I do not know where I found this quote - it has been in my computer files for a couple of years and I ran across it on Saturday. It is my guiding light at this time. I hope you enjoy it - if anyone knows from whence it came, please let me know.
************************************************************************
Pack nothing. Bring only your determination to serve and your willingness to be free. Don’t wait for the bread to rise. Take nourishment for the journey, but eat standing, be ready to move at a moment’s notice.
Do not hesitate to leave your old ways behind - fear silence and submission. Only surrender to the need of the time to love justice and walk humbly with your God.
Begin quickly, before you have time to sink back into old slavery. Set out in the dark. I will send fire to warm and encourage you. I will be with you in the fire and I will be with you in the cloud.
I will give you dreams in the desert to guide you safely home to that place you have not yet seen….I am sending you into the wilderness to make a new way and to learn my ways more deeply.
Some of you will be so changed by weathers and wanderings that even your closest friends will have to learn your features as though for the first time. Some of you will not change at all.
Some will be abandoned by your dearest loves and misunderstood by those who have known you since birth and feel abandoned by you. Some will find new friendship in unlikely faces, and old friends as faithful, and true as the pillar of God’s flame.
Sing songs as you go, and hold close together. You may at times grow confused and lose your way….touch each other and keep telling the stories. Make maps as you go, remembering the way back from before you were born.
So you will be only the first of many waves of deliverance on these desert seas. It is the first of many beginnings, your Paschaltide.
Remain true to this mystery. Pass on the whole story….Do not go back. I am with you now and I am waiting for you.
Alla Bozarth-Campbell was one of the first women to be ordained priest in the Episcopal church. She was one of Philadelphia eleven: eleven women deacons ordained "underground" by a retired bishop of the church, the canons of which declare "a priest is a priest forever."
ReplyDeleteThe Church National Conference laity had several times voted to accept women as priests, but the bishops continually blocked the ordinations by very slim minorities. Young male candidates for ordination were "striking," refusing ordination, until the Church at large allowed women priests. These eleven women pushed the matter from hypothesis into reality, and forced the Church to deal with it.
She penned this poem, together with various other works and writings.
Oh Josephine - thank you, thank you, thank you. I love Alla Renae Bozarth (I did not know her new name) - she is also a widow and I read her book of poetry and other things she had written in the early days of my own widowed journey. I didn't attribute the quote when I saved it. Thank you so much and thank you for visiting and leaving your comment.
ReplyDeleteI just love this essay, Suzann and Josephine's attribution and explanation. Hope you are well. I see Identity Theft below so I'll go see what that is about.
ReplyDeleteInspirational thoughts to bring me forth out of my "cave". Life transitions are tough, moving forward, those first steps, are excruciating. Thanks for stretching the muscles.
ReplyDelete