Homes for all and the kindom of Godde.

OK so it is homeless week. It’s a week to think about people who don’t have it easy. Let’s not make it a week of congratulating ourselves for a small or moderate amount of tokenistic charity but let’s make it a week for reflecting on the systemic reasons for homelessness. Let’s acknowledge the sin of inequitable ways of being in the world and let’s heed a call to repentance (transformation, revolution). This is the agenda I shamelessly bring to my frienemy the lectionary. Let’s see how that pans out!

Abraham prays to Godde in a way that I really admire in the first reading. You can call it bargaining if you like, I call it advocating. “Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? “is a valid question to my mind. Godde is responsive to Abraham in this reading, there is a failure to break out of the kyriearchal model of punishing and using power over. Much as it is tempting to want Godde to act this way toward the unjust (remembering that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitability rather than imposing anachronistic interpretations to do with sexual orientations), much as we sometimes want Godde to be our powerful super-hero that sorts out the bad guys this flies in the face of our experience of our socio-political world.

So, beyond the superficial blind allies, what do we have here? We have Abraham role-modelling for us a gritty and honest relationship with Godde, an ethic of care toward his relatives. Since that time we have had Jesus pushing the boundaries of our kinship, asking us to open up our familial care to “others” (which makes it tragic when Christians feel the need to judge or exclude their own). I seem to hear sarcasm in Abraham’s humility in arguing with “the Lord”. I feel that Godde would appreciate the sassiness of this encounter. Refocusing on the homeless we need to be both this persistent and this audacious in pursuing better outcomes.

One of my fears for my own old age is homelessness. I have not accrued much super and the world is becoming less forgiving of elderly people who are not rich. So being that homeless person in my imagination (the one I hope I never get to experience for real) I read the psalm.

“Though I walk amid distress, you preserve me;
against the anger of my enemies you raise your hand.
Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Your right hand saves me.
The LORD will complete what he has done for me;
your kindness, O LORD, endures forever;
forsake not the work of your hands.”

Do homeless people get to feel this? Can they feel a radical presence? I try to do small acts of solidarity as I walk through town, I try to smile or say “hello” to street people as they are possibly future me (you’d be surprised how many are very well educated). I do succumb to beggars when I am able, it’s a problematic question of what the right thing to do is, but I don’t work hard enough on changing the political scene to feel completely guiltless about other people’s poverty. I try to be the “kindness” in the psalm not the “enemy”.

It frightens me that people can “walk amid distress” and walk and walk mile after mile, year after year with no relief. This applies also to the refugees on Manus. If we are going to discuss homelessness then the way our society ignores, trivialises and victimises Indigenous people and disabled people in particular needs to be mentioned. The number of older women finding themselves homeless is a set of questions we should be demanding answers to. “Distress” in our society is unevenly distributed according to race, class, gender and non-heterosexuality. All these people are the work of Godde’s hands. Godde lovingly created the beloved Indigenous, disabled, queer, poor woman that we discard (or any other). When we forsake the work of Godde’s hands we are deeply insulting Godde.

Christe eleison.

In the second reading we have all been baptised into the life of Christ. This is not about drawing boundaries around an exclusive community or imposing membership processes (such as human celebrations of particular models of baptism), it is about Godde’s sacramental claiming of us all into a radical dignity and equality, nailing to the cross anything that obstructs us from perfect love. Love flows to us and calls to us, it loves us into being better if we only become aware of it. The first step (if we take a sacramental approach) is not striving to do good deeds or to weed out sin, not to fill in some sort of spiritual KPI.

The first step is becoming aware of the love that Godde has for us…for our world…for people…for non-human creation…for the yearning in us to be love. I am Christian because I believe that even this awareness is transformative, that we will learn to desire lovingness as a basis of our life if we let ourselves be aware, barefoot on the ground of our being (Godde). When we are motivated by desire not duty, we work a lot harder. Trust me this is almost always true 😉 Awareness of Godde builds in us a desire to be infused by Godde’s presence and to do good not as “work” but as a creative and free expression of who we really are. The tragedy of violence and abuse is not only that the victim suffers, it is also that the perpetrator is not being their authentic and free self. Nevertheless, anger is often the appropriate response to abuse. Within myself though, I can try to hear the voice of Godde more strongly than the voices of my detractors. I can try to speak out of the freedom of being absolutely beloved and affirmed to be love.

I am not claiming that I have achieved this, but it’s a direction.

To return to the homeless person, we must be motivated by genuine love and solidarity to make social world’s where people have their material needs met. We must work harder for the good of each other instead of letting suspicion and envy turn us into hoarders of wealth. If we are working hard for love not duty, we will feel less angry if someone else benefits from our work. Sacrament then is a key to social change.

Into the gospel. I hope the focus on sacramentality has adequately prepared us to really pray with Jesus our prayer-coach. There is a lot here and I don’t feel able to cover it all sufficiently. I will drop a link to last time I covered this in case you need more.

Jesus is telling us to shamelessly bring our authentic needs and agendas to Godde. How sad that this example of how to pray has become just a set of words we recite in a hurry a lot of the time instead of an exemplar of how to construct our own. Sorry Jesus, for all the plagiarism. Jesus’ prayer is balanced, there is an acknowledgement and awareness of Godde and Godde’s agendas and a flowing over of Godde’s agendas into our interests as earthlings. “Your kindom come” because we are your kin and everything you do will make us more free, and more real. But Jesus also reminds us to be persistent if we feel we are not getting an authentic answer.

This seems to me to be a two-edged sword in that on the one hand it validates our nagging of Godde as part of right relationship, but what is also implicit here is the idea that when we have the power to grant someone’s need of course as decent human beings we would do so. When we, as decent human beings encounter the homeless, we will open the door and give food and recognition. When we, as decent human beings witness systemic abuses we will speak out and act for what is good. When our government refuses to even attempt to save the only planet we can live upon, we will pester and pester not only Godde but humans. We will demand decency and humanity from those in power, we will never become cynical enough to stop demanding what we need (our bread for tomorrow). We will never become cynical enough to give up on a vision of Godde’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven”. We will never have our head too much in the clouds to hear the gritty voices of reason on this material earth beloved by a gritty dirty-sandalled Jesus.

In todays world, hope is a necessity we must search and work hard for. We focus on the needs of those who do not have what they need. We take back our power as members (through baptism) of Godde’s kindom. We seek a fairer, more hopeful world, transformed by love.

 

 

 

Bread in Burnside

It was on an anti-poverty Facebook group

a comrade posted the picture of bread from the Burnside supermarket

very different from the suburbs

most of them live.

 

$6 a loaf for 30 hour sourdough,

brown and crustedly rounded, a sprinkle of seeds

but as someone remarked

“it still looks the same

when it comes out of the dumpster”

 

Someone sneered at fake-poverty-chic

and faker empathy

and someone is getting ready to go out

on a cold July night

to dumpster dive for the community.

 

Panis Angelicus: Corpus Christi

not just in Burnside

but in the solidarity of the starving

because we are the angels, the prophets

our message is Word and Bread

cold street word and dumpster bread

the body, the real presence

Amen.

Mandated this Thursday

Bread in a drought. We are overusing the earth and stealing from the rivers. We are feeding up animals just to slaughter them in horrible conditions. We are ripping out every other plant to grow more vines so we can drown our middle-class scruples and sorrows in wine (reduced when you buy by the dozen).

We don’t want to wash anyone’s feet, we Christians, unless we have chosen them for their likeness to us. We don’t want Muslims and we don’t want trans disciples, we don’t want inconvenient voices calling out for a stop to rape and toxic masculinity, we don’t want vegans or cyclists, we don’t want unionists. We want a small, narrow, white and bland kingdom of a three-word-slogan God who will medicate us back to sleep.

Thoughts and prayers. Thoughts and prayers. It’s all too hard. God save us. This is a test of faith and we cry when a great cathedral burns (and well we might). But the birthing trees are bulldozed on out and we don’t care. Brown children are trapped in factories with no water but overpriced, plastic packages sold back to them despite their tiny wage. Monkeys in metal collars are forced to harvest coconuts for smug minority world festival goers. Mea culpa, I love a festival and coconut water too.

We care more for who gets into Eurovision than who gets into parliament or what their policies will mean. We want gross domestic product…and the word “gross” really is apt! Wellbeing be damned we want measurable outputs to prove we are winning.

But then it is lent and we are called to become aware of the wilderness we are wandering in, the barren emptiness of lives focused on having not being, focused on distractions not deeds, on status not right relationship. It’s been lent and yet we can so easily sit in out “sty of contentment” as Eliot put it, or in some close approximation. And now it is the eve of Maundy Thursday. “Maundy” because there is a mandate here (the words are related) but the mandate is not just to be the king washing the feet of the properly submissive beggar but to wash the feet we would rather not touch.

I grew up with a liturgical foot-washing, a bishop with many attendants serving him pouring some water over feet of 12 respectable men in suits. As an adult I found more inclusive places, the washers and the washed were varied but still it was the respected and the respectable performing ritual. Noone’s foot was actually very dirty and the symbol was mildly uncomfortable rather than wildly destabilising.

But now our refusal to be destabilised may cost us our lives. We are facing climate change, and the main argument is still over who to hate, who to blame, who to exclude. My former partner told me that I have learned nothing through the years and I still don’t love myself and I felt angry and started to argue. “No but really” he said “I want you to hear me”.

It’s Maundy Thursday and I am still not hearing people. I am still busy trying to be the Martha at the table of grace and afraid to be the Mary. I want to be “good” and “kind” and “wise” and “worthy” so someone will love me, to take away from me the burden of having to love myself. I want to make a bargain with God, shake hands on a deal where I will not have to confront things anymore. I am like my corflute after all, flat and polished and smiling on demand.

There is some sort of sacrament here, and I need it and I hunger for it but I don’t know how to receive it. How can I be so dark and disillusioned on this weekend in particular? If there is meaning and I have strived for it then why don’t I feel it? Why does the love of my friends, and especially of my children reduce me to tears? If I am loved after all, cannot that be a sign?

Many years ago, when I was pregnant with my third child I had lunch with a friend of mine, an ordained minister. He spoke to me about the desire to over-eat, that he prays “only you can fill me God” before every meal.

I sit here full of chips and migraine, politics and study, the housework I should have done and the sleep I wish I could get. I sit here full of performative faith: “Don’t you dare leave me God”. I sit here with leftover suicidal ideation I have learned to control but not really to forgive or heal. I am full of fear and sadness and resentment. I know that I will more than likely be a failure and if I succeed that I will be attacked. I know myself to be lazy and a coward. I worry that I might sell my beloved for 30 pieces of silvered silence away from the struggle.

I don’t know how to be empty so that I can be filled by Godde

I see people’s faces turned toward me, seeing something more heroic and strong than I feel myself to be and I know that I have made idols of others to avoid having to be responsible. I feel Godde’s presence with me, tolerant, but it is not Godde whom I have harmed. Those people I admired, did they feel the weight of my worship? How could I expect them to be so much more than I was ever prepared to be? When I have thought leaders to be pompous and arrogant, even narcissistic was it their shield against my need for them to be gods?

Who was Jesus at the last supper? Did it hurt to be bread and wine? How much did he consent to and how much was he created by his followers?

It sounds like blasphemy to say that Jesus was “only human” and yet if he wasn’t then what is this for us? We do not have another millennium to wait to be saved from our need to create church as institution and ritual as hiding. Jesus did not say “cringe and cry to me”. He did not say “avoid anyone different”. He did not say “I will save you from yourself”. Jesus said “I am the least of your siblings”. He said “take up your cross and follow me”. He said “you can’t be part of this unless I wash your feet.”

So much of the world is crying for the bread they don’t have and for the wine that is never shared with them. Factory and field workers collapse too exhausted to hope. Refugees share inadequate meals in uncomfortable buildings behind wire. I have pedicured my feet ready to seem clean when I am washed. I turn up for religion, but hide from the Holy Spirit.

Like an anorexic I turn away from the Bread of Heaven.

I am addicted to the hunger.

Inadequacy?

Dearest Wisdom,
Dutifully, I sat with this week’s readings every day. I thought about prophets- good and bad and my assumption (presumption) that I speak for you. I thought about being humble and reminding people to be suspicious of my words. I thought about how even if well meant, that was a sickly performance of humility that would come across as ironic.
I thought about talking about “fake news” in our world and also critiquing the church but I realised I was performing contortionism to make that what the readings were about. I have come to Saturday afternoon on a hot and busy weekend and I have nothing but my admission.
I don’t get along with these readings and the way they are juxtaposed and I didn’t really find you in them, no not at all!
Power, authority….seems typical of the church to go on and on about those things in a top-down way while meanwhile real ordinary people are suffering disillusionment and lack of representation and lack of material things (eg food, safety) and a rapidly dying environment.
If I have encountered you (true Word) in words this week, then perhaps it was in the words of Naomi Klein and Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Or was it that I encountered you in doors being opened, in the sweet juiciness of mango- slightly tart about the seed, in sister’s returning from far away, in a meal shared with a former lover and his new partner, in the affirmations of people at work, in children taking my hand begging for a story, in dispossessed peoples telling us again that enough is enough and we should not be celebrating their dispossession.
Was it you I felt in the touch of an over-hot sun and in the cool breeze that blew through it, in the trickle of the creek and the fragrance of lemon myrtle in my refrigerated water? Were you in the purr of the naughtiest of kittens or in the voice of a son telling me he had no need of my mothering (shades of Cana as I asked others to listen to him and stepped back). But if it’s bread you were in then it was in fried potatoes because I ran out of bread this week and was too busy and hot to go to the shop after work. If it’s wine then it is white wine spritzers with ice in them- something I never thought I would try.
You were in the small self-denial of refusing to turn on the air-conditioner, and in the caring colleague who came out to swap because I had been outside too long. You were in the famous writer who offered me her support and affirmation and in the refugee I was pow.erless to offer real help to You were in the 5am rising and the midnight going to rest, in the memories of having been in love and in the stabbing pain whenever I move my knee.
As usual I have used many words to try to reach you, only Word. But you have been in life more than in structures. You have brought life and meaning into each day. My readers may fail to find you in my words, but will have their own bodies and moments and meanings to seek you out in and in the end a prophet (true or false) is not so significant after all. You made us to know you not to follow each other. You made us to touch truth for ourselves not to obey authority (or not blindly).
You made us to dance and sing.
You made us to love better than this.
You made us to be loved more fully than we have known yet.

You made us for love.

For love.

Love.

Teach me to love them- the ones who bring me joyous gifts and the ones who bring me challenge. Teach me to seek out the ones who are hurting. Open my eyes and ears and heart to know I am beginning from the place of love.

From being loved.

Loved by you.

Dearest Wisdom, I leave this week’s readings to someone more wise or more obedient.

In love (however flawed).

The Body of Christ

I tried to write about the thoughts and random connections that come to me when I approach communion (Eucharist). I had planned to put in more biblical details and allusions so maybe at some point I will rewrite this, but as soon as I focus on bread, then the mundane stuff of continuing to live as well as the real work of mothering and nurture comes to me and so the real world got into my sense of sacrament (as usual). So it came out less mythical and mystical and more down-to-earth than I had thought…I hope it makes sense. Add your own in the comments if you like.

The bread of life. Amen

The labour of my mother’s hands. Amen

The buried grain arisen. Amen

Cord blood to the baby. Amen

The scent of the turned soil. Amen

The seed scattered. Amen

The birds feeding. Amen

Waybread for the journey. Amen

Loaves, flatbreads, rice, tortillas, sandwiches, pastries. Amen

Starving children while we glut. Amen

Crumbs from the table. Amen

Staling crust, dryly sticks in throat. Amen

Children should be seen and not heard. Amen

Where then is the sacrament? Amen

If all of this will lead to crucifixion. Amen

I threw my leftover lunch out of the train carriage. Mea culpa.

My mother had worked all night kneading and proving the bread. Amen

My grandparents starved in refugee camps. Amen

There are homeless in my own city. Amen

I was only a kid. Amen

Your vocation is to feed hungry souls. Amen

To wash feet, to change nappies. Amen

To break bread and model table manners. Amen

The body of Christ. Amen, amen.

A mother’s body torn to give life. Amen

A mother’s blood flowing through the cord. Amen

A mother’s milk swelling, or inadequate. Amen

The father waking in the night to help feed the baby. Amen

The blessing of grandparents. Amen

Solace to the elderly parent. Amen

This too is my body. Amen

The battery hen. Amen

The lives that go into the abattoir. Amen

The lives that are held in limbo, on Manus. Amen

The lives that are born but not nurtured. Amen

The loves that remain a source of shame and exclusion. Amen

The oceans full of oil and sewage. Amen

The rice crops failing because seeds become patented. Amen

Food is a business, water and investment. Oh Lamb of God have mercy.

I told you this is my body. Amen

We eat you, we eat each other, we are failing to love. Amen

Save us Lord, we can’t walk on water. Amen

I told you you would deny me, but now I will feed you. Amen.

Whenever you make food for your workmates. Amen

Whenever you give food to someone hungry. Amen

Whenever you celebrate your own child. Amen

Whenever you remember to visit your great aunt or grandmother. Amen

This is my body. This is the bread that feeds you. This is flesh and earth and physical joy and strength. This is soul and spirit and the ecstasy of connection. Break this, give this, do this in memory of me.

The pod of dolphins leap for joy. Amen

The chili from a colleague’s generous harvest. Amen

My sister gets up early to make bread– her vocation. Amen

Bread and sacrament, our life and our heritage. Amen, amen.

The body of Christ. Amen

It’s only words

 

Continuing my travel through the order of the mass, after the Eucharistic prayer comes another rich moment, “the Lord’s prayer”. I love this gorgeous and honest version from New Zealand. But I want to grapple myself with my own meditation with “the prayer Jesus taught us”. Travel my thoughts with me if you like.

I remember as a child, a reoccurring theme was how dangerous “the Lord’s prayer” was. Dangerous because it was so familiar, we could say it without really meditating on what it meant, simply as empty words and that would be sinful, negate the power of praying at all or even be blasphemous. Nevertheless that was a “given” prayer that was supposed to be superior to other prayers so we had to always say it- at church, at home, in the rosary, in our own prayers as a family or as individuals.

I remember much more recently at work, debating with some colleagues the merits or otherwise of insisting that children apologise when they have done something to someone. “Sorry is an empty word” one of my colleagues said, positively AGAINST children being taught to say it when harm has been done. In a way she was right of course, the “sorry” of our nation toward Indigenous people has not completely achieved the change of heart we need, and many scoff that it has done anything at all. Nevertheless when Prime Minister John Howard refused to give “them” even the satisfaction of an apology that was seen as hurtful, as an obstacle to the way forward.

Words may be empty but giving or with-holding them has some power after all.

Perhaps it is that words are always as empty as containers, and we infuse them with contexts- with our identities and actions and intentions. Perhaps also while at times familiarity of words can obscure meaning, at times words can make meaning, call a reality into being. “I have called you by your name you are mine” with words we make each other part of our family, a person recognised and nurtured.

Perhaps it is not even always sin when familiar words simply wash over us, when we are at peace and connected in with our faith family rather than overthinking. I worked so hard as a child to overthink prayer, to avoid the blasphemy of praying without deep intention but I think I have missed one of the points of prayer/love/intimacy. In prayer we do not strive to be correct, we simply orient toward the other that is God (and that is God’s beloved) and we simply BE in love. We “waste time” with God.

Jesus as the “Word of God” did not always seek to be understood. Who has ever understood the loaves and the fishes, but thousands went away satisfied. What exactly happened at Cana? There was no wine and then there was. Not all words can be grasped in a logical way, some slip through like poetry, like the quiet breathing of a loved one, like a sunset.

Then there is this bit of wisdom. That took my fancy when I was in my mid-twenties (yeah back last century), although even then I had some quarrels with parts of it, and ever since then now and then I have made up my own meditations that attempt to make my praying of this prayer meaningful and intentional, to try to identify and avoid potential hypocrisy in it.

So here is a feminist version, not by any means finding all the potential pitfalls of meaning but one possible meditation on the prayer:

Don’t say “Our Father” as if God was only ever a father or were literally male. Don’t say “Our” unless you are ready to broaden the group of “we” to embrace whoever has been left out. Do not say “who are” if you will behave as if your own wealth and privilege is more important than the kindom of God. Do not say “in heaven” if by it you mean absent and not also here in my life, in me.

Don’t say “hallowed be your name” if you think other faiths cannot hallow God’s name. Do not say “hallowed” if you think religion is a set of rules and judgements rather than a living, holy place of encounter. Do not say “your” if your God has been recast in your own image…white? male? straight? cis? middle-class? educated? human? Do not say “name” if you are afraid to be named and known in return.

Or then again say it all, say it and learn to mean it. If God will parent you into this “heaven” way of being, if God is a sacred, named and known encounter then dare to say it all and be transformed!

Don’t say “thy kingdom come” as if God is an archaic form of oppressive government. Dare to demand and commit to “your kindom come”. Don’t say “your will be done” if you don’t have the courage to accept that God’s will is for a deeper, broader love for all…for the refugee, the single mother, the queer, the homeless, the welfare recipient and yes even for the right-wing bigot. Don’t say “your will be done” without accepting that God’s will, will radically transform you, and then transform you again! Don’t say “your will be done” without remembering that God’s will for you is joy and fulfilment. Say it! Trust it! Dance it!

Don’t say “on earth” without valuing food and water, music and cuddles and sex and conversation and your own bleeding, aging, beautiful body. Don’t say “on earth” without committing that all God’s children have access to the gifts of God on earth. Don’t say “on earth” without kissing the earth and calling her “mother” and loving her for she too is a child of God. God’s will on earth is love.

Don’t say ”as it is in heaven” without radical hope. Don’t say “as it is in heaven” if you are going to argue that it is impossible to strive for fairness, sustainability and equity. Do not say “as it is in heaven” if you think it does not matter that other people suffer. Do not mention heaven unless you are willing to hammer on its gates and demand its graces spill out through you. Yes I said “demand”, did you think prayers were for cowering and grovelling?

Say it, learn to mean it. Shout it, sing it, celebrate it, touch it, be it. The prayer our lovely Jesus-Wisdom man told us. A prayer we learn, a prayer we grow into.

Don’t say “give us” without knowing that God can and does become involved in human life and history. Don’t say “give” without being prepared to share. Don’t say “give” without opening your hands and hearts to welcome and receive. Don’t say “us” if your circle is too small for the stranger and the orphan. Don’t say “us” if you cannot be kind to “them”. Don’t say “this day our daily bread” if you think this life does not matter and people can “wait until heaven”. Don’t say “this day” if you think it doesn’t really matter what you choose moment to moment. Don’t say “this day” if you will not work for a world that is still here tomorrow.

Don’t say “bread” if you mean a particular culture’s version of bread is the only one. Don’t say “bread” if your loaf is perfectly risen and soft and fluffy while your neighbour subsists on stale crumbs. Don’t say “bread” without being broken and shared. Don’t say “bread” without meaning rice, pasta, quinoa, mealie, chapatti, tortilla and every type of Jesus. Don’t say bread and skimp of the wine. Don’t turn away those who are ill or old or female, those who are Indigenous or foreign or have a different faith, those who are broken or on welfare or ill, those who are depressed or imprisoned or seem just plain lazy. Bread is for everyone. Break it!

Don’t say “forgive us” if you are afraid to forgive yourself. Don’t say “forgive us” unless you are truly sorry. Don’t be sorry without trying to understand. Don’t assume you understand without listening. Don’t say “forgive us” until you have committed to keep listening to the oppressed even when they begin to bore. Don’t understand without committing to change. But do be daring and start somewhere. Start somewhere and let it make you change. Bread and forgiveness go together in the prayer. Eat the daily bread of the work we have done, take it as gift. Commit to change as a response to the bread. Be broken in your privilege. Be broken in your brokenness. Be fed together- oppressor and oppressed.

Don’t say “trespasses” if you mean nitpicking about individual peccadilloes. Don’t say “trespasses” if you violate other people’s space or right to be themselves. Say “as we forgive” and learn to forgive. Say “as we forgive” and agree to being forgiven slowly and to have listening and recompense demanded of you. Say “as we forgive” and cry with relief when forgiveness is given freely. Say “as we forgive” and do not cast the first stone. Say “as we forgive” and learn to love and forgive yourself.

“Do not put us to the test” because life is a journey not a standardised test. “Do not put us to the test” because we want a holistic and respectful way of learning. “Do not put us to the test” because we want to love, not perform our way into your kindom. Do not say “deliver us from evil” if you want to be delivered primarily from other people- unbelievers and sinners. Do not say “deliver us from evil” if your own inability to love is above questioning. Do not say “deliver us…” if you still cling to easy answers and easy theologies. Do not say “evil” without striving to see the good in the world.

“Deliver us God from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your loveliness keep us free from sin (hatred?) and protect us from all anxiety (despair?) as we live in joyful hope the sacramental presence of your living Word (also known at one time as Jesus)”

What do we mean by saying “the kindom, power and glory are yours” how are they God’s? Where do they flow from to exist and belong to someone? What is it to us? Do we simply recognise this reality or help accomplish it? Should we be relieved or frightened at it? Are we perhaps the kindom, power and glory of God in our own lives? Not all of it, but the part we can access?

God transform my desires so that they actualise joy. Teach me to be radically in touch with myself in the familiar prayers, in the tradition, in the things I ask from you. Call me out of the escapism that harms me or my neighbour. I pray all these things as I make ready to eat with you and your creation, to be washed and fed, to be caught up in the spilling out of Eucharist in all things.

I come to your banquet as a typical middle-aged Latvian woman asking, ”what can I bring? how can I help?” and gossiping with you in the kitchen as we set the table. Let me be part of the trusted friends whose contribution is welcome.

Be an everyday hero with me!

Hi friends, this is not my usual blog post (though crossed fingers that will come some time before Sunday). This is something I am doing for charity.

If you live nearby this event please come along. If you can’t, then please consider sponsoring me. If you would rather give to a similar charity in your own town or country then please feel free to tell me about it in the comments.

If you don’t want to do any of those then ignore this one, and the next one will be as normal! I do realise people “give” in different ways and to different causes.

I have chosen to do this because I have a real horror of being cold and wet and hungry- every time I imagine being homeless I want to cry. I am lucky enough to have always had what I needed. I wish everyone would have at least the basics.

https://walkamileinmyboots2017.everydayhero.com/au/stefanija

Do this in memory of me

Recently I saw a sticker on the car. It was a Tyrannosaurus Rex eating the “Jesus fish” and it was supposed to be satirically atheist- sort of a triumph of a natural history view of the world (evolution) over faith (and creation). Seeing it I said “Do this in memory of me” and my son (14) laughed and immediately understood what I was seeing in it (which made me think perhaps I am not deluded).

I am seeing a powerful statement of the timelessness of Christ (Wisdom if you like) the idea that before human even existed there was a sacramental relationship between God and creation and also an eco-theological assertion about the place of ALL creation (not just humans) within a sacramental reality. In this symbol, Christ the fish (embodied in nature) gives Godself as food for the dinosaur. Food seems to be a universal need for all of life and for humans has become powerfully symbolic of well-being, nurture and connection. In the Eucharist we remember a meal Jesus shared and take into our bodies the actual, material reality of food- Jesus’ body.

The dinosaur in this picture asserts that evolution happened and is supposed to violently eat up our ability to have faith but the “Jesus fish” as a symbol that can function recognisably as food (think of all the feeding stories in the new testament that contain fish as part of the meal) can become a reinforcement of the stubborn tenacity of faith and the all-pervading grace and love of God. If we see “fishing” as a symbol of apostleship (see eg. Matt 4:19) then the symbol also has a dark side, this is also a text of terror about church leaders who consume the lives and wills of people. But I am seeing Jesus, the bread of life.

The Eucharistic prayer functions in the mass as a way of focusing us on Jesus as someone who enters our community as food- and on all the emotional and material things that food provides for us in our lives. I have found it to be boring and empty when I am too far from the altar, when there is too much pomp with the kneeling on sore knees while people swing incense and ring bells and use  pages and pages and pages of words in a monotone but I have also found it real whenever I have had the privilege of setting the table, helping with the liturgy or at least standing around the altar like a family called to a meal.

The many prayers then is a remembering of the people present in a bodily sense, or present through the union of similar rememberings or absent to us except in love. The Jesus story becomes our story when we remember it, Jesus took the bread broke and shared it and told us to do the same. We become bread for the world by remembering the story as set down in the bible and in liturgy. “The people” traditionally get to join in with three lines only (the memorial acclamation) and an “Amen” at the end but I think this is wrong. Ideally we would share stories in many directions not just from the voice of authority- we would co-construct our tradition making links between the Jesus story and my story and the work of feeding.

Some contemporary liturgies do this by having various sections read by different people or groups which I think is a step in the right direction and possibly more manageable than the ideal I envision where we actually make meaning together by saying what we remember and how Eucharist has touched us this week. I find it a little bit over-the-top in traditional liturgies where the movement of the prayers goes from praying to various others into a “For ourselves too, we ask some share in the fellowship…” section. Jesus never said “Come to my table begging for inclusion and grovelling for crumbs” he said “I am the bread of life”. Jesus came to wash our feet and feed us – our role was simply to accept this and then pass the action on to the world. NOONE EVER has to grovel and try to adjust their worthiness to receive sacrament. I wish I had known this as a teenager when I was raped and excommunicated myself because I felt unworthy of Eucharist.

Good sheep may follow the good shepherd, but we at times bring our Tyrannosaurus rex selves stomping up to the table of grace. The Jesus fish says “take and eat”. Creation is invited forever into sacrament, into life. God looks at all that she has made and it is inherently good (Genesis 1:31)

Bread for everyone

“Ask and the church will deny it of you, because it is not how we have always done things, seek and you will be told off for being out of your seat and off-task, knock and the door will be slammed in your face.” This is not how Matthew 7:7 originally went, but it feels like how it is trying to remain in relationship with”the church” hierarchy as a queer, ministry-bound catholic woman, and now even more so as a borderline coeliac.

I had decided, just today that given how many people I have been openly telling about my blog, it might be time to tone down the criticism and to try to focus on whatever positivity I can find within my faith…but I guess God let me know a long time ago that I was never going to be allowed to get comfortable and complacent within “the church” that the voice God called out of me was a fish-wife voice (read the prophets though, feminists are not God’s first fish wives nor even the most ranty). So I apologise for the negativity I really do…but I was thinking calm and half-baked thoughts about how to write about the next part of the mass (the Eucharistic prayer) all week when a woman at church drew all our attention to the latest silly rule made up by Rome.

It appears that when Jesus asked “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?…” (Luke 11: 11-12; see also Matt 7:9-10 where the question is about giving a stone instead of bread) he wasn;t reckoning with the callousness and lack of empathy of certain self-styled “fathers”.

In effect forcing a celiac to eat gluten (or you know, be excommunicated) is just that! I guess I am not a true celiac because I just try to take the smallest amount possible at communion time and live with the gut pain. Yes I get gut pain from gluten, like a stone in your tummy, or a scorpion stinging your insides. There are people more intolerant than me who can faint from gluten, from having it once. Most people I suppose wouldn’t die from one wafer, but it does add a disincentive to the habit of daily mass (which used to be a big thing for me when I was young). So that is the first problem with this teaching, the excusion (or torture) of people with Celiac disease.

This is compounded by a compassionless society that we currently live in, where people delight in trying to point out that differences in people are due to all sorts of psychologically motivated weakness, “lifestyle choices” and generally being a “special snowflake” and trying to debunk everyone else’s special needs while acting entitled around their own needs, wants and choices. Celiac sufferers can find it hard to be taken seriously by friends, family and people who sell food. The church has not caused this giant empathy vacuum (or at least not single-handedly) but surely if we read the words of Jesus we are supposed to be the antidote to it, the counter-cultural voice insistantly reminding that “actually I care”. For the church to side with the sneerers and shamers (in this case I think by omission rather than intent) defeats the purpose of even having a church. Sacrament is hollow when it is only for the privileged (see eg 1 Cor 11:22 and the background around that). God made disabled people, allergic people, yes church-Fathers even the queer people. Difference is part of the divine design, “In God’s own image” diverse and challenging (but if you think humans are too varied, try to get your head around parrots some time),

The second problem is that while it might seem reasonable to have a reductionist view of “bread” where it is always wheat and water (I question if the little circles they hand out at church are such a faithful or recognisable version of anything “bread”like in any case, and as a child was frankly delighted with the surrealism of it all) this binds us into a culturally chauvinist reading of the Last Supper where Jesus is excluding the vast millions of people on the planet for whom the staple is rice (or corn, or quinoa or anything non wheat-based).The bible in fact does not give us a recipe for the bread used at the last supper, it may well be reasonable to suppose it was made from wheat, but “bread” has not always and everywhere meant “wheat” my own mother used to make it out of rye and barley; my sister, a professional baker adds things like chia seeds or sunflower, or whatever in all the varieties of “bread” that people want for their meals- their suppers and picnics and date-nights and lunch-boxes. We buy loaves, rolls, flatbreads, buns made of oats, spelt, chickpeas, rice, tapioca, etc, etc etc. Mexican dinners get wrapped in bread made from corn. People in Asia see bread as strange and exotic as they team rice with ever meal (yes breakfast too).

Why do we need to limit what “bread” means other than out of a desire to limit people or exclude them. Did Jesus limit? Did he give strict prescriptions? He ate with tax collectors and prostitutes but we can’t even eat with Celiacs or Asians? Surely this is nonsense!

And that was the final point made by the (very articulate) woman at my church (please note the way I have teased out each point and the possible errors in my thinking are my own). That all this sternness over what can or can;t validly be called “bread” and this lack of understanding around how it is for some people (with real food intolerances, or from diverse cultural backgrounds) makes a laughingstock of the church. It gets harder for us to explain why we would want to be associated with it…which is fine if I am only worried about my vanity, my friends get to see me as a weirdo…I can live with it. But if there is actually something life-giving and possibly transformative within our tradition then surely we need to keep it as open and accessible as possible and avoid turning people off over trivialities!

I once again think of the huge and horrible scandal of abused children and how much harm has been done by the church’s REFUSAL to intervene in a serious matter- and then they get all upset over what recipe of wafer is being used. Clearly I am not a bishop or a cardinal but I fail to see the confusion here. Surely the life and well-being of children is a serious issue and the proper recipe for bread is a side-issue? Not the other way around. They make such a fuss over the right gender for priests and the right grain for bread and probably the right grapes for wine and yet the right treatment of human beings is something they are far too slow to speak or act upon. Why is that? And how does it look to the world? And how hurtful to be marginalised in so many ways- as a woman, as a queer person and now even as someone with a food intolerance (and in solidarity with Asian friends for whom “bread” is not what it is for a European/Australian like me).

Googling around the issue to try to double check that there really was such an edict from “Rome” I came across several stories of people working hard for many, many years to try to get around this rule by removing gluten from wheat (yes that is seen as more natural than making bread from something other than wheat). These recipes, which have taken over a decade in some cases to make successfully in a form that the Vatican allows, seem to have been developed by nuns.

So men make these unreasonable rules and women work harder than ever to ensure that the children are fed nevertheless. And who do we see as “ministers” of the sacraments and of God? There is a whole other feminist rant in that (as usual) division of labour but I am sure any reader who has got this far can see it for themselves.

I enjoy my habit of finishing with a prayer.

Loving God who created bodies- black, white, any colour, skin colour rainbow of browns and pinky-browns and tans. You created food- an abundance of food- grains of all kinds for bodies of all kinds, for stomachs of all kinds. You call us to break our “bread”, our everyday food and share it in memory of your body broken- you feed us body and soul to remind us to do the same. To take the grain, to make the bread, to labour and to love. To shape the meal to feed the needs of the body, to carry our celiac neighbour to safety. To bless wine and enjoy the complexity- the richness, the celebration, the friendship,

God you could have stamped us all out the same, as white round wafers are all the same but you chose to give us rainbow spirits in rainbow bodies- each one different, unique, needed to make the image whole. Harlequin God of shifting colours and differences bless us. Be our breads. Be our wines. Be the way we address our differences in love. Be the hand that offers health and acceptance with the bread.

We ask, we seek, we knock. We hunger and so do our brothers and sisters.

For more than crumbs, abundant God. For more than tokens on the margins. For more than a self-righteous ache in an irritated gut.

Embrace and feed us forever.

Whose body? Whose blood? Whose feet? Whose meal?

Holy Thursday, also known as Maundy Thursday is the feast day when we celebrate Jesus doing women’s work. Most celebrations of this within the Roman Catholic tradition leave out women or relegate them to bit-parts. The feeling of injury and offence I feel at this goes deep, however this is only a tip of the true iceberg. Symbolic “sacrament” can all too easily go hand in hand with deep failure to nurture the world. Jesus asked us to enact and embody sacrament not to empty it out into words and wafers with which to keep out the world. See also my last year’s post. 

I am going camping this weekend, so I will keep this short. But thinking about our church’s celebration of the Last Supper, or the First Eucharist or however we wish to label it I need to think about the idea of God’s table of grace.

I live in a world where women prepare food and clean tables and set cloths on them and serve food and make guests welcome and clean up afterwards. Not only women of course, but still overwhelmingly the real material work of feeding, cooking, serving, welcoming and entertaining is gendered work, women’s work. I spent the day preparing eggs with patterns of grass, flowers and leaves that we boiled in onion skins at work. The two women in the kitchen were busy hand-making dumplings for lunch for 50 children but they had time to discuss my eggs with me, ensure I had everything and do the background work of boiling them too.

In the midst of all this I was transferred to the baby room to serve lunch, encourage them to eat, work out which baby was the right age for which milk and ensure everyone got what they needed. There was coaxing, there was insisting, there was modelling “look sweet potato…yum” and there was a lot of laughing and affirmation o give our babies a welcoming experience of sitting around the table together. There was also a lot of sweeping and wiping and changing of clothes and the team of adults (all women) had to support each other through doing that while also entertaining and comforting babies.

Then it was back to the “big kids” room where I was welcomed with “when are we going to have the eggs”. They had, had lunch but were already looking forward to afternoon tea as children do. We broke coloured eggs together and served them up with a plate of antipasto prepared by the kitchen women and whichever teacher gave up their break to do some slicing. Once again there was a lot of cleaning up to do, then I went back to babies and helped with more afternoon teas in there and then back to the “big kids” for late snack.

It was as if my whole day, this Maundy Thursday revolved around the preparation and cleaning up (and joyful celebration of) food for others. Coming home my son was in the midst of making his dinner. We will eat and go to “mass” the one meal that I am supposedly not worthy to prepare. How offensive then that women cannot preside at the eucharist (and how untrue that we “can’t”, I presided at many really significant Eucharists today- celebrations of the bounty of the earth, out grateful and inclusive selves coming together and feeding our bodies and minds for growth- what is that if not eucharist?) I witnessed also a baby smile in relief at the end of his childcare day and latch onto his mother’s breast as well as two tiny boys lay down together in the cushions with their bottles of milk, their heads touching companionably while a third friend came and lay his head down too though he didn’t have (or need) a bottle. My day was full of Eucharist coming out of the tireless and often trivialised work of women (though it must be admitted our children and families are grateful). How am I “not Christ enough” to break bread at church?

But then who else do we exclude? Who in our world is not fed because of my privilege? Whose feet are never washed? Whose foot-washing is not given due respect and dignity, or is taken for granted? Who labours to stock a table they may not sit down at? Who is mocked and earmarked for crucifixion? Whose body is broken and thrown to the wolves? Whose blood is spilled? Whose voice preaching unheard?

If we are really going to get serious about communion, Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus, the idea that sacrament gives life then we must be transformed for radical sharing and service by it. It is not enough for a privileged man in a dress to stand in front of relatively privileged people one evening a year and them all to produce symbols of feeding and serving and including. LET’S GET REAL about sharing sacrament (bread, security, welcome, washing, love). Let’s touch and see and hear each other. Let’s break the bread of justice and fill every heart and belly with it.

And let’s not kid ourselves. The people who are feeding and wiping noses and sweeping up for the “least of these” are the ones who are following the call to “do this in memory of me.” Like Judas we say we will never betray Jesus. But we exclude him from leadership or even lock him away on Manus. We allow mining magnates to take away the earth that was growing his body to feed and nurture the world. 30 silver pieces and an insincere kiss is an every-day occurance in the neoliberal mind set.

Bread of life call us back to eat you, to become you, to love each other,

Forgive us for we are tired and liable to fall asleep

Feed us, wake us, wash us, draw us in and in and into your radical commitment

Transform the world!