I still haven’t figured out how you are sure that the Holy Spirit is calling and when she is not. It makes me wonder about the disciples and their call to follow Jesus. How did they know that it was the right thing to do? Did they weigh the pros and the cons? Did they follow their gut?
No one else in our family was religious, including an uncle who was an American Baptist minister. The rest of us were Protestants merely because we weren’t Catholic or Jewish. So it’s funny that my most enduring childhood memory of spending time with Uncle Walt and Aunt Alene is of those Sundays when they dragged me to Mass and I had to sit alone while they went up for Communion.
In his sermon my husband said the world was “pregnant” in spring. In an eight minute sermon he used the word pregnant three times. That morning at coffee hour three women seemed determined to coax me into admitting that I was pregnant. One told me there was no shame in being pregnant sooner than one expected. She, after all, had been pregnant at each of her three weddings.
The two poles of the earth’s orbit represent extreme points along the ellipse, but they are just as much a part of the orbit as any other points are. In the best of our political differences, and church differences, and relationship differences, the same can be true. We may be at extremes, but we are in the same orbit.
When you look at the first ten years of my Social Security Statement, your first thought might be how on earth I managed to feed myself (and, by 1992, a family of three) on less than $10,000 a year. In 1996, I managed to break $6 per hour for the first time. Later that year, I got my first white-collar job, right before my 26th birthday, making $18,000 a year.
We hadn’t gone far before we heard the insistent, unmistakable bleat of goats. We walked toward the sound and looked over a precipitous edge. Twenty feet below three goats – two grownups and a kid – balanced on a narrow ledge. Bleating, panting and standing amid clumps of goat poop, these were not happy goats.
And Aron’s parishioner is telling me about her wedding socks, I feel her notice the tiny, bright, sexy things on the counter….
Part of the richness that I cherish in the Episcopal Church is the variety of existing religious orders and communities that are already a part of our life. The monastic tradition is alive and well in our midst. The web site of the Episcopal Church has links to connect to twenty-three religious orders and twelve communities.
That turtle will stop right where it got on and block the path of potential oncoming turtles. Now, I don’t think these turtles are being mean. I think they just don’t think – they just don’t see that they are preventing other turtles from having a place on the log. “I made it on here just fine,” they might muse, “so I don’t see why others aren’t here with me. What’s their problem?”
“But I feel so betrayed” choked out, as Frank told me of the admiration and faith he had felt for his priest and rector, Jess, and the sense of loss from the current revelations about the priest’s activities. Today, Frank wonders, “Was it all a sham? Was I just conned? Did he use me? Or is it a vendetta by those who don’t like him?”