My dear friend Jen made this beautiful video about women in Christianity as a part of a course at SPU. I dare you to watch it without crying — for the beauty and for the sorrow.

Watch here.

As always, when a woman in the church mentions the injustice and pain that our religious history has caused, and that much of our religious present is casuing, there is a backlash. So maybe you could go say something supportive to Jen here.

Much love, my sisters.

-the urban abbess

I’m sitting in my darkened bedroom eating leftover pad thai from last night’s dinner at Monkfish Abbey. I didn’t get to eat it last night when it was hot, and fresh, and being enjoyed by a dozen friends. I had a migraine.

Since I fell out of remission in mid-February the thing I’ve struggled with the most is the loneliness. When you are chronically ill you are alone a lot – in the waiting room, in your sickbed, in the drug addled confusion of your own thoughts. Chronic pain is isolating. It keeps you from connecting, even when you manage to be physically present. It isolates you from your true self, the self you knew yourself to be before you … {read more…}

Oooo…look what ‘Becca did! Vote for me pretty please!

You can vote more than once, I think, if you vote on a different day. Click here.

Presider: Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
Assembly: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary…

See, already I’m having trouble.

Two years ago I started only sometimes believing Jesus was actually God. I don’t know if my rational post-enlightenment self can really hang on to the literal interpretation that Jesus was God, a deity. (Oh my poor in-laws are having such heart attacks right now. Try not to panic my loves. It comes and goes — sort of like mono.)

It all started when one of the pre-school moms’ discovered that I was … {read more…}

It’s Holy Week, the final days of the Lenten season and the turn to Eastertide. My own Lenten practice this year was to create more silence in my life, especially in the car where I’m only just now beginning to feel the “what’s going on in the world” affect of not listening to NPR for several weeks. Silence is such and important, but difficult, discipline for me. I need it to clear my head of negative migraine energy, to make space for new things to grow, and to nuture reflection on this Jesus-y season.

During Lent I’ve been tooling about with some bead work. A few Lenten seasons ago I took up the habit of praying the Anglican version … {read more…}