Tears fall thick and wet,
hot from my face. God's broad hands
cup them, not one lost.

These last few weeks, I've wrestled hard with the news I've read about what's going on in the United States and abroad. I've also reflected at length on the role I play in perpetuating and reinforcing the sin of the world. As a Christian, I am called to hope in Christ, the lamb who takes away the sin of the world--the sin I've helped nurture. As a Christian, I am also called to recognize that I am a member of the Body of Christ, the one who stands forever slain. To be a Christian is to be both the slain and the slayer, the risen and the rising.

The past few weeks have also been a hard lesson about my own capacity for empathy. The weight of the world's pain and suffering has settled heavily on me. Seeing any flicker of light in all this darkness has been a mighty effort.

When I've prayed the hours, I've prayed for those who are oppressed and for those who oppress. When I've led the singing at ECMASU's Sunday night Taizé service, I've prayed for my heart to be opened wider, so I might discover in what ways the world needs my gifts and my radical transformation. When even prayer has left me empty, I've clung to the trust that the dawn will arrive eventually, no matter how much darkness the world and I have created.

Someone told me recently that I was in a chrysalis, a cocoon, being transformed in the midst of palpable darkness from one form of life to another. I wonder if that's not true of the world. I wonder if all this darkness isn't leading us to a brilliant cascade of color that flutters lightly on the wind, bringing about God's peace and joy for the sake of all.

To what new life are you and I being called?

It's about 11pm as I write this. My household has been asleep for two hours. Meanwhile I, who have been crashing into bed early for weeks, am restless. Something stirs in me, so my fingers rest on the keyboard, prepared to work out whatever it is that's keeping me awake.

The last few weeks--ever since the crisis in Gaza escalated--have been a nightmare. I can't get the people of God out of my head. Which people? All of them. We all belong to God--we all belong to the cosmos. And yet we treat each other like villains, or sewer rodents, or mold on our bathroom tile.

My heart has agonized over the global lie that "we" are better than "them," "I" am better than "you," "my people" are worthier than "those people."

The world is in a terrifying, seething rage, and meanwhile I carry on as usual with my daily responsibilities. What else can I do? What can a white woman in Tempe do for a dead black man in Ferguson? What can an American adult do for an orphaned, dying Palestinian child? What can a religious person here do for a Yazidi there?

The world needs to be swept up by peace, and the same old same old isn't going to make it so. I see beautiful ideas for religious renewal that might do some good, and I see also that the needs of the world require something deeper than beauty.

I write this for myself. I write it for others whose hearts are breaking from the weight of the world's anger. I write it for those who haven't found a way to break through their own disillusionment and tiredness.

I write it for those who have broken through. I want to know what's working. And I want to figure out what I can do.

Because I can't just sit around. And I can't sleep, either.

Help me, because my imagination is failing: beyond praying and hoping and waiting for people to come to their senses, what can we do?

For Jana.

An hour of work
to pierce a pair of square feet,
roots hidden, shallow and fierce
beneath the surface.

I pierced, pulled, pushed,
watering as I went with
drop after drop
of my sweat.

My blood simmered as each stubborn stem
gave way to me.
I tossed each aside,
and then there were none,
just strands of what had been,
and loosened soil
for new planting.

A recluse pattered by, catching my eye
as I dug.
I offered a gloved finger
then blew the spider away.
Not now, my sister.

And I dug,
earth spilling into my gloves,
painting my hands with crust.

The succulent fell into the place I had made for her
with a sigh.

I stood, turned, and gathered the remains of what had been
into the trash bin, to be transformed
into compost for another life
to beget life.

The faucet squeaked its protest as I turned it.
When I found the nozzle's boldest setting,
I sprayed away the lifeless dust around the brick-lined abode
until my two square feet
and their new in-dweller
were alone.

Tonight, under the starry sky of the searing desert,
they will begin to confide their deepest secrets,
and learn how to feed one another.

And dear Lady Succulent-
with her thick, soft skin
surrounding mighty wells of gentle balm-
she and her loamy lover
will teach me how to live
well in the desert.

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.

Rebecca Longbow is a writer of poetry, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Her name has been changed to protect her privacy.


She said it was seven years ago. She said she never told me, but she never forgot how helpless I seemed.

I’m going through a divorce right now. When I told a lady I’ve recently gotten to know again, she recounted seeing me struggle in my marriage. I never knew anyone noticed. No one said a word. I always felt so alone in this struggle.

When she told me, I was touched that she remembered. I was touched she cared back then.

She told me that one day it was raining heavily. She said my family drove up in a car. My then husband quickly ran in from the rain, leaving me to struggle with an infant in a car seat, a toddler, and a son with sensory issues all alone. She said she couldn’t believe my husband would be so insensitive.

When she first told me, I was touched that she remembered that it happened. I was touched that she cared. Later that night though, my emotions changed to sadness tinged with anger. She saw. She was mad at my husband. She couldn’t believe he would let me struggle alone.

And then she also let me struggle alone. She did not come over and offer to help carry the diaper bag or hold an umbrella.

In 7 years, she never told me that she noticed I was struggling. She never said, “I thought of you today and I wanted you to know I care about you.” A smile and helping hand would have meant the world to me that day.

I’ve found that is the silence of most in churches that I know. They say, “I can’t believe you waited this long to leave him.”

Yes, I waited. You know why? Because I assumed people either couldn’t see me or all or could see but agreed with how he treated me. No one spoke up. No one told me I didn’t have to live like this. No one told me I was worthwhile. They just watched as he tore me down.

They told me that I didn’t smile enough. They made comments about how I ought to volunteer more. I’m sure there were good intentions like, “not meddling in a marriage.” But there is a broad path between “not meddling” and being that person to help me in the rain.

I wasn’t worth getting wet for. My children were not worth it to her.

Sometimes I don’t know if I embrace a god. But when I think of what I believe, I believe in grace. I believe in forgiveness. I believe in my struggle to forgive all those who turned their heads. I believe in helping hands. I believe in smiles. I believe in extending grace to parents and others, in grocery stores and parking lots and on airplanes.

I’ve learned to be the helper this lady was not to me for those seven years. And I always will. I can never forget her story. And for all the people like me in the world, I want to be there even if just with a sympathetic smile and a kind word.

I think that is part of what draws me to the students I teach in an alternative school. They are the ones others turn from, the teens who show up on the news and in the jail. If I have a religion, it’s the religion of “do not turn away.” I will not turn my face and choose silence over love. My love may not change a life. But even if I’m just the little thought that “someone seems to care about me,” I will have lived a life of meaning.

For me, for now, that is my religion. To care beyond limits. If I ever learn how to do that completely, then I may pursue exactly who I should address if I pray. For now, I try to live prayers of kindness out loud. That feels more real than the many petitions I used to utter. I’m not against the saying of prayers. I’m just trying to find more balance in my life, more living on intentions than praying them.

And, as hurt as I was at first, I’m really glad my friend told me about how she noticed my plight that day in the rain. I’ve learned from her experience in ways I might not have if she had simply helped me that day, instead of telling me years later. The lesson to help others is now firmly cemented in my mind.

A few hours north of Sarnia, Ontario, there is a quiet place nestled in a forest. Built with rustic logs, smelling like pine pitch, and surrounded by acres of misty trees, this small building stands, institutional and peaceful; utilitarian and somehow unique. In its natural surroundings, staring at a painting of the Baby Jesus, I found God.

Prayer, for me, has been a way to get through everyday life. I pray for health. I pray to be a better person. I pray for my family, my friends. I pray for things I want, things I don’t deserve, things I’m desperate about, things I can’t deal with. It’s not a fancy prayer. It’s often a mantra, repeated over and over, sometimes under my breath, sometimes out loud, sometimes mouthed in public places, and sometimes earnestly in the dark. And I pray every night, without fail, before I can close my eyes and sleep. I have to touch base. I have to let Him know. I need You. Please help me.

In that church retreat, hidden in the woods, I learned how to pray for more than just myself. I unlocked the talent I had all along – the talent of being able to use my words to change the world for the better. And I never felt closer to God, or more powerful with Him through me than I did then – creating creeds, weaving poetry, sharing with everyone my own personal faith, placing my feet on the path to social justice. If you had asked me then, I would have told you that I didn’t think I would ever be able to part from my relationship with God.

How things change.

I was badly wounded by the Church when I was a teenager. Shy, uncertain, and angry, I was struggling with my own sexuality and my sense of being. Holding hands with God, or so I thought, I faced the people who, also holding hands with God, told me that I didn’t belong. That I would burn in hell. That I was a sinner, a deliberate sinner, one who was so full of pride and bravado and hubris and lies, that I would never be welcome unless I changed who I was at the core. I had grown up solid in my belief that God makes us in His perfect image, and never makes mistakes. Now, I wasn’t sure if I was wrong, or if they were, but my hurt overwhelmed my faith.

I went back at 18, denying who I was. I joined a church of beauty and majesty, of tradition as old as time, and restrictions worse than any other church I’d ever been to. Was it punishment for the supposed sin of who I thought I was? To this day, I can’t answer that. All I know is that everywhere I turned, I found leaders, church members, even the Bible itself, it seemed, telling me that the person I am would never be good enough for God.

So I left. And I tried to forget.

I’m a rational person, most of the time. I also hold grudges, long after I should. And the hurt faded into twinges and then roared back to life in explosive, fiery anger. I wanted to hurt the Church the way it had hurt me. I wanted to hurt God. I wanted to burn in hell the way they said, just so that I could be myself without pretense, so I could live in sin without consequence and guilt.

And inside, I cried out for the God I knew in that quiet forest retreat. I begged Him to help me. I pushed Him away with both hands while simultaneously crying for Him in the night. And to His credit, He hasn’t let me go, though most days, I continue to angrily push and push and push, as hard as I can. He has forgiven me and continues to forgive me, despite all of my anger and moral failings, despite my hurt and my pride. He has quietly proven over and over that He thinks I am good enough for Him.

Knowing this, I suspect that one day, I will heal completely from my scars and from my open, bleeding wounds, the way that even the biggest wounds do heal. The scars will always hurt a little, but they won’t always be open and raw, ready to bleed again at another article about Christians saying “God hates fags”, or someone telling me that you can’t be Christian and gay.

But here’s the thing about healing. When you forgive someone, you don’t do it for them – not really. They benefit from it. They may think that you are doing them a favour. And maybe, part of healing is to acknowledge that you acted wrongly, too, even if at the time, you don’t think you did. Maybe part of it is to be like God, and not push away your fellow human, even if that fellow human has done cutting, horrible things to your psyche and to your sense of self.

The thing about healing is that forgiveness is mostly for you. It’s to reach out with your own humanity and be the bigger person. It doesn’t mean you forget, and it doesn’t mean that you have to draw that person back into your heart. What it does mean is that where the rushing, raging rivers have broken the bridge of faith, forgiveness helps to place new planks, to tie the knots back into the ropes. Where the bridge has rotted in places, forgiveness places brand new materials to make your bridge stronger than ever before. Where the bridge is shaky, forgiveness helps to steady it so that when you walk across it and try to meet God on the other side, it’s not so hard and scary to cross it.

Because when it comes to healing, it might take awhile. It might take a long time to rebuild your bridge. And I’m not saying that someone isn’t going to come along and say cutting things that will throw it into disrepair. I’ve rebuilt my bridge many times now . . . and I’ve begged God to help me find the strength to do it again.

Your bridge isn’t just to God. Your bridge is to your fellow humans, as well. The ones that put up walls to keep others out – your bridge goes to their door and invites them to come and meet you in the middle. The ones that tell you you’re not welcome – your bridge goes to them and tells them that they are welcome to come and belong with you. And the ones that meet you with hatred – your bridge shows them that the easier path is love.

Because maybe the place you’re all trying to reach is that little church retreat in the woods, with the whispering leaves and the distant rush of the many creeks. Maybe the path you all want to walk is the shady wide dirt path with the dappled sunlight through the trees, that wide and welcoming path that has benches to rest on and clear pools to drink from. Maybe the paths we choose are inevitably the harder ones because the stony paths teach you what smooth footing feels like, and we have to learn, in order to grow.

Maybe the pain and the blood are something we all experience, even when we’re the ones wielding the swords that hurt.  And maybe when it comes to healing, you find it in the silence and the dark, the pleas and the desperation, the fact that when you couldn’t walk anymore, He carried you – and carries you still.

Maybe when it comes to healing, it becomes the easier path to take – broken bridge, and all.

On this Feast of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, another celebration is underway: the fortieth anniversary of the ordination of the Philadelphia 11, the first women to be ordained in the Episcopal Church.

I am grateful for God's prophetic call on the lives of these women. I am grateful for their obedience to God--which manifested as disobedience to the unjust, unholy policies of their church.

I am grateful that these women paved the way for other women to respond faithfully to the call they hear from God without fear.

I am grateful for the first experience I had of Sunday liturgy at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, at which the first thing I noticed was a woman standing at the altar as an ordained deacon--and no one was rioting. No one even batted an eyelash (except me).

I am grateful that the presence of ordained women is normal in the Episcopal Church. I am grateful that the face of the Episcopal Church in the United States, the Presiding Bishop, is a woman (and one of great wisdom).

I am grateful for this church that perceived its own call to be prophetically transformed after eleven women stood up, risking everything that mattered to them, to respond to God's will.

I am grateful that these eleven icons of Martha made it possible for me to sit more easily, like Mary, at the feet of Jesus and hear what he has to say.

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

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

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

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

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

And come and follow me.

As I read the news of terror and anger in the world, I perceive the brokenness of my own heart.

As the murder of innocents continues, I'm more and more aware of the evil that hungers inside me.

It's so easy to feed it when I'm tired, weary, or feeling thin.

It's so hard to empty myself, to starve my control, to make room for quiet, for stillness, for peace.

But I look at the alternative. It's all over the news media.

How can I glut on fury, doubt, and ego when I can taste the promise of the God-who-loves?

Could the morsel of my heart's hope be multiplied into a love-feast for the whole world?

God, you know, we could really use a miracle.

Create in me a clean heart, o God.

Does God take sides?
Does God cheer for Israel's victories,
or cheer for Israel's losses?
Does God pump his fist when Palestine succeeds,
or weep when Palestine stumbles?
Is God on the sidelines of Gaza, rooting for his team to win?

If God were mere man
perhaps the Gaza Strip would be one great football field
and God's whole life would rise and fall
according to the victory of his team.

The Christians say
God became flesh and dwelt among us
They say God became mere man.

They also say the God-Man's great victory was accepting death on a cross
that others might live.

But if Israel and Palestine's men keep taking one another's lives
in God's name
who will be left to bear his cross?

Perhaps the Second Coming
that the Christians await with bated breath
(as smart phones offer updates about their team)
will be another Incarnation,
a child born in the midst of blood and turmoil and rage.

Maybe the Second Coming
will be
a child born of love spilling over
between a child of Israel and a child of Palestine
Maybe, instead of a cross
there will be a stand
silent and gentle and unwavering
Palestinian hand in Israeli hand
the fruit of their living bodies
God's own child, swelling the mother's belly:
an invitation to end life no more.

What will it take for the beloved children of God
to perceive that the people they murder
are the beloved children of God
to understand that the people they hate
are their sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers
and daughters and sons?

What will it take for Jews
and Muslims
and Christians
and other religious people
and anti-religious people
to
quit
taking
sides
to say
"It is done"?

Will it take a new Yeshua?
A new martyr?
A new cross?

Will it take a wise mother among many wise mothers
who learned long ago that only love can yield a victory?
Will it take a woman among many women
who has seen the futility of this fight all her life
to rise up and teach the foolish men what they refuse to learn?

God, how long before you touch the hearts
of the children who think you take sides?

How long before you assure them that they are equally,
infinitely loved?

How long  before they cease their fire
and offer open arms of
sorrow, repentance, forgiveness?

What do you mean
to whisper that
this assurance
this peace
this love
this transformation of the hardest of hearts in Gaza
begins
with my own heart?

Sr. Joan Chittister, a Benedictine and well-known spiritual writer, writes this in her book, Aspects of the Heart: The Many Paths of a Good Life:

Sr. Joan's concept of joy implies something that is more enduring than success or happy moments.

I read this the other day when I was feeling particularly low. Joy was an attitude I didn't know how to embrace in my darkness, and I wondered what it would take to rise above the clouds of my storm.

Joy is a practice that requires regular cultivation in order to become deeply rooted. It is far more work than happiness, which comes and goes quickly, like the fragrance of orange blossoms at the beginning of spring. Joy is the whole orange tree, and it requires care and vigilance for its life to be sustained. Otherwise it withers, and it takes far more than a drink of water to revive it.

How may I become a better cultivator of joy?

Last night this news alert came to my e-mail from the N.Y. Times: Israel’s Security Cabinet Accepts Egyptian Cease-fire Proposal.

The war over God-given land rights that's been taking place between Israel and Palestine since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 continues to escalate. I woke up this morning to another headline: a young Palestinian was murdered after three young Israelis sought a victim to avenge the murder of three young Israelis who went missing last month, whose bodies were discovered a couple of weeks ago.

I received an e-mail from a local synagogue yesterday asking for help in the form of protein bars for special teams of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Do I support the murder that springs forth from this terror-filled war by helping the soldiers? Do I support murder if I don't help the soldiers? As I scroll through the social network feeds of my Jewish and Muslim friends, I see anger and shame at the failure on both sides to seek peace. I see two controversial Facebook groups, "Israel Loves Palestine" and "Palestine Loves Israel," decrying the hatred and violence.

How long will the fight over this holy land continue? How long will bloodshed reign? How long will terror beget terror?

I am aware that this is not my fight, that I am a privileged, white, Christian American who has little reason to fear for her safety on the basis of borders or religion. But it is my fight, because we are all human, and all the world is the household of God.

Did you read the story about the 16-year old Palestinian boy, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, who was kidnapped and murdered about a week and a half ago by a gang of Israeli young men and boys?

Over four hundred Israeli mothers came to offer condolences to Mohammed Abu Khdeir's family.

Perhaps it will be women who end this horrific fight. Perhaps it will be women who illumine the way to kindness that knows no boundaries, compassion that transcends religious ties, and self-emptying, hatred-deflating love that witnesses to God's embrace of all creation.

May peace come swiftly--in Palestine, in Israel, and in my own stony heart.

What in me needs to change so that my religion and my nation's borders do not threaten the lives and joy of others? What in me needs to change so that I might become a bright beacon of God's enveloping peace?

Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) voted 5-4 in favor of allowing closely held corporations (i.e. private corporations run by religious families), like Hobby Lobby, the right to choose not to provide insurance coverage to employees for contraception.

The conflict, as I see it, is between members of the Religious Right who believe that they should have a say in how their dollars subsidize the medical care of those who may or may not share their beliefs, on one hand, and those people (well, women) who seek affordable (i.e. insured) medical care for their reproductive health.

To call this ruling by an all-male majority of the SCOTUS a slide down the slippery slope would understated at best.

Who's doing the sliding? SCOTUS men and the rallying Religious Right, shouting about their right to exercise conscientious objections. What slope? The uteruses of women who work for closely held corporations.

This ruling sounds like rape to me.

In a way, it's unsurprising. Rape culture thrives in the United States, where women who are raped are asked what they were wearing when it happened, rather than rapists being held up to close scrutiny for their total violation of other human beings.

If a woman works for a closely held corporation like Hobby Lobby, surely she's asking for the diminishing of her privacy when it comes to her reproductive health. Surely she's asking for her employer to judge what is best for her, and to deny the financial support that makes possible the healthcare her employer deems unacceptable/unethical/unnecessary. Surely someone other than this female employee and her doctor knows best--and if this female employee doesn't agree, she should take herself to some other job, nevermind what it might cost her.

As a woman and a parent, the impact of reduced coverage for reproductive health is not lost on me. My husband and I are extraordinarily fertile. Think of the woman like me, with a partner like my husband, who had plans to have an IUD placed in order to avoid getting pregnant again after her recent pregnancy. She, like me, can't imagine having an abortion if she were to get pregnant, and she, like me, can't afford to have another child. But now, as an employee of Hobby Lobby, she can't afford an IUD, either--as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her scathing dissent in this SCOTUS ruling, "It bears note that the cost of an IUD is nearly equivalent to a month's full-time pay for workers on the minimum wage." So what does the Hobby Lobby female employee do? Stop having sex with her husband? (Because that wouldn't ruin her marriage relationship--not at all.) Hope she doesn't get raped? (Because that wouldn't happen unless she was asking for it! Obviously!)

This SCOTUS ruling is obscene and frightening. It all comes back to one question for me: What right does any other person have to take away the rights of another--even a woman? And sadly, it seems to come down to the concept of personhood. This ruling affirms the Religious Right's claim that men, fetuses, and corporations are persons--and women are not.

That women aren't persons is the most successful lie of the Western history. The SCOTUS ruling makes it clear that that lie still succeeds in 2014.

As a religious person, I am angry, and I'm praying in fury. How long, o Mother God, till justice rolls down like a river? How long, o Father God, till the patriarchal narrative of "father/male/anyone-in-the-world-other-than-a-woman knows best" is separated from the fine wheat that gives life and burned like the chaff that it is?

How long?

When Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica, he compares the ministry of himself and his fellow leaders to that of a mother.

This ministry is one of gentleness, of refreshment, of steady abiding-with that overflows with love. He regards the members of the Thessalonian church as very dear.

Belonging now to a church in which the vocations of women to ordained ministry are recognized and fully accepted, I find fresh meaning in this. In this passage, Paul is unafraid of comparing himself and other leaders to devoted women. In recommending himself to the Thessalonian church, he embraces a maternal image. In mothering, goodness may be found. In mothering, loyalty may be found. In mothering, unfettered love may be found. In mothering, all the nourishment a young one needs may be found.

To be a gracious, loving, effective, Godly minister, in this passage, is to be a mother.

I am grateful to be part of a church that embraces the title of "Mother" for its female priestly ministers. When I consider the call I hear to priestly ministry, considering it in terms of mothering enriches it beyond what any book on priesthood might say. Mothering is something I get. Mothering implies total commitment, total love, and totally deep joy--even in the midst of difficulties and trials. I would give anything for my children, including my life.

Isn't this what the high priest, Jesus the Christ, does?

Through my silence practice every morning this week, my life has grown very quiet, and I'm noticing a new tone in my discernment about priestly call.

My failings and faults have surfaced with a most poignant sting. I've started questioning the call I'm hearing. I've dared the call I hear to change, to go away.

The funny (read: frustrating) part is that even as I've allowed myself to feel anxiety and doubt and worry during these silences, the call I hear hasn't wavered.

I hear this call even though I'm not perfect, not the best fit, not the holiest person, not the most balanced person, not the cookie cutter candidate.

As I continue to hear this call, I acknowledge that the outcome of all this discernment is irrelevant. My listening--my obedience--is the only thing that matters to the one I call God.

Will I continue to offer over my whole heart, no matter what outcome that offering brings forth?

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

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

I realized that all three were doing the bidding.

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

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

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

My 3-year old is fond of calling me Sister Kate. She's also fond of running through the line-up of our family names.

Just now she said, "Sister Kate, Sister Miriam, Sister Daddy, Sister Mommy!"

I think she's onto an insight about what a title like "Sister" can signify, but I'll wait till she's older to ask about it.

Do you remember when Sister Act came out in the early 1990's? I loved that movie. It was the movie that made me love Whoopi Goldberg. It was amazing to see a film about "my people" told from the perspective of such a quirky religious outsider.

In what ways does donning a religious habit, living the religious life, and taking the title of "Sister" change me? In what ways does my wearing of the habit, living of the life, and using the title of "Sister" change what others think of religious life?

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?