Sermon given by Joanna Fortna, March 10, 2024.

Recently I was going through a box of old things and found a small notebook labeled “backpacking log”, a day-to-day description of a weeklong 80-mile hike that Hal and I took together on the Appalachian Trail in northeastern Pennsylvania. Reading those pages brought back a visceral memory of each day’s adventure through a very rocky stretch of trail, the blisters, the weight of the packs, the mice that ate our granola. Some days were harder than others, but we arrived at our final destination, the Delaware Water Gap, a beautiful vista along the river.  As anyone who has backpacked knows, there are always mishaps and struggles that happen when you are carrying your shelter, food, water and clothing on your backs and in those days, there were no cellphones, so we were off the grid from our family and friends until midweek when we found a payphone at a tavern and could call home and tell everyone we were still in one piece. By the time we reached the end of our trail, we were dirty, weary but happy we had successfully completed the hike.  Ready to be picked up by family, I wrote my last passage in the journal, ending with the words, “Thank you God.” 

It’s been many years of living since that hike when I was in my early 20’s, so now, as a woman in her 60’s I began reflecting upon how my thoughts of “god” have shifted and changed. How was I imagining God when I wrote those words, “thank you God.”  At that stage in my life, I was still active in the United Methodist church, and I considered myself a Christian, an identity I had been born into as a preacher’s kid.  I still felt I belonged in this mainstream church culture because it was what I knew and was such an integral part of my formative years, but I know I was also full of questions and wondering. I am not sure when the word God became problematic for me, but I know I was feeling a growing unease.

Not long before that hike in 1978, my mother became ordained as a United Methodist minister.  I was very proud of her, striving to enter into a male-dominated profession, attending divinity school in a mostly male class and boldly breaking new ground, being among  the first group of women to be ordained in the Eastern Pennsylvania conference. Once she started her parish ministry in the same denomination my father had been working in for so many years, it became clear that her ministry was different. With all her talents and training, she was facing biases from her parishioners, simply because she was a woman.  She was such a role model to me of strength, unfortunately needing to constantly prove that she could do the same tasks that her male counterparts had done, that she could in fact lead a congregation, could minister to others and navigate the politics of everyday church life.  I even remember that at one church she served, several men refused to come until she successfully helped negotiate a contract for the church’s new aluminum siding.

 During that time I noticed she was using the traditional liturgy and interpreting scriptural differently in ways that were refreshing.  The Hebrew Bible (know as the Old Testament) and the New Testament were devoid of strong women role models, and she wanted to be a part of changing the emphasis, to be more inclusive by adding another dimension with her focus of women’s presence and spirit.  One part of her ministry was to combine her love for creating short dramatizations and her passion for deepening our understanding of the stories of the women in the Bible.  At first I was a little embarrassed by what she was doing, afraid that she would appear silly, I recall doing the adult daughter eyeroll, and feeling a little sheepish about her work, but when I really started to pay attention to what she was doing I realized that she was breaking tradition by reimagining these women and inviting people to think differently about the Biblical stories they had heard throughout the years.  Because it was her calling, she was fighting the battle within the Methodist church, and I was drifting away, not suddenly, but gradually. In this process I wanted to know about feminine spirituality. The word god as I knew it was not feeling adequate.   

 I took a deep dive into feminist literature, engaging in what we used to call “consciousness raising.” I become increasingly aware of the patriarchal nature of our society and realized the myriad of ways the church had reinforced the diminished status and roles of women in this context.  The word God seemed omnipresent in our culture, repeated daily in the pledge of allegiance, imprinted on our coins and money, and present on many legal documents.  In God we trust! But who was this God to me? No longer a Methodist, I was still adrift when I found this church, the Haverhill UU church in the early 90’s, and here I am, still here.  Reverend Jan Bowering was the minister here at that point and I was pleased to be in a church community with a woman minister.

The UU denomination was humanist at the point, and it has shifted since to incorporate more spirituality.  I found myself thinking of this as the” unchurch” initially as I let go of the old and embraced the liberating idea that we were all on our own spiritual paths and had the chance to define and explore these journeys here with others instead of following one way.  What kept me coming was that there was a group of parishioners, mostly women, who invited me to come to a explore the curriculum, “Cakes for the Queen of Heaven” an exploration of the Goddess traditions that we had not studied since they were so often spoken of with disdain and labeled pagan, a pejorative label when I was growing up.  Much of our understanding of these Goddess traditions had been suppressed or diminished and certainly had no room at the table of mainstream Christianity as I knew it.  The feminine was not part of that trinity, father, son and holy ghost.  I recall several book discussions including a lively 6- week exploration of the book, Women who Run with the Wolves by Clarisa Pinkola Estes.  Soon I was not only attending but leading and facilitating the discussions. All this was happening in the 90’s and how invigorating it was for me.  I felt I had not only found a new church home, but one that gave me the space to celebrate my womanhood as a spiritual being and one who could explore possible names for the divine.  To name and celebrate the feminine brought me a keen sense of joy and awakening in my spiritual journey.

In her book, A Woman’s Journey to God by Joan Borysenko, a writer who is best known for her work with the mind/body connection, she explains in depth how she needed to learn more about the feminine aspects of spiritual life. While she is Jewish, her dilemma was similar: Where does a woman find herself and her strength in the Judeo-Christian tradition as it had been taught? She traveled to many places in the world and connected with others who sought to find themselves outside of the dominant narrative and live more authentically. 

It matters what we believe and how we live out those beliefs and it matters that get to express them in an accepting community. In Borysenko’s book, she says, “one of the hallmarks of feminine spirituality is the permission to celebrate God in any form. Our image of God may be abstract and impersonal, a life force, consciousness, nature, mystery or it may also be personal and gender based.” This sounds a lot like the message we receive here at the UU church, that you and I could have different ideas of the divine and share them with each other.  There is not one way. Later in her book Borysenko presents the neologism Godessence, a word that embodies the masculine /feminine and spirit in a way that has very much appealed to me.  You may have noticed that when I lead the prayer and meditation, I often mention Goddessence, a word that rolls off the tongue easily for me and opens up a space for my imagination to go beyond the traditional male symbols of Christianity as I learned of them as a child. 

Over the years I have been here at this church, since the early explorations of the feminine, I felt I had settled into a peaceful acceptance of the way we can be flexible in the naming of the divine.  My focus has been paying attention to the natural world, and when I have done summer services here, they have largely been about my continued sense of belonging to the woods, the lake, or the sea.  I am most at home when learning about the living creatures, particularly the birds. I have also felt a deep connection with our Buddhist meditation group that meets here weekly.  I don’t have to name things.  I can just be. 

But now I am feeling unsettled again, unsure of just where I belong with all the political chaos in our country.   Recently I was in choir practice, and we were singing a beautiful anthem that is based on Psalm 46 and instead of feeling the peace of the message, everytime we sang, “Be Still and know that I am God, I was having fourth of July fireworks inside of me.  I felt uncomfortable and frankly, surprised at the strong reaction.  I did not want to be disruptive in this beautiful choir of mine, so I kept my thoughts to myself and went home to figure out what might be going on for me.  Why couldn’t I just be at peace and sing this song with joy? 

I don’t know about you but these times I can be stirred up easily, whatever peace I had achieved inside me is more fragile; there is salt being strewn into the old feminist wound. When the highest courts of this land make decisions in the name of God, deciding to dismantle the rights for women to access safe and appropriate abortion and appropriate health care for themselves and their families. When the rights and safety for the LGBTQ community, there is salt being strewn onto the old feminist wounds.  Our larger culture seems to be regressing and it is alarming to say the least.  When these decisions are made in the name of God, then my alarm bells are set off and I am back to asking why I would want to be even conversing with these words. Old feminist angers don’t completely dissipate.

In this context I am reminded of the words in David Whyte’s poem, Self Portrait.

It doesn’t interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying “this is where I stand.”

But it matters what we believe and it matters that we do what we can to make at least a small part of our world better. I refuse to believe that there is nothing I can do in this crazy world.  I give myself permission to remember who I am and how I am in this world, mind, body, and spirit.  I know I speak from a privileged position of being a white, straight woman and I have not had to face the day-to-day challenges that others in my community continue to endure.   I could hide; pull my head into the turtle shell, but I don’t want to.  I want to use my voice and my energy, my feminine spirit to change the world even though it seems to be daunting.  This is no time to give up. “ I can look back with firm eyes, saying this is where I stand.”

But last week I was calmed when Frank used a reading by Paul Tillich, a theologian that I remember my parents talking about with respect.  I was surprised and grateful when Frank included Tillich’s liberating reading, one that encouraged us to “speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even the name itself.” This reading was a reminder that there are always positive forces at hand even when things look daunting.  I am opening my mind and heart to listen for the call, named or unnamed, of the powerful spiritual forces that work for the good. 

 I am not the same person I was in my early 20’s and I don’t plan to embark on any more weeklong backpacking trips, but I am still connected to the young woman I was when I hiked in PA. I still love to write in journals, I still take frequent walks in the woods, I still hike with my beloved husband Hal, and I still read as much as I can. I still work to find ways to have a voice in this world “with its harsh need to change me.”  For this reason I am grateful to be able to find spiritual sustenance not only in the woods, but also by being a part of a religious community where I can be myself, be invited to the pulpit as I was today to share my views,  where I can be in the midst of others who show compassion and care for one another and for the world around us. Thanks to all of you for being in this community. Thank you Goddessence!