Thealogical Lady: A Blog

Drama

4/30/2015

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.

111

4/21/2015

Thea,
I overheard the table conversation of some followers of the Way.
One said to the other, "All paths lead to God."
The other replied, "None come to the Father except through Jesus."
I bit my tongue, and wondered if I should share the good news of you.
In the end I remained silent, knowing that's what I would want if the tables were turned.
Give me the grace to love the hearts of those who believe only-through-Jesus,
and give me the grace to love the many paths that lead to you.
Amen.

93

4/3/2015

Thea,
I recounted Jesus' journey to Golgotha today,
and then I lay on the floor, prostrate, arms outstretched.
I was still for so long that my older daughter grew quiet.
If Jesus' crucifixion was indeed a ransom for the sin of the world,
then give me the strength to throw all my sins against the cross.
Remind me that this is the day when we remember
the unjust murder of a man
and teach me to love and protect all the living
with all my heart.
Amen.

92

4/2/2015

Thea,
your son, on the night before he died,
sealed a new covenant in bread and wine,
his body and blood.
Teach us to remember his covenant with you
in the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine.
Amen.

Living Lent: Both/And

3/27/2015

A friend of mine recently sent my children a collection of puppets and a doll. The doll is Snow White, and her skirt can be flipped up to reveal an upside-down Queen, poison apple in hand.

It didn't take long for my older daughter to become enamored with the Snow White/Queen doll. Soon she was weaving a play involving the Queen and me--I was to play Jesus.

QUEEN: Jesus, eat this apple!
JESUS: (Leaning head forward, moving jaw up and down.) Om nom nom! (Jesus' eyes roll back and he dies in his chair.)
QUEEN: Okay, eat this apple again so you're not dead.
JESUS: (Eats apple again and smiles.) All better.
QUEEN: Now come on, we're going for a walk. Pick up your cross. (Queen and Jesus walk across the room. Jesus buckles under the weight of the invisible cross.) Now put your cross down. (Jesus lays his cross down with a loud grunt.) Lay down. (Jesus scoots the Lincoln Logs out of the way with his foot and lays down.) No, put your arms out like this. (Queen positions Jesus' arms so they're stretched outward.) Now eat the apple so you die on the cross. (Jesus eats the apple and dies.) Wake up! Get up, boy! (Jesus rises.)

So what if the Queen were God? What if she were Jesus' parent, and she intended for him to die, and he obeyed her? Is that the kind of God Christians believe in (setting aside God's assigned gender for a moment)? Is it possible to imagine this Queen as benevolent? Is it possible to imagine God as evil?

What this play suggests to me that perhaps no one is all good or bad--not even God.

I'm going to chew on that a while.

Mystagogy

1/11/2015

We came as we were to the table of the Lord
wrapped in warm pajamas, I with an alb and stole on top.
We blessed your name, singing as we worked
readying the table for our little liturgy.
Candle, books, cloth, bread, wine:
pieces of your presence among us.
We crossed ourselves as I greeted all:
May the grace and peace of Jesus Christ,
the love of God,
and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit
be with you all.
And then we prayed,
and we read,
and we sang,
and we shouted Halle Halle Halle-lujah!
We broke open your word together
and before we broke bread
we offered one another a kiss of peace.
Miriam jostled for access to everything,
soaking in a baptism of symbol
while Anastasia grinned and mouthed her part,
awe expressed loud in silence.
I had a flash of hope and wonder
at the thought of the day when my children will offer me
your child's precious body and blood
with their own precious bodies.
And I marveled at Anastasia's nod
when I asked her if she wanted me to baptize her
someday.
You have done great things for us, Thea,
and holy indeed is your name.
Amen.

9

1/10/2015

Thea,
you accompanied Jesus as he
wandered in the wilderness
for forty days and nights,
readying himself for his ministry.
Accompany me as I wander
through the desert, discovering
the lonely vocation of an artist;
lead me to your refreshment.
Amen.

Spirit Whispers: The power of story

8/17/2014

The following is the text of a homily I preached this morning at St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish in Tempe, Arizona.

I’d like you to pause for a moment and think about your favorite book. Think about the title, the story, and the characters. Think about the actual copy or copies of the book that you’ve read, and where you were when you last read it. By a show of hands, how many of you have read your favorite book half a dozen times or more?

I reread one of my favorite books this week. My copy of Lawrence Thornton’s Imagining Argentina has yellowing paper, a splitting spine, and some of the most compelling characters I’ve ever met in words. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read and recommended Imagining Argentina to others. It’s a hard book to read, but the vision of hope it presents is powerful precisely because the heart of the book is so difficult. I find that lots of books and stories are great to sink my teeth into, but then there are those precious books whose stories sink into me, and my life is different—more thoughtful, more considered, more virtuous—for it.

When Fr. Gil announced several months ago that I would be preaching on August 17, I looked up the lessons of the day and practically jumped for joy. The stories of the Bible we hear today from the Old Testament and the gospel are two of my favorite stories from scripture.

Fast forward to earlier this week, when I read an e-mail containing a message from our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. She wrote to ask the entire Episcopal Church to make today, August 17, a day of prayer for those in Iraq.

It would be pretty hard not to pay attention to all the stories of what’s going on internationally these days. The Gaza Strip has been a focal point of terror between Palestine and Israel. Iraq is in the news for its highly visible genocide of Christians, among others. Thousands of militants who believe war is the only way to end war are ending the lives of innocent people, while they simultaneously inspire the uprising of new war-mongerers on every side. The desire to maintain the purity of one’s own land is the driving force behind much of this violence and prejudice. Even in our country, young unarmed men and women are being shot and killed by those who only seem to see that these young people are on the wrong side of the American color divide. Children are being detained like prisoners on our borders, in limbo between a land they cannot thrive in and a land that treats them as chaff among amber waves of grain.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t slept well for weeks. These stories echo painfully in my heart. They force me to acknowledge that that simmering hatred becomes a blazing rage in manifold ways each day among people both far away and here at home, people who claim to be driven by the call of the law, or the call of God—people like me.

On this day of prayer for those innocents who are dying in Iraq, I see in today’s lessons stories that are less interesting than urgent, more deep than obvious.

The story of Joseph is an epic--we first meet him as a boy, Jacob's son. His many older brothers, in a fit of collective jealousy, throw him into a well, leaving him for dead. Then they change their minds, pull him out of the well, and sell him into slavery instead, figuring they ought to get something out of him. Joseph ends up in Egypt and endures prison and other grave hardships, with no hope but God's promise to help him. Eventually he becomes Pharaoh's most trusted advisor. When we encounter him in today's lesson, his brothers have just arrived, desperate for mercy from Pharaoh’s advisor in the midst of famine. They don’t know that the powerful man before them is their brother. As Joseph prepares to reveal his identity to his brothers, he sends everyone else away. In the end, all of Egypt, even the Pharaoh's household, hears his cries when he is alone with his brothers for the first time in years.

Next, in the gospel story, we hear about a Canaanite woman, a foreign woman, who comes to Jesus begging healing for her daughter who is possessed by a demon. At first Jesus ignores her, as if she weren’t even there. Then his disciples get antsy and ask him to send her away. To appease his friends, he gives her an excuse. She persists. He gives another excuse; she persists again, but this time she refers to him as master of the story that they’re creating through their dialogue, and it’s at that point where the story turns.

The difficulty with these stories for me comes when I try to put myself in them. I'm not powerful Pharaoh. I’m not wise, faithful Joseph. I’m not the woman begging on her knees for her daughter's life, and I’m certainly not Jesus.

When I put myself in these stories, the characters that resemble me most are the jealous, grudging brothers and the possessive, anxious disciples. I live a comfortable, privileged life. I don't easily relinquish my comfort, particularly for someone I don't like or whom I have no direct connection to. With all the horrors I read about in the news, whether in Gaza or in Iraq or in the United States, I perceive the selfishness of my fellow humans keenly, because it is that same selfishness on a grand scale that I practice on a micro-scale. I see in middle-eastern war-mongerers, as well as white-skinned insiders screaming at and threatening brown-skinned outsiders, unholy icons of the many ways in which my heart is hard and impenetrable. I cry over what I read in the news and in these scriptures, because I know how hard my heart is to break open, and I know it can't be any easier to break open any of theirs.

But here's the thing: Joseph's brothers, who sent Joseph to his doom, watched as God's grace broke through their evil deeds. God’s grace revealed not only their brother who had saved all of Egypt and surrounding lands from famine, but revealed their brother who loved them more than ever.

And then there’s the foreign woman from the gospel. By calling Jesus “Master,” she forces him to pay attention to her. Not only does he pay attention to her, but his understanding of what it means to be Lord is subverted by her. Through this woman’s unflagging persistence in the face of blatant rejection and humiliation, Jesus—God’s own chosen one-- perceives that his power as Lord is not just for the sake of “his people,” but for all who call on him for saving help. Through this foreign woman, God's grace breaks through the walls Jesus and his people had built against this woman, this outsider.

If God can accomplish mighty, gracious deeds through possessive, jealous, rebellious hearts like those of Joseph’s brothers, and if God's grace can break through the walls that Jesus' disciples and even Jesus put up to guard their selfish interests--then perhaps God's grace can break through right here in our midst.

What if the stories of war-mongerers and privileged insiders were subverted by stories more persistent and enduring than theirs? What if they were to see that they are indeed called by God--not called to hate and shut out strangers, but rather to love and to welcome and uplift them? I wonder, if we each take a moment to remember again our favorite books and stories, what we might discover about ourselves from them. What do we find most compelling? Do we embrace the bravery and outrageous kindness and selflessness that we encounter in our most beloved, imperfect characters?

What if we were to embrace Joseph’s love of those who had utterly betrayed him? What if you and I embraced Jesus’ humility in accepting that we, as citizens of the most powerful nation on earth, are accountable to more than just the people we call our own? What if we listened not to our own wisdom, but the wisdom that inspires us to become who we are called to be? Maybe the Word of God, Holy Sophia, would become incarnate in us as it did in Mary when she made her bold, unwavering, all-embracing “Yes.”

Perhaps, if each of us said yes to the wisdom in the stories that are most precious and compelling to us, we, like Mary, would become God-bearers in the world. Perhaps then, beginning with you and me, God’s peace would spread to all lands and peoples, and then perhaps the peoples of the world, both here and elsewhere, would come at last to dwell in the everlasting peace of God.

Amen.

Spirit Whispers: The Call

7/28/2014

Yesterday I completed the construction of a bridge spanning over two thousand miles and thirteen years. I sang Suzanne Toolan's "The Call" with two other young women during the 10:30 liturgy at St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish. This is a song I learned at Historic St. Peter Church (now the Community of St. Peter), and it is a song that gave me a taste of the potential for liturgy and symbol to crash together to reveal the holy.

Leave all things you have and come and follow me, Jesus urges.

Thirteen years and two thousand miles later, I hesitate to leave behind all I've accumulated on this journey. My baggage is mine to keep.

But the invitation is so insistent, echoing softly even when I clang and screech.

Could I just leave it all behind me? Would I be doing it for the right reasons? What if everything changed as a result?

And come and follow me.

Easter: Ascension Day

5/29/2014

On this fortieth day of Easter, Christians celebrate the ascension of Christ. It is a departure. Christ has been hanging around, helping the disciples on their post-crucifixion journey to recognize what this resurrection business means. In the end, though, he ascends so that they might ascend.

Ascension Day is a vulnerable day. It's a lonely day. It's a day when Christ's faithful followers don't know whether they're going to make it without being able to lean on their beloved in the way they always have. What are they going to do now?

Eventually, they'll stand up, with or without wiping away their tears. They'll get back to their holy work. They'll remember--in a most powerful way--Christ in the breaking of bread. And they'll encounter their beloved by slipping into the leadership to which he was, from the beginning, beckoning them.

Easter Tuesday

4/22/2014

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?

Living Lent: Holy Saturday

4/19/2014

Jesus--crucified.
The whole world fills the new tomb.
In stillness hope stirs.

Living Lent: Maundy Thursday Mystagogy

4/18/2014

"Maundy" comes from "Mandatum," which refers to Jesus' mandate to his friends to wash the feet of others just as he washed theirs at the last supper before his death. The act of washing a dinner-guest's feet was normally reserved for a slave, and it meant coming into contact with whatever a first-century Jewish person in Jerusalem might have stepped in or on--dirt, feces, bugs, waste-water, nettles, anything. The host of a dinner wouldn't make his own hands impure by touching the unclean feet of his guests.

And yet.

Nowadays, folks who are planning to have their feet washed during the ritual enactment of Jesus' foot-washing take pity on those who wash feet. They wash their own feet in advance, maybe even manicure them, making sure every last trace of "ewww" is gone.

I might have done this, too, but in the midst of preparing to sing many new-to-me hymns for liturgy, I forgot.

At my parish, anyone can have her feet washed. As the foot-washing ritual got underway, it looked as though everyone was choosing to do this. So despite my dirty feet, I went forward.

Exposing my feet, allowing the clean hands of another to wash them, was humiliating. And in my humiliation, a new gateway for grace manifested.

What a gift to receive the blessing of the holy other who beheld my uncleanness and loved me anyway.

Isn't this receiving and giving the entirety of the Christian call?

Living Lent: International Women's Day

3/8/2014

In honor of International Women's Day, I was invited to offer a feminist, Christian reflection on the story of Jesus and the woman at the well. I invite you to read my reflection below or at the original post on the Sophia Network.

I remember growing up with the story of the woman at the well: the woman was 'bad' because she had five husbands, and Jesus decided to save her from her sin by offering her living water, which was obviously the water of baptism. Pretty straightforward: she changes who she is, accepts baptismal water, and she’s saved from her sinful ways.

Something niggles at me when I hear this story these days. Questions crop up all over the place, and I’m ready to accuse Jesus for daring to approach her the way he does. Why is Jesus, a Jewish man, talking to a non-Jewish woman? Isn’t this act of intimacy just as scandalous to any observer’s eye as the woman’s five husbands are? Jesus’ act would have been like a man of European descent approaching a woman of African descent during the 1950’s in the Deep South of the United States. It simply wasn’t done. And if it was done, anyone who saw it would immediately ask why. Why is Jesus risking his reputation to talk to this woman? From a different angle, one might ask why Jesus is exercising his power over this woman in this way (for he is indeed in a position of power over her)? He could compromise her at any moment and probably get away with it, because he is a clever man living in a patriarchal world. I find myself angry on the woman’s behalf, that Jesus would presume to talk to her as he does, risking her reputation further. He could be any man with any intention, as far as she knows.

I imagine myself in the woman’s position for a moment. I look at the foreign face of this person who stands at the place that quenches my thirst and the thirst of those whom I love, and I wonder why he’s in my way. Why is he talking to me? Is he going to try to take something from me? Am I safe? I am nervous and I am prepared to run if he tries to touch me.

Instead of reaching toward me in power or gawking at my feminine figure, he looks at my face. Recognition alights in his eyes. If he’s like the others, he will regard me as nothing, a piece of flesh, an unholy other. I wait, preparing to make my hasty retreat, wondering if my bucket can help me fend him off if he tries to attack me. He doesn’t move. He continues to look at my face, as if I am the living well and he is refreshing his parched lips and mouth with the story of my life. He takes time, setting aside his ego to make space for my story—and then he tells it to me as he has perceived it.

It is strange, because no grown man has ever made the effort to learn my story. It is always the man’s story that matters, that needs to be told. I am a woman, and therefore I am a thread in a man’s tapestry—many tapestries, in my case. Why is this stranger bothering with me? What does he want?

Again, the threat of harm puts fear in my heart, but still, he takes nothing from me—not even my bucket for claiming a drink. He offers me a gift instead—no favors required.

As I become the woman in this story, I am able to ask the myriad questions that lead to greater understanding about Jesus - the Christ. I perceive that this Christ is one who offers rather than takes; this Christ is one who silences his heart in order to hear the stories buried in the heart of a complete stranger.

Is this what the follower of Christ is called to, then? To take risks, to cross boundaries, to silence egos? To listen so I might learn from this other who has almost nothing in common with me, religion and societal rank included?

An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic

1/17/2014

M. 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.)

Advent 2, Monday

12/9/2013

Photo by M. Kate Allen

This past Saturday, my family hosted an Advent housewarming, and I found the wreath and berries you see to the left from Trader Joe's. A tiny wreath and a few tea candles make the passage of Advent time more pronounced, and the faint scent of pine reminds me of home.

When I was growing up in northeast Ohio, I was surrounded by evergreens. On Earth Day each year it was customary to receive an evergreen sapling from school to plant at home, and my family planted them. One of the most beautiful places in Ohio to see evergreens is Quail Hollow State Park in Hartville; another is the Jesuit Retreat House in Parma. Evergreens like those don't grow in the desert. Instead, the thriving flora of the Sonoran desert include Mediterranean olive trees, which would have been familiar to the eyes and hands and mouth of Jesus of Nazareth.

I miss my childhood home enough to buy an evergreen wreath that isn't native to where I live. Maybe next year I'll fashion my own wreath with olive branches and olives. Olive branches have always been a sign of goodwill, and olive oil is a sign of majesty, healing, and nourishment. Appropriate for the season that awaits the arrival of the majestic, healing nourisher, yes?