i am in the thick of it writing the first manuscript of faith shift: hope for spiritual refugees, church burnouts and freedom seekers. i’ve had all 5 kids at home, all kinds of never-ending refuge craziness, on top of may being the busiest month of the year. of course i waste time i don’t have asking myself “what in the %(#&@%!^!!^ was i thinking, saying yes to this project?!?”

but it’s too late now, and as i much as i like to complain, it is fun pulling it all together. and just when i think it doesn’t matter, i get an email or have a conversation in real life where i am reminded how many of us are in the midst–or on the other side–of a radical faith shift and how crazy &  lonely & freaky it can feel.

when it’s all said and done, faith shifting involves a huge amount of grief. we lose so much, all kinds of things that seemed to hold us together for so long. what was once crystal clear becomes muddy.  what felt comfortable now feels foreign. what worked, now doesn’t.

i believe that one of the central parts of a faith shift is moving away from the core values of affiliation, certainty, and conformity that are embedded into much of contemporary christianity and moving toward a faith that values freedom, diversity, and mystery.

it’s crazy to me that this process is often perceived as radical or sinful or rebellious, but we can’t escape the fact that most of our traditional church systems–especially conservative or fundamentalist ones–are built firmly and solidly upon the core values of affiliation, certainty, and conformity.  they keep a lot of wheels spinning round; they are reliable, clear, predictable and make groups work.

here’s the short version of what they mean to me:

affiliation –  a sense of being part of a team or club or something bigger than us.  if you’re like me, it felt awesome to be adopted into a new “family” in the early years of my faith and i related to the feeling of being connected to other christians not only in my church but in the wider world, too.  knowing which team we’re on is powerful.

certainty – black and white, right or wrong, good or bad, strong or weak, godly or ungodly.  much of life before a faith shift is built on certainty about what God means, feels, thinks, expects.  part of our certainty includes helping other people be clear on what’s right and wrong, too.

conformity – groups have norms and behaviors that we as humans have a natural aptitude for adapting to. we learn what it takes to be part and we do it.  we learn by watching and joining in.  some of it is conscious and some of it is far more unconscious, building on our desire to somehow belong.

as i look at these three values of my early faith it’s easy to dismiss them as all bad. while i now disagree with many  methodologies behind them, i respect that part of healing and moving forward to new places requires making peace with the past.

affiliation, certainty, and conformity used to be big deals to me. they meant everything. they guided the way i thought, talked, behaved, and connected with God.

then they stopped working.  they outlasted their usefulness. they no longer resonate.  i won’t do anything to be part, my certainty faded away years ago, and any demands for conformity make me into a crazy person.

i’m trying not to look back with disdain but instead embrace my deep desire to keep walking toward three compelling & worth-pursuing values on the other side of a faith shift–freedom, diversity, and mystery.

freedom – instead of people pleasing and doing what everything we can do to conform to be part of the group, freedom is  finding our voice and passion and feeling free to lead, grow, learn, experience, practice, try without asking for permission.  freedom also helps us let go of trying to control or convince others and accept people just as they are (and ourselves, too). it’s a deep and strong security in who we are apart from a group or label.

diversity – homogeneous groups make me nuts now.  once you’ve tasted diversity and are around a wide range of beliefs, theologies, and life experiences, we can never go back. living in the tension of diversity and what it means to love each other despite our differences is so glorious (and way harder, too!)

mystery – embracing a bigger God that surpasses what we can get our head around, “i don’t know’s”, and far more expansive ways to connect with God beyond only the Bible. some people are really scared of this word, but those who have unraveled certainty value the magnetic beauty of mystery and the healing, hope, and challenge it brings.

freedom, diversity, and mystery do not need to be feared.

and we don’t necessarily have to leave church completely to find them (although i respect sometimes it’s necessary); we just might have to leave “church-as-we-knew-it” and find some new forms that we would have never before considered as a possibility.

many systems fear freedom, diversity, and mystery because they cannot be controlled or contained. affiliation, certainty, and conformity are fairly easy tasks and create a uniformity that is far simpler to manage. letting faith out of the box and giving people freedom jacks with an industry and man’s ability to manage God for other people.

but when i read the gospels, i can’t see how affiliation, certainty & conformity in the ways we’ve made them out to be was what Jesus had in mind.

yeah, we long for freedom, diversity, and mystery for a good reason–it’s far more consistent with “faith.”

peace, hope and courage to us all as we slowly & bravely move from affiliation, certainty & conformity to freedom, diversity & mystery. it’s a bumpy, beautiful, often terrifying path but so worth it because it all points toward love. 

“when we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. the friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” – henri nouwen

this month’s synchroblog is centered on pain & how to love & care for others who are in pain.  i laughed this morning because today’s my birthday and it’s a little ironic that somehow even on this day  i ended up talking about pain!  there’s an awful lot of grief & loss & hard stuff in this world and for some reason it feels like it keeps ramping up. so many hard things every direction. what is our responsibility in it?  what should we say or not say? what helps & what hurts?

in our human DNA is a deep desire to avoid pain, either in our own life or in the lives of others.

it’s hard to hurt.  and it’s hard to be around other people who are hurting.

at the refuge, our little faith community, there’s a high degree of pain. but i always tell everyone that really, we are no different from almost any other church or group (except that others might have health insurance & live in bigger houses). we just have a culture of raw honesty, where what’s on the inside is freer to come out on the outside. we are trying to be people who welcome pain to the table instead of run from it.  most humans share many of the same troubles & woes, but many don’t have a safe place to express it out loud.

pain and struggle often create shame. i remember when i first started sharing more of my real story; every part of me wanted to run for the hills, move away, do anything i could to not have to live with relationships where all my stuff was out on the table, exposed.

i’m always learning, too, but here are a few ideas that seem to help in the midst of pain:

1. less words, more presence.  i have a theory that we often have an unconscious hope that if we could  say the right words in the exact right way, it would radically help another person. most people aren’t one sentence away from feeling better when they are in pain.  presence seems to matter more than words.  long-haul-ness goes the furthest for those in pain. many people are eager to help and support at the beginning of pain eruptions, but over time many people drop off and quit wondering how we’re doing. safe people don’t do drive-by pain relief.  they are in it for the long haul, which i keep realizing is sometimes the hardest thing of all.

2. less statements, more questions.  along with the one-sentence-away-from-changing-everything theory, it’s a natural default to talk instead of listen. i don’t mean interrogation (although i can be guilty of asking too many hard questions in one sitting, ha ha), but questions usually save us from advice giving and fixing. they help people process out loud and take a lot of pressure off us coming up with the right words that can’t be found anyway.

3. less anxiety, more trust.  pain creates so much anxiety in us.  this is why when people are hurting, we have an instinct to “fix it” or do-something-anything that will help the hurting person feel better in that moment. i feel it all the time. it’s a weird innate control thing and in so many ways, it’s about us playing God and taking on more responsibility than we need to. it’s why i have a love-hate thing with 12 step groups. i  love that there’s no cross-talk, advice giving and fixing, but inside i sometimes feel a little crazy that we just thank people for sharing and go on to the next person.  however, it models something we need to learn–we can’t fix anyone else.  the best thing we can do is listen, honor the pain ,and trust the long healing path.

4. less perfection, more grace.  relational dynamics like hanging-in-the-thick-of-pain-with-people is not formulaic.  we will screw it up, we will say lame things, we will fail people.  recently i gave unsolicited advice to a hurting friend.  yikes, as soon as the words tumbled out of my mouth, i knew they would hurt instead of help. i was reminded, yet again, how we need grace as friends, as leaders, as people. we’re imperfect people trying to stay present in hard places; we won’t be able to master every moment.  this is messy and sometimes we will have to apologize & ask for grace (and give it to our friends), too.

maybe the best thing we can do to hold the space for others’ pain is to learn to hold the space for ours.  if we are people who push our own pain away, we usually will do the same for others.  if we are hard on ourselves for feeling certain feelings, we will usually be hard on others, too.  i love what the apostle paul says in 2 corinthians 1:3-4, that we comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.  it’s why i don’t think most people need another Bible study or church service; there are plenty of those.

we need places to practice getting in touch with our story.

i’m going to quote henri nouwen twice in one post because it’s a great reminder:

yeah, our biggest strength is our weakness, our pain. 

in the end, that’s all we’ve got.

//

other bloggers writing about pain this month:

• Comforting those who Hurt – K. W. Leslie
• Unto the Least of These – J. Stahl
• Like a Motherless Child – Carol Kuniholm
• Exploding Bridges and How to Help People – Phil Lancaster
• The Ministry of Presence – Glenn Hager
• The Problem of Pain – Chris Jefferies
• How to Be with Those in Pain – David Derbyshire
• When Sorry Seems to b the Hardest Word - Doreen A Mannion
• Mourning with those who Mourn – Jeremy Myers
• What He Told The Home Crowd – Tim Nichols

it’s mother’s day weekend in the USA, the time where a bunch of women feel special and extra-loved, and another group of women often don’t.  like so many other holidays, many who feel great about it  sometimes forget that there are others who really struggle this particular weekend. church is extra sucky if they make all the mothers stand up and get a flower and you’re the one still sitting. in divorced families, the reality of what’s been lost creeps up.  others have lost their mothers or significant women in their life and it’s another year of grief.

i promise, i’m not trying to ruin the holiday for anyone, really!  as a mom of 5, it’s not a half bad weekend for me. i love all the spoilage.  but i feel really passionate about making sure we don’t equate mother’s day with only birthing babies.

having children often becomes the ultimate pinnacle of womanhood, especially christian womanhood.  this pushes an awful lot of women to the margins and dishonors all that we were created to be beyond making babies.

sure, having babies is one way to mother, but there are countless other ways, too.

all women are mothers.

it’s how God made us. it looks different for each of us and we have to break down the crazy stereotypes and ways we’ve been boxed in, fenced in, and limited in order to get to the essence of our awesomeness as women.  just like there are lots of ways to love God,  there are lots of ways to mother, to bring things to life, to create, to nurture, to build, to protect.  

women mother when we: 

call out God’s image in someone.

cultivate art & words & beauty. 

advocate for another. 

build friendships and life-giving relationships.

midwife spiritual shifts.

make new families who come from our wombs & orphanages & foster care

influence change.

hug a friend.

listen to a friend. 

weep with those who weep.

rejoice with those who rejoice.

start something. build something. create something. 

protect what’s good. 

lend hope to someone who needs to borrow it.  

inspire dreams & new ideas.

nurture pockets of justice & love & freedom in small or big ways. 

lead teams.

care for our coworkers, our neighbors, someone else’s child

care for parents.

care for ourselves.

yeah, women are awesome–strong, tender, wise, beautiful, compassionate, creative, powerful, brave, messy.   kids, no kids, single, married, gay, straight, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, divorced, widowed, young, old–it makes no difference.

the one thing we have in common is that we all somehow mother.

and i’m really glad there are lots of ways to do that.  

that’s fun to celebrate.  i hope we all tell a woman today how you are grateful for her mothering.

happy mother’s day!

that is what we are meant to do:  heal shame, heal division in this crazy mixed up world. 

for the most part, i don’t think that is what “the church” is known for.  in fact, in so many ways we are known for just the opposite–for creating shame, for promoting division.  i had plenty of shame on my own before i came into the fold of christianity, but the truth is that for a long time, my shame actually ramped up instead of decrease. a lot of my shame came from somehow falling short as a christian, not measuring up to what i was supposed to be doing, and a weird pervasive feeling that somehow being “me” wasn’t really what God had in mind.  the amount of energy i spent on trying to be someone else was really exhausting, and i am ever-grateful for continually breaking free from some of those bonds.

when it comes to division, this has unfortunately become our signature mark.  instead of being peacemakers and bridge builders, we are more often known for promoting who’s in, who’s out, who’s good, who’s bad, who’s on God’s side, who’s not.  as a christian of a more conservative persuasion in my earlier years, i did my share of dividing.  i remember how passionate i was about making sure i wasn’t “of the world” and ways i put myself above other people for self-protection.  what’s interesting, though, is as i have shifted and changed, i can see, too, how some of what i have done has just created a different kind of division.  this time, i am aligned on the other side of things, against some of what contemporary christianity represents.

but division is division.

and the church’s witness is to heal shame and division.

to me, the church is not a building or a system or a program.  it is people gathered together to learn and practice the ways of Jesus and pass on love, hope, mercy, and justice in a broken, weird world.  

our responsibility is to play our part in healing shame and division.  i don’t think that’s a new kind of legalism or asking too much of us. (thanks, jamie).

as far as i can tell, this kind of healing primarily comes through relationship with one another.  healing from shame and division isn’t the kind of transformation that drops out of the sky into the quiet of the night.  it somehow happens when people bump up against each other and give and receive presence, mercy, grace, understanding, challenge, encouragement, love, truth, hope.  

it happens in friendship.  in relationship.

inequality,  deep grooves of hierarchy, and stereotypes of men & women, rich & poor, liberal & conservative, gay & straight, black & white, healthy & sick, educated & uneducated perpetuate shame and division.  the way it is healed is through breaking down divides and finding ways to live together as friends, as brothers & sisters, as human beings. 

i love h. norman crosby’s thought about the church as a place where we collapse into God, collapse into each other. we can’t collapse into God or other people if we are filled with shame and divided from one another, if we shame others and separate ourselves from one another.

our best hope is finding our common humanity in the upside down ways of Jesus.

discovering our shared experience.

our willingness to engage in real, raw relationship with each other.

our becoming-more-honest-about-what’s-really-going-on-inside-our-souls.

learning to be honest about how we feel about ourselves. how we feel about others. how much we are guided by fear. how much we need God’s help to change. how we can’t change the world tomorrow, but we can start with changing us.

some questions we can maybe ask individually & collectively as little pockets of love are:

how are we entering into deeper and more meaningful relationships with other people, even if we are scared? 

how are we building bridges instead of bombing them?

how are we honoring and respecting people who are different from us, even when we don’t agree?

how are we keeping our hands open instead of clenched? our hearts soft instead of protected?

how are we recognizing our shame so it can lose its grip?

how are we becoming better human beings, less divided, more free?

how are we learning to receive and not just give?

and most of all, how are we helping each other feel less shame, less division, so have a much better shot at collapsing into God, collapsing into each other?

//

today i have a post up at sheloves magazine as part of the monthly “down we go” column.  the theme this month is “soar” and my thought is that maybe we could redefine what that means. it’s called flapping, flailing, flying:  ”what might look easy for one person is incredibly hard for another. what might look insignificant to some might be a miracle to another. what looks like flapping, flailing, barely-flying for one is actually soaring for another.”  i’d love to hear what it stirs up for you.

this past weekend i was part of a beautiful conversation in chicago centered on friendship between men & women.  i always say that while i don’t wake up every morning thinking about cross-gender friendships, i do wake up every morning thinking about people & relationships and ways we can participate in healing the shame and division of this world together (more on the healing shame & division part next week!).

my dear friend and refuge co-pastor karl wheeler and i spoke together on friday night. our conversation was called “making purple:  learning to show up, speak up, shut up, and trust love.” we had a great time telling the bloody, messy, fun, sometimes-insane story of our friendship the past 7 years leading the refuge together.  it’s a miracle, really, that we have made it this far, but it didn’t drop out of the sky.  we have worked our butts off to keep hacking at this and i’m ever grateful for God’s everlasting grace & mercy.

friday night, we thanked each other for the ways we both have tried as best we could to be a good friend, teammate, and partner as we nurture this wild and beautiful community alongside each other. it’s not that we haven’t thanked one another before, but it was really sweet to remember the ways we have helped each other move forward.

my friend jim henderson pointed out something in the Q&A that struck me.  he simply said, “hey you guys, thank you for thanking each other.” 

it’s easy for me to remember all of the hard stuff, but the truth is that way back when, karl was the person who called me to come play in a way that changed the course of my life forever.  he saw my passion, valued my leadership, and encouraged me to step into what i loved to do and lead a church together, something that in the evangelical world is extremely rare, especially since we aren’t married to each other.  i have come a long way since then, but his simple and strong belief in me all those years ago is a significant part of my ongoing story.

jim’s comment made me think about how many people–men or women or both–have had influence in our lives that changed little or big things for us along the way. 

they were seed planters or flame fanners or unexpected cheerleaders.  their love and encouragement, their making room for us at the table, their kindness, their support, their healing touch (and yes, even painful words or unsolicited advice) helped us move toward something better.

maybe you’ve already told them before, but sometimes–like friday night–it’s good to remember again and say it out loud.  it reminds us that we can’t do this crazy life without others.  it reminds us that the ways we are with each other matters and that fanning each other’s hopes, dreams, beauty, healing, and goodness into flame in all kinds of interesting and simple ways does not go unnoticed.

they may already know they’ve impacted you but maybe it would be encouraging for them to hear it again.  it’s always great to hear the words “thank you” and know that we somehow mattered.

most of all, i hope we never underestimate how desperately we all need more advocates, brothers & sisters & mothers & fathers, cheerleaders, friends, and dignity restorers in our lives.

there are so many other far more profound things to ponder from this past weekend, but my brain is mushy from working on this crazy-hard-overwhelming book project, and i do wonder if maybe the most simple things are actually the most meaningful.

so i invite us all to thank someone today.

no matter how big or small.

write them, call them, text them, facebook them, figure out a way tell them. 

it’s a gift not only for them, but for us, too.

a few weeks ago i was asked a question on twitter by a lovely blogger friend about a scripture that pointed to “a voice for the voiceless”, which is so often used in a lot of justice-y language. i wrote recently how there is no such thing as voiceless, just people whose voices have been silenced by life experiences, systemic oppression, generational poverty, and a myriad of other things that quelch God’s image.

there’s no passage in the Bible about being a voice for the voiceless. that is terminology we’ve somehow adopted. but when considering our responsibility to help advocate for those whose voices are silenced, i love these passages in isaiah: “seek justice, defend the oppressed, take up the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (vs. 1:17) &  ”is not this the kind of fasting i have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter–when you see the naked to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (vs. 58:6-7).

and proverbs 31:8-9, “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.  speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

but my very favorite passage centered on advocating is an unlikely one, in  john 8, when Jessus stands between the adulterous woman and those about to stone her to death and advocates on her behalf.  he does it in his amazing-and-creative-Jesus-y-way, but the part i am always reminded of is this–had he not advocated for her in that moment, she would have died.

even if she would have been able to use her voice, it wouldn’t have mattered.  no one would have listened. no one would have changed a single thing.

everything in the system around her was completely stacked against her.  

she needed someone with power to stand and speak on her behalf.

the truth is that advocates aren’t “voice for the voiceless” because there is no such thing as voiceless.

what advocates do, though, is stand for those who for a wide variety of reasons can’t say yet (or sometimes ever) for themselves.

a virgin sold into a brothel in india can’t speak for herself. her only hope is an advocate who will fight for justice on her behalf.

a man with a mental disability can’t open certain doors in the system to get the resources he needs without an advocate’s help no matter how much we’d like to believe he could on his own.

a homeless person can’t cross certain practical bridges without someone moving some of the real-and-strong obstacles out of the way first.

an orphan in an orphanage can’t magically find their way into a family.

a kid being bullied can’t wake up one day and start defending themselves the way we hope.

a woman who deeply desires to break into leadership in a church that doesn’t actively honor her gift will never naturally be heard without someone with power actively advocating for her presence.

a person who has been sexually abused won’t magically have the confidence, strength, and security that they need to stand strong in tricky situations.

an illegal immigrant can’t show up in certain moments and defend themselves alone.  the risk is just too great.

advocates stand up for those who for whatever-reason-in-the-moment can’t say it themselves. they also stand alongside for the long haul and help uncover the voice that is buried in there so it can hopefully emerge.  

i would never be where i am today as a pastor had i not had a few men who actively and passionately advocated for me. i just couldn’t say it for myself in the systems i was in.  i was not voiceless then, but my voice and passion was buried under all kinds of personal & systemic rubble.  but just like the woman in john 8, even if i could have spoken up for myself, the churches i was part of wouldn’t have nodded in agreement and immediately flung the door wide open. the chasm was too wide.

but my advocates used their voice and built a bridge for me to eventually use mine.

it’s important to respect the realities of power & not-used-to-being-listened-to voices.

i know many awesome and brave people on the margins who show up all the time to try to get the help they need and are routinely dismissed, mistreated, and neglected.  their lack of power and privilege makes their voices mute to many. my role as an advocate is not to speak for them but to get the attention of those who have ignored them, to build bridges of dignity, and  break down barriers on their behalf.

the adulterous woman’s only hope was Jesus standing up for her, taking a hit from the powers-that-be, and saying what needed to be said to turn the tide.  

that’s what advocates do, in all kinds of wild and creative and often-unorthodox ways (some refuge advocates definitely know what i mean by wild-creative-unorthodox)

and it’s why this world desperately needs an army of advocates. because there are an awful lot of people in every family, school, neighborhood, city, and nook & cranny on this planet who can’t say it for themselves (yet).

my dream is that as the body of Christ, we’d be deeply dedicated to making advocates not buildings. that we’d be known in our communities for actively advocating for systemic change to heal the core roots of injustice. and most of all, that we’d use our power and privilege on behalf of the vulnerable, not to replace their voices but to pave the way for theirs to be heard.  to say what they cannot say (yet).

last week i was at an evening centered on rape & the old testament, and it was really powerful to look at the texts through a new lens.  the most interesting part to me was that in the conversation afterward somehow, some way, we ended up in the same place i always do when talking about almost any hard and systemic issue in the church–how friendship and equality between men & women changes everything.

everything.

and it’s one of those things that’s probably taught the least in church.

we are taught, subtly and directly, that life (especially the christian life) is like this:

where people are over or under another. where we have align with certain roles based on a very narrow biblical interpretation. where power differentials are loudly reflected. where men are over women (or sometimes women are over men). where there’s a stronger and a weaker, a lesser and a more. a wiser and a more foolish.  a whole and a broken.

this is part of our genesis 3 humanness that desires order & systems & control.

it also perpetuates violence.

and disconnection.

and power differentials that strip dignity in all kinds of weird ways.

i get the practicalities of hierarchy. it makes things clearer. cleaner. easier on so many levels and i think it can be helpful in organizations trying to make money.

but i just don’t see how it is a reflection of the kingdom of God, the kind of “on earth as it is in heaven” that Jesus talks about, the new reality that entered the scene 2,000 years ago. the kind that reflects freedom for captives and love above all things.  the kind of culture that you’d think followers of Jesus would be known for cultivating in our own lives & in the communities that we live in.

i believe the hardest task for us as individuals, and as communities, is to learn how to live like this:

alongside each other,

as friends.

as equals.

as brothers & sisters.  as brothers & brothers, as sisters & sisters.

as co-creators.

real equality is much more vulnerable, much riskier. i’m struck by this every day, how it’s so much more comfortable to live over or under each other. equality requires far more grace & patience & love & mercy & justice in relationship with each other than hierarchy ever does. but goodness gracious, isn’t that what Jesus was calling us to–bold and brave and world-changing relationship?  to freedom instead of fear, to love instead of disconnection, to wholeness instead of fracturedness?

equality & friendship changes everything.

it changes how we see ourselves, which is a pretty core problem for many of us as christians.  almost nothing grieves me more than so many people who have an image of God and a spiritual framework that causes us to believe we are unloved, unlovable, and unworthy. equality & friendship helps restore some of that brokenness and insecurity.

it changes how we see others. christian mission is pretty broken. it has a bad reputation for a reason, primarily because we have modeled so many of our methods on the top picture–where one knows more, has more, is more, than another. this disempowers instead of empowers, strips dignity instead of restoring it.  practicing friendship & equality & with-ness instead of to-and-for-ness is radically transforming. also, less-than, more-than thinking is what creates violence, abuse, and domination.

it changes systems that desperately need changing. systems do matter and they reflect the heartbeat of the people who live in them.  it’s also this is why it’s so important to remember that attempting to pour new wine into old wineskins will fail. putting a few women in the same old hierarchical systems won’t change anything although it will look like it is. the way to shift power & topple the stronghold of patriarchy is to bravely foster meaningful friendship between men & women so we learn how to live, work, love, learn, serve, and create together as equals.

this will take a lot of practice. this will take guts. this will take time (but remember, there’s never a “right time”). this will take God’s stirring. this will ruffle so many feathers who like the comfort of old ways where the lines are clear and the rules are black and white and one particular interpretation of “but the Bible says…” trumps change.

i believe so many people are leaving the church for this exact reason. we are tired of the lack of real equality and friendship between men & women. we are tired of the lip service or the biblical justification of oppression. we’re tired of sitting & listening to someone talk to us and want to begin to practice & try & learn & engage in brave ways. i’m so grateful there’s a huge and growing group of people across ages & shapes & sizes saying “this is not how it’s supposed to be.”

the image of God in us is crying out from beneath the rubble of generations-upon-generations of inequality and hierarchy.

and it’s getting louder. 

let’s listen to it.  let’s put our toe in the water or dive in the deep end. let’s have hard conversations that we need to have with leaders who are afraid of change.  let’s be willing to plant new trees.  let’s do anything we can to begin to model a different way so that it won’t feel so far away, so elusive, so much-bigger-and-harder-than-it-really-needs-to-be.

it’s really not that complicated in so many ways.  it’s just that we haven’t been taught how to.

we were meant for equality & friendship.

the image of God is deeply embedded in all of us, calling us to the way it could be.

yeah, it changes everything.

let’s be part of that change.

//

* ps:  i am so grateful for the humble & amazing men in my life who are dedicated to living this out–my crazy awesome husband, my noble & true teammates, and my dear-and-faithful-friends who are with me through thick and thin. these shifts have changed my life forever and i get a little taste of heaven every day.  this is also why i love the bold boundaries conversation and intentional work on how equality & friendship between men & women can change so much. i will be part of it this friday & saturday in chicago & would love to see you there!

it’s been a wild and sad week around here. i’ve been around some pretty amazing open broken hearts and i am grateful.  thanks, too, for all your love & prayers for our little community; they mean more than you know. sometimes what happens when it comes to blogging is that i get an idea, know exactly what i want to say about it, never take the time to write it down, and then some kind of crazy thing happens and it gives the whole thing new perspective. a few weeks ago we finished up our walking wounded: hope for those hurt by the church class. it’s always such an amazing experience, to have a safe place to process grief and loss and find a way to move forward and a lot happens in those 4 weeks.

a big topic for so many of us is how hard it is to untangle our experiences with people & the system from our experiences with God.  they are so enmeshed with each other that as we separate from church-as-we-knew-it, we often don’t know how to still hold on to God.

the same thing can happen with belief and faith.

beliefs become so tangled up based on our church experiences and what we’ve been taught for so many years that we are supposed to “believe as a true-blue Christian”  that as we shed, unravel, deconstruct certain beliefs, we wonder if we’re actually losing all of our faith.  wondering if the last belief falls to the ground, any other last shred of faith will dissolve into the air and we’ll be left with absolutely nothing.

oh, how many times i have wondered this!  especially when i look at doctrinal statements or “what we believes” for certain ministries that i can no longer fully align with and keep my integrity.  as a pastor who really is passionate about Jesus and healing and transformation, it can feel really scary and i wonder “is what’s still left enough?”

i keep finding it is.

faith is different from beliefs or dogma. 

in so many ways, faith is what’s left when everything else is stripped away.

it’s that enduring crazy unexplainable thing that sustains when nothing else can.

it’s more powerful & stronger & more enduring than a list of beliefs and boxes to check or initial.

it supersedes language.

i keep remembering that doctrinal statements don’t save people or draw people to God–faith does.

i think of how many times in the gospels Jesus tells people “your faith has saved you” in some shape or form. not “your belief in all the right things has saved you”

to the “sinful” woman who busts into simon the pharisees house, “your faith has saved you” (luke 7:50)

to the hemorrhaging woman who desperately touches his robe for healing and blind bartimaeus who wanted to see, you faith has healed you” (mark 5:34 & 10:52).

to one leper out of ten who went back to thank Jesus for healing, “your faith has made you well” (luke 17:19)

for each of these versions (saved, healed, made you well), the greek word is sozo, which means “to save, to keep safe and sound, to make whole, to heal, to restore to health.”  sozo comes from the root word soaz which means “safe.”

i love this imagery. our faith helps us be made more whole, more safe, restored to greater health.

these people knew nothing, really, except a belief that maybe Jesus could help them.  they had a humility, a desperation, a desire, a hope.  that’s all they needed.

our systems have set up so many hoops for people to have to jump through, so many bullet points to memorize, so many belief statements to commit to, so many barriers to a free & wonder-filled faith.

after a week like this past week, when someone you love and care about takes their life, a long list of beliefs doesn’t really seem to bring any relief, healing, or wholeness. what does, though, is a crazy enduring faith that God is with us no matter what, that emmanuel-ness can never be shaken, that God shows up despite different theologies or doctrinal statements or words that even make sense.  that Jesus loved her deeply, fully, madly, and somehow knew the depth of her suffering.  that love covers a multitude of sins. that in some bizarre and unexplainable ways light always creeps out of the darkness, reminding us of what’s really important and it’s a very short list.

so many times i am in conversations with such dear and amazing people whose beliefs are unraveling and they think they’re losing all of their faith. when really maybe it’s actually just the opposite.

as the list of “i’ve got to believe this to belong and keep God happy” decreases, a faith that is less list-driven and more heart-driven, less good-behavior-focused and more freedom-focused, less fear-based and more love-based slowly & surely increases.  

yeah, Jesus said a mustard-seed was pretty darn powerful.

we can shed all kinds of beliefs and still have a strong faith.

this week, doctrinal statements didn’t help me. all the things i used to hold on to so tightly out of fear didn’t save me.

but my faith in a God who is in the darkest of the dark with us and cares very little about a long list of beliefs, yet cares very deeply about our hearts sure did.

* i wrote this post earlier this week but hadn’t posted it yet when i received word yesterday morning that we lost a dear refuge family member who had been struggling with a long season of not wanting to live. right now we are aching, struck by the painful realities of life. broken-hearted. and trying to hold on to God’s sustaining hope. i debated posting it this morning, but the reality is that i woke up today needing these words more than ever and if even one other person does, then i guess it’s probably worth it to share. i know we were never meant to suffer alone. 

* * * * *

note: i’m on a parker palmer kick right now.

right after i posted the intra-faith dialogue post i had a whole bunch of other things i wish i had said, like this is different from ecunemical. that is another thing all together; this is about divisions within those of us who come from the same roots and have gone different directions and at this point, i think so many doubt these divides can be crossed so it’s really hard to care about and because a lot of people have had so many unsafe & ugly experiences with certain conversations, there’s no way they are going to go back for more.

but honestly, all of them swept away after a really crazy week filled with news of death & suicide attempts & all kinds of other deep pain around here.

in the real raw moments of our crazy lives, the luxury of theological rambling goes out the window.

it makes me think how the world is crying out for hope while we’re talking about theology and how much time we waste arguing over the dumbest things while the dark is caving in on people all over the place.  it makes me think of what Jesus said to the pharisees, “you hypocrites…you shut the door to the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. you yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to” (matthew 23:13-14).

so many people are pretty darn desperate for some hope.  most people don’t care about the greek meaning of the word “submit” but they sure do care about finding relief, light in the darkness, love in the emptiness, peace in the storm. 

after getting news that a dear friend & lover-of-so-many-hurting-people had died, i pulled out an old handout that he had given me years ago when he facilitated our house of refuge over 4 years ago. i still remember the story he told because it was so good but i wanted to read it again. it was in a chapter called “the open broken heart” by parker palmer.  he says that there are two kinds of broken hearts–one that is “an unresolved wound we carry with us for a long time, sometimes tucking it away and feeding it, sometimes trying to ‘resolve it’ by inflicting the same wound on others.”

but the other is a different way to consider what a broken heart might mean.  he says, “imagine that small clenched fist of a heart ‘broken open’ into the largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy.” 

he shares a hasidic tale where a disciple asks the rabbi, “”why does torah tell us to place these words upon our hearts?” why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?  the rabbi answers, “it is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. so we place them on top of our hearts.  and there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks, and the words fall in….”

the reality of life this side of heaven is that there is extreme suffering.  so much pain, so much loss, so much heartbreak, so much not-the-way-we-had-hoped-it-would-be. 

life is so tender, so fragile.

yet at the same time, it is so strong.  i see the incredible courage of people who keep going after such extreme loss, laughter through the tears, forgiveness after so much hurt, moving forward after huge setbacks, beauty emerging out of heaps of ashes.

divorce. death. abuse. depression. chronic pain. addiction. bankruptcy. loneliness.

to be human means we will suffer.

parker palmer says that “when we don’t know what to do with our suffering, we turn to violence.” 

and we all know that violence isn’t just toward others, it is toward ourselves, too.

the most important thing is that we somehow don’t suffer alone.   

we were never supposed to suffer alone.

it’s why the church is not supposed to be about singing some songs & listening-to-the-preacher-preach & getting a spiritual fix.

it’s supposed to be a place for collective suffering, collective hope.

this is why i am a nut case when it comes to “church” (remember, i use that term loosely) because our best hope in the darkness is to have others with us who have unclenched fists & open broken hearts to help hold this pain.  people who don’t try to solve or fix or scripturize or try to make sense of what can’t be made sense of.  people with pericardiums that work.  people brave enough to welcome pain.  people who can, as parker palmer says, stand in the ‘tragic gap’, the “gap between what is and what could and should be…”

i’m so thankful for those people in my life, for a God who is close the broken-hearted, for a church that does not minimize suffering and keeps turning toward hope.

God, may we be people with open-broken hearts who honor our own suffering and the suffering of others well–with faith, hope, love, and dignity.

last week i was in a fun conversation with some dear friends (planning our next theology camp!) about how hard it is to hold the space for differing theological perspectives on really big issues. it’s tough because so much of our thinking has become “either/or”.  you’re either this type of christian or you’re that type of christian. you’re either conservative or liberal. you’re either evangelical or mainline, for this or against that.

we have built some scary divides between each other and it feels like the gap continues to widen. one hour on facebook when there’s a hot topic making its rounds and the comment threads reflect how crazy it’s become.

it made me think about inter-faith dialogue and how it’s gained a lot of traction over the years. i have many friends who are sitting at much bigger tables than ever before and learning, loving, and practicing with people from other faiths. because of the nature of the work i do at the refuge, honestly, i don’t have that many opportunities to connect with people from different faiths.  most of the folks i meet with regularly come from either no-faith backgrounds or some-form-of-christian ones and are much more focused on how they’re going to make it through the day than on talking theology.  however, it’s totally easy for me to hang with people from different faiths.

over time, i’ve found that it is far more difficult to have safe and loving conversations with other christians who are on a different page theologically.

when we do intersect on some of these hot topics, it seems like it’s tricky to feel safe. often for both sides, it can feel like our faith is being questioned. we can become defensive, protective, or feel like we’re misunderstood. our motives feel threatened. we start to get that ache in the pit of our stomach warning us, “uh oh, this isn’t going to end well.”

it makes me so sad to see the splinters and divisions all over the place between supposedly  ”conservative” and “liberal” christians. often, i have felt the most resistance and judgment from my own christian brothers & sisters, not my non-christian ones.

as i was driving home from our meeting, this word came to mind to describe what we were hoping for in our theology camp dreaming–intra-faith dialogue.

when i got home googled “intra-faith dialogue” to see what was being written on it, thinking i was way late to the party.  interestingly enough, there was little to nothing about intentional intra-faith conversations related to christianity.

i think we need more spaces and places for intra-faith dialogue, where christians with vastly differing views can be together face to face, eye to eye, heart to heart, to listen and learn from each other.  

we need ways to practice dignified dialogue, ways to talk about our differences that are safe, loving, kind, respectful, and challenging. we need spaces to find what we have in common instead of only focus on our differences. we need people who are brave enough to hold in tension radically different biblical interpretations in love and respect.

i am so thankful for the refuge because we do attempt, as best we can, to hold this kind of space in community. it hasn’t been easy and our hardest divide is between conservative and progressive views of the Bible. we most certainly haven’t played this out perfectly and keep learning as we go, but it does seem like our best hope always comes back to relationship.  when we’re friends, real friends, everything changes.

i am painfully aware, though, of how hard it is to hold these kind of theological differences in tension.

i know why people are afraid to try, especially when we have had so many examples where we have felt unsafe & somehow threatened.  but my hope is that with God’s help, we could find new & creative ways to sit at the table together.

a safe intra-faith dialogue would help us:

learn to be okay with different interpretations of scripture. of course, this is probably our trickiest sticking point but we have to find a way to do this!  (in my opinion the best starting point is to take out the language “but the Bible (or God) says…” and replace it with “my understanding of the scriptures is…” that helps so much in every direction.

discover what we do have in common.  sure, we believe things about Jesus in all different ways and the various strands of our faith reflect that, but there’s so much that we probably do have in common  that we could celebrate.

learn to own what we believe in the open. i think there is a deep fear in a lot of people that we will somehow end up in a bad place if we are fully honest with each other (in either direction) so we tiptoe around it or start to “come out” on facebook and find ourselves in hot water. learning to own what we believe and be okay with it in mixed company is good practice.

practice humility.  that should be enough of a motivator, really. we’ve got to learn to humble ourselves and listen and learn from each other.  this one’s the hardest for me out of all of them and really the main reason i avoid these kinds of conversations (in addition to so many of them just feeling unsafe & unfacilitated)

stay in relationship.  i am indeed so grateful for my friends of a more conservative persuasion who love me even though they don’t agree with my theology, and i hope they know how much i love them even though mine’s different than theirs. we’re trying to trust the holy spirit to guide us & put relationship above belief.

become less afraid.  fear shows up fast and often. we need to move out of fear the fear that rules our primitive brain and practice a third way.  our primitive brain is living from our natural fight or flight reflexes, while the third way is reflective of Jesus’ call to us, to be true peace-makers (not conflict avoiders), and show up in love & grace & truth & peace. parker palmer says that “when the primitive brain dominates, christianity goes over to the dark side..[we] self-destruct over doctrinal differences, forgetting that our first calling is to love one another.”  he adds, “when our primitive brain is in charge, humility, compassion, forgiveness, and the vision of a beloved community do not stand a chance.”

i’m continually reminded of how broken & fragmented & wounded Christ’s body has become. i confess that i have contributed to it over the years in different ways both subtly and very directly.

i don’t want to be ruled by my primitive brain–fight or flight.  i want to be ruled by love.

God, help us believe in the miracle of true blue intra-faith dialogue! we want to become safer people who can listen & learn from each other and honor & respect our differences while noticing and celebrating the beautiful things we share.  

* * * * *

ps: the first tuesday of every month  i write a down we go column for sheloves magazine.  april’s theme is “home” and the post i wrote is called mobile homes (not that kind).  i do pray that we’d be “people sent out in a broken and disconnected world to somehow create a strange and beautiful sense of belonging wherever we go. people of hope.  people of love.  people of presence.  people who are beginning to feel more at home in our own skin and can help others feel more “home,” too…”