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.

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. 

Red things go faster

Last week, it was our 14th wedding anniversary. Hubby and I were supposed to go out for dinner to a lovely little cheap'n'cheerful Thai place we really like, but I ended up unexpectedly covering a training course out of town and didn't get home in time. We had a bit of a time-limit - we were planning our date together while daughter was at Brownies. Date subsequently deferred until tomorrow when she's at Brownies again!

Today it's officially the first day of autumn, but no-one bothered to tell the weather! It was an absolute scorcher: it was officially 26degC, but the thermometer was showing that in our hallway (one of the coolest parts of the house) so it was nearer 30 or more in the living room, and more than that outside. They take the readings at the airport! However, the sky is deepening into that gorgeous rich blue you only see in autumn, and the nights are definitely cooler. Waiting for leaves to start to change soon.

This morning, we braved the sun (suitably smothered in sunblock) for a good morning of archery down at the club: groups were a bit wide for my liking but we have had a bit of a layoff. After lunch, we explored the end-of-season sales in search of a new microwave: the one we had was a wedding present from my grandmother and had started to develop some slightly alarming characteristics, such as randomly starting operations when you opened the door, and not stopping cooking when the door was opened.... Obviously the interlock was going a little feral, and it was time to honourably retire it, hence the trip to the sales.

I love 60% off. I also love bright red. We needed a new microwave. Those three things came cheerfully together this afternoon when we found a bright red microwave at 60% off, along with a bright red food processor (of the sort bread-making hubby has been salivating over for two years now) also with 60% off.... Two appliances for half of the standard price of the microwave.

And now my kitchen will probably get a speeding ticket, because red things go faster!

A taste of Benedictine hospitality

Some people would think that the name "the Community of Solitude" is a bit of an oxymoron. How can you have a community of solitaries, or have solitude when you're a community? I must admit there have been times I have asked myself that too. I understand a little better now. 

The last week of July was the Convocation of the Community in Minnesota, USA. We were the guests of St John's Abbey, a Benedictine Community in Collegeville (home of the Liturgical Press - the joke in the community was that it had to be be a Benedictine abbey because it had two bookshops as well as the library!). The setting was beautiful, but the convocation even

The huge bell tower at St John's

more so. 16 members of our Community gathered, sharing the daily Office with the monks of St John's (singing the Office with over 120 monks in choir four times a day is something I will never forget), meeting, talking, praying, laughing together, going for walks, and just being together showed me how rich and how deep our COS community life is. We have a "virtual" community most of the time, sharing our lives through our prayer, email and skype, but seeing them face to face and sharing their hearts was a gift I treasure. 

Our solitude enriched our time together: we shared the "fruits of our solitude" at the dinner table, in our meetings together, and in our general chats. 

We each pray the Office ourselves, but sharing that prayer together made it immeasurably richer and deeper. I use the Breviary of the Order of St Helena in my private Office; the St John's one was different to what I am used to but doing it as a corporate community activity changed it in ways I didn't expect. 

The stained glass in the Abbey church

The pace St John's chant the psalms is a lot slower than I am used to, and it took a bit to get used to. However, I began to find that giving the psalms space like that allowed them to speak more deeply. I also appreciated the sermons of the monk-priests of St John's during the daily Mass: they were very short (no more than 5-10 minutes at the most) but they were profound in their meaning. 

Statue of St John in Abbey church baptistry
(courtesy Br Thomas Andrew COS Cam)

The best one came for me on the feast of Sts Joachin and Anne (parents of the Virgin Mary), when the priest reflected that he had had the same Gospel reading just two weeks' previously: the last time he preached to the Community! He then reflected that our monastic lives are like that: recircling around the same truths, coming closer and closer like a moth to a candleflame. We persevere, as he said, "in the good days, and bad days, and sometimes just days." That phrase captured everyone: choir is a very solemn, beautiful, formal place but there was a ripple of smiles as everyone there completely understood what he meant. Often it is just days, when we walk faithfully, but may not see too many results. It's like the light moving through the stained glass: it looks different at every time of day, but some days it stands out more than others. Some days the Office is full of light and life and joy: other days it's an act of sheer faith to keep going, keep praying, keep singing, keep hoping. 

The stained glass in the Abbey church, viewed from the monks' choir
This is completely huge - this photo cannot capture the size and majesty of it.

St Benedict with his Rule and the ravens

I found myself profoundly touched by the art around the Abbey. It felt like the fruits of the monks' contemplations was made physical, made visible, for us all to share. The fierce St John in the baptistry stood guard over the entrance into the church, but the gentle St Benedict in the Abbey university grounds invited us in to share with him in his hospitality, life, and love. He looked young, passionate, warm, and caring: inviting us to share the feast of his Rule and the richness of study and prayer and laughter. I liked his rolled-up sleeves: Ora te Labora: prayer and work (or to work is to pray).

One thing I found quite amazing was how much fun we had together. It started from the moment I was met at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport (after a 36 hour journey!) by two of my Brothers, and it didn't stop all the time we were together. There was a lot of "monastic humour": one of my personal favourites was when we were having a COS photo taken after Office one night. The person taking the photo couldn't figure out if it had been taken because the camera didn't make any noise: one of the Brothers piped up, "That's because it's a Cistercian camera!" 

Returning home, all 36 hours of it, was quite tough. I was glad to see my family again, but I had grown even closer to my monastic family than before and I miss the regular prayer in choir at St John's, shared with the St John's monks and my own Brothers and Sisters. But I return to my cell, and keep the faith quietly in the regular things - the "just days" of my life - and find in those things the courage I need to keep loving and praying, being faithful in the big stuff and the small daily things. 

I suspect there will be more "fruits of solitude" from my time at Convocation popping up. I had to make a start with the simple basic things, and I promised some of the photos!

Romuald and Wordsworth

St Romuald's Brief Rule says, "Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it.... Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what their mother brings them." In that being is peace. The world may come with us into our cell, our place of prayer, but when it comes with us it comes into the paradise of God's grace, and wonderful things are possible there.

The world is too much with us, and sometimes at the moment it feels very much too much with us. Wars and rumours of wars, fear, hatred, death, loss, pain, grief. What can I do in the midst of so much suffering? My little efforts feel like less than the widow's mite. But I need to remind myself of what I am, of who God has asked me to be: to dwell in my inner place as if it were paradise and wait there. Even though it feels quite often as though no-one else has turned up - to wait there is a gift and it is paradise. My inner cell is the doorstep to heaven and I should be content to sit and wait there, whether there is sunshine or rain, and know that the world I have put behind me is part of me and is waiting on the doorstep with me, gathered to paradise in my heart.

But no-one said it would be easy. As one of the monks at St John's Abbey preached, in our monastic round of rediscoveries and re-echoes and revisiting the same truths day after day, "we have good days, and bad days, and sometimes just days". And quite often its raining on the doorstep, or it's cold, and frequently it is lonely and dark and dispiriting, and sunshine and light and love seem like a distant dream. A long obedience in the same direction, as Eugene Peterson called one of his books, requires sitting on the doorstep even in the winter when the snow is piled so high we cannot see over it and springtime seems a million years away.

But then there are the days when the daffodils are dancing in my garden and the first of the tulips are poking through the ground, the sun is warm on my back as I do a bit of weeding, and the tree down the road is pink with blossom: to sit on the doorstep of my heart on those days is easy and the whole day bubbles with a deep and subtle joy, even when the world is too much with us and seems to be falling around my ears and I don't know what to pray or to say or to do to help. Maybe it's enough. I pray that it is.

Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday. Ride on, Ride on in Majesty and Lift high the cross. Processions with palms. Thinking about 1stC politics. Jesus the rabble rouser. Jesus the hobo? Jesus the political animal. Jesus the challenge to authority. The beginning of Holy Week. Today's collect says it all really:

Jesus, when you rode into Jerusalem
the people waved palms with shouts of acclamation.
Grant that when the shouting dies
we may still walk beside you even to a cross.

A New Zealand Prayer Book/He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa

A dog story

A friend of mine posted this story on Facebook today. I love it and had to share it.

The adam and the adamah

One thought from today. The Gospel reading was the story in John's Gospel (ch.9) when Jesus heals the man born blind. I never noticed it before, but it was pointed out in the sermon today that this was actually an act of re-creation. Jesus made mud and smeared it on the man's eyes. The man born blind either had eyes that were physically damaged, or his brain couldn't interpret the images it received - or quite possibly both. He used the adamah, the humus, the dirt, to heal the adam, the human. Given the deliberate echoes in John's Gospel of the creation myths* in his gorgeous Prologue in chapter 1, this hardly seems coincidental. It is making a link between the God who makes, and the God who heals - and the God who is incarnated.

One for further thinking.

*Author's note: if you're thinking from my comments above that I am some kind of "creationist" who believes in a short prehistory then think again. The creation stories in Genesis are theology: exploring our relationship with the cosmos and the God of love whose love spoke it into being, who oversaw the Big Bang (maybe the Big Bang was the word God spoke?), and set evolution in motion. It is not and never was intended to be scientific explanation. Rock on, Darwin. When you've read the parallel creation stories from the Ancient Near East such as the Gilgamesh Epic, you realise that they are just that - stories, where people have reflected on their place in their world. There is not and does not ever need to be a conflict between science and faith in a God who created love as the highest ideal of life, and the showed us that love by becoming one of us.

But that, perhaps, is a topic for another day....

He who sings prays twice

Or three or four or five times... But I think St Benedict was onto something here. Singing makes the words so much more real, and they sink in more.

Yesterday I was writing a training course and listening to King's College Chapel Cambridge choir singing a whole lot of gorgeous stuff (including some psalms to Anglican chant) via Spotify. My mind and fingers were writing courses, but my spirit was soaring to the vaulted Chapel ceiling! My favourite hymn of all time popped up too (The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended - St Clement tune) which was perhaps not appropriate at 10am but I didn't care, it was beautiful.

And tonight was the first rehearsal of the re-formed St Luke's Choir. Five singers (for now - hopefully more soon), one accompanist, five hymns and a Taize chant, and it felt gorgeous. It was so good to be singing hymns again, and the ones for early in Lent are so lovely that they just carry you with them. Here's hoping it goes okay on Sunday, the first time we sing.

Joke of the day

A Roman goes into a bar and asks for a martinas. The bartender says, "Don't you mean a martini?" The Roman replies, "If I wanted a double I would have asked for it!"

Quote of the day

It's a while since I had my last quote of the day, but this one struck me. It comes from a facebook post from liturgy.co.nz:

'John the Baptist cries out for our repentance. Year after year, on this second Sunday of Advent, his message is the same. It does not waver. It will not let us go. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." His cry uttered over and over again is to repent, to turn about, to reorient ourselves from our places of privilege, our places of self-assured pedigree, our places of having done it on our own, our places where we rely only and always on ourselves. His cry uttered over and over again is to repent from former limitations in our understanding of the Divine One who is coming, that One whom we await as others have awaited before us.' - Martha Brunell

The Third Sunday: Gaudete!

Third Sunday of Advent: Gaudete Sunday. The cry of John the Baptist struck me particularly today. I can't remember how often I have heard this and read it, but like all things of faith, it became fresh again when I needed to hear it. "I baptise you with water ... He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." Funny how I never figured out before today that if we're being baptised with fire, presumably that means we will get burnt, and burns hurt. The liturgy of today talked about a baptism of suffering and repentance - not presuming that everyone is supposed to hurt, but that hurts will come in life, and it's how we deal with them that matters. If we let ourselves get all bitter and twisted up by them, looking always for vengeance and retribution, we will end up hurting ourselves and others. If we let it go, repent, turn away from the need for revenge, we will find peace.

Reflecting on this in my current state of pain is interesting. I didn't ask for this. I didn't want it. But I know it has changed me. I think I am a bit more compassionate to others in pain now because I have had pain of my own. I understand weakness from my own weakness. I understand the shame and humiliation of a chronic illness from the depths of my own; the longing for healing and the despair and darkness that go hand in hand with pain - but the need, the absolute need, to hold on to faith - faith for a healing, but also faith just simply to live each day, to go on, to keep walking, keep hoping, even if the hope is a very tiny one. Even if the hope is for a good death, like those friends I had in the hospice who were hoping to die well. Momento mori.

We lit today's candle for the love we share and the love that enfolds us, but the love that wants us to grow up and won't protect us from the pain of the fire, because we will be stronger for the journey because of it.

Quote of the day: rules for the cat

Courtesy of one of my Facebook friends...

Hell, according to chemistry

The following is an actual question given on a University of Arizona chemistry mid term, and an actual answer turned in by a student. The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well :

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.  One student, however, wrote the following:

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving, which is unlikely. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today.

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:

1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over.

So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct ... leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting 'Oh my God.'


This student received an A+

Just in time....

Martin Johnson (coach of the English rugby team) and Graham Henry (coach of the New Zealand rugby team) both die and enter the Pearly Gates. God takes Martin on a tour of heaven and ends up at a little two-bedroom bungalow with a faded English rugby banner hanging from the front porch.

"This is your house, Martin," says God, "You're very lucky. Most people don't get their own houses up here, you... know."

Martin looks at the house, then turns around and looks at the huge mansion on top of the hill; a massive, multi-storey affair with white marble columns, balconies and attractive gardens. All Black banners line both sides of the footpath and a huge New Zealand flag hangs between the marble columns.

"Thanks for the house, God," says Martin, "But let me ask you a question. How come I get this little two-bedroom bungalow and Graham Henry gets a huge mansion with all those marble columns and things."

God looks at him seriously for a moment. "That's not Henry’s house," God says, "That's my house."

Quotes of the day

1. Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

6. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

7. Evening news is where they begin with 'Good Evening,' and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.

8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research. 

9. A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

Quote of the day

Three Irishmen, Paddy, Sean and Shamus, were stumbling home from the pub late one night and found themselves on the road which led past the old graveyard.

"Come have a look over here," says Paddy, "it's Michael O'Grady's grave, God bless his soul. He lived to the ripe old age of 87."
"That's nothing", says Sean, "here's one named Patrick O'Tool, it says here that he was 95 when he died."

Just then, Shamus yells out, "Good God, here's a fella that got to be 145 years old!"

"What was his name?" asks Paddy.

Shamus stumbles around a bit, awkwardly lights a match to see what else is written on the stone marker, and exclaims, "Miles, from Dublin."

The Tattooed Rock

Regular readers of my blog may remember my hugely excited reporting of the re-discovery of the Pink Terrace back in February. Well, there is more exciting news on that front. Te Tarata, the Tattooed Rock (the White Terrace) may have also been found! This sonar image was released a few days ago from GNS Science:




Te Tarata, the Tattooed Rock: sonar image from GNS Science

They actually took this image back in the same exploratory mission in summer that found the Pink Terrace, but apparently it needed some further analysis before they realised what they had. The lead scientist, Cornel de Ronde, is quoted as saying, "The two places on the lake floor [of Lake Rotomahana] where we encountered hard, up-standing crescent-shaped features correspond to the locations of the Pink and White Terraces before the Tarawera eruption [of 1886]. The rounded terrace edges are standing up from the lake floor by about a metre in some places. The sonar images of both sets of terraces are strikingly similar."

This contemporary photograph of the White Terrace, also in black and white, pretty much convinces me that they've got the right beast:



Te Tarata, the White Terrace - contemporary photograph (just prior to 1886 eruption)

So exciting, and so wonderful to know what actually happened to the Terraces. They weren't found the day after the eruption (10 June 1886) - my guess is that they were covered with ash, which we know was at least 2m deep at Te Wairoa (now known as the Buried Village) and may have been deeper on the mountain side of Lake Rotomahana; and then the lake returned and ended up covering a much larger area than the three pre-eruption lakes it replaced, drowning the Terraces.

My only regret is that I'll never see them....

Strangely warmed

I am feeling curiously heartened tonight. I have spent a very quiet evening in Palmerston North watching the final episode of Diarmaid MacCulloch's wonderful A History of Christianity, which I blogged about a couple of weeks ago. In the final episode, 'God in the Dock' (named for CS Lewis' book of that name), he looks at Christianity post-Enlightenment: the effect of the advent of "natural philosophy" (science) and doubt on the church in the West (curiously, he does not look at the effects of this period on the Orthodox church - maybe because the effect of the Enlightenment was not so strong there?).

In some ways, it's a very grim chronicle: wars and rumours of wars, loss of faith, doubt, fear, pride, revolutions, collusion with power; French Revolution, Catholicism in bed with Mussolini and Franco, the Holocaust and national socialism, doubt. Where is the God of love and compassion, the God of hope, the God who made humans in God's own image and likeness to care for each other and the world God has made?

A wise old pastor once said to me that "Doubt is not the opposite of faith; unbelief is the opposite of faith". Professor MacCulloch finished his series wondering if Christianity was dead in the West. But he visited St Martin-in-the-Fields, which besides being famous for its stupendous church music, has also been a church that has consistently explored what it means to be the face of a loving God in a changing world - ranging from pacisfism through to protest against apartheid, through to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. As the vicar of St Martin's said, "Yes, we're firmly part of the British Establishment [it's an Anglican/Church of England parish], but we constantly find gentle ways to undermine that establishment' in the name of a God of love and justice.

Some may believe that the Church, the institution, is dead or dying, and maybe in some places it is (not where I worship though!). But God, and faith in a God who is love and who inspires us to live lives of love and kindness, compassion, humility and gentleness and justice, who was born in a stable and lived part of his life on the streets with 'nowhere to lay his head', who called the religious establishment hypocritical whitewashed tombs full of decay, that God, and that faith, will not ever die.

So, my heart is strangely warmed. I must just seek to live in that love, that justice, kindness and compassion, to be open to being challenged and changed by it, to hear the call of Jesus the Jew, the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. Easier said than done, perhaps, but Professor MacCulloch has reminded me that Jesus asks that of all of us.

Quote of the day

"Bellringers, an absolutely sterling and splendid group of folk, but with a tendency to think of churches as rather puzzling additions to church towers." - Prof. Diarmaid MacCulloch