Category Archives: progressive christianity

Between Despair and Hope

A Gracious Heresy, activism, everyday theology, progressive christianity, progressive politics, resistance, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

 As we wander through the tangled landscape of the coming election, if you are anything like me, you totter between despair and hope.

I dare not let go of hope because the possibility of a Trump presidency, a clear turn to autocracy, demagoguery, and authoritarianism, terrify me. All I hold dear: freedom, an arc bending toward justice, kindness, diversity, inclusion, equality and so much more, stand threatened by others’ fears and hatred. 

One thing I know is that when people are afraid of me, for whatever reason, the feeling easily and readily, transmutes to anger and then to hate. And while I think I’m immune to internalizing self-hatred I fear for the many who will be vulnerable to that.

And then I remember Paul saying that ‘love casts out fear’ (1 John 4:18a 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear;)

How in the hell am I supposed to love?

I have come to believe that first, and perhaps most important, we must love ourselves and claim ourselves. to be beloved children of Godde. It is an immutable truth from which we must internalize our infinite value. Loving oneself and claiming Godde’s love secures our sense of self in the face of the hatred, vitriol, and self-righteous prejudice of others. 

Second, is that we love one another. As we join in resistance from disparate places by shared oppression, exclusion, rights denied,  and resistance to fascism, we must never collude with those in power referring to ‘good negroes’ or ‘good gays’ or ‘good women’ ad infinitum. Instead, we must challenge the threat of a dystopian future by embracing one another in the entirety of our spectrum. We all matter. We are all children of Godde. Not just those deemed acceptable or agreeable to those in power. 

We will know Sophia active in us as we live into a world where we embrace each one as a child of Godde. Regardless of age, race, culture, class, gender, religion, or expressed sexuality. Regardless.

And finally there’s the love your enemy bit. The one I resist most. But I know hate dehumanizes not only my ‘enemy’ but hatred dehumanizes me. We cannot, must not,  participate in dehumanizing either ourselves or others and still be able to bring a different reality into being.

So how in the hell do I love my enemy?

I’m certain love of my ‘enemy’ is NOT a warm, fuzzy feeling. Loving my enemy means that I must be willing to invite mutuality and refuse power differentials. We must be willing to acknowledge that both the oppressed and the oppressor need to be freed to a new reality. I am also certain that my hatred will only demean me and preclude any chance of systemic change.  

Let us march through the tangled landscape of the coming election and lean into hope. 

Let us lean into the difficult tasks of loving ourselves, loving others, loving our enemies.

Let me close sharing this song of hope – please take a moment to listen:

Is There No Balm in Gilead?

everyday theology, progressive christianity, resistance, Uncategorized

 

We do not need to be cured.
We need to be healed.
Healed from the grief
and despair
of all that has been lost.
But mostly we need to heal
into hope
into believing
that what is to come
can be better.

To heal
we must give up privilege
but refuse to release it
to those who use their
white privilege
to spew hate.
We must use
whatever privilege we have
to end privilege.

To heal from fear
our souls need
the balm of forgiveness
even though
there is much
we may not yet
be able to forgive.

We need to be healed
from the betrayal
of  our nation
and  our neighbors.
Healed from the betrayal of
those who choose
alienation and hatred,
over values
we once sought to share.

We need to heal
from despair.
into hope.
Hope empowers
us to make change
and to love our neighbors,
seeming enemies, all.

The balm we seek
may be the balm we reject.
Love, the life-giving intention
for all creation,
doesn’t fuel our fear.
Love casts out
the fear to act
to stand
to speak
to keep on keeping on.

Love is the balm that heals us.
Damn it.

 

 

 

 

My Cup Overflows

A Gracious Heresy, activism, Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), memoir, progressive christianity

Friday October 15th I preached a sermon at Columbia Theological Seminary for their Pride worship service.
That might not seem like a big deal  but here is some background:
– I was the first open lesbian to graduate from Columbia. (1986)
– The church would not ordain me and I left to pursue the ministry I was called to in other ways and other places.
– There is now a significant presence of LGBT+ students on campus.
– They celebrated Pride!?!

I never paused to dream that one day the seminary would celebrate Pride.  It never crossed my mind that there would be such a vibrant and open queer community of students and faculty.  Or that the community would be supported by the institution. But Godde dreams larger than I do and sees farther than the small span of my prophetic imagination.  As an undergrad at Agnes Scott College, my mentor, Dr. Mary Boney Sheats,  warned me before I set foot in the doors of Columbia that “You might not get there, but you will make a way for  those who come to go farther.” I never truly understood what she was saying to me until I stood that day at a pulpit and looked out over the future.

And they have gone so much farther. Thanks be to Godde! They have pushed forward the work of repairing what is broken. There is still a distance to go but each generation moves us into Godde’s future which is beyond our imagining.

These newly-called-to-the-ministry warriors don’t just look to the battles at hand or the ones in their immediate futures, but they look to the past. The service was one to honor those who had gone before, making this present possible. After the service the LGBT+ community (Imago Dei) presented me with a beautiful handmade stole decorated with a Pride flag. On the back were handwritten messages of acknowledgment and thanks. I could not have dreamed this day.

My cup overflows.

 

 

 

 

Living with Uncertainty

A Gracious Heresy, Circle of Grace, musings, progressive christianity

There is a quote, I believe from an Episcopal confession of sin,  that says “We are self-deceived and strangers to the truth.”

I like to be certain.
It comforts me.
Numbs me
to  ever-changing realities.
But we all seek certainty at times
because the world is so large
people are so unpredictable
politics are so complex.
At their best
religions wrestle with questions
whose answers are beyond our imagining.
At their worst,
they offer false and concrete
certainty.

Most of the time,
most of us,
walk in the world content
with the ‘knowing’ we have
however incomplete
however unchallenged
We ground ourselves
in the rhythms of
waking and sleeping
working and playing
connecting and disconnecting.
Until the times
when our unknowing
overwhelms us
and we realize
that we are strangers to the truth
and maybe even
self deceived.

Climate change.
Political turmoil
in a land that once felt knowable.
The fall of nations to terror,
the subjugation of women
through sexual violence
the rise of authoritarianism,
rampant disease,
economic uncertainty.

Confronted with our ignorance,
that what once we thought
may no longer be true,
that what once we believed
has shown itself false,
we combat our fear,
by clinging
to what we think we know
because certainty
is our last refuge.

So let us pursue
something other than
the numbness of ‘certainty’.
The challenges of our time offer
both despair
and hope.
Death and life.
When we are confronted
by ambiguity
let us choose hope
and let us choose life.
Not because we know
any damn thing
but because
we are willing to risk trust.

This is where
faith and certainty collide.
Choose the path of trust
not because we are convinced
of some immutable truth
but because we choose
knowledge beyond facts
relationship beyond comprehension
and the wild goodness of the Sacred.

The writer of the book of Deuteronomy said,  “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” (30:19)

 

A Nation Stuck

A Gracious Heresy, everyday theology, progressive christianity, progressive politics

 

One of the most helpful books to me, as a pastor and counselor, is James Fowler’s  Stages of Faith. In the same way psychologists use models of psycho-social developmental stages, Fowler examines the development of spiritual growth.

When I look around at our current political dilemma and try to understand how we got here and why, I find myself returning to his text. I have done no research so my hypothesis is based solely on observation. That being said, I believe a good part of this nation is stuck in Fowler’s stage 3.

Stage 3 is adolescence to early adulthood. Fowler calls it the Synthetic-Conventional stage in which peoples’ believe without critical examination. They believe that they have been taught and in what everyone around them believes in. There is a strong sense of identity with the group with whom they share belief systems. A particular feature of stage 3 is a lack of openness to question because questions are frightening. People at this stage of spiritual development tend to trust implicitly people in authority (external authority) and don’t recognize the box or circular thinking that is internalized when their beliefs go unexamined.

Sound familiar? I don’t mean this as a judgment on people but on the systems that  stunt spiritual and intellectual growth.  And not only stunt it, but condemn questions as faithless. A questioner myself, I find it terrifying. However,  it is important that my fears not  engage with the terror of  those mired in stage 3. It will accomplish nothing and most likely escalate fear on both sides.

What are the systems that stunt?  Fundamentalist religion and public education. Fundamentalism has a sharp stop at the door of questioning. The theological tenets of fundamentalism are circular arguments that defy challenges. Having worked with many folk healing from fundamentalist pasts yet thirsty for Godde, the fear of being wrong and ‘disobeying’ the authority figures of their pasts is inextricable tied to the fear of eternal damnation.  Fostering absolute trust in authority figures subsidized Trump’s ascension.

Then there’s our educational system. When we began ‘teaching to the test’ we encouraged children to think in absolutes.  Your answer is right or wrong. Facts are pandered to as knowledge rather than critical thinking.  When you spend twelve years of your life being ‘taught to the test’ the way you engage and interpret events in the larger world is stymied. It fosters  tribalism, manifesting in a shared identity with like-minded people, setting up a false ‘us and them’.

I keep thinking back to the opening chapter in C. S.Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. In it the professor, after helping the children discern the truth of a troubling situation, sends them forth saying to himself (something like), “Aren’t schools teaching children how to think these days?” If we are afraid of children learning to think in a spiritual or theological context then, of course, we would be fearful of children learning to think in an intellectual context. Surely that fear is the origin of the seared phrase ‘intellectual elitists’. Those who have learned to question are deemed questionable.

My friend, Erin, says I put an ‘altar call’ at the end of my blog posts. Today I don’t have one. But join me in the effort to hear the echoes of faith that repeatedly reassure us to ‘be not afraid’,  Be not afraid to think. Be not afraid to question, Be not afraid of being wrong. Be not afraid of not knowing the answer. Be not afraid of many answers all being ‘right’. Be not afraid of the One whose identity is Love.

 

A Prayer for These Times

Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), Corona virus, progressive christianity

Gracious and Holy One
who spins the threads that bind us
who frees our hearts and minds to soar
who roots us in fields of questions
and forgives us when we claim
to know things that are beyond us,
hear our prayers.

Hear our prayers for healing:
heal bodies ravaged by the pandemic
heal hearts desolate with grief with comfort
heal minds embittered with hatred with love
heal souls crying out in despair with justice.

Help us to use the gifts you give us
that our scientists may be inspired
that we might comfort our neighbors
that we may sow love where hatred thrives.

Give us  the strength and fortitude
to do the work of justice
to speak and stand and march
for the freedom you desire for each one.

Grant us, Holy Friend,
the vision to draw the circle wide
to embrace those who are different
and appreciate the radical beauty
of those who are not like us.
Help us not to fear our differences
Open our hearts
that we might learn from one another
what we otherwise would not know.
Grow us, we pray, in wisdom
understanding
and compassion.

Loving Godde,
scorch us with a vision of your kin-dom
so that your hope burns in us
in these times of despair
that we may lift the light of your vision for humanity
and pierce the shadow of these days.
In all your Holy Names we pray.

Fear and Hope

A Gracious Heresy, activism, everyday theology, progressive christianity, progressive politics, resistance, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

In these times I wrestle with abject fear.

Fear of people who no longer share the vision of the idea and ideals on which this nation was founded.
Fear of those in power being invested in power rather than service.
Fear of the ‘religious’ right.
Fear of armed violence.

And then there all the people I am afraid for, including myself:
Fear for women.
Fear for people of color.
Fear for immigrants.
Fear for Asia-Americans and African-Americans and Latinx-Americans.
Fear for the LGBTQAI community.

We have spent decades bending the arc of history toward justice, as Dr. King proclaimed.
And now.
And now the backlash.
And now the hysteria.
And now the fear.
And now the hatred unleashed in thousands of different ways
in our churches
in our legal system
In our laws

And I am very afraid.

Add to that that I am a pastor and called to speak hope.
How do we hope in the face of terror?
How do we sing in a land that has become strange to us?
How do we stand against a mighty storm?

Parts of Psalm 137 float in my head:

                 4 How could we sing the Lord’s song
in a foreign land?
               5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither!
              6 Let my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you…

Part of hope is remembering who we are called to be,
to not forget who we are, no matter how short we have fallen.

And sometimes hope is the beacon toward which we strive in apocalyptic times.

The writers of biblical apocalyptic literature faced the threat of death, annihilation and, what seemed to be, overwhelming odds. Many were tortured. Many were killed. Many hid away in underground caves. Demonized and dismissed. Who could speak hope in those times? And what was hope? It seems to me that in some ways hope was holding on to the vision, believing that something greater than the current evil not only exists but will triumph.

I think of the hope of  the apocalyptic writers of a holy city, of a place where every tear is dried, where the table is open to all, and groaning under the lovely burden of more than enough.  Jessie Jackson taught me something about preaching hope in dark times.

I think of his chant “Keep hope alive!” and his call to us:
“You must never stop dreaming. Face reality, yes, but don’t stop with the way things             are. Dream of things as they ought to be. Dream. Face pain, but love, hope, faith and   dreams will help you rise above the pain. Use hope and imagination as weapons of survival and progress, but you keep on dreaming, young America.”

He offered hope as a pastor and has taught me the value and the courage it takes to speak hope in the midst of terror. I leave you with the close to his speech given in Atlanta in 1988 during the Democratic National Convention:
” Wherever you are tonight, you can make it. Hold your head high; stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but the morning comes. Don’t you surrender!
Suffering breeds character, character breeds faith. In the end faith will not    disappoint. You must not surrender! You may or may not get there but just know that you’re qualified! And you hold on, and hold out! We must never surrender!! America will get better and better.  Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive! Keep hope alive!”

 

Circle of Grace: we are different and very much the same

A Gracious Heresy, Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), Circle of Grace, everyday theology, progressive christianity, retro-Wednesday

We thought we were different. And we are. Though I have discovered the ways in which we were like every other spiritual community I know.

Let me wax poetic a moment about how we were/are different.
We challenged every doctrine and tradition of the church as we formed a worshipping community. We still do.  It is hard work to do with intellectual and spiritual integrity… so none of our conclusions is carved in stone. We know that we do not know. I love that about us even though it is emotionally and spiritually strenuous.

We work to be not only non-patriarchal but non hierarchical. Reimagining power is an ongoing challenge. While we challenge the power of the pastor and name a circle as our way of sharing power, like many assumptions we bring to the table from our pasts, it can be almost impossible to implement.

We reimagine  images of Godde. We use inclusive language about both Godde and humanity in our liturgy, in our hymns, in our conversations. And it’s more than inclusive of male and female. We are inclusive of race, ethnicity, mental health status, gender identification, class, education,  and spiritual backgrounds. We press ourselves to see the Divine in every expression of humanity.

We are a place of spiritual healing for many who have been hurt or abused by the institutional church, making room for the hesitant, for the ones who have been in the stranglehold of doctrine, for the ones who live in fear. We make room for one another, honoring different beliefs and understandings. Our unofficial motto is that we may not all believe the same things in the same ways but we are journeying together. Often we  learn and deepen from our differences because we aren’t afraid (mostly) of them.

We are different.
And we are very much the same.

We experienced crisis in community more than once. Sharing life is fraught with all the idiosyncrasies of personalities, relationship challenges, brokenness of body, mind or spirit… and sometimes we rise and respond with grace. And sometimes we don’t.

Like every other community, as people come and go, we sometimes lose sight our central commitments to one another.  Sometimes the work of being community in crisis is too difficult and people cut bait.  Sometimes we find ourselves sitting in judgment of one another and the circle is broken.

But like many spiritual communities we get up and keep on trying. We limp along in Godde’s grace, holding onto Godde’s dream for humanity, and keep on trying to live deeply  into our relationship with the Divine.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I am working to understand the brokenness  we experienced. My own brokenness and the way the community was torn apart. And I am confronting my arrogance that assumed because we are different  we would avoid the pitfalls of being in human community. We are not that different. And I bow to this challenge to my assumptions.

 

 

The Bible Idol

A Gracious Heresy, Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), Circle of Grace, everyday theology, progressive christianity

I’m not sure when I stopped worrying about what the Bible says.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that book. It is filled with the stories of my spiritual journey. It has provided the construct for my theological questioning. This book challenges me to look deeper and think harder. To question myself and to question Godde. So I am not dismissing it. Nor am I saying that I accept the New Testament but not the Old. If I did, I would miss too much wisdom, too much poetry, too many stories that speak to the deepest parts of me.

What I mean when I say I stopped worrying about what the Bible says is I’m not sure how young I was when I stopped thinking of it as a dictation of rules and behavior. Unlike some, I never had the misfortune of thinking it contained the secrets that would keep my out of hell. My relationship with Godde negated the idea of hell.

Godde is too big for the Bible and I don’t think the writers’ intention was to capture Godde in its contents. Rather, it is the story of a people grappling with their relationship with Godde, one that assumed ongoing revelation – personal, communal, and political.

In seminary I learned to wrestle with the languages of the Bible (Greek and Hebrew), to parse meanings of words, to contextualize the stories, to do literary criticism – basically to engage with the text in intimate and creative ways. Thanks be to Godde. And for myself, after years in ministry, I love this text that is both flawed and profound, beautiful and horribly misused.

Do you want me to make an intellectual and spiritual argument for, oh say, the rights of women or LGBTQ rights using the Bible? I can.  And another can use the text to refute my arguments. I think if I hear one more time that you can prove anything with the Bible I might scream. It demeans the Bible to use it as a proof text to reinforce what one already believes.

I am left with the question of how to minister with people who have been beaten up with the Bible being the whip that scars the soul insisting on the brutality of self-hatred. How do I minister with those who need a new way of seeing for their wounds to begin to heal?

Fundamentalists, it seems to me, have turned the Bible into an idol, replacing direct relationship with the Divine with the rigidity of rules over compassion for the human condition. The psychology of using a peoples’ fear to control their behavior is deeply disturbing. I am often asked by my fundamentalist friends if I am not afraid of going to hell. And then I’m asked why would people be good if there were no hell.

1 – I am not afraid of going to hell. I am afraid of hurting people with religion. I am afraid
of religion used to manipulate people in their deepest vulnerabilities.  I am afraid of
the permission to hate in the name of Godde.

2 – I believe, as Ann Frank said, that people are basically good. That we are communal
folks who want and need to live together in society. I believe the Bible is filled with
stories of people trying to figure out how to live together.

3 – I am grateful for a book that has stories of Jesus in it. A revelation about how
we might all embody the love of Godde, and in doing that, change the world.

My invitation today is to let Godde out of the Bible box and the Bible out of the Godde box. Don’t be afraid. The peace of Christ be with you.

 

 

 

Hello There… I’ve Been Thinking

A Gracious Heresy, everyday theology, musings, progressive christianity, progressive politics

It’s been months since I last blogged and you may wonder why. It started (or stopped) when I took a break after the election in November. It was the first time I had taken a deep breath in years and I wanted to breathe for a while. And then breathe some more. So I chose to breathe and pray in silence. To let the anxiety of the past several years begin to slide off my skin, to breathe it out of my pores, and to rest a moment. So I did.

And then January 6th happened.
Just when I began to hope again.
Just when I thought my heart had broken all it was going to break.
Just when I was beginning the work of putting my heart back together again…
the ‘feels’ overwhelmed me.

So here I am, months later, and I’m thinking again. This is how I know after extended periods of depression, of hopelessness, of grief, and of loss that I am healing. Thinking is like the psychic itch of a wound on the mend. After the feels comes the consideration, the questions, the forward movement.  My strength is returning and so is my hope.

Welcome back to my blog postings. I hope we will breathe and scratch our itches together.

I’m trying to remember from the ethics classes I took what the first premises are. If I’m not mistaken, the first is that to debate ethics with one another we have to agree on what our shared ‘authority’ is. Is it the Bible? The Constitution? ‘Natural law’? And then, again, if I’m not mistaken, we have to agree on our primary values. Is it freedom? Peace? Justice? None without the other? Is it survival? If survival is our primary value we need to dispose of the Bible or the Constitution as our authorities.

Why am I bringing this up? Well, it’s not to give you a lesson in how to do ethics, thank you very much. I’m trying to figure out why we don’t seem to be able to talk to people who are very different from us. Even about what might seem to be a shared value. Take freedom. When I talk to anti-maskers and they argue that masks infringe on their freedom, I wonder why their freedom supersedes my freedom to be healthy. And then I wonder whether we are talking about freedom at all. Because, let’s face it, we’ve all heard arguments for limitations of freedom. Like not yelling, ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. There are times when our personal freedom is outweighed by the well-being of the whole. It’s a tenuous path, so let’s walk it carefully.  

Freedom doesn’t mean that ‘I can do anything I want’. It never has. That’s being a spoiled brat, not being free. Freedom does not relieve us of our social contract to participate in the community in healthy and respectful ways. Not only will I not syphon your gas or key your car, I will not introduce the possibility of disease into your life if there is a chance that I can.

It is clear that we do not all subscribe to the  authority of science. Were that so, I wouldn’t be posting this. So let’s figure out what our shared authority is. And our shared values, should we have any. If we can agree that the Bible or the Constitution, let me suggest that both documents share at least one purpose: how we are to live together in community.

Let’s start here. Not to argue, but to find common ground. It has to begin with agreeing that we want each other to survive and thrive. I cannot do this alone. I am vaccinated and will wear a mask to protect not only myself but those around me. Please realize that when you go about unmasked and unvaccinated you are telling me you do not share the value of community and, even more important,  that you are not interested in us finding our way back to reasoned public discourse.