If you were a conservative Christian girl in the 90s, you probably know the phrase ‘screaming silver-blue eyes’. The Christy Miller Series was almost mandatory reading for our little sub-culture generation. And we tried to emulate this role model of holy femininity. So when Christy journaled, we journaled, and when Christy wrote letters to…
Posts Tagged
church
My Story: Gays, AIDS, and the Church, Part 1
The public junior high was nothing but a hotbed of sin. Or so my fundamentalist parent thought. So instead of moving on with my friends, in 6th grade I was inserted into a small church school, where everyone had grown up together. Being the outsider made for a rough year, so in 7th grade…
A Resurrected Faith
Emotional Pacifism – Laying Down My Weapons
“My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting…” I read this verse in John during Holy Week and realized I fight for Jesus. I need to lay down my weapons. I need to stop fighting for him. Need to stop fighting for what people…
Did I Think About Staying?
give me the heart of an archeologist, that I may dig until I prove that I exist. a subterranean cathedral in my midst, where echoes come to rest. where echoes come to rest. is this where echoes come to rest? -Sleeping At Last A year ago I said leaving Evangelicalism probably wasn’t the answer…
A Tender Thaw
I’m guest posting for my friend Kelly today on coming alive and how painful it can be. Here’s a little snippet (and also why I bawled through Frozen). Be honest. Be vulnerable. It’s home group, small group, community group, so it’s safe here. This is how you build strong friendships. Real community, the…
How IHOP Made Me Hate God
It’s all so tangled. It’s the bordering on financial ruin, the taking ‘handouts’ from the state, but being ignored by the church. It’s a marriage flirting with collapse and being told not to discuss it. It’s so hard to sort out what is human incompetence, personality differences, normal conflicts in relationships, and spiritual abuse, damaging…
When Civil Disobedience is really Christian Obedience
“Our hope for creative living lies in our ability to reestablish the spiritual ends of our lives in personal character and social justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. I’ve been thinking about the question Diana posed last week – why is there so much talk about obedience? I was always taught an obedience that…
Welcoming the Gentiles
The mountain of the Lord and the house of God shall be visible…All the Gentiles shall come to it…..He will proclaim His way to us, and we shall walk in it….They shall beat their swords into plows and their spears into pruning hooks….neither shall they learn war anymore….come and let us walk in the light…
Choosing Ritual and Religion to Find Relationship
Why an Episcopal Church, some people have asked me, and the simple answer is ‘because of Madeleine L’Engle’. But the actual answer involves Lauren Winner, Phyllis Tickle, Sara Miles, and Barbara Brown Taylor, a messy year, random Twitter conversations, and a blog post by a Pentecostal preacher. How can I describe what reading books and seeing a…