Hillside Swedenborgian Community Church

Widening the Conversation

When I lived in Maine, my then-husband and I sometimes went up to T3 R9, one of the unincorporated territories that had numbers rather than names.  The only roads had been put in by the paper company that owned most of the land.  It was wilderness and walking in the unlogged woods was wonderful.  It was so vibrant.  It being a Northeast forest, there lots of different kinds of trees and ground vegetation, as well as animals sharing the same space. 

I was so deeply moved by the beauty of the Creation.  I also had cause to be deeply distressed.  We would drive through the forest, over a ridge and suddenly come upon a clearcut –the paper company had leveled the forest for miles.  If anyone here is familiar with The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you will know what I mean when I say that it was like coming the devastation of Mordor after passing through the forests of Ithilian.  As heart-sickening as this was, even more chilling was the aftermath of a clear cut -a replanted forest.  The paper company had no economic use for “trash” trees, so they created a monoforest, acres and acres of only one type of tree, the only one they deemed “of use”.  It felt soul-less and unhealthy.  It was chillingly unnatural. 

          The Creator’s forest was ecologically sound –a place where the different plants, the animals, the very microbes in the soil, all worked in concert to create and support a healthy planet, a conspiracy of beauty. While humans all too often try to declare that there is only one “right” way, it is clear that the Creator adores diversity.

          As many of you know, before I came out to California ten years ago, I was an active member of the Swedenborgian Church of Portland, Maine.  At Convention this year, I was delighted to see Portland’s banner which declares: Honoring Diversity.  I remember when Susannah Currie and I spent a lovely afternoon assembling the banner out of the beautifully painted pieces that our minister’s wife,Laurie Turley had created.  And I remember the first time we brought it to Convention and one wizened older woman peered at it, sniffed and rather disapprovingly said, “Honoring Diversity.  What does that mean?”

          What does that mean?  The opening ritual that we devised for the Portland Church says, “We honor and support the variety of individual paths which together make our one spiritual community.  We honor Emanuel Swedenborg’s enlightened vision of Christianity and the good and truth in all spiritual traditions.  We honor the earth and all of creation as an expression of the Divine.  We offer an open, safe place for all who seek greater understanding and a life of deepening spirituality.”  In our Worship Services we used readings and prayers from Native American wisdom, Buddhism, and Rumi as well as from the Bible and Swedenborg.

          One of the earliest discussions we had was concerning using inclusive language.  Almost everyone in the Portland Church had come from religious traditions that felt wounding or from no religious upbringing at all.  The exclusive use of masculine pronouns – Lord, He, His, Him – to describe the Divine as well as using “mankind” to describe the humanity were problematic to many people.  As a member of the worship committee I felt that it was important to not do away with the masculine pronouns, but rather to widen the conversation – not an either/or but a both/and approach.  Language is very powerful.  It has the potential to transform the world.  We discovered that it is not difficult to change just a few words to songs and prayers to be inclusive and lose none of the beauty. 

Eventually life took me out here to California and into graduate school and dreamwork and into the Creation Spirituality of Matthew Fox and what I thought was out of the Swedenborgian Church.  And then we got the email about the changes going on here in El Cerrito and I felt called to be a part of this church again.  If Living Spirit is asking me to really be here, to really be a part of this community and to be a part of the greater Swedenborgian community, what do I have to contribute?  Well, I feel called to speak up for inclusive language and a honoring of the good and truth to be found in all spiritual traditions in ways that create opportunities for us all to have experience of the Divine.  I especially feel called to speak up for the Divine Feminine.  And, to that end,  I want to tell you what I found at Convention this year.

          First of all, let me describe altar.  In addition to the Bible and candles on the altar, above the altar hung prayer flags with symbols of not just the major monotheistic religions, but also the Goddess, Native American and other indigenous traditions.  The guest speakers at the opening of Convention were two of the worship leaders from the Interfaith Church of Seattle, a rabbi and a Sufi sheikh – two wise and inspiring men.  Later during the week, other worship leaders from this all volunteer church lead a Universal Worship Service as one of the mini workshops.  It featured brief readings from texts sacred to the various traditions interspersed with chants honoring each spiritual path. 

At the first rehearsal of the Convention Choir, we sang a song that featured the traditional masculine pronouns for God: Lord, He, Him, His.  After we had sung it through once, one of the altos, the Rev. Jane Siebert, from Pretty Prairie, KS said, “Can we change some of those He and His to She and Her?”  And lots of choir members said Yes, let’s do it.  Later when I told Jane how grateful I was for her suggestion, she said, “Well, I thought it was a no brainer.” 

Something else that was new was that there was very little talk about being a dying church.  Instead, a number of people spoke about how the Swedenborgian Church does not own the New Church that Swedenborg spoke about and is not responsible for bringing it about.    Indeed, as Alison Longstaff, one of the two people ordained this year, so eloquently said in her amazing ordination sermon, the New Church is arising everywhere, under many different guises. And she named some of those manifestations and among them she named the Goddess traditions.  She also, at one point in her sermon, referred to God as Her.  Now Alison was brought up in the General Church, another branch of Swedenborgian churches which does not ordain women. She jumped ship to Convention so she could honor her call to be ordained.  The Bible passage she chose was the one about “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was in prison and you visited me, etc.”  It was very moving and I urge you all to read her sermon when it’s published in The Messenger.   The line of people wanting to talk with and congratulate her at the reception was so long that they had to find someone else to cut the cake.

I had a personal epiphany.  One of the songs the choir was to sing was a wonderful piece called, “Jesus Gave Me Water”.  The choir sings backup and Laurie, our director, had asked for volunteers to sing the lead.  Someone heard me singing it in the food line at lunch and suggested that I go for it.  So I volunteered.  I’d had no problem singing along with the CD, but when we started to rehearse it, the key was lower and I said I would step down because it was too low for me and I have no power in that register.  Everyone said, No, it sounds great, which I had a hard time believing.  Laurie said, “Are you sure you don’t want to do it.  It’s your song and you’ll be miked.” I realized that the reason that I didn’t originally get that I could sing it, was that it didn’t sound like me, or like what I’m accustomed to thinking of as my voice. Have you ever turned down a new opportunity because it was outside of what you assume to be your range of abilities or behaviors?  So, with the encouragement of trusted friends, I took the leap and I had a blast being the lead singer with the band!  After that experience, I found myself trying all kinds of things the unaccustomed way and widening the conversation that I have with life.

There’s lots more to say about my time in Seattle, but there’s one other story that I particularly want to tell.  The Saturday evening entertainment was songs, performance pieces and skits put on by various churches and associations entitled “The Complete Works of Swedenborg, Abridged”.  One of the members of the Puget Sound Church, playing Emanuel Swedenborg, came onstage wearing a scraggly eighteenth century wig that had seen better days and carrying a cup of Starbucks finest.  (It is well documented that Swedenborg loved his coffee.) Swedenborg, was talking about how he was getting bored as he had already studied everything known to humanity at the time.  A sassy teenaged girl wearing orange leggings, a really short flouncy skirt that matched her blond, pink, blue and purple hair (kind of like a punked out flower fairy), came onstage and said to him, “How about trying the Spiritual world?”  Swedenborg sort of jumped, did a double take and said, “Who are you?”  To which She replied, “I’m God.”  Now maybe I was seeing the reclaiming of the Feminine face of God everywhere the same way people who ride motorcycles see motorcycles everywhere.  But judging by the joy and the vocal affirmation I saw and heard, I was clearly not the only one.

          Now a word about what happened with that first song.  The choir director, who did not get to Convention until the second rehearsal, changed the words from alternating He and She to gender neutral words.  Sometimes this is the wisest choice.  Sometimes, depending on the history of a song or the context, Lord is preferable.  I don’t think that Divine Love and Wisdom really cares what you call Him, Her, It, the Great and Infinite Isness, but sometimes alternating the gender of the pronouns can have a profound difference to people.  I will leave you with a brief post-Convention story.  I was telling my friend, Kay, about my experiences there and she had a story of her own to share.  Kay was not raised in a religious tradition and she has an almost allergic reaction to the word “God”.  While I was playing in Seattle, she attended a church wedding where the minister at some point referred to God as She and something radical shifted for my friend.  As she was telling me this she had tears in her eyes.  With the naming of God as She as well as He, Kay felt included.  If the minister had merely used gender neutral words for God, Kay’s culturally learned vision of God as the judging, old white-bearded white man in the sky, would have gone unchallenged.  When we widen the conversation, the walls break open, everything gets bigger and more people feel invited in.  It is also, in my opinion, one of the hallmarks of the New Church, the new paradigm that is arising everywhere.  Blessed Be.

Carol Fusco  August 9, 2009