Surprise? I'm engaged!

My my my my my! It has been an enormously busy spring.

What with bus accidents and jail terms and church conferences and ordination paperwork and life with the Co-op, many of you may not yet even know that I have been seeing someone. Jorge is an old friend from McCormick seminary whom I first met through Christian Peacemaker Teams; we've been friends for about five years, and things began to move in more serious directions in late spring/early summer.

He is a pastor in the Church of the Brethren and in the midst of a transfer to the United Church of Christ, where he consults on Latina/o church development. He also serves as a chaplain at University of Chicago hospitals, and is a fellow activist, particularly around the SOA, torture, HIV/AIDS, and developing urban bike trails. We happened to both serve as interns at United Church of Hyde Park, but during different years. He lives in the second house of our GlobalServe Co-op.

You might say that we realized, having both committed our lives to a ministry of peacemaking, that we would be good co-journers on that path. A trip home to introduce him to the family went extraordinarily well--even though this included him sharing a bunk with our loudest-snoring relative, being jumped on by the family pets, and being surrounded by several young (and occasionally screaming :) children. Let alone several days' scrutiny by all my parents and siblings and current in-laws! But, it did go well. My mom said last night, "Well, I thought he was a good fit for you, but I didn't want to meddle," and curiously enough, "now I don't have to worry about you anymore, since there will be someone else to look out for you in the world."

Or as my little niece Gracie said last night on getting the news, "Whoo! Yeah! Yes!"

But, I still have a mountain of ordination paperwork and an interfaith presentation and a half-dozen folks moving into the Co-op tomorrow, so I better send this on to you all. We're looking at perhaps sometime next summer, after I complete said ordination work and finish my M.Div. and he completes some additional schooling planned for this year.

peace,

Le Anne

Introducing the New Cornerstones Project: healing from ordination discrimination/rejection--please share

Greetings friends,

 

I would like to introduce you to a new initiative of the Center for Faith and Peacemaking, the New Cornerstones Project.  Our title refers to the Biblical passage, "the stone which the builders once rejected, has now become the cornerstone" (originally in Ps. 118, and repeated frequently in the New Testament).  New Cornerstones is an ecumenical effort to identify persons who have been denied ordination in their denominations due to age, gender, orientation, race, disability, experience of being abused/reporting abuse, or activism. 

 

While there are many people who are committed to their current denomination or have sufficient geographical restrictions that they are not able to consider leaving, other people are willing to try another faith community in order to continue discerning their call.  However, transferring affiliations can be a difficult and painful task, and resources to help are not always readily available. 

 

Our program includes the option of a residential 're-discernment' year, where participants may come to live in the GlobalServe Co-op here in Hyde Park, and be connected to spiritual directors, counselors, seminary admissions offices, and a network of other seminary students and alumni who have themselves had to make the difficult decision to change congregations, seminaries, or denominations in order to continue pursuing their call to ordained ministry.  Other resources are available to those who cannot physically re-locate for the residential year, including the safeseminaries.org website.  Additional resources are being developed and will be made available through the New Cornerstones website (currently under construction).  New Cornerstones also offers a testimony collection project, towards hope of future publication and research.

 

While discernment resources will be freely available via web, participants in the residential program will complete an application process including criminal background check to prevent seminarians or clergy who have been removed for abusive acts from returning to ministry.

 

Please help to spread the word wherever it would be helpful.  We will also be continually accepting inquiries from persons willing to serve as volunteers, interns, spiritual directors, pastoral caregivers, discernment partners, mentors, etc.

 

The following is our invitation to future program participants, and can be found on our blog, http://newcornerstones.blogspot.com.

 

Many thanks and peace,

 

Le Anne

 

Are You (still) Called to Ministry?

Are you called to ministry?

Even if others have already said no:

because of your race?
your gender?
your health or disability?
your status as an LGBTQ person?
your age?
your history as an abused child/partner?
your call to less than traditional ministries?

Did you ask too many questions?
Did you think outside the box?
Did you report abuse?

We've heard it all before.
We've heard it all too often.

If you have been rejected for ordained ministry with your church for any of the reasons above, yet still feel the call to ministry strongly, we want to hear from you.

Today's church needs strong, compassionate, visionary leaders to meet the needs of this hurting world. Even broken vessels can become whole, and even wounded leaders can become healers.

If you would like another chance to explore your call to ministry within a supportive discerning community, please contact us. We have resources to help you find a new seminary, candidacy committee, or denomination. We can help you start again, and connect you to spiritual direction and other services to prepare you for the way forward.

Join us. Become a cornerstone.

Call for Expressions of Interest: Ecumenical Women's Religious Order

Greetings to everyone who may receive this letter; and to those who do receive it, please share this with a friend;

 

It has long been on my soul to write this letter, to invite a response from women of all backgrounds who may have discerned a similar call, and to begin to put prayer into action.

 

I am a thirty-year old, female, white, U.S. born, seminary student in process to be ordained as a pastor in the Presbyterian church.  I was raised Lutheran; I have studied among Catholics, Evangelicals, and Unitarians; I have worked alongside Muslims and Jews; I have founded a growing interfaith community of service and peacebuilding among young people in Chicago.  I have sought to dedicate all my life to peacebuilding among different religious expressions and in loving service to my neighbor, even when this work may put me in harm's way.  I have sought to be accountable to communities of faith and peacebuilding; I have sought to listen humbly and carefully for God's leading in my life.

 

Throughout my life, I have also been blessed by the presence, counsel, friendship, and guidance of women monastics, or nuns; these sisters are extraordinary women.  I have been blessed to know many male religious also; but I am myself a woman and feel called foremost to working among women in this task.  Perhaps in the future I could find the assistance from a male who would become my counterpart in such work among men.

 

For most of my life, I too, have felt a strong calling to become a woman monastic.  At the time I started kindergarten, this seemed both unconventional and inappropriate; I was advised that only Catholics had nuns and I was a protestant.  A few years later, I discerned my call to ordained ministry, but the call to monasticism never really went away.  Since then I have met monastics in many religious traditions and have learned much from them.  Several years of my life, I have even remained celibate, in order to devote my full attention to religious study and service.  It is only recently that I have accepted a relationship, and then only one that would permit for the continued growth of the ministries in which I serve now and hope to serve in the future.

 

I know I could 'oblate' to any order, but it doesn't quite seem to be the call. There are orders I would have loved to join as a full sister, but they do not yet accept non-Catholics, and I am called to be Presbyterian. There are orders that would accept me in my own tradition, but they are far away from the places I am so far called to be, set apart from the world and from people. I am called to be with the poor and oppressed. I believe strongly the South Side of Chicago is calling me for at least several more years.

It has occurred to me that I might be 'crazy.' I could be. Protestants especially would think that anyone who chooses chastity 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 do not wish 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 of the Sisters of Mercy. I asked one sister friend last year how orders were founded, and she said, "Someone got up one day and started them." My friends and classmates have encouraged me to consider doing just that.  But I do not yet know women who would like to join one.

So, in this modern era, using modern means, I extend my invitation to you who are women and who will join me in founding this new religious community.

 

The gifts (charisms) that this community will seek to offer:

 

+We will be open to women, ordained and lay, who seek to join a community of dedicated women, in order to practice and perfect their ministry as called by God;
+We will practice material simplicity, working for our pay, sharing resources as we are able, and seeking to gain no status over others;

+We will dedicate our lives to peacebuilding and nonviolent resistance to violence of all kinds;

+We will uphold and affirm the dignity and humanity of all people;

+We will engage in voluntary service to others, especially the poor and oppressed
+We will practice and perfect our obedience to God and accountability to one another;
+We will offer spiritual support for those who choose to remain single; as well as those who choose to marry; and those who do not yet know to which they are called;
+We will live out a spirit of cooperation and friendship with all other religious orders and groups striving to live out similar values
+We will offer extraordinary welcome to women of all faith traditions who seek to join us in whole or in part, until such time as creating an additional interfaith order may be wise;

+We will develop a daily office and order our lives in a manner inspired by the Rule of St. Benedict;

+We will learn from all that previously-established religious orders have to teach us;
+We will establish a residential 'motherhouse' in Chicago, in the midst of the seminaries, to serve as a place of discernment, formation, rest and renewal; and seek to create communities around the world as our sisters are called to serve.

 

+Until such time as another name might fit better, this community shall be known as the Ecumenical Order of St. Elizabeth (EOSE).  St. Elizabeth demonstrates that women are called from many backgrounds and paths into many forms of service, changing even over one's lifetime.

 

With God's help.

 

peace to you,

 

Le Anne Clausen

 

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Le Anne Clausen
Director, Center for Faith and Peacemaking
773-656-4745
leanne@seminaryaction.org
www.seminaryaction.org
young-activist.blogspot.com
picasaweb.google.com/leanneclausen