Seeking Authentic Voice

A little girl was born in 1939 to parents who were just out of high school. Her life was not an easy one. In quick succession, two more siblings were added to the family, a brother and a sister. When the little girl was three years old her parents started leaving home for the weekend. The little girl was left in charge of tending to her two younger siblings. Imagine the challenges of being three or four years old and having to feed a two year old and an infant. Imagine changing diapers and trying to keep a house clean. Then imagine the fear and horror of that kind of responsibility. Then imagine what it must have felt like when the parents returned and beat you, physically and emotionally, because you did not do a good enough job, the house was a mess and the baby needed a bath. Imagine living in a house that had rodents residing in the basement, adding to your terror when your parents left for the weekend, as they did many times. My mother was this little girl, broken forever...

It's become a bit too routine, my tossing and turning and waking up at 3:30am on the night that follows a particular meeting. Why I toss and turn is more about me and my reaction to the dynamic in the meeting, than it is about anything that is actually said or done. Still, my reaction speaks to a reality of being a woman in leadership. It acknowledges a general sense that resides within me, one I don't appreciate and wish would go away or resolve itself, or at the very least, I wish I weren't so aware of the dynamic and the ongoing slights that happen in the meeting, the way a woman is treated, me and others. No, it's never my intention to wake up fretful, but still I do. This morning I gave in to the insomnia and headache, and got up at 4:30. I fed the dogs, and made coffee. Thunder and lightning ignited the tropical-like air outside and finally released the rain, a gentle soaking to quench the dry and dusty earth of my backyard. I opened the sliding glass door and c...

Julie over at the  RevGalBlogPals  offers this Friday Five meme: Friends, the times may be dark, the days uncertain, but this we know – God is light and life and love and together we can overcome.   Today for your Friday Five contributions – share your favourite bible verses, photos, times of day and poetry – in any combination you choose in order to shed light on our darkened world. 1. Favorite Bible verse: I really can't choose just one. I could use the same verse Julie selected, from the prologue to the Gospel of John. That verse, and the idea of God expressing God's self as "word" into the world, word that took human flesh, has really formed my understanding of faith, who I am and who God is. But this morning I'm choosing this one: Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.  2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.  3 Mary too...

The Sunday after Senator Gabbi Giffords was shot, in a mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona, I went to church hoping to hear some reflection on that violence. However the preacher that morning did not address it in his sermon, although Giffords and the other victims were lifted up in the Prayers of the People. Still, I found the lack of comment in the sermon to be unsettling, it taught me that as priests and preachers we need to be willing to address the tragedies and current events in the context of the scripture readings, to place the confusion and horror and sorrow in the history of God's action in the world.  So it was a bit of challenge for me to figure out how to address the recent killings of two more black men and the mass shooting of police officers in Dallas in the context of our planned summer sermon time. We had planned to hold congregational dialogues in our sermon time. My concern was that people would skirt the issue rather than face it head on. I wanted to facilita...

I admit, there are days when I wonder if there is a God. I mean, days when I am worn thin from the onslaught of violence, the destruction of terrible weather, the cruelty of human beings and our tendency toward prejudice and bigotry and self entitlement, the nature of politics in this, and other countries, and a general discouraging sense of reality, I wonder about God. Where is God when this stuff is going on? When I hear an athlete or someone else state, “God was with me,” I always think, and God wasn’t with the losers? Why would God choose one person or one set of circumstances in which to intervene, but not another? Why would God answer some prayers and not others? It’s never good when I start down that path. Let’s just say, it’s a curious process to be a parish priest and wonder if God exists. It does a number on my spirit, not to mention the moral, ethical, and psychological challenges I have to navigate to reconcile this.  On other occasions, paradoxically also a “lowes...

A few weeks ago two of the trees in the backyard of the rectory had to be cut down, they were in such poor health that it was just a matter of time before the fell over, taking the rectory and garage with them. Still, they were giant trees that offered a lot of shade over the house and yard, and they were home to many squirrels and birds. One squirrel use to taunt my dogs and yell at them, as if to say, this yard is mine! But now, with the trees gone, the yard seems barren. The ferns and ivy along the garage are drying up because of too much sun, which is not a tragedy - it was too overgrown anyway. The lawn is rutted from accommodating the heavy trucks and cranes that cut the trees down and turned them into the wood chips. Eventually the grass will come back, especially because Dan is leveling the ruts, spreading out grass seed, and watering it. Most curious and amusing is how the animals have adapted. The other morning I saw one of the squirrels rolling around and around in th...

In 1978, to help pay my way through college, I had a job as a waitress. One of my friends at the restaurant was a striking woman - tall, with tattoos and piercings that were unusual for 1978, her hair cut and dyed in a kind of punkish style that became popular years later. She and I spent a fair amount of time together. Eventually she told me that she was going to move to the east coast and asked me if I could store her things until she got settled and could come back for them. My friend was a lesbian and she yearned to live in a community where she could be herself, without prejudice and fear of repercussions. A few months after she left, she returned and got her stuff and moved away for good. I’ve never seen again, but I hope that she found the life she longed for.  A few years later I lived in a different Chicago neighborhood, off of Broadway and Belmont, a an area with a high population of gay and lesbian people. I remember some of the first gay pride parades streaming down ...