is it enough
this story,
this ideal,
this wistful thing—

the teacher speaking soft in the garden,
mouthing my name,
warm-blooded and real.

when I grow tired of picking,
sorting fact from fiction,
lies like stones among the lentils,
truths as yellow bulbs among the rocks,

when I tire of this painstaking plucking

i hold instead,
one smooth egg
one round stone
one child, with chocolate on her mouth and songs on her tongue.

he is wisen, comes the lisp
he is wisen indeed!

tell me true things, i whisper,
my face held close,
warm against her neck.

she sings to me
an edict, a lullaby,
ubi caritas, maman,
ubi caritas et amor
ubi caritas, deus ibi est.

where there is charity, there is love
where there is love
there god is.

enough, i think,
to hold this egg
this stone
this child
enough, to say ‘amen.’

One year in college, a couple decades ago, my girlfriends and I decided to wear black on Valentines’ Day. We were all boyfriendless at the time, and Spring had hit early so couples were coming out the dorms like moths from a wardrobe. We rebeled against coupledom in all it’s sacchrine glory. And what else is a rebel to do, but wear black?

Many years later at graduate school a professor of mine asked me to tell her my life story. I told her all the basics: where I grew up, what my undergraduate degree was in, when I got married. When she asked me how old I was when I got married, and the age “23″ came out of my mouth, this wise woman nodded her head and said, “Oh, so you’ve never been single.”

No, I have never been single. I went straight from a small Methodist college, where (almost) everyone was not so much single as just not-married-yet; on to graduation; and then straight to “Here Comes the Bride.” I never lived a day in the life as a single gal.

But she had been a single woman, my 50-something thesis advisor, and many of my girlfriends have as well–either as women who have not married, or who have married and are single again. And there’s also those girlfriends who have had long-term partners and common law unions, only to find themselves on the single side of the chart once again.

These women do not live lives of bereavement. They are not bereft. And whether they are single by choice or by circumstance, all of them have built lives that are as full and rich as any woman with a ring on her left hand and someone else’s clothes in her closet.

So every year, on Valentine’s Day, I remember that year in protest-black, I recall that a-ha moment with my professor, and it prompts me to post this blessing. I wrote it out of love for St. Lucy, for my single friends, and for the passionate heart of St. Valentine. If you are single, I hope it is a gift to you today. Thank you for living lives of admiration, and for putting up with all of us who go all gooey under the influence of paper hearts.

With Love and Respect,

Rachelle
______________________

I bless you in the midst of your singleness,
In the ebb and the flow of it,
In the hot and the cold of it.

Amen.

Children lighting candles-as-prayer at the peace installation, December 2004. Photograph by My True Self.

Today is the first Sunday of Advent (from the Latin, meaning ‘to wait’). It is the time in which Jesus-y folks everywhere prepare for the arrival of Emmanuel, God-with-Us. (The very concept of that possiblity give me anticipatory chills.)

Last year Advent went by in a flash, and my carefully cultivated discipline of keeping a peaceful, presence-ful schedule evaporated in a sea of poor planning. Ironically, in the midst of packing for an international move, this year we seem to be approaching this season with a more reasonable sense of time. To help this along, the note on my fridge says, “Today will unfold with measured grace,” and I am carefully prioritizing our calendar to help my family sink into this beautiful season.

Tonight we will go to “A Tranquil Advent Evening” at the cathedral on the hill. Though I’ve offered to let them beg off, the girls have both asked to go. They will be content to walk the labyrinth and light the peace candles while Momma –who was raised singing cantatas every year in the school choir — will join in the singing the gregorian chants and the verses of the O Anitphons, inviting the peace of Christ to come and dwell amongst us. My favorite verse, as always, will be verse eight: “O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind; bid thou our sad divisions cease, and be thyself our King of Peace. ”

The first time I came to this service on the hill, a profound sensory experience surrounded me, forever altering my experience of the Advent season. Here are my memories from that Advent, three years ago.

____________________________________________________________________________

Last night we went to “A Tranquil Advent Evening” at St. Mark’s Cathedral. The labyrinths were all candlelit, as were the steps to the altar. There was a classical guitar, a bevy of peace candles, perfectly executed Gregorian chants, a stellar harp.

It was raining outside, as it had been all week, and I had become acustomed to the constant drip. But inside the cathedral, I wasn’t prepared for weather’s resplendent sound.

It was as if the wind had decided to roar and sweep only around the cathedral walls. As if the rest of the city had been abandoned by her touch, that she might rally around this one space, this one focal point, her tendrical arms weaving and circling only around the deep, quiet nave.

“I am in a ship,” I thought, behind closed eyes, “below deck, and out of the way in my berth while the crew works to outstand the storm. Or perhaps we are all below, grasping tin mugs of coffee, working with the sway of the sea, hoping for the best, now that we’ve battened down the hatches.

No, it is more like a submarine, submerged and silent and waiting—hoping not to be heard by the enemy, hoping to be found by rescue rather than salvage.

Or perhaps we are Jonah, sloshing amongst fish bones, listening to the sounds of digestion, praying for rapture.”

Then another thought sprang into my consciousness—more true for its unbiddeness, for it’s unlooked for appearance…

“We are in a womb, in this strong walled Mary. We hear, not the howl of a storm, but the pulsing and swish of the stuff of our own making, the life-blood of our own to-be-ing. Hoping. Waiting. Being very still, yet very present.

Are these not the actions of both the mother in pregnancy, and the infant in utero? Mary’s song, the howl and swirl of heartbeats, the rush of blood in the vein. Entombed. Enwombed. Either way, a closing-in before the reality of new life, shown in a crowning head, in the left-behind emptiness or an abandoned tomb.

Advent, to wait. Emmanuel, to come. Oh! What could it be, if we would hold both words in one space– hold them there, between the roof of your mouth and the top of your tongue; soft in between the hollow of your cheeks, holding two truths in the loose-jawed spaciousness.

To Wait. To Come. Do you feel the void between these phrases? It spills out, whispering, “hold steady, be present.”

Breathe in…the sound swirls inside this still, incubating space where words come, waiting to be birthed into a reality. They hover amongst your teeth. Exhale….your breath hanging like a plea. “O come!”

To learn more about my Advent-y world, visit my previous blog Urban Abbess and choose ‘December’ in the archives window, or browse through the ‘rites and rituals’ category. Thank you for reading.

Catie says “Om” underneath a geodesic dome. The dome was taking test run in our neighbor’s back yard before going to Burning Man.

We have a guest with us this weekend – a lovely young woman named Faith from Nottingham, England. She’s received an enviable grant to travel for two months studying how cities brand themselves as “art cities.” Doesn’t that sound just lovely?

Last night, while we were standing in the throngs at Motel, she asked if we were going to church on Sunday. No one’s asked me that for awhile. Since we closed Monkfish Abbey we haven’t even considered what we might want to do about church – or more precisely – about whether or not we want (or need) a spiritual community that meets in an organized, weekly fashion.

For now, this Sunday will find us worshipping at the Church of Art — that is, we’ll be making bamboo and paper mache lanterns at the Powerhouse for the Fall Equinox walk next Sunday. The folks at the Powerhouse and dedicated to expressing thanksgiving and general attentiveness at the turn of each and every season. Summer finds us parading about in celebration of the Light. Fall is a quiet preparation for hibernation with one last walk around the lake by lamplight. Winter finds us feasting and clapping as the darkness begins to wane at the solstice. And we greet Spring by dancing with flowers in our hair as Life returns to the earth.

For me the creative reality of the seasons is inextricably linked with the creative power of the Divine. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, “God creates” is the first thing we know about our source and our maker. In my experience, the church was never that good at connecting the dots between the words of our holy book and the reality of our physical living on this earth. But the artists at the Powerhouse have an intuitive way of doing just that.

What will you do this Sunday for spiritual sustenance?

Here’s a retroactive post from my life as an non-traditional ordained minister. You’ll find more Magpie posts on spirituality every Sunday from here on out.

Jesus in My Stomach
orginally posted November 10, 2003

Yesterday my sister in law emailed me from Africa. She’s a missionary there, in Kenya. She and her husband work incredibly hard to install water systems and build medical facilities and school houses. They are an amazing couple.

Anyway, she emailed us yesterday to tell us “very exciting news.” Now, when I see this in an email from my relatives, I assume this means someone is having another baby. (We are the only ones stopping at two.) However, this time she was super excited because her four year old daughter had accepted Jesus into her heart.

Now I’m happy about this. This is very, very sweet. But at the same time, this makes me wonder, because even though I am an ordained minister, I have not so much as even offered to pray with my children about asking Jesus into their hearts. In fact, it hasn’t even crossed my mind.

After reading the email, I turned to Cate, who was sitting next to me at the computer and said, “Cate? Where does Jesus live?” “In your bah-dee silly!” Cate replied. (Cate is three.) “Oh Yeah?” I answered, nonchalantly, “Where?” “Here.” Cate pointed to her heart, with an uncapped purple marker, tapping her sweater several times.) “That’s great Catie. Glad to hear it.”

On to the next child, age 5, who’s cutting out paper dolls in the living room. “Eden, where does Jesus live?” Eden answered, sounding very bored and put-out, “In heaven….on the earth in the olden days….in my heart.” Again I try the nonchalant parent voice, “Yeah, that’s good to know Eden. You know, Auntie Jewel says Joanne just asked Jesus to live in her heart.” At this point Eden put down her scissors and looked at me with her head cocked to one side and her mouth scrunched up like she does when she thinks a grown up is trying to pull one over on her. “Jesus lives in everybody’s heart. Everybodies in the whole world, Mommy!” “Yeah, Eden. That’s kinda what I think too. (pause) Unless someone wants to kick him out.” Eden shrugged. Then she went on to her paper dolls and I went into the kitchen, confident that my kids were aokay in the ole’ salvation book.

That’s pretty much how I form my theology. Thirty four years of sermons, 12 years of Christian education, 4 years of Christian college, three years in seminary… and it all boils down to 2 conversations with the 5 and under set. Go figure.

Of course, the next day Cate told me Jesus lived in her stomach…with her baby, “Nina”….not sure what that’s supposed to mean…

It is the last day of May and my children are scampering through the sprinklers. It is like miracle, to be this lovely and warm so early in the sunny season. It feels as though the whole city is breathing a sigh of relief and sinking back into the lawn furniture, which they’ve only just now got brave enough to pull out from the basement to expose to the elements.

It’s Monkfish Abbey night –which, for those of you reading this post on my Magpie Girl site—is a small house church/spiritual growth community that we’ve hosted for several years now. The RSVP’s for this week have been trickling in and our numbers are teeny tiny. The summer siren song of house guests and outdoor haunts has already begun to lure people away to pursuits that can only be enjoyed a few scant weeks out of the year. As the priestess of all things seasonal, I’m totally fine with these sun-induced absences. There is nothing more important in the Northwest than enjoying the sun while you can. It’s a big part of taking care of your body and your soul while living here in this semi-hospitable climate.

Hosting Monkfish Abbey is always a bit of an uncomfortable jobfor me. At first I called myself a pastor and tried to do churchy things to keep everyone nice and saved/safe. Then I started seeing myself more as a spiritual director and I spent some time teaching people contemplative practices, because that is what my Type A personality needed the most. And as my ordaining mentor always says, “You only preach the sermons you need to hear.” My hope—our hope as founding members—has always been that this would be a teaching-learning community with a lot of equal footing, the sort of place where everybody could play. It’s taken me a long time to let go of old, patriarchal, hierarchical church habits. It’s only very recently that I’ve been acting more like a simple hostess—vesting the space with peace and cleanliness, making sure there’s TP in the bathroom and cutlery on the table. On my best days, this seems as natural to me as breathing. Other times, when I’m worn down it is very very hard. There’s a lot of sweeping involved–sweeping and washing dishes, and emptying ash trays. That probably doesn’t seem like much, but as you know I am sickly, and kind of a whiner. So some weeks, it feels like a lot. But no matter how burned out I am on the prep-and-clean-up, I always get a little lift when everyone is here. I always feel happy that we are not living alone, an isolated family with 2.5 kids in a house that’s made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same. Every Thursday night, when I go to bed, I am grateful.

More and more often other people are making the meals and offering the post-dinner activity, with me offering some small semblance of a ‘spiritual development’ activity just once in every 3 or 4 weeks. It’s pretty far removed from the senior pastor model of church life where the ordained person controls and takes care of nearly everything, their finger in every pie and their signature on every sermon. For most our exisistence as a community I’ve struggled with this lack of active guidance, and I rarely feel satisfied with how well I’m taking care of our little monkish life. There’s a lot of self talk telling me that I’m not doing a good job as a “pastor,” followed by a great deal of guilt that I’ve quite possibly left my real vocation behind at the mothership/motherchurch. Shouldn’t I be consistently offering people some sort of lesson? Shouldn’t I meet with people one-on-one during the week? Shouldn’t we be cracking open the Bible, or at least reading some of the dozens of religious non-fiction books publishers send me throughout the year? Shouldn’t we, you know, pray?

Simultaneous to all this worry is the undeniable compulsion to write, collage, and generally muck about in my studio – basically doing anything but pastoring. It makes me wonder what in the world a person with a master’s in theology is doing crafting zines and knitting rabbits. At the same time, these newfound studio loves are what brings me the most joy. I can’t imagine relegating this artist-work to the sidelines of my living.

When my best self is present–when I am the most centered and most aware– my guiding voice says, “You know, your pastoring self is doing just fine. You shouldn’t be doing any of those religiousy things, not any more than you are anyway. Really. It’s just fine. Go pick up your paintbrush.” It’s a peculiar thing – that all the things I’ve been preaching over the years – ‘everything we do is worship’ and ‘art creates holy space’ and ‘conversation is prayer” —all of these things are actually becoming real, and my very silly self is having a hard time believing it. It’s as though I’d hoped Willy Wonka’s factory was really, and now that I’m in the midst of the multi-colored glory of it all I’m blinking my eyes and waiting for it to disappear.(Go ahead dear, you can even eat the dishes.)

When I stop worrying long enough to ask myself “what’s really gone on this past year at Monkfish?,” I actually get a rather nice answer. We’ve talk about our lives. We’ve wrestle off and on with how to be more giving and more justice seeking. We’ve given money to good causes now and again. We’ve mourn the damage our old faith practices have done to us and others. We’ve gotten angry about stuff. We’ve engaged in our own forms of intercession and hope. We’ve put our toes in the water and to try to find new ways of being and doing and living. All of that seems pretty good really, even if it’s done in a very quiet, very laid back way. It all squares nicely with the way Jesus lived (especially all that wine!); it’s nicely moral, and its not been too damaging with the dogma. Not bad really, for a bunch of renegades and a heterodox pastor.

This summer we are closing Monkfish – at least at our house—for six weeks. I don’t think we’ve had more than two weeks off in a row since we started in 2003, so I guess it’s time for a sabbatical. When we return, if people return, I’ll continue to “hold space until something good can get born.” (Jen says that, or maybe Anne, or both.)

So, if you’re reading this on the Urban Abbess site, things will be quiet for awhile – maybe for good, as I’m considering rolling all my writing into one site again. Where on sabatical, you see, trusting the Muse and enjoying the sun. This site will stay up for your perusal and my storage purposes. Maybe I’ll see you again in the Fall. Until then, enjoy the sun, be good to each other, and eat lots of watermelon. Namaste, and God(ess) bless!

Much shalom,

Rachelle

In her fabulous initial Zine, Jen Lemen reminded us that it’s a good plan to write a mondo beyond list for the universe to take care of. Here’s my list of stuff that I need less of, but which someone other than me is going to have to manage.

Magpie Girl’s Top Ten List of Things The Universe Needs to Help Me Have Less Of

10. rain
9. religious conflict
8. car alarms
7. people who “come & go”
6. conflicting health advice
5. medications
4. options overload
3. commerical stimulus
2. distractions
1. pain

Magpie Girl’s Top Ten Things I Need Less Of

10. television (thank god for season finales!)
9. purchasing opportunities (more loot = more maintenance)
8. “edu-tainment” (educational activities are still activities)
7. calories
6. emails (but how to keep them from coming so often?)
5. books (and the guilt over having bought them and not read them)
4. home improvement projects (martha stewart be damned!)
3. self imposed obligations
2. creative ideas (derails finishing)
1. regrets (i’m midlife crisis-ing! more on that later…)

Quick! Open the comments windows and write yours down. Your intuition will make sure the right ones get on there…

I have to use white out on my calendar. This is not my work calendar or anything, it’s just our family calendar—like the one your mom hung in the kitchen to keep track of the soccer games and such. Ours was hung on the side of the refridgerator, right next to the door from the garage. Many were the times I would come into the kitchen to find my mother speaking tersely to one of us, usually my brother, when a scheduling conflict arose. “This. Was. Not. On. The. Calendar.”

I have always had a thing for calendars. Its comforting to me to come to a clean page at the beginning of the month and fill in a few activities on those little boxes. It fels orderly, manageable. With the advance of time and technology my calendars got an upgrade. There were computer-generated weekly schedules and palm pilots that warned me when someone’s birthday was coming up. These magic electric things could change font colors, flash reminders, and–wonders of all wonders—sync.

Then, I quit my day job. I blissfully relegated my PDA to the back of the junk drawer. No more meetings! No more babysitter juggling! No more multi-tasking! I could downsize to an Ann Taintor calendar. Life would be SO MUCH simpler.

Maybe I should have actually read the caustically funny barbs on the Anne Taintor calendar, because the whole “life is simpler” stay at home mom thing doesn’t really exist. Not then. Not now. Almost as soon as I tacked up my quaint little paper calendar, reality hit. Followed by white out. There is so much stuff on my calendar, and it changes SO OFTEN that I can’t fit all the stuff into those moderate sized squares. I have to scratch things, shove stuff into the margins, and add little extras on with florescent post-it notes. And of this calendarizing doesn’t even begin to reflect all the stuff I really do in a day…”grocery shopping” isn’t up there for instance, or “bill paying,” or “dish washing.” You get the idea.

Recently a friend suggested I solve the problem by getting a bigger calendar. Maybe one of those desk-sized calendars or a big soccer-mom style dry erase board? This does not seem like a good idea. Bigger calendar = more space to schedule stuff = more white out.

Instead, I think I’ll downsize. Yes, gentle readers, “Do Less” is my new motto. Doing less will help my kids be less stressed. It will help my brain stay out of the theta state where all the intake nerves are firing at the same time. And it will help me live counter-culturally to my experience-obsessed cohorts who seem to think their kids will end up living out of a grocery cart if they don’t have some sort of after school activity everyday of the week and twice on Sundays.

“Do Less”

It sounds nice, doesn’t it?

How about it? Wanna try? What are some of the things you need to do less of?

Well, it’s the first week in April — time to say goodbye to our March habitude of body love.

Every habitude I play with inspires an artful little offering for the Buy Magpie page. This month’s love-my-curves experiement left me longing — as ever — for expressions of the feminine divine.

If you are a praying sort, you might want to check out the Blessed-Be-She rosetta stones. (Sparkly Things! So pretty!) I’m only making 3 or 4 of these, so if you’d like one, order soon.

Tommorrow, the April Habitude! (Here’s a hint…it’s inspiring me to make leg warmers!)