Dream diary for the church

Upon request for the leadership meeting at my church... a letter describing my dreams for us. 

As many of you know, I’m a student studying Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care. What this field truly does, however, might be something of a mystery. There are technical definitions that place it in line with other academic disciplines, but the spirit, the essence of pastoral theology and care is why our church is important to me.

As our understanding of the world shifts, how we understand pastoral care changes. For many years, it meant caring for the inner world of a person’s life, the spirit, specifically within a Judeo-Christian context. It still does, but now we see that the ethos behind it expands much broader than that. For example, it is also communal and inter-relational. Professor Barbara McClure wrote that pastoral care is “an intentional enacting and embodying of a theology of presence, particularly in response to suffering or need, as a way to increase among people the love of God and of neighbor.”[1]

As one can imagine, teaching how to DO pastoral care is a tricky business. Upon first reflection, it seems what people need in order to do pastoral care are actually personality traits, like empathy or compassion. How can one teach empathy? How can one teach wisdom? Instead of assuming these are inherent characteristics, however, those who advocate for spiritual formation inform us that these behaviors of empathy or compassion are not only learned, they must be deliberately studied, intentionally practiced, and constantly encouraged.

Our church, like all faith communities, seeks to enact and embody a theology, one symbolized by the opening statement of worship – “No matter who you are or where you are on life's journey, you are welcome here.” Being welcoming and being hospitable are not just practices of theology, they are practices of pastoral care.

My dream for our congregation is to dig deep, study, and dialogue with sacred intention how we want to live out our theology and pastoral care. Being chair of Christian Service Committee this year gave me new perspective how hard it is to step away from all the action in order to truly understand why we are acting and how the acting shapes and forms us spiritually. There are trained theologians who specialize in helping congregations live out the theology they wish to embody. I strongly encourage we invite these specialists into our circle as the plans for capital campaigns and restructuring the physical and practical aspects of our church are imagined. While we welcome multiple perspectives within the UCC, there is still a core theology, a core value that we represent. It is bigger than a tagline or a slogan. It is centuries of theological process and development. Let’s embrace it in all its meaning.

Below are some quotes about hospitality to ponder--- quotes that demonstrate hospitality defines our social justice action as much as our worship as much as our fellowship--- Hospitality is at the core of my life as a Christian, as a minister and hospice chaplain, as a student of theology, and as fellow human on this planet.

'The rest must go hungry, their community dehumanised, and the earth pillaged and the earth polluted. One could sum up all this with the observation that globalization knows nothing of hospitality.'– Mercy Amba Oduyoye

Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves. It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world. Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.— Joan Chittister in Wisdom Distilled from the Daily

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[1]   (2011-09-23). The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Practical Theology (Wiley Blackwell Companions to Religion) (p. 270). Wiley. Kindle Edition.

Reflections on African Women's Theology - On Religion and Health 2

Some reflections on readings for seminary class: Global Theologies of Women of Color 

African Women, Religion, and Health Ch. 9-13

Ch. 9 – “Women Poverty, and HIV in Zimbabwe: An Exploration of Inequalities in Health Care” by Sophia Chirongoma

Chirongoma introduces the reader to the reality of living in Zimbabwe as the health of its citizens is threatened by poverty, insufficient health services, malnourishment, and the continuous spread of HIV/AIDS. She calls upon the church to provide the presence of God and Jesus in the lives of those suffering. She suggests they emphasize sharing one another’s burdens and “seeking corporately to correct injustices that deny access to health care or food security for the poor” (184). My favorite part of her theological reflection was her Christology for women. “Women and all those who suffer from deprivation should find encouragement and consolation in Jesus as the caring compassionate healer who is outraged by the injustices of poverty, violence, inequality, and sickness” (183). Having read Carroll Watkins Ali’s Survival and Liberation this week, I see similar themes of survival and liberation within the stories of these African women. , I’m thinking about the Christology Watkins Ali lifts up from Jacquelyn Grant’s work. The Christ who saves souls is inadequate for people in the midst of suffering. Jesus must be made real through not only being a compassionate healer, but also a co-sufferer. Chirongoma calls the church in Zimbabwe to represent such Christology. Just as in Watkins Ali and Grant’s work, pastoral care and church care in such settings is not only to ease the physical suffering, but to accompany and walk with those who suffer

Ch. 10 “Women and Peacemaking: The Challenge of a Non-Violent Life” by Susan Rakoczy, IHM

Evelyn Underhill became an inspiration to me during my own time in the wilderness, rediscovering what my faith and God looked outside of my fundamentalist and harmful upbringing. She intrigued me on many levels, but mostly the pursuit of spiritual and theological understanding on her own terms. The way Rackczy summarizes Underhill’s transformation into pacificism exemplifies what I continue to admire about her. Seeing faith life as a journey, a process that is ever unfolding as our own self-realization develops was transformative to me and helped me return to Christianity. Without her influence, one that wasn’t only cognitive nor only affective, but both, I probably would have never entered seminary. Pacifism is a concept that I struggle with and cannot claim as my own, despite, admiring so much of its goals. I struggle with it because pacifism would not participate in the culture and society, the capitalistic systems within which I live. I cannot claim to be a pacifist if I participate in the structural destruction of others.

Ch.  13 "Navigating Experiences of Healing: A Narrative Theology of Eschatological Hope as Healing" by Fulata Lusungu Moyo

Such a beautiful piece, one with depth of expression combined with theological thinking. Moyo and I disagree upon some fundamental metaphysics, about the nature of God and creation, but the conclusion we get to is similar… healing takes on multiple forms and we may or may not have control over the form of healing that takes place. I would love to hear more of her musings about prayer and  faith healing vs. miracles. She summarized the premise of chaplaincy and chaplain training in pastoral care when she speculated what kind of healing, what kind of prayer would Solomon have requested if they had only thought to ask. Death is a communal event in some ways, but it is also a personal journey, one that is taken alone, or at least, between God and person. As a hospice chaplain, I’ve helped many people who believe in faith healing and miracles process what it means when death still comes. It is not easy and definitely shakes up faith in God, but mostly faith in oneself. I see myself giving this article to people who struggle in similar ways, to see how one woman processes such a journey.

Reflections on African Women's Theology - On Passionate Compassion

Some reflections on readings for seminary class: Global Theologies of Women of Color

With Passion and Compassion

I loved this reading. To hear so many different voices whose passion shines through is inspiring. The power of the words of these women scholars derives from the wisdom acquired through marginalization, suffering, even abuse. To hear one proclaim hope in a future free from suffering when she, herself, is suffocating within a reality of oppression, is to hear the Christ-event incarnated, to hear the prophets of God call us to solidarity.

So many quotes stand out, but the opening page of the first essay, “Church Women of Africa: A Theological Community”, describes the situation of the church so succinctly. “The Christian church has suffered and is suffering from a growing cultural alienation because evangelization has not been that of cultural exchange but of cultural domination or assimilation” (3). I knew from that quote, these women, speaking from their own unique worldview, are prophets to the entire Christian world and that I would learn much from their wisdom. At first, the premise of the book to base a Woman’s theology of the church upon the Bible made me uncomfortable. I grew up in a fundamentalist misogynistic church that “claimed”, as so many evangelical churches do, to be directly inspired by the bible. But later, the authors explain that the source of theologizing is not only the Bible, but that “revelation has to be interpreted and applied to our contemporary situations and experiences,” including the particular experience of women (8).

In the second essay, by Dorothy Ramodibe, she posits that women and men cannot work together to build a church based upon the examples of the past and the structures that keep women suffering inequality and injustice. Ramodibe asks “Which church are we building?...Women want to change the church and not simply “improve” it. Women want liberation of the church from men” (15). And, “men also need liberation from their prejudices of masculinity” (20).

Therese Souga, in the third essay on the view of African women on Christ, writes “Christ is the true Human, the one who makes it possible for all persons to reach fulfillment and to overcome the historic alienations weighing them down” (22). This Christology describes a limitless hope for not only personal transformation, but also community transformation. “False images of women persist in the church in Africa and in turn produce certain negative kinds of behavior. Should not Christology question these images in order to question the real situation of African women and subject it to a critical examination in the light of Jesus Christ?” (25). Christology should not just be about confession of faith and forgiveness of sins, it must use the model Jesus provides as a lens through which to look at our everyday lives, to witness, name, and act upon injustice.

            As we continue to reflect upon the influence of women theologians in church and academia, I am inspired to approach each reflection, each project, with the zeal and love for God and God’s vision for the world that these faithful scholars demonstrate.

Reflections on African Women's Theology - On Mercy Amba Oduyoye

Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy

by Mercy Amba Oduyoye   Second Half

In chapter 6 of Daughters of Anowa, Mercy Oduyoye says “The framework of patriarchy is constructed on many pillars. Each requires scrutiny, but patriarchy itself is defective and must be torn down” (153). Within the second half of her book, Oduyoye looks at several of those pillars, including the impact of Western ideology’s influence upon patriarchy. She says “ Traditional norms are enforced whenever they serve to silence women, reduce or eliminate their voices. My observation is that these traditional systems have been strengthened by Western patriarchal structures as national governments and institutions have been formed” (151). The horrific irony of this is exasperated by the prevalence of customary law and ambivalence to civil law. Civil law, constructed from Western models, is limited by lack of provision for important existing structures in Akan society, such as polygyny. Marriage and inheritance for children are often adversely affected by interference of misaligned civil law (161-162). Another angle of patriarchy are the oppressive expectations on African women. Oduyoye says “To expect women to uphold all that is humanizing in African culture and yet deny their participation in the politics of family and nation is like asking them to make bricks without straw (171).

The essay "A Coming Home to Myself: The Childless Woman in teh West Africa Space" which is in the tribute to Letty Russell, is another example of the rich prose with which Oduyoye writes. She shares her personal experience of internalized oppression and shame of the familial and cultural expectations for childbearing and most importantly her journey to acceptance and affirmation of God’s love and call for her life, a call without biological children, but with great potential for creative generation of life. Our reading of this article stems from a question I asked in class about how to care pastorally for women within such a communally driven identity. Dr. Mombo responded graciously, replying that the individual’s experience of pain and suffering is always there and suggested this article as an example. I’m looking forward to discussion in class about this essay. Oduyoye describes thoroughly the despair and grief she lived with during her reproductive years and shares her testimony of grace and healing coming from God, from a specific experience as well as from her theological construction. I wonder, then, what her advice to African ministers and women elders who counsel women would be.

The ambiguity of reproductive potential and reality of infertility are at odds within a woman’s experience. Female autonomy means that we are told we choose whether we want to have children or not. But, in a society that views the choice of childlessness as abnormal, how much choice do we really have in our desires? I envy my friends who have come to the decision to be childfree due to a genuine desire to not have kids. My soul longs for that level of confirmation. But, instead, I am left with fibroids, in a similar way as Mercy, and thanks to access to more testing ability than the actual medical understanding of what’s going on, I am aware of multiple chronic conditions contributing to infertility and access to only vaguely understood interventions that did not work. My passion for reproductive concerns stems from my own experience… one that includes walking down state-assisted hallways with limited access to care as well as walking down privatized hallways with access limited only to your checkbook and your privileges in society. Both were hallways of shame, fear, and grief. 

Why back to school? grad school reflection

Since the beginning of my discernment, my call to ministry has been to ease spiritual suffering. I continue to passionately believe that the environmental, social and physical suffering in this world will never heal if we do not first address the spiritual suffering. If our sense of self and sense of community were fully realized, how could we live in voluntary ignorance and destructive apathy? After 6 years of answering that call in chaplaincy, I wish to grow as a caregiver and scholar. Participating in the cultivation of theologically and pastorally trained leaders is a natural progression of my call to ease spiritual suffering in the world. To do this, I am seeking a PhD program to study and expand my base of knowledge in pastoral theology, cultural anthropology, psychosocial theories and pedagogy. As a pastoral theologian and scholar, I want to expand the conversation in postmodern theology and to make it applicable to today’s society, especially within the realm of fertility and infertility.  The school I'm applying to has a progressive postmodern voice that is important to me and to accomplishing these goals.

The path to finding a spiritual calling can be an interesting one, but looking back, each step along my path led me with a clear and passionate purpose towards the work I now do. Even before I could name it, discovering meaning and purpose defined my life’s path. The spiritual abuse I received as a child in a fundamentalist Wisconsin Synod Lutheran church steered me towards science and as far away from religion as possible. However, by studying and working with science, I discovered that religion is not the only place cognitive dissonance lives. During that journey, I found my best conversation partners were with progressive Christians.

My healing did not solely happen by leaving the place of abuse or by discovering a replacement faith system. Through secular counseling, I learned how to pull apart my emotions and thoughts, how to distinguish self from group, and how to empower myself and others to live fully. Through earnest and honest seeking, I discovered the joy and peace that the spiritual experience brings. Spiritual direction, monastic retreats, and many other experiences also helped heal my connection with God.

Then, after all that, seminary helped me dismantle and deconstruct hidden precepts and assumptions not only about religion, but about life. I began seminary with a passion for biblical interpretation, seeking to dismantle not only the misconceptions I was raised with, but also to address the assumed authority and power scripture has. My past may have taught me that scripture was the key, but seminary taught me that history of church, theology and even pedagogy are just as key.

Seminary is  a place of crucial integration. By increasing contextual awareness and understanding in many subjects, a person with a call to help others turns into a beautiful  kaleidoscope of skills.  However, my time in CPE and working among professional ministers and chaplains revealed a genuine lack of theological integration with the pastoral care they give. How people view God affects how they view themselves and the world.  As pastoral care providers, I feel we are called out not only to have a clear understanding of our own theology, but also how it relates to traditionally held beliefs. Often, when people have holes or inconsistencies within their theology, it can be due to lack of language to describe their feelings and thoughts about it.  As we listen to people, we should be able to reflect back confusing thoughts with different and hopefully clear language. In order to do that, however, we must do the work of theological construction and integration long before the conversation happens.

Many who seek such understanding attend seminary and labor through CPE, hoping and anticipating some of the theological and spiritual fog will clear. I help with Mid-Year Consultations for CPE residents and each year I’m assigned to a student from an evangelical background, often with a theology that creates separatism and exclusivism. The struggle and pain this brings them is hard for me to observe. I have no desire to convert the world to my way of thinking, but I do desire to ease these spiritual leaders’ suffering. I desire to aid them in exploring the struggle that exists for a theology that may give comfort in some ways, but cause conflict in other ways.  I want to help them discover not only how to fill their own theological gaps, but also how to minister to the diverse world compassionately and competently.

Professional chaplain gatherings also revealed to me several things.   I observed that many chaplains who teach and lead come from faith traditions rife not only with visible cognitive dissonance, but also with moral conflict. In addition, I noticed that chaplain leaders from progressive faith backgrounds often redirected or avoided uncomfortable theological subjects by encouraging religious diversity and focusing on psychosocial or ethical theories.  The field would benefit from more leaders who bring integrative and constructive postmodern theology not just to the discussion table, but to the practitioners in the field. I desire to expand my knowledge of theology and how the work in pastoral care interacts with it. My passion is for the postmodern voice, one that is steeped in understanding modern logic, but acknowledges that to authentically reflect reality, the voice of experience and context must always be heard.

Currently, my ministry entails working in hospice as a chaplain and bereavement educator. The time spent as a child ministering with my grandmother in nursing homes and to elderly church members imprinted not only an awareness of, but also a comfort around physical limitations and end of life.  So, here I am, walking the path with many, a path we all will or have taken: facing our own limitations and mortality. My personal limitations currently involve fertility, conception and pregnancy. When I faced accepting infertility, I had to search deep inside myself for the balm to my spiritual suffering. I had no ready way to process it.

My Master’s thesis combines feminist and process theology, so it should be no surprise that the language of co-creator is comfortable for me. It makes sense for a woman with a biology degree and healthy suspicion of power structures to want to find a theology that not only supports but empowers the individual. Accepting that I am unlikely to conceive life felt like I was sacrificing the very foundation of my faith system as a co-creator, not because I cannot envision other ways of creative being, but because the sacred unique creation of life is no longer within my grasp.

When I studied biology and biochemistry, they fed my desire to understand and revel in the mysteries of life as a creative and distinctive process. It laid the foundation for my understanding of who we are and how we relate to God and the world. What happens when someone with such a foundation finds out that she is not part of the cycle of life?  A piece of writing or the influence I have on people's hearts or minds is not the same as creating life. We must acknowledge the unique and complex process of creating life and the sacredness of such creativity. We cannot deny that all life is sacred and that the ability to create it is sacred as well. Therefore, the loss of such a sacred identity means infertility is not just a loss of function, but a complex web of experience. Infertility is not just a disorder or a dysfunction, it is not just a loss of anticipated future, and it is not just a loss of identity. It is all of the above combined with constant ethical and moral dilemmas, decision making that determines the rest of one’s life, and continual exposure to familial as well as societal pressure and judgment.

 I want to develop a way for pastors and chaplains to approach this rapidly growing area of spiritual discernment among individuals and families. I want to make the language of fertility issues normalized and eliminate the negative repercussions of shame and guilt. Above all, I wish to find an integrative postmodern theology that not only provides comfort to the infertile, but also provides a spiritual and ethical compass during a difficult time. I have my own thoughts and experiences, of course, but I want to dig deeper as a scholar and as a chaplain to add this particular context to the training of our pastoral leaders.

My call to ease spiritual suffering continues to evolve and I greatly desire to be a postmodern theological and pastoral voice in our world. I wish to not only contribute to scholarship, but also to the transformation and growth of pastoral care providers. The PhD program at this school combines the crucial elements of respected scholarship with the spirit-filled mission to cultivate competent and compassionate pastoral leaders. I request approval for admission to the PhD program for Pastoral Theology and Pastoral Care.

Re-Gifting the Spark: A Theology of Co-Creation for the Infertile

My last entry described a process I went through after a moment of grief I had upon watching the movie Brave. That moment not only helped me to let go of some of my guilt for stopping fertility treatments, it also helped me contemplate how to find my place as a co-creator when my body cannot create life. It is a question about identity, but it is larger than gender or sexual identity.

The reason I love the images of co-creation in theology is that it is active, life affirming yet in an empowering way, not one of dogma and doctrine. Many popular theologies are passive, waiting for or learning how something or someone acts and interpreting how we should react. My identity as a co-creator with God, as a crucial part of creation but also only one piece of an infinite puzzle, means that I am actively seeking my way in the world, actively seeking meaning and purpose, and also actively living my faith, promoting the goodness I desire to see in the world. What challenges this type of theology is in the more corporeal aspects of creation, the primal and practical aspects of survival in a very vibrant and visceral world. The desire to conceive and birth new life is about as primal and visceral as it gets.

For some people facing infertility, it is enough to realize that they are redirecting their love and energy towards raising adopted children as their own. Or at least that is what people tell me I should feel, so I assume someone must take comfort in it somewhere.

 On that night of cogitation, I berated myself, asking why I couldn't just let go of the birth obsession and focus on how I could love and raise some of the beautiful children in the world? Surely  it is a simple answer for a disciple of Christ, a minister whose life's work is to help reduce suffering in the world. Does it really matter if my children have my DNA or someone else's? Of course not. But…. I still feel betrayed. I still feel like my identity was snatched away from me.  I am not alright with God.

  If God is the ultimate Creator of all life and I'm made in the image of that, why is it I cannot create life and others can? If that is the truth, then I must be flawed, broken, and not truly in the image of God. Is that punishment? Is that deliberate so I make sure to realize that God holds all the power  and I'm really powerless?

Either way, I'm not convinced that the phrase "made in the image of God" really explains who we are or who God is. What I do believe is that our ability to be creative, unique, and complex reflects how creative, unique, and complex the entire universe is.

So, here I am, a person who will not conceive life in my own body. Let's imagine that the potential for life is within me; that potential is creative energy. Yes, I can redirect my creative energy to other forms of creating, such as writing. Yes, that creative energy can be directed towards other relationships and the creation of bonds between myself and others. But how can any of those compare to the energy and process of creating life? I don't believe they are even close. Yes, it all has value, but we must acknowledge the unique and complex process of creating life and the sacredness of such creativity. We cannot deny that all life is sacred and that the ability to create it is sacred as well.

 My undergraduate studies were in biology, especially biochemistry and developmental biology. I spent a lot of time contemplating the origin of life, how life evolved, and wanting to understand the mystery of existence as a sentient living being. My questions were not always so popular to my scientific-minded professors and  I discovered that the fundamentalist church I grew up in is not the only population to live with cognitive dissonance.

 I mention all this because when I studied biology and biochemistry, it fed my desire to understand and revel in the mysteries of life as a creative and distinctive process. It laid the foundation for my understanding of who we are and how we relate to God and the world. What happens when someone with such a foundation finds out that she is not part of the cycle of life, that her unique existence will not be contributing towards the building blocks of future generations? There will be no tangible contribution that will continue on after I'm gone. A piece of writing or the influence I have on people's hearts or minds is not the same as that. It is so different. Notice, I'm not placing a hierarchy of value on any of them, only pointing out that recognizing and valuing  the difference between them is important.

 So, where does that potential for life go if not utilized by my body? Creating life is a different energy than creating ideas or caring for others. One could argue that the particular form of energy for creating life can be transformed into a different kind of energy. That there is a way to change it within myself, like making a specialized cell convert back into an undifferentiated cell (think stem cell). Perhaps it sounds beneficial in the long run. But I'm not sure it is very efficient, let alone even possible.

 So, what I imagine is that this energy to create life is within me, I just don't have the working parts to go through the process. While I have limited control over whether my body can generate new life, I do have control over how that life creating energy is used. Instead of transforming it into the creation of inanimate or intangible things, I want to release it. I want the creative energy within myself to be used elsewhere, within someone else. I want that energy to still be used to create life, the mysterious and miraculous unique process of creating a human being. I don't want to transform it into writing a dissertation or developing better skills as a chaplain. I want the distinctive spiritual energy that sparks life within another to be gifted back to the universe, to be redirected to another who will create a beautiful soul.

  Then as I accept that my genetic material will not be part of the future, I can envision that the spiritual energy, the spark that starts life, is out there, somewhere, conceiving and giving birth to an amazing life. The energy within myself is not wasted or minimized or made to be something it is not. I can choose to gift that energy out to the universe, back to the Creator, and ask that it be give to someone who needs it. I can still be a part of the cycle of life. Yes, it is still as intangible as ideas or feelings, but it makes more sense to me.

 I choose to release the life creating spiritual energy back into the world. When my husband and I adopt, I choose to receive and accept back the miracle of life reflected in someone else's genetic makeup, but perhaps with the spark that I helped form and create.

  I find this concept also helps me contemplate how I will talk with my future adopted children about how I became their parent. I will not just say that I had love to give and chose to give it to them. Instead, my body could not make a baby, but my spirit sent out not only the desire to have a child, but the actual spark that helped create a child's spiritual self. OK, I won't say it like that, but that is what I will mean. I gifted my creative spirit to another so they could be born, or so another child could be born for someone else who greatly desired a child. And maybe, just maybe, the energy that sparked my own children's lives will be from me.  Either way, the potential for life is not really wasted. My power as a co-creator is not diminished because of an inability to conceive. Perhaps this perspective doesn't make sense to anyone else but me. Perhaps someone has already said it better than I. Or perhaps when I go back to school and analyze it under a hermeneutical microscope, there will be no shred of logic, no shred of philosophical thought that will back this idea up. I don't mind. Because it works for me. Because I now feel affirmed and reassured of my role as a co-creator once more.

My Clenched Fist and the Seed I Wish to Hold

• A year before I started self-defense and karate, I would have laughed in your face if you said I could ever be graceful and skilled enough to do martial arts.
• A few years into martial arts, and I would have laughed at you if you suggested I would ever become a black belt, train hundreds of kids or teach battered women at half way houses.
• A year before high school graduation, I would have laughed at you if you said I’d ever walk into a Christian church again.
• A year into college, I would have laughed in your face if you said I would stop working with wildlife and never work as a scientist.
• A year after college, I would have laughed if you said I’d be a scientist ever again.
• A year into seminary and I would have laughed at you if you told me I’d never work in campus ministry, but become a hospice chaplain and love it.
• A year into seminary, I would have laughed if you suggested I'd consider any PhD work in Pastoral Theology and not Biblical Studies.
• A year into seminary I would have laughed at you if you told me someday I’d feel compelled to choose between academic goals and starting a family.
• A year before I graduated from seminary, I would have laughed in your ear if you said I'd be married a few months after graduation.
• Two years ago I would have laughed in your face if you told me I would let go of my dream to be pregnant.
•  A year ago I would have laughed at you if you suggested that I may be able to go back to school for my PhD.

What isn’t in between those lines of incredulity is the turmoil of blood, sweat, tears, laughter, pain, sorrow, joy, loss, gain, and ever continuous cycle of change.

I don’t think that as a young idealist intent on changing the world I had any clue the amount of heartache change entails. When I look at this list, there are goodbyes and heartache cracked through all the accomplishment and growth. There are life-threatening diagnoses that resolved but left ghosts behind, there are relationships born and relationships shattered. There are epiphanies of great transcendence and epiphanies of profound despair. I see the world through fresh eyes every day. I see with increasing clarity and increasing murkiness the tension between how finite and limited our experience is and how infinite and expansive the universe is.

We all make choices about how our life will proceed, even if by passive means. However, I’m not sure I ever chose a passive way to discern my life’s path since I was born. I fight and struggle and attempt to make meaning in places no seed would normally grow. Each of these milestones that seemed so impossible is stacked on top of hard life experiences, lessons that left profound influence upon my soul. To become empowered and grow, something else had to be released, let go.

As I face my current life change, there is a difference. I had no qualms about the choice I made to start a family. I knew that I wanted to have enough time outside of my career/calling to focus on my personal commitments of family and community. But so many of the options were eliminated from my list of choices until it felt there were no choices left to be made.  I would trade the heartache and despair I feel  instantly for the my denied dreams of a life filled with meaning from hands-on ministry and hands-on birthing and child-raising. I would give up in a heartbeat the thoughts of PhD work, the path of growth and discovery this will bring if I could just have the dreams of feeling a baby grow inside me, the sight of a child with my husband’s eyes and ginger hair.

But first we must unclasp our grip around the emptiness it held to be open to receive the gift we will be given.

Oh how much time and sorrow are wasted on clasping our fist around emptiness, nothingness, the if-onlys and why-nots, the lack of choice, banging our head on the impenetrable wall blocking our path. Imagine the tension, the energy exerted to keep a fist clenched. Imagine how much more it cramps without anything to hold onto, the nails biting into the palm of your hand. Imagine the slow burn of releasing cramped muscles, the amount of effort it takes to relax them and release that tension. It is painful, but it is also a release from pain. It burns and aches and bites. But oh, how much sweet relief there is upon loosening it, unfurling the fingers and stretching the hand. The muscles are not used to it, though. It is so easy to close that hand again to grasp at nothing, to grasp too soon or to flinch at contact.

So now I place the idea of pursuing my academic dreams in my palm, like a beautiful seed. I hold it and observe how light it feels to me compared to the clenched fist, how right it feels in my palm. Tentative touches and attempts to plant the seed are interspersed with comedic yet devastating Buster Keaton antics. I clench with grief and it slips from my fingers. I try to plant it and I kick it onto a rock or slip in the mud. I clench my hand around it, not giving it up despite my fist wanting to clench, and it bruises my palm. I release my grasp and it falls. I try to pick it up and the wind rolls it away from me. A merry dance a dream will give you if that path has bumps of grief.

I have said goodbye to dreams before. I have compromised, found alternatives and substitutes. And this dream I am attempting to let go has no real replacement. There is only letting go. I will have a family always. I will have children, but they will not be from my womb. I have purpose and meaning and hope. But it looks nothing like it did 6 months ago.

With each step I take and with each attempt to hold that new seed, I release the pain and say goodbye to a dream.

Those Simple Questions Are Always the Hardest

I have been reflecting on the most painful part of my journey of not being able to get pregnant. I've filtered it down to a kind of chicken or egg question, or even a nature or nurture question. What is most important in the creation of a human being? Is it the DNA, the conception,  the environment a fetus/child develops in (the womb experience)... or is it the exposure to life experiences as the child grows into an adult? Of course, the real question in my heart is WHO is most important in the creation of a human being, the birth mother or the one who mothers outside of the womb?

I realize the answer is both/and, not either/or. However, here I stand on a precipice, attempting to make sense of my metaphysical and theological foundation, one of being an active part in creation and creating, and I cannot create new life nor grow it inside my body. From the outside looking in, there are plenty of ways to work around this, ways that include recognizing there are other types of creating. But no one can tell me that creating life is not the most basic and primal expression of such a metaphysical purpose.

I recognize not everyone is as focused on esoteric questions as I am. From the age of 12, I have been focused, obsessed even, with what the purpose of life is, what my purpose is, and how I am going to influence change in the world. For me, the struggle is not making me face the fundamental questions, it's making sure I stay grounded in the present experience. Knowing this, it makes sense that I am a chaplain. I've learned the art and skills of getting to the nitty-gritty of those questions while also nurturing a present mindfulness. I spend my professional time finding ways to help people get to the bottom of their grief, despair, anxiety, by answering these very spiritual and philosophical questions of meaning and purpose, then reframing their perspective... if for you, the world is xyz, then does the rest really matter? If you believe that God decides when you live and when you die, does it matter what the doctors think? If the true purpose of life is to love and be loved, then while your body and mind may have new limitations, by loving and being loved, you still are fulfilling your ultimate purpose... your life matters.

My goals are similar but also very different from a therapist. I believe this stems from a strong sense that spiritual revelation about self and world can alter a person's perception and thought process faster and deeper than anything else. Of course, it is also true that spiritual abuse and trauma can damage a person the quickest and deepest as well. Without hope, meaning or purpose, we are truly lost. We admire the perseverance of those who survive crisis and trauma because they cling to these things when the world feels like it is ending.

Our society is convinced that thinking will fix everything. We override our feelings at every opportunity. I may be exaggerating, but after years in chaplaincy, it seems like this is more true than not. The irony is that our feelings always affect our thoughts, just as our thoughts affect our feelings. And the glue that puts it all together is our spirit. To disconnect the spirit from the mind or body is futile.

So, my personal struggle lately has been an assumption that I never worked through or made sure it could stand up to scrutiny. I never looked too closely at whether this joy of being part of the creative universe would work for one who is not just barren, but also sitting in an ambiguous state- having the working parts but never knowing why one cannot conceive, never truly knowing if all those risk factors for baby and me really would have happened. I assumed as woman my body made me part of creating life, and I took pride in this. Without more than a passing glance of what it meant for men or those who never carry life, I created a theology with gaping holes in it. While my premise that we all are uniquely created and creating beings that are part of a changing universe is a great foundation, I thought like one of the privileged, not as one who might be considered marginalized.

Marginalization is a strange thing. I am considered by the BMI to be morbidly obese. I consider this a "scientific" way to marginalize me and put me in a box. This box inundates me with constant reminders that I'm not good enough for society. I am judged continuously, to the point that I did fear my weight would affect my ability to sustain pregnancy. I also lived in fear that my health problems, the same ones that contribute to my weight, meant I may not be part of the elite (conceivers) I so desperately wanted to claim as my own. Like a middle school child wanting to be popular, I focused on being someone else so hard that while the knowledge I may be different hovered in the background, I ignored it. I spent YEARS trying to change myself to fit in, to force my body to conform by dumping horrific drugs in me and manipulating hormones. I made life miserable for myself and anyone around me. While I may have said being healthy was my goal, it wasn't. Ultimately, I don't think I cared about my health as long as I could conceive and be pregnant successfully. I wanted drugs to force my body to do something it couldn't, something it may never be able to do. While I did set some ethical boundaries for myself, they were FAR from what I felt comfortable with. So here I sit, not even 6 months after I was told it was time to stop trying to get pregnant. I sit here and wonder what happened to me.

The simple answer is grief happened. Rage, despair, hopelessness happened. I became so swamped with strong emotions and reactions that it's no wonder I could not think straight. I would try to disconnect from my body's experience only to be forced to live with the consequences of biological forces manipulating my emotions and thoughts.  What a war with myself. If the spirit is the space between mind and body, the mortart that connects it all, then my mortar crumbled and fell apart in many, many places. Grief never leaves, but perhaps some healing can happen now and the mortar that is my spirit will mend.

The answer to my initial question about who's more important, birth moms or moms who raise the kids, is a mute point. I'm trying to create a hierarchy of value based on what society expects from us... instead of acknowledging that we all live in tension between many points. While I will continue to grieve for not having some of those points (conceiving, pregnancy), I live with many other points of tension, many other possibilities for future outcomes. It is no easy and I'm sure I will come up with many more questions like this one, ones that will hopefully bring me back to those simple questions of meaning and purpose.

Grief and My Soul Sucking Alien

So tonight my husband and I went on a date for Valentine's Day. We watched the movie "The Vow". The premise is that a woman wakes up after a car accident and has forgotten the last 5 years of her life, including meeting and marrying her husband, losing and meeting friends, fights with family, switching towns,  career paths, and life goals.  So much happened to change her life and she has to start all over again, discovering the same beliefs and convictions that led to the changes in the first place. She had to rediscover who she was and is.

Life transformations and transitions are interesting things. They seem to always sneak up on us, as if we haven't gone through them before or as if we don't know that life at 50 will be different than life at 20. So we stumble along, whine a little "Not AGAIN! How many times do I have to change?!", and ultimately feel lost, over and over and over. Some of us, if we're lucky, are found for a while. We have those periods of clarity, of who we are and why we're here. So many ways to talk about it, depending on your belief system. The planets aligned or everything came together or even God worked through me.

The past 3 years or so, especially the last 2, feel surreal to me, as if my memories are from another lifetime. The constant pressure, stress and side effects of fertility treatments and challenging health tainted everything I did or thought or felt. I'm not saying it was all bad or all good. It was both, just like life usually is, but somewhere along the way I lost myself. I tried not to. I tried really really hard not to. However, if you know me, you probably realize being around me often was kind of like listening to someone sing just slightly off key.

Since we decided to halt the fertility treatments for now (and most likely for good), a weight has been lifted off me. I kind of feel like a giant soul sucking alien parasite has been detached from my back. When it was detached, my life- body, heart and mind- went out of whack. I had to detox from the alien nasties or something. And now, at times, I can finally see more clearly, before the nasty returns.

The trouble is, this alien nasty is grief. And grief never leaves us. Not really. Funny how I've become a grief educator just as I experience some of the most heart wrenching grief I've ever experienced. It's not as if I haven't felt the loss of a dream before, the loss of a potential future being erased. But the dreams of babies who have my husband's eyes and my freckles are somehow different than the dreams I've had before. They feel more tangible, even though they are still ideas. When I was younger and I lost my faith in "The System", when I realized I could not really "Save the World", I never thought I'd get over that heartbreak and be able to hope again, to trust in a better future.  It was so very real to me at the time, that grief for intangible things. But with time, I did dream again, I did imagine a future where I can change the world... just not how I thought I would when I was an invincible teenager.

So right now, my faith is pretty low. I'm being honest. There are moments however I remember other times when I thought my heart would break. And guess what? I got through them. The grief is still there. A memory of a heartbreak, but those wounds no longer cut so deep. There are times I'm not sure I'm going to emerge from this abyss, but then I remember and I can at least have hope for a day where the pain is not so sharp, not so mind/heart/body twisted up.

Something about times of need heighten my awareness of music and song. Two songs speak to my dark place. One is a hymn from the 1880s, Uncloudy Day. Here is an excerpt:

Oh, they tell me of a home Far beyond the skies
Oh, they tell me of a home So far away
Yes, they tell me of a home Where no storm clouds rise
Oh, they tell me Yes, they tell me Of an uncloudy day

And another from  Florence and the Machines new single "Shake it Out"

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn

A bit of humble pie

Humility. It’s been on my mind recently. An opportunity to learn about another woman-in-ministry’s journey reawakened an area of spiritual practice that I haven’t thought about in a long while. It’s funny how people tend to forget the progress they’ve made and remember only the parts they still struggle with. That is me, to a tee. The same time I learned some of this woman’s story, I also came across at work the Greenleaf Center for Servant Leadership. While I liked the ultimate message of humility, I also struggled with the language. Nothing like patriarchally-secure privileged white men to think the language of servitude is okay. Not that it isn’t okay in some contexts, but to be flung around so casually is a bit harsh on the ears of my soul.


This aversion led me to dig deep into my intuitive memory to find the time and place where I became comfortable with words such as humility and obedience. Deep within the soul-soil, I found the seeds planted by one of my spiritual mentors, Joan Chittister. I’ve never met her, but like so many others, her words speak to my spirit. I recall reading her commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict as I received spiritual and discernment direction from a Benedictine monastery. I desired greatly at the time to come to peace with the hurt and sense of betrayal by “the church”. My distrust and pain were so great, I was not sure I could respond to my call to ministry.

Even with a recent and drastic slimming down of my library, I could not find her books. So, I googled her and the word humility. Google found a reprint of an essay by her in the National Catholic Reporter. The essay is titled “Pride and Humility: A New Self-Acceptance” and is in her book Heart of Flesh (which is somewhere on my bookcases).

In it, she reviews the 12 principles Benedict lifts up and she asserts that the Rule he wrote reveals Benedict had a feminist soul and attempted to temper the violent patriarchy of medieval Europe with his book. Wow. Not your typical commentary on monastic rule books.

One of the things I like but also think is a bit dangerous in today’s world, is that she dissects what each principle means for women and for men separately. She bases this on the contemporary assumption of feminist theology that while Man’s ultimate sin is pride, Woman’s ultimate sin is self-deprecation (see Valerie Saiving’s work dissecting Niebuhr). Within her book, which is subtitled “A Feminist Spirituality for Women and Men”, the context is set and the reader understands it. However, the essay standing alone in a national newspaper does not have that context. The reader could easily assume that she sees separate and distinct gender roles and just seeks to redefine them a bit. Gender role differences are always a sticky area to discuss. They exist, but are not inherent. They will never disappear completely, but we as a gender will never be completely defined by them, either.

Outside of academia, I am not a person that spreads the gospel of feminist theology… well, not overtly. I’m finding that within chaplaincy, at least, the influence of the presence of the feminine is transforming it in wonderful and positive ways, even without aggressive persuasion. The metaphor within The Incredibles pops to mind… While Mr. Incredible’s superpower is to smash, muscle and intimidate, his wife, Elasti-girl’s superpower is in being flexible. Their names resemble the power differential in our society and their superpowers resemble the roles society brings about for us. Bringing in that flexibility to chaplaincy and a very clinical healthcare system, is important.

Back to humility, it is not a bad word for feminists and Chittster demonstrates it. She helps us remember that while we must assert our power as women, we must also reclaim the true meaning of humility and give up this false humility that society forces us into. It’s a very powerful piece and I highly recommend it to you as I will this new colleague.