"SEE, I AM DOING A NEW THING"

Megan McKenna
1998 CALL TO ACTION CONFERENCE, Milwaukee

I am originally from Brooklyn, New York ... you can hear it. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have for about fourteen years, but I'm hardly ever there. For this semester, I am at St. John's in Collegeville writing, and then I run around and do a few things to make money. I just finished, the day before yesterday, a new book called "Leave Her Alone," Jesus' words to Judas while Mary is working on his feet. It is stories of women in the Old and New Testament who needed to be protected or defended in public who did and how and what would it look like today. Each time someone was defended in either the Old or New Testament, they became a moral imperative for conversion and change, either within the Jewish community or within the Christian community. That will be out this time next year. When I go back on Sunday, I will start the second book and, hopefully, finish that before I leave in December. It will be the readings from Easter to Pentecost. We're getting the whole cycle -- Advent to Christmas and Epiphany just came out in two volumes last week. It's available here. Eventually, we will do a whole year.

I'm doing more and more retreats with priests and teaching them how to preach. (Laughter and applause. "Yea!") Hey, they're interested. Anybody who would ask me to come and teach them how to preach is serious. I teach them how to preach using whole cycles, whole Gospels, whole segments of something rather than the way we have often done it, just by shotgun or theme so that they preach in sort of a cycle that follows each other. You build on something and keep sort of nailing it home every step of the way.

Three quick rules of storytelling before we start: The first one everybody knows -- all stories are true, some of them actually happened. Very important. It's amazing how fundamentalist we are. Even when we do scripture study, we are fundamentalist. If it didn't happen this way, then it isn't true. Therefore, you have to look at it sideways or askance, rather than realizing it doesn't matter whether it really happened at all, or this way or that way. What happens, what means something, is what is its truth, its core, its essence. Joseph Campbell says a myth is a sacred story that never happened because it's still happening now.

Every religious tradition believes that its myths are sacred stories that have not been finished yet, that they are still happening now. The storyteller is the one that sets the story back in motion so that you can experience it for a few moments, but it is a part of a much larger reality that is keeping reality going. Or, as the Native Americans say, just because you don't believe that we change the seasons by the way we tell the story doesn't mean we are not.

In practically every tradition, they believe that the ones who tell the stories, literallycreate reality as they go along. They are the stories that belong to the people, they don't belong to anybody, therefore you are not allowed to change them. All the other stories are hidden in the stories, which is another way of talking about what Jewish midrash is, which is the way Jews have done theology and exegesis from the very beginning. It is the stories that are hidden in the holes of the story or underneath or the way one word will be the same as the word in another story, etc. And so there are always stories that are in there, but you're not supposed to change the ones that are there because they're not yours. They belong to the people and those who have gone before you in faith and that sort of thing.

The second rule of storytelling is: Stories of their very nature make community. We are known by the stories we tell. Our stories give us an identity, they give us a long tradition of who we were, who we weren't, what we could be, what we disastrously messed up. They remind us of things that are absolutely crucial if we are going to survive into the future. Somebody once said that stories are the glue that hold a community together. And that's whether you are a family, a religious community, a parish, an organization, a nation, a culture, a whole people. We are known by the kinds of stories we tell. People should be able to listen to your conversation for one day and tell you everything that is important to you. They can tell you your value system, what you think is good and evil, right and wrong, all sorts of things.

Stories are like mirrors and the stories we tell are questions we ask each other, questions like, "Would you like to see what your life looks like a hundred years from now in another perspective?" (it's going to be a real different perspective a hundred years from now, right?) or, "Would you like to see what your life looks like from your enemy's point of view?" or, "Would you like to see what your life looks like from the holy point of view?" or, "Would you like to see what your life looks like from the point of view of someone who's different from you and doesn't believe you are telling the truth?" Very, very specific issues come up in storytelling. Storytelling is about the big, big issues, not the details.

The third rule of storytelling is: All stories are told to convert you, transform you, change you and so all the stories have a certain level of confrontation to them, confrontation meaning to stand face to face up against each other ("in your face," in other words). The form of the story that is the most confrontational in literature is the parable. Just because of the nature of the way the story goes in the patterns of it, it is very confrontational. Jesus told incredibly confrontational stories. Also, according to theologians, Jesus is the parable of God. Everything you are sure of that God is, Jesus blows apart. So every time you think you know what you are talking about, you are a heretic, because of the very nature of what religion is or what God is -- mystery. And there are as many ways to talk about mystery as there are people. But if you are sure that you know what you are talking about, and you are talking about mystery in relation to God, you are a heretic. I figure there are a whole lot of us walking around, because the surer we get, the blinder we are and the narrower and more limited our perspectives are. Everybody's got their narrow, limited perspective, you just gotta know what your boundaries are and know what your borders are, right?

OK, that's the basic introduction, that's all you need to know.

The story I'm going to tell you -- I'm not going to tell you the name of it -- is a Native American story from the Saleesh Indians, which is the northwest coast of the United States and Canada up into British Columbia, way up into British Columbia and it is a story told at the beginning of winter so you know how to make it to the end of winter. Beginning of winter is not the heart; it's the end of winter that is the heart.

I have been only in Minnesota for two months and I have been getting horror stories of what it's going to be like. They basically say there are only two places after winter starts: inside and outside and that your entire life goes on hold because that's all you are interested in, inside or outside. We'll see how it goes. I still have two months. So, this is a story from the Native Americans and it is specifically about what you are supposed to remember when you have a tendency to forget as winter goes on. And you'll see where the story is going when you get to the very end.

Once upon a time, there was an old woman. She was a grandmother and her hair had long ago turned gray and silver, but she was resistant. She was resistant to winter after winter, to the weather, to the change of seasons, to life to death, to almost anything. She'd lived through many changes, but it was winter, and for some reason, this seemed to be the worst winter that she could ever remember. It had been a bad spring and harvest the year before and the snows had come early and they'd stayed. The stores were running very low and the snows were so deep that the hunters had trouble going out to get game. It was late in winter, the end of February, early March and there wasn't anything coming up green. Still, things were frozen solid and already the old had started to die slowly. Some of the children were dying as well. Then finally, the snows stopped and they started to melt and everyone breathed a sigh of relief and went out helping the frozen ground to thaw by banging on it and jumping on it with their feet, dancing on it, doing anything.

But then, without warning, the snows came again in late February and howling, bitter, icy cold winds, and everything was frozen solid and that's when hunger set in seriously. The people who went out to hunt, their hands would tremble and shake. They couldn't pull the bow strings back. They were chewing on wood, leather, anything that their clothes or their tents were made out of. They were so hungry. And she watched her grandchildren start to die. She watched young women about to give birth die. She watched men in the prime of their youth die and she said, "I just can't take this any more. I will die and at least there will be one less mouth to eat what little we've got."

And so, in the tradition of her ancestors and the wise ones, she decided to do her death song. She said goodbye to all of her children, her grandchildren, her great grandchildren and to the whole village. And they mourned her going outside the village because they knew she went to die. She went to a place that she loved. It was a place that in spring was beautiful, a great rushing stream that ran past her village and flowers and trees that just bloomed and bloomed. She went and she knelt by the river that was frozen solid on the dirty, cold snow and she started to weep. Her tears fell into the ground and her cries broke the heavens. She said, "Great Spirit, it is not right, it is not right that grandmothers watch their children and their great-grandchildren die. It is not right that there is so much hunger among people who have tried so hard. It is not right that even the strong die without a chance to live. It is not right!"

And the Great Spirit heard her prayers that shattered the air and had great pity on her. And so the Great Spirit sent her spirit helper that was a bird, a bright, startlingly red bird. It flew down and landed on a dark branch right above where she was kneeling in the snow and started to sing at the top of its lungs. She looked up because she understood the song! She looked up at this red bird that was so bright against the gray dull sky and the black branches and the bird told her, "The Great Spirit has seen your love, has seen your tears and has heard your cries. It has been a long time since the Great Spirit has found one who loves an entire people like she loves her own. And so out of your tears is going to be born something new, something that has not been seen before, a new plant. When it blooms, it will bloom only in the sunshine after the second wave of icy wind and snow has come. The petals will be as red as me, so that you will remember that it is your spirit-helper that brought the gift from the Great Spirit. But inside the petals will be silver and gray lines, streaking through the flowers like your hair that has grown gray, not just with enduring grace, but with wisdom."

And even as the bird spoke, the flowers started coming up everywhere around her. They were tight-fisted-closed, but even as the bird spoke, the sun rose and they opened to bloom bright red with tiny delicate lines of silver and gray, like threads running through them. She'd never seen anything like them before. She said, "What do we do with them?" And the bird said, "Eat them, eat everything, eat the petals, eat the stem, eat the leaves, eat the roots. Chew on 'em, boil 'em, cook'em any way you want. They'll taste incredibly bitter, but they will be enough food and nourishment to get you through the in-between times when it is no longer just ferocious winter, but you are waiting for spring and spring is having such a hard time coming."

And so, she started to dig them up with her bare hands. And the bird said, "You may call it whatever you wish, just remember that when you eat it, its taste is bitter, but its memory is oh, so sweet." She called it bitterroot and the valley that she lived in and the river that runs through her home is the Bitterroot Valley and the Bitterroot River. And the flowers only come in the first sun after the last snows, the second bout of snow and wind and rain -- sometimes the first of February, sometimes the first of March and, in really hard years, the first of April. It is what the people live on and as they chew and the taste is bitter, they remember the sweetness of the woman who was willing to die and from her tears and her death song came the life of her people. When they tell this story, they ask, "What in your life is your bitterroot, and at least have you learned how to make it into food so that someone else will survive."

Now, I give thanks to Joe Broucheck who is an Abenacky Indian who tells this story and he very graciously gave it to me to share with people.
Whenever you hear a story, you ask three questions. First question is what does the story do to you? What does it make you feel? What does it do in your stomach? What kinds of stuff does it stir up inside of you?

The second question is what does this story say that is true about winter, about spring, about life and death, about suffering, about tears, about spirit helpers, whatever. What does is say that's true?

And the third question is what in this story disturbs you profoundly? So what does it make you feel and what does it do to you? Secondly, what does this story say that's true? And, lastly, what in this story disturbs you profoundly? Take a minute, turn to your friendly neighbors, share your answers and see what they think and feel. And talk fast because we don't have a lot of time.

OK, let's see what you have. What does this story do to you as you listen, what does it stir up inside of you and make you feel? What does it do to you?

Ok, it stirred up the feeling of being a grandmother, the gift of that and the burden of that. And being a grandmother is not just being connected by birth, vicariously, or one step removed, or two steps removed. The idea of being a grandmother is that at a certain age in any group of people, you begin to bear the burden as well as the delight of making sure the next generation got everything of value from the last one. Oh, I love your faces!

What else does it do to you? See, we think in such individual terms. You've got to think in terms of the people. Let's not get into the specific things that you're going to jump into your own life. OK, hope. And the hope that comes out of this story has to do with life and death. I want you to stay with life and death. Anything in-house church these days is not life and death, all right? The new thing that's going to happen is a lot bigger than whatever is going on in your life, just as whatever was going on in her life with her small sorrow was the pain and misery and starvation of an entire nation, an entire people. So I want you to think much bigger than your life and we're going to talk about even the scriptures in terms of that.

So there is a tremendous amount of hope, something new that has never appeared on the earth before. A woman priest is not that big a new thing, or any priest for that matter, married or otherwise. Whatever the new thing would be is going to be something that nobody has seen before and it's going to come out of somebody's tears that are large enough for an entire people. Our hearts somehow get stretched because of who we love. Love means the more people you love, the truer your love is. The less you love, or the fewer people you love, the more shallow it is.

What else does the story stir up inside of you? To fight or to grasp or pursue, otherwise known as endurance and steadfastness and toughness, if you want. She knows, I'm going to go out and die and I'm going to do it well, so that my death has a meaning for somebody else. Most of us aren't there, generally speaking, no matter what age you are, but she is. She goes after the Great Spirit in the same way, you got the feeling, she went after life. It's not right! And the Great Spirit, wise spirit that it is, says, you're right, it's not right. Somehow this endurance or this struggle or this feistiness is what, in conjunction with the Great Spirit, does something new.

What else does it stir up inside of you? The willingness to go to the very edge and then to take that last step. Most of us take a few baby steps and maybe one big step if we've got friends who will go with us, with the safety nets underneath there. But to go to the edge and then be willing to go over... The Native Americans would not say that she was angry with the Great Spirit. When you say that something is not right in the world, it's not the Great Spirit's fault. (Laughter) It's our fault. And the Native Americans would say there was a reason for the crops not being good the year before, there was a reason why the snows kept coming and coming, there was a reason why the stores were very low, that everything is so interconnected that the Great Spirit watches us and hopes and prays that we take good care of what has been entrusted to us. But Native Americans don't get angry at the Great Spirit; they get angry at other human beings, because mostly it's other human beings that tip the balance in the order of what the universe is supposed to be. So it's crucial who you get angry at and what makes you angry.

You have to be willing to consume the bitterness to eat it in order to find the sweet. What nourishes you in the hardest times may taste bitter, but it is absolutely necessary for survival. And so what is bitter is in some ways the best blessing you can have. (Your minds are going in all different places, saying, "Hmm, am I going to buy this?")

What else does the story do to you? Kind of a longing for that kind of self surrender. She was willing to sacrifice her life so that maybe somebody else could live. And we don't talk much about sacrifice. We talk about getting what we want, what we deserve, what is owed to us rather than do I have an excess -she has an excess of life! -- and do I sacrifice my excess that I am inordinately attached to and love dearly for someone who hasn't had that chance.

What else does it make you feel? We are supposed to live so that we can die giving birth to somebody else and dying and giving birth has nothing to do with your babies. Literally, it has to do with something much larger. Now, the ones who have done it on the physical biological level can be very realistic to the ones who haven't and say, you haven't a clue as to what you are getting into. This takes a long time. It's a long nine months and it gets longer with every step of the way and it's a long 23 hours, 26 hours, 30 hours, especially if it's your first one. We have to learn how to live so that we can die giving birth. In a culture that says, "Don't die," and that the opposite of life is death rather than the opposite of death is birth and what happens in between is life. It's a cycle, a pattern that keeps going around.

What does the story say that is true? Now we're going to get into the nitsygritsy theology. Winter is awful on a lot of people and some people more than others. Winter is terrible for people on welfare, winter is terrible for small children, for people who are underemployed, let alone not employed at all, for people on the streets. Winter is terrible for the majority of people in the western hemisphere. We make jokes about it, but other people dread it because they may not see spring. In some of the places where I just came from in Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, they have rules that you do not pass anyone, even within a couple of blocks of town, from November the first on, because if you do they're dead. Because it is so cold, the wind is so bad, that even people welldressed and who know it, sometimes can't make it from one block to the next. So winter is terrible and winter sometimes extends into people's whole life. There are people who deal with a summer that is as hard as the winter. It is just the flip side of weather, of water or lack of it, food and lack of it, shelter and lack of it. Medicine, lack of it, etc. Winter is hard on a lot of folk, whereas for many of us, it's been a long time since we've had a hard winter or a hard summer.

What else does this story say that is true? Spring comes. It may be really long and slow in coming, but inevitably, there will be spring. The question is, which group will be with while you wait for spring? Spring means much more to people who have been through winter than to those who have never struggled, where it's perpetually one good thing after another or one not-so-good thing, but it certainly isn't hard after another. Spring does come inevitably, so enduring grace is as much a part of faithfulness as anything else. Do you live as passionately at the end of February as you do in October? Do you live as passionately in your 40's as you did in your 20's or your 60's as you did in your 40's, or your 80's? Will people say when you are in your 80's and 90's, "While that person's alive in the world, life is good?" They don't even have to know you that much, but they'll feel that way.

What else does the story say is true? Sweetness only comes in eating the bitter and sweetness is connected to a memory rather than a taste. Sweetness is connected to someONE rather than a taste. What you eat with someone who loves you, no matter what it is, tastes great. What you eat with someone you are uncomfortable around, no matter what it is, tastes awful. So sweetness is in your memory and memory is in your heart. Everywhere in the ancient traditions, memory is found in your heart and that's where you know things. God has given you a heart to know things with. That's what it says in the book of Sirach.

What else does the story say is true? The cycle of death and life goes on and on. In our small cycle in it, we have to be very careful that we're not assuming that everybody else's is like ours, that our small cycle of life and death is perhaps much better than the majority of the people in the human race. I give the statistics everywhere I go. The United States is less than 5% of the world's population, using more than 83% of the world's resources and contributing more than 75% of the world's pollution. This should make us think twice about thinking that our experience as people in the United States is indicative of anything and that what we have to say may not say anything to the rest of the world, that what we think is our bitterroot, they'd die for, because their bitter roots are so terrible.
What's disturbing about the story? What I just said. Again, all stories are supposed to hold up the mirror and say, "Would you like to see what you look like from the rest of the world's point of view?" Do you want to see what the rest of the world thinks. Do you want to see what your life looks like a hundred years from now in a different perspective? The things that we spend an enormous amount of time, energy, money, words on -- what will it have done for the rest of the world? The question every story asks is: How can I alleviate unnecessary pain and resist evil, especially that has effect on the largest number of people in the most misery. That is what every story is about, it is what every religion is about, it is what every spirituality, if it's spirituality, is about. How do I relieve, alleviate, unnecessary suffering? How do I resist evil, especially as it impacts the largest number of people in the most human misery?

What else is disturbing about the story? She is the tradition of her elders within her community and so she knows how to die, not that she has a choice how, but that she knows how. She gathers her life in her death song. It's the sense that even if no one knows who you were in your death song, you put the words into the air and the air carries your knowledge and wisdom to someone else who knows how to pick it up. Same way you pour your tears into the ground, the ground knows who to give it to when someone kneels on it and listens. That is the tradition of all the people's in this country before we all came here. It is the tradition of every aboriginal people I have ever met, whether it is in the reserves of northern Canada or Central America or the Hawaiian Islands or the Australians, they are all the same. And so, we have this thing that you must be recognized. Not anywhere else in the world! The earth knows its own, the air knows its own. It picks up the songs, it picks up the prayers, it picks up the tears, it picks up the wisdom and will pass it on to someone who knows how to take it back, but nothing is ever lost. That again, is an undercurrent in every religion. Nothing is ever lost.

What else is disturbing? Teilard de Chardin did it from a very, very scientific point of view -- that you could break down. We are made of star dust. Every molecule in us was once a star, millions and millions of years ago. Literally, all stuff is made out of other stuff. You can't get rid of any of the stuff. It just changes form, transforms, etc. We are all made so much alike, it's unbelievable. The more human you become, the more conscious of other people's pain you become. Pain comes before consciousness of joy. Pain is the groundwork and the foundation, the joy rises out of that.

What else is disturbing about the story? It's disturbing that whole people starve to death, that people don't have housing, that the elderly die, that the young die before the elderly do, that even people who are strong, facing their futures, die. Whenever we look at whatever our spirituality is, our religion, where we put our money, our money, our time, our efforts -- where are those things happening? That is where we belong. That's whose voice we are supposed to be. We are supposed to remind the world in the stories we tell of the horror of what is going on. Our sufferings are supposed to just open a little crack in our souls, so that something else can come streaming in that is much bigger than our pain.

What else is disturbing about the story? Winter continues with the white race or the dominant culture still doing to native peoples what it has always done. Winter is a reality that is not just so much snow and cold and ice, but it is when everything dies and when everything goes to sleep and everything disappears. There is one kind of winter that is natural, just as there is one kind of pain and suffering in death that is natural. But much of the winter of the world is unnatural. It is planned by other people who want spring all the time and make sure they do by making sure that most other people get winter all the time. We are those people. We are the dominant culture of the world. I tell people that what's wrong with the world is what's wrong with us. We are responsible just as she was responsible for her people and changed the course of events by what she did -- the new thing that came forth.

There are a lot of stories in the Old Testament of women like the grandmother and the bitterroot. Hannah is one of them. The two women in the New Testament who are most like Hannah are Mary of Magdala and Mary the Mother of Jesus. Hannah's ancient story is that she is one of two wives -- Peninnah is the other one. Peninnah has many children and Hannah has none. Hannah has the love of her husband and he thinks that's enough, whereas in the Jewish community, if you do not have children, you have no self-worth, you have no future, you have no security and you have been cursed by God. Hannah lives in misery. She can't eat. It's amazing the little pieces of information. Whenever they go for celebrations for feasting, they go up to Shiloah to pray and to offer sacrifice. She is so upset by what happens and what her sisterwife does to her that she can't eat. She loses weight and she is absolutely impossible to live with. She goes to the temple in Shiloah and stands on the edge and prays without anything coming out of her mouth. Her lips are moving, but nothing comes out. She is desperate and in anguish. The priest in Shiloah looks at her and says, "Go home. You're drunk." He judges her and assumes the worst about her and she comes back and says, "No, I'm not. I am a woman in anguish and misery and I am pouring out my heart to God. I am long past words that what is in my heart is literally like my blood and my tears that are coming forth. I have been asking for release. I have vowed a vow (a marvelous line!), I have vowed a vow that if God lends me what I want, I'll lend it back. If God gives me a son that gives me power in the community, that gives me status, that gives me a sense of who I am, I'll lend God back what is my most treasured thing."

She goes home and God gives her a child. Then she comes back to Shiloah a couple of years later (she keeps the kid for as long as she can -- three, four, five years they figure until he was weaned; the kid can keep it a long time). She brings him back (it's Samuel), brings him to the temple, stands in the temple and begins to sing what has been called the baffle cry of Hannah, which is the basis for the Magnificat. Hannah takes her particular pain and moves into the realm of an entire people and how they are before God. How she was before God in her desperation, God is before the people in desperation because the people are paying about as much attention to God as they were to Hannah. She does a quantum leap in the awareness that her pain is God's pain and God's pain is connected to the pain of people who are unfaithful and, therefore, break the covenant that takes care of the poor, the widow, the illegal alien, the prisoner, the outsider, the stranger in your midst.

The two people in the New Testament who do that are Mary of Magdala and Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who stand at the foot of the cross. They are witnesses to what we do to each other. They are silent, but they are in solidarity. They are witnesses at executions saying, "No." Jesus died by the usual capital punishment laws of his day -all legal, all unjust. Things have not changed any. Both Marys, whose name in many traditions means Mara and Mara in the Jewish tradition is the prayer of anguish, the prayer of the heart. In orthodox Jewish tradition, it has become the form of prayer that is the middle ground between what you do at home and what you do in the synagogue. Without this prayer of anguish, this prayer of the heart, synagogue worship doesn't make sense. It is out of your anguish that you learn to do ritual. These two Marys learned. They are the ones who witnessed the pain. They are close to those who suffer. They are the ones who watched the things they loved most destroyed. It is out of that that they learned what love is, what resurrection is. The reason why the tradition is that Mary of Magdala saw Jesus when he was resurrected from the dead is because she saw him die and very few watched him die. They were either far enough at a distance that they didn't know out of necessity because they kept people cordoned off and away or many of them just ran and hid because they were afraid for their own lives. And so the good news of resurrection is shared individually with those who went through the death and the pain. You get it in a group if you ran or you didn't stick around. That's why it is normal to experience resurrection in a group, not as an individual. Most of us don't stick around for the pain. We don't go home alone, mourning and weeping. There is a tradition in Latin America called the pessame. The pessame is the woman in black who stands at the foot of the cross and when Jesus dies, the pessame goes home, alone. They travel the route back the way they came, so they walk back the stations of the cross and then they sit with Mary for most of the night in the dark, comforting her for her loss. So the community gathers with compassion around the ones who have experienced the most horror and they stay with them until something new is born whether it is just dawn and the coming of a new day, let alone resurrection that you stake your life on. And so, these images of women are in our tradition. We don't have to go far to learn how to birth something that has never been there before. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Mary in the Eastern tradition are considered midwives to Jesus on the cross. They are there when he dies and when he dies is when the Spirit is brought forth, not at resurrection, but when he dies. They are midwives to the Spirit and so they are both called St. Mary in the Crucifixion because they both do something very specific.

What did this mean for us today? How do we take the tradition of Hannah, take the tradition of Mary of Magdala, take the tradition of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, take the tradition of the old grandmother, the bitterroot, and make it a reality today in the world, make them alive in our world?

Turn to your neighbor and talk fast because we're running out of time and I've got to tell you another story. Trust your intuitions, whatever pops into your head.
OK, what can you do? Follow your heart. When your heart tells you, "This is not right. This is the way the world is not supposed to be." Follow your heart, but the rule is: Do not go after anything that benefits you first. Follow your heart to where it leads you to someone else whose heart is more broken than yours, whose condition is worse than yours. What the world says out there, you know it's not right, outside of you.

Where you have power -- and you have enormous power -- really wield it with integrity. Again, you are not allowed to use power for yourself. You must use power on behalf of the people who need it the most. You cannot use power the way the dominant culture does it.

The theme of this conference is men and women struggling together for equity, not in this system, not in this church, not in anything that is the dominant form. We need to struggle together for equality on the bottom, which is what incarnation is: downward mobility. There is no struggle for any kind of equality in the dominant system. It is dishonest, it has no integrity and it benefits only those who get more power within the system. This means that if we have power within the system, we must use it to atone for the effects it has on other human beings. That's fairly loaded... That's Hannah, that's Hannah when she comes into her own. I say that again: When you have power in the system, you must use it to atone for the effects that that use of power has had on other human beings. Keep in mind that atonement is at - one - ment. You must make communion with those on the bottom; an incarnation is downward mobility. We look most like what is holy when we move it on down.

To begin to realize that you only need what you need to exist and that everything else is your neighbor's. When I came back from the Philippines last year I learned one thing: What is the least amount I need to live on so that I can share the most with other people, because the state of the world is nobody generally has what they need in order to survive. We must constantly remind ourselves that, "Our sweet life is really bitter in the taste and the mouth of a whole lot of folk."

What gives you hope? You've got to go home with hope.

From audience, "You give me hope."

"I give you hope? Well, thank you. I'm glad of that."

The stories, everything in the books, everything that comes out of my mouth comes from the poor -- everything. They just say, "Go and tell them. We're not the problem, we don't need help. You do." Again, start listening to the poor. I always tell people if you're making money off the Word of the Lord, you're not preaching the Word of the Lord. This is very hard for us to take.

Closing story; this is a Jewish story and it's an old Jewish story that's been made into a new Jewish story, so it's a story inside a story. The old Jewish story comes from about the 12th or 13th century and it is a story about a shofar, the ram's horn, and two hofars made out of one ram's horn. It is a very ancient Jewish tale. A woman by the name of Deborah Zallman Gordon Zaflow has written this, so it is a contemporary Jewish story. The first time she told this was on Rosh Hashanah in 1986 in New York City. She gave the story away to anyone who wants to tell it. It's called "The Journey of the Lost Princess." That doesn't really do it. You may come up with some other names for it when it's done.

Once upon a time a long time ago, there was a young princess, the only daughter of her father. Her mother had died in childbirth and the father adored his daughter. They did everything together. He raised her to be the next ruler. She knew how to read and write, she could ride a horse, she could do all sorts of things; but what she loved most of all was stories. From the time she could talk she would say, "Papa, tell me a story." He'd launch into one. He told her stories of dragons and mermaids and witches, good and bad, and all sorts of mystical things in the tradition. She was enchanted. But the story she loved best was the story about the shofar, two shofars made from one ram's horn. When you blew on one, the other shofar would begin to tremble and hum and vibrate in relation to the one that was being played. She loved that story best of all and she would say, "Papa, tell me about the ram's horn." And he would.

One day they were coming home from a state function. They were in the carriage and they were on a terrible mountain road. A storm came up and soon there was lashing wind and rain. Without warning, the carriage overturned. The king was thrown free, just a few yards away from where the horses bolted, but the princess was thrown deep into a ravine. The king woke up next morning in his bed in the palace and immediately said, "Where is the princess?" And nobody knew. They didn't even know that she had been with him. He sent hundreds of soldiers out to look for her. Two weeks later they came back. The princess must be dead. There was no sign of her. So much rain had washed away any tracks. But the princess wasn't dead. She had been thrown into a ravine and caught in a crevice between two rocks. She stayed there for two and a half days and when she woke up she hurt so bad. She was cut, she had broken bones, she crawled into a cave to try to stay warm. She woke the next morning to find a gang of thieves peering at her. They said, "It's just a little girl. We've never seen her before. Who is she?" Well, the princess didn't know who she was, hadn't a clue, didn't remember a thing. So they took her in and it was the best thing they ever did. They found out that this little girl who couldn't remember anything told the best stories (laughter from the audience). She told stories about mermaids and dragons and witches and kings and princes and all sorts of things. She was cheerful. She could pull a bow as well as any man could. She could ride a horse. She was full of surprises. Well, they were thieves, so as she grew up, they would take her into town and she would tell stories while they ripped everybody off in sight. Every once in a while she would ask them, "Is it right to steal from people." They would say, "Honey, it's the only life we know. Just keep telling the stories and we'll keep eating."

The days went by and the years went by and she started to grow up. She was about fourteen now, maybe fifteen. One day, she was standing on that road where the carriage had gone off and the king's carriage went by again. She didn't see him, but she suddenly had this great longing. She wanted to be in the presence of the king. So she walked all day, asking as she went, "Where is the palace? Where does the king live?" She stood outside the palace for hours. She never saw the king, but something had been born in her. She wanted to be in the king's presence. She went home and she told all of her adopted family. They started laughing at her. They said, "You're starting to believe in your fantasy world of kings and princes and dragons and everything. Why would you want to see the king?" She said, "I don't know. I just have this great longing." And it didn't go away. Every week or so, she'd make the trip into town, a long, all-day walk, and just stand there for hours. Never saw the king, never got inside the palace.

Well, the king had been miserable from the very beginning. He was inconsolable. He did only the bare bones. He would make decisions. He would stay inside the palace. He would do nothing. Finally, someone remembered that the king loved to tell stories. They decided to have a storytelling contest and whoever won would become the royal storyteller and move into the palace.

So the word went out all across the land. Of course, the princess heard about it and she decided that she was going to become the storyteller at the palace. They started laughing at her and said, "Now, you really do think you're going to live in your stories. That's a fantasy world. It's a dream!" But she practiced all of her stories. She walked into the woods and told them to the trees. She told them to the air that would listen to her. She told them to all the animals and to the birds. The day came. There would be three days of storytelling. She waited in line with everybody else. Finally, she came up on the stage and the king was slumped over in his chair, not really paying any attention to anybody. And she began.

"On..n..nce.." and she couldn't get it out. Her mind went blank. She not only had no voice, she had no memory. And they yanked her off the stage and said, "Next!" But she was determined. She had two more chances. She practiced her stories until she was almost ready to drop. She stayed there all night. She was in line again the next morning. She got up there and the king still wasn't paying any attention. She got up and what came out was a croak! A whisper. And they said, "Oh, get her off." So they hauled her off again. She had one day left. She said, "What is happening to me. I have no voice. I can't get anything out."

The last day, she got up there and started again. "0..0 ... One ... Once..." And they said, "Not her again! She's been here before." And somebody yelled, "And I've seen her every time there's thieves in the market place. I bet you she's one of them!"

Well, the king woke up. The commotion! And he looked at her. For just a moment, she looked him right in the eye. And her voice came back.

"Once upon a time," she said, and they went to haul her off and the king said, "No, no, no. Leave her alone. Let her talk." "Once upon a time," she said, "There was a brother and a sister. Each of them owned a shofar, carved from the same ram's head. When one would play, the other shofar would begin to tremble and to vibrate in response to the one that made the noise. They played back and forth all the time. They were as connected as the two shofars from the same ram's horn. One day, the brother was out playing in the woods with all his friends. He got bored with the game and so did all the others. He went off and started looking for things and by the time he noticed that he was alone in the woods, it was dark. He realized he would spend the night in the forest alone with no help from anyone. He was maybe seven or eight years old and he was afraid. He sat down under a tree and took his knapsack off and thought, "Maybe I've got something to eat. I'm so cold." He opened his knapsack and he smiled. His shofar was in his knapsack and he knew he was saved. He took his shofar and blew, a long, low note. Far off in a house, the other one started to vibrate and to hum very softly and his sister knew that her brother was in trouble. So she picked up her shofar and blew it back. His began to hum and to vibrate. And they went back and forth all night until she led him home. And, together, when the morning sun came, they blew their notes together to announce what was coming."

The king was standing up. He remembered that story. He went and grabbed his daughter and wrapped her in his arms. The princess was home. And when they tell this story at Rosh Hashonah they say whenever you hear the sound of the shofar or whenever you hear a story, something in you begins to hum and to vibrate and if you follow it, it will take you home. The stories cry out to God, saying in the words of the Rosh Hashanah liturgy, "0 God, if you've never seen our faces before, listen to our voices. You will know who we are. Remember, one note is all you need, as long as it makes someone else's heart hum." (Applause.)

So go hum.