Best Shot(s) Monday--Advent

Our family has been attending Berry United Methodist Church for a little over 2 years now. We missed the first two weeks of Advent, but I brought my camera to church yesterday and I captured some shots.

One of the things I love about our church is how creative people are. Here's Matt. Not only is he the frontman for the much beloved indie rock band Anathallo, he is also a master at making origami flowers. He made a ton of them for our congregation to hang on our own version of the Jesse Tree to symbolize this week's advent theme of Joy.

I also love the fact that our pastor, Sherrie Lowly, dances with the kids during the service just about every Sunday. Here she is doing laps while dancing with Cadence and Rudden. I've met few pastors who are as compassionate and mindful of children as they are of the adults in the congregations as Sherrie is.

We may not be a large congregation, but I love the warmth and openness and humility i see in the folks who do show up on a regular basis. I've learned so much from being in their midst.

I am so thankful to have found a community where I feel like I can lay down roots, where I know the arms of welcome will be open wide to anyone and everyone, whether they be agnostic with Taoist sensibilities, a recovering evangelical still full of doubts and questions, or a boisterous 3 year old who can't sit still. Most churches these days make me feel downright uncomfortable, so to have found one that feels like home is not something to sneeze at.

Go see other folks' Best Shots on Tracey's Picture This.

Thoughts on Emergence

I don't always talk explicitly about faith or God, but that doesn't mean I don't think about them. In fact, I think about them a lot. You see, my dad was a pastor. Even before he was officially ordained in the Association of Vineyard Churches, he was more involved in ministry than some full-time pastors.

There's a lot of baggage that comes with being raised "in the ministry," and I tried walking away from the whole faith, God and church thing. I tried and I failed.

Although I really tried to kick the whole organized religion thing in the shins, I just could not get over this growl of a conviction that at the heart of who Jesus was and is, there lay the key to unlocking the door to my deepest self.

I can't explain it. I've just always known since I was a little girl that I came from God. I've always known that there was something that connected me to God, even as an adult when I was trying to escape the whole "God" thing.

A few years ago, I discovered the Emergent/Emerging church. There's a lot of opinions on what the Emergent church is, some positive and some negative. To me, it's a conversation among a diverse group of folks in the Christian tradition who're trying to work out the whole faith thing in a holistic manner and trying to do it politely and lovingly and gently.

Anyhoo, one of the reasons I'm thinking about all this stuff is that I don't want to impart to Cadence the same baggage I experienced growing up in a spiritual environment that made me feel judged and never good enough. And yet, I do want to impart SOMETHING to her when it comes to faith.

Well, it just so happens that the Emergent folks are starting a new blog for parents called Emerging Parents, "a safe place for those involved in the emerging church conversation to explore holistic parenting ideas." I'm hoping to hear other folks' stories and maybe get some ideas on how to impart faith without the baggage to Cadence.

*Heart*strings

Today is the five-year anniversary of the day my dad died. Yesterday would have been his 69th birthday. We went to the cemetery with my mom and brother yesterday early evening. I hadn't been there in a long time. I understand that some people derive comfort or the fulfillment of some sense of obligation or duty by visiting their loved ones' gravesites. I used to think that I would too, but every time I would visit, all I felt was a big emptiness, so I stopped going except to accompany my mom on momentous occasions.

There is a part of me that is irreparably wounded due to the experience of watching my father die. In some ways, I've closed the door to that compartment of my heart that is made of a mangled, bloody mess. I don't talk about it to my mom or my brother or anyone else. I don't talk about it even to myself. And I'm okay with that for right now.

I happened to be driving behind this truck going down Devon Ave on Sunday afternoon. I've seen it parked in our neighborhood, and it always makes me mad, like what the f*ck do YOU care where I'd go if I were to die today? Can you do a scan of my soul and tell me whether I'd make the cut? I'd really like to write a letter to stick beneath the windshield wiper that says, 'I'M GOING TO DISNEYLAND, WHERE ELSE YOU MORON?!' It really annoys me when Christians use fear to coerce people into "saying the sinner's prayer."

Well, my dad DID die one night 5 years ago, so where did he go? To be with Jesus, I suppose, but WTF does that MEAN? I don't understand what Heaven is. I don't understand Eternity. I don't understand why every day I wake up and I still can't believe my dad's not alive. I still see him in my dreams a couple times a week, and he's so real that when I wake up to the reality that it was only a dream, it's like another little kick in the gut. Not quite the kick in the gut as when he REALLY died five years ago, but nevertheless, a little kick.

And yet, there is a part of me that can't help but believe that someday I will see my dad again. That someday, he will get to hold his granddaughter whom he's never met, whom he would have fallen totally head-over-heels in love with, more so than he ever had with me. I don't know how all that works out logistically; I mean, I would like Cadence to have a long and healthy life, so I don't know if she'd be a little girl in heaven or a grown-up version or what, and I'm starting to sound really crazy as I'm writing this, but it's my blog and I can be deranged if I want to, I guess.

funny in a sad way...or is it sad in a funny way?

Conservative Christians Boycott Wal-Mart.

ok, at reading just the headline, my initial thought was, 'finally! conservative christians doing something sensible!' and then i read WHY they were boycotting wal-mart: the radical homosexual agenda.

i cannot tell you how much that makes me laugh every time i hear a christian use that phrase. it makes me laugh so hard until i cry and then evenually i just weep inside.

i cannot post on this subject coherently at this time as i would like to maintain some semblance of sanity for all the family events coming up this weekend. i have never 'come out', so to speak on my personal blog about my thoughts on this, (although i have been posting aplenty elsewhere) primarily because i don't want to upset or worry some people i care about. but i think it's time. i've got to come clean. more on that later...

for now, i officially start my thanksgiving extended weekend. no more work until tuesday at noon! cadence's uncle charles and auntie ali are coming in from seattle, and i plan on enjoying myself.

the devil wrote the sinner's prayer...

…and accepting jesus into your heart as your personal lord and savior? that was the devil’s idea too. and i have to say, those two inventions of his were pretty darn clever. what better way to keep million and millions of people from actually and sincerely seeking god and truth, when you can trick them into thinking that all they really need to do is to avoid hell and get their one-way ticket to heaven by saying a simple 10 second prayer? ‘Lord Jesus, I confess that I am a sinner. I believe Jesus died on a cross and shed his blood for me. Come into my heart and save me, I pray. In Jesus's name, Amen.’ BAM! guaranteed a spot in heaven! now you can freely go back to your business of ravaging this earth (since it’s going to hell in a handbasket anyways and will be replaced by a New and Better Earth, of which you will be a Mighty Ruler because you said a 10 second prayer). and the poor and the homeless? who cares about them! didn’t the apostle paul say if you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat? let ‘em starve then! and the sick? you just need faith the size of a mustard seed and you’d be healed no problemo. and if you’re not healed and you die? well, you’ll be in a better place anyways. that is, if you say the sinner’s prayer before you’re dead. otherwise, you’re going to hell.

let me tell you something. i spent years—YEARS!!!—feeling like a total fake because i had never said the sinner’s prayer. i had never accepted jesus as my personal lord and savior. i thought for sure, i’d go to hell if i died. and i worried about hell a lot. i mean, i could barely stand taking a shower in rotten-egg-stinkin’-well-water on retreats in wisconsin…how the hell was i gonna stand roasting in a fiery lake of burning sulfur for all of eternity?

so why am i bringing all this up? well, i just got through reading a heretic’s guide to eternity by spencer burke, founder of the emergent community theOOZE.com, and not too long before that i read the last word and the word after that by brian mclaren. i wish i’d read these books years ago (although they weren’t around back then). i could’ve saved myself a lot of guilt and fear and shame.

i was given a prerelease copy of a heretic's guide to eternity by someone over at theOOZE, as were other bloggers, to encourage us to read and review the book. i don’t like doing book reviews, so i’m not going to go into details. there’s plenty out in the blogosphere by now, i’m sure. and i know spencer will get a lot of flack for this book. it wasn’t an easy book for me to read, and i’m not even a card-carrying member of the christian folk. i don’t know that i agree with EVERYTHING he wrote, but the part about GRACE…that part resonated with what’s in my heart. here’s an excerpt:

“Grace is a miracle because it is not controlled, structured, shaped, or handed out by human beings or their religions. Grace is not the result of what we could ever plan or calculate. Grace belongs to no one but God, and because of that, it belongs to us all. Grace says that nothing is sacred and everything is sacred. Grace shakes the world, catches us by surprise, and knocks us off our feet. It is the miracle of miracles.

I believe that Jesus was full of grace and truth, and he is greater than the Christian religion that claims him. When the Bible tells us we will be his witnesses to the ‘ends of the earth’ after the Spirit has come upon us, it does not mean that we force Western religion on others. It means that we are invited to bear witness to how Jesus would nurture and affirm the expressions of God’s grace in our world today. Grace is the gift we get to share and celebrate with each other. Grace is the key that unlocks the kingdom. Grace is life. Grace is hope. Grace is the future.

This is mystical responsibility: questioning, listening, and living in grace.” A Heretic's Guide to Eternity by Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor, p. 215

that’s all i feel like saying about the book right now.

you know, there are a lot of books written on the subject of theology, and there is a whole lot of dialogue going on on the internet and at various conferences. the emergent movement has been pushing the boundaries of the church and pushing a lot of people’s buttons who are outside (and some inside) the emergent community. i’ve read some of the arguments on both sides, and they sometimes use these big words that i don’t understand and can’t even remember let alone even spell. i don’t know what all the fuss is about. i’m not big into theological debates. jesus never said you needed a sound theological background to be one of his crew. in fact, he always seemed to indicate that it was gonna be little kids who got it right before the grownups did.

so the way i see it, the whole gist of what jesus was getting at, and has been getting at, is so simple that little kids will get it no problem. no need to debate. no need to deconstruct. no need to delineate. it’s we grownups who make it all complicated and convoluted, and for the same reason most grownups can’t see the world of magic that little kids so often can, we miss the whole point altogether.

...it’s hard to become like a child, to admit that you don’t know the answers or even the question, to trust someone else to take care of you, to see the good and beauty all around, to hope and dream big, to allow someone to lift you on their shoulders, to cry freely when you skin your knee, to love lavishly without fear of rejection, to be filled with awe by simple things, to believe in magic...and maybe only a kid can be innocent enough to receive so freely a gift as mindbogglingly extravagant as god's love and grace, to just receive without feeling the need to do something to EARN it, to just receive without being afraid of LOSING it...