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

10/7/2017

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Keeley Bruner

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

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

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

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

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

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

9/4/2016

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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.

For a free e-copy of the Thean Psalter, send me a note with your e-mail address. If you'd like a print copy, you can send $10 and your name and address via PayPal to me at lifeloveliturgy at gmail dot com. If you self-identify as a woman and would like to take part in future gatherings of Thean Evening Prayer at Pathways of Grace, we meet every first Saturday of the month at 5:00, and you can RSVP on the Pathways of Grace meetup.com page.
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Praying with the Thean Book of Psalms

8/24/2016

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This morning, my older daughter and I cleared our dining room table. I invited her to bring out my lidded white candle and my sparkling, pale purple quartz. "What are you doing?" she asked as I opened the lid of the candle. I said nothing, setting the lid next to the candle, placing the quartz chunk inside it, and lighting the candle with a match. I opened my Thean Psalter to the section marked "Twenty-fourth Day: Morning Prayer." I asked my daughter if she was ready, and she said yes. I proceeded to pray the appointed psalms, 116-118, in a lively, lilting voice, making eye contact with her and slowing my words at important phrases. At the end of the final psalm, I said, "Amen," and she repeated it after me. I invited her to blow out the candle, and we collapsed in giggles as she blew and blew at the flame, to no avail. Thean light is not easily extinguished, she discovered.

After I walked my older daughter to school and drove my husband to work, my younger daughter and I met with a friend of mine who's heading off for rabbinical studies this fall. She wanted a copy of the print version of the Thean Psalter. As soon as I gave it to her, she began adding thin plastic tabs to it; she also oohed and aahed over the purple cardstock title page, the color of which was her favorite. Her excitement as she explored the Psalter's words mirrored my own, and I couldn't help grinning as I watched her. She asked which of the psalms were my favorites, and I pointed out Psalm 23, which reimagines the relationship between G-d and psalmist, moving from shepherd/sheep to mutually curious, passionate lovers who are, among other things, equals.

This Psalter represents Thean thealogical thought, which is feminist and feminine, egalitarian, pacifist, and creation-centric. Patriarchal structures/images as well as themes of violence and vengeance are challenged, eliminated, or transformed.

The e-copy of this finalized Thean Psalter is available for free to all who request it. The hard copy, which is laser-printed on high quality white paper and purple cardstock and comb-bound with a black spine in clear plastic front and back covers, is available for $10USD, payable via PayPal, with free shipping anywhere in the continental United States. I plan to make hard copies of the Thean Psalter available each first Saturday of the month at Thean Evening Prayer, where all who identify as women are welcome to pray.

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Spirit Whispers: Making Miracles

7/8/2014

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Every morning, my 13-month old and I race to see who will make it from sleep to wakefulness first. She usually wins.

When we're both awake, I will myself to stand up out of bed, and then I move over to beckon her to stand up in her play-yard, wiggling my fingers and smiling. If she's still sleepy, it'll take her a few moments, but when she smiles back I know she's ready. I pick her up, we move into the bathroom to look at one another in the mirror, and then we go to the refrigerator to fetch her morning milk. I put her in the gated living room and fetch her some Cheerios to nosh on, and sometimes I join her there and sit.

A new element has entered our morning ritual when I join her. She fetches a fistful of Cheerios, toddles over to me, and extends her hand to my mouth, her eyes filled with expectation. The surprise of this gesture doesn't fade. I open my mouth. She places a Cheerio on my tongue, or on my teeth, and I use American Sign Language along with my voice to say "Thank you!" after I've crunched on my little wheaty gift.

My daughter feeds me. My daughter, who hasn't yet experienced the waters of baptism, is Christ enfleshed. She feeds the hungry and breaks open a stony heart as she does it.


I don't know much about my female ancestors, but I wonder if there were women like my daughter among them, women who were bold in doing priestly work, even if they could never take the title of priest. Will my daughter be a priest of Christ and feed those who hunger? Will she be someone more extraordinary and surprising than I can imagine?

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Easter: Day 35

5/24/2014

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Tonight I will ritualize the death of a friend of mine from highschool.

Ritualizing is proactive creating/shaping of and engaging in ritual. "Following the rubrics" isn't necessary--rubrics are a by-product, not a prerequisite, of ritualizing.

I invite you to consider the events or memories in your life that could benefit from the act of ritualizing them. What in your life needs healing? What needs reconciling? What needs forgiving? What needs to be laid to rest?

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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: No Longer for Ourselves

4/1/2014

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As a student of liturgy, it's fair to say that I have spent a good deal of my life preoccupied with how liturgy is prayed. I studied liturgy with the same Benedictine community that sent Dom Virgil Michel to Europe to study liturgy during the revolutionary liturgical time preceding the Second Vatican Council. For fifteen years--almost half my life--the way Christians (and others) worship together and how that in turn shapes their lives has been the source of much reflection for me.

When my pastor at the Community of St. Peter (then Historic St. Peter Church) was gathering feedback for his D.Min. dissertation about how worship was formative for our congregation, he asked the choir to gather for a special meeting. We choir members had had the broadest and most consistent exposure to the various liturgies celebrated in our community, including funerals and weddings, which generally were rather exclusive affairs. Our breadth of liturgical experiences made us especially important for his dissertation, so we talked with him. I remember speaking up at one point to offer that liturgy--however it may be done--teaches Christians agency and accountability. Where we are liturgical agents, we become accountable for the way we bring about God's Reign in the world. Where we are not liturgical agents, we are not accountable for the way we bring about (or fail to bring about) the Reign of God in the world.

It seems to me that for Christian communities who are fearful of becoming obsolete in their ritual practices, the answer starts, but never ends, with liturgy. In what way do congregations pray? If what we do at church is what we learn to do in the world, what exactly is it that we're learning? And if what we learn at church is that practicing the Reign of God is someone else's job, then aren't we doing church wrong?

The church doesn't exist for its own sake. Christians are called to live no longer for themselves, but for the sake of the world, that God's radical peace might find a place to dwell in every corner. Any Christian community that exists to serve itself may as well shutter its doors. We are formed in Christian community primarily so that we--all the baptized, not merely clergy--may be sent into the world to do what Jesus charged his disciples to do: to feed the multitudes with that for which they are most desperately hungry.

For what do our neighbors starve and thirst? And what will my Christian sisters and brothers and I--as people empowered by baptism and formed around the tables of holy word, living bread, and saving wine--offer them?

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Living Lent: Homily, Lent III

3/24/2014

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Many weeks ago I was invited by the vicar of St. Augustine's Church to give a homily at both Sunday liturgies for the third Sunday of Lent. Yesterday was the third Sunday of Lent, and these are the words that I shared with my fellow parishioners.

Lent III Lessons: Genesis 44:1-17, Psalm 95, Romans 8:1-10, John 5:25-29

"From the wilderness the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as God commanded. And they camped, but there was no water for the people to drink." This is what we hear from the book of Exodus. God's people had been journeying for a long time. They were hopeful and excited about their newfound freedom from slavery in Egypt. But in the midst of their journey, tired and weary from walking, they found themselves in a place that had no water to quench their thirst. When they got upset about it, Moses got upset at them for being upset. And then God finally relented and gave the people a spring of water. The scripture writer notes throughout the story that God's people persisted in doubt.

There's something strange about this. Why would God bring God's beloved people out of slavery and then leave them out to dry, literally? They're in the wilderness, a place unknown to them, and they're thirsting. Thirst is no insignificant thing. Thirst, if left unquenched long enough, could lead to death. Thirst is such a fearful experience that there are psalms dedicated to it: in Psalm 42 we pray, "As the deer that pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for God," and in Psalm 63 we pray "My soul is thirsting for you, O God, like a dry, weary land without water."

For the people of Israel, a dry land was an unfruitful land. A dry people was a dying people.

And here we are, on the third Sunday of Lent, not quite halfway through our journey in the Lenten wilderness, and we find ourselves parched. My guess is that you, like I, have given up something for Lent (in my case, being the overachiever that I am, I gave up four things). If you're like me, your Lenten fasting leaves you yearning, sometimes bitterly, sometimes desperately, for the familiar comforts you gave up on Ash Wednesday.

This Sunday's lessons are all about water and thirst, and they may be the most important ones we hear during Lent. We think of Lent as a time to honor Jesus' ultimate sacrifice on the cross by making sacrifices of our own, and Lent is that, but Lent also has something far more difficult to teach us.

The harder lesson of Lent is difficult to perceive when our fasting is overshadowed by our certainty that relief is coming. Unlike our voluntary Lenten fasting, for the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, there was no timeline or guarantee of reaching an oasis. Their journey out of slavery in Egypt meant leaving behind all their known sources of refreshment, period. It meant taking the extraordinary risk that they might involuntarily and without warning have to abstain from water--an abstinence that, if prolonged, even for a few days, would have the power to claim their lives.

By leaving Egypt, they weren't just taking their lives out of the hands of Pharaoh; by seeking freedom, they were submitting their lives to the mercy of their God, their sole protector from the dangers of the wilderness. As they found themselves stopping to camp in a place with no water, they were terrified. They were so sick with parched mouths and deep thirst that they were no longer sure that the God in whom they had put all their trust would be willing or able to save them from death. They had already journeyed too far from Egypt to go back. Their lives hung by a thread, and they could no longer save themselves. Only God could. And that scared them.

Centuries later, when Jesus offered living water to the Samaritan woman, he was offering her God's new covenant: the promise that as long as she sought this new living water, rather than seeking water from the source she had always turned to, she would never have to fear dying from thirst the way the Israelites had feared dying from thirst in the wilderness.

The lesson from John's gospel isn't merely a story about the Samaritan woman. It's a story about us. We have been offered this same living water by God in our baptism, and yet what do we do?  We build up storehouses of comfort around ourselves in order to make sure that we never have to rely on anyone but ourselves. Our lives get so cluttered by the comforts we take for granted that when we tear away some of those comforts during Lent, we feel a deep, uncomfortable emptiness. We taste a morsel of the same bitter fear that haunted God's people in the wilderness, and we can't wait to get back to the way things were. In the end, we would rather drink from the well that we've always known than trust in some guy who doesn't even know to bring his own bucket. We might give up what we cling to for a few weeks, but who among us is willing to let our comforts go indefinitely? If I let my sources of comfort die, I risk dying, too.

I'd like to suggest that we ask ourselves what we left behind in order to enter this Lenten wilderness, and whether we're willing to leave behind all the rest. Do we dare to empty ourselves of everything we cling to until all we have left is our aching thirst for God and the trust that God won't let us die? Perhaps, as we enter the second half of Lent, we can risk losing it all--every thing we think we need to be happy, all our enslaving attachments, every shackle of our obsessions--and move forward to the unknown, unguaranteed future. And maybe then, as we go forward bearing nothing but our thirst and radical trust in the face of terrifying dryness, God will lift up for us a spring of living water, and we'll be able to rise from our knees to unfettered, quenching, resurrected freedom.

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Preparing for the Lenten Fast

3/3/2014

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Tomorrow is Shrove Tuesday/Fat Tuesday/Mardis Gras in the Christian tradition. Time to use up whatever remains in the larder, because pretty soon we'll be fasting....

Well, actually, I don't have a larder. I don't even have lard.

But I am Christian, and Lent starts on Wednesday, and I will be fasting.

This will be my first Lent as a member of my Benedictine Canon community. My daily prayers in this community have brought me to a profound awareness of my sisters and brothers who suffer. There are countless people in the world at this very moment who are oppressed, in danger, starving, naked, or enslaved.

I find myself asking what I can do to be in solidarity with all my sisters and brothers who suffer. I'm not in a position to save the world; nor am I in a position to save even one person. I'm no savior. But the one I acclaim as savior is someone whose behavior I can emulate. I can, in my twenty-first-century middle-class American context, step away from my everyday life and take on a journey that isn't surrounded by easy comfort.

It seems silly to do this, mainly because it is my choice to do so. What does it mean to choose to make a sacrifice if I can always choose at any moment to turn back to the way things were? I'm always operating from the privilege of my ability to choose, and in that sense my sacrifice is folly. Nevertheless, I choose to let go of my normal life during Lent with the hope that I might be transformed for the sake of the common good--and transformation will not necessarily be my choice, my doing, my accomplishment.

During this Lent, my penance will involve giving up three things: 1) sweets, 2) meat, and 3) my favorite go-to social network, Facebook. (When my darling husband reads this, he won't believe it. He knows me. These are three of my favorite things.)

I don't know what I or anyone else will get out of my Lenten penance, but I suspect I will feel a great emptiness almost immediately--and in the difficult-to-me facing of that emptiness over the coming six weeks, my heart may break. If it does, what wisdom then will my heart be finally ready to receive?
What good will I be empowered and inspired to do? What injustice will I realize I can no longer overlook, thanks to my recognition of my personal ability to make a tangible difference in reversing that injustice?

This Lent, I will seek to empty myself of what is desirable but not important, so there might be enough spaciousness within me to bear something difficult and radically important: Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. -Galatians 6:2

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Retreat and return

2/11/2014

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My dreams this week concern me.

I've dreamed about killing someone I didn't know; I wasn't convicted in court for lack of evidence, even though I knew I was at fault.  I've dreamed about others I did know dying of natural causes, leaving me to pick up the pieces.  Last night I dreamed about an elderly friend of mine asking me to help pack up two houses: the one in which he used to live and the one in which he currently lived.  He was preparing to move elsewhere, though I didn't know where.  Everything I touched in his current house was laden with memory, whereas everything in the other house was strange, rich, and unlike him as far as I knew him.

I'm no expert on Jung or Freud, but I do know that dreams can point dreamers to insights about themselves and their lives.

What is with all the death, hiding, and transition? 

I woke in the middle of the night last night to get my baby daughter a bottle.  When I returned, I flashed back to a conversation from my last Benedictine Canon chapter meeting.  Br. Philip talked about preparing for his final profession as a Canon next month, in particular about the placing of the pall over his prostrated body.  Like Br. Chad and Br. Rawleigh, Br. Philip will lay down his body at the service of God, the community, and the world.  He'll be covered with a pall, the pale garment of baptism and death.

I realized in the chill of the night that if I make my full profession as a Benedictine Canon, I will be committing myself to die.

I crawled back into bed and closed my eyes, but words rose up, and I ended up texting myself with the words of a haiku so they wouldn't be swallowed by sleep.

A funeral pall
veils the diff'rence
between old
and new. Ego die.


My dreams point me to an unexpected revelation: my old self is dying.  I am being put to the test.  My identity as a religious person has long been plagued with fear, self-absorption, doubt, and horded treasures, all carefully saved so I would have something to cling to in case God ever failed me.  Now, step by step, I am moving forward into the intensely uncomfortable unknown: a place of overflowing trust. 

Father, I put my life in your hands.
 

I'm dying--and it's okay.  I'm letting the precious treasure of my life go.  And what a relief.


Mother, I put my life in your hands.

My life will be whatever it is meant to be.  The particular outcome of my life is no longer my concern
.  Living from moment to moment at the service of God and God's magnificent, multi-faceted creation is enough.  Being able to turn again and again from my selfish fears toward God, the holy Fire who burns within me, is enough.

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An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic

1/17/2014

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PictureM. Kate Allen
To Pope Francis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M. Kate Allen




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

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Praying with Icons: Miriam

1/5/2014

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While on retreat with St. Augustine's Church this weekend, adults were invited to pray with an icon.  One of the mothers there had just commented that my daughter, Miriam, certainly qualified as an icon.  So I prayed with Miriam, allowing God to behold me through her.  I gave voice to my encounter in this way:



We are Godparents.
We are God's parents.
God is our child.

On the seventh day she rested because she was exhausted. She needed rest.

God needs the safety of our arms. God needs our vigilant care and protection.

God would die without us.
God grows up in our midst.

We have a critical role to play in God's destiny.

God is a child and we are her parents. Without our constant attention, she suffers.
We are her caregiver. She needs us to survive.

We are the parents of God, and she loves us implicitly.
May we never betray her love.
Our excuses not to care for her will burst like old wineskins.

She trusts that we will give her all she needs. She trusts that we will be there when she awakes. She trusts that if we put her in the arms of another, that that other will care for her just as well.

We are God's parents and we would die for her.

Her radiant smile stops time in an eternal, brilliant moment.

We feed her with good things.

We love God, for she is our own daughter, wonderfully made in our image.
Her voice causes us to laugh, dance, and run.
Her smile melts our chill anger.
Her cries alert us.

We listen when she calls.

Listen, o mother, give ear to My words.

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Christmas

12/25/2013

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PicturePhoto by Monty and Julie Carson
My daughter danced my parish into Christ's birth last night.  That memory will remain with me for the rest of my days. 

~~~


As part of my Benedictine prayer practice, I read the lections of the day according to the Book of Common Prayer.  A portion of the first letter of John was today's second reading.

This line pealed out like holy bells: "[A]s long as we love one another, God remains in us, and God's love comes to its perfection in us."  Sounds a little bit like the preaching of the new bishop of Rome, no?  Sounds even more like the nudgings of Jesus.  Where two are three are gathered in love, there is God.

There was God last night.  There was God around our Christmas tree this morning.  There is God now as we prepare our Christmas feast.  There will God be as we lovingly greet familiar friends and strangers
throughout Christmastide.

May these twelve days to Epiphany be filled with blessings and your own ongoing, Spirit-ed expressions of sacred love.

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Vigil of the Nativity of the Christ

12/25/2013

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PicturePhoto by Thad Botham
And with that, Advent is over.  God is with us--Emmanuel--alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

I love Christmas.  I love the radicality of the Christmas message that says God isn't so transcendent that God can't be flesh.  I love the intimacy of this God who is both divine and human at once, and who teaches us--like the good rebbe he is--to be the same.

I am so grateful this night for hope fulfilled in the midst of so much doubt and despair.  Light does pierce shadows, dispelling them.  Goodness is stronger than evil, breaking it down with the power of gentleness.  A godly child does make a worldly ruler tremble, displacing cunning selfishness with its own absolute reliance on the sacred other for survival.

The message of the incarnation is that we desperately, utterly need each other.  Humanity and divinity meet in community and communion, not in isolation.  God can't do this gig without us, and we can't sustain God's divine flame within ourselves without the companionship of others.

That's my daughter to the left.  She is about take flight, one of God's own angeloi, standing before the holy altar at the feet of the infant Christ.  She's just carried in a sheep, practicing for her future role as shepherdess.  Later,
she danced during the offering of the holy gifts, and I had the presence of mind not to stop her.  I look at her and see an icon of the Christ, bearing glad tidings and preaching good news through her very body.  She did tonight what you and I do for each other every day.

Merry Christmas to you, o holy bearers and birthers of God.

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Gaudete! Advent, Week 3, Sunday

12/15/2013

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Picture
I made my oblation to the Benedictine Canon Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation this morning. 

You know me--I like it when timing is more than a coincidence.  The Prior of the OSBCn Community here in Tempe allowed me to schedule my oblation for the third Sunday of Advent, not only signifying a heart-opening beginning, which is what Advent is in relationship to the liturgical year, but also signifying a time of rejoicing.  The Latin Introit for this Sunday is where Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, gets its nickname:

Gaudete in Domino semper: iterum dico, gaudete. Modestia vestra nota sit omnibus hominibus: Dominus enim prope est. Nihil solliciti sitis: sed in omni oratione petitiones vestræ innotescant apud Deum. Benedixisti Domine terram tuam: avertisti captivitatem Jacob.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Let your forbearance be known to all, for the Lord is near at hand; have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God. Lord, you have blessed your land; you have turned away the captivity of Jacob.

Could there be a more fitting liturgical opening on the day of my entrance into this community?

When I pray today, I find myself saying in faith, Rejoice.  Rejoice.  The Lord is near at hand.  She is near at hand, and you need have no anxiety about anything, but in all things, by constant prayer, and with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to Her.  Lady, you have blessed your creation and turned us from our deadening captivity.

It is a fitting day indeed.  It is an empowering day.  Today I committed to the regular work prayer, and I find in that prayer the freedom to transcend my self-concern.  Each welcome from the members of my community was a tap-tap-tap on the still stony shell around my heart, bidding it to break free.  To stretch out my arms, to enfold sisters and brothers and neighbors in love: these are my new tasks.  What a strange gift.  What a novel reminder of my baptism.  What a poignant icon of the divine spark that finds fuel in my humanity.

I feel more fully myself today than I ever have in my life.  Here in this place, accompanied by my family, my church community, my sister and brother Benedictines, and my holy cloud of witnesses from every part of the earth and God's heavenly banquet, I am home.

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Advent 1, Tuesday

12/3/2013

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Picture
Tonight I began my evening prayer by lighting the candles of my family's menorah while chanting

O God,
come to my assistance.
Lady,
make haste to help me.
Glory to the Mother,
and to the Daughter,
and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning,
is now,
and will be forever.
Amen.


I read the reflection of the day from St. Augustine's Advent devotional booklet, and then I turned to the light of the Chanukah candles.  The rest of my prayer took the form of awe in that gentle light.

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Thanksgivukah Advent-ures: How to Celebrate the "Season" before You Celebrate Christmas

11/21/2013

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If you're like me, you're just not ready for the red and green and tinsel cropping up at Target, Starbucks, and the grocery store.  I want to go, "Hey, don'tcha know there's all kinds of cool stuff that goes on for a couple of months before Christmas ever arrives?"

I invite you to try out the following this year, not to ditch your family traditions, but to expand them.

Thanksgiving/Chanukah: This year, for the first time (and the last time for 77,000 years, according to one source, Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah coincide.  This year, as you finalize your Thanksgiving day menu, consider a few Jewish specialties, like latkes 
Picture
Source: AllRecipes.com
or matzo ball soup.
Picture
Source: FoodNetwork.com
(Pro-tip: matzo ball soup can be made in minutes using a handy-dandy pre-made dry mix in the Jewish section of your grocery store.)  When you and your family and friends are gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table, share the story of the miracle of Chanukah, in which an oil lamp with only enough oil for one night lasted eight nights, providing ongoing light in darkness.  Chanukah is an eight-day Jewish feast of enduring, miraculous light--telling this story is is a great time to light the first candle of eight of your menorah, if you have one, or perhaps the first of other candles you have on your table.  Allow this to be your segue into a giving of thanks by each person around the table.

Then, when you awake the day after Thanksgiving, consider just staying home.  Really.  Eating latkes with cranberry sauce for breakfast while sipping home-brewed coffee and wearing fuzzy slippers is a far gentler holiday practice than trampling your neighbor at 3 a.m. to get through store doors.  Consider continuing your candle-lighting through the eight days of Chanukah, saying a silent prayer as you light them if you aren't familiar with the Hebrew prayers.

Next, Advent, as in, advent-ure!  
That's right--before you pull out your tubs of Christmas glitz, try cutting a few boughs from an evergreen (places that sell Christmas trees may give these away for free, if you don't have any evergreens of your own) and fashion an Advent wreath with your kids.
Picture
Source: HappyHomeFairy.com
Each Sunday, beginning December 1, light one of the candles.  Sing a verse of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" or "People Look East" with your kids. Invite them into conversation about what the dawning of light means.  Refer back to the Chanukah ritual, if you used it.  You might ask:

Why do we want light when it's dark?  

What are examples of darkness we experience?  

What are ways that we can bring light to dark places?
 
Allow Advent to be the season of quiet, pregnant anticipation that it's intended to be--because if you do, the glimmer and dazzle of Christmas Eve's light and the bright clamor of Christmas morning will shine and ring out for you in a whole new way.



This post was originally featured at parentwin.com.
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Finding my way

9/9/2012

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I went back to Starr King Unitarian Universalist Church in Hayward today.  It was my second time there.  They remembered my face, even though they didn't remember my name. 

Their annual water ceremony took place today, and I got to take part.  It was like communion, except we were giving, not receiving; processing forward from the outer aisles rather than the inner one; returning through the inner aisle rather than the outer ones.  This water will be used for child dedications/baptisms throughout the coming year.  The whole service revolved around water images, including the story at the beginning involving raindrops personified.  One of the raindrops was brave enough to leave his tree branch and fall alone into a bucket for the sake of the parched ground below, even though all the other drops thought he was nuts and refused to join him.  The earth grew desperately dry, the flowers becoming pale and limp, the grass turning brown.  After a while, another drop beheld the lonely drop in the bucket and decided to join him.  Another drop saw this and followed suit, then another, then another, till the bucket was brimming and another bucket was needed.  After many buckets were filled, a great wind came and blew over all the buckets, drenching the parched earth.  Before long, the wilted flowers stood up again in vibrant hues, and the grass was once again green with life. 

I cried.

Afterward, there was a scheduled "information session" for newcomers, and I chatted with one of the new ministers as I waited for the session to begin.  By the time it began, the pastor, the minister I was talking to, and a church member were joining in; two more people also wandered in as we sat talking.  Each person introduced herself/himself to me and told me a bit about how s/he came to be in that place, in that faith tradition.  Then they invited me to tell them about myself, and I did. 

I began to tell them about my educational background.  It was easy enough, at first.  Then it happened.  All the anger and sadness of being denied my call to ministry by the sexism of the Roman Catholic Church, my church, came up too high, and it spilled out of me in hot tears and jagged breaths.  Before I knew it or could contain it I was sobbing without any ability to stop.  I kept apologizing, but they listened, and they listened some more, and I felt as though each one of them was holding me perfectly in her/his arms, just letting me be there as I told my terrible, painful truth.

A part of me scolded myself when I was on my way out of the parking lot a little while later--scolded myself for allowing myself to be so vulnerable in the midst of strangers.  But the stronger part of me stopped the scolding voice, making it clear that I'm done hiding my heart when it comes to matters of faith.  Those people were there for me--a stranger--in a most tender moment. I won't dishonor their presence to me by claiming that opening of my heart to them was inappropriate.

In this church I've found living temples of my merciful God.  They exhibit, in concentrated form, the qualities that I have been drawn to in every community of faith I've ever been part of: hospitality, generosity, vision, prophetic presence, dedication, and abounding love.

I feel like I've come home.  Not that the Roman Catholicism isn't my home--it is.  But my home is also much larger, much broader, much more inclusive, and loving in many more ways than the home I've always known.  And that is breathtaking, world-shattering, and heart-opening.  I am ready to step outside the gate and find my way anew.

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Freedom from shackles, freedom to see God in all

8/22/2012

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Yesterday I attended the first annual Starr King School for the Ministry Symposium.  The theme of the Symposium is "Living in the Differences," and the featured speaker is Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement.  The opening ritual and talk were held at the Islamic Cultural Center of Northern California, and my boss strongly urged me to attend.

Ibrahim Farajaje, the Provost at SKSM, had this to say at the closing of his drash (sermon/reflection) for the opening ritual:

So, Come, Come, Lovers of Leaving,
Come across the threshold into living in the differences;
So, Come, Come: Leave limited consciousness to be plunged into the Ocean of Oneness;
So, Come, Come: Leave attachment to limited notions of self;
So, Come, Come to become Microcosm and Macrocosm;
So, Come, Come: Leave behind notions of 'us' and 'them';
So, Come, Come: Let us build sacred, vibrant, fun, deliciously organic, (g)locally-grown and sustainable communities in the Caravan of LOVE!


And both Ibrahim and Reb Zalman talked about multi-religious identity.  Can you just sit with that for a minute? 

Multi-religious identity. 

You mean I don't have to be merely Christian?  I can be both Jewish and Christian?  I can be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist?  Not in the sense taking on any of the exclusivistic aspects of these traditions, but in the sense of authentically embracing and living by their holy texts, images and names for God, and spiritual practices that invite illumination, deepening, and unity/love among all.  To be multi-religious (wow!) is to break down my exclusivistic faith constructs so I can reach out fully with deep awareness, embracing and accepting my neighbor as the embodied revelation of the divine.  If that isn't holy practice, tell me what is. 

You know what?  We only get one shot at this set of circumstances we're placed in.  Every choice we make has an unknowable (but imaginable) ripple effect.

Ask me my creed:

Will I choose to embrace only Roman Catholic identity any longer?  No. 

Will I reject Roman Catholic or Christian identity?  No. 

Will I spend the next years of my life seeking out the best living spiritual teachers there are from each of the world's major religions so I can sit at their feet and learn from them?  Yes.

It's a new day, my friends.  I shed the shackles with which my long-time faith binds me so I can put on the power to love that my faith has always offered me.  And my faith will be broader and richer and more diverse than I ever imagined it could be.  Starting today.  Well, starting yesterday.

I went up to my Bay Area bestie after the talk was over and gave him a long, tight hug.  "Thank you!" he said.  He pulled back and looked at me and said, "Wow, that really had an impact on you, didn't it?"  I nodded and my eyes got all wet and he said, "You're shaking."

Reb Zalman and Ibrahim Baba and all the people present in that sacred place rattled me, shattered me, made a new way possible for me.

If you want me, I'll be picking my way through the rubble, moving forward in amazing, radiant, warmth-imparting light.  <3
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Community

8/12/2012

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I had a particularly fruitful meeting with my spiritual direction mentor, Hana Matt, this evening.  When one intentionally cultivates a deep spiritual life, it's important to tend to the desires of one's heart.  One of my personal desires is for community--not just church, but intimate gatherings, the sort that Jesus often hosted or attended.  I'm thinking less multiplication of loaves and fishes and more dinner with friends.

And that's what I'm aiming for.  Well, two things, actually.

First: I would like to invite folks local to the San Francisco Bay Area to join together for prayer and a meal once every other month.  Nothing extravagant, but something important and weighty; not merely Christian, but not without eucharistic (i.e. thanksgiving) tones.  Intentional, inclusive time spent--for where the many and the diverse are gathered, there is the divine outpouring.

Second: I invite anyone (from anywhere in the world) to gather (also every other month) for a book group.  Our readings would include works by anyone from Augustine to Flannery O'Connor to Thomas Merton to Hildegard of Bingen to Henri Nouwen to Julian of Norwich to lesser known, contemporary spiritual fiction writers who grapple with issues of justice, self-deception, and unexpected holiness.

If you're interested, please let me know by commenting below, e-mailing me at lifeloveliturgy@gmail.com, or contacting me in some other way between now and September 1, 2012.

Blessings to you. 

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    Picture

    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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