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Hand to Hand, Mother to Daughter: Part 1 (Guest Post)

10/7/2017

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Keeley Bruner

Keeley Bruner is the mother of two daughters and a devoted, progressive member of the Disciples of Christ Church. In this three-part series, she writes of the challenge of handing on her faith in ways that mirror the best of her own religious upbringing while reflecting the ways in which her faith has matured and widened in adulthood.

Growing up in my home, faith was always a part of my life. It was woven into the fabric of our family through weekly worship services and prayer meetings, blessings before meals, bedtime stories and prayers, and frequent conversations with family members. As I got older, my involvement in church activities increased, and my own understanding of my faith and what was framed as my personal relationship with Jesus Christ grew. I remained cozy in evangelical Christianity throughout my college years, continuing to attend church, engage in daily personal Bible study and prayer, and serve through my college’s Campus Crusade for Christ ministry.

Whenever someone begins a spiritual autobiography this way, the implication is often that something then happened, that some shift occurred to change the trajectory of the expected path. And while these things did happen, I can’t trace it to a single event or even period of time. Maybe it was meeting my husband the summer before my senior year in college, a deeply intelligent and thoughtful man whose own faith had undergone significant dissembling and reassembling in the months before we met. Maybe it was traveling to Uzbekistan on a cultural exchange with my college ministry buddies and experiencing the love and hospitality of people of different, or no faith, there. Maybe it was moving to Cambridge, MA after getting married right out of college, where we experienced a definite cultural shift from our suburban Bible-Belt environment. Maybe it was hanging out with Jesuits, Franciscans, Benedictines, and other Catholics at my husband’s graduate school there, or experiencing the social activism of our Baptist church home in Cambridge. Maybe it was moving to Princeton, NJ and finding our spiritual home at a United Church of Christ congregation in the middle of that small, idyllic town, and witnessing the fire of older saints’ faith which had been forged through decades of practicing progressive Christianity. Maybe it was Obama, and the way he engaged people of all faiths to see the possibility and necessity of using government to care for the least of these. Maybe it was the work of Jim Wallis, of reading issue after issue of Sojourners and seeing the ways that Christians are jumping in and doing the real work of caring for the poor without keeping cost, without needing numbers and conversions to bolster their faith. Maybe it was experiencing pregnancy and giving birth, and realizing the magic of growing a person inside my body and nourishing a baby with my own milk, with my own life, twice. Maybe it was moving to Tempe, AZ and being pulled as if with a magnet to our faith community here, the most ragtag, loving, beautiful bunch of misfits I ever saw, with our hearts open wide to whatever, and whomever, may come through our doors.

It’s possible that the shift had something to do with the guilt of never doing enough in my previous Christian tradition, of always falling short but never fully being able to count on God to still love me or the grace of Jesus to fill the gap between who I was and who I should be. It’s possible it had to do with the bean-counting I found here and there, of how many testimonies shared and how many souls converted when the work of Christ encompassed so much more in my mind. It’s possible it had to do with the boiling down of the broad, deep, wide, incomprehensibly beautiful work of the Spirit into 4 sentences, each illustrated by pertinent cartoons. And most recently, it’s possible the final shift slipped into place with the realization that 82% of my former cohorts used their rights, and privilege, to catapult the coarse, vulgar, greedy celebrity we know as the leader of our land into power.

The fact is that it’s done, that the trajectory has been different than it might have been. While I have faith in God, love for Christ, and a kinship with the Spirit that are true, deep, and meaningful to me on a daily basis, how these are manifested departs significantly from what I might have expected based on my early life. But as I expressed above, I like to think of that conversion as a moving towards something, rather than away from something. I think of it as embracing a much larger God than I had imagined, with a much more expansive love than I had been told and a closer knowledge and presence with us than I had ever envisioned.

While my faith surely remains simply a part of my identity, another reason it matters at this point in my life is my children. Having come from where I did (mark my husband’s beginning at roughly the same place on the spectrum) and having traveled to where I am now (repeat), how do I foster a life of faith in my family in a thoughtful, genuine way? The church we attend has a small and hardy children’s ministry but, as my own mother decided, I don’t want to depend on that alone to impart the beauty of Christian faith to my daughters. I may not want them to grow up in the cradle of Evangelicalism the way I did, but there are many facets of my upbringing I certainly wish to convey to them. So, what is a Progressive Christian to do?
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Psalms for the morning of the fifth day

5/5/2016

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I am nearly finished with the revisions of my psalter. Praying with it gives me chills, wonder, and hope. ♥

Psalm 24
 
Creation is Thea and all that is in it,
   the universe and all who dwell therein.
 
For it is she who splashes as the seas
   and is firm as earth alongside the great rivers.
 
“Who can descend the valley of Thea?
   and who can stand in her holy place?
 
“Those who have a pure heart,
   who have not pledged themselves to falsehood,
   nor sworn by what is a fraud.
 
They shall receive a blessing from Thea
   and a just reward from the Goddess whose body they are.”
 
Such is the generation of those who seek her,
   of those who seek your face, O Goddess of Creation.
 
Lift up your heads, O gates;
   lift them high, O everlasting doors;
   and the Queen of glory shall come in.
 
“Who is this Queen of glory?”
   “Thea, strong and mighty,
   Thea, mighty in battle.”
 
Lift up your heads, O gates;
lift them high, O everlasting doors;
   and the Queen of glory shall come in.
 
“Who is she, this Queen of glory?”
   “The Lady of Creation,
   she is the Queen of glory.”
 
 
Psalm 25
 
To you, O Thea, I lift up my flesh;
   my Goddess, I put my trust in you.
 
Let none who look to you be put to shame;
   let the treacherous be disappointed in their schemes.
 
Show me your ways, O Thea,
   and teach me your paths.
 
Lead me in your truth and teach me,
   for you are the Goddess, the breath of my flesh;
   in you I have trusted all day long.
 
Remember, O Thea, your compassion and love,
   for they are everlasting.
 
Remember not the wrongdoing of my youth and my transgressions;
   remember me according to your love
   and for the sake of your goodness, O Thea.
 
Gracious and upright is Thea;
   therefore she teaches her Creatures in her ways.
 
She guides the humble in doing right
   and teaches her way to the lowly.
 
All the paths of Thea are love and faithfulness;
   the Goddess shows her Creatures her ways.
 
Who are they who are in awe of Thea?
   she will teach them the way that they should choose.
 
Thea is a friend to those who are in awe of her
   and will show them her covenant.
 
My eyes are ever looking to Thea,
   for she shall pluck my feet out of the net.
 
Protect my life and deliver me;
   let me not be put to shame, for I have trusted in you.
 
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me,
   for my hope has been in you.
 
Deliver Creation, O Goddess,
   out of all her troubles.
 
 
Psalm 26
 
Give judgment for me, O Thea,
for I have lived with integrity;
   I have trusted in Thea and have not faltered.
 
Test me, O Thea, and try me;
   examine my heart and my mind.
 
For your love is before my eyes;
   I have walked faithfully with you.
 
I will wash my hands in innocence, O Thea,
   that I may go in procession round your altar,
 
Singing aloud a song of thanksgiving
   and recounting all your wonderful deeds.
 
Thea, I love the house in which you dwell
   and the place where your glory abides.
 
My foot stands on level ground;
   in the full assembly I will bless Thea.
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Priest

6/30/2015

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Yesterday my older daughter asked if she could take a look at the ring on my right hand. I took it off for her, and she said, "What is this for?"

I told her it was the ring I wore in honor of my ministry.

"You mean you're a priest?"

"Yes, honey, I'm a priest."

"I want to be a priest."

"You can be someday."

Rearing my children in a house church presents special challenges, but there are challenges I know my daughter will never face as long as she continues to learn from me: she won't grow up believing she can't be a minister. She won't grow up learning that being a priest is something reserved for a special elite. She'll grow up learning that her own bright faith is all that she needs to minister to others, whether it's as a priest or a companion or a friend or a sister--and that no one has the right to rob her of that. Her vocation will manifest itself as long as she listens to the deepest yearnings of her heart, and she'll only jump through hoops if she chooses to. Her vocation will be on her terms, not on anyone else's.

I used to believe that I needed outside affirmation if something were to be true of me. Now I see things differently. I believe that Thea, the source of all goodness, creates the desire within each person to be extraordinary--and one only has to listen to herself to discover and take up what sets her apart. No outside affirmation needed.
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Drama

4/30/2015

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Occasionally my four-year-old and I will do dramatic improvisations of biblical characters. For example, the other day, she said, "You be Jesus," so I played Jesus, first carrying the cross, then laying down on the cross, then being nailed to the cross (by her), then dying. Then my almost two-year-old tapped on my arm to raise me from the dead: I was resurrected.

It wasn't long before my four-year-old wanted to switch roles. She was to play Jesus and I was to play Mary Magdalene, she said. Suddenly we were outside the tomb, the rock was rolled away, and Jesus was calling my name, asking me why I was there. Then we switched roles again so she could play Mary Magdalene and wear a sparkling scarf on her head.

Bit by bit, my daughter, who loves both reading and performing, is learning the stories of the Bible. She's also learning, through our house church liturgies, that God's name is Thea, and that "she" is an appropriate pronoun for the divine. What will my biblically literate, feminist daughter make of her faith as she grows up? Where will the path she's on now lead her later in life? I watch her and see potential for wonderful things. No matter how she chooses to journey in the future, I suspect her adult faith life will be rich indeed.
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Advent Journeying: Protest

12/12/2014

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On Sunday I will join a group of others in a peaceful protest at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe. The pastor of this church recently claimed that the solution to the AIDS epidemic was to kill all gay people, as instructed in the book of Leviticus.

Yesterday, some sympathizers of this pastor found the Facebook page of the protest group. At first the comments were just personal: "You know nothing about the Bible." (Well, actually, I do--my degree is in liturgy and scripture.) Then they turned foul: "God hates faggots" and " Filthy Sodomite Reprobates are all going to hell....."

When I quoted 1 John 4:16, which is what I plan to print on my protest sign, I was ignored: "
And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them."

I said at one point, "I'm wondering where your love is. I'm sad for you.
" And out poured more vitriol. At one point one of the commenters asked me if I was a  Sodomite. No, actually, I'm a privileged, white, straight person like you--I didn't say that, but that's my answer to all this.

I'm disgusted. Perhaps this is Thea's reminder that my participation in this protest is not for nothing. As a Christian, I cannot stand by while other Christians twist the Christian message into one of hatred. It simply isn't. These so-called Christians are doing Christianity wrong, and they need to be called out on it.

I invite you, if you're local, to join me at 10:00 on Sunday. If you can't be there, I invite you to pray for the safety of the protesters and the radical change of heart of this church and its supporters. May this Advent turn their hatred to love and their ignorance to wisdom. Amen.
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Spirit Whispers: When It Comes to Healing (Guest Post)

8/7/2014

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Elizabeth A. Hawksworth is a published poet and historical fiction writer as well as a prominent blogger on topics of feminism, body positivity, fatphobia, writing, nannying, social justice, and spirituality. She is bold in writing about issues of ultimate concern when remaining silent and unnoticed would be, in the moment, easier. Here is part of her story.
A few hours north of Sarnia, Ontario, there is a quiet place nestled in a forest. Built with rustic logs, smelling like pine pitch, and surrounded by acres of misty trees, this small building stands, institutional and peaceful; utilitarian and somehow unique. In its natural surroundings, staring at a painting of the Baby Jesus, I found God.

Prayer, for me, has been a way to get through everyday life. I pray for health. I pray to be a better person. I pray for my family, my friends. I pray for things I want, things I don’t deserve, things I’m desperate about, things I can’t deal with. It’s not a fancy prayer. It’s often a mantra, repeated over and over, sometimes under my breath, sometimes out loud, sometimes mouthed in public places, and sometimes earnestly in the dark. And I pray every night, without fail, before I can close my eyes and sleep. I have to touch base. I have to let Him know. I need You. Please help me.

In that church retreat, hidden in the woods, I learned how to pray for more than just myself. I unlocked the talent I had all along – the talent of being able to use my words to change the world for the better. And I never felt closer to God, or more powerful with Him through me than I did then – creating creeds, weaving poetry, sharing with everyone my own personal faith, placing my feet on the path to social justice. If you had asked me then, I would have told you that I didn’t think I would ever be able to part from my relationship with God.

How things change.

I was badly wounded by the Church when I was a teenager. Shy, uncertain, and angry, I was struggling with my own sexuality and my sense of being. Holding hands with God, or so I thought, I faced the people who, also holding hands with God, told me that I didn’t belong. That I would burn in hell. That I was a sinner, a deliberate sinner, one who was so full of pride and bravado and hubris and lies, that I would never be welcome unless I changed who I was at the core. I had grown up solid in my belief that God makes us in His perfect image, and never makes mistakes. Now, I wasn’t sure if I was wrong, or if they were, but my hurt overwhelmed my faith.

I went back at 18, denying who I was. I joined a church of beauty and majesty, of tradition as old as time, and restrictions worse than any other church I’d ever been to. Was it punishment for the supposed sin of who I thought I was? To this day, I can’t answer that. All I know is that everywhere I turned, I found leaders, church members, even the Bible itself, it seemed, telling me that the person I am would never be good enough for God.

So I left. And I tried to forget.

I’m a rational person, most of the time. I also hold grudges, long after I should. And the hurt faded into twinges and then roared back to life in explosive, fiery anger. I wanted to hurt the Church the way it had hurt me. I wanted to hurt God. I wanted to burn in hell the way they said, just so that I could be myself without pretense, so I could live in sin without consequence and guilt.

And inside, I cried out for the God I knew in that quiet forest retreat. I begged Him to help me. I pushed Him away with both hands while simultaneously crying for Him in the night. And to His credit, He hasn’t let me go, though most days, I continue to angrily push and push and push, as hard as I can. He has forgiven me and continues to forgive me, despite all of my anger and moral failings, despite my hurt and my pride. He has quietly proven over and over that He thinks I am good enough for Him.

Knowing this, I suspect that one day, I will heal completely from my scars and from my open, bleeding wounds, the way that even the biggest wounds do heal. The scars will always hurt a little, but they won’t always be open and raw, ready to bleed again at another article about Christians saying “God hates fags”, or someone telling me that you can’t be Christian and gay.

But here’s the thing about healing. When you forgive someone, you don’t do it for them – not really. They benefit from it. They may think that you are doing them a favour. And maybe, part of healing is to acknowledge that you acted wrongly, too, even if at the time, you don’t think you did. Maybe part of it is to be like God, and not push away your fellow human, even if that fellow human has done cutting, horrible things to your psyche and to your sense of self.

The thing about healing is that forgiveness is mostly for you. It’s to reach out with your own humanity and be the bigger person. It doesn’t mean you forget, and it doesn’t mean that you have to draw that person back into your heart. What it does mean is that where the rushing, raging rivers have broken the bridge of faith, forgiveness helps to place new planks, to tie the knots back into the ropes. Where the bridge has rotted in places, forgiveness places brand new materials to make your bridge stronger than ever before. Where the bridge is shaky, forgiveness helps to steady it so that when you walk across it and try to meet God on the other side, it’s not so hard and scary to cross it.

Because when it comes to healing, it might take awhile. It might take a long time to rebuild your bridge. And I’m not saying that someone isn’t going to come along and say cutting things that will throw it into disrepair. I’ve rebuilt my bridge many times now . . . and I’ve begged God to help me find the strength to do it again.

Your bridge isn’t just to God. Your bridge is to your fellow humans, as well. The ones that put up walls to keep others out – your bridge goes to their door and invites them to come and meet you in the middle. The ones that tell you you’re not welcome – your bridge goes to them and tells them that they are welcome to come and belong with you. And the ones that meet you with hatred – your bridge shows them that the easier path is love.

Because maybe the place you’re all trying to reach is that little church retreat in the woods, with the whispering leaves and the distant rush of the many creeks. Maybe the path you all want to walk is the shady wide dirt path with the dappled sunlight through the trees, that wide and welcoming path that has benches to rest on and clear pools to drink from. Maybe the paths we choose are inevitably the harder ones because the stony paths teach you what smooth footing feels like, and we have to learn, in order to grow.

Maybe the pain and the blood are something we all experience, even when we’re the ones wielding the swords that hurt.  And maybe when it comes to healing, you find it in the silence and the dark, the pleas and the desperation, the fact that when you couldn’t walk anymore, He carried you – and carries you still.

Maybe when it comes to healing, it becomes the easier path to take – broken bridge, and all.
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Spirit Whispers: Speak up

6/17/2014

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If you've never had the experience of participating in a spiritual discernment committee, I invite you to consider it.

After my fifth (and final) meeting with my discernment committee for priesthood yesterday evening, my committee confirmed that they heard my call to priesthood. And that's not even the extraordinary part.

The extraordinary part is that, as I prayed yesterday before my meeting, I prayed for total surrender to God's will, and for the faithfulness not to run if that will was something my ego didn't like. My total surrender granted me total, deep, quieting peace.

The extraordinary part is that, having let go of my attachment to the outcome of my discernment process, I happened to read (during evening prayer) the story in Matthew about the disciples who wanted to know why they couldn't heal the sick on their own when Jesus so easily could. Jesus told them it was because they lacked faith, and that if they had faith even the size of a mustard seed, mountains would move for them. And I realized at that moment that my mustard seed faith was what had moved the mountain of my ego in order to make a straight path for Spirit to enter and dwell deep within my heart.

The extraordinary part is that, despite having a clear sense of call when I walked into the process, my sense of call widened and deepened and became more rooted as the dialogue went on.

The extraordinary part is that, especially in the final two meetings, as I listened to the challenging questions of my committee members, I perceived Spirit doing the asking. And as I offered my vulnerable, open-hearted answers, I perceived Spirit speaking through me. (It's fair to say that I've never experienced God's voice speaking to me so powerfully as I have in my discernment committee meetings, and for a Benedictine who hears God speaking to her through liturgy and scripture and encounters with others all the time, that's saying a lot.)

The extraordinary part is that, despite my Enneagram-three-personality-type's desire to manage a situation in such a way that the outcome is "positive," I was required to relinquish my ability to do that in order to speak plainly and truthfully. I was painfully aware that my deep honesty could at any moment result in the humiliation of my ego, and I spoke anyway. In that total risk of my ego, I realized it was not my ego that spoke, but Spirit.

When I walked out of my meeting last night, I had no idea what my committee members had heard. I didn't know what they would say. My three-ish ability to anticipate the outcome of the process failed me spectacularly. And I perceived in my failure the possibility of God's success--success in finding a way to make use of the quirky instrument that I am.

My committee is passing me on to the next steps of the discernment process, steps that will be challenging in their own ways. What my committee heard may not be confirmed by the next folks I encounter in the discernment process. But what happens next is not my concern.

The most important piece to emerge for me from this discernment process is the profound recognition that my heart--my whole heart--belongs to the one I call God. Whatever comes, I know that I will be faithful to the path God has prepared for me. I won't turn away. This is God's gig, and I am God's beautiful, imperfect instrument.

What song(s) will God choose to play through me for the uplifting, healing, and reconciling of her creation?
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Easter: Day 32

5/21/2014

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There are rare days in my life when the only faithfulness I can muster is a willingness to face God squarely and show her how angry I am at her.

And when I do this, running deep beneath my anger is the confidence that God pays attention.

If one can't get mad at God, what sort of relationship does one have with God anyway?
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Eastertide: Day 10

4/29/2014

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I am struck by this image of St. Catherine of Siena, whose feast Christians celebrate today. She is enormous. She is standing, looking eye to eye with the beholder from slightly above the beholder. She is bold and magnificent and holy all at once.

Women just aren't portrayed this way often in the Christian tradition.

St. Catherine is considered a doctor of the church. On prayer.forwardmovement.org, she is described this way, "
One tends to think of medieval women as silent and passive dwellers in homes and convents. This was far from the case with Catherine of Siena. She exercised great influence in matters of church and state, and hers was one of the keenest minds of her day."

St. Catherine was a Dominican, and Dominicans have a special charism to preach. She took her charism so seriously that she dared to confront Pope Gregory XI--and she left having persuaded him to see things from her view.

I see in this extraordinary woman a model of bold, faithful, wise, and total devotion to God and God's work. She did not cower away behind medieval expectations of what her role was to be in the world. She stood taller and brighter than all her counterparts, female and male alike, not with self-preoccupation but with a keen vision of the vital part she had to play in the bringing about of God's reign--and God's holy work was done through her. She had the humility to say yes to being extraordinary.

In what ways am I called to say yes to being extraordinary? In what ways do I allow my fear to inhibit me from playing my part in bringing about God's reign?
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Living Lent: Disappointment

4/16/2014

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Easter draws near, and I find myself disappointed. I'm excited for the resurrection day, but I don't feel prepared for it. Like all Pelagian Christians, I have this sense that I should have done more (or at least done better) this Lent.

Pelagius was deemed a heretic, though. He implied that the human person had all the resources at her disposal (okay, his disposal--I doubt he would have been concerned with women) to achieve salvation.

And Christianity doesn't work like that. I don't save myself. Salvation--healing--relies on the outpouring of the sacred other. I can't do it or accomplish it on my own.

I'm the sort of person who would rather do it myself. When I'm in charge, things happen more efficiently (and more to my liking). 

But my faith calls me (over and over and over, sometimes to my great annoyance) out of my egoism.
Like right now.

What do these last days of Lent have to offer me that I cannot offer myself?

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Living Lent: Ash Wednesday and Prayer

3/5/2014

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After indulging in Shrove Tuesday pancakes and Mardis Gras beads, we enter the first day of Lent: Ash Wednesday. Millions will travel to churches today to be marked with the ash of last Palm Sunday's palm fronds, marking a stark entrance into the liturgical season of abstinence, repentance, and alms-giving.

During this season of Lent, I would like to offer you my prayers. If you feel so moved, please leave a comment here asking for a particular kind of prayer. I will light a candle at the St. James Chapel of St. Augustine Church in honor of each prayer request I receive. I invite you, in return, to offer a prayer for someone else, lighting a candle of your own. Perhaps, by the Easter Vigil, our candle-lit prayers will have illumined the whole world.

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An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic

1/17/2014

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PictureM. Kate Allen
To Pope Francis:

In my almost thirty-two years as a Roman Catholic, I have never been prouder of any pope. Granted, I've only encountered three in my lifetime, but I am also a student of Christian history. You stand out among your predecessors.

You have rocked the entire world with your embodied proclamations of the good news. You kiss the wounds of the sick. You share tables with those who have neither tables of their own nor food to put on them. You warn your clergy again and again against the glamour of clericalism. Your love is abundant, like Christ's was and is, and I have seen it have a multiplying effect, even (perhaps especially) among non-Roman Catholics.

I am tremendously grateful to God for your faithful, living witness to the teachings of Jesus. Your heart is wide open, and I feel quite certain that if I happened to walk into your midst, you would smile and greet me with the warmth of an old friend, and I would greet you likewise.

I need to confess something to you. On February 16, 2014, God willing, I will leave my cloak of Roman Catholic identity behind in order to be received as a member of the Episcopal Church.

Despite having spent my entire life as a devoted (albeit flawed) Roman Catholic, I cannot remain Roman Catholic any longer. Because despite the gospel of Jesus you now proclaim miraculously through your very body, and despite the many ways in which I encounter Christ's presence through your holy example, I'm afraid there is at least one way in which you, like most if not all of your predecessors, have failed to hear the voice of God and heed it: in the calling of thousands upon thousands of women around the world to ordained ministry.

I was able to name my own God-given call to ordained ministry thirteen years ago. I was still a teenager then. I am close with several Roman Catholic women who share the same call. Yet you, like your papal predecessors, have dismissed even the possibility that women might be called to ordained ministry.

I don't understand this hardness of heart. Not from you.

What I do understand is how hard it can be to hear God's earnest whispers when so much of one's culture screams against it. My favorite psalm is Psalm 51, because it is a perpetual invitation to be changed, transformed, turned around:

Create in me a clean heart, o God.
...
Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways
and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.

I suspect this psalm is as dear to you as it is to me. Please, then, let God's whispers reach your ear through my meager words: God calls some women to serve as ordained ministers. That the Roman Catholic hierarchy refuses to acknowledge this (or even to discuss it) is gravely sinful. It is presumptuous to deny God's calling to those whom God has chosen.

Please, for God's sake, don't allow whatever is lacking in me cause you to be deaf to what God is speaking to you through me in this moment. If anyone with the authority to effect gospel change in the Roman Catholic Church can hear this prophetic word, I believe you can.

Please, open your heart and listen for the sake of my daughters, who will grow up in the midst of your legacy even if they never set foot in a Roman Catholic church.

Please, listen. Listen because you know better than almost anyone that God speaks prophetically through those who are marginalized, women included.

Please, I beg you from the bottom of my heart, listen--allow yourself to be importuned by me, just like the judge was importuned by the widow, or like Jesus was importuned by the woman begging for scraps. You and I both know what happened in those latter two instances. If Jesus' mind could be changed, surely yours can.

I believe that the world-wide turning of hearts to God, if you listened in this one way and acted accordingly, would be a miracle of biblical proportion.

With blessings and love in the One who creates, redeems, and sanctifies all the world,

M. Kate Allen




This letter originally appeared at parentwin.com, where I am a regular contributor on topics of religion.  The letter went viral among my Facebook friends and received more discussion and shares there than anything else I've every written, anywhere.  A friend of mine encouraged me to mail it to Pope Francis.  I did.  If he responds, I will share his response here.  (Unless he asks me not to.)

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Spiritual Direction: For a New Beginning

1/13/2014

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PicturePhoto by M. Kate Allen
I met with my new spiritual director for the first time about a week ago, and now I feel like my new spiritual dwelling has all.  It's one thing to journey forth in a community; it's another to have a holy listener dedicated to hearing your story and helping you recognize divine whispers in it.

Choosing a spiritual director who's a good fit isn't a simple endeavor--not all spiritual directors are good for all people.  Part of discerning who might be a good fit is figuring out whether the spiritual director you meet with is the sort of person you can imagine yourself either wanting to be or called to be in some respect.  My spiritual director is a female Episcopal deacon, and I have long felt called to ordained life as a female, even though my own female identity has prevented me from pursuing ordained life for my entire life as a Roman Catholic.

Meeting with someone who shares (or who can adapt to) your communication style helps as well.  If you're forthright and want to hash things out in an objective way while your spiritual director is highly sentimental, you may feel as though you're talking past your director.  Compatible communication styles help bring forth the substance of the conversation rather than serving as a barrier to it. 


That being said, meeting with someone who isn't exactly like you can sometimes be the most helpful thing of all--someone who is older (or younger), someone who's from a different faith or spiritual tradition, or someone who has had major life experiences that differ from your own may be able to lend a fresh perspective to your context.
 

For me, the most important aspect of a spiritual director is always my gut feeling about that person: Is this someone I trust?  Faith and trust are of the same root, and one can hardly develop one's faith with another if one doesn't deeply trust that other from the very beginning.

My spiritual director shared a poem with me that I had never heard before as we began our first conversation together, and it seems to me to be a perfect encapsulation of what one experiences when one is ready for a spiritual director.

In out of the way places of the heart
Where your thoughts never think to wander
This beginning has been quietly forming
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire
Feeling the emptiness grow inside you
Noticing how you willed yourself on
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
                 -John O'Donohue, "For a New Beginning"
A spiritual director, or spiritual companion, is someone who bears witness to what is stretching and unfolding in the midst of your life and heart.  A spiritual director is someone who walks with you, not to guide you, but to help you name how God/dess is guiding you.
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O Clavis David: Advent, Week 3, Friday

12/20/2013

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December 20

O clavis David, et sceptrum domus Israel: qui aperis, et nemo claudit; claudis, et nemo aperit: veni, et educ vinctum de domo carceris, sedentem in tenebris.

O Key of David, and scepter of the house of Israel, who opens and no one shuts, who shuts and no one opens: come, and lead forth the captive who sits in the shadows from his prison.
Keys open and lock doors.

I remember the day the doors of Historic St. Peter Church of Cleveland were locked, by order of the bishop of the diocese.  I was standing outside along with my many fellow parishioners as our pastor followed orders.  It was the closing of a tomb that had once been a stable.  That day haunts me.

I have never understood--and I'm sure I never will understood--the bullying of that bishop. 

Last night, while singing carols with the St. Brigid's Community of St. Augustine's Episcopal Church in Tempe, I came across my very favorite Christmas hymn, written by Richard Wilbur.  I asked if anyone knew it, and no one did.

It turns out that the version printed in the Hymnal 1982 is not the same version that I learned
at St. Peter as a member of the choir early last decade.  My usual search tricks failed in the effort to find a recording of it.  The CD recorded by the choir (while I was studying in Berlin in 2002) is no longer for sale, either.  Though the building is still there, and though the bishop was ordered by the Vatican to reopen its doors, the community that once worshiped there, the people who refused to be scattered, took roots elsewhere in the city, and there they remain, for the most part.

This is a beautiful recording, but it is not the one I learned in the midst of that beautiful community, and I can't help feeling tremendous loss as I listen to it. 
Love burns in my heart for the community of St. Peter, that breathtaking icon of God.  But even in my anger, my hope refuses to be extinguished.

A stable lamp is lighted
whose glow shall wake the sky;
the stars shall bend their voices,
and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
and straw like gold shall shine;
a barn shall harbour heaven,
a stall become a shrine.

This child through David's city
shall ride in triumph by;
the palm shall strew its branches,
and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry,
though heavy, dull and dumb,
and lie within the roadway
to pave his kingdom come.

Yet he shall be forsaken,
and yielded up to die;
the sky shall groan and darken,
and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
for gifts of love abused;
God's blood upon the spearhead,
God's blood again refused.

But now, as at the ending,
the low is lifted high;
the stars shall bend their voices,
and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry
in praises of the child
by whose descent among us
the worlds are reconciled.
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    M. Kate Allen
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