Beginning to Re-Story Wisdom as She Beckons...

It’s like ridin’ the bronco , I’ve often said when describing my over twenty years at United Seminary, a freestanding graduate school affiliated with the United Methodist Church yet more relationally-nuanced and Evangelical-United-Brethren in its ethos than most of the current teaching faculty know to perceive. We are a small graduate school, though our enrollment puts us in the upper echelon in terms of enrollments in the other twelve UMC seminaries/div schools. In those seas, my husband and I speak of United as a pirate seminary , sailing the unsafe waters of denominational politics that also cannot imagine a primarily relational ethos known historically through the EUB. Even Evangelicals who love United have spoken of this character as an EUB “hangover,” disliking its relational challenges to doctrinal sureties. I landed here over twenty years ago at Spirit’s beck and call, really wanting to serve in a southern PCUSA seminary whose president was a woman (at the time I interviewed)....

  Part of the Mountain wisdom practice was creating–co-creating, really, within guide and circle holding of the whole–an I AM statement or conceived purpose into which you would live and listen during the three days’ fast. I’ve written about that practice-journey elsewhere. Its fruit, these weeks later, remains grounded in my cells, bones:   I am the speaking red fire(s) of loving, freed in the waters of Wisdom, found in Forgiveness, healing and willing now to tend as invited from above, welcomed from below, enough as I am.     These are the words I intend to live into for the next ten years (at least), bookended in my root tradition’s name of Godde (I am … as I am) with the Spirit-spirit journey I’ve lived into the world so far. Waters of Wisdom nod to the F/feminine healed and healing within me. Found in Forgiveness speaks to the initiated journeying in those years, deepened in the Fire&Water leadership work I did in 2020-2024. [It’s ongoing, of course, but I h...