Between Julian of Norwich and Mother's Day

Yesterday was the feast day that celebrates Julian of Norwich.

Tomorrow is Mother's Day.

So many of us live in this valley between the two.

We long for solitude, a tiny cell to call our own.

But we also want to nurture.  We wonder if it's the most divine calling.

We spend our lives navigating this tension.

How can we know what is true?

Poetry Friday: Poems for Mother's Day

I am pleased to be included in the Mother's Day feature at the amazing online journal, Escape into Life.  I always love the way Kathleen Kirk, the poetry editor, combines poetry and art:  it's often unsettling and enriches both the poetry and the visual image.

My offering:  my poem, "Orpheus Visits the Fertility Clinic."  It begins this way:

"Orpheus considers the frozen
embryos of his dead wife.
Long ago, they preserved possibilities.
and now, he pays the price."

I had originally submitted it as a possibility for Valentine's Day, but Kathleen wanted to hold onto it for Mother's Day.  It's an odd inclusion, but it works.

I have also written a poem, "Cassandra Visits the Fertility Clinic."  I think the Orpheus idea came first, but I have a memory of one idea informing another as I wrote.

It's an interesting way to write poems, transporting figures from mythology into our modern lives.  Some day, perhaps an enterprising grad student will write a dissertation about which figures I've used most.

Right now, it's Cassandra, Penelope, Persephone, Orpheus, and the occasional Eurydice poem.  I wonder if my preferences will change as the years go on.  I'm not writing as many Persephone poems as I once did.  In the past five years or so, I've been returning to Cassandra more than any other figure.  It doesn't take a genius grad student to figure out why.

If I taught a poetry writing class, I'd challenge students to write a Mother's Day poem that avoided clichés, both the good and the bad.

I'd direct them to the Escape Into Life feature to see how others have responded to the challenge.

If I was teaching in a place that allowed me to bring spiritual discussions into the classroom, or if I was leading a retreat exercise or a church study group, I'd then ask the group to consider God as a Mother.  We talk a lot about God our Father. We talk a lot less about God as Mother.

We're missing out.  More thoughts on God as Mother as this Mother's Day week-end progresses.

Meaningful Philosophies of Life and How We Develop Them

A week ago, we'd have been going to see David Brooks tonight.  I've found my thoughts returning again and again to some of the things he said.

He talked about annual surveys of college students and what they hope to achieve.  Forty years ago, the number one answer was "Develop a meaningful philosophy of life."  Now that answer is the #16 goal. 

He says when college students are asked whether they'd rather have lots of fame or lots of sex, they choose fame.  Interesting to ponder what that says about our society.

He says that in our current society, we have many platforms to talk about economics and politics, but not many platforms to talk about love and greater moral values.

He bemoaned the lack of public intellectuals, like Reinhold Niebuhr, who used to keep these conversations front and center in our national conversations.

Clearly, he hopes that his book can help start these conversations, and I predict that it will.  But it probably will among people who already are having these conversations, like the book group or the campus group at my mom and dad's Lutheran church in Williamsburg (St. Stephen).

I did find it curious, the absence of churches, synagogues, mosques, and other traditional venues of moral training in this country and others.  Of course, many of the people he talks about in his book had that moral formation from churches. 

I'll be interested to see if he circles back to the idea in his book.  It certainly wasn't present in his presentation.

Or maybe that will be his next book . . .

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, May 10, 2015:


Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
Shout with joy to the LORD, all you lands. (Ps. 98:5)
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17


This week's Gospel continues where last week's lessons about the vine and the branches left off. Notice how many times Jesus commands us to love each other.

On this Mother’s Day, as we read the Gospel, we might see Jesus as the ultimate mother. Jesus nourishes us by giving us his own body. But Jesus doesn’t nourish us just to keep us close and smothered and dependent. Like any good parent, Jesus nourishes us and trains us so that we’re ready to leave the nest, ready to be resurrection people shining light into a darkening and desperate world.

You may not be feeling like you’re in a loving space right now. Pretend that you are. Make the effort that it takes not to snap at your troublesome colleague. Pray for the people that annoy you. Leave love notes for your family members. Say please and thank you more often.

Here, too, on Mother’s Day, we can look at the mothers who are doing a good job and try to emulate them. Tell people that they’ve done a good job when they have. Thank people for doing their chores. Remind people that they need to use their words, and not in their angry voices. Say please and thank you more often, and apologize when you’ve not done your best. Look for ways to make play dates with God and with the world.

You will likely find yourself transformed by your own actions—and hopefully, you’ll find the world transforming around you in response to your loving kindness.

Receive replenishment from Christ so that your withered branch will once again bear fruit. Allow yourself to be transformed into the part of the plant that sustains life.

How Should Christians Celebrate Cinco de Mayo?

Today is Cinco de Mayo.  How many of us know how this holiday came to be?  The Writer's Almanac web site tells us, "It commemorates the Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla in 1862. In a David-and-Goliath confrontation, the 8,000-strong, well-armed French army was routed by 4,000 ill-equipped Mexican soldiers, and though it wasn’t a decisive battle in the course of the war, it became a symbol of Mexican pride. It’s also become a celebration of Mexican heritage and culture in the United States."

For many of us, it's just another excuse to drink, like Saint Patrick's Day.  But what if we looked at this holiday with new eyes?  Today, I'll be thinking about how great odds can be overcome.

Some of us may be feeling discouraged, given the events of the last few weeks.  We may think of all those dead in Tibet.  We may think of all the news of poverty and despair that came to light after police brutality.  We may look at shrinking numbers in our colleges and churches.  We may wonder if societal transformation is possible.

But historical events like Cinco de Mayo, like the marches around Selma fifty years ago, like communities that have rebuilt after disaster--all these things remind us of what can happen if ordinary people come together.

And even if we feel we can't do anything physical, we can still pray.  I leave you with the words of  my all-time favorite theologian, Walter Wink, who reminds us again and again that God will not intervene in this universe that gives us free will unless we ask God to intervene: "This is a God who works with us and for us, to make and keep human life humane. And what God does depends on the intercessions of those who care enough to try to shape a future more humane than the present" (Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, page 301).

So, however you choose to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, let us pause to pray for a world where people do not have to rise up against oppression.  Let us pray for a world where oppression no longer exists.

Maybe we can't imagine such a world.  But God can.

Seasonal Shifts

Some days, we may feel like a partly frozen pond.

Maybe we see ourselves as an orchid blossom trapped in a strange prison.

Some days, we wander down a dimly lit path.

But then we realize that new life has taken root in improbable places.

We see the ways we have been supported.

We see the great gifts that have been brought to us.

We are ready to ascend.

Notes of Hope in a Week of Bad News

My inner sociologist has found the last week interesting, as the crisis in Baltimore grew worse and worse and then a curfew seemed to solve much of the immediate problem.  Despite having a B.A. in Sociology, I really don't understand riots that end in people burning their own neighborhoods.

Oh, I understand the anger.  Most of us do.  I understand the frustration of the slow pace of social change, of feeling unvalued.  I understand the nihilistic joy that comes from destruction.

It intrigues me that so seldom in U.S. history do we see people torch government buildings.  Perhaps they are more protected or perhaps riots escalate and no one says, "Hey, let's move this demonstration to the true source of our misery."

It's hard to move a group, especially a group that's in a bad mood.

In these days, those of us who have ever worked for a better world may be feeling discouraged.  We may wonder if anything that we do will make a difference.

So, I wanted to offer two quotes of consolation.  I listened to the latest episode of the radio show On Being; Margaret Wertheim is part of a huge project, Crochet Coral Reef.  She talks about why the project is important and how it is a metaphor:

"One of the things about the reef project that I feel is important is that it's a constructive response to a devastating problem. I think most people, as I am, are completely freaked out about the problem of global warming. What can we do? Can we do anything? And the reef project — the Crochet Coral Reef project is a metaphor, and it goes like this: if you look at real corals, a head of coral is built by thousands of individual coral polyps working together. Each coral polyp is a tiny insignificant little critter with almost no power of its own. But when billions of coral polyps come together, they can build the Great Barrier Reef, the largest living thing on earth and the first living thing that you can see from outer space.

The Crochet Coral Reef is a human analog of that. These huge coral reef installations that we build with communities are built by hundreds and sometimes thousands of people working together. So the project capitulates, in human action, the power and greatness of what corals themselves are doing. And I think the metaphor of the project is, look what we can do together. We humans, each of us are like a coral polyp. Individually, we’re insignificant and probably powerless. But together, I believe we can do things. And I think the metaphor of the project is we are all corals now."

And to return to theology, which often informs my thinking on social justice:

Easter promises us that our efforts will not be in vain. In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N. T. Wright says forcefully, " . . . what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff" (208).

For many of us, the most difficult part of Jesus' mission that he gives us will be the willingness to believe that the arc of history bends towards justice, as Martin Luther King reminded us. The arc of history also bends towards beauty and wisdom and love and mercy.

Some of us are so beaten down that we forget. Some of us would have no problem being crucified for our faith, but it's much harder to believe in God's vision of a redeemed world and to work to make that happen. But scripture and thousands of years of theology makes it clear, as Wright says, "We are called to live within the world where these things are possible and to agents of such things insofar as they lie in our calling and sphere" (248).

I'm glad to wake up this morning to hear that Baltimore was quiet again last night.  But clearly, we all still have work to do in bending our current arc of history towards justice.