What if she said no?

December 21, 2017 / a samaritan woman / 1 Comment

Have you thought about what would have happened if, when approached by Gabriel, Mary would have said “umm…thanks, but no.”

Unthinkable, right? After all, Mary had been specially chosen. Besides, God clearly knew her answer would be yes (or so I’ve always been told); otherwise, God would not have chosen her.

Right?

Hmmm. Maybe not.

In the image of God, male and female, was humanity created – and with free will, to boot. After all, free will had come into play in a big way before (think Abraham, Sarah and Hagar as a good example) and history kind of got rearranged. Eve and Sarah have long been blamed for leading men astray. (Funny how free will gets forgotten there!)

Mary could very well have said “no, thanks, and have a nice day” when Gabriel came to call.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Annunciation

Had she said no, would God have given up on this creation of humanity as a sort of failed prototype, feeling that humankind was a little too feisty, a little too uncontrollable? Or had Gabriel been dispatched with a Plan B? Was it a case of “if Miriam says no, then go ask Salome, in the next village, she’s also a good Jewish girl, and hopefully more agreeable than this one” or would it be “well, your loss; we’ll wait a while to proceed with the Messiah business…another millennium or so.”

Mary – indeed, women in general – played a critical part in the Incarnation. Sure, God could have popped out Jesus fully grown in the middle of the Temple one day, but it wouldn’t have had the same effect. God could have said “tough, it’s gonna be what it’s gonna be,” but that wouldn’t jive with God’s gift of free will.

Now, I’ve always felt very strongly that women are called to full inclusiveness in Christian leadership because Jesus was inclusive in His ministry. Some denominations have women in leadership roles; others do not. Those who don’t ordain women count among their chief reasons that 1) Jesus, our Savior, was a man, and 2) Jesus didn’t call women to be apostles.

I’ve touched upon reason #2 before in this blog in writing about Mary Magdalene, Apostle. In my mind, though, the first reason loses all validity when you consider that Mary could have said no.

We do consider Mary to be an integral, necessary part of the Incarnation, don’t we?

If Mary had not agreed, Salvation would have taken a detour. (Unless, of course, the Holy Spirit said “that’s ok, we’ll find another woman.” Ouch.)

Mary’s participation was vital in the redemption of humanity. Jesus died for our sins; Mary gave birth for our sins.

Filling in the Gaps

December 14, 2015December 18, 2015 / a samaritan woman / Leave a comment

Our church has a small but dedicated choir, but we often compliments such as “it sounds like the loft is FULL! It sounds like there’s a lot more people singing up there than there is!” It’s a lovely comment, especially as we’re often more of a quartet than a choir.

My friend (and fellow chorister) Margaret recently observed: “I think that God comes in and fills in the empty spaces for us.”

hymnals

We do sing with intention. We want to give our best to God, to our church family, and to Leon (our choir director who brings out the best in us). I think Margaret got it just right: God does fill in the spaces and magnifies our efforts. God can enlarge what we do if we allow it. Here’s an example from my own musical life:

On December 27, 2011, I lost my hearing in my left ear. Unable to find any other explanation for this sudden change (I’m meticulous about hearing protection when performing), my doctors figured it was the result of “a virus.” Over the next year I went through multiple tests, consultations, and listening to well-meaning folks telling me that it might just be wax in my ears, and why didn’t I just have surgery? I clung to hope of a spontaneous return of hearing (it might happen, my doctor said, we have to give it a year). I resisted the idea of a hearing aid for a while, and then began to look forward to the one year mark when I could begin the process of being fitted for a hearing aid.

That was not to be. The sensorineural hearing loss I have does not respond to a hearing aid. Welcome to life in monaural. I cried a river.

I’ve had to adapt. In the case of Epiphany’s choir, small is a blessing for me. I’m able to hear and enjoy the other parts without being distracted or confused. You can’t sing harmony without listening to what else is going on. While that’s not a problem with two working ears, it’s very tricky with only one. Unison singing can be challenging if we’re not all completely unison. My fellow choir members have become used to my moving around to find just the right spot to stand in the loft so that I can hear. At least solos are easy.

Recording vocal parts requires adjustment, too. My music partner Joshua and I recently remixed and re-recorded some demos from our Women at the Well program and released a short CD. A main objective was to re-record vocals and add vocal harmonies on several of the tracks, and there’s where God filled in the blanks.

Adding the harmonies required overdubbing – me singing different lines over myself. You can’t do that without hearing everything, and hearing everything with only one ear means the brain is processing some signals differently. I can’t exactly describe it, but I do know I had to completely re-learn how to manage this.

Since the only budget for this project was earmarked for CD replication, we were recording at Joshua’s house. The bathroom was the vocal booth. Contrary to what you may think, that’s not because of “bathroom acoustics” but rather because it was the quietest room in the house. Since a vocal booth needs to be “dead,” we had a lot of blankets and towels draped everywhere!

It’s a pretty funny picture. I was standing in a tiny bathroom, blankets draped over the shower curtain rod and piled in the bathtub, a big stuffed teddy bear crammed into the closet-without-a-door, scribbled notation taped to the wall in front of me so I’d remember exactly what to sing (what line am I singing now?) and I’m holding one headphone a couple of inches away from my ear so I can hear where to come in – but not so much as to be confusing….In the middle of all of this, a daddy longlegs spider appeared in the corner to watch.

Our budget also doesn’t allow for autotune, so it had to be perfect.

When I heard the final product, I cried with joy and relief. I’d feared I’d never be able to do this again, yet there it was, beautiful harmonies and all.

One of the first people to hear the final product was our friend Danny, who plays keyboards and sings backup in a world-touring zydeco band. Danny knows of my hearing loss, and also understands what’s necessary in overdubbing harmony lines. How did you do that with just one ear? he asked. That’s a miracle.

God stepped in to fill in the blanks inside of my head and ears. A next-to-nothing budget, Joshua’s considerable production skills and a whole lot of Divine assistance gave us a CD we could be proud of, that we could offer to those who heard our Women at the Well program and wanted to revisit the music again and again.

God fills in the empty spaces wherever we allow God to do so. My hearing loss makes me realize that if I’m going to keep doing what I love, I need God to fill in those empty spaces.

This morning I was fixing my tea and thinking about Margaret’s comment, our “heavenly choir” and how God fills things out for us. My eyes fell on a mail order catalog that my husband had left open on the kitchen table. There was a teeshirt that simply said:

God greater than

God is greater than. Can I get an AMEN? God is greater than anything and will fill in the blank spaces when we allow it.

To learn more about the Women at the Well program, visit www.women-at-the-well.com. For information about the Living Water CD, visit www.cdbaby.com/cd/bbontherock The CD page has the latest recordings.

An Epiphany at Pentecost

May 27, 2015June 28, 2015 / a samaritan woman / Leave a comment

I had an Epiphany on Pentecost.

My “ah-ha!” moment occurred during Fr. Matt’s sermon. Now, I’ve heard many sermons on Pentecost. They’ve all focused on things like the birth of the Church, the arrival of the Holy Spirit, the empowerment of the disciples and the like.

But Fr. Matt pointed out something I’d never considered before: Pentecost happened during a meeting.

image from geralt on pixabay.com

Well, I about fell out of the loft chuckling. A meeting! Known to so many of us as that great interrupter-of-productivity, that drainer-of-energy, that breaker-of-plans. There’s not a soul on the planet who hasn’t, at one time or another, prayed for an excuse to avoid sitting in a meeting. Aw, shucks, I’ll have to miss the meeting, I have to bathe my cat / have a root canal / go to my niece’s dance recital.

It wasn’t just the meeting idea, though, that brought about my Epiphany. It was the realization that yes, there IS power in group intention, and I’m seeing it coming out of the spiritual closet after hiding out for a while.

The apostles had been sequestered for some days after Jesus’ ascension, wondering what the heck was going to happen next. They’d already seen incredible miracles. But…what next? They were hanging out in the upper room, praying, talking, eating, and yes, meeting.

photo from music4life on pixabay.com

Paul, in Acts, tells us of the arrival of the Holy Spirit. Call it a Hollywood moment or not, but clearly something happened. Whether it was an arrival of God in the Holy Spirit, or whether it was an awakening of God / Spirit within is something I’ll leave up to theologians to quibble over. But something stirred, woke up, brought, quickened, sparked SPIRIT inside of everyone there.

And I wonder what their shared intention had to do with it. They were there, in community, together, all focused on receiving whatever direction they were to receive. They were focused on surrender, to following whatever the path was. I don’t doubt they were frightened and probably quite clueless.

What next? And then, something happened. Whether you call that something the Holy Ghost, Spirit, or whatever – something Divine that was greater than any one of them brought them all together in shared intention and empowered them.

Acts tells us that they went out among the people that very day, preaching and baptizing thousands. Was it their shared experience – their meeting – that enabled them to lean upon each other spiritually, enhance the spiritual strength of the whole, and thereby be in a position to receive this incredible gift?

One way or another, consciousness rises. Sooner or later, humanity realizes that God is indeed in each of us. When we read the story of Pentecost, we should remember that this is what the story is about; that relying on Spirit – God – within ourselves gives us strength to do that which we would not otherwise do. Joining with others to focus intention, prayer and awareness raises this consciousness as a whole. I believe this is a path for humanity that we need to follow. We are a wonderful collection of unique, individual souls with a glorious diversity of gifts and personalities. At our core, we are all expressing God, for we are all made in the image and likeness of God from the very being of God.

The color of Pentecost is red. This is the same color as the root chakra in Hindu and yogic traditions . (If you’re not familiar with chakras, they are energy centers in the subtle body; a quick internet search will give you an overview.) Each chakra is important. The root chakra is one of energy and empowerment, and well suited to Pentecost. For without the energy, empowerment, and passion of the Spirit that was awakened during that Pentecost meeting, the story of Jesus would never had made it out of the upper room.