do you want to be made well?

While knowledge and truth can be found anywhere, the kind of wisdom that leads to shalom is indigenous to the margins, among "the least," forgotten, and last. Those who know the way to peace and healing are the ones whose bodies, like Christ's, bear scars of others' war-making. Any who sit at empires' thrones feasting on its spoils cannot lead us into justice. The powerful offer up all sorts of expertise, but paths to peace they do not know.

Peacemaking is not a top-down operation, nor does its wisdom flow from center to margin. Peace is forged through conflict (not around), and the way to communal well-being and wholeness is paved with all sorts of interpersonal discomfort, tension, and sweat. Justice cannot roll until subtle and glaring hierarchies and broken systems are identified and ripped out. 

And that much-lauded (and alarmingly misunderstood) rebuilding work of crafting something just and new? It, too, is rooted firmly in Wisdom from the margins! The top and center are architects and upholders of injustice, well practiced in the status quo affirming appearance of peace, but rarely the presence of Kingdom-of-God shalom. Despisers of the critical work of dismantling oppressive systems are incapable of building anything truly new; they lack the empathy, will, and imagination to envision and create alternate paths. Resurrection wisdom lives at the margins, where Jesus anchored his own life and ministry alongside fishermen, lepers, women, peasants, the colonized, unqualified, Samaritans, sinners, and sick.

Peacemaking is the sort of messy work from which many would rather run, particularly those of us benefiting from How Things Are [Unjust]. Privileged voices are quick to paint protesters, critics, and marginalized bodies as disturbers of a peace which does not yet exist. It's a tricky game, with clear winners and losers, actual shalom being the latter.

But we can't hope to take part in fixing what's broken if we refuse to recognize the depths of what's wrong, and that requires going to the margins and sitting at the feet of people the majority are most accustomed to demonizing and writing off.

Until Christians hear and heed Wisdom from the margins, we actively stand in the way of peace, no matter how "gracious" and gentle our words or noble our intentions. Civility is a tool of empire, defined by power and expertly wielded against those who step out of line or refuse the terms of their faux-peace. The Kingdom of God springs up out of far deeper, more fertile soil--and on the backs of none.

So many Christian voices claim--and honestly desire--to be on the side of Jesus, justice, and peace, but shalom wholeness requires a radical de-centering of power, the active subversion of hierarchical systems, and a good bit more staying in our own lanes.

White people can't know the first thing about dismantling racism unless we are sitting at the feet of Black people and other people of color. Men who refuse to learn from and defer to women are incapable of leading anywhere just, no matter how impressive their CVs. Straight and cisgender opinions on homosexuality, marriage equality, transgender identity, and intersex bodies aren't nearly as helpful (or faithful) as many imagine. Edgy tattoos and good book reviews are clanging cymbals accompanied by discrediting survivors and sheltering powerful friends. People who are depressed, in recovery, marginalized, and hurting have a great deal to teach the rest of us about a God who is near to the brokenhearted, but we can't receive their wisdom if we're so busy blaming them for harshing our happy vibe.

It's not the healthy who need a doctor but the sick.

Many Christians are so accustomed to seeing ourselves as the healthy bringers of a gospel of wellness to a sin-sick world, but we're just as sick as anyone. (And we're not the doctor in this metaphor, either, particularly when our actions and neglect contribute to making our neighbors sick!) We trust a pallid gospel of go-to-heaven-when-you-die, but the "personal" Savior Christians claim inaugurates systemic, all-things-made-new, salvific work among and within our communities here and now. We are saved together for greater works than these.

Do you want to be made well? 

Well, do we? We've got to acknowledge the depth of sickness in our systems as much as our hearts, and we can't expect the same voices who taught us hierarchy and complacence to lead us out into wholeness. De-throne the experts: shalom-deep wisdom resides at the margins, with the suffering and bruised.

There, among the despised and rejected, we'll finally and fully encounter the Man of Sorrows we've long claimed to follow. And only there, together, will we be healed.

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setting an extra place

Christians often speak too narrowly of vocation. Certainly, many of us feel called to medicine, caregiving, or teaching, to public service or art. We have a fire in our bones to wield our passions and talents well to make a difference, yet not everyone is paid for her labor or finds their job fulfilling, rendering many insignificant or invisible in conversations about purpose and calling. But there are infinite ways to make an impact, including when economies slow, life derails our best laid plans, and even our bodies betray us.

I've got a piece up today at The Mudroom about community and hospitality. Come say hello, won't you? It's been a while!

image: jirfy

shake off your guilty fears

It was five degrees outside, and we're still recovering from missed sleep and stubborn colds, so we skipped church, remaining camped out in the living room in our pjs. Jim dug out his guitar and the way-back chords from many shared years of youth-campus-church-camp ministry. Our poor upstairs neighbor! We don't sing like that in our little country Episcopal church with the organ hymns and octogenarians, and I miss it. I miss the emotional resonance and immediacy of my younger faith.

But there's a disconnect, too. I don't believe all those same things. One song he pulled out, "Arise My Soul Arise," has a beautiful uptempo and essentially bloodthirsty lyrics that completely jar with the echoing melody. I don't really believe "the Spirit answers to the blood" or worship Jesus "the bleeding sacrifice" anymore. Penal substitutionary atonement is not the message of the cross or the essence of the gospel I now believe.

And then I read this, from Fr. Richard Rohr:

A violent theory of redemption legitimated punitive and violent problem solving all the way down--from papacy to parenting. There eventually emerged a disconnect between the founding story of necessary punishment and Jesus' message. If God uses and needs violence to attain God's purposes, maybe Jesus did not really mean what he said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5), and violent means are really good and necessary. Thus our history...

...This perspective allowed us to ignore Jesus' lifestyle and preaching, because all we really needed Jesus for was the last three days or three hours of his life. This is no exaggeration. The irony is that Jesus undoes, undercuts, and defeats the sacrificial game. Stop counting, measuring, deserving, judging, and punishing, which many Christians are very well trained in--because they believe that was the way God operated too.

God didn't kill Jesus. Jesus was killed by coercive and violent "powers and principalities," whom Jesus shamed and delegitmized by rising from the dead. They dealt their worst and were revealed to be impotent. Jesus' perfect love casts out fear, inaugurating a Kingdom rooted, imagined, and embodied in other Ways entirely.

Jesus wasn't "born to die." His birth, incarnation, ministry, execution, resurrection, and life all have meaning to the work of salvation. Jesus is the Word of God-made-flesh, revealing Divinity and God's own character with the touch of his calloused hands. God speaks through Jesus, whose life reveals the Father's sacrificial love for creation.

The gospel is not about wrath or blood, except that God's love is stronger than the world's ugliest violence. It begins at the beginning, long before the cross, and God is still speaking, saving and liberating and healing and resurrecting in and among and through us today. The upside down Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven, is good news for us together: that's the message of the cross to which I cling.

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blessed be the both/and

water and fire
night and day
contemplation and praxis

wisdom and innocence

desire and discipline

justice and mercy

work and play
fast and feast
lead and listen
lament and celebrate

grace and accountability
anger and compassion

body and spirit
heart and mind

dismantle and build

solitude and community

freedom and responsibility
silence and speaking up
beauty and function
faith and deed
art and criticism
science and poetry
humility and confidence
difference and hospitality
prayer and protest

hear and do

end and begin
death and growth
resistance and rest
heartache and healing
local and transcendent
tradition and innovation
learning and liberation
truth and love
one and many
you and me
both
and
more
let's
yes
now

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good news for weary bodies

Studies show that girls who play sports delay their first sexual experiences, and when they do have sex, they are half as likely to become pregnant as girls who don’t play sports. I don’t know exactly why that is, but I wonder: do female athletes, strong and at home in their bodies, feel like they have less to prove than some of their peers? Might confidence learned on the field lead girls to exercise agency elsewhere, inclining a young woman to be more certain of her “yes” or her “no?” Would she feel less like an ornament and more an actor in her own skin?

Looking back, I felt most capable and myself not in my body at all but inside my head, which school and church both encouraged. My faith was something I believed fiercely and intellectualized, but it was not something I specifically learned to embody. Yes, Jesus wanted us to serve and follow with our whole selves, but there was a clearly implied dichotomy between flesh and spirit and a hierarchy of body to soul.

The stuff of spirit was holy and eternal and good.

The stuff of bodies, irrevocably tainted by sin, was lesser, fleeting, and ultimately passing away.

In the stories handed down around campfires, small groups, and lock-ins, Jesus’ perfect divinity trumped his dirt-under-the-fingernails humanity every time. If Christ’s own body didn’t matter much in the narrative of redemption, how in God’s name could mine?

I don’t recognize that Jesus anymore. (How could we have “a personal relationship” with One so pristine and removed from our shared human experience anyway?) And I no longer see wholeness or holiness in faith expressions divorcing spirituality from embodied existence or a person from her own self.

The shift was gradual. I studied religion (which was indeed a slippery slope). I put boots on the ground with activists of faith and set broad tables in community, with elders and teenagers and folks not like me. Somewhere along the way I became a feminist and a mother, and I began reading Scripture as if bodies mattered all along.

Blood and sweat. Laughter. Tears. Joy. Grief. Pleasure. Pain. Sickness. Sadness. Sex. Service. Social location! Ethnicity. Gender. Race. Disability. Age. Health. Birth. Death. Food. Family. Friendship. Resistance. Rest. Play. Work. Worship. Solitude. Community. Suffering. Celebration. Incarnation. Resurrection. God meets us—and works through us—within embodied experiences. I can meditate, pray, study, and love, but never apart from my own body. With physical bodies we practice our faith within a physical world, and it’s with bodies that Christians make up the Body of Christ together.

It’s perhaps my favorite metaphor, but the Body of Christ was never meant to exist solely as flat words on a dusty page. Together, here, now, WE are the very Word of God enfleshed, the diverse hands and feet of Jesus in an aching world.

**

Glossy magazines, movie trailers, and primetime television tell us that bodies matter, too, of course: white, thin, youthful, rich bodies, mostly. Black bodies matter, so long as they entertain a white gaze. Many bodies are rendered invisible in popular culture (and our own neighborhoods, too). Once the shiny layers are peeled back, it’s an oppressive, restrictive story: bodily mattering is exceptionally limited and painfully exclusive. The media’s emphasis on desirable, unattainable bodies is perhaps not unrelated to a Church’s hyper focus on “greater” things unseen, spiritual, and eternal. We desperately want to tell a better story than the airbrushed, whitewashed ones taunting us in the check-out lines, so Christians talk earnestly of hearts and heaven.

But we are still embodied creatures who thirst and hurt and desire. What has the gospel to say for imperfect bodies here and now?

**

While it’s true that sorrow finds each of us, it’s hard to argue against the insulation that class, whiteness, and money can afford. In public housing where I work, thick concrete walls may keep out fire, but specters of illness, addiction, violence, and death loom larger than life sometimes.

We say bodies matter, but what about elderly bodies? Sick bodies? Fat bodies? Single bodies? Disabled bodies? Frail and crooked bodies? What about the bodies of noisy teens, young moms, or kids whose dads are in jail? Do the bodies of poor people matter, too?

I don’t think Christians can counter gnostic “gospels,” dissolve inherited dichotomies between flesh and spirit, or adequately affirm our physical selves without also intentionally choosing to see all the ways our bodies and bodily experiences are not alike and how very differently our different bodies are valued, both interpersonally and systemically. To do that, we’ll need eyes to see, ears to hear, hands to comfort, hearts to understand, and feet to kick at the darkness of bad theology and bodily harm till daylight bleeds through, and together we are healed.

Emmanuel, God with us, pitched his tent in our messy midst. That’s what we anticipate this Advent: Christ showing up, his very presence hallowing all he touches. Jesus–washer of feet, healer of lepers, feeder of crowds, esteemer of women, releaser of captives, blesser of mourners, friend of sinners and outcasts–could not be defeated by violence or even death, and his deeply embodied gospel is good news for weary bodies now.

The Lord is with us. Take we heart and be not afraid.

-------------------------
Faith Feminisms is back this first week of Advent with timely meditations on how and why #bodiesmatter. Come by to read, and be sure to link up any old or new post fitting with the theme of embodied life and faith practice. We'd love to hear from a spectrum of voices.
I'm also linking up two poems fitting with the theme: Incarnation and Test Everything. Blessings to you this Advent, loves. It's dark and getting darker, but there are so many reasons to hope.

[Archived here.]

shall we strike with a sword?

Shall we strike with a sword?
Shall we crucify, terrify, vilify, war?
Shall we wound with our words?
Shall we seethe?
Shall we shame?

Shall we strike with a sword
or a fist
or a chain?
Shall we make them submit to our rule?
Shall we reign?

Shall we strike with a sword?
Shall we live by it, die by it,
crown it our god?

Shall we bow? Shall we break
every bow that we've made?
Shall we love a more excellent way?

Compellingly uncoerced,
casting out fear. Lay down arms,
forge new tools in the fire that consumes
every dross and illumines strange paths.
Plowshares strike only soil: till our hearts,
may the verdant grow wild.

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the peace we make

For Christ himself is our peace: his flesh makes us one, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility.

Peace stands in the gap. With ears and hearts, peace listens, offering a hand (or keeping it to ourselves). Peace sets each wrong aright.

Speaking good words and hard truths, peace resists false choices, easy answers, cheap grace, and every entrenched pattern of empire. There is no peace in the presence of injustice (and it's rarely the center or top who knows how far we've come or where next to go).

Peace makes more room for the least, the last, and the lost. Peace de-centers power and conventional models of authority. It favors the margins, honoring their hard-won wisdom and recognizing paths to peace are unknown to masters of war and all who feast on their spoils.

They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.

Peace sets to work, not despising the offerings of those who know conflict, too, is fruitful. Exposing violence cannot destroy a peace which has yet to be born among us. Clear out the old to make way for the new. Till each field, lot, and heart. Raze the systems. Raise the dead. Establish the work of our hands.

Many bodies, one Body. Many gifts, one Spirit. One Lord, one faith, one baptism. One hope in Christ, whose body makes a way out of no way, birthing peace in place of great violence.

Heal. Feast. Invite. Wash. Serve. See. Teach. Feed. Bless. Rest. Honor. Listen. Forgive. Empower. Humble. Suffer. Challenge. Invert. Convert. Subvert. Sacrifice. Resurrect. Liberate. Re-create. Love.

The peace we wage is forged in fire. With skin in the game, we arm to the teeth: ploughshares, hammers, covered dishes. Pens and picket signs. Microphones, toilet brushes, canvases, keyboards. Sacraments and safe space. Boundaries. Imagination. Hospitality and hard work. Room to grieve and grace to grow. 

Peacemaking by incarnation and alchemy.

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were not our hearts burning?

Were not our hearts burning within us when the President preached Amazing Grace and Bree Newsome ascended that pole?

You come against me in hatred and oppression and violence; I come against you in the Name of God. This flag comes down TODAY.

One hundred fifty years from Juneteenth emancipation, six Black churches smolder, the dead in Charleston barely yet buried:

Clementa. Cynthia. Tywanza. Sharonda. Myra. Ethel. Susie. Daniel. DePayne.

And white Christians don sackcloth and ash, mourning marriage equality as churches burn, funeral hymns ring out, and wedding bells chime. They shall know we are Christians by our [lacking, lackluster, lukewarm neighbor-] love.

Bread unbroken
Stranger unwelcomed
Christ unrecognized
and we, unmoved, unblessed,
unborn.

Give us a garland instead of ash and hearts of flesh ablaze, beating and breaking and bound up together, let love fuel our work and our days.

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but what are you FOR?

When you've got an analytical eye, folks may chastise your negativity. Why waste energies tearing down? Upright citizens less easily offended are actually contributing something worthwhile, so quit complaining and do something already!

Here's the thing, though: that binary is false. We can critique and create. We can do and do better still, and analysis is one of many tools that can move us forward. Gardens must be weeded if they are to flourish, and weeding is as much work as planting, watering, or harvesting the fruits of our labors. Each of us is uniquely gifted, and there is value in all sorts of service.

But a lack of concern for systemic injustice (especially that which hurts others and benefits me and mine) exhibits neither moral authority or Christ-like leadership. Despite the common refrain (often from those with most at stake in the status quo), critics and activists are not the reason Why We Can't Have Nice Things. Hierarchy and protected power, secrecy, greed, and oppression inhibit shalom far more than "the surfacing of tensions already present." A peace that does not yet exist cannot possibly be kept by silencing dissent, discouraging critical thought, or demonizing the hurting and those with eyes to see.

But what are the rabble-rousers, troublesome "mobs," and angry "social justice warriors" actually FOR, anyway?

The Fruits and Fire of the Spirit

We are for wholeness, hard truth, and a preferential option for the margins. We are for hospitality, boundaries, and diverse gifts. We are for accountable leadership, transparency, and learning. We are for knowing better and doing justice.

We are for indicting and exposing systems and patterns antithetical to the Kingdom of God. We're for assigning positive intent and showing our work. We are for taking responsibility for our own feelings and actions. We are for peacemaking, conflict, repentance, and seeing it through.

We are for the fruits and the fire of the Spirit. We are for testing everything and holding it up to the light. We are for one holy catholic and apostolic Church, the least, last, and lost.

We are for embodied faith, common prayer, and all things made new. We are for subverting power, dismantling empire, and love with roots, feet, and wings. We are for liberation and not losing heart or giving up. We are for belonging to one another and the good, hard, messy work of practicing resurrection and working out our salvation together.

"Our Struggle Is Not Against Flesh and Blood"

The sin in our systems cannot be addressed solely on an interpersonal level, and our best intentions do not exonerate us from participating in or benefiting from patterns favoring the powerful over the marginalized. When criticism and a desire for accountability and consistency are pathologized as ungracious and even satanic, it baptizes, protects, and reinforces power, which is, more often than not: white, monied, influential, male, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, neurotypical, educated, etc. "Mob" voices deemed malignant, irrational, and un-Christlike overwhelmingly belong (not coincidentally) to women, people of color, survivors, LGBTQ people, and those experienced in mental illness. Widely parroted ideas about civility and grace sound pleasing but may not resemble the way of Jesus.

Healthy leadership is accountable, humble, and willing to learn, and criticism is integral to public discourse. Pretending that criticism and social media are the exclusive domain of trolls is disingenuous, silencing, and frankly, ridiculous coming from the mouths of those who have built sizable platforms on both.

Criticism is a discipline that does not exist in opposition to Christian discipleship. Neither people nor criticism is the enemy. Our systems are sick, and it'll take surgeons' scalpels; healing hands; faithful prayer; and good, hard, all-hands-on-deck work to make us whole.

also: 

what it means to take abuse seriously (R.L. Stollar)

detox: on conflict, criticism, & who writes the history
violence in the snowy fields

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the kingdom of God is like chicken paprikash

I have a nemesis. She is the only person outside my own family ever to berate me at top volume and the sole human to manage such a feat in front of an audience. It was a cinema-caliber castigation and that it occurred at our place of employ was really just icing on what was pretty much the worst cake ever.

This happened years ago, but ours is a small town, so our paths still cross. She artfully avoids eye contact and feigns my invisibility, even if we’re in the same shop, hallway, or sidewalk. If you saw us on the street, you might think us strangers, but her scorn for me has bound us more like family, however estranged.

**

My family was in town for Christmas, and my dad took us out for Transylvanian-Hungarian smorgasbord at a wood paneled restaurant resembling the civic clubs of generations past, when people took belonging seriously. Every parking space, table, and seat at the bar was full, and an old man regaled the pink-faced patrons with polkas, Christmas tunes, and classics on the accordion, while we polished off plates piled high with pierogies, stuffed cabbage, and all manner of stewed meat.

We were seated caddy-corner from my nemesis, because of course we were. She has a husband and toddler now, and they were joined by mutual friends and their kids, who played together while the parents ate nut roll. On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me three French hens, two turtle doves, and my nemesis in a Transylvanian pear tree.

The pickings on the buffet dwindled to lonesome green olives on iceberg lettuce and poppy seeds spilling out of errant danish scraps, and we lingered contentedly in the early glow of an eastern European food coma. When the accordionist played the first bars of “Sweet Caroline,” and the whole room broke into song, I thought my sister might actually explode with delight.

**

I live at a Christian camp, and every summer dreams die when our college staff realize the mythical community they’ve idolized is alarmingly less sexy in practice. The work is hard, the quarters close, the people smell, and they can be kind of annoying, too. Life together isn’t a non-stop “mountain top experience,” even on a literal mountain.

But it is a lot like family. We may never have chosen each other, but we love each other fiercely, and that’s what makes it velveteen-real. The sweet spot is enough room for varied perspectives and personalities, complementary strengths, and disparate quirks and foibles. Any semblance of unity grows not out of tenuous or illusory sameness but a shared purpose and the rare, fruitful soil of hospitality. We get it wrong and set our feet toward better paths. We listen, learn, and carve out still more room for community, difference, and making all things new.

The Kingdom of God is like chicken paprikash with family--linked by blood, choice, and circumstance--singing Neil Diamond together at the Hungarian bar at Christmastide. Selah.

--
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strangers in a strange land

Caesar’s imperial census compelled Mary and Joseph to the pilgrims’ path, far from home for their son’s birth to a world brimful of heartache and cruelty. King Herod’s murderous edict set the young family fleeing to Egypt where they lived several years as refugees. The sword, foretold by the prophet to pierce Mary’s very soul, would first cut countless others’ to the quick.

“A voice is heard in Ramah,

mourning and great weeping,

Rachel weeping for her children

and refusing to be comforted,

because they are no more.”

Few carols lament the empty-armed mothers of Bethlehem, but their grief bore witness to ruthless political expedience and state violence long before that dark day in Golgotha. Or a tear-filled August in Ferguson.

“Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”

The nativity of our manger-born King reveals an oppressive displacement not adequately conveyed by children’s Christmas pageantry. But Jesus’ babyhood did not exempt him from the rocky stranger’s path even as he was nursed at his mother’s breast. Lamb of God, on the lam before he was yet weaned. To follow in Christ’s steps is to know that same uncertain insecurity, the felt constancy only of the target on one’s back. Wholly welcome no tangible place, belonging only to mercurial sisters and brothers and an unseen, unchanging God, Emmanuel’s path leads ever outward from comfortable center to harried margin, dispossessed people, and cross.

And yet, somehow, to joy. Christ’s own chosen displacements–from heaven, Rome, and custom–can mend this hard world’s sharpest breaches. And we who’ll “do even greater things than these,” will call the castaways, bind up broken hearts, and walk the weary wanderers home at last. Repenting of our own callous casting out, wayward hearts, and dirty, colluding hands, we’ll “stay woke” this advent to light kindling even now in lands of deep darkness, fueled by cast off boots, blood-soaked garments, and every shattered yoke.

“to give his people the knowledge of salvation

through the forgiveness of their sins,

because of the tender mercy of our God,

by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven

to shine on those living in darkness

and in the shadow of death,

to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

We do not walk this lonesome way alone. Be strong and take heart, all who wait and watch and weep: Emmanuel, ransom of captives, is near.

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those without a horse

Label, lie, vilify
simplify, Other. Brother,
"Can't we all just get along?"

Those without a horse
dismiss the race with record speed.
Whose stories have we snuffed with severed
cries to settle down?

Prophetic voices rise 

above the fray from muted margins;

shalom whispers the heat of conflict, too.

We practice resurrection: calm, storm, 

work and wonder. Rooted and built up,
rebuilding in love, we'll blaze a most excellent way.

re-worked from the archives

take up a different story

The bell calls in the town
Where forebears cleared the shaded land
And brought high daylight down
To shine on field and trodden road.
I hear, but understand
Contrarily, and walk into the woods.
I leave labor and load,
Take up a different story.
I keep an inventory
Of wonders and of uncommercial goods. 

(“Sabbaths – 1979, IV” by Wendell Berry)

Growing up, my parents believed heartily in Jesus, honest work, and Sabbath. At some point, Saturday morning chores migrated to Friday-after-school-before-you-even-think-of-going-out chores, but Sunday was forever set apart as a day of worship, family, and rest. The only work allowed revolved around serving and cleaning up our mid-day meal. Homework was permissible, but not until well after dinner was savored and put away.

None of us were particularly athletic. My siblings and I dabbled in swim team, baseball, and softball, but soccer was out of the question, because those Sabbath-breaking coaches scheduled games during church, which I can’t remember missing once in the eighteen years I lived at home.

After Sunday school, worship, and a leisurely coffee hour that we seemed to close down most weeks, our family headed home to ready the afternoon meal. We kept on our church clothes and often hosted friends, family, or the sorts of newcomers for which my mom was forever on the lookout. Old ladies and young seminarians were among her favorites to invite to Sunday dinner.

Our family ate together in the kitchen every night, but Sundays were a fancier affair: fine china and silver set in the dining room; pot roast, meat loaf, or London broil; baked potatoes; salad; Crescent rolls (if you were lucky); and often pie. This meal was not rushed, and one did not fool around or dare giggle. Maybe, maybe you could get away with goofing off over Tuesday’s tuna macaroni (if Dad were out of town), but not in the dining room and certainly not on the Lord’s day. Sit up straight, and show some respect.

After the dishes were done, (You wash; I’ll put the food away and dry), there might be football or naps. Reading the paper was a perfectly acceptable (read: quiet) Sabbath activity. You could play in the yard, lace up your skates, or maybe bike around the block, but do not ask to call a friend. This day is for God, rest, and family.

Do not dream of asking to go to the mall. It doesn’t matter that you have a ride. It’s a sin they even see need to open their doors. Those workers ought to be able to rest from their labors, too, and they surely won’t work today on our behalf.

I don’t recall a great deal of Sabbath wonder growing up (excepting that time our guest revealed that his favorite t.v. show was Theverboten Simpsons, and our eyes grew wide, incredulous), but the discipline and ritual left a deep impression. Sundays truly were a day set apart to “take up a different story,” the kind we’re trying to write with our own young family now.

Sabbath keeping is contrary to so many popular myths, the greatest, perhaps, that we are the sum of all we produce or own. Rest embraces God’s grace and provision over performance or consumerist striving. “To insist on Sabbath is to give testimony to the subversive knowledge that God’s bias is in favor of freedom.” Sabbath reconnects us with Life beyond the exacting grind or madding crowd, honoring the One for Whom and with Whom we labor all those other days.

So we rest and we play. We worship and sing. We read and make art, sharing meals and appreciating beauty. We recall the Exodus and we dance, keeping inventory of wonders and of uncommercial goods.

the gift of ordinary time

Like the moon orders the tides, the horizon draws seekers to the shore’s edge each evening at sunset. The pull is magnetic and almost liturgical in its rhythm. From our vacation perch atop this tree-lined street, we watch the pilgrims flock. Neighbors appear on porches, cradling drinks, eyes trained westward. Kids abandon bikes where the sidewalk ends. Spilling out of cars and homes and on foot, they head for the sea, casting off shoes in the dunes. Where sand and sky kiss surf is holy ground. We pause together, bearing witness to the beauty which descends like clockwork and grace.

The sun is a dazzling ball of pink, with clouds aflame in orange and regal purple. Times Square’s yearly ritual has nothing on this globe’s daily descent into the Delaware Bay at dusk. Its regularity can’t diminish its magnificence, and I’m struck by how infrequently I honor this pause. The sun sets, of course, each night at home, but I barely realize it most nights in the shuffle of putting the kids to bed or getting dinner on the table.

My spirit awakens to the weekly rhythms of worship, prayer, and sacrament. I welcome the turn of the seasons in creation, church, and culture alike. Summer peaches. Back-to-school shoes. Fall festivals. Advent waiting. Christmas feasting. New Year promise. Winter quiet. Lenten fasts. Spring crocuses. Easter hope. Pentecost revival. Ordinary Time.

It’s the daily rituals my heart is missing lately, the ordinary ones, like stopping it all to watch the sun paint the sky amethyst and tangerine. A summer of travel and camp ministry has left me a bit adrift, and I’m longing for the anchor and stability of quotidian rhythms. A cup of coffee savored. Laundry folded and put away. Meals shared. Compline and kisses goodnight. Less hurry and distraction and more awareness of thin places.

“Every day, this One offers gifts–life, light, and hours in which to work and eat and love and rest–and invites humankind to join in the ongoing work of caring for creation and all who dwell therein. The same One also continues, each day, the work of new creation: the work of forgiving and reconciling and restoring wholeness. This too we are invited to enter, both as ones who stand in need of this divine work and as partners in it.

The Christian practice of receiving the day calls us to remember these truths with frequency and regularity. Forgetting them is costly. […] The practice of receiving the day is the cluster of activities that enable Christians to offer attention, daily, to the gracious presence and activity of God.”

Dorothy C. Bass, Receiving the Day: Christian Practices for Opening the Gift of Time

Confident of mercies new each morning, we’ll pilgrimage together, hearts expectant of quiet beauty, deep need, and great grace.

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like precious oil poured on the head

Sartre famously wrote that “Hell is other people.” Hell can indeed feel like tiny, whiny people who Just. Want. To. Watch. A. SHOW.

We’ve never even SEEN a show. Not in FOREVER.
Forever!
Can we watch a show?
What about now? Can we watch a show now?
Peg + Cat? Justin Time? Now? We’ve never even watched them in forever!

It’s kinda hard to disagree. (With Sartre, I mean. My kids’ grasp on forever is tenuous at best.) We can all be hell to be around, can’t we? We’re a hoggish bunch, prone to violent outbursts, icy snubs, and haughty insularity. We lie, exclude, and think the worst. We’re unfathomably selfish, but at least we’re better than them. (Ugh!)

But then I read Psalm 133 where David makes the rather audacious claim that heaven is other people.

1 How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

2 It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
3 It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

Community is where God ordains his blessing, “even life forevermore.” We are saved together for an eternity starting now. Salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The Kingdom of God is at hand, in our hands.

here the oil is an anointing oil, marking the person as a priest. Living together means seeing the oil flow over the head, down the face, through the beard, onto the shoulders of the other–and when I see that I know that my brother, my sister, is my priest. When we see the other as God’s anointed, our relationships are profoundly affected. (Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction)

We are each other’s priest: co-bearers of good news, deep burdens, and great joy. Evangelical Protestants are quick to claim that we require no mediator but Christ, but as Bonhoeffer reminds, the Christ in my heart is weaker than the Christ in my brother’s–or sister’s–word. When my eyes are weary and my heart is faint, I need you to kindle the flames of faith. At times, we’re all the paralyzed man on the mat in Luke 5: saved by the faith and faithfulness of our friends. We carry each other into the presence of God that we may be seen, known, and healed.

But what about the times when we can barely stand to look each other in the eye? When listening turns to mockery and blood boils hot? When we’re frustrated, furious, and exhausted, what hope have we for pleasant unity then?

***

The township put a gravel bike trail right through our yard this summer. I haven’t done much (okay, any) running since my 5K back in May, but I’ve been out there on my bike, stealing moments when the kids are at VBS or I’ve snagged a sitter from camp for an hour or two. (Glory.)

The trail weaves around the soccer fields, over a creek, past a cattle farm, and into town. It’s quiet enough to begin to hear myself think. To pray. And listen. Even the weeds and wildflowers whisper, and I remember the discipline of paying attention.

It’s quiet at home, too, before the kids wake, after goodnight kisses are given, and intermittently in-between, but I’m far less disciplined about cultivating solitude there. There’s work to do, sleep to be had, and tempting ways to avoid both in the light of screens.

We might practically judge the state of our psychological and emotional health by our practice of solitude. Our ability to care in a world of ongoing change grows when it is deeply rooted in a quiet, silent encounter with our faithful God. This allows us to move through our days without being terribly disturbed and distraught by the interruptions or disruptions. It also allows us to perform a diversity of concrete tasks without haste and distraction. In solitude we re-find our center and rediscover that our unity is continually strengthened and nurtured. (Henri Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

If Nouwen is right – and I’m inclined to think he is – the elusive unity for which we long grows not in togetherness, sameness, or the absence of disagreement (or whining) but in the fertile soil of solitude. Unity is cultivated far from the din of the crowd.

If we base our life together on our physical proximity…life quickly starts fluctuating according to moods, personal attractiveness, and mutual compatibility, and thus becomes very demanding and tiring. Solitude, on the other hand, puts us in touch with a unity that precedes all unifying activities. In solitude we become aware that we were together before we came together and that life is not a creation of our will but rather an obedient response to the reality of our already being united. Whenever we enter into solitude, we witness to a love that transcends our interpersonal communications and proclaims that we love each other because we have been loved first (1 Jn. 4:19). Solitude keeps us in touch with the sustaining love from which we draw strength. (Nouwen, Clowning in Rome)

***

I took both kids out on the trail tonight for the first time together. It was ambitious, as they’re both two-wheel tenderfoots, but we’re hoping for family bike time on the boardwalk in a few weeks, so we’ve got to log the hours.

It was not, as one might imagine, a transcendent experience. One child fell off the path completely into a tangle of poison ivy, and the whine flight was not to be missed, but you know what? I didn’t lose my cool (much), and all in all, I’d put our little outing in the “win” column. They pedaled their faces off, ’til they’d earned tired like a badge. Although they took turns proclaiming they couldn’t do it and they weren’t strong, they did, and they are – even stronger than they know.

My little priests, anointed with bike grease and sweat, down the collars of their summer tees.

For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.

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#FaithFeminisms: A Calling Out

Pssst. Exciting happenings are afoot, and you're invited to contribute. The Spirit is making ways in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. Come by and have a look. 

[Archived here.]

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nevermind the gap

Women not employed by the beauty industrial complex will tell you that your thirties are better than your twenties, due to increased confidence and comfort in one’s own skin. It’s counter-intuitive, perhaps, for a culture as youth obsessed as ours, where magazines whisper that happiness is proportional to the gap between one’s thighs, but I suspect that part of contentment lies instead in the spaces one takes up without reservation or apology.

What good is a gap anyway? Negative space so easily becomes a canvas on which a faceless crowd projects its own constraining desires. They’re impossibly fickle and don’t take kindly to women who won’t abide contradictory rules and roles, but permission never was theirs to grant. I paint my own paths in bold, unmuted hue, attuned instead to passions closer to heart and home.

When I was young, I hunched my shoulders, envious of women delicate and fine. Now I know better: there are as many ways to be feminine as there are people, so I stand with shoulders back and head held high.

My voice carries. There’s no question? At the end of my sentences? I’m not sorry for showing up or speaking my mind (even–especially–if they’d rather I dial it back and fall in line). My presence and perspective will not shrink to fit.

I’ve learned there’s a difference between the crowd and my neighbor. To love the latter well, I cannot seek to please the crowd, and I’ve got to actually love and take care of myself. Self-consciousness and doubt turn a gaze inward every bit as much as pride, stalling the good work of justice, mercy, humility, and hospitality in our midst. I can’t embody my own gifts or fully be the person God created me to be if I’m stuck caring too much about what everyone else does or thinks.

There’s so much more room. Our experiences, strengths, fears, and perceptions vary. We’re not the same, and there’s no reason at all to squeeze ourselves or each other into tiny cookie cutter molds.

Let’s raise an Ebenezer from the molds we shatter together. A monument to faithfulness, freedom, and wings unclipped. To the diverse Body of Christ serving the Spirit and common good.

We can take up space as women beyond corner and margin. Your choices won’t invalidate mine, my victories can’t diminish yours, and your strengths don’t render me weak. Our stories are vast and unique, but our liberation and the health of our communities are bound up together.

We want to be well. We will listen and learn and love, and we’ll carve out still more room, creating space and new paths as we walk, never minding the gap.

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we're here to stay, we're here to stay, we're here to stay

PREVIOUSLY: because purity culture harbors rape & abusers

What Kind of Leadership Blocks Dissent & Privileges Predators, Christianity Today?

They took down the post. Late last night, the president and C.E.O. of Christianity Today and the editor of Leadership Journal took responsibility, removed the destructive article, and issued one of the better apologies I've seen, which you can read in full here.

The conversation is changing, and our work is bearing fruit. Evangelicalism's flagship media group, read by 2.5 million people a month, is beginning to address consent and take steps to change harmful language and ensure survivor care. Because of a grassroots movement aimed at accountability and concern for child protection, sexual abuse prevention and after-care is on the hearts and minds of thousands of pastors, laypeople, and church leaders this week instead of functioning as a niche concern for survivors, therapists, feminists, and activists.

We are kicking at darkness, and daylight is breaking through. Abusive patterns and oppressive systems, once hidden in plain sight, are being named and dragged into the light, and this is a big deal! There is so much work yet to do, but what happened this week is no small thing, and we should celebrate that victory.

I'm so grateful for the work and witness this week of Dianna Anderson, Tamara Rice, Emily Maynard, Becca Rose, Samantha Field, Bethany Suckrow, Mary DeMuth, Hännah Ettinger, Elizabeth Esther, Micah Murray, and so many others.

They'll call you firebrands, gadflies, and honey badgers, but we know you're lionhearts, the lot of ya. xo



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my confidence since my youth

When we rounded up camp’s driveway that first summer when I was ten, my stomach fluttered, and I thought my heart would burst. Two whole weeks! I never felt more grown than there with my own suitcase, shower caddy, and roll of 25 cent stamps to relay my imminent adventures across state.

The years blend together, a mosaic of the some of the best memories of my childhood. Singing “Blessed Be” around a campfire and making copper enamel pendants in the craft hall, not unlike my mom and aunt had in generations past. High and low ropes courses, rowdy games, silly skits, great friends–camp was the highlight of every summer.

The counselors were impossibly cool with their whistles and oversized clothes (it was the 90s), but more than that, they were kind. They wanted to spend time with us, playing cards at the pool or braiding hair on the deck. They gave up a good bit of freedom and certainly better pay to sleep in dank cabins and tell unwashed kids about Jesus, sunrise ’til taps everyday.

My parents and others told me about Jesus, too, of course, but they were old, and there’s no denying it was more appealing coming from Lori with the mall bangs or the really cute guy who played guitar at Club. And somehow, the way they told it, this Jesus thing mattered, not just at church but everywhere: on the playing field, in the cave, and back at home, too.

It was camp where I learned about the Kingdom of God and a Jesus who bowed low to serve. In quiet circles on the hillside and in rows dancing at the dining hall, I learned more of humility, joy, and a God who cares and can be trusted. A God who loves, forgives, and desires good for us.

Camp shaped me. It softened some of my edges and made me more confident. It strengthened my roots, inviting me deeper into faith, community, and my own gifts.

Camp wasn’t like school, with its caste systems. It was a community where it was okay to try new things, mess up, and not be the best. It was okay to ask questions, let down my guard, and fully be myself. It was a place where Love trumped competition, condemnation, or cool.

It was pretty much exactly like how Church is meant to be.

***

This summer camp celebrates one hundred years of ministry under the towering pines. It’ll be our family’s tenth summer serving year-round and our daughter’s first as a registered, bona fide overnight camper. She’s the fourth generation in my family to worship on these hills, and it’s a legacy for which I am indelibly grateful.

As Christians, we’ve lived so many stories of heartbreak and failure. There’s betrayal and hypocrisy in our midst and our hearts, and the Church isn’t always a safe harbor or shelter from the storm.

But every now and again She truly is: bearing good fruit, excelling in the ministry of reconciliation, known by Her love, resembling our good and gracious God.

Blessed be.

because white supremacy & misogyny are violence

Writing off what happened in Isla Vista as the work of a madman so unlike ourselves serves only to obscure the misogyny and white supremacy that undergirded Rodger's crimes, conveniently letting us off the hook for the ways those violences are rooted, too, in our own hearts and communities, on our watch. 

Unless we see and name the misogyny and white supremacy in our midst, we baptize a status quo that is inherently violent, hierarchical, and unjust.

Hold it up to the light. Make it visible. Make it change.

I've got a profile up at Micah Murray's site today on Elliot Rodger's racism, hatred of women, and related "aggrieved entitlement" as indicators of violence. Let's not lose this moment further (and needlessly) stigmatizing mental illness. Let's interrogate instead our cultures of violence and light a better way.