Thealogical Lady: A Blog

Psalm 1

4/22/2018

Psalm 1 of the Thean Psalter

Happy are they whose delight is in the wisdom of Thea,
   who meditate on her wisdom day and night.

They are like trees planted by streams of water,
   bearing fruit in due season, with leaves that do not wither.

For Thea embraces all who seek her,
   and touches them with her love.

Psalm 139

7/29/2016

Psalm 139

Thea, you search me out and you know me;
   you know my sitting down and my rising up;
   you discern the pattern of my thoughts.

You trace my journeys and my resting-places
   and are acquainted with all my ways.

Indeed, there is not a word on my lips
   that you, O Thea, do not know.

You journey behind, before, and beside me,
   and you lay your hand upon me in blessing.

Where can I go then from your Ruach?
    where can I flee from your presence?

If I climb to the heavens, you are there;
   if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

If I take the wings of the morning
   and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me
   and your hands hold me fast.

If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,
   and the light around me turn to night,”

Darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day;
   darkness and light to you are both alike.

For you yourself created my inmost parts;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I will thank you because I am marvelously made;
   all your works are wonders to behold.

My body was not hidden from you,
   while I was being made in secret
   and woven in the depths.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;
all of them were already written in your book;
   they were fashioned day by day,
   when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O Thea!
   how great is the sum of them!

If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand;
   to count them all, my life span would need to be like yours.

Search me, O Thea, and know my heart;
   lead me in your wisdom’s way.

Psalm 107 and Pelagius

7/22/2016

During my prayer today, I rewrote Psalm 107. This took me the better part of two hours--a considerable amount of time compared to what I've spent on other individual psalms. I think it required extra time because what I wanted it to say reminded me of a Christian heresy called Pelagianism, which basically says that we human beings have what we need within ourselves to attain/earn salvation--no extra help from God (via the Christ) necessary.

The difference between Christian and Thean thought here is twofold: first, according to Theanism, salvation is not something that human beings (or Creation at large) need--there is no doctrine of "Original Sin" in Theanism. Theanism claims that we are not now nor have we ever been nor could we ever be separate from Thea, even when we do wrong or commit evil deeds. Thea's love is stronger than any individual's or community's ability to do wrong--Thea's love, which binds all Creatures together as her Sacred Body, can never be torn apart.

Second, according to Theanism, all Creatures are Thea's Incarnation. Whereas Christianity requires God's Word to be made incarnate in a single, sinless man who is sacrificed by death on a cross for the world's salvation, Theanism says that we--all of us--are Thea. Therefore we are individually and collectively all we will ever need to fulfill our ultimate purpose, which is to love and bear witness to one another, particularly by answering the passion that stirs deepest within our hearts, no matter what obstacles lay before or around or beneath or behind us. When we experience fear, doubt, or distress, as the people in Psalm 107 do, we only need to remember who we are: Thea's Sacred Body, capable of fulfilling our destiny to love if we can just turn inward to remember that love is the stuff we're made of.

Psalm 107

Give thanks to Thea, for her love is a holy flame
   that burns brightly within her Creatures.

Some wander in the desert,
   finding no way to a city where their hearts might dwell.

They hunger and thirst;
   their flesh languishes.

Then they look within themselves for Thea’s help,
   and their divine fire melts their icy fear;

Thea thus puts their feet on a straight path
   to go to a city where they might dwell.

Some sit in darkness and deep gloom,
   bound fast in misery and iron;

They are humbled with difficult work;
   they stumble, and find none to help.

Then they look within themselves for Thea’s help,
   and their divine fire melts their icy fear;

Thea thus leads them out of darkness and deep gloom
   and breaks their bonds asunder.

Some go down to the sea in ships
   and ply their trade in deep waters;

Then a stormy wind rises up,
   which tosses high the waves of the sea.

They mount up to the skies and fall back to the depths;
   their hearts freeze because of their peril.

They reel and stagger like drunkards
   and are at their wits’ end.

Then they look within themselves for Thea’s help,
   and their divine fire melts their icy fear;

Thea thus stills the storm to a whisper
   and she brings them to the harbor they are bound for.

Thea’s love changes deserts into pools of water
   and dry land into water-springs.

She settles the hungry there,
   and they find a city to dwell in.

They sow fields, and plant vineyards,
   and bring in a fruitful harvest.

The wise will ponder these things,
   and consider well the holy fire of Thea that burns within.

Psalm 106

7/21/2016

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

Psalm 106

We give thanks to you, O Thea,
   for your love for your Creatures is unending.

When we were enslaved we did not consider your marvelous works,
nor remember the abundance of your love;
   we defied you, believing not even you could help us.

But you set us free,
   making your power known.

You rebuked the sea, and it dried up,
   and you led us through the deep as through a desert.

You delivered us from the hand of those who hated us
   and empowered us to escape from those who would have held us captive.

But we soon forgot your deeds
   and did not take time to discern your wisdom for ourselves.

A craving seized us in the wilderness,
   and we put you to the test in the desert.

We envied Miriam in the camp,
   Miriam, your chosen one.

We forgot you, O Thea,
   you who had liberated us.

We grumbled in our tents
   and would not listen to your voice.

Then we were overtaken by the hand of our enemy
   and those who hated us ruled over us.

Our enemies oppressed us,
   and we were humbled under their hand.

Time after time you delivered us from our enslavement,
   but we forgot your love and sank into traps of our own making.

Nevertheless, you saw our distress
   when we voiced our lamentation.

You remembered your love, even when we forgot it,
   and lifted us up once more.

Blessed be you, O Thea, author of Creation,
   and may the blessing of your love ever be upon us!

Psalm 78

7/15/2016

This is a psalm that originally spoke of the stubborn hearts and repeated rebelling of God's people, despite God's goodness and generosity. In the original psalm, God grew angry and finally allowed the people to die off to see if it would make any difference with them.

I believe my rendering of this psalm speaks to a Thean worldview, one in which we as Creatures still rebel and in which God still resists that rebellion, but in which rebellion, resistance, and resolution are imagined in a very different way.

Psalm 78

Hear my teaching, my sisters,
   incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

I will open my mouth in a parable;
   I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.

That which we have heard and known,
and what our foremothers have told us,
   we will not hide from their children.

We will recount to generations to come
   the liberating deeds and loving power of Thea.

She established wisdom,
which she gave us to teach our children;

That the generations to come might know,
and the children yet unborn;
   that they in their turn might tell it to their children;

So that they might discover their divine identity
   and live as icons of her in the world.

She worked marvels in the sight of our foremothers,
   in the land where they were once slaves.

She split open the sea and let them pass through;
   she made the waters stand up like walls.

She led them with a cloud by day,
   and all the night through with a glow of fire.

She split the hard rocks in the wilderness
   and gave them drink as from the great deep.

She brought streams out of the cliff,
   and the waters gushed out like rivers.

And she said to them, “This!
   This is what I want you to do for your fellow Creatures!”

But they strayed from the path she had given them,
   rebelling in the desert against her.

They tested her in their hearts,
   demanding food for their craving.

They railed against her and said,
   “Can you set a table in the wilderness?

True, she struck the rock, the waters gushed out, and the gullies overflowed;
   but are you able to give bread
   or to provide meat for her creatures?”

When Thea heard this,
   a fire ignited in her heart,

For they had no faith in Thea;
   how could they possibly have faith in themselves?

So she commanded the clouds above
   and opened the doors of heaven.

She rained down manna upon them to eat
   and gave them grain from heaven.

So mortals ate the bread of angels;
   she provided for them food enough.

She caused the east wind to blow in the heavens
   and led out the south wind by her might.

She rained down flesh upon them like dust
   and winged birds like the sand of the sea.

She let it fall in the midst of their camp
   and round about their dwellings.

So they are and were well filled,
   for she gave them what they craved.

But they did not believe in her promise,
   that her power to work miracles was also their power.

They remained steadfast in their stubbornness
   and had no faith in her wonderful works.

Then Thea woke as though from sleep,
   like a warrior refreshed with wine.

She set her eyes on her Creatures,
   whom she had always loved;

And she whispered in their hearts once more,
   that they might recognize their true calling, their deepest yearning,
   and become her miracle-working hands and feet and heart in the world.

116

4/26/2015

Thea,
give me the wisdom to love the questions
when what I seek is an answer.
Amen.

64

3/5/2015

Thea,
grant me the wisdom
to think before I speak,
so that I might do more good than harm.
Give me the energy to be silent
when silence is the surest route to healing.
Amen.

32

2/1/2015

Thea,
you are a wise, loving, and proud mother,
attending to the cares of your children.
Over the course of each day, attend to me:
be witness to my stumblings and successes,
and be my guide on barely worn paths.
Amen.

11

1/11/2015

Thea,
When you set your people free from bondage in Egypt,
Miriam led the song and dance.
When you set me free from bondage,
I led the song and dance.
May your voice ever be on my lips
and your wisdom ever written on my heart.
Amen.

1

1/1/2015

Thea,
Threshold of beauty and wisdom,
You open your arms to us at the door of your dwelling-place.
Reveal the warm mystery of your hospitality
That we may learn how to greet
the holy other in our midst.
Amen.

Spirit Whispers: Philadelphia 11

7/29/2014

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.

Spirit Whispers: A Pentecost-tide Theme

6/9/2014

My fourth priestly discernment meeting, which happened yesterday morning in between Pentecost liturgies, gives me goosebumps as I reflect on it. I realize that the questions I received were the questions of Spirit herself, that God was speaking through the voices of my five committee members (right there in Heidi Chapel) and I was being beckoned to answer God's questions from the depths of my vulnerable heart.

The whole of the Pentecost season (which, thanks to the influence of Latin in the Roman Church, we call "Ordinary Time") is a time of just this kind of discernment, of radical listening. My Pentecost theme for Thealogical Lady will be "Spirit Whispers," and here I will invite myself and my readers to cultivate the ability to hear what Spirit says. To listen, ob audire, is to be obedient. Obedience is one of the vows that I have made as a Benedictine Canon, and obedience--radical listening--is something to which all Christians are called by baptism. Listening is a path of wisdom for any mindful person, that she might hear something greater and wiser than her own solitary voice.

In reflecting on the Spirit-ed questions that emerged during my discernment meeting yesterday, clarity about my identity rose up. I am not merely Kate, responding to a diocesan priestly call; I am Sr. Kate, a vowed member of the Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation, responding to a religious priestly call. I wonder what further clarity will emerge from my next discernment meeting. In what ways will Spirit speak through the curiosity and concerns of my committee members? What will I hear, if I have ears to listen?

Eastertide: Day 10

4/29/2014

I am struck by this image of St. Catherine of Siena, whose feast Christians celebrate today. She is enormous. She is standing, looking eye to eye with the beholder from slightly above the beholder. She is bold and magnificent and holy all at once.

Women just aren't portrayed this way often in the Christian tradition.

St. Catherine is considered a doctor of the church. On prayer.forwardmovement.org, she is described this way, "One tends to think of medieval women as silent and passive dwellers in homes and convents. This was far from the case with Catherine of Siena. She exercised great influence in matters of church and state, and hers was one of the keenest minds of her day."

St. Catherine was a Dominican, and Dominicans have a special charism to preach. She took her charism so seriously that she dared to confront Pope Gregory XI--and she left having persuaded him to see things from her view.

I see in this extraordinary woman a model of bold, faithful, wise, and total devotion to God and God's work. She did not cower away behind medieval expectations of what her role was to be in the world. She stood taller and brighter than all her counterparts, female and male alike, not with self-preoccupation but with a keen vision of the vital part she had to play in the bringing about of God's reign--and God's holy work was done through her. She had the humility to say yes to being extraordinary.

In what ways am I called to say yes to being extraordinary? In what ways do I allow my fear to inhibit me from playing my part in bringing about God's reign?

Living Lent: Happy Spring!

3/20/2014

Four years ago, my husband and I got married in the presence of my best friend, Hubby's best friend, and a few of our family members.

That day marked my ritual transition from a dark winter of my life to a fragrant, vivid spring. I have been happier these last four years than in any other four years of my life, and I trust that we will continue to be happy all the rest of our days.

Here is the scripture lesson from our wedding:

Solomon 2:10-13

My lover spoke and said to me,
"Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, and come with me.

See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.

The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me."

Yet again, Easter bursts forth in the midst of Lent. Thanks be to Goddess. ♥

An Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic

1/17/2014

M. Kate Allen

To Pope Francis:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

M. Kate Allen

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

Words with friends

1/10/2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Leadership

12/27/2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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