Winter, M.T.
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| Interviewer | M.T., thank you so much for agreeing | 0:01 |
| to be interviewed, I just want some background information. | 0:03 | |
| If you could please say, and maybe spell, your full name. | 0:06 | |
| - | Well, my name, that I'm known by, in religion, | 0:10 |
| and professionally, and through the music, | 0:15 | |
| is Meriam Therese Winter M-I-R-I-A-M, T-H-E-R-E-S-E, | 0:17 | |
| and then Winter, with no S, W-I-N-T-E-R. | 0:25 | |
| However, my legal name, and what I use for all | 0:29 | |
| of my travel documents, and anything official, | 0:33 | |
| is Gloria Frances Winter, G-L-O-R-I-A, glory be to God! | 0:37 | |
| (laughing) | 0:42 | |
| Frances, F-R-A-N-C-E-S, thanks be to God, Pope Frances | 0:43 | |
| is here, and Winter. | 0:47 | |
| - | I love it, that's wonderful. | 0:49 |
| And when and where were you born? | 0:52 | |
| - | I was born in 1938, June 14th, comin' up. | 0:54 |
| - | It is! | 0:58 |
| - | Yeah, this will end my 77th year, | 0:59 |
| the year of a double sacred, seven, seven, I'll be 78 | 1:03 | |
| on June 14, 1938, in Passaic, P-A-S-S-A-I-C, New Jersey. | 1:07 | |
| - | Happy early birthday to you. | 1:14 |
| - | Thank you so much. | 1:15 |
| - | (laughing) That's wonderful, ah, | 1:16 |
| you are a member of the ... | 1:18 | |
| - | Medical Mission Sisters, officially, the Society | 1:20 |
| of Catholic Medical Missionaries, yeah, and I entered | 1:24 | |
| in 1955, so, I've been there a while. | 1:27 | |
| - | Yeah, were you 17, is that right? | 1:31 |
| - | I had just turned 17, yeah, just shortly after | 1:33 |
| my 17th birthday, the November after June. | 1:36 | |
| - | Oh, where did you go to school? | 1:40 |
| - | Well, I went to a public school, grade school, | 1:44 |
| I think until about the sixth grade, then I moved to, | 1:47 | |
| like a Catholic school, and then a Catholic high school, | 1:50 | |
| Pope Pious XII, for one year, and then to, that was | 1:53 | |
| in Passaic, New Jersey, and then our family moved, | 1:57 | |
| my father was a state trooper, and he had built | 2:01 | |
| a little house nearer to where his barracks was, | 2:04 | |
| and in Morris Plains, New Jersey, so I went to Bayley Ellard | 2:07 | |
| High School for the last three years. | 2:11 | |
| - | And your college, graduate school, where did you go? | 2:15 |
| - | Well, I entered The Society, with the dream, | 2:20 |
| and the conviction, I wanted to be a doctor, | 2:23 | |
| I mean a real doctor, not a Ph.D, I mean a real doctor. | 2:26 | |
| - | Yes. | 2:30 |
| - | I was gonna go to the missions, I wanted to go to Africa, | 2:31 |
| Zulu, to work among the Africans, and I especially focused, | 2:34 | |
| I chose this particular community, my girlfriend and I | 2:41 | |
| secretly, looking at brochures, reading things, | 2:46 | |
| and chose it over against Marionol, because Marionol, | 2:50 | |
| there was an option that you might end up teaching, | 2:53 | |
| and the one thing I did not want to do, was teach. | 2:56 | |
| So, I kinda hedged my bets, you know, and came to this | 2:59 | |
| Medical Mission Sisters, where they had hospitals, | 3:02 | |
| and nursings, went everything, all over the world. | 3:05 | |
| - | Okay. | 3:07 |
| - | So I entered in Philadelphia, Pine Road, Philadelphia, | 3:08 |
| in 1955, and was actually met for the first time, | 3:13 | |
| I was met by the founder of the community. | 3:20 | |
| - | Really! | 3:23 |
| - | Yeah, and here's an interesting twist, | 3:24 |
| Anna Dengel, in the process, one of the big things | 3:28 | |
| I was doin' right now, is the final touches | 3:31 | |
| on a biography of her, that's telling the untold story, | 3:35 | |
| from documents locked up in our archives, for years. | 3:40 | |
| That she, she founded this community, and in a sense, | 3:46 | |
| to bring professional medical care to women | 3:53 | |
| who could not be seen by male doctors, Muslim, and Hindu, | 3:57 | |
| and at that time, was India, and the Peshawar district | 4:02 | |
| of Pakistan, northern India, and Arabal Pindi, | 4:07 | |
| and she, long story, and you can read it when it comes out, | 4:13 | |
| got medical training, and this is like in the teens, | 4:18 | |
| you know, 1919, 1920. | 4:20 | |
| She graduated from Cork Medical School, | 4:23 | |
| went there four years, realized she needed help. | 4:27 | |
| - | Oh yes. | 4:31 |
| - | And, while the Protestants were doing wonderful stuff, | 4:32 |
| they were the pioneers, and they did wonderful stuff, | 4:35 | |
| they weren't in this area, but the Catholics | 4:38 | |
| were doing very little, if nothing, for the women | 4:41 | |
| in this way, and there was this wonderful resource | 4:43 | |
| of Catholic Sisterhoods, you know, and if they could do, | 4:48 | |
| but they couldn't even participate at childbirth. | 4:51 | |
| When she had maternal, maternity cases, or deliveries, | 4:54 | |
| they had to turn their face, or be outside the door, | 4:58 | |
| or ... | 5:01 | |
| - | The men had to do that? | 5:02 |
| - | No, men couldn't, the men could not touch ... | 5:03 |
| - | Yeah, yeah, but the women had to ... | 5:05 |
| - | The women could, the women, if they were nuns, | 5:07 |
| if they were vowed religious, they were not allowed to. | 5:09 | |
| And there were no real lay missionaries then, | 5:13 | |
| in Ketalasis, I mean, it was like, you become a nun, | 5:15 | |
| if you're a missionary, you're a nun, you know? | 5:18 | |
| - | Yes! | 5:20 |
| - | That was a later development, so, the long story short, | 5:20 |
| in the end, she felt this calling, with a lot of support, | 5:24 | |
| came to the U.S.A, she's Austrian by birth, | 5:27 | |
| and gave rise to this community, which, from its origins, | 5:30 | |
| is pioneering, it's inclusive, and it was not out of | 5:35 | |
| a conversion principle, it is, you be there for those women. | 5:40 | |
| So, I was drawn to that, I was drawn to go to Africa, | 5:44 | |
| but I was drawn to that spirit, and in 1936, | 5:48 | |
| Canon Law changed, and so, immediately, now you can have | 5:53 | |
| women doctors, and women nurses, everything, | 5:58 | |
| but this was the impetus, and I felt this story | 6:01 | |
| has to be out, okay, so ... | 6:04 | |
| - | What is her name? I'm sorry. | 6:06 |
| - | Anna Dengel, D-E-N-G-E-L, Anna Dengel, | 6:07 |
| and she's of Austrian birth, | 6:11 | |
| but she came to the states, and she became a naturalized | 6:13 | |
| U.S. citizen, so she's an American. | 6:16 | |
| And, anyway, so, I, why did I go down there, | 6:20 | |
| well, she interviewed me, I got into the community, | 6:23 | |
| and it was the '55, in Catholicism, there was this | 6:26 | |
| kind of turbulence, pre-Vatican II, and those of us | 6:30 | |
| who were always like, if you're pioneering, you know, | 6:34 | |
| like, you're gonna do this for Muslim women, and medicine, | 6:37 | |
| and change Canon Law, it's no big deal to say wait a minute, | 6:39 | |
| we can't keep singing Latin, we gotta do, and so we began, | 6:42 | |
| doing English, and all this, with our liturgies, | 6:45 | |
| which was very important for our community, | 6:48 | |
| well before the changes came, and I sort of had a bent | 6:50 | |
| for poetry, and loved the chant, and all that stuff, | 6:54 | |
| and, so we were in that. | 6:57 | |
| And then when Vatican II came, and then they put out that | 7:01 | |
| liturgy decree, and in that period, the community said | 7:05 | |
| we're gonna need to have somebody trained, because, | 7:10 | |
| we don't teach, you know, we just teach our own members | 7:12 | |
| what they need to know. | 7:15 | |
| Ah, we need someone who would be an, have some expertise | 7:16 | |
| in this area, to help us, so they asked if I would be | 7:21 | |
| willing to do it. | 7:24 | |
| Now, why don't you just line me up against a wall, | 7:26 | |
| and say, "Would you be willing to be shot at sunrise?" | 7:28 | |
| (laughing) | 7:30 | |
| You know, you're where you want the bullet to go. | 7:31 | |
| I cannot tell you the sort of devastation, but I also | 7:33 | |
| have to tell you, that I'm not inclined to say no. | 7:39 | |
| I don't do no well. | 7:44 | |
| - | Yes. | 7:46 |
| - | But I was given a choice, okay, so I say freely, | 7:48 |
| it was not imposed on me, they knew what that was, | 7:51 | |
| they said, "Would you be willing?" | 7:54 | |
| And I said a prayer or two, and I said yeah, I would. | 7:57 | |
| Long story short, went to Catholic University, | 8:02 | |
| got my degree, and a Bachelor of Music degree. | 8:04 | |
| And Catholic University wasn't exactly forward thinking, | 8:09 | |
| you know, they were doing, teaching the Latin motets, | 8:14 | |
| so I loved that anyway, I love Gregorian Chant, | 8:17 | |
| and I love the motets. | 8:19 | |
| They were soon to be passe, but I loved them, | 8:20 | |
| and then I got my instrument, was an organ, | 8:24 | |
| and I gave a recital on four manuals, you know, | 8:27 | |
| in the Cathedral of Mary our Queen, ba bum, bum, bum! | 8:30 | |
| You know, with putting, with my habit on, | 8:34 | |
| threw up my habit, and I had pants underneath, you know, | 8:37 | |
| and I though my teacher was gonna fall right | 8:41 | |
| over the balcony and crash, because he was so horrified. | 8:43 | |
| But I said, "Listen, I've gotta move my feet, don't even, | 8:46 | |
| you know, think about this". | 8:49 | |
| So, I finished, and I never played another note, | 8:51 | |
| because the medical mission sisters were missionary, | 8:55 | |
| we don't have an organ. | 8:58 | |
| - | Right! | 8:59 |
| - | What are we gonna do with an organ? | 9:00 |
| And, within months, three, four months after I got | 9:01 | |
| that degree, finally, the English things we were singing | 9:05 | |
| became mandatory, not just permissible, but mandatory, | 9:09 | |
| everything went into English, so I had expertise | 9:12 | |
| in an instrument I would never play again, | 9:14 | |
| and in a whole category, and catalog of music | 9:18 | |
| we would not use. | 9:21 | |
| I was totally irrelevant, so for the second time, | 9:23 | |
| this devastating reality, what am I gonna do with the rest | 9:26 | |
| of my life, begin to teach the novices, you know, hello! | 9:30 | |
| And ah, what happened was ... | 9:34 | |
| Okay, excuse me, could you push pause? | 9:40 | |
| - | Sure. | 9:44 |
| - | Okay, great, pick it up again. | 0:02 |
| - | So, with then, Latin going out, it was mandatory, | 0:03 |
| the vernacular language, which we had lobbied for for years, | 0:09 | |
| it happened, but again, I was rendered irrelevant, | 0:14 | |
| and feeling deeply irrelevant, and I said to myself, | 0:17 | |
| and I think I attended some simple conference somewhere, | 0:22 | |
| where someone was singing a very simple song, in English, | 0:26 | |
| to be used in ritual, I think it was only about four lines. | 0:32 | |
| And everybody was cheering, and looked at myself, | 0:35 | |
| I said, "I can do better than that". | 0:39 | |
| And I didn't mean it in any demeaning way, | 0:43 | |
| but since the age of six, six and a half, seven, | 0:44 | |
| I was writing poetry, I had books of poems. | 0:47 | |
| It was my instinctive way to go, like, and I said, | 0:50 | |
| "I've got a degree in music, and all these four manual | 0:56 | |
| "189 stop organ pipes, and I can't do anything." | 0:59 | |
| So I picked up a guitar, it was the Hootenanny Movement, | 1:06 | |
| and the singalongs, we were singin' along on the side, | 1:09 | |
| I said, "I can learn three chords", which is about | 1:12 | |
| what what I did, and I started to sing. | 1:14 | |
| And at one point, I was so, kind of down, | 1:18 | |
| they sent me to our vacation spot in New Jersey | 1:21 | |
| to cheer up, and I remember, it was a terrible rainy day, | 1:23 | |
| and I was with my guitar, other sisters were there, | 1:27 | |
| but they were out of the room, and I was singing, | 1:29 | |
| ♪ I saw raindrops on my window, joy is like the rain ♪ | 1:33 | |
| ♪ Laughter runs across my pane ♪ | 1:40 | |
| ♪ Slips away and comes again ♪ | 1:44 | |
| ♪ Joy is like the rain ♪ | 1:47 | |
| And the third verse, Christ asleep within my boat, | 1:50 | |
| whipped by wind, yet still afloat, joy is tried by storm. | 1:53 | |
| And I ended up, and I'm sobbing, and I'm screaming | 1:57 | |
| in sight of God, "You got me into this mess, | 2:01 | |
| "You got me into this mess, I tried to follow | 2:03 | |
| "the Holy Spirit, and Your Spirit, and I have no life, | 2:06 | |
| "I have no nothing, I'm useless, I feel terrible! | 2:09 | |
| "And you know what, I made my final vows, | 2:12 | |
| "and I ain't gonna break them, so You better do something, | 2:15 | |
| "You better get me out of this, You better do something!" | 2:17 | |
| Over time, there hasn't been a place on Planet Earth, | 2:21 | |
| that I have physically gone to, that that song | 2:25 | |
| hasn't gotten there before me. | 2:28 | |
| And the numbers of people, even during the Viet Nam War, | 2:31 | |
| I've had airline pilots, medic evac people, a person sent, | 2:36 | |
| you know, I came back, and I turned on Voice of America, | 2:40 | |
| and there were these nuns singing. | 2:44 | |
| I got the guts to go out again, | 2:45 | |
| God is gonna be with me. | 2:47 | |
| The stories were, you know, "My little child is a, | 2:49 | |
| "was a dwarfed child, and he loved the song Zacheus, | 2:52 | |
| "and he died, can we use it at the funeral?" | 2:55 | |
| Ah, I cannot come to the banquet, I would give | 2:57 | |
| these concerts, and I had this, give out these song sheets | 3:00 | |
| to sing along, and there was one woman, with her six kids, | 3:03 | |
| and one had his little legs stickin' out, he was only | 3:06 | |
| about four or five, at the most, and he wanted | 3:08 | |
| a sheet of paper, okay, and I'm singin' and watchin', | 3:11 | |
| he had every syllable, he was, and he was lookin' | 3:15 | |
| at the paper, and later I went over, | 3:17 | |
| but he had the paper upside down, he couldn't read, | 3:19 | |
| he just wanted the paper, like the adults. | 3:23 | |
| He sang the whole song verbatim. | 3:25 | |
| So, I mean, stories about meaning that a big seed | 3:27 | |
| was sown early on, that I take steps in directions, | 3:32 | |
| I don't know why. | 3:36 | |
| - | Yes. | 3:39 |
| - | There's no reason for it, I don't even know | 3:39 |
| if I want to do it, I don't not want to, | 3:42 | |
| but I don't want to, it's not a choice. | 3:44 | |
| That has been the pattern, consistently, | 3:46 | |
| to this very moment, okay, ending up in this place, | 3:49 | |
| and finding, all of a sudden, as I look back, | 3:54 | |
| which is so important, to have people like yourself, | 3:58 | |
| asking people like ourselves, "What did you do, | 4:03 | |
| "and why'd you do it?", you know. | 4:07 | |
| - | Yes. | 4:09 |
| - | Because, in looking back, and that's my teaching | 4:10 |
| modality now, with the new degree that we have, | 4:12 | |
| to have people do that, to look, and discern, what is | 4:15 | |
| the finger of the divine leading, what is the wisp | 4:20 | |
| of spirit grace, that somehow is there, and it leads you | 4:23 | |
| to hear that somehow makes sense of all | 4:28 | |
| that is here and now, even though | 4:31 | |
| you'll never comprehend it, even though it's beyond, | 4:32 | |
| because the finite can never, never comprehend the infinite. | 4:36 | |
| So all we can do is grasp a little piece, and say, "Yes, | 4:41 | |
| "this feels right for the moment". | 4:46 | |
| If it's not right, then you need to do something about it. | 4:48 | |
| You know, so, the music that started then, the path | 4:51 | |
| I was on, and so why I tell this circuitous story, | 4:55 | |
| it's so important to know, that the context in which | 4:59 | |
| I have been, this international community, | 5:04 | |
| whose membership, and its leaders are diverse | 5:07 | |
| from around the world, those women that we were helping | 5:09 | |
| are now leaders of their own, in our community | 5:13 | |
| and elsewhere. | 5:16 | |
| And, in fact, one of our Indian sisters, | 5:17 | |
| I just spoke with her a few minutes ago, | 5:19 | |
| she's our NGO representative at the U.N., very involved | 5:22 | |
| with the women, and we have, it's the context | 5:27 | |
| I needed to be in. | 5:30 | |
| And then, what I eventually did, I followed, like, | 5:34 | |
| the song lines, I followed the paths, | 5:38 | |
| I went around the world to our places, so I have been, | 5:39 | |
| I have dipped my toes in the oceans that lap | 5:44 | |
| the shores of Africa, and India, and you name the places, | 5:47 | |
| you know. | 5:51 | |
| And, deeply grateful for the privilege of being able to | 5:52 | |
| be a vessel of some of some spirit energy, | 5:58 | |
| not only passing through me out there, and helping others, | 6:03 | |
| but then to turn around and be able to be a receptor | 6:06 | |
| of someone's story, spirit, and encouragement, to say, | 6:09 | |
| and they'll always say, "I don't know why I'm here". | 6:14 | |
| Sometimes they talk to me, "I don't know why I'm here, | 6:17 | |
| "I don't know why I want to talk to you". | 6:18 | |
| And I say, "I don't either, but you know (chuckles), | 6:20 | |
| "the Spirit is saying something". | 6:23 | |
| And that's what happens, you know, you give a safe place | 6:25 | |
| to not know what you're doin'. | 6:29 | |
| To now know who you are, to make sense of nothing, | 6:31 | |
| but to know there's something, there's something, | 6:36 | |
| where to feel safe, and then, when you get connected | 6:38 | |
| with other women, who are similar, all of a sudden, | 6:41 | |
| you've seen it. | 6:44 | |
| - | Yes. | 6:45 |
| - | The bonds that form, that literally last forever. | 6:46 |
| And the difference that we're making | 6:50 | |
| out in the world quietly, in our own little spaces, | 6:52 | |
| homeplace, workplace, and that's what I've | 6:56 | |
| been doing consistently. | 6:59 | |
| Then I came here, why? | 7:01 | |
| I turned it down three times, I didn't want to teach | 7:04 | |
| - | Did you really? | 7:07 |
| - | I didn't want to teach. | 7:08 |
| - | You didn't want to teach, that's right. | 7:09 |
| - | I wasn't, I didn't even want the degree, | 7:10 |
| why would I do this? | 7:11 | |
| You know, why am I here? | 7:12 | |
| When I got the music done, I went on, and kinda | 7:16 | |
| did concerts and programs around, and then I thought | 7:19 | |
| I gotta learn more about, because, you know, | 7:23 | |
| I was big, I was not big among Catholics, | 7:25 | |
| except underground, you know, and never made it | 7:28 | |
| into the institutional hymnals, it was always, like banned, | 7:31 | |
| in, ah, like the school rooms and all. | 7:34 | |
| But it was the Protestants, and the Mennonites, and the, | 7:37 | |
| I mean, you name it, the Baptists, and the Presbyterians, | 7:40 | |
| and the Canadians, all over the ... | 7:44 | |
| And so I needed, I said I've gotta learn more about | 7:45 | |
| the Protestant biggies, and so McMaster offered, | 7:47 | |
| and they paid my whole way, to a degree, you know, | 7:50 | |
| in Masters of Religious Ed, I got done with that, | 7:54 | |
| and I thought I still don't know enough, | 7:57 | |
| and I might as well learn some more about the Bible, | 7:59 | |
| so I applied to Princeton Theological Seminary, | 8:02 | |
| and they asked me, "Well, what are your others?" | 8:05 | |
| I mean, it was weird, they only take 15 people | 8:07 | |
| out of hundreds. | 8:09 | |
| - | Yes? | 8:10 |
| - | And, why are you coming here, and I said, | 8:11 |
| "Well, it's close to my Mother House". | 8:14 | |
| (Laughing) | 8:18 | |
| - | Okay, "And you have good Bible people". | 8:19 |
| I wanted to learn Bible, so that was a saving grace. | 8:22 | |
| But I also wanted to invent my own degree, which, | 8:26 | |
| of course, you don't say that to Princeton. | 8:28 | |
| But I did, because that's what I wanted to do. | 8:30 | |
| And, what other schools have you applied to? | 8:33 | |
| I said, "None". | 8:36 | |
| "Are you gonna apply to anything else?" | 8:38 | |
| And I guess they though I was gonna be arrogant, | 8:41 | |
| I said no. | 8:42 | |
| He said, "What if you don't get in?" | 8:43 | |
| And I said, "Well then, I won't go to school, | 8:44 | |
| "that will be a sign". | 8:45 | |
| That was it, well, I got in. | 8:47 | |
| - | Oh! | 8:48 |
| - | Full ride. | 8:49 |
| - | That is amazing. | 8:50 |
| - | It's amazing! | 8:51 |
| And then, I did, for my dissertation, toward, | 8:53 | |
| to look into, is there a theology of Catholic Church music, | 8:57 | |
| 'cause I didn't know any. | 9:01 | |
| And the conclusion, with all these incredibly | 9:04 | |
| wonderful scholars, you know, I mean, we had the, | 9:06 | |
| Bruce Medzger, the big scholar, I mean, and Anderson, | 9:10 | |
| I mean is, all these people, you know. | 9:14 | |
| And so, my final thing was, the heads | 9:16 | |
| of all those departments, 'cause I created my own design, | 9:19 | |
| my degree, I took these, I studied liturgy, | 9:22 | |
| and all through the Old Testament, all the Protestant | 9:27 | |
| denominations, everything else, and then I did this | 9:29 | |
| Catholic Church music, you know. | 9:31 | |
| But in the end, I got validated, and I did say | 9:33 | |
| Catholic Church has no theology of music. | 9:37 | |
| What it has is an aesthetic of music. | 9:41 | |
| You can't say that, if is sounds like the Heavenly Spheres, | 9:45 | |
| this is sacred music music. | 9:48 | |
| Because who's ever heard the Heavenly Spheres? | 9:51 | |
| You know, In other words, you can say that | 9:54 | |
| in a Catholic University an get away with it, | 9:56 | |
| because, you know, they feel the same way. | 9:59 | |
| But go to another Protestant, or sectarian place, | 10:01 | |
| and they're gonna say, "What's your proof, | 10:05 | |
| what's your basis, what's your evidence?" | 10:07 | |
| So I learned a lot, I needed Princeton, they were wonderful, | 10:10 | |
| because, you know, I had to get out of my totally | 10:14 | |
| naive Catholic, you know, just spinning the same old story | 10:16 | |
| comfort zone. | 10:20 | |
| And so, I also had this wonderful Eucharist background, | 10:22 | |
| you know, really understanding the sources, getting to know | 10:27 | |
| Jesus in a different way, and the whole Eucharist tradition, | 10:29 | |
| how it evolved, and how, so that lead to | 10:33 | |
| all kings of things, like my book, | 10:37 | |
| Eucharist With a small "e", and eventually, my latest, | 10:38 | |
| recent, not this recent, but a couple of, some years ago, | 10:42 | |
| 2009, Paradoxology: Spirituality in a Quantum Universe, | 10:45 | |
| so, I added to that, like, science, and the quantum sphere, | 10:51 | |
| but I got the rudiments of that experience | 10:55 | |
| from Princeton, you know, | 10:59 | |
| And then while I finished, before I finished | 11:01 | |
| my dissertation, I said, "I'm gonna be a, I have to delay | 11:04 | |
| "this a little bit, 'cause I'm going, I'm going | 11:10 | |
| "to the refugee camps". | 11:12 | |
| There was a call, you know, the fall of Pol Pot, | 11:14 | |
| and there was a call for the refugee camps, | 11:16 | |
| and our community, Medical Mission Sisters, | 11:19 | |
| they're sending a team, and I said, "I wanna go". | 11:21 | |
| And they said, "Anybody free". | 11:24 | |
| And I said, "Oh my God, I just finished | 11:25 | |
| "my comprehensives, I'm free, I'm free!" | 11:26 | |
| And then I said, "But what good am I, who needs a | 11:29 | |
| Eucharist person, who needs a liturgist, what good am I?" | 11:33 | |
| And they said, "Oh, we need a non-medical, | 11:36 | |
| you cannot imagine". | 11:38 | |
| So myself, and this other non-medical who wouldn't | 11:40 | |
| have had a prayer of a chance to go, | 11:42 | |
| she said, "I wanna go too!" | 11:43 | |
| I said, "We'll come together". | 11:45 | |
| And so, a team of 12, and that changed me radically. | 11:46 | |
| That sense of, I have all these academic understandings, | 11:52 | |
| and wonderful background on Eucharist, but the most | 12:00 | |
| powerful sense of what it really meant, to break | 12:04 | |
| the bread of life, was those biscuits we gave of, | 12:07 | |
| several times a day, to those who were emaciated, | 12:12 | |
| these children, and the bringing the dead back to life. | 12:15 | |
| And as we said, on this first, Easter will never be | 12:20 | |
| any more profoundly experienced, than when I came | 12:25 | |
| to the camp, and those who were comatose, | 12:28 | |
| after we had established this little relationship | 12:30 | |
| through music. | 12:33 | |
| I came this one day, and they came running, | 12:34 | |
| these little kids, up this dirt road, screaming, | 12:36 | |
| and threw their arms around our knees, and hugging us, | 12:39 | |
| that's resurrection, that is resurrection. | 12:44 | |
| And, and so, it's using the skills of music, | 12:49 | |
| and prayer, and poetry, and play, and we had marches, | 12:53 | |
| and dances through the ward, you know, it was the | 12:57 | |
| infectious disease ward, but what the heck, you know. | 12:59 | |
| (laughing) | 13:01 | |
| Had to be after we gave the injections, and then we had | 13:04 | |
| play time, and sing time. | 13:07 | |
| But it tells you more about getting back then, | 13:10 | |
| to the spirit of Jesus who walked the countryside, | 13:13 | |
| and didn't get into all of these theatrics later on, | 13:17 | |
| or these, kind of, systems of talk down. | 13:21 | |
| So then I get this call, from this place, to, you know, | 13:24 | |
| I turned it down three times, I said, "I'm not gonna teach". | 13:29 | |
| And I came ... | 13:32 | |
| - | Why did you come? | 13:34 |
| I don't, because they wouldn't take no, and I ... | 13:35 | |
| - | You don't do "no" well. | 13:38 |
| - | I don't do "no" well, you got it. | 13:39 |
| So I'm gonna go tell them that I'm not coming. | 13:42 | |
| And so, I'm saying, and then also, the third time, | 13:45 | |
| I said, oh, I say, "Why is this?" | 13:48 | |
| So I go. | 13:50 | |
| Talk about intimidating, I stand there, in this room, | 13:52 | |
| the hall full of students, faculty, guess what they | 13:55 | |
| were looking for, this is the irony of ironies. | 13:59 | |
| They were looking for a person, to establish a department | 14:04 | |
| in worship, liturgy, and spirituality. | 14:08 | |
| They wanted a female, because they had none | 14:12 | |
| as their core faculty. | 14:15 | |
| And they needed a Catholic, because, get this, | 14:17 | |
| wait for it. | 14:20 | |
| - | Yeah? | 14:21 |
| - | They were starting a track for the Doctor of Ministry | 14:22 |
| program, with the Roman Catholic priests. | 14:26 | |
| - | Oh, my goodness! | 14:29 |
| And I would be teaching Roman Catholic priests. | 14:31 | |
| I, who could not get two feet within the sanctuary, | 14:34 | |
| placed there. | 14:39 | |
| The irony of, it was unbelievable, so when I came, | 14:41 | |
| I didn't know quite that, they didn't tell me, | 14:45 | |
| but when I stood there, and they said, I said, | 14:47 | |
| "I need to say something first, please", | 14:50 | |
| and why I do these things, I have no idea, | 14:52 | |
| I said, "You need to know, I don't wanna waste your time, | 14:55 | |
| "but I don't want this job". | 14:59 | |
| And I mean, they're lookin' at me like, I said, | 15:03 | |
| "Seriously, I tried to say no, I said it a number | 15:05 | |
| "of times, so I'm coming here, but you need to know, | 15:08 | |
| "I have to be honest, I am not looking for this job, so ... | 15:12 | |
| "And why would you want me anyway?" | 15:16 | |
| I'm looking at, there's so many priests in the room, | 15:17 | |
| what's goin' on? | 15:19 | |
| Thing gets over, I get the call, the next day, | 15:21 | |
| "You're our unanimous choice". | 15:25 | |
| Over someone from London, and someone who was the head | 15:26 | |
| of the Liturgical Commission, I mean, the Academy | 15:29 | |
| of Liturgy thing, hold the mail. | 15:32 | |
| I said, "You've gotta be kidding". | 15:36 | |
| First of all, when I was turning it down the third time, | 15:39 | |
| I said, "I can't go, I haven't done my Christmas cards yet, | 15:41 | |
| I don't have time". | 15:43 | |
| I mean, what a, you know ... | 15:45 | |
| - | I love it. | 15:47 |
| - | So, they tell me this, and I said, "But I haven't even | 15:48 |
| "told my Major Superior that I'm even investigating, | 15:51 | |
| "I can't do this". | 15:55 | |
| So then I start discerning with a friend, and I say, | 15:56 | |
| "What's going on here, what?" | 15:59 | |
| So I said, "Should I explore it further?" | 16:02 | |
| And I did, and ah, I said, "Okay, I need someplace | 16:06 | |
| to write my dissertation". | 16:10 | |
| Now this is another thing, I'm in the second year | 16:11 | |
| of a two year residency, I hadn't finished my residency. | 16:16 | |
| - | Oh, my goodness! | 16:19 |
| - | I wasn't, hadn't finished any, you don't do this. | 16:20 |
| - | No! | 16:23 |
| - | You don't do this at Princeton. | 16:24 |
| So I came back, I said, "Well, I've been hired by ..." | 16:25 | |
| They said, "What!" | 16:27 | |
| Oh my, there are no words, there are no words. | 16:30 | |
| I said, but I told 'em I couldn't come for a year, | 16:34 | |
| they're gonna hold it for a year, until I finish | 16:37 | |
| the courses, and my, you know, | 16:39 | |
| tests and exams, and, you know, orals, | 16:44 | |
| and God knows what all. | 16:47 | |
| - | This is remarkable. | 16:48 |
| - | It's insane! | 16:49 |
| It makes no, the whole, my whole life makes no sense. | 16:50 | |
| But it made sense to me to do it that way, but you can see, | 16:54 | |
| I'm not in the world, or of the world, where normal people | 16:57 | |
| act normally. | 17:00 | |
| It was, and it was so flabbergasted. | 17:02 | |
| (laughing) | 17:04 | |
| Oh, my God, so, long story short, that's how I got | 17:07 | |
| into here, and then I, it was back in, what was it, | 17:10 | |
| '80, 1980 I showed up, I signed up, and then I | 17:15 | |
| went to the camps, and I came in 1980. | 17:18 | |
| The computer thing was just, they had this old | 17:21 | |
| Mac, not Mac, what was it, not, something was ... | 17:23 | |
| - | IBM, or ... | 17:27 |
| - | No, it was this green, with a green screen, | 17:28 |
| and you did things, it was a dot between each letter. | 17:30 | |
| It was really quite good, anyway, they were, | 17:33 | |
| and I said, "Could I use that at night, you know, | 17:36 | |
| to do this thing?" | 17:38 | |
| So, I ended up getting on, using a computer, and, | 17:40 | |
| I finished this thing, and so ... | 17:43 | |
| - | Then you did your dissertation. | 17:45 |
| - | That's right, did my dissertation. | 17:47 |
| And I did a Catholic dissertation at that thoroughly | 17:48 | |
| Princeton institution, and I don't think there were | 17:50 | |
| any Catholics on the committee at the end. | 17:53 | |
| But I did my, you know, and I was pleased with the ... | 17:56 | |
| - | Can I stop, just for one second? | 18:01 |
| - | So you, | 0:03 |
| - | So I came here and eventually finished. | 0:04 |
| And immediately really became soul friends with the only | 0:06 | |
| African-American person as well who had come. | 0:11 | |
| And he decided to establish his black ministries | 0:15 | |
| program way back then to give biblical | 0:18 | |
| and theological education to those who had had no access. | 0:21 | |
| A certificate program. | 0:24 | |
| - | Who was this MT? | 0:26 |
| - | Thomas White, marvelous, marvelous, | 0:27 |
| and we became soul friends, the only woman, | 0:30 | |
| the only black and here we were. | 0:32 | |
| And he did that and I early on then said, | 0:37 | |
| we gotta to do something for women. | 0:39 | |
| So we started with bringing in Fierenza, | 0:41 | |
| and Elizabeth Bettenhousen, two wild women. | 0:47 | |
| - | Yes | 0:50 |
| to just give us sessions. | 0:51 | |
| You know, I think it was a weekend of talks. | 0:53 | |
| And they packed the house. | 0:55 | |
| And at the same time I started a women church component | 0:58 | |
| that anybody who wants to be a part of that, | 1:02 | |
| you know, so that lasted for about five years. | 1:04 | |
| But then I began to say it shouldn't be | 1:06 | |
| a one shot thing with Fierenza in all. | 1:09 | |
| Let me start this Women Were in the Church | 1:12 | |
| and that's where we had ten years of incredible, | 1:13 | |
| the best theologians, scholars, artists, theater, | 1:17 | |
| whatever you can do that's, you know. | 1:22 | |
| And when it turned out, | 1:25 | |
| that the year that we celebrated, | 1:26 | |
| was it the 500th anniversary of the country, | 1:30 | |
| was it 500, I forget. | 1:33 | |
| - | It's 200, 1976, no? | 1:35 |
| - | 500 years, we're not? | 1:37 |
| 76, yeah, 1996. | 1:39 | |
| - | Right right. | 1:42 |
| - | Was it 500th? | 1:43 |
| I said the year that, | 1:44 | |
| we came to the Native Americans America, something. | 1:47 | |
| - | Yes | 1:51 |
| - | And I'd invited | |
| - | I'd already been doing for two or three years | 1:53 |
| work with a number of different Native American women. | 1:55 | |
| And doing rituals and we were doing all sorts. | 1:58 | |
| So I invited, I think a total of about 15 | 2:01 | |
| from around the country. | 2:03 | |
| I said could you come a day early. | 2:04 | |
| And they came a day early, Thursday. | 2:06 | |
| This would be Friday, Saturday. | 2:08 | |
| And we met and I said okay, the weekend is yours. | 2:10 | |
| - | Oh. | 2:14 |
| - | Well what do you want us to do? | 2:15 |
| I said I don't know you tell me. | 2:17 | |
| It's your weekend, this is celebrating | 2:19 | |
| your country that we came to, it's yours. | 2:22 | |
| They said, they were stunned, | 2:25 | |
| and some of these were public, | 2:27 | |
| they were published people, performers, you know. | 2:28 | |
| They said, we've never done this. | 2:31 | |
| And also in our own tribes, the women aren't, | 2:34 | |
| you know, they're important to the rituals, | 2:38 | |
| but they're not, and they got into it. | 2:39 | |
| Let me tell you, this was a weekend. | 2:41 | |
| It was awesome. | 2:45 | |
| And we made the front page of the Hartford Courant | 2:48 | |
| with a big, you know, it was dances and stuff. | 2:51 | |
| It was truly wonderful. | 2:53 | |
| - | Oh it sounds phenomenal. | |
| And so after that, and about that time, | 2:56 | |
| it was, I said we need, people were asking for more. | 3:00 | |
| One weekend a month you know, we need some continuity. | 3:04 | |
| And I said, and there's a lot we're learning | 3:07 | |
| from all that we're doing, and here I am | 3:10 | |
| in an educational institution and I would like | 3:12 | |
| to start something that would be like a program. | 3:15 | |
| And that's where women's, women were to the church, | 3:18 | |
| This is the women's leadership institute. | 3:22 | |
| And it's subtitle is equally important. | 3:25 | |
| A program in applied spirituality. | 3:27 | |
| So that as you go through whatever you learn, | 3:30 | |
| as you're coming out, it needs, | 3:33 | |
| you need to have a project or something you do | 3:35 | |
| and share and show what you've learned. | 3:38 | |
| What are the underlying feminist principles and why. | 3:40 | |
| What kind of systemic shift, you know. | 3:44 | |
| And so that's now into it's 20th year in the fall. | 3:47 | |
| We have over 530 incredible more than, graduates. | 3:52 | |
| Some have done some huge things. | 3:57 | |
| I don't know, the very first year, | 3:59 | |
| the prayer shawl ministry has gone | 4:03 | |
| around the world you know. | 4:05 | |
| - | Yes. | 4:07 |
| - | It started here. | 4:07 |
| That was the first year | 4:08 | |
| - | Did it really? | |
| Well two women said, let's just, | 4:10 | |
| you know, that followed after. | 4:12 | |
| The Ray of Light farm in East Haddam | 4:15 | |
| which is a rescue farm for, | 4:18 | |
| it began for Premarin mares and their fowls | 4:22 | |
| that are just cast off once they get the urine | 4:25 | |
| to make the medicine that the women need. | 4:27 | |
| They took, so they have, she has this wonderful | 4:32 | |
| rescue farm, that was another. | 4:35 | |
| We have some just wonder, drumming circles | 4:37 | |
| around the state were started by one gal | 4:39 | |
| who used this as her masters project. | 4:42 | |
| So we had, you know, it was wonderful. | 4:47 | |
| They could take WI, the Women's Leadership Institute | 4:49 | |
| it was, it was an audit program. | 4:52 | |
| But you could take it for graduate credit. | 4:56 | |
| And you can get six graduate credit. | 4:58 | |
| But from the get go, I negotiated with the systems | 5:00 | |
| here to make sure that we could find a way | 5:03 | |
| to get undergraduate credit for those women. | 5:06 | |
| Who need our, discovering they wanna go back to school. | 5:08 | |
| And so through Charter Oak, which is the state thing, | 5:13 | |
| they can get six upper level undergraduate credits | 5:16 | |
| at no extra cost to transfer over. | 5:20 | |
| That's a big incentive and not only that | 5:24 | |
| everyone who graduates the program, | 5:26 | |
| we got a bonus and they never took this away. | 5:28 | |
| Which I think is amazing. | 5:30 | |
| If you finish the program, | 5:32 | |
| now within a year afterwards you can audit | 5:33 | |
| any course in the catalog if the professor lets you in. | 5:35 | |
| So, but for those who are going for baccalaureate credit | 5:39 | |
| we got that accredited, that if you audit a course | 5:43 | |
| in that graduate level you'll get another | 5:46 | |
| three upper level, that's nine upper level | 5:48 | |
| baccalaureate credits, so I fought for that. | 5:51 | |
| And came close to almost losing it. | 5:54 | |
| But I said I'm putting my stake in the ground | 5:56 | |
| for that one because so many women gave of themselves, | 5:58 | |
| and now that they're ready to do something. | 6:02 | |
| It's a long way to the baccalaureate and you know, | 6:04 | |
| not like a masters so | 6:06 | |
| - | yes. | |
| So that's going along wonderfully. | 6:08 | |
| And then as we went along, there were women | 6:11 | |
| saying, gosh we learned all of this, | 6:14 | |
| what more can we do with this, don't you have? | 6:16 | |
| So I tried for quite a while to get another | 6:18 | |
| masters degree in that wasn't oriented toward | 6:22 | |
| ministry, ordained ministry, although we don't give that. | 6:28 | |
| We do do it cooperative with other schools. | 6:33 | |
| But nevertheless the courses are oriented | 6:36 | |
| to fit into that framework. | 6:38 | |
| - | Right. | 6:39 |
| - | And then we also have, you know, | 6:40 |
| to be theologians or whatever, it's all wonderful. | 6:42 | |
| But there was something missing for the women. | 6:46 | |
| And we had a spirituality track. | 6:48 | |
| But the way it's evaluated it's more academically | 6:52 | |
| oriented and it's 48 credits which is a lot you know. | 6:55 | |
| - | Yeah. | 6:59 |
| - | And as the costs went up and up and up | 7:00 |
| it became I felt, more and more difficult. | 7:02 | |
| And also it just felt, we have something here | 7:05 | |
| this big broiling mass of humanity, you know, | 7:08 | |
| that's leading us into, and then what | 7:14 | |
| turned the corner, what was the tipping point for, | 7:18 | |
| in my favor, was that sociologists, | 7:21 | |
| and we have a very significant sociology center. | 7:24 | |
| You know, we've contributed to many | 7:28 | |
| of the things out there that, you know, | 7:29 | |
| studies and all, and actually facilitated a number of them. | 7:32 | |
| But one of the studies done by others was | 7:36 | |
| how do you define yourself religiously. | 7:39 | |
| Any form that you have to fill out, | 7:43 | |
| the census form, or voting form, whatever. | 7:45 | |
| What is, if they asked it, what is your | 7:48 | |
| religious affiliation, and the greater number | 7:49 | |
| today now, it's come to that point, is none, N O N E. | 7:52 | |
| - | Yes. | 7:56 |
| - | And I say, what an irony that the nun | 7:57 |
| needs to do a degree for the nones. | 7:59 | |
| (laughing) | 8:01 | |
| How will I sell this one? | 8:03 | |
| (laughing) | 8:04 | |
| Bar none, so anyway, I designed this, | 8:06 | |
| and sort of, it didn't go anywhere. | 8:10 | |
| In fact it got turned down a couple of times. | 8:12 | |
| But you don't give up at the first. | 8:15 | |
| And then all of a sudden, | 8:17 | |
| this became, that you could begin to hear | 8:20 | |
| the words out there, the nuns, | 8:23 | |
| this seminary's closing, this seminary's closing. | 8:26 | |
| They're no longer hiring this many people. | 8:28 | |
| It became, actually with the speed of light, you know. | 8:32 | |
| It shifted, and then this whole category of seekers. | 8:36 | |
| And you know, and people out there, | 8:40 | |
| the persons who are retiring, even, | 8:42 | |
| and they wanna learn more, they wanna be something. | 8:44 | |
| And so I shifted. | 8:47 | |
| I say I wanna call it exactly what it is. | 8:50 | |
| And it's gonna be evaluated on exactly what it is. | 8:52 | |
| So most of the evaluative mechanisms | 8:55 | |
| are what are you gonna do with this degree? | 8:59 | |
| Like they're trying to, they're job oriented. | 9:01 | |
| People are trying to sell their degrees | 9:03 | |
| to the institutions that if you get this you can be hired. | 9:05 | |
| I said this ain't no job oriented degree. | 9:08 | |
| (laughing) | 9:10 | |
| And I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna evaluate it that way. | 9:12 | |
| And I'm not gonna sell it that way. | 9:14 | |
| It's not what you're gonna do with it. | 9:15 | |
| Who will you be with this degree? | 9:16 | |
| So whatever you do, you will do not only | 9:19 | |
| more authentically, and more informed, | 9:22 | |
| but in a sense you will be able to make a difference | 9:25 | |
| not only in your own life, but in the lives of others. | 9:28 | |
| So there's two components of how to | 9:31 | |
| just respond to what spirit is saying, | 9:34 | |
| or try to even identify if spirit's saying something to me | 9:37 | |
| what might it be and then what might it lead to, you know. | 9:40 | |
| And so, we had our ten year evaluation, | 9:44 | |
| and I said I want to talk to | 9:48 | |
| the accrediting team, if I might. | 9:50 | |
| And God bless them. | 9:52 | |
| I wanted one person, the whole team showed up. | 9:54 | |
| And I just made this pitch, you know, | 9:56 | |
| and we followed up after this, | 9:58 | |
| and the Dean was in my corner at this point. | 10:01 | |
| Because they said this is really seriously | 10:02 | |
| an important thing, we need to do this. | 10:05 | |
| - | Yeah. | 10:06 |
| And we got approval from the Association | 10:07 | |
| of Theological Schools, which is huge. | 10:10 | |
| - | It is wonderful. | 10:12 |
| - | It's the only, it's a second 36 credit masters degree. | 10:14 |
| Second one okay. | 10:18 | |
| Started, we started it, but it just got, | 10:21 | |
| it was formally approved I think a year ago or something. | 10:24 | |
| And the second NEASC, New England's | 10:27 | |
| Association of Theologicals, they approved it, fully. | 10:29 | |
| And my assessment, I said I worked a year | 10:34 | |
| on how to assess this so we can do it with integrity. | 10:38 | |
| But also show you can't look at it | 10:41 | |
| the same way as you look at something else. | 10:43 | |
| And so the big thing, stumbling block, | 10:45 | |
| is when you say spirituality, and that's the subject, | 10:48 | |
| people are trying to, how do we evaluate | 10:51 | |
| one's growth in spirituality, you can't. | 10:54 | |
| And it's not right to start with, and it's impossible. | 10:58 | |
| So I said it's not about that. | 11:01 | |
| This is a two fold thing. | 11:02 | |
| It's an applied spirituality. | 11:05 | |
| Your personal spirituality is your personal thing. | 11:08 | |
| But what you do with it, becomes public. | 11:11 | |
| - | Yes. | 11:14 |
| - | And so we're gonna assess the outcomes. | 11:15 |
| You can assess outcomes by what did it lead to. | 11:19 | |
| So in order to graduate, you have to do a project | 11:21 | |
| you have to do a project | 11:25 | |
| in applied spirituality, so it's very simple. | 11:27 | |
| You know, you lead them to say, | 11:30 | |
| what in you has changed? | 11:33 | |
| And why has it changed? | 11:36 | |
| There's a shifting consciousness. | 11:38 | |
| Say you learned, and you can do it very small. | 11:39 | |
| What's different about you, your thinking, | 11:41 | |
| your perception, whatever. | 11:44 | |
| The shifting consciousness. | 11:46 | |
| And what are you gonna about that. | 11:48 | |
| What is one thing you could do to apply that shift. | 11:49 | |
| And if you apply it in a way that might actually | 11:53 | |
| instigate a shift in someone else, or a group. | 11:56 | |
| That's the core of it. | 11:59 | |
| And how easily these students come in and get it. | 12:03 | |
| They get, I thought I'd have to teach the whole, | 12:07 | |
| orienting course, ten sessions. | 12:10 | |
| They got it in session one. | 12:11 | |
| So we can go deeper, oh yeah, we get this. | 12:13 | |
| Because that's where we are, you know. | 12:16 | |
| We're constantly dancing, we were always thinking | 12:18 | |
| differently than the status quo, | 12:21 | |
| now it's being honored, what are you | 12:23 | |
| thinking that's different, the status quo. | 12:26 | |
| Name it. | 12:28 | |
| Identify it. | 12:29 | |
| And then what can you do about it | 12:31 | |
| within the situation you are in. | 12:32 | |
| So it's not always we gotta tear down | 12:35 | |
| this thing to do that. | 12:37 | |
| It's like the quantum, the pain in the butt, | 12:38 | |
| or the disturbance within the system | 12:41 | |
| is heralding the future. | 12:44 | |
| You start there and you work wherever you're at. | 12:46 | |
| And so it has just been wonderful. | 12:49 | |
| It's been so easy to assess really. | 12:53 | |
| And then one thing, one of the required things, | 12:56 | |
| I love this, | 12:59 | |
| that the Association of Theological Schools, | 13:00 | |
| cause every degree they have has this field work thing. | 13:02 | |
| You know field, it's like a kind of an apprenticeship | 13:05 | |
| or however you wanna work it. | 13:10 | |
| But there's a lot of leeway. | 13:11 | |
| So I had to have a course like that. | 13:12 | |
| And then, my gosh, if we're gonna charge them money | 13:14 | |
| for a course it better be meaningful, you know, | 13:16 | |
| - | Yeah. | 13:18 |
| - | And we don't have a field, where are you, | 13:19 |
| how are we apprentice with, and how? | 13:20 | |
| And then I said, and the Dean was wonderful, | 13:23 | |
| I said could I just sit with this for a semester, | 13:26 | |
| yeah think about it, I said cause this is big. | 13:28 | |
| I'm in the middle of teaching this course on, | 13:32 | |
| transformative spirituality, and we have two | 13:36 | |
| theologians, one who was a quantum theologian, | 13:40 | |
| the other one was theoretically is. | 13:42 | |
| But one is forward thinkin' and the other's | 13:44 | |
| more like, you know, Agutaynen. | 13:47 | |
| And I was saying something about, | 13:49 | |
| now with these two individuals, | 13:51 | |
| this individual's field of energy is, | 13:54 | |
| and then I said, Oh, my God, it hit me, afterwards. | 13:57 | |
| We're gonna, the field course is | 14:02 | |
| identify your own field of energy. | 14:04 | |
| What energizes you? | 14:08 | |
| - | Oh, wow. | 14:10 |
| - | What really, it could be a bunch of things, | 14:10 |
| but what's at the core of that? | 14:13 | |
| That becomes, and then we do some readings | 14:15 | |
| to deepen our understanding to say, stay faithful | 14:19 | |
| within that and be able to apply it. | 14:23 | |
| And then the evaluative things come out of that. | 14:25 | |
| They ran with this. | 14:29 | |
| The things that we're doing. | 14:30 | |
| It builds on who you are. | 14:31 | |
| That's when say stay with individual. | 14:33 | |
| Don't dump things in that don't fit. | 14:35 | |
| Then what do you need to know. | 14:38 | |
| And I'm telling you, it is, it's a wonderful degree idea. | 14:40 | |
| And this is what | 14:45 | |
| - | oh, yeah. | |
| Where we are doing now. | 14:46 | |
| And then not only did they get approved, okay, | 14:48 | |
| they're establishing a chair, | 14:52 | |
| in transformative leadership and spirituality, you know. | 14:56 | |
| So that will not disappear when I leave. | 15:01 | |
| - | Yes | 15:03 |
| - | And that's why I'm still here. | 15:04 |
| Theoretically I'm retired, but not. | 15:05 | |
| I'm rehired. | 15:07 | |
| You know, as a faculty associate. | 15:09 | |
| - | And that's gonna be the MT winter chair. | 15:11 |
| - | Their, said that they're going to name it after me. | 15:12 |
| And they'll probably announce it in the fall. | 15:16 | |
| But they're looking for sources of funding for this. | 15:18 | |
| It's not an easy thing you know. | 15:21 | |
| But we're gonna stick with it. | 15:24 | |
| But the implications of something like this | 15:27 | |
| I think are profound, because you know, | 15:31 | |
| you know as a woman, | 15:33 | |
| somehow, you train a woman, | 15:37 | |
| it's sort of like the mother of a family you know, | 15:40 | |
| and all the generations afterward come back | 15:43 | |
| to the great grand, I mean you're there, you're connected. | 15:46 | |
| You're a source of whatever you are, | 15:49 | |
| energy, support, love, stability. | 15:51 | |
| It's like this kind of degree, | 15:55 | |
| the individual that goes through it, | 15:58 | |
| affects a lot of people, you know. | 16:00 | |
| Just and especially, women if they take, | 16:05 | |
| and they will take the WLI, | 16:07 | |
| they've already got their start. | 16:09 | |
| And they've got networks, and then | 16:11 | |
| the networks can get networks. | 16:13 | |
| If you want to have a model for systemic | 16:14 | |
| shift and change it's something like this | 16:19 | |
| that gives responsibility and possibility | 16:22 | |
| and opportunity to individual women | 16:27 | |
| who are passionate already, you know. | 16:30 | |
| And say how can, so my whole thing is who are you, | 16:32 | |
| what do you wanna do, what turns you on? | 16:35 | |
| What excites you? | 16:38 | |
| Well let's see how that could work out. | 16:39 | |
| I can't imagine anything that couldn't work out. | 16:41 | |
| Do you know what I'm sayin' | 16:44 | |
| - | yes. | |
| Like I may not know how to do it. | 16:45 | |
| But I'm not doin' it, I'm just here | 16:47 | |
| giving you permission, validating, | 16:50 | |
| making sure that it has certain, | 16:52 | |
| meets certain, you know criteria that when you get done | 16:55 | |
| you're gonna feel good about this, and so are other people. | 16:57 | |
| So I think in many ways, it's a pioneering venture | 17:00 | |
| into the field of academia just like | 17:05 | |
| women are trying to get into certain roles, | 17:07 | |
| And you know in the institutional churches. | 17:10 | |
| Also in academia, we got in but we | 17:13 | |
| kept teaching the men's way. | 17:15 | |
| - | Yes. | 17:16 |
| - | And their own thing. | 17:17 |
| This is something significantly different. | 17:18 | |
| It's not limited to women, cause some of my guy friends | 17:21 | |
| are deeply, you know, into dreams and the Kabbala, | 17:24 | |
| and mysticism, so they can get it. | 17:28 | |
| But to us it just comes naturally, you know. | 17:30 | |
| And so this is what, where we're at with that. | 17:33 | |
| So the reimagining which is actually why you're sitting here | 17:36 | |
| talking to me | 17:40 | |
| (laughing) | ||
| was part of this whole evolution of myself. | 17:42 | |
| And the word reimagining that you had as a conference, | 17:47 | |
| and I can't remember when I started using it. | 17:50 | |
| I know I did, and I don't know, | 17:55 | |
| remember when it was, probably, | 17:57 | |
| I don't know if it was after that conference. | 17:59 | |
| Because that became, not a happy, | 18:01 | |
| not a happy phrase afterwards which I was very sad about. | 18:06 | |
| - | Yes | 18:09 |
| - | So maybe it was before then, I'm not sure, | 18:10 |
| but I did a, you know, a program in Duke. | 18:12 | |
| And the biblical students and different people, | 18:18 | |
| and I was, I forget the details, | 18:20 | |
| but I was speaking on reimagining the word. | 18:22 | |
| Reimagining God and reimagining the word. | 18:25 | |
| But I did it using the canonical sources. | 18:28 | |
| - | Yes | 18:31 |
| - | I said before we go out here | 18:32 |
| you think reimagining is a wifty word | 18:34 | |
| outside the framework, I showed them, | 18:36 | |
| which was revelatory apparently. | 18:39 | |
| Which blew my mind to them that they | 18:41 | |
| hadn't seen within their own sources | 18:43 | |
| these possibilities, you know, within the Genesis text, | 18:45 | |
| and the Exodus text, and also in the Gospels. | 18:49 | |
| Where you could see these feminist | 18:52 | |
| female images, you know, I say female images | 18:55 | |
| of the divine and so I was, reimagining | 18:58 | |
| was an important word to me, it still is you know. | 19:02 | |
| And I love, | 19:08 | |
| - | What is it about that word that's important to you? | 19:09 |
| - | Well because, I think the two pieces re and imagined, | 19:12 |
| I mean imagine is wonderful. | 19:15 | |
| But, let me just put it bluntly. | 19:18 | |
| We talk about images of God, | 19:22 | |
| and I was reimagining God, okay images of God, | 19:23 | |
| but there isn't a single image of God | 19:27 | |
| that hasn't been imagined. | 19:30 | |
| Those are all imagined images. | 19:32 | |
| Where do you think they came from? | 19:34 | |
| - | Right. | 19:35 |
| - | Hello. | |
| - | See but we don't follow that back | 19:36 |
| because imagined has become, had become, | 19:38 | |
| it's changed, but then it goes back and forth. | 19:41 | |
| Something in the surreal that you've made up, | 19:44 | |
| or it's your own, you're not in the system. | 19:46 | |
| Excuse me the whole system is based on something imagined. | 19:48 | |
| You know, even the Genesis, all the Genesis text. | 19:52 | |
| You know, in the beginning God, | 19:56 | |
| well who was there, but who was there to record that, | 19:59 | |
| and say, and validate that when no one was there, | 20:01 | |
| when nobody was there. | 20:03 | |
| That's what I said, no one was there when nobody was there. | 20:05 | |
| So who's the evidence for that? | 20:07 | |
| Where's the evidence for that? | 20:08 | |
| - | Yeah. | 20:09 |
| - | Well, God, well who's this God, you know. | 20:09 |
| It's imagine in your image. | 20:11 | |
| So we're reimagining it, and then when we get done | 20:14 | |
| it's not what it is anyway, it's reimagined. | 20:17 | |
| The imaginations we can't hang onto. | 20:20 | |
| When actually feminists quickly learned | 20:23 | |
| and left all the images and went on to other things | 20:24 | |
| more out of the universe and cosmic mystery | 20:28 | |
| and wonderful things like that. | 20:30 | |
| You know, rhythm and sound. | 20:32 | |
| So, it's so, it's such an important breakthrough | 20:35 | |
| to get out of thinking. | 20:39 | |
| This is the legitimate and actual, | 20:41 | |
| the actual, but actual is not factual. | 20:43 | |
| It's factual on those who stated the facts | 20:48 | |
| and actualized it, but it's through | 20:51 | |
| human agency, all of this, anything we've known | 20:53 | |
| has come through human agency if it | 20:57 | |
| was revealed to and through a human, you know, | 20:59 | |
| then it's a humanoid construct. | 21:02 | |
| - | Yeah. | 21:04 |
| - | And if you were taking this course in psychology | 21:05 |
| or philosophy you would learn that. | 21:08 | |
| But if you take it in theology, | 21:10 | |
| you forget what you don't apply. | 21:11 | |
| Hello, when does that stop applying, you know? | 21:13 | |
| And I think that was what was underlying | 21:16 | |
| the whole horror of the reimagining conference. | 21:18 | |
| Because actually what was there, | 21:23 | |
| if you look back that was so horrible? | 21:25 | |
| But people who are clueless, were almost like | 21:27 | |
| is this what they're doing, | 21:32 | |
| (laughs) | 21:33 | |
| - | uh, huh. | |
| - | in their free time and we're paying their salaries. | 21:34 |
| (laughing) | 21:36 | |
| Oh, my gosh. | 21:38 | |
| - | So is that how you, how do you account for the backlash? | 21:39 |
| What did? | 21:42 | |
| - | I just feel that we were so marginalized. | 21:43 |
| So as long as your marginalized you can do what you want. | 21:48 | |
| - | Mm hum, mm hum. | 21:52 |
| - | It's sort of like the African-American | 21:52 |
| whole movement here, if you are in the ghettos, | 21:54 | |
| you're doin' your thing, everything as well, | 21:56 | |
| yeah, sure you entertain us, and you make it into that, | 21:58 | |
| but you're in your place, you know, | 22:01 | |
| you're at the stage, you're in the sun, | 22:03 | |
| you're behind the microphone. | 22:05 | |
| But wait a minute, you want equity and parody. | 22:07 | |
| This is, this is, because then what you think | 22:09 | |
| and feel and say is gonna affect and shift and change. | 22:13 | |
| Not only my perception, but my reality, | 22:17 | |
| my comfort zone, that's what's happening everywhere. | 22:19 | |
| And that happened then, and that was just one, | 22:23 | |
| because one group that sponsored it | 22:26 | |
| was so horrified, and there was nothing | 22:28 | |
| to be horrified about, you know. | 22:31 | |
| - | Yes. | 22:33 |
| - | Now you weren't at the | 22:34 |
| '93 conference, but you | 22:35 | |
| - | I was not. | |
| But you learnt about it, or | 22:37 | |
| - | Oh incidentally, because I mean, | 22:39 |
| because you stay, you're up to date on things like that. | 22:41 | |
| - | Yes. | 22:44 |
| - | Yeah, and | 22:45 |
| absolutely, | 22:47 | |
| and then immediately Barbara Brown Zikmund, | 22:48 | |
| who was president of the seminary, you know, | 22:50 | |
| the first female to become a president of a seminary, | 22:53 | |
| protestant seminary, well any seminary. | 22:56 | |
| (laughs) | 22:58 | |
| - | Yeah. | |
| - | She reached out and she offered her, | 23:00 |
| she said look, she was fired, | 23:02 | |
| you know, Maryann Lundy | 23:03 | |
| - | Maryann Lundy. | |
| And she said listen, you have a place here. | 23:05 | |
| I'll make you, give you an office. | 23:06 | |
| And so she was two doors down from me. | 23:08 | |
| So and she was able to get her footing, | 23:10 | |
| and her balance and to figure out what to do next. | 23:13 | |
| And no one like disclaimed, | 23:17 | |
| none of those courageous women | 23:21 | |
| disassociated from the reality. | 23:23 | |
| They just accepted what they had to as a result of it. | 23:25 | |
| - | Yes | 23:29 |
| - | And that to me is an amazing thing. | 23:30 |
| - | Yeah. | 23:32 |
| - | And then like anything when they really blow it, | 23:33 |
| it just quietly disappears. | 23:36 | |
| There should be like, you know, | 23:38 | |
| a sense of revisiting, and a sense of redemption | 23:41 | |
| or you know, we're not ready for that, | 23:46 | |
| but there's so many things with Native Americans, | 23:48 | |
| and African-Americans, and women, | 23:50 | |
| and God knows what else, you know, | 23:52 | |
| that you look back, and even on our | 23:53 | |
| propensity to go to war, and blast people | 23:56 | |
| we don't understand, and just annihilate them. | 23:58 | |
| To ask forgiveness and to say, | 24:00 | |
| you know, we were in a mode of ignorance then. | 24:03 | |
| You know, | 24:07 | |
| - | Yeah. | |
| How hard is that to say? | 24:08 | |
| We can do this so easily. | 24:09 | |
| - | Yeah. | 24:10 |
| - | Because we crow and we learn | 24:11 |
| and we know this is what I thought then. | 24:12 | |
| You know, I wish I hadn't, but I did and I accept it. | 24:15 | |
| But I don't think that way now. | 24:17 | |
| But it's part of me anyway. | 24:19 | |
| - | Yes. | 24:21 |
| - | You know, | |
| Now did you know Maryann Lundy before that? | 24:23 | |
| - | I did not know her before that | 24:26 |
| No | 24:27 | |
| - | Yeah. | |
| Because she was more institutional thing | 24:28 | |
| and I had a, I was kind of, out there in the trenches. | 24:31 | |
| - | Yeah. | 24:35 |
| - | The prison ministry, and you know, | 24:35 |
| things that were in, and going to retreat centers, | 24:37 | |
| and other schools giving talks and stuff like that | 24:40 | |
| so that was my external things. | 24:44 | |
| - | But you got to know her | 24:46 |
| while she was here. | 24:47 | |
| - | I did. | |
| - | Get to know her, a very incredible, you know, | 24:48 |
| very incredible woman. | 24:50 | |
| Yeah, | 24:52 | |
| - | Yeah. | |
| I liked her a lot. | 24:53 | |
| - | Yeah. | 24:53 |
| - | Yeah. | 24:55 |
| - | And you ended up being a major presenter | 24:56 |
| at the 95 reimagining, could you tell me | 24:59 | |
| what you remember about being asked for that. | 25:00 | |
| I know you don't say no, but, | 25:03 | |
| (laughs) | 25:04 | |
| - | I really thought about that. | 25:05 |
| - | Did ya. | 25:07 |
| - | Oh, yeah. | 25:08 |
| - | Yeah. | |
| - | After what happened sure. | 25:09 |
| - | Then I thought, what do I have to lose, | 25:10 |
| I have nothing, I mean I have nothing to lose. | 25:13 | |
| You know. | 25:16 | |
| - | Yes, yes. | |
| This is an institution that doesn't, | 25:18 | |
| is not beholdin' to any denominational entity, you know. | 25:19 | |
| - | Right. | 25:25 |
| - | And if this is what I do, and in what we believe, | 25:25 |
| and now we have Barbara Brown Zikmund | 25:27 | |
| saying that there wasn't an issue. | 25:29 | |
| But my concern was, why me, and what am I going to do? | 25:31 | |
| You know, like, but they were asking me, | 25:36 | |
| and I again I have to, | 25:40 | |
| so much water has gone under the bridge | 25:43 | |
| since those years that so many things I've done, | 25:45 | |
| that my memory is just not, | 25:48 | |
| if I saw things I would, it would click back in. | 25:50 | |
| And I did manage to find a file that I was, | 25:53 | |
| from the flyer from it, that at least | 25:56 | |
| I remembered I was there. | 25:59 | |
| (laughter) | 26:00 | |
| Okay that's a start. | 26:02 | |
| And there's one unforgettable thing that happened | 26:03 | |
| that I will never forget from that that just, | 26:07 | |
| and that was the end point. | 26:10 | |
| But in between, I think, okay I'm saying | 26:12 | |
| what I think might, but this may not be true, | 26:19 | |
| but in my perception, probably why I was asked | 26:22 | |
| not only just to pick up the pieces, | 26:27 | |
| but I had a safe space and a valid space | 26:31 | |
| in academia in this institution, you know, | 26:35 | |
| so in a sense I wasn't on the fringe, | 26:38 | |
| I didn't come from nowhere, I came from somewhere. | 26:41 | |
| - | Yes. | 26:43 |
| - | I had expertise so to speak in the subject matter, okay. | 26:43 |
| I had done all the women of the Bible, | 26:49 | |
| those books and these other books. | 26:51 | |
| And I had these women's programs so I was in it. | 26:53 | |
| But also, I was not one that went | 27:00 | |
| to certain extremes, and I don't wanna | 27:03 | |
| call them extremists, but, I was, I let women do things, | 27:05 | |
| but for myself, I'm more, you know, | 27:09 | |
| I'm changing, I don't now, I didn't have to do anything. | 27:13 | |
| I was, I just, I'm, you know, | 27:15 | |
| I can't put it into words, but it's a safer bet | 27:18 | |
| if you wanna bring someone in, and then you've got | 27:21 | |
| a Catholic nun, I mean, | 27:23 | |
| (laughing) | 27:24 | |
| for our connect, I mean that already a challenge. | 27:25 | |
| But I said well what can I do, | 27:29 | |
| and then you pointed out what the theme was, | 27:31 | |
| that already I had reimagined all these things. | 27:36 | |
| - | Yes. | 27:40 |
| - | And I had reimagined them on the sources. | 27:41 |
| Now it's coming back to me. | 27:44 | |
| - | Yes. | 27:45 |
| - | That I had gone to the Bible | 27:45 |
| and was surprised at what I found. | 27:47 | |
| So I could share that saying, | 27:50 | |
| okay I was at the stage where people | 27:51 | |
| who don't even know what this is were at. | 27:53 | |
| And take it from step one through | 27:55 | |
| so that in both testaments you know, | 27:58 | |
| and but particularly as you get back | 28:01 | |
| into the Genesis thing and you know, | 28:03 | |
| and to show that those that we hold up as core | 28:04 | |
| figures in our tradition as the groomers and all. | 28:09 | |
| They weren't even part of the tradition. | 28:13 | |
| - | Who were you thinking of? | 28:16 |
| (grinding noises) | 28:17 | |
| - | Sara for example. | 28:19 |
| - | Right, yes. | |
| I mean Sara was a high, there's a lot of evidence | 28:20 | |
| of her being a high priestess. | 28:23 | |
| And also Abraham had more than one wife. | 28:26 | |
| And I mean you lift this up and you say these things, | 28:28 | |
| and she wanted to be, and you reinterpret | 28:32 | |
| the garden story of the sacred grove, | 28:36 | |
| and the serpent and all of those images. | 28:38 | |
| And Yahushua, the Branch, you know, | 28:40 | |
| the flowering tree, which is a goddess. | 28:42 | |
| And you put that all together, | 28:44 | |
| and then you say, that's where Eve, | 28:45 | |
| and so the core to this, all our traditions, | 28:49 | |
| is this Eve was a woman of those traditions. | 28:51 | |
| - | Yes. | 28:54 |
| - | But Adam all of a sudden, | 28:55 |
| so there's more to this story. | 28:57 | |
| He's the proponent from the other side, | 28:59 | |
| his legitimacy coming in, you know, | 29:02 | |
| and it's interesting how the tree of good and evil, | 29:06 | |
| there's another tree, the tree of life, you know. | 29:11 | |
| And in the whole question of ish, | 29:14 | |
| ish and isharah, ish and ishah, | 29:17 | |
| you can not be male and female, you can be humans, | 29:21 | |
| but you really him and her, male and female, | 29:24 | |
| and generative once you are identified as that | 29:26 | |
| so you took that symbolic apple, | 29:31 | |
| you took it and you acted, so that you could be fully human. | 29:35 | |
| And to be fully human, meant a whole lot of other things. | 29:40 | |
| Okay, and so to follow through with all | 29:44 | |
| of this what's going on, and then the symbolic there | 29:47 | |
| of the serpent being the symbol | 29:50 | |
| of the goddess worship and all. | 29:52 | |
| You know you don't have to accept that interpretation, | 29:54 | |
| but that's your Bible, this is our Bible, | 29:57 | |
| it's the same Bible and it's two | 29:59 | |
| different story lines and we both claim it. | 30:00 | |
| Now isn't that interesting? | 30:02 | |
| - | Yeah. | 30:03 |
| - | Isn't that that could not have been | 30:04 |
| the cannon of the scripture | 30:06 | |
| that we say is mandatory, there's room for all of us. | 30:07 | |
| There was room for all of us. | 30:12 | |
| And doesn't end there, it follows through, okay. | 30:14 | |
| And so, that's kind of I guess what I danced around | 30:17 | |
| and then brought in some music and rituals. | 30:23 | |
| But the closing thing was the thing that almost, | 30:25 | |
| I literally almost lost my bearings. | 30:28 | |
| - | Really. | 30:31 |
| - | it's the final thing right. | 30:33 |
| I had designed a ritual, | 30:34 | |
| and to this day I can't even remember what it is. | 30:35 | |
| I'm on the stage to do something, | 30:39 | |
| I had I think something a call and response | 30:41 | |
| to something, was gonna do very simple, | 30:43 | |
| so I didn't really have too much there. | 30:45 | |
| - | Yeah. | 30:48 |
| - | And I think there was that one, | 30:49 |
| something in the program maybe, | 30:51 | |
| and all of a sudden my mouth is open to start, | 30:52 | |
| I'm standing there, attention please comes the microphone. | 30:56 | |
| Breaks in just like an emergency thing. | 31:01 | |
| - | Oh | 31:03 |
| - | There's an announcement. | 31:04 |
| What's his name? | 31:07 | |
| The Prime Minister of Israel has been assassinated. | 31:08 | |
| - | Yes. | 31:12 |
| (knocking sound drowns out speaker) | 31:15 | |
| and it's, he was assassinated. | 31:19 | |
| - | Yes, that's right. | 31:20 |
| - | And that's the end of that announcement. | 31:21 |
| Now why did they have to announce that | 31:24 | |
| to the whole group at that moment? | 31:26 | |
| My mouth open on stage. | 31:29 | |
| - | Yes, oh my goodness. | |
| What do you do? | 31:32 | |
| - | Right. | 31:33 |
| - | Okay so now, I may be a wild eyed feminist, | 31:34 |
| I may be there for that, I may be there | 31:37 | |
| for my biblical background scholarship. | 31:38 | |
| - | Yes. | 31:40 |
| - | But I'm also a liturgist. | 31:41 |
| - | Yes. | 31:42 |
| - | And you can't ignore the present moment. | 31:44 |
| - | No. | 31:45 |
| - | You can't pretend that didn't happen. | 31:46 |
| - | Right. | 31:48 |
| - | But what in God's holy name am I gonna do with that? | 31:48 |
| You know, | 31:51 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And something flashed, you know, the Holy Spirit, | 31:53 | |
| when you give yourself over, | 31:57 | |
| and I just say spirit take me, all these things. | 31:59 | |
| It flashed in my mind what my wonderful Perry Astrid, | 32:04 | |
| who used to do with women who were at the church. | 32:08 | |
| She'd come and most of the weekends, | 32:10 | |
| do a one woman act play, she's from England, brilliant. | 32:13 | |
| And she did, I remember her doing this. | 32:16 | |
| (double rapping sound, repeated twice) | 32:20 | |
| And so I just, I just started doin' that. | 32:22 | |
| I didn't know what was gonna follow. | 32:24 | |
| - | Yes. | 32:25 |
| - | And then people started doin' that. | 32:27 |
| And then I started to howl. | 32:30 | |
| And then we (drowned out by rapping sound) | 32:33 | |
| and then just rock, and the whole thing | 32:34 | |
| just rocked and did this, and ew, and moaned, | 32:38 | |
| and groaned, and then I just brought it to, | 32:42 | |
| and I just sort of, the holy one of blessing, | 32:45 | |
| we lift up to you with this, and then all the, | 32:48 | |
| and the people, and so it's just this culminating prayer. | 32:51 | |
| I think that's what it is, it's what's leading | 32:56 | |
| me to do it now, must have been what led me to do it then. | 32:58 | |
| And then just sort of, I think just ended it. | 33:01 | |
| Because what else could you do? | 33:03 | |
| It was, | 33:05 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And it was a lesson to face the moment. | 33:06 | |
| - | Yes. | 33:09 |
| - | and whatever you do, it's gonna have to be good enough | 33:10 |
| because anything different would not have been acceptable. | 33:13 | |
| - | Right. | 33:16 |
| - | And because we're saying, we don't feel included | 33:18 |
| with those rituals going on that do not even | 33:22 | |
| recognize our presence, here is this horrible thing, | 33:24 | |
| and I'm sure there were also Jewish women, | 33:27 | |
| you know, among that group, | 33:29 | |
| so that was probably why spirit led me to be there, | 33:31 | |
| in the end. | 33:37 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| You know, | 33:39 | |
| - | Wow. | |
| Because and they gave me that insight. | 33:39 | |
| And there once again, I promptly over the years | 33:43 | |
| wiped all of that out of my mind. | 33:45 | |
| And moved on you know. | 33:48 | |
| - | It's been a long time. | |
| - | Well it started, the conference started | 33:50 |
| rather dramatically for you, because you were so ill. | 33:52 | |
| - | Now that, was that the same one? | 33:56 |
| - | It was, yes. | 33:58 |
| You talked about that at the beginning of your, | 34:00 | |
| in your first comments to the group. | 34:02 | |
| You talked about how you, | 34:04 | |
| - | What year was this? | 34:05 |
| - | 95, and you had arrived, and I don't know what | 34:06 |
| you were ill with | 34:09 | |
| - | You're absolutely right. | |
| Yeah, and then Jill Jeffrien, and Beth | 34:11 | |
| - | What time was, when was this conference? | 34:12 |
| - | November, beginning of November 1995. | 34:15 |
| And you said that you were, they came at four o'clock | 34:19 | |
| and you were so, so sick, and you asked | 34:22 | |
| them to pray over you. | 34:24 | |
| - | Boy I don't remember that. | 34:27 |
| I remember, I remember the call | 34:29 | |
| to action one, which was 1996. | 34:31 | |
| - | Yeah | 34:34 |
| - | When Hans Kung opened, | 34:35 |
| - | Yeah | 34:39 |
| - | And I was to close. | 34:40 |
| - | Yes. | 34:41 |
| - | And three weeks before that, I had a mastectomy. | 34:42 |
| - | Oh, my goodness. | 34:48 |
| - | And I couldn't not go because, | 34:49 |
| I couldn't just, there were 4,000 plus people, | 34:52 | |
| stiff them | 34:56 | |
| - | Wow. | |
| So I said I would still come. | 34:58 | |
| I just told only two of their leaders, | 34:59 | |
| that I put me in a hotel room near where I'm gonna be, | 35:01 | |
| and I will do this, and again, I just stood up | 35:05 | |
| on that stage and said Holy Spirit, | 35:08 | |
| and just I guess for an hour just shared spirit. | 35:11 | |
| And then I decided, you know, | 35:14 | |
| if I'm gonna be authentic, so toward the end of it | 35:17 | |
| I just told the story of, | 35:20 | |
| and I linked it to imaging, reimagining, | 35:23 | |
| so maybe some of this, something, | 35:25 | |
| like I don't know, I don't know if I | 35:28 | |
| can think backwards to that but I said, | 35:29 | |
| - | Yeah | 35:31 |
| - | Here it is, I talked about liturgy of life | 35:33 |
| in the camps and how, I've been redeemed, | 35:36 | |
| and I believe this to the core of my being. | 35:40 | |
| But I said it publicly that I am ordained | 35:42 | |
| by the spirit of the living God | 35:45 | |
| to celebrate the liturgy life and so I found | 35:46 | |
| the most authentic rituals and the refugee camps | 35:49 | |
| among the hungry and the children, | 35:51 | |
| the dispossessed, and the homeless, | 35:53 | |
| and I said, and discovering images of God. | 35:55 | |
| God the breasted one, you know, Shaddai. | 35:59 | |
| And I gave those images and I said it was so. | 36:03 | |
| And then I has this wonderful event this weekend. | 36:05 | |
| One of these weekends women were in the church. | 36:08 | |
| This woman had been doing pottery, you know, | 36:09 | |
| She had discovered pottery because | 36:14 | |
| she always wanted to do art but she couldn't | 36:17 | |
| and when her father died, because he wanted her | 36:19 | |
| to do business, so she did business. | 36:20 | |
| He died and her husband said why don't you follow your heart | 36:22 | |
| and she became a famous artist after that. | 36:24 | |
| But anyway, but first I said, | 36:27 | |
| why don't you do it, your first pieces, | 36:29 | |
| and sell it at my Women Were the Church. | 36:31 | |
| So that was her inaugural thing. | 36:33 | |
| Okay I'm setting that up because | 36:34 | |
| in telling the story I said, | 36:38 | |
| I came back from India, | 36:40 | |
| I had to go to Latin America to do a big thing, | 36:43 | |
| came back, and I had my annual mammogram. | 36:46 | |
| I said it was always fine but all of a sudden, | 36:48 | |
| this was aggressive, and anyway, | 36:50 | |
| long story short, I'm facing surgery for breast, | 36:52 | |
| and they said, would you believe, | 36:57 | |
| I finally get images of the divine that work for me, | 37:00 | |
| in God the breasted one. | 37:04 | |
| And then I lose one of those breasts. | 37:06 | |
| I said, that ain't gonna work for me any more. | 37:08 | |
| And I said I began to like, | 37:10 | |
| the day before I was in the mail room, | 37:12 | |
| with, you know, my black female colleague was with me, | 37:14 | |
| and we were just crying, I said, | 37:19 | |
| you know this really is this terrible. | 37:20 | |
| I said, you know, not only is this happening, | 37:23 | |
| I'm losing my whole spiritual basis, | 37:25 | |
| and you know, and she, I said but, | 37:27 | |
| God will be with me I know, | 37:30 | |
| so I'm saying, there was a box in my mailbox. | 37:31 | |
| And the return address was Sacred Spaces | 37:33 | |
| and it was this woman's address you know. | 37:37 | |
| I said I wonder what this is, I opened it, | 37:39 | |
| and she says, the card says, | 37:40 | |
| here is my first attempt at a bowl of God Shaddai. | 37:44 | |
| I was at your conference, I heard you speak, | 37:52 | |
| and this so spoke to me and I lifted it up. | 37:54 | |
| And God Shaddai had wings. | 37:58 | |
| I had forgotten I also teach that God Shaddai | 38:00 | |
| is the breasted one, and the winged one. | 38:03 | |
| The mother hen and the you know, | 38:06 | |
| (knocking drowns out speaker) | 38:09 | |
| and I had in my misery, self inflicted misery, | 38:11 | |
| of feeling sorry for myself forgot that part. | 38:17 | |
| And God the winged one, | 38:20 | |
| came from an address that said Sacred Spaces. | 38:23 | |
| And said to me and I will be with you | 38:28 | |
| as who I will be, I will be with. | 38:30 | |
| I told that story, I say, so I knew that this, | 38:32 | |
| I said what are the chances that | 38:35 | |
| that was not orchestrated by the Holy Spirit. | 38:38 | |
| So I said, I went to surgery, | 38:41 | |
| and I said it's not even three weeks, | 38:42 | |
| so forgive me I'm feeling a little dizzy, | 38:44 | |
| if I have not been coherent, | 38:45 | |
| and I literally was at one hour, | 38:46 | |
| cause I could hardly, I had to sit. | 38:48 | |
| And I think, the place went crazy. | 38:50 | |
| - | Oh. | 38:54 |
| - | It was like, it was like I can't even imagine | 38:55 |
| going up the aisle and women were jumping | 38:57 | |
| over people to say, I too had a mastectomy, | 38:59 | |
| thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, | 39:02 | |
| for saying it out loud. | 39:04 | |
| Holy, you know. | 39:05 | |
| It was like, and so that became like a defining moment. | 39:07 | |
| Now what was before, I'm not quite sure. | 39:11 | |
| It might have been some flu or something like that. | 39:13 | |
| - | Yeah, I think it was something like that. | 39:16 |
| Yes, yes. | 39:17 | |
| - | But I think it was something | |
| - | Less dramatic you know. | 39:19 |
| - | I'm glad you told that story, | 39:23 |
| that is a powerful story. | 39:24 | |
| - | It's so powerful, you couldn't even make this up. | 39:26 |
| - | No. | 39:30 |
| - | And I wanna tell you though, | 39:31 |
| and this is just, so many, I could, | 39:33 | |
| if I put my, someday I need to just | 39:36 | |
| tell these stories again. | 39:38 | |
| There's so many, and they're still | 39:39 | |
| happening all the time now. | 39:41 | |
| Moments like this. | 39:43 | |
| But that is what this new degree is founded in. | 39:44 | |
| Be open to that because they're happening, | 39:49 | |
| but we're too busy, and too conditioned | 39:52 | |
| in other way to recognize, accept and affirm that, you know, | 39:55 | |
| and if you open the space it will be there. | 40:00 | |
| What you need will be given to you. | 40:02 | |
| It's told us, you know. | 40:05 | |
| And we need to trust that. | 40:07 | |
| You need to trust that. | 40:09 | |
| You know, I thought I stood on that sample, | 40:10 | |
| what dear God can I do this, you know. | 40:13 | |
| - | Yes. | 40:15 |
| - | It was, TV screens, it was full, | 40:16 |
| Cobo Hall in Detroit is huge. | 40:20 | |
| You know, 4,000 plus people, and I just, | 40:23 | |
| then I just tuned it out, I just was there. | 40:25 | |
| So sometimes you know, you have more guts than sense. | 40:30 | |
| (laughing) | 40:33 | |
| I didn't want guts in this space | 40:35 | |
| it's just I can't tell them that I'm not gonna come. | 40:36 | |
| You know | 40:39 | |
| - | yeah. | |
| There's a sense of responsibility | 40:40 | |
| for the planners and everything, you know. | 40:41 | |
| And I know how it is because I planned, | 40:44 | |
| and then you pull a key thing out, | 40:46 | |
| and I said, this is meant to be. | 40:49 | |
| If this is what it is, there's some reason why I'm going. | 40:51 | |
| - | Yes, and it ended up being such a blessing | 40:55 |
| to other people. | 40:56 | |
| - | It really did. | |
| - | In the end it really did. | 40:57 |
| - | Yes. | 40:58 |
| - | And a blessing to me as well. | 40:59 |
| Because from then on it was absolute exposure. | 41:01 | |
| I am not gonna hide this, | 41:05 | |
| I am not gonna have reconstruction. | 41:07 | |
| I'm not gonna buy a bra with a something in | 41:08 | |
| to have two breasts, I'm a one breasted woman. | 41:11 | |
| You know, | 41:13 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And it's not changed me, | 41:15 | |
| and so when I was in the prison, | 41:17 | |
| I can't tell you how many different women came up, | 41:18 | |
| you only have one breast, | 41:21 | |
| I said yes. | 41:22 | |
| Oh, really. | 41:24 | |
| Yes, I've had cancer and I'm a survivor and I'm thrilled. | 41:26 | |
| You're a survivor too of other things, remember that. | 41:30 | |
| We can go on, you know, this doesn't define me. | 41:32 | |
| You know, | 41:36 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| It's a piece of me and so it became like a nice | 41:37 | |
| really transitional symbol. | 41:40 | |
| - | Yeah, connection. | 41:43 |
| - | Connection, yeah. | 41:44 |
| - | Yeah, yeah, you know, so much of this | 41:45 |
| is about feminist theology, | 41:47 | |
| when and how did you get interested | 41:49 | |
| in feminist theology MT. | 41:51 | |
| - | I really didn't to tell you the truth. | 41:53 |
| (laughing) | 41:54 | |
| - | I didn't get interested in anything, | 41:56 |
| I just backed into it, and then it hooked me. | 41:57 | |
| Do you know what I'm saying. | 42:00 | |
| - | Tell me, tell me how you backed into it. | 42:02 |
| That's fascinating. | 42:03 | |
| - | Well I'm syncing somewhere when I said | 42:04 |
| about inviting people coming here to speak. | 42:09 | |
| And then women church, and then saying gee, | 42:12 | |
| I don't have any song, my songs, where are my songs, | 42:14 | |
| I've been using all this male language, | 42:17 | |
| and so I had to disassociate, | 42:19 | |
| so I said I'm gonna lock up here for the whole summer. | 42:22 | |
| And I said to the faculty, | 42:24 | |
| I said to one, I'm saying, | 42:26 | |
| why don't we just use for one month | 42:27 | |
| all the all female images, so I went to a Muslim, | 42:29 | |
| one of my Muslim, a very small 12, | 42:32 | |
| I said he's a nice guy, and he really open, you know, | 42:34 | |
| actually he wasn't Muslim, so sorry, | 42:37 | |
| he was Christian, Episcopal, | 42:39 | |
| but he taught in the Islamic area. | 42:43 | |
| I said could I | 42:46 | |
| - | Yes | |
| ask you, I'm wanting to do this now, | 42:47 | |
| will you support me, I'm gonna ask the faculty | 42:48 | |
| just for one, that every time it's a he you put she. | 42:50 | |
| And he was this dead silence. | 42:53 | |
| And you could see the blood just drained out of his face. | 42:55 | |
| And he stood there, and he said, | 42:57 | |
| why couldn't we just call Him it. | 43:03 | |
| And I said because, if you call Him it, | 43:08 | |
| for you and everybody else, it will always be Him. | 43:13 | |
| - | Yeah. | 43:16 |
| - | And for me, while it'll always be Her, | 43:17 |
| it ain't gonna go anywhere. | 43:19 | |
| - | Right. | 43:21 |
| - | So we gotta get rid of the Him, and Her, | 43:22 |
| and everything so it isn't gonna do it at first. | 43:24 | |
| But we've got to demythologize the other. | 43:27 | |
| So I never was able to pull that one off, | 43:30 | |
| but I went into seclusion, the songs | 43:32 | |
| of women song battled somewhere. | 43:35 | |
| And I said, and it wasn't easy for me either, | 43:36 | |
| because conditioned the other way, you know. | 43:39 | |
| Not using pronouns is alright. | 43:41 | |
| And theologically, and spiritually | 43:44 | |
| understanding the openesses. | 43:46 | |
| But singing the words was, | 43:47 | |
| but after a while I get so into it, you know, | 43:49 | |
| and then people, when that ghost, | 43:52 | |
| my feminist, or female things started coming out | 43:54 | |
| then people began responding, | 43:58 | |
| and then you get more into it, to legitimize. | 43:59 | |
| So I was led, okay, we did these rituals, | 44:02 | |
| woman prayer, woman song, with that, | 44:05 | |
| and then all of a sudden the women of the Bible. | 44:07 | |
| And I was so, always so, impressed with Theorenza. | 44:10 | |
| And when she said, you know, | 44:14 | |
| at one point in her first classical breakthrough book, | 44:16 | |
| she said, if wherever we, if we don't have any, | 44:21 | |
| specific things we can use, then we need to imagine. | 44:27 | |
| And that's what got me early on into imagining, | 44:31 | |
| and then to reimagining okay. | 44:34 | |
| So I'm saying, gee, imagining, | 44:36 | |
| well let me go and first of all | 44:38 | |
| let's see what's in the scriptures before I start imagining. | 44:40 | |
| - | Yeah | 44:42 |
| - | So I went through all the Bible, | 44:43 |
| first testament, I mean New Testament, | 44:45 | |
| and I said I think I'm gonna do rituals | 44:48 | |
| that women word, on every woman in the Bible | 44:51 | |
| even those who are implied, and you know. | 44:54 | |
| And so I did something for all of them. | 44:57 | |
| And then that was done. | 45:00 | |
| And then I saw no, I'm talkin' to the demons here. | 45:02 | |
| Not the demons, the other women, I said, | 45:06 | |
| don't you dare, don't you dare | 45:08 | |
| ask me to do this, the first testament, | 45:11 | |
| the Old Testament, I said it's too big, | 45:13 | |
| too long, too many, I'm too tired, too newmist, | 45:15 | |
| da, da, da, da, da, go away. | 45:17 | |
| (laughs) | 45:19 | |
| - | And they didn't. | 45:21 |
| - | I couldn't take a no, you know, | 45:23 |
| right, they didn't know | 45:24 | |
| - | (laughing) Yes. | |
| I couldn't take a no. | 45:25 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And I started. | 45:27 | |
| And like, like a wild, when I did it | 45:29 | |
| in a relatively short time. | 45:31 | |
| Fortunately cause there's so little | 45:32 | |
| that's ever written anywhere so, | 45:33 | |
| I used up all the jury sources Christian | 45:35 | |
| I could find academically. | 45:37 | |
| And then I decided to do it in a way | 45:39 | |
| that would be prayer in ritual. | 45:41 | |
| And so Psalms and also I finished that collection. | 45:43 | |
| And then I got into, okay now that's what's there, | 45:46 | |
| pretty much there. | 45:49 | |
| But now I can start imagining. | 45:50 | |
| So that went to the Gospel according to Mary. | 45:52 | |
| What if, and you know, women had their own stories. | 45:55 | |
| You know they had their own traditions. | 45:58 | |
| - | Yes. | 46:00 |
| - | You know they didn't make it into writings, | 46:01 |
| so what if I imagine that. | 46:02 | |
| Okay, and then what about the Exodus, Genesis | 46:04 | |
| and Exodus, cause those two books are filled with women, | 46:07 | |
| and they're always, and so I did | 46:11 | |
| the Chronicles of Noah and Her Sisters. | 46:13 | |
| And when I looked up Noah, | 46:15 | |
| which was brilliant first move. | 46:17 | |
| There are two references to Noah in the Scriptures, | 46:19 | |
| and one of them is female. | 46:23 | |
| And everybody forgets that. | 46:24 | |
| With those five feisty daughters, you know. | 46:26 | |
| That's how I got so established in the scriptural thing. | 46:29 | |
| And the theological, which of course | 46:34 | |
| has taken me away from my metaphorical | 46:37 | |
| which is my first love, but that's always my secret life. | 46:40 | |
| But the secret life went into Psalms which are public. | 46:43 | |
| So it's not so secret any more. | 46:45 | |
| But the good news is, and this is what saved everything, | 46:48 | |
| and where I'm working on it now with much more strength. | 46:51 | |
| I'm a gemini. | 46:53 | |
| - | Ah. | 46:54 |
| - | So one side is really happy with all of that stuff, | 46:55 |
| the other side is really happy with this stuff. | 46:59 | |
| And in my latter years now, in my dotage, | 47:01 | |
| I am now have the twins, not only working together, | 47:04 | |
| very clear this is your turn. | 47:09 | |
| I call on the right, the correct side for the right thing, | 47:11 | |
| you know, | 47:14 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And don't mix it up, if I do that's when you get distressed. | 47:15 | |
| You know if my metaphorical side | 47:18 | |
| is trying to get rid of all of this detail. | 47:20 | |
| No, you come out later on, | 47:22 | |
| when you're falling asleep, when I'm waking up, | 47:24 | |
| and when you're in your zone, and you're in the park, | 47:27 | |
| you let this person do the homework, | 47:29 | |
| and then you got something to work with. | 47:31 | |
| So it's kind of a really neat | 47:32 | |
| learning for myself psychologically and all. | 47:34 | |
| And to help others to do that, you know. | 47:38 | |
| Take the experience, don't mess up the experience, | 47:41 | |
| with you're, you know, theory. | 47:43 | |
| Keep it separate. | 47:48 | |
| Then look at your theory, | 47:49 | |
| and say which has the more authenticity for you? | 47:50 | |
| Which is the power of the impact? | 47:53 | |
| What is it saying? | 47:55 | |
| Which is conditioning the other, you know, | 47:56 | |
| where can you unite a piece of each one? | 47:59 | |
| So that's part of this teaching thing. | 48:01 | |
| You know, to honor all these different elements | 48:04 | |
| and take them seriously. | 48:07 | |
| - | You know, I'm fascinated when you | 48:09 |
| talk about going into seclusion, | 48:11 | |
| and singing the songs using feminine images. | 48:12 | |
| And you're the perfect person to ask this. | 48:15 | |
| I think a lot of the power and the backlash | 48:17 | |
| of reimagining was the fact that it was liturgy. | 48:19 | |
| And the fact that it was song | 48:22 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And so it was worship. | 48:24 | |
| - | Absolutely. | |
| So could you say a little bit more about | 48:25 | |
| why that was powerful for you. | 48:27 | |
| What is it about this that makes it so powerful, | 48:30 | |
| and even dangerous to some people. | 48:33 | |
| - | Well for me for example, | 48:34 |
| I was a very little girl, six, seven. | 48:37 | |
| Almost before school gave its influence, I was ready, pause. | 48:40 | |
| And I was sitting, and I grew up over my grandfather's | 48:44 | |
| saloon in Passaic, New Jersey, | 48:49 | |
| in a very small cold water flat you know. | 48:50 | |
| But, in the summers, that was my mother's family. | 48:53 | |
| My father's family had a farm in the Catskills mountains. | 48:57 | |
| A little bitsy thing. | 49:01 | |
| And so summer time I would be there | 49:02 | |
| and I would just be sitting out at night | 49:05 | |
| listening, you know, and sitting on the stone fence | 49:07 | |
| and looking at the stars and imagining. | 49:10 | |
| So I had, and so when I was home | 49:12 | |
| in the Passaic, New Jersey part. | 49:15 | |
| My grandmother's next to the bar, | 49:18 | |
| was a little, their house, and the only | 49:20 | |
| little garden in the whole area. | 49:24 | |
| It was all tenement flats, but they had saved | 49:26 | |
| this little, very posted sand garden | 49:28 | |
| with a tree in the middle, and little plants | 49:31 | |
| and I would sit on the porch and write poems. | 49:32 | |
| So I could write there, and I could revel in it in Catskill. | 49:34 | |
| But that was a real world for me, | 49:40 | |
| even though, and I would, I don't know, | 49:42 | |
| when I discovered, read the birds and the trees. | 49:44 | |
| I don't know, I loved that peace of it, | 49:46 | |
| and at night I would lay in bed | 49:50 | |
| and I would be writing a poem, and I'd never finish. | 49:51 | |
| If I had one word that didn't fit right, | 49:54 | |
| it would stay until it, you know, came together. | 49:56 | |
| So it was, I had a parallel universe, literally. | 50:01 | |
| And went in and out, back and forth. | 50:04 | |
| That's, and I didn't share, those with anybody. | 50:10 | |
| They were my secret things. | 50:14 | |
| And even entering the community. | 50:16 | |
| Well when I entered the community, | 50:18 | |
| the one, and she just passed on, | 50:22 | |
| bless her heart, Jane Byrnes, Sister Gerard. | 50:23 | |
| She was one of the rare ones, | 50:26 | |
| who was an English major and loved Gerard madly, | 50:27 | |
| Hopkins, and all the poets, so she stoked that in me. | 50:31 | |
| And plus the biblical stories, | 50:35 | |
| and all the lyricism in the Scriptures. | 50:37 | |
| I learned to see that there's another stream there, | 50:39 | |
| not just what you get when you go to mass on Sunday. | 50:42 | |
| And the little bit that's carved out of context. | 50:45 | |
| And so, I fell in love with that kind of thing. | 50:48 | |
| And so I would integrate then some of those images | 50:52 | |
| into my poems and it was before I was writing, | 50:54 | |
| you know, folk songs. | 50:56 | |
| That I knew the power of ritual, | 51:00 | |
| and then because they taught it to me. | 51:02 | |
| We were into the Gregorian chant. | 51:04 | |
| We followed the ritual at the hours and everything else, | 51:06 | |
| as missionaries, not as monastics. | 51:10 | |
| So there was only Prime in the morning, | 51:12 | |
| and Compline at night, and Vespers on big feasts, | 51:14 | |
| and mass, but, we had a sense of the sacredness | 51:17 | |
| of the day, of the seasons, and Easter, | 51:20 | |
| and you know, it was outdoors and indoors. | 51:23 | |
| So that ritual, liturgy, was important, very important. | 51:26 | |
| And then when the changes came, | 51:32 | |
| and we were working toward these changes before they came, | 51:34 | |
| we were part of those movements, you know. | 51:36 | |
| They needed to fit the people, | 51:38 | |
| they needed to be accessible, | 51:40 | |
| they couldn't just be an ancient, | 51:42 | |
| not that you'd ever wanna lose those, | 51:44 | |
| but they belong in museums or certain occasions, | 51:46 | |
| or you know, how do we make it. | 51:48 | |
| So that's how I got into, all of a sudden. | 51:51 | |
| That's why I said when I found that that degree | 51:56 | |
| thing wasn't working, I started singing songs. | 51:58 | |
| Has somebody read my star chart it's really great. | 52:02 | |
| All my very private gifts, | 52:05 | |
| every one is in all the public houses. | 52:09 | |
| It's in all this (drowned out by sigh) | 52:13 | |
| wrong houses. | 52:15 | |
| In other words, so theoretically, | 52:16 | |
| I extrovert, and I got extroverted. | 52:20 | |
| But I'm right on the line so these | 52:23 | |
| things are introverted, you know. | 52:25 | |
| I have a world inside, and that was more dominant | 52:28 | |
| when I was younger for me, because I would recede into that. | 52:31 | |
| Now that I'm doing all this teaching, | 52:35 | |
| my world is really out there, | 52:37 | |
| wanting you and your world to open up, you know. | 52:39 | |
| So, and in a sense, maybe I can do this, | 52:44 | |
| with such conviction because that's happened to me. | 52:46 | |
| I opened up. | 52:50 | |
| But then I'm opening you up, | 52:52 | |
| so you can open others up. | 52:53 | |
| Not only, if you have to open to yourself first, | 52:55 | |
| but then the point is not to stay, | 52:57 | |
| but to go out, this is how you can help others. | 52:59 | |
| And so it becomes like, you know, | 53:01 | |
| almost something that is contagious really. | 53:05 | |
| - | Yes. | 53:08 |
| - | So I haven't been writing in psalms in a long time now | 53:10 |
| because I got so into getting this degree going | 53:13 | |
| and finishing all this going around. | 53:16 | |
| And somebody writes me from Albuquerque, | 53:19 | |
| when, 2011, 12, 13, 14, 15, maybe six years now. | 53:23 | |
| He wants to put out a collection of my songs | 53:29 | |
| sung by other people of note, could I do it. | 53:32 | |
| So I thought he was crazy. | 53:34 | |
| And actually had letters from him in the past. | 53:35 | |
| He wasn't, I thought, huh. | 53:39 | |
| So I didn't even answer him. | 53:40 | |
| So six months go by, seven months. | 53:42 | |
| And he was a sweet guy so he didn't follow up, you know. | 53:45 | |
| And so I find this letter in the pile | 53:51 | |
| of unanswered letters and I said, | 53:52 | |
| gee, I really at least should say somthin'. | 53:54 | |
| And so I say, well what do you mean or something, | 53:57 | |
| why would you do this or, | 54:00 | |
| well that's all he needed, he leaped on it. | 54:01 | |
| (laughing) | 54:04 | |
| This was a man who had sung my songs | 54:05 | |
| as a church musician and all. | 54:09 | |
| He had been in a religious community. | 54:10 | |
| He'd left. | 54:12 | |
| He was in Albuquerque, New Mexico. | 54:13 | |
| He was, had a sacred art guild | 54:15 | |
| then he had formed out there at the Shrine. | 54:19 | |
| At the National Shrine for Saint Bernadette. | 54:21 | |
| Super rue, he was an artist. | 54:25 | |
| He'd gotten lots of things published | 54:26 | |
| and stuff, you know. | 54:29 | |
| And he wanted to do this. | 54:30 | |
| He loved my music. | 54:32 | |
| He said I can do it, and he told me what it was, | 54:33 | |
| the Sacred Books on Prayer, | 54:36 | |
| and I said I think you're crazy. | 54:38 | |
| Nobody's gonna do this. | 54:39 | |
| I said, but I'm not gonna stop you. | 54:40 | |
| That's all I said. | 54:44 | |
| I don't, I'm not gonna stop, that's all I said. | 54:45 | |
| Well let me tell you. | 54:48 | |
| Okay we're working on the third one. | 54:50 | |
| And not working so much, | 54:51 | |
| as it's apart from my spirit to play on, | 54:53 | |
| cause we have, now Lamour's gonna do | 54:56 | |
| another one in New York, she's, | 54:58 | |
| there's a studio in New York, and I'm | 55:00 | |
| gonna meet with her next month and she's gonna, | 55:01 | |
| she's gonna go back to One by One | 55:04 | |
| from the Women's song, One by One, you know. | 55:07 | |
| I said we need a little bit of feminist energy in here. | 55:10 | |
| And she could toss that one. | 55:12 | |
| But he got people and that's what he did. | 55:15 | |
| And he had contacted Janis Ian, | 55:18 | |
| - | Yes. | 55:20 |
| - | And she says to him, I'd rather talk | 55:21 |
| directly with the, the nun. | 55:23 | |
| (laughing) | 55:25 | |
| - | So that's how your connection with Janis Ian started? | 55:27 |
| - | Through that. | 55:29 |
| - | Really. | |
| And she says, he sends her, | 55:31 | |
| I said if you're gonna do something with her, | 55:35 | |
| send her Woman's Songs, and so she writes back, | 55:36 | |
| and she said, what's this phrase? | 55:39 | |
| And she said, I am the rays of the rising sun. | 55:46 | |
| Well you know, and, it opens the album or something. | 55:48 | |
| It's a poem I've written, or it was something | 55:53 | |
| I've tucked into Women Prayer, Women's Song ritual. | 55:55 | |
| It wasn't a song, it was a text. | 55:58 | |
| - | Yeah. | 56:00 |
| - | The poem prayer. | 56:01 |
| It was God speaking, she says, | 56:02 | |
| this ain't in my, this isn't in my Bible. | 56:03 | |
| And I wrote back and says it's not in my Bible either. | 56:06 | |
| I said, it's a text, you know. | 56:09 | |
| And so I thought if you're gonna be that snippy | 56:14 | |
| I'm not gonna, I just, and you know I just wrote. | 56:16 | |
| She writes back, I can't get it out of my mind. | 56:18 | |
| And she said, I had this melody, | 56:22 | |
| can I have permission to set it to music | 56:24 | |
| for your thing, or whatever, you know. | 56:27 | |
| Set it to music, she was separate from. | 56:30 | |
| And I wrote back, I said, I don't let people do this | 56:31 | |
| because, I said, well let me think about it. | 56:34 | |
| I don't know. | 56:40 | |
| And she wrote back, she said. | 56:41 | |
| I'd like to share with you whatever I have | 56:43 | |
| and if you don't like it, it's over, we tear it up. | 56:45 | |
| And it goes out, and so I wrote back, okay. | 56:48 | |
| And it began, (mumbles) and then I have, | 56:52 | |
| a gazillion emails from her, we're just soul friends. | 56:57 | |
| We are literally soul friends. | 57:00 | |
| - | Yes. | 57:02 |
| - | I've been to her house, five days, in Nashville, | 57:03 |
| love her, she is crazy, and wonderful, | 57:07 | |
| and generous, and spiritual, | 57:12 | |
| and totally at times inappropriate, | 57:15 | |
| on the other times, just so, I just love her. | 57:19 | |
| She is a friend, she is supportive of me. | 57:24 | |
| She, I know she's just terrific. | 57:28 | |
| We did a program together. | 57:31 | |
| We also did a thing, | 57:33 | |
| - | Is this | |
| - | the New Jersey Broads? | 57:35 |
| - | Yes | 57:36 |
| (laughing) | 57:37 | |
| - | That's her title. | 57:39 |
| - | Yeah | 57:40 |
| (laughing) | 57:41 | |
| (drowned out by laughter) | 57:42 | |
| - | Two broads, Two Jersey Broads, and the Holy Spirit | 57:43 |
| or something | 57:44 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| - | Yeah she did that for the NPR, | 57:45 |
| was it the NPR, the rest or something. | 57:46 | |
| Nashville, something out there, I don't know. | 57:50 | |
| - | I think it was Scarlett Bennett. | 57:52 |
| - | Yes it was at Scarlett Bennett, | 57:53 |
| but it was, we did that, but it was televised | 57:54 | |
| for NPR thing out, down there in Tennessee. | 57:57 | |
| - | Oh, okay, yes. | 58:01 |
| - | So that was separate from, | 58:02 |
| but we held it at that, and then I had an event there. | 58:03 | |
| And so I said, | 58:06 | |
| you're talkin' theology, and I'm talking music. | 58:07 | |
| (laughing) | 58:10 | |
| - | But that's like she was very, | 58:11 |
| she came to my house, when she was passing through, | 58:13 | |
| she said, do you have a washing machine? | 58:16 | |
| I said, yeah. | 58:19 | |
| She said I have some dirty, can I come and see you, | 58:21 | |
| I have a concert, big concert. | 58:23 | |
| So she comes over, with this tons of wash, | 58:25 | |
| and I here she's got her wash in my washing machine. | 58:27 | |
| And we're talkin' theology, | 58:30 | |
| and she says, what's the, where'd you get this, | 58:32 | |
| oh let me just get this, she goes online, | 58:33 | |
| you know, unbelievable, we're just flippin' | 58:35 | |
| back and forth, you know. | 58:38 | |
| - | Yeah. | 58:39 |
| So I just love her, | 58:40 | |
| and then she finally, long story short, | 58:43 | |
| she said, | 58:46 | |
| - | yeah, this is great. | |
| She says, | 58:47 | |
| can I, I'm gonna, I'd like to pose to my publishers, | 58:51 | |
| I do audio books, can I do your autobiography? | 58:55 | |
| And so I don't know if you've seen that? | 58:59 | |
| - | I have yes. | 59:00 |
| - | Okay, | |
| - | can you imagine, she sings all 26 songs. | 59:02 |
| - | Oh yes. | 59:04 |
| - | And she says, calls up, I don't know about this one, | 59:06 |
| about Christ, this Jesus one, Christ one. | 59:08 | |
| She said what are my Jewish friends gonna say? | 59:11 | |
| I said well don't do it. | 59:13 | |
| She says, I don't care what my Jewish friends say. | 59:14 | |
| (laughing) | 59:16 | |
| You know you're a singer of songs, | 59:19 | |
| you know, Jewish people sing Christmas carols, right. | 59:20 | |
| But she had so closely identified | 59:23 | |
| with all of it, she had to like, you know, | 59:25 | |
| I gotta check out is this okay. | 59:28 | |
| So she took me to the Audies, you know, | 59:30 | |
| because we got an Audie nomination for | 59:34 | |
| Yes, I saw that. | 59:36 | |
| - | Did you? | |
| - | And so here I am with her for three days | 59:38 |
| in the village you know, wondering around | 59:40 | |
| having the best time, you know. | 59:42 | |
| Oh gosh, | 59:44 | |
| - | what was that like MT? | |
| - | Well the event itself is ridiculous. | 59:45 |
| I mean it's just not my thing, you know. | 59:48 | |
| I mean, well there were nice people there, | 59:50 | |
| and they're all lovely, and I love | 59:51 | |
| everybody's happy, and all this glitz. | 59:52 | |
| But I loved, you know, walkin' around the village | 59:55 | |
| and in the park, and you know with her | 59:56 | |
| and just, you know. | 59:58 | |
| And then we, there was this second hand store | 1:00:01 | |
| that they have in Manhattan, | 1:00:03 | |
| you know, the nuns, and everything's cheap. | 1:00:05 | |
| And I could see little trinkets. | 1:00:06 | |
| I liked that part, you know, | 1:00:08 | |
| (laughing) | 1:00:09 | |
| and just having nice meals together, | 1:00:10 | |
| and just, but she put me up in a beautiful place. | 1:00:13 | |
| In fact the place got comped by the owners, | 1:00:16 | |
| you know, this hotel, they said look Janice | 1:00:18 | |
| we're gonna do this for you, | 1:00:21 | |
| will give you free, give her free room. | 1:00:22 | |
| And beautiful suite, I said this is ridiculous. | 1:00:25 | |
| But is was so nice, cause they were Catholic, | 1:00:27 | |
| I'm a nun, you know. | 1:00:29 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:00:30 |
| And Janice is Jewish so, | 1:00:31 | |
| - | To the bone. | 1:00:33 |
| - | Yes, yeah. | 1:00:34 |
| - | Jewish lesbian. | 1:00:35 |
| - | Yes, yes. | 1:00:36 |
| - | And had married to this wonderful gal, | 1:00:38 |
| and they're just so, and then she's so good to me. | 1:00:39 | |
| When she was here, she drove over to my house. | 1:00:44 | |
| Your case need changing, so she threw | 1:00:46 | |
| the guitar into her van and drove it back to Nashville | 1:00:49 | |
| and restrung the whole thing, and fixed it. | 1:00:51 | |
| My Mark nun had it shipped back. | 1:00:53 | |
| - | Seriously. | 1:00:55 |
| - | I mean stuff like this. | |
| - | She does it all the time, you know. | 1:00:57 |
| You're shoes were terrible so she sends | 1:01:00 | |
| me a credit card for Fleet Feet. | 1:01:02 | |
| Buy yourself some shoes. | 1:01:03 | |
| Throw 'em out, I said we don't throw out shoes. | 1:01:05 | |
| I said it's got another ten years to go. | 1:01:07 | |
| You shouldn't wear more that these. | 1:01:09 | |
| But yeah, I mean she, I love her, she's like. | 1:01:11 | |
| She's just | 1:01:12 | |
| - | I'd love to see | |
| - | the two of you together. | 1:01:14 |
| It must be a hoot. | 1:01:15 | |
| - | it is so funny. | 1:01:16 |
| It truly is, we gotta do more things. | 1:01:17 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:01:19 |
| - | And she agreed to so something here for and with me. | 1:01:19 |
| I'm hopin' to do something related to this chair | 1:01:22 | |
| you know. | 1:01:25 | |
| - | Yes. | |
| And so we'll see what we can do. | 1:01:26 | |
| She's kinda tryin' to zone down a little bit, you know. | 1:01:28 | |
| So I'd love, if I had more, I've had more lives. | 1:01:33 | |
| And I'd love to go back to Nashville. | 1:01:36 | |
| She'd have me there in a heartbeat, you know. | 1:01:39 | |
| - | Yeah. | 1:01:40 |
| - | There's so many things that I do wanna do. | 1:01:41 |
| - | Yes. | 1:01:44 |
| - | And so to awaken this part of the music again, | 1:01:45 |
| for Dan Polis, who's name should be | 1:01:48 | |
| put in lights forever in history. | 1:01:51 | |
| What he has done, not only with Loving You, | 1:01:54 | |
| I don't know if you've seen that CD, | 1:01:58 | |
| you cannot leave it out. | 1:01:59 | |
| - | I have it now. | |
| That and Breath of the Spirit | 1:02:01 | |
| that just came out with people singin' the songs | 1:02:02 | |
| in ways that I could have never imagined | 1:02:05 | |
| them to be interpreted. | 1:02:07 | |
| Elizabeth Von Trapp, you know | 1:02:09 | |
| - | Oh | |
| has gotten one of each of the albums. | 1:02:14 | |
| She's done three. | 1:02:16 | |
| - | Wow. | 1:02:18 |
| - | Malcolm Moore has done three already. | 1:02:18 |
| She's gonna do another. | 1:02:22 | |
| There's just other people to, | 1:02:24 | |
| and then in like Cynthia Clawson, | 1:02:26 | |
| if you're into the movement with, | 1:02:27 | |
| more, what is this, the Gospel kind of, | 1:02:33 | |
| Southern Gospel, there's people from there. | 1:02:35 | |
| And it's just so, it's like people | 1:02:39 | |
| have different faith traditions. | 1:02:41 | |
| Choosing a song that fits so that, | 1:02:43 | |
| it is called The Sacred Folk Song project. | 1:02:46 | |
| People of different faith traditions singing these. | 1:02:49 | |
| - | What is it like to have, to hear them singing | 1:02:53 |
| - | Well it was startling at first. | 1:02:55 |
| - | Yeah | 1:02:57 |
| - | you know. | |
| - | Oh, gosh, I know I've had it. | 1:02:59 |
| He sends me, and it just tears me up, | 1:03:03 | |
| he's just working on this now, | 1:03:05 | |
| he sends me like the first mix of this, they've got 'em. | 1:03:06 | |
| It's so different, you know, | 1:03:09 | |
| it startled members of my community, | 1:03:12 | |
| the first one, some of the interpretations. | 1:03:13 | |
| And I'm sayin' look, this song is out there. | 1:03:15 | |
| It's on these CD's for the nuns singing. | 1:03:20 | |
| Get over it. | 1:03:24 | |
| (laughing) | 1:03:24 | |
| - | You know, I have to get over it, | 1:03:27 |
| at first it was, it was now I'm just so excited | 1:03:28 | |
| to hear what someone's gonna do, you know. | 1:03:31 | |
| Or sometimes it's very different. | 1:03:34 | |
| Sometimes it isn't, but you know. | 1:03:36 | |
| It really is different. | 1:03:38 | |
| It's exciting, it's wonderful, you know. | 1:03:40 | |
| And the thing is, because we're a community | 1:03:44 | |
| of missionaries, and we're not large, | 1:03:48 | |
| and we don't have a lot of people, | 1:03:51 | |
| and so all the music is in my basement. | 1:03:53 | |
| And all the orders are filled, | 1:03:56 | |
| and everybody orders with me, | 1:03:58 | |
| and I'm the only person living there. | 1:03:59 | |
| And you can have a, an assistant. | 1:04:01 | |
| You know, I have someone who helps me with WLI | 1:04:03 | |
| eleven hours a week, on two different days, | 1:04:07 | |
| who's at my house now, so there goes Wednesday. | 1:04:09 | |
| (laughing) | 1:04:12 | |
| But, you know, it just all works out. | 1:04:13 | |
| - | Yeah. | 1:04:16 |
| - | It just, you do, you know, that's how | 1:04:17 |
| my recreation is, I think I'll go to my music. | 1:04:19 | |
| I think I'll go do this. | 1:04:20 | |
| I think I'd better finish this book | 1:04:21 | |
| which they're waiting in London as we speak, | 1:04:23 | |
| that I ship it. | 1:04:25 | |
| - | It sounds like they reimagined your songs. | 1:04:27 |
| - | They did. | 1:04:29 |
| They absolutely did. | 1:04:30 | |
| - | Yeah. | 1:04:32 |
| - | They really did. | 1:04:32 |
| And bout the stories, and what they did | 1:04:34 | |
| with the ones they brought to the studio in Albuquerque. | 1:04:36 | |
| This one guy who's won a lot of Grammys for his video. | 1:04:39 | |
| He filmed an interview with them | 1:04:43 | |
| with three basic questions. | 1:04:46 | |
| Why did you choose this song? | 1:04:48 | |
| Cause they choose the song they identify with. | 1:04:50 | |
| - | Oh is that right? | 1:04:52 |
| - | They're sent several samples | |
| Yeah. | 1:04:54 | |
| - | And they tell about how this really spoke to me. | 1:04:56 |
| This just transformed me. | 1:05:00 | |
| Or this meant so much, at least | 1:05:02 | |
| that's what he's telling me, you know. | 1:05:04 | |
| And so the plan had been, | 1:05:07 | |
| except back in the day when he started this | 1:05:09 | |
| there were more funds available. | 1:05:11 | |
| There's not much funding around the two. | 1:05:13 | |
| And it's like dirt cheap, | 1:05:17 | |
| he's just simply the studio and so, | 1:05:18 | |
| he's now, like he's donating and selling off | 1:05:20 | |
| some of his stuff, and the studio guy, | 1:05:24 | |
| and if money comes in we, they send it. | 1:05:26 | |
| He gives it to him. | 1:05:28 | |
| So it's just bit by bit, you know. | 1:05:30 | |
| - | Yeah. | 1:05:32 |
| - | But he's determined to do this because he loves the songs. | 1:05:33 |
| They never made it into the Catholic tradition. | 1:05:36 | |
| And I think that's what just stoked him. | 1:05:39 | |
| To just get out there. | 1:05:42 | |
| I never went Catholic, I went New York, you know. | 1:05:44 | |
| I went through the New York studio | 1:05:48 | |
| and Ten Pan Alley thing. | 1:05:50 | |
| And so, but even so, it just was never, | 1:05:53 | |
| everything is real churchy in the church. | 1:05:56 | |
| And he, just says, these should be out there. | 1:06:00 | |
| And what's so lovely is, it's true, | 1:06:04 | |
| they're not in the confines of that. | 1:06:06 | |
| I mean my best supporters were the Mennonites | 1:06:08 | |
| and the Amish and just different peoples of, | 1:06:11 | |
| you know, the Moravian's, and the Presbyterians, | 1:06:13 | |
| and the whatever, you name it. | 1:06:16 | |
| And the Africans, and the other cultures, | 1:06:19 | |
| and so that's actually who I am, you know. | 1:06:21 | |
| So it's so perfect. | 1:06:23 | |
| It just settled itself. | 1:06:26 | |
| So these now are just a different way to listen to them. | 1:06:27 | |
| And you know, there's these three teenage girls | 1:06:32 | |
| from the Midwest, from some Iowa, | 1:06:37 | |
| somewhere in the middle of nowhere. | 1:06:40 | |
| And their father's a musician. | 1:06:42 | |
| And he trained them to sing in a madrigal style, | 1:06:44 | |
| acapella, and they've done two songs, | 1:06:49 | |
| that oh my gosh, with their intertwining | 1:06:52 | |
| pure girl voices, you know, so lovely. | 1:06:55 | |
| So you have the young and you have the old, | 1:06:58 | |
| and you have, you know, soloists, | 1:07:01 | |
| and choirs and it's kind of fun. | 1:07:03 | |
| - | This is remarkable. | 1:07:05 |
| Oh I so look forward to hearing this. | 1:07:07 | |
| - | Yeah, you're gonna walk over with me to my house. | 1:07:09 |
| And we're gonna go in and get those and give it to ya. | 1:07:11 | |
| - | Yeah, let me end by, just, | 1:07:15 |
| we talked about your reimagining songs. | 1:07:18 | |
| In the end what do you think if we think | 1:07:20 | |
| about the reimagining movement, the conference. | 1:07:22 | |
| Do you have a sense about what you think | 1:07:24 | |
| the legacy of it was? | 1:07:25 | |
| - | That's interesting. | 1:07:30 |
| Legacy is an interesting word. | 1:07:32 | |
| So I'm not sure if I can answer that. | 1:07:36 | |
| I could say impact, | 1:07:39 | |
| - | Say that, yes. | 1:07:40 |
| - | Impact, | 1:07:41 |
| and even that, is somehow, | 1:07:44 | |
| what we need to do, okay here's what we need to do | 1:07:46 | |
| in order to do, and what you're doing, | 1:07:49 | |
| God bless you this is wonderful. | 1:07:51 | |
| We need, we feminists need not just to leave | 1:07:55 | |
| it to the historians out there, | 1:07:59 | |
| but we need to look, | 1:08:01 | |
| and my talks now go between, | 1:08:04 | |
| okay two men and a bird. | 1:08:07 | |
| Which Rosemary Ruether's, | 1:08:09 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:08:11 |
| - | Okay and I give her credit every time. | 1:08:11 |
| I gotta pinpoint these comments | 1:08:13 | |
| between two men and a bird. | 1:08:15 | |
| I changed the middle, but it's John the 23rd, | 1:08:17 | |
| and now Francis, okay. | 1:08:20 | |
| - | Oh yes. | |
| And how Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, | 1:08:22 | |
| the two men and a bird, | 1:08:24 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:08:26 |
| - | And then, so for me, if we need to look at that period, | 1:08:27 |
| a team of, whatever, and highlight | 1:08:33 | |
| what the women's contribution has been, | 1:08:37 | |
| and identify the different components. | 1:08:40 | |
| Cause we're all over the place. | 1:08:44 | |
| That's because, it's emerging. | 1:08:45 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:08:47 |
| - | But if we wait to history to look back | 1:08:48 |
| and put the pieces together, they may put | 1:08:49 | |
| them together in ways, they wouldn't be sort of wrong, | 1:08:53 | |
| but they're not, we see things differently. | 1:08:56 | |
| And so you can see, we can see the impact | 1:08:59 | |
| if reimagining, that would be just one event. | 1:09:02 | |
| But there are other events, that history | 1:09:04 | |
| will miss that maybe, in the big picture, | 1:09:07 | |
| and settle others, but you can say, | 1:09:09 | |
| okay at this period of time, there was, | 1:09:11 | |
| A, B, da, da, da, there was da, da, da, da. | 1:09:14 | |
| It was among the Mennonites, it was among the Methodists, | 1:09:15 | |
| it was among the, and the Lutherans. | 1:09:18 | |
| Even when you get down to all the Lutheran traditions, | 1:09:20 | |
| even the most conservative shifting. | 1:09:25 | |
| So we need to sort of do that. | 1:09:28 | |
| Like, and like rubbers, like Defecting in Place, | 1:09:30 | |
| that got that, that was a big one, | 1:09:33 | |
| that got a grant, | 1:09:34 | |
| - | That was a great book. | |
| And got people in there, but it doesn't fit | 1:09:37 | |
| any framework, it doesn't fit ritual, | 1:09:40 | |
| it doesn't fit these theologies. | 1:09:43 | |
| So you can't do it, so we've ran | 1:09:46 | |
| with the Bible theology and ritual and spirituality. | 1:09:48 | |
| Cause those are the ones, you know, | 1:09:51 | |
| and then also certainly application, injustice, | 1:09:54 | |
| works of mercy, et cetera | 1:09:56 | |
| But, I think we need to look at this whole thing. | 1:09:58 | |
| So like people are coming up to me, | 1:10:00 | |
| do you have like the thing with Ludmillas stuff, | 1:10:02 | |
| and do you have, and I've said Geez, you know, | 1:10:05 | |
| all these movements, I've had a finger in a lot of them. | 1:10:08 | |
| - | You have. | 1:10:10 |
| - | And I don't even think that way. | 1:10:11 |
| But when people are coming up to you, | 1:10:13 | |
| do you have this, do you have this. | 1:10:14 | |
| I said somewhere in my basement is Ludmilla. | 1:10:16 | |
| Somewhere in the second floor, is somebody, | 1:10:18 | |
| I just found some and said what is this doing here? | 1:10:21 | |
| So I'm trying to like have, | 1:10:23 | |
| I'm trying to put the piles, that relate to each other | 1:10:25 | |
| in the places, and then put them in where they need to go. | 1:10:28 | |
| So they're safe | 1:10:32 | |
| - | Yes, yes. | |
| Because they're not safe with me, you know. | 1:10:33 | |
| And it's so important. | 1:10:35 | |
| And so what you're doing is you're getting | 1:10:37 | |
| a perspective, and you're taking the time | 1:10:39 | |
| to do this, you're getting the backing to do this. | 1:10:42 | |
| And I would recommend to you that | 1:10:45 | |
| this is vitally important, you get that in place. | 1:10:47 | |
| But then you look for maybe some grant money | 1:10:50 | |
| to do the bigger picture, you know, | 1:10:53 | |
| of which I would love to be a part of. | 1:10:55 | |
| Not that I wanna get involved, | 1:10:57 | |
| because I don't have time | 1:10:59 | |
| - | I get it. | |
| I can actually hand you stuff, | 1:11:01 | |
| that are, we have like, even a conference so to speak, | 1:11:03 | |
| of some of, if we're still, those who are still alive. | 1:11:07 | |
| Like we asked, | 1:11:12 | |
| what is my name? | 1:11:16 | |
| - | Letty Russell. | 1:11:17 |
| - | Thank you so much. | 1:11:18 |
| - | That, yes, yes. | |
| Letty was so who was key | 1:11:20 | |
| - | yes | |
| and so close to us | 1:11:22 | |
| - | yes. | |
| And here to us, you know. | 1:11:23 | |
| We don't have a lot of time left. | 1:11:25 | |
| - | Are you talking about getting together | 1:11:29 |
| people from reimagining? | 1:11:30 | |
| - | No, no not reimagining | 1:11:32 |
| - | Bigger than that. | |
| Finish your reimagining | 1:11:33 | |
| - | yes, yes. | |
| I'm talking about, because the role ready. | 1:11:35 | |
| Russell played the role that, | 1:11:39 | |
| the role that, shoosh-la-fear, | 1:11:40 | |
| Rensa played, even though she's got, you know, | 1:11:43 | |
| we've got to, while they're still living, breathing, | 1:11:45 | |
| at least look at, maybe if we get them then that's okay. | 1:11:50 | |
| But then we look at people who | 1:11:53 | |
| objectively could look at those people. | 1:11:55 | |
| You know | 1:11:57 | |
| - | Yes | |
| and say, this is an important one to make sure | 1:11:58 | |
| that you get into this stream of whatever, | 1:12:00 | |
| while we have a chance to put these, | 1:12:03 | |
| resources, make these available, you know. | 1:12:05 | |
| Because now a days so much is available. | 1:12:09 | |
| And what makes it into a conversation, or whatever, | 1:12:11 | |
| are those who initiate the search. | 1:12:16 | |
| - | Yes. | 1:12:19 |
| - | They can go anywhere, for anything, | 1:12:19 |
| which is good and also terrifying. | 1:12:22 | |
| Because you're not evaluating what is really substantive, | 1:12:24 | |
| and what is commentary around the substantive, you know, | 1:12:28 | |
| and I think that's really, that's really something. | 1:12:33 | |
| You know, | 1:12:36 | |
| - | yes. | |
| There's a lot of this, | 1:12:38 | |
| this is a good time because the clock is ticking. | 1:12:41 | |
| - | Excellent. | 1:12:45 |
| - | And we don't have | |
| - | too much more left. | 1:12:46 |
| - | Right. | 1:12:47 |
| I wanna ask one final question | 1:12:48 | |
| - | sure. | |
| And the way you've been doing this all along | 1:12:49 | |
| but i wanna ask this directly, | 1:12:50 | |
| what does reimagining mean today? | 1:12:52 | |
| What needs to be reimagined or is being reimagined? | 1:12:56 | |
| - | Just about everything. | 1:13:00 |
| (laughter) | 1:13:01 | |
| Just about everything. | 1:13:05 | |
| First of all we need to take seriously, | 1:13:09 | |
| we need to reimagine, | 1:13:12 | |
| we need to reimagine, so if you start too big | 1:13:17 | |
| you've lost people, so you gotta start here. | 1:13:20 | |
| But we're also, we need to take seriously | 1:13:22 | |
| not just looking at imaginary programs | 1:13:25 | |
| about outer space, about other things happening, | 1:13:30 | |
| we need to reimagine our reality | 1:13:35 | |
| that it validates these outer space, | 1:13:39 | |
| endless space, | 1:13:46 | |
| what might be out there. | 1:13:48 | |
| The puniness, the puniness and limitations of humanity. | 1:13:50 | |
| The short timeline we have, | 1:13:57 | |
| that have in fact defined and determined everything. | 1:13:59 | |
| So you know the theory of everything of what's his name, | 1:14:05 | |
| (drowned out by laughing) | 1:14:08 | |
| we need to reimagine everything. | 1:14:09 | |
| And if you reimagine it, it's safe | 1:14:13 | |
| well because you can say it's imagination. | 1:14:15 | |
| But at the heart when women reimagine | 1:14:18 | |
| is deep truth, because the imagination | 1:14:21 | |
| is the stuff you use to express and hold | 1:14:23 | |
| something that is the kernel. | 1:14:27 | |
| It's like Paul recorded, | 1:14:29 | |
| the disposable believable. | 1:14:32 | |
| - | Believable. | |
| Good your reading, | 1:14:35 | |
| - | I love that one. | |
| `I say it all the time that there's something, | 1:14:37 | |
| that's wrapped, you wrap, there's something believable. | 1:14:41 | |
| And I don't know anymore what that is. | 1:14:44 | |
| Because I say faith and belief are very different you know, | 1:14:47 | |
| there's the beliefs you hear, person of faith, | 1:14:51 | |
| even if you don't know what you believe. | 1:14:53 | |
| It's not about believing. | 1:14:55 | |
| It's about a deep conviction where faith resides. | 1:14:57 | |
| So we need to get back to what is the disposable, | 1:15:00 | |
| what might be believable, and what can we let go of | 1:15:03 | |
| in all of this, so you apply that principle | 1:15:07 | |
| it would be to reimagine is to safely visit everything. | 1:15:10 | |
| If we could imagine, if we can use the imagination | 1:15:15 | |
| now in a looser way like we would, | 1:15:20 | |
| like a child imagines, an imaginary world. | 1:15:23 | |
| We need to reimagine an imaginary world | 1:15:26 | |
| based on actually, real facts. | 1:15:29 | |
| - | Yeah. | 1:15:32 |
| - | To say, imagine if this might really be true. | 1:15:33 |
| Let's imagine this might be true. | 1:15:36 | |
| And then what if it were. | 1:15:38 | |
| What would be the world we want to reimagine. | 1:15:39 | |
| Okay what would be the kind of world would we wanna live in. | 1:15:41 | |
| Then it safely allows us to do that. | 1:15:44 | |
| So in a sense I'm playing with that in my | 1:15:46 | |
| courses and in my programs. | 1:15:49 | |
| That's what we're doing, it's not specifically saying it. | 1:15:51 | |
| But you're opening my mind to saying | 1:15:53 | |
| maybe we're onto something, you know, bigger. | 1:15:55 | |
| - | Oh yes. | 1:15:57 |
| - | Plus, | |
| - | Because now we want to, it's a safe word. | 1:15:59 |
| And I love, you know, Einstein's, | 1:16:02 | |
| what is it, it's not facts, | 1:16:07 | |
| it's theory or facts will get you | 1:16:09 | |
| from here to here to here to there, | 1:16:12 | |
| but imagination will take you anywhere. | 1:16:13 | |
| - | Yes | 1:16:16 |
| - | And to me, | 1:16:17 |
| - | Yeah, | 1:16:18 |
| - | It's sort of the anywhere reality of yeah, | 1:16:19 |
| - | Yeah | 1:16:25 |
| - | So. | 1:16:26 |
| - | That's a great place to stop I think. | 1:16:27 |
| That's wonderful, wonderful. | 1:16:29 |
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