Yee Haw: Canadian diocese to begin same-sex blessings

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The need for a mentor

The other day, I was in Paris buying liturgical gear for H. He loves the stuff and it makes for great pressents. I was there happily spending an hour or so deciding which stole and thuribles I was going to get. The upstairs level part of the shop is mostly for the general public (pictures, candles and the like) while the downstairs level has got all the priestly stuff. The Italian-speaking nuns were very friendly during that time, but when I went back upstairs to get some incense, another nun appeared, who was just as friendly as the other, but seemed pretty clever on top of it all, and one of those instant judge of character.

Now it became clear that my presence in there, on my own, picking stoles as if they were flower arrangements, chatting away with the attendent nuns about how that one was too flowery and that one was too sober and that one looked cheap and that one was too modern, was a bit unusual. That fact sunk in further when a cyclist walked in and immediately adopted an overly deferential tone to ask one of the nuns for directions. Oh God, I thought, those Parisian catholics are all dead solemn. I look like an elephant in a china store. Or like a carefree young woman in a liturgical shop, indeed.

I could tell the nun from upstairs was quite curious to engage me. "You bought a lot of things today" she finally tried. Uh... oh... I'm totally busted buying stuff for my schismatic boyfriend, let's make a quick exit, I thought. "Yes" I said, sheepishly, and exit I did, fast. It was nothing. But a couple of days later I found myself longing for something like her seemingly wise presence.

I remembered my first ventures into idealistic do-gooding. Joining all the humanitarian societies on campus, and oscillating between the all-night phone counselling, twice weekly afternoons at the homeless shelter, running the Amnesty International campus branch and going to all the political talks, lying on a bed for hours with a newly-diagnosed HIV-positive friend talking and listening to The Piano, writing to a Californian death Row inmate while, on top of it all, my parents were getting a divorce. I don't think I was bad at any of it... but eventually I crashed, and abruptly gave almost all of it up (fortunately, as I've written elsewhere, the death row inmate was writing to many people at the same time, as for my friend, we're still friends of course and he's one of the best, most promising, prize-winning young scientists in the UK).

I remember my recently submitted doctoral thesis, in which I'd been longing for mentoring and got almost none. Noncommittal comments yes. Mean looks for missed deadlines yes. Drunken nights at the pub yes. But mentoring, no.

As I approach my thirties, I find myself chatting to my priestly boyfriend and he's got no mentor either. Sure, I mean, there are people that we call our mentors because it sounds good, on formal acknowledgements and the like. We're doing fine for thirty-year olds. I mean, he's an awesome listener and a very good priest. I've acquired a gentle touch which people around me seem to like. But we're young. There is so much wisdom we don't have.

I'm a bit ashamed to say, but the verses I love most in the Bible are Proverbs 8: 32-36, which refer to wisdom:

"And now, O sons, listen to me: blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death."

Definitely not the most famous or beautiful verses around, but I just love them. In very vain terms, one of the things that pleased me most ever was to see one of my online comments referred to as the wisest thing said on a particular topic. That was three years ago and I'm still massively pleased. But now I'm getting rambly. I always want more wisdom than I've got and I wish I had a mentor. Until I find one, maybe I'll read pastoral letters. But I would love a mentor who loved me.

Friendly young (female) volunteers

Having recently submitted my doctoral thesis for examination (not passed... indeed passing might be delayed by another year or two given the number of typos and approximative statements in the damn thing), I find myself with too much time on my hand, which is a NICE feeling after all this madness.

So I caught up with one of my quaker friends who works with mostly Kurdish and African asylum seekers in a major town nearby, saying I'd love to spend some time helping out while I'm exploring my options. The first thing she said was: I'm worried about a friendly young woman like you. See... many of the asylum seekers are single men, they are very likely to want to go out with you. That would be the answer to everything: the desire to get started in life, the end of crippling loneliness, permission to remain in the EU. Also, you've never lived in a Muslim country, you wouldn't understand the culture, you could really hurt them through your cultural attitudes. In short, you're definitley not my favourite type of volunteer but think about it. Then if you still want to, you can give it a go.

I was glad that someone had pinpointed this phenomenon, which I had observed many times over, and which totally destroyed many of my attempts to reach out towards vulnerable young men, and indeed made the whole situation far worse than if I hadn't initiated any contacts at all. I was also pleased that she didn't dimiss me out of hand. She just said: you're the wrong demographics, I'd rather have retired old ladies, but sure, if you want to be there next Wednesday, that would be great.

Roman Catholic Ecumenism?

I never went through RCIA, because I feel into it when I was little (as Obelix would have it). But browsing through the catechists' manual, the following fact jumped out of the page. The fisrt of the suggested hymn on the lesson relating to faith is... A Mighty Fortress is Our God. And for some reason that means a hell of a lot to me.

Book Review: Le Roi des Derniers Jours by Barret and Gurgand

My step brother brought me a case of books from a library which was closing down next to where he lives. Most of the books are very high-brow, prize-winning literary oeuvres, all of them practically new. Either the librarian was a bit ambitious for a small Alsacian town, or else my step brother thinks very highly of my literary ability and pre-selected all the ones that sounded clever enough, leaving the rest behind.

That's how I came to read Le Roi des Derniers Jours and it was absolutely impossible to put down. I'd been wanting to learn about Anabaptism for a while, because I'd gathered here and there that my own sympathies often lie with it. Le Roi des Derniers Jours is a mix of fragments of Anabaptist theology and a war story that can compete with Thucidides' Pelopponesian war.

It all starts pretty good: the Anabatist preachers take Luther's reformation a bit further and insist on a new form of worship and communal life, redistributing wealth and so on. They're pretty fired up and convince enough people that they eventually form a majority in the city of Munster, in which they try to re-create the apostolic way of life.

This "dangerous heresy" is opposed by the local Roman Catholic bishop who fears that it might spread further and who is prepared to everything to contain it.

For their part, the Anabaptists are so convinced that their doctrine is right that they are prepared to recant if anyone can convince them that they are wrong theologically, but would rather die than give it up because of sheer cowardice.

Munster becomes assieged. Inside; they're busy re-creating the new Jerusalem. Not all of it is rosy: some of their ideas are pretty fucked-up and they're pretty tough on sin. Still on the whole, they sound genuine. Outside, the bishop just wants to bring them back to the Roman fold.

It all goes very very wrong. Inside Munster, the beautiful ideals are increasingly laced with despotism in a completely confusing way (one minute you're completely taken by the beautifully equalitarian sermons, the next you think they're a bunch of self-aggrandizing fucked-up loonies).

Also, the anabaptists are pretty certain that God Godself will intervene to save them, turning stones into bread and that kind of jazz, which -suprise- does not happen.

Finally, assieged Munster is so destitute that a lot of the Anabaptists are leaving the city. At first this was not permitted, and the leaders tried their hardest to keep their sisters and brothers from giving up the faith, but towards the end they can' t cope with this weak contingent, and let them go if they choose too.

This means that starving crowds are arriving into the Roman bishop's army, and he doesn't know what to do with them, because the leavers might still be secretely sympathetic to Munster and would spread "the heresy" the minute they entered new towns. But he can't quite kill starving women and children. So he sends the leavers back into already destitute Munster, who is less than enthusiastic about having the traitors back.

But because everybody in the region knows that Munster is starving, some knights desert the bishops' ranks beacuse they think he's being inhumane, thereby remaining within the Roman fold but disobeying a bishop. On the ground some of the bishop's soldiers take the leavers in anyway, or enable them to go through the ranks unhindered.

What makes this book particularly fascinating is that nearly ALL of these folks are inspired by the message of Christ, at least as they understand it. The Anabaptists for sure... Then the bishop who actually tries his best to get all the Munster folks into confessionals and back into the Roman church, the knights who desert or undermine the bishop because they think he's being cruel, the soldiers on the ground, and all the captured Anabaptists who die as martyrs for their faith.

This book really got my head spinning. I almost feel like doing a Ph.D. in reformation studies (umm... okay, maybe not a Ph.D. you'd think I'd learned my lesson by now). It got me thinking about God, God's way with the world, idealism, life in community, Catholicism, the spirit of the reformation and the contribution anabaptism like nothing else had done before. Definitely worth a read.

The haunting passages are back...

I haven't been blogging for a while because I'm not at home and I don't have regular access to the internet. But I've got lots to blog about, when I get round to it, including (1) a strange half-awake dream, (2) a realisation that a friend deeply needed the experirence of wholseomeness and that I'd been focusing way too much on the duty side of things, and (3) a colleague of H. who explained his preaching routine to me and who deliberately toned down the exhortations because he was wearing out his parish (basically he spends one week teaching, two weeks reflecting on real life issues, and one week exhoruitng the parish to do something with their faith).

But anyways... there I go opening the catechism of the catholic church at a random page. Art 909 pretty much sprang out:

"Moreover, by uniting their forces let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin, that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favouring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value."

Why should the rats have all the fun?

I'm a bit evangelistic about... Regena Thomashauer (whose message I adapt as I go because diamonds are not my best friends). Seriously... cheesy or not, that woman is inspired. So let me quote from her last newsletter:

"I recently read about this fascinating study that was conducted around 20 years ago called Rat Park. The researcher surmised that most of the studies done on addictions were incomplete because they didn't take into account the quality of the lifestyles the rats were living. So he had one group of rats in their small isolated cages, while he built a rat nirvana, dubbed "Rat Park," for the other rats. It was spacious; it had many common areas, places to play, mate and have fun. Rat boyfriends, Rat girlfriends, Rat childcare, Rat exercise, Rat catered meals, Rat cheerleading, and Rat support. We are talking ideal rat conditions. Think Canyon Rat Ranch, 24/7. Both sets of rats were given access to both plain tap water and water laced with morphine. What do you think happened?

Yup. The rats in isolated cages became hooked on the morphine. Chose it almost every time.The rats in Rat Park? Went for the tap water. That's right. Even when they laced the morphine water with sugar to make it sweet (and let me tell you-rats love sweet stuff!) they went for it once in a while, but for the most part they drank the plain tap water.

But how does this apply to us as women, Mama? Think about it. Many of us have put ourselves in our very own isolated cages. Having been raised to "do it ourselves." Whether it's earning our own money or raising our children alone, or moving to a new city without knowing anybody, or getting into a routine of working long hours and going home so exhausted we don't want to pick up the phone or connect with anyone. Well, my loves, maybe we CAN do it alone, but it's not really the way a woman is designed.

Like our little rat friends, we thrive in community. Actually, we thrive in community when it is loving, supportive, and uplifting. If you're lucky enough to have that in your life, congratulations. It's certainly not the norm. I had a taste of it in college, living with my girlfriends, always together, part of each other's everyday lives, every decision, every celebration, every challenge. And after graduation? Isolation. And so began my pursuit of creating a human woman nirvana in this crazy day, and this crazy age. I mean, c'mon. What option did I have? We are designed for pleasure. If we aren't living a fulfilled life, we're gonna get our pleasure somehow. Unfortunately, overeating, overspending, antidepressants, and alcohol are poor substitutes for what we truly are searching for: careers we are passionate about, bodies we love and appreciate, a legendary love affair, time to create, a thriving bank account, a healthy, hot sensual life, and connection with our children [or add your own drem]. So, what's the solution? Community. And Pleasure."