Category Archives: spiritual practice

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:

Where There is no Vision

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

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  Proverbs 29:18a

One of my favorite scripture quotes. It feels so visceral, so challenging, so immediate. For those of us it speaks to, it challenges to us is to dream. To hope.  To imagine a world worth working toward.

When decency seems to fail, when violence is commonplace, and when the ascendence of white masculinity is viewed as the norm, we must dream powerful dreams. We must dream to survive.

The question for us is: how do a terrified and sometimes broken people dream?
Let our visions be informed but not driven by our anger.
Let our visions be informed but not driven by our pain.
Let our visions, instead, be informed and driven by hope. 
Now is the time we need to dream big. We need to risk daring a largeness. The seemingly impossible.

We are heirs to visionaries throughout time, including the dreamers who founded this nation. We will be no more perfect than they were, but we stand on their shoulders and can move what we share of the vision forward. Our imperfections do not reflect on the vision, but on our ability to bring it fully to fruition. It is okay to be imperfect. It is not okay to let our imperfections keep us from doing the work. We are farther along because of the many who went before us.  Let the work continue.
Now is our time.  

Embrace Your Inner Moses

A Gracious Heresy, everyday theology, progressive politics, resistance, spiritual practice
did moses go to heaven

This nation is in the midst of a mythic battle between right and wrong, truth and lies, life and death, and… good and evil. Yep. I said it.

Sometimes it has felt like I was watching a fast-moving train careen around corners. I sucked in my breath, heart thumping, waiting to see if the cars would fall off the rails or down the side of a mountain or churn over a trackless canyon to disintegrate as it plowed into the earth.

Sometimes it has felt like I was watching a slow-moving train with no engineer, no known direction, and no one in control.

The visuals have changed. There are not trains in my present day imaging. Rather a battle where the weapons of truth and lies have equal value. Where the end result will either be life-giving or death-dealing. Where our nation, and even the world will choose for their organizing principle to be those of good (freedom, justice, community, mutuality, diversity, law) or evil (control, vigilantism, division, hierarchy, homogeneity, and power).

It helps to change the imagery. Trains are massive metal containers pulled by even more massive engines that take miles of track to come to a stop. There is no way to turn a train unless pre-prescribed tracks are involved. The way is laid out and diversion is precipitated by disaster.

So… how might this conflict be reimagined? What would it mean if we did not see ourselves as powerless? And what, in this world where we experience so much as being out of our control, can we do to make a difference?

Here is my proposal: let every one of us claim our inner Moses. Imagine the power shift!

Hear me out. The people were inured to an intolerable and seemingly hopeless situation. They might dream of freedom and justice but felt powerless to make change. They may not have realized, because of its universal nature, that slavery was evil. When every day is about survival, enough to eat, enough to pay rent, enough to put gas in the car, then fighting for an idea, even a holy one, can take the back seat.

Moses rose up from his privilege to challenge the status quo and lead the people on the dangerous journey to freedom. Let us take a lesson from that for the present. Those of us who see what is going on must use whatever privilege we have to challenge the power of the right as it seeks to control women, demote queers to second class citizens, eliminate trans folk, and disenfranchise people of color. Period. It means making mistakes, trusting Godde, and learning from one another and from the journey how to be free.

Free and just. Free and mutual. Free and diverse. Free and always learning more deeply what true freedom looks like.

We must recognize the evil before us and stand up to those who use their power to keep power. We must risk ourselves and talk back to lies.
We must raise up an idea that is better and greater than our immediate security.
The idea of a world where personal gain and personal power are not the highest values.
Where freedom is everyone’s birthright.
Where all voices are heard.
Where we cast our lots together for the greater good of the whole.

We must step out in faith that Godde calls us to cross over seas that overwhelm us, trusting that Godde makes a way out of no way.
We must challenge the idols of control and wealth.
We must do the difficult work of learning what it means to be truly free.
We must do the work even if we do not end up living to see the results of our work.

Godde doesn’t care if you ‘stutter’ or whatever hindrance you believe keeps you from the work. Use the gifts you have with whatever challenges you have. The time in NOW. Our nation and our world need us.

Embrace your flawed, wonderful inner Moses and step out in faith.

Making a Way: the Power of Connection

A Gracious Heresy, activism, everyday theology, resistance, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

Sometimes, when I am hurting or scared, I am like a wounded elephant. I want to go off by myself to die. And yet.
And yet I yearn for connection. I want others to care but I am afraid my grief or pain is  too much.
There are times I  cried for days, weeks, months even, sitting in my pain with a friend who listens. Not tears leaking down my cheeks but full on sobbing with snot and hiccoughs and incoherent babbling. It is then I am at my most vulnerable. I fear rejection. I’m afraid  my feelings will alienate the ones reaching out to me. And the sad thing is that my feelings have alienated people. I have hurt so bad at times that the animal instinct to protect myself morphed my pain into rage. Anger at the unfairness of it all. Anger at my hopelessness. Anger at my powerlessness. Anger that there was no comfort, however lovingly offered.

It was, finally, the power of those who persevered that created the space for me to heal. It was those who maintained connection when I withdrew. And those who did not, would not, take my pain and anger personally who helped me retrieve myself.  Otherwise, I think one of a few things could have happened:
– I could have isolated, withdrawn from life, and lived on half alive.
–  I could have returned to the larger world, isolated from myself and others by living inauthenticity.
– I could have become hateful, distrusting, and hopeless, diminishing my ability to be more fully human.

But I didn’t. And I’m telling this story as a cautionary tale. So many of us are in pain, grieving, hopeless, angry… with our neighbors, fellow citizens, politicians, – even friends. The political landscape can seem hopeless. The fast-moving train of racism, sexism, homophobia, poverty, and climate change denial barrels toward our uncertain future. I don’t think I’m alone in mourning the loss of the progress we were making or being enraged at the our seeming powerlessness to protect people of color or a woman’s right to choose or our planet’s health.
I’m not referring to fleeting feelings but the ones that, when reading the news, sends electrical shocks through your chest. Or the times before drifting off to sleep a sadness settles over you like a blanket of hopelessness. Or when rage rises up and you fight off secret desires for another to die.

And you wonder, is there any way to get to the other side.

Here is my tentative and small suggestion. Let us sit with one another. Stay connected. Keep reaching out. When one is weak another can be strong. When one is hopeless, another may be able to see a path more clearly. When one rages, the other can make space for that truth. When you have the strength to reach out, do it. If you should be tempted to withdraw from life, allow the touch of others. My experience tell me  that we can only make our way together. Together we help one another remain authentic. We can refuse to disavow what we value deeply. We may not see the path out of our current failure/challenge/disaster… but together let us make a way out of what seems like no way.

Lost Time

A Gracious Heresy, Circle of Grace, everyday theology, spiritual practice

A year and a half, nearly two years –
and we continue to wrestle with lost time.
How have we filled our hours
and days
and months?

Has fear divorced us
from our neighbors?
Isolated us
from our friends?
Quarantined us
from the world
so much so
that we refuse to live?
Have we marked time with
resentment
fear
anxiety
and the troubled anguish
of our souls?

Let us instead
open ourselves
to the time allotted to us,
acknowledge each day as
a gift to unwrap
a challenge to meet
a promise to be kept.

Let us open ourselves
to the cosmos
the wind,
the raspy pollen,
the green of burgeoning life,
the gray of life expended,
and devote ourselves
to the untamed spaces
within

Let us unearth
the faceted layers
of our souls,
confront  our fears,
and dare to follow
where the Spirit beckons.

This time need not be lost.
Rather,
let us embrace
as possibility
what once we ignored,
discover our uncharted hearts
and the hidden wealth of  wisdom
we unknowingly possess.

This is an invitation for us
to live deeply
to honor our losses
while choosing to live.
This is an invitation
to grasp life’s energy
with both hands
to embrace
to challenge
to drink the nectar
of the Sacred sap
flowing in our bones,
pulsing in the stars,
and thrumming in the veins
of our holy, holy world.

Come with me
to places
not confined
by this disease
and let us explore
the boundless terrain
of our souls.

“I Am Still Learning”

musings, spiritual practice, Uncategorized, writing



People who are utterly and completely sure of themselves confound me-
whether it be about theology, Godde, politics, history, science… or any discipline.
What if more information becomes available?
What if that information contradicts one’s assumptions?
What if differing perspectives challenge old facts?
What if we need to acknowledge two conflicting truths exist at the same time?

Can you imagine how fun, exciting, scary, and wonderful that would be?

When I star gaze, especially when I am alone, listening to a cacophony of insects flutter and chirp and water splashing over stones in the nearby creek… I experience a bone deep connection with all that  is and was and will come. I am flush with the awareness that what  I do not know is so much greater than I do know. Scholars of every discipline only grapple with the edges knowledge. The Mystery is greater than our ability to comprehend in its entirety. Is it possible for the finite can comprehend the infinite?

Not that I want to stop trying to understand more deeply, but the older I get the more in sync I am with Michelangelo who, at considerable age of 87,  said, “I am still learning.”

There is something essential in accepting both our desire and our limitations in the search for truth. And, if we are honest, the moment we claim to possess an absolute truth, some sneaky contradiction up-ends it.  If we are honest.
It’s why I am suspicious of politicians and preachers who claim absolute fealty to one truth or one idea and reject ideas and  information that contradict. I am suspicious when they impose circular thinking on their followers  and reject critical examination of their ‘truth’.

Questions are one of the beginning points of human development. Who hasn’t spent time with a toddler’s incessant questioning?  There is nothing like the pummeling one takes from a two year old’s “What’s that?” and “Why?” – that push us to the limits of our ability to explain.
In the best of all worlds we never stop asking those profoundly human questions.
In the best of all worlds, we never stop growing in our quest to understand ourselves and the world around us.
In the best of all worlds,  answers  become more and more complex and less and less absolute.

What if we could wrap our minds around the idea that contradictory things can be true?  What if,  rather than clinging to absolutes, we find other ways to confront our fear of the unknown?
What if the fear of the unknown is an invitation to unending questions?
What if  our questions don’t lead us absolute answers but  to ever deepening questions?
What if we seek  answers not as fixed points but as open doors?

What if we all admit that we are still learning?
What if a collective will to question made change less threatening?
What if, in our embrace of uncertainty, we became more and more human?

I wonder.

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!”

 

Dear Friends… thank you

activism, resistance, spiritual practice

Dear Friends,

This week, hundreds of friends are posting on Facebook that they have voted.
It fills me up and I find myself commenting ‘thank you’ on every post.

Thank you, not because I didn’t expect you to vote (I do)
or didn’t think you knew how important our votes are in this time (I don’t)
but because I am grateful for your powerful act.
Thank you all  who thought ahead and requested absentee ballots.
Thank you for driving your ballot to drop boxes.
Thank you for voting early.
Thank you for standing in lines for hours and hours refusing to be disenfranchised.
Thank you if you are able to get in and out in a reasonable time.
Thank you if you are going to the polls on November 3rd.
Thank you for making e a plan to vote.
Thank you for  claiming and exercising your power.
Thank you for standing up and speaking out.

I am grateful for the numbers, the great numbers of people who are voting
I am grateful that so many of us are refusing to accept the dehumanizing and cruel excuse for an administration that we have endured for the last four years.

Thank you from the bottom of my hopeful, hurting heart.
Connie

Dear Friends… stand up

activism, Georgia Politics, progressive politics, resistance, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

Dear Friends,

Well, there’s 19 days to go before the election
and we are holding our collective breath.
It looks good but we must persist.
Vote early if you can.
I worry about disrupters at the polls on Election Day.
Make sure your friends are voting.
Offer rides.
Take water to those waiting in line.
Phone bank.
Pray.
Now is the time to stand up
to do all we can however we can wherever we can.

It cannot be said too often:
this is the most important election of our lifetimes.
Be a hero for our time.
Do the best you can with what you have and who you are.

Together, let us stand
to make a country that insists on justice
and relies on science
a country that celebrates differences
protects the weak
frees children
fights systemic racism and sexism
feeds the hungry
a country where we tell ourselves difficult truths

Now is the time
if ever there was one.
Stand up.

Connie

Dear Friends… I’m so sorry for your loss

everyday theology, progressive politics, resistance, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

Dear Friends,

In times like these words seem hollow.  I am sorry for your loss. Our loss.
Sorry beyond words. We stand before the mystery of death and try to comfort one another – not with the certainty of belief  but by holding one other in the pain of our grief.

We grieve  for this majestic woman who championed and embodied ideals that so many of us live and breathe. Let us enfold one another in care. In any other time her death would be a great loss, these times make who and what we mourn even more difficult.
We grieve the loss of a bright light who fought for justice.
We grieve for a woman who changed our world in so many ways for the better.
We grieve not only our loss of advocate and judge but of one who was a protector of the marginalized.

We need to grieve. We need to grieve and to give thanks for her life well-lived, for her voice lifted, for the witness and tenacity of her stands for justice.

For me, the loss of Justice Ginsberg mirrors the apparent loss of so much else in the nation:
civility
human decency
shared values
and who we can aspire to be as a democratic nation.

I wish that we could gather and lift our candles to the sky along with our fists, defying the darkness. I wish I could tell you everything will be alright and that we are passing through a storm. That joy comes in the morning.
Actually, I will tell you that.
Ruth Bator Ginsberg did not give up, not to her dying breath.
How can we honor her and do any less?

What we cannot grieve is the loss of hope.
To do so would disrespect not only her memory but the memories of all who fought for the principles of justice, equality, and shared power.
We can grieve but we must not despair.

I am sorry for our loss. So deeply sorry that it brought me to my knees.
But we are her legacy. Our task is to continue the work she has done.
As it says in the Talmud:
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly now, love mercy now,       walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

I am so sorry for our loss. May our tears cleanse our vision and create a tsunami that will clear a way to a new day.

peace, my friends,
Connie