A sermon preached at Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green, New Haven, CT, on the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 15, Year A – Matthew 15:10-28.

“Woman, great is your faith.”

For those of you who don’t know – Trinity, along with other Episcopal churches, as well as some churches of some other denominations, follow the Revised Common Lectionary. The Lectionary is a three year cycle of readings from Scripture, appointed to be read in worship. The Common Lectionary  was first published in 1983, the result of an ecumenical project of several American and Canadian denominations. The Revised Common Lectionary was published in 1992, and officially adopted by The Episcopal Church in 2006. It is a three-year cycle of Sunday Eucharistic readings in which Matthew, Mark, and Luke are read in successive years, with some material from John thrown in each year. We are currently chugging along on Year A, and we have been hearing Matthew’s Gospel. In other words, we don’t get to choose what readings we get to preach on. Some Sundays, we preachers wonder why, oh why, must the readings appointed today be used. Some other Sundays, like TODAY – I think that our readings couldn’t have come at a better time.

The events of last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, were truly beyond terrifying and vicious. Honestly, my own words cannot quite capture what I felt and thought. The language and symbols used by the marching white supremacists made many of us wonder, “is this truly America in 2017?” Meanwhile, it made others say, “yes: of course this is America in 2017 – have you not noticed?”

Since then, many public leaders, including religious leaders, have spoken out, naming the great evil – the great sin – of racism. Dean Hollerith of the Episcopal Church’s National Cathedral named it well when he said:  “For too long, too many Americans have falsely believed that the evil of racism is largely a thing of the past. We have failed to take seriously the cancer of white supremacy that lurks beneath the surface of our collective life…The tragic events in Charlottesville, and the hatred that fueled them, grieve the heart of God.”

The heart of God is grieving this week.

In the wake of these events, you may have asked yourself, what can I do? Especially if one is a white person of some privilege, like me, you may have asked yourself, what should I do? What must I do?  How can I repent of the racism and white supremacy that exists in our country? What can we do to not only stand by but stand up for our kin who are people of color, or Jewish?

(Well, I  hate to tell you, friends – it will require more than just eating cake…)

And this leads us to a collective, or communal question: how can we acknowledge the role the greater Church has played in systemic racism? How can the Church repent?

Jesus provides us an example in today’s gospel. For today, the lectionary has chosen to show us, in the words of our collect, Jesus, as an example of a godly life – so we can follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life.

There’s just one small issue:

Jesus doesn’t seem to act so godly!!!

Sure, Jesus first reminds his listeners that it is what comes out of us, not what goes into us, that can harm and defile the world. Our careless words and jokes, our lies, and our actions have the power to harm greatly. And as one writer says, “the pain of those choices is not washed down the sewer like yesterday’s lunch.”* The pain we can cause by one careless word or action, or one premeditated word or action, can last a lifetime.

BUT THEN –  Jesus’ behavior with the Canaanite woman is shocking. Where is Jesus’ compassion? Where is his all-inclusive love? Here is a mother, who begs for mercy for her daughter, who is tormented by a demon. This mother is a minority woman – an outsider. She is an outsider because of her gender, her ethnicity, her culture, and her religion. Social norms of Jesus’ day are for her to be silent. Yet she isn’t.  She respectfully calls Jesus “Lord,” and she begs for God’s mercy.

And Jesus does not answer. Jesus is silent in the face of an injustice. Jesus is silent in the face of great suffering.

Even worse, his disciples ask Jesus to send her away – given the context, they likely would have said, “Jesus! This woman’s offensive! She keeps shouting at us! She doesn’t know her place! Tell her to shut up and go away!”

Jesus finally answers this woman, and he tells her, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” In other words, he is not to help the likes of her. Again, she begs of him – “Lord, help me.”

And Jesus calls her a dog.

Jesus utterly dehumanizes this woman, who is kneeling before him, begging for her daughter to be healed. Calling a Canaanite a dog was a familiar insult of the Israelites of Jesus’ time. Perhaps each of us can think of insults that we have heard, that could be the modern day equivalent – something we’ve heard used, or used ourselves, or something that’s been used against us.

If this bothers you? It should. I am not going to try to soften it, or explain it. Jesus utterly disappoints me in this moment. Jesus hurts my heart with his behavior. Even if Jesus were being, say,  tongue in cheek… even if Jesus was just following cultural and societal norms of his time… Even though I know that Jesus is both divine and HUMAN…this passage crushes me every time I read it.

So it’s a good thing I wasn’t that woman, because I may have slumped away crying. But no – not this unnamed Canaanite woman. She doesn’t give up. She doesn’t slump away. She violates societal boundaries, because she believes that she and her daughter deserve God’s mercy. So – she persisted!

Jesus has said to her: “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” And she replies, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

In this interaction, Jesus is forced to confront his own prejudice – his own bias. In this interaction, there is a reversal of roles: the great teacher learns from this ostracized, minority woman. This woman understand that God’s mercy is great – that it doesn’t end with Israel, that it overflows to all the nations and peoples of Creation. She has an unshakable conviction that she deserves God’s mercy – that her daughter deserves God’s mercy.

So then, Jesus returns to being the Jesus that I’d prefer him to be. He says to her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly.

So, what are we to learn? In my opinion, Jesus messed up when he was confronted with something and someone he didn’t understand. But he was able to learn from the experience, and to change. We are to learn by this example of Jesus, that we too are to learn from those who are ostracized, from those that we have ostracized. This lesson can be broadly received, but I hope it can be especially useful to those of us who are white. We need to learn from our kin of color. We need to learn from those who have been disempowered. Sometimes it is indeed quite right for us to say nothing, for it is what comes out of us that defiles – and instead listen. We can listen today – we can do it here in this sanctuary, or out on the Green. We can listen via social media – Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and articles.  We can listen to colleagues, neighbors, and others around us. And then we can let them lead in the way this Canaanite woman did – and then follow.

May we all follow daily in the blessed steps of Jesus. And as a church community, may we choose to be present to each other, and to positive change as it happens – may we always choose faith over fear.

This sermon needs to end here, but the conversation doesn’t. I look forward to continuing it with you.

AMEN.

 

*credit to Iwan Russell-Jones for this quote, in David Lyon Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, Feasting On the Word, Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, ©2008-2011), 357.

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A sermon preached at Trinity Episcopal Church on the Green, New Haven, CT, on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, Year A – Acts 2:42-47, Psalm 23, 1 Peter 2:19-25, John 10:1-10.

‘Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep…’”

In this chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus uses two figures of speech to describe himself: Jesus is both the shepherd, and the gate. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I think we can all get behind that? Our appointed psalm for today is the much loved 23rd Psalm. I’m sure many of us have certain associations with it and with this bucolic image.  

There are many wonderful musical settings of the 23rd Psalm, but my favorite, for both musical and sentimental reasons, is the choral arrangement by Howard Goodall – better known to some as the opening theme of the BBC sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley. I watched the Vicar of Dibley with great fervor many Friday nights as a young teenager on PBS’ weekly BritCom Night. I’ll confess that I may have occasionally lied about my Friday night plans to my friends, so that they wouldn’t think I was an overly churchy nerd. Alas, I was – and I made sure to be in front of my television set every Friday at eight o’clock, to hear the clear voice of a young choir boy sing, “The Lord is My Shepherd, I shall not want,” beginning that week’s episode.

For anyone unfamiliar with The Vicar of Dibley – it is a British sitcom that premiered in the early 1990s, shortly after the Church of England began allowing women’s ordination. The show is set in a conservative yet eccentric English country village. When the long-time vicar dies, he is replaced with some controversy by a woman priest, named Geraldine. Not only is she a woman, but she is outgoing and funny, and at times off-color, defying everyone’s expectations of a vicar. Over the course of time, she eventually endears herself to her parishioners, while staying true to herself, and to her call to God’s people in Dibley.

I watched and loved the Vicar of Dibley, because I wanted to be like her – I felt called to be a priest – I wanted to be a sort of shepherd, a pastor to God’s people. While many other young people my age likely looked up far more glamorous TV characters, I found an unlikely example in this fictional woman vicar. I had wanted to be a priest since I was a very young child. I played mass with my dolls and stuffed animals, using grape juice boxes and flattened bits of Wonder Bread for Communion. I had memorized the Eucharistic Prayers – I knew many of the hymns by heart, WITH harmony!  I loved going to church.

There was just one issue: I was raised Roman Catholic, and I lived in a community that was very much a Catholic bubble. I had little to no idea of other ways to be. I had no idea that I, as a woman, could be called to be a pastor or priest. If I wanted a religious life, I had the one option of becoming a nun, as my own mother had briefly been. But there seemed to be no way, short of extreme and unlikely changes at the Vatican, that I could be a priest. The Vicar of Dibley was therefore a bit of fantastical and outrageous hope to me – reminding me each week amidst the humor of the show, that the Lord IS my shepherd, and that somehow, someway, he’d lead me to do and be what I was supposed to be.

Indeed, the Lord has led me, even when I’ve had to be dragged kicking and screaming. Fast forward twenty some years, and I feel as if my own journey towards the priesthood could been conceived and scripted by a team of BBC Comedy Writers: God has a sense of humor! Like many things in life, my journey to ordained ministry wasn’t a straight path – there were many curves, off ramps, wrong turns, and rest stops along the way.  We call the “official” process to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church the “Discernment Process,” with a capital “D.” Lest we be fooled: all our life processes require discernment. Discernment requires careful listening. I was constantly reminded especially this past year that I always have to keep listening carefully for the Good Shepherd’s voice: for the voice of Jesus, calling me by name, leading me along to where I need to be.

There are a lot of competing voices out there. The voice of the stranger can often be lurking in what sounds or seems spiritual. It takes time and practice, as well as learning from our mistakes and from those older and wiser, to recognize and hear God’s voice within us, guiding us. The process of becoming our true selves in Christ is not easy, no matter how spiritual or religious we may be. It usually happens in God’s time, not our sense of time. It is best done with the help of our fellow sheep: with the help and support of our community. And it can only be done with God’s help.

Jesus also says, “I am the gate.”

We may initially think of a gate as something that closes off and separates, as a barrier. A gate may be used for confinement, or for controlling passage. We can close the gate to be exclusive, to protect those “on the inside,” from “those on the outside.”

Jesus is the open gate: Jesus is our way of liberation.

The gate by which the sheep can go through to find pasture expresses how Jesus brings God’s saving love and grace to all. As both shepherd and gate, Jesus provides for us. Jesus does not confine us, Jesus frees us. Jesus as the gate is the gate that opens for us, even when we are that sheep who totally wandered off and got lost from the flock and the shepherd; the sheep who has almost been stolen and killed by the thief and just barely made it back, banged up, exhausted and crying. Jesus, as the open gate, will welcome us back to the fold.

Jesus as shepherd and gate provides what we need: abundant life. Life not only as the force of God that gives us breath and being, but life in which we can have meaningful vocation and purpose, participation in a supportive community, like this one, sustaining and loving relationships, and finally – eternal life in God through Jesus. We will still face struggles in life, but we can find care and nourishment in being a part of Jesus’ flock. And Jesus, as the gate, is open to all.

I am so glad to be with you here at Trinity, and I look forward to being the church together. The Book of Acts gives us a good reminder of what that entails, and we still carry on these traditions so many centuries later. While the state of the overall church today can seem discouraging compared the church we hear about in the Book of Acts – wonders and signs, everyone being provided for, and numbers growing daily – we will continue to be the church by devoting ourselves to these four practices.

We will continue in the Apostles’ teaching: through our sermons, our educational programs, through reading together and Bible study; we will devote ourselves to fellowship – to nurturing the quality of our relationships, living out a sense of responsibility for each other, encouraging and increasing our hospitality to newcomers, and also while just having fun – at our concerts, our fairs and other events…

We will devote ourselves to the Breaking of the Bread – not only our celebration of the Eucharist, but the common meals we share together,

And finally, we will devote ourselves to the prayers – not only our prayer together in worship, but our own lives of prayer that we live out the other 6 days of the week, praying for this parish, and for each other, our families and friends, as well as our enemies.

As a community and as individuals, may we listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, to  know and trust his voice over the voice of the stranger. The way of the shepherd and the gate is the way of love and mercy. Life is not easy, but we can endure if we put our trust in Jesus, who is our help and our strength, and our companion and guide for the journey. May we know his voice, calling each of us by name, so we can follow where he leads – through the gate to freedom and to abundant life.  Amen.

I have accepted a call to serve as Assistant Rector of Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven, Connecticut! I begin on Sunday, 30 April.

Chris and I have already found a new home in East Rock, and will be moving on 1 May.

I am so happy and excited and exhausted and grateful and yet I’d like to ask you to just reach on over here through the screen and pinch me, please – just to make sure I truly am conscious…

There were many times this year when I felt like I was walking through the wilderness. Thanks be to God, Chris, my family, and all my dear friends for walking beside me, and pointing me to Easter.

I am so glad to be working on this biennial conference once again. We are expecting over 400 attendees, from around the world: performers and performance scholars, educators and youth workers, and others from all sorts of helping professions who use performance as a tool in their development, community building and political organizing work.

Can we perform our way to power?

(I’d say yes!)

http://www.performingtheworld.org/

As some of you know, I was called to serve as an assistant priest at a church last month. I happily accepted the call, and began planning all the details of my new job and our new life in a new city.

Then, out of the blue, there was trouble. My call was rescinded. The vestry blocked my being hired for reasons I will never know. Was it the funding? Was it me as a candidate and as a person?  I do not know. I will probably never know.

I have been heartbroken ever since. I have grieved everything that I had planned to have: great benefits, a good salary, a new life and ministry in a church I had thought was healthy. A purpose: that I was fully called just like all my classmates who are already well settled into priestly positions at great churches. I continue to grieve the required “cure” for priestly ordination that I have worked so hard to finally get in a year when there have been fewer jobs than there normally would. I have questioned my calling, my skills, my entire personhood. I have questioned whether there is truly a place for someone like me in the church. I am only beginning to come out on the other side as a wiser, though likely more cynical person, who still needs some healing to happen, and who still needs a job.

“These things happen for a reason, you probably dodged a bullet!” Even when it’s true, even when I know that I am a happy, healthy, lucky, privileged-as-all-getout person who is still able to pay rent and afford food despite this, it is still painful. I remember being unemployed as a single, younger adult, and there were times when I was quite desperate. I am not even as close to being as desperate as I was then. Yet, I have been grateful to those who have sat with me in the pain and disappointment, who have not just moved on and said, “you’ll find something better!” I am not yet convinced that I will find anything else, and I have appreciated those who have held that, and who have held me.

Before my call was rescinded, I wrote and sent an introduction of myself to go in the church newsletter. I enjoyed writing it, even thought I was given a short deadline.  Here is the introduction of me that never happened: a call story, and even in this disappointment, a reminder as to why I’m still doing this: a reminder in the words that I myself wrote –  Is it not when we feel most insignificant and unprepared that God will suddenly catch our eye, and call us into service?

One of my favorite memories of having been a kid in church is from when I was 10 years old. I was sitting with my family in the pews one Sunday. At that time, our Catholic Church only allowed boys to be acolytes. Only altar boys could perform various tasks in the Eucharist like ringing the sanctus bells, or handling the bread or wine. On that particular Sunday, the altar boys had failed to show. As we sang the offertory hymn and passed the offering baskets, our priest suddenly made eye contact with me all the way from the altar. He motioned me to come up to him. I looked behind me, in front of me, and to my left and to my right. Who, me? Surely he wasn’t asking for my help? But he was, and I nervously approached the altar. He asked me to help him, and I did. I assisted the priest in setting the table for the Eucharist, handing off the elements, and washing his hands with the lavabo bowl. These were tasks I had never done before, and were tasks I was (technically) not supposed to do. Yet I did them, learning how on the spot. On that day, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of meaning and belonging that I had never felt before at church: I had helped prepare the Eucharist! I felt like I was an important part of the parish, and that I had a new and special way to contribute.  Is it not when we feel most insignificant and unprepared that God will suddenly catch our eye, and call us into service?

I am so excited to begin my ordained ministry by serving here as your associate! It is clear to me that the parish deeply cares for its children and youth, and for their growth and development as Christians. It is also clear that parishioners of all ages are hungry for more organized ministry opportunities for young people and their families.

I believe that children and youth are already full members of the Church. As such, they should be actively involved and engaged in all the different activities of our faith community, including worship, education, service, and fellowship. The enthusiasm and love shown by children and youth can help transform all of us to be better people and Christians: after all, Jesus tells us in Luke’s Gospel that we are to receive the Kingdom of God as would a little child! We adults need to always grow in our ability to trust and encourage our children and youth. By sharing our sacramental life together, we can help them discover their own sense of meaning and belonging at church, if we faithfully walk with them through the happy and difficult times of life.

I hope you will walk with me this year as we will seek to create more varied and rich experiences in Christian formation and worship for all ages. I look forward to meeting all of you, and to worshipping, learning, and playing together!

 

 

 

 

Fifth Sunday of Easter,
John 13:31-35

Preached on Sunday, 24 April 2016 at the Church of St. Matthew and St. Timothy.

It is my final semester at Union Theological Seminary, and I am taking a required class called “Religions in the City.” In this class, we are learning about the core teachings and practices of the other major world religions: Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. In addition to reading about each of them, we have also tried a main spiritual practice of each religion: for Judaism, we were to practice Sabbath. For Hinduism, we practiced reciting mantras. For Islam we practiced Salah, or the five daily prayers, and for Buddhism, we practiced Zen Meditation.

Studying these religions, and trying the different spiritual practices of them has led me to wonder: if we were to expose someone from another faith to Christianity for the first time, what would we say is our core teaching? And what practice would we tell them to do? My answer is given by Jesus in our Gospel today: our core teaching is love, and we are to practice love!

John’s Gospel recounts Jesus giving the disciples a new commandment, as he realizes that he is going to die. It is a sweet and poignant moment: Jesus addresses the disciples, this ragtag group of grown men, as “little children.”  This is the final, intimate and intensive conversation that Jesus will get to have with them before he dies, and he wants them to remember his last words. Jesus gets right to the point, there are no parables or puzzles. Jesus gives a new order to love one another. It is both simple enough that a young child could understand, and yet profound enough that a mature believer can struggle with putting it into practice.

Jesus says, “By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I realized while working with the Spanish translation of my sermon that, if one were to translate the Spanish literally, it is “love some and others.” I like this – we are not only to love the ones we know – the ones with whom we are comfortable – but we are to also love those who are “other” to us. What makes one a follower of Jesus is therefore not one’s ability to memorize and recite a creed or a Bible passage. Jesus did not say, “they will not know you are my disciples if you believe the right things.” Instead, this commandment is about how we are to live: we are to practice love.

What do we really mean by love? Writer Glennon Doyle Melton describes love in this way: “Love is not a feeling. Love is the result of hours and days and years of using your hands and heart and mind to show up in a million different ways for other people. We don’t wait to act until we feel loving — we act so that we will feel loving. You don’t wait for love – you create it.”** I really like her definition.

Jesus gives this new commandment as the inauguration of the new covenant between God and the new community of Jesus’ followers. It is a new way for the disciples and for us to commit to being and acting in the world. Unlike the previous commandments – like the ten commandments, this one does not start with a “Thou shall not.” Instead, it is positive, and it is completely open ended! Can we ever love enough? There is always a need for more love in the world. Jesus does not tell us how this love should be, but to say, “just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.” Two chapters later in John’s Gospel, Jesus says that “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” If we follow Jesus as our model for love, his love goes beyond compassion and care: Jesus gives all. There are no limits – love asks for everything. Love asks for every bit of life we have in us.

We could say now: “really, Jesus? That’s a lot to ask.” It can be really hard to love others. It can seem impossible to love others. There are many people out there that seem utterly unlovable. There are those we try to love who just continue to hurt us.

I think Jesus would encourage us to keep practicing. We need to love in ways that will stretch us, yet not exhaust us, or hurt or abuse us. We need to start by practicing love for ourselves first. What have you done to love yourself lately? We have to love ourselves before we are able to love others! If we can love ourselves well, then that love will start to spill over – and we will love others. We need to practice that love, too. We practice it by reaching out and creating love. We practice it by volunteering for ANGELS Basketball, or for the Soup Kitchen. We practice it by singing in the choir – one can really show long through music. We practice it by showing someone grace. We practice it by helping others, and – sometimes – allowing others to help us! Love is a two way street.

As individuals and as a church community, today we can recommit to how we will be and act in the world. How can we use our hands and hearts and minds to find new ways to love? What are the small ways in which we can show up for others? What new risks might we be willing to take, knowing that we may never receive love in return? How can we take a chance on love, while still keeping healthy boundaries and protecting ourselves from undue harm?

As Christians, we are called to live and act so that there IS love in this world.  We are called to keep practicing, so we can get even better at loving. Jesus loved his disciples even though they betrayed him. If we are committed to Jesus, then we are committed to practicing love. Author Karen Armstrong writes that “Religion is not about having to believe or accept certain difficult propositions. Instead, religion is about doing things that change you.”*** By practicing love we show Jesus to others – we show them that we really are his followers. By practicing love, we can bring about change and transformation: in the world, in others, and in each of us.

 

**http://momastery.com/blog/2016/04/12/life-is-hard-but-they-are-brave/
***Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, Reprint ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004) 270.

 

It was a great joy to be invited to be a part of the Seven Last Words Service at St. Bart’s this year. An audio recording of my meditation on the seventh word – “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” – can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/jtu4xde

Oh, the importance of one’s name.

I am marking the date of my official, legal name change. This post is directed at the selected few who care about that. I recently spent some time, effort, and about $160 to change my middle name. Just my middle name. Here’s why.

As  I was preparing to marry my husband, I pondered the name change question. The trend these days amongst my cis-woman friends marrying men is to take the man’s surname, and then move one’s “maiden name” to one’s middle name. Chris, being the delight he is, told me to do exactly what I wanted in terms of keeping or changing my name.

Most other states in the US allow for more name change/combination options than New York. For example, I could not take both of our surnames as one surname without hyphenating them. For some reason, Hanley-Ashley just didn’t look or sound so great to us – it’s the  double “ley” ending, methinks. And both of us would have had to have taken it. New York would have allowed us to create a new surname out of both of our surnames. We tried several options: Hashley, Hanashley, Ansley. Then, for fun, we used an anagram app to see what we could get using all the letters. The best option by far was “Hyenas-Hell-Ya.” Imagine anyone, especially a member of the clergy, with that name?!

Of course, I didn’t HAVE to change my name at all. I’d been Elise Hanley for 32 years, and I was perfectly happy staying with my birth and Equity Card name. I am a Hanley – I really could not be a Hanley. Yet, I liked the name Ashley, and I liked the Biblical notion of acquiring a new name when one is blessed by God to begin a new calling. It finally occurred to me: why not make Ashley my middle name? Chris loved the idea. My middle initial was already A, so I figured it wouldn’t be that complicated a change. After all, New York Law states that “you have the right to adopt any name you wish simply by using that name consistently and without intent to defraud.”

I was not quite correct. For ordination purposes, the Church could not have me as Elise Ashley Hanley unless I changed my name legally. So, I did. I got a small taste of what my trans friends may have gone through, with a whole lot more privilege. I went through the courts to change my name.

So, while I could have moved my maiden name to middle name for free (or for the fee of a marriage license), I had to pay $65 to petition the court to make my husband’s name my middle name. After appearing before the judge, I had to put a legal notice of name change in the Bronx Free Press. That cost us another $95 – good thing we had the money. Overall, it was a fine and smooth process with no implied shame (again, did I mention privilege?) After receiving an affidavit from the newspaper and filing it with the City Clerk today, I am officially and legally Elise Ashley Hanley. So, I am still Elise Hanley, yet also Elise Ashley Hanley. I am also technically Elise Ashley for when people insist on calling us “Mr. and Mrs. Ashley.” The feminist in me is well pleased, while the traditionalist isn’t crying, either.

 

With joy, I announce and invite!