Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Marguerite Sheehan

Closets, Then and Now, Open and Closed

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Issues

I grew up in a large Victorian house in a small city in Western Massachusetts. I had, and thankfully still have, seven siblings. We span fourteen years, so it was not long that we all lived together in that house. During my growing up years, the house was filled to the brim with children, my parents, sometimes my grandmother, an aunt or two, and a cat that we called Mother.

I have lots of memories of that house and that city. And now, lo! I live in a Victorian-era parsonage. It seems like old times when our grandkids sleep over and when the house is filled with visitors. But I do wonder, where are my siblings?

The part of the “growing up house” that is on my mind today is the many closets. Some Victorian houses are short on closets, but ours was rich. They were not “walk in” but some of them were “sit in.” In the back of the closets were bureaus and it was possible for a small to middle size child to push aside the coats or dresses and climb up on the bureau top and finally find a place to be alone. Quiet. If there was a light in the closet or if you had a flashlight you could read, and for a short while no one knew where you were. I loved being closeted in those days. Every kid needs a tiny space of their own.

Even I, who is sometimes short on getting irony, know that the closet of my youth is strangely similar and very different from the closet of the rest of my life. For a long time now I have not wanted to be “in the closet” and have pushed my way out of many.… [Read more…] about Closets, Then and Now, Open and Closed

Laughing Out Loud

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

A friend of mine said recently that the Christ seed that was planted in my heart a long long time ago has taken root and is pushing its way upward.

Here is one example of that “pushy Jesus.” In our “Listening to the Gospel” group this week I had an almost, but not quite, out-of-body experience. I heard Jesus knocking on the door of my study where five of us were sitting in a circle. He was not content to knock. He walked right in and I started laughing.

I laughed because all that I could imagine was the five of us saying what other people say to Jesus when he shows up unexpectedly. “Not in our neighborhood. Not in our circle. Not in our church. You are not what we expected and besides, you are messing up our meditation. Your knocking is way too loud.”

Who wants to see Jesus with scarred-up hands and feet and a hungry belly? Who wants to hear that he is not interested in talking about the pearly gates and how the people we love are waiting for us in heaven? He is still stuck on “welcome the stranger” and “repent and forgive.” No wonder the disciples, then and now, find ourselves more comfortable in our own circles, with the door closed, grieving the past. The present manifestation of Jesus in the world has always been shocking and more than inconvenient.

Easter came this year on April Fool’s Day and each week of Eastertide the resurrection story gets funnier and funnier. This week it is something like this: “Knock knock. Who’s there? It is I Jesus. Jesus who? Jesus… [Read more…] about Laughing Out Loud

Something good comes out of…

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

Since the middle of the week, when I sat with some church and community folk to read and re-read the Gospel I have been praying on Nathanial’s question “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Nathanial was a lot like us. The commentaries say that the reference to sitting under the fig tree was an allusion to the practice of Jewish people who sat under the fig tree and studied Torah. When Jesus said “I saw you sitting under the fig tree” he was saying to Nathanial “I know you and I know that you have been waiting a long time for the Messiah and you know that way before you were sitting here God created the whole wide world and declared it good.”

Nathanial was yearning for something good to come and yet he doubted that this something good would ever arise from the back waters. His heart was in the right place but his eyes were clouded by his prejudice. Like our eyes are clouded, if not blinded, by what we think God’s gift should look like and where it should come from.

This week while praying on Nathanial’s question, I heard on the news terrible comments reportedly said by the President about people from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries, places that you might call a Nazareth. I thought: We have not come so far. We, meaning the President and you and me too, have not come far from Nathanial’s question. When I hear Nathanial and I hear the President and I hear the rants and raves of the commentators, both the Bible commentators and the news reporters, I hear my… [Read more…] about Something good comes out of…

Sounds of Silence 

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

As a teenager, one of my favorite songs was “The Sound of Silence” with that heart wrenching lyric, “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again. Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within the sound of silence.”

We are in the time of silence and darkness again. Short days. Long nights. Times of division and deceit. For many, a time of loneliness, and for others hopelessness. Yet into the silent darkness creeps a vision that leaves its seeds while we are sleeping. That vision is one of light coming into the darkness and showing us another way forward within the sounds of silence.

It is easy to polarize the dark and the light as though we could live with one and not the other. As if one were good and one was bad. As if one is preferential and the other better left behind. From such thinking, it is easy to slide into racist imaginings where dark is something to be feared and light is normalized and not to be called “my old friend.” This easy and destructive slide was showing its head in my teenage years, and so, when “The Sound of Silence” came across the airwaves, it was a wakeup call that resounded. The vision within the lyric remains in the airwaves of our country and continues to seed itself in new forms, such as Black Lives Matter.

Today in my little village of Shelburne Falls, the snow is falling silently and the ground and all of us walking around… [Read more…] about Sounds of Silence 

For Every Season

by Marguerite Sheehan  in Christian Spirituality

Many people my age, on hearing the passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes that says “to everything there is a season,” break out singing Turn Turn Turn Turn! The Byrds, who put that text to music for my generation, were singing about how we all try to make sense of the issues of our time and make peace with being mortal. There is a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. We sing and pray and live these truths and we have to keep repeating them because it is still very hard to swallow that there is a season for everything and nothing lasts forever.

The phrases from that song/text that are haunting me these days are these: “A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate.”

There is so much talking going on and so much hate. So much silence and yes, thank goodness, so much love as well. If anyone ever thought that politics and religion should not mix or that some things are best left well enough alone, they are certainly put to the test now, in our mixed up and very vocal culture. Social media, including lovely blogs like this one, never mind FaceBook, Twitter, Snapchat etc., have us all chatting up a storm and sometimes forgetting the age old wisdom of “a time to keep silence.” We seem compelled to broadcast live who and what we love and hate as though saying it out loud gives our emotions validity. If I say it, it must be true. So… [Read more…] about For Every Season

Turning Toward, Not Away

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

One of the most powerful commandments that God issues us is to resist turning away from encounters with “the other” and instead to turn toward each other.

This past Sunday in our Time for All Ages I sat with three children. During this time in the worship service the kids and I talk with each other and with the adults in the pews, some of whom say that the Time for All Ages is the moment they remember, even more than the sermon.

On Sunday, we read a version of the ancient story of Moses and the burning bush. I love to read from the Archbishop Tutu’s interpretation of the Bible for young children because in the back of my mind I am always thinking how his experience in South Africa informs his re-telling of the Bible stories. Or maybe it is the opposite—how his reading of the Bible stories informed how faithful and courageous he and so many people were and still are in South Africa. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a challenging and transforming model for confronting, not turning away from, life no matter where we are or how old or young we are.

We were reading about how Moses was startled by the bush that was burning while the leaves continued to shine green. The contrast of burning and growing frightened Moses, yet his desire to see the bush overcame his aversion. God called to Moses and gave him an even scarier thing to do which was to directly approach the Pharaoh and demand that the Pharaoh let the Hebrew people go out from slavery.

Moses… [Read more…] about Turning Toward, Not Away

Do You Mean to Mock Me?

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Issues

This year on July 5th I stumbled into a place and a time out of time that caught my soul and will not let me go. The place was a local church. The occasion was a public choral reading of a speech by the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester New York July 5, 1852.

The spirit of Frederick Douglass was with us in his passionate words, in the life size painting of Douglass by local artist Louise Minks, and in the walls that wept as we sang My Country Tis of Thee. The pews were crowded with friends, neighbors, and strangers. It was a minor miracle that I found a seat in the front, where I was swept up into the past and my life resonated with his words.

I heard Douglass call on his mid-19th century listeners to bear the truth of racism and slavery and to own their need to crush that evil. Douglass reminded them — and now us — of the bravery of the revolutionary fathers, and he called on them to bring that bravery forth again to topple what he called the snake nursing on their own breasts: the breasts of the white pre-civil war population that benefited from the institution of slavery, just as White America still benefits from race hatred.

In his words: “I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn… Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?”

Douglass has been invited by his fellow abolitionists to speak on July 5th against… [Read more…] about Do You Mean to Mock Me?

Jesus, the Cathedral and Me

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

Reflections on John 4:5-42

Sometimes when I think about Jesus he seems so far away–someone in a distant time and place, more spiritual than physical, more transcendent than incarnate. I get tired and I wonder if Jesus is really calling me or if I am just hearing my own desire echoing back across the hills. And then, three Sundays into the Lenten journey, he showed up “at about noon” in the Gospel and I was right there with him, thirsty and needing a drink of water to refresh my spirit.

Sunday afternoon I went to the Cathedral in the Light, an outdoor worship service. I went because our church had accepted a request to help with making the meal for the worshipers. Right after our 10 a.m. worship, a group of us gathered around the table downstairs and we made sandwiches to go. Ham and cheese. Peanut butter and jelly. It was fun slapping those sandwiches together. We laughed and we said a prayer that everyone would be blessed by this activity. I said that I would bring the food to the Cathedral. I wanted to be there and I also wanted to be home. It was a long day.

I got to the common with my box of sandwiches. It was about 2 p.m. Cold and windy. A storm was on the horizon but it held off. People volunteered to take different parts in the worship service. The musician played “Sanctuary” on his guitar and we got ready to be a living sanctuary. We sang and prayed. There was a very drunk person reaching out to everyone he saw and asking “Is this church?” Yes, this is… [Read more…] about Jesus, the Cathedral and Me