Goblins in Junkin

So, my seminary lounge - named "Junkin Common" after its donors, decades ago - is a rather dodgy sort of place, for a seminary anyway. It's quite curious. First of all, there are stained glass windows with little goblins on them. Someone paid for stained glass windows that are meant to be JOKES! Now we can barely get people to donate money for student scholarships, and someone back in the 1920s wanted to commission stained glass windows with goblins... the mind reels. But humor is probably good for theology. Maybe the Junkins wanted to affirm the mischeviousness in people who have the pomposity to decide they want to be ordained. The goblins are studying, writing, laughing, and trying to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." They seem very earthy and coarse. It does sound familiar. And very English, somehow, too - fairy tales and things.

And then there's the fireplace. I've been trying to dissect the Greek all year, and I can't quite get it - my grammar's so bad. Transcribed into English letters, it's ethos anthropo daimon - which is confusing to me because those are two nominative nouns and a dative noun. Literally, I think it's "an ethos to man demon/spirit." Which doesn't make any sense. Any more literate Greek readers out there? Of course, since this is an Episcopal seminary, someone may have just gotten their grammar wrong. (We perhaps more devoted to the prayer book and the Queen's English than the Bible and its languages, but that's a whole other post.)

So, it's nice that the Junkins wanted us to have a lounge where students felt like it was alright to be sort of bad. And this is indeed the room where we have drinking parties, although they are admittedly rather tame. Still, Episcopalians like to say, "wherever two or three are gathered, there's a fifth!" Anglicans like to talk about the Incarnation; that we look especially for God in the world, not just in the Bible or in Church. I like that mix of secular and sacred, in my denomination and my seminary - communion wine and beers around the fire, chapel and student lounge, saints and goblins.

Birthday haircut

So, I decided I need a grown-up haircut, since I'm officially over thirty today. Not bad, huh? I like it. I've been amazed, actually, how different I feel. As my mother put it, "You look like a professional instead of a girl in school." Mom's good at saying it like it is. I feel older, but also more like myself with this haircut. But then, when I wash out all the styling tomorrow morning, I may feel different yet again. Hopefully, I can look like myself without blow drying my hair every day.

I've been reading a lot of good stuff about vocation in anticipation of this birthday. I read a lot of bad stuff when I was starting Ye Olde Episcopal Discernment Process. Or I was just so stressed out by the pressure to "figure out my call" that I couldn't use any of it well. I think it was so hard for me, in part, because my hunch that I wanted to do something that had to do with God wasn't a direct translation into "Priest." It still isn't. Then, I was afraid that if I said that to anyone I would be ushered right back to my law firm job. Becoming a priest is simply a way to do the work I feel called to do. I still struggle with whether I actually want to do parish ministry. I'm going to start there, though, because it's something I know and I have student loans to pay off.

I've been rereading parts of Karen Armstrong's The Spiral Staircase, about coming out of her very rigid convent and trying to make a life for herself in the world. She wandered around a lot before she stumbled on who she really was, which was not a priest, nun, or a married person, in the end. She actually did two television series (!), after being denied her PhD at Oxford and teaching high school for a few years. I also like reading her because it gets me thinking more about this book on singleness that a bunch of you have asked me to start writing. (I don't know if that will actually happen, but I like thinking about it.)

Karen Armstrong says:

we have to "follow our bliss" ... even if it seems hopelessly unfashionable and unproductive ... My "bliss" has been the study of theology. For other people it may be a career in law or politics, a marriage, a love affair, or the raising of children. But that bliss provides us with a clue: if we follow it to the end, it will take us to the heart of life. (305)

Amanda Baggs

I found this woman's story and video on cnn.com. She has severe autism, and she makes videos for YouTube - her most famous one is called, "In My Language." It was uncomfortable for me to watch, but it blew my mind. Especially her "translation."

"Living with Autism in a World Made for Others" on CNN

"In My Language" on YouTube

She talks about having conversations with the world, while we pretty much only have conversation with other humans. I don't know what this means about God or human community or anything, but I think it means something cool. Let me know if you figure it out.

She has a video of herself walking - only 11 seconds long - that is an interesting statement about herself, too.

Ash Wednesday

A few weeks ago, someone on the radio mentioned a Jewish tradition - I think it was for Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, but it may have been for Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. It's a piece of paper that you keep in your pocket:

One one side it reads:
For my sake the world was created.

One the other:
I am made of ashes and dust.

It can be a relief to remember that we're made of ashes and dust. We're human, humus, made of earth. We can't have everything under control or figured out. We screw up a lot, we hurt each other - through "the evil we have done and the evil done on our behalf" (sez the Book of Common Prayer). And yet, we have this beautiful world that God has put us in, we're surrounded by love and possibility, and we have some responsibility to take care of all of it.

prayer for unity

Dearest One,
Increase the capacity of my heart.
Take its edges and stretch them out
to include all in me that I do not love,
all in my family that I judge,
all in my Church that I fear,
and all in the world that doesn't fit.

- Phoebe Griswold

Other blogs on the Primates

Sorry to all my non-Anglican readers... another post on the Primates' Meeting. But one of my neighbors was depairing at the lack of liberal blogs on recent developments in the Anglican Communion. Here are a few that resonated with me, courtesy of the Thinking Anglicans blog.

Thinking Anglicans - press release, 2.20.2007

Father Jake Stops the World - "The Primates Strike Out"
The Anglican Scotist - "Just Say No"
Preludium - "The Standard and its Costs"
Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside - "Where Have all the Scholars Gone?

Periodicals
Time - Episcopals Under Fire Over Gays
The BBC - Gay Ultimatum for Anglicans in U.S.

Anglican storm

This is what happens when you take pictures at night with a flash in a snowstorm, when you can barely see because the wind is blowing snow in your eyes, and some nutjob has almost mowed you over because he's mountain biking through the drifts, and then you realize that you might also be a nutjob because what are you doing out in a blizzard with your camera anyway? Then your camera runs out of batteries.


The Primates Meeting has sort of blasted me. I knew it would be this way - I knew there wouldn't be an affirmation of Gene Robinson or same-sex blessings or anything. But I feel shunned. Seven archbishops refused to take communion with the Episcopal Presiding Bishop. Most leaders of the Anglican Communion (which perhaps appropriately, we call "primates") agree the Episcopal Church needs to cease and desist all liturgical acknowledgment of gay and lesbian people, or they will take action to not be in communion with us anymore. By September 30, U.S. bishops are supposed to have formally declared that they will not allow any blessings of same-sex unions in their dioceses. That's just not going to happen.

I believe in the importance of acknowledging that indeed, we did breach the "bonds of affection" between churches. But we did so in the belief that we were following the will of Christ. And now, I think we're being ignored and shunned ourselves. What about the living faith and witness of Christians in this country (and elsewhere) who see Christ living and acting through people who happen to be homosexual? No one at the Primates meeting has made any space for them, or for the ways the Holy Spirit might be moving through them.

And yet, it feels like some kind of strange gift to be struggling with this issue on an international scale. This is not just an issue in the U.S. A fellow student told me this morning he'd rather not be in communion with the rest of the Church anyway, if this is how it's going to be. I'm not so sure about that - I like that my friend Jon's blog is called, "Small World, Big Church."

It's funny, because my ministry advisor in div school often said that churches are becoming increasingly local. Churchgoers don't seem to be as interested in being a national - much less an international church - as being individual communities. I don't know how to put this together with what's happened at the Primates' Meeting, but it sure does feel safer to me to hunker down in my own church ghetto - as my friend Sharon would say - than to face all this insanity out in the world. H. Richard Niebuhr would be disappointed in me.

On being a solitary

Today, I spent the whole day alone in my apartment. I didn't listen to the radio, I haven't checked email, I haven't answered the phone. It's like, the best day ever.

I've been on the fritz... I spend much less time alone at Seabury that I did at U of C, and I have much less free time. I live in community, so there are people around all the time who are doing things, and inviting you to do them, too, and there are all these little responsibilities that are part of community participation. At the divinity school, pretty much all anyone ever asked me to do was my homework! Or, that's how it feels now, looking back. So, a day of doing nothing all by myself has been pure ecstasy.

As a young single woman, sometimes I get worried about the "single" part. I think almost all of us do - "quirkyalone" or not. But sometimes this single thing just feels right. I'm not sure I'd ever feel called to be a real, live Anglican solitary - those people who makes vows to live and work and be alone for the rest of their lives. Although sometimes joining a monastery seems like a much better idea than parish ministry - but then, I don't want to spend my life making caramels or creamed honey, either. I wish there was a theology or spirituality about singleness, something about more than just people waiting to not be single anymore. I've see a couple books out there, but nothing like what I'm thinking. I suppose that means I should write one. In all my spare time.

The Piscina

The sign over it reads: "Please do not put crumbs in the piscina. Please consume them or take them outside. Thank you." You can see there's a sieve over the bowl, too - crumbs clog up the drain, which goes through the wall and outside, straight down into the dirt.

A piscina is a sink that you use to dispose of consecrated wine. After wine has been blessed during the Eucharist, you can't just pour it out any old place. It's pretty ancient Christian practice that you must pour it directly into the ground. Consecrated bread, too, can't be just thrown away. You have to eat it or put it out on the ground for birds, animals, or bugs to eat.

I like this - that holy things are sent back to the ground.

And yet, perhaps it is a little precious that we Episcopalians have special sinks for this purpose. God forbid we go outside in person to pour out the wine... or toss it out the window! Although there is a line between preciousness and respect, I suppose.

Day to be cheesey

My friend, Jill, in high school used to call Valentine's Day - "the day that everyone is supposed to be cheesey." Probably good practice for my cheese-resistance tendencies, or as Emily in college used to call it - "Heidi's cheesemeter." I'll let you know how it goes - maybe I can lift these grim spirits a bit. Yesterday I was actually considering going into Army chaplaincy.

The other remedy for grimness may just be the old Benedictine monastic value of stability. Esther de Waal says that means facing: "the need not to run away, the need to be open to change, the need to listen." Although maybe running away to buy some red paper and stickers would be all right.

Blowing snow and fear

Archipelagos aside, I love living in a place where winter happens. You can't tell in this photo, but it's blowing snow everywhere today. The maintenance guys have had to plow the parking lot three times already. We're gotten at least 6 inches - it's such beautiful stuff. But dangerous; I'm glad I only commute across the parking lot, here.

You know, what I'm most afraid of for next year is not having any time. I love sitting here and making these little pages, and watching the snow blow around. Having time to cook dinner, watch Lost with my neighbors, etc.

I don't know, I'm afraid of everything, lately. Watching Pan's Labyrinth this weekend did not help: what a wonderful window onto the intimacies of fascism. So I look around at my world here, and I don't always feel like it's real. I'm so protected: I go to bed, eat my little meals in my apartment, read my books, walk across the parking lot - and all I'm really scared about it how a new job will work out! Things like this make me think my new job should be in the Sudan or Iraq. And two my div school classmates are either already there or on their way to chaplaincy positions in Iraq. Not that the work I could do here isn't valuable, but sometimes I know I'm missing out on the way most of the rest of the world lives, and that makes me, personally, feel like less of a Christian. I can't possibly know Jesus as well as those people do.

I took this photo from the side, so I wouldn't catch my reflection. Maybe it would've been better if I had - instead of pretending I wasn't there.

Waiting, between snow and tropical islands

My friend Mel is coming to visit this weekend, from Minnesota. She's a farmer for the park service. One of my farmer friends! I'm waiting for her to arrive. She doesn't have a cell phone, so I can't call her to see they are. I have to just wait. How old-fashioned.

Heather, my neighbor in Hyde Park, wants to volunteer to teach English abroad next year. She sent me a link to the blog of a woman volunteering in the Marshall Islands.
She lives on an atoll, in a hut made of palm branches on this gorgeous lagoon (see pic above, you can just make out her 65 sq. ft. hut on the left). She eats a lot of pancakes, ramen, and tuna most days. Still, swimming in the warm ocean every day might compensate. But she's so isolated - she's always writing about how the plane hasn't come. No phones, no internet. She also writes that the suicide rate there is quite high.

My hut.

I get romantic about remote places. Does everyone?

Mel's friend Shelly just called. They're almost here. Good thing, I'm getting hungry.

My chapel stall

So this is where I sit at least once every weekday. We have chapel three times a day - morning prayer, midday Eucharist, and evening prayer, which is usually "evensong," or sung. We call those pieces of paper, the "ordo"; it lists page numbers, psalms, hymnal, etc. Each day is a different feast - of a person of event in the history of the church. Monday was the feast for the "Martyrs of Japan," 38 people who were crucified in Japan in the late 16th century. Absalom Jones, the first Black person ordained an Episcopal priest, in 1818, is next week. Usually we have a feast day almost every day, but this week it's a lot of "feria," or ordinary, days.

The chapel pews face each other, so that we can chant psalms back and forth more naturally. Very monastic. We all have assigned seats so that we can keep all books in one place, it's too hard to carry them all around: one hymnal is African American, another is contemporary hymns, another a plainsong Psalter. I like the psalms the best; the words just wash over you. Sometimes we sing difficult things, like "O God, break their teeth in their mouths" (Ps. 58:6). But usually it doesn't feel so culturally distant (although that could be argued!). This morning we sang, back and forth:

"God heals the brokenhearted,
and binds up their wounds.

He counts the number of the stars
and calls them all by their names." (Ps. 147)

Conservative Blog Gives Heidi a Thumbs-Up

Here's a link to what the conservative anglo-blososphere had to say about my workshop - "How to Love Paul" - at diocesan convention in Chicago last fall. I feel sort of famous! I can't tell if I'm the saving grace in the midst of a lot of liberal nonsense, or a laughing stock in the midst of a lot of liberal nonsense. I was laughing, either way.

Of course, I also know some of my Presbyterian friends have been featured in ugly ways in The Layman for their liberal nonsense. That's not so funny.

Thanks to Art for the link.

Chill and cold, bless the Lord

(from the apocryphal Daniel, 3:49)Me, visiting a church in the suburbs, on one of the coldest days of the year - we had a high of 1 degree today. I didn't realize how many little lakes there are in the 'burbs. Look out Minnesota! (Sorry Shuli, Mel, Jud and Ann!) There were people ice fishing out on this lake. Maybe I wouldn't mind living out in a place like this? Lake, open land, great Mexican food, (best mole my friend John had ever had, he said), the smell of woodsmoke, and a few yoga classes. God works in mysterious ways - and with such irony. I've been missing my hippie life at Gould Farm for six years. Maybe I am being threatened with an answer to my prayers. With a twist.

My apartment is cold. Sigh. My apartment in Hyde Park was FREEZING the past two winters - my bedroom was 58 degrees most nights. Seabury is better, but still, note all the ice crystals on my metal window frames, and the ice along the bottom of the glass:
In college, I always used to say that being cold reminded me that I was alive. Hrumph. But I'd rather be cold than hot.

Fear of the suburbs

Next year looms, and I'm afraid of the suburbs.

Alicia asked me, "Heidi, where does *God* want you to be?" I'm afraid God might want me to be in a place I don't expect.

Why does the greatest spiritual learning always exist in the hardest places? Deserts, mountains, cornfields, strip malls...

Heather said, "If God is everywhere, he must be in the exurbs, too. You probably could have a garden there. Hell, maybe you could even get a pony."

I still don't know.