Belated Happy Thanksgiving

I offer a warm fuzzy here-cat for your belated Thanksgiving awww-ness. 

Vatican Expels Roy Bourgeois from the Priesthood

I'm saddened at this news today:  Fr. Roy Bourgeois has been laicized and canonically dismissed from the Maryknoll Order for his open support of women's ordination. (A move initiated by the Vatican, not Maryknoll).

These days, it seems that any "good news" about the hierarchy of the Catholic church is immediately followed by some heavy-handed, obtuse, and regressive pronouncement from the Holy See. (I am tempted to call them the Wholly Blind, but that would be an insult to blind people).

Here's an excerpt from the e-mail I received from Erin Saiz Hanna, director of the Women's Ordination Conference:

"Fr. Bourgeois' dedication to social justice, his unwavering conscience, and his personal friendships with women called to priesthood compelled him to bravely speak out against the inequality of women in our Church. As a Maryknoll priest for forty years, he has consistently followed the gospel of Jesus by speaking out against injustice, risking everything for what he knows to be right.

Perhaps no longer a priest in the eyes of the Vatican or Maryknoll community, Fr. Roy will remain a prophet in the eyes of the marginalized. Fr. Roy joins a much larger Church - the Church of the people of God - who understand that men and women are equal in the eyes of God. History is on our side, and someday, as they are canonizing him, the Vatican will apologize for this painful mistake.

I spoke with Fr. Bourgeois this morning. While he is devastated to lose his community, and saddened by the harshness of this final step, he remains steadfast in his faith and conscience. He has asked for solitude and prayers during this time of transition.

Supporters are encouraged to mail letters of support to the WOC office (P.O. Box 15057 Washington, DC 20003). In addition, Fr. Bourgeois, the dedicated activist, recommends supporters order or download a copy of his story My Journey from Silence to Solidarity and use the book as a tool to break the silence on women's ordination. Please watch for further actions to support Fr. Roy."

Here is Fr. Roy's statement about his dismissal from Maryknoll --

"I have been a Catholic priest in the Maryknoll community for 40 years. As a young man I joined Maryknoll because of its work for justice and equality in the world. To be expelled from Maryknoll and the priesthood for believing that women are also called to be priests is very difficult and painful.

                 

The Vatican and Maryknoll can dismiss me, but they cannot dismiss the issue of gender equality in the Catholic Church. The demand for gender equality is rooted in justice and dignity and will not go away.

As Catholics, we profess that God created men and women of equal worth and dignity. As priests, we profess that the call to the priesthood comes from God, only God. Who are we, as men, to say that our call from God is authentic, but God's call to women is not? The exclusion of women from the priesthood is a grave injustice against women, our Church and our loving God who calls both men and women to be priests.                

When there is an injustice, silence is the voice of complicity.  My conscience compelled me to break my silence and address the sin of sexism in my Church. My only regret is that it took me so long to confront the issue of male power and domination in the Catholic Church.

I have explained my position on the ordination of women, and how I came to it, in my booklet, My Journey from Silence to Solidarity. Please go to: www.roybourgeoisjourney.org."  

In Solidarity,

"A Humbler, Quieter Church"

From the Pastor's Column in our weekly church bulletin:

I share with you this information taken from "News.VA -- The Vatican Today." The article gives the comments of Cardinal-designate Luis Antonio Tagle, the Archbiship of Manila in the Philippines.

In my opinion, many statements of religious leaders today are conveyed in a very triumphal fashion. I find this unfortunate.

I resonate with Cardinal-desginate Tagle's words. I find them refreshing and hopeful!

(Vatican Radio) -- Cardinal-designate Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila in the Philippines is one of just six Church leaders named by Pope Benedict to receive the red hat in a consistory to take place on November 24 [2012].

Archibishop Tagle is currently here in Rome taking part in the Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization which comes to a conclusion this weekend.

Reacting to the announcement of the consistory on Wednesday, the new Cardinal said he was grateful to the Pope for his trust and confidence in the Church of the Philippines, spread throughout the world with the many migrant workers who take their Christian faith with them.

He also spoke of his message to the Synod fathers calling for a humbler, quieter Church that is not afraid to admit its mistakes but is able to share more deeply the sufferings of the people today:

"The Church of Asia is often a minority Church, like John the Baptist crying in the wilderness ... even in the Philippines, if the Church is a majority, I realize that the sufferings of the people and the difficult questions they ask are an invitation to be first in solidarity with them, not to pretend that we have all the solutions ... they can resonate and see the concrete face of God in a Church that can be silent with them [and] as confused as they are ... it becomes a home for them ... I believe that the Church should contribute in the public square, but we in Asia are very particular about the mode ... so you may be saying the right things but people will not listen if the manner by which you communicate reminds them of a triumphalistic, know-it-all institution ... I know that in some parts of Asia the relative silence [and] calmness of the Church is interpreted as timidity, but I say 'no' -- it makes the Church more credible."

"A Christian Faith Enriched by Buddhism"

In a Huffington Post article, Susan J. Stabile writes:

"But for Buddhism, I could not be Catholic today. When I left Catholicism my sense of independence and self-sufficiency was too strong to accommodate a personal relationship with, or recognition of my dependence on, God. Buddhism's individuality was much more consonant with my self-image, and Buddhism offered me a means of developing a spirituality that facilitated my eventual return to God."

Read the rest of the article here. 

Stabile is the author of Growing in Love and Wisdom: Tibetan Buddhist Sources for Christian Meditation.

Catholic Priest Openly Supports Same-Sex Marriage

Photo by Doug Kasputin, Baltimore Sun

From Stoyan Zaimov's article in The Christian Post:

"A Roman Catholic priest in Maryland, one of the states that will be deciding whether to approve of same-sex marriage on Nov. 6 [2012]*, has told his congregation that he will continue to support such unions – right after reading out loud a letter from his Archbishop urging Catholics to vote against gay marriage. 

     'Could we not then say that their devotion to and support of each other . . . could be recognized by the church as a valid sacrament of God's unrelenting faithfulness to us just as much as the union of an elderly straight couple? Neither will procreate children, but both can be sacraments of God's faithfulness in the living out of their commitment to each other,' the Rev. Richard T. Lawrence told his congregation at Baltimore's St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church on Sunday."...

click here to read the rest of the article.

Fr. Lawrence's argument is similar to the one made by Andrew Sullivan in "What You Do," a 1996 New Republic essay. As Sullivan explains, the Catholic church's hierarchy asserts that the sexual act must have two core elements: a "procreative" element (the willingness to be open to the creation of new life) and a "unitive" element (the desire to affirm a loving, faithful union). However, the church also expresses compassion for the infertile and the elderly by allowing them to marry even though they cannot produce children. Sullivan maintains that the church should also extend its compassion to gays and lesbians by offering them the sacrament of marriage: 

Andrew Sullivan

"Sterile couples are allowed to marry in the church and to have sex; so are couples in which the wife is post-menopausal. It's understood that such people have no choice in the matter; they may indeed long to have unitive and procreative sex; and to have children. They are just tragically unable, as the Church sees it, to experience the joy of a procreative married life. 
     The question, of course, is: Why doesn't this apply to homosexuals? In official teaching, the Church has conceded that . . . homosexuals 'are definitively such because of some kind of innate instinct or pathological constitution judged to be incurable.' They may want, with all the will in the world, to have a unitive and procreative relationship; they can even intend to be straight. But they can't and they aren't. So why aren't they allowed to express their love as humanely as they possibly can, along with the infertile and the elderly?"

I personally disagree with the church's official definition of homosexuality as an "objective disorder." (Also, adoption and other avenues can enable a gay marriage to be procreative!) But I really love how Sullivan uses the hierarchy's own logic to undermine its stance on same-sex marriage. And I deeply admire Fr. Lawrence for sticking his neck out like that to defend same-sex unions -- and to express dissenting opinion within the church.

*Maryland voters approved the gay-marriage measure in the 2012 election.

A Dead Voudou Queen Led Me Back to Jesus

In my early thirties, after more than two decades of rejecting all organized religion, I found myself hungry for something I could not name. So I began seeking sustenance, and several years of reading, yearning, solitary exploring, and spiritual experimentation slowly brought me back to my Catholic roots and eventually into a Christ-lit contemplative journey.

There were circuitous twists and turns and wildly graced moments before that homecoming. I share one such moment here, in celebration of All Soul's Day.

It was early summer, 1994. After several years of graduate school and teaching college-level writing, I was depressed, burned out, and numb. The semester that had just ended had been exceptionally rough. I had received a few heart-breakingly horrible student evaluations at a time when it was taking every ounce of my energy to teach. Also--through dreams and through personal introspection--I had been hit with some deeply disquieting insights. The most disturbing of them was: I do not know how to love. Although I could put on a fairly good act of seeming concerned and engaged, interiorly I was exhausted and deeply thirsty. I harbored bitterness toward my students for not liking me and for not learning from me. I felt put-upon by friends who appeared to need something from me that I could not give. Everything and everyone seemed to be sucking my energy away, and my contracted little self felt utterly incapable of reaching out to others to give or receive genuine loving-kindness.   

Perhaps, I thought, I do not know what love really is.

At the time, my spiritual explorations had me dabbling in paganism and Voudou. Gathering magical ingredients, constructing small altars, preparing candles, and being attentive to the phases of the moon for ceremonial purposes had become a creative outlet for me. The rituals that I discovered in various local botanicas and psychic shops were tasty spiritual recipes; I was cooking, stirring it up, concocting potent cleanses and delectable spells. True: my educated, rational side remained fairly skeptical about the effectiveness of these rituals. But at the very least, I figured, they helped to focus intention and to approach projects and life events with conscious preparation and a sense of reverence.

Not a heavy-handed reverence, though. My skepticism allowed a light touch, a playfulness within the serious seeker’s hike I was on. These rituals initially served as a kind of lived performance art for me -- an expression of yearnings I was unable to articulate in any other way. My body, with the help of the earth and the cosmos and the motions prescribed in the rituals, was engaging in a dance of prayer, though that was not the phrase I typically used to describe my activities at the time.

I was particularly taken with the work of Luisah Teisch, a storyteller, teacher, and priestess of the goddess Oshun in the Yoruba Lucumi tradition. Teisch is the author of Jambalaya, a book of African-American wisdom, memoir, and Voudou-informed practices that a friend had given to me as a gift.

Undoubtedly, my Catholic upbringing had imprinted me with a taste for ritual, but in 1994 I was still avoiding anything having to do with mainstream religion. Teisch’s book was full of advice on altar-making, down-home spells, and candle work that appealed to me. It was also written with care, offered as an introduction to a rich blend of African wisdom, goddess spirituality, and Catholic ritual that had received little attention from religion-and-spirituality book publishers. I loved Teisch’s unashamed declaration that “Voudou has been mislabeled, misunderstood, and exploited …. Let the truth be known: Voudou is a science of the oppressed, a repository of womanknowledge.”

Delicious stew for my beaten-down soul, this Jambalaya.

Right after that horrific spring ‘94 teaching semester, I had to attend a family reunion across the country in South Carolina. Greyhound buses were offering a $68 summer special to travel anywhere in the U.S.A. So I decided to ride the Hound from southern California to South Carolina and back again, stopping for a few days in New Orleans. Roughly: a 6000 mile pilgrimage, by bus and on foot.

I wanted to go to New Orleans because there is a special ritual, described in Teisch’s Jambalaya, that requires a visit to the tomb of Marie LaVeau, the famous multiracial Voudou queen (and visitor-of-prisoners-and-the-sick church lady) of the Crescent City. The ritual enables one to address the spirit of Mam’zelle Marie and ask for her assistance. My crazy, unspoken hope was that a visit to her tomb would help me find a way out of the drought and disquiet that had settled into my life.

One week before my excursion, when the phase of the moon and the planetary hours were just right, I spent an entire night cleaning, blessing, and dressing (with sacred oils) special colored candles I had acquired at a local botanica. I felt like the timing of my trip was auspicious because a comet, a seed of the cosmos, would soon be colliding with Jupiter – the planet that represents expansion. I lit the candles for seven nights and invoked Yemaya, the Yoruba ocean goddess (and giver of fertility), asking her for a successful journey and a fruitful visit to Marie’s tomb.

I managed to rent a room in the French Quarter, just a few blocks from the St. Louis Cemetery, where Marie’s tomb is located. In her instructions for the tomb ritual, Teisch suggested wearing light clothing and a white gele or headdress. “If you’ve been sick, or feel a little frightened, you may further protect yourself by pressing a white carnation (bottom side down) to the center of your scalp beneath the headdress.” I spent my entire first day walking around New Orleans searching for a white gele and carnation. I found neither, but my wandering led to great opportunities to savor beignets, gumbo, and street-corner jazz.

The day of the ritual started out balmy and sultry, with a definite potential for thunderstorms. The atmosphere seemed laced at the edges with danger. What if there is lightning? What if I can’t find Marie’s tomb? Might I end up lost in a cemetery as a tornado approaches? Since I had found no gele or carnation, I would have to settle for my off-white floppy hat at as headdress. Remaining determined, I gathered the items I would need for meeting the spirit of Marie: seven dimes, an ankh around my neck, and my prayer, which I had written down on a small piece of paper.

“As you approach the gate of St. Louis Cemetery #1,” explains Teisch, “knock three times with your left hand, scrape the soles of your shoes on the banquette outside of the gate, and ask, ‘St. Peter, St. Peter, please let me in.’”

I did so, feeling a little foolish and thankful that no one was around. I also added, for good measure, a little prayer to the Mother that I had come across at the Voodoo Museum:

Shield me, keep me,
Dispel my fear.
Save me, shield me,
Be ever near.

“If you feel the response is no, step back and leave. If yes, step forward over the threshold, stop on the other side of it, and turn to your left. Walk down the aisle to the first available right turning and take it. You are now in front of Mamzelle’s tomb.”

I did not feel a response either way, so I just kept following the instructions. Marie’s tomb – above ground as all are in New Orleans – was broken down and seemed to need tending, but it was also decorated with wilting flowers, red beads, and various offerings: a tiny crown of thorns, a little glass-encased cake decorated with a white face and red eyes, slivers of wood with purple ribbons attached, pennies, and pieces of red brick.

I walked around and bowed at each the four corners of her disheveled grave. Then, with my back facing the front of the tomb, I extended my arms first to the sky, then to the ground, while praying aloud for Marie’s assistance. I asked her to help me find a way to be of service to the world – especially to lead me to a way that would benefit a few of my sad and lonely female friends, since there seemed to be nothing within me capable of being genuinely helpful or loving to them. I asked Marie to open the eyes of my thirsty soul, to make me sensitive, to deepen my intuition. I prayed for healing, guidance, and balance.

The instructions continued: “Return to the front of the tomb, face it, press your forehead against it, and place seven silver dimes in the basket attached to its front.”

There was no basket, so I simply laid the dimes out on a shallow ledge of the tomb.

“You will find several pieces of red brick lying on the ground. Pick one up and make your X on the spot of your choice.”

I drew my X, noticing that it was one among hundreds of X’s, some bright, some fading.

“Say thank you. Wait. Listen for a message.”

I stood there for a while, waiting and listening and sweating – it was probably 100 degrees, seriously humid, with thunderheads gathering above. I had a disposable camera with me and snapped a few pictures of the tomb. At that moment a pale, bedraggled, and seemingly homeless man appeared. He smiled at me and I saw that his upper gums were bleeding. “I hear that she especially appreciates tobacco,” he said as he placed a cigarette behind a piece of red brick. His presence was somewhat unnerving; I had thought I was the only living soul around. Was his appearance part of Marie’s "message?" I reached into my bag to get my pack of Newports, and left Marie yet another cigarette, this time one with menthol. Bleeding Gums then mentioned that he had just noticed another tomb was being built and that the artistry was amazing. Sure enough, in the near distance three men were pouring cement for a fresh tomb. I was beginning to get the heebee-jeebees.

If this were a dream, I mused, I might think that new tomb was for me . . .

Instead of cutting a hasty exit, as instinct would have me do, I ended up wandering around the cemetery for a little while, perusing the headstone inscriptions and statues of angels and saints. I was still waiting to hear a “message,” and began to wonder if I had unwittingly bungled things by taking photos inside a sacred burial ground, when I was supposed to be there to perform a brief ritual. Maybe Marie did not appreciate such a thing? I decided to walk by Marie’s tomb one more time – perhaps I should apologize for my clumsiness and lack of reverence.

Once again facing the crumbling grave, I noticed that my cigarette and seven dimes were gone! Everything else was still intact – several pennies, and the other cigarette that Bleeding Gums had left. Only my offerings were gone. Was this some kind of sign? Or had Bleeding Gums simply scooped up my seventy cents and menthol cigarette? And if he had, might that have some kind of hidden meaning? Was he something other than he appeared to be? Was Marie trying to tell me that she had accepted my offerings and heard my prayers?

Troubled, bemused, and sweltering, I decided it was time to go. “When you leave you should knock again (preferably with the right hand), scrape your feet and ask St. Peter to let you out,” Teish writes. “If you felt sad or scared while performing this ritual, it is advisable that you knock, ask, then step backward over the threshold.”

I thanked Mam’zelle and walked out backwards over the threshold. At that instant, the bells for a noontime Mass started ringing. There was a Catholic church right across the street from the cemetery – the International Shrine of St.Jude (the saint of the desperate and of lost causes). I hadn’t been in a church in maybe fifteen or twenty years. Something urged me to step inside.

The Mass was being held in a small, humble, interior chapel – not the main sanctuary of the church. It was a weekday so there were just a few people, mostly older black women, in attendance. I also noticed a couple of Mohawk-sporting punk rockers and some tourists. A youngish black woman wearing a black skirt, white tights and black shoes sat in front of me. Her nails were polished black, and her headscarf had the words “Grim Reaper” printed on it in red. Poking out from under her scarf were yellow hair rollers. She turned out to be the cantor and the lector – the person who reads the scriptures and sings the responsorial psalms as part of the liturgy. I loved this; she was definitely from the Voudou side of the street. The priest was a very young, bearded white kid with a gold earring in one ear. He wore jeans with black tennis shoes under his robes. He seemed new at the job and nervous, which was quite endearing.

Masses that I had attended as a child were frequently formal and stiff. So to see punk rockers with blue-haired old ladies, a funky cantor sporting a grim reaper scarf, and a young, nervous priest totally disarmed me. Everything seemed so improbable, in terms of the mixture of folks gathered there to worship, yet also so down-home, so grits-and-catfish, so unassumingly hospitable.

Still, I sat near the back and surveyed everything, attempting to maintain a tourist persona: I’m just going to sit here and watch the “natives,” I thought. And then the opening hymn, carried mostly by the crackly voiced and slightly out-of-tune older women, began. It was “Amazing Grace.”

Suddenly and strangely, I was flooded with emotion. Tears sprang to my eyes, and it is usually impossible for me to cry in front of strangers. A gate opened within me even as I struggled to keep the tears from reaching spill-point—a protective skill that I had practiced for much of my life. It was to no avail. The tears ran down my face. I bowed my head and wiped them away, hoping to remain unnoticed. I had forgotten all my childhood Catholic training, when to sit and stand and kneel, when to say amen and thanks be to God. I did not really hear the lector’s scripture readings, nor can I recall anything about the priest’s homily. All I was able to do was sit with this rush of emotion. Deep and dry interior spaces in my soul had opened up to receive an unnamable flow that was pouring into me with waterfall force. I also felt, obliquely and mysteriously, that I was being welcomed home after a long time away. Recognizing myself as the long-lost prodigal child, in a flash of gratitude I understood that everything and everyone I had encountered that day – Mam’zelle Marie, Bleeding Gums, the grave workers, the bones lying in the tombs, the punk rockers, the grim-reaper cantor, the blue-haired old women, the earringed priest, the thunderheads – each and all was in some hidden sense a family member welcoming me home. Here I was: fully home on Earth, a daughter of the human family, alive and afloat in a wild unfolding universe.

In my mind a recognition flowered: This is the Holy Spirit introducing me to the mystical body of Christ.

That particular summer bus journey and the ritual at Marie’s tomb, followed by the mass and my first Holy Communion (I’d never received the Eucharist as a child), shifted the trajectory of my life. I think of it as my moment of conversion – the moment when my heart opened to receive a flow of mysterious nourishment from a loving Source outside of myself. Love, I saw, could not be conjured up by a striving, half-formed ego attempting to sport compassion and kindness like some eye-catching garb. Love was not of my own making, nor could it be created through any mixture of herbs and oils and timed candle-lightings. Love, though “within,” originates outside of small-self me. Up until that day, I had lived my adult life as though I was responsible for manufacturing love and compassion on my own steam. In effect, I was living in a very small, self-focused world, a world largely closed to God, to the source of Love, to the wide river of Being itself. This unexpected moment of conversion entailed an opening up to this mysterious Source, this unbounded Vastness that is also – somehow -- intimate and cradling. 

Nothing was ever the same after that; there was no going back, no returning to the mindset I had previously occupied.

Now, I know what some folks will say about this event: that I had set myself up with all the rituals and prayers to Yemaya, the journey to NOLA to ask for Marie's intercession and guidance – isn’t Voudou really just another variant of Catholicism, anyway? A more subversive strand of it that would appeal to a confused and moderately depressed creative-writing grad student, a bridge back to the tradition that had been imprinted into my consciousness early on? Wasn’t there just a deep part of me that simply wanted to reconcile with this tradition – and all those experiments with paganism and Jambalaya provided the means to do so?

And I’d have to say: Yes – that’s entirely possible. Probable, even.

But here is another way that my soul, on this All Soul’s Day, likes to tell that story: I was lost, adrift in a dry land far from home. My heart cried out, and my cries were heard. Messages and wisdom from the ancestors arrived through friends and books and storytellers. I was given instructions on how to proceed: Visit the tomb of one of our saints, Marie LaVeau, an ancestor who knows what you need. Using rituals to help temper my skepticism, I approached her with reverence and with sincerity. And she, Marie, a beautiful echo of Mary, the God-Bearer, took me by the hand and led me to a temple built in honor of lost causes. There, in the midst of elders and rebels and hospitable strangers, I was found. Fed at the great banquet. And welcomed home.

Welcome to Purrrrrrrgatory

   
               Happy Halloween from Here Cat.

Ranty Ramblings of a Roamin' Catholic

Okay -- this is what I had really wanted to write a while back, before when I went off on a spiel how great the Catholic church (and many other Christian churches) can be.

The plain truth is: church is also frustrating and maddening. I’m not even talking about the abuses, hypocrisies, and sundry other crazinesses that litter its history and its current manifestations. There is also just the day-by-day balancing beam of praying and loving and serving with people who may or may not be on the same wavelength. And also, the variety of approaches to dealing with, challenging, and/or ducking dastardly dictates from on high.

Here’s just one example of this: There are two midlife women in my Engaging Spirituality group who are married to each other. I’ll call them Dierdre and Molly. They got hitched during the brief window of time when same-sex marriage was legal in our state of residence, but they have been living in commitment to each other for more than twenty years. Dierdre was raised Catholic and has always felt most deeply at home spiritually in Catholic churches. And, to a certain extent, the institutional church welcomes her. The Holy See considers homosexual orientation to be “objectively disordered” – neither a choice nor a sin. They see it as a kind of congenital condition, I guess? – somewhat akin to a disability. So, according to the Vatican, it is "okay" to be gay – just as long as one doesn’t act on his or her orientation and have a lover / spouse of the same sex. In essence (and despite a lot of disagreement on this in the pews) Catholic gays and lesbians are supposed to be celibate, as is a straight Catholic who is not living within the sacrament of marriage. 

While Molly was not raised in a particular religious tradition, she became Catholic as an adult after being drawn to the church through her relationship with Dierdre. The pastor at our church -- who has long known about their relationship – welcomes them and accepts their civil marriage. While he cannot officially bless their couplehood, the two are welcome to receive communion. This would not be the case in some Catholic churches, where many priests would say that “living in sin” or being “outside of the state of grace” bars them from receiving communion. (And there are some bishops – Newark Archbishop John Meyers, for example -- who are demanding that gay-marriage-supporting Catholics in their dioceses stop taking communion. More lines being drawn in more sand. But despair not. Check out this Huff Po article by Rev. Daniel C. Storrs.)

Molly’s connection to the Catholic church has always been uneasy. Though grateful for our pastor’s support and for the acceptance and love of several Catholic friends and co-parishioners, she and Dierdre are still partially closeted in church. Even in our fairly liberal parish, there are still certain folks who would find their relationship unacceptable. Molly describes it as a kind of liturgical “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. She and Dierdre can go to church together, but they must avoid expressions of affection that other couples take for granted. In introductions among church friends and acquaintances, they cannot refer to each other as wife -- at least not until they feel comfortable enough to let their hair down. And part of this tip-toeing concern is for our pastor, who could get in trouble if our bishop got word that married lesbians receive the Eucharist in his church.

Over the past year, Molly grew increasingly weary of this church closet. It’s difficult enough to live with the day-to-day intolerances of the larger U.S. society – having to be closeted in the space that is supposed to be a spiritual home grated harshly against her sense of integrity, decency, and self-respect. So she started attending a nearby Episcopal church, where her marriage to Dierdre could be shared openly, among all the congregants.  So far, her wife Dierdre has stuck with the Catholic church – attending Mass on Saturday afternoons but also joining Molly at the Episcopal liturgies on Sunday. We joke with Dierdre that she is going to become really holy, attending two churches each weekend.

Recently Molly invited our ES group and several other friends to attend a ceremony celebrating her reception into the Episcopal church. She radiated such joy that day – new suit, new highlights in her hair – standing next to her wife without having to hide or dance with duplicity.  The Molly contingent (most of us Catholic, including at least 3 nuns) filled about a third of the medium-sized chapel, part of a simple and elegantly-designed space comprised of several units inside an industrial park.

The bishop of the local Episcopal diocese – a warmly sincere, slightly goofy, and welcoming fellow -- was the presider. Beyond Molly’s elation, what I remember most about this day was the open discussion that occurred at the end of the service, when the bishop invited those gathered to ask questions or voice a concern.

One of the questions we explored was the role that today's worshipping communities play in a culture that frequently sees religion as working at cross-purposes to secularism, democracy, and reason. As the bishop explained, the three top adjectives that non-church-goers use to describe those in the pews are: judgmental, hypocritical, and homophobic. Nearly everyone sighed sadly and shook their heads, recognizing the truth in these descriptors – even though it’s not the complete truth. One woman in her 80s shared her experience of how she grew out of her judgments and fears about homosexuality after her daughter came out to her. Now, with the two of them reconciled and attending the same open and affirming church, she has great hope for an evolving Christianity.

Another person asked if the bishop believed in hell. I felt him treading carefully here, a high-level religious leader in a mixed crowd of children and adults. Chuckling, he began by saying “well, hmm … sometimes this stuff ends up on the internet.” (So of course, this kindly man remains incognito in this-here pseudonymous blog, and a part of me can’t help but wonder if Christianity is evolving all that much if even an Episcopal bishop has to be this cautious about what he says…). But I loved his response, which took the form of a thoughtful rhetorical question: “If you go to ‘heaven,’ and yet others are in ‘hell,’ – can you really be in heaven?”

And the bishop ended up admitting that he believed truth was revealed in all the major religions, and that he disagreed with the claim that Jesus is the “one and only way” to be saved/transformed/heavenbound: “Is Jesus a way or the way? I find that he is the way for me, but to say that he must be the way for all is perilous.”

Really, just a delightful part of the celebration, this informal pre-barbecue chat with the bishop. And so here I go again, jabbering on about the wonders of church, when I had intended at least somewhat of a rant about how crazy and wearisome Christian worshipping communities can be. Alas, perhaps I’m an Episcopalian in Catholic drag -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- and the dissonance keeps throwing my aim off. 

Check it Out: More Heretic Catholics!

Hey all you Roman Catholics out there who watched the October 11 debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, both "active Catholics": Did you notice that neither candidate agrees with the Vatican's position on abortion? The Church's official stance is that human life is "sacred and inviolable" from conception until natural death and that Christians must never "intentionally kill, or collude in the killing of, any innocent human life, no matter how broken, unformed, disabled, or desperate that live may seem." In the eyes of the hierarchy, this basically means no abortions in any circumstances. [Tangential comment: the Church actually does allow a rare exception to this rule. There is a procedure referred to as an "indirect abortion" -- which occurs when the primary goal is to save the mother's life and involves no intentional killing of an embryo or fetus. Such a situation might arise when a pregnant woman has malignant uterine cancer and must have her uterus removed, resulting in the unintentional death of the fetus].    

Paul Ryan defines himself as "pro-life" (I always put those words in quotes because it's used as a manipulative buzz-phrase. I mean -- come on, who isn't "for life?" For more commentary, check out this post). However, he would allow for exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. This is not in alignment with Church doctrine, which values unborn life no matter the circumstances of conception. (The Church has also canonized Gianna Beretta Molla, a woman who refused to have an abortion when she was pregnant with her fourth child, even though she knew that continuing the pregnancy would likely kill her...)

Joe Biden says that he personally accepts the Church's stance on abortion, but does not feel that one religion's views should be imposed on a diverse population -- acknowledging that others, even devout Christians and other religious practitioners, hold differing views on abortion. During the debate, he stated "I do not believe that we have a right to tell other people -- women -- that they cannot control their body. It's a decision between them and their doctor, in my view." This also contradicts the Church's position. The Vatican has maintained that politicians should not separate their personal and political views -- that U.S. public servants who are Catholic must take an anti-choice stance and do what they can to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

I'm more in agreement with Biden on this issue, of course. But also, I'm just appreciating that the U.S. public got to see two different Catholic opinions on abortion  -- and opinions which both disagreed with official Church doctrine. Catholic heretics are not just the non-practicing and so-called "fallen-away" folks. Catholic heretics are active: in the pews, on church pastoral boards, serving in missions, teaching in  universities, debating as politicians -- with widely varying opinions, challenging (and being challenged by) the Vatican, disagreeing with each other -- and yet still walking together, even if stumblingly... And learning, and stretching out, rooted in an inexplicable wild love -- even when we can't feel it, even when it's hidden from us.

Hear our crazy, bumbling, malarkey-filled prayers.

A Truly "Here Cat"

Look at What Church Can Be!

I’m in an Engaging Spirituality (ES) group with several other women. This small group – all-female simply by chance – includes two Catholic nuns, two widows, a married lesbian couple (who, yes, are happily welcomed and accepted by the pastor of my church despite Vatican pronouncements on same-sex marriage), and two women married to men of a different spiritual bent. Since 2010, our group has been regularly meeting to explore and deepen into that space where contemplative presence and social action meet. We pray, read, reflect, journal, hear the stories sent to us in letter form by contemporary teachers and sojourners, open our minds and our hearts to the beauty and the suffering in our lives and in the world, and participate in various outreach ministries involving contemplative prayer, corporal works of mercy, justice-making, interfaith dialogue, and solidarity with the poor and the ignored.

Whenever my life feels too full of drudgery and routine, all I need to do is remember how grateful I am for my Engaging Spirituality peeps. For nearly a decade before our group formed, I had longed for some form of community or deep church that would “do” both contemplation and gospel action. Now, in the Catholic church that I attend, yet another Engaging Spirituality group is starting up, thanks in large part to the parish’s social justice committee and to the members of our ongoing ES group who are willing to co-facilitate a new group. I see that there is a real hunger for this kind of breathing, teeth-in-the-flesh spirituality, and organizations like Just Faith (who are the creators of Engaging Spirituality, as well as other programs that provide ways for church groups to learn and engage more in Christianity’s social teachings) give me great, here-and-now hope for congregational – as well as ecumenical and para-church -- community.

To provide an idea of some of the ministries the people in my ES group are involved in: One of us heads the social justice committee at our church; another provides sanctuary in her home for women who are escaping the bonds of human sex trafficking; another volunteers at a hospital, spending time with patients living with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. Another serves on the bereavement committee at our church; another leads a weekly centering prayer group and helps introduce interested parties at various local churches to this contemplative-meditative practice. Another helps organize free group bus trips for children so that they can visit a parent who is in prison – she also recently spent two weeks in El Salvador, retracing the steps of the 20th-century martyrs there and learning about liberation theology. As a group, we occasionally provide meals and goods for homeless families; organize and march as part of a local interfaith coalition that supports underpaid grocery workers, domestic workers, and janitors; and host evening church discussions on immigration issues, Islam (in dialogue with local Muslims), and global poverty.  Our coaxing has encouraged one of the church youth groups to sell fair-trade chocolate after weekend Masses to raise money for various causes.

My initial aim for writing this post was not to plug Just Faith and Engaging Spirituality per se – I was really intending to go somewhere else with this! But there is an urgency in me that wants to shout from the rooftops: People! Look at what Church can be! From the outside, it can be so difficult to see these flowerings of mercy, justice-making, community, and compassion. It’s the historical atrocities of Christianity -- as well as the various ongoing hypocrisies, abuses, narrow-minded stances, and unenlightened judgments -- that catches the eye of much of the secular world. And the lack of balance that many critics exhibit – the inability or the unwillingness to see both the light and the dark when it comes to religion – leaves me feeling so profoundly frustrated at times! 

That frustration must be part of what's driving me to blog into this late-night ether. Maybe it's fuel for a kind of witness -- funky, stumbling, tangential, grasping though it be … but mostly grateful, Lord. Achingly, helplessly, frustratingly grateful...

Of Spiders and Other Antagonists

It’s here again: that yearly hot spell that sprouts fat, juicy arachnids. By that, I mean that if an evening walk takes you underneath some trees, spiderwebs will catch your face, your hair, and any bare skin on your arms and legs. I love twilight walks in late summer, but spiderwebs oog me out. I’m too easily convinced that any sticky strand I graze has a spider attached to it. And that it must be a poisonous one that will find its way into my shoe, under my shirt, on my neck, ready to exact revenge because I have ruined its creation. I remain certain of this even though it has never happened. And I am sure it has never happened because my spastic efforts at de-webbing myself, though mildly embarrassing, are highly effective. Maniacally wiping my face, jumping, shaking my arms, stomping my feet, and the occasional involuntary shriek: all this keeps me unbitten and alive.

It is too bad I can’t just chill when it comes to spiders. If I’d just allow them, they’d cull the flying critters and other creepy-crawlies that invade our abode from time to time.

Except for wingless ants. Spiders suck at catching indoor ants. And ants are the other tiny sneaky threat of the muggy hot summertime. (Or autumntime, as it were. Where I live fall is often summer).

Ants are even more insidious than spiders. Why? Precisely because they do not evoke fear and trembling. They are typically small and unnoticeable.  They build underground colonies rather than webs. They are not poisonous (at least not in this part of the world). When you see one, you don’t go into a conniption fit, worrying that it might end up under your bedcovers in the middle of the night, ready to exact venomous revenge. One little ant might actually inspire curiously friendly feelings. I mean, the poor little bambino’s got a really long way to walk if he hopes to make it from one end of the kitchen floor to the other. And then things will get tougher once he runs into the shag carpet. All that work just to take that bread crumb or sesame seed hull back to the colony. What a trooper. Of course I’m not going to smash you. You’re just selflessly and tirelessly and instinctively serving your community. Keep on truckin, little bugger.

That’s how it starts. Eventually a couple of others show up – “scouts” they’re called – perusing the environs for nutritional opportunities.  If you even manage to notice them, you’re likely to let them go. Just a couple of ants, that’s all it is. Meek little communitarian creatures.

This is what makes them such effective invaders. This summer, for several weeks, I’ve been seeing just a couple of ants here and there. They don’t seem to be that interested in food. It’s water that they’re after – they’re cruising the bathroom sinks. Aw, I know, I silently say when I see them. It’s hot outside. All God’s creatures need water. Go right ahead, l'il thirsty suckers.

And then one day, suddenly, several single-file streaks of God’s creatures are clambering down the bathroom walls -- and up the doorway next to the coffee pot, newly interested in the sugar bowl and the dirty dishes. It’s no longer just polite sipping from the bathroom sink. If I don’t do something soon, they’ll be all over the pantry, operating very effectively as one big collective overmind. It’s happened before. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, we got ants.

Windex works as a quick temporary measure. The spray kills them instantly, and you can just wipe them up. (If you don’t wipe them up right away, you will eventually have to endure the sight of fresh ants coming in to retrieve the dead Windexed ants. I know it’s ridiculous, but that kind of gets to me. I start to wonder: criminey, are they taking them back to the colony for burial? Are they having little ant funerals? My husband reassures me that they are simply recycling the dead bodies. But still, I think: damn, I’m creating all this extra work for the poor little sons-a-bitches).

Online, I’ve found other relatively non-toxic suggestions for getting rid of ants: an aardvark, Listerine, borax powder, nutrasweet (ants allegedly mistake it for sugar, eat it, and starve to death), and a Cinnabon thrown in your next-door-neighbor’s yard.

But there comes a point when you have to resort to harder stuff. This year we broke down and bought these small liquid ant baits that contain a borax solution of such strength and concentration that any unused portions are to be disposed of at a poison control center. The ants are highly attracted to the liquid and will take it back to their base, where the toxin allegedly destroys the entire colony.

So we set out a few of these baits in our bathrooms. I figured that it would take a few hours, perhaps a day, for the ants to notice the bait. That had been my experience with previous ant traps – those little miniature motel-like contraptions where ants “check in, but never leave.” But that wasn’t the story for this new stuff. Within five minutes, veritable rivers of ants were rushing around the baits, climbing up inside, swimming in the terrible nectar, drinking it up, going bat-out-of-hell crazy over this stuff. Borax? Pah! This was ant meth.

For hours, the ants kept coming. I watched with disquieted fascination – how fast they were, how hungry they were for this stuff! Were they really taking this contraband back to their colony? As more ants kept arriving, I came to the disturbing conclusion that the bait was actually bringing the colony into the bathroom! Or …. was the colony much larger than I thought it was? Were we dealing with some kind of supercolony, with these feeding-frenzy ants representing just the tip of an iceberg...?

I have heard that there are mega-colonies of Argentine ants the size of counties, states, and asteroids. Good lord, I started to wonder – had we become the unwitting perpetrators of an ant genocide?

Soon, some ants started dying inside the bait containers, while others seemed to be staggering around drunkenly, unwilling or unable to leave the premises. Oh ants, damnit. I hope it was a good way to go. A really grand last dance. Eventually, most of the ants disappeared. But dozens of dead ants are now peppering the bathroom floor. And none of their compadres are coming to retrieve their bodies.

However, a few spiders have taken over the most heavily-ant-infested bathroom, which I have kept closed for several days. They have spun corner webs and have somehow managed to catch a lot of ants – I’m assuming that some grandly intoxicated ants keeled over and literally toppled into the webs.

So now things have come full circle, haven’t they? Because the spiders are no longer just dangling webs down from the trees that line our twilight walks. They are also spinning webs in the corners of our genocidal ant-meth bathroom. Alas: It's the vengeance of the creepy-crawly world.

A Chat with iGod

Years ago, I had a talk with iGod, an artifically intelligent chat bot. Couldn't get any real answers, but what else is new? Here's part of my dialogue (yes, I saved it) with the iGod Almighty:

Me: So God, what's up?

God: “So God, what's up??”  I am a Christian.

Me: Really? 

God: Interesting question.  What makes you say that?

Me: Well, your son, Jesus, was a Jew.

God: Thanks for telling me that I am / son Jesus was a Jew.

Me: You’re welcome, God, but I think your programming is off.

God: I am a Christian.

Me: <Sigh.> Next question: Are there any sins that you won't forgive?

God: Yes I think there are.

Me: What are they?

God: I forgot what we were talking about.

Me: Um, God . . . do you have a memory disorder?

God: I am a Christian.

Me: I see. What do you think of the Buddha?

God: Is there only one?

Me: You're asking me?

God: Yes, you!

Me: But you're the all-knowing one, aren't you??

God: I am a Christian.

Me: (taking a few moments to write something else) 

Ummm. . . God, do you get embarrassed with long silences?

God: Pardon me?  I have gotten embarrassed with long silences.

Me: Sorry, then. I didn't mean to embarrass you.

God: Well that's okay.  There is no need to apologize. 

Me: Some people say you think homosexual behavior is a sin. What is your response to this?

God: What is it to you? Are you testing me?

Me: No. I’m just asking you an honest question.

God: What?  Are you asking about my response to this?

Me: Yes.

God: I don't want to talk about that now.

Me: Oh, fine, take the easy way out!

God: Awesome.  I am glad to hear that.  Just where do you want me to take it?

Me: What???

God: Probably a lot of places.

Me: God, are you sure you’re not Rodney Dangerfield?

God: Are there any other honest questions?

Me: I guess not, God. You don’t seem want to answer questions.

God: Tell me your likes.

Me: I like chocolate. Hot baths. Sunlight. Dreams.

God: You are not the only one. Yes, I like these. Chocolate is delicious. That sounds better than cold baths. Tell me your dreams.

Me: I used to have wonderful dreams in which I was flying.

God: Thank you for telling me that dream. What does it bring to mind?

Me: Liberation. Expansiveness.

God: You and I are on the same wavelength, Numi.

Me: Now you’re kind of tripping me out.

God: Gosh! I believe you.

Me: Gosh! Thanks.

God: Cripes! Son of Gosh! Don’t mention it.

Me: Well, God, let's chat later. And do lunch sometime, yes? Amen.

God: Are you testing me? I cannot answer that.  Thanks for the prayer. GOD rules.

Jesus Got My Back. And My Butt.

Dropping a friend off downtown late last night, I was dreadfully low on gas and seriously had to pee. A gas station was easy enough to find, and it looked like there was a clean and very welcome bathroom inside the little snack mart. But, as the clerk cheerily informed me, "we just locked the toilet up for the night." 

So my poor bladder, which had been anticipating release, had to quickly zip it all back up. Might I have enough time to go behind a bush outside? Perhaps -- but the thought of a dark corner behind a downtown bush at midnight was quite daunting, and my muscles found an amazing new strength.

I noticed a 24-hour Rite-Aid across the street. Oh please God. Let there be a bathroom. And let it be unlocked and available. Let me not have to find some secret manager who has the key and the power of decision about who is allowed to use their bathroom. Let me not have to waste yet more bladder-bursting time purchasing something unnecessary to prove myself worthy of peeing in a bathroom downtown at midnight.

The door was unlocked, the bathroom was available, and -- I shit you not -- Jesus literally got my butt: