Monday, September 1, 2014

Why I am Co-founding a Religious Order and Taking Permanent Vows.


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.

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