways. The story of Moses and the burning bush can be a paradigm for us: God's will for Moses was not an easy job. And Moses' conversation with God was mostly argument. I think of the line in the Lord's Prayer Thy will be done and my own subsequent response, just not right now, and just not by me.

In the Gospel reading (Matthew 12:26) Jesus tells his disciples the hard truth about discipleship: What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? In most of the versions the word soul is used; in some it's substituted by life, meaning the true life. In the Contemporary English Version it says: What will you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself?

Your soul, your life, your self... these are called forth in encounters with God. Difficult. Uncomfortable. Because God recognizes qualities in us that we cannot recognize. Don't especially want to recognize. Whoever thinks that believing in God is the easy way out of this life is mistaken. But definitely worth the effort.

Book Review

2008-09-06T10:00:00.001-04:00

I'm reading a book called 36-Hour Day. Called "the definitive guide to Alzheimer's", it should probably be required reading for all baby-boomers, and their children who will end up watching them deteriorate. It's actually fascinating reading... not only because it helps me understand the odd behaviors of my aging sisters, but also because I recognize myself in the early stages of this process, even though I still function on a reasonably high level. I forget things now. I have to use spellcheck more often. It takes me longer to learn a new task, and I do things on my computer the way I've always done them, not because I can't learn new key commands, but because there's a certain satisfaction in going up to the menu and clicking "save".

I still say Alzheimer's, even though the official designation is Alzheimer Disease (without the 's). I learned Alzheimer's. It would take a lot of energy to learn it without the 's.

There's a cultural more in religious communities that explains why we do certain things the way we do: Because we've always done it that way. It confounds new sisters testing their vocations. They think it's a joke. But it is and it isn't. They cannot understand the stubbornness with which the community expects certain duties and tasks to be performed, certain rituals to be observed.

When this culture clash occurs (and it always does in some form or another) the new recruit will respond in a number of different ways: She gets angry. She argues that there is a better way. She argues that it doesn't matter. She tries to change the community's perception of how it should be done. She does it her own way in spite of the conflict. She does it the community's way but resents the hell out of it. She learns the value of doing it the way we've always done it.

Getting to that final stage... acceptance is one of the necessary steps in a sister's vocational test. Her ego must surrender to the community's established way of life. Many cannot make the leap. It's just too counter-intuitive for a normal 21st-century-conditioned woman.

With our elders, we see them less distracted and upset when they can continue to do things the way they've always done them. There's a certain security in recognizing a cup on the bathroom shelf where it's always been placed. Routine and ritual take on new meaning. The book explains all that. I recommend it.

toot toot

2008-09-02T14:30:00.001-04:00

It's been so long since my last cartoon post (way back in January I think) so I feel the need to let those readers who used to visit that site, know that the boys are back.

If you liked the first two series, you might like the third. (Nothing like tooting my own horn.)

what goes around...

2008-09-01T16:00:00.001-04:00

My best friend is leaving town in less than a month. She's moving across country to San Francisco, a place I once thought I would be moving to... I was going there to live with a boyfriend. (Who actually turned out to be married.) I didn't move there after all.

I've visited, though. It's beautiful. Just like my friend. As much as I will miss her, I am so happy for her. She's going to a new job, where it looks like they might actually appreciate her, unlike the sorry excuse for a boss she has now. She has slaved for this guy for years... saved his carcass on many occasions, made him look good to the board of directors, to his constituents and colleagues, to the public and has he ever shown her one tenth of the respect or acclaim she deserves? Of course not.

She is too capable and even-tempered to be a prima donna, too much of a self-starter and a problem-solver to be a squeaky wheel, has too much dignity to play into his stupid political power ploys. And... in our society it's easy to take advantage of honest, hard-working loyal employees. He did.

But that scenario is about to change. What goes around comes around.

So... Best wishes, bon voyage, good luck and happy trails... I hope I can come visit you in your new digs by the Bay...

paradox

2008-08-25T09:30:00.001-04:00

We celebrated our community's "Foundation Day" yesterday. It was my first as a life-professed sister of the community; why that made a difference, I'm not sure exactly. I've been treated like a member since my acceptance as a postulant. But it was different. I told one sister, I used to look at the bricks, now I am one.

Emotionally, it was huge. (I cried.) The four sisters who live at Melrose, the convent in Brewster, came down mid morning for the day. Those four extra voices at mass made such a difference. One of them, a gifted musician, made our little organ do cartwheels. The service was lovely, the preaching was excellent, we were all together. Emotionally huge.

But... maybe it was huge because I was absolutely wiped out from being up in the night. One of our beloved elders has just come home from the hospital. Her surgery was Thursday and the insurance companies won't allow long hospital stays anymore. She can't get up by herself yet, she's too wobbly, and I just happened to be on beeper duty this week. The beep beep beep went off at 12:30 and again at 5:00. Uh oh... Diarrhea. I was (am) a mom. I've had my share of cleaning up poopy pants, it's not a big deal. Still, it took a while... changing sheets, cleaning up, finding new night clothes. She was a doll through the entire process, cheerful and helpful, apologetic and embarrassed, yet she let me help her do what needed to be done. I didn't think much about it at the time.

In her sermon, our celebrant spoke about the concepts of holy time, holy tools, holy place. When King David decides he's going to build God a Temple, God says "Did I ever say I wanted a house?" It was not God's need, it was ours. We have a distinct history of making altars, tabernacles, places of special sanctification. From early standing stones to mighty cathedrals, we have needed to differentiate between the ordinary and the sacred. Also with our tools... the special vessels for mass, special vestments. And with our time. Here we recite a fourfold Divine Office: Lauds, Noonday, Vespers and Compline. We set these times for prayer aside from the rest of the day, and when the warning bell rings, we stop whatever we're doing and gather in the chapel. It would seem that the larger truth: that all time is holy, all ground is holy is being ignored. She said no... we understand that on an intellectual level, but we cannot comprehend it, not really. So the defining, the comparisons, the degrees of sacredness we assign... all give us a framework for awareness. Layers of mystical awareness.

Jacob, on awakening from his dream of angels says: Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not. We may assign certain times and places as sacred, but God is everywhere and shows up unexpectedly and we know it not. Until later. An afterthought. Oh... that was holy ground. That was holy time.

And so it was for me as she spoke. I thought about the early morning hours, literally up to my elbows in excrement. That was holy time. And I knew it not.

As she continued her thread of the mystical layers of awareness, she said that once in the center, with God, that's not the end. We must keep moving, and come back out to the outer realms. These holy times are always temporary... temporary resting places so we can renew, replenish, but keep on keeping on. And, she said we can be temporary resting places for others.

I thought about that, tried it on to see if it fit. Had I been a temporary resting place for my sister in distress? Maybe. But the larger truth was that she was the holy ground and my time with her, cleaning her bottom was the holy time. Paradox... don't you just love when that happens?

stalling

2008-08-20T13:45:00.000-04:00

While I was in Newport, I went to Sunday services with my friend. A beautiful little church (little only by St. Bart's standards) was in the midst of summer chaos: a priest in charge, a retiring organist, lots of parishioners on vacation... yet the Spirit still moved through the aisles, in the Nave, and spilled out into the coffee hour afterwards. Spirit always seems to move in chaos. I forget that when I'm stuck in the eye of the storm.

The preacher/priest-in-charge did not forget, though. Her job is to hold the boat together and to help her parish navigate through difficult waters ahead. Her texts were pertinent to that: The angel of the Lord speaking to Elijah, who had run away to the cave in the mountain, "What are you doing here?" And Elijah giving his blow-by-blow response, "I've done my best. Nobody listens. They broke all your furniture. All the other prophets are dead, and now they're trying to kill me."

She outlined the usual things such a prophet might feel: the sense of despair at being all alone in the work for God, discouragement, fearfulness, dog-tiredness... standing at the edge of the abyss. Two choices then: hide in the cave or step out into the chaos.

She spoke of the concept of chaos, from very real physical tumult to the simple busyness of each day's activities; how easy it is to get caught up in our obligations and cares, to feel physically battered like tropical storms batter the coastline. She returned to the reading from 1st Kings. God was not in the wind, or the earthquake or the fire. God was in the still. small. voice. "What are you doing here Elijah?"

So... we are called back out. Into the chaos. She noted that in the hymn: Jesus calls us o're the tumult, it never said Jesus calls us out of the tumult. Life, she said, is not a fairy tale, and (contrary to what some believe) the Gospel does not call us to live happily ever after.

Yet the tumult wearies us. When I am weary, I am more easily prone to fear.

Fear... we each respond to fear in different ways. Some snap at everyone around them, some are paralyzed and cannot function. Others become obsessed with controlling what can be controlled. None of it is pretty. Yet necessary. To find the stillpoint which is God, is to know after all, that God is with us. The cave may seem like safety, but that is also illusion. Risk is the key.

I thought about their little church, struggling to make it through another storm. But the words were meant for me as well. Some of you know I draw cartoons. I do it for the fun of it, but I also do it for deeper, less understood reasons. I've been in the safety-cave around this activity since the last series. (Mainly because the next step gets a whole lot stickier, and I am afraid of being glued to some place I don't want to be.) Yet, like Elijah, I keep hearing the question "What are you doing here?" Stalling, God. That's what I'm doing here.

Who is Jesus?

2008-08-13T10:40:00.000-04:00

I was sitting on a park bench, minding my own business, when a young woman approached me. "May I ask you a question?" she asked. I steeled myself for what would be the usual continuation... not really a question, but a sad story and then: the plea for money.

But instead she said, "Who is Jesus to you?" I looked at her. She was carrying a handful of orange pamphlets. Are Jehova's Witnesses canvassing the parks? I wondered. I was wearing our community's summer-simple habit, a dark blue Lands End dress, with no veil, just the cross and girdle cord, also dark against the blue. If you didn't look closely, you might not even notice it was a habit.

"The Son of God?" I said, with that annoying lift at the end that I associate with Valley Girls and most of the young people I overhear in the subway... those who use the word like in the middle of every phrase... like, you know, when they're like talking to each other?

"Oh, so you believe in Jesus?" she asked.

"I do," I said with probably way too much emphasis on the do, (overcompensating for my annoying first response.)

"Do you go to church?"

"Every day." She looked shocked (impressed) at that.

"I'm a nun," I explained, "I have to go to chapel every day, four times a day, actually." She didn't quite understand the term nun.

She handed me one of her pamphlets: Moses in Manhattan, a cute little cartoon about an imaginary Moses wandering through potholes in Queens, braving rush hour in the Bronx and getting side-tracked in Brooklyn, all in search of the promised land. It was a tract published by Jews for Jesus. She pointed out the address and email on the back and told me if I had any questions I should call or write. Then she was off... in search of more promising converts.

I sat there awhile and studied her pamphlet. At the bottom in small letters it said, Please do not litter! I laughed. Practical instructions in the promised land.