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Living Lent: Passion Sunday Meets Spring Equinox

3/20/2016

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This year, for the first time in eleven years, Passion Sunday (more commonly known as Palm Sunday) falls on the same day as the Spring Equinox, the first day of spring.

Palm Sunday was one of the Sundays I most looked forward to growing up, because it meant receiving a palm frond, singing hosannahs, and processing around the church--ritual at its finest. Now I find that Palm Sunday, Passion Sunday, is too distinctly Christian for me to celebrate it the way I once did. It heralds the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem, where he will be put to death. This, according to Christian teaching, is the culmination of his three-year ministry, the reason for which he was born, by most Christian estimations. The cross is the primary symbol of Christians--there is no Christianity without Jesus's murderous death (and resurrection).

For me as a Thean, the death of Jesus, the Messiah, is no longer central to me. In fact, the existence of a savior of the world isn't central to me, either. Several other things assume central importance for me: the creation of the world (for isn't it amazing that there is something rather nothing?); the incarnation of Thea, which is the universe; the inherent goodness of all things; the communal command to be reconciled to one another; the radical breaking down of barriers through the sharing of table fellowship; and the ability of all beings to be transformed, whether from death to life or from poor of heart to rich of heart.

Instead of looking for palm fronds to hail a redeemer, I cut branches from one of our orange trees, gave one to each of my girls, and led them on a procession through the deck and the house, that we might bless the spaces we share together. Then I invited them, in honor of the coming of spring, to plant three kinds of seeds in the earth with me. Then I took them to their room, gathered them close to me, and talked with them about what Thea is like, and how we are all of Thea, and how greatly Thea loves us and wants us to love one another.

Singing hosannahs around the house on Palm Sunday has always been comfortable, but today it jars me. I am aware of how much work I have yet to do in developing my thealogy--not only my beliefs, but stories, songs, and rituals. Thean faith and liturgy may look a lot like Christian faith and liturgy, but they are not the same. I have spent a great deal of time focusing on their similarities, but now, more than ever, is the time to focus on the differences. The differences don't make Theanism better or worse than Christianity, but they do make a difference in how and what I teach my daughters about God and our place in the universe. The fact is, I don't want them to grow up thinking that they had to be saved by a God-man. I want them to know that their Goddess, their Thea, is as near as their own bodies, and that they are holy, and that they have all the power they need to effect tremendous change in the world. They don't need Jesus to be their hero; they can be their own heroes, because they are daughters of Thea. And they can do that by planting seeds, whether in the ground, in other's hearts, or in their own hearts. ♥

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Living Lent: Christian Epics

3/9/2016

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I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in high school, just before the famed film series began to appear on the silver screen. Later on, I read The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. These epics are neighbors to one another on one of my bookshelves. The other day I picked up The Magician's Nephew, and then The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in order to revisit the Narnia stories (and likewise The Lord of the Rings) from my now well-developed feminist perspective. And I have questions.

1) Why is it that the primary villain of the first two books of the Narnia series is a powerful woman? Why is "witch" equated with "evil"?

2) Why is it that the two female protagonists of the Narnia series, Lucy and Susan, are not meant by Aslan (the God figure and a powerful male) to fight in battle alongside their brothers when war descends on the country? Susan is given a bow and arrows, and Lucy a dagger, but together they're deemed unfit to defend the country of which they are to be rulers, even though their brothers are heading up the war effort--why?

3) Why is it that Aslan takes council with the male animals and leaves the she-animals behind?

4) Why is it, in The Lord of the Rings, that the Fellowship of the Ring is made up of nine males? And why is the whole council that gathers before the formation of the fellowship also entirely male? Didn't Arwen, a female elf, save Frodo from the ring-wraiths before that council ever took place? Why does she not lead the battle against evil as her father once did thousands of years ago?

I suppose one answer is that J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were men of their time. Why write an epic prominently featuring female defenders when women in the mid-20th century didn't defend much?

Times have changed, though. Consider the Gulabi Gang in India, a band of many hundreds of thousands of women wielding sticks to deliver grassroots justice to rapists and others who violate women's rights. Consider also the Toronto Newsgirls Boxing League who planned to show up at pro-rape men's rallies (rallies which were, by a twist of irony, subsequently cancelled for fear for the men's safety).

And then consider literary epics that have been told since the time of Lewis and Tolkien: The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Song of the Lioness Quartet by Tamora Pierce, and the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett. All three of these epic stories feature female protagonists who are defenders of their lands--they are also wise, powerful women. Aren't powerful wise women nothing more than witches, and aren't witches evil? The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns witchcraft as "gravely contrary to the virtue of religion" (CCC 2117). But, looking at the bigger picture historically, isn't this condemnation nothing more than a condemnation of the woman's right to stand on her own two feet, to foster her own wisdom, to assert her will, and to embrace and develop her gifts?

I don't understand why, and don't accept that, women are either to be dimunitive/obedient or labeled as sources of evil. And before my time in this life is done, I plan to write an epic of my own, featuring not men, who have already had centuries of attention as leaders, but women: strong, vocal, brave, wise, powerful women, women who in ages past or even in this age might be branded witches--women for whom the labels of others no longer hold any sway. They may be self-proclaimed witches or they may be something else, but in my epic, these women will be self-defined, rather than defined by a man. I can hardly wait to write it.

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Living Lent: International Women's Day

3/8/2016

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Last year, for several months, I wrote a Thean prayer every day. In honor of International Women's Day, I'm copying the prayer I wrote a year ago today--it still strikes a holy chord with me.

Thea,
as I celebrate this day of women,
I celebrate you:
feminine, fierce,
bold, brave,
enveloping, animating,
generous, genuine, genius,
Goddess.
Amen.

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Living Lent: Psalm 10

3/2/2016

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I have revised Psalm 10 to be a Thean psalm, and I find it speaks volumes to the current political situation in the United States.

Psalm 10

 
Why do you stand so far off, O Thea,
   and hide yourself in time of trouble?
 
The wicked arrogantly persecute the poor,
   but they are trapped in the schemes they have devised.
 
The wicked boast of their heart’s desire;
   the covetous curse and revile the poor.
 
The wicked are so proud that they care not for others;
   their only thought is, “Creation does not matter.”
 
Their ways are devious at all times;
your judgments are far above out of their sight;
   they defy all their enemies.
 
They say in their heart, “I shall not be shaken;
   no harm shall happen to me ever.”
 
Their mouth is full of cursing, deceit, and oppression;
    under their tongue are mischief and wrong.
 
They lurk in ambush in public squares
and in secret places they murder the innocent;
   they spy out the helpless.
 
They lie in wait, like a lion in a covert;
they lie in wait to seize upon the lowly;
   they seize the lowly and drag them away in their net.
 
The innocent are broken and humbled before them;
   the helpless fall before their power.
 
Rise up, O Thea;
   do not forget the afflicted.
 
Surely, you behold trouble and misery;
   you see it and take it into your own hand.
 
The helpless commit themselves to you,
   for you are the helper of orphans.
 
Break the power of the wicked and evil;
   search out their wickedness until you find none.
 
Thea will hear the desire of the humble;
   you will strengthen their heart and your ears shall hear;
 
To give justice to the orphan and oppressed,
   so that mere mortals may strike terror no more.

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Living Lent: A Prayer Answered

2/25/2016

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This Lent I gave up all but Fair Trade chocolate for Lent. I was reminded of the stories I had heard about chocolate being produced by slave laborers, and I realized I needed to change my (considerable) love of mass-produced chocolate. As much as I love Snickers and Reese's, I wanted to learn to love the people who produced chocolate more, and that love required action, however small my action might be.

My prayers for an end to slave labor in the chocolate industry were answered today when I read that President Barack Obama signed a bill prohibiting the import of any product produced by forced labor. There are some people saying President Obama is already a lame duck president, but indeed he is not. This is one example of him using his tremendous power in his final year of service as the head of the United States, one of the world's most powerful and influential economies, to make a difference in the way the world does business. Slave labor won't be tolerated or encouraged by our dollars anymore--President Obama made sure of it.

Today I am immensely proud to be an American. There are so many ways in which politics disappoint, but then there are days when a prophetic person makes a real difference in the lives of millions of people. February 24, 2016 was one of those days. Thank you, President Obama, from the bottom of my heart.
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Living Lent: Ash Wednesday

2/10/2016

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I have smudged my daughters with ash in years past, and this year was no different. But this year, I helped my five-year-old make her first Lenten sacrifice: she's giving up playing games on her parents' tablets.

Last year I remember reflecting on the habit of giving things up for Lent, and I remember being chagrined at the idea that people were giving something up for Jesus' sake. As a Thean, I no longer pray to Jesus, but to Thea, mother of all creation. And my Lenten sacrifice is not for her sake, but for mine: that my heart, however hardened it may have become over the last year, may be softened once again.

I want to teach my daughter about this softening of heart, because I think it matters. It matters that we learn at some point that we shouldn't always get what we want. It matters that we should be able to willingly give up something that we do want. The emptying of self and ego's desire is one of the great lessons of Lent. If ever there is a time for letting go of unnecessary or unhealthy attachments, Lent is it. Lent is a reminder that our superficial desires can get in the way of what we most deeply desire--in my case, loving union with Thea and her sacred body, Creation. For my older daughter, learning the idea of selflessness is just the first step. As she gets older, I trust she'll learn to make more meaningful sacrifices--sacrifices that go beyond her. I'm giving up chocolate that isn't certified Fair Trade for Lent because I was reminded recently of the child slave labor that is behind much of the world's cocoa production. Eating Snickers bars, as much as I love to do so, doesn't help those enslaved children--it is very likely what helps keeps them enslaved. It's easy for me to overlook this because their world is so very far away from me, but those children are my own sisters and brothers, my own nieces and nephews, and my heart belongs to them as much as it belongs to me.

When I apply ash to my daughters' foreheads, I say, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This is not just a statement of their mortality--it is a reminder that they are of the earth, of the universe, and they always will be. They are of this creation, just like those enslaved children in Africa, and they belong to it, just as all the people of this world belong to each other. I want my daughters to learn to care not only for themselves, but for those around them, especially those who are in any way oppressed. I want them to learn to lift up others by the way they live their lives, and to be willing to change their lives when they realize that they are complicit in the oppression of others. I also want them to learn to trust in those people who are willing to look deeply at their own hearts and transform them. Those with Lenten hearts, whatever their religious background, are our hope for the creation's future.

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Living Lent: Both/And

3/27/2015

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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.

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Living Lent: Insights

3/22/2015

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Sunday is the day of the week when my daughters and I celebrate Eucharist together. We've been doing our own house-church liturgy for about two months now, and each week I tweak the ordo, trying to get it just right for us. Somehow, in all these weeks, I've forgotten to include intercessory prayers between the homily and the Eucharistic prayer, so I added a place for them today. I didn't write them out ahead of time; I wanted to see who my older daughter would want to pray for. I let her take the lead during liturgy.

"Miriam," she said first. I asked her who else.

"Daddy and Mommy," she said next. I added Anastasia's name to the mix, and a few more names came up.

Then she said, "I want to pray for everybody--for all the people."

I nodded and grinned a wide grin. If I ever want proof that I'm doing this mommy gig right, all I need is a dose of Anastasia's thealogical insight. Every single Sunday, when we gather for liturgy, she'll say something that makes me think to myself, "If only adults got religion like you did!"

Her intuitions about God and the way we relate to God are right on the mark. During our shared homily today, she talked about Thea as the mother hen, and she said that Thea loves all her little chicks, and she said she and Miriam were Thea's little chicks. "Yes, you are," I said, "and she's very proud of you, just like I am." It was Anastasia's turn to grin then, and I gave her a big hug before continuing on.

God is indeed with us.
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Living Lent: Bringing Joy

3/18/2015

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This past Sunday was the fourth Sunday of Lent, Laetare Sunday--the day when Lent takes a turn toward joyous hope. The liturgical color is rose, just as it is on Gaudete Sunday (the third Sunday of Advent). "Laetare" is a Latin command to rejoice, and in this Laetare week, I am gathering up my joys:

~spending time with my husband
~teaching and playing with and reading to my daughters
~writing (prayers, stories, poems, blog posts, letters)
~playing softball (both at practice and on game nights)
~singing with my daughters
~celebrating Eucharist each Sunday at home
~gardening
~walking
~dancing with my daughters
~playing the keyboard
~painting
~praying
~talking with people I love

My life spills over with joy this Lent. Am I doing Lent wrong? Probably, according to someone's definition. But not according to mine. This Lent I am aware of the brevity of life and the utter preciousness of each moment. I'm learning to let go of all that does not give life and to embrace all that does.

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Living Lent: Ash Wednesday

2/18/2015

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This is the first Lent shared by the Allen House Church. Instead of driving to a church building or chapel for the administration of ashes, I administered ash from a black block of charcoal left in our firepit. "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," I said, as I smudged my daughters' foreheads with the sign of the cross.


Later I asked my older daughter, Anastasia, if she knew what the black dust was called. "Ash," I told her.

"What does ash do?" she asked, alight with curiosity.

"Well, ash reminds us that we came from the dust, and we'll become dust again when we die."

Her eyes widened. "No, I don't want to die."

"You won't die today, honey. Or tomorrow or the day after that. You won't die till you're old and gray and wrinkly." She smiled at the word wrinkly, but then she frowned again. "But I don't want to die."

"Everyone dies, honey. That's the way it works."

"But I don't want you or Daddy or Miriam or me to die."

"We won't die today. But we'll die someday. Everyone does."

One of the striking facets of leading a house church is that questions and answers become part of the liturgy, rather than an interruption to it. I no longer hush my daughter when she asks what's going on. I weave her question into the ritual. Anastasia feels comfortable asking me about everything we're doing and using for our liturgies. No subject is off-limits--not even death.

As a result, my daughter, at age four, has a clearer grasp of Ash Wednesday than I had throughout my childhood. I knew what death was at age four, but Anastasia knows that she will die someday, even though she doesn't want to.

Her resistance to death mirrors my own--I perceive my resistance more clearly through her fear. Having been reminded that my death and the death of those I love is inevitable, in what ways am I willing to become more fully alive in the time I am given?

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Living Lent: Holy Saturday

4/19/2014

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


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Living Lent: Maundy Thursday Mystagogy

4/18/2014

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"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?

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Living Lent: Tenebrae

4/17/2014

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Long psalms draw me into shadow.

A clatter rattles me.
Death!

But a lone flame alights,
scattering harbored dark
and my dry face is watered with hope.

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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: Reading

4/15/2014

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I've spent much of this Lent steeping my heart in words: words from my prayer books, words from scripture, words from novels, and words from those I love.

I recently read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, a medieval story that follows the rhythm of the monastic daily office. Now I'm reading D.L. Smith's The Miracles of Santa Fico, a story that my friend, Denise, promises will illuminate Holy Week. Soon I will reread Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, one of the most influential books of my life (whose contents are summed up in the title).

In what ways do the stories I read and hear shape the story of my life? As I approach the liminal liturgy of Triduum that serves as the gateway between Lent and Easter, what stories should I embrace as truth-bearers, and what stories should I relinquish as deceivers?

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Living Lent: Going Home

4/14/2014

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Last Tuesday my baby daughter and I traveled to Ohio to visit family and friends. Many wonderful, loving, fruitful meetings took place, and my daughter and I hardly stopped moving except to sleep. My heart is full with marvelous memories of the trip.

I have much from the trip to reflect on over the coming days, but one insight stands out for me: the home of my childhood, whose land and people I love, is no longer my home. My home is in the desert, a place that I would never have imagined myself living in even a year ago.

What other surprises await my life as I open myself to the possibility of the unexpected?

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Living Lent: Truest Singing

4/8/2014

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As I awoke this morning from a night of grief-laced sleep, the first three verses of this hymn, whose words were written by Jean Janzen, spilled from me:

I sing to you from summers of my heart
My voice a field of surge and greening
My roots established in the long-lit hours
Your presence in the throbbing

I sing when fullness burnishes my day
The mellow spices of completion
The harvest of my life in you which yields
A juice of joy and feasting

But when in silence nothing rises up
Into my soul, and I am frozen
When iron days refuse to split and thaw
The clutch of ice to flowing

I struggled to remember the final verse all morning, till it came to me just now:


Then give me faith that warmth will swell the bud
to song, which like a leaf will open
For from the urgings of your steadfast love
There flows my truest singing

Easter's Aurora draws near.

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Living Lent: Grieving death

4/7/2014

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I have grieved the deaths of many people I love. Grieving death, when love for the one who has died is great, hurts. The hurt can be so searing that the griever seeks to shut out her grief: she buries it, hiding it so she doesn't have to face it.

What isn't obvious to the griever is that hiding grief isn't the same as letting it go. Hiding allows the grief to blossom deep within me. It becomes a weed, claiming good soil for itself and choking to death the good that has been cultivated within me.

In my personal effort to grieve a death I've never grieved,
I have had to dig deep within myself to grasp at my grief's roots. That grasping has taken the form of many words--as I give voice to the grief, its shape becomes distinct from the now-hardened soil in which it dwells, and I can grasp it with gradually increasing ease.

In what ways will I have to embrace my grief before it releases its hidden grip on me?

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Living Lent: Grief - 5th Sunday of Lent

4/6/2014

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Stony heart walls break
Spilling rush of long-dammed grief
Soft love whispers, balm.


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Living Lent: Powers of Mercy

4/5/2014

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As my Benedictine Canon community prepares to engage in a formal discernment process about its future ministries this afternoon, my mind is on spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

"Works" is a loaded word that most folks of Protestant inclinations dislike. "Works" sounds like that dangerous idea of trying to make ourselves look better to God so we can get more grace (which is the notion so unhelpfully espoused in practice, if not in teaching, by the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages). Martin Luther was no fan of this. He, an Augustinian monk, was excommunicated for speaking out prophetically against the notion that we could manipulate God to get God to gives us more grace (mainly in the form of indulgences sold by the church).

There is a long-standing patristic tradition of two kinds of works of mercy: spiritual works of mercy and corporal works of mercy, both of which are worth listing here.

Spiritual Works of Mercy

  • To instruct the ignorant;
  • To counsel the doubtful;
  • To admonish sinners;
  • To bear wrongs patiently;
  • To forgive offences willingly;
  • To comfort the afflicted;
  • To pray for the living and the dead.

Corporal Works of Mercy

  • To feed the hungry;
  • To give drink to the thirsty;
  • To clothe the naked;
  • To harbor the harborless;
  • To visit the sick;
  • To ransom the captive;
  • To bury the dead.

Rather than referring to these fourteen acts as works of mercy, I would prefer to refer to them as powers of mercy. Christians are empowered by baptism to do all these as acts of discipleship to Christ. Our purpose, our mission, is to go out to the world to use our power to act in these ways, because this is this sort of power that Christ bestowed (and bestows) on his followers. The power we are given is radically counter-cultural, noted only rarely by wider society (and then only in people like Mother Teresa of Calcutta) because these powers are embraced in such a lukewarm way by so many Christians (myself included).

Imagine with me a Christianity in which Christians devoted themselves not to the preservation of their own religious status quo, but rather to embracing and exhibiting the powers of mercy bestowed
on them in baptism. Imagine Christian communities taking the lead of Martin Luther in upsetting their own lukewarm faith, emptying themselves of their own chaff that they might make way for the grains of wheat that God seeks to plant in them. What if we Christians allowed ourselves to become living bread, the risen, powerful Body of Christ in and for the world?

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    Rev. M. Kate Allen

    Thean. House church priest. Published author. Mother and wife. Vocal feminist. Faith-filled dissenter in the face of the status quo.

    I address G-d as Thea more often than not.


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