Tweet! : a ‘zine for summer is finally here. It’s chock-a-block full of beautiful images, cheeky sentences, and hidden surprises. Like her cousin Hiver, this ‘zine has a secret prize or two inside. (Mmm….just like Cracker Jacks at the ballpark!) Reach for the sun with this feminine tome to the loveliness of Summer.

See more pages and order via my etsy shop, or by emailing moi@magpie-girl.com with your snail mail address.
Price: $10, $2 ship/handling

- order 2-5 copies for no additional shipping costs.
- bulk prices available for orders of ten or more.

I grew up in the church. I was nurtured by the anchoring habits of rhythm and the ritual; the security of absolute unquestionable truths; and the support of a like minded community. It was comforting to me – until it wasn’t. Then, like a switch flipped on the wall I saw the light, and the light exposed all these ugly and untrue accoutrements that came along with it all. Ironically this switch flipping phenomenon was roughly congruent with my ordination as a minister. Yep, I realized what I was standing in right when I was stepping hip-deep into it all.

It confuses me – as I’m sure it does you – how I can so deeply love Jesus and be so genuinely grateful for my Christian roots, and at the same time be so clearly scarred by the experience of religious indoctrination. I suppose this is because cult and faith cannot easily be balanced. Because Christianity is a social movement and all social movements eventually metastasize and bulge away from their original intent. Because, in my opinion, “Jesus got ‘jacked.”

When I think back over my religious upbringing there are a string of damaging thoughts that got grafted into my being which came purely from attending church, Sunday school, and youth group. Among the long list are these 7 most-damaging messages:

Any impulse you have towards physical intimacy is naughty. (Result: A lifetime of distrusting one’s body and seeing one’s physical self as the great betrayer.)
You should only date someone to get married. (The worst possible message you can give a fifteen year old)
You are not good enough, but God puts up with you anyway. (Result: A life-long feeling of inadequacy and a lack of self-love.)
Everything you love must be given as a “sacrifice” to God. (Thereby making you feel guilty for anything you feel passionately about that cannot be turned into “church work.”)
There is no wisdom/love/spiritual truth/devotion/generosity outside of Christianity. (Result: A really unattractive and utterly false sense of spiritual/moral/political superiority.)
The devil lurks around every corner waiting to attack. (Instilling a constant sense of anxiety and fear.)
God is only male, therefore women are bad because they are not like God and because they brought sin into the world. (Results: such a plethora of damaging crap I cannot even BEGIN to list it all here.)

These messages, these draining repetitive tapes that I still struggle to rid myself of, prevent me from taking my children to church. As much as I want them to have the beauty of growing up in church – community, religious ritual, music – there is too much ….crap…that comes with the package. I can’t allow my girls to be damaged by this as I was. As much as I’d like to think I can counter these messages with parental chats and at- home lessons, I don’t think I can. After all, my parents never taught me any of these deadly messages. I got those all on my own. From church.

Ideally, I could move out of the evangelical branch of Christianity and avoid these things. But really, it’s not true. No matter where I go—and I’ve gone to a LOT of churches—there are still things that keep me from resting easy: exclusively male pronouns for God; one person holding all of the wisdom in the pulpit; patriarchal models of hierarchy and decision making; and the ongoing staggeringly depressing truth that Sunday morning is still the most racially segregated hour of the week. Being a part of these things from a young age shapes you, moulds you, into a certain kind of be-ing. In spite of the changes many of my ministerial friends are chipping out in this old institution, I still have to take a time out. I still have to protect my children in all their malleable young glory. And I guess, above all, I still need time to be …sad.

May it not always be so. May those with the passion and drive to make changes have the strength to continue the work. May healing come, may truth return. Next year, Jerusalem!

This morning there are cherries for worship. They are reddening slowly in my front yard, awaiting sour cherry pie, somehow defying the birds which lurk so near. There is this, and the sound of the sprinklers from behind a neighbors’ fence, one tone as the water brushes the fence, another as it patters on the leaves of whatever bulb is in bloom – first shy daffodils, then a pride of tulips, followed by dominate giant irises and now brash, jubilant lilies. I have brought canned music with me, encased in a white electronic box, fed to me through metal earplugs, but I do not want it. I want only to feel my stride, to let my skin soak in life giving rays, the “taste the colour of peach” (an old line from a friends’ poem lodged in my memory these many years.)

As I walk up the slow slope from my house I pass our local school, a middle school—old and worn, empty of it’s usual wards, all of whom are trying to grow up too soon. Now there is a sandwich board out front, advertising a church. The usual handful of people wander in and out too soon for the service – the mothers setting up the Sunday school room, the worship leader doing sound checks on his guitar, the kids who wander lost and bored at having to come so early so their parents can help. This past week, my children have fallen in love with the singing of church songs. They caught this fever, as they do every Summer at church camp, where the enthusiasm of college-aged music leaders is infinitely contagious. Now, they bellow them all day long to one another, singing at full voice while they leap through the sprinkler or toss one another a ball. This has struck a small cord of guilt in my heart – a heart which is well tuned, over tuned, to vibrate with guilt. Perhaps my children should have these songs more than once a year? Perhaps they need them as a regular part of their diet? So I pause in my worship with cherries, and clad in my walking clothes, venture into the school building to see the church.

The minute I see the man with the guitar I know I cannot stay. My body revolts, my throat grows tight, and I have that feeling again – that metaphysical distress that repels me away from this format, this podium, this song. As much as it leaves me with an aftertaste of sadness on my tongue, I cannot stay in this place I once called home. I cannot raise my children here. Not here, or here, or over there. None of these buildings will breathe for me; will grant me soil to propagate. This is not the fast desired of me.

I am to feast on cherries.

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. :
___________________________________________________________________________________

Click here to listen to this post as a podcast.

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 »

!

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

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.

“Eve just wanted to know shit.”

Tonya, my good friend and brand new graduate of the University of Washington in Women’s Studies (WOO HOO!) turned me on to this t-shirt via feministing a few months back. Being a big fan of the “God Doesn’t Have A Penis” t-shirt of ‘aught five, I happily added this one to my smart ass collection. I wear it cheerfully with the camo cargo shorts I bought in the boys section of Target, and my custom converse which make me feel like the tomboy skateboarder I’ve always wished I was. I don’t often wear such bra-burning gear, preferring to be a little more on the arty-girl side most of the time. Most of the time when I get dressed I’m just trying not to look like an overweight soccer mom—‘though I readily admit there is something deeply troubling in my psyche which urges me to wear my most revealing scoop-neck/push-up combo whenever I’m called upon to speak at religious gatherings. (She’s a rebel and she’ll never ever be any good.) Still, I have to admit that this new slogan stating a possible alternate reality for Mother Eve has really been niggling away at the back of my mind. Believe it or not, I think something as simple as a t-shirt has pushed me over the edge of some invisible boundary into the unknown world of feminist theology. When I put it on I wonder, “What would it mean for me to be a feminist theologian?” Then I want to jump in with both feet.

I was at a wedding recently where the bride and groom wanted to do the Jewish tradition of breaking the glass during the ceremony – only they weren’t Jewish, and they wanted to break the communion chalice. Ray, their oldest friend and ordained minister was officiating at the wedding, and this destruction gave him just a little bit of a pause. He wanted to make sure that the symbolism could hold water. We were sitting at my house the night before the wedding nursing cocktails and musing about how to give this postmodern ritual a consistent narrative. “Maybe,” I said, “maybe we could not break the chalice given as it’s the only symbol of the feminine divine in the joint.” There was that awkward silence where no one quite understands but you’re all too tired and too buzzed to engage in some big new discussion so you just let it slide. But what I meant was that the communion chalice – womb shaped and full of blood for crying out loud, is a fantastic symbol for the feminine aspect of God. I’d love to promote that, got get people thinking about the terrific subversive power the chalice can have, sitting there as it always has been, front and center, throughout all these patriarchal centuries.

Anyhow, that’s what I mean, when I say that the Eve shirt has pushed me over the precipice. I think like this now. I am become this believer.

to read more about how I came paddle about in the pool of feminist theology, explore the priestessy things category at urban abbess.