Notes from May Teleconference with Cynthia Tootle: “Greeting the Goddess”

WATER thanks the Rev. Cynthia Tootle for her time and talent, her wonderful book Dialogue with the Goddess, and for her ministry. What follow are notes of the teleconference including the discussion that ensued after Cynthia read from her book which can be ordered in paperback and Kindle editions from Amazon.

Cynthia is a practitioner of Goddess spirituality, a unique and helpful approach. She began by saying that she had not expected to write a book. But on finding that so much information on the goddess was anthropological, she decided to write a prayer book that reflects her spirituality. An early book that shaped her thinking was Merlin Stone’s When God was a Woman (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1978).

She read the following prayers from her book:

“Mother Goddess Invocation” (p. 7)
--Many Goddesses are mothers

“Crone Invocation” (p. 21)
--These three aspects come up in Welsh and other goddess

“Diana” (p. 42 )
--“We greet you with joy”
--Crones are defined women whose womanhood as useless, but recapturing that by relating to the divine as crone is wonderful experience
--Studying Goddess let go of what men of science think;
--Political statement to capitalize Goddess and leave god in small letters

“Willendorf Goddess” (p. 32)
-- To write such prayers need to know how Goddess is perceived in her world

“Spring Full Moon Prayer” (p. 9)
--How would God the mother want us to stand in relation to the Goddess? Some not very well behaved Goddesses like Pele are of interest.

“Tonacacihautl” (p. 64)
--For a friend who died young

“Goodnight, Sarasvarti!” (p. 82)
-- Everyday prayers

“The Winter Solstice” (p. 88)
“Mary, Tara, Kali”

Conversation ensued:

1. A caller referred to a time when Cynthia prepared contemplative prayer at WATER and an invited each person to choose one Goddess and pray with her. She asked how Cynthia become so familiar with so many expressions of the divine Goddess

Cynthia replied that she simply began goddess circles and then looked at how people who worship her worship particular goddesses. She puts herself in a state of openness to Goddess and the divine responds. If you want to know her, ask her. Find her color, picture, prayer. One need not know everything to be able to worship the Goddess. For example, a Japanese Goddess is funny. Is it important to take the divine seriously?

2. Another caller said she loved listening and feeling the presence of everyone participating. She starts her day with Goddess and mentioned service.

Cynthia replied that Christian minsters talk about one’s whole life being given to service. She questions that from a goddess perspective. On the contrary, sacrifice is not something the goddess looks for. She asks us to be more at ease, to do what is easiest as in serve as it is easiest for me. Nurture yourself first; take care of yourself. “I am not here to make your life better.” She described the remarkable switch that it is to work on things that flow easily as opposed to always having to force issues as she did in her professional life for years. Consider the wonderful Kali who puts people off because she is scary. Men worship her beauty; she is Goddess.

3. A WATER colleague asked about sources for Goddess.

Cynthia observed that what is written is often by someone who is trying to debunk Goddess. Dualities are limited: Light is good; what is bad about cave/womb/darkness? They are places of safety, an open door to the Goddess and hearing her. "It is not the source of the information that is important.  What is important is the critical look at the what is being said."
Children’s books about the Goddess:

--Root, Phyllis, and Helen Oxenbury. Big Momma Makes the World. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2002.
--Jackson, Ellen. Earth Mother. New York: Walker, 2005.

This audio recording will be on our website, http://www.waterwomensalliance.org/teleconferences-audio-and-notes/.

Our next teleconference will be Wednesday, June 11, 2014, at 1 PM EDT, with Carter Heyward. We will send out notice shortly. All are welcome so please join us. Information on all WATER activities can be found on our website at www.waterwomensalliance.org.

Honey, I Shrunk the Church: The Vatican Manages Sexual Abuse, Canonization and the Nuns By Mary E. Hunt

Originally Posted for Religion Dispatches

Whatever happened to that great big Roman Catholic Church? It seems to be shrinking before our eyes despite unprecedented media attention. No amount of hype can disguise the Vatican’s disappearing act at the United Nations on sexual abuse, the sleight of hand in Rome at the papal canonizations, and the failed attempt to usurp women’s power through the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) that may still turn the nuns out on their ears. The “leaner, meaner” church desired by many conservatives during the John Paul II/Cardinal Ratzinger era is on the horizon, indeed may already be in place. Signs are hard to miss—even for those with papal stars in their eyes.

Many were thrilled by the election of Pope Francis. They were hopeful that with his pleasing personality, personal commitment to simplicity, his “Inequality is the root of social evil” tweet, and positive pastoral instincts he would bring about a new day for Catholicism. I wasn’t entirely convinced; it takes more than one person, however charming, to dismantle a system that’s rigged in favor of a few and needs complete overhaul in order to function like a “discipleship of equals.”

I remain open to the possibility that the big tent that ought to be Catholicism may one day lower its top and open its flaps. But I’m no more persuaded now than I was four months ago—and perhaps a little less. The institutional church now appears more like a pup tent from which all but the most entitled are excluded. A review of current affairs demonstrates the reasons for my concern.

Sexual Abuse

That great big institution with a global reach that divides up the known world into dioceses has suddenly evaporated. It’s now a country of 109 acres, roughly an eighth the size of New York’s Central Park, with a population of about 600, many of whom are posted abroad. Did someone cast a spell? Was there a natural disaster that I missed in the news? No, the Holy See signed some United Nations’ treaties and now, when confronted with abiding by them, is scrambling for legal cover.

The gentlemen are claiming that they meant for the treaties to apply to their headquarters, located in Vatican City, but not for the corporate entity, the thousands of dioceses they oversee on the planet. Those folks are suddenly on their own when it comes to liability. Rome’s hands are off.

The Holy See is the “juridical personification of the Church,” considered the government of the Catholic Church. It is located in Vatican City (which really is not, by most lights, a state). Will the real Roman Catholic Church please stand up? This is all quite murky, resulting in the current ambiguities. Some of these distinctions emerged in the signing of the Lateran Treaty in 1929 when Italy gave the land that is now Vatican City to the institutional church.

But in fact they’re distinctions without much difference, except apparently, when it might be convenient. Since when does anything apply only to the papal enclave? Maybe the contract for mowing the grass, but certainly not the institution’s position on birth control as part of government-funded health care, or even divorce and remarriage when it comes to who is welcome to receive the sacraments. The long arm of the Vatican reaches into those matters, but the real estate shrinks right up to nothing when liability lurks.

In early 2014, the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which monitors implementation of that Convention, questioned Vatican officials about sexual abuse perpetrated by Catholic clergy and its systematic cover-up by church officials. Former sex crimes prosecutor for the Church, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, in watershed testimony, admitted that the Vatican bore some responsibility but insisted that steps were being taken to prevent the obstruction of justice and—hopefully—future abuses. By way of defense, the Holy See claimed that its responsibility in terms of the treaty literally extended to its gates, inside of which few (probably fewer than a dozen) children live, not to its dioceses around the world. Needless to say, the Committee, with ample cause, took a dim view.

Once again in May 2014, the United Nations trained its attention on the Roman Catholic Church as a global institution, not a tourist destination. The Committee Against Torture (CAT) that monitors compliance with that UN Convention is now insisting that sexual abuse of children by adults in authority qualifies under its definition of torture, which is defined as (emphasis mine):

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

It’s that last part in bold that’s so chillingly familiar in the Catholic cases.

This time, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Holy See’s U.N. ambassador, tried to take refuge in its postage-stamp sized headquarters as the extent of its responsibility, the same shrinking tactic, with similar results. He didn’t take exception to the definition of torture in the Catholic case, leaving open many questions.

The Committee’s Vice Chair, highly regarded human rights advocate Felice D. Gaer, pushed Mr. Tomasi on the obvious: by distancing itself from the vast majority of the Roman Catholic Church’s corporate being, the Holy See “would create important gaps in the coverage” of the treaty as written and intended. In essence, cases of sexual abuse that did not take place within the confines of Vatican City would not be the Church’s responsibility. This is a hard case to make since the headquarters, not the dioceses, laicized 848 priests and punished in a lesser way 2,572 from 2004 to the present.

The institutional church is shrinking before our eyes precisely to avoid potential litigation. If a crime is prosecuted as torture, the statutes of limitations in many jurisdictions no longer apply. In essence, this could result in a new spate of lawsuits against the institutional church especially by people who were unable to articulate the harm done to them within the time limits set on reporting/litigating sexual abuse cases. No wonder officials are willing to make the embarrassingly dubious argument that they are really only a little tiny place after all. Would that such modesty were employed when it comes to contraception or marriage equality where the Vatican spends millions of dollars trying to make its view stick all over the world.

Canonization

A similar disappearing act took place during the recent canonization (that looked oddly like a coronation) of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. John XXIII seemed to disappear in a sea of Polish flags celebrating John Paul II. I wasn’t there, but from television and press reports one got the sneaking suspicion that this wasn’t really about two saints, but rather one prominent one and a runner-up who was grandfathered in. After all, John XXIII’s case had been made far earlier and it would have been unseemly to fast track John Paul II, despite his popularity.

The media largely bought the Vatican’s talking points that this twofer celebration was meant to unite widely divergent contingents of Catholics. Juxtaposed were the aging progressives who remember and thank John XXIII for his leadership of Vatican II, and those with shorter memories who have known only a more doctrinaire church led by John Paul II, and by extension, Pope Benedict XVI who arguably called many of the shots in the latter years of John Paul II’s papacy before assuming the Chair of Peter himself.

I daresay the reality was a bit more complicated than that, beginning with the transparently messy theo-political process of naming saints at all. The speed with which John Paul II glided through the hoops and hurdles made clear just how fishy, not to say corrupt, the whole deal is. The requirement of two miracles was suddenly waived in the case of John XXIII with the assurance that people already consider him a saint. That is a claim most of us would make about our mothers, but that doesn’t get them the Vatican treatment.

In my view, all of this amounted to a timely reinforcement of the monarchical model of church. Lest anyone labor under the delusion that things have really changed with Pope Francis, the celebration featured the kyriarchal church doing as it pleased—clergy dolling up in their best duds, bureaucrats putting the current pope through his paces to be sure that he’s really what the cardinals elected him to be—namely, a “company” man in every sense of the term (The Society of Jesus, of which he is a member, was called “The Company of Jesus” by its founder Ignatius). It was a time to fill hotels and buses with pilgrims, many from Poland, who favor a model of church that is telegenic, profitable, otherworldly, elitist, and hierarchical. That John XXIII convened a council at which seeds were planted for a very different model—a more horizontal, participatory church—was all but lost in the incense.

Editorial cartoonist Tom Toles depicted the whole farce in a memorable cartoon in theWashington Post. Gazing at a poster that says “Prevent child abuse,” a person asks, “What do you call someone who drags his feet on identifying and punishing abusers?” A person reading from the works of John Paul II replies, “Saint?”

Enough said.

The contradictions of the whole event were not lost. The hoopla of an outdated organization was used to celebrate one of its own, and, ironically, one of the people responsible for its potential transformation. No wonder the John Paul II people were there in droves and many of the John XXIII types took a pass.

The net impact of the canonizations was to reinforce and reinscribe the hierarchal, clergy-centric church by naming two of its recent leaders as saints. Pretty clever. And it worked effectively to shore up the foundations once again and assure people, especially those inside the walls of the Vatican, that they are still firmly in charge. The rest of us have been “disappeared” in the incredible shrinking church.

Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)

A slightly different kind of shrinkage can be seen in the failed attempt on the part of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to domesticate the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The Congregation issued a Doctrinal Assessment in April 2012 alleging that the women were not upholding and promoting the institutional church’s view of the world.

For the next five years they were to reform themselves and function under the aegis of Archbishop Peter Sartain and two auxiliary bishops who would review both their annual meetings and publications. The Vatican’s unrealistic hope was that the women would see the supposed error of their ways and comply with the Vatican’s wishes, parroting their theology and championing their priorities.

In fact, what has happened in the two years since the hostile takeover is something quite other. The nuns (who after all are lay people until the first one is validly and licitly ordained) enjoy a great deal of support among other rank and file Catholics, more support than most of the clergy. The women’s ministries focus on those who are poor, marginalized, ill, young, or otherwise on the periphery of an unjust world. They are Earth-loving and engaged in structural change to eradicate injustice. Their simple lifestyles and commitments to the poor are well known. Their contributions to theology and ministry, their ways of being responsible adults in mature, loving communities are something for the clergy to emulate, not condemn.

Alas, when Cardinal Gerhard Müller made his April 30, 2014 Opening Remarks in a meeting with the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious he complained that the women were going about their business without feeling any need to consult Archbishop Sartain on matters that are internal to LCWR. No surprise there. The women characterizedthe meeting as “respectful and engaging” and let the prelate prattle on in the press.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was apparently LCWR’s decision to honor Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, Distinguished Professor of Theology at Fordham University and a Sister of St. Joseph of Brentwood, with their Outstanding Leadership Award at their August 2014 Assembly.

The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine singled out Professor Johnson for criticism in 2011. They declared that her book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God (NY: Continuum, 2007), contains “misrepresentations, ambiguities, and errors that bear upon the faith of the Catholic Church” and “contaminates the traditional Catholic understanding of God.”

Few reputable theologians shared this assessment of her work; most colleagues praised her as doing solid feminist work in an ecclesial context. Sales of her book increased with the attention, but there’s no trivializing the harm done by such egregious judgment of the Bishops’ Committee. Still, Elizabeth Johnson continues to write and teach according to the data she gathers, exhibiting the kind of leadership that LCWR values, and well within the conversations and parameters of the institutional church.

If LCWR really wanted to pull the prelates’ pigtails they could have chosen to honor theologian/philosopher Mary Daly posthumously for her earthshattering insights that took the world “beyond God the Father.” Or they could recognize the leadership of theologian and biblical scholar Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza who named “kyriarchy” as interlocking forms of oppression that privilege some and oppress others with the Roman Catholic Church as Exhibit A, and offered a biblically-based antidote to it—namely, the concept of a “Discipleship of Equals.”

Or, they could extend their praise to theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether who has spelled out the historical foundations of women’s full personhood, connections between Earth and the divine, and useful insights into ministry, ordination, and ethics. LWCR could look south to Latin American theologian Ivone Gebara who articulates consistent, justice-focused ideas that reflect her context and commitments. All of these women fit LCWR’s stated criteria and push the theological envelope far beyond the confines of the institution. Elizabeth Johnson was a wonderful choice, and there are many other fine picks for the future. The Cardinal’s negative reaction only reveals the size of the gap between the women’s reality and the worldview of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The other issue that got Mr. Müller’s goat was the LCWR’s exploration of the various relationships between religion and science which the Vatican mistakenly collapses into something generically pegged as “conscious evolution,” a phrase used by one of LCWR’s plenary speakers, Barbara Hubbard. While Hubbard’s work is helpful, there is much more at play: how faith and reason function in postmodernity; the various new cosmologies that ground theological thinking; and the exciting insights emerging from gene theory, to name just a few examples. LCWR provides educational opportunities for its members. Perhaps the Congregation thinks they’re still learning the alphabet, but these women are sophisticated thinkers, well read, and eager to plunge into the complexities of our day. Drawing a parallel between such study and the “Gnostic tradition” makes no apparent sense. Do the men have any idea of what Gnosticism was, or is it just a scary word thrown out to make a point?

I doubt that it occurred to Mr. Müller to ask Mr. Sartain—just sort of archbishop to archbishop if you know what I mean—why he thinks the women did not ask his permission or beg his pardon about their choices. The answer is because they don’t need it. I’m left to imagine these teeny, tiny archbishops and the great big women they need to control. The men must be terrified in their impotence.

This time around Cardinal Müller’s trump card was in an expression set off by commas toward the end of his discourse. Having worked himself into a lather over the nuns’ purported failure to comply, he closed his statement with the notion that religious life can “only flourish within the ecclesial faith of the Church. The LCWR, as a canonical entity dependent on the Holy See [emphasis mine], has a profound obligation to the promotion of that faith as the essential foundation of religious life. Canonical status and ecclesial vision go hand-in hand.” I.e., shape up or ship out. This threat—to make the institutional church even smaller by ousting LCWR and probably replacing it with the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious that would be more likely to do the men’s bidding—is consistent with the other two examples of church shrinkage.

Small can be beautiful, and less is usually more. But as the kind of shrinkage to which I’ve pointed continues, the robust, diverse, committed Catholic community that so many hoped would accompany Pope Francis’ papacy seems a distant dream. The  current reality more closely resembles a bad movie. With many others, I’m working on a different sequel, one that features expansion and inclusion, openness and a warm embrace for all.

June 11 Teleconference with Carter Heyward

WATER's Feminist Conversations in Religion Series Presents

"The Power of a Woman's Voice:
The Legacy of Sue Hiatt"

An hour-long teleconference with

Carter Heyward

Wednesday, June 11, 2014
1 pm - 2 pm EDT

Carter Heyward was one of the “Philadelphia Eleven” — the women ordained to the Episcopal priesthood in 1974, before the church had authorized the ordination of women. Subsequently, she taught theology for 30 years at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA.

Dr. Heyward is author or editor of more than a dozen books and hundreds of speeches, essays, and sermons, largely in areas of feminist, liberation, and LGBTQ studies, as well as modern Protestant and Anglican theologies. Over the past 4 decades, she has spoken at churches, schools, and professional and advocacy organizations in many parts of the world.

In 2000, she founded Free Rein, a therapeutic horseback riding center, where she continues to be involved. A Carter Heyward Endowment Fund has been established at Free Rein in her honor.

Her most recent books are Keep Your Courage: A Radical Christian Voice (2010) and The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me: The Writings of Suzanne Hiatt (2014), which she edited with a colleague and friend Janine Lehane. In this most recent volume, Heyward and Lehane have pulled together some of the most engaging and important pieces written over many years by Carter’s former colleague at the Episcopal Divinity School, Sue Hiatt, who led the movement for the ordination of women and who died of cancer in 2002. Carter also wrote the Forward to The Story of the Philadelphia Eleven by Darlene O'Dell (2014). Darlene will lead the July 16th, 2014 WATER Teleconference.

Suggested Reading:

Hiatt, Suzanne R., and Carter Heyward. The Spirit of the Lord Is upon Me: The Writings of Suzanne Hiatt. New York, NY: Seabury, 2014. Available in paperback and kindle edition from Amazon.

Email "Register Me Teleconference" to waterstaff@hers.com by Tuesday, June 1o, 2014  in order to receive dial-in information.

June 9 WATER Meditation/Contemplative Prayer

Contemplative Prayer at WATER and by Telephone

With Cathy Jaskey

Monday, June 9, 2014 at 7:30 PM (EDT)

Our next gathering for Contemplative Prayer at WATER will be with Cathy Jaskey on Monday, June 9, 2014, at 7:30 PM (EDT).

WATER offers a regular contemplative prayer opportunity each month. This is a communal meditation, a time of silence and reflection followed by a short discussion.

RSVP with the words "Register Me Contemplative" by Friday, June 6 to waterstaff@hers.com or call 301.589.2509 so that we can expect you. If you wish to join by phone, please indicate that so we can send you the phone-in number.

The office will be open at 7 PM (EDT) for tea and conversation. Silence will commence promptly at 7:30 PM, so please be here by then. We will finish and be on our way by 8:30 PM.

Parking is free in the garage behind the office after 7 PM. The front door of the building has a phone entry system; find “WATER” and dial the office to be buzzed in. Or, dial 0310 and that should work.

All are welcome. Some of us have been involved in the Engaging Impasse process (www.engagingimpasse.org ), which combines meditation with community dialogue. No experience required! Just come with a contemplative spirit. Your presence will enrich us all. Donations are always welcome.

Janet Kalven Remembered Fondly

Janet Kalven Remembered Fondly

Originally posted for Feminist Studies in Religion

Janet Kalven, Grail member and feminist pedagogue, died April 24, 2014 at the age of 100. She was a veritable force of nature—a feminist who shaped the field of religion by providing various spaces for women to meet, learn, write, and strategize. See my WATER remembrance of her here.

Her memoir, Women Breaking Boundaries: A Grail Journey, 1940-95, is must reading for a history of the Grail Movement and one woman’s remarkable century-long life of justice seeking through education, ecology, economics, and theology. Janet had a full life as a student (University of Chicago), “Great Books” teaching assistant, Grail pioneer, adult educator, and one of the founders of Grailville all long before we met.

I realize that when I met Janet in 1975, she was exactly my current age, 62. That means that all I experienced of this amazing woman took place in her years beyond where I am now. This astonishes and inspires me when friends are retiring, dying, and otherwise slowing down. Was Janet an anomaly or are one’s best years, if one is so graced as to have them, really later in life? I do not know the answer to that question, but I can review some of my times with Janet to demonstrate why I ask it.

In 1975, she was the director of the Seminary Quarter at Grailville (a program that lasted from 1974-1978) where I met some of my most treasured colleagues. We were young women in Loveland, Ohio (yes, the name proved providential for many of us!) for six weeks on the Grail property in a feminist program that featured self-directed learning, lectures by standouts in the field, and spiritual search. I daresay it was formative for an entire cohort of women in religion.

Imagine our surprise to see Grail women driving tractors, running the entire center, baking their own whole wheat bread, making their own yogurt and granola, all the while teaching and counseling us. No wonder several of us (Marie Fortune at FaithTrust Institute, Jeanette Stokes at the Center for Women and Ministry in the South, and I at the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual, WATER) were inspired to found our own organizations. I even went back for a second summer to work in the Grailville garden, learn to cook in the kitchen, and help control algae in the pond without chemicals, i.e., have an excuse to swim every day and toss the algae out until I became tanned and muscular. The Grail women left a lasting impression of the many ways women could be.

The Women’s Theological Center was surely influenced by Grail experiences. The founding co-editors of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza and Judith Plaskow, met at the landmark “Women Exploring Theology” conference in 1972 at Grailville where Judith wrote her famous “The Coming of Lilith” myth. Many women cite that meeting as the place where they came into their own as feminists.

Scores of feminist colleagues in religion met at Grailville for the 1984 “Women’s Spirit Bonding” conference that lives in memory. The myriad rich and provocative presentations included Karen McCarthy Brown introducing her research on Mama Lola; Starhawk conducting feminist rituals around a cauldron; Delores Williams reading poetry; Yolanda Tarango and Ada Maria Isasi Diaz speaking of their oppression by Anglo women in a foreshadowing ofmujerista theology; Jamie Phelps and Jacquelyn Grant laying out the contours of white racism in feminist work in religion in no uncertain terms; the Arab-Israeli conflict addressed with passion on all sides. I have long forgotten my own lecture on political oppression and creative survival. But I will never forget (if I live to be 100!) how it felt to be in the midst of such ferment. It was exhilarating, frightening, pleasurable, challenging, and unbelievable all at the same time, a shaping experience after which feminist work in religion had to become more diverse and inclusive.

While we tend to think of the people and accomplishments, we rarely reflect on those, like Janet, who created the spaces that were formative, supportive, nurturing of the work. Grailville the place—women’s space, lovely and functional, simple yet adequate, offering healthy food, time for prayer and recreation—meant a great deal. Janet embodied the place. She lived at Grailville for decades, commuting to the University of Dayton where she taught, but always returning to Loveland where she was rooted in the land.

Janet was a prolific gardener, an expert on herbs. I recall one time helping her with an electric hedge trimmer. I cut the electric cord instead of the bush. She simply replaced it without reproach, figuring that a budding theologian probably knew more about books than tools. She was right. She would take an herb leaf in her fingers, crush it, and say, “Smell it and you’ll know what it is.” Sometimes I did.

Janet grew with the times and the people. I recall her driving a group of us young, not to say wild, feminists to Antioch College for a women’s conference. On the way home, tales of our adventures including water volley ball games (did anyone wear swimsuits?) did not scandalize her. She wanted us to hear the speakers including Charlotte Bunch, and the rest was gravy.

She read more widely than anyone I had ever met and was in a writer’s group for decades. It showed in her prose that was efficient and laced with humor (e.g., she wrote of some Grail women who were married but probably not using birth control that “they were going through pregnancy and birth at a rate we considered unwise for our dairy cows.” p. 222). She wrote with enviable verve.

We happened to be in the Netherlands at the same time one summer when Janet arranged for Diann Neu and me to meet with Lydwine Van Kersbergen, who, with Joan Overboss, founded the Grail in United States. Lydwine had a strong, positive, if not uncomplicated impact on Janet and other early Grail members. I had heard her spoken of in reverent terms, a tall woman who in many imaginations was larger than life. Then an octogenarian who lived in Amsterdam, Lydwine invited us for a spot of tea. I figured we would be finished and dismissed in an hour. As it turned out, she liked that Diann and I were starting something –WATER– the way she had started the Grail (both in Australia and later in the U.S.) So tea turned into sherry, led into supper with wine, and ended with a late evening coffee. It was a privilege and an education to come to know Lydwine whose subsequent correspondence and affirmation proved that she enjoyed it too. Janet, Diann, and I frosted the Dutch cake with a train trek to the Kröller-Müller Museum in Gelderland, a woman’s collection of modern art in a wonderful park. Janet insisted that we see it, and how right she was to do so.

It was as “fast women in a slow church,” Janet’s brilliant phrase that I only wish I had coined, that we really bonded. In the 1980s and 90s we worked tirelessly on women-church projects, developing conference programs, and attending meetings. Janet usually brought her knitting, took notes in her own unique shorthand, and could be counted on for pithy but always insightful comments. We became a tag team writing letters and statements for the group. She taught me that a good writer needs a good editor; the back and forth style that characterizes WATER’s approach to writing owes its roots to Janet. When it came time to write her memoir, Janet spent several stints at the WATER office and in my home. We talked through the contents over and over until she was pleased with her analysis and then she wrote. The results speak for themselves, a smart book.

Well into her 80s, Janet was always ready to protest injustice. On one occasion, a women’s reproductive justice march in Washington D.C., she attended in a wheelchair having fallen down the steps in my house the night before. Undaunted, she simply asked the taxi driver to fold up her chair and place it in the trunk. And besides, she noted, she was able get a good spot in a huge crowd on the Mall. Attitude is all.

I delight in the memories of Janet Kalven both because they bring alive her stalwart spirit and because they remind me that the best may be yet to come for me as well. I treasure a picture of Janet, taken just a few years ago right after she disembarked from a Caribbean cruise. She is with my daughter and me. My daughter was a small but helpful girl who made sure that Janet had what she needed in the hotel where we drank coffee and chatted. I felt like a bridge between them–one born in 1913, the other in 2000, and I in 1951. How lucky can you get? Lucky enough to have been friends with a woman committed to spirituality, equality, eco-justice, and enjoyment. Vale, Janet, we carry on.

In Memory of Her – Janet Kalven

Janet Kalven: In Memory of Her

WATER extends sincere sympathy to the Grail, both national and international, to her family and friends on the death of beloved Janet Kalven at the age of 100. We join a huge chorus of those who sing alleluias for her life and work, her commitment and her friendship. Long may her memory inspire us to work for justice and to love well.

Janet was born on May 21,1913, of German/Russian Jewish parents who lived comfortably in Chicago. She and her brother Harry experienced city club and country club life that they both found tiresome. Harry went on to a distinguished career in law, while Janet became an equally distinguished educator and a member of the Grail.

Janet studied the “Great Books” at the University of Chicago where she was later a teaching assistant in the famous program run by Mortimer Adler and Robert Hutchins. Her intellectual work propelled this reason-oriented woman to convert to Catholicism in the days of Jacques Maritain. Through a liberal Catholic campus organization, she met the Grail in 1940, and eventually decided that life in a women’s community, though not as a nun, appealed to her.

In a memoir that doubles as a history, Janet wrote the story of the Grail in the United States with the expressive title Women Breaking Boundaries: A Grail Journey, 1940-1995. She describes her own exciting opportunities of travel and work abroad, sharing with Grail members around the world, running educational programs, and developing land and building projects.

She chronicles the Grail’s story from a Catholic women’s group founded in the Netherlands by Jacques van Ginnekin, a Jesuit priest, to an international, ecumenical women’s community that is “committed to spiritual search, social transformation, global solidarity, ecological sustainability, and the release of women’s creative energy throughout the world…bonded in action, solidarity, and faith, working in 17 countries, as individuals and Grail groups, interconnecting regionally, nationally and internationally” (http://www.grail-us.org/). It is a story well worth reading, a group well worth knowing.

The Grail, its U.S. headquarters Grailville, and Janet have played a vital role in the history of women and religion. In 1972, she was part of the organizing group for the conference “Women Exploring Theology” at Grailville, which was a springboard for feminist work in religion. Scholars and activists gathered in Loveland, Ohio, for a meeting that participants including Judith Plaskow (who wrote her famous myth “The Coming of Lilith” there) and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza cite as pivotal in their own lives and formative for the field. Janet’s creative efforts and commitment to self-directed forms of education brought college women together for Semester at Grailville in the early 1970s.

Janet created the space for Seminary Quarter at Grailville (1974-1978). Dozens of young women who were ministers and theologians in training spent six weeks in a living/learning community of feminist pedagogy with leading feminists in the field and the active accompaniment of the Grail women. It was in part because of the inspiration of the SQAG experience that Marie Fortune set up the FaithTrust Institute, Jeannette Stokes built the Center for Women and Ministry in the South, and Mary E. Hunt co-founded WATER, the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual. Women were empowered in those programs to study, speak out, create, manage, and expect the world of one another and ourselves. It took.

In 1982, Janet and Mary Imelda Buckley, a Grail member who taught at St. John’s University, hosted “Women’s Spirit Bonding,” a landmark conference for “136 women, two very small girls, and one man for a week of feminist theologizing” at Grailville. Another hundred people were turned away for lack of space. It was a meeting characterized by diversity unto conflict, collaboration and new insights, hard questions over lovely meals, eclectic liturgies and a shared recognition that we had to learn to work together if we were to bring about justice in the world. No one who attended was ever the same again.

Janet appreciated her various faith traditions. She grew from “religious certainty to religious search” as she put it. We are, she claimed, “fast women in a slow church” as the Roman Catholic institution fell woefully behind the spiritual richness of its own women. The Grail was noted for its religious art, liturgical innovation, and strong social justice commitment despite the kyriarchy’s recalcitrance. Janet was active through the Grail Women’s Task Force in the Women-Church movement, finding like-minded, like-hearted colleagues there with whom to expand her community.

In later years, Janet moved from her longtime house at Grailville to a converted school building in Cincinnati which she and other creative friends helped rehab into affordable housing for women. She took out her first mortgage well into her 80s for a classroom turned into a comfortable condo. Janet was committed to living in community so she loved that the school’s corridors were converted into common spaces. She remained active at Grailville on land use even after she moved to the city.

Nearly 101, Janet died peacefully in Milford, Ohio near Cincinnati, on April 24, 2013. To say that hers was a life well lived is to understate the importance of a veritable force of nature, a dear friend, a skilled educator, a generous and wise mentor.

May she rest in the peace that she worked for in this world, confident that her friends and colleagues carry on in her style and spirit.

The Grail invites all friends to celebrate Janet’s entry into new life on Sunday, June 1^st, 2 p.m., in the Grailville Oratory, 932 O’Bannonville Road, Loveland, Ohio 45140.  Janet requested a Mass of Christian Burial that will be preceded by a short “Circle of Remembrance.” Burial will follow in the Grailville Cemetery.

See Mary E. Hunt’s personal remembrance of Janet at the FIR Blog.

Notes from April Teleconference with Margaret Mann, "Life is Tough, Deal with It"

Notes from

WATER's Feminist Conversations in Religion Series Presents

Margaret Mann, “Life is Tough, Deal with It”

Wednesday, April 8, 2014

1 pm – 2 pm EST

WATER thanks Margaret Mann, a longtime friend, for her candid, smart, and spiritual contribution to this series. Several people remarked that it was so wonderful! Please feel free to share with friends.

What follows is:

a. Margaret’s presentation, including a section from her book

b. WATER’s notes of the Q+A/discussion section

Her book, A Dramatically Different Direction, can be purchased from her website, http://www.adramaticallydifferentdirection.com/book-reviews.html, or from Amazon. It is an inspiring and motivating read.

Remarks by Margaret Mann:

Good morning. I want to thank my very good friend Mary for inviting me to do this and for being a great friend for the last 30 years or so.

“On March 1, 1997, when I was fifty-two years old, I went out to dinner with friends. Four months later I returned home in a wheel­ chair. A blood vessel had burst inside my spinal cord, leaving me instantly paralyzed from the waist down. I now use a wheelchair full time.

In the years since, that blood vessel has taken my mind, body, and spirit on a journey I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams. In a split second, my life took off in a dramatically different direction than I thought it was headed. When my life turned upside down, I was forced to learn how to make sense of senseless random events and to learn how to rebuild a satisfying life. I was forced to learn what it is like to be disabled, how to circumvent hostile environments, and how to endure ridiculous government policies.

My coping skills were forged in a multicultural crucible. I am a Caucasian/Apache woman raised in Hawai'i by a Zen Buddhist. I am also a lifelong lesbian with a passion for civil rights. Before the burst blood vessel, I had a long career as a community organizer working in the national offices of women's organizations in Washington, DC. The inspiration for my recovery has come from my Buddhist practice and also from author Byron Katie in A Thousand Names far Joy; both have taught me that you will suffer in life to the same degree you wish things were different. I could wish that I were not in pain 24-7, or that I could once again walk along the beach and feel the water wash over my feet. I could wish that my income had not been cut in half. I could wish that I were still independent, living and working where I pleased. I could wish all these things and suffer magnificently ...but I choose not to.

Everything about my disability has been a lesson in how nothing stays the same (the Buddhist notion of impermanence). At age fifty-two, I thought I was at the height of my career and would continue to earn a good income until I retired some years in the future. But you never know.

It also became clear to me since my life was altered by that little blood vessel that there really is no inherent value to any given experience. Is it better to be able-bodied or disabled? I know now that we simply get to choose how we will feel about everything that happens. You could choose to think your life is ruined by being paralyzed and suffer marvelously...or you could think of it, as I do, as a fascinating turn of events that teaches you something new every minute. You get to choose. By letting go of the story of what was and embracing what is, you won't suffer quite as much. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I think I finally got it.” (pp. xi-xii)

But you never know…since I have been in the wheelchair I have broken five bones in my legs at separate times, had a recurrence of breast cancer, my gall bladder removed, my thyroid removed, a pump installed twice in my abdomen, two surgeries just last year to fix a mistake made earlier in the year and yet here I am, happy as a clam, living a good life in Hawaii. I think life is a hoot! I live on Social Security and live well, I travel, I have all I need of material things, I go out to eat a lot. I am in pain 24/7 and you would never know unless I told you. Life is good.

Jean Shinoda Bolen said in her book Close to the Bone that every cancer patient is taken on a journey close to the bone, stripping away all the pretense and illusion. I propose that every event in our lives that change things dramatically take us on the same trip. You think you know what your life is about and then Boom! Things are not the same anymore. You can’t walk, you can’t talk after a stroke, you can’t think straight after a whack on the head, you have a baby and you will not have a free moment to yourself for years, you contract diabetes and are face with having your foot amputated. You never know what is going to happen to you.

I make the point in my book that you will suffer in life to the same degree you wish things were different. Well, over the years I have realized that all suffering, just as the Buddha taught, is caused by wishing things were different and hanging on to the original idea. So when some tragedy strikes your life, who you were has disappeared and who you are about to become is rising up before you. Hanging on to the disappearing self will cause you to suffer. Expectations limit the possibilities. Hanging on to what was limits what could come your way. Giving up the expectations unleashes your energy to explore the future. Hanging on just makes you miserable in the present.

The present is a wonderful place to be, it is where everything is happening. You just have to open your eyes and see it. I was sitting by the ocean the other day and friend was going on and on about how badly her mother had treated her when she was child. This woman was in her early 60s…I said to her when was the last time your mother was mean to you? She thought about a minute and said well she has been dead since 1992 and we actually patched things up when I was in my 30s so about 30 years ago. I said Let it go, what difference does it make now, you are retired, happily married, have two great children and we are sitting by the beautiful ocean in Hawaii and you are getting all worked up about what happened 30 years ago. Wake up!

My brother is fond of telling stories about our father and how mean he was to him. I suggested that he could start telling people how wonderful our father was and my brother was horrified. If he did the energy around those stories would be changed and he would have to give up part of his identity. No wonder he was horrified.

I routinely ask my counseling clients when they tell me they are depressed, unhappy or down in the dumps because their partner left them or they got fired or whatever the tragedy du jour may be, is anything happening to you this moment? Is your partner yelling at you this moment? Are you being fired this moment? Of course the answer is always no…why then are you upset? They are upset because they are living in the past and hanging on to what they wished was reality.

I saw a video of Bryon Katie talking with Oprah. Oprah’s mother had recently passed away and she was talking about how sad she was. Katie said why are you sad? Oprah repeated slightly incredulous that her mother died. Katie said I know your mother died and what you need to know is she is never coming back, you will never talk with her again, you will never see her again, and that is the reality. Oprah was shocked! Katie said you are sad because you wish she hadn’t died, but she is very dead. Katie asked her, did you like your mother? Yes, said Oprah I loved her very much and we were very close. Why then are you not celebrating her life and telling everyone how wonderful she was? If you accept the reality that you will never see her again then the only thing left to do is celebrate. 

So, people have asked me, do this mean that you just lay down and let life roll over you? Do I mean that you can have no opinion, take no action, or want for a better world? No, it means take a good hard look at what the reality of the situation is and take action on it. Give up wasting your energy on wishing it wasn’t so.

I was recently asked to co-facilitate a 12 week workshop on Sexuality Education for older adults and the coordinator wants me to take on her  27 year old son who lives at home with his parents, has no job and is remarkable unambitious. At the facilitator training he always wanted to interpret the material as if his opinion was better explanation than presented by the trainers. It was not. On one hand I do not want this doofus co-facilitating with me on the other hand the program standard insist there be diverse co-facilitators and he is the only straight male with the training. I get to choose to be miserable and fuss and insist that I will not teach this class under these circumstances…or could I instead face the reality of the situation and drop my objection and take on this kid and teach him a few things about facilitating. And once I do, not look back and revisit or regret my decision. And as I do not know much about a young man’s sexuality, he could have much to teach me as well. I get to choose.

We all get to choose each moment of the day. You don’t have to have a tragedy to practice letting go. Look at what makes you angry. I can bet without knowing what it is that you are desperately hanging on to a wish that things were different. Look to see what that is, let go of the wish, and then take action on the reality presented there.

The trick of course is how you know what the reality is. I use meditation as my reality preceptor. I focus on my feelings in meditation, where is it charged with extra energy? I breathe in and out, in and out, and let my consciousness drift all around the problem. I know myself well, I know that challenges to my ego are problematic to me and that I have trouble believing anyone else knows as much as I do…a dialog sets in, on one hand it says, you know how to facilitate a workshop, done it dozens of time, one the other hand, every time you have set your ego aside and let some new experience happen it has been good thing. So, come on, let go of that ego and co-facilitate the workshop with the young man and stop calling him a doofus.

Easy to say now but the road here was bumpy and long. I was raised in Hawaii by man who embraced Zen Buddhism when I was child. My father was a mixed race man, Caucasian and Apache. He was raised by his Native American mother who threw over her native beliefs for spiritualism of the 20’s in California. My mother was Caucasian raised by the daughter and granddaughter of Baptist ministers who never questioned one thing about her beliefs. My mother was religion-neutral, I asked her once what her belief was, and she said simply that she believed in God and that was it.

I only went to church once as a child. My Baptist grandmother came to live with us and we all went to a Baptist services that met in the cafeteria at the elementary school. My grandmother was from Maine but this congregation was definitely Southern. My dark-skinned father was clearly not welcome, my grandmother was embarrassed, and we never went again.

In high school, I made friends with a girl who parents had been sent here as missionaries, in the 1960’s  from Texas no less. Her mother asked me if I would agree to read the New Testament. I agreed and read the whole thing in a little red leather bound copy with tissue thin pages. We discussed it when I had finished. She, of course, was hoping that I would be born again with the reading of God’s holy word and embrace Jesus as my lord and savior. Well, I said it was an interesting story but how some man dying for my sins 1,960 years ago made no sense to me. We talked about a lot of other things and finally she said that she was amazed for a heathen (her word exactly) like me could be so kind and decent and Christian like without believing in Jesus. This was the first time she had ever lived outside of her little Texas town the first time she met people who were not Christians. I wish I had kept track of her, I bet she returned to the little Texas town a very different woman.

My father shared his insights on Buddhism and the world at talks at the dinner table. Of course at 12 years old I would roll my eyes and hope this was a short talk. Years later, though. I would hear echoes of his dharma talks at other dharma talks I attended with Buddhist teachers. He taught me early on about becoming one with the world by teaching me to shoot a bow and arrow. He instructed me to pull the string back to my chin and hold it until I felt at one with the universe before I let the arrow fly. Really good lesson in getting in touch with your chi….he also signed me and my brother up for karate classes. The old Japanese man sensei, a man of few words, had a stick that he would whack you with across the shoulders while you stood in meditation, all the classes together in rows in our chi, hand inside fist, everyone quiet and not moving. We learned in our lessons how to never meet force with force, we learned instead how to step aside and use our opponent’s energy against them. Like the archery lesson we learned to channel our chi so that we were at one with the universe. Powerful lessons for a young girl.  But this really didn’t hit home until I was 47 years old.

I had nothing to do with religion in my 20’s but in my early 30’s I felt a longing, a calling, a something to make better sense of my purpose for being here. I joined a big steeple Presbyterian Church and was baptized at the 11 o’clock service one Sunday. I cried through the whole thing, very moved by the ancient ritual. The next Sunday I was attending a woman’s retreat and was recruited on to the Synod Committee on Women. Most folks serve years in their church committees and then move up to a Presbytery committee and then maybe never to a Synod but here I was one week a Christian and the next week on a Synod committee. I was happy in the Presbyterian Church, we had a huge choir with paid soloists, all sorts of events and dinners, and I went along happily for years. I moved to Washington DC and eventually wound up at Silver Spring Presbyterian with Margee Iddings. Within three months I was ordained as an Elder and was serving on the Session. The first issue we had to deal with was it became clear that the previous pastor sexually abused several older widows in the church. Margee’s leadership in dealing with that crisis was genius. The second crisis on the heels of the first was the sanctuary was riddled with termites and had to be torn down and rebuilt. I used to joke that I was not sure that the two events were related but they might be.

Margee’s sermons were enlightening and caused me to think deeply about my faith. At one session meeting we were reviewing the application of a flamboyant gay man, self-professed pagan to become a member. A tight assed lawyer who was raised by missionaries opposed the application saying that he must profess Jesus as his lord and savior. I said it doesn’t he must profess Jesus as his only lord and savior and at that moment I realized that I did not want to belong to any church that had membership requirements. It was a slippery slope from deciding who can join to deciding who can be ordained as a minister, who can serve on the session, etc.

Shortly after this I attended the General Assembly of the denomination where the good Christians once again voted down the motion to ordain LGBT folks as ministers. That was it! I was done with this hypocrisy. Hypocrite: anyone who professes to believe in Jesus and his teachings and flagrantly discriminates against anyone.

About this same time my father became ill and I went home for 12 weeks to be with him as he moved from this world to the next. We talked and talked. He reviewed his life, I reviewed my life. He repeated the dharma talks of my youth. It was a most glorious time of my life. I returned home and joined the Mintwood Zendo.

I was now 47 years old. I went on retreat with Bobby Rhodes (Soeng Hyang) of the Providence Zen Center. She gave me a koan about something existing from the beginning of time to end of time, like a cloud, etc. etc. I struggled with it and struggled with it. In a session with her, I said I got it, it is like the Cheshire cat, yes she said like that but without the cat, just the smile I said, and she said yes but without the smile and I got it! I got it! I saw in an instant flash how everything is connected from the beginning of time to the end of time like a cloud, I was this vast network glowing and twinkling. I was breathless and speechless and I started to cry. Just like that, Bobby said, just like that. That sense of connectedness has never left me, that moment irrevocably changed my life.

Is that enlightenment? I don’t know…the lessons continue to come, the challenges continue, and yet through it all I maintain some sense of equilibrium.

One piece missing for me since I left DC in 2003 was community. Until last year I struggled with finding a spiritual home, or a satisfying social network. I was very lonely but kept present about it and tried not suffer and did pretty well. Then last year I went to the Unitarian Church to support a friend who didn’t want to go by herself and I found a spiritual home. The minister is a Chinese gay man raised in the Philippines and who used to be the MCC minister here in Hawaii. He quotes from the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hahn often. He spent some time at Plum Village in France before coming to Hawaii. But the biggest treat is the congregation. We are diverse in age, race, philosophy, gender, No dogma, no creeds, no doxology, and no one god. I love it.

           

Q+A/Discussion

1. A caller asked Margaret to say more about meditation.

Margaret answered that meditation is a way to deal with reality—turning off the messages/mind chatter in mind. The subconscious takes over when the rest shuts down such that the essence of whatever is at hand rises up.

Another caller, a friend of Margaret’s calling from Germany, mentioned the work of Renate Rose—Thich Nhat Hahn: breath in/out; as soon as a thought starts let it go; let go of ego; why am I upset in this moment—sitting quietly—concentrating on breathing in/out and present moment; breathing in the breath of God, breathing out love; enjoying the present moment.

2. A participant called attention to Margaret’s insight that “You will suffer in life to the same degree that you wish things to be different.” She asked how to do help someone without being preachy?

Margaret replied that she helps people understand that it is all thought. She told the story of a client who came to her crying and to whom she told a joke about penguins. The joke distracted the woman from her issues so that In The Moment she was not sad. Instruction not preaching is Margaret’s way. She sometimes uses a caring tone to ask, “Is that true?” often getting the answer that it is not at the moment.  

3. Margaret was asked to talk some about the combination of Eastern and Western techniques for managing pain, for seeing the world. The moderator said that she gets how they work on their own, but asked how Margate puts them together?

Margaret answered that Western medicine is good at certain things especially technology (replace a heart etc.) but that western medical people tend to look at people in parts not as whole. Western medicine is good at things that need acute care—broken hip, for example. But many western doctors do not acknowledge that the mind has anything to do with what’s happening. Eastern approaches take care of the rest of it. All religions have some form of meditation that is helpful in mind-body medicine. Jon Kabat-Zinn uses meditation as part of cancer treatment. Margaret noted that if one dwells on how horrible cancer is you’ll probably die of it!

Margaret referred to the Rev. Margee Iddings’ sessions and sermons, which Margaret said, did not sound preachy. She urged people to cut out pictures from magazines, paste them on cards and take them home to be with the person pictures for the next week, to pray with/for them.

4. A caller said she was struck by Margaret’s courage, her insistence on practicing openness to new life that streams in when we surrender, the inevitable suffering that comes before harvest of joy. She asked Margaret about any thoughts on engagement in social justice work.

Margaret allowed as to how some of the most dedicated/effective civil rights activists are Buddhist clergy. Accepting the Buddhist path does not mean not taking action. She told how the gay marriage battle in Honolulu included the religious right being angry but being met by pro-marriage clergy who sang “Amazing Grace.” Margaret reported that it was effective, transforming the space with song and eventually the marriage equality bill passed so now there is gay marriage in Hawaii.

5. The moderator asked about people who are stuck. What do you say to people who feel stuck in life? In conversation with a woman who was in a job she didn’t like, the moderator referred to Margaret’s book, suggesting that whining about a job was so different from dealing with major life disruptions. Still, what would Margaret say to her as a counselor?

Margaret connected being stuck with fear. She would ask: What are you fearful about? What is the worst thing that can happen? Trust that the world is good.

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Thank you again to Margaret Mann. This audio recording is on our website, www.waterwomensalliance.org .

The next WATER Teleconference will be Tuesday, May 13, 2104, 1PM EDT with Cynthia Tootle on”Greeting the Goddess.” Email "Register Me Teleconference" to waterstaff@hers.com by Monday, May 12, 2014 in order to receive dial-in information.

Information on all WATER activities can be found on our website at www.waterwomensalliance.org.