What IS it about Princeton...?

Events in my life have returned a recurring question to me from multiple quarters: What is it about Princeton that affects you so? 

I have struggled mightily for years to have a compelling and convincing answer to this question. It’s a trope by now in my family that I have a highly cathected relationship with Princeton Theological Seminary. I can understand their familiarity and weariness with it, given my 10- or even now 20-year journey to move from 

• attachment (ego-grasping of established success in higher education and professional endeavors, with doors opening because of association with the name-education of Princeton) and then 
• aversion (fair critiques against the ironies and paradoxes of such a place, i.e. a place to train Christian ministers to be disciples of a Jewish carpenter whose life/ministry bears little resemblance to the values of Ivy-League privileged education) 
• into the wisdom of non-attachment, gratitude and relinquishment, even forbearance. 

It has surely been a journey of forbearance for these, my intimates, as the energies of this question have worked their way through my mind, my body, my spirit. And with what result or product? After all these years, I still struggle to offer a compelling and persuasive answer to this question, What is it about Princeton that affects you so? It has been a journey with seemingly no resolution, a cycle of discourse or conversation in which they are now bound as well. For that, I do feel regret. For that, I feel sadness at being continuously unheard, unseen, both for my inability to articulate/persuade and our shared captivity to such distracting energies for what is life-giving in this world.

It dawns on me this morning that perhaps the issue lies in the question. Perhaps it’s not the right question to be asking. Just maybe, the question needs to be “Why aren’t more of us within ecclesial Christian traditions befuddled, frustrated, irritated, even enraged by an institution like Princeton Theological Seminary?” Why aren’t you bothered by institutions of higher (theological) education rife with such debilitating and damning paradoxes? If I/we were to try to answer that question, how would we proceed? I have been feeling my way back into some of these energies, not at my instigation but at the impetus of bemusing providence. 

The tendrils of Princeton's gift and burden in my own journey began back in 1992, when I had opportunity to visit the campus in a "Prospective Student" weekend. One could argue they began earlier in my Midwestern upbringing--folks in the Midwest have huge respect, even awe, for ivy-league institutions, almost without any awareness of them as they are. I matriculated for the Masters of Divinity degree in 1993, completed it in 1996. I was accepted into the doctoral program there in 1996, so pursued the PhD in practical theology, completing it in 2001. In the midst of that, I got married to my first love from college days, who then came to Princeton to do his Masters of Divinity degree. He finished in 2003, but we both stayed on one more year--I, to get a Lilly Endowment grant off the ground; he to serve as interim-chaplain at the Westminster Foundation at Princeton University. We were finally granted 'reprieve' in summer 2004 as I entered into seminary teaching and he entered his first installed call as a pastor of a local church. Eleven years' of Princeton Seminary (de)formation in overwhelming privilege, beautiful-souled people, 'establishment' and the version of 'community' that comes with incredible wealth, privilege, and high literacy/intellect. 

These next ten years have been spent in an environment of great felt-contrast, though still incredible privilege, beautiful-souled people, and the paradoxical challenges of community in the 'community' of higher theological education. Christian koinonia and institutional decline & grief are impossible bed-mates--economics and competition are interwoven irreparably into the relational yearnings of consumerist, implicitly 'class-oriented' human beings. Rarely are people seen, truly seen. Rarely are their voices heard, truly heard or invited. Structure and form dominate how human beings interact and even conceive of what they want, who they are in themselves. Given these things, I have spent these ten years doing the hard work of differentiation from Princeton Seminary and its establishment, institutional, high-privilege, class-conscious way of living into Christian discipleship. I have strived to express my heart-felt gratitude and receptivity to all the gifts my years at Princeton offered me, without question or condition. I could not do what I do today without my years there. I have also strived to release my own ego-attachment to the things Princeton instills as values, success, achievement. To release the yearnings for outward success, larger public affirmation of my work, signs of 'proof' that what I do matters to those within the hallowed halls of my (ironically stated) alma mater. And, as the journey of awakening has unfolded, I have also struggled to relinquish the aversion and anger, the sense of betrayal of my holiest yearnings that were woven into institutional and intellectual matters with little connection to the radical claims of compassionate living. The Buddhists are right, after all--aversion is the negative/shadow side of attachment. To have deep aversion is simply the reactive form of a remaining attachment. And I was making really good progress on that front. No longer yearning for what Princeton is perceived to offer, no longer angry or reactive to its way in the world, I was able to say with equanimity that I was thankful for being there and thankful for my journey to have taken me here. End of story.

Until my cousin's husband became the seminary's next president. The Seminary freakin' married into my family. Plopped back into the swirls of privilege, political back-talking, supposed strivings to be seen within the Princeton family once again, I watched as my soul's energies went through their paces once again. Attachment to the ease of being-invited into high-privilege places. Anger at how blind the 'community' is to the larger world and what 'reality' means to the 99%. Well-seasoned recognition of folks connecting with me not because of who I am but because of who I know, love, as my family. All of it arose again, until it eased in practice, in welcome, in acceptance of simply what-is. 

The ten years of practice shaped the days of awareness leading up to and completing the Inauguration Day festivities with a sense of peace and relinquishment. Yes, I had really done the work. Yes, life is funny in how it brings things into your life so as to give opportunity once again to practice, even to see how far you have come. And yes, the question is no longer the right question for me: What is it about Princeton that affects you so? The secondary question, the one that arose this time, Why are not more of us irritated, befuddled...? The further I travel along my way, with spirit-friends and heart-companions, more of us are not irritated, befuddled, etc. because none of all that really matters to this 'more' of us. None of that bears resemblance to the world that does beckon, that does yearn for our gifts. There are so many mysterious, beautiful, and challenging things welcoming this 'more' of us into the world that little time or energy is left for the story that had shaped so much of my own awareness, spirit, for so long.

It is my story, and it will always be with me. I will continue to learn from it and awaken to the things that drew me into the gift and burden of Princeton. I will continue to offer gratitude for all that has been made possible because my story is as it is. And I will continue to smile and breathe into the reality of what-is within Princeton's bounds, accepting the paradoxes so plentiful within them. All those who are drawn to those bounds can have a listening-heart companion in me, if they so choose. Sacred Mother can now do with this journey whate'er She may, as I offer it to holy purpose. Wait and watch. God alone. Blessed be.

Never lose sight of Him. Promise me.

These words returned to me yesterday, as I completed the first story-arc of a writing that happened to me this month, all 38 single-spaced pages. The words were spoken in my imagination, in the voice of Ed, an impish Irish mystic, recovered alcoholic, and Hospice patient I visited four times in the autumn of 1998. In the period of one month, I fell in love with him, in his crusty devotion, with his wife and family, with the Jesus he knew and trusted so very well. The journal came back into my life 14 years after I had begun it. By then, I was a weary theological professor reading my own words about these visits, this gentle Irish soul, not remembering the details of any of it.

I had grieved his death so very much, so very hard, unable to imagine that visiting with him four times could have such an overwhelming impact on my entire being, my life and sense of calling. When I perused the journal, the March morning in 2012, before my first writing class at Women Writing for (a) Change, I found my handwriting and words so very foreign. Who had I been then? What was I writing about? I had forgotten I had started this journal of “the communion of saints” in my life, Ed being the first one to receive journal-writing attention. The only one, really, though I began another entry upon the conclusion of work with my supervisor, Paula Jeanne Teague. That entry still had the fingerprints of Ed, however, so the journal was really only about this overwhelming entrance of an Irish soul into my own soul.

My then-counselor, Nancy, must have invited me to write Ed a letter of good-bye, for the final entry about him in that journal. She seemed to think I was “holding onto the dead,” and needed to let him go in some ritual fashion. She was probably right. At the very least, her invitation gave me the gift of this journal entry, November 19, 1998. This gift of these words in my own hand, from my deepest Self, unknown to me in full then, but for a glimpse. Never lose sight of Him. Promise me. Ed/I was urging me to never lose sight of Jesus, to promise M/myself I would never relinquish him. And today, I return to a deeply embodied awareness that that promise has been kept, if not by me alone. I have kept it, but I have also been held every step of the way to be kept as well.

Such is the reality of faith for any human soul. We never do what we can do, become who we fully are, alone. It may feel like it, many times, of course, but I guess I’m writing here to say to whomever will listen, ultimately, we are never alone. Ever. As long as there is energy coursing in our biological being, it connects us soul and body to all living things. Mind and spirit may require shaping, practice, training to connect in awareness or consciousness to others, but in soul and body, we are never alone. In my own faith tradition’s language, He is Risen.

Oddly, I learned how to step back into this wisdom in a triumvirate of two rabbis and a spiritual doula. A woman came into my life, in God’s impeccable timing, much like a comet streaks across the sky, with brilliant stars. The signposts were so clearly of abundant Intent, or the breadcrumbs so very obvious to a body-soul finally trained to taste and see. I called her my spiritual doula, to get the S.D. into our correspondence and shared awareness. She’s right to resist formalization of these things of Spirit with some-such title like “spiritual director”; I’m right to honor her and her overwhelming, gracious gift to me, to this holy work in the world, with a little bit of an impish title. And now we both know the need in her that met the need in me, two companions called together along this way, for whatever else God will shape in us in the time to come.

The writing that happened returned me to the words of a ‘crazy rabbi friend’ as well, when I wrote him a brief note on Easter 2008. I had awoken to the image of his face, along with that of a lama Garchen Rinpoche, with no idea what “He is Risen” meant anymore. The dream suggested I was to ask them, that they would know. Irwin graced me with a thoughtful, impassioned Teaching, wrestling with this unknowing moment alongside me, within me. In his words, he returned me "to the sheer force of Jesus."

And then just last week, five years after that Easter 2008, I sat in table fellowship with another rabbi-friend, just as crazy but in his own gentling, self-effacing way. We were discussing our upcoming trip to Israel together in which we would share leadership with three others, for a group of 34 students. I confessed my skepticism that this trip to “the land where Jesus walked” would have such Jesus-connotations for me. “I’ve never had this burning desire to walk where Jesus walked,” I said. “I’ve not had much access to Jesus or God language for a long time, actually, which is not to say I’m not devoted to God in Jesus.  I’ve just seen and now sensed in my body such woundedness at the intersections, the peripheries with others, other traditions. I’ve not had a physical need for this pilgrimage-to-Holy-Land thing. So much violence in the name of Jesus,” I concluded. My friend’s face clouded over a bit, seeming sad. “But your tradition has offered such good too. You can’t let it go,” he said. Pleaded, even. I was startled, and something in me shifted. “Well, you’re probably right,” I confessed. “Way seems to be opening for me to say Jesus’ name again with a sense that it actually connects to Someone real.” We raised our shotglasses and had another cracker with lox, leaving it at that.

Never lose sight of Him. Promise me. These words brought such tears to my eyes yesterday. In my travels and covenantal immersion with so many companions, rooted in so many different traditions—or none at all—had I lost sight of my Teacher, my Beloved, Jesus? This one we in the church call the Anointed? The Messiah? True to form, for me, yes and no. J 

One of my “go-to” scriptural stories/texts has always been that of the Emmaus Road, Luke 24. Not only did it undergird the work of my theological mentor, James Loder, but it has structured my understanding of seeing Jesus--and losing sight of him--on the risked roads of a living faith tradition. Loder mirrored for the world a “transformational logic” that rests within this story-text. I have always experienced it as Jesus’ way of making himself known, seen, and then unseen, until he returns to stand among them, you, us, again. Returning to the text, I’m amused to see that the two disciples ran from Emmaus back to Jerusalem, and Jesus returns to them there, saying “Peace be with you.” So I could say this text mirrors Jesus’ way of making himself known, seen, and then unseen, “until we are all together in Jerusalem.” Perhaps this is becoming a pilgrimage story after all.

But this way of understanding Jesus’ way in the text, in my own life, means that I lose sight of him all the time, when he vanishes to go to the next place “on the way.” I’ve learned to trust that I will find him again, or be found, as it may be more accurate to say. But I lose sight of Jesus all the time AND I’ve never lost sight of him. It seems impossible for me to do so, actually. The woman who used to be my spiritual director has often quipped to me, “Always the Bride, never the bridesmaid,” which makes me shy and a bit bashful, though seen and held. In moments of deepest, belly-fear, I lament and grieve my loss of him, this sense that I cannot address Jesus directly anymore, that I don’t feel him like I used to, that he’s not really there. And I understand when others, outsiders, bring languages of psychology and other-traditional language to talk about "the experience of Jesus in human minds, consciousness, awareness." That this "rising" of Jesus in Christian tradition is a psychological-cosmic evolution thing. I get that, but it's not the language for me. There's this seemingly un-rootable both/and conviction of awareness-evolution AND historical-physical reality of resurrection in my mind, my body, my blood, my bones. Apparently, I can't be or believe otherwise, even when I try, when I grieve, when I lament such clear absence. Just when I’ve about mustered all I know how, He is Risen. He comes back in such clarity, such Voice, such unabashed hold on me that I get shy and bashful all over again. A blushing Bride, my friend would say. 

And my dream of long ago? That fidelity to Jesus needs to begin to include the discernment with others like a lama and a rabbi, sings its truths all over again. Faith in the future will not be like faith in the past. It’s never been that way and it still is not. Faith in the future requires the mirroring of fidelity from outsiders of every tradition, deeply rooted in their own. Discovered again and again, on resisted pilgrimages, in the messiness of the mundane that is so incredibly extraordinary we mostly miss seeing it. Seeing each other. And for me, seeing Him. 

Or Her, as I know Her most these days. I don’t think Jesus would mind being seen in drag.

So, next year, Jerusalem.

Becoming Flame

[For the HearthKeepers, all]

Rooted finally in

who you’ve always been,

Mother is Home.

Finding you have wings,

you soar in migration,

sisters newly met.

Cradled, buoyant, energized,

you rest in the gracious embrace

of the ocean surf, the river’s flow,

the lake’s glassy surface.

Yet Old Faithful erupts, and

you rest on the crest of its spray.

As the water recedes below you,

will you be held?

What wings you have,

will they be too wet to fly?

What roots you’ve grown,

Will they lose hold?

Our sacred fire crackles

gentling in its hearth,

warming hands, toasting s’mores,

welcoming us home.

Then like wildfire,

it races in front of us

from home to home to office.

Dry kindling,

carelessly strewn for centuries,

catches fire.

Steady flames or

abundant conflagration?

Devotion fires like this,

its underground, molten wisdom

Creates planets when it cools,

moves earth when it flows.

It upholds all structure,

stability in flux held firm.

It can erupt too,

without much warning,

when a crack in the firmament

appears beneath our feet.

Fear of this harm erupts, in kind,

Grounded in flight, the Circle holds.

Circle fire and earth fire

connect in the human heart

welcomed to the hearth,

upheld by sacred ground.

Fire is fire, we learn,

it speaks, sings, moves

in many tongues,

Multiple forms that

burn, inspire, lighten

all the faces in a room.

Devotion reflects now in my face,

In everything I am,

Because of this Hearth,

Because of you and our circle-fire.

This hearth brings devotion’s wild-fire

Through me, into the room.

I will tend it, Keep it.

We hear, oddly, the church fathers.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph,

“As far as I can, I pray, fast, live in peace,

purifying my thoughts and actions.

What else can I do?”

The Old Woman in Abba Joseph

stands up, stretching her hands open

To invite embrace. “If you will,”

She whispers, “You can become

All flame.”

An Open Letter from Wife to Mistress Church

               The day of Thanksgiving upon which I became engaged, I could not have imagined that my marital commitment would require sharing the love of my life with hundreds of people and their extended families. I have arguably loved only one man in my life, in a sexual and relationally committed way. Perhaps that weakens my realism about human love, imagined in idealism of spirit. The love of my life is also my first love, one with a radicalized bent for loyalty and singularity of focus upon me. We were chosen well for one another, as I struggle to trust within embodied love. It was therefore a surprise to both of us that for the last ten years, our marriage commitment has required me to share him, has required a silent and silencing allowance of a mistress. So I write an open letter from wife to mistress, Everywhere Presbyterian Church.

               I became aware of you in this light only slowly and in particular events. The cover that work affords. The evening meetings. The emotional demands and delights spent in ways that did not involve me…not only did not involve me, but required my absence. Functioned better for him and for you without me. The interruption of vacations with calls, allowable even on our supposedly private time. The entrance of your presence in our bedroom, our most intimate of time and space. Though do not misunderstand: my beloved and I discussed you, your needs, your communal neuroses constantly. It is not as if this unbidden presence were secret in any way. We continued to enact and live into the love given us; but I eventually realized you had become the dominant force within a year of our life here. Even when my own body and sexual identity were exploited for amusement and the sake of ignorance, your power and primacy were irrefutable. How does a woman persuade against the holiness, importance, and demands of Mistress Church? She claims to have direct and exclusive line to God, after all. The best strategy is to know when you’ve been beat and listen for what you can learn, listen for redemption of the mess we humans make of covenantal love.

Because redemption does happen. Spirit takes what you do, what we least value, even what we are most ashamed of and enlivens it for holy purpose and absolute delight. Even as my anger is palpable, aimed at what I feel deeply as your intimate intrusion and some kind of betrayal, I also know this covenantal chaos and multiplicity to be the root of my own body’s healing, the seed of stability in my life of companionships, the invitation to an expressive theological delight able to companion my own suffering and that of others. This moral outrage has given me my life’s blood, my life’s work. Who I am today—a lavishly loved woman able to consciously enjoy multiple covenantal intimacies of Spirit—is a direct result of your presence, your intrusion and neediness, in the life of me and my beloved. So, go figure. Spirit’s life-giving force takes the ugly ways human treat one another and redeems them, turns them into seeds of new life previously inconceivable.

So am I thankful on this anniversary day of celebration and recognition? I am thankful for the fruits of the Spirit made flesh in these years—nothing more, nothing less. As Brother Paul has professed, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” I am thankful for the love that my husband enjoys in his day-to-day ministries in your midst. In the Bible study group on Wednesday mornings where he gets to share his love of Scripture, his passion for God’s people. I am thankful for the moments of joy this path has enabled within him—usually times away from the church, when he is reminded of Whose he is and the beauty of his own Archimidean point on the unchangeable rocks of Grand Marais, Minnesota. I am thankful for the peace of mind he receives when offering his many gifts of competent leadership, liturgical passion, political precision and more.  I have seen patience and kindness grow within him, as he faces those completely other from himself. I have always known his generosity and faithfulness, his gentleness of spirit. Even when he is angry, perhaps most when he is angry. And I am thankful for how his preaching voice has developed, his vision for God’s work in today’s changing times is growing, the many ways in which his self-control has shepherded his own growth, our own. Because you see, he and I are of one flesh, as created in God’s way with us before we ever arrived here.

And my own relationship with you, Mistress Church? You have forced the death of my own idealism about congregational life. I no longer believe that congregational life is the root of revelation(s) through Scripture for a life of discipleship, though I know that one can be a disciple underneath and hidden from or within a congregational community. What this little death (J) means for my own offerings to God toward a theological nurture of God’s people, I am continuing to learn with each new companion of Spirit I meet. I am overwhelmingly thankful for those who have guided my steps, who have carried my spirit during this period of learnings, who continue to live in covenant with me toward larger redemptive pursuits to come. And I love fiercely the one I have been given to love, whom I lose and find over and over again, for the very rest of my life. Our beloved Brian.

Finding the One

You are not the one I engaged to marry

a dashing figure of brisk authority and gentle spirit,

an attorney in love with the law, wearied by its practice.

you were a mystery to me then, a soul

proclaiming his love…for me? A beloved friend

interested in my passions, my strengths, my work?

I had never met anyone like you,

except you of course, ten years before.

You are not the one I married either

an earnest husband, clearing a path for us both.

a companion in scholarship, or along the canal path

where a granola bar appeared like magic

because you knew I would be hungry.

we were young lovers then, eager to please

driven by the adventure of the deep.

You are not the one who began life here with me

a new pastor, overeager to please his flock,

to be successful as we knew it then.

fledgling sermons in a preacher’s voice, then

finding your own voice, strong, sorting

the pleasures and politics of a town

you would never have chosen to serve.

Now, you are the one I lose all the time.

The young-old man vested in proclamation

facing a public life you could never have known,

might not have chosen if you did, serving

people you did not know but now must love,

homeless in all homes you have known but one

you live for vacations and sit with death in between.

You are therefore the one I get to find, again and again,

for the rest of my life: a fledgling vulnerable soul

on Spirit’s rock, torn between the tyranny

of duty and the uncertainty of desire

a trustworthy spirit, distrusting he is enough,

one who imagines new ways to know, in safety

who yearns to honor his own passions and work,

if only he knew how. Tenacious as the dawn, 

I know you as the one I yearn to find.