I arrived in Germany in May to visit my husband who was interim priest at the Episcopal Church in Frankfurt am Main. This trip became a month of excursions beginning with a retreat for the ten priests serving the Episcopal churches in Europe. The Bishop Jeffery Rowthorn invited me to join. When Lew and I stepped from the boat which had brought us from Cannes to Ile St Honorat and began walking toward l’ Abbaye de Lerins monastery on the far side of the tiny island, I sensed the sacredness of this island which has been a refuge for Christians for 16 centuries.

The next morning the twelve of us gathered in the tiny 5^th century hermitage, now a chapel, at the western end of the island. As I stood on the dirt floor in a semi-circle with the ten male priests in front of the small roughly hewn wooden altar while the bishop led us in the Episcopal Eucharistic liturgy, I resisted but could not subdue the unbidden, yet familiar, anger that automatically spread through me at the insistent naming of God as Father, Almighty and Lord. Even though the bishop had included me by asking me to proclaim the Gospel, gradually I felt annihilated by the onslaught of male images. Although in the past this same liturgy had nourished and consoled, sustained and challenged me, over the years the male naming of the Sacred and the images of domination increasingly overwhelmed me, distracting me from worshiping as I once had so easily.

The contradictions grew when I attended the Roman Catholic monks’ worship in the monastery chapel. Once I gave up trying to sing in French and let their melodic chanting wash over me, I felt the masculine words and images melt away and the notes reverberate through my body. As I followed the subtle vibrations move up and down my spine, the stirrings in my body directed me from one energy center to another. The notes deepened, then climbed the scale by steps, and sometimes soared before grounding once again in the lower registers. Years ago I learned about the energy centers in the body called chakras in Eastern spiritual practice and located them in my body. Now comfort washed through me as I marveled within the mystery of this connection between the chakras and the chants which transcended the masculine and hierarchical language. Later sitting next to Lew on a bench under a tall palm tree in the luxuriant monastery garden, I fashioned an introduction to Living Sacraments that captured my passion for bringing liturgy bodily alive as I had just experienced it.

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The same wonder flooded through me in July when I returned to Germany to celebrate Lew’s and my 25^th anniversary by traveling through France. The rolling fields of the French wine country gave way to the medieval cathedrals of Amiens and Rheims. In Chartres Cathedral time slipped from awareness as we walked the labyrinth and were emotionally transfixed by the luminous stained glass windows which reached toward heaven as they told the Biblical stories to us as they have to pilgrims for eight centuries.

Les Imaginaires du Mont-St-Michel, a night walk through Mont St Michel Abbey, spoke a similar wordless sacred language. The 13^th century Benedictine Gothic Abbey perched high on the three-acre granite islet that rises precipitously out of the sea one mile off the coast of Normandy was bathed in sound and light. There was a hint of a Halloween ghost walk as we were led through the abbey’s maze of corridors, stairways and courtyards. As we entered the first corridor, light and shadow played on the walls. We heard what seemed to be New Age music which was actually ancient Armenian Christian chant. The Buddhist OM sounded as we contemplated the light of 20 white column candles set in an enormous copper bowl. In the magnificent Gothic Abbey church with its massive stone columns, the music echoed the Islamic call to worship even as we meditated upon a larger than life chasuble spotlighted in front of the altar.

Finally, in total silence, we entered the refectory and were confronted with a huge round loaf of bread resting on a white cloth that ran the length of the long table in the center of the room. The shadow of a large chalice fell on the thin wooden cross which hung on the far wall.

We had received Eucharist in many faith languages.

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The sacredness of Mont St Michel gave way to other holy ground as we wound our way to the beaches of Normandy. We stopped at a small, quiet cemetery where German soldiers were buried. Silently we read names and dates on the unadorned stone crosses. As though we were being drawn to Omaha Beach by the power of the sacrifices of the men who landed there, we cut short our stops at World War II museums. We took off our shoes and walked in the sand to the edge of the water. We looked toward the cliffs at the far end of the beach and imagined the soldiers scaling them, knowing few made it to the top.

Our words grew even fewer when we arrived at the American Cemetery high above the beaches. After the stark beach and the empty warren of German pill boxes on the hills above the beach, the astounding simplicity mesmerized us. Row upon countless rows of white marble crosses were interspersed with graves marked with the Star of David. Nearly 10,000 engraved with names and dates.

What had become a sacred journey, an outward and visible sign of the inner and spiritual Grace of human history and community, concluded in Paris where I preached at the American Cathedral on the 25^th anniversary of the ordination of women in the Episcopal Church. The journey had taken me deep into my own faith.

….We are living in a “both/and”, no longer an “either/or”, world. Carol Gilligan, who 20 years ago wrote In a Different Voice, discovered that girls lose their authentic voices between the ages of 10 and 14.Today she continues her work at Harvard, now studying boys and discovering they lose their voices between the ages of 3 and 5: “Big boys don’t cry.” “Don’t be a mommy’s boy.” As we have looked at sexism and racism, we have also begun to look at the negative impact of “isms”: heterosexism, classism, nationalism, ageism.

       It seems to me that Jesus dealt with people and circumstances in three different ways: with compassion for people who are hurting, with challenges for those who want to follow, and with confrontation of those who lord it over others so that all of us might become more of who we were created to be. At different times each of us experiences this loving compassion when we are in need, this challenge when we need to grow in our relationships and our faith, and this confrontation when we misuse our power. The ordination of women has brought new compassion, challenge and confrontation to the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion and the Church worldwide. ….

       So, we are called to hold broader and deeper tensions between power over and em-Powerment, wealth and poverty, male and female, war and peace, life and death. It is most difficult for those with power over others to hold these tensions: for men in relation to women, for whites in relation to people of color, for the wealthy in relation to the poor, for the Northern and Western countries in relation to the Asian and Southern countries. And it is extremely difficult and painful for women, people of color, the poor, the Asian and Southern peoples to speak their truths to those with power over them-and it continues to be dangerous, just as it was for Jesus.

         Much has happened over these 25 years; women’s presence as priests has indeed changed the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. It has been exciting and good. And there is much more to be done-much more compassion, challenge, and confrontation-all necessary if we are to grow up in our faith and become more of the loving persons and people we were created to be. And that is why I keep on keeping on-because I believe; no, I know, there is more.

©joy anna marie mills