Today is my mother’s birthday and although she has been dead for more than a decade I still think of her almost every day. At the time of her death I had not seen her for twelve years. Not by choice. After my father’s sudden demise my mother chose my children, her two adult grandsons to be her protectors, and dismissed me from her life, permanently.
When she died, my mother divided her assets evenly between my children and me, forcing her only daughter to live beneath the poverty level for the remainder of her life.
The final betrayal.
At the time of her death I was teaching Women’s Studies at the University.
In a recent post I wrote about finding God in music. I confess, I cannot remember the last time I set foot in a church. As a woman, I continually grapple with the foundational messages of Jesus and Catholic Social Teaching and the disconnect with the power structures that seek to control the ways we love and find justice. I long to participate in the culture I grew up in, but cannot support the weaponization of the tradition.
Lately, I’ve come to realize that the messages I connect to I find in music. There are particular songs that offer me the guidance, philosophy, and ideas around meaning and purpose that I resonate with. One of those is “Where’s the Love?” by the Black Eyed Peas.
I’ve been listening to it on repeat lately because it is the sermon I need to hear; it speaks to me and even though it was recorded quite a while ago, it is still relevant. I think it is fair to say that in our current socio-political culture, people are “acting like they got no mamas.”And by the way, I include myself in that statement. Like anyone, I sometimes get so caught up in believing that my way is the only way, I forget to listen to what others have to say.
We are in the midst of a political civil war and are so busy yelling past each other, we’ve forgotten how critical unity is to shaping a healthy government that serves its purpose – caring for the people. Continue reading “Where’s the Love by Gina Messina”
Author and daughter, Dr. Sheela Jane Menon, Assistant Professor at Dickinson College, PA
The country desperately needs to see the Nuns on the Bus on the road again. I just watched Radical Grace,nearly three years after my daughter and son-in-law gave it to me as a Christmas gift. My tardiness made me feel guilty, but despite the passage of time, the film still feels very timely. Three years after the cancer that is 45 entered the White House; three years after the corruption and cruelty he unleashed has metastasized into key branches of government; three years after Catholics have witnessed the heart of the Gospels ripped out the way children have been ripped from the arms of their parents at the southern border, this documentary about how a few nuns risked their place in the church to fight for justice tells me we need the leadership of the nuns more than ever.
September 17 marks the feast day of 12th century Benedictine abbess and powerfrau, Hildegard von Bingen.
Born in the Rhineland in present day Germany, Hildegard (1098–1179) was a visionary and polymath. She founded two monasteries, went on four preaching tours, and wrote nine books addressing both scientific and religious subjects, an unprecedented accomplishment for a 12th-century woman. Her prophecies earned her the title Sybil of the Rhine.
Over eight centuries after her death, Hildegard was finally canonized in May 2012 and in October 2012 was elevated to Doctor of the Church, a rare and solemn title reserved for the most distinguished theologians.
But most people today know Hildegard best for her soaring ethereal music.
The first composer for whom we have a biography, she composed seventy-seven sacred songs, as well as Ordo Virtutum, a liturgical drama set to music.
Her melodies are completely unlike the plainchant of her era—or anything that has come before or since. Likewise her lyrics are highly original and feel fresh to us even today. She was the only 12th century writer to compose in free verse.
Hildegard and her nuns sang the Divine Office eight times a day. She believed that song was the highest form of prayer—the mystical power of music reunited humankind to the ecstasy and beauty of paradise before the fall, connecting the singer directly with the divine, and joining heaven and earth in celestial harmony.
I’ve spent years researching Hildegard. I’ve visited the sites of her abbeys along the Nahe and Rhine, studied her writings, and written a novel about her, Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, published in 2012. I’ve had the privilege of discussing Hildegard’s life and work with scholars, musicians, and people of faith from around the world. But not until last month did I have the opportunity to experience firsthand what it would be like to sing Hildegard’s wondrous music.
In August I took part in a retreat entitled “Connecting Heaven and Earth: The Chant of Hildegard” at Hawkwood College in Stroud, southern England, led by renowned soprano Dame Emma Kirkby and by author, spirituality teacher, and musician Caitlin Matthews. I’ve been reading Caitlin’s sublime books from the moment she started publishing in the 1980s. Caitlin’s Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom, Bride of God is a spiritual classic I highly recommend. I also own and adore Emma’s iconic 1985 album, Feather on the Breath of God, which first introduced Hildegard’s music to a wide mainstream audience.
This course was open to singers of all abilities. I would describe myself as an enthusiastic amateur, better suited for folk songs than Hildegard’s soaring octave leaps, but as a lover of Hildegard, how could I not at least give it a try? I’ll confess I was somewhat intimidated to learn that many of the participants were professional or semi-professional singers who were quite adept at sight-reading and that some of the scores we worked with were not in modern notation but in the medieval neume pattern. I found our singing classes quite daunting, even grueling, for we were experiencing a heat wave and our classrooms were all south facing with huge glass windows and radiators we could not shut off!
Hildegard’s music is challenging, especially for amateurs like me. It requires a huge range of voice, from ascendant scales that even the experienced sopranos sometimes struggled with, to deeper, profounder notes. But as the weekend went on, I began to slowly grow in confidence, following the stronger voices around me, and enjoying the sheer beauty of the music.
Caitlin helped balance the retreat by sending us on outdoor walking meditations through the beautiful gardens and woodlands where we could meditate on Hildegard’s vision of Viriditas–the sacred as manifest in the green, growing world.
On our last evening, we performed a recital with an audience of one, a friend of one of the participants. Some of the more accomplished singers sang solos while the rest of us joined in the chorus and in other songs. Listening to the soloists, I nearly wept, it was so beautiful and transformative. Listening to Hildegard’s music, particularly when performed live, moves the spirit within. These sacred songs are literally uplifting, just like the dramatic leaps in scales. After our recital, our single audience member told us that she felt the music lifting her heart energy toward heaven.
Our evening recital at Hawkwood. Caitlin and Emma are front and center. I am the short one with the long hair in the back, on the right.
While writing Illuminations: A Novel of Hildegard von Bingen, I listened nonstop to CDs of Hildegard’s music, creating a wall of sacred sound that helped inspire and empower my writing. But singing her music live as an amateur was a completely different and possibly more authentic experience than listening to polished and digitally mastered CDs. Hildegard composed her music to be sung by her sister nuns, not all of whom would be accomplished vocalists. She might have had sisters who were tone deaf or had a very limited vocal range. In sacred song what matters most is the spiritual intention behind it, rather than talent or technique or polish. Each song is a prayer offered to the divine. Sacred song is all about the mystery of devotion rather than the mastery of notes or neumes. Singing in a group of like-minded women, even with such a broad range of ability as we had, we reached a sublime place, our voices joining, so that we could hear the Voice behind our individual voices.
“There is the music of heaven in all things,” Hildegard wrote. “But we have forgotten to hear it until we sing.”
In 2015 Kira Schlesinger wrote piece for Ministry Matters about how her own pro-choice stance on abortion had become more complicated the more she explored the issue of abortion. The article was widely read and shared, as well as hotly debated by many. You can read this article and the many comments here. Out of the response to this article grew Schlesinger’s Pro-Choice and Christian: Reconciling Faith, Politics, and Justice.
The book does a great job of walking the fine line of being both academically engaging and an easy enough read to engage a book or Bible study group as well. Schlesinger uses the first couple of chapters to dig into the history of abortion, listing recorded examples of the process as early as 1300 BCE. From there she briefly walks the reader through the roughly 100 years (Comstock Act in 1873 until Roe v. Wade in 1973) during which abortion was illegal in the United States. Finally, she wraps up this beginning historical section with details about the generations after Roe v. Wade up to our current reality.
There are people in my family who believe Christianity to be so inherently oppressive and harmful, that anyone who identifies as Christian is culpable for all of the harm done by all imperial colonization by Christian empires and nations, all harm done to Native Americans, to LGBTQ people, most slavery, racism, genocide, ecocide, and basically almost every problem the world has had for 2000 years.
Theirs is not an unusual view. I encounter this view regularly here in the Northeast US, though most people assign the blame to religion in general. For parts of my family, Christianity is the true evil because it was so popular, and thus the religion most commonly tied to violent and oppressive political leaders and structures.
I also encounter this attitude from feminists, quite frequently. According to many feminists, I am everything that is anti-feminist and misogynist… precisely, solely because I am Christian.
In my two previous posts, I shared my recent experience talking about privilege at a church near me. Today, I will wrap up this short series with a more personal reflection about privilege from a Christian perspective. Last month, I was thinking theologically about what those of us who have privilege should do with it. But, as feminists and womanists, acknowledging our privilege can be complicated. Most of us in this FAR community do possess some forms of privilege while, at the same time, we lack other forms of privilege. Each of us remains the same person wherever we go, yet our status can change when we switch contexts. As a black woman, I do not have white privilege or male privilege. But I am privileged when it comes to education and class and physical ability. I am a Christian who works at a Christian university in a part of Texas that is culturally predominantly Christian. So that’s a form of privilege. Although as a single woman without children, I don’t fit the cultural norm where I live, my sexual orientation and cis-gendered identity afford me some privilege, too.
The phone rings loud on the bedside table near my head, and I wake with that tiny heart attack that only truly jarring things, like middle of the night phone calls, seem to trigger. It takes me a moment to gather myself, to remember who I am, where I am, and what that sound is… and then I grab the phone, hop out of bed and cross the hall into the office where I can finally answer.
It’s a familiar voice, Eli, my colleague and friend from the domestic violence and sexual assault shelter where I volunteer. They’ve just received a call from the emergency room about a sexual assault survivor asking for an advocate and I’m the volunteer on-call this week.
Eli handles himself so very well, knowing that while he is awake working the night shift I am still trying to grasp his words, trying to shake the sleep from my body and my mind. As his words sink in I write down the survivor’s name and start pulling on clothes to head to the hospital.
Though I’ve taken a fair amount of these calls during daylight hours, this middle of the night call is a new experience for me. I live in the upper peninsula of Michigan and while I love it here, this particular night also happens to be yet another night with significant snowfall, and it takes me quite a while to dig my car out enough to get it out of the tiny alley next to our house and up the hill toward the emergency room.
Storytelling is as old as humanity. We tell ourselves stories – about who we are as individuals, about our families, and about our people – to understand who we are. A lot of narratives are told by a dominant segment of society at the expense of others. I am drawn to stories that flip the script. What stories about real people help us envision a world where all human beings can fulfill our God-given potential?
I practice listening deeply to stories. What is this person really saying about him or herself? What is the essence of what we learn from these events? It is never as simple as it seems. It can take time to find the soul of a story. Continue reading “The Philadelphia Eleven: A Documentary by Margo Guernsey”
I know that most Christians accept some version of the idea that Jesus, the person, died, and then ‘rose from the dead’ in a supernatural, miraculous way – probably the most common definition of what Christians celebrate at Easter. I grew up in progressive Christian churches, where I, too, was taught this idea, which I found fascinating and inspiring. Many people (both Christians and others) still find it healing and inspirational; and I want to state clearly that I think that’s well and good.
Okay.
What I would like to suggest, however, is that this approach may miss the main point of Easter, of resurrection, and of these narratives. Here goes.
In a recent post I wrote about 
Storytelling is as old as humanity. We tell ourselves stories – about who we are as individuals, about our families, and about our people – to understand who we are. A lot of narratives are told by a dominant segment of society at the expense of others. I am drawn to stories that flip the script. What stories about real people help us envision a world where all human beings can fulfill our God-given potential?
Feminism and Religion 