“There are no women on my theology bookshelf…”

Last year on Twitter, someone wrote to me “there are no women on my theology bookshelf. Who should I read?”. I followed up with a blog list, and was pleased to discover that without even looking up from my screen I could easily think of well over a hundred female theologians, ecclesiastical historians, biblical scholars, sociologists of religion, and others who figure on the theological landscape. More names appeared when I actually looked at my own bookshelf.

Replies flooded in through the comments, adding many more names of women authors – both academic and devotional, theoretical and practical, in every area of the theological landscape. Now this has become something of a go-to resource – so, incomplete though it is, here it is again, still being updated from time to time with names added from the comments section.

This list was not carefully compiled, it started simply as a ‘brain dump’ of everyone I could think of in a first shot, then with a second round of additions. Of course, since then I’ve thought of many more who were omissions to my original list, but rather than make this blog a lifelong project, I am collecting all the additions –including those suggested by you in the comments — to create a more comprehensive list for use as a bibliographical resource. More news on that soon – watch this space!

When people ask about women theologians, the subtext is often “I need to read about ‘women’s issues‘ in theology so I need a female author”. But women’s voices in theology are not necessarily writing on “women’s issues” per se, they are simply writing theology. Certainly their experience of theology will be colored by the fact they are a woman. But there is something insidious about assuming that women are there to add ‘women’s issues’ to what is otherwise neutral theology. It implies that theology written by men (mostly white men, incidentally) is neutral theology, while women add on-the-side issues that are not central. But in fact, no one gives you neutral theology. Barth gives you male, Swiss, post-war, post-liberal theology – strongly inflected by his historical setting and personal circumstances. Rahner gives you the perspective of a 20th century, German, male, celibate, catholic priest, wrestling with language after Wittgenstein. Hauwerwas gives you white, American, Protestant theology; James Cone gives you black, American, Protestant theology – it’s all theology, but every one of them writes in a way nuanced by their particular setting. There is no such thing as neutral theology. There is theology done by people who may be male, female, or non-binary; by people who may be white, black or Latinx, people in North or South America, Antarctica, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, by people who may be disabled or not, Western or not, poor or rich. And theology by women is not done just for women, nor is it only about women; neither should it be treated as a secondary tier of theology. It’s theology for everyone, done by women.

As I set out on my PhD studies a few years ago, with my first degree behind me, I began to get calls from publishers asking me to write about women in theology, feminist theology, what is it like to be a woman and a theologian. I took these very flattering letters along to my supervisor, herself a seasoned writer and renowned theologian. “You have a choice,” she said. “You can write about women’s issues as they relate to theology, and that is a fine thing to do. Or you can just carry on doing theology in your area of interest. But you can’t do both.”
“Why not?” I asked.
I never forgot her reply: “I’ve seen so many women start out with such
promise,” she said. “Then they are asked to write about being a woman, about being a feminist, and all that stuff. They spend so much time on that, their real area of interest is swamped, and then they don’t do so well on their first call. Then guess what happens? – men, behind closed doors, say to one another – ‘told you so! women can’t cut it in theology!’ So you choose: read Coleridge, or read feminist theory; do one well, but don’t do both of them badly. Whatever area of interest you choose, you are being a feminist anyway.”

There are so many women with interesting things to say, some writing about feminism in particular, but many more simply writing about areas of theology that used to be thought of as a male preserve – or, the earlier you go, writing theology against the culture that denied them access to what was assumed to be a male preserve. This list names some of them. It is very far from a complete list, as I am jotting these down off the top of my head – but the fact that I can come up with a list of more than a hundred without even looking at my bookshelf is evidence enough that there are plenty of places to go if you realize there are “no women on your bookshelf”. My categories are not perfect – and some of these writers could appear in two or three categories, but such is the impossibility of lists. I’ve read a lot of books, but I haven’t read everything in every field so there will, of course, be many omissions – if someone’s name isn’t here it is due to my ignorance or forgetfulness, not a reflection on their work! Please do add your recommendations in the comments – Note – this is about ‘women on your bookshelf‘ – a bibliography resource rather than a hagiography of amazing women, of whom there are many, and that could be another post all of its own!

ancient voices 
Hildegaard of Bingen (12th Century, German)
Héloïse (Heloise, Héloyse, Helouisa, Eloise, among other spellings) – famed for letters between her and Peter Abelard 12th Century (see also a number of women who have written about them)
Mechthild (Mechtild/Matilda) of Magdeburg (c. 1207 – c. 1282/1294)
Clare of Assisi (13th century Italian)
Julian of Norwich (14th century English mystic) – also note the excellent Frances Beer who writes about her
Margery Kempe
Catherine of Siena (14th Century Italian)
Theresa of Avila (16th century Spanish)

19th and early 20th century 
Katharine Bushnell
Phoebe Palmer (1807 – 1874, American)
Catherine Mumford Booth (19th century English)
Jessie Penn Lewis (1861–1927, Welsh) 
Simone Weil (1909 –1943, French)  
Charlotte von Kirschbaum (1899-1975,  German)
Evelyn Underhill (1875 –194, English)

biblical studies
Margaret Barker
Jo Bailey-Wells
Lynn Cohick  (Philippians, Ephesians)
Adela Yarbro Collins
Ellen Davis
Katharine Dell
Michal Beth Dinkler
Mary Douglas
Wil Gafney
Beverly Gaventa
Deirdre Good – biblical studies
Paula Gooder
A. Katherine Grieb – Romans
Judith Gundry Paul and Perseverance: Staying in and Falling Away, 1990
Jane Heath
Morna Hooker
Denise Dombkowski Hopkins – Hebrew Bible
Catherine Kroeger – Biblical studies
Dorothy Lee (Transfiguration, 2004)
Judith Lieu
Lucy Peppiatt
Pheme Perkins
Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza
Carolyn J. Sharp
Francesca Stavrakopoulou
Elsa Tamaz
Phylis Trible
Gale A. Yee, Hebrew Bible

early christianity (AKA patristics)
Pamela Bright – on Tychonius, Augustine
Roberta Bondi (To Pray and to Love; To Love as God Loves, and other titles)
Virginia Burrus
Liz Clark
Kate Cooper
Nicola Denzey
Susanna Elm
Carolyn (Cally) Hammond
Meira Kensky (biblical studies/early christianity – see “Trying Man, Trying God: The Divine Courtroom in Early Jewish and Christian Literature”)
Morwenna Ludlow
Patricia Cox Miller
Elaine Pagels
Sara Parvis
Karen Torjesen
Christine Trevett — Late Antique religion (also 17th-century sectarianism)
Frances Young
Susan Wood

early christian art and culture 
Felicity Harley-McGowan
Susan Ashbrook Harvey

reformation
Julie Canlis (writes on Calvin)
Christine Helmer (16th-C religion, Reformation, Schleiermacher, Luther, philosophy of religion, constructive and systematic theology)
Charlotte Methuen
Jeannine Olson – Reformation history
Susan Schreiner (Calvin Scholar)

philosophical/systematic/dogmatic/historical theology
Marilyn McCord Adams
Lorraine Cavanagh
Sarah Coakley
M. Shawn Copland
(yours truly) Maggi Dawn
Grace Jantzen
Elizabeth Johnson
Karen Kilby
Renate Kobler
Catherine Mowry LaCugna
Sallie McFague (also in ethics)
Janice McRandal (see Christian Doctrine and the Grammar of Difference)
Sara Maitland – (my favourite: A Big-Enough God: Artful Theology, 1994)
Margaret Miles (history of theology)
Nancey Murphy
Catherine Pickstock
Amy Plantinga Pauw
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Letty Russell
Marika Rose
Tracey Rowland
Anna Rowlands – Catholic theology
Sandra M. Schneiders
Suzanne Selinger
Kate Sonderegger
Janet Soskice
Kathryn Tanner
Cathy Thomson https://www.sbc.edu.au/faculty-members/profiles/the-revd-dr-cathy-thomson/
Heather Thomson
Susannah Ticciati (apophatic theology, Barth, Augustine)
Angela Tilby
Medi Ann Volpe
Frances Ward
Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendell
Anna Williams

theological memoir (strong in theological content but doubly interesting for their literary form)
Karen Armstrong
Nadia Bolz-Weber
Dorothy Day
Anne Lamott
Rachel Mann – Dazzling Darkness
Chine Mbubaegbu Am I Beautiful
Kathleen Norris
Katherine Jefferts Schori
Lauren Winner

theology, literature and the arts (including novels, poetry and literary critique of notable theological content)
Gillian Boughton – Literature and Christianity
Ruth Etchells (a pioneer in Literature and Theology)
Kathy Galloway (would also figure in systematics) 
Mary Karr Sinners Welcome 
Sarah Miles – Take this Bread
Flannery O’Connor
Marilynne Robinson – Gilead, Home
Dorothy L. Sayers – The Mind of the Maker, Creed and Chaos

ecclesiastical history
Caroline Walker Bynum (medieval history and theology)
Rona Johnston Gordon
Judith Herrin
Frances Knight
Judith Maltby
Jessica Martin
Jane Shaw
Miranda Threlfall-Holmes Monks and Markets: Durham Cathedral Priory 1460-1520
Hannah Thomas – early modern English Catholicism
Christine Trevett — 17th-century sectarianism (also Late Antique religion)
Megan Williams

sociology of religion/religious studies
Kristin Aune
Eileen Barker
Grace Davie
Penny Edgell
Sally Gallagher
Slavica Jakelic
Bernice Martin
Sarah Jane Page
Laurel Schneider
Sonya Sharma
Linda Woodhead

asian christianity and theology
Chloe Starr
Melba Padilla Maggay
Violeta T. Bautista
Pui-Lan Kwok – postcolonial theology

liturgy, worship, musicology
Kimberley Belcher
Teresa Berger
Marva Dawn (no relation!)
Siobhan Garrigan
Maeve Louise Heaney
Monique Ingalls
Janet Morley — All Desires Known
Gail Ramshaw
Tanya Riches
Melanie Ross The Serious Business of Worship (ed., 2010)
Nicola Slee

ethics/political theology
Susannah Cornwall (theological ethics, sexuality)
Keri Day
Kelly Brown Douglas (Sexuality and the Black Church)
Margaret Farley
Carrie Pemberton Ford
Jane Foulcher http://readingreligion.org/books/reclaiming-humility/
Amy Laura Hall (also writes on Kierkegaard)
Melanie Harris
Jennifer Herdt
Ann Morisy
Rachel Muers
Esther Reed
Anna Rowlands
Emilie Townes
Deanna Thompson (Lutheran, feminist religion)
Ruth Valerio
Traci. C. West

faith and media
Heidi A. Campbell
Pauline Hope Cheong
Olive Fleming Drane
Angela Gorrell — Always On (2019)
Bex Lewis
Pam Smith (@revpamsmith)
Rachel Wagner

preaching/homiletics
Barbara Brown-Taylor
Kate Bruce – Igniting the Heart: Preaching and Imagination
Anna Carter Florence
Susan Durber
Fleming Rutledge
Nora Tubbs Tisdale

devotional writing and pastoral/applied/practical theology (including education, youth) (you’re right, this category needs dividing up! watch this space …)
Dorothy Bass
Christina Baxter
Charisse Barron
Zoe Bennett
Elizabeth Caldwell
Joan Chittister
Katie Cross (Practical Theology)
Becca Dean — Be, Live, Pray
Rachel Held Evans
Barbara Glasson, A spirituality of survival
Elaine Graham (Practical Theology)
Janet Henderson
Vanessa Herrick
Jane Keiller
Anne Kitch
Joyce Mercer (Practical Theology)
Bonnie Miller-McLemore
Mary Kate Morse
Mary Clark Moschella (Practical Theology)
Kathleen Norris
Evelyn L. Parker
Elaine Ramshaw, Ritual and Pastoral Care
Janet K. Ruffing
Margaret Silf
Rosie Ward, Growing Women Leaders, nurturing women’s leadership in the Church
Lucy Winkett
Margaret Whipp
Almeda M. Wright
Karen Marie Yust

feminist/liberation/womanist/queer theology
Marcella Althaus-Reid
Ann Loades (see – Feminist Theology: A Reader)
Mary Daly
Ruth M. B. Gouldbourne
Jacquelyn Grant: White women’s Christ, Black Women’s Jesus was the first? (or among the first?) womanist book, and a notable corrective to some aspects of feminist theology
Daphne Hampson
Elaine Kaye (with Janet Lees & Kirsty Thorpe – Daughters of Dissent)
Janet Lees
Serene Jones
Eboni Marshall-Turman (Toward a Womanist Ethic of Incarnation…)
Mercy Amba Oduyoye Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (1995)
Julie Faith Parker
Judith Plaskow
Rosemary Radford Ruether
Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza
Elaine Storkey (her What’s Right with Feminism is a classic intro)
Kirsty Thorpe
Linn Tonstad
Renita Weems (also in biblical studies)

The ‘F’ word . . .

Forgiving is the hardest thing to do.

Forgiving doesn’t trivialise an offence – as if to say, “It doesn’t matter – I forgive you.” It does matter. If it didn’t matter, there would be nothing to forgive.

Forgiving isn’t about deserving. If someone has offended you enough that forgiving them is a challenge or even an impossibility, then they don’t ‘deserve’ forgiveness. They may need it, want it, ask for it, or they may not even care about it, but no-one deserves it.

Forgiving doesn’t come naturally. Natural responses to offense would be to hit back, or to withdraw and hold a grudge, or to find a surreptitious means of hurting in return. Some people are more readily forgiving than others, but find an offence deep enough, and you’ll find that there is a point at which it doesn’t come naturally.

Forgiving isn’t about trading. ‘I’ll forgive you if you pay’ never quite works. There is restitution, of course – and if the offending party is prepared to do whatever is possible to repair an offence, then forgiveness may flow more easily. But for the offended party, there is always a level at which some cost is borne. If it was possible for the offense to be paid for completely, there would be nothing left to forgive.

Forgiving isn’t about equalising. Sometimes people will only say they are sorry if you somehow can contrive to admit that it was at least half your fault. ‘I’ll say I’m sorry if you say you are sorry too’ ultimately denies that the offending party is responsible.

And forgiving doesn’t turn the clock back – not completely. It may mean that you choose not to take revenge, not to bear a grudge, not to demand payback. But it doesn’t mean you pretend it never happened.

Why forgive, then, if it costs so much?

Forgiving is about releasing chains that tie our feet to the floor.

The offender is released – to some extent – by being forgiven. Often not scot-free, because forgiving doesn’t mean pretending something never happened. Forgiving a relative triviality might mean a total repair to relationship, but there are circumstances where even though forgiveness is offered, the offender still has to live with conscience or consequence. Not all relationships can be completely repaired, and the injury and memory of the past can’t be wiped clean even if the sting is removed. 

But the offended party is released, as well as the offender, by forgiving. Carrying a grudge, a burden of anger, creates lonely souls. Unresolved, it makes some people explosive, and others depressed, and its corrosive effect produces points of isolation.

And further, forgiving draws a line under the offence, so that you don’t spread bitterness to those around you, or to the next generation. If you have unresolved grief, bitterness, resentment, it’s almost impossible not to hand it on to those around you. So it is, in a sense, a duty of care to the world to move towards forgiveness, for it stops the spread of the disease. This is true even if you are the offended party. Not to take the steps you can towards forgiveness (and sometimes it takes time and a lot of repeated baby steps to get there) is to create a further offence to others out of the one that was dealt to you. 

Forgiving a deeply felt offence really doesn’t happen in an instant. Perhaps that is especially so if it changed the whole course of your life – although curiously it seems that sometimes people find relatively trivial offences harder to forgive than ones of gargantuan proportions. Whatever the significance of the offence, though, if it seems ‘unforgivable’, you have to live with a repeating cycle of forgiveness – coming back to that decision every single day, until eventually it wears a deeper groove in your soul than the anger and hurt and grief.  That is a tough call. But what’s the alternative? It’s like choosing between which of two creatures you will feed. Feed the doves, and sooner or later their peaceful cooing will float through your window. Feed the wolves, and eventually they will eat you too. 

Mothering Sunday or Mothers’ Day? – The fourth Sunday in Lent

While Jesus was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’
Matthew 12: 46-50

In sixteenth century Britain the fourth Sunday of Lent was called Refreshment Sunday. All the Lent rules were relaxed, and the Church required people to return to their ‘mother’ church or cathedral for that day’s service. The day became known as Mothering Sunday, not through association with mothers, but because of the journey made to the ‘mother’ church. In an age when children as young as ten left home to take up work or apprenticeships elsewhere, this was often the only day in the whole year when families would be reunited. By the seventeenth century it had become a public holiday, when servants and apprentices were given the day off so that they could fulfill their duties to the Church. They often stopped to pick flowers along the way, and some brought with them a special cake, made from a fine wheat flour called simila, which has evolved into the Simnel Cake, decorated with eleven balls of marzipan representing eleven of the twelve disciples (excluding Judas Iscariot). The tradition of keeping “Mothering Sunday” was strengthened in the nineteenth century when those in domestic service were allowed to return to their own communities, as they would not be at home for Easter. 

The different threads of the history of the fourth Sunday in Lent give us a way to revisit what has become something of a liturgical anomaly. Over the past few decades, Mothering Sunday has gradually been recast as Mothers’ Day, a move that has grown more out of consumerism than theology, as big business encourages or invents the institution of days to celebrate not just mothers, but fathers, grandparents, teachers, and so on – not to draw the community together, but so that they can sell you more stuff. Turning Mothering Sunday into Mothers’ Day has almost completely eclipsed the original meaning of the day. An example is the current Church of England liturgy for the day which includes prayers of thanks for motherhood, and a pause for flowers to be distributed to mothers. 

While, on the surface, it seems a nice idea to spend a whole Sunday celebrating mothers, it has a complicated flip-side. Why only mothers? Why not fathers, grandparents, children, aunts and uncles, siblings, single people, childless people, and more? The romanticisation of the mother-child relationship is full of fraught overtones: what does it say to women who are not mothers? Are we suggesting that their contribution to the world is somehow less valuable, less worth a celebratory day? The new focus on Mothers’ Day comes with barbs for those who are childless but not by choice, for those who are infertile, who have suffered miscarriages, for women whose children have died or are estranged, or for single or widowed fathers. 

Some years ago I suffered an early miscarriage and, given the brevity of the experience, was almost surprised to find that while the world continued to turn unawares, I was quite washed away with grief. One of my closest friends at the time was a woman older than me who had longed for children but never been able to have any herself. Rather than talking interminably about my situation, she simply checked up on me regularly to make sure that I was eating and sleeping properly, getting out and about, and not disappearing into my own grief.

After a few weeks, Mothering Sunday loomed on the horizon. I began to tell myself that I would be fine by then, how I would think happy thoughts and get through the services without a worry. Then my friend called.  ‘I’ve booked a cottage in the country,” she announced. “Inform your church you are taking the weekend off. You need to come away with us. We will not spend a single moment thinking about mothers and children; we will have a mid-Lent feast that focuses on the family of the Church. That’s you and me, kid.’

She was so right. The last thing I (and the six other men and women she had invited away for the weekend) needed was to dwell on our raw and recent griefs, and have them aggravated by children with bunches of flowers and the vaguely implied message that ‘real’ women are mothers. Instead, we cooked and talked, laughed and sang, prayed and gave thanks for community, and friendship, and life in all its fullness. I came home at the end of the weekend with hope reborn that life would go on.  

Jesus’ words concerning his mother and family are among his “hard sayings” – they sound rude and lacking in compassion, and hard to reconcile with the Jesus who seems to care about everyone everywhere. Yet maybe, rather than rejecting his own mother and brothers, he is calling us to broaden our vision of community, so that we can encompass those who cannot retreat to tight-knit family units of their own. 

I think it would be worth putting serious thought into reshaping today’s feast so that family life is placed firmly within the wider context of the community of Mother Church. We may fear an outcry if we shifted the focus of this mid-Lent feast away from the idea of Mother’s Day, but our concept of family life will be sad and inadequate if we allow it to be constructed for us by advertising campaigns and the greeting card industry. If, like Jesus, we have the courage to embrace a much wider concept of community than the nuclear family, then we too might find that we don’t have to accept our culture’s narrow and exclusive myths about families. 

from  Giving it Up: Daily Bible Readings from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day  

Lockdown Lent 10: a woman against pandemics

Saint Walburga (c.710 – 779) was the daughter of Saint Richard the King, and her brothers were Saints Willibald and Winebald. She went to Wimborne monastery, in Dorset, SW England, to study under Saint Tatta, and later became a nun there.

In 748 she went with her brothers and a couple of friends on a mission to what is now Germany, and healed many people. This healing ability reportedly continued even after her death, as an oil with healing properties began to seep out from a rock on which her relics were placed. This healing ability led to her becoming the patron saint against coughs, rabies, and plague. She’s also the patron saint of two dioceses – Eichstätt, Germany, and Plymouth, England, and of 4 cities.

Walburga’s relics were moved to Eichstatt on 1st May, 870, which coincidentally is the date of a pagan festival associated with witches. Walburga had absolutely no connection with the festival, or with paganism, but the coincidence of dates led to her being strongly associated with witchcraft and superstition. It’s a curious thing that even now, in the 21st century, men who do extraordinary things are generally treated as heroes, while women who do extraordinary things are frequently treated with suspicion. ‘Witch’ is still hurled at women as an insult. Curious, huh?

Lockdown Lent: you can beat death in life

Saint John Theristus (Italian: Giovanni Theristis; 1049–1129) was an Italian Byzantine monk. The name Theristus means ‘reaper’ or ‘Harvester’, a title he got when he performed a miracle that saved an entire harvest from being destroyed in a storm.

His life began in cruel circumstances. His father, who was a farmer, was killed in a Saracen raid on the coast of Calabria. His mother, who was Calabrian, was captured by the Saracens and brought to Palermo, where she gave birth to John. He grew up in a minority faith — a Christian in a predominantly Muslim environment. When he turned 14 his mother urged him to return to his native country, and against the odds, in a boat with no sail or oars, he crossed the Strait of Messina and reached Monasterace. The inhabitants, seeing him dressed in the clothes of the muslim culture he had come from, took him to the local Bishop who gave him the inquisition, but despite John saying clearly that he wanted to be baptised, the bishop put him through some very tough tests before allowing this.

Most of the accounts of his life I’ve found focus on his miracles, holiness, acts of healing, and unwavering faith. I just think it’s extraordinary that someone who is orphaned, enslaved, marginalised, interrogated, all before the age of 15, emerges with a big heart and a soul intact. I’m reminded of these lines from Charles Bukowski’s poem, The Laughing heart: you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.

The Laughing Heart

your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.

Charles Bukowski, Betting on the Muse: Poems and Stories

Lockdown Lent 8: the saint of in-between

Today is the Vigil (the night before) of the feast of St Matthias. After Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, and subsequently died his own tragic death, Matthias was the dude who got picked to replace Judas. And what’s interesting about his appointment is that he’s the only Apostle who was chosen in the in-between time, after the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, but before the arrival of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The first twelve, (well, eleven, once Judas was out of the picture) were picked personally by Jesus. And later Apostles like St Paul were called in the post-Pentecost era of revelation and inspiration. But Matthias was a replacement for someone else, and he was called in the in-between times. I wonder whether he isn’t the perfect inspiration for the in-between times of these pandemic days, and a reminder not to allow the current stresses to rob us, either of our own confidence, or of the days of our lives that we are standing in right now.

How did it felt to be chosen as a replacement disciple? I often wonder whether he was simply thrilled at being chosen at all, or whether his confidence was chipped away at by nagging doubts about why Jesus had not picked him the first time around. Did he ever feel a bit left out in this tight-knit crew, was there a bit of festering resentment that he was ‘second choice’ or B-list, or did he suffer from impostor syndrome, with every less-than-remarkable day making him doubt whether he was really up there with the ‘proper’ apostles? I guess we’ll never know – but we do know how we feel when we are called to stand in for someone else who can’t make it. Matthias is an inspiration to face down impostor syndrome with guts and gratitude: no matter how I got here, I’m going to enjoy being the luckiest person in the world.

But he’s an inspiration also to live in the present. These pandemic days are in-between times; we can’t go back to where we were before, and we don’t know what life will look like on the other side of this. Like the apostles between Ascension and Pentecost, we are caught between the loss of a familiar past, and the uncertainty of what the future will bring. And it’s the hardest thing in the world, when that happens, not to wish away the life that you have. Matthias is the saint of the in-between times, and is an inspiration to grab each day with both hands, and not allow the difficulties, pain, frustration and anxiety to rob us of living that day.

Barbara Brown Taylor wrote “Most of us spend so much time thinking about where we have been or where we are supposed to be going that we have a hard time recognizing where we actually are. When someone asks us where we want to be in our lives, the last thing that occurs to us is to look down at our feet and say, ‘Here, I guess, since this is where I am.’ ” It seems an odd idea to say, mid-pandemic, that this is where I want to be. But perhaps the days will be richer and brighter if, instead of wishing for whatever the future might bring, we say instead that where I want to be is where I am right now.

Lockdown Lent day 7

Today’s saint is Margaret of Cortona, who was born into a farming family in Tuscany, Italy in 1247. Her mother died when she was seven, and the stepmother who came along after that didn’t connect with Margaret at all. Feeling rejected by her family, Margaret eloped with a young lad from Montepulciano. They didn’t get married but they did have a son. 9 years later her partner was murdered, and Margaret found little sympathy or assistance because of the “scandal” of being a single mother.

Eventually Margaret and her son both entered monastic life, but I’m sad to say that she spent a lot of energy repenting of her “sinful” life, and even had to be restrained from actually doing herself serious harm.

I find her story very touching. I wish she had found compassion, help, love and acceptance, instead of judgement and rejection. 780 years on, things are very different, and mostly single mothers are not treated as outcasts any more. But there are places where women who are bringing up a kid single handed experience judgement, and sadly, churches are among those places. It’s amazing to me how many church people, who would claim to know more about the love and mercy of god than everyone else, so quickly presume they know someone’s character and life story, and judge them harshly if they don’t fit a particular mold.

Bringing up my son alone was certainly hard work (and along the way I got plenty of judgey comments and doors shut in my face) but despite that it was the best thing I ever did. I’m endlessly proud of him, all grown up now, I’m happy for the adventures we charted and the little micro-family we became, I’m grateful that we found wonderful friends to create a life with, and so glad I learned to have the courage just to walk away from sad, small people who dared to pass judgment on us. My son is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I have no self-recrimination, and definitely not a single regret.

So today I’m thinking of all the mothers who are bringing up kids by themselves (and yes, I know there are fathers who do the same, but that’s for another day…) especially in these days of precarious employment and lockdown home-schooling. I hope they will find acceptance, help, encouragement, lots of stamina, and no self-recrimination or regret.

Lockdown Lent week 2

First Sunday of Lent (Feb 21, day 5)

I was reading about Saints in the Orthodox tradition, and came across the Kozelshchansk Icon of the Mother of God.

(If you are not used to the practice of praying with icons, you might want to know that the idea is not to pray to something inanimate — not some kind of magic trick. Rather the icon is like a window through which to see God’s presence.)

This icon — a beautiful representation of the Mother of God — is of Italian origin, dating back at least to the eighteenth century, and various owners took it with them to Russia, and then to Ukraine. By the nineteenth century it was a sacred possession of the family of Count Vladimir Kapnist, in the village of Kozelschina. In 1880 Kapnist’s daughter, Maria, dislocated some bones in her foot, and then gradually many more of her joints and bones began to twist out of shape until she was quite paralyzed. Every kind of medical expertise was applied, but poor Maria was getting worse, not better. Eventually, after praying before the icon, her health began to return and she became well again. It was this healing that led to the icon being ‘glorified’ in the late nineteenth century.

The pandemic we are currently enduring has been terribly cruel, both the deaths to COVID, and the disruption to medical treatments for other illnesses while health services are so badly overstretched. It would be glib, offensive, and theologically nonsensical to suggest that all we need to do is to pray more, or that lack of healing is due to a failure to pray. But I do, nonetheless, take inspiration from the story of the Kozelshchansk Icon, for two reasons.

The first is that praying in whatever way works for you (whether with icons or some other way) can help to sustain the soul in sickness, bring peace and solace at the end of life, strengthen those on their way to recovery, and inspire those who care for the sick.

The second is that there are many ways to pray, and how you pray is less important than finding a way to pray that works for you. And if the art of prayer seems to have deserted you under the pressures of the pandemic, you might like to find another way to pray that works for you right now. Through icons, maybe — or through music, or walking in the woods, or listening to the rhythm of your own footsteps. Or, in something like the movement of wordless prayer through icons, simply standing quietly before some sight or sound that seems to open up a window in heaven. I’m reminded of Carol Ann Duffy’s beautiful poem about the way that all the sounds and movements of the world are like a rhythm of prayer, from piano scales to the shipping forecast:

Prayer

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth
enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;
then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth
in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales
console the lodger looking out across
a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls
a child’s name as though they named their loss.

Darkness outside. Inside, the radio’s prayer –
Rockall. Malin. Dogger. Finisterre.

The Times Saturday Review, 1992

Lockdown Lent, Ash Wednesday – Saturday

Feasting and fasting. 11 months of shielding and lockdowns feels like a year-long Lent, so I’m reinventing the tradition this year. Instead of fasting, I’m celebrating a different saint every day. If you look through calendars of Saints, you find that every date has a selection of Saints who are celebrated on that particular day, often because it’s the day they died, sometimes another significant reason. From this range of choice Ice decided to celebrate a saint every day of Lent whose story offers some hope, joy or wisdom for the current days of pandemic. The bonus is that tradition has it that the Lenten fast can be broken in order to celebrate a Saint’s day. I realize, of course, that making every day of Lent a feast not a fast is completely subverting tradition. But these are unusual days; too much self-denial added to the load of restrictions we are already living under could just break the spirit. Instead let’s look for one small thing every day that brings joy and hope. A reason to be glad, despite everything.

Ash Wednesday (day 1) — today is the feast day of St Finan of Lindisfarne. Not as famous as Aidan and Cuthbert, he was the kind of guy who did the hard work of establishing what his more charismatic forbears had got started. Like Andrew to St Peter, Finan was an organiser, a leader who could strategize and put foundations down.

Who do you know who does the unglamorous but vital work of establishing things? (Lent suggestion: send a note to someone who does great work to keep things going — a teacher, manager, financial manager, priest, lay minister, youth worker…?)

Thursday (day 2) — Colmán of Lindisfarne (c. 605 – 675 CE) was Bishop of Lindisfarne from 661 until 664. After that he returned to Ireland, where he set about reviving the church after life had been completely decimated by a terrible plague in 664-665. He learned a thing or two about putting communities back together after they had been swept through by a dreadful infectious illness. He died on this day in 675.

Lent suggestion: what imaginative ways might we have of putting our communities back together, after all the grief and sorrow we have endured lately? (— and I don’t mean after it’s all over, I mean today. I don’t know what we’ll need when it’s over because we really don’t know what life will look like on the other side of this. When we emerge from the pandemic we’ll go forward to something new, not back to what we had before. )

Friday (day 3)
Saint Beatus of Liébana (c. 730 – c. 800) was a monk and theologian from Northern Spain, in the area now known as Cantabria.
There was another Beatus (from Switzerland) who did amazing things like slaying dragons. But Beatus of Liébana just lived a quiet scholarly life, standing up against weird ideas, listening to people pour their hearts out, and teaching people who ended up much more famous than him.
I like this Beatus. Like a lot of people I’ve found that the seemingly endless living in limbo that the pandemic has brought upon us has been emotionally very draining, and there have been days when I’ve found myself thinking that my entire life has been pointless, my gifts wasted and my potential completely unrealized. Reading the news tells me I’m not unique — apparently a lot of us have been feeling this kind of stuff. And Beatus reminds me that you don’t have to be famous, or be remembered forever for slaying dragons or other extraordinary things. Living a faithful life, just being good to those around you is enough.
Takeaway for the day: you are enough. Just live this one day, be good to those you love, breathe the air, and find a reason to be glad. That’s all, and that’s enough.

Saturday 20th (Day 4) Francisco and Jacinta de Jesus Marto, and Lúcia dos Santos. Francisco and his younger sister Jacinta lived in a tiny village near Fátima, Portugal. They went out to play with their cousin Lúcia dos Santos, who used to look after the sheep in the nearby fields, and in 1916 these three kids saw three visions of the Angel of Peace. The following year, multiple times, they saw multiple apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Cova da Iria, in which she told them to return to the same spot regularly to pray. Francisco and Jacinta reported these apparitions, and this led to the Virgin Mary being given the title ‘Our Lady of Fátima’, and later on Fátima became a major Christian pilgrimage center.

Sad to say, not long after these experiences both Francisco and Jacinta dies very young (aged 10 and 9) in the flu pandemic of 1918-20 (sometimes called the ‘Spanish Flu’). Later they were both canonized as Saints. Lúcia, though, lived to the age of 97, spending her life as a Carmelite nun. After her death, the Catholic Church began the process to recognize her as a saint as well.

Their story resonates for this lockdown Lent, not only for the obvious reason that two of the three died in an earlier pandemic, but for two other reasons as well.

The first is that their spiritual legacy emerged, not from heroic deeds, but from simple childlike curiosity. They remind me of Moses who, seeing a tree that seemed to be on fire without burning up, stepped aside from his shepherd’s duties to see what was going on, and found himself in conversation with God. Or of Elisha’s servant (2 Ki 6) whose eyes were opened to see the hills around him covered with chariots of fire. Francisco, Jacinta, and Lúcia were just playing and looking after sheep, but they had enough of that fearless curiosity to see more than meets the eye.

The second is that there were three of them in this together. Usually a saint’s day is a commemoration of one single person, but remembering this event is a great reminder that our journey into God is not individualistic. Of course there is a sense in which we live and die alone. But our work on earth, and our significance to eternity, is closely tied up with others — with our loved ones, our community, and the whole human race.

Day 4 Takeaway: give your curiosity enough space to look up, look around, and ponder. And remember you’re not in this alone.

Lockdown Lent day 4

Lockdown Lent: a saint a day to inspire hope in difficult times. Day 4: Francisco and Jacinta de Jesus Marto, and Lúcia dos Santos.

Francisco and his younger sister Jacinta lived in a tiny village near Fátima, Portugal. They went out to play with their cousin Lúcia dos Santos, who used to look after the sheep in the nearby fields, and in 1916 these three kids saw three visions of the Angel of Peace. The following year, multiple times, they saw multiple apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, at Cova da Iria, in which she told them to return to the same spot regularly to pray. Francisco and Jacinta reported these apparitions, and this led to the Virgin Mary being given the title ‘Our Lady of Fátima’, and later on Fátima became a major Christian pilgrimage center.

Sad to say, not long after these experiences both Francisco and Jacinta dies very young (aged 10 and 9) in the flu pandemic of 1918-20 (sometimes called the ‘Spanish Flu’). Later they were both canonized as Saints. Lúcia, though, lived to the age of 97, spending her life as a Carmelite nun. After her death, the Catholic Church began the process to recognize her as a saint as well.

Their story resonates for this lockdown Lent, not only for the obvious reason that two of the three died in an earlier pandemic, but for two other reasons as well.

The first is that their spiritual legacy emerged, not from heroic deeds, but from simple childlike curiosity. They remind me of Moses who, seeing a tree that seemed to be on fire without burning up, stepped aside from his shepherd’s duties to see what was going on, and found himself in conversation with God. Or of Elisha’s servant (2 Ki 6) whose eyes were opened to see the hills around him covered with chariots of fire. Francisco, Jacinta, and Lúcia were just playing and looking after sheep, but they had enough of that fearless curiosity to see more than meets the eye.

The second is that there were three of them in this together. Usually a saint’s day is a commemoration of one single person, but remembering this event is a great reminder that our journey into God is not individualistic. Of course there is a sense in which we live and die alone. But our work on earth, and our significance to eternity, is closely tied up with others — with our loved ones, our community, and the whole human race.

Day 4 Takeaway: give your curiosity enough space to look up, look around, and ponder. And remember you’re not in this alone.