Category Archives: Circle of Grace

New Chapter. New Book.

I tell my story because I want to understand how the pieces fit together. But there is another part – looking for others who may have shared my experiences or enough similar ones to see to what conclusions they have come, how they were shaped, what wisdom they gleaned that I missed. And in some ways, to find people who are home to me.  Did they ask the same questions? Are there questions I can explore I haven’t considered? 

            Always beneath those questions are the questions: no matter how different we are, how do our lives intersect? where do we connect? Or can we? 

            I often talk about backing up and taking the long view. In those moments I see the connections: the way humanity is woven together and with creation. What seems disparate has tendrils of connection curling beneath the surface. 

            So today I begin to tell another part of my story. The passion that drives me is a gift from Godde. The call to pastor Circle of Grace is a gift and challenge of the Spirit. The struggle to live into the passion is both the gift and curse of community. I cannot tell more of my story without telling the story of Circle of Grace.

While this is my story it is also the story of many people who passed through our metaphorical doors. Some came to stay, some came for a while, some left angry and hurt. I hope to structure the tale to include the telling of others as well as my own.

The truth is sometimes difficult to share. Or even admit. I claim here and now that my truth is only a facet of our shared experiences. I heard a word the other day that that sums up my anxiety, joy, and trepidation of this leg of my journey: “flawsome.” 

            Thank you for listening. This is the beginning of my next book. Ask me questions. Challenge my assumptions. I see a bumpy road ahead and, I hope, will see a few more pieces of the puzzle of me fit together.

Lost Time

A year and a half, nearly two years –
and we continue to wrestle with lost time.
How have we filled our hours
and days
and months?

Has fear divorced us
from our neighbors?
Isolated us
from our friends?
Quarantined us
from the world
so much so
that we refuse to live?
Have we marked time with
resentment
fear
anxiety
and the troubled anguish
of our souls?

Let us instead
open ourselves
to the time allotted to us,
acknowledge each day as
a gift to unwrap
a challenge to meet
a promise to be kept.

Let us open ourselves
to the cosmos
the wind,
the raspy pollen,
the green of burgeoning life,
the gray of life expended,
and devote ourselves
to the untamed spaces
within

Let us unearth
the faceted layers
of our souls,
confront  our fears,
and dare to follow
where the Spirit beckons.

This time need not be lost.
Rather,
let us embrace
as possibility
what once we ignored,
discover our uncharted hearts
and the hidden wealth of  wisdom
we unknowingly possess.

This is an invitation for us
to live deeply
to honor our losses
while choosing to live.
This is an invitation
to grasp life’s energy
with both hands
to embrace
to challenge
to drink the nectar
of the Sacred sap
flowing in our bones,
pulsing in the stars,
and thrumming in the veins
of our holy, holy world.

Come with me
to places
not confined
by this disease
and let us explore
the boundless terrain
of our souls.

Living with Uncertainty

There is a quote, I believe from an Episcopal confession of sin,  that says “We are self-deceived and strangers to the truth.”

I like to be certain.
It comforts me.
Numbs me
to  ever-changing realities.
But we all seek certainty at times
because the world is so large
people are so unpredictable
politics are so complex.
At their best
religions wrestle with questions
whose answers are beyond our imagining.
At their worst,
they offer false and concrete
certainty.

Most of the time,
most of us,
walk in the world content
with the ‘knowing’ we have
however incomplete
however unchallenged
We ground ourselves
in the rhythms of
waking and sleeping
working and playing
connecting and disconnecting.
Until the times
when our unknowing
overwhelms us
and we realize
that we are strangers to the truth
and maybe even
self deceived.

Climate change.
Political turmoil
in a land that once felt knowable.
The fall of nations to terror,
the subjugation of women
through sexual violence
the rise of authoritarianism,
rampant disease,
economic uncertainty.

Confronted with our ignorance,
that what once we thought
may no longer be true,
that what once we believed
has shown itself false,
we combat our fear,
by clinging
to what we think we know
because certainty
is our last refuge.

So let us pursue
something other than
the numbness of ‘certainty’.
The challenges of our time offer
both despair
and hope.
Death and life.
When we are confronted
by ambiguity
let us choose hope
and let us choose life.
Not because we know
any damn thing
but because
we are willing to risk trust.

This is where
faith and certainty collide.
Choose the path of trust
not because we are convinced
of some immutable truth
but because we choose
knowledge beyond facts
relationship beyond comprehension
and the wild goodness of the Sacred.

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy said,  “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” (30:19)

 

Circle of Grace: we are different and very much the same

We thought we were different. And we are. Though I have discovered the ways in which we were like every other spiritual community I know.

Let me wax poetic a moment about how we were/are different.
We challenged every doctrine and tradition of the church as we formed a worshipping community. We still do.  It is hard work to do with intellectual and spiritual integrity… so none of our conclusions is carved in stone. We know that we do not know. I love that about us even though it is emotionally and spiritually strenuous.

We work to be not only non-patriarchal but non hierarchical. Reimagining power is an ongoing challenge. While we challenge the power of the pastor and name a circle as our way of sharing power, like many assumptions we bring to the table from our pasts, it can be almost impossible to implement.

We reimagine  images of Godde. We use inclusive language about both Godde and humanity in our liturgy, in our hymns, in our conversations. And it’s more than inclusive of male and female. We are inclusive of race, ethnicity, mental health status, gender identification, class, education,  and spiritual backgrounds. We press ourselves to see the Divine in every expression of humanity.

We are a place of spiritual healing for many who have been hurt or abused by the institutional church, making room for the hesitant, for the ones who have been in the stranglehold of doctrine, for the ones who live in fear. We make room for one another, honoring different beliefs and understandings. Our unofficial motto is that we may not all believe the same things in the same ways but we are journeying together. Often we  learn and deepen from our differences because we aren’t afraid (mostly) of them.

We are different.
And we are very much the same.

We experienced crisis in community more than once. Sharing life is fraught with all the idiosyncrasies of personalities, relationship challenges, brokenness of body, mind or spirit… and sometimes we rise and respond with grace. And sometimes we don’t.

Like every other community, as people come and go, we sometimes lose sight our central commitments to one another.  Sometimes the work of being community in crisis is too difficult and people cut bait.  Sometimes we find ourselves sitting in judgment of one another and the circle is broken.

But like many spiritual communities we get up and keep on trying. We limp along in Godde’s grace, holding onto Godde’s dream for humanity, and keep on trying to live deeply  into our relationship with the Divine.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I am working to understand the brokenness  we experienced. My own brokenness and the way the community was torn apart. And I am confronting my arrogance that assumed because we are different  we would avoid the pitfalls of being in human community. We are not that different. And I bow to this challenge to my assumptions.

 

 

The Bible Idol

I’m not sure when I stopped worrying about what the Bible says.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that book. It is filled with the stories of my spiritual journey. It has provided the construct for my theological questioning. This book challenges me to look deeper and think harder. To question myself and to question Godde. So I am not dismissing it. Nor am I saying that I accept the New Testament but not the Old. If I did, I would miss too much wisdom, too much poetry, too many stories that speak to the deepest parts of me.

What I mean when I say I stopped worrying about what the Bible says is I’m not sure how young I was when I stopped thinking of it as a dictation of rules and behavior. Unlike some, I never had the misfortune of thinking it contained the secrets that would keep my out of hell. My relationship with Godde negated the idea of hell.

Godde is too big for the Bible and I don’t think the writers’ intention was to capture Godde in its contents. Rather, it is the story of a people grappling with their relationship with Godde, one that assumed ongoing revelation – personal, communal, and political.

In seminary I learned to wrestle with the languages of the Bible (Greek and Hebrew), to parse meanings of words, to contextualize the stories, to do literary criticism – basically to engage with the text in intimate and creative ways. Thanks be to Godde. And for myself, after years in ministry, I love this text that is both flawed and profound, beautiful and horribly misused.

Do you want me to make an intellectual and spiritual argument for, oh say, the rights of women or LGBTQ rights using the Bible? I can.  And another can use the text to refute my arguments. I think if I hear one more time that you can prove anything with the Bible I might scream. It demeans the Bible to use it as a proof text to reinforce what one already believes.

I am left with the question of how to minister with people who have been beaten up with the Bible being the whip that scars the soul insisting on the brutality of self-hatred. How do I minister with those who need a new way of seeing for their wounds to begin to heal?

Fundamentalists, it seems to me, have turned the Bible into an idol, replacing direct relationship with the Divine with the rigidity of rules over compassion for the human condition. The psychology of using a peoples’ fear to control their behavior is deeply disturbing. I am often asked by my fundamentalist friends if I am not afraid of going to hell. And then I’m asked why would people be good if there were no hell.

1 – I am not afraid of going to hell. I am afraid of hurting people with religion. I am afraid
of religion used to manipulate people in their deepest vulnerabilities.  I am afraid of
the permission to hate in the name of Godde.

2 – I believe, as Ann Frank said, that people are basically good. That we are communal
folks who want and need to live together in society. I believe the Bible is filled with
stories of people trying to figure out how to live together.

3 – I am grateful for a book that has stories of Jesus in it. A revelation about how
we might all embody the love of Godde, and in doing that, change the world.

My invitation today is to let Godde out of the Bible box and the Bible out of the Godde box. Don’t be afraid. The peace of Christ be with you.

 

 

 

Dear Friends… Do Not Let Despair Defeat Us

Dear Friends,
Another week of living, breathing, grieving, working, and loving amidst a pandemic has passed and weeks of the same loom before us. In the midst of trying to navigate life with closed parameters, we witness more and more accounts of our fellow citizens being murdered and maimed,  white supremacists wielding weapons with the intent to kill protestors, and a president who encourages hateful division as his best method of retaining power.

How are you managing? How is your heart? Mine is awash with grief and wrestling each day not to descend into despair.  It is from this place I am  urging  us not to succumb. Despair sucks the life out of our ability to hope  and paralyzes our ability to act. So I write  not to deny the despair you might be feeling but to beg you not to surrender to it.

Despair is manifesting in a couple of ways (at least). Some are striking out blindly like a cornered animal.  Let us, instead, calculate our acts of resistance  to achieve the better outcome and make the necessary change we seek. Still impassioned, but result oriented or, as Michelle Obama said, ” When they go low, we go high.”  The other way despair manifests is in giving up. We cannot allow ourselves to believe that nothing we do will make a difference. This is the kind of despair I am hearing from so many.

For those of us mired in despair: we cannot surrender to it. If we do,  we are lost.
So today I invite you to the difficult task of refusing to give into despair. Challenge it by believing that each of our small acts make a difference. Challenge it by doing necessary and important menial work: get it involved with voter registration, become a poll worker, participate in texting, phone banking,  or letter writing campaigns urging people to register and vote.

Whatever you do, do something. We cannot let despair be what defeats us.

Dear friends,  I promised to offer hope in the weeks leading up to this most important election.
Today, this is the hope I offer:
You choosing to fight feelings of despair.
You refusing to descend to the shadow side of resistance.
You finding the small acts that make a difference.
You committing to vote and making a plan.
You standing shoulder to shoulder with all who seek justice.

You.
You are the hope.

Blessings and peace,
Connie

p.s. the song on a loop in my head today:
I will hold the Christ light for you
in the night time of your fear
I will hold my hand out to you
speak the peace you long to hear:

 

 

Centering in Gratitude, Finding Hope


Last night, while online with my spiritual community for a time of prayer, I felt the heaviness of all we are enduring during this pandemic: the chaos of authoritarianism, if not fascism, the small and daily losses we face, the heaviness of systemic racism and sexism in our nation. And it came to me as we were sharing and praying that in the midst of so much suffering, rage, and fear we weren’t praying any prayers of gratitude.

Gratitude is a spiritual practice that centers me. It keeps me from dropping into an abyss of hopelessness. So I invited (okay harangued) everyone to share something, one thing, even a small thing, for which they were grateful. And as we began to share small lumens flickered. Fireflies of grace blinked into view, if only for a moment.

And our tentative lights strengthened into the ‘luminous darkness’ that Howard Thurman talks about. When diving in the ocean we are first illuminated by the light from the sky. Further on, we enter deep darkness where light does not penetrate. And then. And then when we have gone deeper than we think we can bear – there is a the unexpected light at the bottom of the ocean given off by unknown sea creatures.

While not as dramatic, through our gratitude practice we encountered unexpected light. Even more, we began to hope. And the hopes we shared for a better world were glorious. I hadn’t realized how much hope I had given up. I could dream an end to this time of hate, disease, fascism, isolation, anxiety…  but I hadn’t hoped for what we could be.

Last night as hope began to burn within us we dreamed of the wonderful ways this tragedy could be transformed. Eager. Excited. Animated. Things we hadn’t been or felt for so long. It was like gasping  a deep breath after nearly suffocating. We were astonished by our very ability to hope – and not just little hopes, but to hope large.

So today I invite you find gratitude where you can. Small or large, let your gratitude become a place of luminous darkness. And may it carve out space in your heart for the possibility of hope.

Invitation to Easter of the Un-believer

My friend, Maggie, could put a dead stick in the ground and it would grow.

Her husband, Ernie, worked on the line at the local GM plant and Maggie made their home. Their son was born with cerebral palsy. Maggie and Ernie left the church the day women from the congregation visited after Butch’s birth and ask why God was punishing them and what was their sin. Maggie was having none of that. She channeled her energy into helping start the CP Center here in Atlanta where she volunteered with the children every day. Then  Butch died of pneumonia when he was 16.

Their world got smaller and revolved around their older child, a sassy, smart, independent daughter named Ginny. As their long-time next door neighbor, I became a part of their family.  Ginny died from breast cancer in her early 50’s. When Ginny died, I was fresh from seminary and had the difficult privilege of walking with  them through her illness and death. We met to talk about her funeral and  they decided  on  a brief service at the cemetery. Maggie wanted the 23rd Psalm read, other than that she wanted little mention of God. It would already be tense because I (a woman!) was leading the service and their gathered family (absent during Ginny’s illness and otherwise) were pretty rigid fundamentalists. Indeed, they managed to find inappropriate ways and times to comment on how wrong it was that I was presiding at the service. Would that they had kept their thoughts to themselves and comforted  Maggie  and Ernie in their gaping grief.

It was during that time that I got a lot of clarity about Easter. It has nothing to do with what you believe about the resurrection of the body, nothing to do with what you believe about anything. It is the powerful experience beyond words: that death is not final, that justice is not finished, and that love responds to  our struggles with hope beyond our wildest imagination.

Maggie taught me not to demean Easter with doctrine.

Today, I invite you to Easter beyond belief.
Easter is the uneasy time when our hearts are broken open and we stand in the naked beauty of unknowing, bathed in a grace that neither requires answers nor rejects our questions.

Today I invite you to the Easter of the Un-believer.

Tales from an Elephant Orphanage

 

Well, folks, I’ve begun working on the sequel to my memoir (A Gracious Heresy: the Queer Calling of an Unlikely Prophet).  The working title of the new project is Circling Grace: Tales from an Elephant Orphanage. It’s my telling of the story of Circle of Grace, a Christian, feminist, ecumenical, progressive church of which I am the founding pastor.

I am telling my part of the story though, as with all stories and especially a story about a group of people, mine is only a part. It is exciting to remember the early days, the challenges and discussions as we worked to birth this idea of a Christian feminist worshipping community. I hope, in the end, you will find the tale engaging, challenging, and, most of all, truthful.

The title comes form a conversation I once had with my spiritual director who said, “Connie, Circle of Grace is like an elephant orphanage. Wounded or sick or disabled baby elephants that have have been rejected or abandoned by their herd are taken in, healed, and taught how to be elephants.”

Check out this 60 Minutes story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hErfU4gb1GQ

In somewhat the same way, people come to Circle of Grace because their spiritual communities have rejected them. They come in need of respite and healing, starved for spiritual food and the unconditional love. She continued, “Some are able to return to their herd  (the churches they were raised in) and some, whose wounding has been too severe, remain and form a new tribe.” Her insight helps me ponder the implications and pray for and with the community I pastor.

Today I am doing what pastors do: reflecting on the story  theologically.  Immersed in telling the challenges and reliving the excitement of our early days, I was able to distill it down to a sentence:  “Creating safe spiritual space must take an uncomfortable front seat to theological differences.”

I am excited to be telling my part of the story, even while I agonize over my many and varied inadequacies. I am reminded again how important it Is that we tell our stories. Something important happens when we examine our pasts. We discover more deeply who we are. We see more clearly the challenges we face. And, Godde willing, we stumble toward redemption.

 

Herding Non-Doctrinal Cats

My writing group friend ,who is also a pastor, asserted this morning that people don’t come to church because of doctrine. “If you stood outside the doors of the church on Sunday morning and asked people if they believed what they had just heard, if they were honest they, would say, “No.”

I found that astounding. She went on the say that most people aren’t interested in doctrine. They come because it is a place of welcome, a place they belong, where they have a sense of family. My daughter responded that she doesn’t go to a church because of doctrine but there are churches she won’t go to because of doctrine.

One would think then that being a non-doctrinal church would be easier to establish among the young, but the truth is it takes a certain amount of spiritual maturity, a certain amount of personal history that challenges everything you thought were certainties.

When Circle of Grace started I insisted that we be non-doctrinal. It’s easier said than done because one of the first things someone asks of a church is, “What do you believe?”.  Our covenant is one not based on belief but on relationship. We wrestle with the questions, “How do we relate to Godde?” and “How do we relate to one another and to the created world.” In 1993 we wrote our covenant:
We, the Circle of Grace Community Church, as Christians, covenant with Godde and with one another to:
– Live with compassion and seek justice
– Continually discern that to which Godde calls us
– Build spiritual community that is inclusive of race, gender, sexuality, ability, class,      culture, age, and religious backgrounds.
– Provide safe haven
– Worship together using language about Godde and humanity that is inclusive.
– Live in right relationship with Godde and one another
– Speak truth to power

Our covenant is a pointer and directional marker, challenging us to a different kind of faithfulness and a beacon in the wilderness times. And, yes, it was hard making space for  passionately pro-life and pro-choice people, for those who needed substitutionary atonement and those who found the crucifixion to be a judgment on humanity.  We even discussed whether or not to put “as Christians” in our covenant because of what people assume it means when you say that. But we ended up saying we were reclaiming the word in the same way lesbians reclaimed the word “dyke”.  We would define what it means to be a Christian and, for us, we could agree it meant to follow in the Way of Jesus.

The beauty and the challenge of herding non-doctrinal cats is how much we can learn from one another. I confess that, as a pastor, I was often filled with anxiety. The question uppermost in my mind was, “How can we make room for one another?” – though, truthfully, sometime it was, “Will everyone be able to tolerate this?’. It’s different when you say out loud that a church is non-doctrinal than it is silently living with the reality of it.

I like to think it is some of the important work we do, re-imagining what spiritual community can be in all its unsettled and unsettling differences, making expansive statements that call us to live into a way of being, every gathering and worship service an exercise in herding non-doctrinal cats. Circle of Grace’s commitment and experience is a necessary beacon of a different possibility, a different way of being in the world while still being authentic.

As the world churns with uncertainty and fear for the future, it is seductive to reach for doctrines that give us absolute sureties . But doing that only perpetuates the current miasma. We need a different vision of how to live in the world with all our differences.

Our world desperately needs to become a herd of non-doctrinal cats who choose  to make home together.