Category: General

I recently attended a play (masked but in person – hooray!), Minor Character, subtitled “Six Translations of Uncle Vanya at the Same Time”.  To say it was raucous would be an understatement. The gentle, poignant Chekhov play I had always known suddenly turned into circus, loud, brash, and very much in-your-face in its presentation of…
Read more

As you read this, international leaders, climate experts and activists are coming together at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP26, in Glasgow, Scotland to determine where we are now, and what we need to do in the future, globally, to protect the earth from past, present, and future harm from fossil fuel emissions. I…
Read more

1 In our Church, we who are not male gendered persist in trying to get our messages through to hierarchical powers. Like the people who never acknowledge or reply to our phone or text messages, however, they “ghost” us. They vanish, and they banish us. Andrea Cohen in her poem Ghosting tells us just how…
Read more

Sometimes I do wonder at the contradictions. How do we make sense of it all?  Do women need to be encouraged to lead? I can’t find a text – maybe I don’t want to – of a welcome Pope Francis sent to the Women’s Forum G-20 at their meeting before the global summit. It was…
Read more

Nineteen terrorists gave Americans a new Holy Day of remembrance twenty years ago today. Perhaps the many observances are too much for you; no need to read this one, in that case. Every program I hear on the radio asks the commentators where they were that morning, so I’ll ask you to think of your…
Read more

Maybe what we need in our fraying, graying, grating old Church is a more appealing and enticing overhaul, one that energizes young people, that engages conservatives as well as progressives, that challenges everyone of every race and  gender to preserve the old by infusing it with the new. I’m talking about honoring the dynamics and…
Read more

On July 4 of this year I marched in an Independence Day parade in a small town in northern Michigan. Main Street (near a gorgeous lake) was impressively packed with young and old, flourishing flags and clamorously cheering. Unfortunately, however, those cheers were not extended quite so enthusiastically to us! I was marching with a…
Read more

“And, historically, that’s actually a precondition for women ascending to power. Can they seize the moment?”  This headline on Alexis Grenell’s column in the print edition of The Nation attracted my attention immediately. She quotes New York State Senator Allesandra Biaggi: “We’ve got to move on past talking about the bad behavior of below-average men.”…
Read more

[Editor’s Note: While our blogger Ellie is away on a much-deserved vacation, we’ll be hearing from some other voices on Tuesdays. Today, in honor of Pride Month, is the Pride poem written by our staff member, Katie!]

It is official. It is now ‘codified’ into church law: “A person who attempts to confer a sacred order on a woman, and the woman who attempts to receive the sacred order,” will receive automatic excommunication.  Most of the news services used variations on these words: “While the church has for centuries banned women from…
Read more