Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Christian Spirituality

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

When Quiet Means Work: A Reflection for Families, Caregivers, and Those Who Are Still Loving

by Ellen Perleberg in Christian Spirituality

The Sunday after Thanksgiving, I rather spontaneously—or perhaps, I’d like to think, by the work of the Holy Spirit—got on a night bus and went to church. I arrived at St. Mark’s Cathedral to a contemplative Eucharist in their beautiful chapel. It was soft and lovely and quiet.

I love the quiet. I sought it out when I came to college in Seattle, living in “the big city” for the first time this fall, more than a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of people everywhere. I looked for and found spaces where we pray in quiet to hear our own God answer. And now I have come to a season in which we encourage each other to come into the quiet and the rest and peace it brings.

But I noticed something else in the quiet that evening. Perhaps because I had just returned from a trip back home, I realized that my quiet does not belong to me. It belongs to my sister. My twelve-year-old sister has severe developmental delays and serious sensory processing issues. Anything and everything is liable to be too bright, too loud, too much for her, and so I grew up with the quiet. With subtitles on muted TV screens, with an empathetic dread of ceiling fans, with a constant, chiding shhh.

My quiet is active. My quiet encompasses all the work it takes to make the world safe for my sister. My quiet is an act of love. My quiet was enforced for years, and my quiet puts her needs first.

My quiet is heartbreaking. Quiet is unanswered questions and the words she can’t say.… [Read more…] about When Quiet Means Work: A Reflection for Families, Caregivers, and Those Who Are Still Loving

Advent: Hopefully Waiting

by Janene Cates Putman in Christian Spirituality

“A thrill of HOPE, the weary world rejoices for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn.”

Do a quick Google search for “Advent Calendar” and you’ll find over 3 million results—for the gourmet chocolate lover, for the wine connoisseur, for the beauty trendsetter, for the traditional-at-heart, for the children in your life, for that boozy friend—an Advent calendar for everyone on your list.

Having grown up in a non-liturgical church tradition, this is what I knew about Advent: there was a Christmas tree calendar that had doors for each day, December 1 – 25, with candy inside. It was a countdown to Santa Claus and had little, if anything, to do with the biblical Christmas story. I was an adult with nearly-grown children before I began to learn about and celebrate Advent. This yearly celebration has changed the way I worship. “Let every heart prepare him room” has become my personal prayer for this season.

This is the first week of Advent. The definition of Advent is “the arrival of a notable person, thing or event.” Advent has to do with waiting, with being “pregnant with expectation.” This is waiting with purpose, waiting with action. It’s “nesting”—preparing my heart to be Christ’s home. Advent worship is a journey through the biblical narrative, the story of God putting his family back together. It’s a time to focus on what Christ’s coming brings to us: hope, peace, love, joy.

“Come, Lord Jesus” is the anthem of Advent. It’s waiting, between the now… [Read more…] about Advent: Hopefully Waiting

Advent One: To Watch Again Another Night

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

Advent One: Isaiah 64:1-9
Up there. In dusk’s dimming sky. What did the Isaiah poet see that long ago night? Stars wheeling out from their daytime hiding places? Cosmic spheres twirling across a vast celestial ballroom dance floor? Or did the poet see only a sky empty of light? What did that ancient wanderer wonder that stirred such heart-rending words: O that you would tear open the heavens…

Rip through the veils that shroud your light, O God.

Place your feet yet again upon our earth and tremble the mountains as you walk in our midst. Be here. Right here.

These texts for the first week in Advent—they are sublime, in an ethereal sort of way. And grim too. Not much warm Christmas nostalgia in Isaiah. Rip open. Quake. Boil. Tremble. These are words to begin our high holy season? Where is gentle Mary and her lullabying voice? What about the twinkling stars that lit the shepherds’ way to the manger? Where in these verses is our tasteful Advent aesthetic?

And yet, our ancient wondering wanderer offers up bittersweet Advent truth. Even if we had a substantive theology of lingering, even if we knew how to wait—we are tired of waiting. What we really want is for God to rip open the veil and let God’s cosmic light bear down on every place where injustice and its power brokers try to hide. We yearn for God—to boil, quake, tremble. Hopeful expectation and starry-eyed wakefulness don’t do it for us anymore. Not when justice has been delayed and denied. When streets… [Read more…] about Advent One: To Watch Again Another Night

Being A Daughter of Zion

by Jordan Blaylock in Christian Spirituality

That moment you begin living as though you are a daughter of Zion, that you stand tall, and proudly proclaim that you are following God’s will by taking your pain and your sorrow, using it for His good and to glorify God, oh! does your enemy, the devil, attack.

First, it will be with trauma, and old wounds that had scarred being ripped open. Then, well-meaning people, who truly want the best for you, and who are aiding in your healing as best they can, will rip your innards out, unintentionally and without malice.

Resentment comes. Anger. Sorrow. And loss. Heartbreaking, soul-shattering loss.

Your teeth will be kicked in, your ribs and limbs broken over and over, before they can even set, never mind putting the cast on. This is all done because, as it has been so eloquently said, “The devil is after you, girl!” And he is, when you claim your status and you embrace that sanctification and justification that follows that embrace.

God has not left you. Jesus is still there. The Holy Spirit is within you. Even when you cry out for no more, when you beg for it to stop.

It was said that resiliency is more heavily within my genetic make up than that of a normal person. Resiliency is a gift from God, a fruit of the Spirit. And I am not normal. You never are, once you embrace this status and become sanctified and justified. We are not normal.

We are strong and courageous, answering as Mary did, as Isaiah. We stand and fight, then we sing. We kneel and submit, we fast… [Read more…] about Being A Daughter of Zion

For Every Season

by Marguerite Sheehan  in Christian Spirituality

Many people my age, on hearing the passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes that says “to everything there is a season,” break out singing Turn Turn Turn Turn! The Byrds, who put that text to music for my generation, were singing about how we all try to make sense of the issues of our time and make peace with being mortal. There is a time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up. A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. We sing and pray and live these truths and we have to keep repeating them because it is still very hard to swallow that there is a season for everything and nothing lasts forever.

The phrases from that song/text that are haunting me these days are these: “A time to keep silence and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate.”

There is so much talking going on and so much hate. So much silence and yes, thank goodness, so much love as well. If anyone ever thought that politics and religion should not mix or that some things are best left well enough alone, they are certainly put to the test now, in our mixed up and very vocal culture. Social media, including lovely blogs like this one, never mind FaceBook, Twitter, Snapchat etc., have us all chatting up a storm and sometimes forgetting the age old wisdom of “a time to keep silence.” We seem compelled to broadcast live who and what we love and hate as though saying it out loud gives our emotions validity. If I say it, it must be true. So… [Read more…] about For Every Season

Why I Bought Hotel California Four Times (So Far)

by Yvonne Shao in Christian Spirituality

My mother bought me the Eagles’ Hotel California as a Christmas present when I was in junior high. I loved the gritty, glamorous songs even though I didn’t have enough experience to understand most of them. Playing the record before school in the mornings helped me steel myself for running the gauntlet of junior high in a small town.

The songs met me where I was. New Kid in Town radiated within me and seemed realer than real most days.

Great expectations, everybody’s watching you

You’re walking away, and they’re talking behind you.

Hotel California, the ultimate road trip, let me see a future where I could love, lose, and learn. I would be stronger, no matter what love and life threw at me. If the Eagles could do it, I could do it.

However, when a visiting preacher came to our church, he told us about the evils of rock and roll. He played some song snippets backwards, which sounded quite clear after he told us what the garbled words were. I loved the Eagles, but I was more scared of hell. If the Eagles were against God, they had to go. My mother and I smashed Hotel California in the kitchen after we got home that night.

In college, I took the first few steps on my road to prodigal-ness. I missed the songs that had soothed my soul in junior high, and I no longer felt compelled to follow all the religious teachings I had learned, so I got Hotel California on cassette. I played it in my Honda Civic, driving… [Read more…] about Why I Bought Hotel California Four Times (So Far)

Why I Left

by Ami Vielehr in Christian Spirituality

In the early morning hours of November 9, 2016, I lay distraught and wrestling in that place between sleep and wake where nightmares haunt, on a twin bed in a cold stone monastery in Hyde Park, NY. A place that was supposed to provide silence and rest became the spiritual tomb of the religion I deeply loved and once held as truth. It seemed that in that one moment it all became lucid … a pinpoint clarity … the knot of supposed truth of all I had once argued for, unraveled. The suppressive, patriarchal confines that I grew up with came crashing down and crumbled onto that tiled floor.

Looking back now, I know it did not begin there in that room on that post-election morning. I was knocked off my Pharisaical horse sometime around my second year in seminary—the blinders ripped from my eyes by professors and pastors who loved The Word too much to let it be abused. The first stirrings of hesitation came when I began to understand the blatant misuse of the text for power mongering and gender oppression—where those who had no problem preaching a God of love while holding the Bible as a vicious weapon to silence any and all who disagreed with their literalist interpretation.

I had spent months, if not years, grappling with the safe, predictable religion of my youth, which said grace was enough—one that preached of purity, acceptance, and love, but was infected with hypocrisy, hate, and exclusion. And I was left to wrestle while an enigmatic and mysterious faith began… [Read more…] about Why I Left

Accept the Loss of Expect

by Connie Miller in Christian Spirituality

“I feel like I am grieving the loss of something, but I do not know what that is.”
—Me, explaining why I haven’t been to Bible Study lately

Finding out my son is faced with a muscle disease has been the most faith shaking and faith building experience in my life. The phone call from the doctor saying he has a muscle disease and that now we just have to put a name on it sent me into grief. Grief for a loss I did not understand.

“What have I lost?” I would ask myself. He’s here, and we aren’t looking at muscular dystrophy, a fatal muscle disease. So, why am I grieving? I asked for clarity and comfort. I asked for strength. I just kept asking, and one day I received.

I love podcasts, and one of my favorites is the For The Love with Jen Hatmaker Podcast. I was listening to the Chrissy Kelly: How To Survive When Your Dreams Dissolve episode. It was an awakening of the soul—I realized what I had been grieving this whole time!

I had lost expectancy. I could no longer know what was going to happen, as a mom. Plans of sports, school, careers, graduation, marriage, all of the hopes I always took for granted, they are all up in the air.

As a mom, especially if you have twins or more, you learn to expect the unexpected. Some ideas and plans you learn to let go of, but not normalcy. You don’t expect to let go of simple ideals. Yet, when you are facing the unknown, you have to die to the design of normal mom… [Read more…] about Accept the Loss of Expect