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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?
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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.
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Peacemaking during an embodied Advent
It’s the second Sunday of Advent, a day when Christians traditionally focus on the signs of Peace. Christ himself, in our holy scriptures, is given the name Prince of Peace, denoting that Peace is embodied, not some vague or nondescript attribute with no particularity. Whatever Peace is, we feel and experience and live it out in our bodies. As with everything, the body always matters, even and perhaps especially in Advent.
Peace, though, is often misunderstood, I’ve found. In fact, many people of faith seem to translate it to mean that we’re called to be peacekeepers when, in actuality, Jesus is calling us to be peacemakers. Peacekeeping looks at what is and aims to preserve it. Peacemaking, on the other hand, is active. It takes Jesus’ words seriously about the Kingdom of God being a bit of yeast in some dough; it kneads and rolls and stretches and gets its hands dirty as it works to create something new, something beautiful, something good.
Peacekeeping looks at the world and declares it to be “good enough.” Don’t rock the boat. Don’t get angry. Don’t be divisive. Peacemaking, on the other hand, looks at the world and remembers that Christ taught us to work for the fullness of the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Peacemaking sees the job is not yet finished. Peacemaking works for change.
Peacemaking means we use our bodies to live out the stories. It is marching with our own feet in the protest line, serving meals with our very hands at the soup kitchen and food banks. It is shielding the bodies of our neighbors with our own. It’s putting the pen between our fingers and writing letters to our representatives to call for justice and equitable policy. It’s using our mouth to declare that the welcome of God is big enough for all; it invites everyone to the table, tells them of the Great Feast.
This week may we remember we are called to be peacemakers, those who enter the unjust and unfair parts of the world, set up camp, and get to work. May we not settle for what is, for the “good enough for some” — may we not tire until the good enough is given to all. May we not be afraid of what others might think or others might say, because we don’t work for the approval of men, anyway; may the flourishing of God’s people matter more to us than our reputations.
They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.
Jeremiah 6:14, NIVThis week may we roll up our sleeves and make peace. For the Light is coming, friends; let us work to prepare him room.
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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.
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A blessing for weeks when we’re holding our breath
As we go into this new week, there are many of us who feel uncertain. Anxious. Even fearful. May we somehow feel peace in our weary bones and worried hearts. May we remember to be gentle with ourselves this week, and get enough sleep, and drink our water. May we dare to hope. May we dare to dream, and dare to plant good seeds, seeds of forgiveness and friendship, in this world’s thirsty soil. May we be nourished by the ministry of good books, and cozy hot beverages, and gooey baked goods, and friends who text us just to say hello. May we practice one of life’s most difficult lessons to learn–the art of saying, “you first”, not “me first” or “mine first”. May we hold our loved ones near to us this week, either in our arms or in our memories, and may we not be afraid to cry if we need to, because tears are medicine, too. May we take the higher road whenever it is offered to us, and may we keep our eyes fixed on the things that will never pass away. May we keep toiling towards that new kingdom, where things will be right, and things will be just, and the table is wide, and the welcome is for all. May we get glimpses of that great feast, and may it feed us as the days grow shorter and the dark longer. May we feel the warmth of love this week, and may we remember to take deep breaths.
We are a world in waiting, O God. Will you meet us in our unknowns this week, and may we know the gift of your presence with us? And if/when it becomes harder to breathe, may we be restored to the gentle rhythms that will restore us to life.
You are loved this week, friends. This week, and every week.
Amen. -
Wandering in a place called home.
I first heard about the theology of the wilderness from Sarah Bessey. Biblically speaking, the wilderness was often a place of wandering, of exile, of exodus. It was for the misfits, the poets, the prophets, the outcasts. It was a place outside of the city gates, cities where inhabitants lived comfortably with their families and friends and communities. The wilderness was a land of unbelonging. Wanderers were far from any place they had ever called home, the distant memories of safety, of security, of inclusion only a far-off glimpse in their rearview mirrors.
And yet. The wilderness was where Jacob wrestled with God and received his blessings. It was where the Israelites were led by pillars of fire and cloud. It was where Elijah heard the still, small voice, where Hagar sat down to die but instead was met by “the God who sees,” where the Lord spoke to Moses, where Jesus was tempted but ultimately overcame.
The wilderness might seem a lonely, barren wasteland. It may feel unfamiliar, or perhaps like a punishment of some sort. And yet. If only we had eyes to see, we might find for ourselves springs of water in the wilderness. We might find flowers in bloom. We just might hear a voice calling out, cries of straight paths and God among us.
We just might see that the wilderness is the perfect place for God to do a new thing.I’d like to think I’m pretty well acquainted with the wilderness. I’ve been a Christian for all of my adult life and have spent more time than not outside of those city gates, sometimes of my own choosing, but more often because the religious gatekeepers said I couldn’t come in. I was divorced from my first husband, so I was sent outside for a season to think about what I’d done. I asked hard questions, challenged the status quo, demanded better of a faith that claimed the brown-skinned refugee from Nazareth. I was sent outside again, told I was being “divisive” and “angry.” At one point, I left the city all on my own, walking away from what felt like a dry, dead religion that made me deep-in-my-bones weary. Always, I eventually heard the voice of Love calling me back home. Always, I assumed home was found where I had left it — probably because I had never known anything else. Not once did I consider that maybe, just maybe, I could make my home in the wilderness.
Until recently.
I’m in another wilderness season these days. I’m tired of and disappointed by capital-C-Church. Our family has its roots in ministry, and isn’t it funny how the things we love most are also always the ones that hurt us the deepest? I don’t feel safe or secure or even welcomed anymore in groups that say they love our trans-racial family to our faces but then criticize us for saying Black Lives Matter behind our backs. I’m sick of political parties using my faith as a pawn. I’m sick of fellow believers confusing their faith with a party affiliation. I’m weary for my LGBTQ+ friends and family, for indigenous rights as we violate their land, for those who are unhoused and uninsured and food-insecure, for a planet that I want to leave for my sons and daughters but is showing the signs of our abuse more and more these days. I hear the ground crying out with the blood of Michael Brown, of Tamir Rice, of Philando Castile, of George Floyd, of so. many. others. I look around at what we’re doing to one another, to ourselves, and I think: if this is Christanity, then I want nothing to do with it.
Except there’s Jesus. I know Jesus. I love Jesus. And I want everything to do with him.
And the Jesus I read of in scripture, I find, seems to be chasing me down out here in the wilderness — not to bring me back to the city, but to set up camp here. To enlarge my tent, to plant my gardens, to build my home, set my table, to drink wine from new wineskins. To cling to him alone as my guide. To remember what’s beyond the veil and live, as Audrey Assad wrote, in the rhythm between two worlds. Someday, as she says, I will set sail for what is Eternally Next. But for now, I wait, and I remember.There’s a beautiful community out here in the wilderness, one of dreamers and lovers and peacemakers and poets and creators and prophets and painters and farmers. One of people who have started to wake up and remember they were destined for more. We thought we were being sent out here to die, but instead we found we’ve never been more alive. The table out here is vast, and it is long, and it is wide, and when we say all are welcome, we mean all. Justice is our heartbeat, joy is our song, resurrection our harvest, and we feast continually on the goodness of God.
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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. -
one word 2019: enough.
About a month ago, I started thinking about what I wanted my one word for the new year to be. I had my own ideas, of course, about how I’d like the year to go, and words like travel or beauty, family, even gather, swirled in my mind, even as I recognized those weren’t the words mine to grab hold of. See, my one word has a tendency to choose me. It comes unexpectedly–the first thought upon waking, a moment of clarity during a time of prayer–and then it simply does not let go. It’s not always attractive or appealing, and there’s usually a brief period of me wrestling with it, much as Jacob did when the angel touched his hip bone after a long night of struggle with God. And then–surrender. Giving up, giving in. Allowing the word and the Spirit to move me into unchartered, surprising places in the new year.
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Erin Loechner wrote on Instagram a few weeks ago that she has “often operated under perceived scarcity. Is there enough time in my day for this? Enough space for this? Do we have room for that? Is it essential, necessary? Are you sure?” Her words drained my breath momentarily, and I felt hot tears fluttering behind my eyes. See, I’ve lived my entire life with that exact same scarcity mentality. Always afraid of running out, always worried about lack. Always sure I’m going to come up empty-handed, somehow. Maybe it was my upbringing, the poverty, the realization that no good thing ever lasted long. Maybe it’s low-self esteem, the innate belief that I’m somehow not worthy of having those good things, so I snatch them up, try to hoard them if I happen to stumble upon some along the way. Maybe it’s just my personality: afraid of risk, preferring always the comfort and stability of a sure and familiar thing.
For all this and more, my one word for 2019 is enough. Because, as Erin continues, “abundance exists. There is enough time to go around, enough space for us all. There always has been.“
My fear has always been not having enough. Not being enough. And yet, if I look back, I can see what God has been speaking to me all along: “I am giving you manna.”
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Manna. The mystery substance that God fed his people with in Exodus 16. Daily nourishment that literally means “What is it?” The Israelites were sent fresh manna each morning, and each person was to gather enough for their need: no more, and no less. If they tried to hoard their leftovers it spoiled, except for on their Sabbath, when they would have need of their reserves. For forty years, the Israelites ate manna. For forty years, it was a gift straight from God, and it sustained them. And it wasn’t until they’d reached their promised destination that it was replaced with the milk and honey of abundance.
The manna is sufficient for the journey. Once gone, I hunger like the Israelites. But God fills us with enough; no more, and no less. We don’t get to hoard or stockpile; we are given only what we need, as we need it. And this is grace.
It’s a mindset that’s so counterintuitive to the culture of mass accumulation that we live in, and I suppose that might be what Jesus was touching on when he talked about his upside down kingdom. This life of faith seems strange, sometimes. And by no means do I do it perfectly. Clearly, I am still learning the sacrament of dependence, this art of trusting what I cannot see. I am full of fear sometimes. I complain. I doubt. And through it all, he is still good, and he is still enough.///
Some of my favorite books are C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children push past a rows of fur coats before emerging from the wardrobe into a cold, snowy forest. Susan, the responsible older sister (and probably the character I relate most to), suggests they each take a coat to keep warm. She is practical, responsible. She simply wants to be prepared. But, as Heidi Haverkamp points out, preparation “can become an end and…at some point, we have to let go of preparing and just step forward in faith.”
However, the most compelling thing about Susan, I think, is she “shows us that what we need may already be in front of us, if we are aware to notice. The fur coats were there when they needed them. The children meet others along the way who guide them and feed them. That doesn’t mean the journey is easy or that they’re never cold, wet, or hungry; but, because they have one another and allow themselves to accept help from others, they have enough” (emphasis mine).///
I think that my word for the new year is here to teach me to be where my feet are and seek sufficiency there. It’s to remind me to taste and see that he is good, and his faithfulness is promised, and we will have enough for our adoption. It’s to encourage me to be who I am, as I am, and remember that I am fully and completely loved without ever changing a thing. The new year can be a time to set lofty goals, and I have often fallen into the cycle of grandiose dreams and resolutions that are abandoned by, at best, the third week of January. And then December rolls around and I still haven’t lost the forty pounds, I’m still too sarcastic sometimes, I still hold grudges for longer than I should; and, before I know it, I collapse into a puddle of my own failings and disappointment. But right here, right now, exactly as I am, I am loved. I am enough, even if I never accomplished another blessed thing for the rest of my life.
That truth is one I will wear like a weighted blanket in 2019. Enough-ness will be my home.
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On unfriending, living freely, and ghosts from the past
Somebody that I used to know recently unfriended me on Facebook. And Twitter. And Instagram. Oh, and blocked me.
Her reasoning was that she felt like she didn’t know who I was anymore and no longer recognized me in posts I have made. Fair enough. I could agree (to a certain extent). I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve gotten a bit of a reputation in recent days for not shying away from talking about things that make people wildly uncomfortable, both online and off. And she’s right; the Elena that I was five years ago, or ten, would have stayed quiet. Maybe because I was afraid. Maybe because I was still trying to figure out what I believed in. Maybe a bit of both.
And maybe there are many of us today who feel the exact same way, who are just finding their voices and using them to talk about messy things, hard things, things that convict us and challenge us and put everything into a brand new light. Maybe we were silent because we were unsure, or insecure, or threatened, or still learning. And maybe we now feel it burning, hot, like fire in our bones, just as the ancient words of Jeremiah said it would. We too become weary of holding it in, and like the weeping prophet who lamented and grieved and, ultimately, hoped–we say “Indeed, we can hold it in no longer.”
Life, seasons, love, loss: these things change us. They grow us, deep in our cores, and I truly believe they are meant to. And because my hope is in a good God who works all things together, I can lean into the winds of change and trust the process, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be tears or anger or sorrow or goodbyes; that there won’t be doubts, and questions, and maybe some of us will wrestle with God, and maybe we’ll lay ourselves bare like David did, and maybe the whole thing will feel bitter, and gritty, and hard.
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Sometimes, we don’t talk about these things on social media until we’ve already gone through the fire. And sometimes, people don’t recognize us anymore, because they know nothing of what we struggled through, because for a while, at least, their paths diverged from ours.
The older I get, the more I live through, the more I see: relationships, they’re fluid, you see, and they change, or maybe they lay dormant, and sometimes they even die. Some of the people who held me through the pain of my first husband leaving for another woman were not the same ones who celebrated with me on my wedding day to Kyle. Some of those who supported me when I lost everything and found myself on the mission field in West Africa were not there when I discovered I had PTSD, or when Ebola hit, and when I had to leave. They weren’t with me while I cried and mourned, while I screamed at God in a therapist’s office, while I asked God why he’d forgotten me, while I questioned if he really was good after all and if I even believed any more. Some of the people who helped me find my faith weren’t there when I was afraid of losing it. Some of the people who rejoiced with me over my marriage were not the same ones who did so when I welcomed Atticus into the world, and some of those people weren’t there in the early days of motherhood, when I was battling postpartum depression and anxiety. Some of those people aren’t here as our family walks the path of adopting J. Some people weren’t there as I talked to parents about their fear when their black and brown sons left the house. They weren’t there when I held dear ones who wept because they felt like the Church had failed them. Some people weren’t there when I sobbed over the deaths of Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, and so many others. Some people just weren’t there. Let’s not kid each other. And it’s okay.
The same is true even if the tables are turned. There are so many people I used to know, that I used to break bread with and share hearts with, who are little more than ghosts of the past now. I know nearly nothing of what’s going on in their lives, of their joys and sorrows, any of it. Our paths led us away from each other rather than closer together. Time, distance, other things we’re maybe too afraid to name; they got in the way, and the months would go by, then years, and then we realized we grew into different people somewhere along the line. But if we judge one another when we haven’t walked the same road, I’m afraid we’re only missing the point. Yes, maybe there are things we are sorry for; maybe we’ve been the wounded and the wounder, and if we’re Christian, let’s be honest; we are commanded to forgive. And I believe so strongly in the beautiful ministry of reconciliation, but I’m starting to see that the two are not always mutually exclusive, and it’s hard, and a little confusing, to work through all of that, isn’t it?
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I’m reading a beautiful book right now, written by a young woman who left behind her life in Tennessee to move to Uganda and be salt and light there. (Side note: it’s called Daring to Hope, and it’s available for pre-order now; I highly, highly recommend it!) There’s a line I just read that has been sitting with me all day, and I just can’t seem to let it go. “The truth is, I can’t fold my arms to the hurt of this world and simultaneously reach out for my Savior.” You see, some days the hurt of this world feels too much, too big, too heavy, and my inclination is to shut down and hide away from it all. But to hide from pain is to hide from the God who can heal it. So we dig in our heels, and we grit our teeth, and we start again. We post that article, we start that hard conversation, we challenge, we repent–sometimes online, sometimes off. We start again. Every day, some days every moment, I start again. Because my hope is that God can somehow use it. My hope is that he can use me. I read Luke 4:18-19, over and over again, looking for Jesus here, in these well-worn pages, these well-read words. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. And then, later, Jesus again: Go and do likewise.
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. I am secure in who I am and how God is living and moving in me 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.
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And then we look at our ghosts, all the people we’ve loved and lost. We look them in the eye, and we wish them well, and we hope they do the same for us. We even pray for them. Not in a condescending way–“I’ll pray for you” and then, under our breaths, “because you clearly need it.” Not in a way that tries to wrangle and convince we’re right. Not in a way that diminishes the unique thing God is doing. What could be more beautiful than praying for someone in a way that trusts they hear the Spirit’s leading too, even though they might do this whole faith thing differently than you or I? We pray, we forgive, we let go if we’re called to, or reconcile if that’s where we’re led instead. And we remember: “The table. The bread. The wine. The feast. The promise of shalom. No one is left out of the meal. No one left out of the story (Curtice, K.).
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
[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.”
