Just when you thought the answers were simple

The semester winds down. I am surrounded by students stressed out with papers and end-of-semester assignments that they need to do.

I presented a dance study of Hildegard of Bingen, a eleventh century Catholic nun and prophetess, in "Dance of the Women’s Spirit" with two other students today and it was well received. The choreography was triangular, circular, and representative of Hildegard’s “greening” theology of life. Our class audience expressed joy in watching the three-minute, 11-second dance. I was pleased with my direction of the choreography, a tribute to Karen MacIntyre, who I have watched dance for some 16 years.

The weekly Starr King worship service today was about hope, strength and experience. It seemed aimed to hold up individual student journeys, in case any of us had any end-of-semester doubts about what we are doing in seminary.

A subgroup of my Bibliodrama class presented a liturgy this evening on the biblical passage of Mary, mother of God, receiving the news that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and give birth to a king. The service explored her different reactions: what would Joseph think?; she was about to be married, could she not be spared of the embarrassment of being a unwed mother if a few months passed before she became pregnant with God’s child? Didn’t she have any say in the matter?

The questioning as part of the service asked when we have said “yes” to God? When have we kept our faith in spite of God’s abandonment? When did we received our calling to be a messenger of God, not unlike the angel Gabriel?

I was quiet during the service and during the liturgy review. I did not want to add my voice of confusion to the mix. I did not want to say that sometimes it is complicated and that I am unable tell whether I am saying “yes,” or “no” to the spiritual questions that are being asked of me.

Perhaps the Starr King service was prophetic when it encouraged students to have faith that sometimes one breath will simply lead to another.

It’s hard to resist the headlong tumble into the next moment or the idea that we actually know where we are going.

We've only just begun

It’s Sunday evening and I am pleased with my weekend.

With 13 of the 15 pages that were required for my Teacher as Prophet class written, two threshold worksheets, three pieces of felt for a chalice lighting project and my two-page reflection paper for Bibliodrama complete, I feel that I have made a big dent in what is required of me to finish out my semester.

And I managed to heed my friend’s advice to get in a little relaxing. After spending an hour or so on a threshold worksheet this morning, I was out of the rest of the day.

Upon the invitation from my cousin, David, I attended Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco this morning. Located in the heart of the Tenderloin (See “Saturday on the Soup Line” in the September archive), Glide is a diverse, cutting-edge church and nonprofit organization offering innovative programs to poor and marginalized people, according to their website.

The Sunday morning 11:00 a.m. service was a marvelous experience of people actively participating in a connection to wholeness through spirited music and “gospel” truth. With a choir of over 30, accompanied by keyboards, guitar, bass, saxophone, trumpet and drums, the service featured one spiritually themed song after another. And while I understood that we were in church because of the stained glass windows and the pews, there was a point when the announcer was encouraging applause for the singer that I had to remind myself that I was not attending a musical performance.

But after the Reverent Douglas Fitch gave his message, which contained at its core a two-letter, 10-word message of “If it is to be it is up to me,” everyone in the church was well aware that in order to live in our joy or God’s purpose for us on earth, we need to become committed to being a change agent of positive energy.

“It’s like a breakfast of eggs and ham,” he said. “The chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.”

David and I, and his friend Coleman, then traveled to a Deem Sum restaurant located at the other end of the financial spectrum in a posh mall. We leisurely lunched on a variety of appetizers that “teased the palate” with interesting flavors. We wondered together whether science could co-exist with religion and the meaning and purpose of God in our lives.

We rounded the day’s activities with the viewing of “Casino Royale,” the new James Bond movie. We watched the trailer for “Pursuit of Happyness,” a movie which tells the true-life story of a homeless man finding his way to the Glide Memorial Church and working his way into a million-dollar stockbroker’s job. This is one of the movies that will be released this Christmas season and Glide is hosting the premiere of the movie, complete with Will Smith, as a fundraiser with tickets ranging from $250 to $500 a person.

Starr King School for the Ministry has an emphasis on Educating to Counter Oppression (ECO) and actively maintains a mission to help its students understand that there is a invisible white privilege that functions in the world.

I wondered, as I sat in the balcony of the Centre Theater, located in a five-story opulent mall, whether the rags-to-riches true story of a black, single father’s journey from homelessness to millionaire, is part of the perpetuation of the myth that everyone has equal opportunity if they work hard and an encouragement to be part of the energy which strips us all of our ethnicity in order to be successful.

Who could know?

In my ECO class two weeks ago, visiting professor Archie Smith encouraged us to acknowledge the complexity of that which surrounds us.

As my first semester winds to a close and I successfully complete my assignments, I find that my questions and my quest have just begun.

And I am pleased with the wonderful day that I spent today.

An encounter with the divine

My Bibliodrama experience of Luke 1: 26-39 was an answer to a prayer. The prayer had formed itself the week before during a dance study on Mary, mother of Jesus.

From my journal: As Mary I sit on the floor. I drape my black gauze dress around me like a pedestal. I cover my head and torso with the black veil. I move slowly on the out breath. I bring my hands into a cradle to protect a baby. I rock ever so gently in protection of this fledging being. I am saddened today and I quickly wonder if I can cradle myself. I raise my arms to the sky, in request for inspiration and guidance on this spiritual journey. I pull them in again, bringing them in to bless my heart. I wonder if I am simply empty, ready to be filled with God’s grace.

I am thankful when I have faith that God’s grace blesses me always even when I am unaware.

There were no answers in that moment, but I was touched by the simplicity and the authenticity of my desire.

The following week in Bibliodrama class, I listened to the story of Mary and the angel Gabriel who comes and tells her that she will become pregnant. Amazed and a bit unnerved by this revelation, as she is unmarried and a virgin, she accepts the message as a commitment to her faith. As I listened to the Biblical passage, I realized that it was the same Mary that I had danced in Dance of the Women’s Spirit just the week before. It was the same Mary, who became the mother of God, and who is venerated by millions of people as a guiding light of spiritual continuity. I was meeting her again, this time as an untested and innocent, standing on the unborn side of great change.

I took my shawl from around my shoulders and I wrapped it around my head to indicate that I had become Mary. And in that moment, the gesture that came to me was to place my right hand at my left shoulder, and lay it across my chest. I cradled my right elbow in my left hand. It was a pre-birthing gesture, a gesture of nurturing myself, as if a child. The phrase that came to mind was “portent to be.”

Joyce Hollyday, in the introduction of “Clothed with the Sun,” uses the word portent as an indication of momentous and marvelous things that are about to occur. The realization that Mary had no indication of the greatness that would come as a result of the news that was frightening her in the present, was the answer to my prayer the week before.

Suddenly I felt supported in my quest to transform myself into a vessel of the holy. And I interpreted the message of “portent to be” as divine communication. I understood the gesture and the phrase as the answer to the prayer that I would have the strength and the perseverance to birth myself into a more fully whole and spiritually aware being. I understood the message that we never know when we embark where we will end and I should have confidence in the benevolence of the journey. Just like Mary.

I am not so presumptuous to suggest that my life will reach the pinnacle of Mary. But I do believe that we carry God’s spark on earth. We are each a seed, that in conversation with God, can transform into a being who brings divine presence into daily living.

Perhaps it’s an explanation of a virgin birth. Perhaps we can all encounter a messenger who brings tidings of great joy and good news. Perhaps we can all experience the Holy Spirit entering our body and giving birth to a faith and a commitment to a life that is filled with love, hope and divine presence.

Celebrating clarity

The Thanksgiving weekend has begun. Many people have left this Wednesday night to spend Thanksgiving with family and friends. A core group of us will not go home for Thanksgiving as only three weeks of classes stretch in front of us before our six-week semester break.

For me, my family will gather on December 1 here in California in a weekend celebration of my uncle's 90th birthday. So in anticipation of complete enjoyment and relaxation of that holiday weekend, I hope to use this holiday weekend and two days of no classes, to get the many semester assignments done.

“Don’t forget to give some time to relaxation,” someone said to me.

While I understand the sentiment, I cannot stop my brain from assimilating that my goal this next four days is to get the bulk of my work done.

For this clarity and lack of conflict, I am in a state of Thanksgiving.

I wish you the best on your holiday, however it is spent.

Sharing

I was thrilled when my phone rang at 5:30 p.m. last night and it was Jacqueline asking me if I wanted to go to the movies. We had planned to get together a couple of Saturday nights ago, but had played phone tag until it was too late to do anything.

She had just finished studying at Starr King, which is across the street from my dorm.

“Shall I come up to your room?” she asked.

I met her in the courtyard and ushered her through the three locked doors to the second floor. Upon entering my room, her eyes immediately fell on the yard-square mosaic felt piece that I had been working on.

“Oh, those are my colors,” she said as she felt the wool’s softness.

I quickly folded the square piece on its diagonal and wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “It is quite gorgeous.”

“I was going to make it into a poncho, but if I cut in half, they’ll be half for you and half for me and that will save me a whole lot of work,” I said definitively.

She feigned my suggestion away. “I’m big, it won’t fit me.”

I wrapped it around her again. “It sure does,” I said.

The idea of a beautiful black woman from Alaska, with dreadlocks piled high on her head and halfway down her back, proudly wearing one part of a beautiful felt piece, and I the other, makes me feel extraordinarily lucky.

Life is exceedingly rich.

Pieces of the puzzle

I have a plan to be highly productive for the next two weeks. And so it strikes me as slightly ironic that as the 40 minutes of time that clicks by before my next class, I sit and stare at the walls, lost in thought about using visual images, or pieces of felt to be exact, as part of liturgical service.

When I was interviewed for seminary, I was asked if I would be willing to take myself apart and put myself back together again as part of a process of self-discovery.

“Sure,” I said, thinking that it wouldn’t be the first time.

So it’s not really surprising that I have rediscovered my artwork as a way to understand myself. And a couple of weeks ago when I was floundering for meaning, I started creating pieces of decorative felt to explain my confusion.

I have always used art and songwriting as a way to ground myself. Somehow it is helpful if I can put into physical form the swirling of my thoughts and emotions. With those creations, I can experience a concrete manifestation of my thought and understand things in a different way.

I congered words to accompany my small felt pieces, writing them awkwardly with my left hand. I read years ago that if you write with the opposite hand, it accesses a different side of your brain. Such was the magnitude of my confusion and my desire to come to some sort of understanding.

My series so far is about knowing ourselves and it starts with a blue piece of spiraling design. To me, it sets the stage of the creation of everything in the universe.

I moved into the bodily manifestation.

And then I created a piece that symbolizes what I have been experiencing in finding myself and it is called “Prickly Edges.”

I’ve since gotten myself involved in a large piece, using a surface design that reminds me of stained glass, that is way more time consuming than my 20-minute creations. In order to move it along, I skipped worship with the Franciscans and Tai Chi yesterday.

I’m going to add finishing it into the mix of the productive weekend and hopefully by Sunday night, I will be the proud new bearer of a hip-length triangular poncho.

I imagine that it will be warm, yet not binding, and serve as a constant reminder that we all have gifts, both new and old, that we can hold close and access when we need them.

First morning thought

I wake with the feeling that all is potential and that all that is needed is to align ourselves with that possibility.

Last night I wrote words of instruction to be open to everything.

Our day awaits us. Be well.

Who, boy

I have to write a three-part curriculum on wisdom, contemplation and resolution as one of the final projects for my “Teacher As Prophet” class. We were kind of tricked into determining the three subjects following a group exercise exploring the themes of the book “Gilead.” “Gilead” is a slow, and fascinating, read about an aging preacher who has married a young wife, has a seven-year-old son and who is dying. The book, which is a letter or essay to his son, explores a multitude of themes, three of which are the aforementioned.

And after playing a class version of “Name that Theme,” we all chose three themes that were particularly important to us. Unbeknownst to us, in that moment, is that they would be the basis of a three-part curriculum that we would have to develop.

And so as every seminary student might do some five weeks before the assignment is due, I entered “wisdom, contemplation and resolution” into a “Google” search. What came up, after an extensive weeding through a variety of useless web pages, was that those three words were themes of the Hindu heart sutra. Eureka! Maybe I would be able to find some connection that I could use for my assignment.

Alas, I needed to download RealPlayer, a multimedia software, in order to hear the heart sutra chant, which I thought could form some sort of basis for my curricula. A whole web reality presented itself on the RealPlayer site, a part of which was the trailer for “Stranger than Fiction,” a movie that is being released tomorrow.

Many readers of The River Reporter might remember that my son, Zachary, traveled to Chicago last summer to be a Production Assistant on set for this Will Brennan, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson film. In his column “Reel Life, he explored the meaning of the Pablo Picasso sculpture in downtown Chicago and told of his experience in East Chicago, a suburb in Illinois. I watched the trailer through my newly installed software, which played without hesitation, which is more than I can say for some of the clips that I attempt to watch with my dialup connection.

Realizing that it would be a movie that I could watch the credits and see my son’s name roll by, I was overcome with an emotion that I cannot explain. I was not sure whether I was in tears because of the abundance of the universe and the amazing potential that each of us holds, as exemplied by Zachary, or whether there is a bittersweet experience of being human where we almost reach an understanding and fall mute in its presence.

Perhaps I am homesick.

Perhaps I am transforming, as some of new friends here have suggested.

Perhaps, I really can’t tell. Yet.

Balancing edges

When Tammy’s tray crashed to the ground, students around her in the lunch line jumped to her aid. Tom, the fourth floor prefect who moments before had teased her about possible hi-tech improvements to her motorized wheelchair that she could get from the tech department, quickly set down his plate and ran for help. Alex arrived out of the kitchen with a broom and preceded to sweep up the bits of salad and ceramic plate.

Tom handed Tammy another plate. “I guess you can just go in that direction now,” he told her as he moved past her to keep the line moving.

Connie, a middle-aged Episcopalian divinity student from Seattle, put her arm around Tammy and asked her what would make her most comfortable in that moment. Tammy leaned forward to help herself to a piece of the homemade whole-wheat crusted goodness.

I was next in line and went to serve her with the spatula I was holding. As I placed a slice of pizza on her plate, my own tray fell and landed face down on the ground, spilling my pizza and my salad, complete with my favorite sesame dressing, down my pant leg and onto my shoe.

“There’s a sermon in here somewhere,” I heard Connie say as I headed to the kitchen to retrieve the broom which Alex had just put down. I could hardly contain my laughter.

I don’t know if my upset tray was the direct action that would help Tammy feel most comfortable in that moment. I don’t know what the message of the sermon might be. But I do know that when a large sheet tray is perpendicular to the food service cart, the space available for a tray is not enough of an edge to hold it upright.

It’s a knowledge that Tammy and I will undoubtedly giggle about for some days to come.