Living Gospel Inclusivity and Empowerment Now
Let us give thanks for our mothers, grandmothers, aunts and all this have nurtured us.
I give thanks today for my mother, Bridie Meehan. Her love of family, kindness to those in need and deep faith continues to inspire, encourage me everyday.
This song is for the world’s mothers
Medals for Mothers by Rhonda Vincent
https://youtu.be/5rWpoACrqBc
Greeting: Welcome to this circle of remembrance to celebrate the life of Jean. Just as a voice resounds with echoes and a stone jettisoned into a pond creates ripples in the water, so we know that Jean’s love and wisdom continues in echoes and lasting ripples. We trust that the sacred spark of life created in Jean, her Divine essence of unique gifts, obvious to us while she was physically with us, will not diminish with time, nor fade from the heavenly universe that is now her home. Amen.
Psalm 23: Let us pray:
O my Beloved,
You are my shepherd,
I shall not want;
You bring me to green pastures for rest
And lead me beside still waters
Renewing my spirit;
You restore my soul.
You lead me in the path of goodness
To follow Love’s way.
Even though I walk through the
Valley of the shadow and of death,
I am not afraid;
For You are ever with me;
Your rod and your staff
They guide me,
They give me strength and comfort.
You prepare a table before me
In the presence of all my fears;
You bless me with oil, my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow me
All the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the heart of the Beloved forever.
Amen.(Translation by Nan Merrill, Praying the Psalms
Gospel: John 14:1-3
Don’t let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God.
In God’s house there are many dwelling places.
Otherwise, how could I have told you that I was going to prepare a place for you?
I am indeed going to prepare a place for you.
And then I will come back to take you, that where I am, there you may be as well.
Tribute to Jean Loving God, we now remember the blessings that Jean brought to us.
You are invited to share a thought, prayer, poem or brief story about Jean as we grieve her loss and celebrate her life.
Farewell Prayer:
Jean,
The hand of God holds you,
The peace of God enfolds you,
The love that dreamed and formed you surrounds you.
The light of God beside you, above, beneath, inside you,
The light that shines guided you home into the loving arms of God.
(Adapted from The Hand of God Shall Hold You by Marty Haugen)
Closing Blessing: Let us extend our hands in blessing:
Jean,
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May you be held in the palm of God’s hand. (Irish Blessing)
Concluding Song: Go in beauty by Robert Gas’s
from her book- Leaving Church
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| Women priests and our community in Sarasota and the Upper Room We are modem-day happy heretics! |
“Where Mother Church is concerned, those who stray furthest not only forfeit her protection; they may also be shunned as heretics by those who stay home.
I have Elaine Pagels to thank for the revelation that the word heresy comes from the Greek word for “choice.”
Early on, before the Christian church had a solid center, a wide variety of people who all called themselves Christian understood the Christ in a wide variety of ways. There were the Ebionites, who understood him as a thoroughgoing Jew. There were the Arians, who understood him as an exemplary human being, and the Docetists, who understood him as God in human disguise. For almost three centuries, these choices existed in wild disarray.
Then the emperor Constantine, in his imperial wisdom, understood that a faith with no center would never anchor his crumbling empire. So he called all the bishops together, fed them lunch, and asked them to say something definitive about the nature of God in Christ. He asked them to sort through the choices and agree on one that the Christian church could go forward with. This required many more lunches and some theological bloodletting as well; but, when the bishops had finished crafting a central confession of Christian faith, those who did not choose this option became known as heretics.
In my closet I have a T-shirt with many of their names on it, which I wore to bed while I was sleeping in the wilderness: Matthew Fox, Hans Küng, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Luther, Menno Simons, Meister Eckhart, Joan of Arc, Francis of Assisi, Hildegard of Bingen, Galileo, Copernicus, Peter Abelard, John Scotus Erigena, Tertullian, Origen, Jesus. All of these people made unauthorized choices in their love of God. They saw things they were not supposed to see or said things they were not supposed to say.
They wondered about things they were not supposed to wonder about, and when Mother Church told them to stop they did not obey her. Some of them died for their disobedience while others were locked in their rooms. Still others were sent out of the house and told to never come back. Many of them are spiritual heroes now. At least one of them is revered as the Son of God, but none of them got where they were going without passing through the wilderness first.
Given their amazing comebacks, might it be time for people of good faith to allow that God’s map is vast, with room on it for both a center and an edge? While the center may be the place where the stories of the faith are preserved, the edge is the place where the best of them happened.”
