The Way of the Turtle

I am doing this Christmas Cabaret. I need an upbeat Christmas song that isn't already being done in the show. I would prefer one that isn't too silly. Also, I have to dress in clothes that are not as masculine as I prefer. I have opted out of the cocktail dress.

Cocktail dress? Let's think about that name for feminine attire ... or let's not ... hmmmmmm

Anyway, I'm singing "O Come O Come Emmanuel" I will do it as upbeat as I can. But the second song. Thoughts, anyone???

I haven't performed in years. I mean... years!! Nervous? Yes. Excited? Yes. I love cabaret. I think it is a wonderful and needed venue. Going to a cabaret has lifted my spirits more times than I can tell you. Sometimes I'm not sure I would have stayed sane without it. Specifically, thank you to Alexandra Billings and Honey West. Sure, there are others but when I really needed to breathe and get balanced, that's where I would go. Sunday night. The Gentry. Chicago.

Tonight this celtic band in South Bend is fitting the bill pretty well. It's been a bad week. They are doing a kind of celtic cabaret. They are playing Trivial Pursuit with the audience. The fact that audience is totally into it is very very cool.

I hope that the cabaret I'm in will help folks forget their troubles for a short time and give them the boost and hope that they need.

I don't know what this is but dang ... I like it.

Upright bass solo - OMFG! I need a cigarette.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance. For all those who have suffered, were tortured, were murdered for their gender identity, I grieve. For the fact that they lived their lives honestly and with integrity, I am humbled and grateful. Will an equal force of love to hate be enough to stop the violence? It is my prayer that it will.

I am hemming and hawing about auditioning for a local Christmas Cabaret. My concern? I might be too queer for this group. The reply?

"... it's cabaret. It doesn't get any queerer than that."

It is past noon and I am still in my jamas and robe. Sure I've been doing some worky kinds of things online, but mostly I'm just enjoying the quiet, my house, and no commitments. This stillness is healing after a whirlwind start to the week. I do love a whirlwind, but I need the balance of the stillness.

My mom used to say, "The best part of vacation is coming home." It took me a long time to appreciate the concept of home. Slowly, I'm getting it.

Thanks, Mom.

I'm trying to figure out how to convert my audio files from .wav to anything that will work to do podcasting. I don't know what I'm doing and now instead of posting a podcast I am venting.

It has been suggested to me that storing my sermons on my audio device and in the "my documents" folder of my computer is less than useful.

Drats!! What to do?

/vent

The other day I was thinking about how to make a little extra money and stay out of office work. I checked out a website for a nearby theatre which is having auditions for their season. Hmmmmm, I thought. It's been awhile, but it might be fun to give it a whirl. I imagined, as I do, what it might be like. I looked at their season and am fond of many of the shows. Then, just as I was seriously considering this as a thing to do, I realized that I would end up having to play the roles of women if I was cast. I can't do it. I just can't do it.

I had a hard time doing it before and I would have an even harder time doing it now. My favourite role was that of Sassafras in Vatzlav by Slamomir Mrozek. I played the character as neither a man nor a woman. It was fun and freeing. I want that kind of opportunity again.

But for now, I am doing a bit of grieving ...

October Devotion - Coming Out to New Life

39Jesus said, 'Take away the stone.' Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, 'Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead for four days.' 40Jesus said to her, 'Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?' 41So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upwards and said, 'Sovereign God, I thank you for having heard me. 42I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.' 43When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' 44The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, 'Unbind him, and let him go.'

In our Gospel lesson, Lazarus has died. His sisters are sure that if only Jesus had arrived earlier he could have saved Lazarus. But death has come. Death has won. Or has it? Jesus weeps and tells the sisters to believe and roll the stone away. He prays and says to the dead man, "Come out." Lazarus appears bound but alive.

What a meaningful story on the heels of a powerful justice event weekend hosted in Chicago by Church Within A Church (CWAC). This event had been plagued all year with uncertainty. Our finances were low, our support tentative, at best. Yet God continually calls us to life. God calls us to come out of our fear and to declare who we are. Even with that awareness, "coming out" is complex and never ending. I recall the Extraordinary Ordination. There was plenty of resistance from "church" leaders, who renounced and rebuked us. Nevertheless we choose life, listening to God's call to "come out". When we decided as a board to embrace anti-racism work we lost support. Yet, bound by the status quo, we did not give up, we could hear Jesus saying, "unbind them... let them go."

October 11th is National Coming Out Day. All of us have coming out stories, but I am so grateful to my gay sisters and brothers for providing the context. "Coming out" is a spiritual act. It embraces the truth of scripture that all are created equal and that God names us, each of us, and loves us. The ritual of "coming out" is a public declaration that says I am a child of God not in spite of who I am, but because of the gift of identity that God has blessed me with. It is an embracing of one's deepest and truest self, without shame and without apology. "Coming out" calls us to new life.

Coming out celebrates and empowers us to witness to our truth and to God's inclusive love. In the book Preaching Justice; A Lesbian Perspective, Christine Marie Smith speaks about claiming her truth. She says, "I knew from the time I was quite young that I was different. The early years were absolute silence, isolation and terror. Given the reality of closets for lesbian and gay people, I have been trying to find my voice, my truth, and my community much of my life. I have spent most of those years afraid: afraid of hurting my family, afraid of losing friends and colleagues, afraid of being attacked, afraid of being fired and afraid of losing my ordination. It isn't just the fear that keeps me from my voice, my truth, my life; it is the constant heavy sense that I am alien, strange, marginal. In the past few years, I no longer have feared losing my job and ordination, but even as I move my life into more public arenas as an out lesbian, anxiety, fear and strangeness persist."

On October 11th, I celebrate, "coming out", with my gay sisters and brothers and say thank you. Thank you for throwing open your closet doors and giving me the opportunity, a straight, black woman, to envision that possibility for my own life. As you have claimed your truth, so have I. As you have found your voice, so have I. As you have claimed your true, authentic self, so have I. The power of "coming out" is personal, spiritual, as well as communal. As one person or group finds the courage to "come out", it models a life-giving behavior, thus giving others' permission to do the same.

Come out! Jesus shouts to Lazarus and to us all. The power of life, the power of love is stronger than the grave, is stronger than the closet. Come out!

In Truth and Justice,

Rev. Vernice Thorn
www.allinclusiveministries.com

Co-Convener
The Church Within A Church Movement

This afternoon I attended Pride in the Park, in South Bend. It was a chilly and slightly rainy afternoon. The band was playing, bingo was being called under the pavilion, there were hotdogs for sale, and about 30 booths. The booths included

Michiana Monologues
Zion United Church of Christ
Teacher's Credit Union
Trumans (a gay bar)
AIDS Ministries/AIDS Assist
Pet Refuge
Organizing For America
Chris Tetirick (massage therapist)
St. Joseph Visiting Nurse’s Association
Jill Morris
Peace of Rainbow Jewelry
Indiana Youth Group

Take a guess which booth I went to first ... well, second actually. I had some friends at the Michiana Monologues booth, but then, I went past the Zion UCC booth and thanked them for being there. It didn't take long before I was being introduced to folks from different booths and just from the community and next thing I know I am saying, "Sure, I'll be involved in organizing the Pride Parade." As of yet, Michiana has not had a pride parade. I was telling them about CCWC's involvement in Chicago's parade. (We don't organize it, we simply march in it.) I was also telling them that CCWC is interested in starting a Midwest Coalition of Welcoming Churches. They seemed to like that idea. I went to the car at one point, got my business cards and began to pass them out.

This is very exciting.

My friend gave me her yogurt maker so that I can more easily make herbal oil infusions. In turn, I worked on her.
I bought a used massage table.
I put up some pictures.
Had lunch and a walk with a friend.

Tomorrow I need to put some plastic on these windows. Brrrr. Tis chilly in the house. I have not turned on the heat though, because the windows are not covered. I may cave if I don't do it tomorrow and the temperature remains cold. I don't do well being cold.

Tomorrow I am also going to put together the healing room and choose songs for Sunday service.

Bit by bit, putting it together.

http://helpbatnha.org/how-can-i-help/
How Can I Help?

There are a number of things that you can do to help the monks and nuns at Bat Nha Monastery:

1. Send a letter expressing your concern to the Vietnamese Embassy or Consulate near you.
2. Sign online petitions, to be sent to the Vietnamese Ambassadors, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the US Senate. Or start a new petition relevant to your own country or state, directed to the government, human rights organisations or the Vietnamese consulate.
3. Sit with your local sangha and send the energy of support and compassion to all those affected by the events in Bao Loc.
4. Write to or email news organizations and human rights groups about this story.

Please share with the community (in the comments) other ways that one can support and help this incident.

http://helpbatnha.org/2009/09/urgent-help-monks-nuns-physically-forced-onto-trucks/

Dear Friends,
Please pray for the monastic brothers and sisters at Bat Nha Monastery right now Sept.27,2009. They are being physically forced to vacate the monastery.
Please inform the public, the news agencies, human rights group, or anyone who can influence this tragedy, especially if they are there right now in Vietnam.
Please intervene in anyway that you can!

LIVE REPORT:
WWW.PHUSAONLINE is giving updated information on the situation at BatNha.

12:20 p.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*they are breaking all the doors and trying to get all the sisters to outside of the building. It continues to rain here.
*Sisters lock themselves inside.
*The mob, led by the police, are moving towards the sisters’ hamlet “May Dau Nui” (Clouds on the Mountain).
*4 taxi are going towards the main gate; can’t tell who’s inside.
12:02 pm (VN time, september 27, 09):
*The monks are still being forced to sit outside in the rain, nothing to cover them. It’s still raining and very cold.
*Traffic police (in uniform) are controlling all the roads leading to Bat Nha Monastery. Police in civilian clothes are also on the scene to observe.
11:23 a.m. ((VN time, September 27, 09):
*A large construction truck is heading towards the monks’ building named, “the Beginner’s Mind.”
*The monks are sitting together in circles under the cold rain.
*The attacking mob continues to curse and yell without stopping.
*Bells, Sutra books, clothings, personal belongings… are in disordered piles under the rain.
11:06 a.m. ((VN time, September 27, 09):
*It’s raining in Bat Nha. The monks have to sit under the cold rain.
*The police is calling for large trucks to come and transport the monks away.
*All roads to the monastery are monitored. Lay friends try to come to help, but they are turned around from afar.
*The number of policemen present has increased. They have occupied all the monastic rooms; gathered all the monks to the field outside.
*The police has forced the monks to carry their backpacks outside and wait for trucks to come transport them away. Don’t know where they will be going.
*It’s still calm in the nuns’ hamlets.
10:50 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*The police have dragged Brothers Phap Hoi and Phap Tu outside (2 elder monks of the monastic community); they are dragging the monks by force like they would to animals.
*One Buddhist lay woman is being chased by the police; she is running and crying, calling out “We are in danger, dear teacher!”
10:30 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
Our communication is having difficulties, but we know that right now:
*The attacking mob has told the Monastic community that they have to leave the monastery within 2 days.
*The monks have been forced to go outside of their dormitories; they stand outside, chanting in the corridor.
*Two monks are in their ceremonial robes doing sitting meditation in front of their room.
*All community and personal belongings of the monks have been thrown outside.
9:45 a.m. (VN time, September 27, 09):
*We are on the telephone with Bat Nha Monastery. The situation at the monastery is quite urgent and life threatening to the monastics.
*At the start of this current crisis, attackers gathered at 9:30am then began to destroy properties to this moment.
*Police in civilian clothes have been present the whole time, but they do nothing to intervene. It seems that they are there to direct the attack, and the attackers have been hired to do so?
*The monks are doing sitting meditation on the 3rd floor of their building, sending energy to the people who are blinded by ignorance, praying to the Bodhisatva of Deep Listening to cool the fire of ignorance in their hearts with the nectar of her compassion.
*We are hearing very loud banging sounds over the phone line.
*They are throwing meditation cushions outside the building.
*There are about 150 people attacking and destroying properties up to the second floor of the monks’ residence.

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Gay and Straight and Bi and Trans
They are precious in God's hand
Jesus loves the little children of the world

As I drove the five miles home from the South Bend train station/airport, the world was dark and wet. The air was still heavy from a rain I did not experience here. The ground and pavement were puddled. It is the Equinox. I was happy to be in the dark. I was happy to wade through the air.

Mondays and Tuesdays are long for me. My commuter train to Chicago leaves at 6:32am. I am returned to the station at 8:45pm. All day I sit in front of a computer and look at fields of data. I correct the data. I analyze the data. I move the data around. I try very hard to not hate the data.

Most weeks I also commute to Chicago, by car, to lead worship at Grace Baptist Church. This was my Sunday off.

I live in a 5 bedroom house in South Bend. One room will be the massage/healing room. Another the art room. Yet another I hope to rent out to folks who need to get away for a day or two. A B&B Flophouse kind of thing. My kitchen is gluten free. Last Wednesday I hosted a sacred circle gathering. Tomorrow, in honor of the Equinox, I will host a drumming and chanting circle. I don't know if more than one other person will join in the circle, but we will prepare ourselves for the beauty of the coming darkness as well as the challenges she presents.

My eyes hurt, they are so tired. But my soul is churning ... I keep thinking of the dark wet night. I think about the Earth, the Goddess, the Womb. I think about my gender identity; my body; the collaboration which I feel in my essence. My soul and body are knit together and they are in a conversation. Sometimes they argue. Sometimes they agree. They are learning to love each other, although they are not separate. But where they meet is dark and wet. It is the fluidity of my gender identity that longs to be released. I do not understand the body shape I have taken ... or been given ... or ... BUT, here I am. And I am not content to live in either/or. No, I am a good post-modernist. I believe in both/and.

My burning eyes have convinced my mind that it is time to shut down for the night. But my soul ... still churns.

Leader: My Children, remember who You are.
All: We are yours, oh Holy Mother.
Leader: My Friends, consider Our journey together.
All: Through so much We have walked together with You, Sacred Friend.
Leader: My Loves, come to Me and be refreshed and cared for.
All: Divine Beloved, as many who are one and as one who are many, We fall into Your beautiful arms.
Leader: Weep and laugh, sing and moan. This is our time.
All: We are here and We give ourselves to this moment.

*****************************

This moment - it's all we really have. It can bring ecstasy or terror. We can bring to it ecstasy or terror. Sometimes we can transcend our circumstances by engaging more fully outside of time or deep within the covering of our soul's comforting and wonderfully creative darkness. But no matter how we live in that moment, it is still that moment. That moment - this moment - is Holy and Sacred.

That feels important to me this week.

Hi folks,
Today my internet was installed. Wow. That was a long time with no connectivity. I know I can never catch up from what I missed, but I at least plan to go forward.

But first, I have amassed 564 unread email messages. That can't be right, can it???

Any minute now I expect to get online at home. Well, any day now. Or maybe within the week?

The move went well. The commute to and from Chicago twice a week for work is challenging, but I think I can do it.

Mostly what I am doing is preparing my house to become a place for healing, gathering, and connecting.

I hope to be back in not too long a time. Until then, at least I have my Blackberry ...