Blog : Give Me Grace

Proclamation : When and Where I Enter {on legacy}

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Proclamation –  In consideration of the legacy of African-American women priests, in full acknowledgement of my theological heritage as a daughter of Africa, and in remembrance of the lens from which I experience the world – as an African-American woman – I declare acceptance of my call to the Episcopal church.

Using a headline from April 29th on Jennifer Baskerville-Burrow’s promotion as the first African-American woman seated as diocesan bishop, I share a personal journey of reckoning with a call to the Episcopal church. The focus of my proclamation is to declare my acceptance to this call and to claim my space as an African-American woman in this tradition. It is my way of claiming theological roots that center Africa in the very foundations of Christianity – with doctrine and expressions of liturgical life formed on African soil and using that knowledge to empower me to take my place within the tradition.  With experience, practice and agency – I show up as myself.

I also use a theme from our coursework – God, as change – from The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, and consider the ways the Episcopal church now lends itself to a more authentic inclusion in its current treatment of and respect for women. I contrast this with the images of women featured in the articles we read highlighting Juanita Bynum, Paula White and Joyce Meyer. There, perception of and expectation of respectable female behavior is tightly reigned within certain limits. In this instance as victims, in the case of White and Meyers, who exemplify a respectable, sinless sexuality (p. 89), or as the wanton woman redeemed, as is the case with Bynum whose story played into the accepted image of black woman as Jezebel, the woman with an uncontrollable sex urge.

Jennifer Baskerville Burrow’s – the newest bishop in the church of God and the first black woman to lead a diocese in the Episcopal Church enters her role free to be her authentic self. At her ordination, her heritage is centered – she is honored as a woman of African descent and mindfully included without a narrative that ultimately disempowers women. The focus is who you are – not what you’ve done. In deference to a patriarchal society you aren’t obliged to be objectified through the use of your sexuality. It doesn’t have to be your story.  There is no need for a narrative of abuse or suffering – to present as anything other than what you profess to be – a child of God.

I see the paradigm of God as change as something deeply rooted in the Episcopal church.  The Episcopal faith has a long history of putting in the work to meet the demands and questions of a changing world and church in pursuit of Jesus.

In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower – the heroine Lauren Oya Olamina develops the Earthseed theology based on the belief that change – the constant, assured shifting of things and time is God. God, she declares, is change. I see my acceptance of the call to the Episcopal church as a fully embraced change and turning towards the hope found in a new faith and tradition. I bring to the tradition my whole self and welcome the charge by crafting a faith that through experience, practice and agency – continues to grow. This perpetual becoming allows me to change and be changed by the doctrine, discipline and worship of the Episcopal church.  Through it I harness my vulnerability in the face of God and in doing so, shape God anew. With God I make real, what is already true.

She writes –

All that you touch

You change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change

God

Is Change.

God is the connecting factor. It is God who connects our experiences to the transformational process and promise of reciprocal evolution. This, she says, is the only truth that lasts, the only truth we can depend on. For me, change manifested as both subtle and dramatic phases of growth.  It is the everlasting love of an expansive God. I can trust the call of God in my life because of an eternal tethering to that shift. If my life is a text … then my life is part of God’s ever unfolding story – I am part of the long chain of history of Gods people seeking direction – trying to follow Jesus.

I am

Alabama and South Carolina

Baptist and Muslim … now Episcopalian

Batch-brewed in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn – God calls me child.

I first met Jesus as a flight companion.

Together we sky dived from the fire escape of a third-floor tenement to my best friend’s back yard.

When I stopped believing that could be true, Jesus found me on the second floor of a music studio in Hell’s Kitchen.

I found love and other tongues and a sacred dance that left me spent before the altar.

God made and remade me in the beauty of new birth

But this gathering held fast the doors of heaven

instead of flinging them wide

The us four, shut the door, no more theology

Discriminated. Oppressed. Othered.

And all with a smile.

Bending and leaning toward the Son

I grew.

In spite of. Because of

A God bigger than the ‘isms’ of division.

Because

God is change.

And each cycle of the sun found me – different.

It was inevitable.

The expansive, exponential, everlasting

Love I know as change

Grew me. As it does us all.

As it does us all.

You don’t have to understand it to know it’s true.

And I can’t explain my call to this space, this faith, in this time

But I’m here.

And faith isn’t done with me.

Faith isn’t done with me.

In this tradition, that resisted the faithful presence of African-Americans, that now stands to elect for the first time, an African-American woman as diocesan bishop.

I claim my space.

When and where I enter is here.

Now.

I’ll join Pauli and Barbara, Kelly and Jennifer

With God’s help … I will.

With God’s help, I will.

– Lisha Epperson

Click the link below to view a Power Point presentation based on this proclamation

Proclamation : images and text

Resources:

Link to articles about Baskerville-Burrows

http://www.indystar.com/videos/news/2017/04/28/jennifer-child-god-breaks-stained-glass-ceiling/101015288/

http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2017/04/28/episcopal-church-ready-to-make-history-with-jennifer-baskerville-burrows/

 

Inspiring quotes:

 

“You are about to be ordained into a church that thrives on its English and colonial past,” he said, “a church which historically has sought to make its black congregations and churches invisible either by not admitting them to the councils or by trying to model them on the basis of English piety and English preaching.” – Dr. Hood, Prof. General Theological Seminary – (Recited at the ordination ceremony of Reverend Sandra Wilson in 1982)

 

The god in which I have faith does not speak to us as a static being. Rather, god speaks to us as a dynamic, restless force in our world. This, for me, is what god’s revelation in Jesus is all about.  – Reverend Kelly Brown Douglas

 

By their very presence people of color affirmed into the ordination process and ordained are a prophetic presence, they are the sign of the sacramental, holy presence of God’s incarnation in all of humanity. – Angela Ifill – Missioner for Black Ministries

 

I have been enslaved, yet my spirit is unbound.

I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.

I have been slain but live on in the river of history.

I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge:

I seek only discovery

Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being. – Pauli Murray

Click the link below to see the Power Point presentation.
Proclamation : images and text

Audio recording of the spoken word proclamation.

It Was Never About the Earrings

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The #skatergirl started wearing my earrings this year. She’s 14 now. Flipping furiously from sweet girl to blossoming woman, I’ll admit I’ve had a hard time keeping up. Some of the changes that accompanied this transition were quiet and subtle, like trees in winter – patient. Others rolled in like a violent storm no one saw coming – a dangerous surprise with repercussions I couldn’t predict. Both slow and wild the changes are beautiful – all of them.

This is the springtime beauty of youth, the wilderness of her teenage years. Everything about her has come to life. She’s finding her voice and expressing her unique style. She’s dancing to the beat of her own drum – rocking out to a mashup of Lauryn Hill (her mama made sure she knew the greatness of the incomparable L-Boogie), Alicia Keys, Adele, Bruno Mars and of course, the Hamilton soundtrack.

And now, we share earrings.

Her ideas and opinions, the way she is like me and not, the way she shadows my movements and pushes my buttons are all signs of a change as sure as the sun. She’s an independent thinker, a young woman blazing her own glorious trail. She’s changing. And so am I.

It hasn’t been easy.

I’ve watched her suffer disappointment and make mistakes. I’ve celebrated her victories and cheered her through the dark room of doubt. I’ve watched her learn lessons about friendship and fight to establish an ethic of leadership that works for her personality. I’ve witnessed her pain in finding out what it feels like when we don’t tell our truth. To let all this happen, I learned to be quiet.

This post is about all that and more. It’s about how she wears my earrings now – my big hoops. One day, the precious studs and the birth-stoned jeweled clasps weren’t enough.

She wore them for the first-time last summer. When we stopped to take a photo somewhere near the halfway point of our walk across the Brooklyn Bridge I noticed the shimmer of my thinnest pair of silver hoop earrings peeking through the bush of hair framing her face.

She hadn’t asked to wear them that day. She wouldn’t ask again … because it wasn’t about the earrings. It never was.

I’m brushing the dust off my blog with a link to a post I’m sharing at Grace Table today. Join me.

Give Me Grace: Why I Didn’t Post Last Week

Since taking over the link-up at #GiveMeGrace, I’ve faithfully posted each week. 132 posts. 132 weeks of connecting, of loving and wrestling. I’ve been late. I’ve pressed pause. But I’ve showed up. The spiritual practice of showing up has been good.  But I didn’t post last week. Here’s why.

I preached a sermon on Matthew 3:1-12

gmglebutterflyand planned  a worship service based on the text. Our theme, “Water in the Wilderness” featured dance ministry by moi to ‘Take Me to the Water’ by Nina Simone.

I served with my teens in the Lessons and Carols service at my field site and did my best to bear this gorgeous, but heavier than you think, cross.

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We watched our favorite 1st and 3rd graders sing in their first school concert

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and treated them to a sleep over with our god-daughter.

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Let’s be honest, this is how some of the work gets done.

It’s been busy but there is light at the end of the tunnel. One more paper to go.

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

and let’s not forget the good stuff in my newsfeed …

My #godgirl wants/needs Bibliotheca’s bible library

Sandra Heska King shared this with me – The Ancient Dance over at Every Day Poems

and Advent: The Story of Women in Gods Redemptive Plan

Enjoy!

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Give Me Grace: Time {making it sacred}

2016-12-03-22-18-36My Sacred Ordinary Days  liturgical planner arrived this week. I used the daily planner last year and found the intentional ordering of time helpful in reaching my goals.  Using it encouraged me to stay grounded in the word. Anytime I end a week knowing that in all “my running and doing” – I’ve spent even a little time reading the word – not for school or work, but for the care of my soul – well, that was a good week. The calendar helped me explore the rhythms of the liturgical year and connect deeply with the gift of 24 hours.

The only drawback was the size of the book. The daily planner wasn’t easy to carry around. Obviously Jenn Kemper and crew responded to this dilemma with the creation of a weekly planner – a lightweight, compact version of the product I already loved. And … I ordered early enough this time around to get the grey planner. It was already sold out when I ordered last year. Yay!

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This year they included a molded and worn wooden cross as a gift. Sized to fit  in the palm of your hand, it’s the perfect prayer/meditation object. I’m excited about adding this physical element to my prayer ritual.

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Another way I’ve made my time sacred is by intentionally living into it with a life-affirming connection to nature. I’ve told you how special the New York Botanical Garden has been to my family this year.  The grounds are every kind of Secret Garden dream come true.  Like Mary, I crave a bit of earth. If I can’t get my hands dirty every day, I’ll spend a few Sunday afternoons a month feeling like I do.

This year our cultural membership budget was happily spent on a year of unlimited access to their sprawling gardens. From the Frida Kahlo exhibit to the train show and so many fun days in between, I’d say we got our moneys worth and more.  Last weekend we closed out our season pass with a final jaunt through the holiday train show featuring over 150 NYC landmarks crafted out of bark, leaves and other natural materials.

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We ended our visit with a stop at the gift shop to buy ornaments for our Christmas tree. Check out my beloved birds and the delicate golden ball.

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The week ended with LiChai’s research presentation at the American Museum of Natural History. Every year he and his Lang Science classmates conduct research on a particular topic and share their findings with friends and family at a fun and informal gathering. This year I kept the littles home and made it a day just for us. Sacred time, sometimes looks like carving it out for a special moment with just one of the lovelies.

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Yes, he’s taller than me.

Before I go, here’s the good stuff that made it into my newsfeed this week –

post-election encouragement from President Obama in Rolling Stone

some words on letting go of anger by Deidra Riggs

and …

dance ministry inspiration from Nina Simone

 

Let your handmaiden find grace in your sight … #GiveMeGrace

 

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