Welcome to my Pulpit (Again!)

THIS POST WAS FIRST ENTERED IN THIS BLOG AS A PAGE; I AM REPUBLISHING IT AS A POST.

SORRY FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE!

Yes, this is a Sermon and I am writing this as if I were speaking to you from a pulpit.

First of all, thank you for reading this; I hope you'll give me the kind of courtesy so many of you have always given my writing -- that you will at least read what I write because I've already earned your respect as an author, political pundit, historian and teacher.

But MOST of all, I hope you will read this to its end because you know I really am your friend -- at least I am the friend of good people, decent people. I am the friend of anyone who needs a friend.

However, I am no friend to anyone who willingly harms others. I will try to reach out to them to stop their hurtful actions and help them heal, but the person who suffers harm will be my first priority.

If you know me at all, you already know that about me.

Now let me introduce you to who else I am:

I'm a newly minted minister; I haven't even been ordained a full year. If I told you I'd just gotten my driver's license this past April, I probably couldn't convince you to move over, give me the wheel, and let me drive you and your family to church in stormy weather.

We all know it takes extreme skill, caution, patience, and wisdom to drive in dangerous weather; it also takes an abundance of experience with a particular kind of bad weather. Someone may have years of driving experience in monsoons but that doesn't mean they will be able to drive with skill in a snow storm.

You get it; you know what I'm talking about -- I'm telling you that as ministers go, I might not be the best bet to do the spiritual driving in terrible weather. However, I'm not a total idiot either -- age has its perks -- which brings me to this: I also wasn't ordained until I was 65 years old.

Therefore, you'd also be correct to deduce I must have been a significant underachiever in the spirituality department.

Taken together, what I'm telling you, is that not only do I not have years of practical experience as a minister, I also can't boast I've led an exemplary life, a life that could inspire anyone, or even a nice long life of religious devotion or intense spirituality.

In fact, I'm not even remotely impressed with organized religion, have very little respect for most clergy (of any and all faiths), and am usually bored stiff in church. Worse, in a few of the churches I've been in, I've been scared shitless. Some of those people terrify me.

And, yes, I swear a lot too.

It's not true that people who swear have a limited vocabulary; at least it's not true about me. I have a helluva' an amazing vocabulary. I just like to use some spicier words for emphasis -- they are the exclamation points, the italicized, embolded fonts of my speaking style. However, I am careful how I use them and to whom. Since I'm assuming whoever reads this is an adult, I'm speaking (err, writing) more freely.

So, if you seek an experienced minister of proven faith who respects organized religion and her fellow clergy and who wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful of it... I'm not the minister for you. The good news is that if you're looking for one of those good folks, you're in luck: they're all over the place.

However, if you're willing to trust that I just might surprise you, that I just might bring something to the table you've never experienced before -- and that I might even offer atheists, agnostics, and all those who say they are secular humanists something as well (maybe only a few laughs) -- then please accept me. Accept me, with my matronly wide hips, salt & pepper hair, salty language, in-your-face style, and many failings (need I insert here "bad Irish temper"?) and give me a chance.

I would dearly love to be there for you -- and have you there for me -- during a period of time that I think we all believe is going to be extremely challenging.

To give you a bit more insight into who I am, let me further explain that when I finally knew I couldn't run away from whatever it was calling me to this, when I realized I absolutely needed to accept that I was being called to serve others -- people of faith and no faith -- as an ordained Interfaith minister, I knew from the getgo I was never going to be your grandparents' idea of a minister. In fact, the church I was raised and educated in, the Roman Catholic Church, wouldn't even afford me the respect necessary to grant ordination because I am a woman (don't be mad about that; it wouldn't have worked out anyway) so I grew up knowing how warm and welcoming a major faith tradition can be to at least 55% of the world's population. I am most certainly not any Christian fundamentalist's idea of a woman of faith, let alone spiritual leader, either -- and there are many, many other Christian denominations and non-Christian faiths that won't accept me in any role of leadership either.

That's fine; I'm not here to change those people. I'm here to serve the people those churches reject; to serve the people who have no faith anymore because of those churches and faiths.

Unquestioning conformity has never been my long suit. Religious orthodoxy has never appealed to me. I chose an "Interfaith" seminary because what I am about is everything outside the box, everything that does not conform to all of the strangulating restrictions, toxic orthodoxies, patriarchy, and absurd prejudices that have for "almost ever" separated people from people and, most of all, separated people from rationality, free will, moral growth, compassion, tolerance, and a desire to ask profound questions about the reasons for their existence -- and permission to live in disbelief without persecution, condemnation, or stigma.

This is not to say I want to spend the rest of my life singing Kumbaya and remonstrating about the need to turn the other cheek at the cost of our own or someone else's right to survival. I will not preach that we must "go high" when evil demonstrates how low it can go. I will never preach that horrors inflicted upon anyone at the hands of others are because "God had a plan." There is no God, any cosmic force, any Spaghetti Monster who ever had a "plan" to allow others to harm you. That is pure and simple theological balderdash.

I don't believe I was called to ministry to push platitudes, feed you placebos or wrap you in shawls of false spiritual security and more suffering. I don't believe any of us are meant to live a life bereft of moral outrage and human action in the face of the suffering of ourselves and others.

In fact, I believe we all, as creatures of a Mother-Father God and All That is Divine and Holy, MUST understand and act upon the moral duties we have to ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth. I know in my very deepest being that this must be so because we are sentient human beings capable of doing so -- if we have the CAPACITY there must be the PURPOSE. It must be this way or nothing makes sense -- WE don't make sense.

Just as nothing occurs in evolutionary biology that is without an adaptive, necessary purpose, we have, as human beings, evolved to have the level of rational thought necessary to discern what is good and just from what is not. We have evolved to this because there is a purpose for it! However, the exercise of that reason, taking full ownership of our own ability to reason and arrive at moral conclusions is a choice.

If this is not true, then we may as well be rocks in a river, the waters of life flowing over us -- for which we have no say and no awareness.

But you know you are not merely a rock in a river. You know this because every cell in your body, even the voices in the darkest places of your soul, tell you so if you will only listen.

I believe I'm especially called to challenge the hell out of myself and anyone else who wants to be challenged and is willing to also challenge me. It may not always be comfortable or safe or feel gratifying, but it's the journey I'm on and I have no idea yet where it may lead me. No doubt, it will always be a work in progress.

At this point, at the beginning of this unexpected journey, I'd like to reach as many people as possible through the power of my writing for as long as that power is still mine and still effective.

I will eventually figure out how to set up more creative ways to reach out, and may use videos. Your ideas and suggestions are welcome.

As-Salaam-Alaikum, Shalom, Namaste and Peace be with You:
~Rev Mo