Henry, Robin
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- | Well, Robin, thank you so much | 0:01 |
for agreeing to meet with me to be interviewed. | 0:02 | |
Could you please say and spell your name? | 0:04 | |
- | My name is Robin Henry, | 0:07 |
R-O-B-I-N, H-E-N-R-Y. | 0:08 | |
- | Wonderful. | 0:11 |
And are you, well I know you're lay, | 0:12 | |
and your denominational affiliation is? | 0:15 | |
- | Roman Catholic. | 0:17 |
- | Very great. | 0:18 |
Robin, when and where were you born? | 0:20 | |
- | I was born in Old Westbury, New York, | 0:22 |
which is on Long Island, in 1952. | 0:25 | |
- | Wonderful. | 0:30 |
And where did you go to school? | 0:31 | |
- | I lived in Upstate New York and went to high school there, | 0:35 |
and I came out here and graduated from St. Catherine's, | 0:38 | |
with a degree in Music Education. | 0:41 | |
- | Great, and you were at Notre Dame at one point? | 0:43 |
- | I studied, yeah, one of the summers | 0:46 |
after I graduated St. Kate's, I studied at Notre Dame. | 0:48 | |
I actually took graduate classes | 0:53 | |
at the University of Minnesota, and at St. John's, as well. | 0:54 | |
- | Wonderful, okay. | 0:57 |
What work or ministry were you doing at the time | 1:00 | |
of Re-Imagining 1993? | 1:02 | |
- | I was Director of Music and Liturgy, | 1:05 |
which is what I do now at St. Albert the Great, | 1:07 | |
which is a small, Dominican parish in south Minneapolis. | 1:10 | |
- | Wonderful, great. | 1:14 |
Robin, how and when did you first | 1:18 | |
become aware of feminist theology? | 1:19 | |
- | I think probably, | 1:23 |
starting somewhere in the mid '80s to early '90s. | 1:27 | |
And then with relationships with people that, | 1:30 | |
including Cletus Wessels, who is a writer | 1:36 | |
and Dominican priest, now deceased, | 1:39 | |
who was doing some writing about cosmology, | 1:42 | |
about the world, and the Earth, and the universe. | 1:44 | |
It's a jumble up of that, and certainly having graduated | 1:50 | |
from school at St. Kate's, | 1:54 | |
there certainly was a lot of discussion | 1:57 | |
about what feminist theology is and what it means. | 2:00 | |
- | Do you recall, how did you react to it initially? | 2:05 |
- | Oh, I loved it, I thought it was amazing. | 2:08 |
That it was in my estimation, | 2:10 | |
not necessarily the rejection of patriarchy, | 2:14 | |
but talking about how God can come to all of us, | 2:18 | |
not just males or ordained, or whatever. | 2:22 | |
That all of us should have an open access to God, | 2:26 | |
who is all genders, and no genders, who is a mix. | 2:29 | |
So, it's probably a combination of that. | 2:37 | |
- | Great, thank you. | 2:39 |
Well, I know you were involved in planning | 2:41 | |
the ritual for the first conference in '93. | 2:43 | |
First of all, say some more about how you | 2:46 | |
got involved in Re-Imagining. | 2:47 | |
- | I had, when I'd gone to Notre Dame to study liturgy, | 2:50 |
I had met Madeline Sue Martin | 2:55 | |
and sang at her college chapel choir, was a cantor. | 2:56 | |
It was kind of a mind-blowing experience being in a, | 3:04 | |
after having worked in a parish, | 3:09 | |
and then gone back to school, with people studying liturgy | 3:11 | |
and experiencing ritual, and so forth. | 3:14 | |
And Madeline Sue was a real driver | 3:17 | |
in terms of my learning from her. | 3:21 | |
And then she moved up here and was teaching here | 3:26 | |
at St. Kate's and I took some classes from her. | 3:29 | |
And then she worked at the Seminary | 3:33 | |
and I took some classes from her there. | 3:35 | |
So I got connected, she asked me if I would consider | 3:37 | |
being part of this ritual planning group, | 3:40 | |
and met some of the Council of Churches women | 3:43 | |
that were also involved in the planning. | 3:48 | |
So it was my first experience | 3:51 | |
with such a dynamic and diverse group of people | 3:54 | |
that come from a variety of church experiences, | 3:58 | |
not just the tradition that I was working in. | 4:01 | |
So that was extremely important to me to hear other women | 4:05 | |
talk about their own experiences where they worship, | 4:10 | |
and how could we share what we know and make it better. | 4:14 | |
So that was the beginning of it, | 4:20 | |
was going to those meetings and talking about | 4:22 | |
what are we trying to do with these rituals? | 4:25 | |
What are we trying to say? | 4:28 | |
I think one of the most controversial ones | 4:30 | |
was that the media got ahold of was the milk and honey. | 4:32 | |
The biblical origins of that text, | 4:38 | |
it wasn't like we grabbed it out of some occult somewhere, | 4:42 | |
but it was the fact that it had never been done, | 4:45 | |
and that it was done so well. | 4:49 | |
I mean, that's the whole thing is that the liturgies, | 4:50 | |
the rituals were done so well they were mind-blowing. | 4:52 | |
When you think about working in the convention center | 4:55 | |
and the space, and the artists that we had, | 4:58 | |
and the musicians that we had, | 5:01 | |
that it was just over the top, | 5:02 | |
and no one had ever done that. | 5:04 | |
Even with as many other conventions as there are, | 5:08 | |
the NPM, the National Pastoral Musicians, | 5:12 | |
even the ordinations of clergy, or whatever. | 5:17 | |
There just was never the kind of collaboration. | 5:20 | |
People were just, they were sobbing. | 5:25 | |
They were so moving, those liturgies. | 5:27 | |
- | Robin, I wanna hear some more | 5:30 |
about what that process was like. | 5:31 | |
What was it like planning the ritual? | 5:33 | |
- | I think it was kind of like cooking. | 5:36 |
Like you got a group of people | 5:42 | |
that talked about what was important for them. | 5:43 | |
What part of it, music, the arts, the graphic arts, | 5:47 | |
the dance, the ritual elements themselves. | 5:53 | |
And so, people would bring their own love to the table | 5:57 | |
and say this is what I think we should do | 6:03 | |
and then it became, as we worked to together, | 6:05 | |
it became what it became | 6:09 | |
because everybody listened to others. | 6:10 | |
And so, it kind of grew out of that. | 6:13 | |
It was like, I can describe it like a cooking class, | 6:15 | |
'cause everybody had their own piece that went into the pot, | 6:19 | |
and then it became. | 6:22 | |
- | What was your piece? | 6:25 |
- | I was as a musician, I was asked if I would sing | 6:27 |
and be involved in that way. | 6:30 | |
One of things I remember most is that there were like | 6:32 | |
four stages that had four different groups of musicians. | 6:34 | |
So I was on one of those stages helping | 6:38 | |
and the music kind of went circularly from one station | 6:40 | |
to the other, and that had never happened before. | 6:44 | |
It was just the style of collaboration | 6:48 | |
and of inclusivity, and that it happened in the round. | 6:52 | |
That it wasn't the stage is up there and everybody else | 6:57 | |
is down here, but it was we were among the people, | 7:01 | |
within the people. | 7:04 | |
I was on one of those stages helping with music. | 7:10 | |
- | I think you're already alluding to this, | 7:12 |
but how did feminist theology, or feminist beliefs, | 7:14 | |
shape the process and the result? | 7:17 | |
- | I think because the World Council of Churches, | 7:21 |
the folks that are involved in that, | 7:24 | |
that are not Roman Catholic, which is awesome, | 7:26 | |
they came in with we're celebrating the year of the woman, | 7:29 | |
or this decade of the woman. | 7:33 | |
And so, we talked about how can we celebrate women. | 7:35 | |
Women haven't been celebrated for 2,000 years. | 7:39 | |
Names are not even mentioned in the Bible. | 7:44 | |
There's certain things that have been shut down by men, | 7:45 | |
so it was like having the doors and the windows opened, | 7:49 | |
and being able to say, | 7:53 | |
why can we not think of God in these other ways? | 7:55 | |
Reimagine the God that came to us in the Hebrew scriptures, | 8:00 | |
in the New Testament scriptures, | 8:05 | |
and reimagine God in a way that speaks to women, | 8:06 | |
and speaks to men who appreciate that God | 8:10 | |
can speak to women and not just them. | 8:13 | |
I think that's how it came to be. | 8:17 | |
- | Exactly. | 8:20 |
You know Madeline Sue Martin, or Madeleine Seid-Martin, | 8:21 | |
was so crucial to this whole thing, and you knew her well. | 8:24 | |
Could you say a little bit more about what she was like | 8:28 | |
as a person, and what key things did you learn from her? | 8:32 | |
- | She was helping plan a liturgy | 8:38 |
that wasn't involved necessarily with Re-Imagining | 8:40 | |
'cause I took a class in Liturgical Planning. | 8:43 | |
It was talking about all of the elements, | 8:47 | |
so most people will just say, okay, | 8:52 | |
so what is the music, so that's it. | 8:54 | |
What is the preaching, so that's it. | 8:56 | |
And she would ask what are people feeling? | 8:58 | |
How are they embodying this liturgy? | 9:02 | |
Are they sitting, are they standing? | 9:06 | |
And when she worked at the Seminary, apparently she got, | 9:08 | |
one of her students I worked with as a first-year priest. | 9:14 | |
He had a certain way about him that was so freeing | 9:19 | |
as a clergy, because he had experienced being in his body | 9:24 | |
and knowing that when you preside you are in your body, | 9:30 | |
and you should be in your body and let's not negate that. | 9:33 | |
And he had such a way about him because of Sue's teaching. | 9:36 | |
They would talk about how your body is part of the liturgy | 9:39 | |
and use your body as a drum, and just the physicality of it. | 9:43 | |
That was a completely new way of looking at liturgy | 9:49 | |
and the role of liturgy, that it embodies us. | 9:55 | |
We are embodied in this liturgy. | 9:58 | |
So it's looking at so many more things | 9:59 | |
than we were traditionally raised to look at. | 10:02 | |
So it's the smell, it's the taste, | 10:05 | |
it's the visuals, it's the what are your ears hearing. | 10:08 | |
One of the beautiful things that Madeline Sue left us | 10:13 | |
is when she died, she had us do a 24-hour prayer vigil, | 10:15 | |
reading or singing or naming the Psalms, | 10:20 | |
and go all the way through them as many times as we, | 10:24 | |
so I took the 2 a.m. slot or something, | 10:26 | |
and ended up having to do three or four or five Psalms, | 10:30 | |
and sang them, because I'm a musician, I'm a singer. | 10:32 | |
That never happened. | 10:38 | |
I'd never experienced that. | 10:40 | |
Even at Notre Dame, I never experienced | 10:42 | |
the amount of incense that was used for Psalm 141, | 10:46 | |
let my prayers rise like incense before you. | 10:50 | |
And you can smell it, you can see it, | 10:53 | |
you could almost taste it. | 10:56 | |
It was probably for me the awakening that the liturgy needs | 10:59 | |
to take, we need to use all of our senses to experience it. | 11:05 | |
- | And now this is your ministry? | 11:12 |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 11:15 |
This is my ministry, yeah. | 11:16 | |
And I had been in it. | 11:18 | |
I'm in my 40th year, | 11:19 | |
so it's been a good journey | 11:22 | |
and a lot of wonderful mentors like Madeline Sue, | 11:25 | |
who I so miss her because I would love to call her up | 11:29 | |
and say, what are you thinking about this? | 11:33 | |
I'm struggling with that. | 11:35 | |
And she would be able to talk about it. | 11:37 | |
- | After you had planned this liturgy and worked on it, | 11:41 |
what was it like to be at the gathering and have it happen? | 11:45 | |
- | People didn't know what to expect, | 11:53 |
so it was a brand new concept to reimagine God, | 11:55 | |
and to bring people in from all over the world. | 11:59 | |
So a speaker from Korea, a speak from Africa, | 12:02 | |
different groups of women and men | 12:07 | |
from all over the United States and all over the world, | 12:11 | |
to come together and to say the words, | 12:14 | |
to imagine that God is not just male, | 12:19 | |
a white male with a long beard, up in the sky somewhere, | 12:22 | |
to give people the freedom to think about what we would be | 12:26 | |
like as humans to think of God as so much bigger | 12:31 | |
than we had been thinking of God. | 12:35 | |
It was mind blowing. | 12:38 | |
People were so excited to be there, they just couldn't wait | 12:40 | |
to get back for the next session, and didn't wanna leave. | 12:44 | |
And it was life changing in that you felt safe | 12:49 | |
in a group of people that were able to study and learn, | 12:54 | |
and explore the same things. | 12:58 | |
And you knew that when you went back to your own job, | 13:01 | |
you might not be able to talk about God our mother. | 13:04 | |
That others might be offended or think that we were crazy, | 13:07 | |
or whatever it was. | 13:11 | |
So it was a safe place to be, to experience that. | 13:13 | |
One of the sessions, it was very spontaneous | 13:18 | |
but there were people who were lesbian | 13:22 | |
were invited to come forward, | 13:25 | |
and we were honored by all of the people there. | 13:26 | |
Well that was completely amazing | 13:29 | |
because it's not a safe place to be, | 13:31 | |
certainly in '93 it was not a safe place to be out. | 13:35 | |
The Roman Catholic church, still to this day, | 13:38 | |
calls me intrinsically disordered. | 13:42 | |
They had a breakout session | 13:48 | |
and I went to the breakout session to talk about that, | 13:49 | |
and talked about if the church says that I'm intrinsically | 13:53 | |
disordered as a lesbian, then the church is intrinsically | 13:57 | |
disordered because I am part of her, and I'm not leaving. | 14:01 | |
I'm here to stay. | 14:06 | |
For me, that was very freeing and it was also scary to think | 14:09 | |
is the Arch Bishop going to find out, she's a lesbian, | 14:13 | |
she's working in the Roman Catholic church, | 14:16 | |
whatever, all of that. | 14:19 | |
- | You did go up? | 14:20 |
- | I did go up. | 14:22 |
- | Was that a tough decision to make at that moment? | 14:23 |
- | Not at all. | 14:26 |
- | Why is that? | 14:27 |
- | Because it's who I am. | 14:28 |
I wasn't going to go in the closet for anybody. | 14:31 | |
I made the decision to come out and to live who I am | 14:34 | |
with integrity, so I wasn't going to let someone | 14:37 | |
or some group say, shame, shame, you can't do this. | 14:40 | |
So it was very important to me. | 14:44 | |
- | And what did it feel like to be there | 14:47 |
and to have the reaction? | 14:48 | |
- | I had no idea there were that many of us that were there | 14:50 |
(laughs) because you don't wear a badge that says, | 14:53 | |
well this is who I am, you know? | 14:56 | |
At that point in time, | 15:01 | |
it could be a climate of secrecy and hatred. | 15:02 | |
I know women that were relieved from their jobs. | 15:06 | |
A certain Catholic woman, lesbian, | 15:11 | |
was going to receive an award | 15:15 | |
for being a religious educator. | 15:17 | |
And once the Arch Bishop found out | 15:20 | |
that she was lesbian and had a family, | 15:22 | |
then they pulled the award because God knows | 15:24 | |
you couldn't possibly honor her. | 15:27 | |
She is who she is, and she's living a life | 15:29 | |
and she's got this wisdom to impart as a religious educator. | 15:31 | |
But they had to shut it down. | 15:36 | |
So with those kinds of things happening, you start thinking. | 15:39 | |
I did talk with a pastor I was working with. | 15:43 | |
He certainly knew I was out as a lesbian. | 15:46 | |
He wasn't really sure what he would do if the Arch Bishop | 15:51 | |
called him and I said, well, you gotta do what you gotta do, | 15:53 | |
and I gotta do what I gotta do. | 15:56 | |
- | So you have been able to be an out lesbian | 15:59 |
as a liturgical minister? | 16:02 | |
- | Yeah, mm-hmm. | 16:03 |
- | That's amazing, wow. | 16:04 |
And have you served many different churches? | 16:07 | |
- | I've just served in two, and really I came out | 16:09 |
at the church that I am working at right now. | 16:12 | |
So it's really probably only been St. Albert's | 16:15 | |
that I've been out as a lesbian. | 16:17 | |
But it's certainly been more than 25 years | 16:22 | |
that I've been out. | 16:26 | |
- | That is great. | 16:29 |
Let's talk about the backlash for a minute. | 16:33 | |
Talking just kind of about the potential for backlash. | 16:35 | |
First of all, were you personally affected | 16:38 | |
at all by the backlash? | 16:40 | |
- | I was only affected in that I thought it was so wrong | 16:41 |
that Madeline Sue got fired from the seminary | 16:45 | |
for her participation in it. | 16:48 | |
There was so much negative press and incorrect. | 16:51 | |
It was not only negative, but it was uninformed. | 16:59 | |
So whoever was writing the articles, | 17:03 | |
I read one last week before I looked at this, | 17:05 | |
the oral interviews questions. | 17:09 | |
And there were so many lies in the article that I read | 17:13 | |
that came out, and I thought, | 17:17 | |
how is this possible that the people | 17:19 | |
that decided that they should write about it, | 17:23 | |
did not come or did not know what they were writing about? | 17:26 | |
That they could be so off base. | 17:30 | |
That's part of the, I just couldn't believe it. | 17:33 | |
- | Do you happen to recall | 17:37 |
where the article was from, what publication? | 17:38 | |
- | I don't. | 17:40 |
- | That's fine. | 17:41 |
What are some of the specific lies or misrepresentations | 17:42 | |
that were made about Re-Imagining? | 17:45 | |
- | That the people in that conference were worshiping Sophia, | 17:48 |
and worshiping the goddess. | 17:53 | |
That it was so off the mark that you couldn't imagine | 17:56 | |
that you can think of God in both male and female terms, | 18:02 | |
which is really what the conference was trying to say. | 18:05 | |
Let's open up our image of God. | 18:08 | |
And so, I think the milk and honey was too messy. | 18:10 | |
It was like, is that the milk of our breasts, or whatever. | 18:15 | |
They could not wrap their heads around it | 18:19 | |
and thought it was so heretical, | 18:22 | |
that we were heretics of some kind. | 18:26 | |
After being at the conference | 18:32 | |
and reading the articles afterwards, | 18:34 | |
I couldn't believe that they were | 18:36 | |
at the same conference I was at. | 18:38 | |
So it led me to believe | 18:40 | |
that they did not know what they were writing about. | 18:42 | |
That they came in and experienced 10 minutes of something, | 18:45 | |
and didn't have any of the history or the experience, | 18:48 | |
and came in with an attitude that I'm gonna shut this down. | 18:51 | |
This is ruining Catholicism. | 18:54 | |
This is ruining Christianity. | 18:56 | |
Instead of why are we not big enough | 18:58 | |
to think of God in more terms? | 19:01 | |
There should be more than a hundred names for God, | 19:03 | |
not just Father. | 19:05 | |
People were so threatened to think that this group of people | 19:09 | |
was changing the world, or whatever. | 19:12 | |
Which I think is what the intention was, was to open | 19:16 | |
the windows and say let's look at God in other ways. | 19:19 | |
Sophia is the term of wisdom | 19:22 | |
in the wisdom literature in the Hebrew scriptures. | 19:25 | |
And Sophia is the feminine part of God, | 19:29 | |
which if we are all created in God's image, | 19:32 | |
then God's both male and female, | 19:35 | |
not just male and ordained. | 19:38 | |
- | When you said threatened, what do you think specifically, | 19:42 |
how do you account for the backlash? | 19:45 | |
What was it that was so threatening? | 19:46 | |
- | I think it was threatening to think that people | 19:54 |
could think of God without thinking of the umbrella | 19:57 | |
that they have grown up with. | 20:02 | |
So if Roman Catholics say God is male, | 20:03 | |
women are only allowed to do certain things. | 20:08 | |
God forbid girls could even be servers. | 20:13 | |
I mean, all of those kinds of things. | 20:15 | |
And when girls were allowed to be servers, | 20:17 | |
there was a disclaimer that said this will in no way | 20:20 | |
ever imply that women will ever be ordained as priests. | 20:24 | |
To me, that says that there's a lot of fear. | 20:28 | |
What would be the big fear | 20:30 | |
to let women be ordained as priests? | 20:32 | |
They're running out of them right now. | 20:34 | |
They're certainly running out of the good ones. | 20:36 | |
And the young guys that are coming up right now | 20:38 | |
are so stuck up on their pedestals. | 20:40 | |
They are so threatened by those of us that have been in it | 20:45 | |
for so long, that we know what we're doing | 20:50 | |
and we're not gonna be pushed. | 20:52 | |
We're not gonna be silenced anymore. | 20:54 | |
I really think that's the fear, | 20:57 | |
is that those that are in power, so therefore, | 20:59 | |
I think Arch Bishop Roach needed to fire Madeline Sue | 21:02 | |
because what would it say if a teacher at St. Paul Seminary | 21:08 | |
was imparting so much more about our God | 21:12 | |
then they were allowed to be teaching. | 21:16 | |
- | Do you know what sort of motivated that, | 21:20 |
that it was brought to his attention? | 21:25 | |
- | I don't know any of that, I don't. | 21:28 |
I knew after the fact that she had lost her job. | 21:31 | |
I just was shocked | 21:37 | |
because of the publicity that was incorrect. | 21:38 | |
Negative, incorrect, misleading and lies. | 21:46 | |
And so therefore, you take that as word. | 21:50 | |
He obviously had his little spies or whatever, | 21:53 | |
which is just so wrong. | 21:57 | |
I certainly don't think that the church that Jesus wants us | 22:00 | |
to be a part of to impart his love in the world, | 22:05 | |
would ever have had anything to do with all of that, | 22:09 | |
with letting people go, | 22:12 | |
getting fired because their God is too big, or whatever. | 22:13 | |
- | I wanted to talk to you again | 22:19 |
about the milk and honey ritual, | 22:19 | |
'cause as you said, that was very controversial. | 22:21 | |
There were a lot of stories told about it. | 22:22 | |
First of all, were you involved at all | 22:24 | |
in planning that particular ritual? | 22:25 | |
- | Not that I remember. | 22:28 |
- | What did that ritual mean for you? | 22:31 |
- | Well, the Old Testament scripture that it came from | 22:34 |
is something that I grew up with as a kid and heard that. | 22:37 | |
It was to me, no one had ever used that since I was | 22:43 | |
in high school and we sang a piece that had it in there, | 22:47 | |
which is probably why I remembered it. | 22:49 | |
But no one had ever used that ritual or those elements | 22:52 | |
in a liturgy, and I was just blown away because God | 22:57 | |
is bigger than the elements of bread and wine, | 23:02 | |
or water, or oil, or incense. | 23:05 | |
There was a communion liturgy that happened for, | 23:11 | |
what is her name, Roseanne Chigere, when she passed. | 23:17 | |
And it was a communion of strawberries. | 23:19 | |
And everyone communed each other with a strawberry, | 23:23 | |
and I thought this is our God, alive within us. | 23:25 | |
It doesn't have to be the elements that are approved. | 23:29 | |
It's the Earth. | 23:33 | |
We're all of the Earth, that kind of thing. | 23:35 | |
So I think that was the earthiness of it, | 23:37 | |
was very threatening to people. | 23:39 | |
That you could talk about giving birth, or whatever, | 23:42 | |
that those things are very threatening, and I think, | 23:47 | |
not to necessarily old men, | 23:51 | |
but it's not part of their lived experience. | 23:54 | |
You don't see, you don't live through, | 23:57 | |
you haven't given birth yourself, | 23:58 | |
so you don't wanna talk about those things, | 24:00 | |
about the embodiment of the incarnation, | 24:02 | |
like Jesus came through the birth canal. | 24:07 | |
(laughs) They don't wanna talk about it, | 24:10 | |
so I think that's part of the threatening part of it, | 24:12 | |
is that it's scary for people, | 24:15 | |
we're asking them to move beyond their comfort zone. | 24:19 | |
And that's what the liturgies were intending to do is to get | 24:23 | |
people to think of more than they had experienced in ritual. | 24:27 | |
- | Very good. | 24:33 |
How would you define Re-Imagining? | 24:35 | |
- | Re-Imagining, I think, | 24:40 |
was the dramatic way to look at God | 24:41 | |
through lenses that we never looked at before. | 24:50 | |
So to take our ordinary rituals and say, | 24:53 | |
how can we improve upon these, | 24:58 | |
how can we make these more alive, more living, | 25:00 | |
more part of our everyday life, | 25:05 | |
our everydayness of being human beings? | 25:08 | |
So it's that using all the senses, but it's the audacity | 25:11 | |
to think of God differently than just white male. | 25:16 | |
And people were so hungry for that. | 25:22 | |
The native peoples who have a different kind of experience | 25:25 | |
of God, and that they were told to get rid of all of that. | 25:29 | |
Don't talk about the gods, or whatever, | 25:33 | |
instead of being able to embrace their own rituals | 25:36 | |
and incorporate whatever they believe of God | 25:39 | |
in their liturgies. | 25:42 | |
Africans, from Africa, Koreans, whatever, just all of that. | 25:44 | |
I hadn't experienced a lot of other people of the world. | 25:51 | |
So to hear all of these speakers come in and talk about | 25:57 | |
I'm a mother, I'm an African, I'm a mother | 26:01 | |
and I live in such and such a tribe, | 26:03 | |
and my children, and this and that. | 26:05 | |
We are all the same but we are from different corners | 26:09 | |
of the Earth, and to come together | 26:12 | |
and talk about how can we, all of us, | 26:14 | |
reimagine what God would be like if we were all free | 26:17 | |
to reimagine and not threatened | 26:21 | |
by the liturgical police, or whoever. | 26:23 | |
- | Now you attended other gatherings, too. | 26:28 |
Are there certain things that stand out, | 26:30 | |
moments or impressions from those other gatherings? | 26:32 | |
- | Not as much and I think I was disillusioned | 26:37 |
in people getting let go of their jobs with Re-Imagining. | 26:41 | |
Just the fact that prior to this, | 26:46 | |
I didn't go into this with any kind of fear, | 26:50 | |
and maybe that was very naive of me. | 26:53 | |
When you start looking at the world differently, | 26:57 | |
I think it's hard to go back to the way | 27:00 | |
you used to do things, and it's also fearful. | 27:03 | |
You think okay, so-and-so got fired | 27:05 | |
from the first Re-Imagining conference, | 27:08 | |
what's gonna happen after this one? | 27:10 | |
Who is out there? | 27:12 | |
Why are we giving them that kind of power in our life? | 27:14 | |
- | Yeah, yeah. | 27:21 |
In the end, and I think you've kind of talked about this, | 27:24 | |
but I found it's helpful to ask explicitly, | 27:25 | |
what aspects of Re-Imagining | 27:28 | |
were most significant to you and why? | 27:30 | |
- | I think the most striking one was to be able to come | 27:40 |
into a convention center that was completely transformed | 27:43 | |
to look like a different place, so four stages, | 27:52 | |
dramatic colors of fabric, | 27:58 | |
people dressed in a variety of clothes. | 28:01 | |
Just the fact that it was in a circular fashion, | 28:06 | |
that the world looked different. | 28:12 | |
You walked in there and you were like how can this be | 28:14 | |
the conference hall that I've attended other events at? | 28:16 | |
It looked completely different. | 28:19 | |
All of the elements were thought out well. | 28:24 | |
So it was when people come to the convention hall, | 28:28 | |
what will they receive, what will they look at? | 28:31 | |
What will be their experience? | 28:33 | |
What should we have ready for them? | 28:34 | |
It was really mind changing, | 28:37 | |
mind blowing to walk in and see this hall | 28:43 | |
and these people that are leading us in prayer, | 28:47 | |
transform us, that's really what it was. | 28:56 | |
They were like the potters, we were the clay | 29:01 | |
and things were changed once we experienced those rituals. | 29:03 | |
So then you would come back the next day | 29:09 | |
and you were wondering what, and of course, | 29:10 | |
I was in on some of the planning, and you knew some things | 29:13 | |
but you were still wondering what could they do today? | 29:15 | |
What's going to happen today? | 29:18 | |
- | When you say they changed you, | 29:23 |
how did they change you, Robin? | 29:24 | |
- | I think it was the beginning to be able to ask | 29:30 |
why can we not think of God in bigger terms. | 29:36 | |
Why have we not reimagined God before this? | 29:39 | |
Why have we been so stuck in what the world would say | 29:43 | |
we should do, the church should say we should do, | 29:47 | |
the community should say we should do? | 29:50 | |
Instead of talking with everybody that has experienced | 29:53 | |
God in their life, and it was maybe the sharing | 30:00 | |
of those stories that we don't do at a local level | 30:04 | |
in a community and a parish. | 30:07 | |
And we should, because you can't journey with people | 30:09 | |
in their joys and their sorrows, | 30:13 | |
unless you know their stories. | 30:15 | |
And so, that was transforming, to hear people's stories | 30:17 | |
and say, oh my god, I can relate to that. | 30:21 | |
I felt that. | 30:23 | |
Or I can see why you feel the way that you do. | 30:24 | |
It was probably the stories, too. | 30:30 | |
The music and the stories and the rituals | 30:32 | |
that you can't undo those, you can't go back. | 30:35 | |
And now it is a part of you. | 30:39 | |
- | And when you say stories, | 30:42 |
do you mean the stories by the presenters, | 30:43 | |
the stories at a table you were at, or both? | 30:45 | |
- | Both of 'em. | 30:48 |
So it was at a big level when you hear a speaker come in | 30:49 | |
and talk about her experience and impressions of God | 30:53 | |
the mother, God the Goddess, whatever you wanna call God | 30:57 | |
the feminine face of God, which is why they call it Goddess. | 31:02 | |
But it should be God/Goddess if we're talking about God | 31:07 | |
in all genders, and not just the male gender. | 31:10 | |
And then at the tables, we would have questions | 31:15 | |
and people would be sharing their stories | 31:17 | |
and talk about their lives, | 31:19 | |
and how they feel that God is acting in their lives. | 31:22 | |
And I don't think we've had that before. | 31:27 | |
We haven't had a chance to do that, to invite people. | 31:29 | |
People have been afraid to do that | 31:32 | |
and there was such freedom. | 31:33 | |
There maybe should've been some fear in the room. | 31:36 | |
(laughs) I don't know, but I never felt that. | 31:38 | |
I felt the freedom to be able to listen | 31:41 | |
and ask and experience. | 31:45 | |
- | As a Liturgist, what would you see as the contribution | 31:48 |
of Re-Imagining to liturgy? | 31:51 | |
- | I think it's the permission to think outside the box. | 31:57 |
If you've been given, this is your Roman Rite, | 32:01 | |
this is what you need to do, | 32:04 | |
that you can say, | 32:07 | |
why am I doing that? | 32:10 | |
Why can't I do something else? | 32:11 | |
Or asking the questions or pushing the envelope | 32:13 | |
to be able to say I want to use a different reading. | 32:16 | |
Classic example is the Easter Vigil greetings. | 32:21 | |
They're all the old salvation history and all that's fine, | 32:25 | |
but why are we talking | 32:28 | |
about people getting killed in the Red Sea? | 32:29 | |
So we're not doing that any more. | 32:32 | |
It's part of salvation history, | 32:34 | |
but I don't see how that is bringing us forward. | 32:36 | |
So we don't. | 32:39 | |
We choose some other readings. | 32:40 | |
I guess I feel permission to be able to do that | 32:45 | |
because I'm not thrilled | 32:46 | |
with all of the Old Testament history | 32:51 | |
that talks about a murderous God. | 32:52 | |
That isn't the God I want to reimagining. | 32:57 | |
- | And you're talking about in your role | 33:03 |
as Liturgic Administer at this church, | 33:04 | |
you have the freedom to do some of this? | 33:06 | |
- | Yeah, and I've actually, even before Re-Imagining | 33:09 |
have asked the questions. | 33:14 | |
But Re-Imagining gave me permission to be able to say | 33:16 | |
the world would not end | 33:20 | |
if we didn't do exactly as we had done. | 33:21 | |
With regard to other things, if a family comes in, | 33:25 | |
they're planning their father's funeral and they want thus | 33:30 | |
and such a song, and it's not in the approved list, | 33:34 | |
I don't really care if it's not in the approved list, | 33:39 | |
we'll do it because the song or the recording, | 33:41 | |
or the experience of it | 33:45 | |
is what will help this family grieve, | 33:46 | |
and that's more important than the rules. | 33:49 | |
It's not necessarily an indictment, | 33:54 | |
but it's listening to the voice of the people | 33:55 | |
that we're ministering to and what their needs are. | 33:59 | |
I have to think Re-Imagining has helped on that journey, | 34:03 | |
giving me the permission and the freedom | 34:08 | |
to ask the questions and find a different answer maybe. | 34:11 | |
- | Oh, great. | 34:16 |
As we look toward the future, what as you look back on it, | 34:18 | |
what do you think is the greatest legacy of Re-Imagining? | 34:21 | |
Or important legacies of Re-Imagining? | 34:23 | |
- | I think that they could bring such a diverse group | 34:29 |
of people together to talk about the elephant in the room, | 34:34 | |
or what experience of God people have had, | 34:39 | |
and have been asked to be quiet about or not to share about. | 34:45 | |
It's okay to talk about God in our lives | 34:54 | |
and not just the male God, | 34:57 | |
but it's okay to talk about the feminine face of God, | 34:58 | |
if you will. | 35:01 | |
And God in the Universe, not just God | 35:04 | |
in what we have been allowed to talk about God in. | 35:07 | |
I'd like to think that the legacy | 35:17 | |
is that the windows of the church were opened. | 35:18 | |
The windows of the ecumenical church were opened, | 35:21 | |
and that all of us, no matter what tradition | 35:23 | |
and even just world religions, Buddhism, whatever, | 35:26 | |
that we could come together and experience a liturgy | 35:30 | |
that celebrates all of us, | 35:36 | |
and all of our experiences of God. | 35:37 | |
- | Oh, great. | 35:42 |
What do you think Re-Imagining means today? | 35:46 | |
And I'm not just talking about Re-Imagining the gathering | 35:48 | |
or the community, but what needs to be reimagined, | 35:50 | |
or what is being reimagined today? | 35:53 | |
- | I think the conference itself was a beginning, | 35:58 |
and I think we need to keep pushing it, | 36:01 | |
that we can get stuck in the old ways that we've done things | 36:04 | |
instead of just keep the doors open, keep the windows open. | 36:10 | |
And keep talking about how we experience God | 36:13 | |
in the world today. | 36:17 | |
And that it is not from one source, | 36:19 | |
that is from many sources and many traditions | 36:24 | |
that we should be able to embrace those other elements | 36:26 | |
in those traditions, so that we all can experience God | 36:31 | |
and the feminine face of God, in our world today. | 36:36 | |
And that this conference, the beginning of this conference | 36:39 | |
in '93, would not be the beginning and the end, | 36:43 | |
but it would catapult us into continuing | 36:46 | |
to reimagine, rename God. | 36:51 | |
I believe God is ever-changing, as are we. | 36:55 | |
So God isn't the same experience in '93 | 36:59 | |
as God would be today in 2016. | 37:02 | |
- | And that brings me to my final and very specific question. | 37:06 |
The Reimagining Community has reincorporated | 37:09 | |
and is doing a website, and part of it is historical, | 37:11 | |
preserving the speakers and the rituals and everything, | 37:16 | |
and making them accessible so people can build on them. | 37:19 | |
But also, doing links, | 37:22 | |
providing links and resources for people today. | 37:25 | |
So I wonder, we're just looking for ideas | 37:28 | |
about who would benefit from it, what would you suggest | 37:30 | |
what links or resources would be helpful | 37:35 | |
to have on a website? | 37:38 | |
- | I think if people hadn't experienced | 37:47 |
the original conference, | 37:50 | |
they wouldn't know the resources that they used back then. | 37:51 | |
So for instance, the speaker from Africa, | 37:56 | |
the speaker from Korea, | 38:01 | |
the woman who was the chair | 38:05 | |
of the World Council of Churches, | 38:06 | |
their own writings or books, or whatever, | 38:09 | |
there have to be some resources that they used that would be | 38:15 | |
very important if you've never read so-and-so's book. | 38:20 | |
If you never had a chance because that's another piece | 38:23 | |
of the conference itself is that many of us | 38:27 | |
were never exposed to that, so we didn't know | 38:31 | |
of this theologian in Korea, or this theologian in Africa. | 38:33 | |
It was mind blowing. | 38:37 | |
So those resources, those books, | 38:40 | |
and even from subsequent conferences, | 38:44 | |
whatever the resources that they used. | 38:47 | |
For me, I think the thing I wish that it had been recorded, | 38:56 | |
I wish they had had a recording of some of those rituals | 39:02 | |
to see how they, it would be like a movie or something. | 39:06 | |
But I don't think we did any of that. | 39:10 | |
- | Do you mean video taped? | 39:13 |
- | Yeah. | |
- | Yeah, we didn't | 39:14 |
Yeah, you're right, and especially after the first | 39:16 | |
conference, there was fear about doing that. | 39:18 | |
- | I think there were audio tapes. | 39:22 |
- | There are, on cassette tapes | 39:24 |
and we're digitizing all those. | 39:25 | |
So at least we'll have them. | 39:27 | |
- | Yeah, that would be very essential. | 39:29 |
If people don't know anything about the Re-Imagining | 39:32 | |
conference, it would be a way to start. | 39:35 | |
Say, well, listen to these speakers and you can get | 39:37 | |
a flavor of what it was like, or at least what they said. | 39:39 | |
And I do believe some of those words were twisted | 39:46 | |
for the media to impact how people would feel about it. | 39:49 | |
It was that big fear. | 39:54 | |
Like you say, they didn't video tape it | 39:56 | |
and it was probably out of fear | 39:59 | |
because what would, you know? | 40:00 | |
- | Good. | 40:05 |
This was wonderful. | 40:07 | |
Is there anything that we haven't discussed | 40:08 | |
that you would like to mention, Robin? | 40:10 | |
- | No, not necessarily. | 40:18 |
I think the most impactful thing was to get so many people | 40:21 | |
from so many places, so many musicians from the Twin Cities | 40:26 | |
and elsewhere that came together to do all of these things, | 40:30 | |
it was just the best of the best. | 40:34 | |
It was just unbelievable. | 40:37 | |
And that was transforming, just the experience of the music. | 40:41 | |
To be in that space and to be part of that. | 40:47 | |
- | Thank you so much. | 40:53 |