My children, along with a couple hundred other children, are sitting in the dirt wearing the same bright orange shirts they have worn the past four days. They are singing an old hymn, based on an older psalm. There are drums, a college student playing an acoustic guitar, and one cheerful teenage girl wielding the pre-requisite church-camp tambourine. Between each phrase of the song the children clap a complicated pattern while standing in small circles, each child’s palm against the palm of the child to their left or right…Or they shout “Woo Hoo!” in one choreographed voice…..Or they pump their fists into the air and grunt “Ugh!” energized by sheer joy. Each time they repeat the song they speed it up a little, until it resembles the Chipmunk’s Christmas Album, only higher and with more squeak. It is silly and graceless and loud – and it rapidly brings tears to my eyes.

Nothing could be more beautiful.

My girls are attending half-day church camp this week. It’s sponsored by one of the biggest churches in town (Presbyterian) and features lots of lovely things like super-fun teenage group leaders and all the silly songs you could shake a stick at. One of the downfalls of this particular camp that makes it tip into the “indoctrination camp” category at least once each year, is that mid-week the group leaders give the kids a piece of paper asking them to sign if they’ve made a decision “to accept Jesus as their personal Savior”. (Thus the reason none of Cate and Eden’s friends-who-aren’t-Christians go to this camp anymore.) Today in the car Catie waved this purple “commitment” sheet around started this conversation:

Cate: “Our teacher says this is the most important thing in our whole lives, and it’s NOT!”

Me: “What is the most important thing in life Cate?”

Cate: (sounding disgusted at my ignorance) “Your FAMILY.”

Me: “Oh, right. Well, some Christians believe that people will go to hell if they don’t know and love Jesus. So your teacher was probably just worried and wanted to make sure you know Jesus.”

Cate: “Mom. I already love Jesus, so this piece of paper is still not the most important thing in our whole lives.”

Eden (piping in with equal indignation): “I don’t even believe in hell.”

Me: “Well, some people do and we should be careful not to make fun of their beliefs. For instance _________ and _______ believe in hell.”

Eden: “That’s because they’re Republicans.”

This is what we read around the table last week at Solstice. I rather like it, if I do say so myself. :
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We gather around this table tonight because we have traveled through the grey season to return first to Spring, and now to Summer. We have made it through the storms and the cold, the wetness and the drizzle–and we come now to this the longest day, to this abundance of light. So we stop for a moment to remember our journey, to celebrate this gift, and to give thanks.

At this table we have a great bounty, the labor of many hands and many talents. And we have, as we always do, a loaf of bread and a glass of wine. To some of us these simple foods remind us to be grateful. We see the staples and we think, ‘Ah, we have what we need.” To some of us these symbolic foods remind us of Jesus; they remind us to value what he valued – the sharing of life and provisions, the giving of thanks. For some of us the bits of grain in this loaf and the grapes crushed into this cup remind us that we are all part of one great family, birthed of one mother, living together in unity.

No matter who or what is a part of your story, we all have good reason to be here at this table on Solstice, during this time of light. Tonight we belong together. Tonight there is enough. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know I’ve started making recommendations every day over at Magpie Suggests? It’s easy to get something great — just click on the image or the title to order. Check out my beginning collection of great summertime reads and tunes to groove by.

Love,

Magpie Girl

Something about this makes me hope none of these children grown up to be surgeons.

Dear Cate Shalom,

Today you are adding another year to your age, and as much as I’d like to freeze frame each adorable stage, the reality is that you are now 7 years old. It hardly seems possible that nearly 8 years ago I was standing shell-shocked with a baby on my hip and a pregnancy test in my hand. But here you are celebrating on this one calendar square both your last day of first grade and your first day of being seven. (Too bad you had that s’mores overdose and threw up last night or this day would be a whole lot more fun!)

This past year has been wonderfully, typically Cate – full of giggles and good humor with just a touch of stubbornness thrown in for good measure. This year you learned how to read and how to make scrambled eggs. You fell in love with your favorite subject, math, and your favorite friend, Claire. Most cunningly you developed the fine art of manipulation in which you push your sister until she yells some mean name at you, resulting in one parent or the other telling Sissy to let you have (fill in the blank) – which was your clever goal all along. You love all things food – growing veggies, cooking together, and trying all things adventuresome. You love tuna fish, sushi, and the fancy turkey sandwiches from our favorite coffee shop with cranberries and sprouts. When I ordered that one for the first time, you drew a diagram of it with labels in my notebooks so that we could make it again when we got home! Most of all you love going on “Daddy-Daughter dates” to all the local bakeries in search of the perfect donut.

This year you finally got those drum lessons you’ve been planning since you were three. The first thing you said about your teacher, Lacey, was that “she has such SPARKELY eyes!” As soon as you got home from your first lesson you played the drums for Monkfish Abbey while wearing the Esmeralda costume Rosie gave you, complete with a hip scarf trimmed in gold coins. This Summer you’ve been giving the neighborhood free drum concerts while you practice every night on my bedroom balcony – usually while wearing a rainbow striped poncho and your purple-and-raspberry beanie. Our musician neighbor David says you are a perfect beatnik drummer. (Right on!)

As a six year old you took on some big responsibilities like: watering your own lettuce patch in the back garden, walking Neela and Sam’s dog Merlin while they were away, and feeding Samson each night. I feel very proud of you! I hope you feel proud of yourself too!

My fondest memory of you this year is our “4 minute cuddle” that we have each morning, just you and me! (I like how you’ve managed to bump it up from the 3 minute cuddle we used to have!) I love your infectious laugh that often rings through the house. I adore it that your birthday party this year is “pirates and tea sandwiches;” that you went all by yourself with Daddy to see Great Grandma in California; and that any time I say “I don’t know how to make that, Catie” you just grab scissors and tape and make it yourself. I even love it that you so often “get distwacked” in the morning! (Once, when Souren asked what distracts you so much in the morning, I said, “Oh, anything!” Then I went upstairs to find that you still weren’t dressed because you were carefully walking around the outline of the Hello Kitty on your beach towel. I’m glad you’ve got your priorities straight!)

You kiddo, are really great! I’m so glad you came to us as a surprise to fill up our lives with laughs and wonder. Here’s to wearing out another year’s worth of brown boots!

Love, Momma

!

We’re having supper under the trees tonight to celebrate! It will be light until nearly 10! O hurrah!

If you celebrate try reading Mama God, Papa God: A Caribbean Tale, listening to this, and drinking this.

Much Solstice Love to You

Although Paul and I have been trying for more than two weeks now, we cannot find a local printer who will give me a reasonable price on printing a small batch of my latest zine. Jen says I should ask the universe to send me a kind and affordable printer, which I am doing with all my heart. But I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask the blogosphere too. Does anyone have a lovely connection with a printer who might do a small batch full-color job for a reasonable price? Oh, do tell! Because this really should come to life….

One of the best examples of humilty I can think of is Simple Way. Simple Way is a tiny community in Philedelpia’s inner core who try to live a (re)newed kind of Christianity which focuses on taking care of their neighborhood, the earth, and each other. Living at or below poverty level, these generous, clever, imaginative folks have found stunningly do-able ways to support and celebrate the poor but VIBRANT neighborhood in which they live. From helping the neighbor kids grow much needed produce in the backyard of an abandoned house, to shooting pollution sucking clover seed through the fence of a toxic dump site with supersized water guns, these folks refuse to believe that they are too small to make a difference.

Shane Claiborne is the public voice of Simple Way and I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with him at a conference and in conference calls. One of the things I appreciate most about Shane and Simple Way is that even though they live lives of awe-inspiring genersoity and sacrife, I never EVER feel guilty after talking to them. They manage to spread what they call “prophetic imagination” for a better environment and better neighborhoods without holier-than-thou attitudes or condemning speech — a gift rarely seen among dedicated activists. If I could describe Simple Way using only two words I’d say they were brilliant, and humble.

I was just preparing to blog about Simple way and thier stunning humility when I learned the Simple Way common house–in which members live at poverty level– several of their neighbor’s homes, and their neighborhood community center was destroyed this morning. The 7 alarm fire ripped through the low-income neighborhood decimating houses, cars, and business. Members of the Simple Way and their neighbors have lost all of their possesion, including their equipment for the small cottage industries that keep them afloat.

All my love, thoughts and spare change go out to this astonishing community who are teaching me to live with humility and hope. May they soon find their way back home.

My primary place of religious belonging is Monkfish Abbey, a tiny group consisting primarily of recovering Christians who are trying to move in a generally God-ward direction. But over the past several years I’ve also found a home at the big blocky cathedral that beacons to me from the hill when I stand on my bedroom balcony. St Mark’s Cathedral is a monolithic building full of contradictions. It is unfinished, yet perfect; austere yet welcoming; vast yet womblike. It is fitting then that from this place of dichotomy should come forth perhaps the only Episcopalian priestess who is both a Christian, and a Muslim.

For many years the public face of St. Mark’s was Ann Redding. I came to think of Ann, who always seemed to be officiating whenever I came to the cathedral, as my priestess, although I never met her personally in the cathedrals large crowds. I fell in love with her sheer otherness – her blackness, her femaleness – as she held space before the altar for all of us who did not otherwise have a place in the power structures of the mainstream. There she stood, week after week, in this patriarchal monolith of building; her simple presence singing out a song for all of us who were not sure we could be here. When I felt isolated as a female minister in a male-controlled denominational setting, I would return to the the reality of Ann, with her salt-and-pepper dreadlocks and her womanly curves, standing as hostess over the sacraments. This actually seen image, unlike a mere imagined ideal, gave me great solace and assured me that I could somehoe carve out a space to be a minister of Jesus.

Ann was recently laid-off at Saint Mark’s, and ‘though the priest who spoke of her absence on Easter Sunday chalked it all up to amiable budget cuts, it was not hard to read between the lines. This break of the priestess from her parish could not have been easy, and I for one am deeply feeling her loss. Now when I attend St Mark’s, I am struck by the predominate whiteness of the staff; and I am more aware of how the women serve as sacramental assistants, but only men take the preaching pulpit. I still love the building for the sheer holiness of the space; and the retiring bishop makes me laugh and cry at his sweet rendering of Jonny Cash and John Lennon. Still, the community as a whole seems less like home.

It is only since she left St. Mark’s the Ann has been speaking publicly about her Christian-Muslim faith hybrid. There’s a lengthy and interesting article about her dual conversion here, and so far the bishop has been able to roll along nicely with this interfaith reality made flesh. As the abbess of several hybrid monks(Christian/Athesist-curious, Zen Buddhist/Christian, etc.) I read the article eagerly, scanning the words of theologians from both faiths for advice and insight. My main emotional response was, “well, but of course!” Being a Muslim and Christian seems like a natural, path for Ann, the deeply spiritual-mystic-woman-American of African descent-priestess. It is my hope, that after all the disruption of the past year, Ann feels as though she has come home.