Four more years

I guess that I am posting on this blog only once a year...Yikes...

I'm thinking back 40 years ago.  I was a young idealistic girl who believed in justice and peace.  I had to memorize the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.  I believed that All people were created equal, it didn't occur to me that it said "all men", and really meant all white land owners.  I believed that they were talking about all people.

I was raised by a woman who lived in the midst of the Civil Rights Movement, who divorced her alcoholic husband in the very early 60's. She was shunned by the Catholic Church, the church and faith that she loved that meant everything to her.  She was left to raise two children alone, without child support earning minimum wage.  She was denied the Sacraments of her church so was denied God support.  I remember feeling less than because I didn't have a father.  Life was chaotic at best I won't even say what it was at its worse...But I believed in justice and in freedom.

So 40 years ago I voted in my first election, the voting age had just been lowered to 18.  Not only did I vote but I campaigned for George McGovern.  He was the peoples candidate, I did believe that we could get Nixon out of office because he was a crook and didn't everyone see that?  I went door to door in my mothers neighborhood, a trailer park in a small town in Oregon.   Three years later I watched the Watergate hearings on TV.  I guess they didn't see it.  And I thought how can they not see that this man is egotistical and power hungry...  compared to our current republican nominee he was stable and humble....

I was able to escape the trailer park.  I am an RN I live in a lovely home in Northern California and have a wonderful daughter and husband.  I am blessed beyond what I could have imagined 40 years ago.

Four years ago I watched as Obama was nominated.  He wasn't my first choice, I am a Kucinich Democrat.  I wanted a populist president not another corporate puppet.  But I voted for him and while I haven't always been thrilled with his compromising with the republicans.  I have wished, as the Governor of Ma. said that the "party would grow a backbone", I see how much has been accomplished in this time, and how important it is that we reelect President Obama.  There is no viable alternative, and I believe that the man does care.

My daughter is voting this year in her first presidential election...She is in college, it takes more than 4 years to finish because of budget cuts.  She works at a minimum wage job and dreams of a future away from home.  

I have hope that she will be able to move into her dream just as I did, tonight Obama said; "Ours is a future filled with hope"  I am reminded of a scripture from Jeremiah;  "For surely I know the plans I have for you,  plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."

I am also reminded of a scripture which I consider my "life scripture" the words that I try to live by; "and what does God require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?"  I saw that on the wall of The First Unitarian Church of San Francisco many years ago and was stunned that something like that was in the bible.  My experience with Christians had been intolerance bordering on evil...I am now a follower of Christ although I am sure many would disagree.

Sorry about the rant, just sick of the hatred coming from the mouths of those who claim to love God.

Namaste
Renee

Off the Beaten Path

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
                -Steve Jobs

I was thinking about Steve Jobs this morning as I was logging onto my computer at work and wishing it was a Mac.  I never met the man but I have been teary eyed since I heard about his death this afternoon.  When I got home and turned on my MacBook, there was his face on my home page which is still the default apple page.

When I reflect on the quote above I am reminded of how long I was trapped by dogma, as a pastor I tried living with the results of other people's thinking.  I convinced others to live the same way...trapped in a box that had steel walls.  What I heard in my heart was freedom, love, peace, kindness, tolerance, and acceptance, what I saw was the opposite  and I let those voices drown out the truth that was in my heart, what I intuitively knew was the path I was supposed to be on.  

I found that path in New Monasticism.  It is off the beaten path, so to speak, but it is the path I am traveling.   It is leading me allowing me to become who I truly want to be and Steve was right, everything else is secondary.

Rest in  Peace Steve, you will not be forgotten.

Strike!

What does God want us to do? 

It's quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor,
 be compassionate and loyal in your love,
And don't take yourself too seriously—
 take God seriously.  Micah 6:8 The Message

When I think about the strike tomorrow and start resenting that I have to drive an hour to work just to work an hour and then go walk a picket line, I think of the verse from Micah and I know that if I am to live my faith I have to go out, and I can’t succumb to the urge to condemn those who don’t.  

I’m what some call a “Red Diaper Baby”, my mom was a socialist and a militant union supporter, even though she wasn’t able to bring the union to her job. I learned about unions and the civil rights movement before I was in school.  I told my 20 year old daughter that story for the millionth time when I told her that I told my manager that if I didn’t go out my mother would haunt me...her response..  “I know remember you wouldn’t let me shop at the huge Forever 21 in Seattle because they were picketing for “unfair labor practices”  

The RNs who work for Kaiser, Northern California are going on strike in sympathy for those represented by NUHW.  The Social Workers and Optical workers are facing cuts to their health care benefits and cuts to their pensions while senior executives, who have nothing to do with patient care make over a million a year and each have 8 yes EIGHT pension plans...and they want to cut the benefits of 4,000... Really?  (There is a back story to this, a feud between SEIU and NUHW and a judgement against kaiser by the board of labor relations.  I don’t know enough about it to address it here, there is a “labor management partnership” that is well Sleeping with the Enemy...)

I’m a Kaiser Nurse so I’m very familiar with our issues but the Sutter nurses and the nurses at Children’s Hospital Oakland are striking as well.  They are addressing patient care issues.  The Sutter nurses are being asked to give up sick days...WTF... with the economy the way it is many nurses are the only wage earners in their families so I guess they are expected to go to work sick and take care of patients who have suppressed immune systems.  Who is responsible when someone dies because a nurse comes to work sick?  I couldn’t live with myself ... the Sutter RNs are being locked out for 5 days if they strike... They are heros!  I’m just losing one shift I have nothing to complain about or be resentful about

So I commented on a post by a woman who is flying in to cross the picket line.  She wrote something like “LMAO I’m making big bucks while you are making nothing”  I told her she is making way less as a scab then we make every day and that the company that hired her is making all the money.  If she had a union she would make the money, have the benefits and have the support of her sisters and brothers..

I am grateful for my union brothers and sisters, for NUHW, for CNA for the Operating Engineers who are honoring the picket line and for the SEIU members who are brave enough to honor the strike.

For me it is a moral issue...I’ll be in Vallejo tomorrow morning. I’ll have my red shirt on (with great accessories of course)

Oh and we are collecting food for the local food banks...

“for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’

So between my socialist mother and my christian faith is there really a choice here and can I really whine about it?

Love to you all

Call

I love the song White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane and always wanted to use the line "A hooka smoking caterpillar had given me the call"  in a story talking about my "call"  so here it is.

Alice in Wonderland was my favorite book these lines always haunted me:
Caterpillar: “Who are you???”
Alice: “I hardly know sir, just at present, I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”

The question posed by the Caterpillar intrigues me, even as a child I would ask myself that question. As I grew older I would play with the question accenting different words; WHO are you?, who ARE you?, or who are YOU?. The question wafts around me like the smoke coming from his pipe. My answer is always the same. It is the same answer that Alice gave. Well maybe a little different; “I knew who I was last year (week month) but I think I must have changed several times since then”

As a young girl I saw myself dressed in white robes and lying prostrate on a floor. It was like a brief snapshot in my head. If you read week one you know that I didn’t have much use for God. I thought he kind of sucked…. But I was drawn to movies and books about the saints. I thought I was bonkers because in that day women were NOT priests. In these visions/pictures I did not have a head covering so I knew I wasn’t a nun.

When I was 19 I went to nursing school. It wasn’t because I wanted to be a nurse it was all about job security. Growing up poor left an indelible mark on me and even 37 years ago I knew that nursing was a good choice. I remember my first patient as a nurses aid, a middle aged man with lung cancer. He used to push his IV pole in the hall and I would ride on it. But he became weaker and one day the “head nurse” told someone to find me. She grabbed my hand and quickly led me down the hall to be with him when he died. She was a crusty “old” army nurse about 35; I was 19 alone in San Francisco. Together we sat with the man as he died. It was at that moment I realized that I had compassion…I had always been told that I was selfish. That lie was shattered in an instant.

Flash forward 20 years and I am enrolled in an evangelical/charismatic, inner city, and multi ethnic bible college. I “got saved” 10 years earlier and wanted to follow the call I saw in my head when I was a child. I went to a non denominational church, where “women are not allowed to teach men” But I taught a bible study for men and women, the pastor liked me and when people complained he told them I was “facilitating” the group. We later became great friends and spent many hours discussing theology…

I worked part time as an associate pastor in an Assembly of God church, while in the MTh. program. It was fun really…I got to teach about Grace. Many, even though they had been Christians all of their lives, had never heard a message on Grace. I was there for 5 years, but I never really believed the theology and could not buy into the political agenda of the religious right. I knew it was time to go but didn’t want to leave the people behind. One day a women who I had gone to school with walked in and I heard clear as a bell “look up for your redemption draweth nigh”. I left… it was time.

In the meantime I hooked up with a “neo-monastic” group who’s leaders I was familiar with from the charismatic renewal movement of the mid 1990’s. We discovered or rediscovered the sacraments. Our Abbot and Abbess were ordained as priests in an Indy Anglican movement, they were later consecrated as bishops by and Indy Catholic Bishop , and Indy Anglican, and an Indy orthodox woman Bishop…After 3 years of classes and training I was ordained as a Priest, on the feast day of St. George, the Dragon slayer.

As a new monastic, or as our Bishop calls us “secular monastic”, group we have been on a journey together. Nothing is static, I started a home church but after a year that dwindled so I started attending an Episcopal Church. I was later kicked out five years later, the priest in charge said it was because I didn’t respect her authority. I served on the vestry was a Eucharistic minister, lay preacher etc… she was nuts and everyone who disagreed with her it was ”off with their heads”

Now I attend a church in another diocese. I love it and feel loved and accepted. I don’t have any titles, I am a Eucharistic minister but don’t serve on any boards or committees. I talk about healing, theology, Barbie Dolls, and religious crime novels with the Rector. I’m healing from the last experience. It is good…

So I’m still a Registered Nurse, I work in telephone triage and love it. People at work sometimes want to talk to me about spiritual things so I listen and when necessary tell my story or some of it…. Yes I am ordained and can do all of the “stuff” but I am not called to be a Rector or associate pastor. I am called to be me at least for today.

I have a frame around my license plate that says “Following the Wild Goose wherever She may lead” The ancient Celts called the Holy Spirit the Wild Goose… That is my call… It is ever changing… I don’t know if you’ve noticed but geese are loud…very difficult to ignore.

Who Am I? I am compassionate and worthy of God’s love. I am the mother of an amazing daughter who is in her second year of college; she is a good and strong young woman. She has qualities and strengths that I thought I didn’t have… I guess I was wrong because she got them from someone…

I wrote this for a class last year.  Some things have changed others haven't.  I'm happy being....

More

I’ve been thinking about all the judgment day hype.  I’ve seen the billboards, heard it mentioned on progressive talk radio, seen blog postings about it and even added to a post rapture song list.

I want to live every day as if it is my last, I want to walk in the light of God.  This coming Sunday the Epistle reading is from 1 Peter 2, and while some could see this from the perspective of judgment, I don’t.  I see in this reading grace.  As followers of Christ we are called love, to show mercy and to walk in that marvelous light.

May 21st

Ground control to major Tom

Ground control to major Tom

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

(Ten) Ground control (Nine) to major Tom (Eight)

(Seven, six) Commencing countdown (Five), engines on (Four)

(Three, two) Check ignition (One) and may gods (Blastoff) love be with you

Last week I was driving in the Sacramento area and saw signs warning people that May 21st is judgment day “the bible guarantees it”  I took some pictures to post on Facebook but they didn’t come out.  I’m glad they didn’t.
Where to start, what to say... I come to this from a unique perspective of one who was and still is close to many people who believe in “The Rapture”  I never did ascribe to rapture theology yet I read with horrified fascination several of the Left Behind books.  About180 years ago a young girl had a vision of Jesus returning twice, a preacher grabbed that idea and ran with it.  The word rapture doesn't appear in the bible. I could write a thesis on the topic but I won’t.

It is so easy to mock the people who believe that the rapture will occur on May 21st at 6pm.  It isn’t right but it is easy.  In 1988 there was a booklet printed called 88 reasons the world will end in 88. I remember reading in the SF Chronicle an article about a church not far from where I live that taught  Jesus was returning that year in September and people really believed it.  Many quit their jobs, maxed out their credit cards and (skip to the next paragraph my animal loving friends).... euthanized their pets.  No animals in heaven.

I can’t help but think about the children who weren’t quite sure if they were saved.  Can you imagine what they must have been feeling?  Were they really saved?  Were they going to be raptured, were their parents going to be raptured?  Anyone who has every gone to a pentecostal or baptist church remembers altar calls.  Every week the same people would come forward to be “saved”.  Back in the mid 1990’s popular evangelist said “people go to hell with ordination papers on their walls”  If that isn’t enough to make a scared kid question their salvation then I don’t know what is. So what about the kids.  Jesus is coming to get us, they are told by the parents who are supposed to be caring for them.  Jesus didn’t come and now there is no house, no money to pay the bills, and the beloved family yellow lab is dead.  What the F@#k?  What about today?  What about those children?  What about the adults who have quit their jobs and given all of their savings to these charlatans...These preachers speak for God, we can’t question them or can we?  Each one of us can read the bible and think for ourselves.

I can’t find anywhere in the bible, Jesus saying that it is all about us versus them.  I can’t find where he advocates violence.  Yeah we can cherry pick and  quote Matthew 10:34 out of context.  Using one or two verses in the midst of forgiveness, love, and acceptance doesn’t make sense. 

So I need to find Christ in the people who teach this stuff.  I don’t need to make them agree with me.  I know that Christ loves me and loves everyone (no exceptions).  I know that judgement day isn’t May 21.

When we pray the prayer that Jesus taught we pray for God’s realm to come on earth as in heaven we aren’t praying to escape the world or that Jesus will come back in combat gear and kill everyone we disagree with and destroy the world, we are praying that God’s reign will come to the earth.  So what do we do?  We love, we serve and we forgive.  We pray for people even if we don’t agree with them.

This is major Tom to ground control, I'm stepping through the door

And I'm floating in a most peculiar way

And the stars look very different today

Here am I floatin' 'round my tin can far above the world

Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do

Joke Sunday

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength. Proverbs 17:22 NLT

I love laughter.  I love how I feel when I laugh or when others laugh.  I love how laughter transforms peoples faces contorts their bodies and relaxes them.  Even the most uptight person is relaxed when they laugh.  Laughter is contagious.  Look at all of those laughing babies on You Tube, who can watch one of those videos without laughing?  This Blog was originally called “Laughter and Light”. 

Today, the first Sunday in May, a group called Laughter Yoga International promotes World Laughter Day; World Peace through Laughter today.  This year the Sunday after Easter happened to fall on the first Sunday in May.  In the early years of the Christian Church some celebrated this day as Holy Humor Sunday or Bright Sunday.  Today at Saint Francis of Assisi we had Holy Humor (or joke) Sunday.  Joke Sunday is beautiful mixture of the sacred and the absurd, and sooo me.

I laugh in church anyway and I’m sure some would think me irreverent, but oh well.  I mean sometimes things are just funny and a chuckle is appropriate. 

What was my point?  Oh yeah..laughter is healing, it reduces stress, it increases blood flow.  One study shows that it burns calories another that laughter boosts the  immune system.  It helps breathing and expands the lungs.  The bottom line is laughter makes me feel better. “mindful laughing”?  Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry and that makes me feel better.  So Laugh, Smile, Dance......








Did you hear the one about the Priest, the Rabbi and the Minister?