Feminist Studies in Liturgy
2003 Indianapolis, Indiana
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002
Convener 2003
Heather Murray Elkins (associate professor of liturgical studies, Drew University, Madison, New Jersey)
Seminar Participants 2003
Seminar members: Kathy Black, Heather Murray Elkins, Brigitte Enzner-Probst, June Goudey, Martha Whitmore Hickman, Martha Ann Kirk, Marcia McFee, Susan Roll, Linda Vogel, Janet Walton
Visitor: Arden Martos
Seminar Report 2003
At Indianapolis we divided our work sessions into two related topics in feminist thought: (a) the body and corporality in women’s rituals and (b) new ritual approaches to aging. In the first session we opened with a ritual and a presentation/dance on “Bodies, Ashes, and Lamentation” drawn from a global context of women, ashes, rituals of lament and healing. An interactive presentation on InterPlay® extended the topic to patterns of somatic integration, resonance theory, and creative therapy with its implications for training liturgical leaders. This was followed by a working paper on life cycle rituals and the methodological consequence of the notion of “Corporality” that is being developed by German Christian feminists. A second paper, “Tangible Evangelism: The Sacramental Life of Things” extended the discussion to studies of corporality in the field of material culture. The following day featured a paper and a syllabus on women and new ritual approaches to aging in small groups and congregations. This presentation was followed by the reading of a well known short story, “The Potato Masher” by its author and the session closed with a liturgy. Saturday we formalized the seminar’s collaboration in a collection of essays on women and aging drawn from earlier seminar presentations.
Papers
Heather Murray Elkins (associate professor of worship and liturgical studies, Drew University, Madison, NJ): “Tangible Evangelism: The Sacramental Life of Things”
A consciousness of tangible connections undergirds our ceremonial life. Caerimonia, to bind back together that which is separate, is a way of expressing and experiencing the “ties that bind us” to the mystery of existence. To be bound in this way requires consent, a critical freedom in the household of Christ to explore the binding actions and artifacts that link visionary images to Christian memory. This process can be described as tangible evangelism or altar-ing the world, to “lift up the commonplace of life for holy use.” It is not simply an exercise or process that one experiences briefly or only intellectually acknowledges. It is a transformative encounter between the holy and the human, an encounter marked by the fascination with the quiddity of life,the quality that makes a thing what it is. Put more simply, “We are stuff, holy stuff.”
Brigitte Enzner-Probst (guest professor, theological faculty of Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany): “The Role of the Body in the Liturgical Work of Women—Women Liturgies as Performances”
The Women’s Liturgy Movement, in existence for over three decades in the U.S. and for twenty in Europe and Germany, provides the context for the strategies that are used when women ritualize their spirituality and shape liturgies of their own. In scanning the broad range of women’s liturgies one can see that women significantly more often use strategies of touching, screaming, and dancing to shape liturgy. These strategies are body-centered, provide resonant communication, and create presence in face-to-face communication. These strategies are elements of the pragmatic and performative dimensions of communication, performances that create events and not texts. From a semiotic perspective these performances are used to express meaning in time of transition. Women liturgies, therefore, create meaning for a deeply changed world and in a time of transition for church and society.
Linda Vogel: “A Time to Live: Creating Rituals that Speak to Us and for Us in the Winter-time of Life”
One of the critical tasks of teaching feminist liturgy is to develop the art of knowing how to hold in creative tension the ministries of nurture and risk-taking. The absence of rituals that empower and comfort our elders needs to be explored in lives of the older women in the household of Christ. These stories demonstrate how dignity and respect and interdependence and community can be encountered and engaged through narratives of women wise in the ways of God and the world. As part of her presentation Vogel shared the story of the death of her grandson and the formal and informal liturgies that enabled a fragmented group of strangers to become community.
Other work
June Goudey (interim pastor, Woodland Hills Community Church, UCC) and Marcia McFee (consultant for Peace by Peace Productions, Ph.D. candidate) led the seminar in movement analysis. Martha Hickman (author and guest lecturer) read selections from her published collection of short stories, Fullness of Time. Martha Ann Kirk designed the opening ritual and presentation on ashes, lament, and liturgies of healing. Heather Murray Elkins provided a theo-poetic meditation on shells. Kathy Black led the planning for a collection of essays on women and aging that she will edit for Pilgrim Press. There was a remembering of absent members of the seminar and the passing of a handcrafted broom to June Goudey, the new co-convener for 2004.
Next year
At the 2004 meeting in New York our proposed schedule will include a visit to The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, The Women and Liturgy Group in New York, and papers on the topic of “Homo Reparans: Women’s Work of Healing and Repair.” “Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World” by Elizabeth V. Spelman will be discussed. The Seminar’s collected essays on the wisdom, wit, and rituals of aging will be presented for review. Janet Walton will serve on the local site planning team.