Laurel Massé

All shall be well: Julian of Norwich

And in this vision, God showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind's eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, 'What can this be?' And the answer came to me, 'It is all that is made.' I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, 'It lasts and will last forever because God loves it; and in this same way everything exists through the love of God.' In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that God loves it, the third is that God cares for it.  Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love

Julian was the first woman to publish a book in English (in what we now call "Middle English"). In it she tells of the visions she had in 1373. In it she describes Christ as a mother. In it she assures us that "sin is necessary, but all shall be well. All shall be well; and all manner of thing shall be well."

Today the Episcopal Church celebrates dear Julian's feast day. Eat something wondrously good, with gratitude. She would like that. Remember that C.S. Lewis said her book was dangerous. I think she would like that, too. Stories about her suggest she had a cat. I like that.

There is more information about Julian here , and here is the podcast of a talk (the transcript's there, too) given by Rev. Mimi Dixon, Presbyterian pastor, about her experiences of Julian.

This extraordinary icon was written by Mihai Cucu. This, and his other exquisite icons, can be seen here.

It was Madeleine L'Engle who introduced me to the writings of Julian; for that, and for so much more, I am always grateful.

Have a beer with St. Brigid and God!

 Brid agus Muire dhuit!

Today is the feast day of St. Brigid of Kildare, to whom I have a special devotion. Patron saint of poets and brewers, of healers and midwives (and, along with Patrick and Columba, of Ireland itself), she was strong and gentle, prayerful and practical. St. Brigid worked miracles: my favorite is the healing of a blind Sister so that she could see the beauty of a sunset. To ease the thirst of lepers, she once turned a tub of bathwater into a tub of excellent beer. She was called Mary's Nurse, meaning that she helped Mary with the infant Jesus (a Time Lord!). Like so many of the great saints, she was as earthy and real as soil and water, and as wild as fire and air.

The following 10th century poem has been attributed to her:

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God.
I'd love the heavenly
Host to be tippling there
For all eternity.

I'd love the men of Heaven to live with me,
To dance and sing.
If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal
Vats of suffering.

White cups of love I'd give them
With a heart and a half;
Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer
To every man.

I'd make Heaven a cheerful spot
Because the happy heart is true.
I'd make the men contented for their own sake.
I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather
From all the parishes around.
I'd give a special welcome to the women,
The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women and God
There by the lake of beer.
We'd be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer.

 

In my mind's ear, I can hear this woman laughing, and singing, her voice husky, her eyes shining. How could I keep from loving her?

For my solo album, Feather and Bone, I adapted traditional prayers collected by Alexander Carmichael in Scotland in the 1800s and composed Radiant Flame of Gold, a prayer to Brigid. Here is the track, with the sorely-missed Layne Redmond, and Tommy B on frame drums. I pray it in my times of trouble, and for others in theirs: Download 09 Radiant Flame of Gold

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each day,

I am under the shielding of good Brigid each night.

I am under the keeping of the nurse of Mary

Each early and late, every dawn, every light.

 

To learn more about St. Brigid, start here. To purchase Feather and Bone, send me a Facebook message here.

 

To the Christians in the House

I once had a manager who thought he was John Galt. Or at least a John Galt. Even though I adored him, I knew he wasn't. And when he went on to embezzle a substantial sum, it bore out my literary instinct.

I knew, though, who he was talking about because I had read Atlas Shrugged as a younger girl. So much younger, in fact, that my mother had taken the book away from me, saying, "You don't need to read that. You're selfish enough already." But I eventually read through to the end.

So when Ayn Rand's writings came back into public notice with the advent of and media attention to the Tea Party and the Libertarians and Paul Ryan's Randian Catholicism (an oxymoron), I did not have to run out to buy the book to understand that there would be trouble ahead for women, immigrants, and the poor from anyone who followed her precepts. Which are horribly, horribly selfish precepts, and idolatrous, and about as far as one can get from the teachings of Jesus.

A group of Christian faith leaders (Faithful Filibuster) gathers every day Congress is in session across the street from the Capitol  building to read scripture out loud, especially the 2000 verses that tell us how to care for the poor. This is both a protest, and a public education service. Obviously there are a few folks in the government who have clean forgotten that the Bible has any use other than as a weapon with which to bludgeon people.

Those same forgetful folks have also forgotten their Ayn Rand. For it is not, in Atlas Shrugged, the heroic capitalists alone who bring down the government, and with it, the entire culture. It is the giddy, greedy, cruel Wesley Mouches, out for themselves.

You have changed the rules in the House so as to prevent any change in direction. You bark about the Constitution. You would edit out the uncomfortable bits of Jesus' words. Show me how you are not a Mouch.

Listen up, House. You dance yourselves into a tunnel of an ever-shrinking width. It is not the narrow path to heaven. It is a death trap. You will soon lose the ability to turn around. You are worshipping power, and money, and individualism. You are throwing other people's children into the fires of Moloch, in the belief that wealth and particular interests will take care of you if you legislate the sacrifice of others. They will not take care of you. They will use you, and devour you, and fail you, and forget you. They are false idols.

Relent. Repent. Come back into the daylight. Help save our country by saving its people. The Lord, which you claim to proclaim, said to love God, and love our neighbor, to heal the sick, and raise the dead. 

It's time to take Him seriously. It is time to turn around. Come back to your senses. We need you. Come back to us.

 

So simple even a child

By the time I was standing up in school to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the straight-arm salute had been dropped, the hand-over-the-heart had been substituted, and the Pledge already included the words "under God" that were added in 1954. As a child, I did not give it much thought. I thought more about horses, and why the teacher was always so mean, and how much time was left before I could go home and read my book.

But I was also thinking about politics - in a little kid sort of way, of course -  and I had ideas. A platform of sorts, or a manifesto, that was something like this:

1. Sometimes it's the grownup who is wrong, and so the child shouldn't always be the one who has to apologize.
2.No hitting. No making fun. No being mean, and no leaving other people out. Some people can catch a ball, some people can spell big words (I got my first concussion in second grade, courtesy of a baseball. Guess which group I was in). But everybody belongs, even when they are different.
3. Share, and be fair. The person who gets to cut the cake into slices chooses last.
4. Stop worrying so much about the Communists. All we have to do is really be what we say we are, the land of the free, the home of the brave, one nation under God, the best country on earth, and then everyone will want to be like us and to be our friends. Even the Communists.

Simple. Now let's have cookies and milk!

It still seems simple, and I don't see much reason to change it. For grownup, read powerful, any kind of powerful. For child, read deprived of power. For Communists, read the name of the current ideological foe, the perceived, or invented, threat, i.e. [your fear inserted here]. The rest is pretty straightforward, I think. But then, I also think Jesus' words are pretty straightforward. Love. Share. Take care of each other. Rejoice when the lost are found.

And, well, hey, kids! Let's try that. Because I don't think we really have, not as a nation, not lately.

There is one more plank in my platform. Parents who promise a pony for good grades should, when excellent report cards are forthcoming, deliver the pony as promised.

I am Laurel Massé, and I approve this message.

It's the little things

My local PBS station shows Downton Abbey in a most helpful way. Every Sunday, the preceding week's episode runs an hour before the current episode, so I get to see each one twice. This really works for me, because I can watch once for the story, and once for the craft of of how the story is presented (acting, direction, set dressing, costuming, and most of all, the writing). I often notice small details I missed in my first enthralled swoon.

The same thing sometimes happens with books. You may know that I reread Little Women every year in Christmastide. I am too embarassed to tell how many repetitions it took before I noticed all the homeopathic remedies the March family used, or that Marmee was "a born singer".

I miss things all the time in scripture, even though I've read the Bible more than once over the years, and in different translations. I have a strong sense of the arc of the stories, but bits I could swear were not there the last time I looked keep appearing, little word-bomb epiphanies.

(Which is why I don't have a Kindle. With that kind of inattention to detail, when would I notice that They have changed what Jane Austen wrote?)

And hearing the story is so necessary to me that I have taken to solitary reading aloud, coming full circle 'round to the kids to whom I used to feel so superior in elementary school because they moved their lips and whispered when they read. Mrs. Peel stares at me. My comeuppance is here.

It's when I hear it "for the first time" that I notice what I missed.

For instance: on at least three occasions. recorded in the gospels, Jesus is goes away from or ahead of the crowds and of most of the disciples, taking with him only Peter, James, and John. They were the witnesses when he raised Jairus' little girl from the dead, they were the witnesses to his mountaintop conversation with Moses and Elijah, and they were with him in the garden at Gethsemane, where they gained their reputations as the sleeping guys, because when he said "stay awake," they fell asleep, and not just once.

Last Sunday's gospel reading we Luke's account of the Transfiguration, that meeting of Jesus, Moses and Elijah. I noticed two things. First, the same guys who were later going to sleep through Jesus' deepest despair almost missed his transfiguration because they were "heavy with sleep". I had not caught that before. Second, there is a pretty big difference in translation between the RSV (Revised Standard Version) which is what I read at home, and the NRSV (New RSV), which is used in The Episcopal Church and others.

Here is the RSV: And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Here is what I heard in church: Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

Well, then! They got sleepy, and either did or did not fall asleep. I rather think they did. Getting sleepy would not be such a big deal, but falling asleep is worthy of mention. Either way, their heavy-liddedness in the garden was clearly not without precedent. I love Luke for including this detail (even if it didn't happen that way) for what it gives to the story.

Putting belief aside, as a writer I am often taken by the stylistic differences between the four gospels. Matthew is almost professorial, Mark is immediately-suddenly-at-once breathless, Luke inserts little details the way Madeleine L'Engle puts the making of peanut butter sandwiches into her stories of interdimensional travel, and John is swept away by light. In fact, one of the reasons I prefer the RSV at the moment is that these differences seem less smoothed-out in translation.

And translation is always the rub, isn't it? Events translated into memory, memory into words, words into different languages, languages altered by time. Add cultural differences and editorial slant, and wow, it's amazing any two people sitting next to each other on a church pew can agree on anything about scripture. We don't even need non-believers in order to get into arguments and have schisms. I once lived in a small country town that had a First Baptist Church on the main drag, and an Independent Baptist Church up the hill.

It doesn't take a historian to figure out what happened. Some little thing, I'm sure, that hadn't been noticed before.

 

 

 

 

Jesus and the woman

I had a chance to give a talk based on scripture a few days ago. Here is the gist of it, minus the vocal inflections and occasional waving about of hands (not to be confused with laying on of hands).

Jesus and the Woman: John 7:53, 8:1 - 11                  

One more week, and one more day, and the election ads will cease, the polls will trail off, the pundits will... well, they’ll keep spouting, I guess, but the volume level might come down a bit. for as long as 10 minutes. I hope so. I am tired of being yelled at, especially tired of hearing about myself and other women as a specific slice of female torso, with no other body, no mind, no life, and not even a wallet to consider. And most especially tired of being told (mostly by men) what God’s will is for me, my sister, and my nieces.

Telling me about contraception. Abortion. And rape. Legitimate rape, forcible rape, emergency rape, false rape, God-intended rape and easy rape, with never any comment on the responsibility of the man, and, in the case of rape, the rapist (the actual criminal).

“There is nothing new under the sun”, says The Preacher in Ecclesiastes.

When the Pharisees haul a woman over to Jesus - one woman, no man - claiming “she was caught in adultery and Moses said we should stone her, and what do you say?”, something’s a little suspect. a little off.

The gospel writer says the scribes and Pharisees were testing Jesus, and hoping to be able to bring charges against him should he say the wrong thing. “Moses said to stone her. What do you say?” Since under Roman law, they had no power to execute anyone for anything, they must have thought they had him, coming or going. Yes to Moses equals no to Rome, Yes to Rome, no to Moses. Either way, that trap is sprung.

But that’s not the whole of it.  The law of Moses says both parties are to be put to death, adulteress and adulterer. Not only that, it says so twice, once in Leviticus, and once in Deuteronomy. It’s very clear. So why are the Pharisees showing up with only the woman? Was she really caught in adultery? Perhaps she was innocent. Perhaps she was an “easy rape”. They wait for Jesus to say something in response.

But he doesn’t. He doesn't say anything. They didn’t see that coming. He leans over and writes in the dirt. When they fuss at him, he says “Let whichever one of you who is without sin throw the first stone,” and writes again. They obviously didn’t expect that, either, and to give them credit, they knew they did not meet that standard. Or they knew their colleagues knew they didn’t, and one by one, they slip away. With them gone, she has no accusers. There is only Jesus,  only love, only forgiveness; there is only Jesus and the woman.

How many times in the gospels do we see this same picture, Jesus and a woman, speaking as equals? At the well in Samaria, in the nard-scented dining room of a house in Bethany, in the crush of a crowd near Capernaum, outside Lazarus’ tomb, and certainly in the garden on Easter morning - even though there may be men around, they often recede into the background as Jesus speaks directly to women, and women answer him with equal directness in speech and gesture. It is not to his female followers that Jesus has to explain and explain and explain himself. They get it. First to proclaim the gospel - the Samaritan woman at the well, first to see and proclaim the risen Lord - the Magdalene - the women get it. There is no gender inequality when the man in the room is Jesus.  When Jesus is present, there is no inequality of any kind.

If, as Christians, we reach back to Leviticus for our guiding principles, forswearing haircuts, wearing only one type of fabric at a time, insisting that women submit to their fathers, their husbands, because the Bible tells us so.... Well, yes, it does, because before Jesus, that’s how things were. Women did not own property, they were property, and breeding stock. And centuries later, when the Church took some parts of Paul’s letters as the absolute last word on how women should behave - be quiet in church, and do not teach, for instance - women again had to submit, submit, submit.

But that’s not the only thing Paul said.  In his letter to community at Galatia, he wrote:

... for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.  As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female [social structure]; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:26-28).

Throughout Jesus’ brief and intense three-year ministry, and for a while after the resurrection, the poor, the sick, the grieving, and yes, the women, were seen, and heard, and honored, and equal, just as we were in the first chapter of Genesis, in the Garden, made in God’s image.

Nowadays, when people talk about “biblical womanhood”, that’s the part they leave out. When I hear them use the words “biblical womanhood”, I wonder why they omit the good news of the gospel? Who edited out all the red words?  Some very vocal Christians seem to believe and proclaim a lot of wacky things about women, things that include some very bad science, and none of the words and actions of Jesus. You’d think Jesus never lived.

But he did, oh yes, he did. And he does. And in him we are one, and we are free.

Amen. Alleluia.

Skandalon

My title is a Greek word that turns up fairly often - 44 times - in New Testament. As you can guess, it is the source of the words scandal and scandalize, and it means stumbling block, something one trips over, something that causes one to fall. These things happen in life, but no one should be placing the stones so as to cause a fall, as Jesus said. "Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!" (Matthew 18:7). Paul wrote, in his letter to the Romans, "Let us therefore no longer pass judgment on one another, but resolve instead never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of another... Let us then pursue what makes for peace and mutual edification." (Romans 14:13,19)

When two women from the Russian punk band Pussy Riot were tried and sentenced for an activist action in a church (or committing sacrilege in a church, depending on one's point of view), I became involved in an online discussion led by a member of a Christian religious order. I felt that person's position against the women of the band, even in light of the pain and anger the action had caused, was extremely harsh, and I posted a comment questioning that stance. We back and forthed a little bit, chapter-and-versing, but in the end, I was smacked down by Thomas Aquinas. Oof! Serves me right, perhaps, for messing with [a person of unnamed gender who is a member of an unnamed religious order of an unnamed denomination].

About a month has passed, and now a conflagration triggered by insults to the founder of Islam and his followers has caused riots, and killed our ambassador to Libya, along with several members of the embassy staff. These deaths are not justifiable in any way. They are heartbreaking. Information currently suggests that the protests were used by outside agents to cover the murders of the ambassador and embassy personnel. I am trying to separate the killings done by a few from the anger displayed by so many, across several countries.

If Pussy Riot's action was sacrilegious, it seems to me that the film Innocence of Muslims is, too. If we are to accept that churchgoers were hurt and scandalized when the punk band disrupted the sacred service, how can we not see that devout Muslims would be outraged by this film?

Someone - I think it may have been Fran Lebowitz - once wrote, "Your freedom to wear a lime-green polyester pantsuit ends where it meets my eye." There are limits, even for we Americans. I have heard people say that though the film is regrettable, we have freedom of speech. Yes, we do. Here. If we stay within our own borders. But elsewhere, where American law does not apply, we have to abide by the laws and customs of the country we are in. Even at home, we have to be prepared to accept the consequences of that free speech. In Muslim cultures, one does not make a picture of or a joke about the Prophet. I am sorry to have to say this, but really, if a five-year old can figure out that it's unwise to pull the kitty's tail, can't alleged adults predict that riots and violence will be the result of such "free speech"? That may someday change, but we are not the ones to force that change.

There is another definition of skandalon: the movable stick that triggers a trap, the stick that has to be carefully and deliberately set in order for the trap to function.

Someone made a movie defaming the prophet Muhammed. I have read it was intended to be a Christian evangelization tool. Most people smart enough to make a movie are probably too smart to have made such a colossal misjudgement, but it didn't matter much, because only about ten people ever saw the film prior to now. So who really decided it would be a good idea to release such a film, and to post a trailer on YouTube at this particular time? And who funded it? $5,000,000 went into that film. Instead of criticizing the quality of the production, why are we not asking who put up the money? Because it's not that easy to find that kind of money. If five million dollars grew on every tree, I would have planted an orchard, and be having a very different life right now.

Most Christians agree that it is, at the very least, bad manners to show blatant disrespect to Jesus Christ. Responses vary from person to person. Grief. Rage. A shrug. A prayer. But there is always a reaction. So what, then, makes it OK to similarly disrespect Muhammed?

Nothing. It is not OK. And we misrepresent the God of love we profess to follow when we allow it to happen in His name.

I don't know what the religious I conversed with last month might say about what happened and is happening in Libya, Tunisia, Sudan. And Aquinas? I have not studied his work much, so I don't know that, either. But I do know this: three months before his death, Aquinas, while serving at Mass, had a mystical experience that led him to say, "All that I have written seems like straw compared to what has been revealed to me."

 

Baby, who do you love?

Now that presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has selected Paul Ryan as his running mate, people are talking more intensely about the religious aspects of the race. We are starting to hear not-Christian/ too-Christian accusations, and they are being met with a lot of "it's nobody's business", which, to a certain extent, is true. It is very difficult to live an always-conscious life of faith. Everyone who is trying to do it is stumbles, falls, and gets back up again on a daily basis. Nobody gets it right all the time. And yet, I believe there is good reason to consider Mr. Ryan's religion when weighing his merits or lack thereof (he is Catholic); he is the one who brings it into the conversation, as he has also done with his admiration of Ayn Rand's philosophy.

As I understand it, Catholic teaching stresses the importance of caring for the sick, the poor, tthe hungry, he immigrant, the prisoner, the oppressed, and the aged as a primary way one expresses one's love of God. Ayn Rand's philosophy says that the poor are poor by their own doing, and do not deserve assistance or care, that we are all on our own, and that the successful business person has more intrinsic value that the less successful one. Mr. Ryan is guided by Rand, yet claims his religion, too. Can one follow both these ways of thinking and being? Jesus said no: "No one can serve two masters... you cannot serve God and wealth". And so did Rand: "Capitalism and altruism are incompatible; they are philosophical opposites; they cannot co-exist in the same man or in the same society". Jesus said "Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself." Ayn Rand wrote, "This God, this one word: I."

I picture Mr. Ryan, with The Bible in one hand and Atlas Shrugged in the other, as a matter/anti-matter event about to happen.

Which is his deeper allegiance? I would say, discerning from his recent statements, his political history, and the budget that bears his name, that he is more Randian in every issue except abortion (which she supported). So, it matters to me that he professes to be Catholic while seeming to not honor most of the tenets of the faith. That dissonance is important.

Same with Mr. Romney. I don't care that he is a Mormon. But, since he has brought it into the discussion, is he a good Mormon? Mormons place a very high value on community and on compassionate service. Does he personally serve in the network of mutual support and assistance that is a defining feature of that church, and that helps the community to prosper? Or does he simply have his accountant send a check? Do his proposals square with what he professes to believe, not one day, but every day?

Asking this kind of question does not constitute faith-bashing. It is looking for a standard upheld, a target at least aimed at, for more rather than less harmony between words and actions. Yes, one's religion is no one else's business. But if it's offered up as a reason one is the the better candidate for high office, it merits investigation. Ya gotta walk it like ya talk it, especially when you decide to walk in front of cameras, and talk into the microphone.