Church In The Wildwood - OR - The Nun Of Everything

This morning I was interviewed by our local weekly, The Yellow Springs News, for an article about our upcoming Local History Folkshop, the first event of our Heart-Of-Joy Folkschool which is in its beginning stages of growth.

I found myself saying, "I see everyone as a treasure chest - everyone is full of jewels. One of the jewels we're working on in the folkschool process is the one called 'Usefulness.' A catchword of the folkshop experience will be, 'How can I help?'"

When the reporter commented on the more-than-reasonable registration fees I said, "Well, people will be paying us not so much out of their money, but out of their real treasures. You know - things like Respect for Elders, Good Will, Community Spirit, Cheerful Service, Sharing Experience....."

After the interview and much of the rest of the day spent traipsing the Village with flyers for the Folkshop, going store-to-store to get them posted in windows and on bulletin boards, I came home and took some time to finish reading  Anne Rice's second book about Christ the Lord, THE ROAD TO CANA.

When I finished it I understood something vital about my personal calling. Years ago I was ordained as a Christian minister. I've never had a church, but I've often had congregations in a sense. Peace classes, intentional communities - those sorts of congregations. The style of my healing and teaching is multi-religious, a global, accepting spirituality. A few years back, after a number of what I felt were huge enlightenment experiences, I got the sense from the universe that I was a nun. At first that hacked me off. Being a minister was fine -  when Jesus stopped in to tell me that I had to take it seriously - that things would be asked of me now, expected of me, because I was ordained - that was OK. When God-The-Father popped into my trailer to ask me to sing, or to play with me at painting sunsets, or to pour poems through me, that was fine. But a nun? Oh, no! I was not finished hoping that someday my Mr. Right, husband #2, would show up out of the blue or wherever Mr. Rights come from.

Then I realized: OH - I'm just being agreed-with, here. Nuns in some spiritual traditions can marry and still be nuns. Perhaps I'm like that. Maybe I'm just being notified that the status of my spiritual growth is the rank of "nun."

Then I got chipper about the whole thing and decided to call myself the "Nun of Everything," inside my heart - just my little joke with God.

Now, back to Anne Rice and Christ The Lord. In Anne Rice's depictions of Christ the Lord, I find something of the Truth I like to live. She paints Jesus, my own primary Teacher, as a truly simple, humble human being. Working class-wise, yet capable of scholarship. Someone who lives in plain ways and values ordinary existence.

There's a tie-in between this Jesus and the Folkschool, you see. And for me, I realize now: OH! Perhaps I do, in a sense, have a "church." Perhaps it is the character development and community-building teaching practice of humble service, ordinary usefulness, simplicity, good will -  all expressed through medium of the folkschool, which is my church.

The founder of the modern folkschool movement, Grundtvig, was first a minister.

For me, in my sixties - a community person and a soul gardener - it works to consider this Folkschool effort as a kind of "church in the wildwood." We are, actually, holding our Folkshop in the Outdoor Education Center of Glen Helen. It IS in the wildwood which borders the Village of Yellow Springs.