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Can I start a religious order?
I've been thinking about this a while, actually several years.
I would describe my call to vocation being that I knew I wanted to be a pastor by the time I was 8, but I'd wanted to be a nun by the time I was 3 or 4. It just seemed like a good idea. Then I heard that only Catholics were nuns, and forgot about it, for the most part.
These days though, I know there's Anglican nuns and Lutheran deaconess communities and Presbyterians who join Benedictine orders. I know I could 'oblate' to any order, but it doesn't quite sit right with me. There are orders I would really like to join as a full sister, but they don't accept non-Catholics, and I like being Presbyterian. There's orders that would accept me as a Presbyterian, but they're far away from the places I seem called to be, set apart from the world and from people. I think I need to be with the poor and oppressed. I think the South Side of Chicago is calling me for at least another ten years.
One question is whether I'm crazy. I could be. Protestants especially would think that anyone who chooses celibacy or poverty is a little nuts, let alone divine obedience. I have worried myself that it's too self-grandiose to start an order. I don't want to be a rock star or cult figure. But St. Theresa wasn't a rock star or cult figure; and neither was St. Francis really, nor Catherine MacAuley (Sisters of Mercy). I asked one sister friend last year how orders got founded, and she said, "Someone got up one day and started them." My friend David here wonders why I don't do just that. I hesitate, but the idea is growing on me.
The next questions are, on what principles to found an order (the 'charism'), and what to call it. Here are the principles that seem important:
--open to people of all faith traditions
--material simplicity; amassing no property, investments, or status
--resistance to militarism
--upholding the humanity of all people
--voluntary service to others, especially the poor and oppressed
--commitment to community and obedience to God
--spiritual support for those who choose to remain single; as well as those who choose to marry
--a spirit of cooperation and friendship with all other orders and groups striving to live out similar values
I've thought of names that strike me as especially meaningful, such as:
Order of Ecumenical Benedictines (OEB), using an inclusive Rule of Benedict
Order of Preachers of Poverty (OPP), encouraging a ministry that rejects the model of "success =bigger church and bigger salary,"
Order of Poor Servants (OPS), following the same model, but emphasizing the ministry of all.
So, I'm still thinking about it. I think about it actually every day.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Ode to a Purple Washcloth
Ode to a purple washcloth in the second-floor shower
(First in a series of poetry on living in a co-op community)
O my purple washcloth, where art thou now?
Once again I leave you hanging high
High above my head, on the shower door
Out of sight, out of mind
in the morning rush.
You are not large of stature, unmissable
like the purple towel
You are not a risk for much embarrassment
like left-behind underpants
No, you are mostly benign
and too often thus you suffer my neglect
Hours later you are lying there
And I, unawares
Go to use the toilet and look up;
there you are
where I left you;
Memory jogged, I bring you home
Only to lose you again the next day.
Le Anne
(owner of a set of purple bath linens)
(First in a series of poetry on living in a co-op community)
O my purple washcloth, where art thou now?
Once again I leave you hanging high
High above my head, on the shower door
Out of sight, out of mind
in the morning rush.
You are not large of stature, unmissable
like the purple towel
You are not a risk for much embarrassment
like left-behind underpants
No, you are mostly benign
and too often thus you suffer my neglect
Hours later you are lying there
And I, unawares
Go to use the toilet and look up;
there you are
where I left you;
Memory jogged, I bring you home
Only to lose you again the next day.
Le Anne
(owner of a set of purple bath linens)
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Living More with Less
[Originally posted as a comment on Faithfully Liberal]
I have to recommend the ‘Mennonite More with Less’ cookbook as a great reference for not only learning how to eat lower on the food chain healthfully, but also talks about how doing so helps to free up more resources for sustainable agriculture and feeding the world. We had this in the Middle East where I served as a human rights worker and had to feed a team of 6-20 at any given time on the cheap with whatever was in the market.
As mentioned, I shop mostly at a locally-owned produce mart. Following our mideastern habit, I buy few processed foods and no meat; I buy whatever produce is on sale that week knowing that prices change according to seasonability; I buy bananas with spots and whatever’s on the clearance rack, and wash it with dish soap when I get home so it doesn’t go bad so fast. I rely on milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese, lentils and peanut butter for protein. I don’t “cook” elaborately; dinner is usually some form of vegetables and rice or pasta; lunch is filled pita pockets and fruit; breakfast is fruit and bread with whatever’s handy. Usually, I walk out of the mart with hands full and about $12. There’s a lot in that store though I can’t afford, and I’m curious to find out what happens when this family-owned store expands into the larger shop building next door in August. And still, I agree that families with children ought to have more than a dollar per person per meal to buy food.
peace,
Le Anne
I have to recommend the ‘Mennonite More with Less’ cookbook as a great reference for not only learning how to eat lower on the food chain healthfully, but also talks about how doing so helps to free up more resources for sustainable agriculture and feeding the world. We had this in the Middle East where I served as a human rights worker and had to feed a team of 6-20 at any given time on the cheap with whatever was in the market.
As mentioned, I shop mostly at a locally-owned produce mart. Following our mideastern habit, I buy few processed foods and no meat; I buy whatever produce is on sale that week knowing that prices change according to seasonability; I buy bananas with spots and whatever’s on the clearance rack, and wash it with dish soap when I get home so it doesn’t go bad so fast. I rely on milk, eggs, yogurt, cheese, lentils and peanut butter for protein. I don’t “cook” elaborately; dinner is usually some form of vegetables and rice or pasta; lunch is filled pita pockets and fruit; breakfast is fruit and bread with whatever’s handy. Usually, I walk out of the mart with hands full and about $12. There’s a lot in that store though I can’t afford, and I’m curious to find out what happens when this family-owned store expands into the larger shop building next door in August. And still, I agree that families with children ought to have more than a dollar per person per meal to buy food.
peace,
Le Anne
The Food Stamp Challenge
Aaron Krager on Faithfully Liberal posted on the 'Food Stamp Challenge' and wrote about the experience of trying to buy a week's worth of food at the same dollar amount as a person on food stamps receives, $21.00 per week.
Technically, I realize, I would ‘win’ the food stamp challenge. I spend between $12–$24 per week on groceries. And I eat healthy and don’t go hungry when doing so. The ‘catch’ is that I only shop at the Hyde Park Produce mart (regularly, though I go about once a month to an Arab grocer’s or to Trader Joe’s), buy only what’s in season, and generally shop vegetarian.
However, I realize also this is only after a decade of practice and having done a lot of research on how to accomplish this (nutrition planning as well as living in other countries as well as figuring out which stores), and that I don’t have a partner or children– ‘advantages’ in winning the food war.
That’s not to say that if only food stamp people got better educated, they could make it work. There’s only one store where I can make this work in my neighborhood, four grocers where it certainly wouldn’t work, and no grocers at all in the distressed neighborhood (Woodlawn) where I work as a student pastor. I also know that some weeks if an emergency comes up, a paycheck doesn’t arrive when it should, or an extra bill comes up, the food budget might get wiped out altogether. Such was the case these past two weeks when a medical bill wiped out the last of my finances for the summer, though similar events have happened during my three years in seminary. On these occasions, I need to rely on events with food at school, or on friends or relatives to host me for a few meals a week–the seminarian’s form of a soup kitchen. Or sometimes I’m too proud or ashamed to admit I couldn’t make the ends meet on my own, and I just don’t eat.
I also know that my appetite isn’t often what it was when I was a growing child, particularly when I was one of five growing children in a family who was dependent on food assistance, and my mother was a very coupon/price conscious working nurse. Even when I was eight I was well aware it cost less to eat low-nutrition and ‘junk’ foods than it was to eat healthy foods when shopping at most stores. I also know that although both my parents worked regular blue-collar jobs, medical bills would push us over the line. Most folks find the same problem. And most folks, to my knowledge, that need food stamps do work.
I think I write all this in response to two silent but often-thought questions: who is really ‘poor’, and who deserves to eat. A person who works regularly or is a full-time student is not seen as being authentically ‘poor’ (I might add that most seminarians seem truly afraid of those who look or talk about being poor); and it’s a faulty assumption that a person who doesn’t have enough to eat is lazy or incompetent to work or manage their affairs or uneducated. Nobody who looked at me would assume I am poor or grew up in poverty. It’s true that I currently choose to remain a full-time student, after realizing I would be in deeper debt if I dropped to part-time and took longer to go to school. That is more choice than most people have. I also hope to choose to work in settings where I never live over the poverty line, in order to be more authentically among the poor. Still, whether living in chosen or unchosen forms of poverty, I know as a seminary student I need to speak up in the presence of my classmates on poverty issues and people, to transform the way we teach and learn how to be ministers, and how we respond in the course of our daily lives.
peace,
Le Anne
Technically, I realize, I would ‘win’ the food stamp challenge. I spend between $12–$24 per week on groceries. And I eat healthy and don’t go hungry when doing so. The ‘catch’ is that I only shop at the Hyde Park Produce mart (regularly, though I go about once a month to an Arab grocer’s or to Trader Joe’s), buy only what’s in season, and generally shop vegetarian.
However, I realize also this is only after a decade of practice and having done a lot of research on how to accomplish this (nutrition planning as well as living in other countries as well as figuring out which stores), and that I don’t have a partner or children– ‘advantages’ in winning the food war.
That’s not to say that if only food stamp people got better educated, they could make it work. There’s only one store where I can make this work in my neighborhood, four grocers where it certainly wouldn’t work, and no grocers at all in the distressed neighborhood (Woodlawn) where I work as a student pastor. I also know that some weeks if an emergency comes up, a paycheck doesn’t arrive when it should, or an extra bill comes up, the food budget might get wiped out altogether. Such was the case these past two weeks when a medical bill wiped out the last of my finances for the summer, though similar events have happened during my three years in seminary. On these occasions, I need to rely on events with food at school, or on friends or relatives to host me for a few meals a week–the seminarian’s form of a soup kitchen. Or sometimes I’m too proud or ashamed to admit I couldn’t make the ends meet on my own, and I just don’t eat.
I also know that my appetite isn’t often what it was when I was a growing child, particularly when I was one of five growing children in a family who was dependent on food assistance, and my mother was a very coupon/price conscious working nurse. Even when I was eight I was well aware it cost less to eat low-nutrition and ‘junk’ foods than it was to eat healthy foods when shopping at most stores. I also know that although both my parents worked regular blue-collar jobs, medical bills would push us over the line. Most folks find the same problem. And most folks, to my knowledge, that need food stamps do work.
I think I write all this in response to two silent but often-thought questions: who is really ‘poor’, and who deserves to eat. A person who works regularly or is a full-time student is not seen as being authentically ‘poor’ (I might add that most seminarians seem truly afraid of those who look or talk about being poor); and it’s a faulty assumption that a person who doesn’t have enough to eat is lazy or incompetent to work or manage their affairs or uneducated. Nobody who looked at me would assume I am poor or grew up in poverty. It’s true that I currently choose to remain a full-time student, after realizing I would be in deeper debt if I dropped to part-time and took longer to go to school. That is more choice than most people have. I also hope to choose to work in settings where I never live over the poverty line, in order to be more authentically among the poor. Still, whether living in chosen or unchosen forms of poverty, I know as a seminary student I need to speak up in the presence of my classmates on poverty issues and people, to transform the way we teach and learn how to be ministers, and how we respond in the course of our daily lives.
peace,
Le Anne
Le Anne is Grieving Today:
This morning brought tearful news for me, on the death of Letty Russell. I only just came to know Letty this past January in Geneva, when she was with her international feminist D. Min. group. She was so gracious and encouraging to me, perhaps the first feminist theologian I've met to be genuinely interested in my person and education and hopes and work as a young theology student. And so much of what she has done, especially in pedagogy and curriculum, is an incredible model for my future work. I had hoped our paths would cross again in this lifetime. In the meantime, this is an obituary worth keeping for its inspiration to life an amazing life:
Letty Mandeville Russell, leading feminist theologian, dies at 78
Letty Mandeville Russell, one of the world’s foremost feminist theologians and longtime member of the Yale Divinity School faculty, died Thursday, July 12 at her home in Guilford, CT. She was 78. A leader for many years in the ecumenical movement, she remained active in ecumenical circles until her death, working for the World Council of Churches and the World YWCA.
She was one of the first women ordained in the United Presbyterian Church and served the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York City from 1952-68, including 10 years as pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Ascension. She joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School in 1974 as an assistant professor of theology, rose to the rank of professor in 1985 and retired in 2001. In retirement, she continued to teach some courses at Yale Divinity School as a visiting professor.
At various times Dr. Russell was employed as a consultant to the U.S. Working Group on the participation of Women in the World Council of Churches and as religious consultant to the National Board of the YWCA. Her first position was as a public school teacher in Middletown, CT in 1951-52. Over the years she served on numerous units of the World Council of Churches, including the Faith and Order Commission; the National Council of Churches, including the Task Force on the Bible and Sexism; and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the successor to the United Presbyterian Church.
In an introduction to a festschrift published in Dr. Russell’s honor in 1999 under the title Liberating Eschatology, fellow Yale Divinity School theologians Margaret Farley and Serene Jones called Dr. Russell’s influence on contemporary theology “monumental” and wrote of her “uncanny ability to articulate a vision of the church that is radical in its feminist-liberationist critique but that nonetheless remains anchored in the historic traditions and communities of the Christian church.”
In the East Harlem Protestant Parish, Dr. Russell focused her ministry on equipping her congregation of mostly black and Hispanic people to claim their voices as leaders in the parish and the community. Her experiences in Harlem led her to develop Bible studies that encouraged people of color to explore ways in which the Bible gives them voice and liberation.
At Yale Divinity School, Dr. Russell’s influence extended far beyond the confines of classrooms on Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. She was the inspiration behind creation of the school’s international travel seminar program, under which Yale Divinity School students have traveled to countries around the globe for direct encounters with the realities of religion on the world stage, frequently in impoverished countries.
Dr. Russell graduated with a B.A. in biblical history and philosophy in 1951 from Wellesley College, and she was among the first women to receive an S.T.B. from Harvard Divinity School, in theology and ethics, in 1958. She earned an S.T.M. from Union Theological Seminary in New York in Christian education and theology in 1967 and two years later received a Th.D. in mission theology and ecumenics from Union.
A global advocate for women, Dr. Russell was a member of the Yale Divinity School Women’s Initiative on Gender, Faith, and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa and was co-coordinator of the International Feminist Doctor of Ministry Program at San Francisco Theological Seminary. The author or editor of over 17 books, her book Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretations of the Church and her co-edited work, Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, characterized her commitment to feminist/liberation theologies and to the renewal of the church. In 2006, she co-edited a book with Phyllis Trible of Wake Forest University entitled, Hagar, Sarah and Their Children: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives.
Letty Mandeville Russell was born in Westfield, NJ in 1929. She was predeceased by her sister, Jean Berry of New Jersey and former husband, the late Prof. Hans Hoekendijk. She is survived by her partner, Shannon Clarkson; her sister, Elizabeth Collins of Salem, OR; seven nieces and nephews; 14 great nieces and nephews; and a great-great niece. In addition, Dr. Russell felt that her wider family included generations of feminist and womanist activists and scholars around the world.
Memorial contributions can be sent to the Sarah Chakko Theological Endowment Fund, US Conference of the World Council of Churches, 475 Riverside Dr., Suite 1371
New York, NY 10115; the Global Women in Theology Fund at San Francisco Theological Seminary, c/o Pat Perry, 105 Seminary Road, San Anselmo, CA 94960; and the Letty Russell Travel Seminar Fund, Office of External Relations, Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511.
Letty Mandeville Russell, leading feminist theologian, dies at 78
Letty Mandeville Russell, one of the world’s foremost feminist theologians and longtime member of the Yale Divinity School faculty, died Thursday, July 12 at her home in Guilford, CT. She was 78. A leader for many years in the ecumenical movement, she remained active in ecumenical circles until her death, working for the World Council of Churches and the World YWCA.
She was one of the first women ordained in the United Presbyterian Church and served the East Harlem Protestant Parish in New York City from 1952-68, including 10 years as pastor of the Presbyterian Church of the Ascension. She joined the faculty of Yale Divinity School in 1974 as an assistant professor of theology, rose to the rank of professor in 1985 and retired in 2001. In retirement, she continued to teach some courses at Yale Divinity School as a visiting professor.
At various times Dr. Russell was employed as a consultant to the U.S. Working Group on the participation of Women in the World Council of Churches and as religious consultant to the National Board of the YWCA. Her first position was as a public school teacher in Middletown, CT in 1951-52. Over the years she served on numerous units of the World Council of Churches, including the Faith and Order Commission; the National Council of Churches, including the Task Force on the Bible and Sexism; and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the successor to the United Presbyterian Church.
In an introduction to a festschrift published in Dr. Russell’s honor in 1999 under the title Liberating Eschatology, fellow Yale Divinity School theologians Margaret Farley and Serene Jones called Dr. Russell’s influence on contemporary theology “monumental” and wrote of her “uncanny ability to articulate a vision of the church that is radical in its feminist-liberationist critique but that nonetheless remains anchored in the historic traditions and communities of the Christian church.”
In the East Harlem Protestant Parish, Dr. Russell focused her ministry on equipping her congregation of mostly black and Hispanic people to claim their voices as leaders in the parish and the community. Her experiences in Harlem led her to develop Bible studies that encouraged people of color to explore ways in which the Bible gives them voice and liberation.
At Yale Divinity School, Dr. Russell’s influence extended far beyond the confines of classrooms on Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. She was the inspiration behind creation of the school’s international travel seminar program, under which Yale Divinity School students have traveled to countries around the globe for direct encounters with the realities of religion on the world stage, frequently in impoverished countries.
Dr. Russell graduated with a B.A. in biblical history and philosophy in 1951 from Wellesley College, and she was among the first women to receive an S.T.B. from Harvard Divinity School, in theology and ethics, in 1958. She earned an S.T.M. from Union Theological Seminary in New York in Christian education and theology in 1967 and two years later received a Th.D. in mission theology and ecumenics from Union.
A global advocate for women, Dr. Russell was a member of the Yale Divinity School Women’s Initiative on Gender, Faith, and Responses to HIV/AIDS in Africa and was co-coordinator of the International Feminist Doctor of Ministry Program at San Francisco Theological Seminary. The author or editor of over 17 books, her book Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretations of the Church and her co-edited work, Dictionary of Feminist Theologies, characterized her commitment to feminist/liberation theologies and to the renewal of the church. In 2006, she co-edited a book with Phyllis Trible of Wake Forest University entitled, Hagar, Sarah and Their Children: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Perspectives.
Letty Mandeville Russell was born in Westfield, NJ in 1929. She was predeceased by her sister, Jean Berry of New Jersey and former husband, the late Prof. Hans Hoekendijk. She is survived by her partner, Shannon Clarkson; her sister, Elizabeth Collins of Salem, OR; seven nieces and nephews; 14 great nieces and nephews; and a great-great niece. In addition, Dr. Russell felt that her wider family included generations of feminist and womanist activists and scholars around the world.
Memorial contributions can be sent to the Sarah Chakko Theological Endowment Fund, US Conference of the World Council of Churches, 475 Riverside Dr., Suite 1371
New York, NY 10115; the Global Women in Theology Fund at San Francisco Theological Seminary, c/o Pat Perry, 105 Seminary Road, San Anselmo, CA 94960; and the Letty Russell Travel Seminar Fund, Office of External Relations, Yale Divinity School, 409 Prospect St., New Haven, CT 06511.
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