commonplace: expansion

"Immature petition tries to convince God to remake the world in our image for our convenience, but mature petition asks God to remake us in God's own image, so that we can expand our capacity to respond to the world as it is."  p.105

"By crying help, we choose expansion rather than contraction, advance rather than retreat."  p. 108

"But you don't criticize, condemn, chide, or reject yourself.  Rather, you join God in God's desire for your own expansion and well-being."  p. 112

My small group at Woodland Park United Methodist Church (WPUMC) is still reading Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality: a Life With God in 12 Simple Words.  I first wrote about it here.  Our most recent chapters were about the word, or prayer, help.   

I'm not much of a pray-er in terms of bringing petitions to God for intercession or some kind of result.  I grew up with a terminally ill father and a terminally ill aunt, both of whom I was close with.  I learned that the people we love suffer and die.  Prayer does not interrupt or otherwise alleviate that.  So for me, prayer at its best has come to mean more about good company with God while we live, survive, endure, make the best of... the life that is.  

But the idea of expansion brought a new facet of prayer to light.  That prayer might expand my consciousness, for example - expand (and deepen?) my understanding of what Little N needs right now.  So a few nights ago I prayed "help, help me with Little N in all of this," and then I went to bed.  I rested with a calmness about Little N that contrasted with the anxiety and fear that I'd brought to my prayer.  When I woke, I had new clarity about some changes that I could make in my attention and behavior that would better support my son.  I'd say I was expanded.  It didn't take away or in any way reduce the challenges before us, but I was better equipped and aware of how to engage and follow through in healthy ways for our family.  And the responsibility to engage and follow through was on me.  I was granted new insights and the choice to respond to them.

Another place I'm perceiving expansion is with our small group at WPUMC.  During the years of choosing and living in my marriage I also chose to let some of my values (peace, social justice, feminism at its best, spirituality etc.) drop away.  I was mostly aware of it; I deemed them unrealistic and unlivable for ordinary folks.  Though in some ways I assumed these values were still around, paused perhaps, latent, but that we, as a couple, would resume them.  It's become evident, now, that these are my values and not my husband's.  In small group I see and hear these values made central and significant in our conversations.  Ordinary people, not front line activists or otherwise public figures, who make a point to talk about these values and to work together to live them.  They model these values for me and when I go to group open to receiving help I am expanded by their example.

I believe that this expansion is what God wants for me, and for all us ordinary folks.  To live open, deep, expansive lives in our families and communities.  That, I guess, is where social change (peace, social justice, feminism at its best, spirituality, etc.) becomes the common sense of a culture and gradually ousts meaner, stingier world views (not that it worked in my marriage, hmmm).  And I love that McLaren makes the point that we don't cut ourselves down for being small or contracted in some way.  We love ourselves with God, we cultivate richness in our lives, together with God.  And I'd add, we extend that same gentle tending of love to others.  

commonplace Wednesday: Womanspirit Rising

Originally published in 1979, Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion, is a new classic on my summer reading list.  It's a collection of early essays by some of the most recognized writers in feminism and spirituality including: Merlin Stone, Starhawk, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Mary Daly, and Zsuzsanna E. Budapest.  I'm about 25 pages into it and feel energized by the ideas, and reconnected with the feminist identity and theological interests of my college years.  But I'm a little puzzled too - how can I be part of this movement, this bigger conversation, these changes, as a mom with a job?  [When I was in college I was convinced that if the values and ideas I was engaging weren't accessible and actionable by "ordinary people" (rather than ivory tower PhD types) then they were useless.  I inadvertently made that my mission and fumbled my way into ordinariness.  Here I am and what to do, how to do it, with these big ideas?]

This quote from the Introduction offers some hints:

If the world has been named by Adam without Eve's consultation, then the world has been named from the male point of view.  As women begin to name the world for themselves, they will upset the order that has been taken for granted throughout history.  They will call themselves and the world into new being.  Naming women's experience thus becomes the model not only for personal liberation and growth, but for a feminist transformation of culture and religion.  "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?" asks poet Muriel Rukeyser. "The world would split open." p.7.

When women describe their experience they have the potential to change culture and to change religion.  I don't have complete understanding of this yet but I think it's something about the man-made constructs falling away, the rules and the givens, the masculine common sense is revealed for its incompleteness, inconsistency, and inaccuracy.  It is not whole and complete for human experience.  It is not a valid placeholder or assumption.  This falling away makes room for more understanding, more dimensions and perspectives can occupy the space held as truth.

One of my favorite ideas from Carry On, Warrior was G's approach to scripture.  She is totally up front about the fact that all Bible readers pick and choose what to obey and how to understand the Bible. When faced with a passage that she didn't understand she interpreted it against the primary rules to love God and love others.  Based on this she decides what to do with the puzzling verses.  All the other rules, and what I call the man-made constructs, get cast aside to make way for the real work of loving.   Some of her readers find this sacrilegious or blasphemous.  I call it a hermeneutic of love and I dig it.

At it's best, at my best, feminism is an angle for speaking back to the dominant culture and taking apart the givens and the rules.  It's not necessarily about male versus female, men vs. women.  Women just happen to have a particular opportunity to initiate these changes since they weren't welcome to participate in the original naming.  (But women aren't the only "other" that was left out.  There are lots of opportunities.)  And the way this happens, in part, is women talking about their lives - like G in Carry On, Warrior, like me on my blog and Facebook and in life.  It's tiny.  It's barely visible, one woman at a time.  It's sometimes exhausting and seemingly pointless.  But as I, and we, persist in lifting up our very personal lives for public view and value, we participate in a political process of making room for more, different, other than the man-made norms.  The world is "split open" and we have the opportunity to reorder and remake with a new measure - a measure of love.

commonplace Wednesday: Carry On, Warrior

I'm a newcomer to Glennon Doyle Melton and her blog Momastery.  A friend on Facebook shared one of her blog posts and it resonated for me.  Her book, Carry On, Warrior, is essentially a collection from the blog, with a few new pieces added as well.  I expect it's a great place to start catching up on who Glennon is and what Momastery is all about.

I'm about 60 pages in (288 pages total) and here's what stays with me - Glennon is good company for this work of family and life.  I'm not certain that a book is the best medium for her style of writing but her perspective, humor, and faith are welcomed.  Her commitment to being open and kind encourages me, nudges me, to be live an open and kind life too.  She holds a Christian faith that allows for her own discernment and discovery.  She seems not to be solely bound to the rules and mores of religious authority.  I appreciate that.

This is probably my favorite quote from the book:

I learned that in these disasters, all we can do is tell our In Case of Emergencies that their grief is real, and if it lasts forever, then we will grieve with them forever.
As far as I was able to tell during those two years, there was nothing else worth saying. It was not going to be all right, ever. Everything doesn’t happen for a decent reason. I was Sister’s In Case of Emergency and I couldn’t fix her emergency. I couldn’t do anything at all except feed her, hold her when she cried, pray angry prayers, keep showing up, and hope that time and my home and presence would offer healing.

I learned the truth of this approach to grief & comfort in the early days (years?) grieving the loss of my father.  I was comforted most by the friends who came over to just be with us.  And those well intended platitudes about the better place that dad was in or that it all happens for a reason just landed clanking and empty in my ears and on my heart.  I remember in particular that my beloved Miss G was able to fly home from college for a few days and hang out with our family.  We did ordinary things, like clean the kitchen from all the food that people kept bringing us.  We did these things together, in good company.

In the years since dad's passing, I've been near for other friends and their grief.  I hope that I've practiced what I've felt to be true.  I hope that I've given more time to showing up, bearing witness, living as good company, and grieving with them than the other things.

Life offers, holds, brings, is, a lot of grief.  Both from the blatant disasters and the subtle disintegrations.  I'm still grieving the birth of a child I didn't plan on, even though he's become the son I love dearly and fiercely.  I'm grieving all the advantages and opportunities that I've thrown away.  I'm grieving the independence I had a single child-free woman.  I grieve lost friendships and old lovers.  I think the same kinds of comfort apply to all of these kinds of grief.  It's the comfort of time and good company of friends who are just with us through it, who just keep showing up with us.

These days of job and motherhood are often lonely for me.  It's difficult to coordinate schedules to see people, once I get beyond the difficulty of reaching out in the first place.  So I sometimes grieve alone, which feels incomplete somehow, like maybe grief needs a witness to be truly met and healed.  Sometimes I stuff the grief or put it on hold.  And sometimes I find comfort in a book that comes alongside me like a friend would and says, "Yeah, me too."  For me, Carry On, Warrior is one of those books.  

commonplacing: TAZ

In my small group at WPUMC we're reading Brian McLaren's Naked Spirituality: A Life WIth God In 12 Simple Words.  It introduced me to the concept of a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ).

"...rigid conformity and emotional inhibition stultify the human spirit, and so occasionally people defy the authorities and dare to dance.  They create what author Kester Brewin describes as Temporary Autonomous Zones (TAZs), places where the normal patterns of hegemony and homogeneity are broken."

This is taken from page 65, quoting Barbara Ehrenreich, and citing examples like Woodstock, Burning Man, Mardi Gras.  These events, at their best are about jubilation, freedom, and connection.  He continues on page 67.

"Could it be that the kingdom of God is the ultimate TAZ, the ultimate liberation from the normal oppressive patterns of hegemony and homogeneity."

When I was single and child free it was a lot easier for me to resent and resist hegemony and homogeneity.  Certainly they were always there, but I did feel freer to choose people, interests, and expression that were outside the norm.  I didn't dream of marriage, family, and home ownership.  I dreamt of living purposefully, finding a way to make a difference, to be my own, and to be different.

That desire was part of why I chose the graduate school and program that I did.  Whole Systems Design (WSD) at an alternative university.  My dream took the shape of wanting to write, specifically articles about good news, and then maybe start my own program focused on that kind of story.  Producing the stories.  Training people to seek, articulate, and promote good news.  But WSD didn't work that way for me.  It focused on talking and small groups.  Not my areas of professional interest.  Worse, to me, it didn't help equip me to navigate or talk back to the "real world" of hegemony and homogeneity.  I graduated more adrift and vulnerable than I started.

Reentering the "real world" I married my grad school honey, started an interim job, and suddenly fell pregnant.  Six years later I'm still at the job working as the sole provider for my little family.  I feel trapped in the hegemony and homogeneity of job, home, and child rearing.  Any little gap for autonomy is savored, celebrated, and jealously guarded.

These days I find my Temporary Autonomous Zones in my small groups (ironically enough given the grad school debacle), both the Christian group and the Pagan group.  Granted, we are not dismantling patriarchy or otherwise disrupting the status quo in publicly recognizable ways.  But we are peeling away our conformity and inhibition to unveil to ourselves and these trusted friends our thoughts, feelings, and private realities.  And in Pagan ritual we even "dare to dance."

Today it is easy for me to accept grace as the thing that pierces hegemony and homogeneity and frees us to be authentic souls liberated from the rules that stultify human life.  This definition holds true to the example of Jesus's life - practicing a life of loving others that put him outside the rules and mores of the law and the culture of his time.  He stands as the model of how Christians too ought to live lives of love, lives changed by that grace.  I experience this kind of grace in the Pagan rituals as we minister to each other in ceremony, raise energy together, and "party like Pagans."

But it's challenging me and yet I'm hungry for it, to have this grace in the rest of my life in the "real world."  (I guess that's why they're "temporary" autonomous zones.)  How do I live a daily life of such grace, outside the bounds of hegemony and homogeneity?  Is it just part of being fully human that we develop and abide by these conventions?  To live in this world, a soul and a body, means we entangle ourselves in these invisible, powerful things.  And it's a life of spirituality, of practice and of hunger, that manifests the desire for grace and the means to be grace to ourselves and others.

Commonplacing: consciousness & culture

I'm rereading Starhawk's Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess for the first time in about 15 years.  The pagan group I do holiday rituals with has added a book club to its activities and I'm excited to have more time with these good folks and to dig into some good books together.

Starting with the Introduction of this book I'm struck by how many of the same words and phrases are standing out to me now as when I first read, and underlined, the book.   The ideas that held my attention then also speak to my life today.  Maybe it's something about phases of transition in my life.  Or maybe it's a testimony to my years long search for meaning.

"The concept of a religion that worshipped a Goddess was amazing and empowering."  p.2

"Now my body, in all its femaleness, its breasts, vulva, womb, and menstrual flow, was sacred." p.2

"Maybe, in fact, deep transformation of society could only come from an underlying transformation of culture." p.6

"To create the changes in consciousness needed to transform society at a deep level, we need insights broader than those the issues of the moment can provide." p.7

Although, thinking about it a little further now, it's almost ironic that the same material has got my attention because I'm approaching it from such a different place.  Fifteen years ago I was struggling with the evangelical tradition.  I was specifically addressing the roles and possibilities for women in that culture.  Today I've found a Christian church led by a woman and where women and men share visible and diverse roles.  I'm less concerned now about changing culture and more concerned about changing my own mind, my heart, my life.

I can hear my psychiatrist telling me to "go inside" and I suspect that she would tell me that meaning won't be found in a book or a book club.  But maybe this book, with its affirmation of the sacredness of life and the immanence of the divine, with its rituals and exercises, may offer a way inside.  And maybe this book club, with its good company of smart, caring, spiritual women, may form a container of kind support as I make the journey inward.

The book isn't just a 'How To Worship the Great Goddess" guidebook.  It's also an invitation to create religion, to change consciousness, and to change culture.  These are big things.  And in small ways I'm already part of them.  Our little group of pagan friends creates ritual together 8 times a year.  Together, through ritual and socializing we create a little pocket of culture where things are a little different from the mainstream.  From that secure space we walk back into our daily lives, and hopefully bring some aspects of it with us.  Nothing too radical.  But still something very real and special in our lives.  And I suppose that's where change, for a person or a group or a society, begins.

dabbling

I'm rereading a favorite little book, Karen Maezen Miller's Hand Wash Cold.   I read this line yesterday and it's stayed with me since:

As long as you view yourself as a dabbler, you are holding yourself back from the wholeness you seek. (p.55)

She's writing about finding a teacher for your meditation practice and spiritual growth.  But it made me think about a number of aspects of my life, like mothering, writing, understanding Autism, marking what's meaningful with my family, play, and yoga, and art, and a career.  It feels like there's only enough time and attention for dabbling in each of these. 

Where am I holding myself back?  Where can I apply my attention and time for greater wholeness?  And where I can relax and let today's dabbling be enough?  Because striving for more and better isn't always a good answer.  Sometimes the answer is about rest, focusing on what is immediately before me, letting fatigue be my guide to what is most important for my attention, and choosing what to do with the energy I have. 

It's an imperfect formula.  It hasn't rendered a sense of "wholeness."  I want both the challenge of working more intensely in areas that matter to me and the rest of letting some things be good enough for today. 

I think there's a clue back in the quote.   She's talking about more than the words "dabbler" and "wholeness."  The context is about seeking a teacher and cultivating a spiritual practice that has a lot to do with letting be and not striving.  I need wisdom beyond my immediate experience and books, and I need teachers, relationships, (maybe even a community) to guide and accompany me deeper.  The inklings of all this are in my life already but I think that's where I've been holding myself back.  Engaging with the teachers that are in my life today. 

my education as Autism Mom

It's been about a year since Little N received a formal diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder and it's taken me almost that entire year to understand and accept the diagnosis - and start to grasp what it means for Little N's future and for our family.  I compiled a reading list fairly early on but have been slow in actually reading the books.  Slower still to let their contents mull and make connections in my mind.

My current book is Unstrange Minds.  I'm halfway through chapter 4 and so far, these three thoughts are staying with me:

1) Little N has straight-up, 100%, classic Autism.  Not Autism-lite.  Not a wrong diagnosis such that he really is a typical kid after all.  It's Autism.

Here are some excerpts from the text that confirm this for me:

"None of them could consistently use pronouns correctly.  A child might ask for milk by saying, 'Do you want milk?' because that is exactly what he heard his mother say."  p. 48 

That's exactly how Little N communicates his needs.

"They hated changes in routine, in the arrangement of furniture, or even the path taken from one place to another.  Many would eat only a small number of foods, refusing to try new foods or even to accept the same foods prepared in different ways.  There were also sensory problems.  Most of the children were highly sensitive to particular noises, such as running water or the sound of a toilet flushing." p. 49

Again, this is Little N.

"... the core features of autism - a triad of impairments in social interaction, communication, and imagination (with repetitive interests and activities)...." p. 61

Little N, short and sweet.

2) We are so lucky and fortunate to have this diagnosis today rather than any other time in history.  If Little N was growing up 60 years ago he'd be facing a diagnosis of schizophrenia and institutionalization.  As recently as 20 years ago the school system wouldn't have known what to label him or how to help him.  The prevailing assumption was mental retardation.

Today the school system is where Little N is receiving special preparation in a developmental preschool for his future academic study.  He also receives speech and occupational therapy as well as support developing social skills.  Additionally, the school system provides a special program for children with Autism, which Little N attends twice a week in a class with just 3 other children working with 1 teacher and 2 aides.

When we received the diagnosis last fall, I hoped (maybe expected) that there would be someone like a case worker or our pediatrician to hold our hand.  I strongly wanted someone to hand us a map with a clear course and connections to resources and support people.  But that didn't happen.  It's very much a path and resources that you have to locate and identify and meet and participate with all on your own.  I'm overwhelmed at times.

When I read about the history of Autism I am amazed and grateful at how much and how quickly things have changed.  Right now Little N is getting all his instruction and additional support at the public school 5 blocks from our home.  That's amazing and wonderful and such a gift for him and for our family.

3) The book's author, Roy Richard Grinker, waited until his daughter was in middle school before he started writing the book.  I don't want to wait.  I'm striving for a balance of immediately capturing our lived experience with Autism and presenting a well-considered mull that only time will tell (and later retell a little bit differently again).  I want to convey the flux of experiences, new understanding and ideas, the mixed emotions.  I want to share the work and the celebrations along the way.  I want to assemble some meaning, maybe not conclusions but at least perspective, grown from living as an Autism family.

Plus, I'm a text person.  Putting an experience into my own words helps me to acknowledge what is happening and to make sense of it.  Writing with the knowledge that folks are reading adds another layer of accountability for me.   It's an additional push to keep me in motion taking the next steps for Little N and for our family; taking the next steps that deepen and broaden my own understanding of Autism.

As my understanding develops, writing is also a way to share with others, both folks that care about Little N and folks navigating their own experience with Autism, what it can be like and maybe provide some resonance, some company for the journey.  Ultimately, I hope that our story will be positive and resourceful and support others in doing the same.  And loving! - because our little family does have so much love.

commonplacing: yeast & the feast

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast," we heard him say, "that a woman took and mixed with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened."
Judith put her hands to her mouth and actually giggled.
"What's so funny?" I wondered.
"Don't you know, Mary? The rabbis consider yeast unclean. Only women handle it. Who but our Jesus would dare to compare it to the Kingdom of God!"
Many times I witnessed the gap-toothed grins of old women, and the clapping and dancing of younger ones as they recognized themselves and their lives in the stories: the persistent widow demanding justice, the woman throwing a party when she finds the lost coin. They needed no explanation. They understood: the Bridegroom was here in their midst. They were invited to the feast." pp 414-415

First, the obvious things that I like about this passage:
1) Jesus speaks directly to women's lives - rather than overlooking us or lumping us into stories where men are normative & primary.
2) Jesus says and does the things that are vitally different from the conventions of his time & place and through that conveys the heart of his message.
3) Jesus used stories about people's real lives to share that message and to welcome & cultivate a community who got the message.

Now, maybe more subtly, how this passage applies to me.

In the last few weeks, my little family took a pause from our church attendance. We need more time as a family, interacting with each other, doing fun stuff, chatting, chasing & getting chased by Baby N.... When we go to church we feel like we give the best hours of the day (before N's nap) to an event that doesn't give us much room to interact with each other. It felt like a loss. Plus, I tend to come home all riled up.

But in the course of Sunday night's June moon ritual, something came to me. I need to go back to church:
1) Because it's good for me to hear other people's ideas about Christianity. Some of the folks in this congregation have powerful love and commitment to Jesus. They tell stories of their experiences of the presence of Christ in their lives.
2) Because I want to do good work in my community and this church does that all day, every day. They are sharing "the feast" in tangible ways (rent, food, recovery groups, access to medical care...). I will be a lot more effective as part of this community than I will be on my own.
3) It's good for me to get riled up. Maybe not every Sunday, & certainly not to the point where I get bitter & dried up, but enough to point me to something vitally different as illuminated by Jesus & to prompt me in how I'm going to live that.
4) [bonus!] This is a congregation of quirky loving folks that I enjoy. They love my son. They welcomed my family from minute 1. (They shared "the feast" even with us?) Churches like this are rare. People like this are to be held onto.

So, this Sunday, Baby N and I will be heading around the corner to church. Instead of family time, L will get a morning to himself - to play bass or read philosophy or take a long bath. All the good refreshing restorative things that a stay-at-home parent rarely gets to do for himself. And we'll work it out, like all families do. We'll keep moving so that each of us is growing and challenged, nurtured and celebrated. And I hope we'll bring a little bit more into our time together from this kind of time apart.

Cunningham, Elizabeth. The Passion of Mary Magdalen. New York: Monkfish. 2006.

commonplacing: chosen, befriended & blessed

"What does it mean to be chosen by God?"

The question derived from today's Gospel reading - a passage about being chosen by God and now being a friend of Christ, rather than a servant. Pastor J posed it to the congregation and then gave us five minutes to discuss it with our neighbors in the pew. Whoah. Huge! I put my head down - not ready to chat about this. The conversations around me wandered away from the topic.

I have no idea what it means... and I know it means so many things. What does it mean to me? Do I even believe it? (& how does it relate to last week's message about acceptance & pruning by God?)

Walking home I remembered reading some encouraging and challenging ideas about being chosen by God in Henri Nouwen's Life of the Beloved. I want to claim his words as my answer to the question... but really I'm still trying to understand & believe it.

"Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that call us the 'Beloved.' Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence." p. 28

"Becoming the beloved is the great spiritual journey that we have to make." p. 32

"First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to remain realistic enough to reminder yourself of this." p. 49

"Secondly, you have to keep looking for people and places where your truth is spoken and where you are reminded of your deepest identity as the chosen one. Yes, we must dare to opt consciously for our chosenness and not allow our emotion, feelings or passions to seduce us into self-rejection." p. 49-50

"Thirdly, you have to celebrate your chosenness constantly. This means saying 'thank you' to God for having chosen you, and 'thank you' to all who reminded you of your chosenness. Gratitude is the most fruitful way of deepening your consciousness that you are not an 'accident' but a divine choice." p. 50

"When we claim and constantly reclaim the truth of being the chosen ones, we soon discover within ourselves a deep desire to reveal to others their own chosenness. Instead of making us feel that we are better, more precious or valuable than others, our awareness of being chosen opens our eyes to the chosenness of others." p. 52-53

"The characteristic of the blessed ones is that wherever they go, they always speak words of blessing. It is remarkable how easy it is to bless others, to speak good things to and about them, to call forth their beauty and truth, when you yourselves are in touch with your own blessedness. The blessed one always blesses." p. 67

And I think this is the link between last week's message & this week's:

"Becoming the Beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about an doing from hour to hour. ... When our deepest truth is that we are the Beloved and when our greatest joy and peace come from fully claiming that truth, it follows that this has to become visible and tangible in the ways that we eat and drink, talk and love, play and work." pp. 39-40


Nouwen, Henri. Life of the beloved: Spiritual living in a secular world. NY: Crossroads. 1993.

commonplacing: my lenten challenge

"But the idea that Jesus was deliberately handed over and abandoned by his Father to the fate of death is intolerable. When you think about it, what kind of Father is this? A sadist. Even Abraham drew back from killing his own son. This construal of the cross blames the Father for what in fact was done to Jesus by the history of human injustice. It schools people in patterns of thought that regard sadistic behavior as legitimate. When translated into spirituality, it encourages them to worship the executioner." p. 63

I am really struggling with Easter this year. It's not a holiday that you can just skip, like Columbus Day. As the centerpiece of the Christian religion you have to deal with the biblical events and their meaning. But what do you have to work with if you reject the notion that a Father God had his Only Son killed for your sake? That story is immediately grisly. Guilt-inducing. Illogical, at least to contemporary thinking. & maybe not coherent with the rest of the Gospel.

In the last couple of years I've encountered some new-to-me interpretations of scripture. There are other ways to understand atonement and, as in the quote above, the crucifixion. Unfortunately, I haven't found a community of believers that I can study and embody this stuff with. The churches I've visited either maintain the conventional interpretations or issue new age aphorisms. Neither one sustains the depth and vision I'm seeking.

So I'm trying to find my way this season. I'm still attending church services (I love our quirky little community). And then, often prompted by something I heard in a sermon or hymn, I'm still exploring what else it may all mean - in books, in my journal, and in my heart. The discord between what I'm hearing in my faith community and what I'm hearing in my heart is drawing me to continue my exploration. Surely there is something else, something essentially different, that is still true and it calls me to continue.


Johnson, Elizabeth A. Quest for the Living God: Mapping frontiers in the theology of God. New York: Continuum. 2007

commonplacing: rote & ritual

"Still I miss Jewish ways. I miss the rhythms and routines that drew the sacred into the everyday. I miss Sabbaths on which I actually rested. I have even found that I miss the drudgery of keeping kosher. I miss the work these practices effected between me and God." p. vii

"Your faith might come and go, but your practice ought not waver. (Indeed, Judaism suggests that the repeating of practice is the best way to ensure that a doubter's faith will return.)" p. ix

For years I have tried and faltered and wished for "rhythms and routines that drew the sacred into the everyday." I want daily actions and seasonal traditions in order to honor the sacred that I know and experience. But I also want them to hold a place for what I have not experienced and yet hope to know.

I think of these rituals and daily practices like a skeleton or a bowl. They bear witness that there is hot rich marrow to fill these bones, flesh and life to clothe them. There is something, however numinous, that this bowl is waiting to hold.

By tending these containers I invite the Holy to me, into my life.


Winner, Lauren. Mudhouse Sabbath. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press. 2003

commonplacing: lord of the dance

Elizabeth A. Johnson in Quest for the Living God, expanding on the analogy between perichoresis and the cognate word for choreography:

"If God is dancing, why not step out to the contagious rhythms of salsa, merengue, calypso, swing, or reggae or to the intricate a-rhythmic patterns of modern dance? The point is, with the three circling around in a mutual, dynamic movement of love, God is not a static being but a plenitude of self-giving love, a saving mystery that overflows into the world of sin and death to heal, redeem, and liberate. The whole point of this history of God with the world is to bring the world back into the life of God's own communion, back into the divine dance of life." (p. 214)

The word perichoresis first caught my attention while I was reading for my master's thesis. What a funny word! Broken into its parts it's: peri - around + choresis - dancing. I didn't entirely get it. It was something to do with the trinity, the communion of those aspects, and them giving to everything else. What has God "dancing around" got to do with any of that? But it certainly captures the imagination. I mean, imagine the trinity that way - not some dry theological fine point anymore, is it. I noted it in my blog and kept on with my reading.

So it's like running into a friend of a friend at my favorite take-out place to find that word again in another book that is significant to me. Maybe we'll get to know each other a little better this time.

The word was embedded in a chapter devoted to the recall and revitalization of the trinity as an expression and understanding of an essentially different relationship with God made possible through Christ. A trinitarian description of God began as a vivid articulation that in addition to the God whose name is YHWH and goes unspoken, there is also God as we know in the historical life of Jesus and God as we know in the ongoing presence of the Spirit. YHWH drew near to us, nearer than a burning bush or still small voice, by living with us as one of us, extending that solidarity to the point of death. That is a phenomenal gift. It continues with Jesus' resurrection and upon his return to Heaven we perceive the Holy Spirit which remains with us granting insight, supporting & prompting change in the world, offering comfort in the midst of this great work.

Getting back to perichoresis, Johnson leads up to it with this description on the previous page, "The holy mystery of God is not a single monolith with a rigid nature, an undifferentiated whole, but a living fecundity of relational life that overflows to the world."

And now I start to get it. There is a Mystery. We learn to let it be Mystery and simultaneously we try to articulate what we have observed and experienced of it. We say, "it is a Transcendent Other, and an Historical Man, and an Immanent Companion." We say anything about it at all because we want to honor it (along with our less flattering motives). We believe, and the evidence of these three ways of meeting the Mystery fosters that belief, that it wants to know and be known, love and be loved, by us.



Johnson, Elizabeth A. Quest for the Living God: Mapping frontiers in the theology of God. New York: Continuum. 2007

commonplacing: of the waters

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

Genesis 1:2 King James Version

They say that humans are 78% water. Imagine that we're made of the very same water of those primordial days. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of us then and so moves within us now. Providing good company, in darkness and in light.

I don't usually read the book of Genesis but this was read to us on Sunday morning and it's remained with me. You can read a little more about what came to me on Sunday at this posting: ִ עִמָּנוּאֵל

commonplacing: quest for the living church

"The good news treasured by Christian faith proclaims that this ineffable horizon graciously approaches us and bids us approach, enfolding us in an ultimate and radical love." p. 41

"Such loving presence is what theology calls grace." p. 41

"First and last the church is the sacramental presence of the promise of God to the world, a community that despite its sinfulness signals to the whole world that God's self-gift is continuously offered to all." p. 43

I want to believe, experience, and behave as a Christian, in the best sense of the word. Since I was a child I have wrestled with my faith and with Christian identity. I devour books that resonate with my sense of what Christianity is at the core and can be in the world. I hold onto companions who share this quest for a radical faith. I want to be challenged beyond awakening into living, daily and in relationship, this faith. And I am amateur. I need teachers and companions in this journey.

Quest for the Living God is one of those books. It was suggested to me by my friend the Bright Reverend A. In it, I discovered the theologian Karl Rahner, who presented the ideas above in response to the pervasive atheism of the 20th century. Reading this book with A prompted me to find a faith community and I am impressed with our pastor and congregation. Our community convinces me, challenges me, and moves me deeper into a life of faith.


Johnson, Elizabeth A. Quest for the Living God: Mapping frontiers in the theology of God. New York: Continuum. 2007

You can expect more quotes from this book. It really is that good.
The Bright Reverend A isn't actually ordained yet but I am certain that she will be called & supported in it when the time is right. She shines just as bright regardless.

commonplacing: befriending

"Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It's about befriending who we are already."

I read this last night and it caught me. My journal is full of notes-to-self and to-do lists that chart a course away from who I am today in search of some other, better, holier-than-I-am, more successful, more creative, more everything me. But this quote invites me to accept an inconsistent, imperfect, petty, wacky, stressed out self. Love her, as is, today.

I'm approaching meditation in an effort to heal my body. Eve, the nurse practitioner who is coaching me through my postpartum rehabilitation, recommended two books that she thought may teach me how to relax. Was it clear to her that healing my body (I am So Frustrated with my broken body) required another kind of healing within? I'm grateful to her for the suggestion. It was beyond my imagination but now it feels obvious and real.

Thank you.

Chodron, Pema. Comfortable with uncertainty: 108 teachings. Boston: Shambhala. 2002. p. 11.

commonplacing: my love

here's an excerpt from Kathleen Norris' poem "The Wedding in the Courthouse"

I can picture Lucille
chain-smoking: surprised
and pleased
to interrupt routine.
And the Deputy Sheriff,
a young man, blushing,
loaded gun in his holster,
arms hanging loose:
he looked at his shoes.
But it's the words
I remember most. It was as if
I was hearing them
for the first time.
Lucille put out a cigarette
and began: "Dearly beloved,"
and we were!

I have long loved this poem. A conversation today at work brought it to mind - Miss M and I were discussing weddings. Her boyfriend is eager to marry her so she's considering what she'd enjoy and could afford. She'd like a simple courthouse ceremony and then a great party with all of their friends.

I gushed to her about the simple joyful wedding L and I had. A hand-me-down dress. The deck of a ferry. My oldest friend officiating. The applause of strangers. A discreet on-board reception. But what I couldn't communicate at all was our great joy. The joy of "dearly beloved."

"The Wedding in the Courthouse" as found in Sewell, Marilyn. ed. Cries of the Spirit: A Celebration of Women's Spirituality. Boston: Beacon Press. 1991. p.189.

commonplacing: for Brova & his mother

Mary's Song at the Cross

I am Miriam
my name means bitterness
and I will mourn
mourn and not be comforted
for the Lord God has dealt bitterly
with his handmaiden

Once I said yes
be it unto me according to your will
I am Miriam
my name means rebellion
and now I say no
the holy one will not win
what the holy one wills
he shall not have

For I am am the mother
and I say my son shall sleep
sleep in my womb
sleep until he rises
rises with the sun

I am Miriam
my name means bitter rebellion
the angels are round about me
And you shall not have him
terrible one, you shall not
you shall not have
my son.

Brova was his mother's only child, a son, and she was a single mother. She lived for him. She saw him into his early manhood - and he was precious.

Brova worked as an intern at the company where I am an admin. He was bright, funny, and kind. He left to study civil engineering at one of the top programs in the country. All of us who worked with him liked him, laughed with him, and wished him well. We knew success was his.

Brova died last weekend in a swimming accident. It doesn't make sense to anyone who knew him. It doesn't make sense to any mother who loves her son. It certainly doesn't make any sense to me. I resist it, and deny it, and refuse it.

This quote is posted in memory of Brova, in sympathy with his mother, and in defense of my own jealous love for my son.

Mary's Song taken from Elizabeth Cunningham. The Passion of Mary Magdalene. Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Publishing Company. 2006.

commonplacing: ani knows

"Love is all over the place,
there is nothing wrong with your face"

In the same vein as the previous post - this line is taken from "Present/Infant," a song on Ani DiFranco's upcoming album Red Letter Year. The song shares the story of Ani's own struggle with self-image, self-hatred, and the bright challenging mirror her baby holds up to her.

All the love we feel for our babies, all the love we want them to know and have for themselves, they teach us to extend to ourselves.

commonplacing: like a woman's

"I like mine, both of them, and they don't match."

After you have a baby everything changes.

One morning, a few weeks ago, my husband was taking our son to his six month check-up. Still in my pajamas, I dashed out of our apartment to catch up with them and hand off the baby's new insurance card. While jogging across the street, in front of a line of cars stopped for the light, during rush hour traffic, my arms instantly pulled up against my chest in a reflex of protection and, frankly, support. It seems that "the girls" don't have the same resilience that they once did.

I feel like an adolescent wading through puberty. My body is permanently altered, unfamiliar, and uniquely my own. I am learning to love, again, the skin I'm in.


quote from Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, first edition paperback, page not known.