When I first joined FACEBOOK in 2011, I knew that I was a bit late to the party, but I was writing a memoir and launched a website (www.agathanolen.com) and wanted to be able to share my stories and photographs with everyone who was interested in dialoguing about our relationship with God and the relationships that flow from that first love.

I friended friends, friends of friends, and even remote acquaintances with the idea that using the internet to span enormous spaces was healthy and would promote new ideas and relationships. Over the 15 years, I now have 6700 followers on Facebook, although I admit I don’t know all of them personally. In 2010, I helped on the U.S. Congressional campaign of a good friend in Tennessee. He is a Republican, but I’ve voted a split ticket for decades. I didn’t support him because of, or in spite of his political party, but I found him to be honest, trustworthy, and a gentleman who embodied living out his Christian faith with actions. I supported the man, independent of the party, and believed that we needed more like him in Congress. Well, we lost, but through it I met very interesting people throughout the political spectrum, and of course, asked them all to be Facebook friends.

As the rhetoric has changed in the past 15 years, I’ve found it difficult to read many of the posts of my “friends”. It hasn’t been their political ideology that has been troublesome, but the name-calling. I wasn’t raised that way, and my closest in-person friends would never stoop to denigrate a person with words. I do believe that all people bear God’s image and it’s hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to tear another person down.

As Facebook seemed to swing more political, I asked myself what I wanted to post on my page. I felt like I had expertise in a few areas: pharmacy and pharmaceutical products, U.S. health policy and most recently, issues on theology. So, I felt like I could appropriately chime in on these subjects as someone who really knows what they are talking about. In addition, I have opinions about a lot of things that I don’t have expertise in. I try to clearly label those posts as to what I BELIEVE. I’m not trying to convince anyone that they are wrong and I am right. It is my page and it is what I BELIEVE.

However, I admit now that I was wrong. Being a positive influence on the internet has little virtue. As I read through the insults, AI-generated fake news, and “cute” memes I have become disheartened.

I will continue to post as before with my same rules, but for the first time in 15 years I am unfriending people. I have decided that if you post and call people “Commies” because of their political party, reference ex-President’s sex lives in every post, call a sitting President a pedophile, denigrate someone because of their disability, race, or gender, I cannot be your “friend”. This would be easier if they are people I’ve never met, but some are those I was in third grade with, worked with, went to church with, or even shared a cocktail or two. I was interested in staying in touch because of those fond memories, but people change.

I’ve been asked by other friends why I let “trolls” comment on my posts. It was a somber question that I contemplated for quite a while. And then I decided. Maybe we were friends once, but no longer. I won’t let you “troll” my page any longer if you are name-calling. It is always sad when a “friendship” dies. But it does happen, and I need to move on.

Blessings, my true friends,

Agatha

Ten days ago, I made a dramatic life-change. I moved from Nashville where I had lived for 22 years to Durham, NC where I went to school for the past four. I was in a Master of Divinity program in a hybrid format where I continued to live in Nashville but visited Durham one week each in January, May, and August and then participated in the remainder of the classes on-line via zoom. My “intensive weeks” were challenging, but I felt comfortable in Durham and fell in love with the people I met and the area surrounding Duke University. I grew up in a college town and knew that I’d like to spend my retirement years near a vibrant academic community.

 News had spread that I moved into a Continuing Care Retirement Center, The Forest at Duke, and many friends have called to inquire about my health, presuming that I have a serious disease that mandated that I move into a retirement community. I’m in the independent living section and very healthy. I have high blood pressure and a vitamin D deficiency that are well-controlled with medication, and am still, thankfully, cancer-free. I decided to move now rather than when I was forced to, as there are significant waiting lists (up to five years or more) and I wanted to enjoy the freedom of having everything cared for in my apartment, including weekly housekeeping. My Nashville home was just too big for me to keep up, and I didn’t need all that space. In addition, the house had some emotional baggage that I should have moved on from years ago, and it is very freeing to be in a new place. More on that in a future post.

 Now that I’m in Durham, I had the pleasure of attending Christmas Eve Services at Duke Chapel. Rev. Luke Powery in his homily quoted from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” as well as Nietzsche who said “Christians have no joy.” Powery continued that instead of the virtue of joy, we’ve replaced it with capitalism, nationalism, authoritarianism, materialism, historical revisionism, and other “isms” (e.g. Chapel Hill’ism, a local rivalry). He comments that by the look of social media posts from self-proclaimed Christians, they no longer have “joy” in their life.

 It’s a great lesson for me as I want to be a Christian that exudes joy. Hopefully you will know that I am a Christian, not because I tell you, but because of the joy I have in my life.

 The next day on Christmas there was a wonderful brunch at the Retirement Center that was packed with residents, family members, and other guests. As I walked in, I noticed the Christmas decorations, and particularly the large red letters “JOY” that were over the carving station. It was a great connection for me that as a Christian, if I don’t have “joy” in my life, well then, I’m not really a Christian.

I wish you JOY not just in this season of Christmastide, but forever.

 Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

The Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, Bishop of Washington (Photo courtesy of Washington National Cathedral)

I’ve just completed a Master of Divinity (M.Div.) degree at Duke University in Durham NC, and I am grateful for the knowledge and wisdom that I have gained from my professors and students in my cohort. Since we were hybrid students (going for Immersion Weeks three times per year with zoom classes in between), our class demographics were a bit atypical for a seminary. We were older and almost everyone had served in non-profit organizations or been worship leaders or pastors for many years. During my enrollment, I served as Director of Outreach at my church for three years while I was in school.

During these four years of education, I was also in the discernment process for two years to become an Episcopal priest. Although I was not successful and the process has been closed for me in my diocese, I’ve been contemplating what I learned during my discernment for the priesthood. I realized that during my time at Duke and through discerning my calling, I have learned how to “think like a priest.”

I joined the Episcopal church in 2008, and it has been a steady and welcoming home for me since. I’d spent time in Roman Catholic churches and Southern Baptist churches, but when I saw females celebrating and preaching, I knew that I had found the place I needed to be. I felt like in order to become a better disciple, I needed to start looking at situations as if I were ordained as a priest. This started many years ago but accelerated during my time at Duke and my two years in discernment.

This new “mindset” would happen most often when I was faced with a “difficult” situation, either one where I was in disagreement with someone, or when I didn’t know which action to take when faced with multiple options. I developed a list of questions that I would ask myself during these times of disagreement or doubt or when encountering a person I’d never met before:

1.     Can I see the other person as being made in the image of God (imago dei)?

2.     Can I feel that this person has the same right to human dignity that I do?

3.     Can I acknowledge that this person is loved by God just as I am?

4.     Rather than the encounter being about me and my wants and needs, can I put myself in their shoes?

5.     If the situation requires pastoral care, can I sit, listen, and be present without trying to interject my solutions or desires into the situation?

6.     If it is inconvenient for me to provide help (or a listening ear) to this person, do I help or listen anyway although it may require me re-arranging my schedule?

7.     Do I really want all of God’s creation to flourish (humans, non-human creatures and nature) and do I feel called to help all of God’s creatures to live into their identity?

There is much more to being an Episcopal priest, but it has been helpful in my discernment journey of being a better disciple to “think like a priest.”

Are there certain Christian doctrines that remind you of your call to be God’s witness in the world?

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha

I see it often on social media, “We are all children of God.” It is meant to be an inclusive statement to provide assurance that God does not discriminate, loving some of us and hating others. In our readings on Pentecost Sunday, there is a nuance that I hadn’t thought of before. We are all made in God’s image, but we are not all children of God. God is the creator of all things and therefore is the creator of all humans, but it is important to recognize when the New Testament talks of “Father” and the people as the “children of God,” the verses are talking about those who have recognized Christ as their Lord and Savior.

In Romans 8:14-17 we hear, “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”

In John 1:12-13, “But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”

So, it is those who are led by the Spirit of God and believe in God’s name that are called God’s children. Everyone is made in God’s image, but it takes our recognition of the Holy Spirit working in our lives before we can claim to be a child and heir. It is on Pentecost each year that the Spirit comes anew to refresh us and reinforce that we are not only made in God’s image, but we truly share in our birthright with all those who believe.

I’m still processing photos from my recent trip to Turkey and Greece with Duke Divinity School, so I don’t have a favorite yet. Walking in the footsteps of both the disciple John and apostle Paul reminded me of the inheritance that we share with them. The photo is from the tomb of St. John at St. John’s Basilica near Izmir in Turkey, near the ancient city of Ephesus.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

As I approach my graduation at Duke Divinity School, I’ve been reflecting on some of my class assignments over the past four years. Many of them were very academic papers comparing historical doctrines, or exploring Christianity in another part of the world (in the class I took we explored Christianity in Latin America).

Other assignments were more formative, encouraging us to deepen our personal spiritual life in reflecting not only on our education but on the world around us.  For one of our formation classes, our assignment was to write one prayer per day for five days in a row. That was the entire prompt; we could write about whatever God put on our hearts each day.

For the last day, I was reflecting on how we often get so tangled up in our day-to-day world that we forget that God’s world is very different. I looked for some Scripture verses to remind me that God really is everywhere if we will just look, feel, smell, hear, and taste, using all our senses.

Here’s my prayer from Day 5: Praise for our ability to perceive God through all our senses.

Dear heavenly Father, I praise you as you have filled the world with immense beauty. It is only through my senses that I can behold your gracious hand in all these works. It is through my hearing that the mourning dove welcomes me to another orange sunrise. My sense of smell is the most likely to return me to a memory of a forgotten love or a new one just discovered. I am thankful for my ability to touch you when I give or receive a hug from a good friend or help a two-year old tie their shoelaces. It is through taste that I perceive your goodness not only in the fruits of the earth but the spices and flavors that you have given to different parts of the world for us to explore, exchange, and welcome as we give thanks for the nourishment of the plants and animals that give us strength. It is through the magnificent gift of sight that you bring us to our knees as we see the boldness of your created world that inspires us to use our imagination to envision your kingdom here on earth. It is with joy that I sing praises to you, Lord, as there is no one who can love me better or more completely than you do by showing me the majesty of your world. Amen.

I hope that no matter what tries to distract us that we will see God all around us and never far away.

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha

Notes: Genesis 8:21, Psalm 34:8, 115:3-8, 119:103; Proverbs 20:12, Matthew 13:16, Mark 4:23, Romans 10:13, 2 Corinthians 2:15

The Descent from the Cross, Rubens (1612-1614), Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium

“After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.” (John 19:38-40)

It is only three short verses, but it asks us volumes about our faith. Most of the disciples have deserted Jesus; Peter has denied him three times. Where were they when Jesus breathed his last? Were they hiding but watching the crucifixion perched on a nearby hill, or were they worried about their own lives and had gone far away hoping that no one like the servant girl had ever seen them with Jesus.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus are both members of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council in charge of Jewish affairs in Roman Palestine. They risked their wealth, their reputation, and their lives to remove Jesus’s body from the Cross and wrap it in fine linen. This public display of responsibility but also affection spoke volumes of them as followers of Christ. They were willing to go public with their faith, recognizing Jesus as the Messiah for whom the Jews had been waiting over two millennia.

Since we know the end of the story, we are in a rush to “put him into the ground” so that he can rise again. But let’s spend time thinking how we would act at that moment of his last breath.

What about you? Do you hang back in the shadows, hoping that no one sees you going to church or identifying with the one they call Jesus? Or are you like Joseph and Nicodemus, willing to risk your reputation and even your life to gingerly reclaim His body and to proclaim, “My Lord, and my God”?

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha

(Note: In the image by Rubens, the crown of thorns has been removed and cast into the waste bucket at the foot of the cross. Our sins, represented by the thorns, have already been cleansed.)

When I joined the Episcopal Church in 2008, I heard about the three-legged stool. The teaching discussed that the three sources of authority are scripture, reason and tradition. It made sense to me that you would not rely on just one or the other, and three legs gave it balance.

The Rev. Chuck Collins in an article in The Living Church in 1998 took issue with the three-legged stool concept in that it isn’t written in the Book of Common Prayer and that three legs can end up in competition with each other. Rev. Collins’ recommendation is that we declare the Bible as the only authority and discount both reason and tradition as pillars of faith.

I agree with the importance of the Bible and that it is the inspired words of God. But the danger in the single leg is that we have many differing interpretations of the same verses. One example is the use of verses to condone slavery that were often quoted in Congress to support the oppression of an entire race (Ephesians 6:5).

I would like to propose a different solution to the three-legged stool by adding a fourth leg. The fourth leg is imagination. By imagination, I don’t mean that we can dream and come up with any solution we want, but instead that with our imagination, we can have a clearer vision of what God’s kingdom here on earth looks like and we can work toward bringing it into our today reality.

What if we used scripture, reason, tradition and added our imagination. Can we visualize our earth as a place where there are no longer any poor, where everyone acts with righteousness, peace, joy and where hearts are transformed to not only follow Christ but to be like Christ? It will be a lot easier for Jesus to separate us into goats and sheep at the end of time if we live now like we are in a new heaven and earth (Matt. 25:31-46).

Ross Douthat in his book Believe (Zondervan Books, 2025) says, “Once human beings inhabited a supernatural-infused cosmos, saw divinity in every tree and waterfall, lived under the influence of angels and demons, gods and stars and spirits. Now we inhabit a society defined by reason, science, and calculations, a natural world drained of metaphysical significance with selves buffered against the mystical and mythological…. Science supplanted prayer, for good reason, as the primary means of seeking healing, but people keep reporting that they’d been healed by intercessory prayer.”

What would our world be like if we used our imagination to once again see divinity in every tree and waterfall and to believe that intercessory prayer makes a difference in healing?

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha

The Church of the Holy Trinity is a historic Episcopal Church in downtown Nashville just blocks from the Rescue Mission. It was established in 1852 as a "free" church for Black Episcopalians in the area known as South Nashville. It was listed on the National Historic Register in 1972 and will celebrate its 175th anniversary in 2027.

In preparation for a year of celebrations, Rector Bill Dennler has started a new worship service at 5pm on Saturday evenings. With the growth of both music venues and condominiums in the area, we hope that people will participate in a traditional Episcopal liturgy at the new time.

Our first Saturday evening service was this past Saturday, and I was honored to be the lector, appointed to read the Old and New Testament readings. As I started on the reading from Deuteronomy, I realized I had some competition to be heard both by those in attendance and those on-line. The noise was coming from a "pedal tavern" passing by on Sixth Avenue South.

For my readers who are not from Nashville, a "pedal tavern" is a tourist attraction where a group of 10-20 people rent a party bike and pedal their way through Nashville as they drink, sing songs, and listen to a guide who takes them on a lively tour, usually sharing secrets from Broadway's legendary Honky Tonks. Rev. Dennler tells me that the church is on the route for all the pedal taverns as there is a popular liquor store just up the street.

I could hear the music but couldn't recognize the tune. I could tell it wasn't good background music for a reading from Deuteronomy.

But, It was strangely comforting that amidst our noisy, chaotic world, I was relishing in a familiar liturgy among friends.

Although I relish my time in silent retreats, it is always a worship service that is right in the middle of the world’s chaos that nourishes me the most.

Come join us. An oasis in the desert at 5PM every Saturday.

Blessings, my friend,
Agatha

Address:
Church of the Holy Trinity
615 Sixth Ave. South
Nashville, TN 37203

Saint Agatha by Cariani (Giovanni Busi) (1485-1547),
1516 - 1517
National Galleries, Scotland

What's in a name? One way to have a new group introduce themselves is to ask them to tell a story of how they got their name. Many are named after family members, but I wasn't; I was named after a Saint.

I was raised Roman Catholic and my mother's due date was February 5. In the Roman Catholic calendar that has been the Feast Day of St. Agatha since her death in 271 A.D.

Agatha was born in Sicily into a wealthy family and dedicated her life to God. She caught the eye of Quintianus who tried to force her to turn away from her vow and marry him. She consistently refused his proposals until he had her arrested to face torture and possible death. She prayed for courage and refused to abandon her vow to God. She underwent more torture and eventually Quintianus had her breasts cut off. She had a vision of the apostle, St. Peter who comforted her and healed her wounds through prayers. She is the patron saint of Sicily and breast cancer patients.

I relish getting to tell my story of I how got my name (although I was a bit early; my birthday is in December).

I joined the Episcopal Church in 2008, and St. Agatha was never acknowledged until a calendar revision in 2022.  The appointed Collect (brief prayer) for St. Agatha was recited around the world yesterday:

Almighty and everlasting God, who strengthened your martyr Agatha with constancy and courage: Grant us for the love of you to make no peace with oppression, to fear no adversity, and to have no tolerance for those who would use their power to abuse or exploit; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be all honor and glory, now and forever. Amen.

I pray that I can aspire to live up to the foundations of my namesake's life in the 3rd century.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha

Rabbits Making Mochi in the Moon
Harada Keigaku
Woodblock print
Ca. 1850, Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London
 (A mochi is a Japanese rice cake)

We have wonderful exhibitions at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville and currently, I’ve been leading tours for Journey Through Japan: Myths to Manga. The exhibition will be on display through February 16, 2025.

In the first gallery is a beautiful story from Japanese folklore of how the moon is home to the rabbit. The ancient story tells a lesson that Taishakuten, the ruler of the heaven visits Earth disguised as a beggar and asks three animals to help him get food. The first, a monkey, brings him fruit, and the fox brings him fish. But when he turns to the rabbit, the rabbit says he has nothing to share but is willing to give up himself as food instead. Taishakuten is so impressed with the rabbit’s selflessness, that he places the rabbit on the moon for everyone to see and to remember the rabbit’s selflessness every time they look at the moon.

During this Advent season I’ve been pondering what this ancient story might mean to me. It is too easy for me to donate money to a local or far-off charity, similar to plucking fruit from a tree or gathering fish from the ocean. Those things really don’t belong to me, so it doesn’t mean much for me to give them away. But giving up myself; that is much harder. To spend time with a friend really listening to what is going on in their life. Sending up prayers for recent cancer diagnoses or friends who have lost loved ones this year and are not really feeling the “Christmas” spirit.

Money is important and based upon the emails and mail I’ve gotten the past two weeks, every charity could use my monetary donation. But I’m rethinking what it really means to be more like the rabbit and show up in person with the most precious gifts of time and presence.

Blessings, my friend,

Agatha