Live in the Light

I just returned from a week at Linwood Spiritual Center in Rhinebeck, NY.  It was a week of silence, broken only by a brief meeting with a director and Eucharist each day.  Each year vowed Companions spend one week in a directed retreat and another 5-6 days in a silent house retreat.  This gives us a chance to listen deeply for God, and for whatever in us is blocking the connection - or responding to the call!

I entered this retreat after recently beginning a new round of psychotherapy, of a sort different from anything I've done before.  It's opening up some places that have been locked down for years, making a safe space for remembering and integrating aspects of my life that I didn't want to face.  And with the remembering comes the questioning: Where was God?    When I was 11 I gave up on God, because I had no one to ask that question with.  Now I'm much older, I believe in God, but I return to the question:  Where were you?

I grew up hearing that God was all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.  I took that to mean that God could have intervened to stop my pain.  Since God did not (at least not in any way I could recognize), I concluded that God either didn't exist, or didn't care, or didn't see, or couldn't help.  That's logical, but limited - just like the pubescent thinker I was.

Today I think God's goodness includes our freedom, even when God would like us to behave differently.
Where was God?  God was crying in the basement with me.
God was sitting next to me in school while I was zoning out, drawing at least a shield of wool around my bruised psyche.
God was pedaling along, trying to keep me safe while I was endangering my life with alcohol and drugs and sex and cigarettes and . . .
God was whispering in my ear at key moments, and speaking through the occasional voice of adult understanding and compassion.
God did not perform magic, God did not miraculously leave me unscarred by my experiences, but God did choose to share in those experiences through the life of Jesus and so many others.  God led me on to this place, where I can be with others on the journey to new life.

My retreat was huge, giving me an agenda for the next several months of spiritual reflection.  But in the end, God gives the growth.  My job is to be gentle, to let the work be done in me, to let God be God rather than demanding my picture of God - or myself!

If you are mad at God, if the state of the world has you wondering where God is or if God is, take some time to look - not just for the "bright spots," but for the compassionate presence in the darkness.  The light shines there.  Some day we will see it fill the universe.  Live in the light.

Peace be with you.

A book review, of all things!

Lyn G. Brakeman, God is Not a Boy’s Name: Becoming Woman, Becoming Priest (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2016).

In a previous life, I wrote book reviews as part of my job.  It’s been 16 years since I did one outside of a seminary assignment.  So why am I writing this?  Why am I introducing a new element into this blog?  Simple: Lyn asked me, and I wanted to read her book.  I’m glad I did.

Lyn’s memoir takes us through her journey from little girl playing communion under the dining room table to her hard-won ordination as an Episcopal priest, and beyond to her experiences in an around the Church.  Her story is both distressing and inspiring, and not only because of what she goes through.  While she experienced God’s presence as a young girl, that intimate bond was violated by a man who looked like the God of the picture books, a man who violated her.  She makes personally clear the cost of identifying God too closely with a particular gender or race or role: when the people who serve as the model for that picture fail us, we often lose God along with them.  Can anybody say, “Amen?”

Lyn is searingly honest about herself and what she experienced.  Born to an alcoholic father, married to and divorced from an alcoholic husband, filled with confusion about her own use of alcohol, she takes us through all the places “respectable” women aren’t supposed to go.  As she does she paints a picture of the first generation of feminist women in the Episcopal Church.  

Feeling called to the priesthood in the early 1970s, she applies to enter the ordination process as soon as women are canonically allowed to be ordained.  But “canonically allowed” and actually included are two very different things.  She faces rejection after rejection by the relevant committees and bishops.  She wants to give up, but the Spirit keeps pushing her along, mostly through other people.  Finally, in 1988 (I think), she is ordained, only to find that the road continues to be rocky for those whose priestly call doesn’t fit within parish boxes.  Can I get an “Amen?”

The most distressing thing in this story is how common it was, and is.  This week I talked to a new female priest, a fully competent and flourishing human being, who found herself challenged by a committee that was, I suspect, threatened by her considerable gifts.  The pattern of misunderstanding and bias is stubbornly resistant to change.  The Episcopal Church’s Committee on the Status of Women, on which I served, labored hard to change this and provide resources for congregations and dioceses to educate themselves, as well as resources for women seeking ordination and call.  (Let’s just note that this committee has now been defunded.  No comment.)  And now, forty years in, there is the added challenge of complacency.  We aren't done, people!

But with dismay, there is inspiration.  Lyn’s persistence, and the support of the people around her, has enabled her to serve others in many ways.  All the people who keep pushing, not only for advancement within the institutional Church but also for the Church beyond the institution, bear witness to the Spirit working among us.  Lyn’’s journey to personal wholeness reminds us, as her ordination bulletin stated, that “the glory of God is the human being fully alive.” (What would Irenaeus think if he knew who used his words, and to what ends?)  The Spirit is stronger, more persistent, than any wall.  Lyn’s life is testimony to the divine/human urge to renew creation.  The light does indeed shine in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.

If you’re looking to get a glimpse of hard reality and enduring hope, order this book!  Lyn gave me the Amazon link, but I try to stay away from them: I’m sure you can find it for yourself.  And please, pray for stories such as hers (and mine) to become part of history.

Companions' Retreat

Thanks to everyone who wished us well for Mary Mag Day.  We had a wonderful celebration, and then immediately packed up and went to the Catskills for a five-day retreat with the Covenant Companions.  After our plans for a stay at a retreat house fell through, we rented a house: easy!  We shared preparing meals, setup and cleanup, and leading worship.  It turned out to be a great way to build community.

On the first night we rejoiced as Lorraine Coscia-Ackerman made her first annual covenant commitment.  After a year as a Candidate, we agreed that she is ready to begin to share in leadership and active contribution to the Companions network.  Lorraine also served as our "kitchen honcho" for the retreat, and did a great job.

We also were thrilled to receive Dario Ghersi as a Candidate for Covenant Companionship.  Dario lives in Omaha, where he is a professor of bio-informatics.  After nine months in the Covenant Group, he desired a deeper commitment.

We missed our fifth Covenant Companion Candidate, Amy Malick, who had other commitments that week, but we were able to Skype her in for some of the conversations and conferences.  It's almost impossible to find a time when everyone can make the trip, so we're grateful for the technology that lets us be together in other ways.

So what did we do?  We shared stories, to get to know one another more.  We spent two days in silence, reflecting on questions Shane and Elizabeth asked and conference talks they delivered.  We discussed reading we had done, and we told more stories around a campfire.  We took walks, together and alone.  We challenged one another to grow into the full stature of Christ.

If you are curious about the Covenant Companions, please feel free to contact us.  If you want a community to support you in intentional living and mission, if you feel a resonance with our Charism and Covenant, we'd love to get to know you and talk with you.

And if you are simply listening and praying for us, thank you!  This is only possible through prayer.  Pray that this field may grow and bear fruit in the lives of all who need the message of new life.  Thank you and bless you!