Leaving My Religion

In "Trouble in the Tribe" Daphne Merkin writes, "I have been trying to lose my religion for years. But it keeps finding me." . This statement spoke to my spiritual identity. Spending 50 years immersed in Roman Catholic culture creates an indelible imprint on spirituality. While I recognize that religion and spirituality are separate entities, in constructing my spiritual biography I am unable to lose my religion. If I try, it will surely find me.
I grew up the oldest of seven children. My mother had been a Benedictine nun and my father had attended Roman Catholic seminary. Our house was a second home to their former classmates, and I was surrounded with discussions of catholic theology with priests and nuns. I grew up saturated with my religion at school, home and social relationships. My view of God, salvation, grace and my spiritual self was filtered through the lens of the church. Until I was out of grade school Pius XXII was pope and I communicated with God in a special secret language, Latin. Sister ruled at school and our prayers were printed with the time value of release from Purgatory earned by reciting them at the bottom. A "Hail Mary" would be worth two months and a "Glory Be 20 days. While it was reassuring to have the particulars in writing, I was led to believe that grace was a commodity. It could be lost at anytime if I made a misstep and I could accumulate it for a rainy day. This first period of my spiritual pilgrimage resulted in a solid belief in the spiritual side of life and the existence of God and the power of a faith community.
For high school, I attended a boarding school located at a Benedictine convent in central Minnesota (Yes, my mother had been in the convent there. Her name was Sister Dolores). At St. Ben's I lived in an environment that was integrated into the religious community. I attended morning and evening recitations of the divine office in chant, I witnessed the lives of women who had dedicated themselves, sometimes seventy or eighty years, to religious life. I spent my free time with my best friend riding around the streets of St. Joseph, Minnesota singing songs in two-part harmony. One morning in late October of my senior year my friend collapsed in my arms and died. I began a long journey through grief and loneliness, and wrestled with questions of life and mortality. The darkened monastery chapel provided a quiet, sacred place to meditate and heal. No human companion walked with me and I developed a deep personal relationship with God. I was able to establish an inner source of strength and faith. My relationship with God fortified me through the challenges of marriage, motherhood, the loss of my parents and brother, chronic illness and disability.
When I started working at the Washington National Cathedral I met a young man who challenged my assumptions of religion and church communities. He was a former Lutheran missionary and was devout and knowledgeable. His observations and questions fueled complex discussions and led me to mature and focus my spiritual
identity. He opened my heart to the ministry and the possibility of a "calling". The draw in this direction grew stronger with time.
My path became clear during the ceremony for my cousins' final vows as a Catholic brother. It was a powerful ritual in a beautiful historic church in Philadelphia. My cousin was so full of joy. My brother sat beside me and he had been recently selected to the deaconate in his parish. I rejoiced with them yet I realized that although I believed I was called to the priesthood and had a special gift I was created to share with my sisters and brothers, I would not able to answer that call in my church because I was a woman. This didn't make sense. I looked around the church and saw many lay and religious women and was saddened by the colossal waste. The Holy Spirit had given all of us gifts to share and yet there was no place for them to be released in my home church. I felt I was in a spiritual burka and was expected to ignore or suppress the urging of the spirit within. I understood that separations and exclusions in the Body of Christ were superficial. Our common humanity joined us together. In Christ there is no man or woman, no Catholic or Protestant for we are all one. I understood that it was time to embrace my call and my fire to lead others and serve the Body of Christ. I left the church that day and believed that I dropped my burka there.
I know that being a member of a spiritual community includes the role of listening and encouragement. It is vital to listen full heartedly and give attention to a person. It is a gift to encourage others to find their unique spiritual path. Each person is at a different point in their journey and has their own path to walk. I can use my pilgrimage as an example of one path.
Like Merkin, I understand that my religion will keep finding me. It is a part of my cultural identity. There are many good things which I learned as a Roman Catholic that shaped the character of my spiritual, political and philosophical being. Now, attending Wesley, I know I am in the right place to freely foster my whole spiritual Identity. I am richer for my lifetime journey. The Holy Spirit plans to use all that I have experienced and all that has been written on my heart for all these years to grace the world. Spirituality is a dynamic and evolving pilgrimage. I look forward to the trip.
Years ago I wrote down my purpose and goal for my life. I wrote," To illuminate a positive and hopeful path for others and myself to God.” This purpose hasn't changed. I desire to lift up my fellow pilgrims and encourage faith and hope in their walk. We are not alone. We have God and God has given us each other. I strive to give unconditional acceptance.

Artistic License

All of my life I have loved art. I let the beauty wash over me and transcend the moment. I was so envious of those with an artistic gift. I longed to express myself in color and form and texture. Finally, I released the need to be "good". I decided to paint just to delight myself. I took one class in watercolor and enjoyed buying brushes and tubes of paint. And then I started to paint. I like some of my paintings a lot. Some not so much. But I love the process. I love the act. I love expressing myself and releasing my creativity into concrete form. I recognize God as the creator. And I believe we are created in God's image. That includes the desire to create. This call is inside ALL of us. Don't be tyrannized by earthly judgements. Get in touch with your divine side. And for heaven's sake, don't wait.
(the painting above was done by me in summer 2010. It is the fifth painting I have done in my life.)

Great Expectations

My daughter was married this June and her new husband has a 6 year old daughter. As a result, I am a new Grandmother. She was visiting last night and she was filled with delight. "Tomorrow is going to be the best day of my life!" She was going to get off school and going to the aquarium with her best friend. Wow! Life was good!
 After she left I thought of how wonderful it must be to have that fresh and joyous approach to life. Then I thought, "What if I did?" So...
I had planned a short trip to the Jack Daniels Distillery with my husband and daughter. I decided to mimic my granddaughter. Throughout the day I kept saying to myself, "This is going to be the best day of my life!" This mantra seemed to refocus my mind and spirit. It rained and it was an outside tour. "The best day of my life!" It was sweltering. "The best day of my life!" I had swollen legs and used a wheel chair. "The best day of my life!" I was concerned that my daughter was having surgery tomorrow. "The best day of my life!" I said something stupid at lunch. "The best day of my life!" And I did have a wonderful day. After all, here I was, with the two people I love most in the world. We're together and it has the possibility to be the best day of my life! But only if I let it.
I want to expect to have the best day of my life every day.

Rule of Life

           

     I recognize the importance of discipline and order in building and sustaining my spiritual health and preparing for God’s work.  It is important that I take the time and make it a priority to develop a routine of spiritual practices.  In this effort I offer the following rule of life to provide structure and focus to my spiritual formation.

I will exercise the discipline of silence and refrain from judgment and needing control of a situation.

I will seek a spiritual director and have a session once a month.

I will step outside my comfort zone and commit to charitable works in my local area once a month.  

I will maintain a journal and make an entry each day.

I will fast from judging others for a 10 hours a day once a week.  

I will attend a bible study or religious group on a regular basis to learn and share.

I will make regular monthly donations to organizations serving the poor or seeking justice for the oppressed.

I will seek to be kind especially to those who challenge me in this area.

I will start and end my day with 10 minutes of private prayer.

I will attend weekly corporate worship and continue to search for a church home community so that I may commit to a worshiping community. 

I will make a conscious effort to pray before driving and letting go of anger and impatience on the road.

I will remind myself regularly to praise and thank God.
  

I Was Born To Do This

     Discernment is a continuing issue with me.  I have challenges from within and without on a regular basis.  Yet, when I pray and meditate I get my focus and my direction back.  There is a certainty to my call with which I have difficulty making sense.  I have a resistance which arises from my “common sense”.  Looking logically at my personal situation I see an old, fat, disabled, Roman Catholic woman in a Methodist seminary.  Why would I be called here?  It doesn’t make sense to me and yet there is certainty in my spirit that this is my place.  I take a step out in faith every day.  I know to humans it seems impossible and yet to God all things are possible.  Sometimes simply the difficulty and pain of getting to campus seems overwhelming and yet I have no choice and I tell myself, “Do not think about it, do it.”  It is like being driven. Often I’ve tried questioning God to make sure that I’m getting the message right. At that point, people will be sent into my life or doors will open that I could not imagine.  For someone who loves to see the end in sight I have to rest in faith and move forward without seeing.  All the years of my life before this have been God’s preparation for the next phase in my work on earth. I have a favorite quote from Joan of Arc, “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.”  This expresses for me the inner knowledge of the rightness this path.  Of course, she was afraid.  So am I.  The call is greater than the fear.  

     The pursuit of my call must take place in solitude and community. Spiritual disciplines are regular workouts to strengthen and fortify my spirit.  Bonhoeffer explores the importance of community in Life Together. He writes, “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.”  He describes a community worshiping together and singing and working and at the Lord’s table together.  The description provides an image of the body of Christ in faith filled community.  The success of the community comes from order and discipline.  This is counterbalanced with personal times of meditation and silent prayer with God. 

     Thompson outlines practices that are useful to developing spiritual maturity.  Some of them have more appeal than others.  I like the concept of using several and finding the practices which seem to be the most effective.  Thompson’s practicality allows me the freedom to try different disciplines and not be tied to a success or failure paradigm.

     Finally, I feel that it is essential to exercise my faith and calling in the greater community.  Spiritual formation for me is not to build just a private relationship with God.  It is to fortify my spirit to bring the good news to the world.  I can say from my experience as a hospital chaplain that being an attentive presence requires a strong spirit and faith.  It requires not attempting to “fix” things.  Most of the time it requires patience and quietness and a firm faith in the love and power of God.  Words can be an impediment in many situations. 

     The examples of Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King Jr. show me the power of spreading the gospel of Christ.  I want to continue to build my spiritual arsenal so that I may use my strength and experiences to bridge the distances between God’s people.  I want to enable justice to be served and persons set free from prisons of poverty, fear and prejudice.  My common sense tells me it’s impossible and just like the nature of my call I should listen to reason and be practical.  However, I am committed to God to step forward in faith.  I am a child of God and I was born to do this.

 

               

Where are you?

     Last Friday, I was on my way to attend a painting class.  There was another event in the Town Center and it was crowded.  I found a place to park on the second floor of the public garage.  There were two elevators to get to the first floor.  I use a scooter and I waited at the elevators as car after car arrived but was full.   Just when I felt I would never be able to get to my class, an elevator arrived which was about half full.  As I entered the elevator, a person on the elevator sighed loudly and said, “Oh, God!”  Welcome to the world of the disabled. 

 

 

    

     As the result of an automobile accident 15 years ago where my knees were crushed into the dash of my car and accelerated osteoarthritis, I have found myself exiled into this world.  I have struggled with adjusting to a place without my familiar strengths and abilities.  I have a new image of my future possibilities.  I have resented and resisted accommodation for my needs.  Letting go of the past and looking forward to a different future than I had envisioned continues to be a struggle.

    Many people believe that the issues that affect the disabled don’t really concern them, however, with an aging population and advances in medicine, more and more people are finding themselves challenged and attempting to live in the world where they don’t fit in and their requirements are a nuisance to themselves and others.  Often they ask God, “What am I doing here?  Where are you?”

 

 

     Reading  from Isaiah brought to mind the concept of living in exile.  In my study of Hebrew bible I was impressed by the period of the Babylonian exile.  I attempted to understand what it was like for the Israelites to be banished from their home.  The importance of tradition, the importance of the past, the complications of the feelings of guilt, and how they would reconcile the concept of being "chosen" and yet finding themselves in such a difficult situation.  The prophet recounts and refers to the past and yet in verses 18 and 19, the prophet calls to forget the past and to perceive this new thing that God is doing.  Are the Israelites being asked to remember the past or forget it? The imagery recalls Exodus and the years in the wilderness.  The form of Isaiah is poetic.  It seems to me that this section could be part of an epic poem about the challenges to the Jewish nation.

   

     The context of these verses is Israel in captivity.  There are very few records concerning the exile of the Jews in Babylon. Murphy notes that the exile is not “just material devastation but a challenge to its entire world view." The Jewish god no longer has the temple and god's people are disbursed. There is no monarchy.

 

 

 

The Jews were troubled about how to continue to worship their god when so many of his promises apparently had been broken."  The role of the prophets is to penetrate the despair and hopelessness of the situation.  In second Isaiah the prophet attempts to bring hope to the people by reminding them of the faithfulness of god in their history.  The verses and symbols which call to mind god's rescue of the Israelites from Egypt tapped into the identity of the people.  The phrase “I will make away in the wilderness" brings to mind the years that were spent in the wilderness on the way to the promised land.  Wilderness has a special connotation to the Jewish people.   The prophet also speaks of the lord making " away in the  sea" all these words and phrases have had the meaning  for the Israelites.  It is impossible for the Jewish people to forget their past history and their relationship with god.  In verse 19 where the prophet speaks of the new thing springing forth offers hope.  Those things that are remembered as showing god's love and care and power will be diminished by the plans that god and the actions that god is taking now and in the future to care for his “chosen people".  This time god will give his people water in the wilderness in abundance.  There will be "Rivers in the desert".   The Israelites no longer have or need an earthly king, their king is the creator.  Their king is god.  The prophets use words to overcome despair and create an alternative vision of hope.

 

    

       Chapter 43 in Isaiah can be a spiritual resource for inclusiveness of the disabled in the church community.  Isaiah 43:8,9 states “bring forth the people who are blind, yet have eyes, who are deaf, yet have ears!  Met all the nations gathered together and let the people's us amble" is cited as an old Hebrew scripture passage pointing that the will of god is that all people be included are included as his chosen and created.

    I had an interesting experience when I was being treated at the National Rehab Hospital.  I was in another world.  Nearly every patient there was using a mobility device. In this setting I was normal.  To the staff of doctors, nurses and therapists I was nothing unusual.  I was not defined by my disability.  My identity didn't start and end with my use of a mobility device.  It was a minor aspect of my treatment.  I felt relieved not be a spectacle or something to be commented

on.  My inabilities were not in the forefront in any interaction that I had with others.  This experience was a revelation to me.  It challenged me to consider a world without boundaries.  It made me question how much of my limitations were from without and from within me.  I had a glimpse of a reality were everyone was just a person.  They were not defined or limited by ability or gender or size or color or background.  We waste vast amounts of time and energy placing people in categories.

     This brings me to consider myself and my ministry.  I work as a chaplain at a hospital and regional trauma center in Central Pennsylvania.  As result of my ministry I engage in attending to those hospitalized and their families.  I am called to hospital rooms, the emergency room, the trauma center, the outpatient chemotherapy areas, the heart procedure floor, palliative care and in labor and delivery.  Each of those persons that I meet is being challenged with exile from their former life.  They are adjusting to being an inhabitant, whether temporary or permanent, in this 

different world where body or your mind or someone that you love is in a new world.  Like the Israelites they wonder, “What have I done to deserve this? Why me?  If God loves me and cares for me, why is my child so ill? Why is my husband’s heart failing?  Will my mom die of this overdose?  Am I here forever?”  I don’t pretend to have the answers.  Their time in exile may be temporary or permanent.  I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the best gift I can give to them is to listen attentively and without judgment to their fears and laments.  And I do not preach.  My mission is to be the presence of God in the situation.  I listen attentively to their thoughts, worries and concerns.  Usually at the end of our meeting we pray.  I may be incorporating some sections of Isaiah into the prayers.  The reassurance that the prophet gave to the Jews as a message from God is valid thousands of years later.  When we are isolated in a threatening place the knowledge that the Creator is present and cares is powerful.  The message “Behold I create something new.  Do you not perceive it?” resonates in 21^st century Pennsylvania as it did in 6^th century Babylon.

     This is also an important message to me.  In spite of the disdain or disregard I sometimes receive from those who are certain they will never be in my place I have trust and joy in God and God’s plans for my life.   At the beginning of my physical challenge I could never have imagined the new thing that God had created in me. I could not perceive it.  However, now as an elderly, disabled chaplain I find fulfillment that I never experienced in all those years of chasing paychecks and promotions.  I hope that the person on the elevator may never discover what it is like to find them exiled to my world.  I would encourage them to use those hearty legs to walk down that one flight of steps with gratitude.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

United in Poverty

   The German theologian Moltmann maintains that theology must "enter into the changing conditions of the culture in which it is pursued, perceiving and developing its own concern in those conditions". (WJC p. 64) He describes the dual sides of civilization as heroic and barbaric, victorious and defeated. Moltmann questions whether the Christ that we experience in the First World is the same Christ experienced in the Third World and asks how does the First World theology and reality impact the Third World theology and reality. He writes, "The crucified Christ has become a stranger to the civil religion of the First World and to that world's Christianity."(WJC p. 65) Moltmann notes that the new poor in the First World nations are siblings to the Third World poor. He asks who Christ is for these "surplus" masses of people. He asks where Christ is for us in a world threatened by nuclear destruction. In light of this nuclear threat Christian churches are called to serve peace and life in contradiction to the scientific and technological civilization. Moltmann takes issue with ecological crises in the world today. He maintains that the acquisition of power, the consolidation of power and the pursuit of profit have led us to a place of universal ecological death. Moltmann maintains that Christology must challenge the perils of world destruction. By separating a Christology from “above” and from “below” we miss the point. He maintains that we have to study Jesus’ humanity in order to know his divinity and we have to study His divinity in order to know his humanity.
     I agree with Moltmann that we must consider theology as influenced by the context of the listener. I must acknowledge that my interpretation of the person of Jesus Christ is influenced by my background. Warren Buffett has decided not to leave his billions to his children simply because they are winners in an “uterine lottery" .
     I am not wealthy and yet by the nature of the place of my birth, my parents and my community I am a life lottery winner compared to most of the humans on this earth. Although I have spent my life working at being a good person and a follower of Christ I am called to recognize how my benefits in society cause hardship for those who provide them. I see Jesus in this world revealed through those who standup and lead the pursuit of a divine vision in the midst of human weakness and sin. People like Mitch Snyder, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa and that young girl in Pakistan, Malala Yousafzai, who was shot for standing up for the educational rights of girls. All of these people recognized the evil and injustice in the world and at the same time they possessed a divine vision of a world, a vision of the kingdom of God. 
    Christ became human and brought a message of the reality of the kingdom of God and we are challenged to pursue the divine in the mist of our human nature. The Definition of Chalcedon concerns the dual nature of Christ, totally divine and totally human. Moltman’s description of the challenges in the world today also expresses a duality. The culture of injustice, profiteering and death versus a divine culture of justice, generosity and life.
     The person of Jesus Christ in today's world still speaks good news to the poor. Many of the poor in the First World suffer from a loss of vision, purpose and a sense of isolation and hopelessness. When I consider who Jesus is in our world today I see a world of full of hungry people; literally hungry and spiritually hungry. The clamor of industrialization and marginalization of the “surplus people" in the world is deafening. The message of the reality of Christ among us revealed in the body of Christ is the answer to this noise. Christ, in His humanity, walked in this world and struggled with the challenges of injustice, poverty, illness and death. Through Christ’s divinity we are graced with a vision of the kingdom of God.