Seeking Authentic Voice

I woke a little later than usual, 6:15. The morning sky was slightly overcast, the air cool. I unrolled my yoga mat and spent about 40 minutes in a gentle beginners yoga practice. Although I have practiced yoga for years, it has been about three years since I practiced regularly. Beginning again with the basics is good way to get back into a practice. By the time I finished the clouds had dissipated and the sun was shining. I made a pot of coffee and set about preparing for my day of icon writing. I am reading and following the book, “Drawing Closer to Christ: A Self Guided Icon Retreat” by Joseph Malham. I also have downloaded an icon class by a woman, a nun, from Greece. And, twenty some odd years ago I took an icon writing workshop with a visiting  chaplain at Seabury Western, who I think was a retired Bishop from somewhere, Australia? Or was he priest who had spent time in Jerusalem. I do not remember. But he offered a weekend icon class where we were supposed to use the image of o

At the northern tip of Lake Michigan,  Having just crossed the magnificent bridge And turned west onto highway 2 I gasped at the beauty  Blues and teals glimmering As the tips of waves caught the sun through tree-lined marshes The lake spread out before me I yearned to get a kayak and move through it. Settling in I briefly looked down To adjust the AC in the car Then looked up and there you were Your eye met mine  And I was certain we were about to collide This beautiful deer, crossing the road That had been built across Ancient sacred deer land,  The highway of threat And there we were eye to eye I gasped, stepped on the brake, And braced myself. You, already running fast Increased your speed  And leapt off the road Into the trees and were gone. The collision in my mind did not happen. Your strength and beauty and grace pulled You away from an almost horrible collision And off you went to carry on your day. I drove on, shaken, weeping. What if? 

There was a time when I said, that I only stayed in one profession for six years. I was a Technical Director of Dance Theater for six years. I was an interior designer for about six years. But, then I was a massage therapist for nine years. So, the six years thing wasn’t really accurate. Along the way I also moved often. Before Dan and I bought our first house I moved from one apartment to another every couple of years. Our first house was a little Chicago bungalow in Polish/Hispanic neighborhood. I adored that little house. It’s where we lived when both of our kids were born. We bought it in 1987 and we sold it in 1994. Seven years in one house was a record for me. The next. Several years were bumpy, moving several times to one place at seminary and then another, and then to one place after seminary and then another. It wasn’t until 2001 that we settled down again. This was for my first church as a rector. We lived there and I served that parish until 2008. So that was another seven y

This conversation, God, is uncomfortable. I'm not complaining, I am only noticing and acknowledging. It's uncomfortable because there is shame and guilt. There is also, sadly, denial. There is the need to talk knowing mistakes will be made as I learn to see through  the lens of whiteness into a kaleidoscope of truth. Being vulnerable is mandatory. Listening, learning, seeing anew. Going deep inside Introspective self-reflective learning to notice and dismantle all the ways that systemic racism have taken root in me. Yes, it is uncomfortable Get used to it, for you, I believe are calling us into the wilderness terrain into the dialogue into the work that leads to awareness repentance reparations reconciliation and hopefully wholeness. You, Oh God have created a beautiful world with so much diversity each reveals a part of You. And as a whole, we reveal more of You. In the whole of You, is the whole of us.  Amen. A prayer poem by Terri C. Pilarski

The view from my backyard in southern Arizona was striking. We lived on the foothills of the Santa Rita’s, a small mountain range south of Tucson.   Our house was about 2000 feet up the mountain, with peaks that rose to 9500 feet. This was Madera canyon, known for its an annual hummingbird migration. To the south we would look out over the flat desert sand toward Mexico, and watch the monsoons blow in from the gulf of Mexico.  These seasonal storms, coming every July and August were spectacular although uneven, bringing rain to one area while many others just watched, parched for relief that would not come.  And to the west I watched one glorious sunset after another, day after day.  The Sonoran desert is glorious. But the desert is also dangerous.  Across the same mountains that provided beauty, was also violence - people traveling in the dark shelter of night to enter this country, desperate for a safer life,  but unable to secure proper documentation.  Many were subsequently killed

I have only a few words in this feeble prayer.  I am listening. I am learning. I am examining myself. I am trying to recognize how the system of racism lives in and through me. It’s like a tangled up ball of yarn. I untangle one layer only to encounter another.  Until it’s all untangled, the yarn cannot be knit, the potential of the yarn is compromised. written for the RevGalBlogPals blog, Tuesday Prayer.

When I was studying to be a massage therapist in 1991 we learned about the autonomic nervous system in our bodies. This is the system that works without our conscious effort - breathing, blood pressure, digestion, for example. The autonomic nervous system is where we feel anxiety and experience the fight or flight impulses.  A massage therapist taught a class on her work, which was offering massages to nuns and other women who had been brutally tortured in Nicaragua during the conflict in that country in the 1980’s. She spoke about the need to go very slow, to help the woman with her breath, and to help her learn to receive healing touch instead of violence. It was a long slow process.  Yesterday I listened to an OnBeing interview between Krista Tippett and a clinical social worker who works with trauma. His hame is Resmaa Manakem and he works in Minneapolis.  His work is heart work.  He spoke about how trauma influences people in our bodies and emotions, sometimes

On Thursday night a group of us in Dearborn participated in a conversation led by myself and other members of the Dearborn Area Interfaith Network on the Reconstruction Era, the post civil war years of 1865-1877. We watched videos on the history of that time and talked about how the issues of those years are still the issues of today: how racism is forming and informing everything from family life to church communities to schools, and the government.  We planned this event last fall, never anticipating the state of affairs we find ourselves living in now. Although the conversation was somewhat of an intellectual exercise, staying in the head instead of the heart, it pointed out the need for white people to know our history, and to do our work to change,  so we can stop repeating our long history of racism and violence toward black and brown people.  This week Krista Tippet, in her show On Being, interviewed Resmaa Manakem, a black therapist in Minneapolis who studies and treat