Category: Faith

Diabetes, Motherhood, and a New Decade

Posted in Beauty, Faith, Hope3 Comments

Written by Amelia Buschena

So first I need to say, I don’t usually put my writing out there for the world to see. Aside from the people who read my newsletter article at the church I serve, writing is a personal thing. I do this for a few reasons. It’s vulnerable to share your experiences and opinions. It’s risky to put something out into the world that can be misunderstood and not discussed as well in person. And frankly, there are a lot of times I see people engage in written dialogue with comments and thoughts that aren’t very kind or life-giving. What we say matters. How we say it matters, too. I’m comfortable with verbally expressing myself in a compassionate and thoughtful way, but I leave writing to others. I thought I’d give it a try, though. I’m trying to do 30 new things before I turn 30 this year and I’ve never written a blog post. This piece is my 30th thing on my list. Thanks Tim for helping me achieve my goals! These are just some musings, mostly for myself, but something I thought I should share for once. So here we go…
Body and spirituality are so complex. How do you love your body when you have a chronic or temporary illness making you feel as though your body is broken or against you? I’ve been asking that for four years now.
Or, what do you do if you look in the mirror and cannot look at yourself with love and compassion, only judgment and dislike? What if you’ve lived in a body that doesn’t feel like it belongs to you the way it’s put together and you know you’re meant to be someone else?
Body and spirituality are so complex. Complex because they are connected, not separate.
How do we love our bodies? Why should we? What does that have to do with our spiritual health and our holistic health? I think everything!

Which is both frustrating and beautiful; like most of life a yes/and, a dualistic reality of pain and joy woven intricately together deeply touching our cores.
It can be easy for me to reflect on the past four years since my diagnosis as a type 1 diabetic (the end to my 20’s) and think of how my body has carried me in spite of and along with my diabetes through new career starts, moves, continued growth and living, and oh yeah, the big one, bringing life into the world. I mean MY BODY made, grew, and delivered a human into this crazy and beautiful world. A thrilling and risky adventure not to be taken lightly. It should (bleh, who likes the word should?!) be easy to see how my body is still strong, capable, and alive. But the truth is, it’s often easier to think of how it doesn’t work. How in the past four years I’ve said no to some opportunities for the good of my health, or how I often wake up countless times each night to make sure my blood sugar isn’t dangerously high or low. It’s how for four years now every time I go to sleep at night I think for a moment about how I might not wake up tomorrow if my blood sugar drops too low and I don’t realize it. How I can’t leave the house without a bag of medical equipment and back-up plans and electronic devices attached to my body that keep me alive. Or how I had to let my newborn cry for a few extra minutes at times when I was home alone with her because to pick her up during a low blood sugar would have been putting her in danger. I could keep going with this list, but I don’t like to dwell on it.
The reality is that it’s easy for me to sit and think of the ways it feels like my own body no longer likes me or works with me each and every day. It’s easy to sit and worry about what could happen if my disease ever really gets out of control, or how exhausting it is to constantly need to have control over it every second of every day. To say I feel betrayed by myself is an understatement. And I’m lucky, I haven’t lived with this since I was 2, 3, or 14. I have an incredible support system and doctors that I can access and afford. I’m grateful for those scar-inducing medical devices placed all over my body, ticking and continuously pumping insulin into my body. But even still, some days it feels like I’m losing to my own body, like we’re at odds rather than partners in crime through this adventure called life.
And here is where my spirituality begins to be affected. Because I am, like you reading this, a whole person created by God, not only body, not only spirit, not only mind, but all. When one part of a machine isn’t working it slowly starts to consume the function of the others. So how do I reclaim a partnership with my body? One that is real, connected and deeply rooted to the way my body is now, and how my mind and spirituality have changed because of it. Also one that seeks to grow and change and be restored in unexpected ways. These questions make me feel emotional, they make me want to cry and yell all at the same time, because I know I need to ask them, but the work is painful. I was reading some works by Julian of Norwich and reflections on her works from a prayer book I have. They’re the kind of words that when I read them hit me like a knife to the chest, both profoundly maddening and intensely healing. The kind of words I instantly knew I needed to hear but sort of didn’t want to. You know the kind, right?
First, here’s what mystic Julian said, “And when our soul is breathed into our body, at which time we are made sensual, at once mercy and grace begin to work, having care of us and protecting us with pity and love, in which operation the Holy Spirit forms in our faith the hope that we shall return up above to our substance, into the power of Christ, increased and fulfilled through the Holy Spirit. So I understood that our sensuality is founded in nature, in mercy and in grace, and this foundation enables us to receive gifts which lead us to endless life. For I saw very surely that our substance is in God, and I also saw that God is in our sensuality, for in the same instant and place in which our soul is made sensual, in that same instant and place exists the city of God, ordained for him from without beginning. He comes into this city and will never depart form it, for God is never out of the soul, in which he will dwell blessedly without end.” (Showings, pp.286-287)

Maybe go ahead and read that again before you keep reading any of my words, and feel free to change Julian’s language for God to She or They if you prefer. Ok, did you do it? Great! Now, there is so much there but what I love most is her use of the word “sensual,” that our bodies being enabled and life-breathed with senses, sight, touch, taste, sound, smell are intertwined with our breathed-spirits in a way that brings us life here and now as well as in what is to come. To Julian our bodies are not just something that is in the way of our spirit, not something broken or needing to be done away with, they are imperative to our whole selves as a created and loved being. It is through our body and our “sensuality” that we experience, become gifted, and grow in our Christ-likeness. Pow! Did you feel that punch to the gut? I did because I LOVE this, but my reality is still that my body doesn’t always feel like it fits into this beautiful description. And I’m sure many of you agree with me on that. None the less, it is a powerful and poetic reminder of the truth of our complexly connected body and spirit; I’m going to throw mind in there again, too.

Alright, we’re getting somewhere, but stick with me through one more reading. A section of the reflection in the prayer book then reads like this following Julian’s words:
“Spirituality requires that we care for our body as well as our spirit. What does that imply? At least that we do nothing that is obviously harmful to our body and that we do all we can to cherish this temple of the Holy Spirit. Adequate rest, a nourishing diet, a routine exercise, and management of stress are essential to a healthy body and spirit.
Much medieval evidence shows a link between health of body and that of spirit. Many great Mystics in the Christian tradition as well as in Eastern religions have recognized the link between body and spirit. Fasting, yoga, dance, gesturing, and prayer postures reflect the deep weavings of body and spirit in our journey toward the Center whom we call God.

The object of caring for our body and our spirit is to become strengthened, energized, and empowered to care for others – our neighbors here and throughout the world. But loving the body and sound of other people means that we first love our own body and soul. We are a work of God’s art. Indeed, we are created in God’s own image (Genesis 1:26)”

This reading gives warmth and light to my heart but also leads me to feeling intensely challenged and asking, “Is this for me? Even me and my broken body?” But I’m also feeling encouraged and enlivened and I love how this acknowledges those of other religions and our shared drive to unite our bodies and our spirits while finding God. This reminds me to love myself as I am, not if and when I’m healed, a very unlikely proposition. It reminds me to take something I’ve been separating, all while hoping the machine would just keep barley plugging along, and reunite so as to whole.
In about a month I’m turning 30. In my 30 years on this earth I have had amazing experiences, deep and bright friendships, lots of years studying things I’m passionate about, 5.5 years of marriage, 1.6 years of being a mother, 2.5 years as a pastor to a phenomenal congregation, and 4 years as a Type 1 diabetic (yes, happy birthday to me when I was diagnosed 4 years ago just weeks after my birthday). And I’m proud of my body for all of the things it’s done before and after T1D. I didn’t expect to reflect so deeply on what it means to be turning 30 and entering a new decade, or that I would need to reclaim my love and confidence in my body as I entered this new era. Or that in order to reclaim my spirituality I would need to start with my body. But here I am; desperately hoping, tirelessly working, and deeply certain I need my 30s to be about loving and living in my body not despite of my T1D but with it. I will reclaim my spirituality and mind by reclaiming my relationship with my body because life is too short and important to waste my 30s being angry at my body, being sorrowful over its circumstances; although I’m sure that will still happen from time to time. And when that’s where you are with your body for whatever reason, we can totally throw a little pity party over a cup of tea before we get up off the ground and begin again.

So here are some things I’m hoping to do:

  • Spend some time connecting with my body by being fully aware of my senses. Whether through meditation or simply pausing to notice things during the day, I want to cultivate awareness of my senses and how amazing my body truly is.
  • Begin affirming my body and self – in front of a mirror! For example, I have medical scars and stretch marks from childbearing but they are beautiful and strong. I am loveable and I can love others (I stole those last words from the same prayer book and love them!). Or, I have beautiful eyes that see the world around me. I am loveable and I can love others. You get the idea.
  • Eat, move, live, laugh, and love like my body and spirit are involved in every second of everything. This is kind of broad and can look like a lot of things, but I’m hoping it leads me to a more holistic approach to self-care not just focused disease-control.
  • Let other people’s words and acts of love and affirmation in and use them as fuel for my whole being.
  • Let myself have a moment or a day when I need it to feel my feelings about my body and then love on it anyways, and keep living in it.

If I can begin living into these in my upcoming decade I think it’s going to be a pretty good one. I know I’ve rambled and I’ve only touched on the surface of this topic, limiting it often to my story and experience, but there is so much at stake about seeing our bodies and spirits as one and loving them both. So I just want to say if you’re struggling with your body image, an illness, an injury, feeling trapped in a body you don’t feel expresses who you are, or anything else I’ve left out, if these things are affecting your whole self, your mind and spirit too, know this: You are loved exactly as you are, and you are not alone. Also know that there are places we can reach out to for help. Call a trusted pastor or friend, and if they alone don’t have the tools needed to walk with you reach out to a professional counselor. Pastors and friends are great but there are psychologists, personal trainers, yoga instructors, health coaches and more out there who are trained to help us live our best lives; mind, body, and spirit.

Remind me to reach out when I need it, too. So from this almost 30-year-old to all of you, may our bodies, minds, and spirits be blessed, may they be entwined together, may the joy and sorrow be like a beautiful melody. As for me and my new decade all I can say, courtesy of Doctor Who and meaning French for ‘let’s go’, is…Allons-y!!

Death on a Friday

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Today is known by most Christians as Good Friday. I’m still not sure what’s so good about it. We commemorate Jesus’ death on this day. At this point, we’ve spent the last forty days journeying to the cross. This is the moment towards which we’ve been walking. All this talk about suffering and pain and death leads to this one moment: the death of our God. It seems like the culmination of the last forty days ends in this. It ends with the death of all the Good things we thought were going to come our way. It ends with the death of the One who can bring all Good things into existence, breathe them in our direction, grow new things in the universe. God dying is the most infinite form of death I can imagine. And the most terrifying.

I have put my trust into a God that can be killed by human hands. This God can be tortured and humiliated by people just like me. The love and persistence of a God who bears the symbol of a political death is the God I have chosen to follow. This can seem like a mistake at times, like I have made a mistake by following One so foolish. And yet it will seem foolish in two more days when we celebrate a God who rises from the dead. And we celebrate this on April Fool’s this year. I can think of no better way than to experience my faith. Lead me into the time of Lent with Valentine’s day. How romantic. How dreadfully poetic. And then lead me out of Lent and death with a fool’s day. This might be the best church calendar year ever.

Since today is Good Friday (or rather Bad Friday or Sad Friday), I’ve been thinking about death this week. It’s been particularly easy with all the rain and cloudy days we’ve been having. Go figure that the sun is out today. The weather is not making it easy to participate in the somber nature of today. I’m holding death and life in tension today, trying to make sense of both of them, how they fit together, side by side. But I’m also thinking specifically of death. I’m thinking about Trayvon Martin today. I’m thinking about Sandra Bland. I’m thinking about the seven transgender people killed this year already, about Syrian orphans being denied refugee status, about the death and injustice in the world. And this is where God stands next to us shouting “How long? How long will injustice prevail? How long before we stop killing black and brown bodies? How long will queer people still be rejected and trampled upon? When will refugees be welcomed with open arms? When will the violence and hatred end? When will we see the humanity in each and every individual?”

Today is the day that God says, “Me too.”

And that is something in which I can rest.

This is something I can trust.

This is a God I can follow.

A God who says, “Me too” is a God worth my time, worth my effort, worth my attention. This God is One whom I can wrestle with, stand side by side with, and raise my fist against injustice with.

And for this reason, I will mourn God’s death today. I will mourn it tomorrow. And I will sit in the death and sorrow of these two days, waiting for Easter to come. I will wait for God to wake from the grave and say, “Me too, honey. Me too.” And I will be relieved.

Learning Communal Lament

Posted in Faith, Grief, Native Peoples, RacismLeave a comment

For Lent, our church is going through the book of Lamentations, which consists of five poems all centered around the occupation and exile of Judah by the Babylonians. The temple, which for the people of Judah, is where God resided was destroyed, leaving the people lamenting the destruction of the house of God. Where does God go when there is no home for God? Does God leave a people when there is no dwelling place? Did God leave them before and the Babylonians were their punishment? These are some questions with which Lamentations is beginning to grapple.

Lamentations is a book about grief. It’s a poetic representation of our communal grief. How do we grieve things together? It’s a book that allows us to be angry with God, to blame God, even if God is not at fault. There is room in our grief for anger. There is also room in our faith for this kind of grief and anger. The book is about a group of people who have been destroyed and occupied. It is a book about a group of survivors dealing with trauma.

Our pastor has been bringing out the individual nature of grief. What are we grieving this Lent? What do we need to do in order to properly grieve? This is important. It is important to learn how to grieve and to do it well. It is also important for us to learn how to handle other people grieving, how to give them space to be angry, to cry, to blame God, to question God, regardless of where blame ought to lie. These are all good things for us to learn.

My mind, however, immediately went to thoughts about communal grief, particularly as a white male. I am someone who benefits both from my whiteness and my maleness. How can I, as a white person, identify myself in the story of Lamentations? I do not grieve the destruction of white people. My white ancestors are the ones who destroyed entire nations of Native Americans and have occupied their lands for hundreds of years. My white ancestors are the ones who enslaved Africans and brought them to the Americas. I do not identify with those lamenting in this Scripture. I identify with the descendants of those who did the destroying, occupying, and enslaving.

Therefore, I am left wondering how to grieve the sins of those who came before me. How do I grieve white supremacy? How do I sit with the grief that I benefit in numerous ways because of my whiteness that black and brown skinned people do not? I’m left feeling angry at the injustice. I’m left feeling frustrated with my own complicity in the ransacking of the Temple, in the systematic oppression of black people in the U.S. In the past I have felt defensive and thought things such as: I didn’t enslave anyone. I didn’t kill anyone, incarcerate somebody, or enact racist laws. But, I must contend with the fact that I benefit from white people who did. I am in a place of privilege because white people before me did those things.

While I feel disconnected from white people as a racial identity, I must also acknowledge that I am intricately linked to all the white people who came before me. In lieu of the Old Testament, I must learn what it means to ask for communal forgiveness for what my white European ancestors did to Native Americans and African Americans. I must learn how to claim those as my people and to repent for their sins. I must learn that I don’t get to pick and choose the community I came from, that I don’t get to pretend their sins don’t benefit me now.

While Lamentations doesn’t feel like a book written for me to give lament to my own individual grief, it is a book that is giving me new eyes to see those who are grieving. It is giving me lenses to see those who are lamenting, those who are crying out for justice and for equality and to be seen and heard in a country where their voices have been stifled. Lamentations is giving me the chance to sit down and be quiet while I listen. I pray that this book continue to shape me, to give me eyes to see oppression in new ways. I pray that either this book or another book in Scripture help me find the communal language to ask forgiveness, to repent, and to seek wholeness with those whom my ancestors have destroyed.

Beautiful Dust

Posted in Beauty, Faith, Love2 Comments

This past Sunday we sang Michael Gungor’s song Beautiful Things, and it has been one of my favorite songs we sing during our church service.

The song felt particularly timely for me this past weekend. I’m participating in our church’s Ash Wednesday service this year so Lent has been on my mind more than normal. I didn’t grow up in a church that practiced Lent so when I discovered the church calendar in college, I fell in love with the seasons of the church. For how somber this coming season is supposed to be, I LOVE Ash Wednesday.

There is something about being reminded of our mortality that makes me hunger for life, for goodness, for beautiful things. Ashes on my forehead remind me of the ash I came from and the ash I will return to. Beginning and ending as dust makes me feel small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. And yet, this reminder of smallness stirs life and gratitude and creativity in me. And this song, Beautiful Things, moves me in the same way.

The chorus repeats “You make beautiful things. You make beautiful things out of the dust. You make beautiful things. You make beautiful things out of us.” I found myself singing this in my head this week. Not only does the melody stick with me, but the words are a mantra I wish we could all carry around with us. Put them in our pockets like candies we’re saving for later. Wear them in our hair like flowers for everyone to see. Write them on our shoes so when we look down we are reminded. We are reminded that God has made a beautiful thing in us, in me, in you.

Out of dust our lives have come and to dust our lives will return. But the whole inbetween is a beautiful thing. Our lives might not always contain joy, but there is beauty in us nonetheless. We won’t always be able to see it, but hopefully someone in our lives will see it for us. They’ll call it out, name it, will it to come forth, and maybe one day we will be able to see that we, too, are beautiful.

And when we begin to see the beauty in ourselves, we can look outside and see the beauty all around us. It’s springing forth from the ground in greens and whites and reds every spring. It’s growing up in the children in our lives. It’s playing basketball down the street with the neighbors that look different from us. It’s marching through the streets in solidarity with those more vulnerable than us. 

Beauty is finding that even though we are small and insignificant, we also have the power to shape and change the world around us for better. Beauty is knowing that our future rests in the hands of the tiny children our communities are raising, hopefully with more love and more kindness and more perseverance to see justice come to fruition than we could ever imagine.

Beauty comes to us in the laugh of a friend, the touch of a lover, the peace between enemies. Beauty finds its way under our doors and in through our key holes. It reaches us in our happiest places and it consoles us in our loneliest hours. Beauty is ever present, waiting only for us to uncover it and proclaim it to the world. If you’ll be receiving ashes on your head this coming week, remember that the God who created us from dust has made a beautiful thing in us. And if you won’t be, let this be a reminder to you that you are a beautiful thing. Let this be a reminder to us all that no matter how small or insignificant we feel, we are always beautiful.

Holding Hands

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A couple weeks before Christmas my husband Reed and I parked our car across town and took a stroll. It was one of those nice days right before Christmas and before the below freezing temperatures that forced everyone into hibernation. We were revelling in the warmth as we walked about looking at houses, dreaming about the day we’ll own one ourselves. It was in the midst of this nice day, this nice walk, this nice dreaming with my hubby, that a car drove by, about a half a block away and shouted out the window “Fags!” And drove away. It happened so quickly and they were so far away that it took a couple seconds for me to even process what happened.

We weren’t holding hands. We weren’t walking so that we were touching. How did they know? Should we walk further apart from each other so they don’t come back and harass us? Or worse? Why did it feel so threatening when they were so far away? These were the things that immediately ran through my head. I felt immediately conscious of my body language, of how I was in relation to my husband walking along the side of the road. One single word shouted from halfway down the street made me angry and afraid all in a millisecond.

About a block or two later, Reed grabbed my hand and we held hands for a while. It felt daunting and hard. It felt courageous. Holding hands with my spouse felt courageous. Doesn’t that sound silly? But that’s what hate can do to us. It can force us back into ourselves, into the closets we hide ourselves, into the corners of our minds. It can make us rethink that which we thought was safe. A single word can cause a torrent of emotions and thoughts and wondering if this place really is as great as you thought it was. Hate induces fear. And when love and courage are not chosen responses, fear simply breeds more hate. It’s a vicious cycle.

It’s when we decide to hold hands in the face of fear that courage is born. It’s when we decide to hold hands in the face of hate that love wins. It’s when we decide to show up and march for women everywhere that love trumps hate. It’s when we decide to listen to our black and brown neighbors and their experiences in our towns and cities and country that empathy and courage win. It’s when we welcome the stranger, the immigrant into our land and our backyard that courage and peace win out. When we choose courage in the face of fear, the world cannot stop us. Courage and love are far stronger allies than fear and hate ever will be.

Honoring God

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For Christmas, my sweet husband gave me a box filled with a 30 day writing challenge. He knows me well and knows I love writing, but that I have done very little of it lately. So, for day 3, his note prompted me to look into my name and its various meanings, and then to write a story or description about one of those meanings. I found out some new things concerning my middle and last names, but still chose to write about the main meaning of my first name, Timothy, honoring God.  

If you would have asked me ten years ago what it meant to honor God, I would have made you a laundry list of the dos and don’ts of Christianity. I would have said that honoring God could be achieved through ticking off the dos and avoiding the don’ts. Even though I knew that grace comes in the apostrophes of the don’ts and right before you actually start making the list, I would have made it anyway. Even though I knew that grace had to be grander than a simple list because I was told it covered the sheer amount of sins I felt I had committed at the sweet young age of seventeen, I would have made a list anyway. Even though I knew that grace was not mine to give or withhold from myself, I still believed that it wasn’t enough. I believed that honoring God was the only way to receive grace.

But you see, I had it all wrong. And so does Anne Lamott (although I don’t make a habit of disagreeing with Anne Lamott). One of her famous lines is “Grace bats last.” I understand the sentiment that grace covers all. I have found, however, that grace comes first. Grace shows up to the baseball game before we even knew we were going to play. Grace fills the stadium. Grace pours the pitchers of beer and hands out bags of popcorn like it’s going out of style. Grace shows up with foam fingers and rally caps and is ready for the start of the game long before us.

Grace showed up long before we knew we needed Her, and She said, “I love you. I love you. I love you. You are loved. You are loved. You are loved.” Then we look at Her sideways out of the corner of our eyes and try to walk away without drawing too much attention to the weirdo with her ‘I love you’ foam fingers and her ‘You are loved’ rally caps. It’s when we’re in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, the winning run is on base, and you’ve already struck out twice this game that you look to the stadium to see Grace cheering Her heart out. Everything rests of your shoulders and Grace fully believes you can do it. You remember Her smile, her shining eyes, the way she believed you’d be the best all along and that nothing could ever keep Her from seeing that in you.

This is the way grace met me, in my deepest pain, when I thought all was lost. Grace met me and said, “I love you. I love you. I love you. You are loved. You are loved. You are loved.” And something miraculous happened, I started to believe that grace was real. I started to believe that I was worth a life, that this gay man was actually worth something. Grace gave me legs to stand on, gave me vocabulary to begin the journey of self-love. The only way that I know how to honor Grace, to honor God is to be the most fully myself. The most fully gay. The most fully Christian. The most ginger. The most freckle-y. The most outrageous. The most kind. The most loving. Grace anointed me a long time ago. She told me I was loved and worthy of love. And I believed Her. And She wants desperately to do the same for you.

When God is Like a Mother

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Yesterday I told my husband God couldn’t be a woman because She’d never let Donald Trump become President. As real as that feels right now, I do believe that God is both genderless and encompassing all genders. Confusing and paradoxical, I know. Welcome to religion. Recently, I read Wearing God by Lauren Winner, in which she writes about God as laboring woman. It is a metaphor used particularly in Isaiah to speak about God birthing newness in the same way that a woman births a child. It’s not pretty. It’s not neat. It’s bloody and sweaty and grunt-worthy. But, that’s how the writers of Scripture choose to depict God at times, particularly in Isaiah. She bears the weight of the world through the birthing of creation, of new and good things. She is our mother who carried us, the whole of creation, in her womb for nine months and squated and grunted and moaned for 6 whole days to birth all we know to be true. On the seventh day, She rested.

Winner has inspired me to find God where I have always seen Her, but where I haven’t named. Mostly, my mother. God is almost exclusively referred to in churches as Father. Jesus prayed “Our Father,” and patriarchal traditions down through the centuries have referred to God as Father. I was told growing up that we either understood God as Father because our fathers were good examples or they weren’t and so we could find a Heavenly Father who was a ‘replacement’ for our negligent or non-existing father on earth. On occasion, I would think, “But what about our mothers?” This is mostly because I have a mother who, in the words of Amy Poehler, is “killing it.” But, I never gave it much thought. I never pondered the ways in which God is like a mother, specifically like my mother. But now, with Winner’s help, I’m beginning to put words to the way my mother has influenced the way I think about God, the way she showed me who God is and the way God loves.

To begin with, my mother is an encourager. She has been encouraging me since I was five and she was giving me math problems to keep me quiet in church. She cheered me through grade school and middle school, although I know it pained her greatly to see me fail so miserably at track in middle school. I was only in it for the social gratification. And she didn’t do too well a job masking it, if you’d ask my melodramatic twelve-year old self. I think I eased her pain in high school when puberty finally hit and I became half decent at track. She cheered me through my tennis tournaments, through my baseball games, through all my extra curricular endeavors, and my academics. She has always been for me, for my education, for my growing in my faith, for me trying to be a better person.

If my mother’s encouraging spirit tells me anything about God, it tells me that God never gives up on us. I’ve learned that God will keep nudging us, pushing us to do what makes us and the world better, but God also never makes us do things we don’t want to do. My mother never made me play sports until I wanted to. She never made me join band or apply to certain colleges. She allowed me to make those choices pretty freely. She did make me eat my veggies and read before I went to bed (although the latter was actually me making her read with me before I went to bed). My mother is a lens through which I can see God’s desire to see Her children, Her creation succeed, to flourish, to be adventurous and bold. God is our biggest fan, the cheerleader who won’t stop shouting our name as we’re running around the track of life. God wants to see us be the best we can be. But, I also learned that God won’t hide God’s emotions from us. If God is disappointed or dismayed by our behavior, by our lack of love and grace and kindness, God will let us know. And for some of us, God’s disappointment will sting worse than any spanking ever could.

My mother’s encouragement, I think, really springs from her ability to ‘do.’ She is a doer. She is a get-it-done type of person, and while it grates on me half the time, I admire it all of the time. It mostly grates on me because I am convinced she is a superhuman because nobody has enough energy to do all the things she does, and I simply cannot live up to my mother’s ‘do-ness.’ With that being said, though, she bakes, she cooks, she walks and runs each morning, she plays pickleball multiple days a week, she encourages, she sews, she gardens, she spends time with family and friends. Retirement has made her younger because she now has too much free-time on her hands. Except she doesn’t have much free time because she’s out and about going on trips with friends, making photo albums for her grandchildren, plucking the weeds from her landscaping. I’m telling you, the woman is a superhero. And when you mix her encouragement with her ability to get things done, she is a force to be reckoned with. Ask my father, she’s always got a project on the docket for him to do. She combines these super powers and she uses them on anyone in her immediate family or in her friend sphere. If I say that I want to get a different job, she encourages me to do so, then checks in on my progress weekly. She asks how the job search is going, if I’ve contacted the places I’ve applied, and if I haven’t done anything, she asks what’s stopping me. Why haven’t I contacted anyone? Should she get off the phone with me right now so I can do it? This is the kind of superhero woman I am talking about people.

This is how I imagine God, flying around the world asking people what their dreams are, what their ambitions for the world are, and then checking back in on the daily. And, God is doing things all the while, helping people here, helping animals there, checking in on creation to make sure we humans haven’t destroyed it all yet. If my mother is giving me a glimpse into God’s character, it is that God sees something that needs done, and God does it. There isn’t a hesitation. God sets about fixing it or making it or cooking it up. And all the while, God is asking us questions to make sure we’ve set about doing that which we claimed we would do. God is following up, asking us if we’ve volunteered at the local soup kitchen yet. God is asking if we’ve gotten involved in helping LGBTQ youth yet. And then when we say we haven’t, God says “Stop talking to me and get to it!” God is like a mother in that She wants to spend time with Her children, but She also wants to see Her children succeed and to make the world a better place. She didn’t raise us to be selfish bumps on a log.

Not only does this superhuman mother of mine encourage and do, but she enjoys it. She loves doing what she does. When she tries a new recipe that tastes delicious, she shares it. She sends it to me or gives it to her friends. She makes it over and over so that everyone can experience its deliciousness. When my mother goes on a trip, she tells me all about it. She tells me her favorite parts and I can hear the wonder and awe and excitement coming off her in droves. My mother oozes good vibes. In the same way that she struggles to mask her disappointment, she cannot hide all the good things she does and experiences. She is the harbinger of goodness and wonder. She marvels at the goodness of life. It’s always amazing to me watching her grow older and continue to marvel at what life has in store for her and for me and for her family. She shares this marvel with us, this delight, this sheer excitement over good things.

And if there’s anything I’ve come to know about God over the years, it’s that God wants us to live life to the fullest, to marvel at God’s creation, to take joy in the good things of this world. My mother taught me that God takes delight when we take delight. Our creation myth tells us that when God created (or birthed) the world, She said, “It is good.” This good is like capital G Good, like feel it in the pit of your stomach Good, like all the most beautiful and precious and creative and deeply rich things combined kind of Good. And I have come to believe that God wants us to discover it, to experience it, to know that kind of Goodness. Because to enjoy and marvel at that kind of Goodness, is to enjoy God, to feel Love, to know the universe as we are meant to know it. And my mother, oh she has taught and is continuing to teach me how to enjoy that Goodness and how to pass it along so that others may enjoy it.

My mother, the superhero encourager and do-er and harbinger of Goodness. She has taught me so much about God. She has shown me how God loves us, how God chooses to interact with us. This is not prescriptive of all mothers, or maybe even most mothers. I know that all mothers are different, show love differently, and that too many people haven’t had a good relationship with their mother or haven’t even had a great mom. Maybe some of us have had an aunt or sister or cousin or grandmother who has shown us how God loves us. Maybe we’ve had some other woman in our lives show us a thing or two about God. It’s time we stopped pretended that only fathers and only men can lead us to God. It’s time we name the women too. How has your mother modeled God’s love for you? How about an aunt, a sister, a grandmother, a cousin, a friend? Tell me of a woman who is like a conduit for you to understanding who God is. I want to know! We need these stories.

In Favor of Hope

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More than ever, 2017 is turning into the year we need hope, a deep, soul-quenching, spacious hope. We, my fellow U.S. Americans, need a hope that can craft us into a new people. We need a hope that is bigger than us, that encompasses all of us and makes us see each other anew. So often, we divide people and issues into two different categories. We like our dichotomies: republican or democrat, conservative or liberal, good or bad. I understand it is easier for our brain if we make categories, if we strip people down into their different boxes. Evolutionarily, it makes sense for us to categorize things in our minds. It is what has helped humanity to survive. But not all categories are helpful. Some divide us, break us apart, and incite hatred and violence. They are not conducive to the flourishing into which God has invited us. In order to flourish, we must find a hope that helps us believe that people are more than their categories, more than the boxes our brains put them in to make sense of the world. We need to learn to see the world in a new way, learn to talk about the world in a new way. This way is a less divided way, a less us/them way, a less antagonistic way of interacting with the world.

Learning how to talk in a new way is hard. We learn from a young age to talk about liberals in a tone of disdain or to talk condescendingly about conservatives. Or we grow to do this, distancing ourselves from our childhood. Instead of condescension and disdain, we need curiosity. We need to hear each other out with curiosity in our questions, an openness to what the other person has to say. We all have so many pre-formed opinions and we’re just jumping at the bit to share them, of which I am definitely guilty. If we could all clear our minds when listening to another human and respond with words of “I hear you” and “I’m trying to understand what you’re saying” instead of “but” and “you’re crazy!” Sometimes changing our words and our posture towards people starts with inner work. It begins with changing our mindsets and our attitudes towards people before we engage with them. And other times it means we change our actions and words and hope that our beliefs and opinions follow suit.

We need a hope that brings conversation to hard issues on which we cannot seem to find common ground. We need a hope that allows us to see the common humanity we all share. Even moreso, we need a hope that allows us to celebrate our differences, not negate them or try to hide them. Hope is a deep belief and posture towards the world that says, “We can make things better, if only we can tell the truth first.” Telling the truth involves not just admitting our differences, but the truth in how we have played a part in the oppression of our fellow people. It means that as a white, cis, male, I have to admit that I stand in a place of privilege above people of color, trans people, and women. It means that if I’m not navigating the difficult waters of my own privilege, of when it’s okay for me to offer my two cents (which I’m continually realizing is less and less), I’m not being honest. If I’m not attempting to admit that privilege has a part in my success and in my attitude toward life, I’m not being honest. And if I can’t be honest, I cannot grow in hope. I cannot hope for better if I do not first recognize the ways in which the world (me included) isn’t the way it should be. It means that I see black people being incarcerated at a far higher rate than white people, and I also see that black people are not more violent than white people.  It means that I see queer people being bullied or legally denied the same rights straight people have. I see the laws of our nation favoring white people, favoring straight people, favoring men, favoring wealthy people. In this honesty, I find that I am dissatisfied with the way things are. This inspires hope inside me. I see things that are not as they should be, and hope grows.

And when our hope grows, we learn that we need to celebrate our differences. We cannot be “colorblind” anymore because we have seen that the world is not colorblind. How do we combat an issue? Certainly not by refusing to see it anymore. We confront it head on, admit the difference in skin color, admit the difference in culture, admit the difference in sexual orientation, admit the difference in gender, and then we throw the biggest party of our life! We celebrate our different ways of seeing the world, of interacting with each other, of participating in joy and sorrow and beauty. We work towards laws that benefit and lift up those who are oppressed so that we may all benefit. We do the hard work that hope entails. Hope is not a head-in-the-clouds positivity. Rather, it is a deep abiding sense that our world ought to be better and we believe the best in the world and we work, work, work to bring our hope into reality. We enlist help from others or rather, maybe more importantly, we join others who are already doing this hard work. We find people and organizations that are working to celebrate differences and bring people together. We participate in the realization of hope.

What do you hope for this year? How are you planning to participate in the bringing about of your hope? I’d love to hear from you about your hopes and dreams for yourself, for our country, for our world. The more imagining and dreaming we do together, the more we’re motivated and inspired to do the hard work of bringing our hope to life.

When the Winter Feels Thin

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When the Winter Feels Thin

I both love and hate Midwest winters. I love its thinness, the way the trees lose their leaves and stand stark naked in the cold. The way the wind cuts through the air like a razor-sharp blade; it’s like no other season. The way my body feels after being out in the cold, thin and strong because it can weather whatever the weather gives it. The way hot chocolate and baked goods are necessary items for coziness and to remember that the world isn’t always this thin, this devoid of life. The way the sun feels harsh, its rays hitting the earth at a sharp angle, no warm glows for the budding photographer. I hate it’s bereftness, the way the sun leaves us so early and doesn’t return soon enough. The way the cold makes my bones ache, like I’m an old man living in the 1800s. The way clouds only add to the grays and browns of winter colors, making vivid life seem so far away. The way I can get to feeling unmotivated because it’s cold and dark and gray when it’s not dark.

Through the years, I’ve grown less accustomed to the cold, but more able to see the beauty of winter. As much as I dislike frigid air, I love bundling up with a scarf and gloves. I love the idea of a person looking cozy, like they’ve been sipping hot chocolate and reading a book their whole lives. Winter gives us the chance to embrace our coziness, to make ourselves more homey, more inviting to the world to be at peace around us. It invites us to inspect ourselves, to look inward as we grapple with what life throws our way. For me, summer has begun to feel like a whirlwind. Now that I’m not in school, summer isn’t vacation time anymore. Summer is chock-full of weddings and cookouts and holiday parties. Friends and family are out and about doing things and inviting us to join them. Summer tastes like blueberries and watermelon, abundant and juicy. And fall is like a crisp apple, juicy, but not plump and full like berries and melons.

But winter, winter tastes like carrots and parsnips, potatoes and butternut squash, wild rice and barley. It’s not juicy. It’s not plump. But it sure is hardy. Winter will teach you how to survive life. If you can survive winter, you can survive anything. The earth isn’t giving in abundance here in the Midwest during winter, not like the spring or summer. But what it does give is health and strength and a firmness that can weather the cold and snow and grayness. I have come to love winter for the way it teaches me hardiness. It teaches me strength to persist, to persevere when it seems like there is no hope because spring will come again. Seasons love routine about just as much as I do, so I know they’ll come through for me in the end. I don’t have to weather this winter forever (unless I lived in the Arctic, which I don’t, thank God). I can survive winter, because I know it doesn’t last forever and I can learn the lessons it’s trying to teach me.

Here is my advice for surviving the winter when it feels too thin:

  1. Eat your veggies. Make soups that incorporate hefty amounts of carrots and celery, eat big salads made of kale or romaine, and try something new like beets, rutabagas, or turnips.
  2. Make (or learn how to make) baked goods. Learn how to make your favorite cookie. Learn how to make a new pie or crisp. Spend time in the kitchen, letting the oven and stovetop warm your chilled bones. Put your hands to work creating something tasty, warm, cozy, something just right for countering the winter thinness.
  3. Exercise; make your way to the gym or stay inside and do yoga. Go for a walk or a hike and admire the different shades of brown and gray that surround you. As hard as it might be to work out or get outside for a walk, your body will thank you. This is teaching your body hardiness, helping it learn how to weather whatever might come.
  4. Invite people over for dinner, for a game night, or maybe just for drinks. Bring the warmth and laughter of friends and family into your home more than you did over the summer. Fill the space with human bodies and smiles, bathing your home and yourself in mirth and joy.
  5. Drink the right winter beverages. Yes, water is always a must, but take a special interest in hot chocolate, tea, or wine. Each of these are perfect winter drinks, just a cup or glass at night as you sit by the lit up Christmas tree or as you wind down with a book in hand. The warmth will spread through your body and make for a cozy night in.
  6. And number 6 is my advice for life, but it takes particular effort in winter. Pay attention. Keep your eyes open and your ears willing to hear. Listen to the stories of people, to the rhythms of nature, the singing of the birds and the rustling of bare tree branches. Keep your head up, noticing the world in new and beautiful ways. Winter will seem less dreary, less unbearably thin when we pay attention, when we can see the beauty that’s just under our noses every single year.

Gay and Christian [Let Us Make America Great]

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I’ve been struggling the past week and a half with how to respond to the news of the election. I’m disheartened to say the least, appalled and outraged to say the most. I’ve been struggling with the words to express my disappointment in fellow Christians who voted for Donald Trump. I’ve been struggling to express the sheer lack of moral judgment that our new President-elect has shown, and how a group of people so damn set on morality could throw it out the door because ‘he might get the economy on track again’ or some other lame excuse for allowing xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, and racist comments to win this election and be our representative to the world. I’ve been struggling with how to cry out, “How have we come to this, the United States of America?!” Donald Trump wants to ‘Make America Great Again.’ When was it great? When it was enslaving African Americans for economic gain and killing Native Americans by the thousands as they marched across their own lands to be confined and designated an artifact of the new burgeoning empire? When was it great? When it was ignoring the Aids epidemic of the 80s and thousands of LGBTQ people were dying around this country? When was it great? When it was supporting tyrannical governments around the world since the early 1900s?

I must disagree with you, Mr. President-Elect. Our country is on its way to greatness the more it listens to and benefits all of the people who live here. I believe in the diversity of this country. I believe that our greatest strength is the many voices that are to be heard, listened to with charity and empathy, to be taken seriously for the betterment of our nation.  I believe that our country is coming the closest it ever has to greatness because it is finally hearing the voices of trans people, that their voices are being lifted up, even when so many are still trying to cast them down. It is coming the closest to greatness it ever has because our nasty rape culture is coming to light and so many people are intent upon changing this. It is coming the closest to greatness it ever has because black and brown bodies are standing up and saying, “Enough is enough. We will not tolerate the killing of our children anymore. We will not tolerate the unease of mind we have when going out in public for fear of racist remarks, actions, subtleties, or even incarceration for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” And some of us are listening. Some of us are working to change ourselves and the system. Our country is on its way to greatness because I have married the man I love and we can show the world that love does indeed win, Mr. Trump. So, if I don’t have a whole post to write about the disastrous nature of your election, please forgive me because I have too much loving to do since you’ve given license to far too many radical supporters of yours to speak and act with hate that is, frankly, unAmerican.

So, in the midst of our mourning and our shock and our fighting back against hate, I’ll give you the end to my gay and Christian series, a little hope to make your day brighter. The ending of this series isn’t really an ending at all because Reed and I are just beginning this beautiful journey called marriage. While there were some people who didn’t respond kindly to our wedding invitations, we for the most part had a pleasant, usually down-right excited, response from people. Our wedding day was filled with people we love dearly, good food, excellent wine, and donuts. Always and forever donuts. I had a family friend tell me later that it was one of the best weddings he’d been to because we had beer and donuts. I couldn’t agree more! We had friends and family surround us as we made our vows, as we were pronounced Mr. and Mr. Burge-Lape, and as Reed leapt towards me and gave me a big, passionate kiss. We sang hymns, served communion (because what sort of seminary student would I be if we didn’t take communion at our wedding?!), and heard an excellent homily by our dear friend Amelia that I still remember today.

We picked the Colossians text on clothing yourselves with kindness, gentleness, patience, etc., and Amelia reminded us to always remember to put on our clothes of kindness in the morning, our clothes of patience, even when we didn’t want to. It’s an excellent reminder for me when I feel irritable, when I feel like lashing out because I’m tired or frustrated or hurt to put on my clothes of kindness and compassion and humility. All of these things are greatly needed in doing life with another human full-time. It’s hard enough to be a decent human when you’re going about your day and others are rude or mean, but then to come home and share a space with someone else (whom you love more than anyone else) can sometimes be challenging and difficult. But, I am ever reminded about clothing myself, especially with kindness and humility. I think those are the clothes I attempt to put on the most frequently.

A lot of life was pointing me in this direction. I believe that God was readying me for marriage to a man, that God was pushing, shaping, prodding me in the direction of loving myself in a way that allowed me to be an out and proud gay man of faith. While my sexuality and my faith are rarely the first things I tell people, I do take pride in saying, ‘husband.’ I cherish the sound on my lips, that so many saints have gone before me, fighting for my ability to use that word. I am forever grateful to the queer people before me who have fought and died for my freedom as a gay man. And I also love, just a little bit, the confusion that comes over people when I tell them I have my Masters of Divinity (partly because half the population has no idea what that degree is) and that I might want to work in a church some day.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by people at work, who take it in stride that I’m married to a man. I have had a middle-aged woman say, “Did you say you have a husband? I’ve never met a man who had a husband. That’s so cool!” And people ask about my husband, what he does, how long we’ve been together, etc. But, I’ve also had a woman ask what my wife’s name was and I told her I was married to a man and his name was Reed. She then said, in what I think was an attempt to sound like she was okay with my sexuality, “Well, that’s still like your wife.” I just smiled and kind of nodded, thinking to myself, “It’s actually not. He’s a man and thousands before me have fought for me to be able to say husband.”

All in all, coming out gets easier and easier. The longer Reed and I are married, the more authority I feel to be open, to be myself, to hold hands in public or display our affection (to an appropriate amount) in public. It’s still hard when we’re around family we know aren’t supportive to be as affectionate, to put a hand on each other’s back or call each other ‘babe.’ Sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes we don’t fully notice when we’re changing our behavior to make others more comfortable with our presence, but we’re slowly trying to change that. We’re slowly trying to ease/urge people into being okay with us, our shared life, the love that grows between us steadily each day. It’s a long process, to overcome twenty years of self-denial and at times, self-hate, but if we choose to let Love win in both big and small things, to let Love win in ourselves and for ourselves, we cannot help but let Love win for others.

If you’re someone who has been reading most or all of my blog posts, especially on this topic, I thank you. If you’re someone who’s just stumbled upon this, I thank you too. I encourage you to keep reading things by LGBTQ people. I’ve compiled a list below, separated into things I have read and things I haven’t, of books and essays I think would be helpful in learning more about LGBTQ people. We must keep learning and we must keep educating ourselves if we want a better world for ourselves and the generations to come after us. It is imperative and we keep learning how to better love one another because while sometimes love is deeply innate, it is oftentimes a learned skill. So, let us love each other more fully.

Books I’ve read that have had a profound effect on me:

Homosexuality and Christian Faith edited by Walter Wink – The first book I read that allowed me to think about same-sex marriage and Christianity not being conflictual. A book filled with small essays covering numerous topics.

Struggling with Scripture by Blount, Brueggemann, and Placher – A small book by Presbyterian leaders speaking to their denomination on same-sex marriage. Excellent read and quick.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell – The first book I ever read with two of the main characters being gay. It’s young adult fiction, but it’s forever engrained upon my heart.

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan – A young adult fiction that made me think more about all the queer people who have come before me and fought for my ability to be married to the man I love.

The God Box by Alex Sanchez – A young adult fiction work that intimately captures the struggle of a young evangelical boy struggling with his faith and sexuality.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeannette Winterson – A book about a woman in England raised by a strict evangelical mother who comes to realize that men aren’t for her.

Beyond Magenta by Susan Kuklin – This is about transgender teens sharing their stories. It’s spectacular.

How to Gender by Colleen Toole – http://bit.ly/1ZoOfjN – A helpful guide to inclusion of queer people in the church, written by a friend from Seminary. They’re brilliant and this guide is essential for people working in the church or people just wanted to learn how to be sensitive and inclusive.

Reimagining God by Johanna W.H. van Wijk-Bos – An excellent book on the way Scripture conceives of God as feminine.

Books I haven’t read, but I believe to be helpful:

A Time to Embrace by William Stacy Johnson – For more mainline Protestants who want to read about LGBTQ people in the church.

Love is an Orientation by Andrew Marin – My mom read this and loved it. It’s for people who don’t agree with same-sex marriage or aren’t sure where they stand, but believe God calls us to love and to have empathy for others.

God and the Gay Christian by Matthew Vines – A definite read for any evangelical who is looking for a Scriptural account of sexuality.

Torn by Justin Lee – An evangelical read for those looking to bridge the gap between people who are on different sides of this issue.

There’s a lot here. But also do your own research. Look up authors who think differently than you, read them, and give them consideration. Look up authors who are different from you; trans authors, black authors, women authors, Muslim authors. Read and listen. Read and listen. You will be amazed at how listening to another human’s story will transform you.