I came to the academic understanding of God through a class called Reality of God taught by Dr. David Woodyard at Denison University. This was my first introduction to developing a public theology. The intention of the class was to explore Feminist, Black, and Ecological metaphors of God and imagine how those metaphors impacted our view world and the social realm. If you ever want to see a bunch of white, wealthy fraternity boys get their pants all jacked up, have them read James Cone's God of the Oppressed and witness the fear of losing white racial privilege. In the class I consciously witnessed for the first how the social construction of gender and race impact how we see God (and how we want to view God in order to hold on to the power created by gender and race). I can only imagine the amount of shit taken by Barbara, Margee, and others who invited new, contemporary images of God into the church at a time when God the Father was the only image that mattered and sustained patriarchal, ecclesiastical power.



Metaphorical theology helps us grasp something of God as well as explore ways to speak about God. It lets us express in different times and places the relationship of ourselves to the Holy. What is a real-time way to imagine the relationship between God and the Earth? Sallie McFague, in my tattered and nearly broken binder copy of Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age asks, "how can we understand the resurrection in a way that emphasizes the destabilizing, inclusive, nonhierarchical vision of God? What is....an imaginative vision of the relationship between God and the world that underscores their interdependence and mutuality, empowering a sensibility of care and responsibility toward all life...."

Metaphorical theology.....Ten Years of Connections.....the women on my list are image driven, empowerd by many things, including a relationship with God that is based on mutuality and responsiblity to the Whole of the Earth. Images and metaphors have impacted their love and justice in action. So I loved that in back-to-back interviews with Margee and Louise, they both invoked the Phoenix Rising as one image that expresses their beliefs and experience of their own lives within the context of faith. Not only does Margee connect with this image as a way of speaking about her life, but her former retreat center in Western Maryland was named, "Phoenix Rising."

As I work through this 10 year project, I want to take a step back at times and notice the patterns emerging. The Phoenix Rising.....from the brokenness we have come, to healing we shall return. From the personal heartache we have experienced to the political power we will embrace. We have, and will continue to be, remade. This is a key element to this project for me--how have I been remade? How will I continue to be remade as life unfolds? What stories will be reminders, portals of remaking, that I need to hear in order to make sure I live into the rising process when needed?

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I re-discovered Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language and thought her first poem spoke to the Phoenix Rising:

"Power" (1974)

Living in the earth-deposits of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth
one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year old
cure for fever or melancholy a tonic
for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:
she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness
her body bombarded for years by the element
she had purified
It seems she denied to the end
the source of the cataracts on her eyes
the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends
till she could no long hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying
her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power

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Neither Margee and Louise (along with Barbara) have denied their wounds. In fact Margee and Louise's excavation work of their wounds is one reason I am drawn to their stories and is a source of connection. The Phoenix Rising reflects how Margee and Louise experience their wounds as coming from the same source as their power. As Margee writes below, "each rising has created in me more strength for the next phase." Louise writes, "The phoenix is all about strength, beauty, and possibility coming directly from reduction to ash."

I asked Margee and Louise to say a bit more about their connection to this image of the Phoenix Rising. Below are their email responses, shedding more light on how this image is integrated into their stories.

Louise and the Phoenix Rising:

I started thinking about the gorgeous phoenix deeply because I was reading "Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow" by Elizabeth Lesser. My friend Carolyn, a fellow Tai Sophia student, gave me this book in January as I was post-surgeries and awaiting radiation. I found it very moving to read stories of other transformations via pain, and knew that I was in the midst of what Lesser terms "The Phoenix Process."

The phoenix is all about strength, beauty, and possibility coming directly from reduction to ash. That resonated with me to the core. The term "Phoenix Process" was new, but the feeling was not. There have been several difficult but ultimately exhilarating periods of transition in my life. Each one did break open the pieces of my constructed existence, and challenge me to move to deeper spiritual ground.

I decided that my 30 poems written during cancer treatment, on the way to becoming some sort of book for someone, would reference this process. My working title is "Phoenix Rising: The Jeweled Tear." This refers to both the gorgeous bird coming up out of ash, and the almost mystical way that letting go in tears, all the way to ash, creates new beauty.

This actual journal of poetry I have been writing in was given to me by my partner Regina, and has a sequined design on it in a large tear drop shape. My friend Karen, also from Tai Sophia, saw it and called it a jeweled tear, so the second half of the title comes from her. The blank book itself was originally given by Regina to her mother Rosie. Rosie was undergoing treatment for ovarian cancer at that time, and died in September, 2006. She didn't write in this journal (although she did in another), so Regina gave it to me when I received my cancer diagnosis in November, 2008. I blessed it, asked that I might fill it, and so I have.

Last but not least, there is a phenomenal phoenix in the Harry Potter series, belonging to the great wizard Dumbledore. The bird lives in his mysterious office at the Hogwarts School for Wizards, and is depicted beautifully in one or more of the movies. That striking visual has stayed with me as I travel the path of being broken open, once again.

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Margee and the Phoenix Rising: