UCC Ad Campaign and Media Challenge

Mainline churches should be silent while Religious Right political leaders get to speak their mind? Do you care?

Bahamian Beach Babe Returns to St. Louis

Well, we're back from FUN IN THE SUN. More info on the mayhem ensued to follow. Right now I must cram for the mid-term exams I ignored while working on my sunburn... I mean, my tan.

Birthday Party at the DMV

So, I just spent the morning of my 28th birthday at the DMV getting a new driver's license... I would have rather spent it in the hands of a torture specialist driving bamboo shoots under my fingernails (I know, Regan needs to stay away from those scary movies).

First off it is RAINING on MY BIRTHDAY!!!! I'm MISS SUNSHINE!!! Rain depresses me and makes my hair turn into a kinky curly frizz ball and my mood turn a little grumpy.... ok, a lot grumpy.

Then, the poor people who have to work at the Social Security office (did I mention that I had to replace my SS Card to get a new DL?) and the DMV have had all the smiles and good cheer stomped right out of them by annoyed pissed off patrons... and while I am an expert, in fact THE EXPERT, in making grumpy people smile and like me, it's hard to give a flying fig when they're asking you to put your face on an eye exam thingy that has touched millions of dirty faces, asking your WEIGHT and then taking a picture of a grumpy lumpy frizz ball who is A LOT heavier than the last DL picture taken years ago that will be shown to HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of people for the next 6 years... AND they took my old license. :(.... I actually looked good in that picture.

This has not been the best birthday ever... and it's not even noon yet.

Mother Wisdom Speaks

Here's a poem that has meant a lot to me over the past few years. I've been thinking about it and my sense of the feminine aspects of the divine, nature, and reality quite a bit lately. Maybe it's the coming of spring.

I first encountered this poem on a monastic retreat while I was uncertain of my future and health. The possibility of life-risking surgery, not knowing if I could keel over and die at any moment, whether I was going blind, or might have irreversible brain damage.... All scary things. The high level of risk is over, but the knowledge of how fragile a balance life is has remained with me.

The line that helps me the most is: Nothing you need will be lost. This poem and that retreat reminded me that all I have now and will have in the future will be sufficient for my life. Faith, family, friends... and most importantly, God... my mother, father, mentor, healer, sustainer, friend, and guide.

Mother Wisdom Speaks
by Christine Lore Webber

Some of you I will hollow out.
I will make you a cave.
I will make you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.
You will be a bowl.
You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain.

I will hollow you out with knives.
I will not do this to make you clean.
I will not do this to make you pure.
You are clean already.
You are pure already.

I will do this because the world needs the hollowness of you.
I will do this for the space that you will be.
I will do this because you must be large.
A bowl.
People will eat from you and their hunger will not weaken them unto death.
A cup to catch the sacred rain.

My daughter, do not cry.
Do not be afraid.
Nothing you need will be lost.
I am shaping you.
I am making you ready.

Light will glow in your hollowing.
You will be filled with light.
Your bones will shine.
The round, open center of you will be radiant.

I will call you Brilliant One.
I will call you Daughter Who Is Wide.
I will call you Transformed.