You don’t need me to tell you that Mother’s Day is complicated for many. A two-second pause to contemplate the people in your life for whom the holiday might be painful would yield evidence enough that the day (and the church-backed events that it often brings) can be tricky. Instead, maybe we can ask why is that so?

My hunch is that the labyrinth of emotions accompanying this holiday has to do with the elevation and highlighting of a very specific relationship. And relationships are layered, sometimes strained, always unique. They are formed between people, and no two people are alike. A day to “celebrate mothers” feels not altogether different from declaring a day to “celebrate health.” Can you imagine? The pain that would come from those whose bodies have received diagnoses? From those who have learned from their faith communities to not trust their physical selves? From those trapped inside of addiction, or those raging against the institutions that compromise our wellness, or those who have been traumatized by diet culture? Health is complicated because it has to do with a relationship between a person and their body. “Celebrating health” would be an oversimplification of such a complex human experience.

So too with mothers.

Here’s a Mother’s Day litany that is also simplified for such vastly different connections and experiences that surround us. But, I hope it makes a little more room for a few more people.

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

Needed: A candle and lighter, something to represent bread and wine for communion (a cracker and juice, toast and milk, etc), and a little cup of dirt (plus a seed, if available). If reading with people, one voice will read all unbolded sections while the group joins in for the bolded sections.

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we are apart, I will always be with you.” –Winnie the Pooh

ONE: Right now, we push aside all the feelings we “should” have and people we “should” be, and we open wide our doors to what is

ALL: Welcome, old grief; 

Welcome, new reality; 

Welcome, fear; 

Welcome, worry; 

Welcome, exactly who we are right now

ONE: As we light this candle, we declare this space for remembering and honoring the children and parents we miss during Mother’s (and/or Father’s) day(s)

ALL: Be with us, saints; 

Be with us, Spirit

Song: Let It Be

ONE: For children who had to say goodbye to parents when they should have had so much more time

ALL: We hold you now: (name any names aloud)

ONE: For children who have watched the minds and bodies of parents deteriorate, no longer able to recognize or remember

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children whose parents were unable to offer their presence or resources, children who ached to know a different kind of paternal or maternal love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who have lost parents to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who wrestle with the complexities of their birth parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who are navigating the milestones of life without their mothers or fathers there to call for recipes and family histories and old stories that have faded with years

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For LGBTQIA+ children who do not have homes to which they can return

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who were abused in a multitude of ways:

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who dread the holidays because of their voids

ALL: We hold you now:

Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12

ONE: For parents who birthed babies straight into the arms of God

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost young children to disasters that make this life seem too unfair for the human heart

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have raised their grandchildren or other relatives because of a lost life or reality

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost children to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now: 

ONE: For parents whose children were unable to offer their presence or connection, parents who ached to know a different kind of familial love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have received a gutting diagnosis

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who are raising children, and working jobs, and running households by themselves

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For birth parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard decisions and limited resources

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For adoptive and foster parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard questions, identity narratives, and ethics

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For migrant and refugee parents who are risking everything (even separation) for a better life for their children

ALL: We hold you now:

“If I had lost a leg—I would tell them—instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was ‘over’ it. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before.” –Elizabeth Edwards

ONE: To those who are not biological parents, but who step in to mother and father so many around them

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who chose not to be parents in a culture that so often pressures otherwise

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who would choose to be parents, or parents again, but who grieve the loss of a dream

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who have redefined family to go past lines of biology, nationality, and economics

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who did the best they could with what they had when they had it

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those versions of ourselves that we never turned into, and the versions of ourselves that we did

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the voices we wish we could hear say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the ears to which we wish we could say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

Scripture: John 1:5

“Sorry, but you don’t really get a choice—you keep waking up and you keep breathing and your heart keeps on beating. And because your blood hasn’t stopped moving through your body, your stomach gets hungry, and then your mouth eats. This is how it goes. Your sad little heart becomes a force of nature. Despite the depth of its wounds, it just keeps going and then the rest of your body has to follow. You eat. You sleep. You sit, and stand, and walk. You smile. Eventually, you laugh. It’s like your heart knows that if it keeps going, so will you. And your heart hasn’t forgotten how good it is to be in the world, so it pushes on, propelling you along to the fridge, the shower, a family dinner, coffee with a friend. In doing these things, your spirit catches up with what your heart already knows; it’s pretty good to be alive. I guess what I’m getting at is that if you too are mired in the early days of unimaginable loss, the only thing to do is follow your heart. Then listen to your body. And keep…going.” –Jamie Wright 

Song: Great is Thy Faithfulness

ONE: Hear our words to those we miss

ALL: Meet us in our celebration and in our grief 

Communion

ONE: The body of Mary’s son, broken for us

The blood of God’s son, poured out for the world

ALL: Thank you Jesus for the bigger picture of resurrection

ONE: God’s family table is open to all who wish to partake, in your homes, on these screens, though separated we are one.

(Participants hold cup of soil—and a seed if possible—in their hands.)

Remind us, God, that our faith makes room for death, that our faith can hold endings, though they are excruciating and devastating.

(Participants push seeds into dirt.)

Remind us that in a backwards kingdom, end is beginning, last is first, and burial is birth…eventually.

ALL: Thank you for love that was, is, and is to come. Amen.

Go now in the peace that passes our understanding.

Around the moment when the hand of our historical clock was ticking from B.C. to A.D., Herod ruled Judea as a puppet of Rome. Granted the title “King of Judea,” he was trusted to underwrite the interest of his Roman backers. Herod claimed Judaism as his faith, though many Jews questioned his devotion due to his lavish, corrupt, and arguably compromised lifestyle.

His tyrannical reign was an icky mix of abused power and theology. He utilized secret police to audit his people’s analysis of him, restricted protests, and removed opponents. It can be said that Herod’s rule most notably contributed to erecting elaborate constructs (built to improve his reputation) as well as embedding within his people significant levels of pent up resentment and anger.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Meanwhile, in the hill country of Judah, a man of decent enough religious and societal privilege was being chosen by lot to burn incense in the temple. The elderly priest Zechariah, from the tribe of Aaron, was married to a barren woman. Elizabeth, despite her piety, lived in a world where the religious rule clearly stated that the obedient would be granted children by God. She lived her life under a faith narrative that undermined her faithfulness, that caused her very existence to communicate to God’s people that she must have been doing something wrong. The old story didn’t make enough room for folks like her. But something was stirring.

While fulfilling his priestly duties, Zechariah was met by an angel who announced that a child would be born to them who would make ready a people for the coming Messiah. Shortly after, Zechariah’s ability to speak was taken from him. Then comes the part I love . . .

Elizabeth — a brown-skinned, elderly, Middle Eastern woman raised during a time before women’s rights and in a twisted theocratic environment — was given the vision to carry. And not only was she entrusted with carrying that vision, but she was also entrusted with birthing it and naming it. When the baby was pushed into this world, wild and human and claimed, he was visited on the eighth day of life to be circumcised and named by the powers-that-be. “Zechariah,” they decided, because this was how it had always been. But Elizabeth knew something new was taking place.

“No!” She protested, “His name will be John.”

And in an ancient example of gaslighting, the leaders turned to Zechariah. She’s mistaken, yes? What should he really be called?

But because Zechariah knew, on some level, that a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland were on their way — because he knew that the new had to be grown, and birthed, and named by the marginalized so that the way of Jesus could be prepared — he scribbled out his confirmation. What she said.

Here, Zechariah knows that in this story of an evolving faith narrative, he is no longer at the center. He is also not unimportant to where it’s all headed or how it all gets there. But he goes from being the voice to the ear, then from the ear to the nod. His role, despite and because of his privilege, is to listen and then to support at a crucial moment in a changing world and faith.

We exist in a time of puppet politics, of religion-backed and excused corruption, of power so nasty and concentrated that it’s hard not to beg God to do something new. It’s also hard not to feel like something new is already stirring, giving us hope among the exhausting struggle. But who will birth the vision? Who will name what will lead us forward in the new narrative of faith?

It won’t be what it has been.

It won’t be the privileged.

It won’t be the folks given token invitations into the company of the old authority.

It will be the disempowered.

It will be the ones whose very existences were once deemed as a contradiction to God.

It will be those who move about the world in the margins, witnessing and cultivating the fruit of a forever backwards kingdom for the sake of where it’s all headed.

And those of us sopping with privilege? What can we do? I think it’s ok to take a note out of Zechariah’s book here. To listen and leverage. To hear and confirm. To let someone else grow and birth and name. To know that whatever is coming next is better than what has been. To trust the decentralization of our role. To find hope in a God who would care to do a new thing among us and with us…all.

Two weeks had passed in our exploration of the content, and I was waking up to work on sermon research for week-three when I reached for my phone and found that it had exploded with notifications from every single platform on which I am present. As a bi-vocational writer and pastor, I quickly learned that a Christian influencer with a pretty large online following had gotten wind that my next children’s book, releasing in August of this year, features a nonbinary character. Overnight, she’d rallied an angry mob of digital advocates to flood my email and DMs with vile accusations and to get my books removed from Christianbook.com, which they did. 

I spent most of the day licking my wounds, cleaning up my comment sections of language that could be hurtful to people I love, locking down my privacy settings, and making blackout poetry out of hate mail. In a timely or untimely moment for sermon writing, the truth of that morning was that I didn’t really all that much want to stay Christian following the vitriol. If this is what it’s come to, I thought, if this is who it excludes, if few things feel more hateful than Christian love, what are we even doing?

One of my agnostic best friends texted me that morning to say, “Hello, abomination, how are you doing? I don’t think the company of these folks’ anger in heaven is the selling point they think it is.” 

“Yeah,” I responded, “There may be a marketing problem.”

Dark humor aside, the reality was that I felt a little bit done that day, or at the very least, I felt more than able to understand those who are done. But, as can be said indefinitely in the journey of God’s people, the story wasn’t quite over. 

At some point in the afternoon, I was sent a direct message by celebrated, queer, Christian children’s book writer Matthew Paul Turner. Turner’s work has also built a significant following, but one that is made up of all the beautiful souls who have been pushed into the margins of faith—the artists, the prophets, and the misfits. And the message said, “How can I help?” 

Maybe you’ve read Jeff Chu’s introduction to the capstone work of Rachel Held Evans, Wholehearted Faith, which he came alongside to finish after her untimely death in 2019. If so, you know that how can I help were generous, grace-fueled, go-to words of Rachel’s for fellow writers (especially those working in the honest and inclusive places). I was taken aback with resurrective gratitude when I read them, feeling certain that Matthew—who also came alongside some of Rachel’s unfinished work in the form of children’s literature—was carrying on more of her legacy than book-buyers will ever see. 

“I’m up for ideas,” I responded, “your company is a deep breath of fresh air.” 

With no further commissioning, he proceeded to spend the next little bit rallying together so much love and support from countless people and places all over who have dared to ask the gatekeepers, “Who says?”

Who says that this is what the Bible means? Who says that this is who gets to be a conduit of the Holy Spirit, and this is who doesn’t? Who says that the ways in which we are desperate for Jesus to break out of stained glass and walk with us into one of the most vibrant, risky, wonderful, adventurous, connected, equitable, inclusive, full and free existences we can imagine isn’t the way that it’s supposed to be? Who says they get to have the monopoly on a caged Christ that we’ve been given the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to free for the sake of the world? Who says? Who gets to say?

The outpouring of care from curious, creative, resilient people was more than a balm; it was merciful fuel. I cried that night in gratitude, not because I felt less alone or validated—which, to be sure, I did—but because I had been given a fresh glimpse into a redemptive reminder that if all of those people who had come into the conversation that afternoon had already left Christianity because of the people who had started the conversation that morning, then there would be no one left. No light remaining to speak on behalf of God’s totally radical, nondiscriminatory love. No voice to say, “If you want to stick around a little longer, I’ll be here, too.” 

Therefore, maybe, just maybe, I could be willing to not cut ties desperately. Maybe I could hang in there, free Jesus a little more, and look for the people to whom I can also ask how can I help, that they may know the light hasn’t totally left either. In fact, maybe the light is just spreading and growing in all the places that the loudest voices aren’t looking. Maybe we’ll look up one day and see that because we dared to approach all of this with such curiosity, creativity, and resilience, the light will have taken over after all. 

“Do I stay Christian?” McLaren asks what so many of us have asked over the years. Maybe, no. The very valid and heartbreaking reasons that people aren’t are worth looking in the face, lamenting over, and repenting from: violent crusader DNA, corrupted institutionalism, manipulative money worship, the hierarchy of the old boys’ club, and toxic theology that further oppresses the marginalized, to name a few.

Or maybe, yes, McLaren posits, because we are free to adapt and experiment in theology; we can lose that which was dogma as our ceiling but gain it as our floor, which can become our foundation, soil, and launchpad; we can speak and write about God in fresh ways, building upon the past rather than being boxed in by it; we can uncage God from at least some of the roles and expectations we have constructed. Maybe yes, because we have been given an invitation to remember that we need each other as allies, that Christianity is relatively young for abandoning, that there are always third ways to consider, that nothing is truly disposable but all is redeemable, that the church in the margins is growing and we are being welcomed in to stand in solidarity with it rather than following our addiction to innocence out of the messiness. 

But maybe, the answer is simply maybe, for now. And to that, I would say, lean in. Maybe is worth your time, too. Maybe your stir-crazy feelings within the faith aren’t signs of a defect but the song of who you were created to be. Maybe you get to say says who when someone tries to tell you where your lines and Jesus’ lie. Maybe you are being invited by the Holy Spirit to rethink what it means for us to exist intentionally, collaboratively, and reverently in this changing world and church. Maybe, just maybe, as McLaren encourages, you are being drawn in to ask the previously un-askable questions, make previously forbidden confessions, imagine previously impossible possibilities, and form previously un-formable communities as we become the most just, kind, and humble versions of ourselves that we possibly can by way of grace, day by day, practicing a faith that expresses itself in love. 

Last week, on behalf of our congregation, I traveled further south to join statewide clergy and lay delegates in the voting to dismiss the now 130+ formerly-United Methodist Louisiana congregations into disaffiliation, largely over the issue of human sexuality. It was not easy to raise a “for” card to approve the process, though anyone who has read the story of Solomon and the warred-over-baby knows what will die if we keep pulling. Still, the journey was and is painful for so many, surely most profoundly our queer clergy and congregants who were first formed in God’s love in these now-leaving spaces. Chasing the grief, there’s an anxiety about what this now means for United Methodists the conference and world over. 

But here’s something I shared with my peers throughout this process that I’d like to share with you now, especially as we enter Pride Month recognizing the wounds that the church has caused to so many of God’s beloveds—especially holding in spirit those who are asking if all of this is worth anymore time and heartbreak. May it serve as a blessing in the spaces you need such a blessing.

Smaller ships turn faster. Death is just the beginning. Scarcity is a distraction. Abundance is absolute. Shalom is our inheritance. The arc is justice-pointed. In tension is creativity. In desperation lies a new paradigm. Out of labor comes new life. More has been done with less. The next right thing is enough. All that we need is here. Look around to see who is beside you. Ask how it is you may help.

Something new is stirring. Something new is waiting. Something new is gestating. And God needs not for us to wear ourselves thin bailing water from sinking boats all because we do not trust ourselves as swimmers. Let sodden boards warp, and we may find ourselves walking atop waves with Jesus.

The truest truth is that God’s kingdom is not in trouble. The truest truth is that our calling has not changed. The truest truth is that we are a part of living history. The truest truth is that in the economy of the Spirit, where the last are first, the poor are rich, the least are greatest, and the weak are strong, we are in good company here in the floodlands, planting seeds.

Something will take. Something will grow. Something is taking! Something is growing! Watch closely, for when the dust settles, we’ll learn that the work didn’t stop. We’ll learn that we didn’t stop! We’ll see that something was on the other side of all that broke down in the compost pile. We’ll take the mess and mire and reconsecrate it as nutrients for the harvest.

Up around the corner? The truest truth awaits.

Keep going.

For many (most? all?) of us here in America, today is a lot of things. It’s odd, different, bizarre, quaint, lonely, dull, sad, triggering, exhausting, celebratory, energizing, or uncomfortable. This Thanksgiving holiday, regardless of how we have strived for normalcy or ignored the cautionary pleas of the CDC, there is no escaping reality: this is a complex day.

Hasn’t it always been?

I’m writing from a city called Shreveport, located in Northwest Louisiana, where a man named Captain Henry Shreve contributed to the Red River region’s settlement and in return received a legacy. But this little plot of land, where my son swings from oak branches beside the bayou . . . where we make mashed potatoes for three instead of twenty-three . . . where I call home . . . is much more than just a settler’s trophy. We live in Caddo territory, or so it was solely known before the Treaty of Cession of 1835. A whisper of the exiled blows through our walls and halls every time a resident references our “county” by name—Caddo Parish.

It is on this land of Caddo Parish where the Caddoan people were to be paid $80,000 for one-million acres of land. “Eventually these Louisiana Caddo left—their credit was cut off by local merchants, their payments ended, and the United States protection was failing—and headed for the Kiamichi River country in Oklahoma. The Caddoan presence in Louisiana, after a millennium, or more, was over.”

It is on this land of Caddo Parish where a makeshift capitol was established when Baton Rouge fell to Union forces during the Civil War. 

It is on this land of Caddo Parish where, “in the decade following the Civil War, white men . . . were killing and terrorizing African-Americans in such high numbers that the parish earned the name, ‘Bloody Caddo.’”

It is Caddo Parish where nearly 13,000 people have contracted the novel Coronavirus this year, and many continue to shame the masked as “living in fear.”

And it is on this land that I have learned who God and my neighbor are. Where I have seen love, known mercy, connected deeply to image-bearers who have shown me the way of life, death, and life after death. My family is here, living off the fruit of stolen trees nurtured by enslaved hands.

It is home—haunted and heartwarming.

It’s both/and. So, too, is Thanksgiving.

READ: Join us in Prophecy Against the Pandemics

We are grateful for life and any chance to press into joy, especially in 2020. And we are aware that this holiday is built upon a false narrative that spun exploitation into mutual affection. We are missing the warmth and awkwardness of ritualistic connection. And we know that we are citizens of an empire forged by oppression and sustained by racism and inequality. We are nurturing our paths. And we are deconstructing our paths because of how the gain of some came at the expense of many.

There is tension in our country, there is tension in our churches, there is tension in our very selves today and beyond, because these times—like our stories—are complicated.

And we don’t love complicated. We’d rather certainty, which is why dualism is fed so plentifully from our political podiums and pulpits. But for today, I wonder if we might not reject the tension and instead lean curiously into Mystery. I wonder if we might make an honest home in the uncomfortable both.

I wonder if we might pray prayers that acknowledge pain and hope for goodness at the very same time.

Maybe, we can even start here.

A Prayer for Today (and all the days after)

Spirit who hovered over the waters of our earth and our bodies throughout the generations, we give you thanks for connecting us to who we were, are, and will be.

We pause to look out over this plot of land: _____ territory.

As we remember our Native siblings—who first invited the foreigner seeking freedom from oppressive rule, who shared space and sustenance with the homeless and welcome with the sojourner—stir in us the hospitality toward those migrating and seeking refuge today.

As we remember our Native siblings—who did not possess immunity, and who were vulnerable to the diseases of colonizers—impress further upon us the responsibility of protecting those most vulnerable in our current pandemic and racial climate.

As we remember our Native siblings—who were forced to leave unceded land, who were stripped of space and identity, who were taken from home and killed—illuminate the injustices still terrorizing Native communities today. Let us hear your call to act on behalf of sacred lands and water, on behalf of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

As we remember our Native siblings of centuries past, convict us of the narratives we craft and sustain that suggest a people solely confined to history. Let us believe and affirm: you’re still here, I’m still here. Let us lend ourselves to listening, supporting, honoring, and leveraging in months beyond November.

Let us bend low to the ground now, touching the blades or soil, let us remember our baptisms in puddled water or bubbled stream, calling to mind our place in the long story of death and life.

May we feel grateful to recognize the evil and liberation within it and within us, the provision and the need, the celebration and lament and everything in between—all present today.

We give thanks for these: ______

While grieving these:______

And we ask that all which adds to the fulness of our lives is ever used to add to the fulness of others.

Till all are home again,

Amen.

For many (most? all?) of us here in America, today is a lot of things. It’s odd, different, bizarre, quaint, lonely, dull, sad, triggering, exhausting, celebratory, energizing, or uncomfortable. This Thanksgiving holiday, regardless of how we have strived for normalcy or ignored the cautionary pleas of the CDC, there is no escaping reality: this is a complex day.

Hasn’t it always been?

I’m writing from a city called Shreveport, located in Northwest Louisiana, where a man named Captain Henry Shreve contributed to the Red River region’s settlement and in return received a legacy. But this little plot of land, where my son swings from oak branches beside the bayou . . . where we make mashed potatoes for three instead of twenty-three . . . where I call home . . . is much more than just a settler’s trophy. We live in Caddo territory, or so it was solely known before the Treaty of Cession of 1835. A whisper of the exiled blows through our walls and halls every time a resident references our “county” by name—Caddo Parish.

It is on this land of Caddo Parish where the Caddoan people were to be paid $80,000 for one-million acres of land. “Eventually these Louisiana Caddo left—their credit was cut off by local merchants, their payments ended, and the United States protection was failing—and headed for the Kiamichi River country in Oklahoma. The Caddoan presence in Louisiana, after a millennium, or more, was over.”

It is on this land of Caddo Parish where a makeshift capitol was established when Baton Rouge fell to Union forces during the Civil War. 

It is on this land of Caddo Parish where, “in the decade following the Civil War, white men . . . were killing and terrorizing African-Americans in such high numbers that the parish earned the name, ‘Bloody Caddo.’”

It is Caddo Parish where nearly 13,000 people have contracted the novel Coronavirus this year, and many continue to shame the masked as “living in fear.”

And it is on this land that I have learned who God and my neighbor are. Where I have seen love, known mercy, connected deeply to image-bearers who have shown me the way of life, death, and life after death. My family is here, living off the fruit of stolen trees nurtured by enslaved hands.

It is home—haunted and heartwarming.

It’s both/and. So, too, is Thanksgiving.

READ: Join us in Prophecy Against the Pandemics

We are grateful for life and any chance to press into joy, especially in 2020. And we are aware that this holiday is built upon a false narrative that spun exploitation into mutual affection. We are missing the warmth and awkwardness of ritualistic connection. And we know that we are citizens of an empire forged by oppression and sustained by racism and inequality. We are nurturing our paths. And we are deconstructing our paths because of how the gain of some came at the expense of many. There is tension in our country, there is tension in our churches, there is tension in our very selves today and beyond, because these times—like our stories—are complicated.

And we don’t love complicated. We’d rather certainty, which is why dualism is fed so plentifully from our political podiums and pulpits. But for today, I wonder if we might not reject the tension and instead lean curiously into Mystery. I wonder if we might make an honest home in the uncomfortable both. I wonder if we might pray prayers that acknowledge pain and hope for goodness at the very same time.

Maybe, we can even start here.

A Prayer for Today (and all the days after)

Spirit who hovered over the waters of our earth and our bodies throughout the generations, we give you thanks for connecting us to who we were, are, and will be.

We pause to look out over this plot of land: _____ territory.

As we remember our Native siblings—who first invited the foreigner seeking freedom from oppressive rule, who shared space and sustenance with the homeless and welcome with the sojourner—stir in us the hospitality toward those migrating and seeking refuge today.

As we remember our Native siblings—who did not possess immunity, and who were vulnerable to the diseases of colonizers—impress further upon us the responsibility of protecting those most vulnerable in our current pandemic and racial climate.

As we remember our Native siblings—who were forced to leave unceded land, who were stripped of space and identity, who were taken from home and killed—illuminate the injustices still terrorizing Native communities today. Let us hear your call to act on behalf of sacred lands and water, on behalf of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

As we remember our Native siblings of centuries past, convict us of the narratives we craft and sustain that suggest a people solely confined to history. Let us believe and affirm: you’re still here, I’m still here. Let us lend ourselves to listening, supporting, honoring, and leveraging in months beyond November.

Let us bend low to the ground now, touching the blades or soil, let us remember our baptisms in puddled water or bubbled stream, calling to mind our place in the long story of death and life.

May we feel grateful to recognize the evil and liberation within it and within us, the provision and the need, the celebration and lament and everything in between—all present today.

We give thanks for these: ______

While grieving these:______

And we ask that all which adds to the fulness of our lives is ever used to add to the fulness of others.

Till all are home again,

Amen.

If Louisianans held anything in common two Saturdays ago, surely it was the onslaught of disaster-decision texts shooting out from the southernmost communities of our state, as folks attempted to employ the most frustratingly impossible superpower of predicting the future. Here’s what hurricane-veterans know: the storm can change in an instant. Therefore, the months to come are anyone’s (losing) game once the warm waters of the gulf have fed a system to the point of naming her.

“We’re headed north.”

“We’re hunkering down.”

“Can we bring our dogs?”

“There’s no way she can travel.”

Houston, Lake Charles, Grand Isle, and Gulfport all navigate the same possibilities when the weatherperson’s maps begin to show spirals. Monday could have brought with it business as usual or life-altering devastation once Hurricane Ida—a powerful, Category 4 storm—made landfall. For communities like Destrehan, LaPlace, Houma, and Hammond, Louisiana (and every small town in-between), this time, it was the latter.

“The Sunday School building [where so much activity takes place] is a complete loss and needs to be demolished,” Rev. Michelle Harris of Saint Charles UMC in Destrehan said on a call between spotty cell service in the days following. “There isn’t a house that doesn’t need a tarp . . . we’re getting to the point where we’re asking how much rain we can take before the ceiling caves in.”

Michelle’s husband Rev. Jason Harris also serves a United Methodist congregation in LaPlace, LA whose church, she said, had two feet of floodwater throughout the whole building—the most they’ve ever taken on.

“It doesn’t look as bad as Hurricane Katrina [here] . . . but it is as bad in terms of infrastructure and system damage,” emphasized Michelle, noting the massive hit to the oil refinery industry in Southwest LA along with gas shortages and power outages in the thick of the August heat.

Just 45-minutes down HWY 90, Rev. Ted Fine of Houma First United Methodist Church reiterated what so many in the area who rode out the storm said of that Sunday night: “That was a horror story.”

“We kept thinking, ‘That’s the worst,’ and it just didn’t stop.” The howling winds and snapping oaks have been described by many who stayed as nightmarish or the worst hours of their lives. Also haunted were the thousands of evacuees lacking control and proximity, waiting to hear what would be left of their worlds.

Rev. Ted shared that electricity in Houma—where massive wind damage occurred— is likely to be out for at least a month. Ida evacuees were instructed by Gov. John Bel Edwards not to immediately return, especially to areas with road blockages and water outages.

To be sure, it wasn’t just the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain that felt Ida’s rage. Updates from Rev. Drew Sutton of FUMC Hammond have shown the chaos of downed trees in the community, including significant damage to the church. Video of wild roots and large branches rammed through roof shingles and scattered across property into natural barricades indicate a long road of recovery ahead.

“You can see the extent of the tree damage at FUMC Hammond,” Drew writes. “This is reflective of the damage everywhere in Hammond and the surrounding communities.”

With transition towers obliterated, barges loose, levees overtopped, extensive flooding having occurred, rescues necessitated, and schools closed indefinitely for many in parishes like Plaquemines, Lafourche, Terrebonne, and Tangipahoa, this is long-haul pain.

But Louisiana United Methodists are long-haul people.

READ: The Morning After Ida Makes Landfall, a Prayer

Rev. Michelle Harris shared that their top priority was to get the Fellowship Hall up and running to serve as food and water distribution and team-hosting.

“We have experience hosting Red Cross Staff post-Katrina, and we hope to be able to do that kind of ministry again, both in short term and long term recovery. We definitely want people to know that we can host. There’s so much need all around us.”

Rev. Ted Fine confirmed many of the same immediate needs outlined by Michelle: gas, tarps, water, work gloves, box fans, big black trash bags, sunscreen and bug spray, first aid kits. His church’s campus, which thankfully experienced little to no damage, is also opening to serve as a distribution center.

Rev. Drew Sutton —encouraging his community to utilize the Crisis Cleanup resource—shared that 600 people would be coming into the Hammond area this past weekend to address needs. This is just the beginning, but it is beginning. Help is on its way and is, to be sure, already here.

“[I want people to know] how thankful we are . . . we are so relieved to know there is help coming,” Michelle answered when asked what additional words she wanted shared with readers at large.

“Tell them that [the meme that said ‘If you want to know what it means to be an American, look to South Louisiana tomorrow morning] is true. The person who shows up on your driveway to help is the indicator that God is alive and afoot in Houma, LA,” Ted exclaimed.

“I’ve gotten so many calls from people outside of this community,” Drew shared, “from people asking how do we help. I’ve seen so many people in our church who need help who are getting support, whether that’s from other church members or other people in our community. The church is not in recovery, the church is actually at work, doing what it knows how to do so well, which is show up for people . . . This keeps happening, and we know how to do this.”

Rev. Bob Deich, interim Louisiana Conference Disaster Response Coordinator, offered a needed reminder for this moment in a video shared online last Tuesday, “It was out of the darkness and in the chaos that God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And it was in the darkest moments of the disciples’ lives when Christ sent his Holy Spirit to be with them in very dark and troublesome times. And we’ve seen some dark days this last week with Hurricane Ida . . . Be patient . . . Be prayerful . . . Be generous.”

The journey ahead is complex and rightly so—filled with both triage and rehab efforts, insurance claims and bucket truck parades, adrenaline highs and compassion fatigue, questions about climate change and environmental refugees, retelling the story, and sharing the load again and again and again. What is essential now is exactly what we vowed to give as United Methodists: our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness; to show up in the ways we can for the people God loves for as long as is needed—a reality which is itself a story of grace.

South Louisiana, we’re with you. Today and all the days ahead.

To donate to disaster relief efforts through the Louisiana Conference of the UMC, use this giving link.

“Love Song for the Longhaul” is a phrase inspired by author Shannan Martin.

This piece first appeared on the Louisiana Conference of the United Methodist Church website.

Thanks to a well received Benedict Cumberbatch movie released in 2014, many of us are familiar with the idea of cipher-breakers or cryptanalysts (those brilliant minds whose work it is to decode machines like the WWII Axis powers’ Enigma, without any prior knowledge of the key). A jumbled mess is what an Enigma Machine message looks like to the untrained eye. But to the decoder? It changes the story—not just for them, but for the masses. 

Now, as a pacifist, I hesitate to begin this reflection on Brian McLaren’s newest book Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It with a war reference, but here we are. This is what came to mind as I made my way through its chapters. Brian (and the friends, theologians, and experiences from which his words pull) has given language to the church—to me—that I think has been needed for quite some time. 

Anyone who may identify with the words “ex-vangelical,” “deconstructed,” or the like, might balk at the title Faith After Doubt. Based on how communities of faith (or, as McLaren specifies, communities of belief) have historically diagnosed and medicated the doubt of our upbringings with easy answers or shame, a reader who doesn’t know Brian may assume that this is another futile prescription for questions that are not going away. But from the very first pages, readers will learn that, through his words, Brian is not serving as a pharmacist of pious placebos. Rather, he’s a prophet, mystic, seer, translator, cryptanalysts of a modern church in a modern world—daring to see and share a way forward together. 

Lovers of Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward or Phyllis Tickle’s The Great Emergence will sense a familiar undercurrent in Faith After Doubt suggesting that we (as individuals, religious communities, and society at large) are not dying so much as we are maybe being born again—or rather, we have the opportunity to be—into a life and life of faith that is actual good news for the world, for our neighbors, and (gasp) even for our enemies. 

McLaren’s book is one of stage theories, which, he notes, are constructs that “can easily be abused” (p. 43), especially if and as the one utilizing them interprets said theories hierarchically, placing themself in a superior location within the map. To help skew this tendency, he encourages readers to imagine his four stages of spiritual development as the rings of a tree rather than a ladder. Each new stage encompasses the other; each new stage teaches us something, offers us something, that we need in order to grow deeper into a life of love. That we need in order to midwife ourselves, the church, and our world into who we can become in God. 

Stage One—simplicity—is marked by dualism, right and wrong, us and them, all or nothing. It is here that we learn how to obey authorities, absorb an understanding of what it means to be good, and mimic the practices necessary for belonging. In its most useful state, Stage One may equip us with tools and an awareness of our own limitations in order to best care for the common good. At its most toxic, it can be the very soil for which Enigma Machines thrive, as war becomes the language of “good vs evil,” feeding the moral policing. 

Stage Two—complexity—McLaren describes, is the pragmatic stage that centers around success and failure. Here in church-speak, we may find communities less bent out of shape around puritanical rules but hyper focused on what the 2000s often labeled “seeker-sensitivity.” I imagine that mega-churches thrive most often at this stage as does the saviorism mentality (i.e. flashy and competitive programming in worship, “rescue” language in missions, etc.). In its most useful state, Stage Two invites us into a version of faith that we can make our own, one that is actionable. At its most toxic, it can become a business and enable moral profiting. 

READ: Choosing Love at Belonging’s Expense and Wondering What Now

Stage Three—perplexity—will sound familiar, one way or another, to most readers I imagine. This, Brian shares, is where we as a society exist right now. Gone are the days of unchallenged authority, overlooked inequity, and negligent allegiance to institutions. From defunding the police and abolishing ICE to the #MeToo and #ChurchToo movements, the era of perplexity is the air we now breathe. Depending on their own stage-journey, some may say that this is long-overdue while others make memes out of cancel-culture. In Stage Three, honesty is expected, critique is inevitable, and justice is centered. Doubt is a virtue and any place that does not make space for it is suspect. Maybe this is why, McLaren notes, 65-million American adults have left the church. In its most useful state, Stage Three insists that we function in reality and tell the truth about ourselves so that we may actually have a chance at loving well in this world. At its most toxic, it can become a maze for incapacitated cynics and wittle away at hope through moral outrage. 

The last of the stages explored in Faith After Doubt is Stage Four—harmony. Here, Brian writes, we seek “understanding, connection, and the common good, even with opponents and enemies,” we recognize God as a “loving presence, creative wisdom [who can be] known through experience and metaphor,” and we integrate “previous strengths [from other stages] with greater depth and [a] wider circle of compassion” (p.224). In Harmony, we find and manifest humility, deep forgiveness, and radical love. Stage Four’s music is mercy; its home is everywhere. It both sees and loves the “other” that can be found inside and outside of a person. It knows that we are all becoming, that the church is becoming. It is grateful to play a part in cultivating a moral imagination. 

In his book and in several podcast interviews, McLaren shares how most churches are in Stage One or Two, most of the world is in Stage Three, while some of our faith leadership and community are in Stage Four. No wonder we have witnessed (and participated in) so much conversation throughout these last few years about how on earth people who claim love for and loyalty to the same God could live so differently. Stage Four pastors strive to craft Stage Two sermons for Stage One congregants while the Stage Three masses run for the hills. How do we move through and/or encourage movement through these stages of development, you may be wondering, if—like me—this concept has connected wild dots for you just in these few minutes. The answer, according to Brian, is doubt in the answers. Doubt is the bridge through the phases and onto a faith that expresses itself in love. 

“Doubt, it turns out, is the passageway from each stage to the next. Without doubt, there can be growth within a stage, but growth from one stage to another usually requires us to doubt the assumptions that give shape to our current stage,” he writes (p. 43). 

And then later on, “Perhaps, in this light, the much-lamented decline in organized religion is simply a consequence of churches’ refusal to stay mindful of the goal of love . . . Of course Stage One religion will go bad if it doesn’t hatch into Stage Two, and Stage Two into Stage Three, and so on. When faith expressing itself in beliefs (Simplicity) and faith expressing itself in activity (Complexity), and faith expressing itself in doubt (Perplexity) start to stink, perhaps only then we will be ready to rethink everything, risk everything, and in fact give everything up to let religion hatch into faith that expresses itself in love” (p. 167). 

Three days before I finished the last chapter of Faith After Doubt, I packed my son and overnight bag into my Subaru to head to my parents’ house for the night. Before we could back-out of the driveway, however, an unruly southern summer storm began bending bush branches and dropping gallon-sized dollops all around us. With my wheels in reverse, I watched as one massive gust sent our dark green trash can flying past our yard and into the street; and I swear, if it weren’t for my Stage One resources, I may have kept driving. Instead, I retrieved it so as to not cause my neighbors any wrecks, while the mission left me drenched and driving, therefore annoyed. Until. 

I began to think about these four stages of development as they could pertain to how one learns water. A human in stage one may learn that water is wet, used (only) for thirst and bathing and swimming; it pools in the lakes and oceans; it’s distinctly different from land and air. In stage two, they may learn that water is all of those things, sure, but that it can also be steam and ice, storms and lakes, puddles and glaciers. It is a beloved, controllable, and hoardable resource—conquered by boat, explored by gear, and shared through wells. Stage three students of water may learn that water can be poisoned, wielded against protestors, commandeered from natives, and kept from the poor. Water—perplexity tells us—will be called “scarce” by some when there is enough for all. It can be weaponized and associated with death when it was meant for life. Then, in stage four, we learn that water is in everything and of everything. It is in the air where we can’t see it and what our bodies mostly consist of. Harmony, reached through doubt, may show us that there are no real lines separating where water is and where it’s not. It is ancient, of us, and outside of us. It is in our neighbors and enemies alike. It fell from Mary’s eyes and Jesus’ side. It firmed under his toes, and filled his nets, and followed his voice. Try as we may to move away from water, water goes with us. It never leaves us nor forsakes us while mysteriously still inviting us to take it in. 

On that drive out of town—curls dripping with rain and Brian’s pages flipping through my mind—I remembered my baptism in a way that I think I never have before. 

“You will be like a well watered garden, like a spring whose waters never faith.”—Isaiah 58:11

“Unless they are born of water and the spirit . . . “—John 3:5

“Let justice roll down like a river . . .”—Amos 5:24

“If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”—John 4:10

It’s time, McLaren says with a clear tone of fearless urgency. In a world riddled with division, stuffed with nuclear warheads, and barrelling down a storyline of extinction, we need harmony more than ever. We need Stage Four churches making room for all four stages to exist and lead to love. We need a faith that does not insist on belief as much as it insists on making space for belief to be reconstructed again and again, unto Harmony. He’s confident that each time a person’s doubt moves them through, “our global civilization tips one human closer to having a habit of the heart that will help us survive and even thrive as never before. Each time one of us lets simple faith grow into complex faith, and then lets that complex faith die in perplexity and doubt, and then lets it be reborn as faith expressing itself in love, we are one human closer to a tipping point of hope for our species” (p. 202). 

We have an enigma in the world and in the church right now, there’s no doubt about that. But thanks to the Spirit moving through leaders like Brian, I’m willing to have faith that we’re also moving toward deciphering our next steps. To be sure, this deepens my well of hope. 

Fourteen months. 

That’s all I have left before my son leaves the pastel-painted halls of the children’s center that is attached to my work and enters public school. For many reasons, I have looked forward to this. I think he will enjoy it, our neighborhood school seems quirky and warm, and I have missed the life rhythm of semesters, to name a few. But for one reason, I dread this inevitable milestone. And that demon’s name is mass shootings. 

My baby had been barely earthside for a month when a gunman opened fire at a movie theater a few hours away from our home. Four years since, I have yet to sit through a feature film with my husband without fighting a panic attack. “Know your exits,” he says, always, to try and calm my breathing. I cry angry tears as the funny credits roll, confused as to how this is still the culture in which we live. But this is our reality. 

I chatted about my theater anxiety recently with a friend whose son is a bit older than mine. He’s been in big-boy school for a year now. She said, as we talked, that she had shared with a coworker how she cringes when she thinks about her child coming home for the first time and sharing that his class has been running drills in case of gunshots. “He likely already has,” her colleague said with conviction. “They frame it as a quiet game of hide-and-seek at that age.” As she relayed this tragic truth to me, I grew nauseated. Hating the world that necessitates such measures, I raged for an alternative. But this is our reality. 

Six months ago, when my family and I moved into our new-to-us home, we hired someone with a high-powered carpet cleaner to get rid of what the previous owner’s cat left behind—enough dander to haunt our sinuses forever. A professional-looking, middle-aged man spent hours cleaning away the allergens. Before leaving, a bookshelf filled with theological resources caught his eye. “How do you feel about the state of our world?” he asked my husband, Luke, and me. After living in the Bible Belt for many years, I know a question like that can mean many things. 

“We have hope,” my husband Luke calmly replied, moving toward the door to usher him out. Not understanding Luke’s subtle cue, the man continued. For an hour and a half he spoke about what scripture says about America’s immorality, how he would rather his babies be dead than have to live through what is coming, and how God had told him that it would be good to begin stockpiling food and AR15s. For weeks after this conversation, I had nightmares about dangerous theology married to easy access to weapons of war (not to mention our culture’s infamous mental health stigma). And I felt, to say the least, very, very scared as I ached for an alternative. But this is our reality. 

And . . . I desperately need it not to be. We desperately need it not to be. We need for Atlanta to have not happened, for Boulder to have not happened, for the tragically numb and horrifically unsurprising uptick of shots-fired into U.S. crowds this last week to have not happened. 

I desperately need our children not to be plagued by one more year of sickening possibilities and the fear that insulates them. 

I desperately need our parents not to have to normalize one more report of drills (at best) and casualties (at worst). 

I desperately need to not see one more headline of names of those whose lives were sacrificed at the altar of senseless violence and too-little, too-late laws. 

I desperately need for those claiming “pro-life” to include the lives of the students of Marjory Douglas Stoneman High School, the moviegoers of the Lafayette Grand Theater, the image-bearers at Pulse nightclub, and the babies and teachers of Sandy Hook Elementary School. 

I desperately need for not one more presidential term, one more year, one more month, one more sermon, one more day to go by without the country and the church—filled with good, smart, and compassionate people—getting more creative about gun control. 

I desperately need for this litany to never be used by another community, another soul, ever again. 

So I write it as a rebuke, a holy protest of stubborn hope for the world that I need to be ours. With it, I say to this mountain, “Go throw yourself into the sea.” That it might. 

Since it must.

It must. 

READ: Easter Special: Free Chapter from Executing Grace

ONE: God, what can we say?

We are heartbroken and afraid.

We feel exposed and unheard.

We battle against rulers, against authorities, against the powers and principalities that wish to turn our swords into automated assault rifles rather than gardening tools. 

All: This is not your kingdom come. This is hell. 

One: We ring out our souls at the thought of having to speak aloud another name of someone lost to gun violence. But we will not allow them to soon be forgotten—these names that God knew as they formed in the womb, these names of those whose hairs were counted.

All: *Voice the names of those lost recently or in the past.*

One: Come, Lord Jesus, we need you. Help us be parable-tellers, relationship-builders, truth-translators in a realm where polarized political arguments keep us from having eyes to see and ear to hear the trauma that our children face. 

All: Veil-tearer, rip wide the cloth that keeps us from moving forward. 

One: Hear our plea . . . 

All: Never again. 

One: Hear our weeping . . .

All: Never again. 

One: Hear our anger . . .

All: Never again! Never again! Never again!

One: Lord, we rebuke the systems that we have built that allow for such atrocities. Systems constructed by toxic masculinity, white supremacy, xenophobia, homophobia, dangerous nationalism that convinces some that they have the right to self-preserve at all costs, and dangerous theology that convinces some that they have a right and an obligation to do your bidding as the Judge. 

All: We confess that we have added to this mountain. That it did not form by itself or overnight. 

One: Forgive me. 

All: Forgive us. 

One: Free me. 

All: Free us. 

One: Now we tell it to move! 

All: Move! Throw yourself into the sea!

One: In the name of the Christ who turned death around, who made his enemies his family, 

All: We say never again. 

One: Never again, God. We beg that you will lead your people, called by your name, to humble ourselves and pray. To seek your face regarding gun violence, to turn from our wicked ways. That you may hear from heaven and heal our land. That we may never again fear another mass shooting. 

All: Never, ever again. Amen.

This piece is an adapted excerpt from Rally: Communal Prayers for Lovers of Jesus and Justice (Fresh Air Books, 2020).

It’s been a long road, and it’s not over, though it does seem to be changing. And we felt we couldn’t let this moment pass without marking it together in some way. In the Bible, we read where God’s people would lay stones of remembrance to mark a journey and God’s faithfulness through it. In our own 21st Century, socially distanced and virtual way, we hope this prayer can serve as stones to remember all we’ve lost, all we’ve seen, and all we hope to still be true. 

Thank you to the contributors of Rally: Communal Prayers for Jesus and Justice who helped identify the pieces of our prayer as well as joined us for its reading. Let us pray. 

WATCH: All Shall Be Well: A Closing Prayer for Making It Through Together

ONE: Please join me in a prayer for what was (a time of lament)

Everything can change in a moment. 

Everything did. And fast.

What was once nothing, became something.

What was once rumors, became rampant.

What was once predictable, became wildly uncertain.  

This time a year ago, normal daily lives across the United States and the world over shifted suddenly and unceremoniously. 

ALL: We mark that moment today. 

ONE: If trauma is too much, too fast, we have all known great trauma. 

For the classrooms that were left suddenly, 

The senior years whose endings were thwarted,

The nursing homes locked down without proper goodbyes,

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: For the jobs that were sacrificed and interviews canceled,

The panic of essential workers when we lacked the science, 

The medical staff who slept in their cars to keep their families safe, 

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: For the children who went without meals,

The children who went without therapies, 

All the children who went without special education services, 

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: For those who walked their neighborhoods with the dread of “how long,”

Those who said goodbye through plexiglass and screens,

The people who were already at the end of their ropes, before, 

ALL: We honor their grief today. 

ONE: For the principals and teachers weighing all the impossible options, 

The pastors and counselors navigating pain from their own wounds, 

Heads of family having to draw lines amid varying convictions,

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: For the tragedy of navigating it all, 

For the tragedy of navigating it all in an unimaginably divided political season,

For the tragedy of navigating it all amid the political divides and the injustices that were both illuminated and heightened in our country,

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: For Breonna Taylor, who was murdered on this same day a year ago, 

Whose death, along with the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and others, gained the attention of a captive audience in lock-down and ignited a summer of movement for racial injustice, 

For the Black, Indigenous, Communities of Color whose long fights were further exhausted by overdue white-zeal that burned hot and fast like flash paper, 

For those who shouldn’t have had to die in order to be believed and protected, 

For those who are unable to come in and out of issues of justice when things get overwhelming,

And all those weary of educating with their pain, 

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: For the deaths of celebrities who brought us joy and leaders who brought us hope,

For how they fell on souls already numbed with “too much,” an insult to injury,

For how the responsibilities of life did not slow with the onslaught of death,

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: Jesus, for the 527,000-and-counting people who have died in twelve months from this awful infection, 

For the sisters, the daycare workers, the best friends, the mentors, the lifelines, the uncles, the matriarchs, the helpers, the elected, the ones with the history, the ones with the futures, the parents of young children, the children of heartbroken parents, the people who would still be with us had it not been for COVID-19 and, for many, how it was handled with neglect, 

ALL: We honor that grief today. 

ONE: We grieve with this grief and for all that has been lost and stolen, asking that your Holy Spirit would be ever near and would “restore the years that the locusts have eaten” (Job2:25) in ways for which we do not yet have the imagination. 

ALL: Be near our grief today. 

ONE: Join me in a prayer for what is (a time of gratitude).

Grant us an imagination for restoration, 

especially as so much continues to look the same from 2020 to 2021. 

As we did not experience a radically different key-change 

when the clock struck midnight on January 21st, 

stir within us the power of perseverance that grows through gratitude. Though we’ve considered the realities around us—

Asylum seekers still separated from their families, deadly protests in Myanmar, the continuation of virtual classrooms, the unknown realities of long-term depression and anxiety, the persisting diagnoses, and the aftershocks of economic downfall—

ALL: May we recognize gratefulness and joy as resources for sustainment and connection. 

ONE: For the life coursing underneath the melting snow, 

The migrants who have safely left sanctuary, 

And the creativity that has illuminated new paths, 

ALL: We give thanks today. 

ONE: For the small victories of accountability in our pulpits and policies, 

The technology that wasn’t possible ten years ago, 

And the goodness we’ve seen in our neighbors, 

ALL: We give thanks today. 

ONE: For the systems we’ve had to build that will stick around post-pandemic,

And the one’s that are finally being deconstructed,

For the invitation to co-create with you today and tomorrow,

ALL: We give you thanks today. 

ONE: For a vaccine that was created and rolled out in less than a year, 

For the hope that every new arm-bandaid represents, 

For the whispers of a time when we can gather safely, 

ALL: We give you thanks today. 

ONE: For the activists, artists, healers, and educators who can see the road ahead and their role in it, 

For the memories we have of what and whom we’ve lost,

For the preciousness of life that makes the loss of it so devastating, 

ALL: We thank you, loving God, today. 

ONE: Join me in a prayer for what is to come (a time of praise).

But today we can only see in part, 

And as we look ahead, we are met with a skepticism of hope 

And reservations about celebration.

We have not returned to normal, 

But we also have a hunch that maybe normal is no longer the goal. 

Instead, for equity, justice, connection, slower-paces, appreciation for loved ones, mercy for our enemies, and beauty, we now set our sights. 

Still, these yearnings rest on the feeble shoulders of exhausted people. 

ALL: Meet them now with the truth of your word, 

That when it’s time, our energy may catch up with our faith. 

ONE: For being our God forever and ever, 

For being our God till the very end (Psalm 48:14),

For taking ahold of our hands and offering help (Isaiah 41:13)

ALL: We praise you today.

ONE: For establishing our steps even when the plans we’ve set are destroyed (Proverbs 16:9),

For knowing our names and leading us out, 

For giving us a chance to know your voice (John 10:3-4),

ALL: We praise you today. 

ONE: For establishing an unmovable covenant of peace, though the mountains shake and hills disappear (Isaiah 54:10), 

For never, ever leaving or forsaking us (Deuteronomy 31:6), 

For mercies that are new every single morning (Lamentations 3:22-23),

ALL: We praise you today. 

ONE: For loving the whole world (John 3:16) and making us in your image (Genesis 1:17)

For being and creating and calling us to co-create love, 

As well as joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23),  

For not allowing one single thing in all of creation to separate us from that love (Romans 8:38-39)

ALL: We praise you today. 

ONE: For coming into the world as a poor, brown, eventually-fatherless refugee (Matthew 2:13) 

Whose death on the cross stood in solidarity with every act of oppression that preceded and followed it (Psalm 13), 

For standing for nonviolence and loving those who harmed you (John 18:10), 

For healing the sick (John 9:1-7), 

Multiplying the resources (Matthew 14:13-21), 

Seeing the overlooked (John 4), 

And subverting the systems (Mark 11:15-18), 

For blessing the poor, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted (Matthew 5:3-12), 

ALL: We praise you today. 

ONE: For showing us that what is good and required is justice, mercy, and humility (Micah 6:8),

For allowing us to reflect you into this world (Matthew 25:37-40),

For being with us always, even until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20), 

ALL: We praise you today. 

ONE: All shall be well, because love has not, cannot, will not fail.

We will continue to make it through together.

In the name of God our Good Parent, the Holy Spirit our Comforting Guide, and Jesus the Christ our Sibling and Savior. 

ALL: Amen.

1. Leader Representing God—where leadership represents the highest spiritual authority, creates an atmosphere of forced immaturity among members and a culture of distrust for outsiders or naysayers

2. Spiritual Bullying—where ex-members are criminalized either overtly or subtly and members are robbed of the right to be themselves

3. Acceptance via Performance—where one’s worth is measured entirely on very specific productivity that serves the leadership and leadership’s vision

4. Spiritual Neglect—where an environment of omission is fostered, disallowing needs (emotional, physical, relational) to be met by outsiders if at all

5. Expanding External/Internal Tension—where dissonance between inner and outer realities continues to increase

6. Manifestation of Internal States—where that dissonance eventually substantiates through physical and mental maladies

Abuse is a big word. It is charged, laced with nuance, riddled with consequence, one way or another. Like the word trauma, we hear of it a lot these days. And as a writer, as a Christian, I am very careful about where I use them both, not because I think they are insignificant. But quite the opposite. I think they are words that represent grave realities deserving of our utmost responsibility, respect, and care. I enter into this record neither lightly nor rushed.

It quickens my breath to think about it. We were sitting in a circle comprised of my husband, my coworker, all of the executive leaders (older, male, white), and me. I’d anticipated some form of caucus would follow the letter I’d written and delivered at the end of the previous week, but the mental preparation hadn’t lessened my anxiety. It had taken me months to gather my thoughts and even longer my nerves.

For years in the environment of this employment, Matthew 18:15-17 had been drilled into me as the only appropriate (biblical) form of conflict management. (“If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you.”) I was already breaking the rules by writing a letter, and to multiple people at that. But I had tried the face-to-face conversations, and those weren’t working. They left me muddled, interrupted, gas-lit, and embarrassed of my own emotions. If we were going to move forward relationally, professionally, socially, and spiritually (all areas of my life that had become intertwined within this work and community), then I had to share my truth in a way that allowed me both time to think and to speak.

READ: Silence: The Facilitator of Clergy Abuse

I had questions and concerns which were becoming increasingly impossible to ignore. Male employees under female directorship were being paid larger amounts; grant-funding wasn’t being delegated to the needs for which we’d written the grants; we were periodically being asked to go without paychecks (a reality that had been included as a possibility in our original contracts) and praised in the public square for our perseverance despite the sacrifice. Furthermore, protected always was a culture of optimism, and by that I mean, one devoid of challenge to those in power. To convey any of these issues as upsetting or inconvenient was to “sow a root of bitterness” into the otherwise content ministry body.

“You will never, ever accuse this leadership of sexism ever again. I won’t tolerate it,” the founder demanded with a wagging finger and harsh tone as we sat in my kitchen in the round, walking through my letter point by point. “I marched with women!” he scolded.

Today, it is darkly comedic, the irony of this moment. At the time, it was crushing. Who was I to propose such a thing? Had I witnessed any of what I thought I’d witnessed? 

A few years before, we’d found each other (this faith-based nonprofit and I) at a time when I was most vulnerable—an ideologue in her early twenties deconstructing the capitalist nature of institutional Christianity and hungry for holistic, communal purpose. I was in transition or wanted to be, aching for mentoring and support. They were a light illuminating a different kind of path, a different kind of faith, and how it functioned in the real world.

“I used to get up and go to work,” one of their second-career employees would say, “now I get up and come to life.” It was Utopian, this body of people whose careers and religions and friendships were all fed by the same source; I all but begged to be a part. So, I paid for inclusion with the currency of my ideas and network and became an extension of one person’s quest for their vision to be the one thing for all people. For years, I invited it into every part of my life, welcoming the entanglement, rehearsing the answers and systems of the lifestyle, cloning myself into a continuation of the leadership for whom I now represented hope for the organization’s future.

But there’s only so long you can survive with the internal dissonance of inner calling and outer manipulation.

The first writing workshop I was ever selected to attend during my tenure there should have been grand news to all those who cared for me. It was refining for my craft, encouraging for my vocational network, launching for my confidence, and threatening for my mentor. I sipped a La Croix on the couch of a monastic apartment, crafting an essay late into the night that would be workshopped at the next day’s round-table when my phone rang.

“I’m sorry to bother you so late, but the Holy Spirit has just told me to tell you not to sign anything. Do not sign anything while you’re there,” the urgent voice of my boss said.

Caught off-guard, I offered comfort, “There’s nothing to sign here. This is just a workshop. I’m learning from other writers.” When I hung up the phone, I noticed several texts had preceded the call: “DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING.” Upon returning to my city, I was whisked away to a lunch where I was told that the nonprofit would actually be starting a publishing house soon through which I could share all of my work. And that, if I so chose, of course, I could assign a percentage of the profits to the organization since most of my stories came from shared experiences within it anyway.

That was probably the first time I experienced a flag without the compulsion to coat it with internal excuses. Something was wrong, and now I could see it.

A breakdown ensued, first of my body; because a breakdown of my external reality would have meant the loss of everything. Every single part of my existence had been kneaded deeply into the milieu of the organization. To walk away from the work would equate to burning down my metaphorical house while I sat inside, weeping for what could have been. I thought maybe I would have a heart attack by age thirty, the stress was so consuming. But eventually, the cost of staying was at least equal to if not more than the cost of leaving. And, with much peace and gutting sorrow, I lit the match.

I’m told that my leaving, and therefore the total erasure of the program I and my friends had built, was excused by my eight-month-old child. She just couldn’t handle the work and motherhood.

Ward writes, “Spiritual abuse is a misuse of power in a spiritual context whereby spiritual authority is distorted to the detriment of those under its leadership. It is a multifaceted and multilayered experience that includes acts of commission and omission, aimed at producing conformity. It is both process and event, influencing one’s inner and outer worlds and has the potential to affect the biological, psychological, social and spiritual domains of the individual.”

With every year that passes since I began extricating my life and faith from the organization, I understand the experience with a little more clarity. But what colors most my evolving understanding is not an increased demonization of my former superiors, but rather a good, long look at how easy it was to become like them—to adopt a spiritual hierarchy, to mimic the enforcement of the rules onto those considered “under” me, to shame challenge and truth as “divisive.” Was I spiritually abused? Maybe you have an answer. Did I experience and further a culture of spiritual abuse? I’m willing to say yes.

Abused power is tricky when it comes wrapped in love and brilliance. We want so badly as people to be connected, to find the answer to all of our problems, to employ the systems that can fix everything when it feels like the world is burning. Because of this, especially if we’re vulnerable, it is easy (exciting even) to hitch our wagon to a wave of hope without the aid of critical thinking, no matter the cost.

But utopia and hell are just one refusing-to-be-challenged leader away from one another. It’s crucial to recognize this along with our susceptibilities as humans to jump headfirst into a persuasive person’s promise—especially those who fuel their influence and decisions with God, creating a manipulative atmosphere for those who wish to please God. And why is this important right now?

As a country, as a Church universal, we are in transition or want to be, aching for guidance and support. We are starved for a light to illuminate a different kind of path, a different kind of faith, and how it functions in the real world. We are vulnerable, but we cannot be desperate to the point of turning a neglectful eye to injustice wrapped in the language of faith. The result of this level of unchecked desperation can and has invoked the creation and perpetuation of silencing cultures, absolved maltreatment for the sake of “the cause,” and spawned trauma that is both deeply embedded and often unrecognizable to those stuck. We see this in the unwavering loyalty to political affiliations and the church’s countless sexual misconduct stories of #churchtoo.

But if the abuse of power is historically difficult to identify (and it often is, at least at first), how do we know what to look for? We need leaders who are willing to tell the truth, who—as Ward outlines—respect individual autonomy, tolerate and encourage critical thinking, recognize and are sensitive to power issues, accept the individual due to intrinsic human worth, seek to incorporate healthy bio/psycho/spiritual integration, and recognize and acknowledge their own personal flaws and limitations. And we need community members who are willing to invest in them rather than in the narcissistic megalomania of those who willingly trade integrity and humility for vision and power.

We need people who love the world more than they love themselves. Furthermore, we need people who love the world enough to not just better it but also release control over it. For to love your neighbor as yourself is to lay down your life, not enforce the duplication of it onto another.