Visit our new website!

Please click the link to visit our new home, revgalblogpals.org.

You will find the same great content and more!

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Late Night Preachers, Looking for the Party?

Come to the party at our new site, RevGalBlogPals.org!
Same great times, same late nights.

RevGalBlogPals Has a New Home on the Web!

RevGalBlogPals has a new home on the web:

RevGalBlogPals.org

You'll find old-fashioned favorites like the 11th Hour Preacher Party, Tuesday Lectionary Leanings, Ask the Matriarch, daily prayers and the Friday Five at our new home. You'll also find new features such as Narrative Lectionary, WitsEndsDays and The Pastoral is Political. Come and see! And let us know what you think of our new digs by leaving a comment at the new blog.

Be sure to update your feed readers and blogrolls. Thanks!

RevGalBlogPals has moved!

Looking for Ask the Matriarch? RevGalBlogPals has a new home on the web:

RevGalBlogPals.org

You'll find old-fashioned favorites like the 11th Hour Preacher Party, Tuesday Lectionary Leanings, Ask the Matriarch, daily prayers and the Friday Five at our new home. You'll also find new features such as Narrative Lectionary, WitsEndsDays and The Pastoral is Political. Come and see! And let us know what you think of our new digs by leaving a comment at the new blog.

Be sure to update your feed readers and blogrolls. Thanks!

The Matriarchs Have Moved

Looking for Ask the Matriarch? RevGalBlogPals has a new home on the web:

RevGalBlogPals.org

You'll find old-fashioned favorites like the 11th Hour Preacher Party, Tuesday Lectionary Leanings, Ask the Matriarch, daily prayers and the Friday Five at our new home. You'll also find new features such as Narrative Lectionary and The Pastoral is Political. Come and see! And let us know what you think of our new digs by leaving a comment at the new blog.

Be sure to update your feed readers and blogrolls. Thanks!

Are you looking for RevGalBlogPals?

RevGalBlogPals has a new home on the web:

RevGalBlogPals.org

You'll find old-fashioned favorites like the 11th Hour Preacher Party, Tuesday Lectionary Leanings, Ask the Matriarch, daily prayers and the Friday Five at our new home. You'll also find new features such as Narrative Lectionary and The Pastoral is Political. Come and see! And let us know what you think of our new digs by leaving a comment at the new blog.

Be sure to update your feed readers and blogrolls. Thanks!

Tuesday Lectionary Leanings and Tuesday Prayer: Now at a New Location

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All our features have moved, and we have added new ones, too! Be sure to change your blog links and feed readers.

Moving Monday: Our New Home

Looking for the Monday Meet n' Greet? 

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Sunday Prayer: Our New Home

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11th Hour Preacher Party: Our New Home

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Friday Prayer: What Name Shall I Call You?

O transcendant, almighty God,
What words can sing your praises?
No tongue can describe you.
No mind can probe your mystery.
Yet all speech springs from you,
And all thought stems from you.
All creation proclaims you,
All creatures revere you.
Every gust of wind breathes a prayer to you,
Every rustling tree sings a hymn to you.
All things are upheld by you.
And they move according to your harmonious design.
The whole world longs for you,
And all people desire you.
Yet you have set yourself apart,
You are far beyond our grasp.
You are the purpose of all that exists,
But you do not let us understand you.
Lord, I want to speak to you.
By what name shall I call you?


- Gregory of Nazianzus

Friday Five: First Times

Ah, I have a tear in my eye...this is the last post I will make at this blog location, because the RevGals blog will be moving to its new location TOMORROW! Come right back here to this spot for the Preacher Party and you'll find a link for the redirect. 

And for today, here's a Friday Five looking at the other end of things: Firsts. With so many folks starting school, college, seminary, etc. I've been thinking of a lot of other firsts in my life.  Share with us, if you will:

1. Your first "place" - whether it was an apartment, dorm room, or home with a new spouse, the first place where you really felt like a grown-up:
2. Your first time away from home. Construe this any way you want. College? Girl Scout Camp? Study Abroad?
3. Your first job in your field of endeavor (so, not babysitting, unless you are A Professional Babysitter today):
4. Your first time hosting. Again, construed broadly, this could be a dinner for the in-laws, your first time to have guests for a holiday meal, etc.
5. Your first love.That can be a person or something else!!

Ask the Matriarch - Queueless

Dear Readers,
This time next week you will find RevGalBlogPals at a new address, to be announced Saturday. We will have a special Ask the Matriarch next Thursday with an all-star panel of published RevGals.
For this week, our question queue is empty. If you have a question for our panel of Matriarchs - all clergywomen with more than ten years experience in ordained ministry - please send it to askthematriarch@gmail.com or leave it here in the comments.
Faithfully,
Martha

Thursday Prayer

You keep us loving.
You, the God whose name is love,
want us to be like you--
to love the loveless and the unlovely and the unlovable;
and most difficult of all, to love ourselves.
So thank you. . . for the loving time.

And in all this, you keep us,
through hard questions with no easy answers;
through failing where we hoped to succeed
and making an impact when we felt we were uselss;
through the patience and the dreams and the love of others;
and through Jesus Christ and his Spirit,
you keep us.
So thank you . . . for the keeping time,
and for now, and for ever. Amen.

~~Iona Community, Scotland

Wednesday Festival: Marching to Zion

I admit that I went looking for a particular theme as I browsed our RGBP network for the Wednesday Festival. Today is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and that historic march -- along with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech -- has become one of the stories that we remember and retell to give us perspective on this journey toward God's realized kindom.

The March on Washington is like any one of our biblical faith stories that we study, read aloud and sermonize to remind ourselves and our faith communities of what the journey looks like...and where it is going. We share these stories when we feel lost. We sing them when we feel embolded. We question them when we need new vision.

So for our Wednesday Festival, I perused our blogs for journey stories and faith stories and not-sure-where-I'm-going-but-this-moment-holds-me-up stories. Here is a brief sampling (only because my internet browser has crashed twice now amidst posting). If you have a particular story about what sustains your journey, please share in the comments!

• Sally's journey is marked by a hug that is shared without too many extra words or advice, but simply offered to recognize life's strains and vulnerabilities.

• Following a move, Laura is acclimating to a new space -- such a critical factor in our experience and daily perspective! She reflects on the realization that many of our daily routines function on "autopilot."

• Tony shares two favorite scripture verses. A memorized verse or song or poem or prayer can secure our souls when we feel weary or lost.

• Returning to photograph the church where she was ordained, Michelle reminds me that the sensory markers along our journeys (not only the stories) become important icons that we revisit as well. 

• Deb provides a reminder that the journey is not the enemy; she is building a labyrinth using bricks in the backyard, because so often solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking.

Blessed walking and marching, friends!

Wednesday Prayer: Let us leave a little room

Augustine of Hippo said:

Let us leave a little room for reflection in our lives, room too for silence. 
Let us look within ourselves and see whether there is some delightful hidden place inside where we can be free of noise and argument. 
Let us hear the Word of God in stillness and perhaps we will then come to understand it.

Tuesday Evening Prayer

Seen on a co-worker's bulletin board (so forgive the grammar)

Blessed 

are those who laugh at themselves

for they will be

amused forever!

amen. 

Tuesday Lectionary Leanings~~Entertaining angels unaware edition

Lord Jesus Christ, make those who love you, and who love you in return, mirrors of you to those who are unloving; that being drawn to your image they may reproduce it in themselves, light reflecting light, love kindling love, until God is all in all. Amen. After Christina Rossetti, 1894

Frank T. Griswold. Praying Our Days: A Guide and Companion (Kindle Locations 800-802). Kindle Edition. 

September 1! NO way.

I am so not ready for the end of summer (in fact I am still on vacation as I write this,) but here we are. In the U.S. we will be celebrating Labor Day weekend, many of us are gearing up for a new program year, and kids have either returned to school or will be doing so in the next few days. My oldest granddaughter is starting kindergarten tomorrow! This weekend my congregation will be joining others in our deanery for an end of summer picnic and outdoor Eucharist, complete with baptism. Appropriately enough our RCL readings for this 15th Sunday after Pentecost focus (in part at least) on the theme of hospitality.

Our Hebrew scripture reading from the prophet Jeremiah finds Jeremiah voicing God's lament that the people God brought out of Egypt have in essence abandoned the hospitality that awaited them in the promised land--both the abundance of the land and the largesse of God's love. Instead they have defiled the land and worshipped false gods, exchanging "their glory for something that does not profit," and digging out "cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns, that can hold no water." How much do those charges apply to the ways we choose to live today?  

Our new testament reading continues with the letter to the Hebrews. This section echoes the call to radical hospitality we hear in Jesus' teaching in the gospels (it especially brings Matthew to mind for me, but perhaps that is because Matthew is my favorite gospel.) This passage also hearkens back to Abraham's visit from the weary travelers, who were in fact angels in disguise. How often might we entertain angels unaware? And how often have we turned them away?

This week's gospel finds Jesus under close scrutiny as he joins some Pharisees for a Sabbath meal. Sabbath meals were times for gathering together family and friends, and in a culture where status was extremely important, one can imagine that there might have been some jockeying for invitations, and for the seats of honor. Jesus wants no part of that; in fact in counsels the arriving guests to take the lowest seats, and advises his hosts that in the future they should invite not those who will reciprocate in kind, but rather the poor and lowly who have no way of returning the kindness. How often is our hospitality tied to at least an implicit expectation that we will get "credit" for it? And can we let go of that?

So where are you headed on this first Sunday in September?  Are you winding up a summer series? Having a fall kick off? Riffing off Labor Day? Perhaps you'll choose the alternative readings from Sirach or Proverbs or focus on a psalm. Join the conversation whether you have questions, inspiration, or just want to say hi! The welcome mat is out, and the coffee is on!

RevGalBookPals: Love and Salt

I have to confess that I'm an inveterate writer of real letters, the sort where you scratch out words, twine a last minute addition to a paragraph around the edge of the paper, and tenderly fold up to slip into an envelope.  I love the physicality of putting pen to paper, and delight in the thought that this object I have put my hand to will land in the hands of someone I care about.  And to find a letter or a postcard in my mailbox in return is a unlooked for but utterly delightful grace.  

So when I heard Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith, the authors of Love and Salt: A Spiritual Friendship Shared in Letters talking about their exchange of letters last April I added it to the top of my summer reading list. 

Amy Andrews and Jessica Mesman Griffith met in a creative writing workshop while they were graduate students in Pittsburgh.  On a class trip to New York City, they came across a copy of the Book of Ruth and were captured by the line

Whither thou goest, I will go
Thy God shall be my God.

A few months later Amy moved to Chicago to teach math and Jessica took a job at Notre Dame.  When Amy, who had grown up with a religious bent in an agnostic household, decided to become a Roman Catholic, she asked Jess to accompany her through the process, to be her sponsor.  Jess vows to write a letter (not an email!) to Amy every day during Lent, and Amy decides to write in return.  They continued to write to each other intermittently over the next five years, writing they say,

"...to preserve and make sense of our daily lives; we wrote to confess and console, to rant and grieve.  But more than anything else, we wrote because it was the only way we know how to pray...In our letters, we wrote ourselves back to belief."  [p. xi]

I suspect many of us who blog and preach have walked this path. Writing is a way into a relationship between God and ourselves, our friends, our congregations and our readers.  We write, to paraphrase CS Lewis, because we can't help ourselves; we write because we're helpless; we write because the need flows out of us all the time — waking and sleeping; we write, not to change God — but to change ourselves.  

In these letters, Jess and Amy share their joys and concerns around faith and God and religious practice, the whole of it wound into the fabric of their everyday lives: birthdays, basketball games, and baptisms.  Above all it recounts their journey of faith; not one that is piously placid, but one that takes them through lands that are green and through howling deserts.  It is not a journey that leaves either Amy or Jess unscarred.  There is love and there is salt.

Though there is a natural narrative arc to the collection of letters, loosely organized around the liturgical calendar — Lents, Easters and Ordinary Time —  it is not a book to be drunk too quickly.  I read it in short pieces over two months, and even then it felt like I was moving too fast.  I wanted to hold this faith journey gently, to listen to Jess and Amy's story, to hear in it echoes of all our faith lives.  At this point, I couldn't share my copy with anyone, I wrote so many notes to myself in the margins.  

[Spoiler alert:  Since this isn't a novel, I'm not sure there is anything to spoil, but just in case you want to let the journey unfold in its own way, without knowing much about the events that shape it, skip to the last paragraph.]

If you are still with me, know that the second part of this book is what makes the title so apt, and for me, so powerful.  Both Jess and Amy become mothers in 2006. Jess to Charlotte, Amy to Clare.  Clare dies just before she is born.  Amy struggles with God, with fear, with rending grief, as she mourns Clare and then becomes pregnant with a son, John.  Jess struggles with being alone with a newborn while her husband is away working in another city.  Through their letters, and in person, they walk with each other, grieving, listening, a ministry of steadfast presence, whither you go:  

"Again, the consolation was not of relief, but accompaniment." [p. 254]

says Amy of two aunts who drove miles to be with her at Clare's burial.

The letter format means that the raw roller ride of grief is very evident, as good and bad days are swirled together.  Having lived through a similar period of wrenching grief in my twenties, I can remember the odd way that joy and pain wound around each other in those days, and wish that I had known that this storm tossed pattern was normal, or as normal as anything can be in such times.  

In summary, this is an exquisite book. Read it if you want to see how faith looks when it is clothed in doubt, rings with joy, is rent by grief, when it comes alive in our messy human lives.  I'm hoping it inspires a host of similar exchanges, whether on paper or electronically or shared over coffee.  

• What inspires you to put pen to paper and add a stamp?
• Have you ever carried on a sustained correspondence, either through email or on paper?  or dreamed of doing it?
• Thomas Merton noted in a journal, "To write is to think and to live — even to pray."  Do you find writing to be a way to pray?  

Share your thoughts in the comments!

______

I bought a physical copy of this book from Amazon, and page citations refer to that version.

Prayer for P 16C / O 21C / P +14

Lord as we come before you today in prayer and worship, We are ever mindful that we have been created by your Lord. You knew us even before we were born. Sometimes we forget that Lord and go about our days thinking of ourselves as just a lump of clay. But according to your word we are much more than a lump of clay. We are your children. We are the ones you have called to speak your word to all people. We are the ones you have called to open the doors for justice in our world. We are the ones you have called to feed the hungry. We are the ones you have called to pour your healing oil on aching and hurting persons. So Lord we pray for your forgiveness of all our sins. We pray for healing of our diseases.. We pray for the redemption of us all. We pray that you crown us with love and mercy. We pray you wrap us in your goodness. We pray you that you renew us. We pray that you make everything right in this world. We pray you put victims back on their feet. We pray for the healing of the brokenhearted. We pray for healing of our broken world. Amen cross posted at rev abi's long and winding road