Springtime

Kristin and I are walking out of Lincoln Center, having just experienced Martha Graham's "Springtime".   I am mesmerized and Kristin is perplexed.   We are on our way to the Russian Tea Room.   It is a long, long time ago.   Lifetimes ago.   Martha Graham was still alive and her dance troupe performed regularly in New York.   Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham inspired me for so many years and I still try to get to New York between Thanksgiving and New Years so I can see Alvin Ailey at City Center.


Back to our walk to the Russian Tea Room and our conversation.   Kristin had expected a gentle, lovely dance given the name.   I wasn't surprised that Martha Graham focused on the tensions in moving from winter into spring -- the force it takes for those new shoots of growth to push through frozen ground.


Ten years or so later I am talking to my spiritual teacher about this.   And softly, gently, I am told that it is all in one's point of view about peace and war.   If I perceive life as a battle, an endurance test if you will, then I perceive the need for those tender new shoots of growth to force their way through the frozen ground.   If I perceive life as peace, trust in grace and ease, I will see that the frozen ground relaxes in the warmth of spring's arrival and as it relaxes the new growth emerges.


Wow.


Over these past 21 years, since that conversation, I have made a commitment to shift my perspective and have been fairly successful, but not completely.   I have shifted it enough to survive with some moments of grace, but not enough to really thrive and it has been a source of incredible frustration.


I had hoped that 2012 would be the year that I made the shift complete.   The first 6 months have not been terribly successful in this regard.   I sit here feeling that they have been among the most difficult and painful months - but maybe it only feels that way because I have made such significant shifts in my consciousness that I really can't tolerate discomfort now.   So maybe it is a good thing.


It is not by accident that I woke up at 4 AM this morning thinking about that evening with my dear friend Kristin - that conversation - and my deep desire that this year be the year that I see the frozen ground of my life relaxing and the deep, beautiful growth I yearn for emerging effortlessly into the world.


I will celebrate my 60th birthday in July.  It is time for me to be in the summer of my life.   Guess I am a late bloomer of sorts.   Time to fully surrender as an act of peace -- and experience that surrender as falling into the arms of a lover.

Dorothy Day and The Movement of Spirit

These are soothing and interesting times for me in many ways.  I chose purple for my font this morning because I feel a bit "liturgical" and I have a sense of thrilling anticipation, just like I do during Advent.   And I trust that the fulfillment of that anticipation is assured whether I can see it or not - like Easter morning.   So purple it is.

For the past few days I've been thinking a lot about Dorothy Day who, as many of you know, is one of my heroes.   Feeling that this challenge to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious by the Vatican's Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith is at its source a promising moment of epiphany and breakthrough, I have been taken by the response of these religious women -- no rush, no politicizing, letting us know that they will take their time, they will come together in prayer and community to discern how the spirit is moving within and among them, in the sure knowledge that by doing this the way forward, in faith, will emerge.   Asking for our prayerful attention and support for them and the church.

It has turned my attention to an interview with Dorothy Day when she was an older woman - it was near the time of her death in 1980.   The interviewer was asking her how she felt, in retrospect, about her association with her bohemian and radical friends when she was a journalist in New York City's Greenwich Village.   They were her compatriots before she converted to Catholicism.   As I recall she spoke of her admiration for them and the depth of their commitments to social change.   And then she said something that has remained with me all these years.   I am paraphrasing here but the gist of it was:   In those days we spent so much of our time strategizing and making plans about the best ways to have the most political impact.   That is not the way I engage life now.   When we need to make decisions at the Catholic Worker we pray and meditate, we go to Mass and receive the sacraments, and we ask "what would Jesus do" and always the answers we need and the way forward emerge.

Then this morning I go onto Facebook to find this wonderful article on Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/nyregion/a-different-intersection-of-religion-and-politics.html?_r=1&ref=bigcity   Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin started the Catholic Worker together on May 1, 1933 in the midst of the Great Depression by selling their Catholic Worker Newspaper in Union Square for a penny a copy and the article says the price has stayed the same to this day.   So next week on May Day we celebrate the 79th anniversary of this incredible movement.   Since 1980 when Dorothy Day died, the movement has had no leader.   It does not have a headquarters or a board.   Yet it continues to thrive and grow.   There were 134 Catholic Worker communities in 1980.  Today there are 210.

Think about that.   No leader, no headquarters, no board of Directors and yet it thrives and grows.   And believe me it is a difficult and harsh lifestyle that these communities adopt -- to live with and among the poor.   To bring forward the Catholic social teachings of both solidarity and subsidiarity by living in a way that demonstrates what self-reliance really means -- that we need to rely not solely on ourselves, but we need to radically rely on each other and the spirit of life that sustains us all,  in community.   That is what Jesus modeled for us as "the way, the truth and the light".   That is the point that Paul Ryan absolutely misses about his Catholic faith when he puts forth his budget and claims it emerges from Catholic social teaching.

The Vatican would do well to ponder both the integrity and success of this movement that has no Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith to insure orthodoxy and thereby insure its continuation.   The Vatican would do well to really engage the miraculous faith and faithfulness of the women religious and members of the Catholic Worker Movement to the call of the Gospel and the spirit of our times.   To see that the ends never justify means.   Rather the means of prayerful communal life and decision-making with trust in the Holy Spirit insure the continuation of their meaningful work and bring about a more just and peaceful society.

I think that the growth of the Catholic Worker Movement without a living leader and without any organizational structure for the past 32 years should give all of us faith that the spirit of life - whatever we may choose to call it - has its own powerful organizational integrity.   It does not require huge headquarter buildings or charismatic leaders or cumbersome organizational structures and rules.   What it does require is faith in the goodness of life and the power of authentic community.   Internet and social media technology certainly help to expand our sense of community.

Arab Spring.   Occupy Wall Street.   Catholic Worker Movement.   Leadership Conference of Women Religious . . . these are good and interesting and hopeful times.

Abiding Peace

Donna

Music

You have no idea what you are missing if you have never heard and seen Andre Floyd perform.   It is one of those multi-sensory experiences that reminds you how deep and diverse your emotions and feelings are.

Last night Andre was generous enough to travel 100 miles to play for us at the Hangin Art Gallery in Arlee and he gave an extraordinary performance.    I was sorry more people didn't come out to hear him play.   It amazes me that when such talented folks come to share their gifts more people don't jump at the chance to come experience their talents and their generosity.

But here is what is on my mind and in my heart this morning.   Andre and I are contemporaries and he sometimes will perform some of John Sebastian's songs.   When he finished last night, I asked an outrageous thing of him -- to play a particular John Sebastian song that I love -- "She's A Lady".   Amazingly he remembered it and played it.  And beautifully at that.

His rendition was heart breakingly beautiful.   Soul-full.   Elegant.   Moving.   It broke open more hearts than mine in that room.   And it certainly broke open the crust that has developed around my own heart over the past "oh so many" years as the demands of work, community and family have slowly and surely changed me from a woman who spent time every day opening her heart to beauty and experiencing love and elegance, to one who wonders how on earth she will get everything done.   It made me remember a time . . . it made me feel like I was still there.   As if that woman still exists and that someday, maybe someday, I will again be a Lady.

Andre my friend I cannot thank you enough.  "I remember times it felt like . . . .it was raining daisies!"

Peace

Donna

Renewal

I am so happy that I was able to get Marti deAlva's beautiful photograph into this morning's blog.   Yesterday was a day of renewal for me and Montana's Mother Nature was an integral part of it.   I opened Facebook this morning and there was Marti's extraordinary photo with the perfect Rumi quote.

Marti is one of my favorite photographers and here is why.   Montana is a vast and sweeping landscape.   In the fourteen years I have lived here there has not been a day that I have not felt like I was living in a beautiful painting.   So it is very, very easy to take beautiful photographs here -- even I can do it.

What makes Marti's work so extraordinary is the intimacy she finds, even in the vast spaciousness.   This photograph is a perfect example -- clearly the landscape is vast and yet the quality of light, the perfect Rumi quote all create a sense of deep intimacy.   That's what things were like yesterday.

The past few months have been harder than I would have liked.   I had a vision of coming into 2012 with a more balanced life -- work, family AND leisure.   It turned out the Family overtook a great deal of it, work didn't let up and so what got sacrificed was leisure.


Yesterday a friend and I took the afternoon off and drove to Quinn's Hot Springs for lunch and a soak.   Bright blue skies while we drove along the beautiful Flathead River and entered the canyon that "houses" Quinn's.   Lunch was lovely and the sky was still bright blue when we immersed our bodies in those healing waters.   Luxury!   Leisure!   A good friend, good conversation, healing waters and a beautiful blue sky.


And then - the reported shift in weather occurred.   Spring and summer in Montana bring amazing shifts in weather and everyone jokes that if you don't like the weather just wait 10 minutes or so.   Clouds rushed in and rain began to fall - but no thunder so we remained in the pools and then, magically, the sky was blue again.   Suddenly the clouds moved back in, the light shifted and we heard the rumblings of thunder so it was time to get dressed and head home.    Rain was falling in buckets and as I got into the car huge hail began to join in with the rain.   It was intense and beautiful.   Almost magical.  The hail looked like diamonds on the roadway.  We drove about 5 or 6 miles with the rain and hail falling and then - you guessed it - sunny blue sky again.   The shifts in light renewed my perception of the landscape, and of my life.


Yesterday was one of those magical days where everything I did felt perfectly matched to my deepest desires and gifts.   It reminded me of the wisdom Alan imparted to me when I would get tense with the press of business and what felt like the limitations of time.  In his gravely New York accent he would say, "Relax Sweetheart, there is always a lull.   You will cross the t's and dot the i's in the lull."


Yesterday afternoon was one of those lull's and I feel this morning like I had a vacation.   I am grateful.


Peace,
Donna

Christa and The Feminine Dimensions of God

In my last post I referred to my time working with Edwina Sandys and her monumental sculpture "Breakthrough" made from sections of the fallen Berlin Wall.   One of Edwina's most controversial sculptures is Christa - and she made her public "debut" at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine during Holy Week in the 1970's.   Christa still startles - and rearranges perception so here she is.

Christa comes to mind this morning as I pray and reflect on the ongoing news related to the Vatican crackdown on the LCWR.   There is a wonderful article in the Catholic National Reporter this morning  http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/lcwr-earthquake-snaps-tensions-present-vatican-ii#comment-322240.  In one section of the article the writer says that this should not be about men vs. women or even about who is most important in the church. But he says the male leadership has made it about both of those issues.   And he is correct.


You can imagine the controversy about Christa.   A great deal of it had - and has - to do with the sense that Jesus is MALE.  How heretical to imply otherwise and to put a woman's body on a par with a man's.   One of the life giving dimensions of Christa is that she does not say Jesus is FEMALE.   She opens up the fullness of God as neither male nor female but all encompassing.   She fills in a terrible blank space that has impeded our capacity to bring the Gospel message to life in our world.   God as the perfect balance of masculine and feminine energies - ying and yang - required for creation in our physical world.    And yes, of the suffering of women in our world.   And when women suffer, inevitably children do as well.


Those energies - masculine and feminine - exist everywhere and all of us have varying amounts of both.   True leadership in a time like ours requires us to love both - to tend to both - to find our perfect balance of those two energies in our own lives.


I worked in the American Council on Education's Office of Women in Higher Education in the early 1970's and many of us had a sense that if we only brought more women into leadership positions in education, medicine, law, business, that the mere presence of those women would transform the institutions.   From my point of view it has become clear that that idea has not worked.   In order for women to get to those positions and to hold them, they need to take on many of the characteristics of those patriarchal organizations.   There are some important shifts, of course, but not the transformation we had hoped to see.  


And this is why the current confrontation from Rome with the women's religious orders that are part of  the Leadership Conference of Women Religious fascinates me and makes me hopeful.   Here we have an indication of what happens when women actually control the organizational structure within which they work.   Over the past 50 years, these women's religious orders have transformed themselves in response to the mandates of Vatican II.   We see in them leadership that respects both masculine and feminine styles of leadership.   We see in them respect for wholeness and diversity.   And we see in them courage to pray, reflect, change and yes - to lead.


What we are seeing here is the absolute refusal of the patriarchal structures of the Roman Catholic Church to see in this a way forward for the church.   We see Rome understanding what a threat to their authority - moral and temporal - these women and their religious orders are.   Of course, these women have been invisible to the power structures for so long that they have had a chance to actually institutionalize the kind of women's leadership those of us at ACE's Office of Women in Higher Education envisioned over 40 years ago.  If Rome and our Bishops force us to choose between them and these women religious there will be no contest -- a huge number of American Catholics will stand with the sisters who have demonstrated moral courage and authenticity and true service to the Gospel in the world.


There is no question that this is a critical issue for American Catholics.  I also believe it is important for our larger society since it has both political implications, and it has relevance for us in our quest for a more just and more effective political and governmental sector.   This story is as important as covering the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements.   It is based in the same spirit of freedom moving powerfully through our world.


So back to me.   My undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland is in political science, with a concentration in American Political Thought.  My graduate work at NYU was in Religious Education.   And I attended an Interfaith Seminary in New York City - The New Seminary - from 1993 - 1995.   I was ordained at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine when Dean Morton was there -- that courageous man who unveiled Christa during Holy Week.   On a trip to Antigua in the 1980's I met one of Her Majesty's Submariners - he was one of a number of submariners on their way home to England from the Falklands.   We went to dinner and dancing and when he asked about my education and I told him he smiled and said "Ah - religion and politics - the two things one does not discuss in polite company".   I still laugh when I think of it.


By the way, Edwina Sandy's artwork is amazing and provocative in addition to being quite beautiful.   So if you have a chance visit her website at www.edwinasandys.com   I think you will be glad you did!

Slow Motion Fall

It seems that weekly, and sometimes daily, I learn of some action by the Vatican and/or the US Conference of Bishops that makes me shake my head and feel a deep sense of sadness.  Sometimes it makes me feel embarrassed for them.   It certainly makes me realize that as they move more and more away from the spirit and the letter of Vatican II, more and  more catholics come together as church to move forward the spirit of Vatican II..  A deep divide, a chasm is opening before our eyes.  Many loyal catholics of good faith have been trying to bridge it with prayer, action and organizing.

Then last week the news that the Vatican has taken heart breaking action against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) broke open.   All I could wonder was "what are they thinking?"  Yesterday on Facebook my friend Magy posted an interview with a Notre Dame historian that was quite wonderful.  Among so many important points was his statement, "It is a mystery why the church is turning in on itself".

And as I sit with that statement I have come to feel that we are watching a slow motion collapse of a centuries old authority structure.   It feels like watching the Berlin Wall fall in very slow motion.

On the Vatican side of the wall, like the East Berlin side of the wall, is a vast expanse of monolithic grey concrete.   On the Church as the People of God side of the wall, like the West Berlin side of the wall, is a crazy and colorful expression of life giving creativity and openness.   On the Vatican side uniformity.   On the Church as the People of God side unity in Christ representing the incredible diversity of God's Creation, united in Love.

Years ago when I lived in New York City I had the privilege of working with Edwina Sandys, a painter and sculptor whose monumental sculptures are a testimony to the freedom of the human spirit, the connections among all of creation and between what is "seen and what is unseen".  She is a master at the power of void and space. Her sculptures grace corporate headquarters and United Nations campuses all over the world.   When the Berlin Wall fell she accessed sections of the wall and created the amazing sculpture "Breakthrough" http://www.edwinasandys.com/filter/sculpture%E2%80%93public-art#Breakthrough  and then with the monumental figures of men and women she cut through the sections of wall, she created the sculpture "The Four Freedoms" installed at Hyde Park.   I've been thinking about that alot over the past few days as I let my heart ponder the ever growing chasm between authority structure and people of God in my own church.

Edwina's sculpture helps me recognize the life giving elements in this otherwise sad and destructive time in my country, in my church and in the world.   The spirit of life is breaking through outmoded structures all over the world giving us hope and a sense of a viable present and a hopeful future.   That spirit - call it whatever you will - is what unites us across national borders, gender, species and all other "differences" that have been cause for violence and warfare over time.   Technology - particularly the mode I am using right now - supports this movement.

So back to watching the slow motion fall of the centuries old authority structure in my own church.   I am hopeful, but not that the authority structure will survive and be transformed.  As I look at the history of the Papacy I don't see much of anything in it that really serves God's work or God's people.   It has always been about temporal power.   Even those sometimes Saints who sat on 'Peter's Throne' like John XXIII, have only been able to create small openings for the spirit of life to come through.   The structure quickly moves to close those openings and to reassert temporal authority in the name of God.   What makes me hopeful is that the spirit moving through our worldwide church as Vatican II has taken such root in the People of God that we are revealing the church AS the People of God.  Women's religious orders took the mandates of Vatican II seriously and over the past 50 years have come through dramatic changes.  Their work in the church and in the world has embedded love, care and compassion in the very fabric of our world.   By the recent attack on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Vatican forces our attention to the history, role and accomplishments of these amazing, humble women and their Orders.

As we focus our attention there it becomes clear that the spirit of life is moving through these women, their Orders, and those of us who have commitments to implementing the fullness of the promise of Vatican II.   For this focus to our vision, maybe we need to thank the spiritual and moral bankruptcy of the Vatican.

In the World or In the Castle?

Just read a great NPR interview with Sr. Simone Campbell about the Vatican action against the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).   One of her comments struck me as especially pertinent.  "When you don't work everyday with people who live at the margins of our society, it's so much easier to make easy statements about who's right and who's wrong . . Life is way more complicated in our society and it's probably way easier to be 8,000 miles away in Rome. . . "   I'm thinking you don't need to be 8,000 miles away for it to be way easier, and for you to be irrevocably removed from the day to day life of most of the people on the planet.   There is Cardinal Dolan at St. Patrick's Cathedral right in mid-town Manhattan and he might as well be 8,000 miles away in Rome.   There are these politicians deeply opposed to abortion who are also opposed to contraception.  There is Ryan, touting his "budget" as fulfilling catholic social teaching in spite of the U.S. Bishops Conference telling him otherwise.   8,000 miles away???  in where???

In another reality that has lots of deep fears about the realities of human suffering that we all experience at one time or another in life -- and some that many people engage on a daily basis in their struggles for basic, very basic human rights.

In the early years of my relationship with Alan, we stood next to each other on the street and we sat next to each other on the New Haven Railroad but we might as well have been 8,000 miles apart.   I was working at a catholic college doing social justice work and he was a Park Avenue architect in Manhattan who belonged to the New York Athletic Club.  I always wondered why he was attracted to me because I wasn't anything like the women he had relationships with in his life before that.   One night his sister was in the hospital on the Upper West side of Manhattan.  This was before it got really gentrified.   It was a neighborhood I knew well.   We visited his sister and then went to eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant I liked.   As we were driving back to Westchester he remarked that he had seen more people with physical disabilities that evening than he had in months and months.  I laughed - really hard.   I asked him how many disabled people he thought he would run into on the New Haven, in his Park Avenue offices and the walk from Grand Central Station to Murray Hill.     How many poor and disabled people did he rub elbows with in corporate boardrooms and at the very prestigious New York Athletic Club (at that time they didn't have women, blacks or jews as members but the priests from St. Patrick's Cathedral were always there) and at the yacht club in New Rochelle where he kept his boats to take him to his island.   Clearly we were next to each other and simultaneously 8,000 miles apart - at least.

So began fifteen years of him trying to understand why I wasn't driven to make money and use it to protect myself from the suffering of the world, the suffering of life.   And all the while he couldn't see his own deep suffering made all the worse by his drive to do everything in his power to avoid it.   I was glad that in the last months of his life he found a way to understand and he found a way to come to peace in his own way.

A dear spiritual advisor once cautioned me not to have concern for what would appear as the "maximization of opposition" as our world moved from an operating principle of warfare to one of peace.  I was cautioned to pay no attention to the reporting of the demise of the world of warfare, and to joyfully be about the works of peace.   It was good advice.  We are clearly in that time right now.   Everyday brings the stark differences of orientation front and center.

This latest action of the Vatican to try to reign in the Gospel spirit of the U.S. women religious by taking over their leadership conference makes our choices crystal clear.   Will we live in fear and warfare trying to shore up our control over life and the world?   or will we surrender to the powerful and creative forces of life and take our part in ushering in a new time of peace and prosperity on our planet?     Geography is irrelevant . . . trust, faith and courage are everything.

Godspeed to the women religious of the LCWR as they grapple in a peaceful, Gospel based way with the choices before them.

Frank, the Boy Genius, and Beauty

Yesterday was Easter.   It is all about the Resurrection and how that changed the lives of all Jesus' followers in an instant - and how, if we take it seriously, it changes our life in each instant.   So it brought my thoughts to my dear friend Frank Treviso - an artist in every aspect of his life - who died far too young.

Here is a photo of Frank in his beautiful coop apartment on "Central Park North" as we called it when he and his partner Craig bought it and moved to Harlem from their place on Thompson Square Park.   The photo is part of a cover story in Better Homes and Gardens Home Ideas publication (Fall/Winter 1998).  It featured Frank and his "High Style in Harlem:   Decorating with flea-market finds".

 

Frank made the beautiful window treatments and the throw pillow from raw silk that he hand painted before sewing them into treasures.   I met him in 1984 when my partner Alan gifted me with a half day "make over" at Elizabeth Arden on 5th Avenue -- Frank was the make-up artist and from the moment I sat in his chair we became heart friends and although he died over ten years ago, he remains one of my heart friends still.

So what does this have to do with Easter and Resurrection and Beauty?   I was ordained an Interfaith Minister at St. John the Divine in June of 1995 and I sent Frank and Craig an invitation to the ceremony.  I thought it odd that I didn't hear from Frank and couldn't reach him by phone.   And then 4 months later he called and asked me to meet him for dinner in the West Village.   I did and he told me an amazing story of where he was, why he couldn't respond, and how his life had changed.   In the early spring of the year he was hospitalized with advanced AIDS and Hepatitis and was told he would never come out of the hospital.   He let go of his hold on his life and began what many describe as a near death experience - a soothing voice telling him to let go and move to the light.   He described moving to the light in the imagery of our shared Italian heritage -- the sacred heart of Jesus and it's crown of thorns -- when he arrived there he felt he was home - in the light and love of the loving heart of Jesus who shared and redeemed Frank's suffering.  Yet the voice persisted, urging him beyond the crown of thorns and the broken heart and so he continued to follow the light and entered into the glorious blazing light of the Resurrection.   He realized the reality of life was that light and beauty, not the suffering and the crown of thorns.  He understood that to be a disciple of Jesus was to move beyond the suffering and into abundant life.

He returned to his body - he needed to test out what he had experienced.  He had an amazing recovery (he is written up in textbooks for the fact that over the next 6 months his liver regenerated) and in the following 3-1/2 years of his life he built up a successful, creative window treatment and accessory company called MU/H  (short for make-up and hair!).   He returned to this life and demonstrated his faith in beauty as the center of his life.   I had so many wonderful days with him - especially Saturdays when I would help him fill orders - I would cut and press and he would sew his magic.   These days together helped sooth my own heart after Alan died.   And I was blessed to live in the light of his enormous creativity.   When we went to trade shows designers from all over the country would exclaim over his incredible color sense and he was dubbed "the boy genius".   At one trade show his mother made cappucinos for the designers and served them Italian cookies that she and Frank had baked.  And I would hear her say to the designers, "I am the mother of the Boy Genius".   Here's another photo from the "spread" that will give you a sense of why they gave him that nickname.

Frank moved beyond the macabre fascination with the crucified Jesus and his sacred heart wrapped in his crown of thorns that had permeated the imagery of our immigrant parents and grandparents.  He found the truth -- the power of the Resurection is in the eternal LIFE - the eternal abundant and creative life in which we are born and in which we move and live.   His memory lives on deep in my own heart - and in the beautiful hand painted silk pillows, comforter covers and table accessories he made for me.

The power of his witness urges me on when I feel it is all too hard.   I remember what Alan always said about my friendship with Frank -- he would tell people "Donna could be stranded on a desert island and come back with a friend.  I sent her to Elizabeth Arden and she came home with the make-up artist!".   I came home with more than a friend that day.   I came home with a soul mate who I came to love dearly - who loved me dearly.    One Saturday when we were working together on an order in his loft - Alan gone a year or so - Frank wondered out loud if we both would have been happier choosing each other instead of our partners, in spite of his homo-sexuality.   Wondering if we would have had happier lives together because of the ways in which we were so similar.    The answer both of us came up with that day was "Probably".

Although I carry Frank in my heart all the time, I think of him with particular fondness each year during Holy Week as we move through the Passion and especially on the glorious morning of Easter.

Blessings,

Donna

Greater Love Than This

It is Holy Week - tonight is Easter Vigil and tomorrow we celebrate the Resurrection.   It is two months exactly since my last post.   I have been in a deep period of reflection and it is a time of encouragement and hope.

It is Holy Week and the Pope makes a stern and fairly angry public address chastizing priests who are challenging decisions by the Vatican that they feel jeopardize the Church and the people of God.   The Pope urges them to "Radical Obedience".   I find myself grateful that Jesus did not heed what must have been many calls for him to "Radical Obedience" - by the Roman occupiers and by some of the religious leadership that found obedience to the religious laws the most important thing.

In fact the witness of the life of Jesus of Nazareth was one of radical disobedience to man-made laws that create suffering and injustice.   It is a witness to the power of radical love and radical communion, placing God - the father, abba - at the very center of all life.  He taught us that love, peace, friendship, abundance and non-violence are what God wills for his creation.

In my mid-twenties I found myself in the midst of a deep reflective time - very similar to the one I find myself in now.    I spent many hours in prayer and meditation in the chapel at the College of New Rochelle.   In one of those times, gazing up at a familiar image, I had a radical new understanding of a familiar line of scripture.   Here is what I saw looking up above the altar

I don't know if you can read the words along the horizontal cross bar - they say "Greater Love Than This No Man Hath".   I was reminded often by some of the nuns at CNR that the line finishes "than to lay down his life for his friends".   But the radical new understanding that flooded my heart and mind that day was not Jesus crucified on the cross.   It was the love and radical friendship of those women who stood with him even unto death and continued to stand with him after his death and who were the first to witness his resurrection.   It was the radical love in which Jesus trusted so that even when threatened with death for his ministry to the people he was able to lay down his life rather than retreat into violence, or compromise his conscience and engage Radical Obedience to save his life.  He was able to trust God and eternal life and to continue to love unconditionally and to forgive, even his most fearful enemies.

In this most holy time in the Catholic liturgical year - when we recognize and celebrate the great love of God and Jesus - when we are called to be faithful to God first and foremost - our Pope preaches Radical Obedience to the "Law".   It is a powerful and painful contradiction.

So over the past days as I have reflected on this contradiction an amazing thing has happened to me, or maybe for me.    I have found compassion for  Pope Benedict - for this man for whom I have had nothing but contempt for over 40 years.   I cannot imagine the fear of change, the radical change that the Holy Spirit continually brings to us, that must be motivating is actions to turn back the spirit of Vatican II, and that must be motivating him to preach Radical Obedience at the very time we engage the gifts we are given by the Radical Disobedience of Jesus in his own time. 

I can tell you this morning that it is so much better to feel compassion than contempt.   Something has loosened in my own heart and mind and I feel more free than I can ever remember.   Maybe I am beginning to understand the life and witness of Jesus in a more concrete way than ever before.

Easter Blessings

Donna

Time Flies

Hard to believe that my last post was on January 25th . . . .if you've been reading the blog you know I have been immersed in a kind of reading that I haven't done for over 25 years.   I am circling around, at a deeper level given the life experience I've gained over the years, to reading in some of the same areas of my graduate work at NYU.

Mary Daly and Nelle Morton, who along with Maria Harris and Rosemary Reuther inspired an  inclusive and radical feminist theological point of view at the center of my heart and life.   Now I am adding James Carrol and Hans Kung to the mix and I am totally engaged body and soul in reflecting again on silence, language, prophetic voice, truth and courage.

I'm so immersed in all of this that I have hardly noticed the passage of time -- every spare moment I have been reading and for the first time in 30 years, reading with a dictionary at my side.   Because these authors and prophets use such exquisite and precise language -- that I want to be sure I understand in great depth what they are conveying.   So I have to admit I have been using the early morning hours I have set aside for writing, to keep reading what others have written!

I want to give special thanks to Rosemary and Jim Tarkes for gathering an amazing group of "Concerned Catholics" together to share plenary sessions from the American Catholic Council's important gathering in Detroit in June 2011 -- to reflect together on our commitments to our catholic faith and tradition, to provide nourishing worship opportunities in the face of a new mass imposed by Rome on Roman Catholic parishes, and to push forward with our commitments to the letter and spirit of Vatican II.

Watching the interview with Hans Kung and the plenary session address by James Carroll spurred the reading of Carroll's "Practicing Catholic" and now the two volumes of Kung's autobiography.   Kelley Brown and I are sharing books and the experience and that is great fun!

So what I want to say in closing this morning, is how grateful I am to those who have come before me -- for centuries -- in this church that I love in spite of her institutional sins and faults -- those who have had the trust and the courage to move forward in keeping with the call of the Gospel and the power of their conscience.   In all instances during their lifetimes these brave souls have been battered to some extent or another, by the institutional church's desire to hold and preserve temporal power.   Yet their love of God, their commitment to truth and to the Gospel, moved them forward, and so move all of us forward with a deeper understanding of Love and community.   I am in awe of their gifts and filled with gratitude for their witness.

Blessings for the day
Donna

Nelle Morton - Silence and Speech

My dear friend Cathie reminded me this morning that Nelle Morton's essays in "The Journey is Home" started us out in a deep reflection of silence and speech many, many years ago.   In one of the essays she reflects on her experience in feminist support groups during the 1970's and talks about the way in which the women would "hear each other into speech" that was truthful and life giving.   That pregnant, attentive silence and deep hearing among the women.   She then says that if "In the beginning was the Word", what preceeded the Word was the Great Listening Ear at the Center of the Universe.   I still love that image and am soothed by it.   The importance of real community - the patience to be with each other in silence - the real interest in knowing each other deeply.

This morning, in the last chapter of "Practicing Catholic" I am reading James Carroll's reflections on the power of language and how it is that language connects us to God - or to the larger creative life if God is an alienating word - which it often is to people.

As an Interfaith Minister I have learned to communicate without the specific religious language of my own tradition -- but in these most recent reflections since I am reading and reflecting within my tradition it is so much easier to use that specific language.

I could probably write everyday for at least a year about silence and speech - maybe I will take that on at some point.   It is like breathing . . . .inhale and exhale both critical to sustaining life, both inextricably linked to each other as breath.

I have been in an exhale mode for most of the past 10 years and it has been exhausting.   It reminds me of a network chiropractor that told me over 30 years ago that my breathing was so shallow it was hardly enough to sustain life!   So I learned to breath more deeply and fully and it was an amazing turn around for me.   I still breath deeply and fully -- and I also realize that as important is the breathing of "action-inaction".   My commitment to myself this year is to have that balance restored to my life regardless of my external circumstances.

Again, dear Cathie gave me a wonderful Christmas present this year.   "The Paper Garden:   Mrs. Delaney (begins her life's work) at 72" by Molly Peacock.   Precognition?   Or just the knowledge of a life long friend?   It is a perfect gift in every way.   The book design is beautiful -- and the content inspiring.   I come into January of  2012 hoping that I will have the health and longevity to begin my life's work now --

Blessings to everyone this morning!

Donna

The Narrative Form

I am immersed in the book Practicing Catholic by James Carroll.   And in a process of deep inner reflection questioning if I really "know" what it is I have believed for so long now.   I mean this in its largest sense, not only in a religious sense.   Can I, at this late date in my life, engage a certain freedom to make my life new?   To leave behind some central experiences that have framed and limited my life to move into the life I have been generously given by grace.

When I started this blog after Christmas mass at Fr. Jim's house, I wasn't sure what it is, what it means, what it will "become" -- I only knew that I felt called to write again and this seems a good way to do it.

This morning, in the last chapter of this book that I will now buy for my library (I'm reading a Missoula Library copy right now), he opens the chapter by saying "I left the priesthood to be a writer.   This is the very definition of my life."   In order to really write, he needed intellectual and moral freedom to go where the writing would and could take him.

And following very quickly he writes something that rings true for me about why, now, I choose to write again -- and maybe even why I choose to write in a way that is shared for the first time in my life . . .

"The redemptive shape of narrative form, the unquenchable thirst for meaning, THE IMPLICATION-LADEN TENSION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND WHAT REMAINS FOREVER UNSPOKEN, the contemplative habit of absorbedness, the dark night of the soul as a source of illumination, God as the author of creation, why we call Jesus "Word," the final inadequacy of all expression, which is the first value of it . . . "

The emphasis above is mine -- all of this spoke to me and the highlighted section above spoke to me at the level of an almost deafening roar.

I have learned so much about the need to speak and to share from my dearest friend Cathie.   She and her Campus Ministry group at the College of New Rochelle were central to moving me from a soul crushing silence that kept me unspeakably lonely to a way of sharing myself in meaningful ways with others.

It was the beginning of a life long journey to create some balance between the deep introspection that comes so naturally to me and the call to be part of the community that the Gospel demands of me.

And now, in this blog, I am a bit stymied or maybe challenged is a better word, by what to put into language and what is rightly left forever unspoken . . .

Donna

Obedience

James Carroll is one of my favorite authors -- both his fiction and his non-fiction.  I am now reading "Practicing Catholic" which he published in 2009 and I am finding it as deeply moving as his autobiographical "An American Requiem:  God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us".   We are "almost" contemporaries -- he is seven years my senior.   The seven years are not enough to change the dramatic effect of the Kennedy era, the Second Vatican Council and the Vietnam War era on our lives.   His was a more privileged life than mine -- his father a high ranking military officer, mine a Private First Class in the Marine Corps.   And that changed some things -- a sense that he has been more at the center of the institutions than I ever was.    But when I read these two books I am moved from the center of my very being at how he captures these formative aspects of my own life.   And I am grateful to hear him come to some of the same conclusions to which I have arrived myself along these "highways and byways" of a deep catholic spirituality, a deep sense of patriotism, and a call to live out the Gospel to the best of my ability.

This morning I am reading the chapter "The Scandal" which follows fairly closely to chapter 6 "Sex and Power".   He speaks of the nature of "obedience" in terms of the vows Roman Catholic priests take and he says, "In the hierarchical order there is obedience upward, but there is obedience downward too."    It is all too clear to me that the Roman power structure of our church has long since forgotten about their obedience "downward" to the people they are there to serve and I am grateful to him for this sentence that clarifies things for me.   I am reminded of one of Rabbi Abraham Heschel's books where he speaks about the Commandment to "Honor Thy Mother and Father".  He tells us that intrinsic to this commandment is the requirement of mothers and fathers to behave in ways that are themselves honorable.   These are reciprocal vows and commandments.   There is no way to separate them and be in truth.   All life is at the beginning and end interwoven and relational.

So this was on my mind when I made my way to my office several hours ago to write this reflection.  

One of the things I did before sitting to write, was to check in on Facebook.  Last week was a hard, busy week and I haven't even looked at it in many days.   I read a "Truth Out" op-ed by Chris Hedges (see http://www.truth-out.org/ if you are interested in the entire article) and was struck by how similar his reflection on the corrupt nature of electoral politics in this time is to what I read this morning relative to my beloved church.   He says, "Turn off your televisions.  Ignore the Newt-Mitt-Rick-Barack Reality Show.  It is as relevant to your life as the gossip on "Jersey Shore." 

Those who "lead" our polity use the powers of distraction from the real issues in the same ways that the Pope and the Bishops have used distraction from the real issues within our church.    Both sets of actions by those who are supposed to "lead" and have obedience "downward" have covered up deep and outrageous lies that have resulted in so much damage to the dignity and quality of people's lives.   So much damage to the integrity of our country and to my church.

And yet, as James Carroll says relative to the sex abuse scandal of our church, it is not only those who lead that have culpability.   It is also all of us who have chosen to be distracted rather than to demand truthfulness and obedience downward from our leaders.  Again, my dear Rabbi Abraham Heschel comes to mind.   When speaking out against the Vietnam War he was clear that in a Democracy few are to blame and all are responsible.

Although our present days seem filled with conflict and difficulty, when I stop being distracted by all the easy distractions, I am encouraged that it is almost impossible to cover up any lie today.   That truth is breaking through all of the institutional and personal lies.   And that ordinary people, who are filled with the dignity of their very creation, are finding the courage to tell the truth and to refuse distractions.   To assert our common human dignity and our inescapable relationship to the eco-systems in which we live.

It is painful and also encouraging.   I believe from personal experience that truth, no matter how painful, actually does set us free and heal us.

I think that is all for today.

With love to all!

Donna

Aunt Helen and Baklava

This morning I am inspired by lots of things including the sparkling diamonds the moon created from last night's snow.   But Aunt Helen and baklava won out.



Tonight we will be serving our homemade baklava along with Greek dinner entrees while we listen to the wonderful music of Baba Ganoush Snyder Duo at the Hangin Art Gallery here in Arlee Montana.

I thought it was funny that I was making the baklava while I watching Julie Julia for the 2nd or 3rd time.   At least I wasn't trying to make it in one of those Queens kitchens (you should excuse the expression, as my Jewish friends' mothers would say).

Whenever I cook Greek food or make baklava I have these amazing and lovely thoughts of my Aunt Helen.   Her parents were from Greece and she married my grandmother's brother so we had the great good fortune of eating amazing dinners and wonderful baked treats at Aunt Helen and Uncle Julie's house.   Their son Vincent taught me to dance Greek dances in their living room while enticing aromas drifted in from the kitchen on the main floor and sometimes from the downstairs kitchen as well.

Vincent was my favorite cousin and I was always sad that he lived in Syracuse instead of Brooklyn because it meant I didn't see him enough to suit me in those growing up years.   In fact all three of Aunt Helen and Uncle Julie's sons were cousins that brought me lots of joy.

When my father was transferred to a Xerox plant in Rochester, it meant lots more time with my Aunt Helen and Uncle Julie.   By that time I was a grown woman living in New York City and then Montana - but whenever I visited my parents we would make the short trip to Syracuse to be with Aunt Helen, Uncle Julie and those great Syracuse cousins and their families too.

So this morning I am happy thinking about them and all of our good times.   And I am feeling very fortunate to have these wonderful memories as part of my life.

Blessings,

Donna

Full Moon

One of my favorite books of poetry was purchased because I fell in love with the title, "The Moon Is Always Female" - by Marge Piercy.   It started a love affair with her poetry and I still am likely to pull that book from my book shelf because the title makes me smile.

Here's another beauty by Marti deAlva -- "Moonrise Over the Garden Wall".   This is what I now call "my neck of the woods" but in the days of my purchase of Marge Piercy's poetry my neck of the woods was New York and I watched the moon rise over Long Island Sound.

Still, the faithful moon has been my trusted companion over all these years and all these miles I have travelled and I take deep pleasure in all her phases.   It reminds me that I can take the same pleasure in my many phases -- the waxing and the waning -- the fullness and the emptiness.

I can remember standing outside in New Rochelle, gazing at the moon in a January sky through the stark branches of a tree.   It was a night before it was full and it was gorgeous -- bright and clear and luminous.   And suddenly I thought "but it isn't full yet . . . I don't want a portion of life or love even if it is "almost" full . . . I am going to hold out for absolute fullness."

I'm older now and hopefully wiser.   And I think I've learned that it all has value and meaning and beauty.

And still - I am a die hard about wanting it all . . . . so on I go!

Blessings,
Donna

Choose Life

Before you today is life and death . . . choose life so that you and your children may live.   A rough paraphrase from what I think is an important part of the Exodus text.   I first became aware of the importance of this text in the early 1980's at an interfaith service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City.   The service was part of the demonstrations throughout New York City during the United Nations second session on nuclear disarmament.   Choose life so that you and your children may live.   Over all these years I come back again and again to reflect on this text.

This is the single most important choice we make in our lives - and each one of us makes it alone and for ourselves although the choice certainly has a dramatic effect not only on those around us but on all of creation.   And we don't only make the choice once for all time.   We make it over and over and over again in each instant of our life.   We can always alter our choice.  It is one of the many proofs of grace.

What is life giving and enhancing for you?   For me?   What paths and decisions lead to life and abundant life?    Why do some of us choose life and others not so much?

It has been five days since I wrote here and it is not because of the press of the Gallery as I had feared.   It was a combination of "life" intervening with time consuming and emotionally difficult tasks, and my inability to really know what I was feeling, how I was feeling and what was happening at a very deep level within me.  For those of you who know me well, it isn't often that it takes me days upon days to unravel those internal states of being.   This one was one of those life changing, life altering times.

And at the end of all the images and byways I have traveled during these days and nights it comes back again to what will I chooose -- life or death?   And can I find the love within myself to honor those who make different choices than I do?

I choose life -- for all its challenges it seems it is what compels me.   A friend once told me that human life requires great mastery because by its very nature it is filled with loss.   That is certainly true.   And along with the loss that always comes, it is also filled with great beauty.

Last week I promised you a post of the beautiful blessing stick that Bonnie Tarses made for me so here it is:

Bonnie wove this beauty for me from colors I chose and a word I gave her with a deep intention.   It seems perfect to put into this lovely vase made by a North Carolina potter.   And here is a "plug" for Bonnie Tarses, my friend who is "An Artist Who Happens to Weave".   Visit her website at www.bonnietarses.com and join her blog at http://weavingspirit.blogspot.com   and I promise you, you won't be disappointed.   It will be a feast for your eyes and your spirit.

Beauty is the balm for my soul and in the hard times, and these past 5 days rank right up there with the hardest times of my life, it is beauty and love that carry me through.   So thanks to all those artists and friends who make both of these so available to me.

So I choose life - and as hard as it is, I will also choose to find honor and respect for those I have loved who make a different choice.   That one is a greater challenge, but I do believe I am up to it!

May your days be filled with beauty and life - and may you choose abundant life!

Donna

Balance and Harmony

Now it gets interesting -- I chose red for the color of font because today is a day for high alert - translated into high awareness!

The Hangin Art Gallery re-opened this morning at 7 AM after 10 days of rest for me and for the building - and for my staff to have time with family over the Christmas and New Year break.   Those of you who have been following my musings know that I have determined (without much surprise) that I am not well suited by nature to retail.   The pressure of time, the need to be in such non-stop extrovert mode, the physical demands all are at odds with my natural inclinations.

Yet -- and this is one of the central dichotomies of my life -- the desire to serve the community, the joy of offering hospitality, the rewards of being in the midst of the beauty and creativity of the artists whose works hang on the walls of the Gallery and whose books and fine crafts are available here -- all these things are in almost exact "counter balance" to my needs for privacy, control over my time, silence.

Part of the time "off" over the last ten days was to see if I could find a renewed enthusiasm for the Gallery.   The past two years business has been off dramatically, as it has for all the small retail businesses in this area (and probably in most of the country).   I know that if we are to re-build this business, I have to have a sense of enthusiasm for it, as well as my employees.    So my decision to close in order to catch my breath - and to reopen on a Wednesday to Saturday schedule - are designed to help me find balance, harmony and renewed enthusiasm.

So - today's test -- could I actually find "time" in the midst of these demands -- for this blog?   Guess I did!  

In the days ahead it will take a strong awareness of myself in the midst of these events to help me weave a fabric of joy and integrity and creativity from the many and diverse activities in which I participate - and the non-activity I need.   Great thanks for my friend Bonnie Tarses - an artist who happens to weave -- for bringing weaving into my life again, and for creating a beautiful "anchor" for my heart intentions that sits on teh shelf over my desk!   Tomorrow I'll post a photo of that lovely piece of art.

More wisdom from my spiritual friends -- years ago they insisted that in this lifetime it is possible for me to be "in the world and in the contemplative hermitage" at one and the same time.   So I am going to proceed with the belief in what is now present and unseen - the way forward to have all of this in one life filled with peace and joy.

Many blessings to everyone

Donna

Sunrise

This beautiful photograph, Dawn Comes to Greywolf, is by Marti deAlva one of our Killdeer Artisan Guild members and a regular contributor to exhibits at Hangin Art Gallery.    Living in Montana it is easy to take beautiful landscape photographs because everywhere you look there is incredible beauty in nature.   One of Marti's great gifts is her capacity to capture the intimacy of this vast landscape.   Her "feel" for light gives her photography a luminescence that defies description.

So this morning watching a beautiful Western Montana sunrise and that faithful sun made its way above the Rocky Mountains, my heart did some singing and I thought of Marti's photography.   Made me want to share her perspective on our valley (yes, this is right here where we live) and I'm hoping she won't mind that I didn't ask her permission first.

Light.    I never realized how important it is to me until I began to spend winters in Western Montana where the fall comes and then the winter and we can go weeks without seeing the sun, immersed in what they call inversions here.   We know there is sun and blue sky somewhere over those inverted clouds and it takes all of my faith to believe I will see it again.   When I do I remember the joy that comes from a beautiful sunrise and a bright blue sky winter day.    We have one of those today and I can feel all the muscles in my chest and back and neck relaxing.   Last March I went to New York and while the temperatures were cold just like here in Montana, the sun was shining every day and I realized how very much I miss that!

And then again, the winters here help me to realize how much I value those clear, sunny, bright days.   And I think sometimes life is like that.   They say familiarity breeds contempt.   I think worse than that, both familiarity and too much busy-ness in our days, dulls our awareness.    Like an internal "inversion".   Our beautiful bright awareness is somewhere out there, but not visible to us.

I started this blog by saying that my commitment for this year (and hopefully the rest of my life!) is to engage being more fully human.   And I can't think of a better way to do that than making a commitment to awareness.   To receiving the grace all around me, regardless of whether or not the sun is shining.   A dear spiritual mentor used to remind me frequently that God is everything, not just the good stuff.

So I am going to enjoy the "sunrise" in every day and every moment, even the ones that don't feel like "the good stuff".   And my guess is, that the discipline to choose to see beauty everywhere, will make my world and my days pretty sunny and bright!

Donna



Relationship

I remember years ago my friend Cathie asked me why I was doing so much to try and help my grandmother, who really didn't like me at all.   We were sitting in her house in New Rochelle drinking tea.   And I thought for a minute and said that for me, it was better to be in relationship than not if it was at all possible.

That is still true for me.

What I have had to learn over all the years in between that conversation and today (32 years now or thereabout) is what a healthy definition of "if it is at all possible" might be.   In the process of learning about that I've learned a lot about what love really means.

One of the aspects of catholic spirituality that has great meaning for me is the Trinity -- One God in Three Persons.   However we want to name those three persons, the Trinity always calls us to an understanding that life is inherently relational.   It is also what I love about Buddhist "interbeing".   

What I've learned about healthy relationship is that there needs to be a strong, healthy "I" to be relationship, and there needs to be both reciprocity in relationship and respect.   A large part of that respect has to do with honoring other people's choices, even if they aren't what we would choose for them.

And now a little note about addiction . . . the last time I will even turn my attention to it in any way.   When a person is in the midst of addiction, there can be no reciprocity of relationship and no respect for another.   Any kind of addiction whether it is to alcohol, food, drugs, God, work, money, yada, yada, yada.   Addiction is a defense against life . . . a refusal to be responsive to our place within the larger life . . . a reason to have an excuse for everything and to never accept personal accountability.

So today I can find it in my self to honor the choices of people who choose addiction and bless them on their way. 

For myself I choose life, and as a consequence, deep relationships.

Donna

Beginnings

My dog Griffy made it through another night of fireworks in Arlee!   He jumped on my bed at the first sounds and stayed there all night.   He shook much less than usual and I'd like to think it is because my presence soothed him, but it could be because he is an old dog and maybe doesn't hear as well as he used to.

I am so happy to turn the calendar page to 2012 today.   It is the first New Year's Day in over 10 years that I feel rested and peaceful.   And deep within I feel a surge of excitement about where life is flowing not only for me but for the world.   It is easy to look at what is wrong (media helps with that for sure) all around.   But the truth is that there is a spirit of freedom and a witness for peace and a sense of unity erupting all over the world that brings joy to my heart.

I've been thinking about the fact that Jehovah Witnesses don't celebrate the holiday "days" that we all mark with such enthusiasm.   Years ago a friend of mine in the faith explained that when we make one day more special than others, we lose the excitement of realizing that every day is the day God made for us.   And I think there is a great deal of truth in that.

Every day is a day to give "thanks", every day is a day to appreciate those we lovve, every day is a day to allow the peace of Christ to be born and to grow in our heart and our life.   Every day is a day to celebrate the joy that our Irish friends bring to the world.    I understand it is important to mark time and I think it is also important to bring those things we celebrate into our every day lives.

Especially New Year's.   Because not only every day, but every instant, every breath brings us the possibility of being fresh and new.   That's the power of Grace.

Let's dance in every day with the sheer pleasure of Becky and Denny dancing at the Arlee End of Construction party!

All wishes for peace, joy, health and abudance to everyone.

Donna