Thealogical Lady: A Blog

Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts: One Mom's Comparison

10/17/2017

The CEO of the Arizona Cactus-Pine Girl Scout Council, Tamara Woodbury, shared the following letter this evening with all the troop leaders, family members, and friends of Girl Scouts in our council regarding the move announced by Boy Scouts last week to include girl members in its ranks.

October 17, 2017

Dear Girl Scout Friends and Families,

Last week, the Boy Scouts announced they will begin accepting girls into their programs in 2018. The announcement has created a lot of media buzz and a multitude of conflicting opinions on this development. The biggest question, however, is how will this impact Girl Scouts.

Certainly, the Boy Scouts become another activity choice for girls and their families, adding to the Boys and Girls Clubs, 4-H, sports teams and more.

The Boy Scouts are framing their move around families and the convenience of taking their sons and daughters to the same activity. Some girls may want to join Boy Scouts because they think Boy Scouts do more, especially outdoor adventures. Yet, according to a recent Time magazine article, "There's actually a great deal of overlap among the different badge skills, including camping, car maintenance, first aid, fitness, budgeting and even robotics." Both organizations offer strong STEM programs and each offer a high award - the Gold Award for girls and the Eagle Scout rank for boys. Some girls are drawn to the Eagle Scout rank because it's better known and seemingly more prestigious. While it may be better known, the Gold Award is actually more challenging to earn since it requires making a measurable, sustainable impact.

Yes, Girl Scouting is different. Very different. Our program is all about girls, informed by research on how best to empower girls to lead, thrive and gain skills, beginning in kindergarten. We give girls the safe space of an all-girl environment, where they are free from the gender stereotypes entrenched in our society. Girls gain confidence and build grit and leadership qualities through experiences that are girl-led and designed to encourage learning-by-doing and cooperative learning.

Girls face unique challenges and they need support from the very beginning to build the resilience and confidence to overcome peer and media pressure. The Girl Scout program is designed and proven to change these sad statistics for girls.

Beginning around 6 years old, girls start thinking that boys are smarter than they are.
In elementary school, girls are as excited about math and science as boys, but lose interest by middle school.
One out of three girls say they are afraid to lead because of what others might think of them.

A report published this past summer by the Girl Scout Research Institute, The Girl Scout Impact Study, shows that participating in Girl Scouts helps girls develop key leadership skills they need to be successful in life. Compared to their peers, Girl Scouts are more likely than non-Girl Scouts to be leaders because they:

Have confidence in themselves and their abilities (80 % vs. 68 %)
Act ethically and responsibly, with concern for others
(75 % vs. 59 %)
Seek challenges and learn from setbacks (62 % vs. 42 %)
Develop and maintain healthy relationships (60 % vs. 43 %)
Exhibit community problem solving skills (57 % vs. 28 %)
Take an active role in decision making (80 % vs. 51 %)

In short, Girl Scouting works. As CEO of this council for more than 20 years, I have seen the impact our program makes in the lives of girls.

I continue to strongly believe that Girl Scouts is THE best leadership program for girls. We know the unique needs of girls and the work required to overcome the gender bias and gender gaps that exist in every facet of business and society.

Please share your Girl Scout stories and how you've seen Girl Scouts build girls into confident leaders. Thank you for all you do, each and every day, to help make the world a better place.

With love,

Tamara Woodbury

Some folks in Girl Scouts may feel threatened by this move. I, as a troop leader, find it curious and interesting, rather than threatening. As a troop leader, I have a special view into just how much Girl Scouts offers girls. I am beyond thrilled that I get to journey with my girls through this leadership program. I am interested to see what Boy Scouts will offer girls; what they will offer very much remains to be seen.

What I know as a troop leader is that my daughters have more opportunities than they could possibly take advantage of in a given year to earn badges and gain confidence in their skills and in themselves. Girl Scouts offers girls every opportunity I've ever heard of Boy Scouts offering boys--and then some.

On a personal note: I have lived the consequences of a male-dominated society my entire life. I was told as a girl and as a woman that I could never be a priest because Jesus, the male man-God, wouldn't have wanted it. I've been told countless times in countless ways to defer to the authority of males--in church, in the academy, in my career path, in virtually every aspect of my life. I've been taught to be silent in the face of male harrassment, abuse, and assault, lest I bring shame or humiliation unto myself. I've been boxed in to "feminine" stereotypes and roles again and again and again. But in Girl Scouts, girls aren't told what they can and can't be. We don't tell them, explicitly or implicitly, that their voices matter less than those of their male counterparts. We lift girls up to be whoever and whatever they want to be. Every time I lead a Scout meeting, every time I go to a Troop Leader meeting, I catch myself looking around in awe at the talent and interest and curiosity and leadership in the girls and women I see, uninterrupted by the casual sense of superiority/privilege that boys and men so often bring.

I think it's great that Boy Scouts are going to accept girls--because maybe those boys will figure out that girls can do anything they can do (and just as well, if not better).

As for Girl Scouts: if the Boy Scouts come up with a great idea, girls will examine it and make it even better for themselves, without asking for some boy or man's permission. Because we we are G.I.R.L. Scouts: Go-getters, Innovators, Risk-takers, Leaders.

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Liturgical Renewal

7/9/2017

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It's been 2.5 years since I gave birth to my Thean ministry, and in that time I've been imagining into life a liturgy that is uniquely Thean but which also honors the many religious traditions in which I have learned and grown. Today, the shape of this liturgy reached maturity.

One of my difficulties with the liturgical format I grew up with is that it constricted the agency of the majority of the participants. When during college I came across liturgy that honored the agency of all gathered while maintaining a coherent, holistic narrative ritual, my vision of what religion could be and the shape of my own faith changed. I went on to study liturgy for that reason, at both the Master's and Ph.D. levels. After moving from Cleveland, however, liturgical and religious agency was hard to come by in the same way. I recognized along the way that I was called to priesthood (which ultimately required me to turn from my religious upbringing, a tradition that claimed women could not legitimately be priests/ministers), but even after that departure (or perhaps because of it), my vision of priesthood wasn't the sort that would authorize me to make or enforce decisions on behalf of a community or to otherwise wrangle agency from others. Theanism, which was in its birthing my own act of radical religious agency, allowed for authority created to dwell not at the top of a hierarchy, but at the depths of diverse community.

In its new maturity, Thean liturgy creates intentional space for the creative agency of each one who takes part. It is not merely the fruit of my imagining as a Thean priestess. When it comes time for what would normally be the sermon/homily/drash, each participant is given sacred time and space to pursue the creative work of her deepest yearning. In her creative agency enacted, she becomes the great revelation of Thea.

There is time in this liturgy for what marks, to me, what is both familiar and holy--the lighting of candles, the breaking of bread, the sharing of the cup, the sounding of bells, the anointing with oil--but now the climax of Thean liturgy is the creative act that finds its origins in the deepest desires of each person. It is during this time that Thea feels most alive, in us, in myself, in one another. It is sacred communion, the night of bliss, the rosy-fingered dawn of awakening.

And as I watch my daughters continue their creative work, now hours after our new liturgy has concluded, I perceive the nod within myself that this liturgy is the holy, whole-making ritualizing I've been chasing since I left my liturgical home in Cleveland. This is the liturgy that reflects the religious agency I learned long ago from a community that lived that agency, and which was eventually excommunicated by the local hierarch for exercising that agency.

May my daughters and I ever practice and hold space for that agency in one another, and in practicing this learn to hold space for that agency in others.

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Stepping beyond the bounds of comfort

7/1/2017

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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!

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When light and shadow unite

5/6/2017

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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.

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.

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.

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106

4/16/2015

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Thea,
when the opportunity for leadership lands in my lap,
help me to discern if it's what I really want,
rather than merely what I think will make me look good.
If it is what I want,
help me not to underestimate the role I choose to play.
Amen.

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Spirit Whispers: I'm sorry

8/3/2014

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I'm sorry
she says
softening her tone
averting her gaze
shifting her posture
willing the other to see that she means no harm

I'm sorry
she says
when she actually means
Pardon me
-or-
No, thank you
-or-
Here's what I think about it

I'm sorry
she says
when it's the other person
who screwed up, caused harm, bears blame
the other person
who offered what she doesn't need or want
the other person
who just heard her apologize for no good reason and is no longer interested

I'm sorry
she also says
on the rare occasion
when her apology
has merit

Why does she
hide behind
that simpering sorry?

Is it fitting to say sorry in a crowd that seeks her vision
rather than to say what she means?

Is it fitting to say sorry to a man in order to submit in the way she expects he expects
when young women are watching every move she makes?

Is it honest to say sorry to a challenger
rather than to speak forth the prophetic fire that blazes within her?

Why does she say
sorry, sorry, sorry
when so little of what she does
deserves her easy
self-deprecation
self-humiliation
self-abasement?

What if
she stopped
watering down
her virtue

and instead

began her day
with a strong cup of
I'm not sorry
?

(What a
HERE I AM, LORD
that would be)

~~~

The above is inspired by two people I respect who recently asked me, on separate occasions, why I say sorry when I do. I have long regarded "I'm sorry" as a gesture of hospitality in tense or difficult situations, but I am beginning to rethink that. I am grateful to my gentle adversaries for inviting me to see beyond my limited vision of what genuine hospitality might look like from a (female) leader.

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Spirit Whispers: Come and listen to me

6/21/2014

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I began a spiritual practice of silence this morning--ten minutes, first thing after getting the baby her morning milk, eyes closed, hands and body open to receive.

One thing I received was the final phrase from a Taizé song: "Come and listen to me." I couldn't remember in that moment what song it came from--all I could remember were those words. Without context, the words took new shape. Was God bidding? Was I bidding? Was someone else bidding?

I realized that all three were doing the bidding.

My heart turned then toward the fruits of the Spirit, and then to spiritual and corporal works of mercy. As my silence ended, I wondered whether there were opportunities available to volunteer in local hospices and prisons--to listen, to be present, to abide in what is difficult and deeply transforming.

I found out that there are abundant hospice volunteer opportunities in the Valley of the Sun. I found far less when I was looking for volunteer opportunities for prison ministry, at least from within an Episcopal or interfaith context. I asked for help on Facebook and got information from two of the leaders from my parish, one of whom pointed me to a notice on the Trinity Cathedral website that Bishop Kirk Smith is planning a summit for those involved in or interested in prison ministry within the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona.

Coincidence? Spirit stirring in open hearts for the common good?

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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: Ascension Day

5/29/2014

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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.

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Easter Monday

4/21/2014

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I don't know how Cyril, the late-4th century bishop of Jerusalem, did it. After all the liturgical hoopla he went through in each Holy Week and Easter, he spent each Easter Week guiding neophytes of faith through mystagogy, the breaking open of the mysteries they had just experienced.

I'm no bishop. I'm not guiding anyone through the meaning of their confirmation/baptism/communion. All I did for Holy Week and Easter was sing, and I'm totally zonked.

Perhaps Bishop Cyril was able to move energetically from Easter action into Easter mystagogy because he was an artist, the kind of artist who's so passionate that he'll forsake all else for the beauty and importance of his work (work, in his case, which was done for God's sake).

Perhaps Cyril believed, like I do, that liturgy (and the belief to which it gives rise) matters. Maybe, since he was the head of the church--in the city where Jesus died and rose--he felt that his responsibility was just a little bit weightier than that of others whom God had ordained to serve. And maybe his desire to bring about illumination of hearts was his manna in a wilderness of leadership.

As I went through Holy Wednesday's shadows, Holy Thursday's footwashing, Good Friday's darkness, Holy Saturday's silence, and then the Vigil that beckoned forth the new light of Easter, I was struck over and over by how different Holy Week and Easter felt at St. Augustine's than it had for me elsewhere. I don't perceive the difference in terms of "better" or "worse." I perceive the difference in the degree of leadership I was granted, and in the way my leadership helped shape the prayer of others. In small ways--as a musician--I spent this Holy Week and Easter living into Bishop Cyril's holy presence as a liturgical leader. I find myself in awe (and maybe the more appropriate word here is "fear") of my God-given ability to make a difference to others, for better or worse.

As I continue to be called forth to lead, how will I maintain my zeal like Bishop Cyril did? How will I engage in self-care without losing sight of the care of others?

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Living Lent: No

3/28/2014

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The first question I asked my vicar during our meeting about priestly discernment yesterday was, "Do you see any obstacles that might stand between me and priestly ordination, based on what you know of me?"

His answer was an unadorned "No."

I can think of few greater affirmations I've experienced than that simple negation.

My cup overflows.

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Living Lent: To Lead, Or Not To Lead?

3/27/2014

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This evening I meet with my vicar about the discernment process for priestly ordination.

As my best friend and I were discussing this last night, she commented that I sounded grounded in my understanding of who I'm called to be.

This grounding, this rootedness, is what inspires me to pursue a call to pastoral leadership.

There's an important shade of difference between what I hear myself being called to be and what I feel naturally inclined to be. Leading for leading's sake doesn't feel comfortable to me. It feels awkward and threatening to my oh-so-precious ego. The only times in my life when I have felt comfortable leading have been those times when I bring some expertise, some gift, some knowledge that others lack or otherwise need me to exhibit.

Nearly all the occasions when I've been called to leadership have something in common: they've had to do with spiritual life, religious practice, and the deep-hearted, skillful care of others.

I walk into this conversation not with a sense of natural-born leadership, but cultivated leadership. I am prepared to speak the truth of who I am called to be, knowing what I have dared to embrace, despite (or perhaps because of) deep introversion, in the past thirty-one years.

What will my vicar hear as I speak openly, bravely, and truthfully about what I hear God calling me to? What will I hear as I let my God-given words pour out?

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Living Lent: Demons

3/18/2014

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For weeks, I've let it get under my skin.

Several weeks ago I was invited to give a homily (i.e. a sermon/reflection) for Lent III, which is next Sunday. As of yesterday I hadn't yet been able to write one word of it.

Think of it as a bad case of writer's block, except it only applied in this one case. I've written a dozen blog posts since Ash Wednesday alone, so it's not as though I didn't have a command of words elsewhere. The lessons for Lent III are richly evocative, so that wasn't it, either.

When I'm about to do a new thing, especially a thing that's bound to make a tremendous impression on people, anything short of excellence and complete satisfaction on my part will send me fleeing in the other direction. And even though I've written and given a number of homilies in the past, I've never stood up as "The Preacher" for Sunday liturgy. It's a new thing, and it scares me.

The other day I talked about how I spend one or two hours writing per day--and that's on the ample side. Yesterday I gave this homily no fewer than five hours of feverish attention. Why?

A lot hangs on this, in my mind. It's a classic case of first-impression-making. If I do well, the parish as a whole gains not only a thoughtful homily, but a set of implicit expectations about who I might be and what I might do at the service of the parish in the future. If I don't do well, the parish will wish they had heard the vicar instead, and--more importantly--the leadership might see my future and vocational path in a different light.

Giving this homily is about so much more than giving a homily. It's a moment in which I'll have an opportunity to prove wrong every single person who ever told/taught me that women in general--and I in particular--weren't meant (or designed!) to be pastoral leaders (and Jesus said so, forever and ever, and let the church say "Amen").

That's a lot of disvaluing to overcome in ten minutes. For the record, neither the vicar nor anyone else has said to me that my vocation is at stake in this homily--they have been generous in trusting that I will do well (I wouldn't have been asked otherwise). I trust that they trust me. Nevertheless, I can't help feeling that my vocation and the integrity and valuing of women on the whole are wrapped up in this small opportunity I have to stand up before a hundred people and speak with authority.

Patriarchy and Hegemony are powerful demons in the Christian tradition, and every battle waged against them matters. My homily is ready. May I speak this Sunday with the authority of the one I call Lord, that they may be powerfully silenced in my presence.

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An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic

1/17/2014

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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.)

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Spiritual Direction: For a New Beginning

1/13/2014

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Photo 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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Words with friends

1/10/2014

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While sipping a hot cup of Ten Ren King's tea and chatting with a dear friend from the San Francisco Bay Area on Facebook, my friend wrote this to me:

"kate, I am so happy for you - it seems your life is developing in amazing ways"

(NB: The editor in me would like to capitalize and punctuate that sentence, but the friend in me knows better.)

My friend is right, you know. I'm struck by how very much my life has changed in a very, very short period of time.

I started this blog/site two years ago today. I wrote this:

Hurrah! Thanks to the inspiration of a dear friend of mine, Noach, I have planted the seed of this blog (and broader website). I hope it will yield many vibrant, lush, delicious fruits, and perhaps yield some long-lasting connections in the process.

Is it any surprise that the same friend who helped me plant this seed of a website and blog is now bursting with joy for me at what has risen up from the dark, fertile soil of my dreams and yearning?

I look back at the woman I was in 2012--a first time mom; an office manager at a small synagogue; a frustrated, well-educated, sad, and increasingly jaded Roman Catholic--and I see someone who knew that 2012 was a beginning rather than an end. I had no real idea of where the road would lead, but I knew I would be creating the road for myself as I went along, and that I would visit some unusual and unfamiliar places along the way.

My mantra lately, when folks ask me how I like Arizona, is, "I never thought I'd like living in the desert." But I do. My family is happy here. My husband has a job in which he thrives. I'm able to be at home with my girls for now, do fun-to-me gigs, and write to my heart's content. And finally, at long last, I get to be a both-feet-all-the-way-in member of a religious community in which I am valued, period--no strings attached, no hidden agendas, no glass ceiling. I love this community so much that my heart aches, as if it might burst. It's like being home again, but it's more than that. I'm not just part of the beauty that is my new community; I'm becoming a leader in bringing forth that beauty. Me. A woman. A thirty-something from Ohio who very early on learned to shut up and take it when something or someone wasn't good enough, even when what was good enough was within my reach, and even when what wasn't good enough was sanctioned by my religious leaders.

Two years later, in 2014, I find myself in the midst of imperfect, beautiful people, and just by being my own imperfect self, I am amazing. I am vibrant. I am what I was searching for two years ago. It just took being planted in a fertile garden, free of choking weeds, for me to see myself stretched up tall and completely radiant for the first time.

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On Leadership

12/27/2013

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When my friend Noach was helping bring this site into being, he asked me about folks he could contact to recommend me to others.

One of the three who responded was my classmate from St. John's School of Theology (Collegeville, Minnesota), Rev. Cody Unterseher.

When I wrote my post about leadership yesterday, I had forgotten about the recommendations tucked away on this site. I found the following from a person who was even more dedicated to the study of liturgy than I was, and who even knew about my church in Cleveland as soon as I mentioned it to him while at table in the St. John's refectory in August 2005.

Cody and I were both laypeople when we were at St. John's, and somehow we ended up in a stance of wary opposition to one another for most of those two years. Although I sang at his ordination to the diaconate in late March of 2007, we didn't really become friends until we had each been accepted into (separate) doctoral programs in liturgical studies. He was an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church by then, and his focus in all things was reconciliation in Christ.

He wrote this about me when solicited for the testimonials on this site:

I had the privilege of working side-by-side with Kate during our overlapping years at Saint John's School of Theology•Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota (2005-2007). During that time, each of us served a one-year tenure as Chair of the School's Student Liturgy Committee. In her time as Chair, Kate showed herself to be a competent, confident and collegial leader. Her ability to coordinate the Committee's efforts were exceeded only by her gift for enabling and equipping others to do the work with which they were engaged, in a non-anxious, non-domineering and non-threatened way. Everything needful was well done, without haste, without micromanagement, in a respectful atmosphere of mutual listening and creative consensus-building. The ability to lead in such a way is a real gift as well as a skill, and Kate has cultivated it as a faithful steward. In terms of practical ability, Michelle Kate is a most competent liturgist. She combines a commanding knowledge of liturgical history and liturgical theology, together with a refined sense of liturgical law and its application, and brings these to bear on her work in preparing for liturgical celebration. At the same time, and more importantly, Michelle Kate has a refined pastoral sense. She is able to listen to a community, supporting its members as they give voice to their vision and aspirations, and helping them to identify and prioritize needs and goals for practical achievement. In preparing for liturgical celebration, Kate has a strong sense of liturgical gestalt, and is able to harmonize musical selection, crafted and received texts, and worship space environment in a way that is at once humble and elegant.

As I said, it was a privilege to work with Kate; I would not hesitate to work with her again in the future, nor to recommend her wholeheartedly to others.

His kindness in remembering our two years together overwhelmed me. That was late in 2011. When he died suddenly from complications related to a brain aneurysm in April 2012, my world collapsed around me. I wept for months. I still weep for him.

I'm not into guardian angels, but I often have Cody (whom I fondly refer to as Codex) close to heart when I consider my future as a the( )logian and minister. In fact, I just found out that he was ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of the Archangels (also known as the Feast of St. Michael, or Michaelmas). He is indeed my own Holy Messenger (άγγελος), accompanying me from his place at the Holy Banquet. He and I were more alike than I ever imagined when we were in school together. That fact alone leads me to believe that I could indeed become a remarkable servant leader--just like the one he became.

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Forging a path

12/26/2013

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Photo by M. Kate Allen

My baby crawled for the first time today. Her dad and sister and I cheered her on wildly as if she had just hit a grand slam. (The first object she went for was a crinkly package of baby wipes; the second was a major league baseball. Yes, a little music and a little baseball confirm that she is our child.)

I feel like her--inching forward, reaching for that which I behold, struggling little by little with every bit of my strength to get where I'm going.

With her, it's a down-on-the-ground, whole-bodied struggle. With me, it's a battle raging within me over a single, burning question: whether or not I qualify as a leader.

(Weird inner battles, I'm good at them.)

I'm not an alpha female. I know women--amazing women--who are alpha types. I admire them, but I'm not one of them, nor do I have any desire to be one. This obviously precludes me from assuming any role of religious (ordained) leadership.

I still hear this call to leadership, though, which makes my eyes cross. Come on, Goddess. Non-alpha types don't make leaders. The whole notion is absurd. How can I be a leader when I'm the one who's always been in the background, observing more often than herding? When I've been told to my face that I'm not a leader? Leadership roles in my case seem (as my medically trained hubby would say) contraindicated.

Conveniently, I've never had to grapple with this before, because I've always belonged to a tradition in which I would never have to take seriously (or be taken seriously regarding) my call to religious (i.e. ordained) leadership. Now I'm about to be received in a tradition that does, and I'm flailing like my infant daughter. How am I supposed to get where I'm going if I don't have the juice to do it?

For fun, I decided to humor my Lady Goddess and google "characteristics of a leader." I found this list.

I am/do all of those things when it comes to something I care about and am deeply invested in. So...

Moi? Leader?

I'm not an alpha leader.

I'm a servant leader.

I lead by example. I'm dazzling and inspiring in a different way. Folks don't generally want to be me--they want to be around me. When I live out my (rather awesome) ideals, I am at the service of others, rather than in charge of them. That's how my leadership manifests.

I've just never formally thought of leadership, especially religious leadership, like that. Now that I see it at work at St. Augustine's, however--a context which has become my context, rather than remaining someone else's--it makes a surprising amount of sense.

Tune in again soon for more from the M. Kate Meets Her Vocation show!

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Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts: One Mom's Comparison

Liturgical Renewal

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When light and shadow unite

106

Spirit Whispers: I'm sorry

Spirit Whispers: Come and listen to me

Spirit Whispers: Speak up

Easter: Ascension Day

Easter Monday

Living Lent: No

Living Lent: To Lead, Or Not To Lead?

Living Lent: Demons

An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic

Spiritual Direction: For a New Beginning

Words with friends

On Leadership

Forging a path

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