How God speaks

by Chris Wogaman

In what ways does God speak to us, and how has God spoken to others in the past?

Immediately, I can think of at least seven ways in which God speaks to us: 1. Through the Scriptures, in human language; 2. Through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist; 3. Through prayer; 4. Through further reflection on the Scriptures, doctrine, and work of the church, or theology; 5. Through our communities; 6. Through our personal experiences; 7. Through our own persons, our individual instances of God's creation.

I want to reflect for a few moments on some of these ways that have been particularly important to me in my faith journey, how God has "spoken" to me. I hope in doing so, you might reflect on your own journeys and see how God has spoken to you.

Like some of you, I was raised in a family that went to church every Sunday. Our family went to Wesley United Methodist Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota, attending Sunday School and worship at 11 a.m. for years. The Bible was illuminated through singing songs like "Father Abraham" (which in retrospect was anything but gender-inclusive!), memorizing some Bible verses and learning stories from the Bible. More than the Bible, though, I remember the regularity of attending church, some of the fun and not-so-fun times, and most of all the people who were there as I grew from a baby into an adult, the community of the faithful who were those I first experienced as the "Body of Christ."

In college, I stopped attending church as I was entering a long exile from faith, seriously questioning the existence of God as I was first dealing with my gay sexuality. God, after all, may have been the nice, fatherly figure of my youth, but was also the force said by so many "Christians" to condemn gays to a life of exile and an eternity of hell. I didn't know what to think, and as a result gave up on God for several years.

But God didn't give up on me. Even then, God was speaking to me through a variety of experiences and persons, though I didn't crack open the Bible or pray. The only time I remember praying during those years was when I was dealing with a professor whom I hated with every fiber of my being, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be humiliating his students. But at the point of breakdown, when hatred ruled my life, my eating and sleeping, and was threatening both personal relationships and school work, I prayed to God for the grace to change my hating into loving -- a last, desperate attempt to save all of what seemed important to me at the time. And in the course of one day, I went from hating to loving that man, although it seemed to last only for the duration of that semester.

I believe strongly that God had a hand in that whole experience, in leading me to prayer and recognizing that no matter how much I wanted to control the situation, I was not in control of it. God showed me that God has the power to help us change our lives, if we give that control to God.

Ultimately that time in my life passed, and I did not immediately return to the church, or seek to return to a life of faith. But God was still speaking to me in other ways. One evening before the end of my freshman year, I visited the home of a friend whose father was an old-school Lutheran preacher. As I was about to have my first experience with Greek -- my undergraduate major -- that summer, he took me into his study and showed me a page of John's Gospel in Greek, telling me that it was not so hard to learn as it looked.

εν αρχη ην ο λογος

The shape of the letters fascinated me, the sounds of the words as he read. εν αρχη ην ο λογος... ("In the beginning was the word…")  "How could such a language have a grammar?" I thought as I tried to make sense of those different-shaped letters.  Later, I learned that Scripture was written originally in only three languages: Hebrew and Aramaic in the Old Testament (although the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament was recognized by Jews as inspired around 200 BC), and Greek in the New Testament. But beyond these "original" languages, God indeed speaks to us in every human language.

Later in college, I studied the whole Gospel of John in Greek, becoming fascinated with the Scripture as text, a document that was recorded and transmitted by humans, and how that text comes to us between 2,000 and 3,000 years after it was written. My professor and major advisor in Classics, Dr. Daniel J. Taylor, had a great interest in this subject, and introduced us to the work of Dr. Bruce M. Metzger, an emeritus New Testament scholar from Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Metzger was also chair of United Bible Society's Greek New Testament committee, which established the most up-to-date text of the Greek New Testament on the basis of a wealth of ancient Biblical manuscripts and fragments dating as far back as to within 20-50 years of the original composition of the books of the New Testament. I was amazed that somewhere there existed almost original fragments of the books of the New Testament!

A couple of years after graduating college, during the time I was starting again to attend church, I found a copy of that Greek New Testament in a Salvation Army thrift store. When I brought it to the counter to purchase it, the clerk's response to me when I asked the price of it was, "We don't sell Bibles here. Just take it." I had been sorry that I hadn't done any Greek since leaving college, and became fascinated again with the Scriptures through the Greek text. They seemed so alive and vibrant, somehow again speaking to me.

I first began thinking of seminary a few years ago, during a visit to Princeton Seminary to meet Dr. Metzger. I didn't even know what a seminary was, let alone why I would want to visit one. I had no idea that seminaries trained people to be pastors, or that I would even think of one day becoming a pastor. My conversation with Dr. Metzger on that cold January morning humbled me greatly, especially his quiet, unassuming, and present manner. To say I was in awe of Dr. Metzger's learning and experience, some of which he shared with me that morning, is an understatement, but at the same time I had no idea what I was doing at Princeton Theological Seminary.

I had, after all, just recently returned to the church, hadn't read much of the Bible except what I was looking at in Greek (being almost totally ignorant of the Old Testament except for those Sunday School lessons I'd mostly forgotten), knew basically nothing about theology or doctrine. In fact, I wasn't even looking to return to the church. And although I grew up Methodist in a highly Lutheran part of the country (northern Minnesota), I found my way into the Lutheran church not because I was first attracted to its theology or liturgy, but because I was looking for a piano in my new neighborhood in Manhattan.

There happened to be a small Lutheran church down the street from where I lived, though I didn't know it was Lutheran until I spoke to the pastor, who was sitting on the front steps one day in her running outfit. She said, "Sure, come by and practice! But we ask that you play for a service in exchange for practicing." That sounded good, as I had enjoyed playing piano or saxophone for services in my home church growing up. I played for their service the next Sunday, and was somehow hooked by the sermon, the Eucharist, and the passing of the peace. I came back the next week, and every week after that until I left in August of last year for divinity school. God spoke to me through that congregation, those sermons and sacraments!

Looking back, God also spoke to me through many interests, trials and triumphs, and countless people along the way. Many of the most important times I have not yet mentioned. God has spoken to me through the ancient languages of Greek and Hebrew, through the gentle moments of visiting with the elderly and infirm at a local nursing home, though the often overpowering experience of taking the body and blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, through simple prayers along the way with others and alone, through surviving close calls with death and even as I explored my sexuality with others. God speaks to us through the truth of our lives, as we discover who we have been created in God's image and seek to live out that truth. I hope that my sharing might help you to think of times and places God has spoken to you. The stories of our lives are the stories of God speaking to us!

Chris Wogaman is a student at Yale Divinity School and The Institute of Sacred Music. In San Francisco for the summer while on a Fellowship from the Fund for Theological Education, he is volunteering at St. Francis.

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When inclusive language misses the mark

by Robin Ressler

(This is the first in a series of articles in which members of St. Francis and others will discuss the practice of using gender- inclusive language in our worship. -- Ed.)

Ever since I have attended St. Francis (and, I suspect, for a while before my arrival!), the worship folder has usually included an apologia regarding the use of inclusive language in our prayers, hymns and liturgy, as well as an invitation to participate in the ongoing conversation about language. Well, here's my two cents regarding a recent rendition of the Gospel that I found jarring.

Over the years I have admired the creativity with which our worship leaders -- clergy and lay -- have risen to the occasion of proclaiming the Gospel and leading our eucharistic celebration with words that do not reinforce old, sexist and heterosexist, sex- role stereotypes and prejudices. None of that "God is a guy" stuff at St. Francis -- hooray!

Sometimes, however, we should be careful that, in our zeal to eliminate gendered appellations for the Divine, we do not eliminate other things as well. Also, when we substitute one of God's names for another, we should be mindful of adding as well as diminishing. We must choose wisely, carefully considering the text and its context.

The Gospel reading for the recent Good Shepherd Sunday, John 10:11-18, was in my view, an example of inclusive language missing the mark -- both diminishing the Gospel message and introducing an element foreign to it.

In the lesson, in which Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, the one who will lay down his life for his sheep, he notes that he knows his sheep intimately and they recognize him with the immediacy of intimacy as well. Jesus compares this profoundly personal knowing with the knowledge he has of the One whom he calls Father, that is, God, and the knowledge that One has of Jesus.

Verses fifteen and seventeen include the following words in the King James translation, which is, overall, a remarkably literal translation of the Greek: "As the Father knoweth me, even so I know the Father...Therefore doth my Father love me." At St. Francis, this text was read: "Just as the Most High knows me and I know the Most High... For this reason the Most High loves me."

Three points:

First, the substitution of the term Most High for Father takes something away from this text -- the intimacy and immediacy conveyed by the term Father. I don't know about you, but I see the good shepherd and his sheep being much closer to each other than either of them are to "the Most High:" I see them huddled together with their sheep dogs on an open plain under a starry sky; far above them, above the stars in the highest heaven, sits the Most High.

In this text, the author of John's Gospel is conveying several important points, including the following two:

He or she -- we really don't know for sure who wrote the Gospel of John -- is using the imagery of sheep/shepherd, son/father to tell the reader that the person who has faith in Jesus knows God through Jesus -- directly and immediately and, most of all, personally, not abstractly.

This reading is part of a longer narrative (including John 10:30, which says, in the King James Version, "I and my Father are one.") in which the divine identity of Jesus is established. While modern Christians are used to, and perhaps tired of, Jesus referring to God as Father, this was an incredibly bold thing for Jesus to do. Indeed, in verse 33 of the same chapter, we see his listeners' reaction: they want to stone him for blasphemy.

In my view, we lose both the personal intimacy and the bold audacity that the Gospel writer intended when we substitute the term Most High for Father. Is this a trade-off we want to make?

Second, and dreadfully counterproductive in my book, is what is introduced, or perhaps I should say reinforced, by using the term Most High: a patriarchal cosmology or worldview. For those in the pews who may not recognize its Old Testament roots, for good or for bad, this term may just sound abstract. It is actually a translation of a very ancient designation for God, consonant with Old Testament cosmology.

From this hierarchical worldview people have long ranked the diversity of creation, that is, said this one is better or more important or more worthy than that one. In this hierarchy, for example, "men" are "a little less than the angels" and, of course, superior to women, animals, children, viruses and the like (such as, in some views, non-white persons, who are somehow less than human).

But as a woman and a feminist, I cannot help but be sensitive to the harm done over the millennia by a church that adopted a pagan, Greek cosmology and used it to assert a divinely ordained hierarchy in creation. Too many people have been hurt as a result, including those of us who advocate inclusive language to get rid of the notion that to be male is to be better or more Godlike than it is to be female!

I don't think Jesus, in the scene depicted in this chapter of John, is trying to make a theological move which attaches him to the highest rung of the great cosmic ladder (although we see the author of this Gospel doing so in chapter 1). I think Jesus is using the concrete term Father to bring people to the love and knowledge of God. Is taking the term Father literally, reducing it to its genderedness and eliminating it, while introducing an alien, abstract theological element to the Gospel writer's beautifully crafted, concrete metaphor a trade-off we want to make?

Finally -- and perhaps this is a personal prejudice -- I don't like messing with the words of Christ as they are presented to us in Holy Scripture. As we have seen above, it is too easy to add or subtract meaning when substituting words. Lutherans have a theology of Jesus as the living Word. We place the written word of scripture centrally in our worship and in our lives. Thus, I would prefer to sort out what scripture and tradition tell us Jesus said for myself.

I do not believe that Jesus' words alone present a picture of God as male. The "maleness" of God is implied much more by our tradition of translating the gendered pronouns and articles for God in foreign languages (such as Greek) into "him" and "his" in English.

In most Western languages every noun is masculine, feminine, or neuter, and we normally do not carry this over into English translation. (For example, in German, the pronoun for table is "he", for newspaper is "she", and for girl is "it"!) In English, grammatical genders are normally reserved for sexed, or gendered, creatures, such as humans and dogs, but in the case of the One who created gender, we make an exception, and assign God a gender! Scripture in English translation is full of these gender additions, and this is a fruitful place to de-gender God language.

Moreover, in our liturgy and in our own "God talk," it is important, when speaking of God, to utilize both creaturely genders as well as images and language that have nothing to do with gender -- and the Bible is full of them! Jesus does not call God Father exclusively, but tells us that God is Spirit, that God is Love. Jesus frequently calls God "Lord" (another good, old term that was subsequently spoiled by politics and patriarchy!) and, simply, "God." Further, Jesus tells parables that give us an opportunity to see God in action, just as we see God in action when Jesus heals, when Jesus forgives, and when Jesus is resurrected from the dead.

If you really want some great imagery, I suggest you turn left at the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew and explore the Old Testament. But don't forget St. Paul, either. This poor fellow is quite a poet, and if we can stop taking him so literally all the time and enter into some of his long, extended metaphors, we can see God in exciting new ways. Be brave. Pray to God for guidance. "Say unto wisdom, 'You are my sister,' and call understanding your kinswoman" (Proverbs 7:4) -- and read!

Language has the power to bind us together, as well as to sting and to push us apart. Let us learn from the injury many of us have suffered, and let us be patient with one another. Let us love one another and encourage one another to explore the Word that does not come to us unadulterated by a sinful world.

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For further reading

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Canada has guidelines on inclusive language at http://www.elcic.ca/docs/inclusive.html.

An article on the Roman Catholic website Adoremus features a conservative perspective on inclusive language: http://www.adoremus.org/98-04_whitehead.htm.

This 1984 article from The Christian Century offers a more liberal perspective, speaking of the development of the Inclusive Language Lectionary by the National Council of Churches: http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showarticle?item_id=1414.

An extensive list of additional links is here: http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/inclusive.htm

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Opening the table

by Sara Miles

“Oh God of abundance, you feed us every day;
Rise in us now, make us into your bread
That we may share your love with a hungry world …”

-- Collect from the food pantry service at St. Gregory Episcopal Church

I started St. Gregory's Food Pantry -- La Bodega de San Gregorio -- in November 2000, two days before I was baptized, as a thanksgiving, an extension of the Eucharist that had converted me.

When I first walked into St. Gregory's Episcopal Church on Potrero Hill early one winter morning, I'd never been to church before -- never heard a Gospel reading, never read a psalm, never said the Lord's Prayer. I didn't even know that people don't generally dance in church, as we do at St. Gregory's.

I loved the singing, was uncomfortable in the silences, and fled the coffee hour quickly, before some weird Christian could try to chat me up. But I was just blown away by the Eucharist. I heard the deacon's announcement -- Jesus welcomes everyone to his table, so we offer communion to everyone, and to everyone by name -- and burst into tears. I stood there crying, terrified at what was happening, but I was so hungry for that bread that I kept coming back. I became a regular.

After a while -- my guess is because in any community there's a shortage of people foolish enough to get up and work at 6 A.M. regularly on Sundays -- a priest invited me to serve as one of the people we call "deacons" at the early-morning mass. (Serving under an ordained deacon's leadership, lay people share many of the deacon's traditional liturgical duties at St Gregory's: welcoming people into the service, setting the Table, announcing the Gospel, leading music and prayers, and helping distribute communion.) Those words began to enter me in another way, as I spoke them aloud week after week. Jesus welcomes everyone to his table, I'd say, and hand the body of Christ to the body of Christ.

It sounds way too pretentious to say I had a vision, but the fact is I kept seeing a picture, during that first year of service as a deacon. Basically, it looked like St. Gregory's on any Sunday -- a great, humming, semichaotic blur of people moving together around the Table, under the icon of the Dancing Saints.

It was communion. I understood it as a food pantry.

Some of the vestry and staff and members raised utterly reasonable objections to my proposal that we open up the church to offer free groceries every week to all comers: How would we pay for it? How would we find volunteers? What about thefts, and damage to the building, and security, and storage, and mess, and how were we going to keep it all organized and screen out troublemakers and not be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of need? How did this fit with St. Gregory's mission?

I wrote to the vestry (our congregation council): "The elements of St. Gregory's mission that I'd guess connect most strongly with the idea of a food pantry have to do with the welcoming of strangers, the invitation to find Christ embodied in our neighbors, and the physicality of worship.

"Of course there are the teachings about feeding the poor, but mostly I'm thinking of the Gospel's repeated insistence that God's right here, and we do not have to fear: 'Take heart! It's me! Don't be afraid!'"

Written on the heart

At 3:30 every Friday, we open the church doors for the pantry, and people walk in. When they enter, and we greet each other, it's the thing I've been waiting for all week: a meeting, a recognition, a joy. Paul described it to the Corinthians: "You are all the letter we need, a letter written on our heart; any man can see it for what it is, and read it for himself. It is plain that you are a letter that has come from Christ for us to deliver: a letter written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, written not on stone tablets but on the pages of the human heart."

Each week at La Bodega we serve over 250 families in the sanctuary, giving away more than three tons of groceries -- rice, beans, fruit, vegetables, cereal, bread. We set up right around the Table -- St. Gregory's altar is in the center of a large, open octagonal space -- laying out bright altar cloths, putting up an icon at the door, piling the food high so that people can choose what they need. We have dozens of volunteers, some of them church members and many of them pantry clients -- people who, like me, came to receive and stayed to help out. When it's time to open, we vest ourselves in aprons, gather around the Table, sing prayers, kiss each other, eat something, and start to work. We offer food to everyone, without exception: the deaf, the crippled, the aged, the insane, the perfectly healthy, and the faithful; doubters, convicts, widows, foreigners, and whores. And we offer it to everyone by name.

About a year ago, our rector Donald motioned me into the vestry during the food pantry. "I want to put this in here," he said, and opened up the huge official parish book that records all the services at St. Gregory's. "Bodega," he wrote, "Friday, 3:30."

The pantry did not become a "service project" of the church. It's simply church: a liturgy of acts, modeled directly on the liturgy of the Word. It's as necessary and as intimate as breaking bread together: daily bread, the bread of Heaven, and the bread that we become. We are bringing each other into communion.

There's a tendency to think of service as something auxiliary to "real" worship–something we do because, being edified and basically nice people, we want to be helpful to others. Or because, in that dreadful, condescending phrase, we feel an obligation to "those less fortunate than ourselves." We tend to think of service as something a committee does. Something you write a check for. "A good cause."

But the people who serve at the pantry, like those who serve in our liturgies, know otherwise.

When we sing our prayers together right before the pantry opens, holding hands, I often thank God for letting me feed others, as I have been fed, and for allowing me to give, knowing that at other times I have been, and will be, only able to receive.

I could just as easily pray in the words of another announcement our deacons make during Sunday worship: "Now seeing how greatly God loves us, let us share freely in the good things we have received, so the whole world may know God's love."

It's easy to hear this as a delicate pitch, implying a payback, some kind of a deal. But the pantry has showed me that the important word is "freely." We all come sinful and needy to the Table, so at the pantry we don't ask for ID, or try to ferret out and stop cheaters. This, after all, is how God gives: not because we especially deserve it, not because we've been good, not because we've performed the rituals correctly -- but freely, because of love. Finding and following that spirit, in which I can stop judging others, stop trying to decide which poor people deserve my help, stop attempting to control the people I give to, is the thing that frees me.

Good news in lettuce and potatoes

The people who serve at the pantry are, like most of the deacons at St. Gregory's, lay ministers. Their work encompasses welcoming, organizing, feeding, teaching, anointing, listening, healing, hauling, singing, praying, and schlepping. They do everything: lift 50-pound bags of rice, light candles, bless children, break up fights, give a thirsty man a drink of water and a hungry woman a loaf of bread. They sort through pallets of lettuce and piles of potatoes. They tell strangers good news. They sweep the stairs and take out the garbage and touch those possessed by demons. They lead the people in prayer and in work. They keep the bathroom clean.

And over time, the food pantry has become a school for St. Gregory's deacons, as I've started to recruit people to serve in the liturgy from among the pantry volunteers. The Bodega and the Eucharist are, after all, different enactments of the same Gospel. It is the same invitation we sing, both on Fridays and on Sundays, when we gather God's people around the Table: "Draw near!"

It's easy to spot the likely deacons. They're not always the sweetest or the noblest ones. They're not Christians, like Peter, so busy with important holy business that they don't have time to wait on tables. They're not guilty or dutiful. Above all, they're not scared. They're the people who are having fun. They're outside swapping jokes; they're on the phone, dealing with a delivery crisis with gusto; they're in the sacristy, picking out the most beautiful altar cloth; they're making coffee for everyone and handing extra M&Ms to the kids. When I see someone like that -- someone who can take care of business, who is equally willing to pick up garbage and to sit down and listen to anyone -- I usually make an invitation. "Hey," I'll say. "Can you take a chalice this Sunday?"

Many of our best volunteers at the pantry have backgrounds in restaurant service -- cooks, waiters, expeditors. Lawrence, a maitre d', began serving as a deacon in the liturgy after several months of volunteering at the pantry. Tall, gracious, unflappable, he deals with hundreds of hungry poor people, stressed-out priests, rich, cranky customers, and an unexpectedly large crowd of Sunday worshippers with the same ease. "It's all about, 'Your table is ready,'" he says.

Others started shy. "When I began volunteering at the pantry, I was pretty uncomfortable about having contact with poor people," says Todd, an engineer. "I was good at systems, not at people." But it wasn't long before I'd see Todd hanging out, listening to confidences and talking for hours. I asked him to think about serving as a deacon. Again he demurred. "I'm not a good enough person to stand up there in front of everyone," he said. "I'd have to be a whole lot more holy." I laughed. "The thing about serving," I told him, "is that it's not about you."

Service is thanksgiving, because it means not only giving freely, but understanding how greatly we're loved. I remember an afternoon at the food pantry when I was trying to open up, while an impatient throng of people shouted at me and at each other in three languages. I'd been unloading crates of oranges as fast as I could, and bossing the volunteers around, but we were still behind schedule. We were short a crate of snacks, and the two old Cuban sisters who always show up hours early were out front, bickering noisily. Three hyper little kids were pestering me for candy, and the crazy guy with apocalyptic theories kept trying to corner me and explain the secret messages he'd received. Some visiting minister was standing around, but I couldn't get a minute to talk to him; new volunteers kept asking me what to do, but somehow nothing was getting done. Everything felt hectic and irritating and on the verge of chaos, and my feet hurt. I was sick of poor people, sick of church people, utterly sick of myself.

And then a woman pushed her way to the front of the crowd. She was Chinese, with a quilted jacket, and she was thrusting a package at me. I couldn't understand what she was trying to say, but she kept smiling and coming closer. "Here," she said, and handed me a piece of fish wrapped in waxed paper, still warm. "Food, for you."

Sara Miles, a freelance writer, is Senior Warden (council president) at St. Gregory's Episcopal Church. She is currently organizing new food pantries around the city.

This story is reprinted from God's Friends, the periodical magazine of St. Gregory's, and is copyright Sara Miles 2003, reprinted by permission of Sara Miles and God's Friends.

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The labyrinth as a novel experience (and vice versa)

by Mark Pritchard

A cool wind gusts over stones and grass as I walk amidst skyscraping fir trees and mountains. A mountain stream, brimming with snowmelt, hurls itself over rocks and sand in its bed behind a stand of trees a few yards away. Shaken by the wind, the trees whisper a high-pitched descant to the low roar of the creek.

I steady my gaze, straighten my posture, and take another step.

I'm walking the labyrinth at Holden Village on Sunday morning, the first day of June. It's my second try, during my six-week stay at Holden, at walking this deceptively calm via contemplativa. The village's labyrinth, constructed in what is still called the Ballfield (though baseball probably hasn't been played there in decades), is three quarters of a mile west of the village on the very edge of the Glacier Peak Wilderness. A few weeks ago, when scraps of snow still littered the edges of the labyrinth and grey clouds were closing in, I strolled out here one evening to try to get in a little bit of meditation before dark.

On that evening I started out in my usual slow, measured step, sure I would reach the center and come back out long before dark. But the labyrinth ensnared me, keeping my steps slow as I watched the evening fall. After forty-five minutes, with the light failing, I hadn't come close even to reaching the center of the ringed path, and afraid I might stumble in the dark on the way back to the village, I finally bailed out and hustled back, trotting across the grey mud back to the road and the village.

Now I'm trying again. I've come out here right after Sunday morning Matins and I have the rest of the morning. I have embarked on the labyrinth with new resolve. I haven't asked any questions or brought any heartaches, only my body and breath and, back in my room in the village, the still-unfinished second draft of my novel, Make Nice.

I came up to Holden in early May on the half-pay, half-sabbatical plan. Every morning I spend three hours in the kitchen, chopping apples and onions and everything else the lead cooks tell me to. Every afternoon I retreat to my room -- the village has graciously allowed me to live without a roommate so that I can use my room to write -- and work on my book. I've been working on this book for several years now, in between full time jobs in the high tech industry, and on vacations and long weekends. After being laid off for the last time in October 2002, I decided to be a full-time writer for a while. I finished my first draft in January and went to work on revisions. I'm here at Holden to finish work on the second, I hope final, draft.

The labyrinth, on this spring day, is now fringed with green grass, and dandelions poke up here and there. Despite the cool breeze, the air is warm when the sun comes out. I settle into a slow, unhesitating step, my hands in the shashu posture I learned at a Zen center, my breath slowing as my feet make their own way along the sawdust path. As the path turns and doubles back, I quickly lose any sense of how far I've come or where I am in the labyrinth as a whole. I'm just where I am, taking slow, calm steps, watching my breath, reminding myself I have all morning if I need it.

My novel, as it emerged over the years, unfolded in a similar way. I didn't outline much ahead; I only had a few milestone events that I wanted to hit along the way, scenes based on historical events I'd uncovered in my research. Set in 1960, the book looks at the strange and often comic ways the worlds of Hollywood, the Mafia, and politics all met for a season in the person of Frank Sinatra and his "Rat Pack" cronies. Because I didn't want the book to be only about celebrities, the novel also looks at how some currents of the day -- racial integration, the nonconformist lifestyle suggested by Beat Generation writers, and the new interest in Eastern spirituality -- play out in the lives of a few ordinary people. As a neophyte novelist -- I'd tried once and failed to write a novel, and I was determined to make this one work -- I found that writing the book was less a matter of arranging reality for my characters than listening to their own fears and hopes, and giving them room to live them out. The novel took longer than I expected -- five years -- but I found that the process of writing fiction was its own reward as long as I paid close attention.

Walking the labyrinth is a similar discipline. When I focus on the sensation of the earth beneath my feet and the breath in my lungs, notice the breeze tugging at my sweater even as my shadow grows shorter, I am perfectly at peace. When I start getting compulsive about whether the sawdust is too thick in some places and too thin in others, or start wondering what time it's getting to be, my steps falter. When I return to doing nothing but walking and breathing, I am again content.

I couldn't rush my novel. Setting aside a week here and there as a concentrated work period allowed me to make fitful progress; but once I lost my job and tried to rush the novel along to completion, my spirit resisted. Minimizing distractions was important, but I found I couldn't chain myself to my desk. I might write for an hour or two, then nap for forty minutes, returning refreshed to the book. Four or five hours of this alternating writing and dozing was optimal; if I tried to push myself further, I was just worn out for the next day.

As I tread the labyrinth, a couple of people come down on bicycles to read and relax in the grassy field nearby. I focus on my walking and don't greet them; they leave me alone too, but I'm glad they're there. A bear has been seen haunting the village in the last several days. I saw him a few days before, and he wasn't very imposing; but I'm glad to have someone else there in the Ballfield with me. I don't know if bears are interested in people walking the labyrinth but it's nice to have some backup.

Turn and turn again

After a while -- maybe thirty or forty minutes, maybe an hour -- the people get back on their bicycles and go back to the village. I'm alone again -- still walking, still not even having reached the center of the labyrinth. I turn, step, turn again, surrounded by forested slopes and snowy peaks. Sometimes I can see Martin Ridge, sometimes Copper Mountain, sometimes a flash of whitewater in the creek, which roars continually on its way down the valley.

I came up to Holden for six weeks -- long enough, I figured, to complete the second draft of my book. My writing was going well, but this afternoon I have to tackle a difficult task. I have decided to dump a whole chapter from the first draft and do it over again, creating new scenes and action that would better show the characters and their struggles as they approach the climax of the book. But as I walk, I'm not thinking about this problem; I know it's enough to let the wind and the sun and the sound of the creek and the trees wash over me, to be receptive to these phenomena and to the solid earth beneath my feet, to the tunnels of moles that have burrowed beneath the labyrinth's paths, to the green grass shooting up where a few weeks before there had been only mud.

Finally I reach the center. There a boulder, roughly heart-shaped, sits surrounded by the labyrinth's bends and curves. Others have left small objects there: a few coins, stones, a keychain, small notes. I take off my hat and wipe the sweat from my forehead. I haven't brought a watch but I know the morning must be almost over, for the sun is high in the sky. It has taken me almost two hours just to walk to the center. That's one long labyrinth.

If writing a novel is like walking a labyrinth -- the successive views surprising you as you twist and turn, following a path not quite of your own making -- then finishing a second draft also involves cutting. I know I'm supposed to meditate for a while at the center, then walk back out the way I've come, but I'm hungry, and I know it's late. Bowing to the boulder in the center, I turn and traipse right through the side of the labyrinth and back out to the road. Strolling back to the village at a quick but comfortable pace, I get back to the village five minutes before lunchtime.

I had given myself all morning to walk the labyrinth, and it had taken all morning. I gave myself all the time I need to write my novel, and it has taken five years. Neither journey could be called quick or efficient; but having taken them, I'm at peace.

Mark Pritchard was at Holden in May and June 2003.

 

St. Francis Foundation -- making the Gospel real

by Cindy G. Carroll

Preach the Gospel always; and when necessary, use words. -- Saint Francis of Assisi

The recent book Growing Givers' Hearts, by Thomas H. Jeavons and Rebekah Burch Basinger, begins with the question, "Can fundraising become a way of preaching the Gospel for Christian organizations?"

Given my experience as a board member of the St. Francis Lutheran Church Foundation, I'd like to answer the question "yes" -- but not in the way I expected. The funds given away by the foundation make the Christian Gospel real not only to the recipients but to those of us making the decisions about these gifts. The way I see it, the donors themselves become instruments for spreading the gospel throughout the world.

At first I found membership on the board somewhat challenging. I replaced a board member, Greg Jahnke, who had had a particularly effective term and had served six years. Since I live in Danville and work in Berkeley, crossing the Bay Bridge to attend the Foundation Board meetings more than doubled my commute.

I forgot about the inconvenience when I attended the premiere showing of a documentary film, THIS obedience, which the foundation helped support. (The St. Francis Foundation partially funded a website and other promotion for the film.) The screening at St. Francis was an exciting event with the church filled to capacity to view the documentary about the struggle for ordination of a lesbian, Anita Hill. Rev. Hill attended the premiere and spoke to the attendees about her ministry following the screening.

Also last winter, I drove to the city again to attend Sunday worship at St. Francis, and found that Rev. Pieter Oberholzer was preaching. Rev. Oberholtzer, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church and a native of South Africa, works with Affirming and Inclusive Ministries in Cape Town to bring the Gospel message to lesbian, gay , bisexual and transgender South Africans. Oberholtzer's organization is another recipient of grants from the foundation. (See the next story, "AIDS Education in South Africa," for more on the foundation's work in South Africa.)

The foundation accomplishes its work with a surprisingly small amount of money. In 2002 the Foundation gave a total of $16,310 to ten groups that work locally, nationally or globally. An equivalent amount went to St. Francis Lutheran Church and its ministries. (Similar amounts were distributed in 2001.)

These grants, no matter how large or small, are greatly appreciated by the recipients. For example, The Rev. Anita C. Hill wrote this in response to receiving the grant for THIS obedience: "We believe the completion of the study guides, DVD, and website will assist ELCA congregations and other audiences to explore the matter of ordination and service of lesbian and gay persons in committed relationships. Thank you also, for your thoughtful offer to add a link to our materials from the St. Francis website."

While other 2002 grants included such familiar organizations as the Friends of St. Francis Childcare Center, San Francisco AIDS Walk, and Dolores Street Community Services, others may not be as familiar.
 

Volunteers

One of these is the Lutheran Volunteer Corps (LVC). The organization allows volunteers who make one-year commitments the opportunity to live and work with four to seven other volunteers who want to explore their spirituality while living in intentional community, working for social justice and trying to simplify their own lives. This is the first LVC house in California, according to a representative from the Washington, D.C. headquarters.

LVC coordinator Rev. Sarah Isakson wrote, "If the Oakland house is successful, LVC would love to open a volunteer house in San Francisco sometime in the next three years."

Another 2003 grant was awarded to the University Lutheran Chapel, Berkeley, for their peer ministry program. Ellen Chien, peer minister for ULC last year, who recently received her master's degree in Bio Statistics, said that "the peer minister program helps train church members (mostly students) to reach out to students who want to get in touch with what it means to be a Christian in today's world." She said that one way they live this out is through involvement in ministry programs like Habitat for Humanity. Pastor Jeff Johnson describes their campus ministry as "progressive" and it provides students "a safe place to be a Christian disciple amidst the tidal wave of fundamentalists/literalists on campus. Our program of campus ministry offers students a place to make friends, explore spiritual journeys and take justice-centered action that makes a difference in our neighborhood and in the world."

These are just a few of the vibrant examples of how the gifts of the St. Francis Foundation proclaim the Gospel in the world in very real and tangible ways.

If you're interested in contributing to the work of the St. Francis Foundation, contact the church office or talk to one of the Foundation Board Members: Rob Byrne, chair, David Bernstein, Nancy Loewe, Ken Hedrick, Brad Hubert, Marilyn Jackson, or Cindy Carroll. Ex-Officio members are Pastor Michael Hiller and Father George Belcher.

 

AIDS education in South Africa

by Kevin Graziano

I visited South Africa in 2000 as a graduate student (from Central Connecticut State University) and volunteered twice a week at a secondary school in a township called Kayamandi located in Stellenbosch, a town of about 50 kilometer east of Cape Town.

While I was there, I chatted with a few teenagers about HIV prevention, which to date is still not perceived by many township residents as a widespread threat to South Africa. At the time, I was amazed at what they told me. According to these teenagers, they believe that if a man is HIV positive and has unprotected sex and ejaculates then he no longer carries the HIV virus. This made me realize that erroneous information on HIV and AIDS was being exchanged on the playground, in hallways, and in classrooms throughout Kayamandi.

I wanted to do something to correct this lack of accurate information, so when I returned to the U.S., I developed a proposal to train teachers in teaching HIV prevention. The South African Department of Education accepted the proposal and, with the help of the St. Francis Foundation, I returned to South Africa in April 2003 to conduct my workshop, held at Ihlomelo Junior Secondary School in Mbekweni Township located approximately one hour outside of Cape Town.

I arrived with few expectations and several anxieties. Despite my preparations, I wondered whether I, as a white man from the West, would be accepted by black South Africans I had come to teach. I wondered if the one day allotted for the workshop would be enough time to disseminate the information on AIDS prevention which, given the state of things, had become vitally important. In the three years since I had last been in South Africa, the South African Department of Health has estimated that in 2001, in the general South African population, 2.65 million women and 2.09 million men between the ages of 15 to 49 were living with HIV. It was also estimated that 83,581 babies had become infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission.

Though schools were on holiday and the teachers would not be paid for attending my workshop, seventeen teachers and three administrators attended. The workshop was held in the 6th grade classroom equipped with a flip chart, chalkboard, and aluminum chairs behind petite desks. Despite an impending autumn, participants and I scrambled for comfort from South Africa's searing sun and decided it would be best to conduct the workshop with the classroom lights off and the windows wide open.

As I felt it was important for participants to start with the basics and to surrender any preconceived ideas they had on HIV and AIDS, I made a quote from Malcolm X the theme of the workshop: "We cannot teach what we do not know and we cannot guide where we will not go." I was happy to see several teachers jotting down the quotation.

The workshop was divided into four interactive areas. The morning consisted of an icebreaker activity and a discussion on the workshop objectives followed by a slide show, prepared by the Western Cape Education Department, on HIV infection rates in South Africa. I was struck by the statistic that said one out of eight South Africans is infected with HIV.

Participants then divided into groups and were assigned three questions on HIV prevention. Their task was to display the answers to each question on poster paper and present them to the class. I knew that this activity would help expose some of their misconceptions. For example, most participants believed that HIV originated in Africa by a mosquito or an African indigenous animal. Participants also debated ways HIV is transmitted. Most of them believed that if one has intercourse with someone for the first time, he or she could not contract HIV. A lively discussion of these beliefs, and accurate medical information correcting them, ensued.

Next I had the teachers role-play. A few participants volunteered to play the role of a teacher trying to answer difficult questions on HIV or AIDS. Someone in the group asked, "What is riskier for getting HIV, oral or vaginal sex?" As the teacher answered the question, the "student" was prompted to ask about female-to-female contact for oral sex and was instructed to act disgusted when the teacher mentioned female-to-female sex. Participants evaluated each other's role-playing and commented on the quality of the exercise.

I then handed out case studies of people who engaged in risky behaviors. Participants had to identify the HIV risk factors in each case study, name which case study depicted an HIV-positive person, and justify their line of reasoning. To end the morning, I posted large cards around the room showing acts such as masturbation, kissing, and unprotected anal sex, and I had the teachers identify which acts were high, medium or low risk.

After lunch, participants watched a video on living with HIV and AIDS, and then wrote responses to statements like: "When I hear the word AIDS, I feel…" and "Someone with HIV/AIDS probably needs…" These responses were then discussed.

The workshop culminated with individual and collective action plans. Each participant had to identify at least one action that he or she would like to implement in his or her school or classroom. Finally, the participants were given certificates of attendance, posters on HIV prevention, and resources, including HIV prevention books written in both English and Zulu, provided by the Western Cape Education Department.

Unrelated to the HIV prevention workshop, while I was in Johannesburg I met Pastor Pieter Oberholtzer for lunch. I shared with him the outcome of the HIV prevention workshop and the results of some doctoral research I was doing on black lesbian and gay lives in South Africa. Pieter was extremely helpful in identifying participants for my research, and in turn, I referred a male participant from my study to assist Peter in making a documentary film on gays and lesbians and the church in South Africa.
 

Kevin Graziano has been educating young adults and adults on HIV prevention since 1993 and is a graduate student at the University of San Francisco completing his Doctorate in International Multicultural Education.

 

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Book reviews

Within or without?

Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels. New York: Random House, 2003.

by Michael Hiller

Sometimes life seems to be a remarkable confluence of events and opportunities. A book on Zoroastrianism led me to begin a class on "heresies" as a way to approach Christian teaching and the formation of Christian dogma. A few days later, I read in the New York Times an article on Elaine Pagels' forthcoming book, Beyond Belief -- the Secret Gospel of Thomas. Recently we celebrated, or noted on our calendars, a day devoted to Iraneaus, Bishop of Lyon, France (then Gaul), who began the movement toward orthodoxy in the Christian Church. All of these things happily flowed into each other and helped to inform the whole.

I first became acquainted with the Pagels family in 1989. While traveling home from a Christmas vacation back East, I wandered into a bookstore in Dulles airport and found Heinz Pagels' The Cosmic Code. It began a minor hobby for me of reading about quantum physics. A year later, I became acquainted with Elaine Pagels, Heinz's wife, through her book The Gnostic Gospels. With all that quantum theory and theology in the air, the Pagels' dinner conversations must have been something else.

The latest book by Ms. Pagels stems out of her own family experience. As she relates in the introduction, her disaffection with Christianity was altered when her young son, was diagnosed with a fatal and rare lung disease. Later, her husband fell to his death from a cliff in the Swiss Alps. These events led to and cemented her relationship with the Church of the Heavenly Rest in New York. It is there that she begins her tale, and her struggle to deal with a Christianity that requires a belief beyond creeds and dogma.

If you have lived a great deal of your spiritual life with a "Sunday School faith," as Leona Lee would call it, then this might be the time to explore just exactly what it is that you believe. With Pagels using her own life experiences as a backdrop for her exploration, you will be able to see your own spiritual journey reflected. Many of us here at St. Francis will identify with the serious quest that so many of the characters in this story are making. God, life, neighbor and self -- how do these all come together? But most of all, for Christians, just exactly who was Jesus -- and what on earth was he all about?

Dr. Pagels not only tells the story of her own spiritual quest, but also tells the story of how we got the Christianity that we celebrate today. It is a not so much a "deconstruction" of the religion as it is a laying out of all the parts, as if a careful mechanic had taken apart an engine and laid each of its pieces in order. By Pagels' reckoning, some of the parts that have gone into "orthodox" Christianity have been forgotten or discarded, while others have become so familiar that we have lost their original intent and meaning. Pagels points out early on that the word "heresy" comes from the Greek word for "choice," and that is what she lays out for her readers -- all the choices that went into early Christianity as well as the options that were discarded. Robin Ressler, in a light moment in our Sunday morning Bible Class, opined that every Christian probably entertains at least two "heretical notions." This idea feels similar to the "six degrees of separation" theory. We are not that far from that which we supposedly oppose or find different.

Pagels' tools, after she has diligently schooled us in the development of the Christian Scriptures, most notably the gospels, are the late Gospel of John, and its (perhaps) contemporary, the Gospel of Thomas. She contrasts them. Thomas represents the "within" tradition developing the early church –- the tradition that saw divinity in all of God's children. It is a movement that involves continuing prophecy and revelation, something like the charismatic movement of the last three decades. I found it interesting that she then describes the Gospel of John as a common source for both the "innovators" and those who pressed for "standardization." Those who wished to standardize and codify Christianity saw revelation coming from "without" or outside of human experience. For those of us who have been raised to believe, or who believe by default, that our theology was fully developed at the time of Abraham or Mary Magdalene, Pagels' book will be a rude awakening. And for those of us who find our Christianity to be a part of a much larger spiritual quest, the effect will be just the same, for more elements will have been added to the mix. An added bonus is that the process she describes mirrors movements and innovations within contemporary Judaism.

In one respect the book is a disappointment. The subtitle, "The Secret Gospel of Thomas," is an unfulfilled promise since most of the book is really spent discussing the forging of "orthodoxy" under Iraneaus, and of his primary tool, the Gospel of John. In spite of my initial disappointment, I found the book to be quite helpful.

This is a very approachable book. Technical terms are either avoided or translated. For example, although she uses the word "catholic," she always translates it as "universal." There are repetitions -- the various chapters are assembled from separate lectures -- but these repetitions are helpful in schooling the reader in some fundamental concepts. For those inclined for further study and inquiry, there are notes and suggested bibliography. It is a book you will want to read with others for it will spark discussion, if not with others, then in your own mind.

 

Forbidden relationships

The Wild Man by Patricia Nell Warren. New York: Wildcat Press, 2001.

by Paul Brenner

Patricia Nell Warren, author of the 1970s best-selling gay novel The Front Runner, has written another story, The Wild Man, about same-sex relationships, set in the realistic, historical context of Fascist Spain in the l960s.

Antonio, a successful, aristocratic bullfighter, has become disillusioned with both his sport and the macho role expected of a toreador. Admiring the strength and spirit of the bulls, he finds he no longer wants to kill them but free them to live again in the wild. And although a marriage has been prepared for him to a lovely young woman, he is more interested in a young peasant, Juan, whose extraordinary gift of communicating with and healing animals commits Antonio to a plan to establish a reserve for bulls on the family estate.

The two men's relationship deepens into romance, but Spain in the 1960s was still ruled by the Fascist government of Gen. Francisco Franco. Homosexual relationships were both forbidden and dangerous. Thus the pressure from his conservative family to go through with his wedding causes Antonio great conflict and pain. When he confesses his relationship with Juan to his fiancé Sera, to his astonishment, she reveals that she, too, is experiencing "forbidden love," with Antonio's rebellious sister, Jose.

The two couples develop a plan to meet the social expectations of family and Spanish society, while continuing in secret their forbidden relationships. However, Antonio's jealous, unhappy younger brother, Paco, a fascist informer and fanatic Catholic, discovers the truth about Antonio and Juan through lies and spying. The rest of the book examines the betrayal and violence unleashed upon the four young gay people, and their unrelenting quest for freedom and love.

One of the book's interesting themes is revealing the interconnections between fascist authoritarianism and violence in religion, politics and families through the experience of Antonio's family.

Even more interesting is an exploration of the critical and central role of the feminine in Antonio and Juan's lives through the spiritual power and presence of "the Lady." The author extends this goddess-like figure far beyond the Roman Catholic cult of Mary, connecting her with a more primal pre-Christian spirituality. Through the devotion of Juan to the Lady and the shrine to the Lady that Antonio and Jose alone know is hidden on the family estate, the author skillfully relates this ancient goddess to the present lives of those who are different by sexuality and sensibility.

This understanding echoes the analysis of Carl Jung, who believed Christianity's fatal flaw was its exclusion of the feminine as an equal component in its picture of the deity, rendering it incapable of effecting authentic wholeness in life. Certainly, the masculinization of the deity in Christianity has been at the basis of its violence against sexual deviance.

Warren's well-told story telescopes this "truth" onto the physical, spiritual, political, economical and sexual landscape of Spain. She carefully draws out its implication for the religious and political environment at work in the United States with the rise of Protestant fundamentalism's drive to create a "Christian" American in its own image. The author's skill as a writer is revealed in the way she illumines the present situation in the United States through the experience of Fascist Spain.

For us, as for Warren's characters, there is danger and hope. Freedom, as Warren reminds us through the experience of Antonio and Juan, Sera and Jose, is not without cost. The Wild Man is a finely crafted novel with a powerful set of messages for a wider audience than only gays and lesbians.

 

Upcoming events

 

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instrument
a newsletter of St. Francis Lutheran Church

Editor: Mark Pritchard

This Summer 2003 issue was completed on 16 July 2003.

Produced on something like a quarterly schedule. Submissions in MS Word format to mark94110 at yahoo.com, or on paper to Mark c/o the church office, 152 Church St., San Francisco, Calif. 94114. Submissions may be on any topic related to spirituality or the work of the people.

Opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not necessarily of St. Francis Church, its staff or members.

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