Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Christian Spirituality

Biorhythmic Resistance

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

“Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.” –Deuteronomy 30:19

Whatever else people of faith make of this week’s Old Testament lectionary reading from Deuteronomy, I hear in these ancient words a call to embrace and embody life as gift, even during messy, difficult, and uncertain times.

My brief encounter with cedar waxwings the other day reminded me of how important this is. Waxwings are wonderful, mysterious birds. Here, where I live, their visits are brief. They come to our backyard for a few hours in February, and then they journey on. If we are lucky, we get to see them. I was lucky–blessed–to get to be near the waxwings this week.

How did the fleeting visit of these beautiful birds remind me of Deuteronomy’s call to embrace life? Political chaos fills my newsfeed and attempts to infiltrate every corner of my heart and head. So many people have so much to say about our current political realities. A colleague shared with me important wisdom about this. The danger, she said, is that we will begin to live by the new administration’s biorhythms instead of our own biorhythms of hope and grace.

I wrote this poem as a prayerful imagining of what kind of internal spiritual resistance is needed if we are to reclaim healthy heart and head space so that we can do our part to “choose life,” to cultivate communities of Gospel hospitality, healing, and hope.

 

The waxwings visited today.… [Read more…] about Biorhythmic Resistance

An Illusion of Freedom

by Christy Wood in Christian Spirituality

Growing up in a Christian cult (Bill Gothard, of IBLP and ATI), I’ve had plenty of experience with legalism. Formulas abounded in my world–if you do such and such, then you are guaranteed this fabulous result, but woe to you if you don’t. Rules, standards, commitments, all these kinds of things supposedly made you a better Christian and more likely to have God’s blessing on your life. “Godly” people acted this way, dressed that way, and avoided these things, etc. Performance, outward show, controlled behavior, fear, and anxiety…I’m excessively familiar with all of this.

Unfortunately, you don’t have to be in a cult to experience legalism. There is plenty of it spread throughout “mainstream” Christianity. How exciting.

Many Christians will tell you that they aren’t legalistic (even though they are following a specific code of behavior) because they aren’t trying to earn their way to heaven. However, if you ask why they do good things, you will find that they are still trying to earn something: blessings, God’s pleasure, or maybe just the image of a “Good Christian.”

I truly believe the Christian community is starting to wake up. There are a good handful of us talking about legalism, exposing it, reacting to it. I love this! But we cannot confuse rebellion against legalism with actual freedom that comes through grace.

I’ve seen it and I’ve been there. We hate legalism, we realize how stupid it is, and we reject it and embrace things that we’ve always been told were wrong.… [Read more…] about An Illusion of Freedom

Answered Prayer

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

Dr. William Barber, II, is a hero. He wrote an op-ed this week following the National Prayer Breakfast. I have continued to think about his essay and about the powerful words he quoted from Frederick Douglass (1818-1895): “I prayed for freedom for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.”

****************************

“These times we’re living in
call for courageous people,”
the preacher said that day.
I am not brave.
Never have been.

Bravery is something to be
read about in storybooks
where quixotic heroes
ride out on prancing
stallions to do battle,
sabers flashing in
magnificent sunlight.

Bravery is something to be
prayed for in church
where harsh living
daylights must first pass
by saintly stained-glass
sentinels of bygone years
before being transmuted
into the kinder, gentler
beams that caress Sunday
morning’s bowed heads.

Isn’t it?

Or maybe we should
pray for freedom,
like Frederick Douglass did,
walking in faith
until our legs are braver
than our thoughts.

So, in this present cloud
of unknowing, being not
brave, we resolve, if
we can find the honesty
to do it, to live on
as best we can,
stringing together each
momentary breath
like pearls of hope to
place with the gentleness
of a lover around our
fear to name its wounds
as our own and journey on
not in spite of
but with it.

For out there, where the
times we’re living in
call for courageous people,
the groaning ground that
soaked up the… [Read more…] about Answered Prayer

Confessions of a Doubting Christian

by Emma Higgs in Christian Spirituality

Some days I find it really hard to believe in God.

I sit in church surrounded by the familiar, friendly faces, perusing the notice sheet as the worship band finish their sound check with a chorus of “10,000 Reasons,” and I’m convinced we’ve made it all up.

We’re kidding ourselves, aren’t we? It’s obviously just wishful thinking. A fairy story. A diversion from reality, far too good to be true.

The questions rage, unfiltered, through my mind.

“If there is a God, why would he answer our prayers about the weather for the summer youth camp whilst ignoring the cries of a Syrian mother begging for her three young children to be spared?”

“Even if there is a God who answers prayer, how likely is it that we predominantly white, middle class Baptists in 21st century Britain have him/her all figured out?”

“Isn’t it perfectly possible that all our ‘spiritual’ experiences and answers to prayer can be explained away by psychology and neuroscience?”

I look around at other people in the congregation and wonder, is it just me? Or are there others who have these same doubts but are too afraid to admit it?

It seems to me that people are walking out of church and losing their faith altogether because they are never given space to ask the tough questions. When their worldview expands and the “truth” they were taught in Sunday School stops making sense, the church responds by praying for their poor, backsliding souls and offering easy answers and carefully selected Bible verses.

We have a… [Read more…] about Confessions of a Doubting Christian

I Am One with the Force; The Force Is with Me — a Star Wars Theology

by Luke Wilson in Christian Spirituality

Warning: Minor spoilers ahead! I say “minor” because there’s no plot points given away here, I’m just discussing an aspect of a character in the film, but I know some people (like me) don’t like to hear too much of anything before they see a film!

If you have seen the new Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, you will be familiar with a guy called Chirrut Îmwe. When he feels threatened or in times of peril when he wants protection, he repeats the short mantra: “I am one with the Force; the Force is with me.” Now, Chirrut is not a Jedi (apparently, actual spoilers in this link), but is a Force-sensitive “warrior monk” according to his Wiki (even though his skills displayed in the film look very Jedi-like!).

Despite not being in the “Jedi club,” this character shows a strong dedication to his faith in The Force and his belief in its protection and power in his life, even in those times where he had good reason to doubt, and even when he as actively encouraged to do so by his companions! But instead of thinking the Force had failed him, it strengthened his resolve and made him “pray” all the more in faith and trust that everything would be fine and that they’d be safe.

I couldn’t help but see the parallels in his “faith” and “prayer” to how our life as Christians ought to be concerning the work of the Spirit in and through us. I found this encouraging and it reminded me of an ancient Christian mantra-like prayer which is still prayed today by some… [Read more…] about I Am One with the Force; The Force Is with Me — a Star Wars Theology

Three Things I've Learned in 2016

by Hunter C. Beezley in Christian Spirituality

It’s the first day of the new year. I’m sitting across from my wife, groggily sipping some necessarily strong coffee in a cozy and warm cafe.

She asks, “What have you learned in 2016?”

It’s good and healthy to ask that question. It helps us to reflect on the past, learn from it, then move on with this new year. It’s going to move on whether you’d like it to or not. The problem is that I would like it to move right along as soon as possible. I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment.

2016 was especially difficult. It was a dense year. Chock full of major world events, too many deaths that came way too soon, and one of the most difficult, ridiculous, and devastating political elections in this country (especially for progressives). Then there’s my own life: both my wife and I have experienced more change, growth, and newness in this last year than we ever have before. So when I’m asked, “what have you learned in 2016?” it’s a difficult question to answer because it seems as if the list may not end.

But I still have to answer. I have to start somewhere.

What I’ve included below is merely a start in a longer reflective process.

This is what we talked about as we both—together—began to answer that question. What I’ve learned in 2016:

To take seriously the imperative, “love your neighbors as yourself” (Mark 12:31) is an impossibility unless I genuinely get to know who my neighbor is. Like that old scribe asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29), it goes… [Read more…] about Three Things I've Learned in 2016

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years: The First Sunday after Christmas

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

A heart-rending image appears in the lectionary for Sunday, January 1, 2017:
A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be consoled, because they are no more.
–Jeremiah 31 and Matthew 2

On the First Sunday after Christmas, mere days after the newborn Jesus has snuggled into the hay of the manger, our star-struck hearts and carol-drenched ears are startled to hear in the Gospel lectionary text Matthew’s horrifying story: “Herod sent and killed all the children who were two years old and under.”

What are we to do with this savage story? Read it in church even though the lights on the Christmas tree are still flickering in our sanctuaries just inches away from the pulpit?

Yes.

Though we may be tempted to avoid the images painted in Matthew 2, to seek safer seas or more beautiful shores from which to launch our boats as we begin 2017, we cannot. The silenced cries of innocents slaughtered in cities across the globe call to us. And through their pain—through Rachel’s weeping—God calls to us too as in this week after Christmas we pack up our nativity scenes to store them away for another year.

God became flesh—Jesus was born into the grittiest, most painful realities of human life. And that means that Christmas—Christianity—is far more than a temporary or sentimental escape pod from the world as it really is. God made Godself vulnerable to a world as… [Read more…] about The Hopes and Fears of All the Years: The First Sunday after Christmas

Christmas Day: And the Word Became Flesh

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

In the beginning … a Word …
          Danced
          Unfurled
          Unleashed

In the beginning … a Word …
          Sparked
          Ignited
          Illumined

Hope.
Peace.
Joy.
Love.
Life.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us.

But oh, how wordy we have become. Speeches and spin doctors. Tweets and tabloids. Debates and diatribes. Talk that says nothing but harms hundreds. So many empty utterances harass our eyes and ears, distracting us from the cries of our world’s most vulnerable ones.

Today, O God, we encounter again your Word in a manger. Not what we expected. Your Word in swaddling clothes. Your Word in an infant’s searching eyes. Your Word in a newborn’s reaching hands. Your Word in Aleppo’s rubble. Your Word in human flesh of every hue.

Give us wisdom, Earth-dwelling God, to talk less and birth your Word each day in our flesh and skin, in embodied tidings of hope, joy, peace and love.

Amen.

 

About Jill Crainshaw
Jill Crainshaw is a PCUSA minister and Blackburn Professor of Worship and Liturgical Theology at Wake Forest University School of Divinity. She is the author of… [Read more…] about Christmas Day: And the Word Became Flesh

A Visit from St. Alban, or A Refugee Christmas

by Andrew Apsley in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Andrew Apsley.

Embed from Getty Images

A Visit from St. Alban

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all Christendom
Sat hoping and waiting for Santa to come.
The cocoa and cookies lay spread on the table
While music rang out and told old Christmas fables.
Our daughter lay down in snug new pajamas,
The heiress of strong economics (thanks, Obama).
And Ma on her iPhone, and I on my Droid,
Were browsing our Facebooks and online tabloids—‌

When on our front door there came a soft knock;
I looked at my wife and then questioned the clock.
It seemed a bit late, but I went just the same.
I opened the door to witness who came.
The moon on the breast of the new fallen snow
Shown dimly between the four figures below.
Their breath fogged the air as they huddled together;
Their dark skin wrapped loosely with clothes all in tatters.
With a little old father, his eyes weak and tired,
A mother and two kids, who were almost expired.
As weak as could be, he raised a bare hand
And whispered a plea though he barely could stand.

“We come from Aleppo—my family and I.
We come bearing nothing but the rags that you spy.
Through the top of our roof; o’er the top of our walls,
The bombs they have dashed away—dashed away all.”

’Twas then I beheld, at the base of his feet,
A pool of fresh blood gath’ring on the concrete.
My daughter, who peered through my legs to behold,
Ran off to find blankets to keep out their cold.
I turned and I called to… [Read more…] about A Visit from St. Alban, or A Refugee Christmas

Advent Four:  Lighting the Tiny Lights

by Jill Crainshaw in Christian Spirituality

This guest post is by Jill Crainshaw.

“We are lighting the tiny lights.”

This is what a Franciscan friar said about living Advent in Aleppo.

Seeing all the violence in Aleppo and other places, I fear that Advent may bleed over into Christmas this year, and I do mean bleed. As we arrive at this Fourth Sunday of Advent, the Sunday when we light the candle of love, I am haunted…

A candle flame of love. Seems so small, a flickering candle. Not enough to combat the fiery explosions that bombard the neighborhoods of Aleppo where children once played soccer in the streets. The other three candles on the wreath shrink each week—hope, peace, and joy melting as time passes. And doesn’t it seem that they have diminished in our world—hope, peace, and joy—suffocated by the rubble as a Syrian city crumbles, doused out by blood running through the streets? Or is it that evil winds have chased their flames away, banished them to obscurity before Mary and Joseph even arrive at the stable? How can hope and love find the spark of humanity in this starless midnight where the most visible message flashing across the sky is a seven-year old’s tweet about her impending death?

When I was seven, I loved watching the Advent candles burn down lower each week until Christmas Eve when we would light the big Christ candle. As those other candles got shorter, I knew Christmas Day was coming closer. The Advent wreath does mean just that. The candles drip and melt, but they do so as we… [Read more…] about Advent Four:  Lighting the Tiny Lights