the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods

Also, what am I going to be for Halloween?

2007-10-27T15:56:00.001-04:00

Something highly conceptual, not too much work. I have no ideas. I need ideas!

(There were all these upsetting girls in Seattle for whom Halloween was like prom: expensive, labor-intensive, snotty. I used to love Halloween until it became this like small one-upping girl war. I want Halloween love to come back! Funness! Silliness!)

Fraught lovers.

2007-10-27T15:36:00.000-04:00

Me and my church. We love each other, but we fight like cornered dogs.

It's only since I've been interacting with people at General Theological (the Episcopal seminary in Chelsea which I very very chose not to attend) that I've realized that partnered white men are the cream of the f***ing crop in the Episcopal Church. They cruise. They get ordained super-fast. The rest of us, we wait. We get told to be more prayerful. We are told to wait, and wait, and wait. We are the Eternal Postulants. It's hard.

I had a few brief confrontational e-mails with my bishop about this, and she came to visit last week. We had lunch, good good lunch, where she made sure I knew she had my back. The Commission on Ministry has to be handled in particular ways, but she and I have bone-deep understandings, and I love her. It helped, but it doesn't fix the ways this happens systematically throughout the national church. I am trying to stay vocal about it, especially with these white boys who will have parishes very soon, to try and show them how NOT to do this to people who will go through the discernment process in their parishes.

This Polity class at General is making me frustrated. I am now just keeping a running tally of the frightening/misogynist remarks the bishop makes during each class. (One week there was a lovely combination of using a priest killing his wife as the example of what kind of information one should not preach on and of saying, "Well, why shouldn't we bless same-sex couples? We bless dogs. And cars." Um.) I have been told that one does not lodge complaints at General. We'll see. I wish someone other than me felt like hell about it.

Preaching is awesome. And I like teaching a lot. A lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot. I'm starting to think that if I do doctoral work, it will be about using Foucault and Butler and Spivak to talk about the politics of interpretation, particularly in relationship to the Greek Scriptures, and the implications for Christology. I want to talk about permeable, negotiated selves, and what happens when we attempt that process transtemporally, and with someone we make particular faith claims about. Still sorting this.

I'm playing a lot of Excuse 17 these days. And Neneh Cherry. And I think it may be time to let go of my prejudices against the Raincoats.

The Trazodone is helping me sleep, but now I'm sedated most of the day, and I don't know quite what to do about that. Check-up next week.

Please support my friend.

2007-10-12T12:50:00.001-04:00

The fabulous Nina is baking pies for many, many, many hours in order to honor her mother, who died ten years ago, and to raise money for low-income cancer patients. Please, please visit her website: Pieathon and sponsor baking time or (if you're in NYC) buy a pie. Good karma, God will love you even more, all that good stuff.

I hate the Royal Tenenbaums.

2007-10-09T20:22:00.000-04:00

I am SO glad other people are starting to write about how Wes Anderson's movies are misogynist and racist and total white hipster cultural appropriating nonsense. God, trying to have that conversation with the Seattle hipsters was profoundly annoying.
Look here
and here.

Warning: some hard stuff news stories.

2007-10-08T21:19:00.000-04:00

Monday night.

Thinking about a lot of things. Thinking about this. And this. And this book. A lot because Onleilove and I want to make chapel for people who have experienced sexual trauma. We want to scream and make safe space to break things. We both think lighting candles (which Christians do for everything) is insufficient to the threat, and to the lived reality, of a lot of bodies.

Went to the Long Island wedding yesterday of Kenny B and Ally. A couple beautiful moments. The best photobooth pics ever. Hanging out with Jeremy and Emily. Talking to Allison's dad, who had gone to see her burlesque show (eep!), and who was so very very proud of her "for being so confident in her own skin...I see so many brides get married here, and some of them are just so uncomfortable. I'm proud of her, out there with her red dress and her tattoos." Hava Nagila. More food than H. and I had maybe ever seen in one place. Crazy dancing. (Side note: after 2 hour yoga Sunday morning and hours of walking and trains and dancing in 4 inch heels, my legs are totally shot). Lots of laughter on the LIRR.

I am up writing an analysis of a 15-minute lecture I delivered last week in my pedagogy class about thinking about gender in the church. I'm sick (I kept pushing it off and today it came back and bit me), and I'm not thinking well, although the experience was pretty big. Something will get written.

I'm falling in love with Dan Bern all over again. Especially this song. It's important for me to remember faith, past belief.

Can I just say how much I love my best friend? A TON. I've been thinking a lot lately about how important it is for me to have a best friend, finally, after so many years. I have a complete wealth of good friends right now in my life, for which I am thankful and bewildered (what did I do to deserve these fan-TAS-tic people in my life?). I am also experiencing a real lack of babies. For the past 10 years, I've been taking care of someone's bubs, and now there is a lack of baths and bubbles and little crackers and naps and warm heads and snuggling and laughing hysterically. It's a big place of emptiness, although when baby Grace left last year, I got so lonely for Jane and Ben and Alice and Bea that I knew I couldn't keep doing that kind of loss again and again. It's an interesting void that I will be living with for a while.

Must continue to write paper. For real. Kisses.

God repents.

2007-09-27T14:45:00.000-04:00

I'm really interested right now in texts that deal with God changing God's mind. We're looking at Exodus 32:1-14 today in class on my suggestion. Any thoughts, people?

I like the idea that we, people, human beings, agents, free will-ers, have a say in the making of God's mind. What I'm finding is that there aren't too many scholarly articles willing to cope with this in depth.

Sunday night.

2007-09-16T20:28:00.000-04:00

Went to my new favorite place: World Yoga Center. Little teeny anusara studio on the UWS. The teacher, a sub, kicked my tuchus. I got to demo handstands and then do a bunch of handstands, and thought about all that love and goodness Lisa has poured into me for the past five years. We also did nineteen hundred lunges. And then pigeon. I hate pigeon. My knees are quivering still. Really deep sivasana.

Then Jerry and I walked to the 70th Street pier, where there was a carnival for toddlers and saw the teensiest Ferris Wheel ever (we agreed neither of us would trust our kids in it). We drank beer and I had a Hebrew National with sauerkraut and good mustard for $3. Yum. We talked classes, and selves, and love, and figuring out who gets to decide who you are (answer: God. And you. And people who love you and have known you for a long time. But mostly really just you and God). We watched the sunset. A good night.

I have more work than I have time for tonight, but whatever.

One Saturday night.

2007-09-15T23:20:00.001-04:00

Well, two good nights. Last night watching The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which actually made me MADDER at Jerry Falwell. I didn't know that was possible.

Then, tonight, Danielle and I watched Phat Girlz and it's my new favorite thing. (OK, there's one OJ joke that's totally unacceptable, it's true.) One perfect pork chop, two glasses of red wine, four loads of laundry, and Mo'nique. Really, really good Saturday night.

Newsy York.

2007-09-15T17:14:00.000-04:00

I'm back. Whew.

Here's a quick rundown of all the news:
1) I am taking a leave of absence in the spring to collect myself and be with my mom. I will be doing some kind of two-day-a-week field ed placement, probably in Seattle but possibly in Yakima. I will probably be asking folks if there are places I could stay one or two nights a week in the spring, if I do end up in Seattle.

2) That's getting ahead of myself. As most of you know, this was a difficult year for each member of my family. (I am reluctant to divulge very personal emotional information on this blog. If you don't know about all this, ask and we'll talk.) Thank you for your prayers and support. I am also of course emotionally shaky because of holding the world-record for number of traumatic break-ups in 12 months. Again, thank you for the support. I feel like taking some time to feed both my mom and myself is a GREAT decision. And I've been supported. Props to my financial aid officer, the dean of the seminary, my beloved bishop Nedi, Bishop George with whom I work at 815. All have been dreams to ask for help in this shaky time. I love being able to go to my mom when she needs me. And who knows? Maybe I'll take Spanish lessons! Voice lessons! I will also be going to Alaska in the summer to relieve some dead salmon of their internal organs, hanging out all bloody on the boat with my dad, soaking up water and salt and a community of people drinking coffee and wearing Xtra Tufs.

3) That said, any love and shout-outs you would like to give me in comment or e-mail form would be so welcome right now. (I am surviving one moment of outreach and comfort to the next right now.) I just got back from my friend Emily's ordination to the priesthood at St. John the Divine, and was compiling the extraordinary list of people I will be able to invite to my ordination in a couple years, and I was crying on the sidewalk thinking about the people I've been blessed to meet in my life. Y'all better come.

4) An aside: I'm rediscovering Reasonable Doubt after a summer of The Black Album, and you know, it's just so easy to fall in love with Jay-Z all over again.

5) I am taking Luke with Joanna Dewey (!!!!!!!!! Joanna Dewey!), which is going to be a ton of work because visiting profs always forget you're taking a million classes. Because they're only teaching one class, they always give a ton of assignments. Also, I think they get nervous about impressing the institution they are visiting and make their classes really hard. Argh. But it should be good. I don't like the Gospel of Luke real well: lots of female characters but they all get silenced and a "softer, prettier, less threatening" Gospel for rich people. But I LOOOOOOVE her work on Mark, and I hope she busts something open for me.

Also, The Practices of Teaching, a pedagogy class taught by my advisor, Mary Boys. Should be interesting.

Also, Intro to Preaching and Worship. Co-taught by some seriously kick-ass women.

Also, Exegesis. Taught by my Greek Bible prof from last term, the one who helped me so much.

Also, finally and painfully, Episcopal Polity and Canon Law, at General. Taught by the bishop of Long Island, who I've heard "doesn't like to be contradicted." They give letter grades at General. Expect a punitive C+.

What I'm most excitied about is that Pedagogy, Preaching, and Exegesis are all asking me some serious questions about who I am in the world. Where am I located? Who AM I? I can only bring that person to what I do and how I do it. This is connected to:

6) Surviving CPE. Some very good learning. But also massive frustration. One of the big pieces of learning was that I bring this person, this skeptical, hopeful, questioning, engaged person to the people I pastor. I can't bring someone else, someone less messy, someone more conservative theologically. I can't be tidy. I can't fit a little box. And this messy person I am can take care of people. Showing people that I am broken too, but that I keep looking for the places God and Hope poke their collective nose around the darkest corners, helps. Sighs of relief. I don't have to be a monolith. I am learning that SO intensely right now. Who I am as a prophet, who I am as a teacher, who I am as a pastor, are all who I am right now. A part of me is thinking, "Well, goodness. I'm only 27. I have to know who I am NOW? You're kidding, right?" But I do know a lot about myself, about my primary commitments, about myself and God. I know I need to be always holding the big picture and the teeny picture together. I know I want to break systems and cycles of injustice as much as I want to hold one little baby and baptise it with tears streaming down my cheeks. I know I see God all over the place: my lack of a Sunday School education enables me to not compartmentalize God-ness. God's in hip-hop, God's in the bookstore, God's in Spike Lee movies, God's in Gloria Steinum, God's in Prokoviev, God's in the turtles, God's in the sidewalk and in the cracks. God loves sushi and God loves me and God is skin and God is the magical math that explains how airplanes fly.

7) Bishop Katherine preached at Union's convocation. That was awesome.

8) Ghostface Killah's Fishscale was so hyped when it came out I just couldn't listen to it. I am now. I am cautiously pretty hot for it.

Also, this is a really interesting article about the responsibility white people have to hip hop. I'm going to post, but I'm still thinking on it. Racialicious is a great blog anyway.

9) I really need to do homework. Really. Much love. I'll be posting here again soon. Once I'm caught up at work I will also be posting back at the work blog too. I'm also going to be offering up a little political round-up, stuff I think is pertinent to media, race, representation, and gender.

Other blog.

2007-03-08T00:17:00.000-05:00

I thought you might like to know that the Bishop of my office, Bp. George Packard, is now on the blogging bandwagon, and has asked me to blog for him. I am one of two contributors to a blog for diocesan chaplains, and you can find it here.

I work at a really great place.

Le Rire de la Medusa

2007-03-05T23:28:00.000-05:00

Can I just say how glad I am to be back in grad school? The last time I had this much fun with my brain was when I was dating that tragically unsorted boy and we went to queer theory reading group, and I got to start thinking about discursive creation of bodies, about norms materializing human beings, and about how series of acts create (not develop out of) naturalization. Super, super fun, and now I get to interpret that theologically.

I am starting to do thinking and talking around how to organize the gender conversation at Union. I am starting to reread Butler and bits of the French feminists. They are HILARIOUS. Not always useful, but completely, adorably insane. (How can you not love someone who wrote a book called "The Speculum of the Other Woman"?) I mean, there's an awful lack of any whisper of postmodernity on this campus (OMG, it's SO overwhelmed with "good" white "liberal" "mainline" Protestants chugging away at this doomed and glib and facile modernist happy "progress"-centric project. Ack!). So I feel like I'm starting from scratch. But who loves a challenge? Me!

The revolution is pending. Union is stuck in a place where it's not even willing to cede the aims of the second wave. And the second wave was racist and classist and all kinds of problematic, but Union isn't even there yet. It's slightly horrifying. But one of my profs has promised me space, and I just heard about someone's thesis about Paul's queering of gender dynamics in the early Jesus movement. It's a start.

Religious illiteracy.

2007-02-08T22:12:00.000-05:00

We've begun our academic journeying into Islam this week in my Religions and the City class, and today we had a prof from Harvard Divinity come speak with us. Dr. Ali Asani spoke with us about the insanity that comes from a nation of religiously illiterate people (like, um, Americans). We're so spooked about religion and schools that we refuse to teach people good methodologies around thinking about religions, and histories of religions (which are, actually, only histories of loci of interpretation). As a result, we get a nation of bumper stickers about hunting Osama, a nation of people who wrongly equate Islam with the "Middle East" ("middle" according to whom, exactly?), an entire city on Puget Sound that will not stop telling me, "But Christianity says that women are less than men and that abortion is wrong and gay people are going to hell." I mean, goodness. You would never tell me that "Art" or "Literature" says that "gay people are going to hell," right? I mean, some writers says that and they are wrong, but don't hold the whole damn field accountable for it, K? You don't stop reading books just because some books are bad. People who are religiously illiterate eventually resort to caricature and humiliation, and when in power, acts of dehumanization.

Another of the manifestations of religious illiteracy is the equation of religion with devotional practice. We are socialized to think about religion as churches, festivals, people praying, etc. We are taught to think of religions as individual practice, instead of a complex interweaving of economics, politics, culture, gender, text, art, literature, etc. Which, of course, they are. Yet another manifestation is the use of religion as the EXCLUSIVE lens used to explain the actions of an individual or a community. ("Well, s/he was a suicide bomber/was an abstinence "educator"/supports the State of Israel BECAUSE s/he is Muslim/Christian/Jewish." Not because they're poor or scared or living under colonial rule or entire family was killed in a genocide or their human rights are being compromised on a daily basis or or or...) This is reductionist, and it's wrong. It's particularly salient in light of the dangers faced by American Muslims in contemporary America. People are now talking about "the Muslim problem" in the same way they used to talk about "the Jewish problem."

In other news, next Thursday I am going to be in an ankle-length skirt and a headscarf at a mosque in the east 90's for the afternoon. I will then catch a cab back to school, throw on my red dress, and proceed to play a sex worker in the Union production of the Vagina Monologues. So multiculti!

And, for just a moment, I would like to formally thank you readers. This blog contains a lot of blather, and it's rather poorly written. I don't edit. I just go. I promise I do hand in real essays that are elegantly and concisely written. I just want to pour some of this out sometimes. Thanks, loves!

FIVE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS.

2007-02-07T21:10:00.000-05:00

This is what my books are costing this semester. Jiminy Crickets.

Can somebody call them and tell them I only make $150/week?

I have a feeling that I'm going to have to provide artifical respiration to my bank account this semester. Between doing my CPE in Seattle (paying rent in two places, here and there, and paying Swedish) and buying plane tickets, I'm going to be eating a lot of cereal and tuna fish. Well, I already eat a lot of cereal and tuna fish, but you get the point.

And, interestingly, the front page article in Episcopal Life this month was about how much debt seminarians accumulate in the process of attempting to follow a call to ordained ministry. Which I felt great about, right? Until the part about how the people trying to relieve that debt are only willing to do it if the seminarian is going to an Episcopal seminary. Apparently those of us who are trying to prepare for the ecumenical future of the church at truly excellent seminaries are not worthy of being supported financially. Puh-leeze. This is the 21st century. The studies tell us that no one is choosing a church family on the basis of denomination anymore. And, as a friend of mine at an Anglican seminary told me, "I feel like I'm being taught how to be a really good Anglican but not necessarily how to be a really good Christian." I am at Union because the academics are stellar, and because I need to learn how to make good church. I am learning how to be a good Christian and not isolate myself in an Anglican enclave. I need to learn how to speak God, not just Canterbury-ian.

And all of these things are making me more intensely Episcopalian than I've ever been: I defend and speak up for my beloved, beloved tradition all the time. So I'm not losing identity: I'm gaining it. But apparently that's not exactly worthy of support. Yeesh.

I forgot to tell you.

2007-02-04T00:30:00.000-05:00

That last night I went with Andrew from work to St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square for the 6:00 Eucharist celebrating the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

WOW.

There was so much incense choking the air that by the end of the 2-hour service I could barely see the altar. And it was sung! For those of you who remember my Christianities and the City course last semester, you'll recall I went one morning to a Methodist service where we sang 14 hymns in their entirety and I was about ready to bolt, screaming. Sung services are really alienating to people who don't sing. It actually felt strange to take the Eucharist because I didn't feel like I was part of the community's life and affirmation in the service! I couldn't sing it, and I felt awkward consuming something I didn't help make.

But it was quite an experience, and there was a schmancy wine-and-pate, WASP-centric recetion afterward where everyone was very nice. And it is certainly a show. I don't think I've ever - even when I was attending Catholic Mass - been to a service where the priest has his or her back to the congregation (I almost said audience). It was astonishing! But overall it was beautiful. I am going to bring my mom when she comes.

My friend Andrew was somewhat worried about me, I think, because he knows I am much less of an Anglican-ist, a traditionalist, than he is (even though I'm more of a traditionalist than most of the people I know at St. Mark's). I think he thought I would be in a tizzy about how traditional it was. And, I mean, I don't use the language they use, but they are preserving a cultural legacy, they are making something beautiful, they are preserving a part of my narrative, and for that I am truly thankful. It works for a lot of people, and I'm all about what works.

Seattle summery-ness.

2007-02-04T00:15:00.000-05:00

I got in! To the Swedish CPE program! Whoot!

It was funny - I called Mark VERY despondent the evening of the day they told me they were going to inform me by, and was tremendously grumpy on the phone, wailing about how if they wanted me they would have calllllled already and obviously they didn't want me. He was so patient, and told me that hospitals tend to have bad administration practices, and they just didn't get around to informing me. He reminded me about all the other times I've been waiting to hear back from places (Union, the COM) and gravely sad, and how I always passed before. The very next day I e-mailed them and they e-mailed right back saying their staff person was out of town but I was in and would I accept? Yes!

So for all the Seattle readers: I will be back this summer to take the little bunnies on picnics, to eat good and proper fish, to run around Greenlake (Sarah, want to train for a 10K this summer?), to sit in the warm pretty sunshine. And I will be learning how to be broken open to God through pastoring to people in crisis. A little Holy Spirit tells me that that will be the defining part of this summer. Thanks be to God.

Thoughts on spiritual direction.

2007-01-30T23:37:00.000-05:00

So I realized when I was back in Seattle that a lot of my anger and anxiety that I was feeling about St. Mark's had disappeared. It was a huge relief, a weight lifted. And I started thinking about that. I went to spiritual direction today - with the (overly?) erudite spiritual director I'm still feeling conflicted about - and realized that part of what was going on was that I had learned to parse my anger about the wretched track-to-ordination system (I mean, seriously, asking for my Pap Smear? SO invasive!) from the actual people I love. In Seattle, there wasn't much space to separate out my feelings, since church was the only place I got to talk about God (hello, secular friends! I still love you even though we never talked about the biggest thing in my life!) and I couldn't quite figure out which parts of me were mad at God, mad at my process, mad at life, mad at my church (where, even though I've been there for years and served in a wide variety of ministries and supposedly they are commissioning me for ministry, I still get welcomed in the morning with a handshake and a blank look and a cheery "Welcome to St. Mark's!" Uh, thanks.). And, of course, I was supposed to be utterly grateful for the mere chance to beg for a place at the table (as the lady said to Jesus, even the dogs get to eat the crumbs...). It all coalesced to make me feel frustrated. And I did a stupid thing: I started identifying that frustration with individual peoples and ministries at my parish. Wrong, wrong, wrong. They love me. I love them. We support each other and laugh together. It's the system that is wearing. The system where no one tells me what's expected of me, where my paperwork is, who I'm supposed to report to. The system that offers no pastoral support for people defending their very real calls to ministry (because of the supposed state of our eternal gratitude, as mentioned before). And then they get mad when I'm not psychic. Sheesh. But when I went back, I had a little epiphany. And the feelings fell into their proper places. And I am really glad for that.

I have started thinking more intentionally about these things in part because my dear friend Carolina, one of the most beautiful/glowy/holy people I've ever met, told me that over the break she realized she can no longer pursue ordained ministry. She can no longer do it because the process is destroying her relationship with God. And I had sudden pang of very real sympathy - realizing that I didn't always feel as far away from God as I do now, that I didn't always have such a hard time praying. It was about in the middle of my process when it started to fade, when I was experiencing a serious amount of classism at St. Mark's (they really assume everyone has some kind of middle-class job that can support all the meetings and volunteer service and paperwork and doctor's appointments that the process requires, some kind of job where you don't lose much-needed paid-by-the-hour rent money for trying to make meetings on time or meet with your mentoring priest during the day or paying for required shrink visits, some kind of job that lets you say, "Yes, I will be there whenever you need me" so as not to incur stares that imply "Are you REALLY serious about this?" Well, yes, I am, but I also need to eat and buy gas and I'm already working a 60 hour work week and the little one has what we think might be the chicken pox but sure, yes sir, I'm all yours even though you have never once asked me how I am). Again, with the conflation of God and church, I started feeling like since the process was so lonely, God must be somehow leaving me, God also somehow thought I wasn't trying hard enough and was too much in the service class to be any good, even though I was trying and trying, and, as the Lark can attest, crying. I was wrong. God was still there, good old eternal magnet that God is, calling me back to God's warm breast whenever I was ready to recognize that the churchly struggle was not God. (Apologies for the mixed metaphor.) The work that my spiritual director has been doing with me - nudging me back to prayer, particularly unashamed unabashed petitionary prayer - has been really helpful in this. God and I are going to be OK. That's an excellent thing about God: you come back, and you always come back to joy.

I am also starting to think that part of my frustration with my spiritual director is that he was not counselling me. Well, I think maybe if I need counselling and crying and emotional catharsis, I need a real live therapist. I think he's actually doing a good job as a spiritual director, asking how everything I tell him affects my spiritual well-being. No one has done that in ages. (And yes, OK, he finishes my sentences too often for comfort and overthinks things and talks a bit too much but we are working together to unlearn these things.)

Sigh. Folks, I'm sorry I'm so grumpy. Also, today I was supposed to hear back from the folks at Swedish about my Clinical Pastoral Education, and they didn't call and I have eaten too many pieces of toast and feel really unwanted. It's the worst feeling, that no one wants you. It does resemble that loneliness felt during my process - that I have a call, I want to serve, I do good work, I work hard, but it's not exactly being reciprocated. It's worth it. Right?

Back.

2007-01-21T14:35:00.000-05:00

But not back "home." Seattle is home. My Lark is home. Pad Thai is home, Mt Rainier is home, Franz Bainbridge Island Swirl Bread is home.

First, please go to this website of these right-wing activists and vote yes in their poll, vote that the NCCC is doing a fabulous job. Because it is, and you know they are going to use this poll as "data" or "evidence" somehow in their paranoid attacks on the NCCC. Please. Here it is: Institute for Religion and Democracy.

Lots happened over the break. Lots of family things. Lots of eating and snuggling with the kitties. I feel ready to start school again, the old rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. I did very well last semester and I am game for more. I will be taking two Greek Bible classes, two church history classes, intermediate Hebrew, and Religions and the City (the companion class to the Christianities and the City class I took last semester which you all helped me out with very kindly).

I am working pretty much non-stop for the next week setting in a store of cushion money for the semester. So I will post more probably after school begins again on the 31st.

Love!

Wow.

2006-12-20T18:11:00.000-05:00

1. Good thing #1: So yesterday Sam and I went to Santaland. Please visit Sam's blog. It will tell you all the wonder and joy.

2. Good thing #2: At the Episcopal Church Center's Dessert Bake-Off yesterday, my Mandarin Orange Cake won an honorable mention! Woo-hoo! Especially since it wasn't actually a good cake. Wait until next year. Cardamom bread. YEAH.

3. Good thing #3: Tomorrow I come back to Seattle. I see the loveliest people. Tonight I am cleaning and cleaning and cleaning and doing laundry and packing and singing out loud to songs.

It is finished.

2006-12-15T21:36:00.000-05:00

All the work I can do is done.

I handed in all my papers. I took my last final exam today.

I thought I would feel like dancing up and down. Mostly I feel like sipping cocoa and watching and movie in my bed and maybe, just maybe, crying.

Much love. I made it. I love you.

Really good news.

2006-12-13T16:12:00.000-05:00

I got my Hebrew final back! I got a 100+5! I got my evaluation! I got a Credit with Distinction! (Which is the only way, in the Union Credit/Marginal Credit/Fail system, that one can earn honors). She says she's excited to have me back next semester! Yay!

Also, I passed my Pass/Fail Old Testament contents course. We had the final yesterday, and it was H.A.R.D. There was much murmuring among the Israelites. But I did well on it, according to my prof.

Also, you should all read this. It's about turtles, God's Best Animals: Turtles in the Time of Love and Turtle Cholera. They don't age! They love ice cream! They can be reallllly little or reallllly big. God is great.

Awesomest shirt.

2006-12-08T17:33:00.000-05:00

This is for Sarah.

2006-12-04T22:22:00.000-05:00

My favorite paragraph so far this semester:

From Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, from the essay Woman and the Discourse of Patriarchal Wisdom: A Study of Proverbs 1-9 by Dr Carol Newsom:

“Where [the movie Fatal Attraction] skillfully attempts to naturalize its discourse, to conceal its speaking subject, and mask its interpellation of the viewer, Proverbs 1-9 emphasizes precisely those features. Certainly Proverbs 1-9 also makes its own claims to universality and transcendent authority, but its explicit self-consciousness about the central role of discourses in competition provides an internal basis for questioning its own claims. Having learned from the father how to resist interpellation by hearing the internal contradictions in discourse, one is prepared to resist the patriarchal interpellation of the father as well. For the reader who does not take up the subject position offered by the text, Proverbs 1-9 ceases to be a simple text of initiation and becomes a text about the problematic nature of discourse itself. Not only the dazzling (and defensive) rhetoric of the father but also the pregnant silence of the son and the dissidence that pseaks from the margin in the person of the strange women become matters of significance. Israel’s wisdom tradition never examined its patriarchal assumptions. But its commitment to the centrality of discourse as such and its fascination with the dissident voice in Job and Qoholet made it the locus within Israel for radical challenges to the complacency of the dominant symbolic order.” (159)

Precisely. Best thing ever. I am feeling slightly better today. I am doing good work. I ate proper food. It will all get done. I am not lost. As the secretary to the office of the PB asked me when I was communicating my stress, "WHO'S IN CHARGE?" And I said, of course, "God." I know.

(Not that I believe in an interventionist God like that. I believe in an always accessible, always attractive/attracting, always calling, always urging, always loving, always challenging, always comforting Creator/Redeemer/Sustainer. Who is, in all those accessibilities, in charge, if we ally our hands and hearts with Their Good News.)

Finals.

2006-12-03T18:51:00.000-05:00

Please, please pray for me as I cry and eat Nutella and promise myself finals will be over soon.

I am writing two papers right now. Both are due Thursday. The same day as my Hebrew final. And my Mannheim paper. One paper is 10 pages long, and is (involuntarily) titled: "What is Christianity?" Um. A modest topic, to be sure. And the other, which I like better and wish I had more time for is: "The Inside of her Mouth: Proverbs 1-9, Competitive Discourse, and Gender." If you're in the Judeo-Christian tradition, you should go back and reread Proverbs 1-9. Pretty fascinating. "The strange woman" vs. the female personification of Wisdom. So, we're happy, as good feminists, about Wisdom being figured female, right? Except. Except the text is an instructional one, father to son, about only coloring within the lines, socially and politically and religiously. And for a female reader, what's to be done? Judith Fetterly writes, "What is essentially a simple act of identification when the reader of the story is male becomes a tangle of contradictions when the reader is female. In such fictions the female reader is co-opted into participation in an experience from which she is explicitly excluded; she is asked to identify with a selfhood that defines itself in opposition to her; she is required to identify against herself." Yeah. How do we do something redemptive with that?

Prayers. Comments. Easing of the deep homesickness. Please?

Also, if you have anything to offer on the topic of "What is Christianity?", please feel free to chime in. You can even write and say "Christianity is a bunch of wacko losers who placate themselves by believing in some kind of stup-o heaven." That's helpful feedback for me. You can write and say, "I would be dead without Christianity." You can say anything. But say something. Help my paper!

I would not be able to do this without your prayers and love. Thank you.

Day of celebrities.

2006-11-28T19:55:00.000-05:00

And then, Law and Order SVU was filming on campus all day today and I went to Pilates tonight and Ice-T was hanging out and then I talked to him about Pilates. Um.

Katherine. Jefferts. Schori.

2006-11-28T18:09:00.000-05:00

(Immediately after group meeting with KJS):

I
AM
TOTALLY
a) ENAMOURED
b) DAZZLED
c) IMPRESSED
d) ALL OF THE ABOVE
WITH
THE
NEW
PRESIDING
BISHOP.

More on this later. She knows my name! AHHHHHHHH! I Love Her.

She is clear and keen and kind and precise and GROUNDED and comfortable and God-centered and everything good.

YES!

Thanks-Givings.

2006-11-24T14:31:00.000-05:00

Whew. I am sitting in a pretty room in pretty Philly where the sky is pretty pretty blue outside. Eventually I will make it outside to walk in it, loud music all up in my ears.

I am at Heath's, where we had very good vegetarian Thanksgiving last night with lots of lovely Philly people, and then watched Rize. It was very nice.

Except that I'm really homesick.

Don't get me wrong. I am in the right place at the right time doing the right thing. I am supposed to be in seminary, doing what I'm doing. I am supposed to be following this call and meeting the people I'm meeting. It's just...sometimes I miss the hills in Seattle, the way you can walk west and smell the water. I miss food that costs reasonable amounts of money and I miss kitties. I miss my most perfect apartment, and I miss my dearest little people. I miss my co-op and I miss Ecology/Spirituality. I miss grown-up people too (and you know who you are). I miss thrift stores that don't suck, and I miss Velella Velella. I miss being able to get where I need to go in 15 minutes or less. I miss being able to walk places and I miss affordable beer. I miss Seattle Yoga Arts. Yes.

Happy Thanksgivings, everyone. I am thankful for a great many things this year.

For example, not in order:
1. my excellent roommates
2. my nice room
3. Union
4. Fairway
5. heart-friends: Katy, Jerry, Carolina
6. work I like at ECC
7. Hebrew
8. Fr. Haight
9. occasional cooking
10. Olive Tree coffee (not Seattle-standards, but nice to go there)
11. learning how to do major life transistions in a grown-up and not (entirely) panicky way
12. being on the same coast as Heath
13. running in Riverside Park
14. Trader Joe's NYC
15. cobbling together a serious prayer life again
16. long city walks
17. finding Christian allies
18. living in a castle
19. the love and support I've gotten on this big big journey
20. my parents, always

A beautiful thing.

2006-11-15T19:29:00.000-05:00

I received a check from the Seminarian Scholarship Fund of the Diocese of Olympia. I didn't even know there was a Seminarian Scholarship Fund. They state that they understand that as seminarians, we are putting ourselves at real financial risk in order to pursue the calls placed upon our spirits. Isn't that beautiful? Especially after that scary letter last year that informed us of the psychological exam, the physicals, and the cost of BACOM. Especially after hearing a well-loved middle-aged priest friend of mine from my diocese tell me that he was still working on paying off his school debt.

The letter states that I "can help by telling the story of what these gifts from the diocese mean to [me] and by raising the level of awareness in [my] sponsoring congregation and beyond to encourage ongoing contributions to the fund." So here I am: hello, St. Mark's and diocesan friends. This money matters. This money is real. Please give generously. Those of us in seminary are looking at around $20,000-$40,000/year in loans. It's a three-year degree. It's serious. I was fortunate enough to be granted a Union Scholarship, so that eases my burden some, but it is still a major, major concern.

Can I tell you how much this means?

It means not having to panic about all the $65 textbooks. It means having a cushion of food money. It means not having to obsessively tally the cost of transportation in this crazy city. I means mental rest, and ease. It means knowing that my communities care about me and about us, that we are loved and supported in tangible ways. It means a lot.

So thank you. Thank you to all of you who give to this fund, and to all those who support seminarians in various ways. It is a blessing, and we do feel it.

Love.

Bonus for the E/S Group.

2006-11-12T19:13:00.000-05:00

I wanted to let my Ecology/Spirituality beloveds know that at Episcopal Church Center, the appliances are EnergyStar certified, and the lights are automatic in public spaces: they go out when no one is there and go on when someone walks in. They also have can recycling, which is not typical in NYC businesses. It must be specially requested, and our national offices do ask for it. Isn't that excellent?

Also, thank you all for your prayers for my friend Ingrid. She has been declared to have a very low chance on having cancer, but is still receiving some radiation therapy to make sure the tumor removed from her arm didn't leave behind some nasty cancerous cells.

Glee!

2006-11-09T01:48:00.000-05:00

OK, can I just say BEST DAY ON CNN.COM EVER?

Can I get an amen?

Yes.

I am in Orlando, with the NCCC USA, as a delegate with the Episcopal Church. Two years ago, I was a steward, and last year I was a senior steward. This year I vote! Wahoo! I am excited about this work and about the opportunity to network with other religious young adults and with potential mentors and with my Anglican allies and friends. We passed resolutions and policies today on raising the minimum wage, reforming Wal-Mart, and human biotechnology. It was beautiful.

My Ecology Spirituality Group will be happy to learn that the NCCC (after a fuss made two years ago) is now only considering hotels with ecologically-sensitive programs for the General Assembly. Excellent. Honestly, it never occurred to me how many people are not on board with even basic ecological agendas until I moved away from Seattle. I know we have struggles on the West Coast, but we really do have the benefit of widespread understanding that the planet is worth protecting, enjoying and loving.

I am years behind in my reading, since my mom was just here and I entertained her, but I am trying not to think about it too much. I will catch up over Thanksgiving.

Jonie P., you will be happy to know that I am slowly but surely getting better at Philsophy. Thank you so much for your kind e-mail. I received very good grades on both my Augustine and Aquinas papers. Now I'm up against Kant. And then Schleiermacher. Jiminy crickets. Kant is a freaking battleground.

I watched the installation of Katharine Jefferts Schori (or, as we call her at Episcopal Church Center, "The PB") live on the webstream on Saturday morning and cried my eyes out. It was SO beautiful: her vestments were purple and blue and green, and her miter bore the image of a sunrise. God is doing something new in her, in the church, and in us. God is doing Some-Thing-New, and It Is Good.

It's 2:00 a.m. here and meeting begin again at 9:00, so I should get to bed. I realized that I have neglected this shamefully and wanted to share the joy of the elections. May we continue in the prophetic ministry God has given us. Amen!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

2006-10-22T14:28:00.000-04:00

Whew. I have midterms next week. How did that happen? We are mid-term. Fast.

Here's where I seem to be standing:
1. Acing Hebrew. Lots of work, but it's working.
2. Doing well in Christianity and the City. Fun class, relaxed, lots of time for contemplative thinking.
3. Hebrew Bible and contents: Eh. I'm doing well, but I don't care about it much. I've done most of this work before, and I miss my old professor.
4. Philosophy for Theologians: killing me. Really. Killing me. I am apparently the world's worst philosopher. I'm not stupid, but I could not really care less about some abstract postulation about the stupid hidden Forms in some stupid person's head. Especially while that person has slaves. Especially when that theory is going to turn into a big mind/body dualism within Christianity. I care about how things play out, how people live them. I don't do this big mental abstract supposedly-not-related-to-anything crap very well. (Sorry, MLG.) So I am seeking extra help from my prof (the aforementioned radical Jesuit), and struggling. I like school, I am good at school, and nothing has ever been so hard for me as this. It's pratty intense.

In other news, I have a spiritual director. His name is Fr. Bill Wizeman, and he is a young Jesuit. He works at Corpus Christi (which, after I mistakenly called it "Corpus Crispy" once, now cannot stop laughing at the thought of: toasty Body of Christ, anyone?), the Catholic parish across the street where Thomas Merton was baptised and came to faith. We are working on prayer life, which has suffered some the past year. (Well, a lot, really - this past spring I was so mad at God I wasn't even praying grace anymore. Sue helped me come back to little bits of prayer, but I am really working on a daily, intentional practice.)

In still other news, can I tell you how much I love my job? I love my job. I love talking to chaplains on the phone. I love being at the Episcopal Church Center. I love lunchroom chat, and I love midday chapel. Plus, a week ago Friday, Frank Griswold presided! For the 20 of us!

I must go study for midterms. I might go to the Emerge service (an updated liturgy) tonight at St. Bartholomew's, a gorgeous Episcopal Church in midtown. I went last week, and left feeling fed, and might return.

I love you all! You are free to leave comments, you know. Blessings!

Notes.

2006-10-09T20:32:00.000-04:00

I began work at Episcopal Church Center today. Which would have been fabulous, but I am knocked OUT with a cold. I survived my half day with a LOT of Dayquil. I did manage to notice the following wonderful things:
1. I have a cubicle! With a scanner! And files!
2. I can go to chapel every day and not have it count as my lunch hour. Excellent.
3. The Bishop invited me to bring term papers to work, if I need to. I love chaplains. They care about you.
4. The PB's (presiding bishop's) office is just through the double doors from my office. Woo-hoo! After Katherine's installation, she's going to be RIGHT NEXT DOOR.

Finally, please keep my friend Ingrid in your prayers. She has just had a tumor removed, and is awaiting the results from the test that determines whether she has cancer.

So much to catch up on.

2006-10-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

So. I am in school, very very very officially.

I am going to try and post once a week. So much happens here. I can feel God breaking me open and pouring Godself into me and healing me and speaking.

Here's the overview:

1. I am taking, in typical Shelly Fayette overachiever fashion, one less credit that they will allow me to take (next semester, I am taking all 15 credits they will let me take. Woo-hoo!).

2. I am taking:
*Hebrew Bible (dates, context, critical-historical method, redaction, etc.)
*Hebrew Bible Contents (um, actually reading the Hebrew Bible)
Although. One note on this. At Union, it's all called "Old Testament". Isn't that ridiculous? No one worth their salt calls it "Old Testament" anymore. We actually had someone in my tutorial say, "Well, it's called the Old Testament because we don't need it anymore, right?" ARRRRRGH. So *I* call it Hebrew Bible. But Union doesn't.
*Christianities and the City (a course about urbanity and Xty, about NYC and Xty, about the city in Xn thought - it's very good).
*Philosophy for Theologians (excellent, much needed, and taught by a fabulous radical Jesuit named Roger Haight)
*ELEMENTARY BIBLICAL HEBREW!
OK. A note on this too. When we were having orientation, we were told to take one class "just for ourselves" every semester. I thought "Oh, Hebrew! I have always wanted to take Hebrew! It will be so fun, so refreshing!" Hah! It's a pile of work. A pile. Oh. My. Goodness. We have done the alphabet (the aleph-bet, literally!) and vowels and basic vocabulary. Interesting that for Biblical Hebrew, basic vocabulary includes: God, the gods, prophet, grapes, righteous, king, eternity, convenant and knowledge. If I ever go to Israel, I will not know how to ask for the bathroom. But I will be able to quote Proverbs at length.

3. My roommates are fabulous.

4. I am really growing as an Anglican. I have made friends with other Anglicans, and we recently had a "Disco Episco" chapel service ( a mass set ot disco music and using disco lyrics for various parts of the service). I am learning, through the experience of being in daily worship from a variety of traditions, that I am very attached to the Anglican hymnal and liturgy. I just love it, down to my bones, down to my toes.

5. It is so wonderful to be "out" as a religious person, to not have to translate for people all the time. It's a relief to able to talk about my personal relationship with Jesus Christ and not have people start looking at me like I just bombed the Planned Parenthood. It's so good to be able to ask people for prayer, simply and easily, and receive prayer.

6. I have been hired at the Episcopal Church Center (the national offices for the ECUSA) as the intern in the Chaplaincies office. They oversee all federal chaplains (military, prison, healthcare). I start next week. I really wanted to be connected to both the national church, to see how people integrate our values and life on a national and global scale as well as be connected to a small church. Both have happened.

I can't tell you all how happy I am. I am exhausted. Constantly. But exhilarated.

There will be more to tell next week: remind me to talk about praying in tongues, a chapel service for women who have been sexually assaulted, fellowship through running in Riverside Park, the subway, Queens and more.

Please continue to pray for me. I love you all.

First Sunday at church.

2006-09-03T14:00:00.000-04:00

The poem below does not have indents. But the original poem does. I don't know why Blogger won't let me indent. Anyone?

I went to St. Mary's Episcopal Church Manhattanville this morning. It was lovely to be in a small church with a little choir, making a joyful noise unto the Lord. I have missed the standard print-outs of the readings and the time when all visitors stand up, introduce themselves, and everyone claps. I have missed hearing people pray out loud in church for people they know who are dying, who are at war, who are ill. I have missed the service not being "perfect" but perfect in its non-impeccableness. In Seattle, going to St. Mark's or St. James sometimes felt like the church equivalent of going to Nordstrom's: sleek, beautiful, comfortable (except, perhaps, for the sermons), with everyone wearing nicely pressed designer slacks. I think the amount of money spent on the clothes on people at St. Mark's might pay for a week's operating budget at St. Mary's. And it's a relief to be out of genteel whiteness and into the parts of America the newspapers ignore.

Also, St. Mary's is likely the only Episcopal church in America with a poster of Malcolm X in the entryway. Yes! I think I'm home.

One week and two days at seminary.

2006-09-01T12:13:00.000-04:00

Seminary looks like seminary.

I've been praying late at night from a little red book called "Hearts on Fire: Praying with the Jesuits." So of course, I am remembering what it is to get goosebumps from Mr. Manley Hopkins. Here is the poem from which this blog derives its title:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and share's man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshest deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs-
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

I LOVE it.

I also love being here.