For over fifty days now, I've written at least 750 words on 750words.com, a site that's designed to facilitate Julia Cameron's popular exercise of "morning pages." Each day, I can receive statistics on what I've written. It will tell me what sort of mood prevails in my words, and it will also tell me what subject is most prominent. Every time I've checked in the last few weeks, the stats tell me that I'm feeling mostly affectionate and mostly concerned about religion.
That's telling, because before a few weeks ago, I was mostly concerned about religion, but I was almost never listed as affectionate. Of the five categories of feeling listed in 750words.com's stats--affectionate, self-important, self-expressive, upset, and happy--I was very often analyzed to be upset. What has changed in the last few weeks to bring about the transformation of a many-years-long trend? One piece of it is that I've let go of my expectations about how I'm supposed to fit in to religious communities. I no longer seek to fit in anywhere (which is a strange thing for a liturgist to say). Ever since realizing that I'm an Enneagram four-type, not a three-type, I've taken a deep and intentional turn inward, and I've found myself at home. I haven't been part of a church community for several months (for a number of important and difficult reasons), but I've wanted liturgy in my life. Lacking a community in which to safely or happily participate, a mustard seed of an idea has taken root in my heart. Why not engage in liturgy at home, as the earliest Christians did? Why not take my priestly skillset and become presbyter of my own household? I don't mean seeking formal ordination or jumping through ecclesial hoops--I mean taking the exceptional liturgical knowledge and presiding skills I have and celebrating the great thanksgiving with my own small children. But you don't have permission to do that! cries my critic. But I don't need permission to do that, I say back. Perhaps to be a Christian feminist in the twenty-first century is as simple as saying that I no longer seek permission from patriarchal authorities to do what I'm called to do. Can I hear an amen?
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