Chapter Sheila

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=125 BGCOLOR="#BFBF00" TEXT="#080000" bgproperties="fixed" background="05b467d1dwoxjb.png"> <bR> <div> <B><IMG SRC="275207d0.jpg" border=0 width="800" height="125" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=189 style="border-right: 1px solid #CCCCCC;" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="WovenWord Press"><B>home</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id89.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="new from the press/Mother Blessings/Jour"><B>new from the press</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="catalog"><B>catalog</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="how to order this book"><B>how to order</B></A><B> </B><A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="how to order this book"><B>books</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="who we are"><B>who we are</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id33.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="links"><B>links</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id34.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="contact"><B>contact </B></A></div> <div> <B>    </B></div> <bR> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=355 width="100%" BGCOLOR="#FFFF99" TEXT="#080000"> <div>               </div> <div>                      </div> <div>      <FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Verdana" ><I><B>c h a p t e r   s a m p l e</B></I></FONT></div> <bR> <div>    WomenEucharist<FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div>                                                                             <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="6" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" >By Sheila Durkin Dierks</FONT></div> <bR> <div> <I><B> </B></I></div> <div> <B>Introduction </B></div> <bR> <div> <I>Bind me-I still can sing-</I></div> <div> <I>Banish-my mandolin</I></div> <div> <I>Strikes true within-</I></div> <div> <I>Slay-and my soul shall rise</I></div> <div> <I>Chanting to Paradise-</I></div> <div> <I>Still thine. </I></div> <div> <I>theology is not carved lapidary</I></div> <div> <I>from the quarry of eternal truth</I></div> <div> <I>(he said),</I></div> <div> <I>but flashes fresh in each new age, </I></div> <div> <I>dancing just beyond the horizon of longing. </I></div> <div> <I>For every woman we have named, there are a hundred who speak; for every hundred who speak, there are a thousand who know; for every thousand who know, there ten thousand who do not yet know. </I></div> <bR> <div> This book began almost a decade ago, around the lunch table in a local restaurant. I had invited half a dozen interesting women to meet on a monthly basis to talk about how it is that God enters into our lives. The group was enormously popular and women marked calendars at the beginning of each year so there would be no conflicts with our monthly date. </div> <div> We had no set agenda, nor readings-in-preparation. We knew we were coming together to explore the Creative Presence in our existence. It was prophetic that we should gather in a circle and share food as we talked of God's love. There was no shortage of topics. The participants dealt out tales of cancers, children's engagements both happy and sad, domestic free-for-alls, births of wonder, the spectrum of life. No event was shrugged away as trivial. We challenged ourselves to see God in these experiences. There were tears and a lot of joking. As intimacy bloomed so did willingness to bare our souls. In response, respect flourished, evidenced by the fact that no one demeaned the experience of another, nor marched out canned judgments. </div> <div> We were there in support of each other, and in the recognized reverence for the journey. In the years that we met the number of regular participants grew to almost twenty who came to talk of the actualities of God present in our lives. </div> <div> As the group matured we sensed that our meetings were not complete, lacking the ritualization which we as mostly Catholic believe is central to our lives. We needed to pray these moments, distress and happiness together. We wanted to pray them with the prayer of Eucharist. So, in awe we began. We knew of no other groups of women who were involved in such an endeavor, but we took our cue from the Christians of the early Church. Gathering in our homes, we praised and thanked God, shared Scripture, blessed and shared bread and wine. We did, and do this in memory of Jesus. ". . . in their homes they broke bread. With exultant and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God". </div> <div> For many Catholic women the daily struggle to remain faithful to their Church requires that they deny their own experience and sense of call, and if not their own, that of their sisters. Many women recognize that not only the "who" of celebration, but also the "what" and "how" has been determined by men for almost two millennia. The canon of who is acceptable, what shape the skin must be in order to preside, and the rubrics of the celebration presided over have had input from only one group of the baptized. Women chafe under the inequity, often finding that we must attend liturgy with intellectual, emotional and spiritual blinders on in order to remain practicing members of a faith community. To pray with people whom we love and know as faith-family, we must ignore excluding language, insensitive homilies, poor liturgy. The pervasive nature of sexism in the church, indeed sexism deified and presented as religious necessity is a burden of stone strapped to the backs of women. Many of us find ourselves chronically angry as we depart from Sunday Eucharists. Rosemary Radford Ruether comments, "It is precisely when feminists discover the congruence between the Gospel and liberation from sexism that they also experience their greatest alienation from existing churches." </div> <div> Thousands of women have ceased formal practice of faith as they experience heightened consciousness of their own capabilities and what seems to them the virtual certainty that their voices will not be heard, their talents never fully employed in the church of their baptism. As women begin to identify and claim their own spiritual authority, they often come to admit that the institution is blindly out of balance with the values preached and lived by Jesus, and that the valuing of power-over and the maintenance of the status quo have become paramount for that institution. It is sadly noted that many feel that they are not missed; they count for so little that their passing out of the parish doors for the last time is not noted or regretted. </div> <div> And where do they go? Those who wish ordination may turn to the Lutheran church which first ordained US women in 1970 or to the Episcopalians where women were irregularly ordained in 1974 and officially in 1976. Those two denominations joined Methodists and Presbyterians who have allowed women as clergy since 1956. Other Christian denominations have also opened their doors kindly to Catholic women. </div> <div> Women who feel a lack of hospitality in Catholic parishes go to a variety of churches where they are welcomed, or finding that nowhere drift away from formal religious practice. Some have experienced such unfortunate treatment at the hands of the official Church and in the name of Jesus that they have left Christianity behind and, in search of a spiritual community which affirms them, have joined the New Age or Goddess movements. </div> <div> In this age of spiritual seeking there is a swelling alternative to remain in pain or find a new home. Women in small but growing numbers are gathering in informal groups, often in private homes, to celebrate Eucharist without inviting or including a priest to act as presider or celebrant. </div> <div> I have identified over 100 such gatherings in the United States. They reach out their arms from Seattle to Miami, from southern California to Vermont. They are six women, they are 30 joined in the name of Jesus. They meet regularly (my definition: at least once a month). Many are on a journey of discovery, some feel that they are finally home. </div> <div> In my curiosity about these spiritual communities I queried 30 groups by questionnaire and accepted the invitation of five to visit, celebrate Eucharist and explore in depth their motives and experiences. </div> <div> What follows in this book is not meant to be a sociological study. I am not trained for that, nor am I primarily interested in statistics. My goal is to share the voices of many women; to experience each story as individual and important to an understanding and appreciation of how significant numbers of women are experiencing the spirit of Jesus present in their lives and to seek the connection points (and sometimes the points of diversion) with the formations of our childhoods and earlier adulthood. </div> <div> Community without hierarchy, we sit in a circle. Community without sexism, we experience each other as image of God, and God as Mother, Breath, Ruah, Shekinah. Community without rigidity, we may all participate in shaping the celebration to reflect our own journeys and how God is a part of them. Community without slavery to fixed space, we can rediscover our bodies in gesture and dance, free-flowing movement. Community without judgment, we may, as women, finally offer our best gifts without fear that they will be refused because of our gender. </div> <div> This is WomenEucharist (WE) and in many ways, we claim the middle ground. WomenEucharist chooses to affirm our deep connection with Jesus through the celebration of Eucharist together. It is the native tongue of our spirituality. </div> <div> Women often say, "I don't do theology." We have understood from years of training that theology is the purview of the specially educated, most frequently of the priest. Theology has for so long been hands-off territory, confined to the seminaries, where women could not tread. Of course, we, many of us, are theologues, doing God-thinking every day as we seek to imagine what God must want when we are sad or injured, content or rejected, joyous or angry, how our loving God accompanies, guides and instructs us when we are confronted with crises, what God wishes when we are faced with challenge, how God must love us to send a Godchild to teach us how to live and die. </div> <div> In my conversations with women in all parts of the United States I discovered that what is at issue is not solely inclusive language or the ordination of women, though both are part of the problem. Rather, women are identifying that we have different styles of celebration and prayer which are not acknowledged or respected by the institutional Church; styles which perhaps we do not even know, having seldom or never been in a position to pray in our own ways. We have an inkling that if we continue to practice our subjugation in canonized liturgies we cannot possibly live what we celebrate. </div> <div> Since the hatching of The Women's Ordination Conference in the early 1970's, the thrust has been away from women's ordination as the only issue, and towards a reordered priesthood for women and men in which talent is more important than gender, in which feminine experience is cherished and in which access to ministry and decision making is open to all. </div> <div> A most striking fact about participants in WomenEucharist groups is that most are beyond the age we might think of as the rebellious years. In the groups with whom I visited (and most of those who indicated age on the questionnaires) grey hair is a constant. Many participants are over the age of forty, with some well into retirement years. I met several women who had passed eighty. </div> <div> The majority are cradle Catholics, who can only be called in Dorothy Day's words, "Faithful daughters of the Church." They are distinguished by their years of membership, often their years of employment. A good number are, or have been, vowed members of canonical orders. A significant number indicated that they hold advanced degrees in divinity, theology, scripture or liturgy. </div> <div> It is a sign of spiritual maturity that these women continue to attempt to separate that which is liberating from that which is unhealthy in the church. More than half of the respondents volunteer a fair bit of time to parish needs. It is interesting that many who are involved are so in spite of their perception that injustice dwells there. Religious education teachers, bible study group leaders, liturgical planners, parish council members, musicians, justice and peace activists. As one respondent put it, "My group of women gathering to pray is what makes it possible to remain in my parish." </div> <div> It is valuable that, in this age of options, so many who find little joy in the institution do not just walk away, but instead remain, seeking new ways to celebrate and explore the spirit of Jesus present in themselves and their communities through the expression of Eucharist. </div> <div> WHAT THIS BOOK IS AND IS NOT ABOUT </div> <div> This book is not about hating or rejecting men. </div> <div> This book is about creating a space for women to encounter their spiritual lives in loving community, while being free from male judgment, and safe to speak, pray, invent, and ritualize the most sacred and the most daily elements of their lives. </div> <div> This book is not about rebellion, though it is about revolution, in the sense of a movement expressing vigorous dissent. The revolution has its genesis in the lives of women, one by aching one. It is about revolving away from the individual experience of rejection, denial of gifts, patronization, condescension, played out against the words of the Scriptures, the promise of God-life betrayed again and again by the Church of our baptism. </div> <div> The vigorous dissent confronts the centuries old concept that the male sex holds the keys to the kingdom, defines the New Covenant, has the corner on all official understanding of morality, spiritual life and growth. This dissent rejects the idea that only through maleness can the most important and unifying act of our sacramental Church be experienced. This dissent confronts the idea that women's prayer must be mediated by a male priest, that it is only through a male-dominated community that a woman can find her salvation. </div> <div> This book is not about pathology in religion, rather about a revolving toward spiritual wholeness. Certainly, the curtains have been parted to disclose what many of us have experienced individually: there has been much abuse of power over others and that this abuse is the root of heart-rending damage done in the name of Jesus by the Catholic Church. Many have found the institution to be an impediment to spiritual maturity, as it often seems to encourage infantilism in adults, especially female ones. </div> <div> We gaze at a long history of institutional abuse of many groups, but always against women, and marvel at how the faith has survived, especially among women. In this moment, however, there are many who recognize that we, as Christians, are responsible for the now. We are not indifferent to our moment in Creation history. We cannot continue to blame the institution if we have, for at least part of our lives, made the mistake of having faith in it, and substituting it for faith in the love of God. </div> <div> This book is not about final answers. Few who participated in the research for this book believe that women gathering to celebrate Eucharist is the ultimate solution to the problems which confront us. Many of us wish for ways to include men, families, in coequal worship. As Rosemary Radford Ruether dreams it, "I assume the name for this liberated humanity would then no longer be 'Women-Church,' but simply 'Church'; that is, the authentic community of exodus from oppression that has been heralded by the traditions of religious and social liberation but, until now, corrupted by reversion to new forms of the ecclesia of patriarchy." </div> <div> Most express that this is part of an ongoing discovery, a process, an evolution in which we, because the ways of our childhood are not sufficient to our adult spiritual experience, attempt to encounter how God interacts with us. For many this is extremely painful, often lonely. It is in the gathering, the sharing, that the pain is eased, the loneliness lessened. It is also relief, delight, God's presence with an intensity never before experienced, and yet most see it as an oasis, a long sought place of safety in the desert, not home yet, but wonderful for now. </div> <div> SOME PROCEDURAL NOTES </div> <div> Of course, our little group which went from lunch to Eucharist discovered we are not alone, and it is in curiosity about this that the book took life. My main source of leads to other groups was through word of mouth. One friend tells another that she has a friend in Minneapolis who gathers with other women to celebrate, another knows someone in Miami or San Francisco. I also discovered the network of WomenChurch to which I am greatly indebted. </div> <div> When I learned the name of a woman in another city, I would phone and explain my interest, ask her to describe her group and request that she share a set of questions with each participant. No one refused. There was a wonderful sense of community by telephone. People were eager to share news of their gatherings and hear about others. </div> <div> There is great curiosity about what other groups are doing, who is imagining their own worship materials, and what rituals and styles of celebration call forth joy. </div> <div> Groups were mailed the appropriate number of questionnaires (one per member), each accompanied by a stamped envelope addressed to me and a cover letter. I guaranteed anonymity by telling those who had concerns about disclosure to not sign or back address their responses. </div> <div> The questions cover two main areas: one devoted to the specifics of organization and planning, the other to the personal and spiritual experience of celebrating. (See questionnaire.) </div> <div> The return mail brought 126 responses to 377 sent out. I organized them by postmark of place of origin. The answers of four groups, while wonderful, are not used as material here because the majority of their rituals are not or are no longer Eucharistic. The 104 usable responses from 26 groups averages exactly four respondents per group, however I received as few as two per group and as many as 8 from others. </div> <div> I received responses from three men who are included in two groups. Their answers are here and may sometimes be identifiable by certain comments they make. The men are participants in groups which include families. </div> <div> That we struggle with language will be apparent in many of the voices. Our vocabularies for this undertaking are still shaky. We are thoroughly suspicious (with cause) of language which we have used for the decades of our lives without much thought. It is language which has imperiled us, defeated and coralled us while masquerading as normal. </div> <div> We have a hard time differentiating Church, as in the institution identified with the Vatican and Bishops, (sometimes called Papalist) from church, as recognized in the gathering of the people of God. Because of my unwillingness to assume what exactly we mean when we choose to capitalize or lower case a word, I have recorded the word church as it is written by each respondent. You may notice that in the responses of the survey participants, (identified always by a double star ** at the beginning of each response, and by enlarged type) there are other language and capitalization differences which I have made no attempt to standardize. To do so would be to somehow imply that I know better than they what they intended to say. </div> <div> Each chapter will be preceded by a FORETHOUGHT, placed there in order to give a preview of what ideas will be addressed and how they work together about a particular aspect of this journey of ours. </div> <div> I have made every effort to proportionately represent ideas which came in the returned questionnaires. </div> <div> I received numerous invitations to visit, talk, and pray. I chose the groups I would visit based on their ability to share specific insights. It is no wiser to assume that the numerically dominant group, (white, middle-aged women) has a corner on answers than to assume that men do. I talked with a several Latin American women and African American women whose experience of church in a white culture has had its own special difficulties. Lesbian women also spent time sharing the particular struggles they face. </div> <div> So this is our story, our voices braided together, individuals in God-focused community, singing songs of liberation, walking together on a new (yet aged) path, feeling mutual strength in prayer and ritual, uncertain at times about the future but hopeful, trusting that we move in the Spirit.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>_______________________________________________________________</B></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id148.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Author Sheila Durkin Dierks"><B>about the author</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id136.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter Sheila"><B>sample book chapter</B></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="catalog"><B>catalog</B></A></div> <div> <B>                  </B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Arial" ><B>                                         </B></FONT><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#CCFF99" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT><A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="how to order this book"><B>How to Order this Book</B></A><B> </B></div> <bR> <div> <B>WOMEN EUCHARIST - </B><I><B>What in the name of God are </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>thousands of Catholic women doing?</B></I></div> <div> <B>Sheila Durkin Dierks</B></div> <div> <B>317 pgs.  $16.95  paperback  ISBN: 0965813797</B></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>