12-18/60

Eight days to go . . .

The basics: These were the girls' boarding school years.  Grades 7-9 with the Ursuline nuns in Ohio and grades 10-12 at Northfield, one of the schools founded by evangelist D.L. Moody in Massachusetts.  No stereotyping allowed! Those were the places in which I gained a grounding in religion that was open-minded, progressive, and scholarly.  The Catholics were just blossoming forth from Vatican II and the Protestants were heavily influenced by Tillich and the social justice movement.  Once I got to Northfield, I seldom went home anymore; I spent my spring breaks in Florida with my grandparents and my summers doing a mother's helper gig for a family on Cape Cod.  Those were influential but impressively unproductive years; I was a terrible student and my extra-curricular activities were unbloggable.

Key phrase: "You are wasting your potential."

Best memories:  Oh, most of those are unbloggable, too.  But there was the music at Northfield, which had an incredible choral program.  Even those of us who otherwise did little more than tunelessly hum Beatles' and Joni Mitchell songs had to participate. 

 

Spring 1970 Sacred Concert, dedicated to Kent State.  Many of us would probably agree that singing the David Stanley York arrangement of "Once to Every Man and Nation" was one of the defining moments of our lives.  It's completely different from the jaunty version found in most hymnals and was powerfully appropriate to that period in our national history.

And, amazingly, I've finally found a recording online ~ from a Presbyterian church in Dayton, of all places.  You have to scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page to 9.5.10 and then click on the title.  I would suggest turning the volume way up and imagining the young voices of 1200 idealistic high school students accompanied by an orchestra on a sunny spring day in western Massachusetts at the height of the Vietnam War.

A little reflection: One of the things one asks at 60 is how on earth she got to be who and where she is.  I did not, at the age of sixteen that afternoon at Northfield, believe for one minute that there was a God standing within the shadow keeping watch above anyone at all. 

 

But everything was in place, wasn't it?  Immersion in the beauty of creation, from rural Ohio to the Atlantic coastline to the foothills of the Berkshires;  a family's terrible suffering; a demanding religious and musical education ~ and a relentlessly skeptical but still hopeful mind and heart. 

 

No WONDER.

 

One could possibly even believe that God engineered all of this.

Here are the James Russell Lowell lyrics as adapted if you want to listen and read what you're hearing:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
 

By the light of burning martyrs, Jesus' bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
 

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Truth forever on the scaffold, and forever on the throne;

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

 

 

 

 

 

Boarding School Years - Protestant (Part I)

This journey back in time might take a couple of days . . .     .

 

My father's plan for all of us kids was that we would attend boarding school, as he and his brothers had done.  I ended up at what was then the Northfield School for Girls, founded by evangelist D.L. Moody in the 1870s.  The Mount Hermon School for Boys has been opened a couple of years later across the Connecticut River.  D.L. or Dr. Moody -- we tended to refer to him one way or the other -- envisioned schools that would provide outstanding educations for young people unable to afford the traditional New England prep school fees.  In fact, he saw Northfield as a base for preparing young women to become missionaries, whom he thought should go into the field only with the best of academics in their pockets.  He was born here, at the foot of what is still the Northfield Campus:

When people hear that I went to one of the schools founded by Dr. Moody, they immediately think "evangelist" and "Moody Bible Institute."  In fact, Northfield is an extremely progressive school. 

We were indeed required to attend chapel daily. (Okay, yes: I could tell you all the ways to exempt yourself without drawing the attention of the attendance takers, but in fact I loved chapel.  I would have described myself as an atheist in those days, but I reveled in the mid-morning respite, and I loved the music and preaching which came our way via some of New England's finest.) 

We were also required to take a religion course each year, which for my three years there meant the required classes in OT and NT and then an elective. Those first two classes meant that much of my first year of seminary decades later was a repeat ~ a good thing, due to the 35-40 hours a week I had to invest in keeping afloat in Greek.    And as one of my friends has since said, "Isn't it amazing that they took us so seriously?  That our first discussion in religion at the age of 15 was on the documentary hypothesis?"

My senior year elective provided me with an introduction to Freud, Bonhoeffer, Tillich ~ and, as usual, the more important learning that takes place outside the classroom.  It was the teacher for that course who asked me, as we walked to class through the snow one morning, where I was applying to college, and then castigated us all as "so parochial" in our reluctance to leave New England.  ( I later discovered that his degrees were from Chapel Hill, Duke, and Vanderbilt, which would explain why he recommended those schools to me that morning!)  At any rate, I did go to college in New England, but I have never forgotten that conversation. and have tried hard to be less parochial in my adult life.  I can't say that I've succeed, but I have tried.)

 

When I realized during my 9th grade year that a move from the comfort of the Catholic boarding school in which I had been ensconced since 7th grade was inevitable, I started looking closely at the catalogs that came via mail.  My father, I suppose, liked Northfield because the small classes were all run seminar-style around big tables, and because of its stratospheric academic reputation.  I was too angry to pay attention to those things.

 

I liked Northfield for one reason, and one reason only.  Most of the schools seemed to have been created entirely for wealthy New England families; even the dress code requirements reeked of elitism.  But Northfield girls, I discovered, had to work ~ preparing and cleaning up from all meals, cleaning the halls and classrooms ~ an hour each day. It was called "domestic work" ~ "dummy" was our name for it ~ and it governed our lives.  The biggest barrier to a week-end away from campus was finding someone to take over your dummy job -- either as an exchange or for pay.  I recall how flabbergasted we all were when one of our friends didn't show up for dummy -- she simply forgot.  You might forget your algebra assignment, but how could you possibly forget dummy?

 

This photo is from slightly before my era -- we did wear those smocks, but our caps were not so hideous.  The image is one of my very favorite dummy assignment ~ after-dinner tins.  Many girls hated tins ~ it was hard work to scrub those pots and pans clean!  But . . .  tins took so long for our dorm of 60 girls that it inevitably cut into our evening 7:00-9:30 study hall, during which we were supposed to be in our rooms or in the library.  Senior year we could go and do whatever we wanted, but after-dinner tins was how I took care of the problem junior year.   On warm spring evenings, we turned up the radio and danced around the  kitchen for a long as we could, until Mrs. Powell materialized to say, "Girls!  The tins!"

 

 

I was not a good student in high school (actually, except for English and French and 12th grade religion, I was a TERRIBLE student in high school), and I was a fairly miserable person in general.  But in retrospect, those days ~ from algebra (a disaster on a par with Greek) to preachers from Harvard and Yale and musicians from Julliard, from Tillich to T.S. Elliot to tins ~ they did have the predicted influence on my life.  They made me not a little weird and ambitious and brave and resilient and curious and extremely impatient with impositions and with limitations ~ most especially my own.  These things create problems for me, but they are not bad problems to have.

LCWR

I don't usually do anything like this, but today I did ~ I started a FB group as a statement of support.  Please join, if you're qualified and so inclined:

Protestant Women Support the LCWR

Protestant + Steadfast + Sister

I almost titled this post  "Neither Non Nor Wayward ~ and not a Brother, Either" ~ but that would have meant toppling right into the trap laid for me.

Frequent readers of my blog know that I spend a considerable amount of time crossing worlds, especially Catholic and Protestant worlds.  I like it that way.  There's no question in my mind that I am called to the Christian faith, Protestant dimension, and that I am called to ordained ministry in that context, but I am most appreciative of the first 1500 years of Christianity and of the many gifts of contemporary Catholic faith, and also very much called to practice much of my faith life as taught and encouraged  by Ignatius of Loyola, a Catholic if ever there was one.  It's not always easy and I often bump up against difficult inconsistencies, but there's that whole "my ways are not your ways" thing, so I live with it.  Contentedly.

Some time ago it dawned on me (slowly, yes; I'm extremely slow about certain things) that Catholics and Protestants alike often refer to Protestants as "nonCatholics."  As soon as I realized it, I stopped doing it.  Why would I want to self-identify, or identify others, as something I or they are not?  It seems to me that the preface "non" implies a certain degree of either diminishment or exclusion with respect to the noun in question.  

(Interestingly, in my days as a teacher in an Orthodox Jewish day school, I was most often identified as a "Christian."  Clearly I was not of the majority there, but in general Jews seem content to identify others as who we are.  They don't resort to the term "nonJews.")

A few days ago, there was a debate over at The Deacon's Bench over whether or not Catholic priests should bless children during the Eucharist.  It seems that there are a great many rules and opinions about blessings and about children of which I was unaware but hey, this is their argument, not mine.  I still don't know much about it, having just stopped by on a friend's recommendation (?) this morning and skimmed the post ~ and the 150+ comments!

But there it was, that term "nonCatholic."  Suddenly I felt . . .  hmmm . . .  extremely irritated.    Moreso when I read another comment to the effect that many Protestant churches do not welcome children.  Excuse me?

And then, the grand piece de resistance: the referral to "wayward brethren."

OK, really? 

I am Protestant.  I am steadfast in my faith,  which has not been a matter of smooth sailing for me.  And I am female.  I am delighted to be all of those things.  

So, please.  Do not refer to me as one of your nonCatholic wayward brethren.  (I don't think I've ever done the reverse, by the way.  Some real bloopers have come out of my mouth, but "nonProtestant wayward brethren" is not one of them.  John Calvin et al. said some bad, bad stuff about the Catholic Church, but we are, thankfully, no longer in the 16th century.)

Protestant.  Steadfast, focused, and on track.  Female.

Please use correct terminology.

That's all I ask.

Calvin and Ignatius: The Lighter Side

I've long been intrigued by the simultaneous presence of John Calvin and Ignatius of Loyola in Paris during their student years.  Supposedly their portraits hang next to each other in what is now a government building.  We never managed to see them when we were there a few years go, but a friend and professor of mine attempted to do so last month.  It seems that the paintings have been moved and, according to her FB post, the response of a librarian to her request for information about their location side-by-side was as follows:

"Jamais, jamais ~ cote a cote dans l'eglise catholique ~ jamais!!" ~  with hands demonstrating an emphatic "Impossible!"

Where Do You Encounter God in Church?

Yes, I am genuinely interested in answers to this question.  (And don't worry - the next one will ask about outside of church.)  (And ~ perhaps this is a worry ~  I'm focused on churches here, and not on houses of worship across the board.)

I've spending a lot of time these days thinking and daydreaming and wondering about what church is.  There is, for example, church as my congregation remembers it: a 1950s full house, the multi-generational Sunday focus of everyone in town.  (It's a very small town.)  There's our church as it is right now: maybe one-third full on a Sunday, with most folks well over sixty.  There's our church as it might be ~ but I have no idea what that is.

For most of my congregants, the word church immediately conjures up a companion word: community.   And one of the things that I've been musing about is that, for me, it doesn't.  Not at first, anyway.

An odd acknowledgment for a pastor to make?  But I didn't grow up in a church community.  I found my way into the rich life of the church via theology, and architecture, and music, and communion, and a deep sense of mystery.  I eventually became part of a wonderfully energetic mainline church community, and then another, and now I lead a third, a group of loving, capable, and committed people who long for their church to blossom again.

But what will that entail, exactly?

Longtime readers may recall that after Josh died, I started attending church in a Catholic parish ~ where no one spoke to me, at all, ever.  It's a huge, vibrant parish, with lots going on, but I have no idea how one would become a participant.  I was looking for solitude, for God in music and ritual and prayer, and so the experience worked well for me, but had I been looking for God in community, I would have been lost.

And lest I be accused of singling out Catholics, let me add that when my husband and I, in our late twenties, first joined a large United Methodist church, it was at least a year before we had a conversation with anyone other than the senior pastor.  I had no idea what a church community was, so I was not dissatisifed but, looking back, I find it rather odd that no one at all approached us.  We were eager to become involved with the mission and justice activities of the church, but had no idea how to go about doing so.  And in the meantime, the ethereal music and the challenging preaching were enough.

At any rate, I'm wondering.  I think that if I were in a position to look for a new church for myself,  I would slip into a worship service and watch for mystery made manifest.  It would probably be some weeks before I paid attention to the bulletin and its lists of activities and groups.  But I have the feeling that I'm in a distinct minority.

What about you?  If you were to walk into a new church next Sunday, what would convince you that God was present there?

Image: Prince Edward Island, August 2005

Breaking Bread with Online Friends

"How do you know all these people?" exclaimed a friend last night, when I stopped by her house to wish her a happy birthday.  "You had a rabbi from St. Louis and a photographer from Philadelphia at your ordination - how did that happen?"

A couple of years ago one of my seminary professors expressed great skepticism about internet interactions and friendships.

Let's see . . .

Carol isn't a rabbi, but she is a dear friend (unmet in real life until last Sunday!) as a consequence of fifteen years of emailing among a group of moms who met online.  Carol and I have enjoyed numerous discussions about Jewish-Christian matters over the years and she has been a rock in my life since Josh died.  Of course I wanted her to read Psalm 139, and to read at least the first few lines in Hebrew.

Michelle isn't a professional photographer, but she's a contemplative one, as well as a chemistry professor and essayist on the spiritual life.  We met online through our mutual passion for blogging and Ignatian spirituality, and we've met at Wernersville, a place of silence and prayer to which Michelle heads frequently and I, once a year.  We blogged our way through Into the Silent Land Together (see top of page), and we've shared many conversations, both intense and humorous. 

Another online and now in-person friend who appeared is Chris.  We met because an article appeared in the local paper a few weeks after Josh died, a year after her daughter died in Italy.  We've walked along Lake Erie together and we've shared many challenging and loving conversations with two other heartbroken mothers, all of whom met through our blogs andall of whom eventually spent months in an online retreat together, reading and writing about a Joyce Rupp bookr.

I'm realizing as I report on these friendships that perhaps they are not so much online friendships as writing friendships.  Carol mentioned that many of her friends at home expressed skepticism about her trip out here; many of my friends also roll their eyes at the mention of internet relationships. 

But the reality is that years of shared correspondence ~ whether high tech or via the old quill-and-ink method ~ produce deep reflection, intimate sharing, and lasting friendship. 

The image is Michelle's ~ My First Celebration of Communion.

Fourth Question

Yes, I see that the third question is a bit overwhelming.  Since I'm about to go on vacation, I'm going ahead with my answer.  I'll read the others over the course of the day.

My response to the third:

For me, the big question has to do with seeking/finding/encountering ~ being sought by, found, encountered by ~ God.

One of the hallmarks of Ignatian spirituality is that God is in all things. 

When I was making the Spiritual Exercises six years ago, I once heard my spiritual director say, in a public talk, "Well, first you have to find God in some things."

I didn't see either statement as much of a problem.

And then Josh died and my experience was of God in no things.  My experience was of a silence and emptiness so vast that it seemed that I was falling endlessly into a great abyss, falling and falling and falling, and would continue to fall forever.

 I could see that God was plenty available to other people.

Eventually, I began to wander through the new territory in which I found myself in an experiential sense by listening to the spiritual journeys of others.  That's how I knew that God was still interested and involved.

I dove into it in an academic sense by continuing with seminary.  One of my ordination exam essays involved a hypothetical in which several people were engaged in a  discussion with their pastor about whether God is revealed only in Scripture (perhaps a Reformed position), only in Jesus (and, therefore, Scripture ~ a Barthian clarification of the Reformed take), or primarily in nature (certainly a view common among spiritual seekers). 

My Catholic friends may wonder why none of the hypothetical conversationalists took the position that God is revealed through tradition.  That would be because they were hypothetical Presbyterians.

My answer ~ and we had to address such questions with a theological exposition and then a practical response to the individuals in the scenario ~ covered all of the foregoing as well as Celtic Christianity, contemporary Calvin studies, and the Wesleyan quadrilateral, and was deemed, well, a good deal more than acceptable. 

How did I do that in an hour? How at all?   I suppose the response has something to do with the fact that I had just completed my second year in seminary over the course of the year and a half immediately subsequent to Josh's death, a year in which I read and discussed and wrote about everything I studied in the context of those questions:    Is God in all things?  Some things?  Any things?  How does God reveal God's own self? 

Over time and in surprising ways, God's presence ~ to me ~ became profoundly evident.  I think now that one of the basic symptoms of grief is Failure to Notice.  Kind of like failure to thrive in babies.  Not, I would think, a startling revelation. 

And now I am more passionately interested than ever in how the Spirit of God sustains and nourishes us, and how we come to recognize and celebrate that engagement of God with us.

Believe it or not, this all has something to do with colors, cities, landscapes, interiors, and clothes.

The fourth question: How do you connect your answers?

Happy St. Ignatius Day!

Tomorrow is the feast day of St. Ignatius of Loyola  in the Roman Catholic Church.

I often wish that we followed a similar practice of celebration in the Protestant Church.  Having attended many Catholic masses in my time, I've heard lots of stories about saints, stories which connect the people of today's church with those of their tradition and history.  

In the Methodist church to which I belonged for a long time, we heard at least a couple of sermons each year about John Wesley.  So I do know about his heart being strangely warmed, and I know a bit about his mother, Susannah Wesley, and his brother Charles Wesley, famous in his own right as a hymn writer. When I went to the boarding school founded by evangelist D.L. Moody, we were all well versed in his life and thought.

But on the whole, we Protestants don't spend a lot of time dwelling upon our forefathers and foremothers in the faith.

Anyone who reads this blog knows that Ignatian spirituality has had a huge impact on me, and so it's a pleasure to honor his day, which just happens to come two days after my birthday!

I have another photo to post in a couple of days, but it's a surprise for someone elsewhere, so we'll have to wait.  The one above is of the statue of Ignatius the Pilgrim at the Jesuit Center in Guelph, Ontario.

Women and Ordination

I wrote most of this a few days ago, before the double-vision thing made typing such a challenge.  This morning, reading and participating in the RevGals' conversation about preaching tomorrow,  I feel more strongly than ever the depth and breadth of women's voices bursting forth from the pulpit.


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

The round of reviews of Half the Church and the flurry of controversy in the Catholic community over the U.S. bishops' recent criticism of Dr. Elizabeth Johnson's work have prompted some musings on my part.

The argument in some Protestant denominations against the ordination of women is based upon a couple of verses in which Paul denounces the prospect of women holding teaching authority over men.  This argument conveniently overlooks the women colleagues whom Paul praises and upon whom he placed considerable reliance, even in a culture in which women had no legal standing or social or economic status independent of men. 

The argument in the Roman Catholic church against the ordination of women is based upon the undeniable fact that Jesus was a man and on the metaphorical construct of the church as his bride; how can a woman stand in the place of Jesus?  That one conveniently overlooks the fact that many of Jesus' disciples were women and that women ~ the Woman at the Well and Mary Magdalene ~ were the first evangelists ~ in a culture in which women had no legal standing or social or economic status independent of men. 

The outcomes for me personally:

The Protestant church does feel very male to me.  Most of our historical leaders and theologians have been male.  My seminary felt something like a men's club; it often reminded me of my law firm life a generation ago.  In both situations, women were/are welcomed and encouraged in our endeavors, but the climate was/is a masculine one.  (Despite the fact that half of our seminary students are female.)  In my city, there has been one female senior pastor of a large mainline Protestant church over the past several years ~ and she's just moved away.  A friend recently commented that her United Methodist Church ~ to which I used to belong ~ feels like the 1950s: three white, male pastors in our community that is half African-American and Latino and half women.

All that said, women leaders are welcomed and supported, and I think that in another generation, the landscape for women in the mainline Protestant church will look quite different.

Ironically, the Catholic church often feels very female to me.  With its devotion to Mary, its plethora of women saints, and its still significant population of women religious ~ sisters and nuns,   highly educated women who often hold positions of enormous responsibility in hospitals, colleges and universities, and other institutions ~ the part of the Catholic church visible to me has a welcoming and feminine aspect.  Catholic priests and sisters have been among my strongest supporters  in my quest for ordination and in the recent dramatic personal challenges of my life.  But . . . no ordained women in the RC church.  The M.Div. program at the Catholic local seminary is off limits to women.  ("We can earn a Ph.D. there," one woman told me, "but not an M.Div.  They're afraid we'll want to be priests.")  When I attend a Catholic mass, I am painfully aware that, once we get to the Gospel reading and thereafter, the leadership other than in music is entirely male.  When I see photographs of Catholic ordination ceremonies of  deacons or priests, they look oddly off-kilter to me ~ because there are no women.  In another generation, I am certain, it will all look the same.

The general conversation around these issues tends to focus on issues of justice and discrimination involving women who are called to the ministry or priesthood.  That is certainly a critical discussion.  But increasingly I see the most significant one being justice and care for the people we are called to serve.  The voice missing from ordained leadership is even more significant to those who are not permitted to hear it than to those not permitted to exert it.

I have heard Catholic women friends say that they long to be ministered to by a woman priest. Perhaps more significantly, I have NOT heard Catholic men friends say the same thing.  It has not yet occurred to them that it might be a differently valuable experience to be ministered to by a woman. I know that in certain churches, no one will ever hear an Advent sermon from someone who has experienced pregnancy and childbirth.  No one will hear an Easter sermon from someone who has known the mother's experience of the death of a child.  In a church in which I preached some months ago, a woman came up to me afterward to relate her fears about some female-only health issues for which she was about to undergo testing.  Would she have had the same conversation with an unknown male pastor? 

And I am not talking only about "women's issues," whatever those might be.  I'm talking about all issues. I'm talking about voices missing from conversations, be they about Moses or about Miriam.  I'm talking about bodies missing from leadership roles in sacred encounters, encounters in which babies are baptized or communion is served.

Even my lovely and wonderful 80-year-old Jesuit friend, in response to my pointing out that he would never be ministered to by a female priest, argued that he often seeks the advice and counsel of women colleagues.  "But you will never receive communion, at least not in your own church, from a woman," I said.  I'm fairly certain that it had not occurred to him that he might be missing something.

I've only read one or two of Elizabeth's Johnson's books, as options in the course of a seminary education in which no work by feminist theologians was required.  The present controversy fermented by the Catholic bishops means that I will probably start working my way through all of them soon.  But in the meantime, I can ask, "Would a male theologian have ever conceived (pun perhaps intended) a book entitled She Who Is?" Based on the theological literature published in the nearly 2000 years of Christianity before that book's appearance, I think I am safe in presuming that the answer to that question is "No."

And how much, therefore, have we all lost?  Not merely the women called to ministry as priests and ministers, but all of us, women and men and girls and boys, who have never heard God speaking through the voice of a woman, through the scholarship of a woman, through the experience of a woman?