Lighting Brigid's Fire

St. Brigid in the Desert has started meeting as a church again.  We're meeting weekly - which is an unexpected turn of events, really.  It was in some ways a difficult decision, yet in another way it was the simplest decision of all.  It took a long time to decide what to do.  I knew the time was coming to light a little bit of Brigid's fire, but in my overwhelmingly busy life, I couldn't see where I was being Called to go with it.

Then, I started that whole journaling thing back up, an experience I wrote about in my last blog.  I was poised to graduate from my unit of Certified Pastoral Education, and I began to allow myself a little more time opening to Spirit.  Answers to my questions about what I needed to do next began to flow into my mind and settle into my heart.

First, find a place to meet for a discussion group once a month.  We'll be starting an open discussion on various topics at Macayo's in Mesa on Monday, February 9 at 6:30 p.m.  The first thing we'll be discussing is whether or not we believe in "God," and if so, what we believe.  There is no requirement to believe in anything - just a willingness to discuss our thoughts about things beyond our perception and to accept the thoughts of others.

Second, I knew St. Brigid needed to become more of a church than it has been in a long time.  It weighed heavily on my heart, yet after I decided upon the place and date for our first discussion group, I knew what to do for the worship service.  We met this past Sunday at Red Mountain Park in Mesa.  We will meet there every Sunday at 4:00 p.m. until we discover a better place.  I found a nice spot at or near the Owl Ramada that is first come, first served.  If we can meet under the ramada, we will do so.  This past Sunday, I set up my table nearby and a handful of us met around it.  We spent a little bit of time reviewing the history of St. Brigid in the Desert and the Universal Anglican Church.  We prayed, I gave a message, and we shared Communion.  The entire service can be read at my sermon site, Sermons from an Inter-Spiritual Priestess.

Last week's message was about becoming Spiritual Warriors.  One of the tools for doing so, I said, was to think for ourselves.  It occurs to me that if only we thought for ourselves as we come into conversations with others, it might be easier to be ourselves all the time.  Wouldn't it be easier to avoid hypocrisy if we worked toward being who we are and what we are called to be, instead of trying to be what someone else tells  us we're supposed to be?  This doesn't require that we drop everything we've been taught - it simply requires that we think about what we've been taught and how it applies in this great big wonderful pluralistic world we live in.

Right?

I'm such a heretic.

In honor of St. Brigid, here's a beautiful song to light a fire of inspiration, played by the 1999 Hopkins Junior High String Orchestra of Fremont, California.