Madeline L'Engle on the Transfiguration

Strong stuff. Mythic stuff. That stuff which makes life worth living, which lies on the other side of provable fact. How can we be Christians without understanding this? The incarnation itself bursts out of the bounds of reason. That the power which created all of the galaxies, all of the stars in all of their courses, should willingly limit that power in order to be one of us, and all for love of us, cannot be understood in terms of laboratory proof, but only of love. And it is that love which calls us to move beyond the limited world of fact and into the glorious world of love itself. Of Jesus standing with Moses and Elijah, both of whom had themselves stood on the mount and been illuminated by God’s glory. When Moses went down from the mountain his face was so brilliant that people could not bear to look on him, and he had to cover his face in order not to blind them.

I found this doing some research for my sermon tomorrow from 30GoodMinutes.org (yes, I am way behind).

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

Short Hops: MLK, Immigration, and a Poem

Sally has a beautiful, haunting poem about The Samaritan Woman up on her site.

Instead of simply celebrating Martin Luther King Day, Dustin Wax at Lifehack has a list of things we can do to continue making King’s dream a reality in 12 Ways to Make MLK’s Dream a Reality. Here are a couple of them:

Re-examine what you “know”: It turns out our minds are full of racist stereotypes, even among the most saintly people. We act every day on things we “know” are true, without realizing that those “facts” are grounded only in stereotypes, not reality. Consider:

  • The lowest violent crime rates in the US are found in Hispanic neighborhoods.
  • White teens are more likely to use and sell drugs than any other teenagers — even drugs like crack that we associate with minorities.
  • Almost all school shootings have been carried out by white students.

None of these facts conforms to our expectations, which are shaped more by the stereotypes we’ve internalized and the sensationalist media than by actual experience.

Think community: Kant’s Categorical Imperative states: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. What he meant in a nutshell was that you should act the way you wish everyone would act. Don’t just ask yourself if your behavior is in your own best interest, but if it also makes your community better (which, if you think about it, is also in your best interest).

In The Outrage of Outsiders: Why So Many People Dislike Christians (Hat tip to Gord), Journey with Jesus has an article about a three year study that resulted in David Kinnaman’s book unChristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity… and Why It Matters. He found that an overwhelming majority of young adults view Christianity with quite a bit of hostility. They see us as judgmental, bigoted, and extremely critical and unaccepting. All I can say is can you blame them? When you have people constantly telling you (or yelling at you) that you’re going to hell for one reason or another, I’d have to say you wouldn’t like them. May be the church (particularly the evangelical church) needs to take its cue from Jesus and the Christians in the New Testament instead of the “hellfire and brimstone” preachers of the 30s and 40s revivials.

Following the example of Jesus, the first Christians broke down social barriers. They disregarded religious taboos that judged people as ritually clean or unclean, worthy or unworthy, respectable or disrespectable. They subverted normal social hierarchies of wealth, ethnicity, religion, and gender in favor of a radical egalitarianism before God and with each other: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).

In a word, the first believers were generous. They demonstrated authentic transparency, not moral superiority or ulterior motives. Like their Lord, they exuded compassion rather than condemnation. They lived out of gratitude not fear, and had a reputation for empathy rather than fault-finding. The first followers of Jesus were people of self-sacrifice, not self-interest. They insisted that God was like a tender father, not a vindictive tyrant, and encouraged every person without exception to believe what the psalmist said: “This I know, that God is for me” (Psalm 56:9).

Pastor Dan over at Street Prophets reminds the right-wing, anti-immigration crew that they Can’t Fool the Faithful: Immigration is a Moral Issue, Not a Political Football. American Christians are going to have to decide are we going to be Americans first or Christian?

Pastors and people in the pews know that inhumane raids, deportations, local anti-immigration ordinances, and racist sentiment against various groups of immigrants fly in the face of the Lord’s admonitions to not “oppress the stranger” (Ex. 23:9) or “pervert the judgment of the stranger” (Deut. 24:17). Instead, the Lord taught us to “love the stranger as ourselves” (Lev. 19:34), and “allow the stranger to live among us” (Lev. 25:35). Christ’s teachings in the New Testament reaffirm the Lord’s commandments of inclusion by urging us to welcome the stranger. He promises that as we provide for the stranger (or “alien,” NIV), we are serving Him (Matt. 25:35-40). How many of these politicians really want to deport Jesus?

And may be those anti-immigration people need to remember who the illegal immigrants of 300 years ago were. Bet the Native Americans wished they had built a big, honking wall right after we started showing up. (I saw a great cartoon of this, but I don’t remember where. If you know, leave a link in the comments, and I’ll update this post.)

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

A Roundup of Decluttering, "Wars," and Where Was Jesus Really Born?

I am slowly getting back around to blogs and reading online in general. Here are some of the posts and articles that have caught my eye.

There’s a lot going on this time of the year, and if your mind is cluttered with things to do before Tuesday, then Leo Babauta has an article for you. 15 Can’t-Miss Ways to Declutter Your Mind has several different ways to get things off your mind, so you can have some peace of mind:

Identify the essential. This one is practically a mantra here at Zen Habits. (Can you imagine it? All of us here at Zen Habits, sitting on a mat in lotus position, chanting slowly: “Identify the essential … identify … the essen … tial …”) But that’s because it’s crucial to everything I write about: if you want to simplify or declutter, the first step is identifying what is most important. In this case, identify what is most important in your life, and what’s most important for you to focus on right now. Make a short list for each of these things.

Eliminate. Now that you’ve identified the essential, you can identify what’s not essential. What things in your life are not truly necessary or important to you? What are you thinking about right now that’s not on your short list? By eliminating as many of these things as possible, you can get a bunch of junk off your mind.

Let go. Worrying about something? Angry about somebody? Frustrated? Harboring a grudge? While these are all natural emotions and thoughts, none of them are really necessary. See if you can let go of them. More difficult than it sounds, I know, but it’s worth the effort.

It’s beginning to sound a lot like Christmas: Oh no not another war on Christmas! (Don’t people realize that Christmas is NOT the only holiday in December?) One of the battles on the supposed “war on Christmas” is a movie this year. Kathleen Falsani reviews The Golden Compass and comes to this conclusion: Golden Compass Doesn’t Point to War on Christmas.

I haven’t read Pullman’s books, which by all accounts include explicit anti-religious, and anti-Catholic in particular, themes. I have, however, seen the film and if those themes were present, they flew right over my head, not unlike the heroic witches who prophesied the birth of Lyra, a child who would someday decide the fate of the world.

The movie is a jumble of heretofore-unknown characters and existential ideas that don’t quite hold together and that are entirely lost amid the fury of big-budget special effects. The message of “The Golden Compass,” if there is one in its celluloid incarnation, was lost on me. And I would venture a guess that any child who would see the film — and with its PG-13 rating for violence, no young child should — would miss the point, whatever it is, as well.

I agree with Falsani’s assessment of what Christians should be doing:

The Bible tells us that in order to love a broken world back to wholeness, an omnipotent God decides to come to Earth, not as a king or a great warrior, but in the form of a helpless infant born in a stable to an unwed teenage mother from an oppressed religious and ethnic group. There are signs and wonders announcing the Christ child’s birth — miraculous movement in the heavens, angels appearing to shepherds in fields, three mystical magi traveling from the East with exotic gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and prophesies foretold and fulfilled. Good triumphs over evil and love over hate, all through the birth of one baby boy in a backwater town in the Middle East more than 2,000 years ago.

I defy Hollywood to come up with a more powerful, enduring tale than that one.

Christians would be better served telling and retelling the real Christmas story, without wasting time on brickbats and boycotts. Make big-budget films about it, write powerful books, make beautiful music and create enduring artwork that reflects the spirit of that story, the greatest ever told.

Jesus didn’t get defensive about ideas and stories that paled in comparison to the one he was telling. His followers shouldn’t be, either.

So, next year, when December rolls around and nervous Nellies begin shrieking about the latest Operation Secular Menace threatening to upend Christmas and its true meaning, please stick your fingers in your ears and repeat after me: Fa la la la la la la la la.

Yes! Finally someone has written about this! Ben Witherington questions where Joseph and Mary stayed on that night when Jesus was born in No Room in the What?

When it came time for Mary to deliver the baby, the Greek of Luke’s text says, “she wrapped him in cloth and laid him in a corn crib, as there was no room in the guest room.” Yes, you heard me right. Luke does not say there was no room in the inn. Luke has a different Greek word for inn (pandeion), which he trots out in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The word he uses here (kataluma) is the very word he uses to describe the room in which Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples — the guest room of a house.

Archeology shows that houses in Bethlehem and its vicinity often had caves as the back of the house where they kept their prized ox or beast of burden, lest it be stolen. The guest room was in the front of the house, the animal shelter in the back, and Joseph and Mary had come too late to get the guest room, so the relatives did the best they could by putting them in the back of the house.

******************************************************************

Bethlehem was a one-stoplight town, and we don’t have a shred of archaeological evidence that there ever was a wayfarer’s inn in that little village in Jesus’ day. All this silliness about ‘no room at the Holiday Inn’ for the holy family or the world giving Jesus the cold shoulder is not at all what Luke is talking about. It’s a story about no inn in the room! It’s a story about a family making do when more relatives than expected suddenly show up on the doorstep. It’s a story most of us can relate to in one way or another.

Not to mention Mary would have had a little more privacy in the back of the house than in the guest room. People always think it’s so horrible that Mary and Joseph had to be in the “barn” (and let’s face it, that’s the way most of us pictured it). But they were in the home of family or friends. Thank you Ben. I’ve been saying this for years, and Christians treat me like a heretic. Now I can say I’m not the only one who thinks this what really happened and can point them to Ben’s article.

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

Made in the Image of Godde: Female

Gifted for Leadership’s most recent post is What Our Feminity Means. Here is an excerpt that sums up the entire post:

The benefits of modesty aside, femininity became a new way to behave, a role I played, a corset I wrapped around my soul and tightened down to get approval. Femininity quickly became something I did to get what I needed or wanted in life. It was something to use, not something I owned.

I don’t think this is what Godde intended when he created Woman. In Genesis 1 Godde wanted to splash more of the Trinity onto Earth. So Godde made Man and Woman to mirror Godde’s image (Gen 1:27). Femininity in its truest, original sense was one way Godde’s image appeared, and this image was not weak, catty, emotionally crazy, or inferior because Godde is none of these things. Femininity wasn’t a role Eve played to get what she needed; femininity was part of who she was. Even after Eden, as broken image bearers, we reflect God. If a child is humble, she mirrors her Godde. If a man is gentle, he mirrors his Godde. If women are feminine in the original sense, we reflect our Godde.

My main problem with this is that “feminine” and “femininity” are social and sociological constructs, not biblical or theological terms. Genesis 2:26-28 states:

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Godde did not make “masculine” and “feminine” in Godde’s likeness. Godde made Male and Female in God’s likeness. And what does this image and likeness look like? According to these verses it means that man and woman subdue the earth and rule it as well as being fruitful and multiplying. Both the man and woman are commanded to have a family and to have a vocation.

In Genesis 2, we find that Godde created a human being and placed the human in the Garden of Eden. Godde decided that it was not good for the human to be alone, so Godde made an ezer cenegdo for the human. After the ezer is made there is now man and woman. What exactly is an ezer? Outside of Genesis 2, it appears 20 times in the Bible*. Seventeen of those times, ezer is used to describe Godde. In each instance military imagery is used to describe God coming to help Israel against its enemies. I found Psalm 146 particularly fascinating:

1 Praise the LORD! Praise the LORD, O my soul!
2 I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God all my life long.
3 Do not put your trust in princes, in mortals, in whom there is no help.
4 When their breath departs, they return to the earth; on that very day their plans perish.
5 Happy are those whose help [ezer] is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD their God,
6 who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them; who keeps faith forever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8 the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.
9 The LORD watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10 The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, for all generations. Praise the LORD!

After telling the congregation not to put their trust in human leaders, the psalmist proclaims: “Happy are those whose ezer is the Godde of Jacob, Rachel, and Leah!” (author’s paraphrase). The psalmist then goes on to describe how Godde helped Israel: Godde executed justice for the oppressed, gave food to the hungry, set prisoners free, opened the eyes of the blind, lifted up those who are bowed down, and loved the righteous. Godde watches over the strangers, upholds the orphan and widow, and brings the way of the wicked to ruin. Godde’s help is not to dominate the people, but to lift them out of poverty and hunger, to set them free from oppressors and oppressive debts (most people in prison then were in debtor’s prison: they could not pay their debts). God helped the orphans and widows: those in society who have no one else to help them and be strong for them. Godde uses Godde’s strength and power to help those that no one else will help because they are seen as weak, poor, and marginal. Again we see military imagery used to describe Godde as Israel’s ezer or helper.

Carolyn Custis James does a wonderful job of exploring the word ezer and its military connotations in her book, Lost Women of the Bible: Finding Strength & Significance through Their Stories, in the chapter on Eve. She translates ezer as “strong helper.” Woman was created in the image of God to be a helper to the man as God was a helper to Israel. But this does not make her superior to the man. That’s where the second word of the phrase comes in: cenedgo, which means standing or sitting face to face. It means equal. So the full translation of ezer cenedgo is a powerful helper equal to. Woman was created to be a powerful helper equal to the man the way God is a powerful helper to God’s people.

Man and woman are created in Godde’s image to image Godde in our world. Psalm 146 gives a description of what Godde is doing in the world. Godde is not only fighting enemies and saving God’s people. Godde is also taking care of those who can’t take care of themselves. This means that both man and woman should be doing the things Godde does to image Godde to our world. This includes fighting systemic and spiritual evil, but it also includes tenderness and compassion toward those who are poor, needy, and those whom society overlooks.

I want to look at two women in the Bible; one in the Hebrew Scriptures and the other in the New Testament. First we’ll look at Deborah from the Hebrew Scriptures. We are introduced to Deborah in Judges 4. She was a prophet and judge, and she led Israel. The Israelite people came to her with problems and disputes, and she mediated Godde’s will as Moses once did. She was married, but she was a working woman. Godde called her to be a prophet and judge, and she answered. When Godde commanded Israel to go to battle with their enemy Sisera and the Canaanites, Deborah summoned the military commander Barak, and told him what Godde said. But Barak would not go into battle without Godde’s representative, Deborah. Both Barak and Deborah led Israel’s armies into battle. Here we see a man and a woman working together to fight the people’s enemies and obey Godde’s words and will. And irony of ironies is that Deborah’s husband, Lappidoth, was probably in the troops following his wife.

Deborah, Barak, and Lappidoth do not resemble or act according to the societal constructs of masculine and feminine, but they are obeying Godde and building Godde’s kingdom side by side. Leading men into a battle is not considered “feminine” in Western society, but Deborah was obeyed Godde. Godde called her to lead her people and protect them from their enemies. She was an ezer who was imaging Godde in her every word and action.

The next woman I want to look at in the New Testament is Priscilla (or Prisca). Priscilla ran a business with her husband, Aquilla. They made tents together. They worked in Corinth with Paul where they heard the Gospel and were saved (Acts 18:1-3). Later the couple would meet Apollos who had heard only of John’s baptism and not heard of Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension or the baptism of the Holy Spirit. When Priscilla and Aquilla heard him, they took him aside and “explained the Way of God to him more accurately” (v. 26). They also led a home church when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans (Romans 16:3-5). It is very odd during this time for a wife’s name to be mentioned before her husband’s, and yet four times Priscilla’s name is put before her husband’s. Many scholars believe that she was the dominant one in ministry: the teacher and pastor of the churches that met in their home.

Again we see a man and woman working side by side making a living and building Godde’s kingdom. There is no mention of what is masculine and what is feminine. They worked together as the team Godde created them to be.

I think being made male and female in the image of Godde has very little to do with modern notions of femininity and masculinity. It has everything to do with faithfully imaging Godde to our world by obeying God’s callings on our lives and working together–both men and women–to build the kingdom of Godde on earth.

*Exodus 18:4; Deuteronomy 33:7, 26, 29; Psalm 20:2; 33:20; 70:5; 89:19; 115:9-11; 121:1-2; 124:8; 146:5; and Hosea 13:9.

The New Revised Standard Version is used for biblical quotes unless otherwise noted.

The picture is Thomasz Rut’s Insuspenco.

Crossposted at Emerging Women.

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

Self-Nurtue and Sabbath-Keeping

I have been thinking a lot about nurturing recently. Part of it has to due with the clinical depression, but not all of it. Earlier this year I went through The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Every week it was stressed how important it was, not only to take care of ourselves, but to nurture ourselves–especially our inner artist. The child in us who loves to draw, color, paint, write and not be told what to do. It is also because of the command to love our neighbors as ourselves. We cannot love anyone else if we do not love ourselves. Sally’s Friday Five, Extravagant Unbusyness also brought this up. How do we take care ourselves? How do we treat ourselves?

Several of you wanted me to write poetry and post it this week. I’m sorry to say that I didn’t write any poetry (but it’s still a goal). But I did do two things on my list:: I took a long hot bath, and I started reading The Golden Compass. In fact, I got a good ways into The Golden Compass last night. The characters are great. I also like Pullman’s writing. He’s a wonderful storyteller. I think Wicked was the last novel I read, and that has to be at least three months ago. I need to take the time to read fiction. I love it. I get so caught up in the books I’m reading for my writing projects and launching the church, that I’m not reading something just to read it and have fun. I enjoy what I read for work, but it’s that: work. All reading cannot be for work. The same with writing poetry. Not all writing can be for work. Some of it has to be fun and just because. So yes, I intend to keep that one way of nurturing myself: writing a poem, just because.

My wonderings (and wanderings) about nurturing myself have clicked with the observance of the Sabbath. This idea that we need a day off to rest, to worship, and to recoup. A day where it’s okay to stop and take care of ourselves. I wonder if we kept a Sabbath, if taking care of ourselves and nurturing ourselves would be so hard. Because it would be ingrained in us to stop, to worship, to rest, to relax, and to have fun one day a week instead of being on a merry-go-round of always having to do something. And I’m not talking about a strict do nothing observance of days past where one did nothing except go to church and then sit for the rest of the day.

In her book, Keeping the Sabbath Wholly, Marva Dawn says that not all activity has to cease. Just work: what we do to feel productive, make money, pretend to give meaning to our lives. The work we cease from doing is the work we do to live. The Sabbath is a day to trust God: to trust God to take care of our needs without us doing anything. The activities we can do on the Sabbath are those we enjoy doing and may be don’t do because we see them as frivolous: taking a walk through the park, playing in the park, gardening, sewing, crocheting, taking a nap and getting some well-deserved rest, or may be writing poems and reading a novel. It’s doing things that free us from the mentality that we are what we do and how much we produce.

It’s also a time to leave behind the world’s way of relating to each other in using people for what we can get or for what they can do for us. It’s a time to receive God’s unconditional love, knowing there is nothing we can do to earn it. It is a time of learning to give and receive that unconditional love from each other. It is a time of love and give as God loves and gives. It’s a day of feasting and celebration. It’s a day of worshiping God together and being the people of God without worrying about anything apart from communion with God and communion with one another.

The Sabbath makes it okay to stop. To stop and take care of ourselves. To stop and love and rejoice with other people. To stop and focus on God and his love. I think if we took the Sabbath seriously, we would not have such a hard time taking care of ourselves and nurturing ourselves. I think if we practiced the Sabbath we would not feel guilty of nurturing ourselves because God himself rested after creation on the Sabbath. Right after he created human beings in his image, he rested. We are made in God’s image, and we are made to rest on the Sabbath. Part of being made in the image of God is a day of rest, worship, nurture, and feasting and fun.

I’m beginning to think about this as I will begin to pastor and “work” on Sunday again. Marva published a book last year that I need to read: The Sense of the Call: A Sabbath Way of Life for Those Who Serve God, the Church, and the World. I need to get it because it is so hard to observe a Sabbath when you’re a pastor. I remember that. It’s doubly hard when you’re bivocational. I remember the burnout from that. I’m hoping I get a sense of how to keep the Sabbath while pastoring from Marva’s new book.

The picture is “The Risen Lord” by He Qi.

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

Madeline L'Engle's Death

Because my in-laws were here, I missed that Madeline L’Engle had passed away. Oh my. I first heard A Wrinkle in Time read aloud by my teacher in the third grade. As she read the classroom disappeared, and the world of Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin became more real than the desk I sat at. When I found out there were more books, I went to the school library, checked out, and promptly read A Wind in the Door and A Swiflty Tilting Planet (Many Waters would not appear until my sophmore or junior year of high school).

After 4 1/2 years of college and 4 years of seminary with nearly no fiction reading through that time, I went back to Madeline to recapture the wonder, whimsy, and sheer imagination that has always been inside me, but was buried for far too long. Madeline, C. S Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkein, and J. K. Rowling helped me remember that imagination and wonder were vital to the soul. No wonder my soul had dried up in my years of academia where everything was explored, explained, and parsed. No wonder, my mystery, no imagination. Theological education needs an overhaul. Not that I didn’t receive a good education–I did. But inspirational and imaginative, it was not. I remember that before all my education, I learned most of my theology in novels. I have returned to that practice. In fact, Madeline said it best: “Faith is best expressed in story.” Amen Madeline. May your faith, imagination, and introspection light up heaven as it has lit up earth. Rest in peace.

Here is Madeline’s obituary from the AP with a very big and grateful hat tip to Kathleen Falsani for posting this on her blog (I also swiped the picture from her).

HARTFORD, Conn. — Author Madeleine L’Engle, whose novel ”A Wrinkle in Time” has captivated generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88.

L’Engle died Thursday at a nursing home in Litchfield, said Jennifer Doerr, publicity manager for publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

The Newbery Medal winner wrote more than 60 books, including fantasies, poetry and memoirs, often highlighting spiritual themes and her Christian faith.

For many years, she was the writer in residence and librarian at the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City.

Although L’Engle was often labeled a children’s author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she did not write down to children.

”In my dreams, I never have an age,” she said. ”I never write for any age group in mind. … When you underestimate your audience, you’re cutting yourself off from your best work.”

”A Wrinkle in Time” — which L’Engle said was rejected repeatedly before it found a publisher in 1962 — won the American Library Association’s 1963 Newbery Medal for best American children’s book. Her ”A Ring of Endless Light” was a Newbery Honor Book, or medal runner-up, in 1981.

In 2004, President Bush awarded her a National Humanities Medal.

Keith Call, special collections assistant at Wheaton College in Illinois, which has a collection of L’Engle’s papers, said he considers her the female counterpart of science fiction author Ray Bradbury because people loved her personally as much as they loved her books.

”She was tremendously important initially as a children’s book author, and then as she wrote meditative Christian essays, that sort of expanded her audience,” he said. ”She spoke exactly the way she wrote, very elegant, no nonsense, crisp, and deeply spiritual.”

”Wrinkle” tells the story of adolescent Meg Murry, her genius little brother Charles Wallace, and their battle against evil as they search across the universe for their missing father, a scientist.

The brother and sister, helped by a young neighbor, Calvin, and some supernatural spirits, must pass through a time travel corridor (the ”wrinkle in time”) and overcome the ruling powers on a planet with a totalitarian government reminiscent of George Orwell’s ”1984.”

”A Wrinkle in Time” exposes readers to the words of great thinkers, as its characters quote Shakespeare, the Bible, Euripides, Dante and others.

L’Engle followed it up with further adventures of the Murry children, including ”A Wind in the Door,” 1973; ”A Swiftly Tilting Planet,” 1978, which won an American Book Award; and ”Many Waters,” 1986.

”A Ring of Endless Light,” 1980, is part of another L’Engle series, the Austin family books. In all, there were nine Austin books from 1960 to 1999, and eight Murry books from 1962 to 1989, many featuring a grown-up, married Meg and Calvin and their children.

Among L’Engle’s memoirs are ”The Summer of the Great-Grandmother” in 1974, about life at the family home in Connecticut. The great-grandmother is L’Engle’s own mother; the story deals with L’Engle’s memories and emotions as her mother dies at age 90.

After Harry Potter mania swept the world of children’s literature, ”A Wrinkle in Time” was often cited as a precursor or, for frantic Potter fans, something to read while waiting for their hero’s next installment.

L’Engle told Newsweek in 2006 that she had read one Potter book and, ”It’s a nice story but there’s nothing underneath it. I don’t want to be bothered with stuff where there’s nothing underneath.”

Born Madeleine L’Engle Camp in 1918, L’Engle graduated from Smith College in 1941 and worked as an actress in New York City. There, she met her future husband, Hugh Franklin, an accomplished stage actor who became known later for his portrayal of Dr. Charles Tyler on the soap opera ”All My Children.”

In 1945, her first book, ”The Small Rain,” was published; she and Franklin married the following year. They moved to Connecticut in 1951 and for several years, the couple ran a general store to make ends meet.

They had a son, Bion, and two daughters, Josephine and Maria. The couple had adopted Maria after her parents, who were friends of theirs, died.

The family later moved back to New York; Franklin died of cancer in 1986. Her son died in 1999 at age 47.

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

Hymn: Sing a New Church

Going through a notebook I found this hymn that I copied out of a hymnal at Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine monastery, on one my retreats there. It’s a great hymn, and I thought I would share it. And if you ever get a chance to hang out with Benedictine sisters do it: they are very, very cool.

“Sing a New Church” by Delores Dufner, OSB
Tune: “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”

Summoned by the God who made us
Rich in our diversity,
Gathered in the name of Jesus,
Richer still in unity:

Chorus:
Let us bring the gifts that differ
And, in splendid, varied ways,
Sing a new church into being,
One of faith and love and praise

Radiant risen from the water;
Robed in holiness and light,
Male and female in God’s image
Male and female God’s delight:

Chorus

Trust the goodness of creation;
Trust the Spirit strong within.
Dare to dream the vision promised
Sprung from seed of what has been.

Chorus

Bring the hopes of every nation;
Bring the art of every race.
Weave a song of peace and justice:
Let it sound through time and space.

Chorus

Draw together at one table
All the human family;
Shape a circle ever wider
And a people ever free.

(c) 1991 Sisters of St. Benedict. Published by OCP Productions.

Published by Shawna on | Permalink

Updated: Potential "Career Women of the Bible" Outline

Here is the very beginning of my potential outline for the Career Women of the Bible book proposal.

1. Introduction

2. In the Beginning
Does It Really Mean “Helpmate”?
The Fall and Women

2. Ministers
The 12th Century, B.C.E. Woman: Deborah
Standing Between Life and Death: Miriam
Standing Between Life and Death: Zipporah and Huldah
The Apostle to the Apostles: Mary Magdalene
Apostles and Prophets
Teachers, Elders, and Coworkers

3. Mothers and More
Sarah
Hagar
Rebekah
Rachel and Leah
Hannah

4. Just a Housewife?
Standing Between God and the People: Jael
Abigail
The Proverbs 31 Woman
Sisters in Service: Mary and Martha
The Samaritan Woman

5. Off to Work
Rahab
Ruth
Esther
Priscilla and Lydia

The women who don’t have links, I have not written on yet. I also realize the articles I have written need a lot of rewriting. For those who just found the site, Career Women of the Bible started out as my thesis in seminary. I’ve started to rewrite it, but it still is very scholary and has some ways to go before it has the narrative and story-like quality that I want the finished book to have.

This is just a start, but I think it is a good one. Any advice or opinions? Who did I leave out? Why do you think they should be included? Please let me know. Thanks.

Published by Shawna on | Permalink