When I said I’d make this newsletter occasional, I didn’t mean it would be once-a-year occasional. But here we are, a full year after my last dispatch.
The thing is, I’ve been writing a book (peep the cover below)! And also learning how to be a priest. Since I last wrote, I got ordained and began a job at a place where no woman had ever been employed as a priest before. There has been very good work in the past year and there has been very hard work. Much of it has overlapped, as, again I was also writing my first book and learning how to be a parish priest while at the same time being a parish priest.
Why had there never been a woman in my role before? It’s a good question, and one I’ve been asked by many friends and family. For most people of my generation and younger, the overt brand of sexism that includes things such not hiring qualified women (the insidious brand of it is still very much alive and well) is something our mothers, aunts, and grandmothers told stories about. There is a small subset of the Episcopal Church that has been resistant to ordaining and hiring women, and much of the argument for doing so usually boils down to tradition. In other words, “It’s not what we do, because we haven’t done that before.” (This is essentially the last argument really left in the Roman Catholic Church, too, an appeal to the tradition.)
Some of that subset broke away from the Episcopal Church largely over beliefs about gender and sexuality (ironically, the priest who has a column for the New York Times is a woman in that breakaway group); most stayed. Those who stayed includes the church I now serve. But things have obviously changed! The church that hired me is rather proud of their progress in this area and many members have expressed a desire for more inclusiveness across the spectrum of socio-economics, race, sexuality and gender identity. You won’t always hear me using such identifiable Christian turns of phrases, but being here is something I do feel called to, meeting people where they are while being my authentic self, walking alongside them into places more flooded with light.
I’ve spent a lot of the last year thinking about history and tradition. What matters? What doesn’t? Why do we adherents to a religion and/or spirituality value old things? Why the urge to appeal to things ancient? While writing, I reflected on so-called ancient grains and, regardless of the actual provenance of said grains, it’s simply good marketing language because it appeals to our deeper longings for things of the past. Here’s a small selection of that reflection:
We can acknowledge the wisdom of the past, but we ought to keep a critical eye in order to prevent our reverence for what once was from becoming nostalgia, lest what once was outsizes what could be. When we become nostalgic, we risk seeing in one hue only: rose. Nostalgia, at best, eliminates all other colors. At worst, it sees and ignores anyway. It interprets the present only in comparison to the past—a past that never was as we see it now. It lacks imagination and does not allow for optimistic pondering of what might be: an abundance of all things good and wonderful for all people. A world where there is not just enough but a bounty of equity, peace, love, joy—and bread.
The book, if you haven’t gathered already, is about bread. It includes recipes (something I was initially resistant to) and my attempts to probe why bread is such a good metaphor for the things that really matter in life. I’m delighted to share the cover! (Talk about burying the lead, eh?)
The Sacred Life of Bread comes out in spring 2023 from Broadleaf Books. You will definitely be hearing from me many times before then. And after then.
Table Talk
In August, we stopped Philadelphia on our self-made Colonial America/Revolutionary War History Tour, inspired by my 8 year old’s unyielding love for Hamilton. A friend and former Philly resident suggested we get “mind-blowing” hummus at Dizengoff, Michael Solomonov’s homage hummus stalls in Israel.
I don’t love hummus. I was skeptical. I was wrong.
Flash forward a month later, and I stumble across this recipe for 5-minute hummus in the New York Times (requires subscription) from Solomonov. People, I cannot get enough of it. I like to eat it with slices of cucumbers when I want to pretend I’m eating virtuously. In truth, I could eat this with a spoon.
Signals
Speaking of history, is there a second reformation coming? There is so much to unpack here, but honestly, I cannot stop laughing—despite, thanks to age, my inability to completely understand it. It’s at once weirdly charming and mildly unsettling.
God Talk is an occasional newsletter written by Meghan Murphy-Gill, an Episcopal priest and author, about seeking and making meaning in the modern world. God is in the name but belief is not required for reading. Each newsletter includes stuff about food, too. Because food is my favorite way to understand, seek, and make meaning.
If you enjoy this news newsletter or know someone you think would, please subscribe and share.