Looking for the Prince of Peace

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6

And I can't think of that verse without hearing this chorus from Handel's Messiah in my head.

This week one of my friends was missing from the Christmas Eve choir rehearsal because he believes in the Prince of Peace. Jim is a veteran and he was in Washington, D. C. with Veterans for Peace. On Thursday we got an email from our pastor that Jim had been arrested in front of the White House for civil disobedience. He was among 131 people arrested, including Daniel Ellsburg, who released the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.

When I did a Google search on: Veterans for Peace arrest December 16, 2010, I got a number of internet blog entries, led by postings on the Veterans for Peace website, but there were no immediate hits from any major newspaper. Peace protests and 131 arrests are not news? When I searched on the Washington Post website, there was no mention of the arrests. Nor was there anything in the New York Times, except for this individual comment following an editorial about President Obama's remarks about Afghanistan. In the Boston area, there was only this article in the Merrimack Valley newspaper, but nothing in the Boston Globe.

On Veterans Day this year I started reading Shelly Rambo's book, Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining. Rambo speaks of three aspects of the "lens of trauma," "alterations in time, body and word" (p. 18-21). Trauma takes a person to an in between space, a liminal place, out of time, where at any time the person may re-experience the traumatic event—the past does not stay in the past. Trauma becomes part of body memory, bypassing conscious control by the brain over memories, so at any time body memory can be evoked by a sound, a smell, or a sight. In that way, trauma also bypasses human ability to put words to the event, because the suffering is imbedded directly in the body, and this isolates the sufferers because they can't access language to interpret their experiences. Rambo talks about the usefulness of theological language about and acts of witness as one way we can begin to be pastors and healers to those suffering from trauma. I have to confess that her book is one that I have needed to digest in small doses, but I was glad that I had read what I had about trauma when we heard from some of the veterans we were honoring after church the Sunday after Veterans Day.

The most memorable witness for me that day was the slender, even slight, young woman who was a Marine heavy diesel mechanic who, when she found out that she as a gung-ho Marine, couldn't get to Iraq using her mechanic's skills, volunteered for "mortuary affairs." It is clear that she really didn't know what she was volunteering for, and that perhaps there was no way in a two week training that she could have been prepared for what she would face. She shared a powerful witness to her time there: opening the body bags where every person was dressed like you, had the same kind of boots, dog tags, watch and wallet (because that's what the PX sold), and wondering which person you might find, and in what condition you might find this person's "remains." She now is studying to be a counselor, because she knows that veterans will need to talk to someone who understands. She is someone who speaks for peace, because she knows the cost of war.

For unto us a child is born…

I too have a yearning for peace. I want to stop grinding my teeth and tightening my muscles because I am stressed about budget cuts and increasing bureaucratic regulations at work that negatively impact thousands of elders, who are poor, sick, isolated and lonely people, because I am worried about friends and loved ones with chronic disease and pain, and because I have been confronted with the visible signs of incivility toward one another in this season in too many ways.

So today, instead, I want to celebrate and bear witness to the generosity of my colleagues who gave a thousand dollars so that we could buy grocery store gift cards for elders who don't have enough food to eat, and to understand that caring for people is an act of peace. I want to make my year-end donations to organizations that make a difference in my life and in the lives of the hungry in body and spirit, and in that act of giving know that our generosity and giving is a movement toward peace and healing and community. I want to applaud my friend Jim who has the courage to stand for peace and be arrested for his witness, and to shout out that ending war is a first step toward peace. Professor Valerie Dixon started each class session of "The Ethics of Peacemaking" with a time of meditation and prayer because she believed that we have to have peace inside, to know peace ourselves, in order to work for peace. We must know peace in order to do the work of the Prince of Peace.

My prayer today is that we each take the time to know or find a moment of peace within ourselves. Then may we share that peace with others and may we each be a witness for peace and healing, the holy wholeness that is shalom, in the world.

Lectio Divina with Color Doodles

I have been beginning to prepare for a study about the incarnated Christian, and bought some new books this past week, including Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth. Last night I spent some time in contemplative doodling. Here are some samples:

I don't know whether these were prayers as as we usually think of prayer, but they do seem to be the visual version of "sighs and groans too deep for words." The falling leaf, the acorn, the red tornado and each of the others must have some meaning in or description of my life and thoughts and yearnings.

My cycle of Psalms reading this morning brought me to Psalm 119:17-24. The verse that caught my attention was "Open my eyes to the beauty of your law." (Using The Psalter: A faithful and inclusive rendering published by Liturgical Training Publications.)

So I thought that I might try to doodle/pray in color through a meditation on this verse.

The first thing that came to mind was eyes, so I tried to draw a pair of eyes. Tried is the operative verb. Eyes are hard to draw. So I reminded myself that this was doodling and started over with a fresh piece of paper. Doodling is much easier—no pressure. MacBeth comments on the need to let go of the "shoulds" in doing this, and enter into a spirit of playfulness and delight. I decided that the color of open eyes would be my focus. My eyes are a mutable green and blue, so those were the colors I pulled out. Lectio divina calls for an iterative reading and so after each reading of the verse I doodled again.

On second reading I thought that perhaps beauty could be captured in color and I drew a rainbow prism of color.

Then I wondered about what law: law of gravity, law of nature? Perhaps God's law is God's covenant of steadfast love? It's not man's law.

My final meditation was on open, rather than closed. Here is the end result:

Yes--this is a spiritual practice! My spirit has been engaged during both doodling sessions in contemplation and reflection about God, nature, and meaning. It is also quite soothing, and even delightful to be pulling out a colored pen and letting my hand lead my brain.

Delight is something to cherish, and MacBeth emphasizes that as she quotes the Psalmist:

I delight to do Your will, O my God, And Your law is within my heart." Psalm 40:8

So, grab some crayons or colored pens or pencils, and a piece of paper and pray in color today. Take delight in your hands and into your heart.

Even though the day be laden

When I realized that I hadn't posted here since March 24, I couldn't quite figure out why, so I went back through those dates in my emails and on my calendar.

Since March 24,
I've celebrated Passover, Maundy Thursday, Easter—with extra choir rehearsals;
I've had my basement flood for the second time this spring, and cleaned it up;
I've led worship several times, preached and designed a service once;
along with colleagues, over the past two months, I wrote, edited and compiled a 650 page response to a state request for proposal on the agency's largest contract—a process that has to have been the most tedious thing I have ever done in my work life;
then I played catch up at work while interviewing to hire for a new position;
my mother has fallen twice and I've worried a lot;
my daughter has had some difficult things that fortunately she talks about with me, but almost always late at night;
we had a boil water order in our area for one weekend and part of the week because the metropolitan water supply line broke;
I've tried to get my yard into shape again after the winter.
That's a sampling…

In other words, I've been living a rather over-full life. I did make time for some intentional contemplation and centering. With all of this, though, I didn't have the energy to take my contemplations and reflections and turn them back around again into writing. That's okay. Sometimes, things need to simmer.

A thank you is in order to my friend, John B., for his recent Facebook posts for their inspiration, then:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, God's mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:21-23

What a wonderful reminder today, when it is a lovely fresh and new spring morning.

John's second contribution was this poem that he said summarized his life just now (he's finishing seminary and has been organizing his papers and books).

At Fifty-Seven

By Mark Nepo on 05-14-2010

I feel like I stumbled
down a hill of years, only
to land in a pile of my books.

Along the way, I cracked
like a Russian doll; finding
something smaller and more
essential inside every version
I've known as me.

And now, when all I know
bursts into flame each time
I try to give it away, I'm asked
what matters.

There's something perfect
in how we're worn; like sculptures
left for Spirit and wind to finish, the
film taken from our eye just as
our heart is exposed, one
crumbling into the other.

John mentioned that you can subscribe to these postings here, so I did. Today as I was contemplating whether I should mop the kitchen floor, vacuum the rugs, mow the lawn, or do something else entirely (like write), I got a new posting, entitled My Messy House by Kathleen Norris, and this line struck me.

If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell?

God always dwells with us, and yet we need to make space and time to remember that. We need to clear out the clutter in our space, our lives, and our calendars to have room for what is truly important.

One thing I have held onto through all of the physical and mental labor of the last seven weeks is the spiritual and emotional assurance that God is always with us. My theme song during this time came from the Northumbria Community whom I first "met" via the book Celtic Daily Prayer. I had the book, but discovered their prayers are online, as is some of their music, and I ordered the music and recordings for Celtic Daily Prayer and Waymarks as an Easter present to myself. Their words and music have been the backbone of my contemplative practices these past weeks.

Even though the day be laden is from their Waymarks CD (also available as an mp3 download).

Even though the day be laden

and my task dreary

and my strength small,

a song keeps singing in my heart,

for I know that I am thine,

I am part of thee,

thou art kin to me,

and all my times,

all my times are in thy hands.

Sing that slowly and then work it up to jig tempo. May your tasks be lightened by song and by a reminder of God's ever present grace and love in your life today.

What matters?

O God, my God, I pray that these things never end...

I've had this song as a part of my listening collection for several years now, and just found the sheet music in the UUA hymnal supplement: Singing the Journey. It's written in Hebrew and in English, but here's the English text for the really haunting tune by David Zehavi: Eili, Eili

O God, my God, I pray that these things never end:
The sand and the sea,
The rush of the waters,
The crèche of the heavens,
The prayer of the heart.
~Hannah Senesh, 1921-1944

Hannah Senesh was a young Jewish woman, a writer who wanted to make a difference in the world, and who volunteered as a paratrooper and was killed after being captured while on a rescue mission to Hungary during World War II.

There are stars whose radiance is visible on earth
though they have long been extinct.
There are people whose brilliance continues to light
the world even though they are not longer among the living.
These lights are particularly bright
when the night is dark.
They light the way for human kind.
~Hannah Senesh

A more recent addition to my collection is the song by country/pop group Lady Antebellum: I Was Here.

You will notice me
I'll be leavin' my mark, like initials carved in an old oak tree,
you wait and see.
maybe I'll write like Twain wrote,
maybe I'll paint like Van Gogh,
cure the common cold.
I don't know but I'm ready to start 'cause I know in my heart

I wanna do something that matters,
say something different,
something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better, with the time I've been given
and I wanna try to touch a few hearts in this life
and leave nothing less than something that says, I was here

I will prove you wrong
if you think I'm all talk, you're in for a shock
'cause this dream's too strong, and before too long
maybe I'll compose symphonies
maybe I'll fight for world peace
'cause I know it's my destiny to leave more than a trace of myself in this
place

I wanna do something that matters
say something different
something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better, with the time I've been given
and I wanna try to touch a few hearts in this life
and leave nothing less than something that says, I was here

And I know that I, I will do more than just pass through this life
I'll leave nothing less than something that says I was here,
I was here,
I was here,
I was here

Wanna do something that matters
something that says I was here
wanna do something that matters
something that says, I was here,
I was here

Most of us are probably more like the person who wants to do something that matters, who fears that others will scoff because she is perhaps is all talk, with a dream that we don't know how to make come true. Hannah Senesh was right: we need to work and pray for the things that are important, those things we want to last, and in doing that perhaps we will become one of those people who do make a difference and light the way for others. That seems like a lot to ask some days.

Yet Emily Dickinson put it another way:

If I can stop one Heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one Life the Aching
Or cool one Pain

Or help one fainting Robin
Unto his Nest again
I shall not live in Vain.
(from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

So what if I am not a star that lights the way for all of human kind? We don't have to be heroes, write like Mark Twain, paint like Van Gogh, or cure the common cold to matter: just cool one pain, help one robin, ease one life. Surely, we can do that? It's a helpful perspective for me when I wonder if I am making a difference, if I'm doing the ministry I "should" be doing.

In doing something that matters: I gave up "shoulds" for Lent, yet in this last week I cooled one pain (brought out the icepack for my daughter's bruised shin), helped at least one robin (found a bag of bird seed in the basement to go out into the feeder), and eased one life (had a phone conversation about living in a relationship with chronic illness with someone who doesn't have nearby supports). It's perhaps not the ministry I could be doing or hoped I'd be doing now, but it is the ministry I am doing, and that's what matters.

Let us do what really matters. May the prayer of my heart and yours never end.

Bells for Peace and a Silent Center

On the first Sunday of Advent this year, my church choir had the pleasure and privilege of being/singing the prelude for one performance of the Huntington Theater's production of A Civil War Christmas, and then we got to stay for the show.

The show, which closed this weekend, featured music of the period, including a musical setting of the poem by Cambridge, MA poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that he wrote in reaction to the Civil War: Christmas Bells. Nowadays hymnals leave out the verses about the cannons of the Civil War, and I had not heard the whole of the poem in context, so I looked up a collection of Longfellow's poems. The irony of this poem about bells ringing the songs of peace on earth was pointed out in the play, because in the South during the Civil War bells no longer rang out in carols of peace from churches and town halls because the bells had been melted down to become cannon balls.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good will to men

Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good will to men

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head
“There is no peace on earth,” I said,
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men!

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men!

While I had heard the tune that they used, it was less familiar to me and somehow more haunting than the one I first learned, and it has stayed with me these past few weeks. I found versions by Harry Belafonte and Sarah MacLachlan that I liked, although neither of these captured quite the pure despair and simplicity and hope, that I had heard in the play.

Unlike Longfellow, the bells that I've been hearing lately have mostly been ringers in front of a Salvation Army kettle, not so loud and deep, but jangling, not singing of peace, but of need.

So, peace on earth has been in my thoughts in recent weeks and the ironies continue. The President of the United States announced that he was escalating the war in Afghanistan on December 1—I listened to the last of his speech on my way home from a service that I participated in for World AIDS Day. Hm, what if we took the money we're using for war and devoted it to medicine for the millions dying of AIDS? Did you know that AIDS is one of the leading causes of death for women worldwide? (Interesting side note: both Belafonte and McLachlan use some of their artistic work toward the health of women and children in Africa, including fighting against AIDS.)

Then the irony was heightened as President Obama went to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace prize. He noted in his speech, "But perhaps the most profound issue surrounding my receipt of this prize is the fact that I am the Commander-in-Chief of a nation in the midst of two wars." You think?

I didn't hear him live and I had to search hard to find the text of his speech to read it because on Thursday I was busy helping a loved one check into the hospital because she suffers from a disease that may in fact be a perfect example of the mockery of peace on earth. Crohn's is an autoimmune disease, which means the immune system goes haywire and attacks the body or doesn't protect the body correctly when something else attacks the body, or sometimes both, at once. The increase in such diseases is attributed partially to the increasing amount of environmental toxins we create and spread and ingest, and her flare-ups, though this was a more extreme one, are almost always related to periods of high stress.

She is Jewish and we virtually lit the first candles of Hanukkah while she has been in the hospital (virtually meaning no flame—too many people on oxygen). So then my thinking of peace took a personal and a Jewish turn. The Hebrew word, shalom, while usually translated as peace in English, really has a broader meaning, more like holy wholeness. Hospitals, in contrast, really are about sickness, not about health or wholeness. Hospitals are about care, often and maybe usually intrusively and noisily provided, not about rest or quiet. Saturday, after my third day of just visiting her in the hospital, I was so jangled I came home absent my own quiet center, my own piece of peace on earth.

And in despair, I bowed my head: 'There is no peace on earth,' I said.

On Sunday morning as we began choir rehearsal our choir director began with a prayer as he always does, but today after he said, "let us pray," he paused. He held that pause until it became pure silence, and in that moment before spoken prayer, not measurable in time by clocks, but only by the sense of the Spirit moving among us. As I sat surrounded by friends and people of faith and preparing to sing and to worship, I was both surrounded by and filled with peace.

God is not dead, nor does God sleep.

May we each find our way, through prayer, through music or poetry, or through your own path, into peace and wholeness and centeredness, especially in this season where the bells are not always singing the songs of peace on earth.

A Couch, a Sofa, or a Daven-port?

I sing the sofa! It had stood for years,
An invitation to benign repose,
A foe to all the fretful brood of fears,
Bidding the weary eye-lid sink and close.
Massive and deep and broad it was and bland—
In short the noblest sofa in the land. …

See the rest of The Last Straw by R. C. Lehmann

Like the subject of this poem, my old sofa had stood for years. So the big news at my house this week is that, after 28 years, I got a new couch. I am marveling at the possibilities that a new couch might bring, prompted by a little bit of internet searching:
Poetry on the Couch: Depressed? Try beating the blues by writing a poem.
Could a new couch lead to poetic flights, freedom from stress?

But then I began to wonder whether it's a couch or a sofa, or maybe even a davenport. And why do we have all of these different words?

Couch comes from Middle English, according to The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories, "as a noun denoting something to sleep on, and as a verb in the sense 'lay something down.' Couch is from Old French couche (noun), coucher (verb), from Latin collocare, 'place together.'" Fans of seventies pop music will remember what may have been your first naughty French language lesson, "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?" When I heard that song when I was young, I certainly did not realize that the couch in our living room and coucher were related. I spare all of our blushes.

Sofa, according to my Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary, comes from the Arabic, suffah, meaning long bench. It is a long upholstered seat usually with arms and a back and often convertible into a bed. That is why we can buy sofabeds, but not couchbeds, I guess.

My grandparents referred to this same object of furniture as a davenport, although few people call it that these days. The Free Dictionary online told me that Davenport might refer to "A city of eastern Iowa on the Mississippi River opposite Moline and Rock Island, Illinois. It grew rapidly after the first railroad bridge across the Mississippi was completed in 1856. Population: 99,500,"
or to Davenport, John 1597-1670: English Puritan who fled to America in 1637 and helped found a colony at New Haven, Connecticut.
Or it could be either
1. A large sofa, often convertible into a bed.
2. A small desk. [From obsolete davenport, a small writing desk, probably from the name of the manufacturer.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved, clarified that davenport is a noun and 1. Chiefly British, a writing desk with drawers at the side but
2. in Australia, US & Canada a large sofa [sense 1 supposedly after Captain Davenport, who commissioned the first ones]

and the Collins Essential English Dictionary 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2004, 2006 third definition for davenport is a large sofa usually convertible into a bed, and gives synonyms:
chesterfield - an overstuffed davenport with upright armrests
sofa bed, convertible - a sofa that can be converted into a bed

But then I wondered if daven-port might be a useful name at times. Daven (with an "ah" sound for the first syllable rather than the flat "eh") comes from the Yiddish meaning to recite the Jewish liturgy of prayers. A port is a safe harbor. So then would a daven-port be a safe place to say one's prayers?

One of the Jewish liturgies of prayer comes with the ceremony for ending the Sabbath called Havdallah, meaning distinction. It marks the return to the week. While this would occur on Saturday evening for Jews, I think that this prayer from The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness by Rabbi Rami Shapiro (p.47-48) is a wonderful prayer as we begin any new week, and perhaps I can infuse and support these prayers on my new daven-port or couch, where I lay down my burdens, and rise up refreshed.

Blessed is the Source of Bliss who offers me a path to bliss. May this be a week for setting aside expectations and surrendering to the simple truth of what is, that I may find my way to what may be.

Blessed is the Source of Wisdom who offers me a path to wisdom. May this be a week for heeding the intuitive voice that whispers within. May I be open to what comes my way, trusting in Life and the One who manifests it.

Blessed is the Source of Understanding who offers me a path to understanding. May this be a week for cooling my desires and seeing things more objectively. May I seek first to understand and only then to be understood.

Blessed is the Source of Restraint who offers me a path to restraint. May this be a week for holding back and making room. May I uplift others and find in their success a bit of my own.

Blessed is the Source of Grace who offers me a path to grace. May this be a week for reaching out to help and reaching out to be helped, for offering love and opening to it when it is offered.

Blessed is the Source of Balance who offers me a path to balance. May this be a week of self-correction, listening to my needs and fulfilling them.

Blessed is the Source of Receptivity who offers me a path to receptivity. May this be a week for patience. May I resist the desire to change what is that I might first come to know what is.

Blessed is the Source of Victory who offers me a path to victory. May this be a week for overcoming obstacles, remembering that some walls need not be toppled, only walked around.

Blessed is the Source of Transformation who offers me a path to transformation. May this be a week for doing things differently. May I seek out new ways of encouraging mutual fulfillment, joy, purpose, and growth.

Blessed is the Source of Grounding who offers me a path to grounding. May this be a week for slowing down and settling in. May I attend to what needs doing and do it with fullness of body, mind, heart, and soul.

May we all be so blessed this week.

Resonating with other

Preaching this morning using the text on the anointing of David by Samuel from 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13, I said, in part:

We are all David.

How many of you have ever said or done anything you've regretted?
How many of you have ever done anything you weren't very proud that you'd done?
How many of you have ever had someone do something amazing for you completely unexpectedly?
How many of you are loved by God?

We are all David. …

Up until the point where the oil gets poured on your head, where you are chosen, singled out, marked as other, you really don't have to do much. Once you are chosen, once you are singled out as different, then, then you start having to figure out what this means for you. Now people are paying attention, now you have to do something with what God has given you. …

So the second lesson is that, like David, we are all being called out to be other. …

What is your reason or excuse to come out and share with someone outside of these walls what this faith community means to you, or what our prayer time means to you, or what God is doing in your life or how you hear a story from the Bible reflected in your own everyday life? When you do the work of social justice that so many of you are called to do, do you tell people about the faith that motivates you to do so, and if not, why not? It's one thing to be called to be different, to be other; it's quite another to figure out how you really need to live that out and speak out about our difference. When we are called out, how do we live faithfully as other, as different? …

God is calling us out. We are all called to be ourselves as people of faith, both in and not in the world, to be contemplative and activists, to be do-ers and be-ings. We need to come out to live on the thresholds, in the boundaries.

But how?

For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there," and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. The One who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always confident—even if one of us is not in the moment, like last week when I asked for your prayers, we as a community are a container for faith—we are always confident, even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord—for we walk by faith, not by sight.

Have faith to be other. Like God called David, God is yet calling us. Come running in from the fields, and see what God has in store for you. It is through that faith in showing up and coming out that we will find God, and be about doing God's work, here, on the boundaries, on the thresholds. The love of God will meet us there.

What struck me then in the time of community prayers is how much people variously resonated with otherness. One person asked for prayers for faith to be other while she begins to do ground breaking research—no one has done preliminary research in what she is trying to do. One person asked for prayers as he travels with a group of formerly homeless veterans who've formed a rock band—talk about knowing about otherness, he said. I am reminded that we all have fears and feelings of being other and thus outcast, and I was trying to reframe otherness as a gift that we each bring to the world in/as our faith journey.

The chorus of a song I've just been listening to by the Talley Trio, Orphans of God, has this key phrase: "There are no strangers, there are no outcasts, there are no orphans of God." What does it take for us to know that? And to know that being other, not being the same, is why God created us in our glorious diversity, and that being different is not to be feared?

In my meeting with the committee on ministerial preparation, which, give thanks and praise, has affirmed me in my call to ministry and so I move onto the next step, I said in response to the question, "What is my learning edge?" that I was reminded by my recent CPE experience of the blessing it is when we learn ways to get people to see us outside of the boxes that they put us in and when we remember to see other people outside of the boxes that we have put them in, and that is what we most need to do. If it were a bumper sticker, would it be "Question assumptions," rather than the 1970's "question authority?"

Rejoice today in your otherness, for it brings you close to the holy mystery and Otherness that is God. That perhaps is what loving the neighbor as ourselves really does. Then, I was reminded of this poem about neighbors and prayer and finding ourselves going places we don't expect to go.

(from Claiming the Spirit Within, edited by Marilyn Sewell):
Answered Prayers by Kathleen Norris

I came to your door
with soup and bread.
I didn't know you
but you were a neighbor
in pain: and a little soup and bread,
I reasoned, never hurt anyone.

I shouldn't reason.
I appeared the day
your divorce was final:
a woman, flushed with cooking
and talk, and you watched,
fascinated,
coiled like a spring.

You seemed so brave and lonely
I wanted to comfort you like a child
I couldn't, of course.
You wanted to ask me too far in.

It was then I knew
it had to be like prayer.
We can't ask
for what we know we want:
we have to ask to be led
someplace we never dreamed of going,
a place we don't want to be.

We'll find ourselves there
one morning,
opened like leaves,
and it will be all right.

Lament on Maundy Thursday

Last night at Easter choir rehearsal, our choir director shared a tragic story about friends of his—the wife is dying of cancer, the husband lost his job because his company wanted 80 hour weeks from him, and their nine-year old son doesn't want to talk about how mommy is going to be getting a lot sicker. They ask for prayers.

After rehearsal I stopped to talk with a fellow choir member. His wife is taking a job in another city after two years of a local job search because she's a woman of integrity and is tired of being the only person at her workplace who understands that you have to say no before you start down the slippery slope. Her husband is taking an "early" retirement package and he and their girls will stay here until school is out, and then move. They have been and will continue to be in my prayers. I'll miss them.

As I drove home last night, and again tonight as I was driving home from a particularly thought provoking Seder (we used the Freedom Seder by Rabbi Arthur Waskow), the setting of Psalm 130 by Martin Luther, translated by Catherine Winkworth, with a blues arrangement by my friend Arthur Hock, came to my mind (sorry, not published or recorded for public use). On this night in the Christian tradition, where Jesus supped with friends and then was betrayed, and as we pray for friends in these kind of tough situations, surely this is one of the Psalms of Lament that we can and must sing to the blues.

Out of the depths I cry to Thee;
Lord, hear me, I implore Thee!
Bend down Thy gracious ear to me;
I lay my sins before Thee.
If Thou rememberest each misdeed,
If each should have its rightful meed,
Who may abide Thy presence?

In the face of loss and grief, I feel called to witness, to hold the pain for a bit, to make space for lament. Tonight we sit in the garden, falling asleep, while someone cries, out of the depths of pain. God hears, God knows. Amen.

Historical Perspective

In 1977, I graduated magna cum laude from a prestigious New England women's college convinced of my ability to be a leader. I had been a student leader of a number of organizations on campus, in addition to working and doing well academically. That fall I enrolled at an equally prestigious graduate school of business in the Midwest to pursue a master's degree to give me the credentials and education toward a career in which I saw myself as a leader. (Playing in the background as I write—Ray Charles and Willie Nelson singing It was a Good Year from Genius Loves Company, "When I was 21, it was a very good year…) My business school entering class had 25% women, who were bright, articulate and energetic.

One of the first experiences I had, literally as I was moving into the townhouse where I would rent a room for the two years of graduate school from a divorced Jewish woman who was a legal secretary, was an encounter with two young evangelists who were canvassing the neighborhood. Imagine their surprise when they asked if I was saved, and I said yes. What followed was an invitation to their house church/bible study group, and my disclosure that I was enrolled in an MBA program. Somehow out of that came some discussion about women's roles in church, where we had some disagreement. The next week they came by and left a pamphlet arguing their case: women should submit, keep quiet in church, etc., authored by some man I had never heard of with a copyright in 1929. That was probably the final confirmation I needed at the time that church had no room for a woman who was and wanted to be a leader. I did not regularly or even occasionally attend church for another fifteen years.

Also in 1977, the Ministers Council of the American Baptist Churches USA commissioned sociologist Edward C. Lehman to study the receptivity of congregations and denominational and lay leaders to women in ministry, looking at the barriers both individual, cultural, denominational, and organizational to women in ministry and factors for placement of women as pastors. The study surveyed and/or interviewed all of the ABC women seminary graduates for 1977 (31 in total) and all of the ABC women seminary graduates from 1972-76 (70 in total). The study included a sampling of male seminary graduates in similar numbers, all of the 117 executive and area ministers, 500 laity, 100 pulpit committee representatives and 2160 members of American Baptist Women. [Project SWIM: A Study of Women in Ministry by Edward C. Lehman, Jr. and the Task Force on Women in Ministry of the Ministers Council, American Baptist Churches, 1979]

Of course, my immediate reaction to this study was to wonder if things have changed at all in the past thirty years. Key points:
• There were few fence sitters—people either were receptive to the idea of woman in ministry or they are not. This was across denominational leaders and laity, although proportions varied within the groups surveyed. (p. 30)
• Higher education and income were the highest demographic factors that would correlate with receptivity to a woman pastor, not gender, age or occupation. (p. 41)
• The East was more receptive than the Midwest, which was more receptive than the West (not a significant sample size in the south where American, formerly Northern, Baptist churches have little presence). (p. 42)
• Church members who emphasized the importance of the "conversion" function of the church were least receptive to women in ministry, while church members who emphasized "social reform" functions were most receptive. (p. 45)
• Similarly, those who advocate Biblical literalism were much less receptive to women in ministry than those who interpret Biblical literature in more complicated ways. (p. 45)
• Respondents who were not receptive were least likely to think that women should perform "church-specific" roles, roles that symbolize church: senior pastor, deacon, leading worship, preach, conduct funerals and weddings, or administer baptism or communion, while they had less issue with women who took on the elements of a pastor's job that were more traditionally female and not as symbolic of church: religious education, youth, teaching. (p. 36)
• Churches with declining membership were more receptive to women in ministry than churches that were holding their own or growing. (p. 40)
• Cultural stereotypes around women in professions carry over to women in ministry. Perceiving women as incapable of providing strong leadership to make churches flourish was strongly and consistently associated with lack of receptivity to women in ministry. (p. 50)

I'd be happy to hear other's perceptions around this list, but I don't think these elements have changed as the factors around receptivity of women in ministry—the proportions of people becoming receptive may have shifted somewhat as cultural acceptance of women's equal rights has gained ground, but these are the dividing factors still.

Those are individual and cultural issues. There are also social and cultural organizational issues about church and American Baptist churches that also contribute to receptivity.
• American Baptists prize local church autonomy, so denominational national leaders and state executive/area ministers have much less influence when making suggestions for change than local leaders. (p. 54)
• People who were receptive to women in ministry perceived that their local leaders were as well, and opposition to that was just being caught up in tradition or being "old and set in their ways." (p. 59)
• People who were not receptive perceived that their local leaders were not receptive too, and their opposition was based on theological reasons or that "women were not qualified." (p. 59)
• Churches are voluntary organizations where people are free to leave, and take their support with them. This makes churches less willing to risk controversy because it will damage the stability of the organization. Women in ministry were perceived as controversial at the time of this study. (p. 60) Is that still the case?

The study also included some interesting information about the factors that influenced success for women seminarians in placement. I'll have to come back to those, because one of the key success factors is participation in the American Baptist Placement System and I have to go and work on that profile document now. :-)

We are creations of the times in which we live, as well as being creators of the times in which we live. My own recollections of 1977 confirm what this study, now an historical document, reveals. How has that changed?

My prayer for this week, as I begin to write an essay for the placement profile that describes who I am as one called to ministry, is for clarity and for freedom from thinking only inside the box, whether it's a box that others put me into, a box that I create for my own safety and comfort, or the boxes that I use for others without recognizing their complexities too.

Is this not the fast?

Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God.

“Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?” Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high. Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the Lord?

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.
Isaiah 58:2-12

A portion of this scripture was read at the baccalaureate service at Andover Newton Theological School this past weekend, and a smaller portion also appears on the ordination announcement that I just received from a Unitarian Universalist friend. Such synchronicity I believe is God's way of calling my attention to something. But what?

I happen to have been "sort of" fasting the past 36 hours—drinking only fluids in preparation for a colonoscopy appointment. For those of you who have done this, you know that the liquid diet follows several days of giving up seeds, nuts, fruits, raw vegetables, peas, beans, corn … foods that form the core of my usual high fiber diet. A day of only clear liquids also precedes taking some vile concoction designed to clean out your colon. Fasting is not a part of my low-church Protestant heritage or early farm upbringing. Celebrating the abundance of the harvest and of God's love and extending hospitality to others to share in that abundance forms one of the bases of my own theology. Thus, I had considered that this modified fasting would be just a rather curious and unpleasant medical preparatory procedure until being confronted by the prophet Isaiah. "Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself?" Certainly, colonoscopy prep is humbling, giving up control over food and over bodily elimination processes.

But when I do this kind of fast, however unwilling, I am claiming my privilege of being able to have preventative medicine, food, and water. I am particularly conscious of this in the wake of the cyclone in Myanmar and the earthquake in China. In those countries there are people who are fasting, without food and potable water, not by choice, not out of privilege, not with access to excellent medical care, with food waiting in the refrigerator and cupboard, and with water on tap and all sorts of beverages available. Particularly in Myanmar, they are fasting because they have been struck by disaster and that has been compounded by the kind of self-serving interests and oppression that Isaiah condemns.

What Isaiah is calling for is not really about fasting or any other show of piety, but rather the prophet calls us to look around at where we are, to understand the gifts we have, and to do something about the brokenness in the world. Perhaps we must break things to make things whole: breaking yokes of bondage may help repair and restore the buildings and streets in Myanmar. We are called to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and clothe the naked. We are even to repair relationships with our kin.

I wrote a check for relief funds to go to Myanmar because my church and denomination both have long standing ties there. We had a visiting professor from the Myanmar Institute of Theology who came to my church and to school this week and I was able to ask him personally how his family was. The Institute's buildings and books were destroyed in the cyclone. There will be much work to be done. What else can we do to repair the breaches in those walls? But … we all have heard some variation of this before. How do we stretch ourselves beyond writing a check?

Is that all of the fast that I choose? There may be other things that will occur to me, but probably not that I can do before going to the doctor's for this exam. Short of travel to Asia immediately, however, there is one other thing that Isaiah reminds us to do: to pray: "you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am." Pray for the people of Myanmar and of China, for the fast that they did not chose, that they will get the help that is trying to get to them, that the money we can give can turn into food, shelter and clothes that the people can use. They have been and will be daily in my prayers.

So, I commend Isaiah 58 to you the next time you have a colonoscopy, and a fast that you don't really choose. It offers an opportunity to refresh one's own compassion for those in need, and reminds us to do something that is the kind of spiritual practice that really matters. Blessings on your fasting, and blessings on your knowledge of God's abundant love that we are called to share.

Postures of Prayer

For those of you who don't know me in prayer, I'm fairly restrained in my physical demeanor. In public prayer, it's probably hands at my side, or maybe on the pulpit. In private, prior to the last several months, prayer at home sometimes happened at the table as I read a table blessing, in bed at night with the lights out, or on the run. I would not have said that any particular posture was conducive to reminding me to pray.

At the end of my field education experience I got a gift of a set of small ceramic praying hands from a woman who was the sole attendee at my Thursday night experiment in Song and Prayer. We had some wonderful prayer time together. Now I'm not much of a brick-a-brack person, and hope not to inherit my mother's set of highly glossy glazed bigger than life size set of praying hands, and these white ceramic hands are nothing like Irene's beautiful chocolate colored hands, but I put the hands up on the corner of the mantle.

I've started a regular set of morning stretches, mostly to deal with the plantar fasciitis and leg cramps that are exacerbated from sleeping in the air conditioning. And it was coincidental that when I got to the one where I take my left foot in my right hand and stretch it up while using my left hand to balance, that I ended up using the end of the mantle with the praying hands and the mantle clock. For all of the other stretches I count the seconds that I'm stretching, but for that one since I'm standing and looking at the clock, I don't need to. Since I'm also looking at the praying hands, I was reminded one morning to pray for Irene. This was occasional for a number of days, and then I realized that this was a wonderful time for prayer.

So now when I say to someone you are daily in my prayers, it means that while I'm standing on one leg, I lift her or him up in prayers on my list for the 20 seconds of each leg. You can pray for a lot of people in 40 seconds, standing on one leg. I am stretching more than my legs; I'm part of stretching the opening of the world for God's presence to be with us. I commend this posture of prayer to you--at least in the privacy of your own home. It is apt to work for flexibility and balance and to stretch with compassion while praying--a good practice for the rest of the day.