I wish to be singing alleluias rather than wanting to set fire to churches. I speak the truth. Mere blocks away a mocking bird priest stands in the shimmering of Pascal candles in his white vestments: He who stole my faith, he who stopped my voice He, member of the Anglican patriarchal succession holds forth and there are sheep with the silver hair the unchallenging decorum of the Goodly Episcopalian in the palm of his hand. Let us profile here: let us name the names of those who fail to think for themselves, the true sinners, The dark-faced Mestizo woman who stabbed me in the back with gossip, spilling my confidences like unshelled frijoles among the tepid women of the choir She, whose brake cables I would like to cut. Let us crucify the liars strip them of their Easter best and throw them on a pyre for hypocrites. The censor, she who spreads incense throughout the nave shall not be blamed. He who reads the Gospel held high over his head by acolytes is the One who came to me when I was ill like the serpent in Eden: Come back to us, we want you, your voice; forgiveness abounds in your old nest. I am here as is HE, the one of whom they speak as having risen on this day. She is to be blamed, who sits at the organ in the white cotta of sanctimonious look-at-me- soli dei gloria, I give you Bach And here is my choir, listen to the ascension of voices recounting redemption for all but on account of your past mistakes, although you sing like a meadowlark “We do not want you after all.” And according to the Gospel of a Living Woman the child in me wept, returning to the Gethsemane where she had been living, crouching down alone, hugging stone.
Tag Archives: Episcopal Church of Colorado
Insurrection – A Poem
Religiosity…
I’ve written about some of my experience with the Episcopal Church on this blog. I’m still wrestling with some things that may or may not be of interest to anyone attempting to come to terms with matters of faith.
About three months ago I was writing in my room in the country house I’ve shared with a friend for a number of years. I was wearing my advocacy hat, having just urged him to stand up to the neighbors over an easement issue and having spent days, weeks, steeping myself in land use statutes and property rights.
I looked over at the Cross on my wall. It was actually, a crucifix I bought at the Good Will one day when I was making my way back to Christian faith and my Episcopalian roots.
I had paid close attention to the Christian story in Sunday School. I believed what I was taught–that terrible things had happened to my and our God. As for the matter of rising from the dead– that to me, is beyond a child’s comprehension and in many respects if we are honest, beyond an adult’s.
As I journaled, I realized that I had experienced deep grief over the Crucifixion, and that in essence, I was still trapped at the foot of the Cross, bound somehow to Christ’s suffering. No one had come to help me with my grief, or shown me how to move through grief to the other side.
Imagine the impact of the crucifixion in all its gore and drama upon a little girl. It ranks right up there with a pet being killed in front of you on a busy street. It is traumatic.
Later I was to see two movies that brought this all back to me: Ben Hur and King of Kings. I cried at these too.
My association with the Church became linked to sorrow and darkness, and self-depriving, mute and conforming people in black, while priests in white said from the pulpit, “Jesus Died for YOU” because you are a sinner, you are bad.” You are a very bad little girl, I heard.
To me one of the the biggest crimes the Church commits is to instill shame in children in this manner. We are taught that we are doomed to hell if we don’t profess Jesus.
It’s no wonder that I was trapped in this grief. There was no one to talk to about it, and so it compacted itself into the sedmiment in my child’s pysche.
As a young intellectual, I found other theories of human spiritual life more palatable, such as Carl Jung’s collective unconscious. I shied away from existentialism; I am a poet, after all, who finds meaning and beauty in many things.
In recent years, when at my lowest, I reasoned my way back into the Christian story, imbuing my Crucifix with a living identity. I returned, open-hearted, to the Church. I needed to be part of something bigger than me, to believe that Someone and Something was in charge of our chaotic world, my chaotic world and that there is some sort of immense and unfathomable spiritual equation by which human suffering and the vagaries of nature are resolved.
After the experience of all of that grief I was left with confusion. Therefore, having devalued my intellect when it came to matters of faith, I turned to it to help me.
I realized that not only had I martyred my own happiness and freedom to the suffering of Christ, but to that of my broken family and my own brokenness. I felt guilty moving on in my own life when I had been surrounded by people who didn’t make it, who believed that they had been born into sin and needed to be saved, and who refused to save themselves.
The Family Hero carries a huge burden. No need to add to it, when one’s faith is meant to be a source of comfort, not shame.
Christians and Liars…A Look at a No-Woman’s Land…
Guard Your Heart All Ye Who Enter Here...
In 1982 I was in pretty rough shape. I had been pulled cold-turkey off booze and vallium by a shrink who had his head up his ass (they don’t do that to people anymore, thank God). I was in a terrible withdrawal, on the ceiling for days, not sleeping. Stripped arbitrarily and suddenly of what got me though life, I was in a round the clock state of terror. I hung in and resisted the physical and emotional urge and need to use for days.
After I couldn’t go through with suicide, I checked into a psych unit, which didn’t help much either; I was jacked up on antidepressants and locked in my room when I had an allergic reaction.
In desperation I called our family priest. Deep within, I thought that if I reached for the faith I had abandoned in my years of addiction, if I could get help in reconnecting to something familiar, it would help me.
He came to my bedside in his black suit, shirt and white collar. I was glad to see him. I hadn’t seen him since he had given my mother last rites in the ER after she had a heart attack.
I thought he would pull “the sacraments” out of his pocket and get to work on me. But that’s not what happened.
He pulled his chair over to my bedside and sat down. He said, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is your savior?”
After a few moments, brought up short– I had called him, after all–I said, “I don’t know.”
For me, this was an honest answer.
He said, “Then I can’t help you.” He got up, and left my hospital room.
In 1987, still sober, in therapy, making progress in inches, I gave it another try. I was in a muffler shop having my old blue Ford Fairlane worked on, surrounded by clanging and banging, in stifling air that smelled like grease and exhaust. Suddenly I felt that I couldn’t hold in the guilt and pain I was carrying; my pain was intolerable.
I called a church that had for years been the only Episcopal Church in Fort Collins and asked to speak to the priest. Our family had gone there too, and I had sung in the choir after my parents had died.
The priest picked up the phone. I told him that I didn’t think I would last much longer if I couldn’t unburden and get some help with feeling forgiven and forgiving myself.
There was a long pause. Then, with a thin voice, and diffident manner, he said, “I might have some room in my calendar next week.”
I hung up. I went back to my apartment and fell on my knees in tears and poured my heart out to what I hoped was listening to me.
Five years ago, at the urging of a social worker and friend who was active in that same church, and after I told her these stories, she urged me to return. She said, “It will help. I know you’ll feel better. It’s beautiful there. Father So and So is gone and Father So and So and another priest are there. You’ll like them.”
She was right; I liked both priests. Father So and So the First was bright, and seemed welcoming, albeit somewhat distracted when I tried to talk to him. Father So and So II was a winsome, sharp accessible guy serving an apprenticeship. We had long talks about God, the Church, healing, and his issues– all priests seem to have them– with AA: ”I don’t get that generic God they talk about in the Big Book, and the business of relative truth.”
I didn’t either, but I went to meetings and strove to be a sober person anyway.
I hadn’t sung in years, and at the 10 a.m. Eucharist I began to sing again, rediscovering my voice. I got a lot of compliments. Finally, I worked up my nerve to ask the choir director if I could come back on board.
We had a guest choir director at that time while the regular one was on sabbatical. She was harried, thin, a Southern woman whose hair was recovering from being dyed bright red. She was a tremendous musician and a task mistress.
We were to perform the John Rutter Requiem on Good Friday; I was outfitted with a robe and a portfolio for my music.
The first few rehearsals, I picked up on the choir’s dislike of the guest director nearly to a woman and a man. I didn’t understand it– but it seemed to have something to do, someone said, with their affection for the one who was away.
I reached out to the substitute director and chatted with her after rehearsals. I also made friends with a Native American woman who sat in the soprano section next to me, and we would go out for coffee. She seemed like a nice person and we both loved music, art and the Southwest.
Singing the Rutter Requiem was an experience I will never forget. It is a gorgeous piece of music and we worked hard, rehearsing and rehearsing.
A few weeks after the performance I determined that I should undergo a Rite II Reconciliation and Absolution. I was having powerful experiences of connection to a greater power at that point. I had, to put it with as much subtlety as possible because, like many, many people, I absolutely hate being bludgeoned over the head with religion, felt love emanating toward me from the direction of the Cross. I was trying to trust that experience.
I remember that day vividly. Father X had put a chair, table, glass of water, and box of kleenex in the Southwestern-style chapel, where candles flickered and shadows draped the carved crucifix on the wall over the altar.
I went down on my knees and recounted my misdeeds.
I came to a list of men with whom I had been involved. I didn’t flinch; I talked about my anger, and was as specific as I could bear to be. I had to fight through fear and worry that I was taking too much of his time.
He stopped me at one point. He said, “You can be more specific; get it all out, about all of them. You’ve had a lot of them.”
As I had made myself vulnerable, this was a direct hit. I tried to absorb it and keep going, but, clearly, like an elephant, I haven’t forgotten it; it still stings.
Some time later, the regular choir director came back and we began fall rehearsal. I was one of two sopranos in the choir with a strong and trained voice. The other soprano was the section leader and she said, “Help me encourage the others to sing out. Nobody can hear them.”
We rehearsed shortly before the performance and the director seemed unhappy with all of us. Out in the foyer I said to my friend, “You have a beautiful voice. I know you can open up and sing more powerfully.” She glared at me. It seemed that everyone was uptight.
I was distracted and then turned around to see her running into the arms of the choir director, crying. The choir director was glaring at me.
We all went back into the church and I was moved over right next to where the director sat at the organ.
I put a toe in the water.
“Are we… am I singing in the way you wish for me to,” I asked.
She turned to me in utter rage. ”NO,” she said loudly.
When I returned to the Church I brought with me many many years of anxiety over whether I would be accepted or whether I belonged anywhere, at any given time, in any group or activity. I was, despite how I kick up my heels on the page and let myself play occasionally, extremely shy and self-conscious.
Her response hit an old wound and reopened it. Before I began to spurt blood through my choir robe, I excused myself. I ran out into the parking lot and got in my truck. I threw down my music and some of it blew away in the dark.
I went home and got under the covers and sobbed myself to sleep.
The next day I tried to talk to all of them. They blamed me and I blamed them; we got exactly nowhere.
Two years ago, as I lay recovering from a broken leg in the nursing home, Father X came to see me. We talked the whole thing over. He said, “We’ve all talked, there’s a new director; you can come back and sing, all is forgiven.”
No one in the scenario had asked my forgiveness, but I let it go.
It took me two years to work up my courage to call the Church and express my desire to sing.
I spoke to the new director. She said, “I’m glad you called, because we need to talk.”
Apprehension welled up in me.
She said, “We don’t want you in our choir. Your presence stresses everybody.”
By now it was three years since I had left on the night of the performance, and I had apologized numerous times.
Now I was furious. I raised hell with the Church, the diocese and tangled with the Chancellor for the Bishop– an attorney. Nothing has been resolved, except that I’ve decided dealing with all of it isn’t worth it. I even have a cousin who, improbably, is an ordained lesbian minister in a church– where else- in San Francisco, who has written me off and holds seminars on “emotional resilience” and “forgiveness,” when she has a little sewage in her back yard, i.e., how she treats our family. Another cousin is an ordained Episcopal priest who is evidently above reaching out or responding to us.
As I write I am listening to Bach, Brahms, Handel. I am surrounded by the beautiful churches of Fort Collins. I should be singing somewhere, instead of writing this story, telling it to my small readership, something so deeply personal.
But if there is any pain worse than that of rejection, particularly in an environment where the rhetoric of unconditional love abounds, I’d like to know what it is. I didn’t deserve this.
It is snowing here; it is beautiful. I have come to terms with my solitude and I write many hours every day, with seemingly, many stories to tell, including this one. Perhaps this was meant to be
At the risk of sounding like a homily torn from the pages of Reader’s Digest, I speculate that these “trials” have strengthened me. I have been forced to forge self-love, self-belief, to re-empower myself as best I can.
The unfortunate consequence of these things and others like them in other venues, however, is that to a great extent, I hide myself away. I come and go in a subterranean fashion. Recently, I have felt myself withdraw from the open-heartedness with which I pursued faith. What had seemed like a hardy sapling of belief has dwindled back to mustard seed status. How dare these alleged men and women of God wear the collar and inflict so much suffering on a vulnerable person. And where the hell was God?
Pass It On
No love, NoTolerance in the Colorado Episcopal Church
(Apologies to those who’ve followed this aspect of my saga on this blog– but there is an update.)
I thought, about six years ago, that it would be good for me to return to the Episcopal Church– specifically, St. Luke’s in Fort Collins, where I had gone in the past and sung in the choir. I did so downplaying that I am disabled by non-obvious depression and PTSD.
After an incident regarding my participation in the choir, St. Luke’s was obligated under its own resolutions and nationally adopted policies to make accommodations of my or anyone’s disability and to work to resolve the antipathies and understandings that had become so entrenched. So was the Diocese and the Offices of the Chancellor and the Bishop.
Not only did the Diocese refuse my requests for assistance, it dispatched its chancellor/lay lawyer to undermine my self-advocacy and raise questions about whether I was really disabled, whether my disability played any part in matters, refusing to address my direct charges of discrimination and exclusion.
I recently summoned the courage to present an affidavit of events as I remember them to St. Luke’s. Two weeks ago, I e-mailed the Rt Rev Robert O’Neill, Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Colorado, requesting his personal assistance in mediating my return to St. Luke’s and the choir.
The other night I received an e-mail reply from Bishop O’Neill in the form of a copy of an e-mail he sent to the Chancellor, Lawrence Hitt II, as follows:
“Given our history with this woman, I am assuming you don’t want me to respond, right?”
The Diocese and its member parishes trumpet love, tolerance and inclusiveness. Regarding compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the National Council of Churches, of which the Episcopal Church in the US is a member, adopted a resolution of inclusion– this eloquent document should be on the tip of O’Neill’s tongue, driving his behavior and that of his staff, and isn’t.
For the past decade O’Neill has been caught up in a high profile lawsuit around the issue of gay clergy in the EC, involving a seceding conservative Episcopal Church, Grace Episcopal, in Colorado Springs. O’Neill’s disciples stripped that parish of its land, indicted its priest within an Episcopal Court; the priest took a plea to a misdemeanor “under Alford”, meaning that he did so even though he viewed himself as innocent. (Unethically, Hitt has opined that to plead under Alford is a sign of guilt, when the opposite is really the case).
Then, although he had ordered Colorado churches to refrain from sanctioning same sex unions, O’Neill ordained one lesbian priest and seated “a partnered lesbian” priest at St. Paul’s in Fort Collins.
Accordingly no one, as he attempts to straddle the middle, is sure where O’Neill stands, but he is generally viewed as having done a disastrous job of holding the Episcopal Church in Colorado together. A close-knit conservative parish working out of the beautiful St. Andrews in downtown Fort Collins is on the market–that congregation which is “bible-based” has siphoned off many members of the Episcopal Old Guard in this community and set up shop on the outskirts of Loveland.
O’Neill appears to act out of political expediency– it is de rigeur to champion gay rights, while dismissing out of hand the concerns and needs of a disabled communicant. For shame.
Leave a comment | tags: Bishop Gene Robinson, Bishop Robert O'Neill, Disabled Resource Services Fort Collins, Episcopal Church of Colorado, Lawrence Hitt II, Peggy Johnson Ph.D., Rt Rev Harold Warren, St. Luke's Episcopal Church Fort Collins, Tamara Schmiege Ph.D. | posted in Civil Rights ADA, Politics and Commentary, Tour d'Force Posts, Trauma Survival