The Feast of the Visitation

 Today we celebrate the Feast of the Visitation, the day when Mary goes to her cousin Elizabeth. Both are miraculously pregnant, Mary with Jesus, Elizabeth with John the Baptist. As they approach each other, they recognize each other, as mothers, as miracles--even the babies in their wombs understand what's happening.

I'm a good Lutheran girl, so growing up, we never celebrated these feast days. As I've gotten older and explored monasticism, and to be honest, as I've blogged more and needed more to write about, I've been doing all sorts of research into feast days.

Some feast days leave me shaking my head and wondering what modern folks are to do with them. Some feast days, like today's, make me wish I'd known about them earlier. I think about my younger self who was enraged that so much femaleness seemed to be erased from Christianity. What would my raging feminist self have done with this festival?

I'm not sure she'd have been appeased. I was also in the process of trying to assert that biology isn't destiny, while also acknowledging that I was one of the first generations to be able to assert that idea.

My middle-aged self is willing to admit that biology is often destiny, although not in the womb-centric way that the phrase is often bandied about. I'm seeing too many people at the mercy of bodies that they have increasingly less control over.

I love this story of new life being held in unlikely wombs.  I love this message that biology is not destiny, that our bodies can do all sorts of wondrous things, like heal, generate new life, or learning new ways of being in the world.

There are other aspects of this story that aren't immediately apparent.  I love the intergenerational care that's present in this story.  I am fondly remembering female members of my own extended family and offering thanks for their support. I remember the family stories they told and the ways they included me in family gatherings. I remember the rides to the airport, and memorably, one time that my cousin Barbara (my mom's first cousin) came to Augusta, 60 miles away, at night, to help me out of a jam caused by the breakdown of a car. I remember that she treated it as a grand adventure. No castigating, no lecturing.

This year, I'm thinking about the elements of discernment, call, and retreat.  God calls both Mary and Elizabeth, and both say yes to a radical change of direction to what they might have planned.  And it's a change that will have an impact on the rest of their lives, not just a year or two.  I love the idea of taking some time away to support each other and to prepare.

On this feast day of the Visitation, let's take a few minutes to listen for God's call.  What new life waits to be born?  What new project of God's can only proceed if we say yes?  And how can we nourish ourselves so that we're ready?


Here are the readings for today:

First Reading: 1 Samuel 2:1-10

Psalm: Psalm 113

Second Reading: Romans 12:9-16b

Gospel: Luke 1:39-57

Here's a prayer that I wrote for today:

Creator God, today we offer thanks for Elizabeth and Mary, women who were willing to follow your invitation into adventures that must have seemed impossible.  Open our hearts so that we hear the invitations you offer to us.  Give us the courage to say yes to you.  Plant in us the gifts that the world needs.

Meditating on Memorial Day

I never got Memorial Day off as an adult, until we moved down here to South Florida. In South Carolina, in the 1990's, Memorial Day was often not celebrated because it started out life as a holiday to honor the Union dead.

I realize that some of you will be saying, "Union dead? The Civil War? That war that happened over 100 years ago?"

Oh, yes. For some folks, that war isn't really over. They celebrate Confederate Memorial Day.

And in terms of state and federal holidays, my community college employers were a bit stingy. We didn't get Presidents' Day off either.

So, it was a joy to move down here and to have the day off. But soon, enough, it felt a bit empty.

I've spent all of my life before moving down here living in places that had a military base in the community--sometimes two or three. Memorial Day has a different flavor in places with a military presence.

Now I live in a place that feels more like a future U.S., where English isn't the dominant language, where there are more recent arrivals than people with ancestors buried in the soil. Most days, I'm cool with this, and invigorated by it.

Today, I'd like to be at a national monument, listening to one of the service bands perform. Or maybe I'd rather be in a contemplative spot, saying a thank you.

So, on this day which has become for so many of us just an excuse to have a barbecue, let us pause to reflect and remember. If we're safe right now, let us say a prayer of gratitude. Let us remember that we've still got lots of military people serving in dangerous places.

Let us remember how often the world zooms into war. Let us pray to be preserved from those horrors.

Here's a prayer I wrote for Memorial Day:


God of comfort, on this Memorial Day, we remember those souls whom we have lost to war. We pray for those who mourn. We pray for military members who have died and been forgotten. We pray for all those sites where human blood has soaked the soil. God of Peace, on this Memorial Day, please renew in us the determination to be peacemakers. On this Memorial Day,we offer a prayer of hope that military people across the world will find themselves with no warmaking jobs to do. We offer our pleading prayers that you would plant in our leaders the seeds that will sprout into saplings of peace.

Deadlines and a Sense of Grace

 A student wrote to apologize for not getting her work done this week. She said she had been in the hospital after giving birth to a baby but that she would catch up on work this week.  I told her to take all the time she needed.

I know that some teachers would require documentation; I was once one of those teachers. But my experience during spring of 2020 has changed me a bit. In March of 2020, facing enormous disruptions, I wrote to my students and told them I had suspended all deadlines and that all they had to do was to do their best to get their work done by the end of the term. I would keep writing weekly emails as if the deadlines still applied, and in fact I encouraged them to try to meet the deadlines so that they wouldn't have impossible tasks at the end of the term. But I could tell early on that we were going to be facing a variety of challenges, and I didn't need to hear all the details to grant people grace. My goal was to get them to the end of the term as successfully as possible.

That's always my goal of course. I was surprised by how many people stayed on track even though I had given them blanket permission to turn in everything late. It made me wonder if the punitive approach to missing deadlines is the best. We talk about training people to be good workers later, good professionals, people who will get the work done on time. I'm not sure they really learn that by me taking 20 points off if they turn in a paper late.  Perhaps it's more accurate to say that the ones who learn the lesson that way have already learned it by the time they get to my college English classes.

I also thought about different approaches to grades with my own grades that I earned as a student this term in seminary. In one class, I earned an 89.7. On a 100 point scale, would you give me an A or a B for the class? As a teacher I would round up, but I know many teachers who don't.  I'm happy that my seminary professor did round  up, and I got an A minus for my term grade.

When I broke my wrist, I did write to all of my professors just to let them know, and they all wrote back to say that they were willing to do whatever I needed. I decided to push forward and finish my work before the surgery. This morning I looked at the calendar and thought that if it was a month ago, I would be deep in a variety of papers.  I thought that pushing ahead was easier than taking incompletes, and that turned out to be a good decision.

There's this strange emptiness in my days where seminary work once was and where it will be again. It makes sense to take this summer off for a variety of reasons:  wrist surgery recovery, moving across multiple states, and the fact that seminary scheduling didn't quite work for me for this summer. Today I will connect with old friends, one of the joys of having some extra time.

Coastal Ministry

Last week, I saw this tweet from @revpaulwhite, which I'm still thinking about a week later:

"Just had an interesting talk about rural ministry. 

However, in my new context, it would be interesting to think about coastal ministry: fishing industry, seaside tourism, end of the road poverty, seasonal work in leisure. Feels like an area not much talked about..."

I thought about commenting, but as I scrolled through the comments, I reflected that my perspective in southeast Florida might not align with the English context of the tweet and its responses. For example, we don't have much of a fishing industry.  Much of our economy is rooted in tourism, which means that many people are working in all sorts of hospitality industries.  But I'm guessing that's true of many (most?) coastal areas.

My comment would have talked about climate change and how coastal communities will face very difficult challenges in the coming decades.  How will coastal ministries help communities face the enormous losses that are coming?

That's an issue in coastal ministry that's not talked about much . . . 

The Feast Day of the Ascension

Today is the Feast Day of the Ascension, 40 days after Easter, 10 days before Pentecost. This feast day commemorates Jesus being taken up into Heaven.

Imagine it from the eyes of those who have followed Christ from traipsing around Galilee, Crucifixion, and then Resurrection. You have just gotten your beloved Messiah returned to you, and then, poof, he's gone again. What a whipsawed feeling they must have had.

How do we celebrate this day, so many thousands of years later? Many churches have chosen to simply ignore it. We march on to Pentecost.

But let us take a minute to acknowledge the wonder of the Ascension. It's a fate reserved for very few in the Bible. And let us take a minute to think about Jesus, who has already suffered death, the fate which an ascension spared for the few others who experienced it.

Just like the first followers, just like Jesus, we don't get to stand around waiting for our chance to go to Heaven. There's work to be done on Earth. The coming Sundays of the Pentecost season remind us that we’re not put on Earth to wait to die. We are here to help God in the ultimate redemption of creation. Jesus began that work of that redemption. We are here to further it along, at least as much as we can during our very short time here.

And how do we do that? The possible answers to that question are as varied as humanity. Some of us will pray without ceasing. Some of us will fight for social justice. Some of us will create works (of art, of science, of theology, of gardens) that point others to God. Some of us will visit the lonely and the sick. Some of us will give away our money so that others have the resources to do the creation redeeming work that needs to be done.

Whatever we choose, it’s important that we get to work. We don’t want to get to the end of our time here, only to be asked, “Why did you stand there gaping, when there was so much work to do?”

For those of us who feel like we can't do much, consider this language from today's Gospel, the latter part of Luke 24:9: "so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

I love that language: clothed with power from on high--how would we behave if we truly believed we had been clothed with power from on high?

Pentecost will be here soon, the holiday that commemorates the first clothing with fire. But we've all been clothed in that way. We have all been clothed with power. Believe in that force--and then get to work in the claiming of creation.

Prayer for the Feast of the Ascension:

Ascending God, you understand our desire to escape our earthly bonds, to hover above it all, to head to Heaven now instead of later. Remind us of our earthly purpose. Reassure us that we have gifts and talents that are equal to the tasks that you need us to do. Help us close our gaping mouths and get to work.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, May 29, 2022:

First Reading: Acts 16:16-34

Psalm: Psalm 97

Second Reading: Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

Gospel: John 17:20-26


In this Gospel reading, we get a glimpse of the prayer life of Christ. I find it deeply moving to think of Christ praying for me. I think of him praying for those that will come later (in our case, much later, 2000 years later) and want to weep in amazement. To the very end, Christ prays for his followers, for those that have been and those that will be. In these last prayers, he continues to focus on his central message of showing God's love to the world.

Christ also reminds God that he wants to share the glory that God has given him. He wants to give that glory to his followers. Think on that for a minute. What if you actually were capable of being like Jesus?

Here, too, we get a vision of success the way that Jesus defines it. It's not about claiming all the glory for himself and translating that glory into wealth or ruling the Roman empire or beauty. It's about glory that spills over to those who come later. It's a sharing economy that we don't often see in our human-made world.

It's a radical vision of love. But how do regular humans, who often operate from a space of greed or loss, how do we move towards that space of love? The good news: the more we practice being Christlike vessels of radical love, the better we'll become at it.

Here, as with any change, it's better to start with the tiniest of baby steps. Maybe this summer is a good time to increase your charitable giving. Maybe you want to donate some time to work with the poor and the oppressed. Maybe you want to remember to pray for those who aren't as fortunate as you are. Maybe you want to clean out your closets and give your surplus to those who have little. Maybe you want to adopt an artistic practice that will help you notice the presence of God.

Maybe you don't want to add an additional task, but you want some quiet time, a time without the constant blaring of the sorts of media that feed our space of separation and hate.

Christ's prayer that we may all be as one resonates even more in these days of deep division. How can we be part of the healing mission of Jesus.

We are surrounded by people who are poor in spirit, people who are suffering terrible blows. You could be there for them. You could be the person in the office who always has a smile and a kind word and reassurance that all will be well and all manner of things will be well (to use mystic Julian of Norwich's words). You could sow the seeds of hope and help fight despair. You could be the person that makes people wonder and whisper, "I wonder what his secret is? What makes her so capable of being happy?" Maybe they'll ask and they'll really want to know, and you can talk about your faith. Maybe they'll just be drawn to you and hang out with you, and you can minister that way.

Theologian Richard Rohr had these words of wisdom in a daily meditation several years ago: "Rather than consuming spiritual gifts for yourself alone, you must receive all words of God so that you can speak them to others tenderly and with subtlety."

Begin today.

Sea of Tranquility, World of Turmoil

During my April travels, I heard this interview with Emily St. John Mandel on the NPR show 1A. The interviewer and the author discussed the new book Sea of Tranquility, which sounded interesting. I first read Station Eleven and enjoyed it thoroughly, so I was predisposed to like this book.

In fact, I loved this book. I’d go so far as to say it's one of the best I've read in a long time. I started it Friday afternoon and got up early Saturday morning to finish it. I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to ruin it for those who haven't read it, so let me just say that it was satisfying in so many ways, particularly in ways that pleased me as a writer. I was so impressed with what she managed to pull off.

This interview on the Ezra Klein podcast also inspired me to want to read this book. This morning I went back and listened to both interviews again. Emily St. John Mandel is a wonderful guest with a wide range of knowledge.  I’m glad that she’s younger, that we might have many more books from her to enjoy.

I was sad yesterday when I learned that Rosemary Radford Ruether had died. She, too, had a wide range of knowledge. She was one of the feminist theologians who helped change how we talk about God. She did groundbreaking, revolutionary work on gender issues and God talk. She's not one of the theologians whose work I go back to reread, but her work forms a foundation for many of the works of theology that have sustained me.

I wish I could say that her work was done, that it seems part of an earlier age and no longer relevant.  Sadly, that is not the case. Just last month I was part of an interesting conversation about changing references to God as a father. We talked about translation issues and gender issues and whether or not it was appropriate to have a more expansive language when talking about the creator.

The person who was most opposed to changing God the Father language was not in his 90s. I looked him up later to be sure. He's roughly my age, at the far side of mid life. I thought that most people in more liberal church denominations had accepted the need for careful language when it comes to the creator, a need to move beyond tradition. I was surprised by the ferocity of the conversation.

I held my own, while at the same time thinking of the decades of work that had been done on this issue of the language of God talk. It's also interesting to think of these issues in a week where the Southern Baptist Convention has had revelations of all sorts of horrible abuse. It reminded me of one of my undergraduate friends who went on to seminary in the late 80’s, right at the time at the Southern Baptists decided to stop ordaining women. I felt sad that the church world would lose her gifts.  I feel that sadness still.

We live in a time when the church world is losing the gifts of all sorts of people who turn away for all sorts of reasons. Some people scoff at the idea of language making a difference, but theologians like Ruether knew that change doesn't happen at the larger macro level without change happening at the micro language level. Maybe we need to return to some of those revelations.

This morning I took delight in reading this tribute to Ruether. Come to find out, the academic dean at Wesley Theological Seminary, where I am a student, studied under Ruether, and she directed his MA thesis. I have been so pleased this past year to be at this seminary, and discovering that the seminary has connections back to Ruether makes me even more happy to have made this choice.