pegkerr | Entries tagged with spirituality

I attended an ordination last weekend, and the pastor explained during the announcement portion of the services that out in the narthex, there was a table containing bags with sticks of chalk and a piece of paper explaining the tradition of doing a house blessing at Epiphany. We were all encouraged to take them home. I was intrigued, as I had never heard of this custom before, and I took home the bag with the chalk and read the paper.

It said:

For centuries, Christians have celebrated the season of Epiphany by chalking their outside front door with a blessing. You are invited to try it at your home.

The Traditional Chalk Blessing:

20 † C † M † B † 25

Surrounding the blessing is the date of the new year (2025). The crosses between the letters symbolize Christ.

CMB has two meanings. It signifies the traditional names of the three magi who visited Jesus (Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar), and it stands for the Latin phrase "Christus mansionem benedictat," meaning "May Christ bless this house."

Reading about this tradition got me thinking about my house.

Rob and I moved into this house in December 1992. I realized, counting back, that I am almost at the exact point where I have lived half my life in this house.

I thought of a song I've loved for years by one of my favorite artists, Peter Mayer, "Houses of Winter," which imagines homes as almost sentient entities, watching over the people in their keeping. ( The Houses of Winter )

Watch on YouTube

When we moved into this house, I was seven months pregnant with Fiona (convenient, because I wasn't expected to lift anything heavier than a waste basket on moving day). I brought my babies home to this house and raised them here. Rob and I loved each other here, and it was my anchor when he died.

This home has sheltered a family. Now it is just me.

I have often wished I come up with a proper name for the house, as some of my friends have for their own homes, but nothing ever quite seemed to fit. Yet it has a personality. It was built in 1916 and has beautiful bones, but it is whimsical and sometimes temperamental, too. The furnace in the basement is original to the house, an octopus monstrosity that crouches in the darkness, tentacles reaching in all directions, hemmed in by asbestos, greedy as hell for natural gas, yet as reliable as could be desired. The electrical system is barely adequate. The floors slope toward the midline, the tile floor in the bathroom is cold, and the light switch in the bedroom says 'NO' instead of 'ON' because it was installed upside down. The less said about the paneling installed in the hallway and two of the bedrooms, the better.

The house regularly demands tribute in expensive repairs: a new roof. Drain tile in the basement. Regular repainting. The walls are threaded through with cracks in the plaster.

I have tried to make my home more my own as I have been slowly cleaning out Rob's stuff. I have never had a pet while living here (allergies make it impossible). It is just me. And the house.

I've eaten tomatoes and Swiss chard grown in the backyard and cooked thousands of meals in the kitchen. I've probably cried in just about every room in the house. The walls have soaked up so much laughter, the yells from so many fights, the joy of so many celebrations (perhaps that's why they are cracking so much).

It feels almost like...like it's the two of us now, the house and me. It is almost anthropomorphic, in other words, as in the Peter Mayer song. This house has watched over and sheltered my family, been my comfort and haven in times of struggle and grief. Now it watches over me. It seems more personal. Just as it has been a blessing to me, it seems only fitting to bless and thank the house in return.

Background: a dark wooden front door, overlaid at the top with a stitched sampler reading 'Bless This House." The top of the door has an inscription in white letters "20 † C † B † M † 25." Lower center: a mesh bag containing a piece of chalk hovers over three porcelain figurines of the three wise men. A pair of hands reaches up from the bottom, cupping the sampler in blessing.

Blessing

2 Blessing

Click on the links to see the 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: Houses of Winter by Peter Mayer

Our bishop Jen Nagel has now been formally installed. It was a splendid and joyful service, held at Central Lutheran in downtown Minneapolis.

I am curious to see how her term as Bishop will unfold. I do like her very much.

The text at the top of the collage is from one of the readings at the service.

Image description: Background: a magnificent church interior (Central Lutheran, Minneapolis). Center: two women stand behind a prie-dieu. The woman on the right is dressed in a red bishop's chasuble and holds a bishop's crozier. Behind them is a metal screen with lit red votive candles. Lower right corner: communion trays. Top in white text: "Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

Installation

38 Installation

Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: pleased

The Winter Solstice has slowly been growing in importance for me over the years. It's odd: I pay very little attention to the Summer Solstice. But when you have seasonal affective disorder, the Winter Solstice (particularly in northern climes, where sunlight is scarce in winter) is a REALLY BIG DEAL. I held a Solstice party a few years ago, and were it not for the pandemic, I would have held it again this year: a quiet gathering with friends, mulled wine, and delicious food. *sigh* But I celebrated it this year in my own way.

Churches are beginning to notice this, too: a growing trend in congregations is a service before Christmas, around the Solstice, which some have dubbed "Blue Christmas." My church has always had an outreach to people suffering from mental illness, so this is right in our wheelhouse. As it happens, I have had no issues with seasonal affective disorder this year at all (thank heavens), which I attribute to good diet, regular exercise, and the fact that I have finally conquered my struggles with sleep for the first time in almost half a decade (thank you, Sleep Boot Camp). Coming into this darkest period of winter, I feel good.

Anyway, Blue Christmas. My church held a quiet, elegant, lovely service called "The Longest Night" last night. We incorporated two songs by Peter Mayer, one of my favorite singers (I introduced his music to our music director and she has taken to him as much as I have). One song was "Green," which I sang as a solo, and then the congregations joined as we segued into "Joy to the World."

Watch on YouTube

The other song included in the service is one of my favorite pieces of Solstice music of all time, "The Longest Night." I incorporated some of the lyrics into this week's card.

Watch on YouTube

After Pastor Sara's reflection, the small gathering wrote their prayers on slips of paper left in the manger and then came to the center of the circle to light candles.

I went home and turned off all the lights and lit candles throughout the downstairs. Lots and lots of candles. I listened to a peaceful solstice mix of music, roasted some chestnuts, and brewed myself a mug of mulled wine.

Two lit candles on a table. In front sits a large glass much with mulled wine with cranberries and oranges

Two lit candles on a table. In front sits a large glass much with mulled wine with cranberries and oranges

Delicious. Then, utterly at peace with myself and the world, I sat down and created this card.

Solstice

51 Solstice

Just one more card and then I'm done for the year! I have had so much fun with this project and have found it to be so valuable (both in terms of creativity and in working things through for myself) that I have already decided that this project will continue next year. I will start a new gallery after the first of the year, but will include a link from the prior gallery to direct people.

Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

This is my thirteenth collage of the year, which means that I'm 1/4 of the way through the project. Some preliminary conclusions:

I REALLY like doing this, and I have no trouble believing I will finish out the year. I had said at the beginning of the year that I planned to print the images out and paste them to cards, as I did the last time I tried this project. I started with digital collages, and although I thought at the beginning I might do some traditional ones, now I think I will do digital collages throughout the year and probably will not print them. The reason is that now that I am using digital tools, I'm playing a lot with transparency, and that just doesn't turn out well when I try to print, at least on the printers to which I have access.

As I said in my last post, I got my second Moderna shot. I don't feel great, but I am so, so happy. The conception of this card seems blindingly obvious to me: I got the shot yesterday, and today is the first day of Passover. Not a holiday I usually celebrate, but Fiona has several housemates who are Jewish, and they have very kindly invited me to join their Zoom Seder tonight, which I plan to do (although I will probably spend most of it lolling on the couch with my eyes at half-mast)

The background is taken from a still of the movie "Prince of Egypt," which the girls loved to watch as they were growing up, showing the appearance of the Angel of Death which manifests as a ghostly apparition hovering over the darkened buildings. I overlay that with a different artist's conception of the Angel of Death, and below and parallel to that, I put a Covid vaccine syringe (I'd taken a picture of the actual syringe used for my vaccine, but it did not turn out very well, so instead I used a standard stock photo). I debated placing the syringe cross-ways over the angel, (like the circle with a slash through it often placed over symbols to indicate "no...." I also debated using a picture of a doorway marked with blood on the lintel posts, with syringes overlaid over the markings of blood.

But in the end, I just placed the syringe parallel to the Angel, with the angle of the Angel's sword mimicking the placement of the syringe's needle. The meaning isn't quite parallel, because the Angel uses the sword to kill, whereas the needle protects AGAINST the Angel. But in the end, aesthetics won out. I flipped the image of the background, too, so that the Angel as represented by the mist also matches the angle of the Angel in the foreground. Edited to add: Huh, I also just noticed that (entirely coincidentally) it's at about exactly the same angle as the syringe in "Vaccine I."

I'm pretty pleased with this one.

I had decided at the beginning of the year that the cards would have one-word titles. Yes, I'm cheating by making the last vaccine shot "Vaccine I" and this one "Vaccine II." Bite me. If I hadn't decided that, the title of this card would be the caption I put at the top: "Let the angel of death pass by."

Vaccine II

Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

*Deep breath*

Okay.

This is maybe the most complicated-in-thought card I've ever done (the card is at the end of this rather long post). I will try to explain it, and doubtless, some will be TL;DR and/or I may miss the mark in explaining it (if so, sorry!), but, well, it is important to me. And it's been the result of/prompted by the sort of deep reflective inner work that I hoped this project would spark, so I'm pretty pleased with it. Both aesthetically and what it's opened deep within myself.

The card started with my tuning into one of the prayer gatherings being held at 8:00 a.m. every morning while the Chauvin trial is going on, hosted by the organization Healing Our City (some of the organizers have ties to the Minneapolis Area Synod for the ELCA, my employer, and several of my coworkers are tuning in every day).

The day's reflection leader, Rev. Frenchye Magee of Hennepin Avenue United Methodist, invited the listeners to reflect on an image, a plant growing in a fractal pattern, which is common in nature, as we considered the thought, "What we practice of the small becomes the practice of the large." Large changes, she explained, begin with the smallest changes we make in ourselves as we engage in the work of social changes and justice, and those changes spiral out, becoming an opportunity to repeat the pattern in ever-enlarging arcs of love and hope and healing that transform the world.

As I thought over the next few days about this meditation, I made the connection with what I am doing in my own life. Last week's card, Books, was about the small, laborious changes I am making in my own life to open up space for something new. This past week, I shipped off my wedding china to a company that deals with used china as part of this downsizing/changing process (see the teacup in the upper right).

"Wait a minute!" you cry in outrage. "Stop right there! How dare you turn a meditation about the changes necessary to bring about social justice into a rumination about downsizing and decluttering. How self-centered and self-absorbed can a white woman be!" Well, yes, but please give me a moment to explain. I promise I will tie it all together.

I have been studying the concept of hygge for the past couple of years, and as I have been dealing with All of Rob's Stuff, I have become aware of the Swedish term döstädning, or as it's called in English, Swedish Death Cleaning. As I have struggled to go through all of Rob's stuff, I have sworn to myself, time and time again, I WILL NOT DO THIS TO MY GIRLS. I am aware that I have to make the hard choices, the small changes--but it's not only about simplifying my life to be kind to others after my death. I need to be aware of the changes I need to make in my mentality--caring more about people than things--not just in preparation for my own death, which hopefully, will be a long ways off yet. But also it's necessary to open up space for the life I truly wish to live.

There is nothing like becoming a widow to make you think about preparing for death. I saw how Rob became less and less tethered to his possessions as he lay dying in the hospital. He didn't care to read or open his laptop, and he didn't show as much interest as expected in the gifts we brought him, certainly far less than usual.

What ties it all together was something prompted by a song included as a part of worship in another Healing Our City gathering later in the week: People Get Ready:

People get ready
There's a train a comin'
You don't need no baggage
You just get on board
All you need is faith
To hear the diesel's hummin'
You don't need no ticket
You just thank the lord
(See the ghostly train at the top of the card.) The song, as well as all the thinking I have been doing about making small changes in my life, made me remember J.R.R. Tolkien's great story "Leaf By Niggle." (You can listen to a lovely recording of the story being read here. Which is coincidentally where I got the script spelling out "Leaf by Niggle" in a font based on Tolkien's own lettering, that you see overlaying the ghostly train. Niggle's perfect leaf, dappled by dew, is underneath.)

Niggle was preoccupied by his own concerns, his hope of painting a perfect tree, leaf by glorious leaf. He is annoyed by the constant demands put upon him by his neighbors, especially the intrusive Parish. The constant interruptions cause him to neglect his work; in turn, his inability to finish his work caused him to be insufficiently concerned about his neighbors. Finally, he was called away from his work because he had to go on a long journey on a train, clearly a metaphor for death ("There's a train a comin' / You don't need no baggage / You just get on board"). It is not until he undergoes a series of small changes (in a realm that reflects Tolkien's Roman Catholic conception of Purgatory) that his heart opens up to his neighbor Parish, and in return, he discovers his Great Tree, a real living tree, as he pictured in his imagination but could not quite capture.

Luke 12: 13-21 tells the story of the rich fool, who cared only for building barns and piling up his wealth, until God required his soul to come to death, and what good did his riches do him then? A related parable is the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31: a rich man thinks only of his possessions and his own pleasures, ignoring the downtrodden Lazarus outside his gate until both come to death, and what good did his riches do him, in comparison to what he should have done for Lazarus? (“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again [in Dickens' A Christmas Carol]: “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”)

What should we do for Lazarus? What should we do for Parish? What should we have done for George Floyd, who had his life cut short by death? What small changes do I need to make in my life to open myself up to them? I hasten to explain that I'm not trying to say that de-emphasizing possessions is the work here; it's part of it, but mostly I'm pointing that process out as a metaphor for the work. I hope I can escape self-absorption, and make the changes to turn my attention away from mere things to the people around me: my neighbors Lazarus, and Parish, and George Floyd. And I have to make the small changes to root unhappy patterns out my life, including, yes, the inner racism I am training myself to see, the small selfishnesses, like putting away and getting rid of the old familiar things in my life that are no longer appropriate to the life I wish to lead. And in doing so, I think I can open myself up more fully to truly seeing and helping my neighbor.

It is difficult. It will take many small changes. But death is one of the few certainties in life. It puts so much into perspective, and things become so much clearer.

(So...did I manage to tie it all together? And did you actually read through all the way to the end???)

Changes

Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Many thanks to

minnehaha K. for the link:

The Tree of Contemplative Practices.

Maybe all month: here:

"@LegendMG: The thing that bugs me most about North Carolina; Jesus had two dads."

Also: my favorite fictional president, Josiah Bartlet (@Pres_Bartlet) made a speech, on Twitter no less, in response to yesterday's events (link here):

The following is a speech given on twitter by the account of the fictional President Bartlet from the television show The West Wing, on May 9, 2012, about the passage of Amendment 1 in North Carolina, and directly preceding President Obama's endorsement of Gay Marriage. Each line represents one tweet. President Bartlet can be followed on twitter @Pres_Bartlet

To those who want to retaliate against North Carolina for their vote my moving the DNC: You are going about this all wrong.

If anything, the vote in North Carolina is a sign that we need to spend more time in this state, not less. We still have minds to change.

To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.

When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating.

Cry, The Beloved Country, For The Unborn Child That's The Inheritor Of Our Fear.

Alan Paton's words are as true today as they were in his day.

There is only one thing that has power completely and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.

It would be easy to be consumed by anger and hatred right now. I suggest that instead we commit ourselves to love and forgiveness.

Let our message be the message of love. Of the belief that all men and women who share love should be treated equally under the law.

Will it be harder for @BarackObama to win reelection if he comes out in support of gay marriage? Maybe. I can see the argument.

I have found in my many, many years in politics that doing the hard thing is usually the same as doing the right thing.

We are, here and now, setting the conversation for the next generation. If we refuse to stand up, we are failing our children.

We are failing our brothers and sisters, or mothers and fathers, our fellow men and women of this country. We are failing them.

For those of you worried about energizing the base of the GOP, I have to tell you, they are already energized.

[At this point, the news breaks that Obama endorses gay marriage]

Game on.

to know whether this is an accurate flowchart of Mormon theology.

But it IS freaking hilarious.

(Hat tip to @almightgod. Who's pretty freaking hilarous Himself.)

Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer.

Delia has decided not to be confirmed.

She agonized and went back and forth a lot on this in her inimitable Delia manner, but finally made the final decision last Wednesday night. I'm sad about it, but not surprised. Rob is not a church goer at all, although he was amenable to both girls being baptized. I have always believed it's a child's own decision, and I would never force her to do this if she didn't want to, and she doesn't. She says she simply doesn't believe. I admitted there are times that I have difficulty believing myself.

From now on, I'll be going to church alone. It's a lot lonelier way to do it. It's one reason I wished my sisters and my parents and I lived closer to each other (we're about a half hour apart), so that we could attend the same church. For most of my life going to church has meant going with family. Of course, that day would have come someday only, and now it's just a little earlier. But she may never have that as a part of her life. Of course, that may change. Either way, I will she will always be in my prayers.

I love this story.

knitmeapony sent out a tweet that alerted me to this one.

From blogger Tim Schraeder here.

A couple of months ago I interviewed Nathan Albert from the Marin Foundation about Mercy, Justice, and the GLBT Community. It generated some interesting dialogue around a tough issue… how does the Church communicate God’s love to the gay community?

This past weekend Chicago, along with many other US cities, celebrated Gay Pride with a parade. As a part of the weekend, Nathan and a group of over 30 Christians from various Chicago churches went to demonstrate at the Gay Pride Parade with the Marin Foundation.

Their demonstration was much different, though.

While the most vocal “Christian” presence at the parade was in the form of protesters with “God Hates Fags” signs, Nathan and a team from the Marin Foundation took a different approach… they chose to apologize.

The volunteers wore black t-shirts with the phrase “I’m Sorry” on the front and held signs with messages of apology, on behalf of all Christians, for the way the church has treated the gay community.

While the ultimate message Jesus came to preach was one of love, grace and compassion, we’ve sadly misrepresented Him and alienated sons and daughters from their Father’s embrace… and I’m so excited to see how Nathan and his team took a different, humble approach and in the end, did something far more powerful than preaching or shouting… they showed love.

Nathan posted a story from the Pride Parade outreach on his blog that absolutely needs to be heard…Here’s some excerpts…
What I loved most about the day is when people “got it.” I loved watching people’s faces as they saw our shirts, read the signs, and looked back at us. Responses were incredible. Some people blew us kisses, some hugged us, some screamed thank you. A couple ladies walked up and said we were the best thing they had seen all day.

Watching people recognize our apology brought me to tears many times. It was reconciliation personified.

My favorite though was a gentleman who was dancing on a float. He was dressed solely in white underwear and had a pack of abs like no one else. As he was dancing on the float, he noticed us and jokingly yelled, “What are you sorry for? It’s pride!” I pointed to our signs and watched him read them.

Then it clicked.

Then he got it.

He stopped dancing. He looked at all of us standing there. A look of utter seriousness came across his face. And as the float passed us he jumped off of it and ran towards us. He hugged me and whispered, “thank you.”

I think a lot of people would stop at the whole “man in his underwear dancing” part. That seems to be the most controversial. It’s what makes the evening news. It’s the stereotype most people have in their minds about Pride.

Sadly, most Christians want to run from such a sight rather than engage it. Most Christian won’t even learn if that person dancing in his underwear has a name. Well, he does. His name is Tristan.

However, I think Jesus would have hugged him too. It’s exactly what I read throughout scripture: Jesus hanging out with people that religious people would flee from. Correlation between then and now? I think so.

Acceptance is one thing. Reconciliation is another. Sure at Pride, everyone is accepted (except perhaps the protestors). There are churches that say they accept all. There are business that say the accept everyone. But acceptance isn’t enough. Reconciliation is.

Reconciliation forces one to remember the wrongs committed and relive constant pain. Yet it’s more powerful and transformational because two parties that should not be together and have every right to hate one another come together for the good of one another, for forgiveness, reconciliation, unity.

What I saw and experienced at Pride 2010 was the beginning of reconciliation. It was in the shocked faces of gay men and women who did not ever think Christians would apologize to them.

I hugged a man in his underwear. I hugged him tightly. And I am proud.

What’s so cool about this story is that when Nathan posted the picture it lit up on Facebook and someone recognized Tristan and Tristan got in touch with Nathan yesterday afternoon. He said that all he could talk about from his experience at the Pride Parade was meeting Nathan and all of the Christians who were there to say they were sorry.

He was moved and he and Nathan are going to meet up later this week for coffee.

That’s what it’s all about. Who knows what will happen or what will come of this, but one life was impacted and countless seeds were planted in the hearts of many.

Pray for Tristan and Nathan’s conversation and pray that this will be the beginning of a movement of reconciliation between the Church and the gay community.

Huge props to Nathan, Kevin, Andrew, everyone at the Marin Foundation, and those who courageously joined them this weekend in taking Christ’s love to a place most Christians would run away from. Thanks for being an example and setting a high bar for the rest of us to follow.

How is your church communicating to the gay community? Maybe we need to start with a humble apology.

–

UPDATE: Many people have responded wanting to do something similar in their cities, so the Marin Foundation is making the “I’m Sorry” t-shirts available. Details here.

Gacked from The Best Article Every Day:

Written by Carl Sagan

If every person on our blue Earth watched this video, the world would be a much better place. At least for a few minutes. Listen closely to Carl Sagan’s words till the end. It won’t fail to get you teary.-JD

The spacecraft was a long way from home.

I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having.

It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos—but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last for decades to come.

So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it’s just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth’s surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalisms is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we’ve ever known.

The pale blue dot.

This is an excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It talks about the photo of the same name, Pale Blue Dot, taken by Voyager I on February 14, 1990.

The short film was produced by David Fu.

A feminist theologian who had a big influence on my thinking, who showed me that you could be a feminist AND a Christian, passed away this week. I read her book Womenspirit Rising in a religion class in college, and thank heaven I did.

Thanks to

mayakda for the link.

The Call - Council Suit
I am the One who summons you, often in the still hours when you least expect it. I may be loud and imperative, or so quiet that you will be tempted to ignore me, as badly timed or inconvenient. Do not do so, upon peril of your soul. The Call must be heeded, for it is the infusion of the Divine into the everyday world.

( What I did today to make the world a better place )

She sat perched on the edge of the chair, fidgeting a little, in the well-appointed anteroom, which was decorated with tasteful paintings on the wall and an aquarium stocked with colorful tropical fish. She knew that the fish were there to keep people from becoming nervous, but even knowing that didn't help enough. After a short wait, she was ushered into his office. A junior flunky politely offered her a choice of soda or water or coffee, but she refused. She didn't think she could have raised the cup to her lips without the trembling in her fingers becoming totally obvious.

There were pleasantries at first. She expected that, and did her best to sound natural as she replied to his polite inquiries about the day job, the family, a recent vacation. Perhaps if she just pretended to be confident, she could finesse this interview without getting too embarrassed. The trouble was, she didn't think that she could convincingly assume an air of insouciance, particularly when all she felt was sheer terror at having to face him and admit the truth. Then he leaned forward a little, looking at the papers on the desk in front of him, and she felt a frisson of dread.

"I was so pleased with your progress the last time we visited," he told her. "The Wild Swans was--well, it made me very proud." And she believed him. That, perversely, was what made facing him now so awful. He paused, looking at her expectantly, and she realized he was giving her a chance to respond. She murmured a rather disjointed thanks, something to the effect that she was quite proud of it, too. She hoped he wouldn't think she sounded like a ninny. She also hoped he wouldn't see how wretched admitting this made her feel now.

"So tell me," he said, picking up an elegant fountain pen and holding it poised over the papers in front of him. "What have you been working on since our last meeting?"

She looked down at her hands, clenched together tightly in her lap. "I was--I had started another novel. About--about an ice palace. The St. Paul Winter Carnival ice palace, you know. The central character is the architect designing it. And it's--well. Well. About--about summer and winter magic." She cursed herself inwardly for her own stammering.

He waited, but she volunteered nothing more. "That sounds promising. It could be quite interesting, indeed." Another pause. "But you are not finished with it yet?"

Slowly, she shook her head. "No, I'm not." She heard the leather of his seat creak as he sat back, looking at her. She couldn't bring herself to look up to meet his eyes as she added faintly, "I--I don't think I'm going to finish it."

The pause that followed was very long indeed. "I see," he said. Was he angry, she wondered anxiously? Was he surprised? She couldn't tell. She could feel her palms starting to sweat. "Then--what are you working on now, Ms. Kerr?"

She could hear the faint ticking of the elegant clock on his desk. How was it possible to hear that over the thundering of her own heartbeat? Couldn't she just keel over out of sheer nerves and end the agony of this interview that way? She took a deep breath. "I'm not working on anything right now," she said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her own voice. Fleetingly, with an enormous effort, she finally raised her gaze to meet his. "I don't think I'm going to write any more novels, sir." Inwardly, she cringed. There. She had said it.

"No more novels?" Slowly, he turned the pen over in his fingers. Tap. Tap. "May I ask why you do not think you will be writing any more novels?"

She opened her mouth and closed it again as a wave of shame swept over her. Tears prickled the corners of her eyes. Oh, no. No. I swore I would not cry. "It's--it's just so hard. It's very difficult." She cleared her throat.

"Difficult." The very flatness of his voice made the inadequacy of the excuse clear.

"I'm just--well, I'm just so busy. Ferrying the girls around. Keeping up with everything. And I try to write--I try to write, and nothing comes." There were other reasons, of course. The frittering away of her time on the internet. The time spent reading junk. Why mention it? She already looked stupid enough as it was.

"But you try."

"Well. I did. I did, for a long time. Eventually--eventually, I stopped trying, you see."

Tap. Tap. "If you do not write your novels, Ms. Kerr," he said with infinite gentleness, "no one else will write them for you."

His very gentleness made her feel even worse. I will not cry. "I know that, sir," she ground out through gritted teeth.

He pulled the calendar before him forward and named a future date. "I will see you for your next report then."

"But--but I won't have anything to report," she said desperately. "I told you. I've stopped writing novels."

But he was already writing her name down on the paper, and he raised an eyebrow. "We shall see, Ms. Kerr. We shall see."

Current Mood: guilty
Current Music: Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance - Jonathan Coulton

I have been thinking a great deal about this article ever since I read it. Time Magazine has published a report about the inner life of Mother Teresa:

On Dec. 11, 1979, Mother Teresa, the "Saint of the Gutters," went to Oslo. Dressed in her signature blue-bordered sari and shod in sandals despite below-zero temperatures, the former Agnes Bojaxhiu received that ultimate worldly accolade, the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance lecture, Teresa, whose Missionaries of Charity had grown from a one-woman folly in Calcutta in 1948 into a global beacon of self-abnegating care, delivered the kind of message the world had come to expect from her. "It is not enough for us to say, 'I love God, but I do not love my neighbor,'" she said, since in dying on the Cross, God had "[made] himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She condemned abortion and bemoaned youthful drug addiction in the West. Finally, she suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere — "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive."

Yet less than three months earlier, in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, that is only now being made public, she wrote with weary familiarity of a different Christ, an absent one. "Jesus has a very special love for you," she assured Van der Peet. "[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand."

The two statements, 11 weeks apart, are extravagantly dissonant. The first is typical of the woman the world thought it knew. The second sounds as though it had wandered in from some 1950s existentialist drama. Together they suggest a startling portrait in self-contradiction — that one of the great human icons of the past 100 years, whose remarkable deeds seemed inextricably connected to her closeness to God and who was routinely observed in silent and seemingly peaceful prayer by her associates as well as the television camera, was living out a very different spiritual reality privately, an arid landscape from which the deity had disappeared.

I have never entirely venerated Mother Teresa, as she supported many tenets of the Roman Catholic church that I simply cannot accept. But learning this about Mother Teresa has made me feel an unexpected kinship with her, and I have been brooding about that this week.

What I have been thinking about specifically is something that I have talked about with Kij occasionally over the years. I have always wanted my living to follow an ethical framework. I am, in fact, a Myers-Briggs ~~ENFP~~ ENFJ: the "F" (as opposed to "T") means that my mind operates on a "Feeling" axis rather than a "Thinking" one. But I have had to accept that how I live my life cannot be guided by how I feel about things. This is partly because I am subject to periodic bouts of depression, and so my feelings, which can occasionally be out of whack, are not a sound guideline. But more, I have come to feel that actions, if I wish to be ethical, must be guided by will, not by feeling.

Love is shown by actions, not by how one feels. I live out my love for my spouse not by how I feel about him but by how I treat him. Same with my kids. Same with God. It is painful, however, when these are dissonant. I have been thinking about what ethical questions it raises when this dissonance stretches on and on. Apparently these questions have been raised about Mother Teresa, too. If she experienced her relationship with God as being an endless silence, does this not mean, as some atheists have suggested, that she simply lacked courage to face what she should have realized as the truth, based on her own feelings: that there is in fact no God? Or was it in fact greater courage to continue on in obedience to what she felt was God's will, despite feeling no support or guidance from her God at all?

My depression seeps into many areas of my life: my faith, my marriage, my parenting. How do I live my life, despite it? What things must I continue to do, no matter what I feel? What must I keep doing, even if my feelings tell me that I am being a fool, that all is hopeless?

Much to think about.

Current Music: I am Going to Make It Through This Year if it Kills Me - The Mountain Goats

In response to my request here,

aeditimi has written a great response to Michael O'Brien's Harry Potter and the Death of God here. Thanks,

aeditimi!

Current Music: This Year - The Mountain Goats

I bought this one today, the Druidcraft Tarot. I went to four stores in all and looked through a lot of decks. I'm not totally in love with this deck or even sure that I will use it extensively, since I've never had a Tarot deck before. But I like it, and I thought it might be a good starting point. I have, however, also put the Jane Austen deck on my Amazon wishlist.

_lindsay_ asked to know a little about my previous remark that I'm somewhat wary of Tarot. That's true, I am. For one thing, I probably first learned about Tarot in detail by reading Tim Powers' Last Call--and that book is enough to terrify anybody from ever touching a deck! Tim is a devout Roman Catholic, and--it's funny--although he is a fantasy writer, he doesn't like or trust magic at all! In fact, in his stories, magic pretty much always leads to ruin. Tim has told me that he won't allow a Tarot deck in his house, and he would never dare play a game of Assumption, the game he actually invented for Last Call that is played with a Tarot deck.

Then, too, I have had somewhat of an inner struggle about what to think about Tarot because I am a Christian myself. A liberal one, but a Christian all the same. And Christianity has often been suspicious, if not overtly condemning, of things things associated with the occult, as Tarot sometimes is. I know that Tarot is a pretty amorphous, squishy concept, with connections to many different spiritual and mystic paths, not just Paganism--it has links to Masons, Hebrew, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Egyptian mysticism, Jungian archetypes, and more. I do not condemn Wicca or Paganism myself; I understand them to be different faiths than my own, and not, as some conservative Christians think, the road to the Devil and damnation. I am certainly very interested in many aspects of Wicca/paganism--the cycle of the seasons, the attention to the mother/maiden/crone, the reverence for the natural world, especially trees, male/female energy and balance, etc.--and I think my Christianity can learn and draw wisdom from that.

Do I think Tarot is magic? Well, I don't know what I think of magic, frankly. I am extremely skeptical whenever I step into a New Age shop. But I am interested and curious when I step in. I am not like Lavender or Parvati, credulous and perhaps gullible, but I am not Hermione, the totally rejecting skeptic who thinks divination is probably useless, either. I have had

l_a_winter do a reading for me on Easter Sunday every year for probably ten years or so. I do not think that what we discuss when we do a reading is a prediction which will, of course, come true because Tarot is magic. Rather, I think that Tarot can tap into some useful insights, many, perhaps, Jungian, and I am interested in opening myself up to that.

Then, too, I have been to some panels at conventions about how Tarot may be useful to a writer, and that is because Tarot, as I understand it has developed over the centuries, can be a useful tool for intuition. I LOVE thinking and chewing over archetypes; it is one of the reasons I particularly adore fantasy literature, and why, when I write, I am particularly attuned to theme. Tarot is all about themes. And that in the end, I think, is what made me decide (after YEARS of thinking about it) to go out and get a Tarot deck. I have felt awfully stultified and stuck lately, and barren of intuition. I have been struggling with some things for years that my best attempts at using logic and reason have yielded no direction at all (and some of this is writing-related, some of it personal stuff that Elinor Dashwood does not talk about in this LiveJournal). I have been feeling very frustrated lately as a result. Why not try Tarot, with the understanding that I'm using it not as a "magical" device, or a step into a faith that is not my own Christian faith, but as a way to open up a pathway to my unconscious and intuition, the source of my creativity, which, let's face it, has been feeling awfully blocked lately?

So I looked around and after investigating and hesitating over a LOT of decks, I chose this Pagan/Druidic one. And yeah, I must admit I am a little uncertain and uncomfortable with that choice. But the artwork is cool, and I'm not buying it because I'm about to worship the Maiden/Mother/Crone or cast off my clothes to go skyclad or mate with a horned god or anything (no disrespect to my Pagan/Wicca friends on this friends list, I assure you). I may get around to wrapping the deck with silk, or I may not. I am not quite credulous enough to think I will be able to detect "emanations" from the cards, nor do I feel the need to bless my new deck with the ritual elaborated in the accompanying manual--I find it mildly silly rather than inspiring.

But I do want to listen to what the Maiden/Mother/Crone, or the Moon, or the Magician, or the Star or the Hanged Man have to say to me. And especially the Fool.

The Tarot is often described as the story of the journal of the Fool into achieving wisdom and mastery. I have felt a lot like a Fool lately, so I am sure we will have much to talk about.

(If there is anyone local and knowledgeable who might be inclined to meet with me over coffee some Friday night to sort of introduce me to my new deck, let me know. Thanks.)

Edited to add: When you think about it, Harry Potter would make a good Tarot as well. Lupin could be the Moon card, James and Lily could be the lovers, the Tower could be the death of James and Lily (the lovers) and explosion of their house. Judgment could either be the Sorting Hat or Harry's trial before the Wizengamot. Strength could be summoning the Patronus (with the Gryffindor Lion as the Lion on the card), or maybe Strength could be Neville Longbottom. Peter Pettigrew could be the Devil card. Death could be Voldemort, or the Dementors. John Granger has already done a lot of analysis of how the four Houses are associated with the four alchemical elements (earth, fire, air, water) which in turn are associates with the four suits (wands, pentacles, cups, swords). You have wands, of course, and the Sword of Gryffindor. Maybe Ollivander would be the Ace of Wands. Fawkes would be associated with Fire--perhaps the Sun card. Gilderoy Lockhart could be the Fool, or perhaps the twins, with Weasley Wizarding Wheezes. Sibyll Trelawney could be the Priestess. Something with a lot of pentacles could be a trip to Gringotts. (Maybe the twins would be the Knight of Pentacles, with their Triwizard Tournament winnings). The Magician might be Dumbledore, looking into a Pensieve. Etcetera. There are lots of possibilities.

There have been some people who have started developing ideas for a Harry Potter tarot on the web, but I think you'd have to wait until the seventh book is published to do it right, and no deck has been published yet.

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Into The West - Annie Lennox

I have been thinking over the presentations I saw at Lumos. A couple in particular stood out: the one by Ed Kern on Snape's eyes, and Tom Morris' presentation (he just wrote the book If Harry Potter Ran General Electric, which Rob and I picked up and had signed.

Kern's presentation assembled a careful reading of the text to examine how Snape uses his eyes, coming to the conclusion that Snape has been ~~reading Harry's mind~~ using Legilimency to pretty much interpret Harry's thoughts ever since first year. I found it fascinating, and most convincing. Alas, it was not included with the Compendium.

Just as interesting was Tom Morris' examination of Dumbledore's character. Before encountering Harry Potter, Morris had written a book called If Aristotle Ran General Motors. After reading Rowling, he started wondering how Aristotle would go about running Hogwarts--and then realized that Dumbledore was doing it already. So Morris outlined for us how perfectly Dumbledore fits Aristotle's ideal, embodying those virtues Aristotle thought necessary ingredients to a good, effective, and happy life.

Courage - a commitment to do what's right despite the threat of danger
Temperance - a rational moderation and proper self-restraint in our pleasures
Liberality - a freedom in giving to others what can be of help to them
Magnificence - a capacity for acting on a grand scale
Pride - a true sense of honor and worthiness
Good Temper - an inner calm manifested by appropriate outward behavior
Friendliness - the demeanor of treating others convivially and sociably
Truthfulness - a strong disposition toward honesty in all things
Wittiness - the ability to see and express humor appropriately
Justice - the fundamental disposition of treating others well and fairly.

Yes, yes, Dumbledore is exactly like that. And what is more, as Morris explained, he is shaping Harry to be this way, too--not as only a teacher, but as a mentor/example. This gets exactly to what I was talking about in my paper on the Seven Deadly Sins, Seven Heavenly Virtues in the Harry Potter books, how Dumbledore considered his true mission to be giving his students a moral education--countering Voldemort by guiding young people to use their power ethically.

It made me think more deeply than I have ever thought about Dumbledore's character, and how I admire him. Yes, I do aspire to have a character like his, although I certainly fall short as often as Harry does. But I think I would like to be more mindful of this, to keep Dumbledore in my sights as a good personal model.

I would like to make it my practice to ask myself regularly: "What would Dumbledore do?"

Edited to add: Thanks to

chamisa for the icon and picture for this entry!

Current Music: Draco and the Malfoys: Why Won't You Shake My Hand

"Today the Gospel of Judas got its first public outing at a news conference, and it is on display at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C. It will eventually return to Egypt to be housed in Cairo's Coptic Museum. It is also available online, in Coptic and English, and is the cover story of the new National Geographic magazine.

But while the document is a real one, is what it claims also true? Did the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John get it wrong? Did Jesus ask Judas to betray him?"

Read the entire story here.

Fascinating.

Peg Kerr's Journal

The Holy Tree Grows Within the Heart

2025 52 Card Project: Week 2: Blessing

2024 52 Card Project: Week 38: Installation

52 Card Project 2021: Week 51: Solstice

52 Card Project 2021: Week 13: Vaccine II

52 Card Project 2021: Week 12: Changes

A holy tree

Best tweet seen today; also: President Bartlet

I don't know enough about Mormonism...

The Most Astounding Fact

Confirmation

A Different Kind of Christian Demonstration at Gay Pride

The Pale Blue Dot

Mary Daly

A new card

Matthew 25:14-30

Thinking about Mother Teresa

aeditimi responds to O'Brien

My first Tarot deck

What would Dumbledore do?

The long-lost Gospel According to Judas is found and authenticity is verified

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July 2025

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