Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

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Incarnate Empathy

by Morgan Bolt in Christian Spirituality

When I was told I had Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumors three years ago, I took the diagnosis better than pretty much anyone else I knew. I didn’t wonder why or despair or curse my fate. I just accepted it and carried on as best I could. Some of that is no doubt due to my generally carefree nature and the fact that my own diagnosis didn’t contradict my understanding of the world and how God relates to it (which is why I wrote a book on the subject). But I also attribute a good part of this to the fact that I’m the one—rather than someone I love—who’s going through all this hellish treatment.

It would be far worse to sit and watch someone else I care about enduring round after round of chemo until I lost count, surgery followed by surgery followed by still more surgeries, debilitating radiation treatment that made eating all but impossible, and a pair of clinical trials. And then repeat it all for a second year. And a third. And counting. I’d rather go through these years of intense, difficult treatment myself than see someone I love endure it for a single day. I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

Several people have expressed to me that they wish it could be them, not me, going through it all. It is, I think, a natural reaction when we see people we care about suffering and struggling. We want to take their troubles from them, to carry their burdens and give them some respite from their trials. We’re made to experience empathy, after all, to feel others’… [Read more…] about Incarnate Empathy

Learning From the Wise Men

by Darrell Lackey in Christian Issues

I’ve always been fascinated by the story of the Wise Men (Matt 2). Even in my fundamentalist/evangelical days, I found their story intriguing. Their time in the Gospel accounts is limited, but profound. As we come to this season of Advent, of that first coming, what might we learn from the story of the Wise Men? Here are three reflections we might consider:
God Acts Outside Traditional Frameworks/Understandings:
The Wise Men were from the east—they were gentiles. They were not heirs to the promise or the covenant. They were not given the law or rescued from Egypt. They were not told they were “clean” or chosen. They were outside the framework, the boundaries, the walls, that the Hebrews (Many of them) felt God had placed around Israel—the nation he had chosen out of all the peoples and nations of the world. The Wise Men were outsiders, foreigners, “others.”

And yet, God chose them to see and understand what those inside the presumed framework would not, or could not, see or understand.
God Speaks to Those Outside Traditional Frameworks/Understandings:
It is commonly understood the Wise Men were, what we would consider today, astrologers. The Magi were probably Persian-Medes, from a priestly class, and associated, again, with what we today would consider the occult.

And yet, God chose to speak, to communicate, to be present to those associated with a world and practices—that were actually condemned in Scripture (For example see Leviticus… [Read more…] about Learning From the Wise Men

Sounds of Silence 

by Marguerite Sheehan in Christian Spirituality

As a teenager, one of my favorite songs was “The Sound of Silence” with that heart wrenching lyric, “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again. Because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain, still remains, within the sound of silence.”

We are in the time of silence and darkness again. Short days. Long nights. Times of division and deceit. For many, a time of loneliness, and for others hopelessness. Yet into the silent darkness creeps a vision that leaves its seeds while we are sleeping. That vision is one of light coming into the darkness and showing us another way forward within the sounds of silence.

It is easy to polarize the dark and the light as though we could live with one and not the other. As if one were good and one was bad. As if one is preferential and the other better left behind. From such thinking, it is easy to slide into racist imaginings where dark is something to be feared and light is normalized and not to be called “my old friend.” This easy and destructive slide was showing its head in my teenage years, and so, when “The Sound of Silence” came across the airwaves, it was a wakeup call that resounded. The vision within the lyric remains in the airwaves of our country and continues to seed itself in new forms, such as Black Lives Matter.

Today in my little village of Shelburne Falls, the snow is falling silently and the ground and all of us walking around… [Read more…] about Sounds of Silence 

Advent: Waiting for What We Already Have

by Morgan Bolt in Christian Spirituality

It often feels like I’ve done more waiting than anything else the past three years. I’ve waited for my initial biopsy results. I’ve waited for bloodwork. I’ve waited for my urine to get to the right specific gravity to start chemotherapy, waited for chemo to be made, and waited for the infusions to finish.

I’ve waited for radiation, waited for one clinical trial and then waited for another, waited for surgery again and again and again, waited for relief from shingles, waited for painkillers to take effect, waited for constipation and diarrhea to end—sometimes at the same time, and waited for some new treatment to be invented that gives me a better chance.

And, most of all, I’ve waited for healing. I’m waiting right now for my next set of PET scans so that I can start waiting for those results. Really, I’ve been waiting over three years now for the results I want, for the seemingly unachievable No Evidence of Disease pronouncement.

All that waiting reminds me of the waiting we do during the Advent season. Advent is, after all, a time of waiting for the arrival of the Messiah, the deliverer who will establish God’s kingdom here on Earth. Advent might mean “coming,” but for me it has always felt more like “waiting.” Waiting and watching for an arrival, certainly, but waiting nonetheless.

For me, the best part of the Advent season has always been the knowledge that, though we wait for Christmas Day to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Immanuel has already arrived.… [Read more…] about Advent: Waiting for What We Already Have

Advent: Joyfully Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

Joy to the world—the Lord is come!

Joy to the world—all the boys and girls now! Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea, joy to you and me!

OK, I admit it—this week’s blog has been the most difficult of this series for me to write. The good news is I’ve been singing

Jeremiah was a bullfrog
Was a good friend of mine
I never understood a single word he said
But I helped him a-drink his wine
And he always had some mighty fine wine

for days (I know you’re humming along now—you’re welcome)! Look, I’m a joyful person—my Hot Husband, our children and grands, our extended family and friends, a lovely glass of wine with Jeremiah the Bullfrog all bring me great joy! So it’s not that I don’t like JOY or I don’t have JOY or that I need to find JOY in the journey. It’s just that JOY is so dadgum hard to explain, right? It’s one of those nebulous things that we know it when we feel it and we profoundly feel its absence when we lack it—but what is the actual definition of JOY?

The dictionary gives these meanings: a profound feeling of happiness; a feeling of great pleasure and happiness; the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune; delight, exuberance, elation, bliss; to rejoice; to delight. These definitions seem to me to be vague, hazy and even transitive. Can’t JOY be abiding; can’t it come to stay?

Celebrating Advent trains us in waiting. JOY comes, many times, as a… [Read more…] about Advent: Joyfully Waiting

Rock Us Into Joy

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This third Sunday in Advent (December 17) is Gaudete or Rejoice Sunday. But not much joy can be seen or heard in Jesus’s childhood home of Nazareth this week. Leaders there have quieted some of the usual Christmas celebrations in protest of President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Protests and violence have broken out in Bethlehem as a result of the decision. Photographs of both ancient cities show smoke-filled streets and angry protesters.

Nazareth and Bethlehem are not the only places in our world where conflict, violence, and uncertainty are daily realities. These realities—the depth of so many people’s suffering—have made this season of Advent, the season of waiting, a melancholy one for me. I am weary of waiting for justice to prevail in places where people are hungry or homeless or in fear for their lives.

So, how do we celebrate Rejoice Sunday in a world so burdened with sorrow? One of the promises of  Advent and of the Gospel story is that joy and sorrow sometimes hold hands. As headlines shout disturbing, heartbreaking news, people in Christian communities continue to hold on to the countercultural, radical, and subversive promise that somehow, even in smoke-filled streets of protest, the hopes and fears of the years meet and are transformed by God’s unending love.

So, joy? Joy for me on this Rejoice Sunday is present, but it is a quiet joy, a leaning forward and looking back—a persistent moving toward hope while… [Read more…] about Rock Us Into Joy

The Prophecy of Prejudice

by Lydia Joy in Fundamentalism

For many years, I had anticipated with anxiety last Friday’s presidential announcement that Jerusalem would finally be recognized as the capital of Israel, of God’s Chosen People. I felt fear and panic whenever I saw something that I had been told meant a prophecy was being fulfilled, and was leading our world closer to its cleansing and its end: the final Judgment of all judgments, ringing in the Rapture where God’s saints would be fetched up with a single trumpet signaling we were “going home” to heaven.

Being part of God’s Kingdom meant many things to me as a child. For one, it meant I wouldn’t burn in a literal hell for eternity. Also, it meant I would be reunited with any loved one who had believed and accepted Christ as their personal Savior, granting them a place to worship at His throne forever. So, two major things that concluded in a positive way of thinking, right?

Wrong.

I say this because I know the other teachings Christian Fundamentalism includes. Forgiveness of sins is only part of the salvation they preached. As a Christian, you’ve also reserved a place to point out those that have not experienced such forgiveness, deeming others of your fellow human race damned by the guidelines you were given to separate the “Goats from the Sheep.”

As a child, I have strong memories of scanning crowds of strangers, searching for other believers, because I knew if they didn’t resemble me, chances were they were going to hell, and this brought terrifying images… [Read more…] about The Prophecy of Prejudice

Long Obedience in Different Directions

by Cindy Brandt in Christian Spirituality

We had left our baby girl in the makeshift nursery to attend one of the meetings for the orientation that was to launch our missionary career. In the next few days, she would get sick with her first fever while we were trapped in a damp, chilly, tiny lodging with an outside shower that provided limited hot water. It was our inaugural taste of “suffering for Jesus,” and it was miserable and gritty but grand.

In a roomful of fellow missionaries, some seasoned, others new to the field, the energy was palpable. We had gathered to reach the nations, just like I had dreamed as an evangelical teen on fire. The speaker spoke powerfully, and the one phrase that resonated in my young adventurous mind, the one mantra that would sustain me through some of the most stressful years of my life, was this: “long obedience in the same direction.” The speaker was using the title of Eugene Peterson’s Christian classic, which I had not read, but the catchy title was pregnant with meaning, and especially poignant for a life of mission. We were fueled by the intense longing to stick it out for the long haul, to persevere despite the suffering, to be faithful in our long obedience.

We were faithful, for a year. And then two. And three and a half more years after that. But there started a stirring in my spirit, like a pea at the bottom of twenty mattresses, which kept me tossing and turning in the dark night of my soul. That small pea quickly turned into a full blown faith crisis that first… [Read more…] about Long Obedience in Different Directions

Advent: Peacefully Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

Let there be PEACE on earth and let it begin with me
The first snowfall of winter is happening right now at our home. What is it about falling snow that is so peaceful that there’s even a Peaceful Snowfall app? As I sit gazing out the window beyond our Christmas tree, a sense of peace and goodwill envelops me. I wish that feeling could stay with me always. But wait a minute—why can’t it? This is the season to celebrate the coming of the Prince of Peace—doesn’t that mean something today, here and now?

A prophecy in the Hebrew scriptures promised a Messiah to come who would be the leader of PEACE. “For unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. These will be his royal titles: Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6). This was a promise to the Jews and, I believe, a promise to us today. “The Prince of Wholeness” has come and we celebrate his arrival during Advent.

Advent worship is a journey toward the Christmas story—the story of God putting his family back together. Advent is the story of shalom—peace; wholeness; completeness; the way God meant it to be all along. PEACE—particularly, the PEACE we celebrate at Advent—is not merely the absence of conflict; it’s a sense of wholeness, a sense that all is well within you.

So there I was, looking up the dictionary definition of PEACE, like a good little researcher, and I came across this gem at… [Read more…] about Advent: Peacefully Waiting

Advent Two: Preparing a Way

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality, Poetry

To announce and encourage a season of waiting seems preposterous to me sometimes. Too many people suffer through enforced waiting every day, and every path they try to take through their life’s wildernesses is blocked by human wreckage. The lectionary Gospel reading last week from Mark spoke of stars falling from the heavens, and for some people that image is not a metaphor. Some people’s skies are empty of signs of hope, and they can’t see a way through the darkness.

Yes, the realities of racism, violence against women, food insecurity, political unrest—so many painful realities that people face into everyday—make it hard for me to light the candles of Advent and sing hymns of waiting. We have waited long enough.

I wrestled with these thoughts as the prelude began in my church last week on the first Sunday in Advent. Then, with no rehearsal or liturgical prompting, three children formed into a circle at the front of the church and began to dance. Their innocent joy reached out into the sanctuary and, for a few moments at least, quieted my restless spirit.

As we enter into the second week of Advent and hear in the lectionary “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way,’” I am still restless for Gospel justice and peace to come soon. But those dancing children sparked in me a new imagining. Perhaps the sacred Star-flinger who sequined the skies in the beginning with light is now sowing stars into hungry and thirsty wildernesses by… [Read more…] about Advent Two: Preparing a Way