Let the more loving one be me.
The first to say hi. The first to say sorry. The first to ask for forgiveness. The first to smile. The first to sit quietly with. The first to acknowledge I don’t know the answers. The first to notice. The first to reach out after a long period of silence. The first to laugh. The first to hold back tears and let them roll if necessary. The first to love.
I feel sick.
That’s what courage feels like.
But it feels so uncomfortable.
That’s what brave feels like.
But do you feel alive?
Embracing the brave and afraid
Not allowing the pull into fear to win
over but standing between and looking ahead at the hope
of an aliveness that frees and allows all of your worth to be set out before the valiant seas
Courage is our call in life
for it brings us out of harm and strife with a sense of gentleness and compassion for others
Courage is the tip of the berg and under the water is the rooted wilderness of vulnerability
Ability to stand in the risk, uncertainty and exposure of emotions
Ability to stand tall and know yet still your worth is secure
and even if I disappoint, even if I fail, even if I am marred and kicked, I can stand up again and say
I was in the arena–
What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.
It’s hard to put kindness in a box, yet when you’re in the presence of it, you feel it. Some people are naturally kind — what is it? This generosity of spirit? The authenticity of presence? This lack of sauntering their own ego? Their insistence on others’ well-being? All that is part of it. It’s hard to define kindness, yet when you experience it, it transforms you. You too want to be kinder. You feel a little lighter. You feel more capable of being you, nothing more. Being open to kindness is hard because it breaks your insecurities and propensity for evil down. Being open to kindness begins a journey of our own lack towards our true worth. I want to open to kindness. I am open to kindness. It’s my first openness to it that can lead me to my own kindness to others. We love because God first loved us. I am loved. I am love. I can love. I choose to love. I am kind. I choose to be kind. Let us experience heaven here.
We all LOVE preaching at the pulpit pride is bad. Pride comes before the fall. Those who are proud will be humbled. We will preach our lungs out about being humble and to set aside yourself, for Jesus… and maybe for others.
Yet do we do that when we engage with someone who challenges our theology, our thought process, our framework? Do we really hold an openness to engage humbly with those who present a different way of thinking?
I am very guilty of wanting immediately to write someone off if they love Trump or say something so overtly racist that my heart aches and I fume. And for many people, they would find no error in my ways. But I really don’t want to be that person. Jesus hung out with people who disdained him, who believed and said very contrary things to him. Yet he managed to hold space. I am not Jesus and I probably could not withhold the pain and harm as well as he did, (well I guess he didn’t either — he died.) But I really want to try. I don’t want my circles to be of people who all think like me. Diversity is so buzzy nowadays, and to that, how broad is our landscape of diversity. Do we have diversity in color, gender, socioeconomics, faith, career, thought and so forth? Look around, do the people you hang with all look, think and act like you?
This is not to say that you should let ANYONE into your inner temple. Nah people need to earn your trust for those inner courts. What does trust entail? Love and safety. Commitment and faithfulness. Forgive the and humility. Vulnerability and an ability to listen. Hopefully a sense of humor and no judgy eyes when I kill a bag of Hot Fries. The last few I added for my specific courts.
But I really do try and it is hard and ever increasingly impossible. It requires breaths and filters and thinking the best of another. It’s hard but thus is life. I’m friends with Christians and heathens alike. But why is it that so many of my Christian friends can not handle conversations where their frameworks are being challenged? It’s as if their faith is in their framework, not in their God. God is rooted. God is unchangeable, but our frameworks can. How does Jesus talk to people? Differently depending on who he is talking to? He’s the same. He has integrity. When I challenge especially white Christians on race, gentrification, and god, white male Christians, on being a woman, I honestly am often met with skepticism and defensiveness. They meet me as if I’m an anomaly and I must prove every point I make. Again that feeds into the fact that YOU ARE IN THE DOMINANCE AND REVERSE RACISM & SEXISM DO NOT EXIST.
Please for the love of God trust that I am not demolishing your worth and your God when we have uncomfortable complicated complex conversations. I am trying to bring us closer, to find a common ground. Stop equating your worth with your mind and thoughts and your life here. That’s your ego. Your EGO should be killed because then you will all the more know your worth and God are still immovable.
Just kidding. The church LOVES talking about singles and marrieds. It’s both adored at the pulpit and anticipated in the audience. There’s this rush of hope every time that maybe this sermon would unlock and unravel the pain of waiting for singles, and root and make sense the never talked about pain of staying for marrieds. Yet no one really talks about the pain of waiting because we love focusing on how singleness is a gift and that the Lord can really use you specifically in this season. So we have a bunch of singles hurting inside lashing themselves with this holy waiting and trust. And no one talks about the real pain of marriage. Ya we talk about how it’s ultimate sanctification and how’s that’s the hardest BUT MOST BEAUTIFUL thing on earth, blah blah blah. But can we cut the glamorized version of difficult sanctification and get into the nitty ugly cave. Do we talk about falling out of love with your spouse? Do we talk about low grade amounts, and I dare you, overt abuse? Do we talk about how monogamy is not natural and how sometimes this fight seems too uphill? We don’t. We wrap obstacles in, we’re being sanctified.
The danger of never talking about these things is that when someone is in that position, the response is guilt and shame. If we are ever in a space that is not publicly discussed as normal, we feel abnormal when we experience these human tendencies. Shame is hiding because of a fear of losing worthiness. Shame is hiding because of a fear of judgment. Shame is hiding because a facade keeps others distant from your mess. Isn’t that what happened at the garden? We assumed God would lash at us so we hid and lied instead. I wonder if those peeps in Eden were outright about what they did, would they have been able to stay in the garden? God might have let them stay? The transgression wasn’t the issue? The hiding was? But the reality is, we are no longer in Eden and people are not lovely like God. When we are vulnerable people do cover us in judgment, create distance and make us feel less Christian or unwise/blind/foolish when we talk about said topics above. It’s a fucking catch-22. If you talk, you might get shamed. If you don’t talk, you are imprisoned by shame. How do we change the culture to merely listening and holding space, suspending your judgment and quickness to scripture showering?
But I think the deepest issue with this whole thing is singles v marrieds. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP DIVIDING PEOPLE IN THE CHURCH IN TWO CATEGORIES. Why do you do that?!! Why do you delineate people by relationship status? Inherent in that boxing is our huge human-created difference, there’s a type of crossing over, there’s us v them and they wouldn’t understand the struggle. Don’t act like after marriage, spouses don’t want to sleep with a hot emotionally available dude that walks by. Don’t act like singles cannot get deeply sanctified by close friends and roommates, FO SHO. When you say singleness is a gift, then proceed to spend 15 minutes chatting about the beauty of waiting….take a nice exhale, smile and then get into your inclusive circle tone of voice to talk to those who are married, it is obvious and weird. Stop taking a few verses in the Bible and elevating them into central to our faith structure — don’t we Christians love doing that with whatever scripture seems perfect for such a time as this. Why don’t we talk about things we as humans struggle with that cross all boundaries? Greediness. Jealousy. Greediness. Racism. Sexism. Misogyny. Defensiveness. Ego. Gossip wrapped in we should pray for her. Ego. Fucking ego. Why do we need pastors specifically for singles and marrieds? What qualifies one to know people in these categories better? I’m really asking. Do I go to one pastor if I’m thinking about masturbation and another pastor when I want to hoard my money? Stop drawing out details of my identity like they’re my defining trait. Stop making such a big deal about my status like that’s the reason I sin. I don’t always put God first because I’m human and selfish. My relationship status is not how primarily relate to people. We have created a culture of such connection like that in church. It’s incomplete and often damaging.
Stop putting people in boxes so it’s easier for you to manage and control. Stop defining people so you can quickly go to your prescription box of scriptures. See me as a complicated human. Show me the wisdom and faith and trust I too have the Spirit.
I was 17 when I grabbed Nick A’s crotch and asked him if he was having an orgasm. He wasn’t, I don’t think…could my innocent Christian hands coming in contact with his vulnerable gems make him cum..? Anyway, the point is, I had no idea what orgasms were. I probably heard it in passing and here I was drunkenly letting my suppressed curiosity bust out.
And of course innocent, save myself for marriage teenage self, won a sex basket my freshman year in college. It had lube and condoms and I think TWO vibrators. I never win raffles but God thought this was the surprise I needed in my life. Then I proceeded to have sex for many years, and I think I never had an orgasm. It’s no one’s fault. I didn’t know. They didn’t know. We all moaned along so no feelings were hurt and relationships were preserved. I didn’t know my body well enough and I didn’t know who to turn to to ask about how to feel my very best. We all want to come but we don’t know who to go to. At least I didn’t. I was already dealing with a low grade of Christian guilt having sex before marriage, so I wasn’t about to really welcome the devil by really accessing all the feels.
I got a purple vibrator in the mission after college, as most do when you’re free and in San Francisco. D. A. M. N. That was what I was missing this whole time. Why would God give me a sensual biological needy body and prevent me from enjoying it fully? Why would God create the opportunities for climax when we are taught to only walk through the valleys of shadow and death? Is our Christian obsession with suffering so evasive it’s blocked out access to peak human living and loving, may I say?
Then I really had a Jesus encounter when I moved to LA. I will never forget God’s full embrace of bitter, lonely, lost Nancy. I will never forget the feeling of someone having my back, always. I will never forget my response of, alright, I’m yours. Tell me what’s next. And thus led into my long beautiful journey with the Christian church. I met the bestest of people who are my dearest of friends. I’ve had ideas of family redeemed. I’ve learned the difference between forgiveness, reconciliation and forgetting. I’ve also tucked myself into a narrow hole of sexual repression in the name of boundaries for the name of said Christ. If I am to truly follow Jesus, I am to lay myself down, ignore my bodily impulses, not be selfish and wait to come with another. Masturbation required list and lust was sin. Masturbation is self indulgent and true Christians put others first. Sexual acts, regardless of the number of parties required, are reserved for covenants. Single, you WAIT and ENDURE till you get to the merry other side. And we all know the other side is equally fucked.
But I was a leader. I was a FOLLOWER. I loved Jesus. I spent days and months googling, is masturbation a sin? Can I masturbate without lust? Does masturbation really ruin my future marriage? And after my solo google research, I confessed my sin of self pleasure and tossed away my beautiful vibrator.
And I stopped masturbating. So I stopped lusting and felt complete in Christ alone in my singleness. The end. SAID NO ONE EVER.
I got myself a new sleek AF vibrator. I would vibrate with a blank mind, with nothing but presence, and still come. I would vibrate with pop music. Still came. Sometimes, yes, I did think about a dude I had the hots for and yes I still came. Is that really SO BAD? Am I really using the dude by making him the center of my affections and body exploration? I don’t know. I don’t feel guilt. I feel like a child with a lot to learn. I still feel really shy, but I’m also proud my body works and I get to be a woman who also has the right to come. Why would God make us with a clitoris and g-spot? To dangle them under us all day and night to tempt us, to test us, to see how much we can suppress and repress?
Are there dangers to masturbation? There were nights when I felt really shitty and lonely and dealt with it by vibing. Maybe I band-aided my pain with a little self-love? There was one night I made plans with a guy and before meeting him I had a little fun and actually didn’t want to see him anymore. Damn it, did I feel content without said guy who was actually not good for me?!
Why is the church so afraid of me getting to know my body when we so readily forgive a dude from jacking off because HE JUST CAN’T biologically help it?! What kind of patriarchal blatant bull shit is that? How is my exploration and owning of my body a threat to your family/marriage structure? Are you afraid that you can’t control me with your singleness is a gift sweet nothings? Are you afraid that if I masturbate, I might not see the beauty of marriage? Sweet audience, I can’t wait to get married and bone my hubby all day and night and you know what, me getting to know my body now, will be a gift to my marriage.
xo
Deuteronomy 28-29; Psalm 62
It’s not so black and white between obedience and disobedience is it. There are two Deuteronomy verses here to tell you the fruit and consequences of obedience and disobedience respectively. But if life is a constant teetering between the two, are our results also a mixture of both? I also don’t want to go about like trying to be obedient in order to get blessings. I know that’s not the purpose of these passages, but sometimes when you read these over and over, they kind of put God and human behavior in a box. God is kinda fluid and pretty darn compassionate. Humans are 100% a mixture of trying to do good, the occasional good, and lots of messing up. I think the obedience and disobedience more speak to a heart posture. Who are you serving? Who do live your life for? And even in that, your actions might stray but your heart can be still. You might turn a bit, but your feet are rooted.
So I’m grateful most for Jesus and how he’s a constant reminder that we can’t go too far. Because of him, we know God loves us, even in our messiest and most disobedient states. We’re always teetering between the two sons — the self-righteous son and the prodigal son. Neither are great most of the time; it’s about the loving father who knows how to communicate to both when needed. Praise God for his love for us. I need to really feel some today.
Deuteronomy 15-16; Psalm 58
The laws in this book cover forgiveness, justice, hospitality to those forgotten, taking care of the least of them. Besides the slave part, I’m kind of into these laws. They’re hard to follow — generosity that forgives debts; taking care of foreigners like your own; and so forth. How is it from one book to the next the laws from the same God can seem so different? Context.
If we trust the thesis that God is for us and is good, we have to trust that he is reliable, consistent and knows better than us. In the wilderness, God created boundaries for the people so they could make it out and into the promise land. In the promise land, God creates boundaries for societal and relational healing and health. Out of context boundaries and laws would do harm. I love that about God. Depending on the season we’re in, God guides and leads so we can either get to the promise land or get to slow down.
Deuteronomy 1-3; Psalm 53
What if your wilderness years took 40 years? Then it can’t be just be about the destination. What? You’re supposed to just squander 40 years for this future point. I hate platitudes. I hate those, it’s about the journey, not the destination. But what if there is actually something to this dumb cliche? That if we allow ourselves to be present and open to the journey, each moment can be the destination. If we think of the wilderness as living, every night is a finding of home, wherever we land. If we think of the obstacles and the sorrows and the WTF moments as markers in a life schedule that helps us to see all the ways we grow, can it all matter?
Usually we can only say the wilderness was worthwhile when we get to the goal. How can we find each moment in this dark shithole somewhat beautiful? We need to redefine shithole. We need to reimagine beauty. We need to expand getting there.
Numbers 19-21; Psalm 46
Sometimes our leaders get angry and do something they’re not supposed to and fall. Sometimes our leaders want our good so much, or they think they do, they do something off. It happens and yes they are human and they should be forgiven, but there are consequences. Sometimes they don’t get to go to the Promise Land. Sometimes they are humbled and become just like one of us. Sometimes they are fully restored like King David. Sometimes they die like Judas. Who knows why? It sometimes feels really unfair? Why do some get away with it? Why do some get forgiven? Why do some die? I don’t know and I wish I had the answer, too.
So you just be on the look out for your own behavior. You stand with integrity. Instead of only pointing the finger and exclaiming how these leaders have failed, what’s the lesson? Where can you take ownership? It should humble you. See the only place you can’t fall from is the ground.
Are you there God? 