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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ten months ago today, I wrote a post detailing my frustrations with the characterization of God in Psalm 106. I rediscovered that post just now after transforming that very psalm. This is what Thea looks like to me. ♥

Psalm 106
 
We give thanks to you, O Thea,
   for your love for your Creatures is unending.
 
When we were enslaved we did not consider your marvelous works,
nor remember the abundance of your love;
   we defied you, believing not even you could help us.
 
But you set us free,
   making your power known.
 
You rebuked the sea, and it dried up,
   and you led us through the deep as through a desert.
 
You delivered us from the hand of those who hated us
   and empowered us to escape from those who would have held us captive.
 
But we soon forgot your deeds
   and did not take time to discern your wisdom for ourselves.
 
A craving seized us in the wilderness,
   and we put you to the test in the desert.
 
We envied Miriam in the camp,
   Miriam, your chosen one.
 
We forgot you, O Thea,
   you who had liberated us.
 
We grumbled in our tents
   and would not listen to your voice.
 
Then we were overtaken by the hand of our enemy
   and those who hated us ruled over us.
 
Our enemies oppressed us,
   and we were humbled under their hand.
 
Time after time you delivered us from our enslavement,
   but we forgot your love and sank into traps of our own making.
 
Nevertheless, you saw our distress
   when we voiced our lamentation.
 
You remembered your love, even when we forgot it,
   and lifted us up once more.
 
Blessed be you, O Thea, author of Creation,
   and may the blessing of your love ever be upon us!

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.

In the BCP's prescribed psalms for today, God is depicted as a jealous and vengeful God. In Psalm 105, the Egyptians didn't listen to God's command to let the people of Israel go, so God unleashed plagues on them, including death upon their firstborns. Then, in Psalm 106, the people of Israel "intermingled with the heathen and learned their pagan ways," and thus "they were polluted by their actions and went whoring in their evil deeds." Consequently, "the wrath of the Lord was kindled against his (sic) people, and those who hated them ruled over them."

In other words, people didn't act in accordance with God's will, so God threw magnificent tantrums.

As I revise the Psalter into a Thean prayer book, I find I can't abide by this manner of characterizing God. When I imagine God, I imagine her acting like a compassionate, patient, wise, peaceful grown-up--not like a child or a cult leader.

I don't want a fickle God. I want a God who's bigger than that. I want a God who shows her might in her gentleness and care; I want a God who forgives without demanding punishment first. I want a God who gets righteously angry at oppression and enslavement--realities that any loving individual ought to be angry about--and at the same time, I want her primary motivation to be love for all her creatures, who are (in equal measure) her incarnation.

As I reweave the psalms for Thean use, justice for the poor and oppressed will appear, but I hope to eliminate tantrums--particularly death-dealing ones. My Goddess is a Goddess of life, and I want to convey that, one psalm at a time.

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.

Sister Thea Bowman was a Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration, and she changed the face of the African-American Roman Catholic Church.

Sister Thea was a woman who led with joy, story, music, and a sharp intellect. She was a woman who had  the power to speak prophetically against injustice in ways that would soften the hearts of even old white bishops--again and again. Her power was the power to tell a story, to preach without a fourth wall, to engage others at the level of senses and emotion and experience.

She died from cancer a couple of weeks before I turned eight years old. It was another twenty years before I knew who she was.

When I make my solemn profession as a Benedictine Canon next spring, I plan to take Sister Thea's name as my religious name. I see in Sister Thea a bright, strong, gentle, humble, magnetic leader who could tear down any Jericho walls with the dulcimer sounds of her story-telling-and-transforming voice.

Do I have the courage to be more than I am? Do I have the humility to let go of my own weighty importance so I can fly with the wild, light Spirit in whom I put my trust and hopes? 

In a unique collaboration between Fey Publishing and Solarwyrm Press, and thanks to an idea put together by M. Kate Allen, a new anthology of short stories will be produced at the end of May 2014 in honor of the over two-hundred Nigerian girls who were kidnapped at gunpoint by the religious terrorists of Boko Haram on April 14, 2014. All proceeds from sales of this anthology will be donated to http://www.notforsalecampaign.org, an organization that seeks to uncover and put a stop to human trafficking and slavery of all kinds.

The stories in this anthology will address enslaving and enslavement. To the extent that you, the writer, are free from the dangers and enslavement that these Nigerian girls and millions of others presently suffer, you are asked to take great care in considering your own privilege as you weave your tale. The stories in this anthology will seek to name the dynamics of privilege and unjust, unearned power and also seek to highlight ways in which those who are powerless may be thwarted or lifted up by any number of outer or inner forces. Writers are particularly encouraged to explore silence, indifference, and ignorance as forms of oppression.

This is a chance for people whose voices are free to join together to speak powerfully for the sake of those whose voices have been stolen away. The money raised from the sales of this anthology will do financially what the stories of this anthology aim to do narratively: contribute to a culture of liberation that reveals, names, and destroys all forms of oppression.

All short stories should be between 1,500 and 5,000 words long. All submissions are due to Jax Goss (solarwyrm at gmail dot com), editor at Solarwyrm Press and the editor of this anthology, by May 15, 2014 at 11:59PM Pacific time. The anthology is due to be published on or around May 31, 2014 by Kristen Duvall of Fey Publishing. Any questions about the content of the short stories, the fundraiser for the Not For Sale Campaign, or any other aspect of the anthology may be directed to M. Kate Allen at lifeloveliturgy at gmail dot com or at http://www.lifeloveliturgy.com.

Note: I invite you to share this call for submissions far and wide, whether by e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, or on your own blog. I also personally invite readers of Thealogical Lady to consider submitting a story for this anthology. Thank you.