Update March 10th: I can’t keep up with all the folks who are sending me news that they posted, so the below list is a little truncated. So readers, once you’ve made it throug this great list, check in the comments and see more bloggers who have linked to thier posts. Oh, and everyone be sure to read Christy Lambertson’s post. Stellar writing and thinking. love, R

Today is International Women’s day.

We’re making it the day we raise our voices, the day we use our hammers to dismantle patriarchy and build something that looks more like kingdom. Below you can find links to most of the participating bloggers. I’ll update the list throughout the day. … {read more…}

Tom Sine at Mustard Seed Associates invited me to present at The Church Has Left the Building. It’s an experiential weekend to help folks inspire each other to live more incarnationally/missionally. Like most postmodern/emergent type events, it’s evolving as the planning goes on. My workshop/practice will be on creating sacred space, and rituals that you can do with multi-faith groups of friends. I’ll also be presenting at the pre-event COTA learning party on neo-monasticism and there is an “after” day in Silverdale at a Christian co-housing project. It’s a pretty electic offering and I think it will prove quite interesting. If you are in the Northwest, you might want to check the weekend out.

So I’ve been pondering Lent for a bit. I have a love hate relationship with Lent — which is the 40 days before Easter. On the one hand I resist the tendency of the religious culture I was raised in to see Lent as a nice long period of self-flaggelation and general bad feelings. On the other, I adore the idea of spending 40 days with Jesus — in the desert or otherwise. Added to this is my general love of all things self-improvement oriented and 40 days of any sort of noble goal is very motivating to me.

This year, I’ m trying to think through a couple of things about how we at Monkfish Abbey should celebrate Lent. … {read more…}

I don’t know why I write about my mirgraines so much, other than I’m trying to stay present to everything in my life — not just the good. This is what I wrote this morning:

“I don’t feel good and my head hurst and something is wrong. I don’t know what to do. I just sit in my room with the shades closed and it’s still not dark enough. It’s a perfect Spring-like day and I’m sitting inside a darkened room. It’s ironic, becuause I’m acting just like I did when I was depressed in college — curl up in a ball, hide out in my room, cry. But the wierd thing is, I’m not depressed. My body is defintely not … {read more…}

Stealing Honey from a Swarm of Bees…

It’s been sunny three days in a row now.

The scary thing is, I’m starting to believe it.

In Seattle, where it rains upwards of 40 days in row, you really can’t get your hopes up about one sunny day. It could just be a 24 hours sanity break. But three days in a row? Now that’s temptingly Spring-like. Not to mention the crocuses are randomly blooming in my front lawn. (Remember that part in Generation X, where they throw playing cards on the front lawn and plant a daffodil bulb wherever one lands? I liked that.) Oh, and my neighbor’s ornamental cherry is all rosy…and this morning, at 7:30, it was vaguely … {read more…}

Yes! Magazine recently ran an article on the intriguing and controversial Matthew Fox. The article also links to Fox’s 95 Thesis which he’s affixed to the Wittenburg door. It’s a long list and includes some odd bobs like #94 “Since angels learn exclusively by intuition, when we develop our powers of intuition we can expect to meet angels along the way.” Others rang with me and have made me think. Here’s a sampling to wet your mental whistle.

#33 The term “original wound” better describes the separation humans experience on leaving the womb and entering the world, a world that is often unjust and unwelcoming than does the term “original sin.”

#38 A diversity of interpretation of the Jesus event … {read more…}

A week or so ago I wrote an off-the-top-of-my-head post about the organized church, and my current relationship to it. As is usual with the case of my shitty first drafts (SFD) it wasn’t worded especially careful. And as is usual of my most propheticish moments, it raised some hackles. I don’t intentionally raise hackles, at least not most of the time, but I really don’t mind when they get raised, and I mostly stay out of the fray. There was quite a bit of back-and-forth on the blog…15 or 16 comments, if I remember rightly. Folks do do do love to theologize. I don’t really enjoy that much myself, the theologizing. I like orthodoxy as much as the … {read more…}

Hey Jason C!

Did you guys see that Jason Clark asked me how I thought emergent should proceed in the future? He did, just check it out in the comments below. So nice! Thanks Jase.

I should say too, that I have been invited to be a part of the Emergent planning group. (Thanks Bob Carlton.) I just couldn’t afford the travel…and truthfully, I don’t know how much energy I can/should give to the organization because I know organizing the emergent types out there is not my primary call. I’m listening though, to see if and how I should be inovled as things move foward towards the 07 gathering.

Anyway, I certainly don’t have all the answers, but I have a … {read more…}

Emerging Women You Should Know:
(off the top of my head, in no particular order at 1am)

Claudia Burney
(beautiful black woman with plenty of chutzpha becomes an eastern orthodox convert — who wouldn’t want to read?)

Liz Rios
(sassifrass jones with a good education and a wicked key pad)

Kelly Bean
(alas, she doesn’t have a blog. but she does have a community that she’s been hosting — unpaid, unordained, and unrecoginzed — for 7+ years)

Deborah Lloyd
(mama bear of a church for street youth in portland, plus a big ole’ fat degree from a seminary that doesn’t think women should be ordained — plus great platnium dread locks and grandkids.)

Maggi Dawn http://maggidawn.typepad.com/maggidawn/
(the godmother of bloggers, highly educated british brain with … {read more…}

I get several emails a week from folks wanting to know about the Emergent Church, postmodernity, Monkfish Abbey, and what-the-hell-is-an-Abbess. A while back I got an query from a fellow, Scott Collins, who was working on a paper on “Women and the Emergent Church.” I finally got around to answering the poor guy, who’s email had gotten lost in the shuffle. My delayed answer is probably not going to do him one iota of academic good, but it I did spend quite a bit of time typing it, and it’s not a bad assessment, if I do say so myself.

As regular readers know, I do get tired of debating these things on line, but every once in awhile … {read more…}