• One Word 2021: Embodied

    Every January, in lieu of resolutions, I choose a word to help guide the coming year. It helps inform my thoughts, my words, my actions; it reminds me of what to spend precious emotional energy on. Sometimes, the word is directly linked to my hopes or desires for the coming months. At others, it’s more of a lesson that I began to learn, and I want to walk it out in the new year. Such is the case with my 2021 word: embodied.

    This past year, I learned a lot about the body. I walked away from diet culture and came home to my body through intuitive eating. I took up yoga, a practice I had shied away from for years because I was afraid I didn’t have the right body type for it–and in doing so, I realized just how strong and powerful my body truly is. I spent time barefoot outdoors, literally grounding myself in the earth’s energy. I focused on rest, and nourishing myself, and moving joyfully–the very basics of what it is to be a human. I read, and I researched, and I realized that the body really does keep the score*, and much of my C-PTSD is tied up in the physicality of my own body; every time I treat it with gentleness and grace and remind it that it is safe and cared for, I heal a little bit more. Dan Siegel says, “Where attention goes, neural firing flows,” which refers to neuroplasticity, the changing and regrowth of the neural pathways in our brains; essentially, what we focus on can literally alter our brains, ultimately impacting how we feel about ourselves and the world around us.  I struck a balance between treating my body with traditional Western medicine and more homeopathic and holistic remedies, and I saw how both are essential. I tracked my feminine cycle, and I discovered how it was linked to natural rhythms, like the phases of the moon, or the seasons of the earth. I felt my feelings. I took my meds. I asked my body daily what it needed, and I gave it exactly that.

    But there is so much more I want to explore this year, particularly when it comes to the role of the body as a person of faith. Because here’s the thing: Jesus, The Greatest Mystery of our faith, entered this broken world the way we all do: in a body, in flesh and bone and sweat and muscle and organs and pushing and pulsing and screaming. The body is not shameful to him; it is literally how he chose to come to us. God had a body, a body very much like my own. A body with knobby knees, one that got tired and needed sleep, one that hurt and bled, one that needed sustenance to survive, one covered in pores and hair and veins. So the body, it seems, is good to him. All bodies, even, not just the ones that look a certain way. There is such a holy healing in that. All bodies are good bodies.

    This year, I want to lean into embodiment even more. I want to discover how God communicates to me through my body, through the injustices that make me rage and cry, through the beauty I see with my physical sense of sight. I want to pray not just with my mouth or my wallet but also with my feet. I want to re-read the Gospels, the story of the man Jesus who healed with spit and mud, who cooked his friends breakfast on a beach, who napped in a boat, who flipped tables in the temple. I want to use my hands to mother, to cook, to soothe, to heal, to write, to clean, to welcome–because it all matters; there is no separation between sacred and secular. I want to be an active participant in this thing we call the Christian life. I want to live it as embodied.

     I need the body, the body who knows my limitations and expectations and fractures and failures and desire and disappointment and hunger and need because it has felt them, too. I don’t want impractical faith, faith that acts like God is some ethereal force somewhere out there, like God is there but not here. I don’t want a faith that’s too far removed to be attained, a faith that acts like it exists only in my head and my heart without paying any attention to the skin that inhabits them.

    How could a faith like that speak to an epidemic that has claimed over a million lives?
    How could a faith like that speak to the blood of black and brown bodies that soaks the earth?
    How could a faith like that speak to children who feel the angry gnaw of hunger in their bellies?
    How could a faith like that speak to inmates on death row?
    How could a faith like that speak to refugees who traverse the deadly desert or the dangerous waves of the ocean in search of freedom?
    How could a faith like that speak to the one who has cancer?
    How could a faith like that speak to the AIDS patient?
    How could a faith like that speak to the families in cages?

    Humanity is embodied, and so we need an embodied God. Our pain is embodied, and so are our struggles. We don’t need a God who floats around in a far-off mansion in the sky; we need a God who feels the hurt, who knows the ache, who understands the weariness. We need a God who plugs the bullet holes and feels the bony ribs, who shields our bodies with his own, who weeps, whose body tore, who knows what it is to choke out the words, “I. Can’t. Breathe.”

    So here’s to 2021, the year of living embodied.
    I’m curious: do you choose a word for the new year? If so, what did you decide on?

    * I highly recommend reading the book, The Body Keeps the Score, by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk.
    ** Sketch of the body is from BlekPrints on Etsy.

  • A blessing for weeks when joy feels impossible

    Today is the third Sunday in Advent, and as we light the candle for Joy, I close my eyes and breathe a silent prayer, a confession of sorts. For these days, if I’m being honest? Joy seems so very far from my reach. Maybe it’s the same for you?

    We are walking through the darkness of these Advent days, friends, magnified by the literal darkness that permeates our days as we inch ourselves closer to the winter solstice, crawling there on our knees. And in these long, cold days, I find myself intricately attuned to the darkness of our world, too, so much that it physically hurts. This past week, the federal government carried out two more executions, making the total for 2020 seventeen lives lost to state-sanctioned murder. One case, that of Brandon Bernard, gained a lot news coverage, for five of the original nine jurors stepped forward and said if they had known twenty years ago of the new evidence that recently came to light, they would not have sentenced him to death. Brandon was fully repentant, and still, he died on December 10th. My birthday. International Human Right’s Day. And the darkness grows heavier, just like the grief in my chest.

    The fact is, it’s a hard year. These past months have been marked by so much loss, so much mourning, so much suffering, so much rage. And you want us to celebrate Joy, Lord?

    ///

    Every year, we bring our neighbors Christmas cookies, accompanied by a little card to wish them happy holidays. Every year, our one neighbor Les, two doors down, stops by to tell us how much he appreciates our gift, how yummy they are, how thankful he is that we think of him. This weekend, as I planned our cookie list, tied a bundle of shortbread together with string, I thought about Les, about the ministry of baked goods and what it means to love your neighbor as yourself. I think maybe, just maybe, Joy is what happens when we choose to be the good we want to see in the world. I am aching these days for the good. Perhaps you feel it, too?

    Maybe a batch of cookies is a Joy-seed, one we plant in the soil of a world that sometimes feels overwhelmingly cold and dark. Maybe every time we make the effort to be the good, another seed is planted.

    When we wear a mask to protect society’s most vulnerable.
    When we buy coffee for the person behind us in the drive-through line.
    When we right our wrongs.
    When we forgive our enemies.
    When we send in our end-of-year donations.
    When we speak the hard truths with gentle love.
    When we practice saying thank you for the gift of enough.
    When we keep our mouths shut instead of trying to prove our point.
    When we refuse to other those who are different than us.

    We plant the seeds, even when our hearts are heavy, and the beautiful thing is that Joy, at the end of the day, isn’t just a feeling, and it is not at all dependent on us. Joy is our promise, our inheritance, and it doesn’t have to stand around and wait for our permission in order for it to be true.

    So this week, may we reimagine Joy. May we narrow our focus to the faces right in front of us, and may we seek to sow the seeds there. May we remember that Joy, after all, is resistance because it sees the dark, it sees the pain, it sees the suffering, and like Mary, it sings out anyway.

    You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.


  • A blessing for weeks when we’re waiting

    It’s Advent. For most Christian traditions, it’s the beginning of our liturgical year, marked by the expectant waiting and preparation for Christmas. Christ-mas. Christ’s coming.

    We are a people in waiting, aren’t we? Waiting for a cure. Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for the test results. Waiting for that phone call. Waiting for an opportunity. Waiting for a second chance. Waiting for that apology. Waiting for the big break. We spend so much of our time holding our breath, teetering on the edge of whatever is coming next. And it’s exhausting.

    Because when we’re in that great waiting room, we live by the “what if”s. What if it doesn’t work out the way we’re hoping it does? What if we don’t get what we want? What if we’re disappointed? What if we come up empty-handed? We spend so much time and emotional energy, take up so much brain space occupying the possibility of that which hasn’t happened and friends, let me tell you, it is draining our very souls.

    So this week, what if we imagine a new what if? What if we dare to believe that this here, this moment, this real, actual life that’s happening in this right-now is what we have been waiting for all along, even if we didn’t know it? What if we look around at our lives, take stock of everything, and declare with joy that this is good?

    May you know the blessing this week of seeing the beauty in the ordinary moments. May your meals nourish more than just your stomach; may you feel fed in your soul as you give thanks for always enough. May you have warm company and warm memories to carry you through the cold of the approaching winter. May you feel strengthened by those who love you. May you give grace and gentleness to yourself as we hunker back down for another quarantine. May you smile whenever you look in the mirror. May you laugh loud, and laugh often, laugh so hard your sides hurt and your cheeks feel tight from smiling. May you get enough sleep, and may you remember to take your medicine, and may your feet be warm and cozy while the rain and snow falls outside.

    There is goodness here, I promise you. You may have to squint to see it, but it exists. You have a beautiful story inside of you, dear one, and with every waking moment, another page is being turned. You are the one you’ve been waiting for. What if this week you practice believing it?

    You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.

  • An embodied Advent

    The moments just following my son’s birth four years ago were some of the most holy ground I have ever experienced. As his full-bodied screams pierced the room, the very space between heaven and earth felt thin, and hallowed, the lines between sacred and worldly bleeding into one another, much as the elation and the pain coursed simultaneously through my body.

    Birth is an altogether spiritual experience, and so it seems fitting that one of the most holy days of my faith tradition is characterized by a baby–a baby who was covered in blood and fluid and vernix, a baby who cried and tore Mary’s flesh and suckled at her breast. A baby who had an umbilical cord, who soiled himself, who had wrinkly toes and patchy hair, a baby who was helpless and wholly dependent on his teenaged mother. The Greatest Mystery of our faith entered our broken world the way we all do, in a body, in flesh and bone and sweat and muscle and organs and pushing and pulsing and screaming.

    And we sing come, let us adore him.

    Christianity’s Advent begins tomorrow, November 29th, and it is a season where we will wait, expectantly, much like a pregnant mother, for the miracle of Christmas Day. Christ-mas. Christ’s coming. A season where we ready ourselves and prepare him room, much like a pregnant mother who nests and washes tiny infant clothing in preparation and arranges a nursery.

    And this Advent, I find myself coming back to the body. I need the body, the body who knows my limitations and expectations and fractures and failures and desire and disappointment and hunger and need because it has felt them, too. I don’t want impractical faith, faith that acts like God is some ethereal force somewhere out there, like God is there but not here. I don’t want a faith that’s too far removed to be attained, a faith that acts like it exists only in my head and my heart without paying any attention to the skin that inhabits them.

    How could a faith like that speak to an epidemic that has claimed over a million lives?
    How could a faith like that speak to the blood of black and brown bodies that soaks the earth?
    How could a faith like that speak to children who feel the angry gnaw of hunger in their bellies?
    How could a faith like that speak to inmates on death row?
    How could a faith like that speak to refugees who traverse the deadly desert or the dangerous waves of the ocean in search of freedom?
    How could a faith like that speak to the one who has cancer?
    How could a faith like that speak to the AIDS patient?
    How could a faith like that speak to the families in cages?
    How could a faith like that speak to the woman who is starving herself to be thin?
    How could a faith like that speak to the ones who accidentally overdose or the ones who die by suicide?

    Humanity is embodied. Our pain is embodied, and so are our struggles. We don’t need a God who floats around in a far-off mansion in the sky; we need a God who feels the hurt, who knows the ache, who understands the weariness. We need a God who plugs the bullet holes and feels the bony ribs, who heals with mud and spit, who shields our bodies with his own, who weeps, whose body tore, who cooked his friends breakfast, who knows what it is to choke out the words, “I. Can’t. Breathe.”

    We need an embodied God.

    So as Advent begins tomorrow, I’m not looking for the sparkly lights and the shiny presents. I’m not looking for angels singing in the sky, the joyful carols, the sanitized and white-washed version with the cherub child and a glowing halo.

    I’m looking for the dirty manger, the stench of the stable, the mother who is leaking milk, the baby slick with fluid. I’m looking for the tears, the screams, the flesh, the exhaustion, the thin and holy places. I’m looking for an embodied God.

    O, come let us adore him.

  • The Goodness

    I lay my head on the pillow, close my eyes, breathe in through my nose. My thoughts wander over my day, stopping when I remember a moment that brought me joy, or a word I wish was unspoken, and I sit with it, that moment; I cup it, stretch it, hold it up to the light. Where were you in that moment, God? I ask. What do you have to teach to me?Thank you, I say. Or sometimes: I’m sorry.

    This has been my nightly practice for a month now, and it’s my version of the Examen prayer, an ancient practice traced back to St. Ignatius. It’s a method of prayer in which I learn to look at things as a sum of many parts, and reawakens me to the presence of God in my everyday life, in the moments I’m tempted to call mundane or ordinary. It’s where my social media pillow prayers originated from: bite-sized prayers, lines of poetry, sacred conversations that come to me during this time that I then share with my Instagram followers. I don’t know why I started posting them, to be honest. I guess because I wanted to remember. I wanted something tangible to look back on, to find God in, to say, “Ahh, yes; that’s what the Spirit said to me!” or “Oh… yeah, still working on learning that one.”

    It was recommended to me from my spiritual director Nish — the Examen, that is; not the pilow prayers. I came to her a little over a month ago because honestly, I was burned out on religion, yet something inside me still ached to connect with the holy but didn’t know how to do that in my new context. I’ve written about my journey many, many times here, about all the unconventional places I have found God over the years, about the deconstruction and rebuilding of my faith, about my problems with the institution of Church and all the damage it’s done — it’s all part of it. But deep still cries out to deep, doesn’t it? Time and time again, I can only walk away so far before I hear the call to come back home. And so with each new season of my faith-journey, I’ve had to relearn God all over again, and rediscover how to flesh out the truth I believe in. I’ve had to wrestle with all those hard questions, and often, to accept the smallness of my understanding. I’ve had to look back and build my altars of remembrance, to stake out claim and become acquainted with the wilderness, to remind my soul that these desert places are good because they birth an intimacy and maturity that’s simply just not possible to achieve on the mountain-top. There is always goodness because there is always God, and sometimes we maybe don’t see it because we’re still wrapped up in going through the grit. But the goodness remains all the same.

    Once upon a time, I was naive, and I was unsure. But mostly? I was ignorant. Back then, the world was very much black and white for me; I hadn’t yet been introduced to the beautiful in-between, the sacred space that exists in the gray

    And then, in a moment, it all changed. Everything I’d built my neat and tidy little life upon crumbled into nothing but dust. I suffered loss after loss, became fearful of holding onto anything too tightly lest it slip through my fingers. I went to Liberia, a place both so tragic and so beautiful that I still scarcely know what to do with everything it showed me, all the hard lessons I had to learn because of it.

    Yet wasn’t God there, too? Isn’t that the chorus my soul cries out, over and over again? God is in this place; he just doesn’t look or smell or feel like he used to. In Liberia, he was sweat and mud and sea breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. He was hot sun and dust under my fingernails, and he was a gulp of cool water, a blessed reprieve. He was a handshake with snapping fingers, hugs with a kiss on both cheeks; he was toothy smiles and weathered skin and little fingers that claw my legs, stroke my hair. He was hunger, and he was need. He was unmarked graves and children who leave this world much too soon. He was the wailing of a widow in black robes, he was war, he was disease, he was hope. He was my daughter that came home ten years after I first met her.

    God was there, has always been there, and because of that, everything is different for me now. God was there, is there even after I’ve left, and at the same time, he’s in my marriage, an ocean away. God is the dinners my husband cooks for the family, the morning cups of coffee I bring him, the way we’re always learning new steps in the dance of “you first”. God was in my pregnancy, in the miracle of cells multiplying. I came to know God as mother in that season, and she was the swell of my belly as my son stretched his legs. She was morning sickness, the swooshing sound of a heartbeat during a sonogram, the exhaustion, the pain of labor. She was the breaking of my body, the splitting open, the blood, the birth, the scar. She was tears and laughter; she was leaking breastmilk, and she was soft lullabies sung against my son’s silky curls. God is my daughter–the miracle and courage and strength. God is leaning into one another instead of pulling away. God is laughter in the living room and tickling toes and jokes about robots and the confidence to speak English aloud to the room. God is both my comfort and my discomfort, my joy and my pain. God is my excess and my lack, my fulfillment but also the not-quite-yet. God is a father who carries his baby on his back and also a mother who prepares daily bread with love. God is the land of my Canaan but also is my wilderness. God is the hard places, the uncomfortable and the mess, where I’m stretched thin and my heart feels heavy yet full.

    There is always goodness because there is always God.
    That is what praying the Examen has taught me. That is what I’ve learned from coming to the end of all the rules and regulations, of the pride and self-sufficiency, of religious social clubs that sit around and talk about who’s in and who’s out, who’s doing it right and who’s doing it wrong. God is not as complicated, not as demanding, not as angry, not as unrelatable and unreachable as we make her seem. We are never so far gone that we’re unable to find our way home. We are never broken beyond repair, never too much or not enough, never so messy that we can’t still be glorious. 

    So we watch, and we look for what the Spirit is doing in our own little pocket of this messy-beautiful world, in the tension of God’s kingdom here and yet to come, the now and not yet. We watch, and we join in. We listen for what he is calling for us to do, and we do it, and we know full well that our calling might not look the same as someone else’s. The way we are walking out our faith might look differently and sound differently than the way someone else is. And that’s okay, too. God is big enough to be doing a work in both.  We can be secure in who we are and how God is living and moving in each of us right now. And we live with our arms wide open, to God, and to our neighbors, because it’s never been either/or. Both/and, remember. Both/and.

    I don’t know what kind of Christian I am these days. Some of you might be uncomfortable with that, and it’s okay. I understand. But it’s true. I am deeply connected to my Pentecostal roots; the things of the Spirit will always feel like home. I still raise my hands and cry while I sing. I still tremble when I pray–and I always like to pray while I lay my hands on someone. And I am moving with God in the Presbyterian tradition, too, in how I can feel the divinity of the words in our liturgy roll over my tongue as we recite them in unison, in the knowledge I am taking part in something holy and ancient, a foundation of our faith. I find God in sunshine that warms my shoulders and the way my son’s hair curls up around his ear and the dimples in my daughter’s cheek when she smiles. He’s in how he uses Kyle to ground me, and uses me to challenge Kyle, and how we grow so beautifully together. God’s in my tears over war and racism, our broken planet, the loss of life. He’s in the dark and the silence, and he’s in the light and the noise; the order and the chaos; who I was and who I am becoming.

    It is my prayer that wherever you, the one reading these very words, find yourself on the journey, you still believe in the goodness. Maybe you need to take a few minutes at the end of each day to look back and find it, but oh, how I hope you do.Because here’s the thing about the goodness, you see; it’s a bit like yeast in a batch of dough, moving with you, growing, in the tension of the way your fingers dig into the wet, messy dough and shape it. We have the power to shape our messes, remember–it’s not always the other way around. 

    And there, in the mess, in what started as all those disconnected ingredients, all those separate parts, the goodness grows. It binds them together. It makes something new, something beautiful. And that something beautiful is for you.

  • So, A Pentecostal and A Presbyterian Walk Into A Bar…

    Alternative title: So, I Have Some Thoughts About Church.
    Or: It’s Good to Reflect On Our Faith.
    Or: I Think Sarah Bessey Might Have Written a Book Just For Me.

    ///

    When I was six years old, I found God. Or rather, God found me.

    I grew up Catholic, not in practice, necessarily, but definitely in name. The daughter of two immigrants, I was enrolled in Catholic school because religion was a tie to the old country, so I went to mass, was taught by the sisters. I found God again when I was nine, kneeling on the floor of a basement bedroom in my aunt’s home. I asked Jesus to make a home in my heart that day. I didn’t really understand how it all worked, if we’re being honest. But I was young, and I was scared, and the idea of a savior who could somehow fix my problems appealed to every part of me.

    This God looked differently than the one I’d been introduced to just a few years prior. There are some, I suppose, who might say they were two separate entities. I don’t believe that to be true, though. I don’t think that God incarnates himself one way for the Catholics, another for the Protestants, and so on and so forth. Rather, I think we are the ones who craft God into the versions that best suit ourselves. God alone cannot be divided, after all. God is bigger, wilder, more abundant and good than we could ever imagine, so perhaps I saw merely a glimpse of him when I was six, and perhaps I saw another one when I was nine. I think that perhaps it must be God who remains the same; it’s only our vision that changes.

    ///

    I met him again when I was seventeen. I was in a Pentecostal church, listening to a preacher with a slow, Southern drawl. It was a Sunday evening. I sat in a pew near the back, still so young in my faith, so unsure. I listened to this preacher talk about God, and my insides felt hot, my heart like it might thump right out of my chest at any moment. At the end of the night, I made my way down to the altar, and the preacher prayed for me with his hands lightly touching my head, and I cried and raised my shaking hands to heaven, and everything around me was blazing in light, even though my eyes were closed.

    I could sit and talk to you for hours about the seasons of life that followed. At first, I had my carefully constructed boxes of what was black, what was white, what was Christian, what was not. I was merciless in holding everything–and everyone–up to impossible standards. I didn’t yet know otherwise, you see. I had yet to be introduced to the glory of the gray areas, the sacred space that exists in the in-between, or even on the fringes and edges of what I thought I knew.

    But that wasn’t all it was–there was beauty, and growth in that season, too. I could talk to you about how my faith came alive in those years. I could tell you about poring over the scriptures, praying in tongues I had never spoken before. I could tell you about how the Spirit sometimes made me want to shout and jump, and how there were other times I’d lay on the floor and weep while I felt it heavy on me. I could tell you about hearing stories from missionaries in India and Honduras. I could tell you about grandmothers who prayed over me at altars, at their kitchen tables, over the telephone in the middle of the night.

    I could tell you so many stories of the seasons that came next, when I left that church and met God again in small, ordinary prayer rooms and living rooms all across the country, in Pennsylvania and Virginia and Colorado and Missouri and Washington. I could tell you about meeting him when I decided to leave church for a while and spent my Sundays singing and reading and painting and praying. I could tell you about meeting God halfway across the world, and how he no longer looked or smelled or even felt like he used to. He was sweat and mud and sea breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. He was hot sun and dust under my fingernails, and he was a gulp of cool water, a blessed reprieve. God was a handshake with snapping fingers, hugs with a kiss on both cheeks; toothy smiles and weathered skin and little fingers that claw my legs, stroke my hair. I met God in hunger, and in need. God was unmarked graves and children who leave this world much too soon. He became the wailing of a widow in black robes, the cry of an orphan, the ache of lack. And when I met my now-husband, I was introduced to God yet again. He was present in the longings finally fulfilled, prayers finally answered, and he was present in Kyle’s theology, how he celebrated community and communion and felt joy at setting the table for his neighbors.

    I remember the first, and only, time I questioned whether Kyle and I could make it work. It was during our first date, actually; we went to Starbucks for five hours and drank hot espresso and told each other our histories. He’d grown up in the Reformed Church in America, a denomination this “happy-clappy” (to borrow Sarah Bessey’s term) charismatic had never even heard of (though he’s started serving a Presbyterian church as of last year). He feels most at home in the order of tradition, the rhythms of the church lectionary and ancient liturgies. He’s had unpleasant experiences with evangelicals in his younger years, and so he spent much time with his spiritual guard up, understandably so. And here I was, talking about things like prophecy and speaking in tongues, and I sat across the table from him and wondered, “Am I going to be too much for him? And furthermore–is he going to be enough?”

    In the months to come, I was questioned by others too, dear ones with the best of intentions who gently voiced their concerns about Kyle’s and my differing faith-backgrounds. I determined early on I wouldn’t take it personally, and here’s why:

    After that first date, God put me and all of my questions in place. I was reminded of all the seasons of life I’ve walked with him through, and I remembered he was in all of it, every moment. God is no longer found solely on a Sunday morning while sitting in a pew with my head bowed. I’ve come to find him in both my comfort and my discomfort. My joy and my pain. In my excess and my lack. In fulfillment but also in the not-quite-yet. In how my husband fathers our son, and in how my heart has become that of a mother, and how God is both/and. In the land of my Canaan but also in my desert. In the hard places, in the uncomfortable and the mess, where I’m stretched thin and my heart feels heavy and yet full, and in my rejoicing, celebration, the place of my abundance. In liturgy and old-time hymns, in hands raised in worship or folded in prayer. In tradition and the ancient paths, and in the new way which springs up before me. In the past and the future, in our faith’s history and what is still to come. God in all things; I truly do believe it. In him I live and move and have my being. And because of that, everything is changed for me now.

    ///

    In Sarah Bessey’s Out Of Sorts: Making Peace With an Evolving Faith (which seems like she could have written just for me!), she writes:

    “Jesus isn’t only in your tradition. You get to love Jesus without being an evangelical or a Pentecostal or a Presbyterian or whatever new label you’ve acquired these days or old label that just doesn’t fit anymore.

    Your pet gatekeeper isn’t the sole arbitrator of the Christian faith: there is more complexity and beauty and diversity of voices and experiences within followers of the Way than you know. Remember, your view of Christians, your personal experience with Christians, is a rather small sample: there are a lot more of us out here than you think. …

    The Church is sorting and casting off, renewing and reestablishing in the postmodern age, and this is a good thing. The old will remain–it always does–but something new is being born too. If It is being born in the Church, it is first being born in the hearts, minds, and lives of us, the Body” (pp. 84-85).

    ///

    I don’t know what kind of Christian I am these days. Some of you might be uncomfortable with that, and it’s okay. I understand. But it’s true. I am deeply connected to my Pentecostal roots; the things of the Spirit will always feel like home. I still raise my hands and cry while I sing. I still tremble when I pray–and I always like to pray while I lay my hands on someone. And I am moving with God in the Presbyterian tradition, too, in how I can feel the divinity of the words in our liturgy roll over my tongue as we recite them in unison, in the knowledge I am taking part in something holy and ancient, a foundation of our faith. I find God in sunshine that warms my shoulders and the way my son’s hair curls up around his ear. God is in the dinners my husband cooks sometimes, and how we hold hands while we pray before eating. He’s in how he uses Kyle to ground me, and uses me to challenge Kyle, and how we grow so beautifully together. God’s in my tears over war and racism, our broken planet, the loss of life. He’s in the dark and the silence, and he’s in the light and the noise; the order and the chaos; who I was and who I am becoming.

    ///

    Maybe you’re like me, and you don’t know where you fit anymore–I’m with you, and you have a place to belong here with me. Maybe you’ve walked away from faith entirely–I love you, and I am not judging you or trying to save you. Maybe you don’t like change, so you stay in what’s familiar–I understand you, and I hope you have life–and life abundant!–in your current situation. Wherever we find ourselves on the journey, I believe God is holding us all together, and I am comforted that the scriptures remind us every path of the Lord is good.

    Maybe whatever our label, whatever our denomination or tradition–maybe it’s not a surprise to God, and maybe he even delights in our diversity. Maybe we can think less about who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s got this Christian thing down and who’s doing it a hundred and eighty degrees differently than we think they should. Maybe we can sing hymns and songs of the Spirit, maybe we can listen to both men and women who preach, maybe we can bow low and jump and clap. Maybe being able to tap into every side brings us that much closer to experiencing the fullness of God. Maybe all of this is not better or worse, not less important or more. Maybe we need to remember again that we are the Church; it’s not a separate entity. It is alive and active because we are alive and active. We don’t stay stagnant, we don’t stop growing, we don’t accept a stalled narrative. Maybe “there’s room for all of us.” Maybe “there’s room for all of me” (p. 81).

    Maybe it all matters.
    Maybe it’s time to “reclaim Church.”
    Who’s with me?

    ///

    A few notes…
    *Image from Creative Commons
    *Quotes from Sarah Bessey’s Out of Sorts
  • in this place

    sometimes people ask me about when i first got “saved”, and i tell them the story of the old Pentecostal church and a preacher who spoke with a slow, Southern drawl. i was young, not yet 18 years old, and still finding sure footing in my new country, in my new family who had taken me in as their own. i sat in that church and listened to stories about Jesus, and then i went home and prayed like i never had before.

    i grew up Catholic, not necessarily in practice but definitely in name. i was the daughter of an Italian immigrant, who went to mass and was taught by the sisters. religion didn’t have much of a place in our home, though; God wasn’t something we talked about or prayed to ‘round the dinner table. still–i believed, even then; it’s just that i didn’t quite know it yet.

    i had a large extended family (mainly Protestant, mind you) who cared for me and nurtured me during my early years:: sweet aunts and sturdy uncles, sources of consistency and dependability amidst all the chaos surrounding my childhood. it was in the basement bedroom of one of my father’s sisters that i knelt and “asked Jesus into my heart” for the first time. i didn’t really understand it, to be honest. but i was young, and i was scared, and the idea of a savior who could somehow fix the problems i dealt with on a daily basis appealed to the deepest parts of me.

    it was years later–nearly a decade, in fact–that i found myself in that Pentecostal church during a Sunday evening service, and my heart was beating so hard i was sure it’d thump right out of my chest. i don’t know how i knew, but i did. God was real–like, really real. and looking back, i suppose that’s where it all started. i guess it’s where faith became a reality, where God became more than a word to me.

    as a “baby Christian”, i was naive, and i was unsure. but mostly i was ignorant, as is to be expected, i suppose, in the early days. back then, the world was very much black and white for me; i hadn’t yet been introduced to the beautiful in-between, the sacred space that exists in the gray areas. i had my carefully constructed ideologies of what was Christian and what was not, and i was merciless in holding everything–and everyone–up to impossible standards. looking back, i cringe to remember how critical i’d become, how far from grace i was living, how little i resembled the Jesus i claimed to believe in. i didn’t know any better, to be sure. still–i’m sure i owe many an apology:: for when i judged instead of loving, for when i criticized instead of caring, for when i was quick to speak and slow to listen, even when the scriptures clearly told me to do the opposite.

    and then i got divorced. and everything i’d built my neat and tidy little life upon crumbled into nothing but dust. i suffered loss after loss, became fearful of holding onto anything too tightly lest it slip through my fingers. and then i went to Liberia, a tiny nation i knew very little of but felt drawn to nonetheless. nothing could have prepared me for what was waiting on the other side of that ocean. Liberia was both tragic and beautiful, and i scarcely knew what to do with everything it showed me, all the hard lessons i had to learn because of it.

    here’s the thing, though, if we’re going to get right down to the heart of it. God is in this place; he just doesn’t look or smell or feel like he used to. now, here, today, he’s sweat and mud and sea breezes rolling in from the Atlantic. he’s hot sun and dust under my fingernails, and he’s a gulp of cool water, a blessed reprieve. he’s a handshake with snapping fingers, hugs with a kiss on both cheeks; he’s toothy smiles and weathered skin and little fingers that claw my legs, stroke my hair. he is hunger, and he is need. he is unmarked graves and children who leave this world much too soon. he’s the wailing of a widow in black robes, and he is the cry of the orphan, the poor, the oppressed.

    God is here, has always been here, and because of that, everything is different for me now. God is no longer found solely on a Sunday morning while sitting in a pew with my head bowed. i’ve come to find him in both my comfort and my discomfort. my joy and my pain. in my excess and my lack. in fulfillment but also in the not-quite-yet. in a father who carries his baby on his back and also in a mother who prepares my daily bread with love. in the land of my canaan but also in my desert. in the hard places, in the uncomfortable and the mess, where i’m stretched thin and my heart feels heavy and yet full.

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    [Photo by Indigo Skies Photography // Flickr // Creative Commons] 

    God, in all things–i’ve really come to believe that. for years, i was ignorant, my eyes closed, merely surviving my way through the sacred. and then one day, i became Jacob, feet covered in the dust of holy ground, as i bend low and echo his ancient refrain. “surely God is in this place–and i didn’t know it.”

     

     

  • saying goodbye to Lamie

    today, i write to honor the life of a friend. i met Lamie around Easter of
    this year, while i was still in Liberia. he was sick and listless, unable to move (presumably because  of a stroke he had suffered.) he was sleeping on the ground, in a pile of garbage, directly across from a dumpster. during the day, he was there, baking in the hot sun. at night, he was there, exposed to the elements. he was starving; he was thirsty; he was homeless. he had been abandoned and left to die. upon investigating, some friends and i were able to find out more of his story, and our hearts were broken for this man who had suffered so greatly. we knew we had to help. nobody deserved to have to live as he did.

    fast forward a few months. Lamie was off the streets, had a roof over his head, and seemed to be improving. it had been a rough go, both for he and those of us involved in helping him. he’d gone from sleeping in the garbage heap to sleeping in his own room to sleeping on my front porch to sleeping in a Liberian-run facility for the elderly. poor Lamie had been tossed around from place to place, and my heart broke as i imagined how badly he ached for home.

    then, it was all of sudden august. it was nearing the end of my stay in Liberia, and i knew that i had to walk away from Lamie. i knew i had to entrust him to the care (and i use that term loosely, unfortunately) of the people running the home he was staying in. more importantly, i knew i had to entrust him to God. i had to be okay with walking away, not knowing what would happen, but knowing i had done all i could to love Lamie and care for him as Jesus would have.

    this is the last photo i have of Lamie, taken only a week or so before i left Liberia. this is how i always want to remember him:: fat cheeks, bright eyes, and a tender spirit. he never once complained about his situation or all that he had gone through. he would smile wistfully as he remembered his younger years, when he had been a tailor and had a family. he’d get this dreamy look on his face, and i knew he was longing to go back to that time. yet he also accepted the cards life had dealt him, and i believe he really did try to make the best of them.

    unfortunately, Lamie died last month (and i just found out about it today.) i have no idea what happened, other than he had been sick. i don’t know what he was feeling when he passed away, if he was lonely, if there was anyone at all by his side. and if i let it, the not-knowing will shatter my heart and crush my spirit.

    so instead, i choose to join my friend Ashley in seeking the joy in an otherwise terribly sad situation. she says it best in her tribute to our dear friend::
    Lamie’s body is whole again. Lamie died knowing that those crazy white people loved him. We fed, clothed and gave cold water. We fought for truth, justice and for what was right. It didn’t matter that we were different or that he was from a certain tribe or that he was a stranger. It didn’t matter that he was physically disabled–his heart was gold! He brought laughter and unity and compassion. He was an example, and a reminder. There is no happily-ever-after for this story and this morning, Lamie’s story came to a close. But, I know that his story and his life weren’t told and lived to be forgotten. He lived his story so that he could be remembered. He faced insurmountable obstacles, but he kept that spark in his eye. [He had] joy in his smile, despite his circumstances. [He was a] literal example for us to be the Good Samaritan. Lamie was my friend–my beautiful, laughter-filled, sweet-spirited (unless he wanted a haircut from Momo) friend. At one point, Lamie had taken everything out of me, but I pressed on because Jesus filled me and equipped me to keep going. Lamie was and is a part of my story…and a reason why I just can’t walk away from Liberia.

    Lamie was–and is–a lesson to me to love others. to love freely, wildly, without holding back. to love with my whole heart. even when it hurts. even when i think i have nothing left to give. he taught me to love others because sometimes, my love is the only Jesus they will ever know.

  • eat the mystery

    a few weeks back, i found myself re-reading Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts. Spirit-filled and poetic, her words were like water for my thirsty soul.

    and recently, i find myself going back to a particular passage, one i have underlined in ink and even copied into the pages of my own journal::

    “when we are despairing, we can choose to live as Israelites gathering manna. for forty long years, God’s people daily eat manna–a substance whose name literally means ‘what is it?’ hungry, they choose to gather up that which is baffling. they fill on that which has no meaning. more than 14,600 days they take their daily nourishment from that which they don’t comprehend. they find soul-filling in the inexplicable. they eat the mystery…and it is ‘like wafers of honey’ on the lips.” (page 22)

    they eat the mystery. they choose to trust even when they do not understand. they open their mouths and let Him fill them with what He sees fit.

    oh, that my faith were as deep! i so often resent the mystery because it doesn’t fit into my neat little boxes. i strain to understand and, if i cannot, i push it aside, choosing to gobble up instead that which i can explain–even though i know it will not satisfy.

    but what if i welcome the mystery? what if i stop asking why and how and when and instead let Him fill me?
    i may not always understand that which God gives me. i may not be able to explain ache and the pain, the longing, the discontent. i may not have answers for the things i have seen and experienced and walked through.

    but if i trust that He is good, i can trust that what comes from His hand is as well. if i choose to see His goodness and His grace instead of the circumstance or feeling, i too could eat the mystery. and it shall taste sweet. 

    in the book of Ezekiel, God gives him the mystery, feeds him the manna::
    then i looked, and i saw a hand stretched out to me. in it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me. on both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.
    and he said to me, “son of man, eat what is before you…” (2:9 – 3:1)

    Ezekiel’s manna came in the form of a scroll. it took on the shape of lament and mourning and woe. and God still asked him to eat of it.

    so i ate it, and it tasted sweet as honey in my mouth. (3:3)

    Ezekiel trusted that God was good, and so he decided that what came from Him was good as well. even a scroll filled with sorrow.
    Ezekiel chose to eat the mystery, digest what he did not understand.
    and God made it good.

    so much of this life is mystery. we walk through days and circumstance and emotion, and some of it hurts, and we cry out “why, Lord, why?”
    and though i believe He has compassion, and He understands our human hearts,
    i also believe there are times when the only answer He gives is to hold out His hand, offering us the scroll, the manna, that which seems to make no sense.

    and if we listen closely, i believe we will hear Him saying, “eat the mystery, child. trust me. i make all things good.