Keep prayin', please

For the wordy request, see here.

Thank you.

Cecilia coming-out-to-congregation update

Cecilia, about whom I posted an update two nights ago, has more news now about her coming out to her congregation.

Things have gone well so far. The congregation loves and knows Cecilia and appreciates what a good pastor she is. This is guiding the congregation's response.

There will be tough times ahead since the denomination to which Cecilia and her congregation belong is one that does not allow out lesbian and gay people to pastor. Pray for Cecilia, for her Beloved, for the congregation, and for the church, that the love of Christ may lead and surround them, that Godde may remind them daily that they are beloved and created by Godde, that the Spirit may guide and sustain them.

I am remembering also what many lesbian, bisexual, and gay friends have told me -- that coming out is not a one-time event but a process, and that coming out happens many times over time. Still, this event for Cecilia is perhaps the most important. She came out to close friends, to her children, and more recently to her father (see follow-up with her dad here) and to a few colleagues before telling the congregation.

Some music for the occasion, following up on the music selection from the previous post on Cecilia's coming out. Same piece, different movement, one of the most powerful.

Cecilia's meeting with the congregation leaders

Here's an update from Cecilia on her meeting. It went well!

A little music for the occasion.

Sheep

What in the world am I going to say in my sermon for Good Shepherd Sunday?

Photos: Rising Meadow Farm

Taking up our cross: a meditation by Magdalene

Okay, back to Lent.

Magdalene, ever the fine preacher, theologian, and biblical interpreter, has a meditation on what the cross is which is a must-read. When you think of someone "having a cross to bear," what do you think? When Jesus says "take up your cross and follow me," what does he mean? Read Mags's thoughts on this here.

The healing Psalms of Rebbe Nachman, revisited (edited with addition of the text of Psalm 16 plus commentary excerpt)

Today I am beginning a sequence of prayer for a dear friend of mine who is having bypass surgery on Wednesday. (He is a rather private person, so I will just ask for your prayers for him by saying "pray for L." Which is not the initial of his name; I am being protective of his privacy unless or until he tells me otherwise. He is an occasional reader of this blog but doesn't post.)

Because my friend is Jewish, I told him that I would pray for him the traditional healing Psalms of Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav (a.k.a Breslov - same city). They are from the book of Psalms you all know, but Rebbe Nachman believed that reciting these ten Psalms brought about healing of body and soul. This practice has survived in Judaism. There is a fine contemporary book with commentary on these Psalms by both men and women rabbis from different movements (denominations) within the religious Jewish community and I am using it for these ten days of prayer.

I posted on those Psalms and that book here. (I'm finding that I am starting to refer to and recycle old posts - why not?) Have a look.

The first of the ten healing Psalms is Psalm 16.

The editor of Healing of Soul, Healing of Body, Rabbi Simkha Weintraub, writes in his introduction:

Viewed together, the Ten Psalms reflect and unfolding of many emotions and reactions common to those dealing with illness. Although every reader should approach the Ten Psalms from his/her own individual experience and vantage point --and may thus arrive at a different understanding and personal interpretation-- here is one sketch of each psalm's content, to aid in uncovering the flow of meaning and direction.

Psalm 16 starts with a powerful expression of trust and faith in God and gratitude for God's goodness. The psalmist feels the nearness of the Divine Presence and confidence in Divine protection.

Psalm 16

These are among David's golden words:
Watch over me, God,
****for I seek refuge in You.
You said to the Lord:
****You are my Master,
******but my good fortune is not Your concern.
"Rather, the holy ones on the earth
****--You care for them
*******and for the great ones whom I should emulate.
"When their pain multiplies,
****they know to speedily turn to another.
**But I cannot even pour their libations because of guilt,
******I cannot even lift their names to my lips."
The Lord is the Portion, which is mine by right,
******my Cup.
******You nurture my destiny.
Labor pains turn into pleasantness--
******so, too, I must see my inheritance of beauty.
I will bless the Lord who counsels me,
******though at night my conscience afflicts me.
I keep the Lord continually before me;
******because of God-Who-is-my-Right-Hand,
******I shall not break down.
So my mind is happy,
****my whole being joyful;
******even my body rests secure.
For You shall not abandon my soul
*****to the world of the dead,
*******nor let the one who loves You
********see his own grave.
Give me directions on life's road.
****With Your Presence,
*****I am filled up with joys,
*******with the delights that ever come
********from Your Strong Arm.

Rabbi Weintraub also writes:

****Rabbi Nachman taught that the Psalms can have minimal value in mere recitation --one must identify with their contents in a deep and meaningful way, and seek to apply the words to oneself, to find oneself in every psalm.

From the commentary by Rabbi Harlan Wechsler:

****...With this realignment, the possibility of a new direction, David blesses the Lord (v.7). From deep down in his being, he knows that the conflicts of conscience, the feelings of worthlessness that afflict him from time to time, do not tell the whole story. God does not want him to wallow in his sorrow. But rather it is a lofty, a pristine, and a powerful feeling to know deep inside that I am so close to God, so near to the Lord's purpose, God's power, and the beauty of my life which is the way God sees me, that I can do that which is best: bless the Lord. I might have felt bereft and without the ability to bless. I might have found myself more tempted to curse. But feeling God near, I am able to bless, even now in my pain.

.....God's strength is in my service. Now I am revived, human, myself. Ready.


Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, C.S.W., Healing of Soul, Healing of Body: Spiritual Leaders unfold the Strength and Solace of Psalms. (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1994).

Anglican churches of the Americas and the Caribbean: responsible, accountable, in mission, in communion

News of the demise of communion and the (Anglican) Communion is, as always, exaggerated.

More than this, there is good news coming out of the recent meeting in Costa Rica of the Anglican Churches of the Americas and the Caribbean.

Caminante and Padre Mickey have both posted the text of the communique from the meeting.

The Episcopal News Service story is here.

I am sure that we owe to the participants from the Global Center much of the credit for this heartfelt, outer-directed, and harmonious gathering.

¡Demos gracias a Dios!

January 24: Li Tim Oi

On this day, January 24, we commemorate Li Tim Oi, first woman ordained priest in the Anglican Communion. She was ordained on this day in 1944.

The Episcopal Women's Caucus has an informative essay about her here.

Grandmère Mimi of Wounded Bird has written about her here.

I honor also one of Li Tim Oi's spiritual descendants, who is very much alive, my friend the Rev. Dorothy Lau, Director of the Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council. Here's an article Dorothy wrote about five years ago for the online arm of the late lamented magazine The Witness.

Nedi Rivera rocks: a brief note, and full text soon, I hope.

No, she's not a rock star,* she is the Episcopal bishop mentioned below, and she addressed the Diocese of North Carolina Convention this morning on mission, outreach, multicultural ministry, justice, Jesus, and related topics. As she did yesterday when she preached, she spoke without a note (that I could see, anyway) and with complete coherence. She said some things I have never heard anyone say out loud (about kitchens, bathrooms, and liturgy, among others) and she said them with joy and clarity. I am hoping there will be a text and/or a video and if so I will post them here. If not I will try to reconstruct from my notes, but I really hope I can bring +Nedi's words to you as fully as possible. I wish all Episcopalians, and for that matter all Christians in the U.S. (especially, but not exclusively, those from majority white Euro-American cultures and the more privileged classes) could hear her.


*Okay, so maybe she is a rock star in the other sense, but personality is not my point here, though +Nedi's personality and style are part of what help people listen to her and hear her. Now let's see if we do anything about what we heard.

Other than that, I skipped most of the sessions and had meetings with folks I needed to see, mostly about our committee work for racial justice and reconciliation, but also some involving more personal and ministerial catching up. I also stopped by various exhibits and learned about various people, places, groups, and ministries. Always enlightening and sometimes fun.

I will post in the next week or so a very nice pledge for straight allies that PFLAG is offering.

That is all Her Grace the Feline Bishop is letting me write. I am under orders to have a nap.

Click to enlarge and see detail.

Wulfstan of Worcester

Who is he???

Wulfstan of Worcester is the saint of the day in our Episcopal calendar today, January 19. (I know, this year the feast of Confession of Peter was moved to this day, but Wulfstan is still there as well.)

Wulfstan was the only Saxon bishop who survived, administratively speaking, after William the Conqueror showed up.

He is also known for his opposition to the slave trade in Western England.

He was a Benedictine monk.

Today, January 19, is the 7th anniversary of my formal reception into the Episcopal Church.

It is also the second day of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, which begins the day of the Confession of Peter and ends the day of the Conversion of Paul. (See also here for more info on the Week.) As an ecumenist, I love this holy coincidence.

We are, of course, still in Epiphanytide, so Wulfstan is an Epiphany saint, though we do not always make that connection and "work it."

Thanks be to Godde, and thank you to all those who continue to be witnesses to me and to accompany me as sisters and brothers in faith.


You can see Wulfstan's crypt and some explanatory notes at Worcester Cathedral here.

A bit more on Saint Wulfstan here. Note the foodie episode with the roast goose and the resolution about vegetarianism.

I used to wonder why this 11th century Saxon guy ended up as my patron saint, but the more I read about him, the more inspiring I find him. Not least among his interesting traits is his political and ecclesiastical survival among a powerful majority of clerics (and others) who were culturally alien to him. And of course there is "the simplicity, earnestness, and incessant labour of Wulfstan's pastoral life."


The Wulfstan birth-millennium website is here. Lots of bio about him on one of the site's pages here.

Perhaps one of our English friends can try the St. Wulfstan Ale for me.

Pastoral help needed, Santa Cruz, CA area

Friends -- Padre Mickey and the Lovely Mona are off in the Panamanian hinterlands without their e-mail, and they are my closest ties to the Santa Cruz, California area aside from a clergywoman friend farther north whom I have just written.

Here's a question for you: Do any of you know of a) a pastorally sensitive clergyperson (preferably a woman for this situation, doesn't have to be an Episcopal priest, can be any denomination) and b) resources for battered women and other women in abusive situations (with school age child or children who will need to stay with them) in the Santa Cruz, California area? This will require sensitive outreach as the person is still reluctant to leave her situation.

I think my priest friend in the San Francisco Bay Area is sufficiently south of SF that she can rustle up some kind of resources in or around Santa Cruz, but I am not sure, and this pastoral situation has landed long-distance in my lap via someone I know here who is worried about this household and called me out of desperation. More I cannot say, obviously.

If you know of any resources or good people who are competent to address the kind of situation I have sketched out, please write me off-blog at widsauthor at earthlink dot net. Thank you, and please pray for this woman and her child/ren.

A sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent

On blog break, but as promised, I am posting today's sermon.

I am sojourning at All Saints three Sundays a month till May or June -- back at St. Mary's next Sunday for my one Sunday a month there. All Saints is a wonderful worshipping community with a lot of kind, hospitable people. A special joy was giving communion to the children there. St. Mary's House doesn't have children these days (we are a combination "regular" congregation and university chaplaincy and the few families with children we had have moved on, especially as we have recommitted to our chaplaincy mission) and it's nice serving the young 'uns for a change. There are also quite a few elders at All Saints, though. I was at both liturgies, 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., and as is often the case, the early liturgy draws a lot of elders. And a zippy lot of elders they are! I'll be spending Christmas Eve at All Saints' as well. Then back home to St. Mary's House for the Sunday after Christmas.

I don't usually footnote my sermons, but this one was based on another I wrote three years ago and for which I did a lot of reading, so for the sake of honesty and interesting references, I've left the major notes in, the ones that have interesting references. Obviously they were not there in the oral delivery!! I love Beth Johnson's book on Mary, by the way, and recommend it highly.

4th Sunday of Advent (Year B, RCL)

December 21, 2008

All Saints Episcopal Church

Greensboro, North Carolina

Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

In the name of the God
Who was
Who is,
and Who is to come,
Amen.


Have you noticed the people of Advent?It’s hard not to notice John the Baptizer,
that strange character with the raggedy clothes and
the strange eating habits, crying on the edge of the wilderness,
haranguing his contemporaries
and us.
He is squarely in the tradition of the prophets of Israel,
reminding people in a loud voice
of a God who calls them
and their institutions
to righteous living.

Prophets are not usually persons you’d want to have over for tea.
They are the not so gentle companions of Advent.

Mary
doesn’t harangue us.
We are observers from the outside,
hearing the story of the first appearance of Mary in Scripture,
perhaps envisioning already in our minds
our favorite Renaissance paintings of the Annunciation.

But Mary too is a prophet.
Do not assume she is only a soothing and innocent presence
on the way to the Christmas pageant.

I am always struck
by the way in which the conversation
between the angel Gabriel and Mary
parallels the conversation
between of God and the prophets of the Hebrew Bible.

You may remember the general pattern:
God calls the prophet. Usually by name.
The prophet says, “Here I am, Lord.”
Then God says, “Listen, here’s what I want.”

And in every case, this “here’s what I want,”
God’s will for the prophet,
involves a particular role within the community of believers
and some kind of proclamation of who God is for this community.

And then the prophet puts up a fight.

Jeremiah says he’s too young.
Moses protests that he is slow of speech.
Amos argues that he is only a herdsman
and a dresser of sycamore trees.[1]
Jonah doesn’t say anything; he just runs away.

Now Mary – Mary has basically the same thing happen to her,
and she does ask a minor question about how this sign from God,
this birth, can happen when she has no husband. A logical question!
But she doesn’t run off or avoid the call;
in fact, in the scene following the one we just heard,
the second act of the story of Mary,
she run toward someone
to begin proclaiming what she knows to be true.
And that someone is Elizabeth, an older woman filled with new life and new hope,

who is also a proclaimer of good news, a bearer of revelation.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let’s get back to Nazareth.

The Mary we meet here is not Mary the mother,
as we will encounter her in just four days, in Bethlehem,
down South,
but Mary the young Galilean woman --
still in her northern hometown of Nazareth.

We don’t know much about Mary.
We don’t have facts and details about her early life,
or even about her life at the time we meet her
in today’s Gospel story.

In this she has much more in common
with the unknown people
of the first and the twenty-first centuries
than with those whose dwellings or divorces show up
in People magazine
or whose statements about war or money
make the front page of the newspaper
or prime time television news.

Mary has more in common
with the millions of people,
especially poor women,[2]
whose names we do not know
and whose lives
whose daily courage,
whose memories,
whose yearnings
we tend to overlook,
even though
they form the major portion
of our human family.

We do know that Mary came from Galilee.

Galilee was a backwater.
It was that place up north –
a good four days’ walk from Jerusalem
a little less if you had a donkey.[3]
We now know thanks to the work of archaeologists
that in Galilee there were several hundred villages,
and that Nazareth was a small village of maybe 300, 400 people.
It was off the main road, a place of no special importance.[4]

The economy in Galilee was heavily agricultural.
Joseph, to whom Mary was betrothed, was an artisan.
But he and his family would have also had a small plot of land
on which they grew some food – barley and wheat, grapes, olives.
Almost everyone did.

Galilee, even in the villages, was a crossroads of cultures.
In Mary’s daily life, the spoken language
was Aramaic, a close relative of Hebrew.
Educated and business people spoke Greek.
The Romans, who had conquered the land
and still occupied it,
spoke Latin.
And in the synagogue,
the congregation to which Mary and Joseph belonged,
the language of scripture and prayer was Hebrew.

Still, Galilee in Mary’s day
was far from the circles of power,
though the power of the Roman empire did reach there,
in the form of a triple tax.
There was no middle class. Most of the people were poor,
living at what we would call subsistence level.
The rich and powerful
were a very small percentage of the population.
The story in the Gospel of Luke
is not about them. Not yet.

The second Book of Samuel,
from which we also heard this morning,
is about the powerful –and the famous.
Both books of Samuel are organized around the careers of Samuel, Saul, and David.[5]
An official prophet –a professional—and two kings.
They are stories of the people of Israel
But they are also very much the story of God.
Woven throughout the many tales and adventures of the prophet and the two kings
are God’s attempts “to maintain or [to] recreate a relationship of loyalty
between God and [God’s] people.”[6]

The second book of Samuel is very concerned about institutions.
By the time we get to today’s story,
David has ascended to the thrones of both Judah, the little country in the South,
and Israel, the little country in the North.
He settles in Jerusalem, which is now the capital of the newly united kingdom.

And into the story comes
Nathan the prophet, who gets a little visit from the Lord at night.
Nathan hears from God
for David
a promise that appears to be unconditional:
Your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me;
your throne shall be established forever.[7]
But it’s a little deceptive.
As is often the case today,
you need to read around and underneath the sound bites and the official statements
to get the bigger story.

If you read on in the Second Book of Samuel
you’ll see that humans keep behaving
like humans.
King David, the great king,
gets involved in a good dose of treachery, adultery, plots of murder,
and a few other things that make us love him and hate him
for his larger than life humanity
and also make us wonder
why he gets touted as Joseph’s ancestor.
Certainly not because he is a model of virtue!

Read on in the Second Book of Samuel, and beyond,
and you’ll see that the house of David
isn’t exactly what we would call secure.
A generation or two after today’s story, things start falling apart.

Now, kingship arose at least in part out of people’s need for security;
And humans
–all of us, from Galilee to Greensboro—
crave security.
Give me an answer! Give me a formula!
Give me a strong leader!
Give me an economic miracle!Give me a new technological toy!
Give us a nice clean war!
Give us well defined gender roles!
Give me a quick fix!
Give us ten steps to prosperity or
peace of mind or
firm abdominal muscles!

The major message in the second book of Samuel
is not that the king is the source of the people’s security.
It is that God alone is sovereign.
God alone offers security.
All institutions are relative.

Generations later, the story in the Gospel of Luke tells us,
After destruction, exile, and many other empires,
in the days of the Roman Empire,
a descendant of David now living in this backwater of Galilee,
a descendant named Joseph
is betrothed to a young woman named Mary.

Mary and Joseph were betrothed.
That’s not like being engaged in the contemporary sense.
It had what we would call legal status.
It really was the first of two stages of marriage.

So we know that Mary was from Galilee
in the days when Rome reigned.
We know that she was betrothed to Joseph.

We also know that Mary was Jewish.
As was Joseph. As was Jesus.
They were observant Jews,
living their faith within the rhythms of ordinary life,
daily and weekly,
faith in the one sovereign God.[9]

And this faith,
“belief in one God
whom no graven images could capture
clashed” with the new god who was about in the land:
Caesar, the emperor,
“full of power [and] glory.”[10]
Roman religious belief
was inseparable from Roman politics.
The Lordship of Caesar
was on a collision course
with the religion of Judaism.

Another few things of which we can be fairly certain:
there is a good chance
that Mary was very young.
Girls were betrothed around the age of twelve,
maybe thirteen, fourteen. Probably not much later.
And Mary was likely brown-skinned,
like most people in the region,
and muscular
from the labor she performed
outdoors and indoors
and which was a lot more strenuous
than pushing a vacuum cleaner.

So Mary, a brown-skinned, muscular,
working-class Jewish girl from Galilee
is sitting around one day
minding her own business (or maybe not)
when,
as happens in biblical stories,
and sometimes in other places too,
an angel shows up.

Shalom! Says the angel. Greetings!

Angels don’t have a translation problem, have you noticed?
They are messengers from God
who speak in the language of the person they happen to be visiting.
We can assume they are a multilingual lot.
Shalom, says the angel.
YOU are special to God,
and God is with you.

“Huh?” thinks Mary.

Or as the text says in our contemporary translation
...she was much perplexed by [the angel’s] words
and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.[11]

In other words,
“Huh?”

Mary was not someone likely to be singled out.
She was not one of the truly destitute or the most marginal:
she was betrothed to an artisan; she had a place to live;
but she was an ordinary girl in an ordinary village.

“Hello, Mary! I’m here for you!
I’ve got a word from God!”

Mary is still digesting this one,
and then comes the big news.

“You’re going to have a baby, Mary.”

And it’s not Joseph’s baby.
This child announced by the angel
is not what we would call legitimate.

Anticipating Mary’s reaction,
the angel reassures her,
invoking her people’s history,
talking of thrones, of David the royal ancestor,
of a kingdom that will have no end.

Being a smart Jewish girl,
though probably illiterate,
Mary says
How can this be, since I am a virgin?[12]
Or as the original text says much more eloquently,
How can this be, since I do not know a man?[13]
And somehow satisfied with the angel’s answer,
willing, somehow, to say,
“All right, God, I’ll do it,”
Mary the prophet goes forward.

Now,
hold together
the angel
and the village,
the message from God
and one particular, ordinary, daily life,
history writ large
and history writ small.

Here in Greensboro,
it’s four days before Christmas in another kind of empire.
One in which
we, like Mary, are not living in the centers of power,
but where the centers of power reach us.
In this empire as in the earlier ones
institutions and their leaders fail us:
corporations, investment banks, government,
the military, schools, even churches.

We in this American empire
are about to celebrate the birth of Jesus
and we look also in this season of Advent
to Jesus’ coming again
at the end of time.

And what do we do,
as we prepare for this?

We contemplate Mary.

We remember her as the human being she was,
in the little we know of her and her surroundings.

This is a much deeper and more challenging mystery
than if Mary were either the ideal woman
or the feminine face of God
or an archetype or a model
or even the ideal disciple.

“As with every human being, as with every woman,”
[as with every girl, every boy, every man,]
“[Mary] is first and foremost herself.”[14]

I am not saying that we can’t also appreciate Mary as a symbol.
But Mary is and remains
“truly our sister,”[15]
“a concrete human being”[16]
“....who acted according to the call of the Spirit
in the particular circumstances of her own history.”[17]

This is no reason for us to toss our Fra Angelico reproductions in the trash bin
Or to take the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe down from the wall.

On the contrary, perhaps they, along with other images,
can help us to remember that Jesus,
true God among us
and truly human,
was the son
of a truly human mother,
a particular mother
in a particular place.

For some reason
God loves history.
God loves our history.
God lives in our history
through us,
with us.

It is in that history that Mary will go off to visit Elizabeth,
And that she will cry out in song
That the God of promise will turn the world upside down,
That the hungry will eat,
That the powerless will be filled with new strength,
That the mighty will tumble from their proud thrones,
A message worthy of the prophets
Of Mary’s people Israel.

My friend Gene Rogers,
Who teaches at UNCG, has written a book in which
he comments on an ancient hymn about Mary
from the Christian East
And here’s what he says of her:
As a woman of low estate, she opens up a time for justice;
as a willing recipient of the Spirit, she opens up a site of joy.
In preparing the justice of God’s realm, she plays the role of the prophet.[18]

The Gospel on this fourth Sunday of Advent asks us:
Are we ready
with Mary our sister
to open up a time for justice?

Are we
willing recipients of the Spirit?
The Spirit!
Not the shortcut solution.
Not the security for which we hunger.
Not the ordinary exercise of power.
The power of the Spirit -
the Spirit of God
the one with the messages in the middle of the night
the one with surprise visits in broad daylight
the one who visits the backwaters of conquered lands.

Are we ready
to open up a site of joy?

Are we willing
as Mary was willing
to be that place
where God lives
and where, make no mistake,
neither Mary nor we
will serve as passive incubator
for a pop-up Jesus?

Will we be
a living, breathing, choice-making site of joy,
a real being who makes room for the action of the Holy Spirit
whatever it is?
At a really inconvenient time?

Think about it:
This woman –we would call her a girl– is virtually married.
And in what form does the Spirit show up?
A baby who’s not her husband’s.
Let’s see. In her historical context
she could lose
her husband,
her economic support,
her reputation,
even her life.

Never mind the how the pregnancy happened
Look at what the fact of Mary’s pregnancy says:
God is really really inconvenient.
And really risky.
And really close
to us.

Jesus
flesh of Mary’s flesh
flesh of our flesh
is coming soon.

And the angel
in some form, in some voice, in some manner,
will come to us
as the angel came to Mary
and ask
the Advent question of God:

Will you bear my word to the world?
This world?
Will you hold my word in your heart?
This heart, your heart, in this time in history, in this place,
in your skin, in your faith, in your life?

Will you share my word with the world ?
Will you
open up a time for justice
in this place, in this empire?

Will you
be a willing recipient of the Spirit?
Will you open up a site of joy?
Will you, with the help of the Spirit
risk being a prophet?

Saints,
Says the angel with the Advent question of God,
Will you
bear my word to the world?


Amen.

********************************************

[1] A dresser of sycamore trees is someone who makes little cuts in the sycamore fruit so that they can grow to be edible. It was a lower-class job in the low-class food business; sycamore fruit was for people too poor to afford dates.
[2] Elizabeth Johnson makes note of this when introducing Mary’s Galilean context. Elizabeth A. Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (New York: Continuum, 2003),137.
[3] Johnson, Truly Our Sister, 172.
[4] Ibid.,141.
[5] Jo Ann Hackett, “1 and 2 Samuel,” Women’s Bible Commentary, expanded edition, ed. Carol A Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 91.
[6] David Gunn, “2 Samuel,” Harper’s Bible Commentary (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), 287.
[7] 2 Sam 7:16.
[9] See Johnson, Truly Our Sister, 165.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Luke 1:29
[12] Luke 1:34, New Revised Standard Version.
[13] Luke 1:34, literal translation from the original Greek. This also happens to be the King James Version’s translation, which is not always the most accurate, but which in this case is closer to the text.
[14] Johnson, Truly Our Sister,101.
[15] While the phrase “truly our sister” comes from Pope Paul VI, Johnson also notes in the frontispiece of her book that several women theologians, whose writings evoke the words and beliefs of grassroots women in Mexico, Korea, Brazil, and the United States, refer to Mary as a sister.
[16] “[T]he proposal to interpret Mary within the company of the saints entails this corollary: First and foremost Mary is not a model, a type, an archetype, a prototype, an icon, a representative figure, a theological idea, an ideological cipher, a metaphor, a utopian principle, a feminine principle, a feminine essence, the image of the eternal feminine, an ideal disciple, ideal woman, ideal mother, a myth, a persona, a corporate personality, an everywoman, a cultural artifact, a literary device, a motif, an exemplar, a paradigm, a sign, or in any other way a religious symbol. All of these terms are drawn from contemporary religious writing. To the contrary, as with any human being, as with every woman, she is first and foremost herself. I am not saying that the contemporary human imagination cannot make use of her in a symbolic way. But it is the luminous density of her existence as a graced human being that attracts my attention. As Rahner argues, ‘We, however supremely elevated our spiritual nature may be, still remain concrete historical beings, and for this reason we cannot consider this history as something unimportant for the highest activity of our spirit, the search for God.’” Johnson, Truly Our Sister,101.
[17] Johnson, Truly Our Sister, 42-43.
[18] Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources Outside the Modern West (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2005), 104. For my own rhetorical purposes, I have left out of this quote from Rogers’ elaboration on Hymn XI of Romanos the Melodist a fourth point, which immediately follows the three I quote: “In preparing the joy of God’s realm, she plays the role of patriarch.”

I love my deacon-to-be students!

Did I mention that I love my deacon postulant (just one postulant) and candidates? I had my last theology class with them yesterday, a double session, and we had presentations, on which they did a fantastic job. The sole woman in the class, not a person you'd immediately think of as theatrical, dressed up as Hild of Whitby and brought props of all kinds and informed us of all manner of history, theology, and early medieval English culture. These are adult students who are not in seminary and will not go to seminary: they are in a special diocesan formation program for vocational (permanent) deacons. Another student gave a kick-ass presentation on William Stringfellow, about which and about whom more this week. We also had fine visits from the spirits and words of Julian of Norwich, F.D. Maurice, and Vida Dutton Scudder. [I'll add links to info about these various people on Monday or Tuesday.] We began the class by reflecting on Guadalupe and Juan Diego and their feast, which was Friday, and getting a little introduction to Mexican and Mexican-American spirituality and theology.

Last month we read works by thinkers/doers from the African diaspora and Africa: Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu (sermons and essays from the apartheid era which most folks don't get to read, including the oration at Steve Biko's funeral), and Pauli Murray, the first African American woman to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church, who was from these parts in North Carolina and who was also a jurist and a poet.

The students are from a variety of backgrounds and are involved in a variety of ministries. One does hospital chaplaincy; another works with farm laborers (and is a former scientist who is involved in a bit of farming himself); another is involved in parish work and, I just discovered, is a stylist (as in salon and spa); another is a lawyer who has done poverty and housing law. The wife of one of the students is an oblate in the Order of Julian of Norwich and he was the person who helped us learn about Julian and her life and theology and spirituality.

The students gave me a thank-you present at the end of the session, a low, broad vase in which to make flower arrangements -- or, I'm thinking, an arrangement of evergrees for this season, and a lovely card with "they who sing pray twice" on it. I was very moved. I am glad to have a lighter schedule in the coming months, but I was thrilled to be back in theological and ministerial education, even on this very very part-time basis, and I will miss our conversations.

The deacon candidates will be ordained in June. The postulant is a year behind them. Celebrations to anticipate!

Story on last year's national deacons' conference here.

Blog of Ormonde Plater, our friend the deacon in New Orleans and a mentor to many, here.

December 1: World AIDS Day

Never forget.

Remembering the year the AIDS Quilt first came to Boston, running into a colleague there and holding him in my arms as he wept.

Honoring my friends who work in the field: Brian. Lisa. Doxy. Will, who worked in South Africa where, he told us, they are burying people two deep in the cemeteries because there is not enough room. Musa, the biblical scholar from Botswana, who works with women especially, but who also educates church leaders of all genders and examines with them how our scriptural interpretations kill or give life. The women of the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians. Guy and the people at his center for spiritual care in Atlanta, Georgia, many of whom have been homeless. Margaret, who with Guy and like Musa, teaches Pentecostal seminarians and pastors in the Atlanta neighborhood that is ground zero for HIV infection and where the rates of infection are as high as in South Africa.

And the hospice nurses who were my colleagues twenty years ago when we were raising money for the first residential hospice for people with AIDS in Boston, because there were people, mostly gay men, who had no place to go and die with dignity and with the loving care all human beings deserve. Jeannette, now resting with the saints, who after years as a prison chaplain began working with people infected and affected and who opened a home for formerly incarcerated women and formerly homeless women living with HIV infection. Mary, who volunteered without fanfare for years, taking time from a busy job to go and hold infected babies in a Washington hospital. Edward, who is in his second executive directorship of an AIDS-related organization, the first a consortium serving the needs of people of color in a large city in the Northeast, the current one a group advocating for better distribution of life-saving drugs. Joe, who continues to ride his bike each year in the annual fund-raiser for research and care.

Doxy's thoughts are here, Fran's are here, with some words from South Africa.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation's prevention program is here.

The Frontline PBS series of a couple of years ago, "The Age of AIDS," which you can watch in its entirety in the privacy of your home, but which is also great for group discussion, is here. The movie series is a great place to start if you don't know where to start, and the website is full of good scientific and social information. Its perspective is international --great segment on Uganda-- and it also tracks the social history of the epidemic and related politics here in the U.S.

And here's a quiz for you to take, from the movie's website.

UNAIDS's photo gallery is here.

Learn about the feminization of AIDS here.

From that last one:
HIV infections among women and girls have risen in every part of the world in recent years. The numbers point to a fundamental and startling reality - the HIV/AIDS pandemic is inextricably linked to the brutal effects of sexism and gender inequality, most pronounced in Africa. ... Gender violence and poverty are disease risks.

Episcopal and other resources on creation, science, and religion

A while back I posted some science-and-religion resources. They are still alive and kicking and here is the link.

Meanwhile, I am just back from Hillsborough where I met with the candidates (well, three candidates and one postulant) for the vocational diaconate, to whom I teach theology once every few weeks this fall, and I promised them I would post a link or two to the Catechism of Creation. The Catechism of Creation is one of the better efforts of our national Church and comes out of the Executive Council's Committee on Science, Technology and Faith.

So I posted the resources to the Deacon Theology blog, which is not open to the public, and was thinking of making a post here to share the resources with a broader audience.

But first, moving into web-bopping mode as one does in these distracted and curious days, I went over to my friend Paul's (Paul a.k.a. the Byzigenous Buddhapalian) and what should I read but this.

Folks, science is important to our society. If this is the way the Governor of Alaska thinks of research, we are in big trouble if she gets anywhere near Washington. How does she think her lipstick got here? That's chemistry research, Governor, and so is hair dye. And your microphone is technology. So is your SUV. So is your pap smear. Wake up and smell the fruit flies.

Oh, and here is the info I posted to the deacon theology blog. (Deacon Formation Program, Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. October 25, 2008.) Thanks to TCR for the photos.

* * * * * * *

The Catechism of Creation was prepared in 2005 by the Committee on Science, Technology and Faith of The Executive Council of The Episcopal Church. It is a great resource.

Main resource page for the Catechism of Creation with related resources.

The home page of the Episcopal Church Network for Science, Technology, and Faith is here. The page of the Executive Council Committee on Science, Technology and Faith is here.

Text of the Catechism of Creation in pdf.

There are also links to specific sections in the Catechism of Creation via the main resource page at the first link above. You can also find related Bible studies there. It's a fine resource for Adult Forums, Youth Ministry, Christian Education, professional support and study groups, Bible study, or your own edification -- and preaching too!

Here's the Episcopal Ecological Network.

And here's the Society of Ordained Scientists!

Photos by The Cunning Runt of Little Bang Theory. Click to enlarge.

Be prepared...

... be prepared, always, to be part of God's answer to your own prayers ...

That beautiful piece of wisdom is from MikeF at The Mercy Blog. It comes toward the end of his post for Blog Action Day, a bloggers' day on world poverty. FranIAm has also posted for this action.

I am a little low-energy today and looking at four (or is it five?) unfinished projects, none of them optional, so I am re-learning the lesson of the Body of Christ, and remembering to be grateful for my friends whose prayers carry me and who also act when I cannot.

As I write, I am especially grateful for Mike's wisdom.

By the way, Mike just made his Life Profession as a Third Order Franciscan. Read about the fine day at Hifield Friary here, and if you want to know more about what it means to be a Tertiary as opposed to a Brother, don't be afraid to ask Mike! P.S. Mike is also a grandfather and a cat person. +Maya wanted me to write that.


Art: "Communion of Saints," by Ira Thomas. Tip of the fedora to ConcordPastor. (Fran, note, I just found this via a Web search for art on the Communion of Saints!)

Waaah

I am missing the Obama/Biden rally in Greensboro even as I write because at the very time it is scheduled to start (two hours after the doors open and many more hours after folks started lining up) I have one of those can't skip command performance gotta be there the powers that be said so we scheduled it a month ago major diocese says jump meetings at high noon, and I can't wear my "Got Hope?" t-shirt to it either.

My friends will give me a full report, I hope.

Theology for deacons and running for the hills

Holà all -- I am finally taking a day off. After teaching the first class of the theology course for our diocese's vocational deacon candidates today, I will drive away from the not-so-big city for some peace and quiet and fresh air. At the end of my time off I will drive a little farther and meet up with my buddy Padre Mickey de Panamá, who is coming through this Southern region on his way from here to there. We will have Sunday evening dinner and tell funny stories and who knows? Perhaps there will be a surprise appearance by Gallito Mescalito. Stay tuned.

Deadline time again

I'm not asking for much: I would just like to have some period of time when I am not being evaluated by some person or committee and when I don't have a deadline to meet.

I guess that's called "vacation" or "retirement" but don't they make jobs (or vocations) without either of these, in which you can just do your work?

All right, that was the "dream on" section of the post.

Just a note to all y'all to let you know that posting will, once again, be scarce, because I have two deadlines to meet right now, immediately if not sooner: 1) the Dreaded Fourth Year Evaluation (not its official name) for which I have to finish up my long and specific self-evaluation document with responses to anonymous student comments from the college evaluation forms and 2) a proposal for an Interdisciplinary Studies upper-level course ("Religion, Ecofeminism, and Environmental Justice" - have taught it once before but not in that special category on an interdisciplinary capstone) that needs to go through a committee and which is not optional -- we really need one of those courses in our department and this requires writing a long proposal answering very specific questions about how the course meets pedagogical and academic requirements.

That's on top of the usual teaching and related activities.


And once again I am behind on the Episcopal Café writing, which is what I would really like to be working on all week, along with the first of the theology classes for the Deacon Formation Program, which I teach this coming Saturday. I did get the blog up for the latter (open only to class members and other authorized persons) and of course made a link there to the one and only Ormonde Plater, who teaches us so much about diaconal history and ministry. (Why do Roman Catholics spell it diaconal and Episcopalians spell it deaconal? I may be a seven-year-old Anglican, but I still spell it diaconal. Force of habit, and it doesn't look right to me the other way.)

So, I may or may not post this week, but check in once in a while, and meanwhile all y'all go wish some good health to JohnieB, who recently had a little hospital episode related to his kidneys, and to his feline companion, Miz Scarlett, who is even more skittish than usual. Both of them have a move in the offing and their abode is about to be topsy-turvy for a while. Caminante is also packing. Her feline friends are taking note. And +Maya Pavlova and I are still in boxes at the new place, speaking of topsy-turvy, though we have a functional kitchen and bedroom and she, the feline bishop, seems to be her old calm and calming self. Me, I am managing. Lord, have mercy. I'm taking 36 hours off this weekend after teaching the deacon candidates and am running for the hills, literally: off to the mountains on Saturday.

P.S. ¡ Si se puede !

Jeff is back and well! Thank you for your prayers.

Some of you may remember my colleague Jeff, a much beloved professor of English and advisor to the student newspaper, who was literally at death's door this past winter. He was quite severely ill and I asked for prayers and posted updates on several occasions. (See links below.)

Jeff is back at work this fall semester. He will, in fact, be giving the Opening Convocation Address. (Unusual -- the speaker is usually from outside the college, or has been the three years I've been here.) When faculty and staff heard about this at our opening meeting yesterday, we all stood and gave Jeff a long ovation. It was his first time back among us. A very moving moment.

Jeff is deeply grateful for your prayers. He is convinced that they made a huge difference. Thank you all so much. (We also had two faculty on sabbatical who said they lit candles all over Siena, Italy; a lot of other people, formally religious or not, were praying for Jeff.) Besides those who read this blog, I want to thank especially Shannon's guys, the men in the prison where Shannon is a chaplain. She wrote in the comments section of this blog, when I first asked for prayers, that they would be praying. Shannon, please tell the guys that many people are grateful, including Jeff, and remind them that we pray for them too. (You do pray for people in prison, all y'all?) I told Jeff yesterday that they had prayed for him, along with other people on the Pacific coast and people on on both sides of the Atlantic coast and places in between.

Thanks be to Godde.

Requests for and updates on Jeff, since last February: Here and here and here and here and here.