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August 20, 2006
Ann-Mary MacLeod -
Ministerial Candidate
Discernment:
Our Bodies, and Christ’s, as guides
This is a very
bittersweet day for me. I am filled with such gratitude for this congregation. My
sermon today will be not be based on any well-studied myths; it is mostly a reflection
of my own life and calling and my chance to thank you for the part you have played
in my formation.
A few of you
know that I think I first heard my call when I was four years old. I don’t think
it would be too hard for any of you to imagine me as a naughty little girl. I’m
sure I would have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or some kind of squirmy child
disorder. I was born into a devout Roman Catholic family nearly a decade before
Vatican II. This meant, that other than the scripture readings, the whole Mass was
in mumbo gumbo to my toddler ears, and when the priest worked his magic on the altar
it was hidden; but I was a savvy four year old and it only took me a Sunday or two
to realize to act out when they were done reading the stories in English. If I started
asking enough questions loud enough, my father would take my little hand in his
huge one and march me off to the cry room. That turned out to be better than front
row seats. The cry room was on the left side of the sanctuary, it was sound proof
so I could keep asking questions and making editorial comments, and it had a huge
plate glass window. From the cry room, I could watch everything the priest did.
Some Sundays I felt sorry for him. He was so somber and sad and I thought it must
be terribly boring to have to do the same thing week after week, so I would try
my best to entertain him. I did this by standing in front of the window and imitating
how my father shaved in the morning all without letting my father see what I was
doing. But one Sunday I caused the priest to start laughing and after that my father
watched me like a hawk. So I soon settled into a deep reverie. Sunday after
Sunday, I too, became mesmerized by the venerated host and the uplifted chalice.
One day I announced to my father that I would be a priest when I grew up. His response
suggested that was unlikely.
When I
was in first or second grade and attending Catechism, the nun, who drove all the
way up from Santa Fe to Los Alamos to teach us, asked us to draw pictures of what
we wanted to be when we grew up. I drew a stick figure with breasts and a
halo. She asked me what it depicted and I said a “saint”. She informed me that I
couldn’t choose to be a saint and asked if I’d like to be a nun instead. My “no”
was emphatic. The thought of wearing a brown dress the rest of my life frightened
me. But the fact was, in my little heart of hearts, I did want to be a saint.
Now my sister often accuses me of being a princess. That might have something
to do with the fact that I’m ten years younger than my next sibling and did get
a bit spoiled. But have any of you seen the movie “Millionaire” about the Irish
boy who finds all the money that got dumped off a train just days before the currency
was changing to Euros? Do you remember the halos in that movie? They
look a little bit like hovering flying saucers. I really don’t want a tiara; I want
one of those halos. I think it would be completely apropos for someone born in Roswell.
At four I had
just begun to embody the last words of today’s psalm:
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom;
all who follow his precepts have good understanding.
To him belongs eternal praise. (Psalm 111:10)
I felt fear in the sense of awe. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the idea of
transubstantiation; it still looked like bread and wine to me, but I knew those
moments when the priest’s body bent in near ecstasy over the elements were profound.
It induced a deep awe in me and a longing to know God.
I didn’t hear
a call to ministry again until I was in my thirties. I had started off to college
at eighteen and detoured into motherhood by the time I was twenty. To be pregnant
at 20 in my family was highly unfashionable. To be pregnant and unwed was unfathomable.
I don’t for one minute regret marrying the father of my children. I’d picked him
to be the father of my eldest daughter, Rose, and once we were married I would have
just as soon had eight little girls. In fact, I picked the name of our eighth
daughter just after our third one was born, Octavia; he suggest we get a girl dog
and let her have puppies and I could name the seventh puppy that! My shopping list
for a mate was pretty short: intelligent, Catholic, and from a family that was still
intact. It never dawned on me that perhaps I should like the fellow as well. I had
not liked him. Somewhere I still have the chemistry notebook in which I made scathing
observations of him in the margins. I was only a little bit wise in those days!
I had not had to study at all in high school. I usually sat in the back of the classrooms
and stealthily did my homework while the teachers lectured so when three p.m. came
around I could peel out of the parking lot and head to the mountains for a hike
or home to sew, cook or read. When I got to college without any study habits and
was challenged, I simply didn’t know what to do. My nubile body suggested I try
motherhood. It suited me beautifully.
But by my late
twenties I was writing desperate poems of boredom and was ready to re-pursue my
original dream of being a doctor. I needed to finish my Bachelor’s degree first.
My then husband who is now Jewish lad left the Roman Catholic Church and become
an Episcopalian. Grateful that he had not chosen Judaism at that point, I followed
him across town. When I was thirty we moved across the state to the goober capital
of the world, Portales, NM. He had just finished law school and gotten a job as
an assistant D. A. There was a university there so I could finish my last year of
college. The Episcopal Church was tiny and it was served by a circuit riding Canon
XIII priest. I thought I’d finally gotten it straight: I’d be a mother, always and
forever, I’d become a doctor and then a Canon XIII priest and my life would be complete.
My truly ever
faithful and rock steady husband had an early mid-life crisis and left me for another
woman; my plans changed. But the thing that was rock steady by then was my belief
in and my relationship to God. For one thing I had discovered the twelve steps of
Alcoholics Anonymous. As I’ve shared in previous sermons, by the grace of God I
am not an alcoholic or other addict, but I was certainly affected by the family
disease. A long the way I’d taken a job as a nurse’s aid in a state run alcohol
treatment facility in downtown Albuquerque, adjacent to the city jail. I’d say my
street ministry started there. Anyway I stole a copy of the “Grapevine” and hung
the twelve steps in my closet, thus making me a closet twelve stepper. The eleventh
step, “Sought through prayer and meditation to increase our conscious contact with
God seeking only knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that
out”, had taught me to pray along the lines of Solomon. To quote the Beetles, “I
don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love”, but I did ache to serve
God. When we’re not looking, God does some pretty interesting things. Neither medicine
nor ministry lay directly before me.
But my body did
give me very clear signals of what was next. All kinds of neurons fired when I was
in the presence of my physics professor and the hair on my neck stood up when I
read The Mind, the companion book to the PBS series by the same name. Before
I’d said yes to any of it, I was married to my professor and living in St. Louis
doing neuroscience research at Washington University Medical School. This would
be as close to medicine as I ever got unless you want to count my years apprenticed
as a lay mid-wife in New Mexico.
It was quite
a few years before I again heard the call. It’s been a long, slow process, but my
body has been one of the best guides I’ve had when I stopped to listen to it. And
we do have wisdom as children. Those were awe-filled moments when I was four and
watched the priest say words that were just slightly harder to understand than the
ones we heard in the gospel this morning. What does it mean to eat living flesh
and drink blood? Two thousand years ago there were more ritual sacrifices than we
are used to today. The words almost certainly had a different meaning to the original
Christians hearing them. To me the words mean eternal life. But what does that mean?
Well, just as I asked the children this morning, what does happen when we break
bread and pass the cup? Isn’t there a deep sense of being in the eternal flow of
life? Isn’t this the moment among all others, set aside, filled with awe and majesty,
that makes us tremble and gives us fear? A moment when we do come to know our
lives as eternal, the moment when we’re reminded yet again of how deeply God
loves us; so deeply that God’s beloved son gave up his body and spilled his blood
that we might know this truth?
Brothers and
sisters we are all called. Each with our own bodies, each in our own way, to be
fed by God, to enter God’s eternal stream of love and drink until we are filled.
I think you from
the bottom of my ten and a half narrow feet to the top of my six foot frame, from
the depth of my soul to my flights of imagination, that you have called me forth
from the nest of my trepidation and uncertainty; that you have let me start to feel
the spirit under my wings. I’m not leaving this congregation. No matter where I
venture, where I’m sent, where God calls me, I will always carry you in my heart.
Please join me
in saying, “so be it”; please join me in saying, “Amen.
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