by Serenity Dillaway
When we first built our garden, it was small. A few raised beds, a hobby to connect my husband to his rural roots, a place to grow some flowers and maybe a little lettuce. One anonymous zoning complaint from an irritated neighbor, an unwitting permitting violation, and some spiteful gardening later, we had 15 beds and now we grow everything from brussels sprouts to zinnias.
It’s so much work. Sometimes I try to count up the many hours we spend planting, weeding, harvesting, and fertilizing. Not to mention our futile efforts to make it suburban-friendly. New cedar mulch every two years, Pinterest-worthy painted stepping stones, even a few trellises for the more adventurous flowers. I’m not sure if it’s worth it some days. Like when I’m kneeling in the rain, putting in hoses that will be needed in a month or so, but need to be set up now. Or when I can hear the kids fighting in the house while I’m trying to spread straw in the hot sun to prevent water loss. Or when everything smells like compost from my husband’s latest foray into natural recycling. I doubt my commitment.
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by Courtney Bither
My heart is pounding as I stare at my computer, hands hovered over the keyboard. I am nervous. Writing, like Twitter and the buzz my phone makes when I get an email, triggers me.
It has been more than two years since I felt compelled to write anything. After my last post on Quaker process, I gave it up. I was done with sacrificing myself for people who couldn’t listen to me or see me. I took a step back to heal.
Now 25, I look back on the year I came out—21-years-old and knowing no other ‘out’ folks in my community—and I finally feel compassion for myself. I didn’t say things nicely back then. I didn’t ask for respect; I begged for it. I screamed, and I wept, and I held my friends sobbing on the sidewalk, and then we got up and yelled some more. I lost relationships. I burned bridges.
I wish things would have gone down differently. I believe there was no other way for things to have gone down.
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by Enrique Cintrón
“How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh sing for joy
to the living God.”
Psalm 84:1-2
In this strange and scary time of quarantine, a lot of us Christians are struggling with being isolated not just from our family and friends, but from our church communities. While many churches have quickly adapted to live-streaming services on Facebook and YouTube, you may feel, as I do, that it just doesn’t feel the same as being physically present in church. So then, maybe this is a good time to set aside a spot for prayer at home if you’ve never done it before.
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by Hye Sung
I am not white enough to be a Quaker.
But I cannot deny how Quakerism has informed my theology and my spirituality.
I was attracted to Quakerism because of the radical legacy of the first generation of Friends. As far as I can tell, being a Quaker used to mean something. Quakers were a threat to the state. They were jailed and tortured. In the first thirty-five years of Quaker history, one in three Friends experienced some form of state-sanctioned persecution. Entire meetings were imprisoned. But new meetings kept appearing. And growing.
State repression couldn't force these Friends to abandon their faith. They knew God experimentally, and they couldn't help but live into their vision for an ocean of light and love.
They were holy fools.
They indulged in Spirit-led performance art such as “going naked as a sign” or wearing sackcloth and ashes while proclaiming judgment on the rich and powerful. They sometimes marched into church services mid-homily and argued with the priests, declaring the churches apostate "steeplehouses." Friends wouldn't keep quiet about what they saw – the hypocritical destruction of empire and the complicity of religion. They believed their words were given them by the Spirit. They couldn't keep quiet.
Sometimes, people listened.
When I first read about Friends, their fire felt familiar. Through their stories, I stumbled into a wider and deeper theological imagination that matched the God I'd already fallen in love with – the God who loves me. Apocalyptic. Pentecostal. Apostolic. Insurrectionary.
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by H.L. Holder
Today my wife, Amy, read Scripture before a congregation for the first time right before our dear friend, Heather preached a pretty kickass sermon from Luke on the Lord’s Prayer and how it’s more tangible than spiritual. How we should be truly forgiving people’s debts and feeding those who are hungry and taking care of those in our community. All of this preceded my serving communion for the second time of my life alongside Kevin and being afraid I was going to flub the words and accidentally say, “The body of Christ shed for you” instead of “The blood of Christ shed for you.” And then, in the midst of that worry, Heather stood in line in front of me to receive communion.
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by Josh Talbot
This last holiday season reminded me of something that happened to my little sister.
After I had moved out on my own, but my little sister was still a child. Something happened with my Aunt's family. My Aunt, her husband, and all 5 kids moved in with my parents. Suddenly, instead of 3 people living in a decently sized house (Mom, Stepfather, and one kid), it was 10 people under one roof that was way too small.
My cousins were loud and always yelling at each other. Picking on each other just short of bullying. They were used to just grabbing anything that the other sibling had that they wanted. Basically, a normal, slightly dysfunctional, large family.
For my little sister it was incredibly traumatizing. She was Home-schooled. Used to a quiet environment where the adults read, watched TV, and spent their days on the computer (my parents were early adopters). She hated every minute of it. Just wanted my cousins to stop taking her stuff and leave her alone. Resented every insult (they thought she was over sensitive when they picked on her). Basically, it became her version of a living Hell (mine is going through a retail store closing).
After my Aunt's family moved out. My sister refused to have anything to do with my cousins for a long time. Actually, it was only recently that she started talking to them...
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by Chelsea N. Anderson
I've loved Jesus since I was a little girl. My mother raised me by herself for many years and taught me by example what it means to trust God for provision. Church was one of my favorite places to be. I loved singing worship songs. I was a "star student" at Sunday School and VBS, and had what's often called "childlike faith". I was told that God loved me and nothing would ever change that. For my self conscious, socially awkward self who often felt rejected by peers, this brought a sense of security.
I felt atypical throughout childhood and adolescence. The "girly girl" mold never never really fit. I never could name or pinpoint why I felt different, though. There was always the general expectation that girls should hang out with girls, and guys with guys. My experience was the total opposite. I didn't have much interest in doing "girl things" and felt more comfortable hanging out with the guys.
Looking back, I see that I started "noticing" girls AND guys in 8th grade. I'd develop crushes on guys and try awkwardly flirting with them. But I'd also catch myself admiring the beauty and personalities of female classmates in ways that I now know were crushes.
I knew that attractions to guys were normal, as I'd been given the purity/abstinence/hormones talk by my youth pastors. I proudly wore my purity ring and committed to saving sex for marriage. I wasn’t alarmed by my attractions to girls, as they seemed to just arise naturally. I think all the internalized teachings against homosexuality prevented me from recognizing them as crushes.
However, I was eventually confronted with my sexuality during freshman year of high school.
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by Jarell Wilson
I am a pastor.
It’s a label I try and run from. When asked in bars or on planes what I did, I would respond, “I’m a community organizer” or something like that anything to avoid a label that carries so much gravitas and so much baggage. But looking at my life and reflecting on what I believe I’m called to do, only “pastor” adequately reflects who I am. Even in my law school applications, all I could do was preach to the admissions committees.
On December 23rd, 2018 I was checked into a hospital for people struggling with mental health issues. I didn’t go voluntarily at all, I went to the emergency room escorted by my pastor and a concerned lay person. I thought I would be a quick stop, the doctors and nurses would realize I’m fine, keep me for a few hours and then let me leave, but instead they transferred me from the emergency room to another hospital where I stayed for six days.
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by Matthew Staples
In competitive fighting games, the words respect and disrespect have odd connotations.
To play respectfully is to play conservatively – you respect your opponent’s ability, and thus are focused above all on avoiding their traps and gambits.
Respect in fighting games is passive and reactive. When taken too far, it results in a playstyle based entirely out of a fear of adversity and failure, fear that your own commitments will be your downfall.
Disrespect, though, is pure confidence. You don’t respect the idea that your opponent has the ability to counter you. It is a complete trust in your decision-making, trust that your plans – whether meticulously crafted or entirely instinctual – will win out no matter what your opponent throws at you.
When a player is playing disrespectfully, they’re either going to crash and burn spectacularly or put on one of the best shows that fans have ever seen.
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by Joey Rodil
In “Advent and Queer Bodies,” Joey Rodil waits with his queer siblings, in the face of homophobia and transphobia, for the coming of Jesus whose table is for all.
But we’re still waiting…
This past summer, I remember walking in my neighborhood in Chicago to meet a couple of friends. As I approached a group of men waiting outside a restaurant, one of them yelled, “Look at that f@& in short shorts. F@&!” Walking by myself, my body seized with fear and I learned quickly that I am more of a “flight” person when I feel my life is in danger. I crossed the street and ran down the sidewalk as I passed them. For a second, I feared they might attack me physically, but fortunately they only resorted to verbal harassment.
As a cisgender gay man, I am used to these occurrences, but I know that others have fared far worse. As of November 2018, the Human Rights Campaign reported 29 transgender deaths this year*. My transgender siblings were violently killed. Their queer bodies and lives taken away from our community because… well … we’re still waiting.
We’re still waiting for our bodies to be viewed equally as human.
We’re waiting for our bodies to not be seen as a threat to the church.
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by Angelica Brown
When I turned 18, I decided to be a missionary.
Well, I guess it wasn’t so simple. I grew up in a missional church, and one of my favorite aunts was a missionary. And when I looked into her eyes, and when I saw her come home from long trips out of the country in her Birkenstocks and her battered up guitar case, and she brought me a small ceramic dish from Turkey, I felt her commitment to God, no matter what.
I wanted her commitment to the lord, but it was all mixed up with my colonial gaze.
So when I graduated high school, I decided to go YWAM, an acronym that stands for Youth With a Mission. They had a program where for three months, you pray and study with other young people hoping to go into missions under the tutelage of more seasoned missionaries, and three months you went on an “outreach,” where you do charity work and preach to people in another country.
And what a complicated experience that was.
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by Elliot Coulter
For most of my life I’ve been afraid.
In the middle of the night, I would hear things. I’d wake up screaming and thrashing. Every night, I’d wake my parents with my screams and then try to fall asleep again on my mother’s side of the bed, clinging to her hand. I had to hear over and over that the dream wasn’t real before I could calm down enough to sleep.
Once I finally started sleeping in my own room, the voices didn’t go away. But instead of monsters, I often thought I could hear my mother’s voice in the middle of the night, usually asking for something (her Bible, some food, nail clippers). No matter how many times she told me she had been fast asleep and to stop waking her up with these “jokes,” I continued to go into her room, convinced that, this time, the voice was real.
In the Old Testament, Samuel hears the false voice of somebody he trusted. After coming to Eli several times, he learns it was the voice of God, but the voices I heard were not the voice of God. They were evil. I was afraid. And later in my life, I continued to feel that God had left me alone, giving me no voice or guidance that I could trust.
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by Jonah Venegas
Something that you'll know about me if you've known me for a little while is my complicated relationship with the church. You could say that things have been on-and-off for the last several years since coming out, for all the obvious reasons. Calvinism. Complementarianism. Oh, and of course, the bigger kicker, non-affirming LGBTQ theology.
Just the other night, I was sitting in my car, talking to my sister in the driveway about how for about three or four weeks straight immediately prior to me beginning what would become my 3-year hiatus from church, the head pastor felt the URGENT NEED to sneak something into the sermon about how depraved or broken or lost queer people are, by virtue of existing. It didn't really matter that the sermon had been about Peter denying Jesus three times or the Great Commission or some other completely unrelated topic. Apparently, this particular pastor happened to be massively convicted that he had to speak against queer people. Cool. Not relevant. But I guess we'll go with it.
That was the last straw essentially. At that point, it didn't even feel like a pastor reiterating the church's established beliefs on sexuality. At that point, it just felt like a cruel reminder that at this particular church, queer people were certainly NOT welcome, unless of course they were willing to entertain notions of lifelong solitude or conversion therapy.
And so, I left.
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by: H.L. Holder
(Content Note for talk of hell, spiritual abuse, etc.)
Growing up, fear and love were inseparable concepts. Because my parents “loved me,” they would punish me and my siblings physically instilling fear anytime I remotely thought I might be doing something wrong.
Because God “loved me,” and didn’t want me to die and go to hell, God supposedly killed his son, Jesus, on a Roman cross because of my sins. Unsure what “sins” a 6 year old can commit exactly, other than maybe being a kid and not always listening well to my parents, but I do know I believed all of that. And “got saved” at that age–which is fundamentalist/evangelical speak for I confessed my sins to God and “accepted” that Jesus died to take the punishment for my sins.
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by Eric Muhr
A good game is like the gospel. In the imaginative world of play, people perform foolish acts for no good reason. It’s fantasy that teaches us something about reality: what it is to live without inhibitions, what it means to be real together.
Imagine a six-year-old girl teaching adults to wriggle around on their stomachs like snakes. Imagine two friends on a road trip, reading billboard messages backwards, pretending to speak in a foreign tongue. Imagine a group of students using dictionaries and a long cafeteria table to create a schoolhouse shuffleboard.
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by Brett Anthony
I wasn’t listening to my body. I was trying to ignore the anxiety building up in my chest as my stomach turned in knots. My palms were sweaty. My neck was tense. I took a deep breathe in. I held onto it for a few seconds. Then, I let it go slowly. I had forgotten what it felt like to breathe. I had forgotten what it felt like for my heart to beat, holding onto both excitement and fear. I had forgotten what it felt like to be alive.
About one year ago, I found myself feeling the most depressed that I have felt in a while. I had to force myself to get out of bed and I don’t mean that I had to push snooze on my alarm three times. Rather, I slept through my alarm and other important tasks that needed to get done. I ate because I knew I needed to, not because I felt hungry or wanted to. I felt that my mind was eroding. I was numb. I was breathing because I had to survive, not because I was living. I felt like a half functioning machine.
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by Jonah Venegas
The main gist of this whole "guarding your heart" facade is supposed to be this: if you don't get too close to someone in the early stages of a relationship, "giving too much away," is usually how it gets phrased, then you'll walk out the relationship with less pain if it happens to not pan out. That might be a nice idea to start out with, but it really starts to destabilize when you throw in the parallel Christian notion that casual dating is bad and that you're always supposed to date with the goal of marriage. (I could write another whole blog post on the flaws of that, but I digress). The problem with this setup is that those two ideas are completely antithetical. It's not possible to simultaneously "guard your heart," aka basically hold a person at arm's length in the initial stages of dating while also dating with this laser-focused goal of getting married eventually. I might only have one year of therapy school under my belt, but it's enough for me to tell you that's not how things work relationally whatsoever.
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by: Hye Sung
I’m going to be honest – I work hard. I work two jobs, one of which is physically demanding. Lifting and carrying heavy things up and down stairs. Hours all over the place, often past midnight – hours past midnight. It takes a toll on my body and on my mind.
I like routine. I like going to bed early, waking up early. I like knowing what’s coming and living in a rhythm. I like the mental space that order gives me to be thoughtful and creative, to be present. But for now, that can’t be a thing.
I’ve worked hard the past few weeks, putting in more hours than usual, trying to make up for the time that I took off work to organize and participate in the Friendly Fire retreat. I was excited for today, for my check to come. I logged into my bank account, and it was big. Not as big as I thought it’d be, but bigger than any check I’ve gotten in a while. So I paid my rent and some bills. I had $27 left.
I laughed.
And then I cried.
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by Caitlin J. Stout
“Who knows…some of you might even be struggling with your sexuality.”
My professor glanced around the room solemnly as he said this. He had just finished a story about his gay friend, who, after making the decision to live a “full-blown homosexual lifestyle,” eventually succumbed to drug addiction and died from a meth overdose. This, of course, being an example of the proverbial slippery slope– the one that starts with following Jen Hatmaker on Twitter and ends in Hell.
“Struggling.”
This is a narrative that so many LGBT folks grow up hearing from their pastors and parents. It’s the idea that anyone who does not currently identify as straight must be experiencing inner turmoil, anxiety, or agony over their own sexual thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Of course, there is a period of struggle for most Queer people. It is an oftentimes agonizing thing to realize that you are not what your friends and family expect you to be. It can be difficult to decipher what your mind and body are telling you when you grow up in a society that assumes everyone is heterosexual and cisgender. And it is terrifying to realize that you’ll have to come out of the closet and into a less-than-friendly world. Sometimes, being Queer is indeed a struggle.
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by Rachel Virginia Hester
Finding my voice as a queer Christian means being comfortable about being a queer Christian.
Being black feels vulnerable already. Being queer and Christian feels vulnerable and scary as well. Being a woman anywhere is scary. Being queer and black and a woman who wants to be a Christian… help me, Jesus. Being queer, black, Christian, woman and ME makes me want to pass out!
I know that many people in my community know that I am living in my identity as both Christian and queer and that I do not see this “bothness” as a contradiction. I’ve never really struggled so much with believing that it was good to be both, which is different from a lot of people’s stories. There was a time in which I didn’t believe being a queer Christian applied to me, because well… I didn’t know bi+ people even existed until I was 19 going on 20. It was then I met for the first time in my life an “out” bisexual person. That is a story for another time.
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