The Unmooring, Issue 3

The Unmooring

Issue 3 January 2022

The Unmooring

www.theunmooring.org

Volume 1, Issue 3

issuu.com/theunmooring

Cover Art:

“The Fires,” Digital Media, 2021 Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier

PO Box 2834 Ventura, CA 93001 editors@theunmooring.org

Editors

Bonnie Rubrecht | Kylie Riley

Art Editor

R. Sawan White Published January 2022 under Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

United States of America

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Editor’s Letter This issue is coming out in a moment of great anxiety for many of us, as we watch pandemic case numbers rise yet again. At the same time, we continue to bear witness to the discrimination and abuse suffered by so many people, particularly women, at the hands of Christian leadership. The heartache seeded by this brokenness requires many of us to ponder our place within the present construct of the church and many to leave it all together. From this upheaval, we are forced to rely on the steadfastness of Jesus Christ to ground and guide us and to remind us of the hope we find in the assurance of “Christ with us.”

The Unmooring was created for this moment: we confront the difficulty of our present with the courage that comes from a faith that endures all things. We are exhausted, bereaved, and overwhelmed, but in this suffering, we are humbled. We find grace for one another in our common tumult. As Yeats wrote, it does often seem that the “best lack all conviction” while “the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Whether politics or climate disasters, rifts within families and friends, crumbling manifestations of the Church, or our own pride, we are grateful to live through a time when the veil is pulled back. We can see ourselves for who we truly are while still recognizing the Imago Dei within us all, and from there find common ground to begin rebuilding together. We believe not only in deconstructing, but in forging a new way forward. In fact, we believe that God calls us to reparative work and finding our way back towards heaven in all our earthly endeavors.

Through it, we’re still beset with sadness and grieve all the imperfections of our humanity. But we are determined to rejoice in grace and seek joy in the midst of doubt and difficulty. The pieces in this issue reflect the cautious hope and possibility that emerges out of suffering and grief. It’s our prayer that it provides some semblance of peace, commonality, and renewal for readers as we walk together on our sojourn and prepare for what comes next.

A. Kylie Riley & Bonnie Rubrecht

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Staying Home

Annarose Steinke

15 Liturgy: A Litany for Those Hurt by Christians or Churches Emily Louis

Table of Contents

16 dear Church Sang Lintakoon

20 Artwork

Hanna Wright

22 The Church and Acceptance of the LGBT Community Hannah Parry

26 Beneath the Surface: A Tribute to Teachers

28 Liturgy: Calling God Kylie Riley

30 Literal Actions emry sunderland

34 Artwork

Holly K. Smith

38 Beneath the Surface: A Tribute to Healthcare Workers

40 The Skies Proclaim the Work of His Hands Stephanie Nikolopoulos

44 Artwork

Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier

46 Liturgy: A Prayer for the Unlearning Sarah Winfrey

49 Our Way of Loving the World Right Now Heather Lanier

53 Ebb Tide 5

Hanna Wright Hanna Marie Dean Wright is a self-taught folk artist residing in Keavy, Kentucky. She uses her experiences from growing up in rural South-Eastern Kentucky, teaching special education classes, and living with obsessive compulsive disorder to inspire her unique works of art.

Emily Louis Emily Louis loves helping Christians heal their relationship with God so they can let go of fear and guilt for more abundant living and a deep connection with God that is founded upon grace and truth. Hear more on her podcasts Abundant Grace and RFWP: Seeking Truth, Finding God’s Heart.

Stephanie Nikolopoulos Stephanie Nikolopoulos is an author and editor based in New York City. Learn more at StephanieNikolopoulos.com.

Heather Lanier Heather Lanier is the author of the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her nonfiction has been published in The Atlantic, Longreads, The Sun, and elsewhere. Her poetry chapbook, Erasing the Book of Pregnancy, is forthcoming from Seven Kitchens Press.

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Sarah Winfrey Sarah Winfrey is a writer and a spiritual director from Colorado. She believes that we have nothing to fear and everything to gain when we are honest with God about our questions, doubts, and desires.

She helps people find places of honesty, wholeness, and growth from the center of themselves.

Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier Karen Boissonneault-Gauthier is an indigenous photographer. She’s created covers for Synkroniciti, Feeel Magazine, Arachne Press, Pretty Owl Poetry, Doubleback Review, Nebo, Wild Musette, Existere Journal, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Gigantic Sequins, Ottawa Arts Journal and others. She’s recently been Bracken, Mermaids Monthly, Three Rooms Press and in Vox Popular Arts Festival as well as New Feathers Anthology, Maintenant 15 and Parliament Lit to name but a few. In her spare time, she takes her Siberian Husky for long walks. See http://www.kcbgphoto. com for more.

Contributors Annarose Steinke Holly K. Smith Holly Smith has a Bachelor of Art in Graphic Design from Iowa State University and a Master of Interdisciplinary Studies in painting and craft and material studies from VCU. She paints, prints and stitches on textiles and papers in her mixed media work, which she exhibits locally. Her largescale commissioned textile art pieces are held and displayed by St. Mary’s Hospital and Third Church in Richmond, Virginia.

Holly taught art to the youngest students at Collegiate School in Richmond for 24 years, and finds lasting inspiration in their creative risk-taking and inventive approaches to self-expression.

Annarose F. Steinke lives, writes, runs, and teaches English in south central Nebraska.

Her work has appeared in The Manifest Station and Unruly Catholic Women Writers.

Sang Lintakoon Sang Lintakoon (she/her) is a daughter of immigrants from Southeast Asia who grew up in New Jersey and is now in Denver, CO. She is passionate about issues of faith and racial identity and will complete her MA in mental health counseling at the end of the year.

emry sunderland emry sunderland has earned advanced degrees in history and writing, and loves bringing the past to life through fiction. Her work has appeared in APT (Climate issue); Dead Head Reviews (Pride issue), the gothic Christian devotional, Darkness is as Light, and more. https://emrysunderland.yolasite. com

Hannah Parry Hannah is a freelance journalist and blogger. She has travelled the globe writing about travel and adventure and about the refugee crisis in Europe. She is also a church organist and professional scuba diver. Find out more at hannahparry.co.uk.

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Staying at Home

Annarose Steinke Some keep the Sabbath going to Church — I keep it, staying at Home — With a Bobolink for a Chorister — And an Orchard, for a Dome — —Emily Dickinson1

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’ve lived in four different states and at least twice as many apartments since heading off to college in the year 2000. With each move, finding the local Catholic church was always at the top of my essential to-do’s, right up there with forwarding the mail and setting up the Comcast installation. In college, Sunday night Mass was a welcome refuge from Calculus 101 and dorm socials alike, a designated hour during which I knew precisely what to expect and what was expected of me. When I moved to Virginia for my first teaching job, I waited patiently on cobblestone steps at the end of a long line of men, all of them bearded and suspender-clad a good decade before the ironic vintage trend had taken off. Once I reached the vestibule, and a young woman in a floor-length dress with long sleeves gestured magnanimously toward an end table with a stack of lace doilies, I promptly turned around

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before I could notice any reactions to my knee-length jean skirt and hot pink tank top and never returned again. Two years later in New Mexico, I was immersed in a parish with a vibrant young adult group. We helped the local Franciscan friars bring meals to those waiting outside the homeless

“For the first time in my lifetime of church-going, I had bona fide church friends, people other than blood relatives to scan the pews for in those frantic seconds before the organist struck the first chord of the processional, who noticed if I was missing on a given Sunday, who noticed me...” shelter downtown, shared our potlucks with a pastor who knew each of our names, and (a phenomenon I’d once regarded as exclusive to Protestants) prayed with and for each other joyously, jokingly, openly, intimately. For the first time in my lifetime of church-going, I had bona fide church friends—people other than blood relatives to scan the pews for in those frantic seconds before the organist struck the first chord of the processional—who noticed if I was missing on a given Sunday, who noticed me, and not my potential for marriage or motherhood (the only secular milestones, I’d long understood, for which I’d be acknowledged after receiving the sacrament of Confirmation as a teenager).

As to be expected with a bunch of 20-somethings, the group dissolved when we all started moving to different parts of the country for jobs and partners. Now married myself and moving to central Nebraska, I had zero expectations for finding anything close to this kind of parish community and I was right. But I did find the church, a building just completed in 2011 and boasting a magnificent gold baptismal font bearing an uncanny resemblance to the lavish hot tubs once featured on MTV’s Cribs. That it was exactly halfway between our townhouse and the main grocery chain increased my attendance slightly from my Virginia days even if it was nowhere near what it was in New Mexico. And for me, regular attendance has never been the point. What that building meant to me varied: sometimes my whole life, other times a distant yet solid anchor, but always a place where, if

1. Emily Dickinson, “Some Keep the Sabbath Going to Church” (236), “Poems by Emily Dickinson,” The Emily Dickinson Museum (2021).

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I ever felt like that anxious 18-year-old away from home for the first time, I would always know the answers.

Dickinson’s universally beloved “Some keep the Sabbath going to Church.” I’m suspicious of how smoothly the bobolink and orchard slide into the roles of chorister and dome, the altar of the There are a few terms for what kind of Catholic outdoors instantly replacing its indoor prototype I am: cafeteria, as though this were exactly “I wish I knew, as Dickinson did, how it was always meant to be. lapsed, or (for the four Or maybe I’m more envious how to articulate and actualize “big days” of than suspect. I wish I knew, as Christmas, Ash exactly what I need for spiritual Dickinson did, how to articulate Wednesday, and actualize exactly what I need sustenance.”

Palm Sunday, for spiritual sustenance. I wish and Easter) I felt completely at home during CAPE. Yet these all imply a level of ease and the various Episcopal services my husband and comfort I’ve never felt, with ready explanations I have tried over the years. I wish I felt at home, for choices that seem sporadic and irrational anywhere, within or without the four walls of an even to friends with similar ambivalent relationinstitution that has repeatedly let me know, in ships to their childhood churches. I might go ways big and small, that I am not fully welcome. every Sunday in January, then fall off as Lent approaches; sometimes I’ll attend a Good Friday When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, I’d only service and skip Easter entirely. Although my just started husband and I had been living together for two returning to years when we got engaged, and he was my sole the Saturday nurse when I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Vigil, not sure lymphoma just six months before our wedding, how long this there was no question we’d complete the streak would pre-Cana course no matter how alienated we last. It was a felt from the workbook’s blithe fill-in-the-blanks relief at the (“We expect our first child to be born in the year end of a long ___”), or that we’d get married in the church week where where my parents took their vows 35 years prior. I was solely in charge of There are dozens of reasons to leave and I’d my routine— be in good company with thousands of other what I’d be once-devout Catholics in the 21st century. And doing with my yet, even in the aftermath of another homily stale students, what with sanctimony, when I’ve felt most angered vegetables I’d by the neglect that feels at best oblivious and at pick up for worst callous to real human need, something tomorrow’s stir brings me back, whether the following week fry—to have or several months later. That something might some hint of be anything: hearing a Gospel verse that takes surprise. Those me to the exact dress and shoes I was wearing more lapsed when I’d heard it for the first time at five years than I will tell old, a whiff of incense that both grounds me you that Mass and transports me, the spectacular prairie is “always the sunset that hits at just the right moment when same,” but exiting the 4:30 Vigil on an otherwise mundane it’s really not.

November evening. I’ve never related to Emily The hymn

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selection is always a surprise; the readings and responsorials may surprise you too, even if you vaguely recall them from the year before. I would have liked for that last homily, perhaps, to have been about something other than Shakira’s performance at the 2020 Super Bowl and her audacity to have, at 42-years-old, not a husband but a boyfriend. (Admittedly, the English professor in me was begrudgingly impressed with how seamlessly the deacon managed to connect Shakira to Matthew 3:14, the baptism of Jesus.)

Nevertheless, missing Mass due to stay-at-home orders was merely one of many smaller disappointments and inconveniences, no different from the other times I’d retreated from weekly attendance.

Still, I tried. I dressed exactly as I would for any other Easter morning, makeup and all, as I searched for the recording that the parish

had uploaded on their newly created YouTube channel. It felt excessive to stand up, kneel, and respond as prompted, but strangely disrespectful just to sit. I took small, discreet sips of coffee during the readings, but waited for the slightly longer pause between the second reading and the Gospel to finish the late bites of my banana muffin. By the offertory, however, my bare feet were tucked beneath me on the couch and I was already looking toward the kitchen counter just a few feet away, wondering if it would be ok to pause at Communion and start chopping the leeks for our brunch quiche. (I could still hear Sister Mary Joel admonishing my second grade Communion class never to be like “those people” who put their coats on during the offertory and sneak out the door as soon as they get their Hosts.) The whole experience felt at once both restrictive and empty, and I soon realized this was one activity I could never duplicate on screen.

With few other ways to mark the time, I started craving something more—not exactly Mass per se, but some way to break the seemingly endless stretches of Zoom hangouts and emails.

I texted my mother, who has a Master’s in theology and copious notes for improving every mediocre homily she’s had to endure since 1975 if only the Vatican would get its act together and let women into the priesthood and diaconate already. Prefacing every drive to Christmas Midnight Mass with the disclaimer, “If I get aggravated, we’re leaving,” she’s the only

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person who fully understands my own not-quite-lapsedness.

She suggested some podcasts and websites, and soon I had created a new Sunday afternoon routine of folding laundry while listening to an episode of Turning to the Mystics. I subscribed to Richard Rohr’s daily emails from the Center for Action and Contemplation and started my mornings with these before opening my work emails. I joined an Advent e-retreat hosted by an online Benedictine community, with reflections and discussion questions to ponder each week; it was a real gift to be a student myself in the midst of moderating my own students’ discussion posts. I began making my own small rituals: specific mugs for certain days of the week, animals I expected to see at different times of the day on my long runs. The deer who stopped to stare just before bounding back into the woods at 6am were part of a select few who got to see my smile live and in-person.

Between 2 and 3pm I shared the trails with a red-tailed hawk who also preferred this quieter time of day between lunchtime dog walks and school dismissals. I got so used to seeing him soaring low, scanning the fields for mice and chipmunks, that one day when I looked up and he wasn’t there I called out “Where are you?” before I was aware of what I was doing.

As Christmas Eve approached, and we decided that traveling to our families was not a risk

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“I’m not sure that I feel completely at home in my still-evolving spirituality. But I am growing more confident with improvising, more assured that I don’t need to wait on someone else’s steps to be granted admission on someone else’s terms.” worth taking, I made plans to attend services —this time in a way that would honor the space we were in. That afternoon, my husband and I tuned into Lessons and Carols with the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, attentive to the celebration but letting our feet drift where they may onto the floor, couch, or coffee table and sipping freely from our festive cocktails of cranberry juice and seltzer. At 10:45pm, I brewed a cup of chamomile tea, changed into pajamas, and searched for the YouTube channel of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. The cat, who by then had developed a fondness for Zoom yoga and now expected a class any time I opened my laptop, leapt up to join me on the couch and purred contentedly as she settled against my thigh. The processional began and I kept one eye on the comments as viewers from around the world shared greetings and blessings, with not a small amount of disdain at the accommodations made for the televised broadcast: “What’s with the sports announcer? This is Mass, not a football game.” My mother, while too far to whisper her usual running commentary this year, made sure to text it: “Notice the complete lack of women in the procession.” I was comforted knowing that so many others felt compelled to do this—whatever “this” was.

Feeling strongly that I was here, even if not there, I lasted much longer than the cat, who, miffed that no one was inviting her to take some cleansing breaths or stretch into savasana, leapt pointedly from the couch to her own bed in the middle of the Gloria. A little after midnight, just when the cantor reached the highest notes of “O Holy Night” and my eyelids started to droop, I closed my laptop and slipped up the stairs. I fell asleep with a sort of peace I’d not felt in a long time, that I did not think was possible to attain without physically being inside a church.

Now approaching the second holiday season in the pandemic, I have no idea what will happen this Christmas Eve. My parents have not been back to Mass since March 2020, as much for their disgust at the sexual abuse scandals still being unearthed from just about every diocese across the United States as for health and safety concerns. As for me, I can’t yet say whether this break from church will be the break. Every so often, while doing the dishes or driving home from work, a verse of “Be Not Afraid” or another cherished alto-friendly hymn will pop into my head and I’ll start singing, envisioning a someday when I’ll return but not so anxious about when or if that “someday” will materialize. I’ve kept many of my quarantine rituals while resuming my normal schedule, but I wouldn’t call them a replacement for church; doing so would simplify and diminish their own unique gifts that evade categorizing.

Claiming my home as a vital and valid space for my spirituality to flourish, I recently upgraded my Advent candle holder made of sparse wire to one of wood fashioned in the shape of the Jerusalem cross and inlaid with brass grommets. At 40 dollars plus shipping—the most I’ve ever spent on a strictly religious article—I felt bold and extravagant as I hit “purchase” on the Etsy page.

I’m not sure that I feel completely at home in my still-evolving spirituality. But I am growing more confident with improvising, more assured that I don’t need to wait on someone else’s steps to be granted admission on someone else’s terms. Rather than a place to rest in plain answers, my home is slowly becoming a space for seeking more intricate questions. On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind another glimpse of that epic gold baptismal font.

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A Litany for Those Hurt by Christians or Churches Emily Louis God, we acknowledge how churches and Christians have damaged Your name and brought shame and dishonor to your reputation.

We lament.

We repent for how we've propped up individuals or institutions over the hurting, ostracized, or marginalized.

We repent.

Lord, we acknowledge that so many feel unseen, unheard, and undervalued by people who represent You. We lament.

We acknowledge the times we believed that being and proving we were right was more important than listening with compassion.

We repent.

We see those who are walking away from You because of how the church has treated them. And we lament those who don’t know how to have deep relationship with You, God, because You have been misrepresented.

We lament.

We repent for misrepresenting you. And being party to systems that did also.

Lord, have mercy.

God, let us be people who listen well, deny our own comfort, and stand for truth while remaining teachable. Help us to embody truth and grace as Jesus exemplifies. We hope to help people experience a little heaven on earth. Amen.

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dear Church Sang Lintakoon

dear Church, i love you, i really do. i’m reminded of something james baldwin once said about america the beautiful: “i love america more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, i insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

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i resonate with that statement, Church. and for that reason i need to pen this letter to you, in hopes that you will: first, receive it second, open it third, read it fourth, hear it fifth, absorb it and lastly, that you will bring these words before the throne of God and ask Him to show you the parts of it that are true and pure so that you can become more like the God you claim to follow. i know that outlining those steps may seem a bit patronizing, but there is a reason your morning coffee says, “caution: hot drink” on the label. please sip this letter slowly. i love you, Church. and for that reason i must speak frankly with you—look into my eyes; are you okay? are you safe? the way you have stood so upright and emotionless with your head turned ever-so-slightly in the other direction when so many of God’s children are crying out in agony is completely antithetical to the reason you were birthed. the way you cling so tightly to what you claim is absolute truth and the arrogance that is being generated out of seminaries and church leadership programs grieves my heart and you know what? i dare say a big part of it grieves God’s heart too.

i imagine God watching you learn, grow, expand, and trying your damnedest to check all the boxes to “be right” with Him, all while ignoring the possibility of not knowing it all, the possibility of wonder, the possibility of another perspective having even an ounce of truth to it. i wonder, Church, what it is you are so scared of? i know you mean well, Church. i really do. i have been a close friend for many years. i have stood by you when others have walked away, when others have misunderstood you, when others have grown discouraged and lost hope for (and in) you. i have stood faithfully beside you and humbly received your correction when needed while also challenging you in areas that i’ve seen needed help. you have expressed your gratitude for my boldness and said and done all the right things to appear civil, just, and fair on paper, but i’m afraid you’ve never really heard me. jesus was spot-on when He called your leaders white-washed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled with rotting carcasses on the inside. outwardly righteous but inwardly hypocrites. let me ask you, Church, when you read those passages where jesus criticizes the religious leaders of His day, do you ever stop to consider that you could very well be the religious leader in the story? (yes, you, dear reader.) do you ever, for a second, allow yourself to consider the possibility that your devotion to God, while admirable and well-intentioned, could be missing the mark that jesus came to recenter?

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the arrogance that i have seen permeate western christianity and then be exported to the ends of the earth grieves me. this is not the good news. this is not what God has called you to. wake up, Church. wake up and look around you. look at the influence that you have in your streets, in your neighborhoods, in your cities, in your states. look at the ways your love is handed out with conditions. look at the inconsistencies the world sees in your smiling faces that turn around and exclude those who don’t smile back. do you see the blue and white stripes of your tallit garment fade into the distance as your neighbors are left wanting on your front doorstep, hungry and alone but at least equipped with a bumper sticker of your establishment? it is laughable. when christ demonstrated the characteristics of the unseen God, He showed us that this God is holy, pure, kind, gentle, humble, compassionate, merciful, gracious, peaceful, and loving. He shared stories about shepherds leaving their 99 sheep in search of their one lost sheep.

He shared stories about feasts being thrown for sons who returned home after squandering the family inheritance. He showed us tangible ways to sit at tables and dine with those whom society deemed “unclean.”

Church, why don’t you look more like your Christ? i wonder if the good news can still become good news to a watching world if you somehow learned to emulate your God better. if you could truly stop to understand what it means to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to be angry (or defensive). if you could stop long enough to: first, humble yourself second, listen third, enter into the pain and suffering of those who entrust you with it

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and lastly, set your facts and agendas aside long enough to extend compassion, love, and kindness to the imago Dei in front of you. the greatest commandment is to love God with your all. the second greatest commandment is to love people the way you love yourself. “the way you love yourself.” oh Church, i fear you do not even know how to fully love yourself because you have been so conditioned to squeeze yourself into boxes of certain dimensions. so much time has passed that your contorted body has even become used to the rigid angles, the lack of oxygen, the protective bubble wrap between you and the world of heathens. what would happen if you stepped out of the box? what would happen if you stretched out your legs and took a few steps? what would happen if your lungs could be filled with the air that it’s been so desperately needing? wake up, Church. go outside and smell the different flowers, taste the different fruit, hear the greetings of people who speak different languages than you. humble yourself and explore like you once did as a child. because i think you will find yourself again once you do. and i think you will start to look the way God intended you to. i love you, Church. i really do.

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Hanna Wright

“Abstract Portrait,” Ink on Paper, 2021, 9” x 12”

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“Abstract Portrait,” Ink on Paper, 2021, 9” x 12”

“Abstract Portrait,” Ink on Paper, 2021, 8.5” x 12”

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The Church and Acceptance o Has the church shifted in its acceptance of LGBT people, or is it only my unique experience?

Hannah Parry

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non-affirming, I had never faced direct negativity in any of the churches where I worked, but I wasn’t fully welcomed. Not only because of this, my own faith wavered. I wanted to believe in this Church, in the God that these people worshipped.

Yet, people sleeping rough would be waiting at the doors, hoping for a tiny handout from the wealthy congregation members. It wasn’t just me that wasn’t welcome, and I felt the hypocrisy of biblical passages expressing the need for generosity and I grew up in the Church of England. All my family sacrifice hollow are or were involved when the people in ministry in one way “I had never faced direct negativity in around didn’t or another, particuany of the churches where I worked, seem to practice larly as musicians. I but I wasn’t fully welcomed.

Not only what they heard showed a particular talent at the church because of this, my own faith wavered. preached. organ, which led me from the countryside I wanted to believe in this Church, in the Lumbini, located near to London. Five God that these people worshipped.” the border years of studying between India led to positions in and Nepal, is the birthplace of the Buddha. I found some of London’s wealthiest churches. St Paul’s myself in the sacred town after spending months Knightbridge sits next to the luxury Berkeley travelling through India. I had left London hoping Hotel and round the corner from Harrods. Farm for meaning and purpose through discovering Street Church is a famous Catholic church in Buddhism, which has no negative stance on Mayfair where designer stores sit next to gourmet homosexuality, as well as experiencing other restaurants. The services at both these churches cultures and seeing the world. At the start of my were lavish. A full choir of professional singers trip, I had been warmly welcomed at a Hindu would perform complex music during the masses, temple in Mumbai. It was a festival day, and the which were often followed by glasses of wine and fancy food. Parish events would include expensive temple community were welcoming in everyone to experience the joy of their worship and to share dinners to which celebrities would be invited. in a communal meal. I had visited many temples and sacred sites throughout India before travelI was confident in my sexuality from my late ing across the border, yet the disparity between teens. The fact that my first serious relationship rich and poor still irked me. The pilgrimage site was with a woman was accepted by my family at Lumbini contains lavish temples funded by without exception. While the official stance of Buddhist communities from all around the world. the Church of England and Catholic Church are Yet the town contains basic homes, sometimes stepped over the threshold of the dimly lit building. Candles illuminated the gold statue of Mary, her head leaning to one side as she gazed upon the infant in her arms. I sat at the back of the ancient church as the familiar liturgy wafted over me in an unfamiliar language. But I knew I wasn’t welcome at that Catholic church in northern Spain.

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of the LGBT Community without continuous electricity or water, in stark contrast to what lies such a short distance away.

Walking the Camino1 in northern Spain, I met many others who were there simply for the physical challenge rather than the religious experience of the ancient pilgrimage route. We were there for the adventure of a long hike, meeting new people and seeing new places. I was welcomed by new friends without judgement. My companions included a Swedish couple bored of a monotonous home routine, a German graduate spreading her wings for the first time and a Filipino American accountant who left his corporate job to see the world. We were an eclectic and happy group, sharing cheap wine, fresh bread and tales from our lives. But I was still searching for something. It wasn’t until several months later that I found some of what I was looking for.

I first volunteered in Calais, France in 2018. The European refugee crisis has led to hundreds of

people from poverty and war-stricken countries gathering there in an attempt to reach the safety of the UK and to claim asylum. I went to help out and spent a month sorting clothes and camping equipment in a large warehouse before taking what we had to give to those in need. The living conditions of the people from Sudan, Eritrea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Syria are dire. The French authorities clear away tents, often taking personal belongings, leaving people cold, wet and without hope. These people are rejected too. They are rejected by the French locals who struggle to be patient with their presence. They are rejected by the British, who pay millions to try and keep them out. Despite a vast difference in circumstance, I felt something in common with them.

More importantly, though, I found purpose. I was good at organizing, managing others and making friends. I felt useful and helpful. The work was hard but important and I was glad to give myself to it.

1. The Camino de Santiago is an ancient pilgrimage route. The ‘French Way’, which I walked, starts in Southern France, continues across Northern Spain, and ends in the city of Santiago de Compostela. The route is 1,000 km and took me 30 days to walk.

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This did nothing to help me feel part of the church, though. Many people in the church communities where I still worked were supportive of my trips to France and would donate their old clothes and tents for me to take with me, but I felt that they should be doing more. I couldn’t understand how people could have knowledge of the human rights violations perpetrated on behalf of the British government and not act. However, through my work sorting clothes to distribute in the grey, cold, French winter, I met people who challenged my view of religion.

Mohammed was 15 when I met him; his bright white smile shone out from under a winter hood in the cold weather. He had travelled alone from Sudan, across the treacherous Mediterranean Sea and by foot through Italy and France. Years had passed since he had last seen his family, yet he still clung to his dream of playing football for a team in the English Premier League. We were both in Calais during Ramadan. Despite his hardship he was devoutly observing the daylight

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fasting, and he welcomed me to eat with him and his friends at Iftar. The food would be prepared ahead of sunset and he would pray words of thankfulness before breaking his fast. I saw the strength and comfort that Mohammed drew from his faith and found it inspiring.

Mohammed wasn’t the only person to show me the strength of faith. Fellow volunteer Stephanie had felt called by her faith to travel to Calais from Germany as the first wave of coronavirus was flooding across Europe. We worked together in France for more than two months before realizing an opportunity to help at another border. Serbia lies just outside the European Union. People travelling from the Middle East, fleeing Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and Syria come this way in an attempt to reach safety inside the EU. The illegal actions of the Croatian Border Authorities are well-reported but leave a desperate situation for vulnerable people trapped with nowhere to go. Stephanie and I worked to help by cooking food for people sleeping in tents,

as well as collecting reports of violence by the authorities. We met families with children who were subjected to degrading searches when they were illegally moved from Croatia back to Serbia without having their claim for asylum considered.

Yet these families, both Muslim and Christian, remained devout, believing that God would take care of them and that eventually they would find the safety and freedom that they longed for.

Through our time together, on long drives and in emotionally difficult situations, Stephanie and I grew closer. During nearly 6 months of volunteering and travelling together, we realized we didn’t want to spend time apart.

Before I knew it, I was a resident of a small town in Northern Germany where Stephanie lives. In contrast to the Anglican Church, the German Lutheran church welcomes gay couples equally to straight couples. Whilst this isn’t the church that Stephanie was regularly a member of, as an organist my skills were welcomed immediately.

I was playing for Sunday services, desperately listening out for the instructions of when to play in a language I’d just started learning. Families who are now refugees in Germany from Iran and Afghanistan number among mutual friends of the Lutheran pastor and the Roman Catholic priest.

The international cafe, operated by Catholic charity Caritas, ensures to have halal snacks and language games to aid friendship and integration in an atmosphere of welcome and acceptance.

My own stance of religion and faith remains fluid, with more questions than answers, yet in my new community, as a foreigner, as a gay woman, I am welcomed.

“... he would pray words of thankfulness before breaking his fast. I saw the strength and comfort that Mohammed drew from his faith and found it inspiring.”

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Alex is a kindergarten teacher in Brooklyn, New York.

Nutrition, health and exercise are important to her as she experienced healing through prayer from an eating disorder. She lives in Manhattan with her husband.

Beneath the Surface: A Tribute to Teachers

An Interview with Alex Bradt

In what ways has COVID impacted your work?

I worked from home all last year and I never thought that would be possible as a kindergarten teacher because so much is hands-on. The first three months you’re teaching kids to play and hold a pencil—how do you do that through a computer? Even with that, it was enjoyable working from

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home. My husband, Alex, was working on the other side of the house and it was nice to be together.

New York was pretty dead for some moments, and we would go on walks. Work-life balance was tricky because I was living right next to my desk. I still had the same responsibilities and tried to make it fun by dressing up and letting the kids meet my dog. I actually miss it a little bit.

This year has been challenging in adjusting to being back in the classroom. The commute to and from work and the COVID slide have added to the challenges. Many students are behind, and we had to make a few modifications. It has been a rollercoaster of a year for teachers, but for me, I am in a good place right now.

a very empathetic person and it would worry me when I didn’t hear or see a child. I was disconnected a little from [my husband] because I could not shut off the emotional side of my work. It was challenging and things felt heavier this last year. I had to learn to invest in my relationship with [him] instead of worrying about other things on my list.

As a frontline worker during a pandemic, how has your faith been impacted?

How would you say that impact is different for men in your field?

I actually feel like I am in one of the stronger sections of my faith during the pandemic. The whole first year, I had so much of the worldly things taken away that provide fun and pleasure, like going out, but that can be distractions. I was able to draw closer to God because I was forced to lean into him.

First of all, there are not as many male teachers and if I were to compare, I honestly think it had the same impact. For most families in the city, the roles are not the same traditional roles that exist in other places. Male teachers are typically teaching middle school, which is a whole different vibe. I rarely bring work home and middle school teachers have to bring work home. I honestly think it has to do with what age you’re teaching and not gender roles.

We joined a new church at the start of the pandemic, and we were able to join online. The church is called Church of the City—New York City. We joined during lent and it was really powerful. We were able to take lent in last year in a deeper way. It had already felt like a year of lent but we were able to dive in and it felt like a big fast.

We pray often together as a couple and discuss how we are more intentional throughout the day. Calling on God to bring him into the room with us for situations that felt out of control. I feel like I have been able to develop a friendship with Jesus and that he’s in the room with me and see my struggles. I feel very connected to Jesus, even though I have had a lot of loneliness, that I have been able to connect with him. Which is just his grace because I know how difficult the last few years have been.

Describe how the responsibilities of your work, particularly during this time, impact the roles you play as a woman?

I struggled with it a lot. When the pandemic hit, we had not even been married a year. I was still adjusting to being a wife and I felt overwhelmed by it. At the end of my work day, I was so depleted from reaching out to families I just wanted to sit on the couch. We had to talk about creative ways to do household chores together.

I felt mental drained and exhausted from reaching out and not hearing from families for months. I am

What are some things you learned over the past few years to help mitigate anxiety and stress?

I have a routine of praying in the morning and having the routine is so helpful in preventing anxiety. Even in my most anxious moments, when I had a list so long, I had to put it away and make time for God. God saw that I took time to give to him and he almost always had things fall into place and I would have a peace for the day. When I would make time for God, he would repay it later in the day.

I also take a daily bath to make time for myself. New York City can be really loud and you walk right out the door into the city from your house. The bath is one place I can just be.

I love to move and exercise. I work out five times a week, which gives me better sleep and makes me more energetic. Even when I am tired and don’t want to exercise, I have like ten times more energy afterwards. I usually work out after work to sweat it out.

Worshiping and playing music, even in the background, has also helped a lot. I feel like even though there has been a pandemic, I’ve had one of the best years of my life. I turned 30 and I finally felt like I was thriving. I feel like I found my balance in life, and I still found joy in the midst of the uncertainty.

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Kylie Riley Yahweh, Lord We call your name when we are powerless knowing all authority is yours.

Adonai, Master We call your name when our lives feel out of control knowing you are the great, kind ruler.

Jehovah Rapha, The Lord Who Heals We call your name when we experience sickness and during this pandemic because you are the great physician.

Immanuel, Lord with Us We call your name when we are lonely because you called us your friend.

Jehovah Shalom, The Lord is Peace We call your name when we experience fear and anxiety because you drive away the darkness.

Jehovah Jireh, The Lord will Provide We call your name when we are in need knowing you give freely.

Elohim, Creator We call your name when our imagination fails us because you make each morning new.

Jehovah Nissi, The Lord is My Banner We call your name when we need a teammate knowing that you stand with your people.

El Roi, The God Who Sees We call your name when we experience injustice because you fill the cup of the righteous.

El Shaddai, The God Who is All Sufficient We call your name when we need support recognizing our human frailty. AMEN.

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Calling God

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Literal Actions emry sunderland though it’s unclear if she was living in seclusion at For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, “Fear not, I will this time, or if it is what prompted her decision, we do know that she wrote about it and that it help you.—Isaiah 41:13

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magine stepping into a room not much bigger than a closet. Three tall walls without any windows. It’s stuffy and claustrophobic. You say goodbye to friends or family. A few hugs and tears are shed before the fourth and final wall is ceremonially bricked up, sealing you in. Forever. Row by row, as the mortar sets, you prepare inwardly for your new life.

There’s only a tiny window where food is passed through. Should someone fail to come weekly or monthly, or your funds—or the funds raised by the devoted townspeople— should run out, you’ll go without. You could very well die in this ready-made tomb, but then, it was your choice. No one coerced you.

laid the foundation for her steadfast faith.

I’ve ruminated Julian’s moment of no return—the moment that she essentially left her friends,

The last brick is in place. It’s done. Now what?

The life of Sister Julian Norwich, the famous Christian anchoress used to scare me. I learned about her from a class I took in college on late-medieval women. One of the few female voices of this period in the Western tradition, her memoir, Revelations of Divine Love, describes her decision to leave behind her everyday life for one in permanent seclusion and solely dedicated to God. A child when the Black Death was raging through Europe, Julian1 would’ve lived a life where uncertainty about the future was prevalent. Though there is little known about her upbringing, history shows that around the age of thirty, she fell ill and became very close to death. During this time, she had many visions about Christ’s life, and

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1. It’s unclear if her real name was Julian, or if it was a name she took on entering into the religious life.

family, society, technology, and more, to live in a very small, confined space at the St. Julian Church, Conisford, a sub-borough of Norwich. I’ve contemplating the amount of conviction it must’ve taken, on her part, to commit to this literal action. A literal action is any time we find ourselves living our faith through literal interpretation. It is usually a heightened vow or impetus to live with greater faith that propels us to live our faith in a deeper way. In Julian’s case, she committed to a prison-like life to experience Christ’s suffering as deeply as she could. If I stay thinking about the “what-ifs” that she’d faced, it makes me freeze into a state of inertia and fear, a great shutting-down internally, the very definition of suffering. But I wanted to know her type of faith, her leaping off and surrendering to uncertainty.

To understand her choice, I took my own literal action through a sacred four-day fasting in a shelter not much bigger than Sister Julian’s. It took some planning, to scout a location that would be away from society, noise, people, and more. And then there was the matter of who to share what I was planning… Those within my sacred community were supportive, but others, like coworkers were concerned, worried, fearful even, and voiced that they thought it was a bad idea. In fact, I learned a lot about my faith in these talks, how we’re prone to fear when anything new is presented, or our everyday life challenged. The more they showed their fear, the easier it was for me to exercise my faith to be unwavering in my vow to fast. Without knowing it, I’d suspended fear for anticipation and a willingness to serve God through my devotion. It was like planning for a really amazing vacation and the only entertainment was going to be my prayer, my love, my walk, and my faith; no amusement park needed! It surprised me, in fact, that more people I knew weren’t doing it. But then, many hadn’t heard about “A literal action is any time we Sister Julian, or ruminated on her discipline find ourselves living our faith and willingness to surrender to the material through literal interpretation. It world in utter unfolding of faith.

is usually a heightened vow or

Regardless of the concerns, I didn’t waiver, impetus to live with greater faith and I did take time to research any health risks and consult a doctor to appease a loved that propels us to live our faith in one. A few days leading up to the official day a deeper way.” that my fast would begin, I made a small shelter from mostly things found in the woods, and then began to offer prayers to prepare my mind for what was to come. Once there, alone, I had four days ahead with no food, water, technology, no personal items, no chairs or books or fancy gadgets—no regal bathroom and toilet paper or showers, no conversation, no rain coat! (I did have a blanket but no pillow).

Nor did I have any lights to turn on when it got dark. For four days, I had only my commitment to God, myself, and the support of my community, and every moment was spent walking to the point of exhaustion in constant prayer.

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As soon as I was ”closed in,” my connection to Sister Julian grew immediately. It’s like I knew and understood I had work to do. There was no time to be worrisome or fearful. I came with hundreds of prayers to offer on behalf of my family, community, town, the world, and made a small path around my shelter to walk and pray, only taking small rests, and then back to walking and praying. Most people might assume that I experienced difficulty not eating or drinking. Food no, but thirst, yes, but it kept me moving, kept me praying and recommitting to my prayer. Lack of modern conveniences, the darkness, they became my freedom. By day two, I understood Julian wasn’t living walled-up in a state of fear; I saw that she had her commitment to God and nothing else mattered. It becomes your focus; the world, just like she explains in her testament, falls away.

“... you start to peel your perceptions away, revealing your own pure state, allowing you to hear with a deeper presence and wholeness.”

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You learn a lot about yourself when you leave everything behind. Even for a short period of four days. Time slows. Your prayer changes, as it gets more honest, less on the surface, less about things you thought mattered, but were just holding space under the banner of worry.

In fact, you start to peel your perceptions away, revealing your own pure state, allowing you to hear with a deeper presence and wholeness.

Only when I made a commitment to a literal action did I realize the depth of Sister Julian experience. We may, from a modern mindset, see her choice to be walled in as somewhere between extraordinary or extreme, but it is a great freedom. The moment you make the commitment, is the moment you actually relinquish suffering and surrender to a greater faith.

That’s Sister Julian’s secret.

In the trial, your literal action teaches you to deepen your faith through a continual giving-up of fear, worry, and doubt, through prayer. Of course, we don’t need a walled tomb or a four-day fast to discover opportunities to practice, but rather, we can recognize each moment is available to reclaim our conviction and commit to the Lord’s promise that we’re always cared for.

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These mixed media works are from a series titled “Haiku Attend.” Be present, deal with. These two distinct definitions of the verb attend are the clarion call of my art practice. I make art that starts with intentionally being present in my well-worn path of daily living. Noticing and then attending to a glimpse or a moment on my morning walk, I hold it in my memory with the seventeen syllables of a haiku until I can get to my studio to jot it down.

In response to the spare verse, I employ a variety of media to recall the distilled impression. Often a line—stitched, embroidered or collaged—dissects the space of a composition, suggesting that nothing is stagnant, and that all creation is moving and connected in some way.

References to times and seasons reflect the eternal-like utility of my art, while the act of recording these small glimpses remind me to look up and down, out and around. My attention—first to visual imagery, then to words, and lastly composition, color, line and texture—forms a practice of honoring creation and noticing the exquisite beauty and variety of the natural world.

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Holly K. Smith

“Road Calligraphy,” Mixed Media, 2016, 11” x 7” 35

“One-Eyed Calling Card,” Mixed Media, 2016, 11” x 7”

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“Ambitious Journey,” Mixed Media, 2016, 10.75” x 7”

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Beneath the Surface: A Tribute to Healthcare Workers

An interview with Dr. Dihn “Maria” Vuong In what ways has COVID impacted your work?

In what ways has it not? It changed everything in the way we approach healthcare. COVID has changed how we take care of people, especially early on when we had to ration supplies and when elderly patients that had a lot of comorbidities would not have access to ventilators.

Pre-COVID, we’d tried to be heroes and save Grandma and Grandpa. Now, not everyone’s grandparents can be saved, and we have to have difficult conversations with the families to let them know that they will not see their Grandma or Grandpa again. We have learned that we can’t be heroes all the time.

It has changed how we go to work and live our lives.

We have to be more cautious with everything. You don’t want to see friends and family until you have a chance to change clothes after work. You worry every day, “Am I exposing my love ones?”

As a frontline worker during a pandemic, how has your faith been impacted?

I definitely pray a lot, lot more. I was really fortunate, one of my best friends in med school taught

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me how to use Christian music as a way to pray and heal and talk to God. One of the radio stations in Houston is KSBJ, which plays Christian music, and I listen to it 24/7. I use music to stay connected and grounded. Sometimes you don’t even know what you are feeling until you hear a song and suddenly start crying because you realize there are hidden emotions that you don’t know you had and the song resonates with you.

I have been praying for safety for friends and family.

Praying for clarity. Praying for colleagues because we’re tired, stressed, and burnt out. I also pray for us to have courage and wisdom to make the right choices for patients. I don’t want to play god with patients’ lives. I always ask if this is the right choice, especially when having to make difficult choices and ration care, so I pray for wisdom to do the right thing.

Describe how the responsibilities of your work, particularly during this time, impact the roles you play as a woman, such as wife, mother, sister, daughter, friend?

As a wife, I have to remember to put work away so I don’t take out the stresses of my day on my husband, who is so patient and kind. He doesn’t

know why I am agitated or tired or upset. Instead, I try to remember to talk to him so that he knows about my day. Another impact is learning to let go of imperfection. I feel awful sometimes because there’s no groceries in our fridge and the feelings of guilt will rise up. It’s making time to be present which can be difficult because of fatigue and lack of sleep...

Being a mom and wife is already a full-time job and when you add a full-time job on top of that, its like you are working three full-time jobs.

And I use simple deep breathing techniques. One thing that people usually don’t think is okay but is really helpful is to allow yourself to feel the emotions.

As a new mom, sometimes I just have to cry but it is not a weakness. It is okay to sit and cry and let yourself feel the emotions, anxiety and pain. It usually goes away one you let your body feel it and not suppress it.

How would you say that impact is different for men in the same field?

I think men feel less pressure to fulfill their role on the domestic side. Being a working woman, you have to do both. That was the example that we saw from our mothers and so we carry that expectation within ourselves. I put these pressures and expectations on myself and the guys I work with don’t have the same expectations on themselves. I don’t hear them say that they need to make dinner or go to the grocery store.

What are some things that you have learned over the past few years to help mitigate anxiety and stress?

Dihn “Maria” Vuong is an ER doctor in Houston, Texas. She is a first generation Asian American with a close relationship with her parents and sisters. She lives with her husband and their new baby girl.

I definitely use music as my therapy. Anytime I feel stressed or worried I use my favorite songs to help reset. I sit and listen to the music and give whatever it is up to God. Like Carrie Underwood, “Jesus Take the Wheel!”

I exercise. I feel if you have a healthy body, you have a healthier mind.

I try to do positive affirmations to remind myself of some of the things I hear in church or in the Bible.

I think about verses like Jeremiah 29, “I know the plans I have for you.”

Other avenues for me to manage my stress and anxiety is talking with my mom, sisters, and girlfriends. It always helps to know others are experiencing your same problems or have gone through it and they give advice. Lastly, my strongest support is my husband. I can’t not mention how wonderful he is. He supports me in my career, my faith, as a wife and a mother. I’m so lucky to have him as a lifelong best friend.

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W

ith no cabin of my own to call home for the night, I climbed the steps from the hull to the open deck of the ferry and blinked as my eyes adjusted to the velvety black night. I could barely see where to step.

The bench was hard and cold in the offshore summer air. I breathed in and out, inhaling the distinctive rank of briny seawater and exhaling a certain tiredness that comes from living out of a backpack. As I listened to the water splash rhythmically against the side of the boat, tranquility Psalm 19:1 of the little washed over me.

Freshly graduated from undergrad, I had been on the “As it said in road for two months, staying pink pocket Bible I carried on my in crowded, fluorescent-lit The vast hostels across Europe so that journey, ‘The heavens declare the expanse of sky I could witness the hands glory of God; the skies proclaim stretched over ticking off the passage of time the shoreless the work of His hands.’” at London’s famed Big Ben, sea. My eyes stare into the stony eyes of took in the the gargoyles perched atop Paris’s Notre Dame, nebulous night, and stars began to pierce the and meander through Gaudi’s fanciful Barcelona darkness. At first, I could only see the brightest playground Parc Güell. I had marveled at the celestial bodies, but in time I began to connect handiwork of man as I traveled from there onto more neon cities across the continent—until they the dots, and the familiar constellations became visible. As my pupils dilated further, I saw more began to blur together like a hazy dream. and more stars splash across the night sky.

What had at first appeared blindingly dark now Now, I found myself floating in the middle of revealed itself to be dazzling with light. As it said nowhere. Or rather, floating somewhere in the in Psalm 19:1 of the little pink pocket Bible I middle of the Ionian Sea. Somewhere between carried on my journey, “The heavens declare the Brindisi, Italy, where I’d boarded the ferry, glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His and the mainland of Greece, where I planned hands.” to reunite with my family, who were already vacationing there. What I didn’t know, as the I sat up. I had never seen so many stars in my waves rocked the boat back and forth, was that life! Away from the light pollution of cities and I was also somewhere between my past and my suburbs, I realized the countless stars foretold in future, my stable suburban American childhood the textbooks and planetariums of my youth had and an adulthood stamped by expatriation. been blazing overhead all along. I walked over to the side of the boat, and I looked out toward I walked over to a bench and lay down flat on the inky Ionian to discover the stars drenching my back, my travel-weary vertebrae resettling. the vault of the sky, from north to south and east

The Skies Proclaim the Work of His Hands Stephanie Nikolopoulos 40

to west, seemingly dripping into the sea.

And I thought about my father.

Born on an olive grove in the Peloponnesus, in mainland Greece, my father had gone to sea at seventeen years old. Starting as a cook’s assistant, he worked his way up the ranks of the shipping industry, at last becoming a captain himself. He had regaled me with stories of geisha in Japan, tribes along the piranha-infested Amazon River, and the streets of India when I was a child, inspiring and encouraging me to set off on my own adventures.

He didn’t return to land to build a home and family of his own until he was nearly forty, and now I wondered what his life at sea, the life between ports, must’ve truly been like. I knew he could navigate by the position of the stars, but he had never told me just how dark it got out at sea and how it was only out in that darkness that you could truly see the light of the stars.

I was following in my father’s footsteps now, traveling from city to city, living out adventures that would give me my own stories as a woman on the road. I didn’t yet realize that the memories I would hold dear weren’t the tourist attractions but the

“My Heavenly Father had placed each star in the sky like pushpins in an elusive map to a destination I was still yearning to reach.”

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self-discovery that comes from the journey itself. I didn’t know that I would vividly remember the night on the boat, but that I’d barely be able to recall the Eiffel Tower or St. Peter’s Basilica.

A few years after I had backpacked across Europe, when as a struggling writer in my mid-twenties I was still living back at my childhood home, my father announced he was returning to live in his homeland. My mother, who was not Greek, believed that as a Christian she was duty-bound to follow her husband to this foreign land. My younger sister and brother would expatriate soon after. I stayed behind. I was an adult. An independent woman. I was not tethered to anyone or any place.

Even as I planted my feet on familiar land, I felt lost at sea. Although we were a family that embraced travel and encouraged each other’s solo journeys, we were also an immigrant family that knew the pain of not having nearby relatives and so grew up talking fervently of staying close together even as we got older. Now, we were older. And now I felt alone and abandoned. Worse yet, I felt ashamed that although I was independent enough to travel internationally on my own, I now felt adrift without my family in my homeland. My outlook grew dimmer.

I thought of my Father.

I remembered the stars from that night at sea when I was caught between two destinations.

Though now I could see only a few distant stars shining high above the streetlamps of New Jersey, they were the selfsame stars my family an ocean away could see on the shores of Greece. My Heavenly Father had placed each star in the sky like pushpins in an elusive map to a destination I was still yearning to reach.

My vision was still adjusting to the Way, the Light.

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“Heavy is the Crown,” Digital Media, 2021

Karen BoissonneaultGauthier 44

... Any image I photograph and create, needs to communicate with a wide range of people and, like a poem, access connotations and archetypes that are both universal and unique. For that reason, I like combining depth, texture, whimsy and moods, layering my photographs so as to create images that can be studied to ease out multiple levels and meanings while delivering visual impact.

“Grass,” Digital Media, 2021

A Prayer for The Unlearning Sarah Winfrey God of our fathers and mothers, will you walk with us today as we unlearn the things that we need to unlearn so we can follow you and not a pseudogod who only looks like you when the light is right?

Help us to faithfully unlearn truths that aren’t true, and stay with us as we do the moment-by-moment work to distance ourselves from die-hard faith stances that don’t actually need to kill us.

Help us to cling to your robe, and not to the clothes of passersbys who might resemble you. Help us to learn how to find you in a crowd, how to hear your voice (and only yours) when you call, and how to continually sift truth from lies without burning out and walking away.

Bring us again to the center of ourselves, where we meet with you in the middle of our own being. May we live from that place and let the rest fall away.

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Our Way of Loving the World Right Now Heather Lanier

T

he cardinals flitted from the platform feeder to the ground, and the squirrels snagged crusts we tossed from the kids’ morning toast, and none of the backyard creatures knew that the humans were about to “shelter-in-place.”

On this March morning, a literal haze descended on our plot of earth as suddenly as a rumor: Lockdown forthcoming. Our phones had been pinging with texts and calls all morning. Did we have enough food for a month? friends wanted to know. My husband, not prone to panic or even quick movement, grabbed the keys and the hand sanitizer and split for the store.

I stayed with our girls, six and eight. “Let’s do morning meditation outside,” I told them. They cheered, maybe because morning meditation was new for them, maybe because so was this daily chaos—no school, no schedule, no clear workday for the parents, who now muttered the word pandemic in the kitchen.

The six-year-old handed a dull bell to the eight-year-old, then kept a shinier one for herself. We sat facing each other on the concrete patio. The two girls clanged their bells, piercing an octave higher than any bird.

The six-year-old wanted to chant Om. Not my practice, but okay. For sixty seconds, we chanted: Om. Aum. As in ow and aw. As in um and amen. As in, the sound that some mystics think holds all the cosmos, like a big bowl into which can fit every planet and person and fear and prayer.

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Then I opened the book I consult most mornings. I read a little about a man named Jesus, the man I believe is God in human form. God with feet. God in sandals.

Sometimes the day’s passage is about how, if you welcome a child, you welcome God. Sometimes it’s about how, if someone is cruel, you cannot fix their cruelty with more cruelty. In other words, the Gospels contain plenty of kid-friendly content.

But on this day, the reading was about dirty hands. Namely, the dirty hands of the disciples of Jesus, who ate their food without washing.

The sun was rising over our A-frame roof, and the haze over the lawn was dissipating. I knew that when my husband returned from the store, he would carry bags into the garage for quarantining, wash his hands, wipe down the door handles with disinfectant, then wash his hands again, most of which was new protocol.

The Pharisees were aghast. How could Jesus let his students eat with filthy hands?

“This is a confusing one,” I said to my kids.

Jesus defended his dirty disciples. Nothing can be defiled, he said, from the outside. Only from the inside can we become dirty.

In other words, Dirty hands, don’t care, said my God incarnate.

I tried to explain that Jesus didn’t mean germs or viruses come from inside us. I touched my chest and said something about the heart.

The six-year-old looked at me quizzically. The eight-year-old, I’d lost minutes ago. “What are we doing next?” she asked.

A few millennia of enlightened masters—folks who meditated for decades and hiked the mountains of truth and had their hair blown

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white with revelation—they tell us that what pulses through this big, wild world is Infinite Love. Which means what pulses through us is Infinite Love. I haven’t yet perceived this truth, not on any ordinary day. So I especially didn’t on this March morning, while my husband went on what felt like an apocalyptic run for proteinsources, and panicky text messages piled undeleted on my pocketsized screen.

It didn’t dawn on me to tell my children this: What the man named Jesus means is, if you get sick, you are still beloved. Nothing outside of you can defile you, turn you unworthy, make you “unclean.”

When Jesus lets his disciples scoop their fish with dirty fingers, he’s saying they are worthy just as they are. He’s saying, if you are covered with every sticky virus on the planet, you can still feast at the banquet that is Infinite Love. It’s your heart that determines your seat at the table of love. It’s your act of loving that brings you to love.

On this morning, my heart was a little infected with fear. Three hours north, portable morgues lined a parking lot in New York City.

I wanted to keep my kids, myself, the whole world clean from every outside source. And yet, we had learned by then—we are also the outside source.

So this was our new way of loving the world: by not entering it.

Not with our bodies. Yet we clanged our bells and chanted our oms beneath the oaks and among cardinals and squirrels, so we could enter the world a different way—with our hearts. Mine needed reminding: Love the world, so you remember how to love it. Come to the altar of the world with your big, wild, hopeful heart.

“Just know,” I told my kids, who were now standing up, peering into a canopy of bare branches, wondering what’s next for the day.

“You still have to wash your hands. Okay?”

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“I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.”

Revelation 3:8

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EBB TIDE

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The Unmooring is an online journal that explores critical issues of faith through women’s voices. We look to both ancient writing and wisdom as well as contemporary commentary as a means to create dialogue. We are navigating everchanging waters.

We are, in this moment, unmoored but not adrift. Rather, we look to create space where women can discuss, debate, argue and read new voices on subjects of faith, foundations and Christ. We are eager to hear every voice that questions and seeks out truth and is willing to wrestle angels to find a way forward.

We hope we find a way, tethered as we are to Christ, to create new spaces, new moorings—be they temporary or fixed, like a star.

Read more about who we are and what we’re doing here. If you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter for updates, sign up here!

www.theunmooring.org editors@theunmooring.org Instagram: @theunmooring Twitter: @theunmooring Facebook.com/theunmooring