Sense of divinity

Last weekend was an interesting one. I went to the Progressive Christian conference held at St Andrew's on the Terrace. The Friday chimed with all of the work I've been doing on breaking stigma around mental illness at work, and preparing for Mental Health Awareness Week and the launch of all the resources we've been working on - but it was doing it from a different angle. I have only been in a church three times since the abortive St James' AGM in March and in that time my thinking has really shifted again, so I was a bit nervous about being with people that described themselves as Christians, as my experience of people who use that term are often anything but loving and compassionate.

However, I was pleasantly surprised - I met people that I could have genuine conversations with about issues that mean something to me: how we treat our Mother the Earth; how we treat other people that wear skin over their divinity; how we walk with kindness and gentleness in the world; how we find Godde, God, Goddess - the Greatness that is the Brightness of All - in the midst of all things and in everywhere.

The most interesting sessions were the one that Emily Colgan ran on reading the bible from the perspective of Earth, employing a hermeneutic of suspicion that I am familiar with from feminist theology. I found this helpful as I haven't touched the bible for months, preferring Matthew Fox's theology, the Gnostic Gospels, or Goddess writings. There may be a way back there for me, employing the hermeneutic of suspicion again.

The best session of all though was Sande Ramage's Jungian "releasing the Christian ties that bind" session. I cried - suddenly it seemed I had found someone else who has travelled the same route I am travelling, and is further along the road. When she talked about her experience of divinity as Goddess and swapped between he and she as naturally as breathing, it felt as though I had found what I had been trying for years to get into the church.

Not sure where this leaves me though. I will continue to read, to seek. Hubby and daughter gave me a singing bowl for my birthday, which now sits alongside the pottery version of the Venus of Willendorf that one of hubby's pottery friends made and we bought a few months ago. It is astonishing, the sense of divinity that comes when I ring the bowl and light a candle. Maybe that's all I do for a bit: small ritual actions, lighting candles, calling on her, singing bowls, breathing, walking on her breasts the earth. Smelling the jonquils in my garden. Sinking into the depths of the wonderful bathtub in our gorgeous new bathroom that hubby built. Being aware. Writing. Poems are beginning to bubble again....

Discovering a feminine Godde

“And the Lord said…” preached the priest at the parish I was attending, and suddenly, everything changed.

“Why does it have to be “the lord”?” I thought. “We know God is above and beyond gender, but I only ever hear God referred to using male pronouns and male terms. Can God be Mother as well as Father? Can God be … Lady?” That thought was the beginning of the seismic shift in my theology, my practice, and my life.

Until that moment, I had lived my faith in a conventional (but hopefully courageous) way. I studied English Literature and Religious Studies in my BA, and then went on to complete a Bachelor of Ministries degree from the-then Bible College of New Zealand, with a focus on spiritual formation. During my time at BCNZ, I returned to my Anglican roots, and was Confirmed as an Anglican not long after I married my husband in 2001.  

I joined the Third Order Franciscans not long after we married, and I transferred my vows to a Benedictine community a few years later, as I found the Benedictine vows of stability, conversion of life, and obedience to God a much easier fit for a married woman than poverty, chastity and obedience! Our daughter, then aged 4, assisted me at my vows by vesting me in the Benedictine habit – she has grown up with a mother who works fulltime, is married and a nun, and is quite happy with all of that, as is my husband who is my strongest supporter!

Fast-forward five years. My small family were attending a small Anglican church and living our lives as a youngish couple with a small child. Everything was seemingly normal. I was reading voraciously, as is my lifelong habit, and one of the books I read around that time was Sue Monk Kidd’s The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. And then, from left field, comes this thought: why do I never hear God addressed by female names? And following on from that, what is wrong with being female, that (according to Augustine and other male early church leaders) means women cannot be seen as imago Dei, fully created in the image of God as women?

St Augustine said that,

“Woman does not possess the image of God in herself but only when taken together with the male who is her head, so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned the role as helpmate, a function that pertains to her alone, then she is not the image of God. But as far as the man is concerned, he is by himself alone the image of God just as fully and completely as when he and the woman are joined together into one.”

I dived into the most serious theological and historical study I had ever done (including the six years I spent doing my degrees) – certainly the most fraught. This felt like a life-or-death situation – the life or death of my ability to respect myself as a woman, the life or death of my ability to connect with the divine.

Is there historical and theological support for calling God by female names?

To my great delight (and relief), there is ample biblical, theological and historical evidence for addressing the Most Holy by female names. I discovered that the translations made of the Bible had frequently changed female names for people, as well as mistranslating female terms and names for the divine. For example, the ancient Hebrew “El Shaddai” is usually translated “The Almighty”, assuming that the term derives from shadad, burly or powerful, or shadah, “mountains”. However, many Hebrew scholars now understand that El Shaddai derives from Shad meaning breast – El Shaddai therefore translates as the Many-Breasted One. The ancient habit of translating the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter name for God, as “LORD”, further reinforced the incorrect assumption that only male language was acceptable to name the Most High.

The usage of “Father/abba” to relate to the Holiest is only used 4 times in Mark, 15 in Luke, 49 in Matthew, and 109 times in John (the Gospels were written in that order, from around 60-120AD) - surely a sign of a growing community usage, rather than Jesus’ actual words. Given the Gospels had earlier sources now lost to us, it is possible that the term “father” was used infrequently by Jesus, and was then latched onto by his followers as a quiet and subconscious way of reinforcing the Graeco-Roman worldview of men as pater familias, the head of the household, and its use encouraged and strengthened through the years by those reinforcing male leadership and power.

I came to understand that, if we only use male names for God, then that subtly implies that only men are made in God’s image. When we use only male terminology for God and for people in our liturgy, worship, preaching and teaching, we subtly reinforce this incorrect, outdated understanding of God and imply that maleness is “normal” and somehow being female means we are less.

Theologically, we understand that God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, and as omnipotent and all-powerful, God will not be limited by gender, and nor should our language for God put God’s power and presence in a box of limited male terms. St Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) called God Mother in her sermons; so too did Julian of Norwich (c1342-1416). Yet despite extensive biblical, historical and theological evidence, including discussions within our own Anglican tradition in New Zealand and overseas over the last 50 years or more, we still continue to primarily name God by male names.

I began to look closely at the liturgy and Bible translations we use. I translated the entire Benedictine daily prayer cycle into gender neutral and expansive terms (where female and male names are used equally) for my own use as a Lenten devotion in 2014. I then tackled A New Zealand Prayer Book/He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa. I wrote a version of the Eucharistic liturgy p.404 that removed all male terms for God, replacing them with female or gender-neutral terms. Not being a priest, I was not able to use this, but it was an exercise in trying to find out what it might feel like to be in a liturgy where God was addressed openly as Sophia, Mother, Lady, She. I began to look for versions of the Bible where the names for God were not changed, and discovered both The Inclusive Bible, and even more powerful, The Divine Feminine Version of the New Testament, and began to experience the scriptures with a new voice.

I found that I could not keep silent about the explosion of love that I had felt since I had openly embraced calling God by female names – my favourites being She Who Is, following Elizabeth Johnson’s book of the same name that was the beginning of the strong theological backbone I needed, Sophia (the Greek translation of Hokhmah or Wisdom), and Mother or Lady. I began to think about Jesus as the incarnation of Holy Sophia in the continuation of the Wisdom tradition, which a lot of scholars had identified, and reflected that the Holy Child could be thought of as the Child of the Mother. I began to discuss my discovery of She Who Is with others.

And that’s where things got complicated.

There was a lot of support, often from older Christian friends that had gone through the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, several of whom had been closely involved with the Anglican Church and the Prayer Book Commission. There was also stonewalling, accusations of heresy, and refusal to engage with the theology and history, particularly from some male priests who clung to patriarchy like a ragged, worn-out old blanket that they wouldn’t, or couldn’t, let go of.

I tried everything. I spoke, with love, to friends and acquaintances at churches – my own and others. I spoke with my husband and daughter, who have both journeyed with me on this discovery of She Who Is Godde (the term I now prefer for the divine – it is an old medieval spelling for the divine, and is completely neutral with no male connotations such as “God” has). I spoke with passion to our churchwardens and parish priests, describing my journey and trying to engage with them over the theological and historical information I had gleaned through at least five years of intensive study, prayer and reflection.

I felt unwelcome in regular church liturgy because I only ever heard Godde named by male names, and that no longer named my experience of her. I changed the words when I was singing hymns (first resigning from the church choir) and participating in liturgy, substituting she for he so I could be present in church. When I used a female name for Godde, Sophia, Holy Wisdom, when leading intercessions one Sunday in 2016, I was formally censured by my parish priest and removed from all rosters in the parish where I, and my dangerous ideas about Godde, might be expressed publicly. Patriarchy was rampant.

I did find allies – people that felt the same as me, who had sought Sophia/Wisdom and found her, as we are enjoined to do in Proverbs and Wisdom. They helped me keep up my courage. In the end, in desperation, I sought a meeting with our People’s Warden asking what I could do, as our parish priest completely refused to engage in conversation about this topic with us. The Warden recommended we put motions to our parish AGM – which we did, seeking removal of male terms when the whole of humanity was meant, and seeking education for the parish and changes in our language for Godde in church.

So how did it all turn out? Well, the parish priest would not allow the motions on the naming of Godde to even be put at the AGM (giving us no warning of this so we couldn’t even amend the motions) and refusing to allow discussion on the naming of Godde. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to the motion I was trying to put (which had been notified to the parish according to the correct protocol, three weeks before the AGM). The priest tried to undermine the motion on naming of people by putting a much weaker motion from the chair, but at least there is some intention to remove terms such as “mankind” and “man/men” when they are intended to refer to all people. The motion on educating the parish on the female names for Godde was passed, after my husband spoke with calm eloquence, identifying that his experience of the journey was that knowing Godde by male-only terms was missing so much of the richness of Godde’s nature.

And where does that leave me? I am still reading, still researching – trying to identify what it might do to the way the church treats people, the way Christians treat people, if we viewed Godde as our Mother. How might we respect her world, if we thought about it as birthed by her? How might we show love one to another, if all of our people could see and hear of Godde in terms that show that, no matter what flesh you are born into, you are fully born and bearing Godde’s image? I am still lighting candles of hope in her name, praying in the stillness of the night sky, walking the beach and hearing the water crash on the shore, filling her footprints left there by some other person who walked before me and carries her name.

I am calling out her name in the world, and naming patriarchy and misuse of male power wherever I see it.

I cannot un-see or un-know what I now know, the experiences of her love I have had. My image of Godde is forever changed – much bigger, wider, deeper, more beautiful, richer. I am a different person since I encountered Godde the Mother, Godde the Creatrix, Godde the Incarnate Child, Godde Holy Wisdom. I have found my image was in her all along – I just couldn’t see it, because the language we use for God told me that only men were made in God’s image. Women were only mothers, not fathers – but now Godde is my Mother I can find myself in her.

Skating the dark moon

I am watching the Olympic men's figure skating, one of my favourite things to see. I only get to see figure skating every 4 years, when the Winter Olympics is on. There is something so beautiful about seeing these highly-trained women and men soaring over the ice, effortlessly, forever blurring the line between ballet and skating and flight.

I guess it's that feeling of seeing someone master something, truly master it, until it looks easy. Like the speed skaters, looking so relaxed as they fly around their course faster than a car goes. It's also incredibly beautiful to watch.

I am looking for that sense of ease, of doing something until it is utterly natural and becomes normal. I am beginning to feel this sense of ease about calling the Divine by Her names. It came hard to start with because I didn't know any different, but now feels utterly normal - and I get frustrated when all of the language commonly used for the Divine is male. It's like we're only getting half the story: Godde is so much more than a male, and by cutting out female language we cut out female experience too.

Tonight is the dark moon following the January supermoon, so tonight is a night of deepness, darkness, and depth, perhaps as deep and dark as it can go. Tonight, I will see whether the depth and darkness of the night leads me somewhere with Her. Maybe I can burn with Her dark light, at ease on the ice.

I will not participate in my own invisibility

I saw that quote today, and I like it.

Today has been a day of me deciding that I will stand up for what matters to me. I heard about the "Women's March on Washington" in protest of the inauguration of the Orange Despot in America, and I decided that I would attend that march. Even more beautifully, my daughter (aged 10) also decided to go, in her full Girl Guide uniform, as she identified that Guides is about including everyone.

I have never marched before. I have never protested before. But now, I cannot stand by silent, as a complicit bystander, in what I see going on in the world. My friends, who are rainbow, inclusive, women, black, progressive, are frightened. I cannot be silent. So I marched, with nearly a thousand Wellingtonians.

I saw a number of placards I liked: my favourite was "Kate Shepherd sent me".

Then, this afternoon, I met with a friend from church to discuss language for God, which was really encouraging as she uses feminine names for God as well and would be happy to see them used in public worship.

And tonight, we met with the church wardens to discuss naming and language for God - for the first time I feel that someone is listening. The question will be whether there is doing as well.

I will not participate in my own invisibility. I see these three things linked: I am finally having the courage to stand up and say that this is not okay, that the silencing of some of God's most ancient names and nature is not okay, and that it is an issue of justice as well as a issue of understanding and seeing God's depth and beauty - and I finally have the courage not to be a bystander or complicit any more.

It's really tiring though....

Hagia Sophia, holy Sophia, wholly God

This year promises to be an interesting one. As part of seeing the new year in, the whanau and I reflected on what our dreams were for 2017, and what the best thing was from 2016. 

For me, the dreams for this year could create an interesting time. The work dream is to find my joy in my work again as I experiment with new ways of working, particularly with contracting. 

The more interesting dream comes out of some events recently. I frequently lead the weekly intercessions at our parish, and early in Advent it was my turn again. These are the prayers I led our parish in on 11 December:

Blessed One, this day we celebrate the joy you bring us.

You came to us in an ordinary event

Of a refugee mother giving birth

In the only shelter that could be contrived.

In the joy of the face of the exhausted mother,

The joy in the face of her husband,

We see a very ordinary miracle.

We pray for ordinary miracles:

Life, peace, hope, joy, love.

Holy Wisdom, Holy Sophia,

Bring your ordinary miracles into the faces

And lives of those in pain, in places of war,

Or affected by your restless earth.

Holy Wisdom, holy Spirit, hear our prayer.

Coming One, in this Advent we remember the baby who came,

Jesus, Light of the World,

The baby born of a refugee teenager.

And we know you promise to come again

In joy and love and peace and hope.

We pray for teenage mothers, refugees,

And those for whom this season means fear and violence.

May they know your peace and hope.

­­We pray for those for whom Christmas is a reminder of loss,

And for those who have gone on that have left a hole in our hearts.

Holy Wisdom, holy Spirit, hear our prayer.

Holy Sophia, Wisdom Spirit of God,

We pray for leaders everywhere

That they would hear your voice,

Listen to your heart, and act with justice and compassion.

May they follow your star,

See your love and kindness,

And return by another way, changed.

Holy Wisdom, holy Spirit, hear our prayer.

Most Holy, may we look with your eyes,

Hear with your ears.

Help us to experience your coming

In the touch of those we love, the smells and tastes

That make this season special.

May our senses show us your ordinary miracles.

May we have the courage and kindness

To share those ordinary miracles

With those that we find it a challenge to love.

Holy Wisdom, holy Spirit, hear our prayer. Amen.

Quite simple and innocuous, I thought. Apparently I was wrong. I got a snarky email a few days later from the vicar telling me that I shouldn't have named God by her ancient name of Sophia in church, and that I wasn't to lead intercessions again until after he had "talked to me" in January, as it "wasn't appropriate" to name God by a female name in church and "someone had complained". 


I saw red. I still see red, as this is the third time he's tried to do this - he told me I couldn't edit the church magazine after I wrote an article about Sophia, and that I wasn't allowed to even submit any articles on that subject, and now he tries to remove me from the intercessions. Patriarchial oppression and censorship at its clearest and most obvious. 


I will not allow someone else's narrowminded, patriarchal, androcentric ignorance allow the knowledge of Sophia's beauty to be crushed again. The vicar seems to be of the opinion that the only person that this affects is me - well, he'd be wrong there. I asked a whole lot of people I know that this matters for to speak to him, and the next day in church (I wasn't there - I was both too angry to go, and wanting to visit a friend of mine in hospital) lovely hubby spoke during the "sharing" time at the end and identified how much discovering Sophia had meant to both him and me - and why I wasn't there, because the vicar was trying to shut me down. 


Lovely hubby also helped me make my Christmas present: he got a t-shirt printed for me that says "Hagia Sophia | Holy Sophia | Wholly God" on the front, and "Wisdom-Sophia is vindicated by all her children" on the back. I wore it to church yesterday, and intend to wear it to church every week.

So my dream for 2017 is that we see full equality in the language we use for God in church. And I am going to fight for it. I have been fairly quiet, asking nicely for this to be included especially as we combined the 9 and 10.30am services recently and changed all the liturgy, but as nothing has happened its time to get significantly less vocal - and significantly more Anglican. After all, the Fourth Mark of Mission says that we are called to "Transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation." Patriarchy is an unjust structure of society and it's time that our language for God reflects our commitment to a just society where women and men are equal in Sophia's sight and made in her image. 

Camino di Compostella

The calendar tells me it's 16 September, over a month since I last posted. I can believe it. I thought today would be a day of craziness, but in the end the auction scheduled for today was cancelled because our house sold prior (thank God) and we have an offer on another house in Lower Hutt. The slight downside is that we don't get possession of said house until early November, but it is worth waiting for. It is exactly in the area we wanted to be, it has a stunning view over the harbour that will keep me plastered up against the living room window all the time I'm home, and it's been recently redecorated with a brand new kitchen. In fact, it's as close to perfect as a house can be, and we bless God for blessing us with it. 

The house feels like a gift, but what is more important to us is how much we have been missed, and welcomed home. We went down to the Hutt to look for houses a couple of weekends ago, and we were very nearly mobbed by the congregation at our parish church of St James: everyone was really happy to see us and was ecstatic that we're moving home. It was almost overwhelming, especially when I found out that they have begun a journey into looking at the gendered language of God in liturgy and hymns, which has been a real issue for me for some time. We realised how much they had missed us, just as we have missed them terribly for the time we've been in Rotorua. We had lived into each others' journeys in the nearly 10 years we'd been worshipping at St James', and now it's time to resume the camino again.

So, at the Rotorua end of this move, I am making lists about my lists, crossing things off, adding lots more, and feeling as though my brain has too many tabs open! One major thing will be crossed off this Friday when I finish work as a consultant: I get a couple of weeks' break to move (originally also intended for moving in!) before I start my new job in October. However, things are slowly slipping into place: our new house is 700m from the local primary school so our daughter can walk to school (until we move into the house, hubby will commute her to school from where we're staying), we've found her a Guide company and an art class, hubby is looking forward to rejoining the local camera club and art society, and I'm happy that my professional networks and choir are now back on the horizon. Not to mention access again to art galleries, museums, the ballet, orchestras, and music! Lunchtime organ recitals, here I come....

However, there will be things we will miss: we're not looking forward to saying goodbye to friends, and we will miss the beautiful weather and the loveliness of this part of the island. Not to mention how close it is to everything: an hour to Tauranga/the Mount, 4 hours to the snow, 3.5 hours to Auckland, and I never did get back to Coromandel while I was here. 

But, as before, we know we have been called. In fact, it's all part of the bigger camino, the journey, and the impetus for this one really began about this time last year when we did the Tarore pilgrimage, and then our pilgrimage in the UK really showed us our hearts. So it's time. Time to go home. 

Black Madonna

I had a hammer-to-the-head moment today. This last couple of weeks since the house went on the market have been insanely crazy, and I've really struggled to keep my focus on what really matters to me.

One of my new Sisters in the Community of Solitude has a real passion for the Black Madonna. As we've been getting to know each other, we've begun to talk about the Black Madonna as an ancient route of the divine feminine to bridge into our world, and I started to read up about these ancient manifestations: icons, statues, and the devotional practices and legends that have grown up around them. The "hammer to the head" was that the statues of the Black Madonna traditionally are seated on the Seat of Wisdom, and many of the writers I've read so far make a clear link between Sophia and the Black Madonna. She is the darkness, the fecundity of the earth, the richness of the shadow, the dark night of the soul.

I need to find out more about her. She symbolises the power and strength of the earth, the darkness of knowing God, the depths of the night, the courage to be and to endure. I've always had a connection with Mary and sensed that there was great strength in her, but finding her this way is a whole different experience.

Speaking faith

Tonight I am sitting here in the cold of an autumn night with the cat next to me on the arm of my chair, reflecting on a blog post I have just read. John Shore has rapidly become one of my heroes of the faith: a passionate, articulate person who has shown me that there are others out there that think like me, that my lonely faith journey here in smalltown New Zealand isn't alone. The story I read is entitled Eight "Bible-believing" churches vs one progressive church, and it is a sad indictment of the narrowness and sickness of the "fundamentalist" and "evangelical" churches that I left with relief 15 years ago.

At the bottom of that article, John has a summary of what a progressive Christianity could look like, and I want to summarise his summary here in my own words. This is a good summary of what I have come to know over the past 15 years or so.

1. Jesus was divine, but Jesus was also human. Jesus allowed the crucifixion as evidence of God's love for us - it was never any kind of punishment or "substitution" for us - it was an act of ultimate love.
2. The Bible is not a contract or literally dictated by God. It is a complex set of different kinds of literature that is human's record of God's dealings, filtered through their understanding and time period. God always requires us to choose love, compassion, and kindness over any other action or so-called biblical law because love is the highest good there is - God is love, and where there is love, there is God. 
3. Christianity is about nothing more (or less) than living a loving, caring life that is gentle towards all others, and towards the earth.
4. Where there is love, there is God. Love comes in many forms, and can and does include love between people of the same gender. The scholarship stating that St Paul never wrote anything condemning homosexual love is much more convincing than the scholarship claiming he did. 
5. God does not require any person to submit to another in an unequal power relationship, including between men and women.
6. God is beyond gender, and therefore it is as accurate to speak of God as she as it is as he. Sophia is an ancient naming of God that is totally valid biblically and historically. 
7. God introduces herself in history through many different ways, places, and people. There is true knowledge of God everywhere that people love and are loved, and in the stories where we are taught to love and act with compassion.
8. There is no support in the Bible for a hell where people are eternally punished, nor is this consistent with a God that loves us inordinately. 
9. God loves us and wants to teach us, not punish us. God uses ordinary everyday circumstances to do this.
10. God and power are not normally a good mix. Church and state are separate and should remain so, but we who love God are called to speak truth to power in love.
11. We are called to love. God handles the rest. 
12. God made it, evolution shapes it. There is not, nor has there ever been, any conflict between faith and science. God created the capacity for change and growth in all things, just as God herself changes and grows. God delights in our human curiosity and desire for knowledge, because God made us that way! 
13. Divorce is not immoral and in some cases is a good idea where power is being misused. God loves everyone, even when relationships don't work. 
14. Our identifier as to whether we are truly God's is how we treat each other. 
15. God gave us a brain, a will, and a desire to learn. Asking questions is right, and "because the Bible says so" is not an answer - it is an interpretation. The bible is always open to interpretation, but if the interpretation means someone acts without love to others, their interpretation cannot be true. God never guides us to act without love. 

This is as close to a summary of my understanding of God and her ways as I can currently make right now. Thank you, John Shore, for helping me arrive at it.

Missing liturgy

A while ago, I reflected on whether it was possible to be homesick for a place I have only been once. I concluded it was eminently possible: Canterbury Cathedral has so stamped itself on my heart that I know I will never truly be the same. It is the heart of our ancient faith in England (although not the oldest place of worship there), a place of worship and pilgrimage and seeking for more than 1500 years.

I knew when we came home that it would be difficult to come back from the visceral, whole-of-body, whole-spirit experience of cathedral worship in the UK: where the very stones seem to be painted with prayer and the whole place shimmers with the organ and the bells and the singing; incense, beeswax, body and blood. Immersive church, where everything is done excellently, reverently, and with holy purpose.

Sure, it's not perfect: they've only just figured out that women are called to the episcopate too (we're 25 years ahead of them there!) and the language is seriously patriarchal - but there is hope in the movements of inclusive church that that will change. What won't is the desire to do all things "decently and in order", with love and passion and skill.

What I have realised is that I need that liturgy done with love and passion and skill. I need the music and love and prayer and holy purpose. I need the Office, the daily round of prayer, painted on my heart like light through stained glass. I need this. Liturgy done poorly, bad music, trite lyrics - I cannot separate myself from it. It becomes like sandpaper on my soul, grinding me in all my most tender places.

Some people might say this is me being overly sensitive, too "high", not being "of the people" - snobbish, even. But for me, worship is not of the people. It is our gift to God, and should it not be the best of what we are capable? It should be the best music, the best singing, the best words, trusting that God, by some alchemy of her own, will make them worthy of her worthiness, for nothing we offer God will ever be enough. But it should be beautiful.

And when it is not, then it is time to listen to what my heart says, what my spirit knows. I cannot return to Canterbury, but our pilgrimage there has shown me my heart. I need to be honest to myself and I cannot hide any longer.

Momento mori

The last few weeks have been tough for us. Between hubby and I, we have lost three friends and my uncle: one of hubby's friends from Camera Club, two of my Kinleith friends/colleagues, and my uncle. Death seems to be stalking rather close right now.

I can't quite put into words what I am thinking about. Momento mori, the remembrance of death, is a monastic activity: remembering that this earth is not all that there is, and that we live our life as well as we can in the 'sure and certain hope' that when we leave this place, when our journey ends here, there is a door that is opened and Sophia will welcome us home. 

That is my prayer for my uncle and our friends: that their doors have opened into a place of joy and love and hope; and for us that are left behind, may Sophia walk with us in the valley of the shadow and lead us to her hope. 

Table-flipping

I saw something amusing on Facebook the other day from the Episcopal Church:

Tonight I feel very much like that answer. I want to flip over some tables and chase a few people with whips over the gendered language issues in our liturgy, hymns, and readings. I substitute things out but it still drives me crazy that I cannot walk into a church and hear God addressed as she as often as God is addressed as he, when that language is historically and biblically attested to. 

Hence the Sophia liturgies. And some table-flipping of my own, I hope. 

Lent update

So, Lent. How's that going, then?

Followers (?) may remember that this year's Lenten task was in three parts:

1. Writing a divine office for Sophia
2. Reading Sophia: the hidden Christ of Thomas Merton
3. Exercise

Well, given it's the second full week of Lent, it's probably time for an update.

The divine office for Sophia is proving an amazing blessing. I am writing one office per day: so far I have a complete week of morning prayer, and nearly a complete week of evening prayers too. Writing the litanies for each of these services seems to being out something rich from inside. Sophia is blessing this project and I am profoundly grateful.

The Lent book is proving more problematic. It is very dense: I can only read a little at a time, otherwise it gives me mental indigestion! However, I am determined to finish it during Lent. It's good - but dense!

And the exercise - working most days. Just have to keep at that one.

From dust to dust

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return," said the priest as he marked my face with the ashes of last year's palm crosses, mixed with holy oil. So, Lent begins again, the cycling back towards the Journey to Jerusalem with Jesus.

Last year, I undertook to reflect throughout my Lent on this blog. It was an interesting discipline and it made me stop each night to look back on the day, the good and the bad things. I didn't quite manage every single day but was fairly close. This year's Lenten discipline is slightly different. Lent is about opening myself to God's goodness in new and different ways, looking for the light of Sophia's hand opening in my life.

So this year, I have a Lenten task: to write a Divine Office for Sophia, using the Sophia translation of the psalms that Mother Laura Grimes sent to me. I made a start tonight after the Ash Wednesday service (which was lovely - held at St Faith's Ohinemutu, combined with the Catholics and Methodists, and beautifully bilingual!), and have finished a Monday morning prayer office. I'm going to give it a test run tomorrow morning to see how it goes.The format of the Divine Office is clearly set throughout history - all I'm doing is tinkering with the translations.

I'll also be undertaking some physical as well as spiritual exercise each day.

The other part of a Benedictine Lent is to read a study book right through. I had already started Sophia: the hidden Christ of Thomas Merton by Christopher Pramuk, but had come to a grinding halt with it a couple of months ago: it's very interesting but quite dense! I am going to read this as my Lent book, and if I finish it before the end of Lent there is another study book waiting in the wings that I haven't started yet, but has been eyeing me up from the bookshelf in my library.

I'm interested to see how this threefold discipline: writing and praying liturgy, reading, and exercise, will help me open myself more to God's darkness and love.

Sophia prayer

One of my distinct frustrations at present is the invisibility and lack of resources for liturgical exploration of Sophia. Part of my vocation as a Benedictine is to pray the Opus Dei, the work of God - usually known as the Divine Office or breviary. Those of you who follow the blog (I have followers?!) will know that I've been trying to find resources for Sophia-prayer for some time. The most recent foray into an expansive language Office was from the Order of St Helena, which I used for a while. However, somehow it didn't seem to truly fit, although it gave me some very good ideas.

The next step, which was suggested by one of my Brothers in the Community, was to create my own version of the Office. Purists among you will now be shouting that the Office is the "official prayer of the church" and therefore shouldn't be tinkered with. However, praying the Office as I currently have it is an exercise in trying not to grind my teeth to the gumline, through frustration and anger over the misogynist language used for God - which hardly helps me connect with the One who truly Is! The pattern of each service of the Office is set historically so putting together a Sophia version shouldn't be that tricky (just time consuming!) and I am going to use the lectionary for the readings, so I don't fixate on the readings I like and ignore the bits that are harder for me.

The first step was to find a four-week psalter pattern, which sounds significantly easier than it was. The complication comes when you consider that Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox all number the psalms slightly differently - RCs and Protestants both have 150 psalms but they're "chopped up" differently; the Orthodox add another one and have 151. I needed to find a Protestant arrangement as my translations were all numbered that way! I also wanted to make sure it included all of the psalms, including the so-called "imprecatory psalms", because I think it's more honest to human experience. I think I cracked that one, finally.

Step two: which translation of the psalms? Should I re-image a known translation into Sophia-language, use the OSH psalms, use the NZ Prayer Book psalms with changed language, use the psalms from the Inclusive Bible.... ?

This was a source of extreme teeth-grinding, until about a week ago I googled "sophia psalms" in sheer desperation. And I think I found a treasure! I stumbled across the blog of Mother Laura Grimes, an Old Catholic Bishop and feminist, who has taken the 1979 Book of Common Prayer version of the psalms and made them Sophia-centric. And they are beautiful. And bless her, she's made them available to others! I have always loved the way the BCP psalms flow, as they were written for singing, and she's captured that.

The neat thing is that Mother Laura has also created a Sophia little office and rosary! I've ordered those too and am excited to explore her work. Here's hoping....

Homesick for pilgrimage

I've often wondered whether it was possible to be truly homesick for a place that isn't really home. Last night, I got my answer: absolutely.

Part of our trip to the UK was a pilgrimage. We visited three cathedrals and several holy sites while we were over there. We started our pilgrimage on Christmas Day in NZ's northernmost Cathedral, Holy Trinity Auckland, which was pretty special as it was 200 years to the day since the preaching of the first Christian sermon in this land. We continued it with English cathedrals and holy places.

York Minister is jaw-droppingly beautiful. The feral GPS took us right into the centre of the old city within the walls - to the point that we nearly ran into the pedestrian-only zone through the Shambles (oops); but as a way to see the Cathedral, driving up Museum Street to the York Information Centre pretty much can't be beaten. The Minster just loomed up out of the frost, with the morning light behind it, shimmering on the golden stone, and the Heart of Yorkshire tracery in the Great Window catching the sun. Inside, it's even better. I literally had to scrape my jaw off the floor when we walked into the nave and looked up. I have never seen anything so lovely as those pillars of stone reaching for the sky, and the gilded bosses and ribbed ceiling. We did one of the guided tours, which was very interesting but quite long. I loved the crypt, with the tomb of St William of York (very simple, a single block of stone with a candle burning on it), and the ancient paintings. We went back later on that day for evensong in the quire. Candles, choir (a visiting choir - the Minster's one was on holiday but they were very good), and that thunderously gorgeous organ. Worship was a whole body experience: the feel of the organ, the smell of wax and candles, the music, the silence. Prayers offered for the prayer intentions left in the Minster. Very down to earth and grounded in reality, even in the midst of the glorious music.

Sheffield Cathedral on New Year's Day: very quiet and peaceful. Reminded me a lot of the feel of Wellington Cathedral of St Paul although it's much much older and looks nothing like Wellington's "big pink sarcophagus"! It's not one of the "famous" ones but it was very lovely. We liked the fact you could see the Norman, Gothic, and later additions very clearly, and it had a gorgeous chapel to the Holy Spirit that I particularly liked. It also had the coolest of all the nativities we saw: made of Sheffield steel, about 1.5m high, and somehow the makers had made that steel very winsome and gentle.

Grace Dieu Priory was not on our original itinerary: my sister-in-law suggested it as it was just up the road from their place near Loughborough. We got there by a very cold walk through English woods in the snow, which was interesting in itself: I was quite surprised by the lack of undergrowth, bushes etc - just trees, and they seemed fairly widely spaced. I don't think it was deliberately planted but it had a "managed" feel. The priory itself is a ruin, but it was beautiful. The stonework was all iced with thick snow, and the walls rose out of snowy fields. The late afternoon light was very kind to the stonework, and the whole place had a kind of breathless hush, almost as though it was waiting for something. It had the feel of a "thin place": it knew it had once been holy ground, and the sense of consecration was still there. It was very cold! Having the deep snow helped the sense of hush too. The pond beneath the priory was frozen solid (small daughter threw a good-sized rock just to make sure and it skidded for several metres!).

Most people wouldn't consider Stonehenge a holy place, but I do. Most modern scholarship seems to think that it, and the landscape around it, was holy to the prehistoric peoples, and that Stonehenge was a place of worship. I certainly sensed that when I was there: It is so old, so unbelievably old, and it was in use for over 1000 years for whatever the ancients did there. It has left a mark on both the physical landscape and the landscape of Spirit. I spent some time trying to listen to the place (rather difficult when it's swarming with tourists!). I got the sense that Stonehenge isn't quite sure what it is anymore, but that when it's quiet, after dark or at the turnings of the year, it would go back in time a long long way. It would be a place of awe, and to me, that's what worship is: finding the awe, the marks of our recognition of the numinous, in places, times, music, art, and people - the places where God has touched us and we have touched God.

I suspect the National Gallery isn't on a list of holy places for many people either, but there were so many wonderful works of art, many of them altarpieces or great artist's explorations of religious themes that it was definitely part of our pilgrimage. So many artists, so many places to go in the world through the art, so many themes of love and beauty, power and betrayal, peace and war and everything in between. Highlights too numerous to mention, but seeing Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael in the same building was pretty amazing, not to mention Holbein, Constable, Turner, Degas, and a whole lot more.

Westminster Abbey was a different kind of holy: the holiness of the ordinary, the holiness that we find through living our lives and contributing to society. It also turned into a very personal moment, when I found a shrine to one of my ancestors, and the tomb of another (a Dean of Westminster). Did not expect that at all! Partly because of the number of people there, it was hard to get a sense of the Abbey as a working church, except at the prayers on the hour (when one of the Canons requested everyone to be still for a few moments while they offered prayer). We didn't go to the prayers at St Edward the Confessor's tomb, although I did spend a few moments reflecting there. I found it hard to get a sense of the architecture too, because there were so many monuments and grave markers - I found some old friends, like CV Stanford, Howells, Dryden, Keats, Shakespeare, and rather endearingly, CS Lewis (no Tolkien though). Also Queens Elizabeth and Mary (in a shared grave, rather beautifully). Henry V, and Henry IV.

The jewel in the crown, and the finale of our pilgrimage, was Canterbury Cathedral itself. We were staying in the beautiful, peaceful Cathedral Lodge within the precincts of the Cathedral - it was tasteful, comfortable, and luxuriously beautiful in a very understated way. What was amazing was how the noise of the city just disappeared when you went through the walls into the precinct. The old city walls are stone and incredibly thick: the grounds are almost silent. The Cathedral opened on us like a revelation as we came through the gates from Quenensgate. After a very late lunch we went in. The sense of prayer and Presence hits you the moment you walk through the doors - there is a holy hush in the building not of any person's making. It just is. We were blessed enough to arrive about 15mins after Saturday evensong had begun (we got there about 3.30pm), so there was a tide of glorious music and resonant organ everywhere. We went to explore the crypt, beginning with praying at the Martyrdom of St Thomas Becket, and then visiting the various chapels in the crypt - all with evensong washing over us, even through the thick stone of the ancient Norman crypt. There are some very ancient wall paintings in one of the chapels that gave us a tiny sense of the riot of colour the Cathedral would have once been, but it was the atmosphere of the place that kept stilling us. The place where St Thomas' body lay, in the Chapel of St Mary of the Undercroft; the place where his tomb was before they built the shrine (that Henry VIII pulled down). The single candle that burns where the shrine once was. And of course the tomb of Edward the Black Prince. Over 1500 years of continuous prayer has marked this place. The very stones pray and praise.

The next day we went to choral eucharist there, in the quire, with the light blue and gold and red through the stained glass. Incense. Singing. Organ. Psalms sung to chant like I've never heard them before. Processions of readers, the Gospels, holy gifts. Receiving communion at the High Altar of Canterbury Cathedral. The taste of port on my lips, the holy body and blood. More singing, and hearing the purity of those boys' voices soaring in the Anthem.... Prayers, very down to earth, for ordinary blessings, ordinary pains, ordinary joys. Being encouraged to pray the Lord's Prayer in our own language - I started in Maori but got lost amongst all the English! Blessing the water for the holy water font. Finishing with Psalm 150 for the Recessional, soaking the stones in praise and prayer yet again.

And at the end of the service, gathering with Canon Nick in the Chapel of Our Lady of the Undercroft for our pilgrim blessing, giving thanks for the journey we had made and the one we were to make home. Holding Canterbury specially in my heart, trying not to cry as we left. None of us wanted to leave. Trying to carry Canterbury with me, St Thomas, the Martyrdom, the crypt, and the praise soaked into the stones.

Can I be homesick for a place I don't belong to? Yes, I can. I'm homesick for Canterbury. I am homesick for the Presence of that place, for the stillness, the silence, the beauty of the worship, the smell of incense, the thunder of the organ and boys' voices soaring in praise. Beautiful stone and light and glass. The warmth and kindness of the welcome we received from everyone. The place of martyrdom, destination of millions of pilgrims like us through the centuries. The place marked by God's presence and our recognition of God's presence.

Now I need to find those places here, find a way to bring it home to smalltown New Zealand, land of sheep, green fields and bright sunshine. It's going to be a long job.

Contemplation and finding ghosts

Today was an interesting day.

This morning's 8am service (which we finally made! Yay!) was an oasis of peace, focused liturgy, and a wonderfully challenging sermon on the necessity for being open to change and challenge, and finding the flexibility to allow that to happen even if it isn't that comfortable. It was a real affirmation for me that I am on the right path in seeking Sophia, because it isn't comfortable. It feels awkward, difficult, strange, but at the same time, it is a large spacious place that I am invited into. I know it's right for me to be open to her and to follow her, but I also know it's awkward for other people sometimes...

From that, we went straight to the range. One of the things I'm loving about archery is that it is not something you can do while thinking about other things. It requires total focus, total presence to the body, the bow, and the arrow. It is very contemplative in some ways. I was shooting recurve again today, which I haven't done for a couple of weeks, and it felt very different. I was just beginning to get the feel of a compound, and switching back was a bit of a challenge, but a good challenge. I was focusing on body form: on how my body moves and stabilises and balances through and after the draw. It felt good, but what I was truly surprised by was that I didn't feel at all sore after it, and the recurve was really easy to draw after the compound I've been using.

And this afternoon, I flew down to Wellington: I am delivering a course here over the next couple of days (standing in for a colleague who is sick). It feels a little odd to be back here - I am staying in Plimmerton to be closer to the venue, so not back in the Hutt, but it was strange driving through Wellington from the airport. There are new roads and even a new tunnel that I didn't recognise - and we've only been gone not quite three years. So here I am: in a motel room in Plimmerton, hearing fireworks going off directly across the road, and thinking how odd it is to be back, to be here but not here, to see these places I grew up in, but not belong. It feels like a ghost of my former life in some ways.

I hope they finish up with those fireworks soon: I think I need to go to bed.Com I need to remember to account for traffic here....!

A modern day pilgrim

Pilgrimage.

The word sounds a bit old-fashioned, a bit musty, a bit redolent of old schoolrooms and tattered copies of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales—those wonderfully funny (and sometimes slightly naughty!) stories told by a group of pilgrims in the Middle Ages, travelling together on the famous Winchester-Canterbury pilgrimage route to the shrine of St Thomas à Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. How could this possibly be relevant in New Zealand in the 21st century, so far from all the famous pilgrimage routes of Europe (and the theology that said that pilgrims earned merit in God’s eyes by visiting holy places)?

We decided to find out. We joined a pilgrimage organised by Whakatane Parish to the sites associated with Wiremu Tamihana and Tārore: one of the first converts to Christianity in the 1830s, the peacemaker during the Waikato Land Wars; and the little girl who was murdered at Wairere Falls, and whose copy of a Māori translation of the Gospel of Luke was stolen and touched the hearts of her murderer, her father, and the great chief Te Rauparaha with the message of holy peace.

I began to better understand those pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales: travelling together on a bus wasn’t quite the same as riding on horseback, but the same sense of camaraderie and enjoyment, the same urge to tell stories, to learn about each other, seemed to be as present in these modern-day pilgrims as in the ones in Chaucer’s time. Partly it was a way to pass the time between sites, but it was also a chance to find out how we came to be there, to get to know each other, and to share our joy in God’s love.

Praying at the very simple little grave of Tārore, standing next to that little white cross and picket fence out in the glorious spring sunshine of the Waikato is probably a different experience from praying in the chapel of St Thomas, but nevertheless, it was a “still place”, with all the wildflowers blowing in the breeze and the sun soft on our faces, and the sense of this small girl’s love for God and message of gentleness and forgiveness close all around us. We could see the Wairere Falls directly across from her grave, some 10-12km away, and had a sense of the sad journey her father had to bring her body home and his own struggle not to seek revenge for her murder, but to be faithful to the way of peace he had chosen.

The stained glass windows in All Saints’ Matamata commemorate both Wiremu Tamihana and Tārore in a stunning, modern style. There she sits, at the base of the Falls under the kowhāi, with tui and piwakawaka (fantails) fluttering about her, reading her Gospel. Another window nearby shows St Francis preaching to the birds of New Zealand that same message of compassionate love and peaceful courage.

St Thomas à Becket has had pilgrims coming to his grave for nearly a thousand years, after he was murdered by a greedy king for standing up for the faith and the church of his time. Tārore died in 1836, on her way to the mission school in Tauranga, after it was moved from the location near her home, and her grave has been a place of prayer ever since.

Both Thomas’ and Tārore’s stories inspire us to journey with them in the way of God, the way of compassion and love, the struggle to forgive and find peace even in the midst of bitter pain and loss. They tell us that listening to and learning from the saints who have gone before us is important—not to put them on pedestals, but to hear their human voices, their frustrations and their triumphs, and inspiring us with their steadfast courage in the face of loss and risk as they travelled with God in their own day, and as we travel with God in ours and find our own courage and hope with them.

Pilgrimage in 2014? Oh, I think so.

This article first appeared in the St Luke's Parish (Rotorua) magazine Reaching Out, St Luke's Day/Advent edition 2014

News from the hill

A friend of mine posted an amazing link today on Facebook, about a group of extremely brave Jewish women who smuggled a tiny Torah scroll into the women's section of the Wailing Wall and conducted a Bat Mitzvah there, a coming-of-age ceremony for a young Jewish girl. This was brave on several counts: the Orthodox rabbis who oversee the Wall tried to prevent them from gathering there, and traditionally women have not been seen as equals in Jewish law. They are not allowed to wear tallit, the prayer shawl, or tefillin, the little boxes with Torah scrolls in them that are tied onto the head and hands of Orthodox Jews when they pray (putting God's word on their heads and hands). Jewish women are not allowed to carry, touch, or read from the Torah, and synagogues are segregated.

This group of amazing women is asking, why is this so? Why is one interpretation of halakhah, the Jewish law, stopping them from gathering at the most holy site of their faith? Why are men allowed to carry out a Bar Mitzvah, the ceremony for a boy, at the Wall, and women are not?

These courageous women are standing up and claiming their faith in a new way. They too have been inspired by the Shekinah, Wisdom, Sophia - the working of God in the world. I pray alongside them in their struggle to be seen as equal in the sight of the Holy One.

Inequality

One of the things I have been reflecting on for a long time is inequality of language, particularly in a worship setting. Those of you who are regular readers here will know that I am journeying through a sea-change in my own experience of God's goodness: from a small picture of God as "father" and "son" to a much bigger, deeper understanding of God that includes Mother, Lady, Sophia - Holy Wisdom.

So what really happened to the women? Where did they all go? I even posed this question to the Patheos blog (and got a reply, which was super-cool!). The answer is essentially that, "to the victor, the spoils". The victor in this case was men: in Roman society, women were powerless: they had no rights, and could not own property or rule (although they could lead in church!). In Judea, it wasn't much better. Although Jesus himself welcomed women, stayed in the houses of his female friends and relied on their support, and Paul named Junia (sometimes spelt Julia) as first among the apostles in his letter to the Roman church, along with Lydia and other key female figures, by the end of the second century they were gone. Their stories were lost to us, their voices discredited. And why, you might ask?

Greek thinking was coupled with Christian reflections on God's actions in the world. The Greeks had a pretty dim view of women, and that translated into them seeing women as passive rather than active, dark rather than light - which Christian thinkers, raised in a Greek philosophical mindset, viewed as evil rather than good. Early Christian theologians such as Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome assimilated Graeco-Roman ways of viewing the world that saw women as sinful temptresses who had to be "kept in their place". This of course was complicated by the Christian interpretation of the Jewish story of Eve and the "temptation". The language of God became male, because Jesus was born male, only a male was perfect, and therefore only men were perfectly made in God's image. I kid you not: they actually thought that women's bodies weren't fully reflective of God's image because they were female. And there are still people that think that.

So, to the victor, the spoils. Women's stories, women's experiences, women's bodies, were devalued. The language of God in churches shows a deep inequality that is the result of 2000 years of false thinking and fake theology, and say, "but it's in the Bible" to continue their oppressive treatment of women's skills and experience. If people actually take the time to look at the images of God that are truly there in the Bible, they would get a shock. Here's just a few of my favourites: El Shaddai "the breasted one"; God the mother bird who shelters her chicks; Holy Wisdom, Hokmah/Sophia, who is always addressed as she in the Hebrew scriptures and who is God abroad in the world - we usually call her the Holy Spirit; the mother bear defending her young. Female images and female language for God abound.

People also say, "but Jesus called God Father - doesn't that mean we should too?" Not when you count the number of times Jesus refers to God as abba changes in the different Gospels: it's used 4 times in Mark, 15 in Luke, 49 in Matthew, and 109 in John (the Gospels were written in that order, from around 60-120AD) - surely a sign of a growing community usage, rather than Jesus’ actual words. The oldest Gospel, Mark, refers to God as abba only four times. Given the Gospels had earlier sources now lost to us, might it be possible that the word was used just once by Jesus and then latched onto by his followers as a quiet and subconscious way of reinforcing the Graeco-Roman worldview of men as pater familias, the head of the household, and its use encouraged and strengthened through the years?

So where is this language now? Where is Sophia in our churches, the Holy One, God's own presence with us? Sung a hymn to Sophia recently? If not, why not? Called God Mother lately? If not, why not? The language we use for God defines how we understand and view God and God's work in the world. If God is never addressed or referred to as She in church and in public, then how will my 8 year old daughter come to truly understand and know that she is made in God's image: in all her beautiful skin and flesh, fully reflective of God's glory in her own person - as much as any boy? How can she possibly feel that she is valued in God's house if she never hears all of God's Names - all of them, the female ones too? Will she ever have a relationship with God that sees more of God than just what someone referred to as "two men and a bird"? Will she ever feel herself equal with men - in courage, faith, pay, and work?

I truly hope she will, but only if I can help her find Sophia: God in the world. She who Is. The God who welcomes us all, and sent her child to be the redeemer of all, the Chosen One of God.

A post for Blog Action Day 2014 #inequality

Octave stretches

It's the end of the Octave of St Therese. As she is my patron and one of my deepest inspirations, I keep her feast as a full First Class Feast, with an octave (which also includes St Francis and St Bruno, which is rather nice). I was deeply disappointed to find that the NZ Lectionary doesn't even have her feast day in it and so there are no designated readings, and the Order of St Helena Breviary that I use doesn't commemorate her either. I find this surprising because she was an amazing woman who has influenced spirituality in a whole new direction in the 20th and 21st centuries. Once you get past the early, saccharine interpretations of her and start to find her depth, she is deeply courageous and enormously inspiring. I had to go online to find readings and prayers for her, but it was worth it.

So, what has come out of these days of reflection in her light and in the context of her friendship? More movement towards Sophia, the One who is calling me, and a deep frustration that when I go to worship, all I ever hear is "he, he, Lord, Lord." It always makes me think about Jesus' saying, "Not all who call me "Lord, Lord" will enter the kingdom of heaven" (just so I'm not accused of proof-texting, I know that is not the context of what Jesus was saying, but there is a resonance for me). I find it so disappointing that the entire Wisdom tradition and all of the tradition of Jesus as Sophia's messenger lying squarely in the Wisdom tradition has been so completely forgotten and buried under a great stinking pile of androcentrism and patriarchy.

So where next? Home by another way? And what does that really mean for me, for my vocation, my faith? What is the "other way"? And who is Home?