Deacon-Weber, Kathy
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
- | Alright, we should be going here. | 0:00 |
First of all, if you could say your name. | 0:03 | |
- | My name is Kathy Deacon Weber. | 0:05 |
- | Thank you and are you lay or clergy? | 0:07 |
- | Lay. | 0:10 |
- | And your denominational affiliation, if you have any. | 0:10 |
- | Uh, my background is Roman Catholic. | 0:13 |
- | Good, great. | 0:17 |
When and where were you born, Kathy? | 0:19 | |
- | I was born in | 0:21 |
Varina, Iowa in 1954. | 0:24 | |
- | OK, nice. | 0:27 |
And where did you go to school, graduate or divinity school? | 0:29 | |
- | I went to United Theological Seminary | 0:32 |
in New Brighton, Minnesota. | 0:34 | |
- | Great. | 0:36 |
And how and when did you first | 0:37 | |
become aware of feminist theology? | 0:40 | |
- | Um. | 0:43 |
I think it started in the 80s | 0:48 | |
and I attended a | 0:51 | |
diocesan retreat that was held here | 0:54 | |
in Shoreview at Home of the Good Shepherd. | 0:57 | |
And it was by two nuns, | 1:00 | |
Michelle and Kay and they gave a | 1:05 | |
day of the feminist images of God in the Bible. | 1:09 | |
And I was a young mom then, and I thought, | 1:15 | |
oh my gosh, I had waited my whole life | 1:17 | |
to hear this, you know. | 1:19 | |
So they... | 1:20 | |
talked about, | 1:23 | |
well, I know they said that Ourea meant God of the mountains | 1:28 | |
or God the breasted one and I thought, | 1:34 | |
oh my goodness, I'm made in God's image. | 1:36 | |
You know and-- | 1:40 | |
- | Is that the first time you really felt that? | 1:41 |
- | Yes. | 1:43 |
- | Wow. | |
- | Mmhm, yeah, in a deeper way. | 1:45 |
- | Yeah. | 1:48 |
- | And I think I'd call myself a feminist before then. | 1:50 |
And then at the College of St. Catherine's | 1:54 | |
they had a theological insights program | 1:56 | |
and every fall and every spring for four or five | 2:00 | |
Friday mornings they would have a topic | 2:04 | |
and they would invite a woman to come | 2:07 | |
and share her story on the topic | 2:09 | |
and then they'd have another woman come | 2:11 | |
and do more of a theological reflection on the topic. | 2:14 | |
And I would imagine there was at least probably | 2:18 | |
300 or more of us that would attend regularly | 2:23 | |
and I went not knowing anyone | 2:27 | |
and that's where I met kind of a core community | 2:29 | |
that I still meet regularly with. | 2:33 | |
- | Really? | 2:35 |
- | I decided then that feminist theology | 2:41 |
was women telling their stories. | 2:46 | |
That's what I learned from that. | 2:49 | |
So that kind of shaped my theology. | 2:51 | |
And then I took a continuing ed class | 2:54 | |
at St. Catherine's University | 2:57 | |
by Florence McHugh, | 3:01 | |
who studied and got her degree with the university | 3:02 | |
that Matthew Fox had started in California. | 3:06 | |
And it was called Awakening the Divine Feminine | 3:09 | |
and that was very life changing | 3:12 | |
and she introduced me to uh, | 3:14 | |
oh, like the Goddess of Willendorf | 3:20 | |
and some of the early goddess figures and um, | 3:22 | |
some films about the goddess and anyway, | 3:26 | |
that was quite an awakening. | 3:29 | |
And she had two classes, one that met in the day | 3:32 | |
and one that met at the night. | 3:35 | |
And when that series ended, a woman from the other class | 3:36 | |
contacted me and we formed a | 3:40 | |
feminist spirituality book group that met for several years. | 3:43 | |
- | Really? | 3:49 |
- | And um, our first book was Matthew Fox, | 3:50 |
Original Blessing and so that's kind of the book that, | 3:54 | |
if anyone wanted to join the group, we'd say, | 3:59 | |
well have you read that and does that resonate with you | 4:01 | |
to see if they would uh, | 4:04 | |
kind of fit into our group. | 4:07 | |
- | How many people were in your group? | 4:10 |
- | I think um, maybe 10. | 4:12 |
Yeah. | 4:17 | |
And then Florence McHugh offered another class | 4:19 | |
at St. Joan of Arc called from Patriarchy to Partnership. | 4:23 | |
And I took that and that was quite... | 4:28 | |
Life changing too. | 4:32 | |
And I think, I think there's a book of that title | 4:33 | |
that I read along with that. | 4:35 | |
- | You said life changing. | 4:40 |
Could you say more about what about | 4:41 | |
these experiences were life changing? | 4:42 | |
- | I thought it was interesting to learn | 4:47 |
a bigger history of um, | 4:50 | |
women's role in the world, | 4:56 | |
you know, in society. | 5:00 | |
And of times way back and you know, | 5:01 | |
when woman were honored and there were matriarchal societies | 5:04 | |
and you know, um, | 5:08 | |
a feminist reading of what | 5:11 | |
some of the goddess figures represented, | 5:13 | |
versus maybe what cultural patriarchy might say about them. | 5:15 | |
It was empowering as a woman, yeah. | 5:21 | |
- | Yeah. | 5:25 |
- | And um, and it was, there was also some anger there. | 5:26 |
You know, like we watched the film the Burning Times, | 5:31 | |
you know, and how woman have been, | 5:34 | |
women's wisdom has been downplayed | 5:36 | |
and certainly those of us in those classes | 5:38 | |
and in those circles felt | 5:43 | |
we were involved in communities | 5:47 | |
that limited the roles that we could be in the church | 5:48 | |
or in society and didn't fully honor the gifts we brought. | 5:54 | |
- | That is great, Kathy. | 6:01 |
How about talking about Re-Imagining? | 6:04 | |
What was your relationship to the Re-Imagining community? | 6:06 | |
- | Well, I began seminary | 6:10 |
in the fall of 1993 | 6:13 | |
and I took a Re-Imagining class that Christie Neuger offered | 6:16 | |
and so that's what introduced me | 6:20 | |
to the Re-Imagining Conference. | 6:23 | |
And I had not heard about it through my Catholic circles | 6:25 | |
and found out, you know, it was sponsored by | 6:30 | |
the World Council of Churches. | 6:32 | |
It was um, | 6:37 | |
amazing timing for me | 6:40 | |
because I had just written a long letter | 6:41 | |
to our local parish priest about my frustration | 6:45 | |
with inclusive language and the limitation | 6:48 | |
of women's voice in the liturgy. | 6:50 | |
You know, like, we could do a reading | 6:53 | |
or we could sing in the choir, but we could never, um, | 6:56 | |
reflect on the gospel or give a sermon, you know. | 7:02 | |
So and he | 7:09 | |
accused me of having white, middle-class women's issues. | 7:11 | |
That these were white, middle-class women's issues. | 7:17 | |
So for me, going to Re-Imagining and having women | 7:20 | |
from all around the world, from many ethnicities, | 7:25 | |
raise up the same concerns was so empowering | 7:31 | |
and I'm getting goosebumps as I talk about it. | 7:35 | |
I felt like I waited my whole life | 7:40 | |
for the ritual at that conference. | 7:44 | |
It was so... | 7:47 | |
amazing. | 7:51 | |
- | Oh, I want to hear more about that. | 7:52 |
Talk some more about the ritual. | 7:54 | |
What about the ritual moved you so much? | 7:56 | |
- | Well, I had taken a class at St. Paul Seminary | 7:59 |
about ritual, feminist ritual. | 8:03 | |
And I was critiquing the traditional, | 8:06 | |
what at the time I called the Roman Catholic Liturgy, | 8:10 | |
but you know, when I started at United Theological Seminary | 8:12 | |
I was just surprised that | 8:16 | |
a lot of times the liturgy there was the same that we had | 8:19 | |
in the Catholic church, you know? | 8:24 | |
I'm like, oh, you're the same creed, | 8:26 | |
you have the same, you know, outline for your service. | 8:29 | |
And many of the same prayers, I was kind of shocked at that | 8:33 | |
because I hadn't been that exposed to, um, | 8:37 | |
many protestant services. | 8:43 | |
- | Yeah. | 8:44 |
- | Yeah. | |
But I had done a critique of that | 8:46 | |
and do you know, in our Catholic liturgy, | 8:48 | |
God was referred to as male 80-some times. | 8:51 | |
It's easy to refer to God in general neutral language. | 8:59 | |
You can just say God. | 9:05 | |
Lord was a very common phrase | 9:10 | |
for God or Jesus was in the Catholic tradition. | 9:13 | |
In our hymns, all of our hymns are, | 9:16 | |
we're singing to the Lord, you know and our prayers. | 9:19 | |
And God was referred to as father | 9:24 | |
and the priests were referred to as father. | 9:27 | |
So it was just refreshing. | 9:31 | |
I recently reviewed some of the liturgy | 9:37 | |
that we had at Re-Imagining and it was | 9:40 | |
nothing that profound, I mean. | 9:45 | |
(laughing) | 9:47 | |
I mean, it was, but, I mean, it mainly just didn't, | 9:50 | |
we didn't say God the father, maybe we just said that, | 9:54 | |
kind of, you know, God is love or you know-- | 9:57 | |
- | Yeah. | 10:01 |
- | Loving creator, I don't know what terms were used, | 10:02 |
but they didn't seem that amazing. | 10:04 | |
But they were, for that time. | 10:08 | |
- | Right. | 10:10 |
Both | Yeah. | 10:11 |
- | Do you think they would still be today? | 10:12 |
- | I feel like some of the work, | 10:19 |
like I have a friend in the United Methodist Church | 10:22 | |
and I feel like even my own involvement | 10:25 | |
in the Catholic church, I was a lay presider for a while, | 10:28 | |
where I was uh, commissioned to | 10:31 | |
lead communion services | 10:36 | |
for the school children, there might be 800 children there, | 10:37 | |
or in a nursing home | 10:43 | |
or a Saturday morning | 10:44 | |
at the local perish | 10:48 | |
and um... | 10:51 | |
I feel like that there was a little window | 10:56 | |
where we experimented with more inclusive terms, | 10:59 | |
that I feel like, | 11:05 | |
some of its turning back now. | 11:09 | |
And I've heard that from my friend, | 11:11 | |
who is a United Methodist retired minister too. | 11:13 | |
- | Mm-hm, yeah. | 11:16 |
- | So-- | 11:18 |
- | So mostly the ritual at that first Re-Imagining, | 11:19 |
it was the language, the different language for God | 11:21 | |
that really was powerful for you? | 11:24 | |
- | And the songs, you know, too. | 11:27 |
And just even saying there's many names for God, | 11:31 | |
I mean, thank you. | 11:34 | |
(laughing) | 11:36 | |
I felt like, um, | 11:39 | |
it was so nice to hear about | 11:42 | |
one's spirituality or religion or theology | 11:46 | |
from a woman's perspective | 11:51 | |
and I felt like the metaphors and the language | 11:53 | |
that the women presenters used felt so familiar. | 11:57 | |
It felt, um... | 12:02 | |
Maybe even somewhat ordinary to our everyday lives. | 12:08 | |
You know, some of the symbols and the language | 12:13 | |
and stories we could relate to. | 12:16 | |
- | Yeah. | 12:18 |
You know one thing that attracted a great deal of criticism | 12:18 | |
was the milk and honey ritual. | 12:21 | |
Do you remember that? | 12:23 | |
Do you have, do remember what your reaction to it was? | 12:25 | |
- | Um... | 12:29 |
I remember that did get a lot of backlash. | 12:31 | |
And um... | 12:35 | |
I don't think the rit-, I loved the ritual | 12:38 | |
but I don't think it shocked me in any way. | 12:43 | |
And uh... | 12:46 | |
I had been involved for years in the RCIA movement | 12:48 | |
in the Catholic Church and I've been told | 12:51 | |
that in the early church, | 12:55 | |
the milk and honey ritual was part of that. | 12:57 | |
I think it got misinterpreted. | 13:04 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 13:07 |
- | Something else I want to pick up on that you mentioned, | 13:09 |
that was really interesting is that course you took | 13:12 | |
related to Re-Imagining, could you say some about | 13:14 | |
what that course was like | 13:16 | |
and how it was connected to the conference? | 13:17 | |
- | Yes, we um, we were asked to do several readings | 13:21 |
before the conference, so those readings kind of | 13:25 | |
prepared us for some of the theology | 13:29 | |
that some of the presenters would be talking about. | 13:31 | |
We read an article on atonement that | 13:36 | |
later was talked about in the conference | 13:39 | |
and you know, and a variety of other things. | 13:41 | |
And I was pretty new to, | 13:45 | |
you know, it was my first semester at the seminary so, | 13:47 | |
that was probably very helpful for me as a participant. | 13:54 | |
- | Right. | 13:57 |
- | Because there is a jargon in every field | 13:58 |
and there's a theological jargon that... | 14:01 | |
You might not understand things as fully | 14:06 | |
if you don't have a little background. | 14:08 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | 14:10 |
So when you were actually at the conference | 14:11 | |
and hearing the theology of the speakers, | 14:13 | |
do you remember what your reaction was to it? | 14:15 | |
- | I just remember being so excited. | 14:18 |
There was a... | 14:22 | |
Woman from Korea, I believe, | 14:25 | |
who talked about Adam and Eve | 14:28 | |
and how Eve got in trouble | 14:32 | |
for eating from the Tree of Knowledge | 14:36 | |
and we all had an apple and took a bite out of it, | 14:38 | |
kind of proclaiming that we have a right to that knowledge. | 14:41 | |
(laughing) | 14:44 | |
It can be ours too, it was, | 14:48 | |
and I loved that, I loved using symbols and action. | 14:50 | |
You know, taking the bite out of that apple. | 14:55 | |
And there's many of us that, you know, | 14:57 | |
we got, you know, like wooden apples | 14:59 | |
with a bite out of them later. | 15:01 | |
(laughing) | 15:02 | |
That we used in rituals after or something | 15:04 | |
and I remember um... | 15:07 | |
The woman, perhaps from India, | 15:11 | |
who had us put the red dot on our forehead, you know, | 15:14 | |
so I just loved that, uh... | 15:16 | |
We were including sacred symbols | 15:22 | |
from women around the whole world. | 15:25 | |
You know, we were greeted by the Native American | 15:27 | |
drumming when we entered the space. | 15:30 | |
And I thought the ritual was so full | 15:36 | |
and so many layers, it was um, | 15:39 | |
there was a lot of planning that went into it. | 15:44 | |
A lot of planning and a lot of um, | 15:46 | |
a lot of layers of meaning. | 15:50 | |
And it was, for that big of a group, | 15:52 | |
I think there was, you know, 24, 25,000 people there? | 15:56 | |
For that big of space to have ritual | 16:02 | |
and a flow to the weekend like it did was amazing planning. | 16:04 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | 16:09 |
- | Because it flowed. | 16:10 |
It was not disorganized. | 16:12 | |
There was so much thought put into everything. | 16:18 | |
- | So you attended the first conference, | 16:23 |
but then you were involved after that. | 16:24 | |
Could you say a little bit about | 16:26 | |
what your involvement was after the first conference? | 16:28 | |
- | Well, there was, I think every year for, | 16:31 |
was it up to 10 years that they had | 16:34 | |
and I was, um, | 16:36 | |
going to seminary at the time, | 16:39 | |
so unfortunately, perhaps the first conference | 16:41 | |
I thought I couldn't afford it. | 16:44 | |
But I think Maryann Therese Winters was one of the prese-, | 16:45 | |
and I really wanted to go to that. | 16:49 | |
And I think by the time I finally gave myself | 16:51 | |
permission to spend the money, it was full. | 16:53 | |
But I remember um, attending some of the other conferences | 16:57 | |
and I really can't even tell you how many. | 17:02 | |
But there was one where we did movement | 17:04 | |
and we did a lot of movement where we did | 17:08 | |
like a karate chop, or you know, | 17:11 | |
it was very empowering, it was so fun | 17:12 | |
and then I woke up after that conference, | 17:14 | |
I couldn't move my neck for a week. | 17:17 | |
(laughing) | 17:18 | |
- | You really got into it. | 17:21 |
- | But I think that was the very last conference | 17:24 |
that I was part of the planning committee | 17:26 | |
and that was really rewarding | 17:29 | |
and I met some | 17:32 | |
women there that, um, I still am in contact with. | 17:36 | |
- | What part of the planning were you involved in? | 17:42 |
- | Well, I remember introducing Mary Bednarowski, | 17:46 |
who was a professor at United Seminary. | 17:50 | |
- | Yes. | 17:53 |
- | So I can't even really remember the details, but-- | 17:56 |
- | Sure, yeah. | 17:59 |
It's been a while, hasn't it? | 18:01 | |
- | Yeah. | 18:02 |
(laughing) | 18:03 | |
But I remember being excited to be part of that. | 18:05 | |
- | Yes. | 18:08 |
How about if we move to the | 18:12 | |
backlash from the first conference? | 18:13 | |
I assume you were aware of the backlash? | 18:17 | |
- | Yes, I was. | 18:21 |
- | Did it affect you directly? | 18:24 |
- | Well, in a way it did. | 18:26 |
Because, you know, I, I um... | 18:27 | |
I don't even know how to describe my | 18:33 | |
religious affiliation today, | 18:36 | |
but I, you know, I grew up in the Catholic Church | 18:37 | |
and it certainly is a big part of my spirituality today, | 18:40 | |
but I'm not involved, | 18:44 | |
I'm kind of on the edges of the... | 18:48 | |
Parish communities or just, you know. | 18:52 | |
I'm involved in a lot of small groups | 18:58 | |
and that's my church today. | 19:00 | |
But... | 19:03 | |
I knew a lot of Roman Catholic women at seminary who | 19:06 | |
converted to another denomination | 19:12 | |
so they could become ordained. | 19:14 | |
And I think what Re-imagining taught me | 19:17 | |
was that the misogyny that I experienced | 19:19 | |
in the Roman Catholic church hierarchy | 19:21 | |
was in all the denominations. | 19:26 | |
- | Mm-hmm. | 19:28 |
- | And so it didn't appeal to me | 19:29 |
to change denominations to become ordained. | 19:33 | |
- | Yeah. | 19:37 |
- | It kind of, like, opened my eyes. | 19:39 |
They might be further ahead in the struggle, | 19:47 | |
but there's still a struggle. | 19:49 | |
- | Right, yeah. | 19:51 |
- | It's women's issue. | 19:52 |
- | And how, as you think about it, | 19:54 |
at the time or now, how do you account for that backlash? | 19:55 | |
Why did it happen? | 20:00 | |
- | I think that even... | 20:03 |
One of the things I longed for at the time | 20:15 | |
was a democratic church. | 20:17 | |
And even, I think, what I saw then, | 20:20 | |
I don't know how it is today but | 20:23 | |
churches that even looked democratic had a patriarchy | 20:27 | |
and women who were ordained | 20:32 | |
were always not fully accepted. | 20:39 | |
I mean, I know the system well enough to know that | 20:43 | |
when you're a woman and you work within a patriarchal system | 20:49 | |
and you reflect the values | 20:52 | |
and the language of patriarchy, | 20:55 | |
you're much better embraced and accepted | 21:00 | |
than if you try to speak about your own | 21:03 | |
personal spirituality, | 21:09 | |
in your terms, you know. | 21:13 | |
And so you're beloved as long as you're following | 21:16 | |
the traditional... | 21:22 | |
Rules and then if anything looks a little unorthodox | 21:26 | |
then there's some questioning and um, | 21:30 | |
moving you out to the outskirts, yeah. | 21:35 | |
- | Mmhm, mmhm. | 21:40 |
- | So. | 21:42 |
- | Yeah. | 21:43 |
- | I guess I speak for my own experience | 21:44 |
of being a beloved person within my faith communities | 21:45 | |
and also because of my ability to, | 21:50 | |
or my, I guess I just couldn't help myself | 21:54 | |
to ask some tough questions about inclusive language | 21:58 | |
and the roles of women and many other things that... | 22:02 | |
Even people who dearly love me could be | 22:09 | |
challenged by some of my questioning. | 22:12 | |
- | Mmhm. | 22:14 |
- | And wanting to move the community, | 22:20 |
open it up, you know, make it broader, you know. | 22:24 | |
Yeah. | 22:28 | |
- | When you say the community, would you say, | 22:30 |
are you thinking of the Roman Catholic Church | 22:32 | |
or is that, or a different community? | 22:34 | |
- | Basically the Roman Catholic Church is my experience. | 22:37 |
But I certainly was exposed to a lot more denominations | 22:40 | |
in my four years at United Theological Seminary | 22:45 | |
and I did see that so many of the struggles | 22:48 | |
in my own denomination were the struggles in others. | 22:52 | |
- | Yeah, yep, mmhm, mhmm. | 22:55 |
- | And I think with the backlash, I think that | 22:58 |
there was a window and I can't even tell you how many years. | 23:03 | |
You know, maybe a decade, where there was a lot of | 23:07 | |
experimentation and openness and | 23:11 | |
a lot more freedom | 23:16 | |
to try new things. | 23:21 | |
And I think not only did some of the women | 23:22 | |
who were part of the Re-imagining planning | 23:25 | |
experience backlash, but a lot of the denominations too, | 23:30 | |
because I feel like a lot of the progress | 23:34 | |
that was made in the 80s and 90s is um, | 23:36 | |
we're losing it. | 23:41 | |
- | Mmhm, mhmm. | 23:42 |
Yeah. | 23:44 | |
How would you define Re-imagining? | 23:47 | |
- | At the time of the conference, | 23:53 |
I would say that | 23:57 | |
what was so exciting for me was | 24:00 | |
to explore new ways to speak about God | 24:05 | |
that wasn't God the father. | 24:08 | |
- | Mmhm. | 24:09 |
- | I found anytime that I attended a conference | 24:17 |
or a lecture given by women, or a sermon, | 24:20 | |
I, as a woman, a lot of times the language or the | 24:25 | |
um, the stories they shared resonated more personally | 24:30 | |
with me because they were coming from a woman. | 24:34 | |
- | Mmhm. | 24:38 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Yeah. | 24:39 |
- | Yeah. | |
And I felt empowered. | 24:40 | |
You know, in our Lectionary in the Catholic church, | 24:44 | |
very few women stories are even in our Lectionary. | 24:47 | |
And when they are, it might be a weekday. | 24:51 | |
And so I felt empowered to be learning about | 24:55 | |
all these women in the scriptures. | 24:58 | |
And maybe a new exegesis | 25:01 | |
of what, | 25:04 | |
of how to interpret the story. | 25:08 | |
You know, so that was exciting. | 25:11 | |
- | And that was coming through Re-imagining? | 25:12 |
- | I think I witnessed some of that there, yes. | 25:15 |
- | Mmhm. | 25:19 |
- | And of course other places too. | 25:20 |
But that was there. | 25:22 | |
- | Yeah. | 25:24 |
- | You know, there was talk on the atonement at Re-imagining | 25:25 |
and I thought that was so... | 25:28 | |
It spoke to what I believed in my heart. | 25:35 | |
You know, like I already had that in my heart | 25:38 | |
but somebody was saying it out loud. | 25:41 | |
- | And what specifically were they saying? | 25:43 |
- | That you know, the theology that Jesus died for our sins | 25:47 |
and we had to believe in Jesus to be saved | 25:52 | |
or believe in Jesus, God the father through Jesus | 25:57 | |
to be saved, that never made sense to me. | 25:59 | |
Like I always thought Jesus was radical and he was, | 26:03 | |
he's radical in that he spoke up for the oppressed | 26:08 | |
and because he did, the people in | 26:13 | |
power didn't like it and they killed him. | 26:16 | |
- | Mmhm. | 26:18 |
- | So that's how I interpreted his life. | 26:19 |
Because the other theology, to me, | 26:22 | |
creates an in group and an out group. | 26:27 | |
And I could never, um, accept that. | 26:30 | |
You know and my first time I ran into that | 26:34 | |
was when I went to college. | 26:37 | |
I went to Iowa State University. | 26:38 | |
And there'd be, oh Campus Crusade for Christ | 26:40 | |
or other groups that would, you know, | 26:43 | |
stop you on your way to class or whatever | 26:46 | |
and you know and, if they found out you were Catholic | 26:48 | |
they'd say, "Oh, you're not saved," you know. | 26:52 | |
And get into these theological discussions | 26:55 | |
and so it was eye opening then to come, | 26:59 | |
and I wanted to be a faithful person, | 27:03 | |
so they did challenge my beliefs, you know, | 27:05 | |
because I kinda listened to that. | 27:08 | |
But I knew it wasn't true from my own experience. | 27:09 | |
- | Yeah. | 27:14 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Yeah. | 27:16 |
Do you know anything about how and why | 27:19 | |
the Re-imagining community was formed? | 27:21 | |
- | What I heard was that um, | 27:24 |
the World Council of Churches was | 27:27 | |
celebrating a decade of women. | 27:29 | |
- | Yes. | 27:31 |
- | And that they wanted to do something. | 27:32 |
- | Right. | 27:36 |
- | And so toward the end of that decade, | 27:37 |
they had this conference. | 27:40 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 27:41 |
- | And I love that it was woman from all over the world. | 27:43 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 27:47 |
And then after the conference the community formed. | 27:49 | |
The one that lasted for 10 years. | 27:52 | |
- | Yes, uh-huh. | 27:55 |
- | Yeah, you probably weren't | 27:55 |
involved in that decision, right? | 27:57 | |
- | No. | 27:59 |
- | OK, yeah, that makes sense, sure. | 28:00 |
Um, from your perspective, and you were involved | 28:02 | |
with the planning and as an attendee a little bit | 28:06 | |
so do you have a sense of how feminist theology | 28:09 | |
affected the structure and functioning | 28:11 | |
of the community from your involvement in it? | 28:13 | |
- | I think that was the heart of it wasn't it? | 28:21 |
- | Yeah. | 28:23 |
(laughing) | ||
Yes. | 28:24 | |
Was there any difference when you think about, | 28:27 | |
and I know it's been a while, so you might not remember it, | 28:29 | |
when you think about like planning the conference, | 28:30 | |
was it different because it was Re-imagining | 28:33 | |
in the way that it was done? | 28:36 | |
- | I think it was more collaborative. | 28:39 |
Yeah. | 28:41 | |
I think uh... | 28:45 | |
There wasn't a lot of top down | 28:48 | |
decision making as far as I knew. | 28:49 | |
And it just seemed so inclusive in that. | 28:52 | |
I know that, particularly the first one, | 28:56 | |
was so big that they had all the sub-groups, you know? | 28:58 | |
So you wouldn't have to have like | 29:01 | |
a group of 50 come together every time. | 29:03 | |
But it just seemed like, um... | 29:06 | |
For me, good ritual includes as many people as possible. | 29:11 | |
- | Mmhm. | 29:15 |
- | And so I know the ritual of the Re-imagining | 29:17 |
had a lot of people's input and voices. | 29:20 | |
And as far as the speakers, too, | 29:24 | |
there was quite an effort, I could see, | 29:28 | |
to have women from all over the world | 29:30 | |
and from a variety of different experiences. | 29:34 | |
- | Mmhm. | 29:37 |
Talking about this reminded me, | 29:39 | |
you have a great story about your small group | 29:41 | |
and the objects, could you say a little bit about that? | 29:43 | |
About how people gave gifts to each other in your group. | 29:46 | |
What your experience was at that table? | 29:49 | |
- | Yeah, we were invited to um, bring a, | 29:52 |
an object... | 29:55 | |
To share with other women at our table. | 29:59 | |
We had a group of 10 women at the table. | 30:01 | |
I received a beautiful clay, | 30:06 | |
handmade plate that you could put under a candle | 30:11 | |
from a woman from Saskatchewan. | 30:14 | |
And I shared a, um, polished turquoise stone | 30:17 | |
that I know one of the women at my table received | 30:23 | |
and every time I see her she talks about that stone. | 30:27 | |
And it's been all these many years since then | 30:31 | |
and how special that still is to her. | 30:34 | |
- | Mmhm. | 30:37 |
And when I came today, you were able to show me that plate | 30:37 | |
and a pitcher that was used at all of the gatherings | 30:40 | |
and a basket that was used at them. | 30:43 | |
So you have those ritual objects still. | 30:45 | |
- | Right, right. | 30:48 |
And I also remember that we were invited to bring um, | 30:49 | |
I don't know if they said just a cloth, | 30:54 | |
or I brought a scarf, you know, | 30:56 | |
and we used those in some movement and um | 30:57 | |
that became important to me too. | 31:02 | |
Because out of this Re-imagining group, | 31:06 | |
I had some friends who uh... | 31:13 | |
Were active in the Catholic church, | 31:20 | |
many at St. Paul's attending, you know, | 31:21 | |
getting their degree at St. Paul's Seminary | 31:24 | |
who wanted to do a ritual. | 31:28 | |
- | Mmhm. | 31:30 |
- | And we gathered about 50 people | 31:31 |
and we um... | 31:36 | |
Before the ritual, | 31:39 | |
there was about 10 or 12 of us that met | 31:42 | |
and we claimed our ordination through our | 31:45 | |
baptism into the priesthood of all believers. | 31:47 | |
And we used a prayer | 31:51 | |
for deaconesses in the church to claim, | 31:55 | |
you know, to commission ourselves to lead, | 31:59 | |
to preside at this liturgy. | 32:03 | |
- | An ancient prayer for deaconesses? | 32:06 |
- | Mmhm. | 32:08 |
- | Mmhm, yep. | |
- | So we claimed our ordination through our baptism | 32:10 |
into the priesthood of all believers | 32:12 | |
and we put our stoles on. | 32:13 | |
And the um... | 32:17 | |
The cloth that I had at Re-imagining | 32:23 | |
was what I used for that ritual. | 32:25 | |
- | Really? | 32:27 |
- | And then every time. | 32:28 |
And then this was supposed to be a one time ritual. | 32:30 | |
- | Yeah. | 32:32 |
- | Well, we were so moved by it | 32:33 |
that we continued to meet monthly for six or more years. | 32:36 | |
And every month we, um, | 32:41 | |
people took turns planning creative rituals | 32:45 | |
and we wore our stoles pretty regularly | 32:49 | |
in the beginning years and I think as time went on, | 32:55 | |
it became less important. | 32:58 | |
- | And this developed right out | 33:01 |
of the Re-imagining conference? | 33:02 | |
- | It did and we knew that Re-imagining | 33:03 |
had their own monthly rituals. | 33:06 | |
- | Mmhm. | 33:08 |
- | But we had our own and the first one was held at the, | 33:09 |
is it the World Council of Churches building | 33:17 | |
or Minnesota Council of Churches? | 33:18 | |
- | Yep, Minnesota Council of Churches, yes. | 33:20 |
- | They provided space for us. | 33:22 |
- | Yeah. | 33:24 |
- | And then we met there for a while after that. | 33:25 |
But them um... | 33:30 | |
There was gonna be a charge that was beyond our capability | 33:33 | |
and we found | 33:37 | |
another sympathetic protestant church | 33:40 | |
that offered us space. | 33:45 | |
- | I'd love to hear a little more about this, | 33:48 |
this is fascinating, so how many, | 33:50 | |
you said there were 50 women at that first event? | 33:52 | |
- | Mmhm. | 33:54 |
- | How many women would you say | 33:55 |
were involved over those six years? | 33:56 | |
- | I would say that there was probably, | 34:02 |
we probably would have... | 34:07 | |
15 women there and there's probably a core group | 34:14 | |
of about 10 that took some main leadership roles there, | 34:18 | |
as far as, you know, like, there was a woman who | 34:22 | |
was kind of like our liturgist. | 34:25 | |
She would bring a round table to each of our liturgies | 34:27 | |
that she had in the trunk of her car, | 34:31 | |
because we wanted to gather around a round table. | 34:33 | |
- | Oh. | 34:35 |
Was that, just one question, | 34:37 | |
was that related to Re-imagining or not? | 34:38 | |
- | Well, these core women had been to Re-imagining, yes. | 34:42 |
- | OK, yeah, OK. | 34:45 |
- | And so this was, this was kind of like, | 34:46 |
well, what can we do with this? | 34:49 | |
You know, we felt like the ritual at Re-imagining was, | 34:51 | |
like I said, I waited my whole life for it. | 34:55 | |
So we wanted to continue that energy | 34:58 | |
and I think a lot of us were kind of like | 35:02 | |
lone voices in our local churches. | 35:04 | |
- | Were you all Catholic? | 35:08 |
- | Yeah, uh, a few not, but majority yes. | 35:09 |
And many of us worked in the churches | 35:14 | |
or were very active volunteers. | 35:16 | |
So we had our liturgies on Saturday morning | 35:22 | |
because a lot of people were involved in the | 35:24 | |
Sunday morning services in their local perishes. | 35:26 | |
But a lot of us found that we were kind of | 35:31 | |
a lone voice in our perish, | 35:33 | |
calling for inclusive language and greater roles for women | 35:35 | |
and we almost felt like battered women. | 35:40 | |
You know, it was hard to be a lone voice | 35:43 | |
and for myself, I'll speak personally that | 35:47 | |
I couldn't help myself, I mean, | 35:52 | |
I had to bring up these issues. | 35:53 | |
They were, it felt oppressive | 35:56 | |
to not have | 36:00 | |
an intelligent voice from women in our ritual. | 36:04 | |
We could read a reading or we could sing in the choir, | 36:08 | |
but we never heard from a woman, | 36:14 | |
her reflection on the gospel. | 36:20 | |
There was nothing like that. | 36:22 | |
And we felt called to preside. | 36:25 | |
So this gave us a safe place | 36:30 | |
to develop our gifts | 36:34 | |
as presiders of ritual and we also had a different vision. | 36:38 | |
We never wanted anyone to be the leader. | 36:42 | |
It was always a shared uh, | 36:46 | |
leadership you know? | 36:50 | |
There was never one person in charge. | 36:56 | |
And even when we presided, it was a team or more. | 36:59 | |
Never just one person. | 37:05 | |
- | To make sure I understand, from what you said | 37:09 |
about the stoles, it sounds like you, | 37:10 | |
you were doing this as lay women | 37:13 | |
because of your priesthood as believers. | 37:16 | |
- | Right. | 37:20 |
- | Is that right? | |
- | We were claiming that. | 37:21 |
We were claiming our ordination | 37:23 | |
and our right to wear a stole. | 37:25 | |
- | Yeah, OK, yeah. | 37:27 |
- | And it was an important symbol at the beginning. | 37:29 |
- | Yes. | 37:31 |
- | And as the years went on, I think that, | 37:33 |
I had been a lay presider in our local perish | 37:38 | |
and I presided over these word communion services and stuff. | 37:40 | |
And I wore an alb. | 37:43 | |
And that was important to me, | 37:45 | |
but as the years went on, I saw that the stole or the alb | 37:47 | |
became a symbol of separation between | 37:52 | |
the presider and the community. | 37:55 | |
And so I think we decided to shed those. | 37:57 | |
- | Interesting. | 38:01 |
- | Because then it kinda... | 38:02 |
We didn't want anything that would separate, | 38:06 | |
you know, somebody at the ritual from | 38:12 | |
thinking that they weren't fully participating. | 38:14 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 38:17 |
You mentioned the stoles, are there other key rituals | 38:18 | |
that you remember from this group over those six years? | 38:21 | |
- | Well, you know, we rose out of our Catholic traditions | 38:26 |
and so Eucharist was important to us and it was quite, | 38:28 | |
it was exciting to claim that we could | 38:36 | |
pray over the bread and wine and um, | 38:40 | |
and then that became an issue as time went on. | 38:46 | |
Some women, that was central, they wanted | 38:49 | |
the bread and wine there every ritual. | 38:52 | |
And others wanted more freedom to um, | 38:55 | |
create ritual without those symbols. | 39:00 | |
So there was some tension there as the years went on | 39:04 | |
because some people it was really important to | 39:10 | |
and some people felt it limited what we could do. | 39:12 | |
- | Was it ever resolved in a certain way? | 39:16 |
- | I don't think so. | 39:19 |
- | Yeah. | 39:20 |
- | It just was, and it maybe was just with a few people. | 39:21 |
- | Yeah. | 39:25 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Yeah. | 39:25 |
- | There was actually one woman in this group who | 39:27 |
got her Masters of Divinity at United Theological Seminary | 39:32 | |
and she was Catholic and she converted | 39:36 | |
to another tradition so she would be ordained. | 39:38 | |
And the Eucharist was pretty darn important to her. | 39:42 | |
(laughing) | 39:45 | |
- | But for those of you in the community, | 39:49 |
most of you, being Catholic was an | 39:50 | |
important part of your identity, is that true would you say? | 39:53 | |
- | For most of the women in that group. | 39:57 |
There was um, | 39:59 | |
I remember right off hand, two women who were ordained | 40:03 | |
in the protestant churches that were there. | 40:07 | |
- | OK, OK. | 40:10 |
- | And another woman quite involved | 40:11 |
in another denomination through the music ministry, | 40:13 | |
but the majority of us had a Catholic background. | 40:18 | |
- | Yeah. | 40:21 |
- | Yeah. | |
And even the woman who was involved in music | 40:22 | |
from another denomination had, | 40:26 | |
her degree from St. Paul Seminary. | 40:33 | |
- | Oh OK, yes. | 40:35 |
- | So she had studied at St. Paul Seminary. | 40:37 |
- | Mmhm, mhmm, this is really, really interesting. | 40:38 |
What aspects, we've kinda talked about this, | 40:44 | |
but maybe you can add something to it, | 40:46 | |
what aspects of Re-imagining were | 40:47 | |
most significant to you and why? | 40:48 | |
- | I think it empowered us as women. | 40:54 |
I think that we were starving for that empowerment. | 40:58 | |
And like I said, so many of us kind of felt like | 41:02 | |
battered women, you know, so for me it was like | 41:04 | |
my experiences, they validated what... | 41:08 | |
It validated my yearning for inclusive language, | 41:15 | |
for more active participation for women, | 41:20 | |
for more inclusivity. | 41:23 | |
And it validated my own call. | 41:31 | |
You know, like, uh... | 41:33 | |
So it was very empowering. | 41:40 | |
- | How would you define your call? | 41:41 |
- | Well, I think a call to be a faithful person | 41:51 |
and I felt like there, I have felt for most | 41:54 | |
of my adult life, a mystical, | 41:58 | |
a relationship with a mystery, that seems real. | 42:02 | |
At the time of Re-imagining, it was rooted | 42:10 | |
in the Christian tradition and since Re-imagining, | 42:12 | |
there's been an evolution of my spirituality | 42:18 | |
that includes the wisdom from so | 42:22 | |
many different religious traditions. | 42:25 | |
And um, so Christianity's part of the story, | 42:28 | |
but it's too small to contain what I experience now. | 42:32 | |
And so therefore, I find it, | 42:38 | |
there was about a decade in my life | 42:41 | |
where I tried to go back to the traditional ritual | 42:43 | |
and it just did not fit anymore. | 42:46 | |
I know so many people like myself, | 42:48 | |
who have no, um, church community because we don't fit. | 42:55 | |
- | Yeah. | 43:01 |
- | You know? | 43:02 |
So my church today is small groups. | 43:04 | |
- | Could you say more about that? | 43:08 |
You mentioned that earlier, that's intriguing, | 43:09 | |
what kind of small groups? | 43:11 | |
- | Well, some are all women, you know, | 43:17 |
maybe, I have a group that meets monthly at home | 43:20 | |
of about nine women and we've met for um, | 43:23 | |
almost 10 years monthly. | 43:29 | |
- | Wow. | 43:31 |
- | When we first started meeting they wanted to | 43:32 |
meet twice a month, they were so excited. | 43:33 | |
(laughing) | 43:35 | |
And uh, we just, you know I, | 43:37 | |
I call the group our soul sisters, | 43:41 | |
you know, Oprah had an XM Sirus Radio show | 43:44 | |
called Soul Series. | 43:47 | |
And I loved all the people she interviewed | 43:49 | |
and the books she talked about and so we kinda began | 43:52 | |
reading and studying some of the books and authors | 43:55 | |
that she had on her show. | 43:57 | |
- | Can I just ask how these women got together? | 44:01 |
Were these people you know you kind of brought together? | 44:02 | |
- | Yeah, these were all women I knew | 44:04 |
and they're kind of, mostly in the neighborhood. | 44:06 | |
- | Yes? | 44:08 |
- | But many of them didn't know each other. | 44:09 |
And now they all do. | 44:11 | |
And then there's another group. | 44:14 | |
In 2004 to 2006, | 44:17 | |
I went through a spiritual direction program. | 44:20 | |
- | Yes? | 44:23 |
- | And we met every weekend, | 44:24 |
one weekend a month for two years. | 44:28 | |
So by the time our program was over, | 44:30 | |
we knew each other really well. | 44:33 | |
And most of us were women, | 44:34 | |
there was a couple men in the program. | 44:36 | |
So I asked the, one of the women who um, | 44:38 | |
facilitated that program if we could create a meeting, | 44:44 | |
a monthly meeting where we could bring our spouses | 44:47 | |
and significant others and so that started in 2006 | 44:50 | |
and it continues today. | 44:55 | |
And we lost our, our... | 44:57 | |
Retreat center, our public space for that. | 45:02 | |
The nuns who | 45:06 | |
had that space sold it. | 45:09 | |
But um, we now meet in homes. | 45:12 | |
- | Oh. | 45:16 |
- | Yeah, we wanted to keep meeting. | 45:18 |
And it's so exciting to have a small group where my | 45:20 | |
husband comes and we can talk about our spirituality. | 45:24 | |
I mean, if it wasn't for, I've been at a couple groups | 45:30 | |
with my husband, a small Christian community | 45:35 | |
through St. Joan of Arc. | 45:38 | |
And if it wasn't for those gatherings, | 45:42 | |
there's so many things about our own spiritual journeys | 45:45 | |
that we wouldn't share with each other. | 45:48 | |
- | Right. | 45:49 |
- | And what I find in these small groups is, | 45:50 |
they're places where we can transform personally. | 45:55 | |
You know, like, it causes personal transformation. | 46:00 | |
So they're working groups in that | 46:05 | |
we really work on how to become, | 46:07 | |
you know, wake up to our best selves, you know? | 46:13 | |
And you know, I just read an article on | 46:17 | |
non-duality, you know and I think that probably arises | 46:25 | |
out of the Buddhist tradition, you know? | 46:29 | |
But every time I think in black | 46:31 | |
and white, I find that I'm stuck. | 46:34 | |
And when I think in both and, a door opens, | 46:38 | |
you know, so some of these concepts are just so freeing. | 46:41 | |
They really have helped me grow as a person. | 46:46 | |
- | I'm curious, if you don't mind my asking, | 46:49 |
the group of um, your spiritual direction | 46:51 | |
with the spouses and significant others. | 46:53 | |
I'm curious, do you have a structure to it, | 46:56 | |
how do you have these conversations about spirituality? | 46:58 | |
- | When we started we, like I said, | 47:01 |
we met at Women Well in St. Paul, | 47:03 | |
which is no longer there. | 47:06 | |
And we would go on one Friday a month | 47:08 | |
and we start with a soup supper | 47:11 | |
and it was so nice because we would sit in small tables | 47:13 | |
of four or six and then have, you know, | 47:16 | |
45 minutes where we could get to know each other. | 47:19 | |
And then we would gather in another room | 47:24 | |
and we had a video for about a half an hour | 47:26 | |
that we followed up with for an hour discussion. | 47:30 | |
And one of the um, | 47:35 | |
before Re-imagining, | 47:39 | |
I was introduced to creation spirituality | 47:41 | |
and I had taken some classes. | 47:44 | |
And Brian Swimme has a series of videos on, | 47:48 | |
he was influenced by Thomas Berry, you know | 47:54 | |
and Brian Swimme is a physicist. | 47:57 | |
And so he talks about the | 47:59 | |
intersection of modern science with spirituality. | 48:02 | |
My husband is a physicist. | 48:06 | |
- | Oh. | 48:08 |
- | And I have a theology background. | 48:08 |
- | Wow. | 48:10 |
- | So we found his work fascinating. | 48:11 |
- | Yes. | 48:13 |
- | And so a lot of this, our journey in the early years | 48:14 |
in this couples group was studying the work of | 48:18 | |
Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry and you know, | 48:21 | |
other people who were looking at | 48:23 | |
what does modern science have to say | 48:27 | |
that informs our spirituality today? | 48:30 | |
- | Fascinating, wow. | 48:33 |
To get back to Re-imagining, this was really interesting | 48:37 | |
and related too, did your involvement in Re-imagining | 48:40 | |
affect your perspective on feminist theology or the church? | 48:44 | |
I think you've said some about that, | 48:47 | |
but anything else to say about that? | 48:48 | |
- | Well, you know, the work that | 48:59 |
the speakers, | 49:03 | |
the emerging theologies | 49:07 | |
that were mentioned in the main talks, | 49:09 | |
it was exciting work and necessary work. | 49:13 | |
And I know it probably continues today. | 49:22 | |
Although, I'm disillusioned. | 49:24 | |
- | Mm, say some more about that. | 49:26 |
- | I don't know... | 49:28 |
How um, it changed our local perishes | 49:35 | |
in our local communities. | 49:39 | |
- | Mmhm, yep. | 49:40 |
- | And I think a lot, I don't know, in my circles anyway, | 49:43 |
a lot of us who question | 49:47 | |
and study and learn | 49:51 | |
have left the perish communities | 49:54 | |
because we don't fit there anymore. | 49:58 | |
- | And I'm curious, have most gone to | 50:02 |
something like small groups? | 50:04 | |
Have they moved to a different church | 50:06 | |
or they've moved to small groups or they've just, | 50:08 | |
I mean, where, where have they gone? | 50:11 | |
- | I think, and I... | 50:21 |
A lot of the people I have contact with | 50:26 | |
come out of the Catholic tradition. | 50:28 | |
- | Yeah, yes. | 50:30 |
- | I think we tried sometime, maybe some of us | 50:32 |
went to the Unitarian Universalist Church for a while. | 50:33 | |
And you know, personally, I loved the community, | 50:37 | |
I thought the minister was phenomenal with her sermons, | 50:41 | |
but there was a mystical | 50:47 | |
connection that I have that I couldn't connect to there. | 50:51 | |
It was more humanist. | 50:56 | |
It was more in the head and maybe the mystery | 51:01 | |
and the mystical feels more heart centered, you know? | 51:06 | |
So I find I can bring that to the small groups. | 51:11 | |
I think the call in these small groups that I'm involved in | 51:14 | |
is to be authentic, you know, to be who you are, | 51:17 | |
to bring your whole person, you don't have to hide a thing. | 51:20 | |
And we love each other no matter what, you know? | 51:24 | |
And we love each other into more wholeness. | 51:26 | |
So we don't walk into those groups being anybody but who | 51:32 | |
we are, you don't have to act like a professional, or-- | 51:36 | |
(laughing) | 51:39 | |
Like you're, you know it all. | 51:43 | |
- | Right. | 51:44 |
- | You're a seeker. | 51:46 |
- | Yeah, yes, yes. | 51:48 |
- | We're in it together. | 51:50 |
It's all shared and, and leadership is all shared | 51:51 | |
and rotated and of course there's certain people that, | 51:54 | |
you know, rise to the occasion more than others | 51:57 | |
to kinda create the structure or facilitate. | 52:00 | |
You know, my opinion, I think it's shared among the group | 52:07 | |
is that we're all there to learn from each other, | 52:11 | |
we're mutual learners. | 52:13 | |
- | Yeah. | 52:14 |
- | Mutual seekers. | 52:16 |
- | Yeah, mmhm. | 52:17 |
And as you look toward the future, | 52:20 | |
you know, you've said it doesn't feel like | 52:24 | |
that's really had much of an affect on the local church | 52:26 | |
and do you see the future in these small groups. | 52:29 | |
Or maybe another way to phrase it is | 52:32 | |
where do you see Re-imagining happening, | 52:33 | |
today or in the future? | 52:36 | |
- | Well, when I was in Re-imagining, | 52:38 |
I think I kind of had a vision. | 52:40 | |
And I shared it with a friend of mine who was | 52:45 | |
Catholic married to a Jewish man. | 52:47 | |
And she said it sounded very similar to | 52:51 | |
what happens in their synagogue. | 52:53 | |
And it's the idea that, um, | 52:55 | |
and I did this with my children, | 53:01 | |
we would have little home rituals, | 53:03 | |
where I invited them to pick the reading | 53:06 | |
and the symbols of the season. | 53:09 | |
And we would gather, my son might invite | 53:13 | |
the neighbor boy over and we had our own little rituals | 53:17 | |
and they understood how to create... | 53:22 | |
A ritual from the symbols of the season, having a reading, | 53:29 | |
prayers for people important to our lives. | 53:34 | |
And we even would have, | 53:37 | |
share orange juice or crackers. | 53:41 | |
(laughing) | 53:45 | |
And they just loved being, um, involved in that, you know, | 53:47 | |
in creating it. | 53:55 | |
- | Yeah. | 53:56 |
- | And then uh, we were involved in these small groups | 53:58 |
where we'd meet in a retreat center or in each others homes | 54:02 | |
with you know, a bigger group of people. | 54:06 | |
And then we would go to our perish liturgy | 54:09 | |
some Sundays or maybe special holidays or something. | 54:14 | |
Well, this is my friend who was married to the Jewish man | 54:17 | |
said that's, they had their Friday ritual at home, | 54:21 | |
twice a month, they would meet with other families | 54:25 | |
to have their Friday ritual and then for the, | 54:28 | |
like maybe once a month or more, | 54:32 | |
they would go to the temple. | 54:34 | |
And so that's kind of the vision I had for a while. | 54:37 | |
- | Yeah. | 54:40 |
- | But to be quite honest, today I don't have | 54:44 |
the connection to the larger community. | 54:47 | |
- | Yeah. | 54:50 |
- | So I'm not quite sure. | 54:54 |
I know that the journey that | 54:55 | |
the communities I'm involved in is part of a larger group. | 55:01 | |
And actually Jean Houston, I read an | 55:05 | |
article of hers about jump time. | 55:08 | |
- | Mmhm. | 55:11 |
- | And it's this idea that, I think that jump time means | 55:12 |
there's big metamorphosis that kind of happen quick, | 55:17 | |
you know, over time or, and that a lot of those | 55:22 | |
are happening quickly now. | 55:26 | |
But she said the work that we do in these small groups | 55:29 | |
is transformative and it combines with the energy | 55:35 | |
of all the other small groups around the world | 55:38 | |
and it really makes a difference. | 55:41 | |
And that empowered the work that I do when I read that. | 55:43 | |
I thought, that's what I do! | 55:48 | |
- | Yes. | 55:49 |
- | You know, it's personal transformation groups. | 55:50 |
- | Yeah. | 55:52 |
- | Around our inner spirituality and growth | 55:54 |
and wakening consciousness and-- | 55:58 | |
- | Would your hope or dream be that this would become | 56:01 |
larger, it would be a larger community, | 56:03 | |
or do you think it's good to have it | 56:06 | |
stay in the smaller groups? | 56:08 | |
- | I don't know, I know in 1978, | 56:13 |
I was invited to be part of the | 56:17 | |
Campus Ministry Team at Iowa State University. | 56:20 | |
I graduated from Iowa State and I was invited | 56:23 | |
to stay on staff and direct the student programs. | 56:25 | |
And one of the women on staff, | 56:29 | |
and this was a new thing then, | 56:30 | |
this was kinda right after Vatican II | 56:31 | |
and I mean, it was kind of unusual | 56:34 | |
to invite lay people to be part of parish staffs. | 56:37 | |
And one of the women who was on the staff with me said, | 56:40 | |
"The future of the church is in small groups." | 56:45 | |
I still remember that from like 1978. | 56:48 | |
You know, just a conversation with her. | 56:52 | |
But I don't know and I don't think a lot of us know. | 56:56 | |
I think we're in the midst of a huge paradigm shift | 56:59 | |
and I think we might not even see it in our lifetime. | 57:03 | |
I don't understand, you know, like, | 57:09 | |
there's a lot, you know, a lot of people | 57:11 | |
are quite concerned about our youth, | 57:12 | |
who aren't involved in churches today. | 57:13 | |
I have um... | 57:16 | |
Two children about 30 years old. | 57:19 | |
And they do not, | 57:23 | |
they are not involved in a church community. | 57:25 | |
We sent them to Catholic school and uh... | 57:29 | |
I'm not concerned about it. | 57:36 | |
Because I think um, | 57:38 | |
in my, in the terminology | 57:41 | |
of the church I grew up in, | 57:43 | |
we said the holy spirit was the evangelizer. | 57:46 | |
And I believe there's a movement happening | 57:50 | |
and I think it's gonna be better, | 57:53 | |
because I think the transformation | 57:57 | |
is not coming from an outside force, | 57:59 | |
imposing it on a group of people, | 58:03 | |
but I think the transformation is happening | 58:04 | |
in the hearts and souls of people. | 58:07 | |
And I would say that my children are spiritual, | 58:10 | |
but not religious and they're very good people | 58:15 | |
and loving and I don't know how it's gonna play, | 58:19 | |
I have a granddaughter now, I have no idea how it's, | 58:22 | |
but I'm not as worried as some people. | 58:25 | |
Because I trust in that spirit. | 58:28 | |
- | Yeah. | 58:30 |
- | I trust. | 58:31 |
Because, how did we come to faith, you know? | 58:32 | |
Something bigger than us called us. | 58:37 | |
- | Yeah. | 58:40 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Mmhm. | 58:41 |
- | And I found that | 58:43 |
even with my children, | 58:47 | |
there had to be a lot of on learning, you know. | 58:49 | |
Like, I remember my second grade daughter | 58:51 | |
saying a prayer once, "Oh God, please change me." | 58:55 | |
And I'm like why? | 58:59 | |
You know, who told you you needed to be changed? | 59:02 | |
You know, like-- | 59:06 | |
- | And what did she mean by that? | 59:07 |
- | Well, I think they're, | 59:09 |
we grew up somewhat with a theology that uh, | 59:11 | |
we were sinners who needed salvation, you know? | 59:15 | |
As a mother, I just, I found that sad, | 59:24 | |
that somehow she had picked up on that too. | 59:28 | |
- | Yeah. | 59:30 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Yeah. | 59:31 |
- | Yeah. | |
But I empowered my children to question. | 59:34 | |
I took a class at United Theological Seminary, | 59:37 | |
a constructive theology class | 59:39 | |
and our professor said the more | 59:41 | |
questions you have, the higher your grade. | 59:43 | |
(laughing) | 59:45 | |
So as a mother, I encouraged my children to question. | 59:47 | |
One of my proudest parental moments was, | 1:00:01 | |
my son, in the eighth grade in the Catholic school, | 1:00:04 | |
the religion teacher was telling him | 1:00:08 | |
about the churches stance on homosexuality. | 1:00:10 | |
And so this would have been, | 1:00:14 | |
you know, several years ago now. | 1:00:16 | |
And he raised his hand and he said, | 1:00:19 | |
"If God's that prejudiced, | 1:00:21 | |
"I'm not going to believe in that God." | 1:00:22 | |
And I thought, what courage. | 1:00:24 | |
He found his voice in junior high and what courage. | 1:00:26 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:00:31 |
- | It wasn't a supported thing to say then. | 1:00:33 |
- | Mmhm. | 1:00:35 |
- | Like it is today. | 1:00:36 |
- | Mmhm. | 1:00:37 |
- | Yeah. | |
That would have been in the late 90s probably. | 1:00:40 | |
But anyway, I don't know what the future brings, | 1:00:46 | |
I just, you know, there's a spirituality | 1:00:48 | |
of being present to the moment. | 1:00:51 | |
- | Yes. | 1:00:53 |
(laughing) | 1:00:54 | |
Yes. | 1:00:55 | |
- | It's frustrating though. | 1:00:56 |
You know, it's lonely. | 1:00:58 | |
- | Yeah? | 1:00:59 |
- | I miss the larger gatherings, I miss the singing. | 1:01:01 |
Like, I feel like there's not even a lot of music today | 1:01:06 | |
that speaks to the spirituality that I embrace. | 1:01:08 | |
I'm old enough now to know that what I believe today | 1:01:14 | |
could change 10 years from now and that's exciting. | 1:01:18 | |
I really kind of like the new, you know? | 1:01:22 | |
And yet there's things that are lost. | 1:01:26 | |
And ritual is important to me, symbol is important to me. | 1:01:29 | |
Um, I think there's, in some of our sacraments, | 1:01:33 | |
there was some transformation that happened | 1:01:37 | |
and so there is a loss when you don't have those. | 1:01:39 | |
And yet, um, | 1:01:42 | |
in the small circles I'm in, sometimes it gives us | 1:01:45 | |
an opportunity to create some of those | 1:01:48 | |
together in a new way. | 1:01:51 | |
So we're continuing the Re-imagining work. | 1:01:54 | |
- | Yes, you are. | 1:01:56 |
Well, what would you say is | 1:01:58 | |
the greatest legacy of Re-imagining, for you? | 1:01:59 | |
- | It was so exciting to have | 1:02:07 |
the questions and the... | 1:02:12 | |
Experiences in my personal life | 1:02:18 | |
being spoken about in a public, global platform. | 1:02:21 | |
You know, it made, I think a lot of us women who were there, | 1:02:28 | |
you know, we were just like, | 1:02:32 | |
we felt so affirmed and at home. | 1:02:34 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:02:38 |
- | And it felt, it felt... | 1:02:41 |
You felt it in your soul, you know? | 1:02:48 | |
Like I said it felt like I'd waited my whole life, you know? | 1:02:51 | |
(laughing) | 1:02:54 | |
Yeah. | 1:02:55 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | |
- | It was so affirming and um... | 1:02:57 |
The backlash was so disappointing. | 1:03:01 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:03:04 |
- | Yeah. | 1:03:06 |
So one of the freedoms I think someone like myself has, | 1:03:09 | |
I used to work in the churches. | 1:03:13 | |
That was my, you know, and I mourned that, | 1:03:16 | |
I've mourned that I grew to be someone | 1:03:19 | |
who didn't fit there anymore. | 1:03:22 | |
Or I mourned that the church couldn't open and grow. | 1:03:23 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:03:28 |
- | I felt a little betrayed by that. | 1:03:29 |
But on the other hand... | 1:03:32 | |
There's no one telling me what I can believe or can't | 1:03:38 | |
or what I can say or I can't. | 1:03:41 | |
And that is, there's a freedom in that. | 1:03:44 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:03:46 |
- | It's hard to be called heretical. | 1:03:48 |
- | Yes. | 1:03:51 |
(laughing) | 1:03:52 | |
- | Oh worry about being excommunicated. | 1:03:53 |
- | Right. | 1:03:55 |
- | Or moved to the, you know, | 1:03:57 |
you're not included in the group anymore. | 1:03:58 | |
And so there's a freedom that comes | 1:04:02 | |
and I've met so many wonderful, imaginative, | 1:04:04 | |
creative, gifted people on the edges. | 1:04:09 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:04:13 |
- | So. | 1:04:18 |
And I guess I need to say that I feel like there's | 1:04:21 | |
a community growing on the internet, you know? | 1:04:25 | |
Maybe even on television. | 1:04:33 | |
Like I said, I'm kind of a, I love Oprah, | 1:04:34 | |
and the work she's doing on her | 1:04:38 | |
OWN channel with the Soul Series | 1:04:40 | |
and so many of her other programming. | 1:04:41 | |
The World Wide Web and social media | 1:04:47 | |
is a great tool for some of these, | 1:04:51 | |
you know meditation and... | 1:04:55 | |
We have access to whatever we want at the tip of a finger. | 1:05:01 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:05:03 |
And that actually brings me to kind of my final question is, | 1:05:04 | |
what would you include, the community is | 1:05:08 | |
working on a website, a Re-imagining website | 1:05:10 | |
and do you have ideas about what you would want included? | 1:05:13 | |
Who would benefit from it, how they would find out about it. | 1:05:17 | |
You know, what are your thoughts | 1:05:20 | |
about a Re-imagining website? | 1:05:21 | |
- | I think that... | 1:05:33 |
If that website could connect us to | 1:05:38 | |
some of the cutting edge theology today. | 1:05:41 | |
Some of the current issues and maybe a broader vision | 1:05:47 | |
of where people think | 1:05:51 | |
things are headed or you know, | 1:05:56 | |
or how many of us are in a certain movement. | 1:05:58 | |
You know, I think that would be helpful. | 1:06:02 | |
That's what I turn, like, I'd love like a TED Talk | 1:06:05 | |
or something, you know? | 1:06:08 | |
Where it's 20 minutes and you hear something that's | 1:06:09 | |
somebody's, a new thing that somebody's given a lot of, | 1:06:14 | |
maybe two decades of work to, you know, in a short. | 1:06:19 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:06:23 |
- | And so it would be great to have access to | 1:06:23 |
some of the theologians today or, | 1:06:29 | |
like I said, just a broader vision of | 1:06:32 | |
church or spirituality, some connection to that. | 1:06:37 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:06:41 |
Good, Kathy, this has been wonderful. | 1:06:45 | |
But let me ask, is there something we haven't discussed | 1:06:48 | |
that you would like to talk about? | 1:06:50 | |
- | Well, I just want to re-cap maybe. | 1:06:58 |
- | Good, do that. | 1:07:00 |
- | And emphasize | |
what was so important to me. | 1:07:01 | |
- | Please do. | 1:07:02 |
- | That the Re-imagining conference happened | 1:07:07 |
and it empowered, | 1:07:09 | |
in my life, | 1:07:13 | |
a small group of women to claim their, um... | 1:07:15 | |
Gifts and to create space to develop them | 1:07:22 | |
and I think we were just one small group of how many? | 1:07:27 | |
You know. | 1:07:32 | |
I feel like, you know, I have a whole file of our work | 1:07:33 | |
and it was, it was, like the Re-imagining conference, | 1:07:36 | |
we put a lot of work into our worship aids | 1:07:40 | |
and our, you know, | 1:07:44 | |
we created our rituals from scratch every time. | 1:07:48 | |
And we used the Sophia blessing every time, | 1:07:50 | |
I should say that. | 1:07:53 | |
- | Did you, did you, OK. | |
- | Yeah, that was our closing. | 1:07:55 |
- | Wow. | 1:07:56 |
- | But you know, I know of a, you know, probably | 1:07:57 |
four other ritual groups, | 1:08:03 | |
maybe not sprung out of Re-imagining. | 1:08:05 | |
One particularly that was, but that were doing similar work | 1:08:07 | |
so I think that, um... | 1:08:10 | |
We don't know, really what women who walked out the | 1:08:15 | |
door did with that, but it's probably been amazing. | 1:08:20 | |
And it's exciting for me to talk to you | 1:08:25 | |
so that I can share, you know, | 1:08:29 | |
the work that we did for about a decade. | 1:08:31 | |
You know, that was so important and yet... | 1:08:34 | |
Hasn't really gone down in history, you know? | 1:08:41 | |
- | Mmhm, mmhm, exactly. | 1:08:44 |
- | Like I said, probably the gift to us, | 1:08:54 |
who were Catholic women, forming these small groups, | 1:08:56 | |
we weren't involved in, it would have been really exciting | 1:09:00 | |
for me to be able to bring some of this to a local perish | 1:09:03 | |
and do this work with people. | 1:09:08 | |
And I tried, in some ways. | 1:09:10 | |
- | Did you? | 1:09:12 |
- | Yeah. | |
But you run into so much opposition. | 1:09:14 | |
- | Yeah. | 1:09:19 |
- | And it's so discouraging. | 1:09:20 |
- | Was it mostly from priests? | 1:09:22 |
Was it from other members of the perish? | 1:09:23 | |
- | Both. | 1:09:29 |
- | Both, mmhm. | |
- | I don't think a lot of the people were there, you know? | 1:09:31 |
- | Mmhm, yes. | 1:09:34 |
- | And maybe still aren't, you know? | 1:09:38 |
- | Yeah. | 1:09:41 |
- | Yeah, as progressive as some perishes are, | 1:09:43 |
the minute I walk in the door | 1:09:47 | |
and there's only a male presiding, | 1:09:48 | |
a lot of people don't even recognize that that's limiting. | 1:09:51 | |
They're so used to it. | 1:09:58 | |
Yeah. | 1:10:00 | |
So I appreciate how Re-imagining supported | 1:10:04 | |
my theological exploration. | 1:10:08 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:10:10 |
- | And connected me with people, women around the globe | 1:10:12 |
asking such similar questions | 1:10:18 | |
and having similar experiences. | 1:10:22 | |
How exciting, in my lifetime, | 1:10:23 | |
to be connected to that global community. | 1:10:26 | |
- | Mmhm. | 1:10:29 |
- | Yeah. | |
And that's maybe what can happen on the web. | 1:10:31 | |
- | Yes, yes. | 1:10:35 |
- | We can continue it. | 1:10:36 |
- | Right. | 1:10:38 |
Thank you so much, Kathy. | 1:10:40 | |
I really appreciate your reflections, thank you. | 1:10:42 | |
We're done. | 1:11:00 |