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December 31, 2007 at 5:28 am (Uncategorized)
Not Your Usual Missionary Position
December 31, 2007 at 5:04 am (Uncategorized)
For “Tha Bish”….. on google’s blogger is an ancient blog entitled
“Not Your Usual Missionary Position”…. You’ll need to “google” for the blog; I’m sorry I can’t make a link work. Lo siento….Just more of “never an undocumented thought”……. Love, oonie
I hope Rufus Wainwright’s “Hallelujah” plays for you at “Not In Seminary Anymore But Wish I Were”…it’s one of my favorite pieces of music, as is the link to the lyrics of “Remember Me” at the end of the blog.
Cry to Brigid
December 31, 2007 at 4:34 am (Uncategorized)
Some months ago, with encouragement from a very very special person, who shall remain nameless unless said person chooses to identify huself, I began intentional prayer to my patron saint, Brigid of Kildare. In prayer/trance/meditation/whatever one chooses to call what it is that I do when I’m able to lose myself in God’s Love and Presence, I began to write. I’d never shared anything this personal with anyone, not even my beloved spouse. But write I did; and send I did, in an email to this beloved person. I choose to share with you all, my personal “beloved community.”
The Ancients and The Fay both call
Both to nourish my heart and soul
Where the body moves and cries to Justice
To Iona, to Skellig, to Glendalough, to Tara and Meath
To Ulster, to Belfast, to Derry, to Portadown, to Armagh and Oomagh
I call down The Powers of the Ancient Ones
I call down The Powers of the Most High
I call down The Powers of the beehive Saints in Cells
I call down The Powers of the Moon and Sun
I call down The Powers of the Mists and Rain
I call down The Powers of the Green and Her Very Stones
To come….to come….to home….to home….
To circle the wells
To leave the clooties
I come as a Daughter of Erin
I come as the Daughter of Grady
I ask to come as a Pilgrim
I come to walk in the mists
and I come to follow The Way
—————-
If You want me to work alongside others
to raise up the all new Irish
If You want me to work to heal the Troubles
If You want me to stand alongside of
and stand up for the Travellers
Then You have to get me there first
You have to change Kilkenny’s heart
You have to make it beat for You like a bodhran
You have to bring us home!
—————–
Brigid, Come get me
Brigid, Call me
Brigid, Heal me
Brigid, I follow.
Brigid, Take me Home
Brigid, Bring me Home
Brigid, Make my bed
Brigid, Be with me
Brigid, I come
—————-
Irish Dove of God, Columba
Whose Home is and within the Derry walls
The place of the Oak
Bring me to your HomeLand
Move me to the Bogside
So that the Voices of my people
Sing me to sleep
Even into the Sleep of Death
I want to Go Home
I want to Come Home
Our Goddess of Guadalupe
December 31, 2007 at 4:20 am (Uncategorized)
In the very recent past, someone from Albuquerque (for God’s sakes) on the Anglican GLBT site was going on and on about a Rosary prayed during the celebration of the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I got so tired of it all, I had to respond.
It is fascinating, watching and reading the tempest stirred by La Morenita’s light Christian dusting of syncretism. Fascinating to watch and read the controversy stirred by the Goddess Tonantzin, barely cloaked in the Church’s peculiar restraint, tricked out (for some, only some) as Virgin Meek and Mild. I’m delighted to discover the power of the “feminine face of the Divine” still disturbs.
Upon first reading of the rounding Rosary on ‘Lupe’s Feast Day at the Episcopal parish in Albuquerque, I felt as if La Morenita had been insulted. It was as if someone thought, “Oh, here’s a day we do something Mexican and Roman Catholic for a Mexican apparition. There’s nothing more Mexican and RC than a Rosary. And we won’t even pray an entire decade; we’ll do Rosary-lite!” If I were playing word association about OLOG, I’m sure “Rosary!” would never occur to me. When I think of La Morenita, I don’t first think Mexican (in a contemporary sense) so much as I think aboriginal/First Peoples/Indigenous. I think Zapata, Hidalgo, Cesar Chavez, Eduardo Fernandez SJ. How many actions and manifestations carry ‘Lupe’s banner? How many homes bid us welcome from an altar grounded in the image of OLOG, proclaiming hospitality as the bedrock of social justice, social action?
Revolution! yes; perpetual rose-smelling Rosary? Hardly. Unless one remembers and then ACTS the revolutionary, social action call-to-justice of the Magnificat.
But then I’m paternally Irish (maternally Sioux–a double dose of glossed Christianity), raised on Brigid of Kildare (Mary of the Gael) and her beloved Darlughdach (lover, we all hope), Maeve, Maud Gonne, Grace O’Malley, Mother Jones, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Rosemary Nelson. My personal Irish Mary is not at Knock; she is in community of a Lavery triptych, wild-haired and barefooted, stomping through RC Belfast’s Troubles and on the Fall Road, a force to overcome Empire’s genocide through Peace, Prayer, Power, and politics, smack dab in the middle of Irish life, incarnate in suffering and redemption.
Unfortunately and all too typically, most Episcopanglicans fail to leap into mentioning, much less acting, out of a position of social justice, even when given an opportunity to speak of Catholic Social Teaching, Liberation Theology, and the power of the Arts to heal and transform. Even when CST could be the springboard to a common heritage of Anglicanism’s unique Social Gospel. In terms of social justice, Rome does it best (no offense to Quakers, UU’s, and Mennonites. I’m thinking liturgically here, folks). All those mighty Jesuits, super Franciscans, edgy Maryknolls.
Many have written about her symbols. Learned articles attempt to explain away her unusual shape, when every feminist/womanist knows a vulva when she sees it, ‘Lupe’s head the Universal Clitoris. Our Lady of Guadalupe is sensual, overtly pregnant. She seems grounded, earthy, strong. ‘Lupe examplifies my personal Mariology. This is no perpetual virgin, I pray. To birth the godhead with hymen intact seems ludicrous. Yes, there has been much power for women in the power of Virgin in community (John Dominic Crossan says “whore” means not connected to a man through marriage, father, or mother of a famous son), throughout the history of Christianity; again Rome still does it best! But the history of “The Feminine Face of God” in Christianity was practically FORCED, early on, by those who came to Xanity out of Isis and her Goddess Sisters; Christianity, the Institution, dusted off Mary to give those who needed a goddess, and if not a goddess, then, at least SOMETHING. And The People have made Her their own; and womyn, feminists, and womanists claim her power in many forms. Even secular feminists have been known to rave.
I, for one, have always thought that monasteries and convents were Rome’s gift to gays, Lesbians, etc.–or the equivalent for the time and culture–as a way to be and live in community of like-minded and gendered souls. Sure, there is a call to celibacy, I believe. Just as there is a call to abstinence. It’s that whole channeling the fires of desire stuff, the Divine energy of Creation the same energy as sexual energy. Sex, being more than actual intercourse, at least in my opinion. Some of the sexiest people on the planet are celibate.
Myth, Symbol, Metaphor. To me it’s ALL Myth, Metaphor, and Symbol, at a great great power it is intended. To me, we trivialise when we literalise. There is mighty M/mystery surrounding La Morenita’s Numinous Inexplicable.
Even though Rosemary Radford Ruether takes issue with this poem, Clarrisa P. Estes, Jungian, feminist, and activist paints our Guadalupe as the guurrrl many of us adore:
“Mi Guadalupe is a girl gang leader in heaven.
She is unlike the pale blue serene woman.
She is serene, yes like a great ocean is serene.
She is obedient, yes, like the sunrise
is obedient to the horizon line.
She is sweet, yes,
like a huge forest of sweet maple trees.
She has a great heart, vast holiness
and like any girl gang leader ought,
substantial hips.
Her lap is big enough
to hold every last one.
Her embrace
Can hold us,
All.”
