My wish for this year: 20/20 vision. I’m old enough to know that what I know I need to know better. We need deeper insight, depth perspective, more peripheral vision. In church and society, in climate and culture we need a lens that does not distort the imago Dei, the essence of all being. Perhaps we need to have our vision corrected by the Huichol practice of creating God’s Eyes. It was a “crafty” discipline of weaving a connection between humans and the Holy. It formed a protection for the wearer as well.
Since my sight is blurring with glaucoma, I decide to mark the start of this year with a celebration of aging, of becoming a crone. The Cambridge Dictionary gives me a choice with two worldviews about the process: “an unpleasant or ugly old woman or “in stories, an old woman with magic powers”.
I consult my mirror. I do look better these days because my vision is worse, but I decide that I’m going with both definitions. I pick the first because I was taught that the best way to survive a curse is to breathe it in, absorb it in the bloodstream, and then let the Spirit convert it into a breath of fire. My present sense of age connects the first to the second definition. I’m being screened via criminal checks and fingerprinting to be able to read to Delaware children. I’ve learned that one way is to learn is through nursery rhymes. The one that comes to mind is by Longfellow, (not Mother Goose).
“There was a little girl
who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good
She was very, very good,
But when she was bad she was horrid.”
That’s a perfect match for my current hairstyle, and lifestyle. Once upon a time I dyed my hair bright red to cope with the accusations of being a Sophia/Wisdom heretic. (See my essay “Dancing the Hula in Heaven” in my book, Holy Stuff of Life.) The 2019 UMC General Conference decision to “discipline” those who don’t fit, or persist in resisting the Traditionalist interpretation of our faith tradition made me want to pull out my hair, so I permed it into a perpetual swirl. it’s a little Medusa, a little Byzantine angel look. I like the range that offers: very, very good, and horrid. Sometimes my one action provokes two very different reactions.
The dictionary definition doesn’t include an important directive. You don’t just “crone” yourself. It requires communal action. I’m in an in-between time and place, suspended between communities of work and faith. Where will I find like-minded seekers of wisdom?
“Wisdom cries aloud in the street, in the markets she raises her voice;
at the head of the noisy streets she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks…” Provers 1:20-21
A voice from the past summons me. Bishop Susan Morrison sends me a Halloween card and an invitation to Rehoboth Beach. We have a history. Women clergy could be easily counted in the 70’s. I was the worship leader for the Jurisdictional Conference where she was elected the first woman bishop in the NE Jurisdiction. A storm is building in her conference over Wisdom’s Feast, when I preside at a communion service drawn from those scriptural Wisdom texts.
The Re-Imagining Conference, held to celebrate the UN Decade of Women is the spark that us used to create a wildfire. The IRD (Institute of Religion and Democracy, an NGO, with its roots in the John Birch Society) is ready with a torch. The threat of heretical women will fire the base, and so it goes. Some of us hold a press conference to offer theological and emotional support for women church leaders who are under fire. I bring a large processional God’s Eye created for the UMC Fellowship and Bishop Susan carries it through public space and into the press conference. God’s Eye, for holy connection and protection, but scorch marks, the burned over districts can be seen in the cross and flame pains of our present church.
Wisdom is calling. I arrive, hat in hand, literally. When a bishop says to bring a hat, you do, and I happened to have just what was needed for a time of croning. Beside the historic site in Rehoboth where the Bishop would stay in the days of Camp Meetings, two old women don their hats and smile.
“On the heights beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand.” (Proverbs 8:2)