Open Hands Vol 10 No 4 - The God to Whom We Pray

Open Hands Vol 10 No 4 - The God to Whom We Pray

10

4

1995

Spring

$6.00
4
Open Hands is a resource for
congregations and individuals seeking . to be in ministry with lesbian, bisexual, and gay persons. Each issue focuses on a
specific area of concern within the
church.
Open Hands is published quarterly
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Resources for Ministries Affirming
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Vol. 1o,No. 4 . Spring ~995
REFLECTING ON GOD-IMAGES
Focus on Imagining the Divine
MALCOLM BOYD
Trinitarian images, saints, angels, and holy places help us imagine God.
B'ut Who Do You Say That I Am 6
"GARY DAVID C OMSTOCK >it
Two' major biblical images are combined with a' 'goddess image for a personal, contemporary answer.
Bless Sophia-Wisdom of God
BARBARA B. TROXELL
Sophia images expand and deepen our God-relationships.
Sophia/Wisdom in Scripture
BARBARA B . TROXELL
A list of biblical and deuterocanonical passages is provided.
.The,Sai'nts, Our Friends AN INTE~~"IEW WITH D ENNIS, 0' NEilL BY DIC~f;POOLEtk>
Gay-Iesbian-pqsitive icons help us connect God, with oar own lives and'provide us with religious roots.
Finding God in Our Own Backyard
K ITTREDGE CH ERRY
Spiritual sustenance can be found in miracles and pop images too.
NAMING OUR GOD
How Do We Name Thee-And Why?
CAROLYN BOHLER ,t~
God is Persistent and Patient Black Friend for fbis writer
who explores how we all need to both identify"and
affiliate with the Divine.
Choosing Divine Metaphors
CAROLYN B OHLER
Here are five questions you might raise about a potential metaphor.
My God-Who-Is-Like-a-River
ELIZABETH A NDREW
God as a river-lover flowing into a demanding ocean emerges from deep in this writer's personal experience.
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The God To Whom We Pray
Living Water 20
M IRIAM T HERESE WINTER
A flowing musical prayer comforts and sustains.
Praisesong 21
M ARK B ELLETINI
This poem names and praises God as You, Friend. 22
Psalm 10 22
H OWARD B. WARREN, JR .
This modern psalm, based on Psalm 86, might be used as a litany. 23
SUSTAINING THE SPIRIT 24
Bring Many Names 25
BRIAN W REN
Celebrate some of God's many names with this hymn of praise.
ONE MORE
WHAT DO
SELECTED
MO VEM ENT
WORD
YO U THINK?
RESOURCES
NEWS
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Spring 1995
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Open Hands Editor
Mary Jo Osterman
Illustrations
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In Print -Jan Graves
Editorial Advisory Committee
Peg Beissert, Rolling Hills Est., CA Lindsay Biddle, Minneapolis, MN Ann Marie Coleman, Chicago, IL Dan Hooper, Los Angeles, CA Derrick Kikuchi, Daly City, CA Samuel E. Loliger, Buffalo, NY Dick Poole, Oak Forest, IL Caroline Presnell, Evanston, IL Irma C. Romero, Chicago, IL Paul Santillan, Chicago, IL Martha Scott, Chicago, IL Stuart Wright, Chicago, IL
3
By Malcolm Boyd
HOW do we picture what is holy and divine? God is our basic image. How do we see God? Only by being clear about this can the welcoming church be truly honest in its own intentions and actions.
A Trinitarian View
A n activist lesbian minister told me .f'\.that she still imagines God as actor Charlton Heston (due to his roles in religious movies), despite her sophistication and . strong belief to the contrary. For many years I imagined God to be a kind of aging, paternal Lionel Barrymore figure with a touch of majesty and a whi te beard. Later I grew to see God the Father/Mother also in the guise of an Eleanor Roosevelt, a benevolent, nononsense, sturdy maternal figure. I no longer see God in any anthropomorphic terms; instead, I am aware of a vastness that is overwhelming, yet is also completely personal.
For me a sense of the numinous exists in God. There is mystery, a quality that is unfathomable; I need to accept it in faith. The Lord's Prayer remains my primary prayer-the old, traditional form with "trespasses." I believe that God is in "heaven" as well as on earth. I find tremendous security in the words "hallowed be thy name." God is stable, fixed, all-powerful, and absolutely reliable. The comfort this gives me is inexpressible.
Yet there is also fluidity in God-in God, the Holy Spirit. This is a softer, more luminous, indelibly personal image. I used to think the Holy Spirit was the wind, or like the wind. I can also imagine the Holy Spirit in the sound of a cello or oboe. Candlelight makes me think of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus Christ is something else. Jesus
is God embodied. The gospels are enormously
helpful in assisting us to imagine
God as seen in Jesus. The question
of Jesus' sexuality leaps out at me as a gay man and priest. He appears to be androgynous. He was sensitive, vulnerable, knew how to receive as well as give to another, and was relaxed about his body. Jesus was apparently not afraid of intimacy; he shared his feelings and empathized with those of others. To be human is to be sexual.
Sexuality is a part of God's creation and is healthy, vital, and good. Since the church makes the claim that Jesus was fully human as well as divine, I believe Jesus was a fully sexual human being. We have no documentation of his personal life pertaining to sex. He lived much of his adult life in the company of men; his relations with women were frank, open, startlingly honest.
The church seems to have told a big lie about Jesus' sexuality, creating a tragic abyss between the human body and spirit. I found a glaring and sad example of this in a story told me by a heterosexual man. He said, "When I have sex with my wife, God turns his back." But that isn't true. God doesn't have a back to turn. God is not disapproving of sexuality. God is involved and interested and concerned. God cares intensely. This story is a bad example of imagining God.
The God to whom we pray is wholly
accepting of us as we are. Sex is a part
of God's creation of us. When we pray
to or through Jesus, we are intimately
involved with a savior who is sexual and
understands sexuality. I asked a good
friend, the Rev. Nancy Wilson, pastor of
the Metropolitan Community Church
in Los Angeles, for her view about this.
She said,
Presuming (since there is no evidence
to the contrary) that Jesus
was not sexually dysfunctional,
normal sexual arousal was a part
of his reality. Did Jesus long to
know the special appreciation
of another's smell, taste, and
touch? Did he know the feeling
Open Hands 4
Ce'tlc tradition saw God as a trinity, but more a trinity of mothers than the trinity of the CNistian tradition. In this image the maiden Masai woman gives birth to the earth, the Irish .......,other receives and protects the earth, while the Plains Indian Wise Old Woman reminds ",s of the endings and renewal of life. The serpent and the raven are symbols of the cycles
f life and death. con © 1990 by Robert Lentz. Original in full color. Text from Bridge Building Images catalog, P.O. Box 48, Burlington, VT 05402. Both are used with permission.
of passionate abandon where the difference between bodies/selves joyously blurs? Did he know the God-created capacity for deep, cleansing sexual pleasure, healing, and renewal? Did Jesus know the tender vulnerability of naked sexual giving and receiving? And if he did not, how can Jesus, as the Risen Christ, be with me in my own sexuality? Another friend of mine, Robert
Kettelhack, a theologian and priest who
died of AIDS in 1989, imagined/imaged
jesus as someone to pray to and through. He told me: For modern and post-modern people, we must insist on the presence of sexuality in the archetypal Person who is Christ. It's very likely that Jesus had homosexual urges and orientation. I remember when Bishop John Robinson,
Spring 1995
author of Honest to God, asked the question, 'Did Jesus have an erection?' It upset some people so much.
The irony Jesus was working with was his almost violent offensive against almost any kind of hypocrisy, his impatience with religious rules and statutes. This is very comforting to a gay person. Jesus introduces the primacy of love, the primacy of justice, into the midst of all ethical problems. This is essential for gay people looking for the ultimate criterion of Christian life.
Saints and Angels
I maging, imagining, and naming saints is another way to visualize the Divine. Saints are people who have led holy lives. What does this mean? They have lived lives of loving, lives of service,
lives more God-centered than selfcentered. Biography helps here, but so does simple discernment and openness to the reality of searching people's lives for meaning. We need to start naming our gay and lesbian saints and placing them in context. As we find and name them, we will see new faces of the Divine.
This brings us to angels. They are vastly popular. There is. a reason. It is spiritual hunger. People yearn for a sense of the holy, the Divine, especially when caught in a secular age that offers few answers to questions of meaning. Angels can be found in the pages of scripture and in notable pieces of art. Angels can also be found in our own lives. Angels bring the Divine close to people's lives.
I do not hesitate to talk about my own guardian angel. This angel is with me always. This angel hears the outpouring of my cries and anxieties, questions and joys. This angel clearly offers me unconditional love. This angel does not go away and leave me. This angel accepts and understands me completely. This angel is right here.
Imagining in Context
A holy space is a good place to imagine the Divine. What is a holy space? Well, it can be a place where people have worshipped God. A cathedral. A quiet corner. An altar. Or, it can be a place where people have come to meditate, or engage in meaningful social action rooted in idealism, or pour out communal outrage or hope, or lift up prayer in hope of peace.
Imaging the Divine is a task of beauty and creativity. It beckons us to God and to God's realm of holiness and earthiness, justice and peace, faith and hope, and love. We need to share our different images ....
Malcolm Boyd is an Episcopal priest on the staff of st. Augustine by-the-Sea in Santa Monica, California, chaplain of the " AIDS Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, and the author of twenty-seven books, including Take Off the Masks.
5
!lO/) THtlT 1tlm?
~------~--------~------~
By Gary David Comstock
TI e Bible tells me who God is, not
with clear definitions, but within
the tension of questioning and answering. It does not give me a tidy package of "God" that I can carry around with me and rely on to solve my assorted problems. Instead, the Bible gives me the responSibility to engage God and to know God through dialogue, discussion, argument, and process. God is not a problem-solver for me, but a problem-poser and often a problem. The Bible places much of the responsibility for solving those problems on me.
My interpretation of the biblical God may seem "radical" in the sense of being drastic, extreme, or off-beat. But it is not. It does not come from digging into remote passages, looking for hidden meaning, reading between the lines, or twisting words and phrases. Instead, it is found in the Bible's central stories. I read the passages from those stories at face-value and not out of context. Ifmy interpretation is IIradical," it is so in the other meaning of the word which has to do with what is fundamental, essential, basic-the "root" of the Bible.1
An Old Testament Answer
My primary source for knowing God is the Exodus story, particularly Moses' encounter with God (Exod 3-4). After telling Moses that "I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians," God says, "I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." Moses then goes through a litany of doubts, insecurity, apprehension, objection, and avoidance. "Why me? Who am I to do this? They won't believe me. They won't listen to me. I am not a good speaker." But God reassures, explains, and provides.
Among the excuses that Moses offers is his ignorance about God's identity. Who is this God who is asking him to take on the responsibility of leading slaves out of bondage? Moses says to God, "If I come to the Israelites and say to them, 'God has sent me to you,' and they ask me what your name is, what shall I say to them?" And God says to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM. Tell them, 'I AM has sent me to you."' God also says, liTell them, 'YHWH, the God of your ancestors, has sent me to you. ' This is my name forever."
The Hebrew words for "I AM WHO I AM" can also be translated as "I AM WHAT I AM" or "I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE." Their use here as a name for God depends on and stems from the Israelite name for God, YHWH, which is derived from the Hebrew verb for lito be."z
The Exodus story is central to the Old Testament. The stories that come before it lead up to and anticipate it. The stories that come after it refer to and build on it. God's choice of Moses and Moses' response to God provide us with fundamental information about God and our relationship with God. In this foundational biblical story, we are told by our God that God is not a static, unchanging entity, but an active verb of being in past, present, and future tense. Furthermore, our relationship with our God is not one of unquestioning obedience, but of honest uncertainty, insecurity, questioning, protest, and negotiation.
The Old Testament puts forth a relationship between humans and the Divine that is dialogical rather than mono logical. God does not speak to silent, unresponsive people. Instead, people are expected to answer, doubt, challenge, and interrogate God. Throughout the Old Testament, these question-and-answer dialogues with God are rarely tame, laid back, casual conversations.
A New Testament Answe
The New Testament continues tho tradition of encounters with th Divine that are challenging, emotiona and tension-filled. One New Testame. story in particular is helpful for gaiT> ing a better understanding of our relationship with the God of the Bible. The story is told three times-once in eac of the Gospels (Matt 16:13-20, Mk 8:2~30, and Lk 9:18-22). The story takes place during the heightened activity ofJesus ministry as he is traveling with his disciples and speaking to various group of people. On their way to a village, Jesu.. asks his disciples, "Who do the people say that I am?" And they tell him, "Some say you are John the Baptist; others sa Elijah; and still others say you are on~ of the prophets who has risen." And the._ the push comes as Jesus asks, "But wh do you say I am?" The story turns or: these two small, yet powerful words "but" and "you," as it shifts from questions about popular perception to pe!"sonal knowledge. Not all of the diSCiple are ready to respond. Instead of the co lective response to his first questior. only one disciple, Peter, answers witL "You are the Christ of God." The second question is a lot harder and more strongly put. The sharp turn to person _ responsibility for knowing about G and the apparent difficulty of gainir. such knowledge give the story its importance.
This importance is given another d:mension with a final sentence: IIAnd h charged them to tell no one about him. The knowledge and name of God th we gain in dialogue with God is indee personal, private, protected, and not tt. be shared indiscriminately. In the 01 Testament story also, the name for Go is camouflaged as a proper noun tha reads as verb. The confusion and ambivalence are intentional and protective Traditionally, Jews have regarded the proper name YHWH as too special to
Open Hands 6
nee. The Hebrew word "Adonai," meaning "the Lord," is usually substi.
protect our relationships with cause their meaning is peculiar particular to us rather than univereneral, and common. As a person pIe, we keep the name and knowlof our God within or among us use it is unique and speCial to us. biblical God is not a God for all at e but for each at their times of need. seems to interact neither with the of humanity as one nor with only
'\ .
e chosen person or pe9f le. God interacts
instead with many chosen individuals and many groups of people. We are chosen to interact with and know God, not to the exclusion of the others and not in the same way as others, but in different ways, at different times, and in different company_ We preserve, protect, and cherish the meaning of how, why, and when we are chosen; and we do not impose that meaning on others.
MyCu ns~wer
These two stories from the Old and New Testaments tell us thaHhe biblical God is an active, verbal ever-presence who engages us and qialogues with us at those times ;whe~something is bothering"'God andior bothering us. The name of ou? God and our negotiatio~ and relationship with our God have ~ special meaning for us that renders/ u~ silent about God'sn ame, but confideht
VIEW OF THE TRINITY
God is understood as the mutuality and reciprocity in r relationships and Jesus is our saving one another
om loneliness, despair, abuse, and neglect, the Holy Spirit is the community that includes and encourages each person to share her or his gifts.
Gary David Comstock
Gay Theology without Apology
(Cleveland, OH: The Pilgrim Press, 1993), p. 138.
Spring 1995
of God's everlasting presence and interaction with us. To express these qualities, I borrow and combine one sentence from the Exodus story with one sentence from the Jesus story and follow them with part of a chant by the Goddess theologian Starhawk.3 I intentionally move from biblical to non~biblical passages because I think that the chant effectively captures the unspoken, eternal, constant qualities of the biblical God.
I Am "Who I Am.
But who do.you say I am?
,.1
Her~nam(~annot be spoken,.
Her ) face was not forgotten,
Her power is to open,
ff~rpromisecan never be broken.
...
IThe'English word "radical" is derived from
I
the Latin "radix,II meaning II root./I
.,. ..
2'fhe Israelite name for God i§...made up of the ~tconsonants Y~H, probably pronou-flce!.Yahweh. See N9J;man 'K. Gottwald,
The Hebre~:Bible: A Socia-Literary Introduction (Philadelphta:~Fortress, 1985), pp. 211213.
3Starhawk, Tht Spiral Dance:A Rebirth ofthe Ancient Religion of th( Great Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 89.
Gary David Comstock, a United Church
ofC~ristclergyman, is the Protestant chaplain
a"t Wesleyan University
in¥iddletown,
Connecticut. His most
rec~nt book is Gay
Theology witho
Apology.
7
~~~~~~
The naming of our God is a sacred act.
The words we usegive meaning
To our imagining ofthe Divine.
With joy and reverence
We speak the hallowed names of God.
Ancient names, newly found namesWe
speak the hallowed names of God. 1
~~~~~~
At the opening ritual of the Reimagining Conference, a leader spoke these words between stanzas of the remarkable Brian Wren hymn, "Bring Many Names," (see page 25) as we gathered at our circular tables and began to learn the names of those who were sitting with us. Together, we sought to name and worship the Holy One.
The naming of God is indeed a sacred act. The ways we name God influence the ways we pray and speak and act and live in the world. Conversely, how we pray and speak and live in the world are directly related to how we name and image God. If, for example, I image God as a strong, dominant judge who is watching people to catch us in our evil acts, I may pray ardently, perhaps fearfully, begging for mercy. Or, like the Pharisee, I may pray boastfully, thanking God that I am not like those others who lie, steal, cheat, and do immoral things (Lk 18:9-14). Imaging God as a strong, dominant judge may lead me, in daily actions, either to be harsh and judgmental towards others or to be exceedingly kind, suppressing feelings of anger so as not to stir up the wrath of the God in whom I believe.
On the other hand, if I image God as one who makes and keeps covenant with humankind, who is incarnated in human interaction, and who calls us to be in holy partnership, my prayers and actions will likely take a different turn. Prayer with an incarnating, covenantkeeping God will involve dialogue, thanksgiving, and holding others and myself in the Holy Presence. A full range of emotions may come into play when we pray to God as Friend, Co-Creator, or Spirit at the heart of our lives. We likely will perceive others as our gifted, wounded equals-who are also created by the One who tends, challenges, and calls all of us.
These are but two scenarios, evoked by different images of the Divine. There are countless others, borne of other images. In this article I choose to emphasize the image of God as Holy Wisdom (from the Hebrew word hochma, translated sophia in the Greek language of the Septuagint and the New Testament). Such an image has deep and ancient roots in judaism and Christianity, as well as in other religious communities. As one steeped since childhood in biblical tradition from a "moderate-toliberal" Protestant perspective, I focus first on the scriptural roots of Holy Wisdom as a lively image of God. I then offer ways in which Sophia/Wisdom can aid our prayer and our ministry within welcoming congregations.
Sophia in Scripture
Leo Lefebure writes in Christian Century that "There are few events as important in religious life as the emergence, disappearance, or revival of a religious symbol. 11 2 Sophia, the Wisdom of God, a female personification, certainly had disappeared from our Protestant tradition (although she was vitally retained among Catholics and Orthodox, especially those of the Eastern Church). In recent years, especially among feminist scholars, the image of God as Sophia has come again to the fore in Protestant study, discussion, and worship.
We have rediscovered many places in Scripture where Sophia/Wisdom is mentioned (see box). The actions of Lady Wisdom in Proverbs and the list of glorious epithets for Sophia in The Wisdom of Solomon (abbreviated Wis) are quite stunning. Special note must be made of the affirmation and action of Sophia in Wis 7:27:
Although she is but one, she can all things, and while remaining in herself, s renews all things; in every generation she passes in holy souls
and makes them friends of God, an
prophets.3
Lefebure notes that "Paul began tradition of attributing to Christ cosmological role in creation that h been held by Sophia" (see I Cor 1:23· 24; 8:6). Lefebure also points out oth 7 places in the Epistles where Sophia linked to Christ, such as in the hymn Col 1:5-20. He notes that Heb 1:3 (He : the reflection of God's glory and exact imprint of God's very being. parallels the description in Wis 7:26 (Feshe is a reflection of eternal light, a spo'less mirror of the working of God... .
Robin Maas, in "Wisdom Calls to H Children," also points out the conne . tion of jesus with Sophia and the str. ing parallel between the creative fu . tions of Sophia (Prov 8:22-31) and Logos an 1:1-18), a parallel which me-· its further study. S
Several persons in recent years ha written substantively about a recoye..of the Sophia aspect of God. Their \ . . . ings are deeply rooted in the biblic images of Sophia/Wisdom. Nearly a cade ago, two United Methodist de Susan Cady and Hal Taussig, toge with ecumenical Catholic layworr: Marian Ronan, wrote Sophia: The Fu of Feminist Spirituality, which rein T" duced the metaphor of divine Wisd from Scripture and tradition as basic feminist spirituality. They specifica avowed that "Sophia...can be develo into a powerful integrating figure . feminist spirituality and that the bi cal Sophia provides us with a start' point for that development."6
Elizabeth johnson, in She Who .5 offers a superb feminist theologic presentation on Sophialogy. Follo " ing Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza an other New Testament scholars, ]ohnso
Open Hands 8
affirms how central to both the Pauline ..-ritings and the gospels is the connecion of Wisdom withJesus. As her book evolves, Johnson (utilizing the sources of Scripture, of women's experience, and of classical theology) describes the Trinitarian God as Spirit-Sophia, JesusSophia, and Mother-Sophia, interacting
..ithin the world: Christ crucified and risen, the Wisdom of God, manifests the truth that divine justice and renewing power leavens the world in a way different from the tech.:. niques of dominating violence ... The unfathomable depths of evil and suffering are entered into in friendship with Sophia-God, in trust that this is the path to life.7
oohia in Our Ministries
ophia, Lady Wisdom, the Co-creator with God, and the creative Spirit 'hich matches and complements the gos: these images expand and deepen ur God-relatedness as participants in ";elcoming churches. They do so by affirming a strong feminine aspect of God as we pray, by expanding our images of God yet again so we can re-imagine One ;ho receives with outstretched hands all who come. Sophia personifies a Holy One who plays and dances and prophesies and stands firm for the truth of
nclusion.
Welcoming congregations do well to include Sophia in their liturgies, responses, prayers, readings, study, and mission. She adds to our lives and brings them together in different ways in different liturgical seasons. For example, in Advent we can emphasize the second stanza of the familiar hymn, 110 come,
o come Emmanuel, " which invokes uWisdom from on high." At Christmas we might read the prologue of John's Gospel (1:1-18), together with Prov 8:2231.
During Lent, we might highlight Paul's text from I Cor 1:23-25, recalling that IIChrist crucified" is lithe power of God and the wisdom (sophia) of God."
Ve can sing the II Canticle of Wisdom," as found in The United Methodist Hymnal (1989), number 112, combining the Wis 7 text with familiar musical responses.
Praying to Sophia God-to Holy Wisdom-helps us to be IIfriends of God and
Spring 1995
prophets" (Wis 7:27d) There is a wholeness here, a witness to shalom/salaam, in the presence of the mobile One who is a IIbreath of the power of God" (Wis 7:25) and against whom lIevil does not prevail" (Wis 7:30). We soon discover that Sophia will not leave us alone. She dwells in each of us and our gathered company as a central image of the mystery of God. She blesses us with her wise, centered, and visionary presence. As Barbara Newman concluded in a recent lecture, ((There never was when She was not."s 'Y
Notes
1Re-imagining Conference Program Book (November
1993), p. 12.
2Leo D. Lefebure, "The Wisdom of God: Sophia and Christian Theology," The Christian Century 111 (October 19, 1994):952.
3The Wisdom of Solomon is found in the apocryphal or deuterocanonical section of a "study Bible" such as HarperCollins or New Oxford Annotated.
4Lefebure, op.cit., p. 954.
SOPHIA/WISQOM IN SCRIPTURE
1. Proverbs
5 Robin Maas, "Wisdom Calls to Her Children," in Maas and O'Donnell, Spiritual Traditions for the Contemporary Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1990).
6Susan Cady, Marian Ronan and Hal Taussig,
Sophia: The Future of Feminist Spirituality
(New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 14. 7Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery ofGod in Feminist Theological Discourse
(New York: Crossroad, 1992), p. 159.
8Barbara Newman, "The Journey of SophiaChrist" (Unpublished lecture, delivered at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, October 12, 1994).
Barbara B. Troxell, a United Methodist clergywoman, is assistantprofessor ofpractical theology (director of field education and spiritual formatio n) at aarrettEvangelical
Theological Seminary in Evanston, illinois. A clergy member of the CaliforniaNevada Conference, she has been active in the Reconciling Congregation movement.
1:20-33 -Wisdom is a prophetess and· street teacher (who later is contrasted with the loose or strange woman in 2: 16-19, 5:3-6, 7: 1-27). This contrast', which supports the cultural bias against women, hasled some scholars to view Proverbs as one more patriarchal work.
8: 1-36 -,Y'Visdom is a gracious woman, crying out at city gates. She is the form in which God com~s near to humans (according to Lefebure).
8:22-31-Wis'd()LTl is either "a child born of the deity before the creation of t he cosmos" or "a preexistent being who aligns hers~lf with God." (See HarperCollins Study Bib/e, NRSV, p. 953.) ..
2. Wisdom of Solomon
7:7-11:1 -Sophia/Wisdom is described in twenty-one epithets (7:22-8:1) and additional attributes.
3. Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus)
24: 1-34 -In this R,assage, titled "The Praise of Wisdom," Sophia/Wisdom tells how God chose the~place for ,her tent and how God created her in the beginning.
4. Paul
I Cor 1:24 -Paul namesChrist crucified as "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."
5. Jesus as Prophet and Apostle of Sophia
Lk 7:33-35 -"Wisdom is vindicated by her children (deed~)." See also Matt 11: 1819.
Lk 11:49-51 -Jesu"s' speaks Wisdom's words. See also Matt 23:34-36.
6. Gospel of John
1: 1-18 -Prol09,ue uses language of Sophia (Prov 8:22-31) to describe Logos (Word).
9
THE SAINTS. ElllR FRIENBS:
EXPLORING IMAGES AND ICONS
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dick: Many Open Hands readers come out of the Reformed church tradition where religious images of all sorts may be questionable. You come out of a Roman Catholic tradition which has valued imagery. What for you is the value of iconography, of imagery?
Dennis: I love pictures. IIA picture is worth a thousand words." As a child I loved to read comic books, especially Classics Illustrated Junior. A picture was always a catalyst for my imagination and gave a focus to what I was reading.
Icons of the saints are like the family album of the church. They remind me of those people who lived and of their influence on my life. Out of my Irish sense that lithe dead are always with us," it was very easy for me to buy into the "communion of saints." In childhood other kids had imaginary friends; I had saints. I would talk to them and ask for whatever I wanted. I never saw any of them; I never had any visions. But the saints were quite real to me. They were my friends who were always with me to help me. In adulthood, icon art has reconnected me with my roots in history and in faith. Icons of saints provide me with a sense not only of their place in history but of my place too, because I am also an icon of the presence of Christ and meant to radiate light even as they do.
Two years ago was the first time I walked in the Gay Pride Parade. I had a clear sense of the presence of Christ there. Where else is Christ going to be but present to that crowd of so many people, all of whom have had to wrestle with alienation in SOCiety and oppression from their faith roots? I marched with the Catholic Worker group in that parade, helping to carry their banner. At one point, where the crowds were at their thickest and all kinds of people were acting out in a carnivalesque way, one person stopped when we walked by and reverently crossed himself. I remember thinking, "What's that about? Be-
An Interview with Dennis O'Neill by Dick Poo
cause we are a religious group? Or because we're a Catholic group?" Then I remembered that on our banner was a picture of Christ with his arms around the Catholic Workers. I can walk through a crowd mindful of the presence of Christ, but if I carry a picture of Christ, I don't have to say anything; the image itself speaks.
Last year, people from The Living Circle ministry marched for the first time, carrying icons of the saints. People had never seen that in a Gay Pride Parade before. I heard a couple of people yelling "Yea, Jesus!" We weren't even carrying Jesus, but they got the idea. You can't do that with words; you can't make that kind of impact. Images do that. Images have power!
Dick: You said that you are an II icon the presence of Christ." How do y understand yourself or someone else an icon?
Dennis: In my case, it has to do \ ,". learning how to "be present." Whee first considered beginning The Lh··. Circle ministry, an image from my sen; nary days came to me. We were su ~ posed to take our empty pop bot back down to the machine and put the. in the cases. I noticed that if I put a bot in the hall outside my room to car'" down later other bottles would gath around mine. So, the image came to IY. with Living Circle: just be like a po. bottle; stand in the hall, and people \ ' . gather. As an icon of the presence
Sts. Sergius and Bacch us ca. 300
Sergius and Bacchus were Christians who were tortured to death in Syria because refused to attend sacrifices in honor of Jupiter. Recent research of old manuscripts re ea s that they were erestai, or lovers. After their arrest, they were paraded through city stree s women's clothing to humiliate them as officers in the Roman army. They were t e separated and each was tortured. Bacchus died first and appeared that night to Serg .... ..1 who was beginning to lose heart. Bacchus told Sergius to persevere, that the delights heaven were greater than any suffering, and that their reward would be to be re-unitea .... heaven as lovers. The feast day of these saints is October 7.
Icon © 1994 by Robert Lentz. Original in full color. Text adapted from back of icon notecard publisr EJ by Bridge Building Images, P.O. Box 1048, Burlington, VT 05402. Both are used with permission.'
Open Hands 10
I'm just supposed to "be" out in the community. the gay and lesbian community,
oes one "be" the presence of
?Just take one step at a time. Speak as much integrity as possible. Tell ory, the Christian story, and highhose things in the story that might
ot particular interest to gay and lespeople. Help them to see that '··e always been there, folks."
for Gays and
ians
. ": So, why iconography with gay and an people?
nnis: There is a parallel between us ..\frican Americans or any other p searching for its identity. Part of ay we all have been controlled is
'ing our history away. Historians On some level we have been aware
end we didn't have a place in histhat we have had a place, even in the . For gay and lesbian people, the lie Church. I hear people say: "Fine, you've at we have always been oppressed, used us to decorate your churches, to .':e have always been fringe, that we build your churches, to compose the e always been a negative aspect of
music, to do every other thing that enhances the liturgy, including to preside
WHAT IS AN ICON?
comes from, a Greek,,\\,ord meaniDg, ':irnage," Several classlcal rules determine
at makes a picture ar:t i~Qn: -e picture cannot go to the e9ge;it;ha~ to have a frame pain,te:~c1aroundit.
0
. _.
-e name must be printed or painted qp the rcont fr~quently i~:Greek or Russian. s are stylized. Rather than trying to capture a> phbtographiclikeness of the perSO'
1 when they;Jived, they are trying mystically to bring the presence to you, some'"g like the e~perienceof the risen Savior in the gospels whe~e heIs sort of recogzable but notimm~diately.
• l ght radiates froT insicfe the figure butW~rd; rather than corrtf~:~~:·~0m spmewhere · else towards the picture as inWestern,ari. An icon tries to ca~~~r~. that'facet'?f >,
erson that is also a facet of the Divine. So wherever skin tou£hei~abric (a~ at elbows a;'ld knees) it will be brighter. . ~
Certain elemenfs on theface are .also lit. The "third eye," in thexniddle of the forehead, will hav€jp.,.? k%i ,~ comes from deeper
ipd of brightness, f~presentng vision th9an the eyes .. fh~ '~y~s them?elves" Jq;~~?e ':windows of th~ " ~, ", spl.lr to which one is drawn when medita.~.i~~. on an i~on/~il~tbe1~rger than usuaL.Ihile mouths are made'smaller, because in an icon (as~n the portant to lIsten than to talk. '
"''1e icon is a flat picture, rather thana sculpture, as a remindet.jhat there is a lot
~ore behind what you arel.ooking at. If! vyalk'up to a scuipture'like Mic:;helangelo's David" and walkaILaroun9,.,it,<1 might co~vince myself that I havel/got" it. In an icon, au can never seethe b9,ck;'so' you .~~JJ' I3;§v~r fool yourself into th~nkirig that now you ave caught the whole mystery of w
'-Dennis",Q'NeilJ
Sts. Perpetua and Felicitas Died March 7, 202
These North African women were martyred for their Christian beliefs. Both had infant children. Perpetua's meticulous journal, the first such in Christian history, omits any mention of the infants' fathers. Their relationship was so strong that they are always named as a pair.
Drawing © 1980 by Bill Joyner. Text adapted from Living Circle brochure. Both are used with permiss ion .
at your altars. Then, after you've gotten everything you wanted, you burn us at the stake or denounce us as sinful. " However, as young people are growing up, they don't necessarily know that Michelangelo was gay or that a whole bunch of composers were gay. Icons (along with lithe lavender list", or lithe lesbian list") are ways of telling the truth: all kinds of people in history-even religious saints-were gay or lesbian. Some saints went through hell because of it, but still they lived their truth. That is good for all of us to know.
I hold up an icon in a Pride Parade and people are caught up by it. The picture tells the story that we were there, present in religious history! In last year's Parade, we carried an icon of Sergius and Bacchus. One of the II queens" jumped out of the crowd and said "I want that!" I don't know if he was Catholic; he may have been Buddhist for all I know. What he saw was two good looking guys with halos, almost embracing. He wanted it. It conveyed some sense of desire, some sense of history, some sense of the Divine.
Dick: So, when I gaze on an icon, I am drawn into the eyes, including the third eye, and it ceases to be just a picture; it becomes an experience of communion. What happens, then, when I gaze at this icon of a gay or lesbian person? Does it transform the value of my sexuality?
more II."
ring 1995 11
Joan of Arc 14 12-1431 Prompted by her sacred voices, this remarkable teenager led the French army in driving the English out of Orleans. She then helped get Charles VII crowned king of France. Her English enemies, however, tried her for witchcraft and burned her at the stake in Rouen. The final reason given for her death: she kept her hair cut short, wore only men's clothing and armor, and refused to resume the dress of a woman!'
She seemed to move with equal ease among men and women, but when "on the road" slept only with young women. Records exist of deep conversations she had with some of these women. She is, unquestionably, a holy person for cross-dressers.
Icon © 1994 by Robert Lentz. Original in full color. Published by Bridge Building Images, P.O. Box 1048, Burlington, VT 05402 . Text is adapted from Living Circle flyer and brochure. Both are used with permission .
Dennis: No, not "transform" the value, but perhaps help you to better appreciate it. They are friends and helpers. The whole point, whether we are talking about guardian angels or saints, is that they are around, they are helpful, and they can help us get a clearer picture of what is going on in our lives. Maybe, simply by saying "you're not alone," they can affirm whatever courage we need to take the steps to be what we ought to be. We've got that from God anyway. Traditions that don't have saints have the presence of Christ saying the same thing. I don't want to downplay that at all, but icons are another kind of help.
The eyes of the icon draw me into communion with the spirit represented in the icon. I can understand myself a little better and not be trapped by my own history. So, if I am gazing at the icon of Saint Joan and I know some of her history, I can just sit down and commune with her and say "You know, what about it?"
Dick: Dennis, I'm struck by how you talk about the saints as friends, whether Joan of Arc or Sergius and Bacchus or Harvey Milk or Perpetua and Felicitas. For you, it seems to be a very active friendship with this collection of saints and wanting to show off your friends.
Dennis: That's right. Showing off my friends. And letting other people take what they need. Friendship is the core. That's the way I feel about Christ in the eucharist, too; if it is daily communion with a friend, I can never get tired of that. It's the same with the saints; if it's some kind of geniune communion with a friend, I can tap into that power any time I want.
Icons, Power, and Sexuality
Dick: As a Protestant, I feel more c fortable talking about the power of' Word. But then I think that words, t are symbols or icons. What we are ta ing about is power "behind" those s: boIs or words or icons-like the po.
"behind" liturgical action or in the e ments of bread, water, oil, or incer. There is power "behind" an icon Sergius and Bacchus, of Harvey Milk Joan of Arc. Power behind what we h man beings can take hold of throu
our senses.
Dennis: Gay and lesbian people are certainly aware of the negative power th some churches put behind the Word God to oppress gay and lesbian peop They select their texts well and then bl~ away and make us sound like the ul .mate scum of the earth. That's powe" frightening power.
People have also had strong react io to the icons we have displayed. We h to move Living Circle out of the chape at a hospital after some of the nurses were quite angry about us being the" with our icons and other symbols. Man. of these nurses were Catholic, but b cause the icons did not represent wh they thought icons should represer.· they couldn't even look at them: IIGe' them out! II There is power.
Dick: Why would Catholic nurses object to a collection of Catholic icons Catholic saints?
Dennis: It was the concept of conne ing the saints with sexuality. When the, were first told the saints' stories, th erotic was left out. Sexuality is not on., a missing piece but also a piece th Western culture has wrapped with su picion, taboo, and fear. When you brir. that kind of taboo into the lives of saints: EXPLOSION! If icons can be cat lysts for such negative energy, imagin what catalysts they can be for healin .
Dick: We're comfortable with sain being "spiritual" entities, but not necessarily with saints being "sexual" entIties? So, part of the value of these icons is that they are "friends" of our own
Open Hands 12
orientation, "friends" who can our human sexuality as well as
. ·tuality?
: Yes, but many people have difaffirming the combination of Q\7'nT~lity and spirituality because a las been jammed between the and the sexual in Western cul. So, there is an explosive power e spiritual and the sexual meet? ~ll1.L>: That's right. It meets in everytit meets more transparently in gay and lesbian people, which is
ason people have an aversion to Q, in the icons you display and ...ts' stories you tell, the spiritual exual are being reconnected.
h this reconnection, gay and leseople know that these are our this is our humanity, our sexuour
spirituality. And there is a in that wholeness, a healing Dis: And that can be frightening. can be the cause of resentment. than listen, people demand, II Get
of here!"
''I \'hen we talk about icons, then, not talking about being transinto some other spiritual dimenor about worshipping images, or having schizophrenic conversaith other voices. We're talking connections and wholeness. talking about bringing sexuality irituality together-as they are, in ogether. And we're talking about ower in that connectedness and nis: Yes. What we're talking about e sense of communion with the . Their lives were difficult; my life
en difficult. Some of the reasons :es have been difficult are similar. uple of these women caught hell he Church they loved. We have . n common. What we are going gh we have in common with some "'aordinarily holy people who also a lot of problems, a lot of baggage. I ,~ want to lead a life anything like
Harvey Milk 1930-1978 The first openly gay man to be elected to high public office (city supervisor) in the U.S., Harvey Milk was assassinated with San Francisco's mayor on November 28, 1978, by a rival politician enraged by the mayor's defense of lesbians and gay men.
Icon © 1987 by Robert Lentz. Original in full color. Published by Bridge Building Images, P.O. Box 1048, Burlington, VT 05402. Text is adapted from a Living Circle brochure. Both are used with permission.
Joan of Arc or Hildegard or Sergius and Bacchus; I don't plan on martyrdom. But I feel much safer if I can be bonded with them and know that the light they were in their own day has continued to be a light for generations, even down to being a light for me. It helps to know that they somehow are still alive and supportive of me in my coming to better understand God in Christ and what it means for me to be a follower of Christ.
Dick: The saints may have been exceptional people doing exceptional things, but the fact that they had this light in them doesn't separate them from us. They remind us that we also have that light in us which has a particular source, God.
Dennis: We have a connection. Spirituality is about finding connections. If all of created reality are unique facets of God's glory and if the purpose of the incarnation (at least in John's Last Supper discourse) is III came that all may be one," then connectedness is vital. The more the communion of saints is true communion, the more the facets of God's glory shine. We are an lIicon" of God; creation is an "icon" of God.T
Note
1A catalog may be ordered from Bridge Building Images, P.O. Box 1048, Burlington, VT 05402. 802/864-8346. Den nis O'Neill is a priest at St. Benedict Church in the Chicago diocese. He is also codirector of The Living Circle, an interfaith spirituality center and chapel founded to serve the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community in the Chicago area.
Dick Poole, a member of the Open Hands advisory committee, is a Lutheran pastor who does spiritual direction at the Claret Center in the Hyde Park area of Chicago.
ng 1995 13
FINDING GOD IN OUR O'WN BACKYARD
By Kittredge Cherry
I~\
I was eating sushi in a North Hollywood mini-~:~:;:~l mall with a clergy colleague when he mentioned .~~
that Our Ladyof Guadalupe had been sighted i
nearby. The moss on a tree in somebody's back-l~1
de'
yard in a Latino neighborhood looked to be grow-';}f$ ing in the form of the Mother ofGod, known in 1\)\
:::'~e:a~:~:::r:~~ac;o~;:~~;~o':::X?~: $lJ own longingto seel:;~:;~:;;~s~J
Our mixed motives made us laugh nervously as we drove through a rare southern California drizzle to the site. Did we seek to honor something sacred or just to watch other people respond to an image they believed was holy?
We joined the crowd that stretched for nearly a block and shuffled with them past a makeshift burrito stand. When we reached the backyard, the first thing I noticed was light: The tree looked surreal under the glare of a harsh spotlight. Around it glowed at least a hundred candles, sputtering as the rain grew heavier. To see the image, I had to push through the crowd and relinquish all hope of staying dry, unmuddied, untouched. I breathed in the smells of roses and candle-wax, sweat and fresh rain.
I gazed at the moist niche in the Chinese elm tree and watched Mary's mossy image being obliterated. People longed with violent intensity to touch her and take her home. Some, like me, stroked the cool, damp wood. Many took whatever they had-a wristwatch, a wallet, a set of keys-and rubbed it against her. Others ripped off twigs to keep.
The singing of sweet Spanish hymns was interrupted by a child dressed as an altar boy (apparently the son of the homeowner), urging people to come back t omorrow. "Manana!" he called out. "Manana, manana." Nobody left. Soon his mother took him aside, her eyes gentle as she looked upon the longing that she couldn't refuse. "Let them be." That night I felt we saw the image of the God-Bearer, but it was in the faces of the people at least as much as in the unusual moss formation,
The next day I read in the newspaper that some bishop had forbidden official worship at the tree because "there is always the danger that miracles will distract Christians from the call to service." I couldn't help remembering what Jesus called the great and first commandment: "You shall love God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind." I can scarcely think of a time when I have witnessed the love of God expressed more physically and fervently than in that backyard in North Hollywood. And, yes, there was something scandalous and frightening about it, as with any paSSion. Our sense of order is disturbed when God becomes fles h in our own backyard.
Searching My Backyard
I began to wonder what God might be up to in my backyard-the backyards of my suburban childhood that still rest within my heart. Towncrest, Court Hill,
and Orchard Heights were the names the white, middle-class subdivisio. where I grew up. They could have bee anywhere in America, although th happened to be in Iowa. I felt then t.! Iowa was both anywhere and nowhe As a little girl I was fascinated same-sex friendships, wondering as watched TV what kind of relationsh existed between Wilma Flintstone a her neighbor Betty Rubble? Betwee Uncle Martin and the man he pretend was his nephew on liMy Favorite M
ptian"?
Looking back, I feel I was alwa lesbian and I consider secular Americ pop culture to be my spiritual backyar my native culture. I wasn't baptized a baby and our family rarely went church, so pop culture also serves as r!':, "church of origin," peopled by the Ii . of Captain Kangaroo. '
When spiritual ideas or images co into contact with pop culture, they te to become kitsch, like a magnetic }..f dashboard ornament. Yet, I wond whether God dwells in the plastic, . prefab, the disposable, the artificia flavored. I don't mean the sentimen' God, plastic-shaped to look like Jes' but the God of backyards and other likely places. Lesbians and other outc have always used scraps, the crurr. from the master's table, to maintain and build what they needed, indud their spirituality.
Finding the God-Bearer i American Pop Culture
The traditional place to seek God not in the backyard, but in the B. If you think American pop cu lt seems too devoid of meaning to pro. a dwelling-place for God, well, th how the Bible initially struck me. \ I began reading the Bible as an ad my first reaction to almost every s was, "You mean that's all it says? you mean all it says about what· God-Bearer felt aboutJesus' miracu birth is "Mary kept all these thi
Open Ha. 14
;c;:xfering them in her heart"? I ex-IIWe've Only Just Begun." Sometimes
o find out more by reading the the music seems to guide me. During a less. . ickness for old friends,
Song+M~~~r urged me not to stop h1~i .fri :~bowords of Donovan,
1995 15
. 16
Human beings have two spiritual needs which Christian beliefs meet: to be "like" and "with" God. We believe we are in some manner made in the "image" of God. We can identify on a finite scale with some godlike qualities (creativity, capacity for love, longing for justice, connectedness with others). Furthermore, we believe that, no matter where we are, we cannot be separated from the love of God. God is with us.
Each of us needs both to identify and to affiliate with God. We also should be able to identify all other humans with God. In the past, males have had the advantage and burdens of over-identification with God, while females have been encouraged to be affiliative with (and dependent upon) God. Both can benefit from evaluating their ways of conceiving of and naming the Deity. We can find ways to name the Deity so that we are profoundly shocked into the awareness of our own-and others-withness and likeness to God.
When I pray to "Patient and Persistent Black Friend," I never forget that
,God is able to be imaged in other ways, but my prayer opens aspects of divinity which I had not known. "Patient and Persistent Black Friend" has a lot to teach me. One dimension of my experience which grows is my way of being with God. I am more inclined to take a listening stance, fully aware of my interdependence with God. When I pray "Patient and Persistent Black Friend," I am not at all tempted to backslide into thinking that God is a "Magic Wand," to whom I make requests as a child might to Santa Claus. Also, the more familiar I am with God, addressed as "Patient and Persistent Black Friend," the more likely I am to identify my patient and persistent African-American friends with the image-of-God.
f40W PO WE N4~E Tf4EE
4NP Wf4'1?
By Carolyn Bohler
Expanding God Metap
M ~taphors and symbols for the lty cannot be voted upon. T emerge from a culture, communi and individual searching. During past two decades alone, literally h dreds of books and articles have dressed the question of what metap. to use for the Deity. We are in the ploratory stage: past metaphors have some of their meaning, but no mand has emerged for specific new metap While sometimes cumbersome or ch lenging, this is a very good stage. I fords us the opportunity to think th logically. What do we believe about and God's power? How are we with Gc Why do we say we are like God or Tn in the image of God?
While we may think that we do "have a problem" with how Go named, our problem may be who we to be made in God's image. Our s when three years old, observed th God weren't sometimes "She" for then boys might "accidentally" that God was more like them thar. I girls. He was right.
As we choose how to name the D for personal or corporate prayer o!" course, we can seek to find meta which will help to reveal God, wi hiding too much of God. Quite a c _ lenge. Luckily, monotheism is a in one God, not a belief in one phor.
To correct the irrelevancy or id of past metaphors, we do not ne argue that anything goes. We d reach a truth about the Deity by ing just any object, trying it out God metaphor. We need to ask two tions of a metaphor which is bein sidered. What does that metaphor ' about God's power? How does metaphor affect our self-respect? respect is not the same as self-es'
Open ii
··espect includes a healthy regard for -. 'gnity as well as the recognition
!' obligations.) rting our personal prayer with ghty, Eternal, Everlasting Lord" how we identify and affiliate with Does this metaphor match our
rstanding of God's power? Is God
hty? Can God step in, coercing nt to take place, without human ration? If not, what does it mean
almighty"?
ur prayer started with "Creative d Leader,/I our ability to sense and ourselves as like and with God be skewed in another way. The experienced we are with music or cIs, the more we can get into the of God coordinating the musithe!r timing, tones, moods, and
Honies. Consider the assumptions
power. Jazz band leaders are not
hty. Their power is persuasive
eative. Their power lies in their
"ng hard with the musicians, in sweating. They cannot make the .dans play their instruments well "ce one band member to coordi,ith another, but they can be a rful help. That power is coope.
Each individual must act with rs and with God, the Jazz Band er, to develop beautiful music.
onotheism is a elief in one God, ot a belief in one
metaphor!
m a lesbian mother, raising my -in the midst of a homophobic y, what does it mean to pray to 'enly Father"? The answer to that ion depends on my theology, \TI experience with a mother father, and my current context. ever, the metaphor, while ngthening my identification of es-who-father with God, likely not strengthen my self-respect esbian mother. How effective is enly Father" for the gay man oves and cares for his nieces and ws, but has no desire to be a
etic father?
ng 1995
Not many who are gay or lesbian can increase their own dignity and sense of obligations to others, or experience a healthy sense of their interdependence with the Deity, by using a heavy emphasis on Divine Father motifs. However, there may be occasions when such a divine metaphor could evoke healing. In a kairos moment, one may experience a release of accumulated barriers to one's human father, ushering in an urge to give grateful thanks to one's Divine Father.
One Use or Many?
M etaphors for the Deity may be used once, occasionally, or for a long period of time. Several times in my life I have used a divine metaphor for a specific occasion and never used it again.
~ C\
CHOOSING DIVINE METAPHORS
Ask these questions about potential metaphors. Check as many as relevant.
1.
Does it fit with my beliefs about God's power? _ God is "all powerful"-coercive _ God is "all powerful"-Iovingly persuasive _ God is persuasively responsive
2.
What kind of identification does it evoke from me? _ self-respect, made "in the image of God"" _ respect for others, also made "in the image"
3.
What kind of "withness" does it evoke from me? _ childlike dependence _ co-authored responsibility _ potter-clay-like moldability _ collegial interdependence
4.
Can I pray with this metaphor? _ empowers me _ causes an amused smile, but strikes achord _ leaves me cold, flat
5.
Will this metaphor be useful to me? _ once or twice, because of aparticular need _ for "this period" in my life _ for "quite awhile"
-Carolyn Bohler
<.; v
Once, during an ecumenical gathering at a Roman Catholic church, I was drenched in images of the saints while praying about my relationship with my husband. That one time I prayed, "Divine Infinite Couple," feeling that whatever helps couples throughout eternity could help us. In a meeting, furious at people's silence, I once prayed, "Spokesperson God, Why don't they-or Youspeak up?/I
For three years I breast-fed our two children. Then, Goddess gave me milk in the middle of the night when it seemed no Almighty Father would be of much use. A decade later, puzzled about menopause, I prayed "Clever, Creative Companion./I She helped me to realize that it is a clever idea to give women menopause, a pause in the middle of life to learn once again the lesson of ambiguity.
Each of those divine metaphors served me well in specific personal situations. Over time, however, the metaphor II Creative and Nurturing God" has challenged and sustained me again and again as I have led corporate worship or prayed whispering into my pillow.
The God to whom we pray remains "Who God Is." We can envision that presence more or less fully, responsibly, and healthfully. How we name that God powerfully affects our relation to God and to other humans .•
Note
This article is heavily rooted in Carolyn Bohler's book Prayer on Wings: A Search for Authentic Prayer. (San Diego: LuraMedia, 1990). For more discussion on ideas about identification and affiliation as spiritual needs, see especially pp.19-32.
Carolyn Bohler is Emma Sanborn Tousant Professor ofPastoral Theology and Counseling at United Theological . Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, where she has taught for thirteen years. A United
Methodist clergywoman and mother of two pre-teenagers, she has written two other books besides Prayer on Wings.
17
There is something about a river which has formed me, which still washes and pulls me. I grew up on the Hudson at a point where it spans two miles and is bordered by mountains all the way up the valley. It is an estuary, rushing fresh water down from the Adirondacks, pausing like the still moment at the exhalation ofbreath, and then pulling up the thick green smell of the sea. Something about tides and the constant undercurrent is in me, making me always yearn for movement. Journeying is my life-breath.
One evening when I was still young enough to be living at home, I walked down to the beach where I had swum almost every day for every summer since I was seven. That night the tide thrusting forward as I came up for air and my legs thrashing together in a strong push, I came into the current. The shores stretched wide on either side .of me like the thighs of a woman giving birth. I felt for the first time the immense, powerful rush of the water on its journey sea-ward. The river bore me up, cradled me, and demanded that I travel south. I had to labor upriver to stay in one place.
The creative, driving force of that river is my first image of God born of experience rather than learned from a Sunday school book. It is a dynamic image which has its roots in the interactive spirit of place. My thoughts that evening as the light faded to my left were that God is a lover, kissing every pore lay alongside my childhood as I ah :a. hoped a lover would lie beside me . bed-sensuous, stable, always chang:
Growing up on the Hudson, I lear the concepts of north and south _ro its source and outlet. I learned from tides of the estuary to wait out the c:of my childhood depressions. I lear to be a journeyer. River people or themselves along the cut of the va When we leave, it feels as if the margin of our life-story has been er Since I left the Hudson Valley, I learned that I carry that margin ,.. me because God is within me. Go river-lover, continues to border and shape to me.
wa
s ebbing and the water smelled clean, less heavy and salty than when the sea is pushed upstream. I waded out as the sun's lower rim tipped the edge of the palisades. The river was turning its hidof my salt-wet, nearly naked body. God den color. I dove into a murky wa e,ana.----came up in the breast ro e, determined for the fi ime to {) stay"" within the swi ming ea boundaries but instead;o ck under the · weedy cord hel by floats and to Rull ¥_----way b nd the rocky hr~The riv: widened . its around me until,7 'ning in prayer and then ... < ~~.
Open Hands 18
·our years I lived knowing I was xual and keeping it entirely silike four years of swimming the unrelenting tug of the curI~ is hard work doing the crawl, nwheeling around and legs ..g, all for the sake of staying in
e. I knew that being honest and
about the gift I am given-this . cated nature of mine which me sometimes to men and someo
women-was essential before I ontinue to grow in my relationh God. I got tired fighting my hobic excuses for not sharing my _.-;.ov;,.t with anyone. I grew exhausted es which screamed that I would ". job teaching seventh graders, ould scare off women as well as om intimate relationships, that I
right to come out because I had ave a sexual relationship with
e.
en I began to think that hiding h was harder than telling it, I imagine what would happen if I
swimming and allowed the cur"ash me south. I turned my fa toward the sky and let the tension and effort in my limbs fade like the orange light about the palisades. The water beneath me grew black. I spun slowly as the stars emerged. When I breathed in, the air became solid in my body, filling and sustaining me. In all that darkness, my perimeters were defined by breath. I passed under the bridge and the humming of its high steel struts. I passed under many bridges and through the walled, oily waters of the big city where fluorescent lights of skyscrapers smeared the stars. Heavy barges lurk~d in the periphery of my vision. Always the liquid substance of journeying held me up. At that unassuming opening where the river finally arrives, with the coast barely visible at the center of night, I was born into the ocean.
The ocean is a dangerous place for me. It is where perhaps God really exists and where perhaps the dream of who I could be is not a dream at all.
more"'"
1995 19
The longer I live with my river image of God, the more I understand how I, a bisexual woman, am created in that image. My river is an estuary with its tides pulling the salt water upstream and then pushing fresh water south. Everything is God-the current coming from the mountains, the river's journey, the emptying in the ocean, the ocean. The backwash is God. The ebb and flow and the still moment at the changing tide are God. Sometimes my journey retreats on itself, crossing back over familiar territory before it can continu~. It is the to do is write about bisexuality and spirituality. What seems to pull me further from my destination is simply part of the journey to get there. I need this time for my thoughts to mature and to get some perspective on the rough drafts of chapters I wrote last summer.
God's will can pull in two directions toward one end. My God is bisexual! If I trust that my will, deep inside, is also the movement of the water, then I will be carried. This is the flow tide now, the thrusting up of seaweed over fresh water, the creeping up on dry banks. This
give and take of breathing that prc)P~~::::::::t~tHIl~ of filling, and waiting for the me forward.
Nothing is more important for the spiritual well-being of gay Christians than healthy images of the Divine which spring from our experiences and work in dynamic relationship with our daily struggles. We need the constant reminder that who we are mirrors what is holy. Too many images of ourselves are destructive. God-within-us is frightening and infinitely beautiful. By naming God from what we know of God rather from what we have been taught we dive deep into the pulsing current of our lives. T
':-A-J(l'rIrpw is a member of Prospect
~ea..$1€~ftlJ)alst Church, a ReconCongregation
i
'M-lr1'ltzeatJO[I',S, Minnentl~
she
th grade
and is workin:r
-Ti'lWi;;lrct-.hPr Mast
by Miriam Therese Winter
LIVING WATER
Living Water, like a river,
like a fountain, like the sea.
Living Water, like a river, All who thirst for Living Water,
ever rising, rise in me. turn to You, Unfailing Spring.
Wash our wounds and cleanse o ur spi" · Living Water, So urce of Life for everything.
full and free.
Living Water, Cool and c leanse,
live in me. Unfailing Spring,
Cool and comfort Living Water, Living Water, everything. Living Water, full a nd free. Rising Water, rising Water, Living Wate r, Living Water, Rising Wate r, rise in me. Living Water Living Spring; Cool and comfort, Comfort everything.
Copyright © 1976, 1987 by Medical Mission Sisters. Used with permission of copyright owner.
Note
This song is sung in parts to music composed by Miriam Therese Winter. Words and music can be found in Winter's Womansong, published by Medical Mission Sisters, 8400 Pine Road, Philadelphia, PA 19111.203/233-0875.
Open Hands 20
,
ral2~§ong
r1995
Note
This pra~er poem was first published in The World, Jul~/August 1994. Used with permission. Mark Belletini is minister at Starr King Unitarian Church in Hayward, California.
You ow Icould choose fancier words: ofall Being, Ultimate Reality, Mystery ofCreation. somehow today Ineed to imagine more intimately, 5 f Icould reach out my arms and hold Youtenderly ea friend whoinvites my best love.
'erhaps it's thedusky scent ofsummer sycamoreleaves ':'at somehow suggests such intimacy, "eminding me ofthe comforting fragrance ofa friend's cotton shirt rounded on supporting shoulders in a hug. Don't be scared ofthe word, Friend. Ido holdit in high esteem. Loo~ just as Idon't blame any friend ofmine forbloodshed in Dalmatia or volcanoes in the Philippines, Ido not blame You, Friend, nor do Icower before You in terror, as ifYou were a bully. From You today Iask no more than what any other friend gladlyoffers all the time (although, like You, they often don 1know it).a sense ofperspective, and the redemptive laughter that goes with it, a sense of being loved, ofbelonging, a feeling ofimmense gratefulness for everystar in heaven. When You are close, as You are now, Iget a sense ofthe Alleluia curled up in every fragment of my mortal life, an Alleluia despite the unbalance, the hardship, the pains that life is heir fo by being itself.
Praise to You, my Frien d, forYour steadfastness in being there moment by moment, like my breath, like my heartbeat, like my rhythmic hopes. I'm working on being as good a Friend to myself as You've been to me. Sometimes I'm harder on myselfthan You could ever be. At other times Ilet myself off, while Youjust keep on expecting me to be the best I can be. Thanks. Without You there walking by my side, with Your arm draped over my shoulder, or a twinkle or tear in Your ubiquitous eye as the situation demands, my life would be flat, not full ofsuperb joy and rich sorrow as it is, Thanks. Oh, yes, and all the ancient praise, Sanctus, Baruch Atah, Alhamdulila, Metta. And not a little love.
WJr..Dr..V JNc:.r..USJ"t-A. ~ii",e We c:.iill Go
By ....owArd B. WArre", .Jr.
I mages-those names by which we call God-grow richly out of our exThe kerygma, the proclamation, was periences and life journeys. In the that God is with them/us fully. Overmidst of our journeys, the kerygma night, God became to me forever liThe (Greek word meaning proclamation), Wildly Inclusive God." the heart of the Gospel, is experienced The One who gives life and an image appears. The One who overwhelmingly loves
The name, liThe Wildly Inclusive those created God," grows out of three inter-related The One who is with us now and experiences over a three-year time span forever in my journey. First, I discovered I was A very practical Trinity indeed! HIV+ and lived with that horrible, false As a child, youth, and adult growing guilt/shame growing out of the early up in the church community, I carried lies, myths, and stigma. Second, I iman early childhood shame and guilt that mersed myself in the Scriptures, letting became falsely confused with my sexual truth replace lies, and opened myself to orientation. It always made me feel secGod's call to come out as being HIV+/ ond class. Even after ordination, I chose AIDS and gay. Third, I was working as a always to be an associate minister, as if I director of pastoral care atan HIV+/AIDS could not be a responsible vehicle for service and support center with so many God's love to flow through. This was so folks who felt that God would not be heightened by my non-integration of with them because of their sexual orimy sexuality and spirituality. entation or other reasons. Yet, by the grace of God, beautiful
ministries developed
and I always wondered, "Will I be fully touched,
PSALM 10 Based on Psalm 86
Bow down your ear and hear me, 0 Holy One,
first class someday?" In
as my soul is ragged and needy.
In this time preserve and protect my soul
the three years before I
and the souls of the lavender People,
discovered I was HIV+, I
for we cry unto you daily and we are holy.
was plunged into teach-
In good and bad times we call upon you,
ing Kerygma Bible Study.
for you are good, ready to forgive
It required-2-3 hours of
and overflowing with mercy.
daily direct Bible study.
Especially in the times of our trouble we will call upon you,
I was being prepared by
for there is no one like you and your works reflect you.
The Wildly Inclusive
Someday all will come to you and glorify your name,
God to one day use this
for you are God: Creator, Prophet, Spirit,
Shepherd whose mercy raised my soul from lowest hell;
name.
One evening
Now the proud, self-righteous ones have risen up against us.
The solemn assemblies are now assemblies of violence.
learned that a colleague,
There is a mean spirit of arrogance
who had been so pastoin
what has always been your inclusive home.
ral to my face, had been
They wish to push us out, to make us strangers at your gate
working to get rid of me.
because we are open about thefact that we are
I could not respondlesbian,
gay, bisexual, transexual, transgender, created by you.
until the message of my
morning Bible study (lsa
owildly inclusive God full of grace and mercy,
sustain my soul.
50:4-11; 51:6) came to
Give us a token of good to show them that hate our inclusion
me: The mighty hand of
so that they will be ashamed.
God will lift you up.
All so that we may live in your house forever.
It was the experiHoward
B. Warren, Jr.
enced images of God's
Indianapolis, Indiana
hand, God's arms, God's
Note
This psalm was first printed in the More Light Psalter, published by Presbytewatch
over, and care of,
rians for Lesbian & Gay Concerns, January 1995. Used with permission.
me that created my
22 name for God. These were images of a God who does not simply stay in the church but goes outside to the strangers at the gate. Here was a God to whom there is no outcast or "other." There simply is no asterisk of exclusion to the incredible, inclusive, compassionate love of God.
I am sure I first used the name, Wildly Inclusive God, in a hospital room to help alleviate the fear of someone living/dying with AIDS. Perhaps I first used it with two gay males as a name to bless their earthly love forever before one of them went to God's eternal home, held in God's arms forever.
This name by which I call God is associated with Isaiah 43 where God calls everyone by name. The name grows out of "Lost in the Stars," the musical version of Cry The Beloved Countr)/J in which the black African pastor who is looking for his lost son sings about him being lost in the stars but that God knows each star. This name for God grows out of Ethyl Waters singing, "God's eye is on the sparrow." The name "Wildly Inclusive God" grows out of m;' teenage reaction to Blanche's words i Streetcar Named Desire, where she sa.;s "I've always depended on the kindnes of strangers." The name for God grO\':~ out of songs like "You'll Never \IVa.. Alone" and "There's a Place for Us" an "There's a Wideness in God's Mercy.
At sixty, I thank God for finding me enriching me, and enabling me to naIr. God in this way. I look forward to next name I will be led to discover. H about you? What is God prompting y to call forth? Go for it! Let that imag name, or title grow out of God, you, an others.'"
Howard B. Warren, Jr., is director of pastoral
care at the Damien Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. He recently celebrated his thirty-fifth anniversary as an ordained clergy in the Presbyterian Church, USA.
Open Hands
"\
By Lynn Mickelson
~ ;:s--'-.......
~
everal weeks ago Iwas feeling very sad and lonely. I was feeling my losses-Dad's death, an ended rel5hip, many precious friends with
oJ
I longed for comfort. That night, rayed for peace and consolation, a re sprang into my mind of a
'Cii."'nTnID with open arms offering to hold . saw no head or face, only her arms orso. As I nestled my grief-ridden ainst her naked breasts and belly, e"s I was resting in the strong arms . I slept deeply and woke the next ling filled with serenity. I was in hat my communion with God d be so tangible and physical. This rience was not so much a sexualizof God as a receiving of comfort m a lover. So often we carry our deep"';ounds in our bodies long after they e disappeared from our minds and rts. God related not only to myemo15 and thoughts but also to my body.
mingaNew
-Image
ven't always related to God as lover. . fact, not too many years ago, I .d have thought such a notion to rovocative, ifnot blasphemous. Topraying
to God as lover is as natuand truthful as being alive. :: hen I was a child, my parents ht me to pray. This was very impor. because it showed me that I could ," with God and that God was lis.. g. Yet, soon the memorized prayers me just words which rarely engaged mi nd or heart. My image of God
.ng 1995
then was of the benevolent, grandfatherly white guy who somehow lived in the sky. As I grew and learned about prayer petitions, God became (as one friend puts it) a cosmic vending machine. Neither of these images were helpful. I longed for a relationship with God like those I read about in the Bible. There, women and men seemed to know God and God knew them. They talked and argued and celebrated.
Itwas in "coming out" that my relationship with God came alive and deepened. During those months of internal anguish and struggle to affirm a reality I did not want, God was my constant companion. I argued, struggled, and wept. Through itall, I, kept getting affirming messages from surprising places like my church, St. Paul-Reformation in St. Paul, Minnesota. (When I started attending there, I had no idea that it was Lutherans Concerned's first Reconciled in Christ congregation. I didn't know that it had just started Wingspan Ministry, staffed by Anita Hill and Leo Treadway, an open lesbian and gay man.) One day while I was pacing down historic Summit Avenue, a message came to mind with alarming clarity: "Your sexuality is my gift to you, Lynn." God had not abandoned me, but like a lover remained steadfast, sharing and respecting my journey.
Healing the Divine Mind/Body Split
As I discovered and became a more
fully embodied person, celebrating my sexuality and erotic power, I also realized the embodiment of God. Much is written about healing the mind/body split in human beings. I believe we also need to restore to God all the sensuousness of Creation. The One who created the wonder of our earth and the wonder of our bodies is not divorced from that creation. God is not a sort of cosmic computer or ethereal spirit. God is tangible. We experience God embodied through each other and through nature.
Several years ago, I made an unforgettable hike to Holden Lake while at Holden Village, a Christian retreat center in the Cascade Mountains. Surrounded by sensuous mountains, I was reminded of EI Shaddai-the breasted God. Descending into the valley, with the air becoming moist and steamy, was quite erotic. I felt filled to bursting with the beauty, life, and the erotic power which surrounded and touched me. My heart was singing; each step was an affirmation and praise. I understood in those hours the ecstatic and intimate prayers of my Christian mystic foremothers. God is my lover who relates to me wholly with spirit, mind, heart, and body.
We need to restore to
God all the sensuousness
ofCreation.
This relating to God as lover means a profound affirmation of the sacred erotic power both in the Divine and in ourselves. God, my lover, affirms all of who I am. With God I am completely naked, vulnerable, and exposed, but God is not distant from me. God is present, affirming, sharing, loving. With God I am completely known and invited into a relationship. In this relationship, God is the intimate partner of my so~l.T
Lynn Mickelson is an attorney in St. Paul, Minnesota, and legal program coordinator for the Min nesota AIDS Project.
23
(f{l~[p)~ a~ @@[p)))~ a(f{l~@~~
@@w)WJC!tJ~cruw t?({@W@[? cr~
~C!tJ@cr@ @~ctJ ~@W@WJ@~\(
By Caroline Presnell
Made in God's Image
Words and music: Caroline Presnell
I~ ~ JtJ J)I 3 J J J IJ J J. IiI§J II
Be-~ond us, One of us, VJith-in and with us.
© 1994
Practice >}
To avoid breaki~~fhe prayerful mo~"lrice started, give cl1recti0I1S (belq~i]for the movements before starting. Practice {QPping and walking ~h~.circles comfort.~ble. r}·i;L\.···· .. ~t\
Djff;ctions foWJPtoveJ.'
.};~fter we have le~t~ed the m~~ieiJ~~der will stafld ~p. Maint~inirig the q~~~t rri~.Od,
f:6rm two circles~~5ipg OPPOSit¢iqtreS)ions, onei~s~de the otJ1~rl;rith eacqtndi~dual
tpe per~on aheag> > ·i.>·<\·ii/:\ .•••••• ..L\}
;?.(pn7circle w#l. be n;oving clockwise, the other counterclockwise~ .::ersons unqble.!to walk
\ j~s~;tnside th~Fentertircle, grtgst outside the outer circle, facin~~~coming l!al~7rs.)
••.. "1'erill singt~e t14I?-e OnCti~\place, perhaps~~th eyes closeq ... ':{hen, as w~~ggin the
tirt~s~~rt slowlywal~ing the circ1: s. As you ch~nf~nd move, lqek il}Fo the f~~~ of each
ar1p.&9.egni,?t .~he qiv~ne inthat P7fson. You wiUlnake the cornPI;te, round·several
·eg.~Q.~n111 ripg ap'~ll (or(give an<;>ther signal)!orYQu to stop tA0Yipg. Bothcircles
center and w¢wills:frig the/<:llant ~9ttly one 19st}tirne< . . . ... ... . .
... .......
:':":
Begin·;··
Sittin&.2o~fOr~~bIY relax~g/t~~~in tpe ~§~if as:~?ro~p. 's,ihgiio~er siqjvly~iny, manY¥ifnes, jlrttil .< everyone ~n()\Vs i~well. As the ~ip~!ng~egins to flow effOr!less!g.r( it will becc)~~ .~ nra.ver'tu l ready, give thrLsigpal (by stand!~g up~ f?r combining th~ inu~~c with move~~Jlt:
When rea9M;tq stop, give thesigp~lt2face center andsing\thant softlybq~ l~st
Note
The music and directions may be freely reprinted or photocopied for use in worshipful settings.
The music must include composer citation. No part of the work may be published in any form
without written permission of author/composer.
Caroline Presnell is a member ofWheadon United Methodist Church, a Reconciling Congregation
in Evanston, Illinois, where this musical prayer chant was first used at a retreat. She
serves as a member of the Advisory Committee ofOpen Hands.
Open Hands 24
Bring Many Names
Brian Wren Carlton Young
(J =69)
Westchase. 9.10.11.9.
v.............. _......
•
-.. ' 1 '..I r7
~
I{ .... .t:.
'"'
II~ V II "l
,v .----* ..
....,
~ ...~ -4~
~ -
Op.Y
I "---,,fr
~ " --r ••
I '-----1.
Bring man -y nam~s, I beau -ti -ful and good, I
2.
Strong moth -er God, work -ing night and day,
3.
Warm fa -ther God, hug -ging ev -ery child,
4.
Old ach -ing God, grey with end -less care,
S. Young grow -ing God, ea -ger, on the move,
6. Great liv -ing God, nev -er ful -ly known, ,. .r. I ......... . n
!-'
1-II . rJ L.
c..~ I-' '-' n
I ""
r •
[ .... v 1.1 t:.
"
~ I I r u
f 1 L
IJ 1.1 "'I{
""
II~ V I ..... .... ....
• --J
•,... --,~
-J ....I 1":1.-. r ..I
~ ---• 0
-77
TJ
r r J
I I 1
cel -e -brate in par -a -ble and sto -ry, ho -li -ness in plan -ning all the won -ders of cre -a -tion, set -ting each e feel -ing all the strains of hu -man liv -ing, car -ing and for-calm -ly pierc -ing e -vil's new dis -guis -es, glad of good sursee -ing all, and fret -ting at our blind -ness, cry -ing out for joy -ful dark -ness far be -yond our see -ing, clos -er yet than
1
I d I I I ~
~. ,..,
--II· I r~ !-' u ( -" -----[
.r..
L '"
~
I .... v .....
1.1
r
(\ I
I
1.I II
1\
, -In" v -.. , • -.. • -..-'"
-'
, v
...~
~
~
b""" # ~t· ~ "'III i i
r '-"f ...
glo -ry, liv -ing, lov -ing God: Hail and ho qua -tion, ge -ni -us at play: Hail and ho giv -ing till we're re -can -ciled: Hail and ho pris -es, wis -er than de -spair: Hail and ho jus
-tice, giv -ing all you have: Hail and ho breath -ing, ev -er -last -ing home: Hail and ho I
1
,....L""II.,--r~ ~ -'-'
....
"" ~ r
1/ ~
7 "" ~. -...
.... v
• -....I
-
0
I i ~
• !
1-5 11 6
II
~r
san -na, bring man -y names! san -na, strong moth -er God! san -na, warm fa -ther God! san -na, old ach -ing God! san -na, young grow -ing God!
great liv -ing God!
I
Copyright © 1989 by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
Permission to reproduce this hymn must be obtained directly from Hope Publishing Company, 1-800-323-1049.
Spring 1995 25
On God-Images
A deep longing is sweeping through many of us these days, a longing to name the Divine in our own particular ways out of our own particular holy moments, holy spaces, and holy interactions. Many of the traditional names for God do not match either our personal, private experiences of the Divine or our corporate, public experiences of worship. So, we speak out God's names: River God, Wildly Inclusive God, Patient and Persistent Black Friend, Lover God, Sophia God.
We in God's Image-God in Ours
We are claiming more and more thoroughly the biblical announcement that we are "made in the image of God." All of us need to claim that wondrous announcement. A three-year-old boy caught the signficance: if God isn't sometimes "She" then boys might aCcidentally think that God is more like boys than like girls (Bohler, p.16). More than that, and probably beyond the little boy's comprehension, is ~he fact that girls might consistently think that boys are like God-made in God's imageand girls are not. Many of us have been insisting further that God is Black and Brown as well as White. Some of us acknowledge God as young and old. Some of us are now naming what we have long felt-that God is lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered as well as heterosexual.
With growing insistence, therefore, we affirm that if we all are made in God's image, God is to be named in our images, all our images. The Divine One is our Earth Mother as well as our Heavenly Father, our Black and Brown Friend as well as our White Friend, our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Lover as well as our heterosexual Lover.
Intimate God-Images
I was struck with how many of the writers in this issue used God-images of Friend and Lover. We long to connect with the Divine in intimate ways. We imagine God interacting with us in human ways. We want to relate to our God as compassionate, steadfast Friend or Lover rather than Almighty, everlasting, Heavenly Father or Lord which implies distance and subservience. We really want to believe in incarnation and pentecost: God embodied, God with us, God among us, God in us. How sad then that at least one new denominational hymnal prints Shirley Erena Murray's hymn, "Loving Spirit," but omits the friend and lover verse:
Friend and lover; in your closeness
I am known and held and blessed:
in your promise is my comfort,
in your presence I may rest. 1
It seems that mother, father, and spirit images of God (in the other verses) are acceptable, but friend and lover images are not.
The lesbigay and transgendered communities are bringing more sensual, sensuous, and intimate God-language and Godimages out of the closet. Mickelson's (p.23) grief-stricken self nestling against God's naked breasts for comfort as with a steadfast lover may disturb us. It is, however, a powerful image of a comforting and steadfast God. Can we expand our image of God to include such images? Or is our God too small? Too non-sexual? Too distant?
In the final analysis, of course, God is always more than we can name; God is I AM WHO I AM. Yet, God is also who and what we name God. God is who and what we experience as Divine. Our names for God are just that-our human names for the Mysterious Presence. There is no other way. And each of us has one-and many-names for the Divine. Ifonly we can feel free to speak them.
Note
1Shirley Erena Murray, In Every Corner Sing (Carol
Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing Company,
1992), no. 48.
tlaJl ~qrA:rtifle~ror Wint~r 1996
l!!)een ¢
. ~andJ
d;hder atJd !;~nsgender:
};,xploring tl1.e Issues,' Sh~,ring thl"Stories ,
8~;~.;;; .. ~_ ,
This theme will exp!ore current understandings of gend~r and
> transgender and offer ~' variety ot personal storIes and reflections. We tnvite transgendered people to share their s,tories. We also invite pastors to share their experiences and ref1ection~ about ministering to and with transgendered ~ople in ourwelcoming church community. Other artides are well:=ome. 900-2 700 words.
Call with your idea: July 1 Final manuscript due: November 1
Ifyou would like to write an article, contact Editor, RCp, 3801 N. Keeler, Chicago, IL 60641
26
Open Hands
mments &Letters
as Friend
e image of God I most often use is Friend. I see God as one who is beside me, encouraging and strengthening carryon, enabling me and giving me hugs, and stretch.d challenging me. God loves me deeply and does not let
.. . me. It is important to me to think of God as being here . me, working with me .
contrast is the image of God as some grandfatherly, :-ded, white man up in the sky. This distancing of God lends ••0 worm theology-God in the sky is to be praised, while n beings are dirty worms groveling on the earth. This
logy's emphases on sinning, judgment, redemption, and _.ng God go together with beliefs that we should just wait .. the Second Coming for there to be justice on earth.
ry not to base my faith on that kind of theology. I believe s helping us change the world now! We are not supposed it. God's sexual minority children have a Friend holding ands, comforting us, goading us, and helping us extend
hands to others.
-Tim Eckert, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Canadian Representative on Lutherans Concerned Board
1: A Worship Service on God-Images
n relating to the various groups within the Mennonite rch of which I am a member, I have found that using scripe
and familiar hymns to speak of Mother God is quite efve. fi rst realized this over ten years ago in my home church in " Park, Illinois. Rather than beginning with people's heads, ided to appeal to their hearts, since most of our resistance change is not intellectual but emotional. I requested an ortunity to lead a worship service on maternal images for
in scripture.
'oVe did not have a sermon that morning. Instead, through
.ipture readings and quiet reflection, through hymns and a
ny, we spent an hour in the presence of God as a woman in
.. dbirth (Isa 42), as Mother Eagle (Deut 32:11-12), and as
ther Hen (Lk 13:34). The mood was so well established that body blinked an eye when we sang the old gospel song, nder His Wings I Am Safely Abiding," and changed every e of the twelve male pronouns to Her. It had to be her wings; at chick runs to a rooster for safety?
The rich sharing time afterward surprised me. Women and men talked about their own secret female imagery for God, or recounted childhood experiences with their mothers. A friend with no previous interest in inclusive language told me later that she was converted. I have used this service several times since, and it continues to be effective.
-Reta Finger, Harrisonburg, Virginia From Daughters of Sarah, July/August 1991 Excerpted and used with permission
Idea 2: A Workshop on God-Images
Spend sonie time in Bible study using the many references found in articles of this issue. Sing hymns with different Godimages. Provide art materials and invite people to draw, paint, finger-paint, or sculpt their personal God-image.
-Editor
On "Healing Broken Institutions"
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
I am returning the copies of the current issue which arrived in today's mail. There is a very offensive article about a seven step plan to heal broken institutions (George McClain's "Healing Broken Institutions," Winter 1995)...1 take offense at the article's mechanistic presuppositions of how institutions can overcome bigotry and brokenness. If it were that simple, racism would have ended in this country with the Civil War in 1865 and from that point onward any of the other identified evils of western society should have been swiftly and forever ended as well. In a mechanistic universe, we should have reached perfection several generations ago.
I suspect the reasons for any vote 'on an issue of controversy within a congregation are always very complex, and possibly even unique to the individuals within that congregation. When a congregation votes the "right" way, there needs to be continuing compassion for the losers, even as there should be when a congregation votes the "wrong" way. And whichever way a congregation votes, the issue is seldom resolved. I doubt if there is even one Reconciling Congregation in which no homophobia is to be found either institutionally or personally...
Kermit Krueger, Pastor The United Church ofRogers Park (RC) Chicago, Illinois
Readers Invited to Respond
Send us your comments oli past IQemes and artigles OJ your concerns about particular struggles in the welcoming church com~ munity. Write a short personal reflectionpieceon one of me themes for upcoming issues (see box on page 26). Send to EdHor, 3801
N. Keeler, Chicago, It 60641. Fa~: 312/736:.5475.
-inter 1995 27
RE-IMAGINING GOD
Ciark, Linda, Marian Ronan and Eleanor Walker. Image-Breaking/Image-Building. New York: Pilgrim Press, 1981. Includes general discussion of re-imaging God. See especially the poem "Baker-Woman God."
Craighead, Meinrad. The Mother's Songs: Images of God the Mother. New York: Paulist Press, 1986. This small (79-page) book consists mostly of colored illustrations.
Flinders, Carol Lee. Enduring Grace: Living Portraits of Seven Women Mystics. San Francisco: Harper, 1993. Includes descriptions of Clare ofAssisi, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, Catherine of Genoa, Teresa of Avila, and Therese of Lisieux.
Fox, Matthew. Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality. Santa Fe: Bear & Company, 1983. See Theme 11, "Emptying: Letting Go of Images and Letting Silence Be Silence," and Theme IS, "From Cosmos to Cosmogenesis: Our Divinization as Images of God Who Are Also Co-Creators."
Marstin, Ronald. Beyond Our Tribal Gods: The Maturing ofFaith. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979. "Where people are called to the worship of a God whose love is understood to embrace all the world's people, then the essential idolatry lies in accepting as God's will a social arrangement in which the lives of some are reckoned cheap" (p. 10).
Nelson, James B. Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1978. See especially his discussion, pp. 238-46, in chapter on liThe Church as Sexual Community" where he explores how our images of God have been both too sexual and not sexual enough. See also his Body Theology (1992).
Phillips, J.B. Your God Is Too Small. New York: Macmillan, 1955. An "oldie" which provides interesting reading about the need to expand our God-imaging process; written before the feminist re-imagining process existed. The book's use of exclusive male imagery for people and God just underscores the need for theological re-imagining work today.
Sur, Carolyn Worman. The Feminine Images of God in the Visions ofSaint Hildegard ofBingen's Scivias. The Edwin Mellen Press, 1993. Exploration of six God-images that German prophet and visionary Hildegard of Bingen used in her 12th century work, Scivias: Living Light, Terra Mater (Earth Mother), Eve, Synagoga, Mary, and Ecclesia (Church).
WORSHIP RESOURCES
Emswiler, Tom Neufer. "Who Knows the Face of God?" Sisters and Brothers Sing. 2d ed. Normal, Illinois: The Wesley Foundation, Illinois State University, 1977, p. 76. This song lifts up biblical images of God as mother, father, shepherd, woman searching for coin, hen, young girl, old man, and others.
Howard, Julie. We Are the Circle: Celebrating the Feminine in Song and Ritual. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1993. Includes scripture references, prayers, songs, and ritual suggestions. See song, "I Am the Vine."
Winter, Miriam Therese. Woman Prayer/Woman Song: Resources for Ritual. Oak Park, Illinois: Meyer Stone Books, 1987. See especially two ritual tunes on God as water and God as fire.
Wren, Brian. Bring Many Names. Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing Company, 1989. A wonderful variety of songs celebrating different names for the Divine One.
CHILDREN'S RESOURCES
Sasso, Sandy Eisenberg. In God's Name. Illustrations by Phoebe Stone. Woodstock, Vermont: Jewish Light Publishing, 1994. In poetic text and vibrant illustrations, this modern fable celebrates the diversity and, at the same time, the unity of all people. A multicultural, nondenominational and nonsectarian spiritual celebration of all people of the world and their belief in one God. (From book jacket)
Wood, Douglas. Old Turtle. Illustrations by Cheng-Khee Chee. Duluth: Pfeifer-Hamilton Publishers, 1992. The animals argue over their various images of God until Old Turtle, in her wisdom, tells them God is wind, mountain, and all the other images they have.
OTHER RESOURCES
Anderson, Elizabeth, ed. Daughters ofSarah:The Magazine for Christian Feminists. Published quarterly. $18. To subscribe: Daughters of Sarah, 2121 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 6020l. See especially Winter 1995 issue on "Courageous Voices: Our Spiritual Mothers" which includes a great cover image of "wisdom" and an article about Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena.
Bridge Building Images. P.O. Box 1048, Burlington, VT 05402. This group features artists who create icons and other spiritual images, drawing on Judeo-Christian, Goddess, Native American, and other traditions. Catalog available. 802/8648346: Fax 802/865-2434.
Joern, Pamela Carter, ed. Re-Imagining: Quarterly Newsletter of the Re-Imagining Community. Membership, $20. To subscribe: Re-Imagining, 122 W. Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, MN 55404. Articles, poetry, art, news, and resources. First issue focused on liRe-Imagining Jesus, Christ, Us"; second on "ReImagining: Body and Soul."
Open Hands 28
ucing our New Welcoming Churches ewelcome these twelve new churches which have joined ~ ~rowing grassroots movement in recent months.
..................
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OPEN
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AffiRMING ~
CONGIlEGAnONS
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..................
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[ AND AFFIRMING
mmunity Congregational Church
cia, California
rue to its name, this Bay Area church of 106 members s seriously the call to be a community that "rejoices with se who rejoice and weeps with those who weep." Their life ether is marked by openness. They are open about the .lggles they face in everyday life and seek meaningful ways elp each other through them. In their worship life, they open to the Spirit and willing to try new ways to celebrate express their faith. Their current pastoral search process encouraged them to focus on who they are and what they h to accomplish as a church. They look forward to discuss-hat with candidates.
eCongregational Church, UCC
dlebury, Vermont
Located in a county famous for dairy farming and Middle•
ry College, this 400-member congregation includes people all ages and life stages, including singles, families, and many .red folks. Members are looking forward to hosting the An~l Meeting of the Vermont Conference this spring. The rch's ONA decision is one expression of its strong comtment to social awareness. While there has not been any :-mal decision, they have had conversation about ceremo.
s of blessing.
irst Congregational Church IE ... 'eka, California
Part of an area previously sustained by logging and fishing, .e approximately SOmembers of this congregation share the rrent concerns of economic hardship. Aspiritually vital faith mmunity, First Church brings a more "liberal bent" to the nerally conservative atmosphere of this part of northern lifornia. Its ONA decision, however, was not without struggle. .e church is now engaged in a pastoral search process and is
hopeful about the promise of new leadership and new directions for ministry.
First Congregational, UCC Mankato, Minnesota
Just over an hour from the Twin Cities, First Congregational is the only UCC church in this university town. Its 210 members come from various religious backgrounds and are diverse in age and family configuration. Since the 1970s, the church has met in the Multi-Church Center which it shares with a United Methodist congregation and, until recently, a Baptist congregation. As it looks to the future, the church is in process of deciding whether to build its own facility to accommodate its growing congregation. Mindful of the future expression of its ONA commitment, it may form a new ONA committee to address that challenge.
Niles Congregational, UCC Fremont, California
Niles is a growing suburban congregation of 233 members with a strong tradition of involvement in the community, conference, and wider denomination. Members of all ages take part in its active Sunday School, dynamic music program, and ministry with the local homeless shelter. Expressions of the church's ONA commitment include a newspaper ad (with a shortened form of their ONA statement) and announcements to the church of gay/lesbian events. Some members also participated in the UCC contingent of the San Francisco Gay/Lesbian Pride Parade.
Zion United Church of Christ Henderson, Kentucky
Increasing in number from 15 to 200 members and friends in a little over two years, this dynamic, urban-related congregation is seeking to insure its stability while continuing to grow. It is an "intentional community" in which members write personal covenants about their relationship to the church and also sign a communal covenant. The church is hoping to receive a grant from one of the UCC's national boards which would enable them to hire an additional full-time staff person. Through their 'community meeting house, called "Paff Haus," the church offers encouragement and space to various community groups, including Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and a gay men's support group.
.. .-.".. .-.".-....-.-.·:.·'.-.·.-.·.·.T.·".·....~.-.-. . .;..-.-.-.
~"}!;~~~ff~p _ ~i -i National Gathering Of.,the • United Church Coalition ,for Lesbian/Gay Concerns :
"Hurtling Tow;lrd the Mif/tnnium: • Political Uphljaval/ GS}<ifRower and> Our Dreams for the Church"
June 26-29,1995
BerK~ley,.,Califorrtia
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Registt{{iion informa1io'h':: UCCUGC,'18 N. Colfege Street, Athens, OH 45701 •
614/593-7301 :
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pring 1995 29
Macalester-Plymouth United Church
st. Paul, Minnesota
Macalester-Plymouth became the 63rd More Light Church on January 22. As a united church, Macalaster-Plymouth has also become an Open and Affirming congregation in the United Church of Christ. The decision was the culmination of a study process which began in the fall of 1993 and included a number of adult education forums, all-church retreats, questionnaires, visiting preachers, and monthly task force meetings.
Silver Spring Presbyterian Church
Silver Spring, Maryland
Silver Spring is a congregation of 275 members actively involved with counseling programs, food kitchens, and Habitat for Humanity as part of their commitment to justice and "the common pilgrimhood of all people." Silver Spring engaged in a deliberate More Light study process lasting several years. The More Light declaration, adopted on December 12, was delayed a bit while the congregation dealt with major termite damage to the sanctuary.
Church of the Redeemer UMC
Cleveland Heights, OH
Church of the Redeemer's 350 members reflect a rich diversity culturally and socio-economically. Its vibrant music/ worship program includes three choirs: gospel, chancel, and bell. The congregation lives out its "Community of Love and Service in Christ" motto in varied ministries, including Habitat for Humanity and a weekly meal program for homeless persons. Ministries with children are a strong emphaSiS, with many enrichment opportunities for children beyond the Sunday School time. Redeemer's strength lies in its broad base of committed lay leaders.
Grace United Methodist Church
Chicago, Illinois
As the oldest Protestant church in the Logan Square neighborhood, Grace traces its roots back 125 years and three congregations. Its 80 members include both lifetime members who commute back from the suburbs and young professionals who live in the neighborhood. Grace has a high profile in its community because of its ministry of hospitality. Aspira Community High School, serving Puerto Rican at-risk students, and the Puentes ("Bridges") Project, an after-school program serving Latino and African-American youth, both meet in Grace's building. Grace's Reconciling decision reflects the feeling of openness which permeates the congregation's life.
United Methodist Church of Sitka
Sitka, Alaska
The UMC of Sitka was established in 1965 in this historic southern Alaska city located on a Pacific island. It is a "missionary church," ninety miles from the nearest United Methodist church. The congregation's 125 members include a professional cross-section of the city. Its building houses a Head Start program and a youth hostel managed by the native Tlingit Indians. The congregation has long identified itself as an "open fellowship." The UMC of Sitka is the first RC in Alaska.
Wesley United Methodist Church
North Las Vegas, Nevada
A small urban congregation in a transitional neighborhood, Wesley is taking steps to move beyond a "struggling to survive" mentality. In order to keep its building open as a community center, Wesley has entered into a ministry partnership with Maranatha Academy (an alternative elementary school) and the Metropolitan Community Church. The congregation recently became a pilot church in The United Methodist Church's Vision 2000 program. Wesley's decision to become an RC reflects its commitment to being a welcoming place for all persons.
WELCOMING CHURCH LISTS AVAILABLE
The complete ecumenical list of welcoming churches is printed in the winter issue of Open Hands each year. For a more up-to-date list of your particular denomination, contact the appropriate program listed on p. 3.
RIC Sunday in October
Reconciled in Christ (RIC) Churches will recognize RIC Sunday for the first time in October. Resources and information for this special Sunday will be sent to all RIC churches. Also, a new RIC brochure is now available.
RCP is a Family Event
Housing at the national RCP Convocation in July is free for children under 10 and reduced to $10.50/night for ages 10-18.
Open Hands 30
eN Proposes Dialogue with General mbly Mission Council
The More Light Churches Network (MLCN) Steering Comtee is planning dialogues with the elected leaders of the esbyterian Church (U.S.A.). About twenty More Light .urches are being asked to invite some of the seventy Gen: Assembly Mission Council members to visit a More Light
rch. This plan is a response to the General Assembly's call the whole church to be in dialogue about sexuality, parlarly homosexuality.
"fLCN Steering Committee member Joanne Sizoo is organg
the project. Congregations asked to participate will re.
'e a list of Mission Council members to invite. The visits are
e completed before the September meeting of the Council.
Program Exceeds Goal
ases New Resource
The Open and Affirming (ONA) Program in the United . urch of Christ set a goal of 150 ONA churches by the UCC
,.eneral Synod in July 1995. By mid-February, 153 congregaons had declared themselves to be ONA! The ONA goal was rojected by the Council of the United Church Coalition for
sbian/Gay Concerns (UCCL/GC) to the next biennial meetg of the UCC national delegate body. Many more ONA urches should be announced at the UCCL/GC dinner on y 1 at the General Synod in Oakland, California.
The ONA program has developed a new resource to respond local church questions about the meaning of being "af.rming." In this twelve-page booklet, Open andAffirming: What Does it Mean to Us?, seventeen les/bi/gay UCC members offer
oughts and feelings about being affirmed by their congrega. ons. Copies are $2.50 each (check payable to UCCL/GC) and lay be ordered from ONA Resources, P.O. Box 403, Holden, .l.\ 01520-0403. Widely·acclaimed original musical drama inviting lesbians & gay men to come "home" to church ...
HOME:
The Parable of Beatrice and Neal
it,
Original Cast Rec.or~ing;(40 mins.) Compact Disc .. :: .. , .................................................. $15 Cassette Tape ............ " ............................................ $10
HOME Video (105 mins.) ............................................... $25 Unedited live recording of final tour performance.
Rep 10th Anniversary Video (25 mins.) ...................... $30 Highlights from show and interviews with company.
Act'! $3 shipping to your order.
ORDER FROM: Reconciling Congregation Program 3801 N. Keeler Avenue Chicago, IL 60641 3121736·5526 fax: 3121736·5475
Published music and score will be available in early 1995.
Cont~..¥~Tim McGinley, 622 N. Rit~y.lndianapolis. IN 46201 . 317/356·2215.
Spring 1995
RCs Speak Out on Firing of Lesbian Coach
Fifty-plus Reconciling Congregations and Reconciling Pastors have written letters to the president of Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Kentucky, protesting the firing of Diana Chalfant. Chalfant, hired as the women's coach at this United Methodist college last April, led the women's volleyball team to a very successful second season. She was quite surprised when she was asked to resign on December 9. She was told that the school wanted to "take the volleyball program in a different direction" and that there had been "lesbian incidents." When Chalfant refused to resign, she was fired and told to clean out her desk and leave immediately. Chalfant subsequently told her story, and her belief that she was fired for being a lesbian, to the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Several students, including members of her volleyball team, organized a protest against her firing. Their efforts garnered significant media coverage questioning the school's actions. Reconciling Congregations and Reconciling Pastors joined these efforts by writing letters questioning Chalfant's firing and stating the United Methodist position supporting the civil rights of lesbian and gay persons. In addition, Edgehill UMC in Nashville has provided a supportive church home for Chalfant.
RCP coordinator Mark Bowman noted that liThe United Methodist Church has tragically once again sent a message of inhospitality to lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. Through the shoddy treatment of Diana and public statements regarding the unacceptability of homosexuality by school and conference leaders, the church has pounded another nail in its closed doors. Such exclusionary words and actions undermine the welcoming ministries of Reconciling Congregations."
Chalfant has been invited to speak at the national convocation of Reconciling Congregations in July .
Youth/Student Rally, July 13
AYouth and Student Rally will be held from 10 AM to 5 PM on Thursday, July 13, before the Reconciling Congregation Convocation opens in Minneapolis. A design team of youth, university students, and adults are creating a fantastic event. The day will include exciting youth and university speakers who are making a difference, "jam groups II to address hot topics, and some fun and bizarre activities.
Reconciling Congregations are encouraged to arrange participation of their youth and students in this event. Let's empower the next generation of RC leaders!
31
OH Subscription Increase
The subscription cost of Open Hands has increased with this issue. We have delayed making this decision as long as pOSSible, but financial realities have prevailed. The basic subscription price of $16 has remained unchanged for six years. During these six years Open Hands has broadened its scope and content by becoming ecumenical and has increased in size by 33 percent, from 24 to 32 pages. Our readership has risen dramatically during this time-by 67 percent-to 2,500 paid subscribers. We have held the line on raising the cost to you as long as pOSSible, but you are well aware of the escalating cost of doing business: supplies, printing, personnel costs
have all increased.
The new prices are:
One year subscription
$20
One year outside the U.S.A.
$25
Single issue (including postage)
$ 6
10 or more single copies
$ 4 each
. Current subscribers can renew their subscription at the old $16 price ($20 outside the U.S.A.) until July 31, 1995. Even if your renewal is not yet due, you can send in a $16 payment before July 31 and we will add four more issues to your subJuly
13-16,1995 ............ -\
Augsburg College ....................-r \,\ .)
Minneapolis ............ . do. ~............
..................~f\\.~~............ FOURTH
............ ,\, ~............. NATIONAL
(" ~O'{\",....",. CONVOCATION OF
\..-.................. RECONCILING CONGREGATIONS
BOU
ND for the PROMl'3EDLAND
... a spirit-filled gathering of the whole family of God
For registration information contact:
Reconciling Congregation Program
3801 N. Keeler Avenue, Chicago, IL 60641
31 2/736-5526 Fax: 312/736-5475
scription. You may also purchase gift subscriptions at $16 until July 31. subscribers now send in $5, $10, or whatever they can afford
We will continue our policy of sending Open Hands to and indicate they want to receive Open Hands. Such requests anyone who can use it, regardless of financial situation. We are always honored, since our primary motivation is to emhave not built in a multi-tiered price schedule for students, power the Christian movement welcoming lesbian, gay, and prisoners, low-income, or fixed-income persons. However, some bisexual persons and their families and friends.
A Time For Exultation
Members of Open and Affirming (ONA) churches in the UCC, churches exploring the ONA process, and friends from other welcoming programs will gather in Cleveland, Ohio, to rejoice in our shared witness to God's love for all people-lesbian, bisexual, gay, and straight.
Leadership will include:
•
The Rev. Paul Sherry, President, United Church of Christ-Speaker
•
The Rev. Michael Kinnamon, Dean, Lexington Theological Semi· nary-Speaker
•
The Rev. Christine M. Smith, Associate Professor of Preaching and
A NATIONAL ONA EXULTATION
Worship, United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities-Preacher October 13-15, 1995 • Ms. Elaine Kirkland and Mr. Steve Cagle-Music
Performances by: Northcoast Men's Chorus and the Just Peace Players (MA Conference, UCC)
Join us for a tim.e to expand ideas, com.m.itm.ent, and hope!
For more information contact:
ONA-UCCL/GC
P.O. Box 403, Holden, MA 01520·0403
(Sponsored by: The ONA Program of the United Church Coalition for Lesbian/ Gay Concerns.)
GATHERED IN SPIRIT
GAINING IN STRENGTH
Open Hands 32