Seeking Authentic Voice

Mary Beth, over at RevGals wonders what five characters we might like to be for a day. They can be any character from a book, play, movie, cartoon, or comic book. And, for bonus points, we can say why. YIKES! I am rushed this morning, as I am most mornings these days. Today we are heading out to celebrate our daughter's 24th birthday and have a little family time for the Labor Day weekend. This is something we don't do much of as a family anymore. I'll make a quick effort to play: 1. Sr. Joan Chittister - I have read a number of her books and I'd love to be in her head for a day. She is fascinating - intelligent, thoughtful, brave, strong, articulate. She is an amazing woman of faith crossing the paradigm of 20th century and 21st century Church - which are very different paradigms. 2. Hildegard von Bingen - this woman of the Church lived in the 12th century. She was a poet, musician, mystic, healer, a leader of a woman's convent, served as a counselor to Popes

 A reflection on 1 Kings 8:(1,6,10-11), 22-30, 41-43, Proper 16B Thursday night, curious about what they would say, I watched Rock Center with Brian Williams, and its report on the Mormon Church.   Born into a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, I am a descendent of pioneers who put their “heart to song, their shoulder to the wheel” and travelled across this country in order to live their faith in peace and prosperity. Rock Center’s report spoke of the values of the Mormon faith: hard work, strong family ties, deep faith, and a commitment to the Gospel of Jesus Christ as they understand it. By the time the report was over I found myself wondering why I left the church. I was a faithful member for the first fourteen years of my life. My parents were married in the temple. I was baptized by full immersion in the baptismal pool in the building known as the tabernacle on Temple Square.   (In case you don’t know how special Mormon’s think that is, you just have to see the expr

As an Episcopal priest, every time I pray the words of the Eucharistic prayer “ we offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies,” I think of a book my mother bought me in 1971 when I was fourteen years old, “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Some may find this blasphemous.   What can I say? It happens. There I am standing at the altar, reverently praying these words from the “traditional” Rite I liturgy, words that invite us into a transformational relationship with God through the living presence of Jesus Christ, and suddenly I have a memory of this other transformational book.   “Our Bodies Ourselves” changed the lives of women of a certain age. We learned about our anatomy in graphic detail, and the door was opened to talk about aspects of our selves that were formally taboo. Who would have imagined that 42 years later the conversation on women’s anatomy and health care would devolve? The current political discourse on women reveals an antiquated ideology t

One day woman spoke to God in this way: "Let us change places. You be woman and I will be God. For only one second." God smiled and asked her, "Are you afraid?" "No, and you?" "Yes, I am," God said. But woman thought to herself bitterly, No Matter. I want you to know how it feels to be me. I want you to know how much I have suffered because you let yourself be named in man's image as the God of the fathers, as the man of war, as king of the universe. I don't believe you'll know how I feel until you become woman. No, I am not afraid. So woman becomes God and God becomes woman. But as woman takes the place of God she finds herself led to an insight she has not expected.... As woman takes the place of God, she hears what she can only describe as a still, small voice saying, "God is a woman like yourself. She shares your suffering. She, too, has had her power of naming stolen from her. First she was called an

I hear it everywhere: on television commercials and shows, from friends and even from my daughter. Men have, or want to have, “man-caves.” You know, every man wants to have a room he can decorate with posters of sports and beer. A place where he can house his weight lifting gear or running shoes, pool table or tools.     Now, I wonder, when did this phrase, “man-cave” come into every day parlance? Or more to the point, “why” did this phrase come into common use? When I think of cave I think of Elizabeth George, the mystery writer from England who once played out a story along the caves of coastal England. Or I think of the story in the news some years back and retold by Barbara Kingsolver in “Small Wonder.” She writes  “On a cool October day in the oak-forested hills of Lorestan province in Iran, a lost child was saved in an inconceivable way.  The news of it came to me as a parable I keep turning over in my mind, a message from some gentler universe than this one.  I carr

Well, I hadn't intended To bend the rules But whiskey don't make liars It just makes fools So I didn't mean to say it But I meant what I said ~ James McMurtry, "Too long in the wasteland" Let’s talk about the word “Misspoken.”   I know. It’s been in the news too much. Maybe you are even tired of it. We get that way pretty quick, right. The news bombards us with a story until we are sick of it and shut down. But in this   case the implications of shutting down rather than taking the time to really understand this holds significant implications for all of us. Hang in there. My daughter (and yes, this makes a mother’s heart proud) wrote,   I have misspoken if my statement offends anyone and it compromises my popularity. In which case it is obvious that I have "misspoken" and those affected should suffer no offence as a result of my earlier statement. She gets it. In fact her quote actually started by calling the person most rece