Earth Circle meets once a month on the third Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm Central via Zoom. If you’d like to join us, please email us at sthildecommaustin@gmail.com to get the link. We’d love to have you join us as we lament the loss we feel as Earth is ravaged, and as we find joy in connections between humans and the natural world. When we gather, we recognize our interdependence with all life and the efforts of many to work in harmony with our great Mother Earth, for we are the Earth.
Pauli Murray’s Feast Day in the Episcopal Church July 1
We at St. Hildegard’s have been exploring and celebrating Pauli Murray’s Contemporary Saint Day for two Sundays, and July 4 will be the second Sunday we experience together Pauli’s life struggle. On June 27, we heard of Pauli’s childhood in North Carolina as they grew up in an apartheid world, living with and loving their grandmother who had been born into slavery. We followed their brave journey to achieve an undergraduate degree at Hunter College in New York City, and closed with a journey through Pauli’s decision to pursue a law degree in order to work for freedom for the black people who were suffering under economic hardship and Jim Crow laws.
This Sunday we will hear of Pauli’s struggle to live in a female body when they felt they were a man.
Pauli’s life has many oppressions and triumphs. The Episcopal Church was a refuge for Pauli from the time they were born. In the final chapter of Pauli’s life, while they were in Seminary, they fought within the church to make it possible for women to be ordained as priests.
On the night of September 1977 that the Episcopal Church passed the resolution allowing women to be ordained as priests, Pauli Murray received a call from a priest present at the convention who was Rector at the church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina where Pauli’s grandmother Cornelia had been baptized. He asked Pauli to come and preside at the first Holy Eucharist she would give after her ordination. Pauli writes of this experience on the last page of her book, Song in a Weary Throat, which is summarized, and quoted in part in the following:
The first Holy Eucharist at which Pauli Murray presided took place on February 13th in the bodies, hearts and minds of those present in this historic Episcopal Church which had been built by and continued to serve whites who counted slave owners and their descendants in their members. Both slave and slave owner blood was in Pauli and her grandmother Cornelia, who had been baptized in this church and allowed to attend in the balcony.
By February 13, 1978 the work of countless individuals, like Pauli, strong families, like Pauli’s and courageous religious, government and institutional officials made it possible for “a thoroughly interracial congregation” to attend this first Holy Eucharist presided by an African American woman in the Episcopal Church.
Pauli writes, “Whatever future ministry I might have as a priest, it was given to me that day to be a symbol of healing. All of the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner, I had already been called poet, lawyer, teacher and friend. Now I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female —only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness.”
offered and composed by Professed Member Margo Stolfo
St. Hildegard’s is an intentional, contemplative/active community in Austin, Texas. We are currently in provisional status to become a recognized faith community in the Episcopal church. The whole of our life—our liturgies, music, retreats and the community itself, as well as our Servant Leadership School—is the primary justice ministry we offer to all who are seeking. The use of expansive, non-hierarchical language in our liturgies and music, and our shared creativity creates peace and comes from a deep theological commitment. With our words and our actions, we consciously seek to embody a vision of God’s dream: a culture of non-violence, using collaboration and partnership to express our talents and gifts and to exercise community discernment.
We seek to empower and support each member to follow and develop his/her personal call for the healing of the world and also nurture initiatives that emerge in the community. Current actions and concerns include women’s issues such as human trafficking, GLBT justice, supporting fair trade, being in solidarity with cooperatives on the Texas border and in Chiapas, providing support for conscientious objectors, ending the death penalty, immigration reform, interfaith dialogue, and care for the Earth.
We are grateful for our community, as the Thanksgiving Address so simply and comprehensively embodies.
In the quote by Martin Luther King Jr., we hear a simple truth: We live in a universe whose structure is relationships. Through the lives of plants and animals, and through the interactions of people with plants and animals—people who we may never meet–our needs are met.
This structure of interrelatedness gives some of us freedom to pursue careers, knowledge, art, recreation and mischief, hopefully, good trouble. Today I want us to have an opportunity to become aware of some of our frontline workers, to give them a place in our thoughts and hearts in order to give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Perhaps this will help us approach the Haudenosaunee statement, “We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things.”
Frontline workers is a new term we use to refer to those who are working during the pandemic to help us stay alive with food and other needs as well as those who are striving to meet the health sustaining needs of those who are sick with the Coronavirus.
I have read and heard stories from health care workers that portray that the frontline also means the place of life and death. The reality in our hospitals and care facilities is extreme. The balance and harmony seeming to be no longer attainable.
However, we hear how the workers can find a moment of release from this living and dying nightmare in waking life when restaurant workers and benevolent organizations bring them a hot, delicious, nutritious meal. For the moments they can grab some of the food, they feel their need for care is acknowledged and met. Some balance is made possible by the kindness of strangers.
Other groups of people continue working who are not as visible to the rest of us, and therefore often left out of the actions from kind strangers. They are far from the eyes of most of us, because their work is in agriculture on massive farms away from us city dwellers. Yet we depend on them, on their back breaking labor that they perform without protection, adequate housing, medical care or access to services that would give their lives honor and balance.
The truth is that to bring balance and harmony to people in the extreme farm labor force, you have to have heard about them. It reminds me of the lamps from last week in the parable of Jesus. You need lamps, light to see, and oil to keep them burning. The kindness of strangers depends on strangers who light their lamps and look into the reality of the interrelatedness of life.
It seems like that is even harder now with the political circus and the isolation requirements of the pandemic. Yet we can envision abundance for those who grew, harvested and packed, unpacked, prepped and displayed the food we purchased at the store and eat to sustain our lives. We can honor them with gratitude to begin a balance that we would like to manifest.
We can also, in our isolation, have an opportunity to get to know each other better. We can start in many directions in our circle of connections and friends. One place I would like to bring our attention to is the garment workers. That sounds so general and far out there, almost like a farm outside the city. But the Earth and her plants and animals can’t fulfill our needs for nourishment and shelter without people who develop skills to transform the trees into building materials, plant fiber into fabric for clothing and animals and plants into meat, grains and vegetables for food.
Here at St. Hildegard’s we have been in relationship with the maquiladoras along the border between Texas and Mexico, as well as the textile workers in Chiapas, through the work of Josefina Castillo and Judith Rosenberg, who passed wholly into the Great Spirit, March 8 ’15 These communities and ours have been woven together in relationship for 16+ years, and we feel blessed by their lives of creating beauty and sharing their struggles with us. These communities are made up of people who work closely with the fibers of plants if not the plants themselves,
The women have skills and knowledge of the connection between the beauty that they craft and the spiritual world which sustains all life. Every year in November Josefina and the organization ATCF puts on a festival, Women and Fair Trade, where we all go and buy huipils, look over treasures from other countries and listen to beautiful live music.
Some of us know of another connection our community has with the garment workers in Los Angeles, Virginia Marie’s daughter, Marissa Nuncio, who brought our Sister Virginia Marie to Los
Angeles to live with her and her husband and two sons. She works to provide for the immigrant garment workers in Los Angeles, many of whom are working in unsafe conditions, lack the legal services they need to improve their conditions, and because they are undocumented, have more difficulty obtaining unemployment benefits when work shuts down. These women are not paid minimum wage, and therefore are subject to all the pitfalls of poverty, unsafe housing, lack of medical care and diminished possibilities for changing their situations. During the pandemic they are now sewing personal protective equipment, so the work of their hands is protecting the frontline workers.
They are skilled seamstresses who have the ability to create garments to industry standards at mass production speed. So much of our life is dependent on these women’s abilities, and the work they perform brings profits to corporations who do not respect them and care for their basic needs.
Marissa works through her nonprofit, Garment Worker Center to provide an organizing space for these women who are providing this necessary protection for frontline workers. The primary mission at Garment Worker Center is to empower and support workers to organize together to fight to transform their industry and workplaces themselves. To help the workers achieve their goals, the center offers a legal clinic, and tools for communicating their situations and needs to those who have the ability to contribute in a variety of ways to the change that the workers envision. The center works alongside the garment workers in the spirit of solidarity not charity.
In working with these women, the team at the nonprofit also campaigns for legislative initiatives for living wage, connects workers with medical providers and transportation and provides food and other necessities for those whose income does not pay for their needs and/or those who have contracted the virus and are not able to work. These kindnesses help these women survive while giving them the tools to create new opportunities, safer working conditions and social supports as they continue their careers.
When the world is so out of balance, the people of Garment Worker Center give what they have in knowledge, time, advocacy and love to these women trying to get a foothold in a country where there are safer living conditions and more opportunities than in their home countries.
Josefina and Judith were pioneers in finding ways to accompany those in difficult situations. In the trips to the border, volunteer participants were given an introduction to the practice of solidarity. In a nutshell, this practice asks of the volunteer to arrive without an agenda of how to help the struggling workers, which means giving them the credit they deserve for living their lives and learning through their experiences the best avenues for change in their situations in life. This practice of solidarity was created by the workers at the border.
Josefina will be sharing with us next week about her work with those who in trying to immigrate to this country have become tangled up in the United States broken immigration system. She may have more to say about solidarity in her reflection.
Here is a link to a video that a garment worker made in solidarity with Garment Worker Center. It gives a comprehensive picture of the conditions under which they work to make our clothes and now the personal protective equipment. As I watched this video of her giving a tour of her factory, I found a face and voice to picture and hear when I stroke the fabric that the plants of Mother Earth provide. I can bring to mind the women and men who work under harsh conditions to create clothes to cover and protect us as well as create beauty in our appearance. Now I can hear the voices of the indigenous in my mind, “We have been given the duty to live in balance and harmony with each other and all living things. So now let us bring our minds together as one as we give greetings and thanks to each other as people. Now our minds are one.”
These are certainly times of confusion and uncertainty about the present time as well as of the near or long-term future. We are all in the same boat now, most probably kept within our own homes, though undergoing different situations in terms of places, family members (or just ourselves) and personal attitudes, but the contingency of the epidemic crisis hits us all in one way or another.
Some might be filled with worries, fear, and/or anxiety; others might just be calm and inviting God/Sophia to send her love and compassion to our crushed world, or perhaps a combination of all these feelings. I have heard numerous stories, have read articles based on scientific data, have listened to prophetic explanations, and have come to realize that what fits me best in these challenging times is the opportunity to reflect, as a creature of God/Sophia, about the bonds with my loved ones and about the need to collaborate with other groups or other people who are in worse constraints. Today, this very day, is a favorable condition to join forces and walk in the same direction.
During the first week of February, just about the time that the virus was spreading out, I took a Vipassana course in Kaufman, Texas. This is a buddhist meditation technique that centers on the breath, and by focusing on our breathing we may become aware of our cravings as well as of our aversions; these are attachments which we have nourished all through life, but that are impermanent. Impermanence here is one of the key elements of this meditation. Everything moves, nothing is permanent. The past is all gone, the future we don’t know, so let’s focus on the present time which is the only certainty we have. If we feed our awareness and become observant of how we react to circumstances without any judgement, in this very moment, we might be able to turn our fears and uncertainty into positive thoughts. Let us work together, meditate together, and make road while we walk (“caminante no hay camino, se hace camino al andar”) as the poet Antonio Machado once wrote.
The St. Hildegard community is inviting you to worship with us, online. Our media source is zoom. If you would like to be added to our list please send an email to sthildecommaustin@gmail.com and we will send you an invite. Meditation starts at 4 pm central time. Eucharist begins at 4:30 pm central time.
Our Mission
WE are a community of faith, sharing from the springs of living water we know in our own lives, and reaching out for others who thirst.
WE are restless in the Church that we love, longing for faithful change. WE see a flowering of the Holy Spirit, drawing deeply from the lively tradition to do a new thing for a new time.
WE recognize the Spirit, calling us to boldness and passion.
We want to follow Jesus in compassion, and in the liberating discipline of the Spirit.
BELONGING to the larger Body of Christ, we are called to help recreate the Church for the future, to be new wine in new wineskins, a Church in reverent relationship to all creation.
You are the Sabbath Queen, the Great Mother, who sits at the heart of the table… May we remember you and lift you up. May we recognize your face and celebrate your beauty in everything and everyone, everywhere, always. Mirabai Starr
Space to listen Deep Reflection Community
A time to experience Sabbath and to welcome the Divine Feminine in ways we can bring home to our ordinary lives. A silent retreat is a place to come with intention of deep listening. It is a time for “being” rather than “doing.” In supportive companionship you are encouraged to connect with your deep longings.
Where: John Knox Ranch near Fischer, Texas
When: Friday March 13 6:00p.m. dinner through Sunday, March 15th lunch/clean-up
Leader and Spiritual Director: Judith Liro, SHC
You are welcome to arrive any time after 3pm on Friday. We recommend that you get there as early as possible to settle in before dinner. Silence will begin later Friday evening and extend until Sunday a.m. If you aren’t able to make the whole retreat, please plan on coming another time.
Cost: Retreat costs are on a sliding scale: $120-150 + 1 meal for the group. Those willing and able to make a donation to help sponsor scholarships are encouraged to do so. Please ask about scholarship if cost is a barrier. Registration/questions: Judith: jliro@swbell.net —
It is my hope that you, like I, will find yourself shining from the luminous mirror of these wisdom beings. That you will identify with their struggles and be encouraged by their breakthroughs. That you will forge living relationships with them as your ancestors and guides, draw on their power, embody their essential qualities. It is my prayer that together we will welcome the wisdom of women back into the collective field, where it may help to transform the human family and heal the ravaged earth. Mirabai Starr
When we are sorely tempted to lose hope, the women mystics from the world’s spiritual depths arise to guide and empower us. As Mirabai Starr understands and shares their wisdom through the particularity of her own unique life, we are invited to find our own connections, to bring our own offering of wild mercy to heal the earth.
Leader: The Rev. Judith Liro, St. Hildegard’s Community. You can participate on-line by Zoom or in person at Trinity Church of Austin
Trinity Church is located at 4001 Speedway, Austin, Texas, and we enter by the 40th Street door. Participants should commit to being present for most of the classes and to engage the reading and assignments. Participants in Austin will occasionally share a simple meal. Contact Judith with questions or to register: jliro@swbell.net, 512-925-9156 Cost is a sliding scale $40-$100 plus the cost of the book. Don’t let cost keep you away as this can be adjusted to your needs.
February 6 Introduction
February 13 Turning Inward: Cultivating Contemplative Life
February 20 Laying Down Our Burden: Keep the Sabbath Holy
February 27 Breaking Open: The Alchemy of Longing
March 5 Melting Down: Dissolving into the One
March 12 (no class)
March 19 Connecting: Community and the Web of Interbeing
March 26 Embracing: Sexual Embodiment
April 2 Sheltering: Mothering as a Path of Awakening
April 9 Maundy (no class)
April 16 Cocreating: Caring for Our Mother the Earth
April 23 Making a Joyful Noise: Creativity and the Arts
April 30 (no class)
May 7 Forgiving: The Art of Mercy
May 14 Dying: The Ultimate Spiritual Practice
May 21 Taking Refuge: Teachers, Teachings, and Soul Family
For those in and near Austin:
February 20th: Conspirare’s Vanguard II, featuring Mirabai Starr’s Prayer to the Shekinah, commissioned by Conspirare. St. Martin’s Lutheran Church 7:30pm $20-$60
Friday evening, May 8th from 7pm to 9pm, please join Eremos for a special inter-spiritual experience. Mirabai will offer an introduction to the essence of Wild Mercy, lead us in the Jewish Shabbat prayers and then welcome Dr. Güner Arslan to help us honor Ramadan and break the fast at 8:15pm (sunset). $65 per person (includes dinner).
Saturday, May 9th, spend the day with Mirabai immersed in the wisdom of the women mystics: 10am to 4pm (with book signing immediately following). $125 per person.
Attend both events for $175.
Both events will be held at The Wyndham Garden Hotel 3401 I-35 Frontage Road, 78741.
A member of St. Hildegard’s, Cindy Ybarra, along with her son, Michael, and their partner, Sarah Wambold, have submitted a grant proposal to the Episcopal Church USA for funding to move forward their vision of establishing a conservation cemetery in Texas and of promoting conservation burial far beyond. Campo de Estrellas Conservation Cemetery (“CCC”) is a joint project between Cindy, who has donated 10 acres of her farm, Abbey Grange, to be used for green burial, and Campostella LLC, established by Michael and Sarah as the legal entity to make that vision a realty.
Abbey Grange engages in native grassland and forest restoration, re-wiliding, habitat restoration, and livestock rescue in Bastrop County, TX. The hope is that their project Campo de Estrellas Conservation Cemetery: Community Engagement & Educationwill reconnect and reconcile people from diverse backgrounds to nature, spirituality, mortality, and each other through a thoughtful and robust introduction to conservation burial practices.
Please note: There will not be a liturgy this sunday, August 18th 2019. May we be filled with nature’s beauty and drink deeply to feed our souls in a day of communing with mother earth.
