On September 6, 2014, I will be co-founding possibly the first ecumenical
religious order; the Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler. All our founding
members will profess permanent vows. Perhaps not a few of you may wonder why I’m
doing such a thing. What follows is a statement of why I, personally am doing this, how I see the order's work in the world is for another post…
All quotes from A Little Rule for The Order of Jesus Christ, Reconciler will be in Italics.
The simple answer is that I’m taking what looks like the next step in deepening
my commitment to God.
To quote a prayer by Thomas Merton: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am
going… Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the
desire to please you does in fact please you and I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.” You see I want to please God because I love God. I
love God because God loved me first.
The very fabric of the Universe is loving relationship. This is one way
of understanding of my personal revelation that God is Trinitarian. That God is
love in relationship (Trinity) is the revelation of Christianity, not mine
alone. Through the Christian sacraments, however, I have had my own unshakable
revelation of this knowledge.
I don’t have to look far, or for
that matter very deep into myself, to see that humanity is alienated from that
love. As I understand it, the Second Person of the Trinity incarnated, suffered
and resurrected in order to address that alienation; an act of reconciliation. “For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was
pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to God’s self
all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of
his cross. (Col 1:19-20 NRSV)”
I do not understand this act of
reconciliation as God’s deliberate self-torture in order to appease God’s
“angry judge” self because we’re really really bad children (what I was raised
to believe.) I rather see God reconciling us through solidarity, through shared
suffering. Remember that the resurrected Christ now carries our wounds. God has
taken our pain into God’s self. [By the way this is my understanding here, not
the position of the order.]
I continue to need this
reconciliation since I am far from free of alienation from God’s love, even
though that alienation has considerably lessened as I live into the reality of
God’s reconciling work. That alienation is not a simple matter of ethics. That
alienation is a deep and profound inability to believe that one is intrinsically
lovable or capable of love. In my case it was a hopelessness, a despair that
led me to a crossroads where the only options I could see were death, jail or
the asylum. But then “[the Lord d]rew me out of the pit of destruction, out of
the mud of the swamp, Set my feet upon rock, steadied my steps” -Psalm 40
Loving in kind (because God first
loved me) led to a deeper love, an intimacy of body, mind and spirit. I became
conscious of God’s presence in the eating of Christ’s body and blood, the
divine body entered mine. I studied the Gospels, putting myself in the story as
a beloved, devoted disciple, hearing Jesus’ words spoken to me personally.
Images, words, emotions that were not of my own origin were given to me as pure
gift. How was I to respond?
I eagerly (though cautiously at
times) followed a gradually more committed, more surrendered, path. From
minister of care (taking the Eucharist to hospitals), to divinity school, to
ordained priest to associate pastor, to
taking vows as a religious. All of this propelled by deeper commitment to God,
more surrendered discipleship.
Each time I reached for another
traditional way of giving more of my life to my beloved Lord and God, I found
it harder to do that by way of conventional denominations. No small obstacle
was that to give oneself fully, one must give one’s authentic self. And for me
that meant owning I was transsexual and transitioning.
That alone put me on the fringes, on
the outskirts of the vast majority of institutional Christianity. Even more
problematic for me was that what had been revealed to me in intimate mystical moments
and in soul searching and in sincere conversation, did not at all fit many contemporary
theologies. What many mainstream Christians were saying about God sounded like
heresy to me.
I belong to Christ. Despite what I
believe are well founded opinions, I am not the one who gets to say who else
does or doesn’t belong to Christ. And even though self-proclaimed Christians
are actually my enemies, my Lord tells me to love them (He doesn’t tell me to
agree with them, however.) But to even say that (possible) members of the body
of Christ are my enemies is very disorienting.
And so the following words from the
Rule of Life of the Order I’m helping to form are so very true for me:
The
essential and foundational Christian faith-claim is an echo of Christ's act of
reconciling all Creation to the Creator. From different denominations and
traditions, we (perhaps surprisingly) find ourselves about the same work of
Reconciliation. Today we are aware of our estrangements from the Body of Christ
as there are seemingly endless reasons for one to be estranged from
another. Whether by virtue of the
Ecumenical Movement, the decline of mainline Protestantism in the United
States, the burgeoning Emergent Movement, or by some other path, we find
ourselves living in the ruins of some thing in some place, on the outside of
what once was. Reconciliation is, for us, the only way forward.
Claiming
nothing for ourselves, but in living and working together under this Rule, we
give ourselves over to the reality of God’s Reconciling love. We proclaim
reconciliation in the face of continued estrangement, division, and animosity.
We proclaim peace, and in love we offer ourselves - and invite any who are
called to offer themselves - to this asceticism of reconciliation.
In
this we humbly seek reconciliation between church and world, between divided
Christians, between Christian and the church, recognizing that we also are the
estranged who are reconciled only through the blood of the Cross.
When one joins an order
one does this by taking vows to God. There are three traditional vows for
committing to the life of a religious; they are poverty, chastity and
obedience. Poverty and chastity are part of our vows, however they are vows
that flow out of our primary vows of Reconciliation, Obedience and Humility.
God's desire is to be reconciled to
Creation. In the commitment to Reconciliation, the Order witnesses that we are
no longer alone but are part of Christ's loving desire for all people.
The Order and its members live this commitment
to Reconciliation through the cultivation of the virtues of Obedience and
Humility.
Let me speak to why I’m
committing to these vows (and their component parts as understood by the order)
OBEDIENCE
Obedience is not mere submission to
authority/ies, but rather a choice to be faithful to God's creative action and
one’s own individual call.
The call of following
Christ cannot be done alone. “For human beings this is impossible, but for God
all things are possible.” Yet, beyond power from God to love and forgive as
radically as Jesus asks us to, we still need other people to support us in this
effort, and to tell us when we act out of our alienation. This is why I need
the community of an order.
This Obedience is understood particularly in terms of the virtues
of Stability, Perigrinatio, and Chastity.
Stability
Reconciliation is made
real in the witness of the Order to the work of God in a particular place.
In
my case this is a re-commitment to living in the intentional community that
will become a house of the order and being associate pastor for the worshiping
community of the oratory of the order. Here I will quote the rule of the
community I’ve already vowed to be a part of:
“Following
the example of Acts and nearly 2000 years of ascetics, monks and nuns, we turn
aside from the individualism and self-reliance of the world, resolving to hold
real property in common for the purpose of service to Christ in, through, and
for the Church and the world. We have chosen to live in Christian community, in
part, to speak to the current economic system, attempting to remove from
ourselves the fetters of economic necessity. In doing this, we no longer trust
the economy focused myopically on the creation and accumulation of wealth for
individualistic benefit. We seek an economy of mutuality and the sharing of
personal wealth and talents for both the common good and personal development,
an economy beyond individual ownership and beyond all economies: the economy of
the Kingdom of God. We come together sharing real property and other goods
(material, spiritual, and personal) so that, through the joining of individual
resources for the sake of the community, individuals may have not only what
they need but also the means fully to mature and exercise their talents.”
Perigrinatio
In
these latter days, however, few live in one community for long.
Perigrinatio is a sense of pilgrimage. The Spirit may lead me
elsewhere in time, and as a member of the order I support, as I can, others
call to move about in the world.
Chastity
Whether single or partnered, chastity puts limits on sexual
expression so that we see ourselves fulfilled not in another human being nor in
sexual expression but in relation to God.
Sexuality is an
inherently vulnerable thing. Inherent in sexual desire is the desire for
another to desire us in return. It’s a deep risk, to allow making sense of our
physical selves become a collaborative effort. Abuse of our sexuality is mainly an effort to
control or deny this risk. As Christians, we are called to see this risk, this
vulnerability in the context of God’s desire for us. To quote Rowan Williams, “To
be formed in our humanity by the loving delight of another is an experience
whose contours we can identify most clearly and hopefully if we have also
learned or are learning about being the object of the causeless loving delight
of God, being the object of God's love for God through incorporation into the
community of God's Spirit and the taking-on of the identify of God's child.” To
see it in this way makes the taking of this risk a thing not to be entered into
without serious consideration and prayer.
HUMILITY
Humility is… the acceptance of God's will, our own limitations,
and our own responsibility. Humility is seen in the life of the Order in terms
of holy poverty, hospitality, and labor.
Holy poverty is a generous expansive practice of
sufficiency, mindfulness, open-handedness, stewardship, and care-taking. The
embrace of holy poverty calls members to a frequent examination of their
practices of stewardship and consumption. Whether members are residents of a
House or unattached to a House, all are called to treat all of their goods and
resources “as if they were sacred vessels of the altar” consecrated to the
service of God (Rule of Benedict,
Chapter XXXI).
If all my goods and resources were
consecrated to the service of God, what might that look like? It might look
like finding use for that which I do not use. To simplify greatly. To value
what I do use and properly care for it.
This must apply to my inner
resources, my talent and usefulness in the world. To cultivate and
(promote/provide?) my skills in such a way that I can achieve a sustainable
living. To recognize and admit to the world my own sacredness and the worlds
sacredness.
Frequent examination of my practices
of stewardship and consumption, turning away from blind consumerism, this is
hard work. I need support in this.
This all feels right. Not easy, but
right. Much of what gets in the way are old ideas, values that don’t belong to me,
emotional challenges & a resistance to see my inner resources as sacred or
valuable - especially giving a voice to my abilities.
Some part of me doesn’t want to want
anything for myself, but I do and in my shame I have taken without giving and
acted greedily – collecting secretively and unaccountably. If I allow for
sufficiency (modest comfort); if I can honor what I truly want for myself I
believe this will change.
Hospitality
Houses of the Order will welcome those who are marginalized to a
space of welcome and spiritual life.
Yes! Marginalized! Also,
treat all as the beloved of God (‘cause they all are.) Intrinsic worth exists
in all. Again, though, seeing everyone as God sees them is not something one can do alone.
Labor
Paul’s witness of tent-making, tells us that supporting ourselves
by other means than our ministry is a part of this work of reconciliation.
The clergy of my entire
denomination is bi-vocational. I have the great fortune to be working for a
feminist collective which does just work in an unjust world.
PRAYER
Though not a vow per se,
we commit to praying daily, together whenever possible. Especially for
• all the other
members of the Order,
• those with whom
we are reconciling, and
• our
reconciliation and the reconciliation of all to God and each other through
Christ and the Blood of his Cross.
We also acknowledge that
continuous regular prayer is hard to maintain by oneself. Having others pray
with you, even if not in the same place, helps a great deal.
The daily office as well as the
Eucharistic service that all oratories of the order will celebrate, illustrate
the ways in which we value the deep traditional practices of the historical Christian
faith. In my ministry I do emphasize an embodied, incarnational worship,
whether that’s understood as “mystical” or not to those I serve. As I mentioned
earlier it was through these practices that my faith came to me. And though in
my journey I rejected them for a while - because of what was taught along with
them - when I returned to them, trusting them, more than any words or
teachings, my faith blossomed. It is this entering deeper and deeper into my
faith that calls me to the kind of commitment the order asks of me. It is about tangibly practicing being in relationship with
God through Christ.
