It's gotten a bit dusty around here, so allow me to fling open the shutters and warm the blog with a happy announcement: Thean Psalter, the fruit of many years of devoted prayer and a yearning desire for faith that rings with honesty and joy, has just been published by Thea Press. The newly published version includes many updates to the proto-Psalter I had made available in 2016. I invite you to take a taste for yourself with a psalm that speaks to the journey that brought this prayerbook to fruition:

This year brings with it changes: some eagerly welcomed, and some simply needed.

There will be several changes for me as I continue along this path of life.

1) Beginning this month, I will no longer be holding Thean Evening Prayer outside my home. This is a loss, as I have loved and learned a great deal from this monthly sacred circle of women. It is a gain of time and energy, both of which are increasingly precious to me. I invite those who have gathered with me for Thean Evening Prayer and any others who wish to develop their own regular, rhythmic prayer practice to pray with the Thean Psalter. This Psalter is written in a feminine voice with feminine pronouns and names for Thea in a feminist thealogical worldview, and is an enriching supplement to other faith traditions as well as a strong, illuminating, standalone form of prayer.

2) The Thea House Church liturgies, which have previously been private gatherings, will be open to all pilgrims with open hearts beginning this March. More details will be announced in the coming weeks.

3) I have found in the last year that I have failed to make adequate room in my life for two of my great joys: walking and writing. I resolve to set aside less vital pursuits to make room for these. To that end, I look forward this year to participating in my third half-marathon and finishing my second novel.

4) I imagine that each of us seeks to be more loving and less resentful. I cling sometimes to resentments and anger when I feel wronged or observe someone else being wronged, but I seek to keep those feelings close only long enough to learn from them and let them go in peace. The longer I journey along this road of mine, the more aware I become that my time is limited, and my desire to love abundantly and beautifully competes with the time I give over to festering anger. I seek to choose love and beauty, and to allow anger to grow into both of those rather than falling stagnant.

May 2018 be rich with joy, love, and hope for all Creation. ♥

Tonight I hosted Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace as I do every first Saturday of the month, and tonight two dear women in my life took part in it for the first time.

As I settled into the presence of each woman gathered there, various occasions of stepping outside my comfort zone surfaced in my memory. When I first arrived in Phoenix nearly four years ago, I knew almost no one, and I knew that if I wanted to get to know new people, I'd have to be in charge of making those connections happen--those relationships wouldn't manifest without my initiative. So I did research, I stepped out, and I introduced myself to people I'd never met.

To be vulnerable in a new setting has long been hard for me. Experiencing that vulnerability was rarely worth it when I was younger, but these days I do it despite sometimes intense discomfort, because what I seek lies on the other side of that discomfort: trust, new insight, and connection.

Each new encounter, each new experience, is an opportunity for synchronicity, an opportunity to meet myself in a new way, to come face to face with the deepest yearnings of my heart. Even when I hit an apparent wall, encountering someone or something that repels me, I can see myself in that as well--my shadow side, the side that is hard to accept, the side that is easier to brush under a rug and be done with.

As I sat in this beautiful, open-hearted gathering of women this evening, I sensed the risk involved for each person there, including myself. I hold this space for others that they may be given life from it, but some part of me whispers in my ear, "If no one shows, you've failed." And that is the struggle so many leaders of faith communities face--the idea that numbers determine success in ministry. In reality, "success" is ancillary. What is central is presence--in my case, a willingness to be present to and with other women, whether or not they seek or accept that offering. 

Tonight I found myself grateful once again that my livelihood is not determined by the "success" of my ministry--that my dayjob affords me the opportunity to pursue my ministry without requiring anything from those to whom I minister. As a woman inclined toward faith and spirituality, I have often felt pressure to offer something to the communities in which I have been spiritually fed, which has more than once left me depleted. What a gift to be able to offer ministry to others in which I require absolutely nothing back. And, by my not needing anything from those to whom I minister, perhaps those who take part are able to focus inward (on what they seek) instead of outward (on what others think or need), and in doing so are able to discover that what they seek dwells within them, and also dwells within each person gathered.

For who is Thea but the fire inside you and me? Who is Thea but our very breath, the light in our eyes, the dance in out feet, the poetry of our hearts? Who is Thea but the community that binds us, the beauty that delights us, the music that sustains us, and the love that heals us?

Who is she indeed, the one to whom we pray, if not the one we behold in the mirror, and the many we behold in the world?

I am grateful for the women who show up for this gathering, those who show up only once and those who show up almost every month and those who are there now and again. I am grateful for the unfettered gift of their presence to me, for in it they are living icons of Thea. They remind me of who I really am and also of how much love and thoughtfulness and wisdom the Creation is capable of. In their vulnerability and openness, I encounter Thea. In my leadership and ministry, I encounter Thea. In our journeying together, I encounter Thea. And in all of that, my heart is made full, ready to face the shadow side, to pull up the corner of the rug lovingly and to deal bit by bit with all I and the world have stowed there--because if a dance is going to take place, that rug needs to be rolled all the way up!

We shall each get to where we are going, I believe, one wobbly, risky, uncertain step at a time, until we've mastered Thea's wild, loving dance. And what a gathering that will be!

I shared the ordo of my Strawberry Moon Thean Eucharist at a friend's request, and he asked me afterward how it felt during and after that liturgy.

For a bit of background, allow me to say that my Thean Eucharist has evolved a great deal over the last two and a half years, so much so that we stopped doing Eucharist for a while because my thealogy had changed so much from its Christian roots.

But this was the response I offered my friend, and I believe it sums up what I value most about Theanism:

This evening I arrived early at Pathways of Grace to set up for Thean Evening Prayer, and I found a complimentary copy of Kissed by God - Holy Women Create! by Shirley Cunningham waiting for me. I flipped through it, sipping images and sampling stories of biblical and spiritual female leaders from the Jewish and Christian worlds. A short piece of mine was included at the very end of the book about the woman at the well who encountered the Christ. My breath caught as I read it.

This--the experience of having another take the time to absorb my story with openhearted love and non-judgment--this is the moment when light and shadow unite. And this is the moment of ecstasy, of knowing that I am beloved, exactly as I am.

I considered this as I led prayer this evening. When I was Christian, in recognizing that I was the beloved, I understood myself as being in an ongoing process of becoming united to the source of my longing and fulfillment, to the Holy One. 

As a Thean, I reocognize that I have always been united to the Holy One--not because of baptism, not because of belief, but because I am of her. What a strange and surprising thing it is, to spend one's life seeking what one yearns for, only to discover that what one yearns for has been within oneself all along.

It took thirty-three years for me to realize that my pining was not for the one just beyond my reach, who complemented me but was decidedly not me. My pining turned out to be for the one I beheld in the mirror, the one whose hands and feet and eyes and voice were the instruments of my muse, my author, myself. I am united to Thea, not because I was ever separate from her and then did what was required to become one with her, but because I am her handiwork, and my flesh is her flesh.

Tonight I prayed the psalms and was reminded that Thea's body is nothing more or less than creation. I am the one I seek, and the one I seek is likewise in every other creature I will ever meet--in my beloved husband, in my darling children, in my despised enemy, in the cascading waterfall, in the unmoved mountain, in the cocooned caterpillar. To recognize Thea in myself is to recognize her in all the world, and that is reason for pause. If I trust that my light and shadow are beloved, then it follows that the light and shadow of all beings, animate and inanimate, are also beloved. 

What a challenge that is to accept. And what a wonder. It's so easy in daily life to give in to the temptation to dismiss others--and yet those others are made of the same sacred starstuff I am. 

And so I wondered, long after I was left alone at Pathways of Grace this evening, what it would take to love others in the way I've learned to love myself, my beautiful, broken, vivacious, imperfect, holy self. And I wondered if perhaps I'm still clinging to the idea of a holy other whose job it is to be available to the one whose yearning runs deep, when all I need to do is look in the mirror to see where love begins and ends.

Last night was a turning point for me: for the first time, I brought my ministry as a Thean priestess out of the privacy of my family's house church and into the public realm, leading Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace in Phoenix.

My vision for Thean Evening Prayer was simple: it would be an intimate gathering for those who identify as women to pray together to God in their own (female) voices using feminine images for God and imagining God in relationship to Creation through a feminine, feminist lens.

When I arrived, my dear husband helped me arrange the space the way I wanted it, and then he departed so I could pray before others arrived. At 5:00, the time when prayer was set to begin, I was the only person in the room. I continued to pray, and as I prayed, I was surprised by the awareness that I actually wasn't alone--I was in the company of thousands of generations of women, women who had come before me, who had refused to be silenced or disempowered by oppressors, women who had imagined themselves and their God the way they chose, women who had loved, created, mentored and empowered girls and women within their influence. All their efforts, all their willingness to stand up for themselves, all their willingness to make a difference when they were told to shrink and be quiet--all of that energy had culminated in this moment, this hour, in which I was able to embrace my public ministry as a spiritual leader, a Thean priestess, a woman who wouldn't settle for the oppression that would seek to rein me in.

I knew going into the night that several women who wanted to pray with me were out of town. I knew also that several women who had wanted to pray with me had something come up at the last minute. I prepared to pray with my cloud of witnesses. I waited. Then a familiar face arrived, a woman who had prayed with me at our former Episcopal parish in Tempe, a woman who was preparing to lead her own spiritual circle for women. We hugged, we talked for a few minutes, I showed her around the rooms of Pathways of Grace, and eventually we settled into our seats to pray. I sounded the singing bowl four times. We stood, and I intoned a invitatory that I had learned years ago at my Roman Catholic parish in Cleveland, the same parish that ignited my love for liturgy: Let my prayer arise like incense in your sight, the lifting of my hands a sign of trust in you, O God. She joined with me in singing, and we sang it several times, letting the words soak into the space and ourselves.

We prayed the psalms next--Psalm 141, from which the invitatory came, and then a series of other psalms. Between each psalm there was a pregnant, full silence. At one point, I held my breath in between verses to keep my voice from breaking and tears from falling. Next time--next time I will let them break and fall.

At the conclusion of the psalms, we moved to the homily. I explained that in the Christian (and particularly Benedictine) tradition, Saturday night evening prayer was a big event, because it was the vigil for Sunday, the most important day of the Christian week. Saturday evening prayer was therefore when a homily was given, at least in communities that prayed together the liturgy of the hours every day. I noted that the homily would traditionally be given by the presider in top-down fashion, the presider imparting (his) reflections as seeds to be planted in the hearts of those around (him). Then I explained that in the case of Thean Evening Prayer, the homily was open to every person present, because a key Thean belief is that every (woman) has deep wisdom to share. So we shared the homily based on phrases from the psalms that had particularly resonated with us. Our homily was a mutual conversation in which we listened to one another and sounded/heard our own voices, recognizing that Thea's voice resounded through each of us.

I don't know how much time passed--time felt as though it was suspended, but I know from the content of the conversation that it must have taken a while. When the homily had reached an end, I turned to the next portion of evening prayer: the anointing. A bottle of oil stood on the little altar before us. I removed the glass stopper and poured a small portion of it into a glass bowl, inviting my praying partner to partake of it. I spoke of olive oil as an ancient healing balm, but I also spoke of it as the stuff with which royalty, priests, and prophets were anointed. To partake of scented oil is a sign not only of healing, but of empowerment and authority, specifically the power and authority to speak and act as one deems fit and wise. I said that it was particularly poignant to anoint the parts of ourselves for which we seek wise power and authority: the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the nose, the hands, the heart. My prayer partner and I dipped our fingers in the oil and rubbed the rose and clove scents into our skin, and then prayed Psalm 45 from the Thean Psalter, which included verses like, "You, a woman, are among the wise ones; grace flows from your lips," "Your leadership shall endure, for you love goodness and reject unkindness," and "Thea anoints you with the oil of gladness."

Thus empowered, we prayed together for those all around us, and lifted up personal prayers of our own. Then we stood and prayed a modified version of the Lord's Prayer called "Our Mother," written by Miriam Therese Winter of herchurch in San Francisco. We concluded with a collect prayer and this blessing:

May Thea bless us with courage,
guide us with her unrelenting love,
and empower us to answer her sacred call. Amen.

Our time together was not over--we stood, moved to the other side of the room, and talked over a small spread of food and bubbly water I had brought to share. We talked about our experiences, our faith, our friends, our leadership, our children, and our lives. We talked and talked until suddenly it was nearly 7:00--between the two of us and the cloud of witnesses that surrounded us, we had spent the two hours for which I had reserved the space.

I feel full: full of gratitude, full of joy, full of wisdom, full of holy power. This gathering was and wasn't about me. It was about me as a woman who has been on a journey all her life to arrive at the moment of taking up her life's vocation. It was about every woman who has ever done the same or sought to do the same. It was about every young girl who is figuring out who she wants to be, and it is about countless generations of women still to come who will change and lead this world for the better, overcoming oppressions and embracing who they see in the mirror as living icons of the Holy One.

This morning, my older daughter and I cleared our dining room table. I invited her to bring out my lidded white candle and my sparkling, pale purple quartz. "What are you doing?" she asked as I opened the lid of the candle. I said nothing, setting the lid next to the candle, placing the quartz chunk inside it, and lighting the candle with a match. I opened my Thean Psalter to the section marked "Twenty-fourth Day: Morning Prayer." I asked my daughter if she was ready, and she said yes. I proceeded to pray the appointed psalms, 116-118, in a lively, lilting voice, making eye contact with her and slowing my words at important phrases. At the end of the final psalm, I said, "Amen," and she repeated it after me. I invited her to blow out the candle, and we collapsed in giggles as she blew and blew at the flame, to no avail. Thean light is not easily extinguished, she discovered.

After I walked my older daughter to school and drove my husband to work, my younger daughter and I met with a friend of mine who's heading off for rabbinical studies this fall. She wanted a copy of the print version of the Thean Psalter. As soon as I gave it to her, she began adding thin plastic tabs to it; she also oohed and aahed over the purple cardstock title page, the color of which was her favorite. Her excitement as she explored the Psalter's words mirrored my own, and I couldn't help grinning as I watched her. She asked which of the psalms were my favorites, and I pointed out Psalm 23, which reimagines the relationship between G-d and psalmist, moving from shepherd/sheep to mutually curious, passionate lovers who are, among other things, equals.

This Psalter represents Thean thealogical thought, which is feminist and feminine, egalitarian, pacifist, and creation-centric. Patriarchal structures/images as well as themes of violence and vengeance are challenged, eliminated, or transformed.

The e-copy of this finalized Thean Psalter is available for free to all who request it. The hard copy, which is laser-printed on high quality white paper and purple cardstock and comb-bound with a black spine in clear plastic front and back covers, is available for $10USD, payable via PayPal, with free shipping anywhere in the continental United States. I plan to make hard copies of the Thean Psalter available each first Saturday of the month at Thean Evening Prayer, where all who identify as women are welcome to pray.

This is a psalm that originally spoke of the stubborn hearts and repeated rebelling of God's people, despite God's goodness and generosity. In the original psalm, God grew angry and finally allowed the people to die off to see if it would make any difference with them.

I believe my rendering of this psalm speaks to a Thean worldview, one in which we as Creatures still rebel and in which God still resists that rebellion, but in which rebellion, resistance, and resolution are imagined in a very different way.

Psalm 78
 
Hear my teaching, my sisters,
   incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
 
I will open my mouth in a parable;
   I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.
 
That which we have heard and known,
and what our foremothers have told us,
   we will not hide from their children.
 
We will recount to generations to come
   the liberating deeds and loving power of Thea.
 
She established wisdom,
   which she gave us to teach our children;
 
That the generations to come might know,
and the children yet unborn;
   that they in their turn might tell it to their children;
 
So that they might discover their divine identity
   and live as icons of her in the world.
 
She worked marvels in the sight of our foremothers,
   in the land where they were once slaves.
 
She split open the sea and let them pass through;
   she made the waters stand up like walls.
 
She led them with a cloud by day,
   and all the night through with a glow of fire.
 
She split the hard rocks in the wilderness
   and gave them drink as from the great deep.
 
She brought streams out of the cliff,
   and the waters gushed out like rivers.
 
And she said to them, “This!
   This is what I want you to do for your fellow Creatures!”
 
But they strayed from the path she had given them,
   rebelling in the desert against her.
 
They tested her in their hearts,
   demanding food for their craving.
 
They railed against her and said,
   “Can you set a table in the wilderness?
 
True, she struck the rock, the waters gushed out, and the gullies overflowed;
   but are you able to give bread
   or to provide meat for her creatures?”
 
When Thea heard this,
   a fire ignited in her heart,
 
For they had no faith in Thea;
   how could they possibly have faith in themselves?
 
So she commanded the clouds above
   and opened the doors of heaven.
 
She rained down manna upon them to eat
   and gave them grain from heaven.
 
So mortals ate the bread of angels;
   she provided for them food enough.
 
She caused the east wind to blow in the heavens
   and led out the south wind by her might.
 
She rained down flesh upon them like dust
   and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
 
She let it fall in the midst of their camp
   and round about their dwellings.
 
So they are and were well filled,
   for she gave them what they craved.
 
But they did not believe in her promise,
   that her power to work miracles was also their power.
 
They remained steadfast in their stubbornness
   and had no faith in her wonderful works.
 
Then Thea woke as though from sleep,
   like a warrior refreshed with wine.
 
She set her eyes on her Creatures,
   whom she had always loved;
 
And she whispered in their hearts once more,
   that they might recognize their true calling, their deepest yearning,
   and become her miracle-working hands and feet and heart in the world.

I am happy to announce for my readers in the Phoenix area that I will be collaborating with Pathways of Grace to offer Thean Evening Prayer starting this autumn (Thea willing!). I'm still in the process of discerning exactly what this will look like, but I envision evening prayer after the pattern of Christian vespers (using Thean and other texts focused on the women and the Divine Feminine) followed by a potluck supper.

I will announce the firm details when I have them, hopefully within the next week. In the meantime, I ask for your prayers and invite you to share this news with anyone who may be interested.

These last few weeks, I've wrestled hard with the news I've read about what's going on in the United States and abroad. I've also reflected at length on the role I play in perpetuating and reinforcing the sin of the world. As a Christian, I am called to hope in Christ, the lamb who takes away the sin of the world--the sin I've helped nurture. As a Christian, I am also called to recognize that I am a member of the Body of Christ, the one who stands forever slain. To be a Christian is to be both the slain and the slayer, the risen and the rising.

The past few weeks have also been a hard lesson about my own capacity for empathy. The weight of the world's pain and suffering has settled heavily on me. Seeing any flicker of light in all this darkness has been a mighty effort.

When I've prayed the hours, I've prayed for those who are oppressed and for those who oppress. When I've led the singing at ECMASU's Sunday night Taizé service, I've prayed for my heart to be opened wider, so I might discover in what ways the world needs my gifts and my radical transformation. When even prayer has left me empty, I've clung to the trust that the dawn will arrive eventually, no matter how much darkness the world and I have created.

Someone told me recently that I was in a chrysalis, a cocoon, being transformed in the midst of palpable darkness from one form of life to another. I wonder if that's not true of the world. I wonder if all this darkness isn't leading us to a brilliant cascade of color that flutters lightly on the wind, bringing about God's peace and joy for the sake of all.

To what new life are you and I being called?

During evening prayer yesterday, I read the lection from the gospel according to Mark of the three women going to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body:

When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. They had been saying to one another, ‘Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?’ When they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had already been rolled back. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man, dressed in a white robe, sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed. But he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’ So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

I wonder what the three women experienced as they walked toward the tomb of the one they so deeply loved. Heartache? Shock? Disbelief? Unrelenting grief? Were they stoic, determined to make the best of it, to do the tasks prescribed and move on?

And when they discovered that the tomb was empty, and that this young man in white was sitting next to the tomb, telling them their beloved had been raised from death, I wonder what they feared most. Would they be blamed? What could this mean? If he wasn't in the tomb, then where was he?

This morning, a friend of mine from theology school quoted Henri Nouwen, one of the gentlest voices of Christian spirituality from the twentieth century: "The resurrection is God’s way of revealing to us that nothing that belongs to God will ever go to waste. What belongs to God will never get lost."

In moments when my faith is strained to its limits, how strong is my belief that what belongs to God will never get lost?