Soul Archives - ��Ƶ of Theology & Psychology

Learning Beyond Walls

��Ƶ — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 18:26:01 +0000

We believe that transformative education—the kind of learning that gets in your bones and changes how you see the world—cannot be contained to the classroom. When we go outside our building to learn from others, encounter new stories, and wrestle with hard questions amid the messiness and complexity of our world, that’s when the ideas and theories from the classroom are given new life.

Earlier this year, two summer-term classes took ��Ƶ students beyond our walls (and beyond Seattle). In Engaging Global Partnerships, Dr. Ron Ruthruff, Associate Professor of Theology & Culture, and Cheryl Goodwin, Director of Institutional Assessment & Library Services, led a group of students to Kenya, inviting them to let their assumptions, beliefs, and practices be challenged and clarified by the stories of a place and the people who serve it. That same month, spiritual director and pilgrimage guide (MA in Theology & Culture, ‘12) and spiritual director and retired faculty member Tom Cashman journeyed to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona to guide students through a pilgrimage grounded in the ancient Christian tradition of desert spirituality.

Engaging Global Partnerships in Kenya

“We’re taking a deep look at the history of colonialism and religion, and the relationship between a place and the people who inhabit it—especially in places of wounding. How can we enter those wounds in a way that is honoring to others’ stories and also helps us reimagine our shared future?”
–Dr. Ron Ruthruff

Pilgrimage to the Sonoran Desert

“During our time in the desert, we explored the ancient Christian tradition of desert spirituality with an emphasis on the apophatic way and the contemplative path. The word apophatic means ‘without image,’ and during our time in the desert we sought to abandon our expectations and preconceived notions of God through themes such as awareness, inviting us to non-dual consciousness; surrender, inviting us toward a posture of kenosis or self-emptying; and encounter, inviting us to be present to the desert, the Divine, and ourselves with loving indifference or non-attachment. Ultimately, the fierce landscape of the desert served as teacher and guide on our journey, teaching us how to tend to and be with the sacred and fierce landscape of the soul within.”
–Lacy Clark Ellman

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Breathing Myself to Life: How Story Informs My Vocation

Jenny Wade — Mon, 17 Jun 2019 21:53:56 +0000

This month on the blog, we’re exploring how our particular stories of harm and healing inform our work in the world—meaning vocation and service look different for everyone (and this is a good thing). Here, Jenny Wade (MA in Counseling Psychology, ‘13) reflects on experiences of emotional and sexual repression, her journey of learning to inhabit her body in a new, life-giving way, and how that story helps shape her work with others.

I breathed myself to life, and so can you. My own recovery from the trauma of sexual repression drew me towards the healing medicine of yoga. I am a psychotherapist and a yoga teacher. My passion, obsession, and saving grace is embodiment—the experience of inhabiting the home of your body. Social forces and generational/personal trauma split the psyche into compartmentalization and dissociation, which inhibit us from fully inhabiting our own skin. I came into this work by following the golden thread of aliveness that vibrated inside of me whenever I stepped towards an act of embodiment.

My journey towards my profession and passion began by confronting my own pain of living in a deadened body.

“My journey towards my profession and passion began by confronting my own pain of living in a deadened body.”

As a girl I was steeped in an evangelical church that was emotionally and sexually repressed. I was taught to dissociate from my emotion and sexuality. Eager to perform for my community, I was one of the ‘good’ ones. My dissociative abilities grew stronger as they were reinforced and praised. I swallowed my emotions and wore my pledge of virginity until marriage like a badge of honor. I committed to these ideas with resolve, to the point of receiving a purity tattoo—a dove on my hip that I wouldn’t allow anyone to see until my wedding night.

As a child I was tirelessly praised for my goodness, my ability to follow all of the rules set before me. The only price I had to pay for this endless stream of praise was my unwavering compliance with the group norms of emotional and sexual repression. As long as I agreed that the impulses of my body were wrong and should be ignored at all costs, I was given power, respect, and trust from a group of people I deeply respected.

As a 3 on the Enneagram, “the performer,” my disposition lends me towards being preoccupied with how others see me. ‘Good’ became my identity, and my value was centered around how well I could perform to the expectations of those in authority around me. My obsession with blamelessness made me feel afraid to consider my own right to connection and desire.

It is painful to realize I was brainwashed out of connecting to my own sensuality. Over and over again I kissed my college boyfriend (who is now my incredible, gracious husband) while willing myself outside of my body and interrupting our connection if we got ‘too close.’ For years. For five years. That is too many years of not surrendering to the wisdom of our bodies. Our super power, being deeply present with each other, was shadowed by shame and secrecy. By the time we decided we had waited long enough to have sex, I had retreated so far from the felt experience of my body that I didn’t know how to enjoy it.

Dissociation is the psychological process of blocking out what an individual considers to be harmful. What is defined as ‘harmful’ within an individual is often the parts of self that may inhibit a sense of belonging to a particular community. I was taught that my body was bad and not to be trusted, so I spent the vast majority of my life ignoring what it was saying to me out of an ethical duty to be ‘good.’ I’m not the only one. The bodies of countless people growing up within Evangelical communities have been affected by the shameful rhetoric of purity culture.

The trauma of neglecting and shaming my body during vital years of sexual development caused a severe split between my mind and my body. We don’t learn how to be in our bodies unless we are taught how to follow sensation. In order to keep my purity pledge, I did everything in my power to sever myself from sensation, and in the process inadvertently sent the message to my brain that connection to my body was not to be trusted. My evil body tempted me into sexual sin—an age-old fable more concerned with power than with sex.

Yoga was the first place I learned how to inhabit my body intimately, in a way that wasn’t overtly sexual. Yoga was a neutral environment I could enter to learn how to de-thaw my body, without having to hold the emotional complexity of sexual shame that would often come up during sex. It has been through my own yoga practice that I’ve learned that there is ancient medicine in using breath and movement in order to bring bodies back to life. What has historically been my biggest weakness is turning into my biggest strength because my pain forced me to look so closely at my body.

“There is ancient medicine in using breath and movement in order to bring bodies back to life.”

While I was still dry humping Ben in church parking lots (#wheatonlyfe) in 2006, I attended a ‘stretching and breathing’ class (yoga, in disguise) that changed my life. My body, which I had spent so much time trying to separate from and control, was now being gently paid attention to. I learned how to use movement as prayer, and for the first time I began to see how being with my body was a worshipful experience. It made my heart burst wide open to pay attention to myself in this way. Each time I laid in savasana, the final resting pose at the end of a yoga class, I came into direct contact with the weirdness and goodness of my body, the pure delight of feeling my own aliveness. These magical experiences in my body drew me to enroll in a yoga teacher training the summer before I started class at ��Ƶ. Immersed in the world of body wisdom I began, piece by piece, to land into a body I wasn’t fully aware I had disowned.

After I graduated, I spent four years working at , a local eating disorder clinic that was my therapeutic boot camp. Working with clients with eating disorders is a minefield of body hatred and dissociation, and I needed to learn quickly how to help my clients tolerate being in bodies that felt deeply unsafe to inhabit. I voraciously read books on embodiment and somatic healing from trauma, and I realized as I read that I needed to heal myself. The deeper I dove into healing my relationship with my body, the more I could teach my students how to find islands of safety within their own skin.

Dissociation is a form of trauma that leaves the body frozen, numb, and unresponsive. When trauma and neglect happen, we need to vacate. It is a sweet gift that the body doesn’t allow us to come into full contact with the enormity of our pain when we aren’t safe enough to feel it. I see the body as a manifestation of the unconscious mind, and when we work explicitly with the physical body, we grow awareness to the most hidden parts of our psyche. Yoga is a way to slowly reintroduce ourselves to the disowned parts of ourselves. Using the tools of breath and focused awareness, we can gradually thaw the frozen, clenched parts of our bodies. Now in my private practice, I’m teaching my clients and yoga students how to reclaim the uncharted waters of their own bodies using meditation, yoga, and breathing practices.

It wasn’t until I began connecting to my body that I realized how deeply disconnected I had been my entire life. Even now, after spending the last decade working to integrate the experiences of my body, I’m more aware than ever about how much I still don’t know about this earth suit of mine. It is endlessly mysterious and mystical to discover the maps of intelligence that are encoded into our bodies. I’ll never arrive at a perfectly embodied or integrated place, but I have breathed myself into a new body. A more fluid, open, welcoming, and grounded body. A body that knows how to lean into care because of all those times she leaned into the earth in savasana and felt held.

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Resilience, Trauma, and the Hope of the Church

��Ƶ — Wed, 15 May 2019 16:11:05 +0000

On this episode of text.soul.culture, we’re talking all about resilience—not just as a theoretical idea or buzzword, but as a very real set of practices and resources that ground us in our vocation and help sustain meaningful work. Shauna Gauthier, Alumni Outreach Coordinator, talks with Kate Davis, Director of the Resilient Leaders Project (RLP), and Laura Wade Shirley, Circle Leader for RLP, about how they learned to recognize the need for resilience in their own lives, and about what they’re learning now as they develop new ways to help other leaders foster resilience.

If you’ve ever worked in ministry or a helping profession—or any work that requires your full self—you know this matters: the rate of burnout is too high, and the cost too steep, to not take seriously the need for resilience. We launched Resilient Leaders Project to help leaders and communities respond to that deep need in the midst of a changing church and fragmented culture.

Kate: “Resilient Leaders Project is about trying to come alongside leaders in their context to help them construct lives that support their good work, instead of feeling like their lives are at the cost of their work.”

In reflecting on what drew them into this work, Kate and Laura Wade share about their histories with the Church and how they came to believe it could be a space that would welcome them fully and unequivocally, in all of their brokenness and trauma. Because it turns out that it’s impossible to talk meaningfully about resilience without also talking about trauma.

Kate: “There’s a depth of experience that you must learn to narrate in your own life if you’re going to integrate the really hard pieces of your life. It’s not simply bouncing back to the shape that you were before something hard happened, it’s saying ‘How did this really difficult situation, this suffering that I went through, actually form me to be in some way more human, more compassionate, and therefore more divine?’”

“There’s a depth of experience that you must learn to narrate in your own life if you’re going to integrate the really hard pieces of your life.”

Laura Wade: “Resilience, to me, is finding healing and freedom and voice in the midst of those harmful places, and being able to meet the Spirit and meet God there to be different, to be more of who we are created to be. That’s the linking of resilience and trauma. I don’t think you can have resilience without some level of trauma.”

Shauna: “And maybe you can’t be a human and not have trauma.”

As we gather to reflect together on the trauma of Christ—the violence, betrayal, death, and resurrection—in the Church we might also find space to reflect on our own trauma, to lean into a community of others who can help us find language and meaning for that which is beyond words. This is a beautiful hope, that reflecting on the wounds of Christ in community might help us heal from our own wounds, but it is also a risky, vulnerable hope—one from which it is all too easy for many leaders to shy away. The rigorous demands and unspoken expectations of leadership often mean that leaders—especially in church, ministry, and nonprofit settings—are left feeling as if they cannot disclose experiences of trauma or uncertainty, and like there is not room for them to receive care.

Kate: “Wounded healer is language that we usually use, but we gloss over the wounded part, which means that we often have healed wounders in those roles.”

“Wounded healer is language that we usually use, but we gloss over the wounded part, which means that we often have healed wounders in those roles.”

Toward the end of the conversation, Kate and Laura Wade share about their experience in the first full year of RLP, inviting leaders into intentional connection, thoughtful reflection, and new practices that create room for their full selves—including their trauma, doubt, and brokenness—to be present in their work and relationship. This integrative work is a central part of building resilience, and it is a gift to journey with leaders as they step into that.

Kate: “My hope for the Church is that God’s not done. And it might not look like the church that it looked like in our parents’ or grandparents’ ages, it might not be focused on Sunday morning worship, but I think God’s not done in gathering people in a certain type of way. I want to be part of making that happen, and I want to be part of helping resource the creative and courageous people who are stepping into this unknown territory.”

Resources to Go Deeper

You can learn more about the Resilient Leaders Project—including our newsletter, upcoming events, and the application process for our next cohort—at theseattleschool.edu/rlp.
Kate shares a poem by an anonymous survivor of rape, which reads in its entirety: “I can’t forget what happened, but no one else remembers.” When she was a student at ��Ƶ, Kate wrote this moving reflection about the installation and about church as a community that remembers and holds.
Laura Wade recommends a book about integrating the feminine and masculine parts that live in each of us. The book is by Tami Lynn Kent.
One of the practices Laura Wade mentions that she has returned to because of this work is running. You can read her reflection about how running helps her return to spiritual health in this blog.
For more on resilience, you can watch Nikkita Oliver’s stunning talk from our 2018 Humanity Through Community gathering, and you can listen to Nikkita’s conversation with Shauna Gauthier from an earlier podcast episode.

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Nurturing Body and Soul Through Rituals, Movement, and Story

��Ƶ — Mon, 13 May 2019 18:20:34 +0000

All this month we’re exploring the art of nurturing identity and formation in a way that clarifies calling and sustains deep, meaningful work in the world. We’re intentionally using a bodily, sensory word like nurture because we believe that this is not merely an intellectual pursuit but one that calls for our full selves—body, mind, and spirit.

Of course it is all too easy to tune out our bodies, to ignore how they communicate our need for nurture. What are the practices that help us listen to our bodies? What are the rhythms and rituals that connect us to those deep, vulnerable parts of our bodies and souls that are crying out for care? Our students and alumni have been wrestling with these questions in beautiful, creative ways for many years, and we often turn to their voices when we need to remember how to be present in our bodies. Today we’re sharing a few of those voices—thoughtful presentations inviting us to engage the rituals, rhythms, and age-old practices that draw us back to our deeply human need for nurture. And if you’d like to join us in the gift of learning from the integrative and insightful work of our students, save the date for the annual Integrative Project Symposium on May 31.

At our second annual Symposia in 2016, Heather Stringer (, ‘10) presented “Breaking Frozen Seas: How Rituals of the Body Transform Clients and Communities,” exploring how intentional, sensual rituals open us to learning from our bodies as we pursue healing from trauma. “I think our body longs to teach us, it longs to mother us, it longs to remind us,” says Heather. “And without ritual, we foreclose creativity and shared open language about what is happening, and we dissociate.”

“I think our body longs to teach us, it longs to mother us, it longs to remind us.”

Also at Symposia 2016, Jenny McGrath (MACP, ‘15) talked about “Healing Trauma Through Movement,” sharing how dance had been an avenue of healing and growth in her own life, and how movement and dance can be used therapeutically to bring counseling and rehabilitation for trauma survivors. Jenny shares about her work in northern Uganda, researching the therapeutic power of movement in the wake of war and exploring how dance can help communicate emotional realities that are beyond language. “We are affected not just neurologically, but neuro-physiologically when we go through trauma. We are not just floating heads,” says Jenny. “So there needs to be some form of engagement with our bodies if we are truly to develop a sustainable model for people to recover from their trauma.”

At Symposia 2017 Jenny Wade (MACP, ’13), a therapist and founder of in Seattle, shared about “Finding Beauty in Embodied Resistance.” In this profound talk, Jenny starts with the disgust that so many people feel toward their bodies, and the million ways we are taught to believe that our bodies are not worth trusting. “I believe that bodies are good,” says Jenny. “They are good, and they are wise, and they are beautiful. […] But trauma, both collective and personal, separates us from the felt experience of our body. When we experience trauma, our body feels foreign. Our body doesn’t feel like it’s ours.”

(For more on this, we also deeply appreciated J. Knox Burnett’s (MACP, ’13) presentation, )

When we are more fully connected to our bodies, we are more able to attune to spiritual practices and soul care. This is much of the work that Lacy Clark Ellman (MA in Theology & Culture, ’12) fosters in her work as a spiritual director. In 2017, Lacy presented “Beyond Borders: Cultivating Awareness, Resilience, and Transformation through the Practice of Pilgrimage.” In 2017 she shared about the ancient art of pilgrimage and the archetypal human stories that have so much to reveal about the journey of separation, initiation, and return. “This adventure of the hero and journey of the pilgrim is built within each one of us,” says Lacy. “And claiming it as our own, we are aligning with our divine imprint as seekers of the sacred.”

(Kate Davis [Master of Divinity, ’15] also powerfully reflected on the transformative insights of ancient human stories in her Integrative Project presentation, )

Across cultures and generations, these categories of initiation, wilderness, and pilgrimage have been central to questions of what it means to be fully human—and yet for many of us, they feel so foreign today. That’s why we appreciated this Symposia 2016 presentation from Doug Wheeler (MA in Counseling, 1987), “Navigating the Masculine Journey with ‘Sherpas’ Nouwen, Jung, and Peck.” Doug reflects on the archetypes that help clarify the terrain and trajectory of human pilgrimage. “There is no entry fee, but it will cost you plenty to make this journey. Pack a lunch, lose your map, travel lightly.”

On May 31 we’ll gather to hear from students in our Master of Divinity and MA in Theology & Culture programs as they present on the projects that serve as a capstone of their time in graduate school. The Integrative Project Symposium is always an inspiring, grounding, and thought-provoking time. All are welcome!

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The Call to Nurture Formation

��Ƶ — Mon, 06 May 2019 16:17:32 +0000

Last month on the blog, we explored the call to serve God and neighbor, wrestling with the intersection of our unique calling and the world’s deep needs. These are deep waters, requiring the activation of our full selves and constant re-attunement to the contexts we serve and to our rapidly changing world. And when we fully invest ourselves in that work, the cost can be steep. In the midst of our activism, prophetic truth-telling, and informed service, how can we nurture our own ongoing formation?

That’s what we’re diving into on the blog this month: how to open ourselves to the nurture and care that is required to sustain our calling as fully embodied people committed to the movement of hope and healing. It might be worth pausing on that last sentence. What comes to mind when you hear the word nurture? Somewhere along the way, many of us have internalized an assumption that the need to be nurtured is something to be outgrown, something no longer experienced by people who are competent, mature, and capable of effecting change in the world.

We believe, though, that the deep need for nurture is a central part of the human experience, and it is essential to the art of growing in wisdom, empathy, and clarity of calling. As we lead, care for others, and respond to the needs around us, the reservoirs we draw from will run dry if we are not open to receiving care from God, ourselves, and each other—ultimately leaving us burned out in our work and cynical about the possibility of meaningful change.

We hope you will join us in this conversation as we hear from alumni, students, faculty, and staff about how their particular identities and stories shape their work in the world, and how they receive nurture and care along the way. May we remain curious about whatever resistance might emerge, about those places in us that might feel shame about our need for nurture, and may we continue learning to open ourselves—individually and collectively—to the care that fuels our formation and sparks creative, courageous work in the world.

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Bringing Taizé to ��Ƶ

��Ƶ — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 22:39:25 +0000

We believe that the arc of transformation does not end in a classroom and does not involve only our personal formation; it is ultimately a process of growing our imagination and capacity for serving God and neighbor. Sustaining that growth requires intentional practices of pausing, reflecting, and listening for the movement of the Spirit in the quiet corners of our hearts and in the people and places around us.

That’s part of why we seek to foster thoughtful spaces for connection and reflection in our community. We believe something holy and vital happens when we gather in prayer, song, and silence, and when we remember that our individual journeys of formation are intimately connected to each other and to our collective journey. Recently, a group of staff and students initiated a weekly Taizé gathering, an opportunity to gather in a prayerful, liturgical space as a way to help ground each other and re-orient to our work together.

“In grad school, life can get really busy and hectic,” says Megan Doner, Master of Divinity student and facilitator of the Sacred Space realm of Student Leadership. “Taizé creates this beautiful space that is doing the work of allowing us to connect with God, allowing us to connect with each other, in such a beautiful form of worship.”

“Taizé creates this beautiful space that is doing the work of allowing us to connect.”

Taizé is named for a monastic community in France known for simple, repetitive songs, reflections, and prayers that express an ecumenical commitment to peace and social justice. The short songs with simple language is designed to welcome a diversity of backgrounds, and the quiet space and repetition allow our bodies to settle more fully in the midst of whatever stress and anxiety we may have arrived with.

In the video above, Heather Barnes (MDiv, ‘15), Director of Institutional Support, shares more about the nature of Taizé and why she’s excited to help bring this rhythm to ��Ƶ. We also talked more with Megan Doner about why Student Leadership prioritizes fostering intentional space for our community to rest, wrestle, and play together.

“When we may not have the words we need to be able to say I’m sorry, or I’m curious, or I’m scared, or I’m afraid, or that I don’t know you well enough but is it possible we could move in a new way together?—if we don’t have the words, sometimes we can do that together in the room through the music, and let the music hold a lot of the things that we don’t have the words for,” says Heather.

Additional thanks to those who have helped bring this practice into our space: Rebekah Vickery, Jonathan Coopersmith, Daniel Tidwell, Becca Shirley, Jodi Bagge, Caitlin McDanel. Beginning again on May 7, we will gather for Taizé every Tuesday at 12:15pm in the fourth floor Chapel. Learn more on our event calendar.

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From Dust to Glitter: Love Beyond Violence

Daniel Tidwell-Davis — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 14:00:09 +0000

Updated with video on February 18, 2021.

During Lent we follow Jesus into the wilderness, where we wrestle with our common humanity and the arc of death and resurrection. It’s a season of repentance, traditionally signified by the familiar ashes and dust. Here, Daniel Tidwell (Master of Divinity, ‘10), Alumni Programs Coordinator, guides us into Holy Week with a reflection about the formational arc that holds together both death and resurrection. Daniel invites us to wonder how the mingling of ashes and glitter might call each of us to a new form of repentance, one that affirms the humanity in ourselves and in each other, calling us to the violence-defying love of the Spirit of God.

There is a formational arc to the season of Lent—a time of preparing for Holy Week where we play out the days of Jesus’ last meal with the disciples, his betrayal, trial, violent death, and then, hovering over death, the unthinkable—resurrection and the extraordinary/ordinary of life that follows.

Traditionally, new followers of Jesus are baptized at Easter. We recall creation narratives of passing through chaotic waters and the Spirit moving us with Jesus through death and into resurrection. We initiate this journey by reminding one another that “you were made from dust, and to dust you will return.” And so, it’s in the birth waters of Baptism at Easter that we are brought into a new life that has passed through death, and yet, lives.

We start with ashes sprinkled over the head or smudged in the shape of a cross, calling us to remember our common humanity; our of-the-earth dustiness—a notion linguistically rooted in our English words for humility, humanity, and humus, and held together in Hebrew with the name of Adam and the word for earth. In short, we mark our heads with dust and ash to ground us in the fact that we are mortal creatures of this shared earth—it’s an acknowledgement that death is part of all of our stories.

Two years ago, Reverend Elizabeth Edman started a movement to begin Lent by imparting ashes mixed with glitter on the heads of LGBTQ Christians. This was born out of grappling with the reality that for many LGBTQ people in our society, the reminder of our mortality and the presence of death is already as ever-present to us as the daily experiences of discrimination and violence that mark our lives. Family rejection; discrimination in housing, jobs, and healthcare; school bullying; sex trafficking; youth homelessness; and outright physical violence are daily realities. These traumas often occur in the name of God, adding another soul-wounding dimension to the violence.

The glitter-ash symbol is tied to a slightly older tradition that emerged in the last decade on the streets of San Francisco, where Episcopal clergy impart ashes alongside a charity group of drag queens known as The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Several years back, the two groups came together—clergy offering ashes and the Sisters offering glitter. LGBTQ Christians, alongside those of other faiths who have been harmed by religion, line up to receive ashes, glitter, or both. It’s an invitation for all who show up to receive recognition of their beloved humanity that shines despite violence and death.

While glitter isn’t a universal symbol for LGBTQ people, it does have a history—connected with drag performers’ spirit of defiance and determination to show up vibrantly—to thrive—in a world that seeks to trample LGBTQ people through traumas, collective and personal. For many of us Christians who are LGBTQ, our bodies have long been marked for death by our own churches and families. And instead of following the arc through death to resurrection, we find ourselves stuck repeating only one part of the Jesus story.

Through the mingling of ash and oil on my own forehead, I am called to remember my shared humanity with every person on earth. The addition of glitter invites me to honor the particularity of my own experience of learning to thrive in a world where many fellow followers of Jesus have been the very agents of harm that have visited death on my own story. To be marked by both ash and glitter helps me hold together in my body that I am a part of this oh-so-human body of Christ. Human cruelty and fragility, and the need for resurrection, exist in me personally and in us collectively. Our repentance is tied up together, but how it gets played out may look different for each of us.

“To be marked by both ash and glitter helps me hold together in my body that I am a part of this oh-so-human body of Christ.”

For fellow Christians who have done violence to your LGBTQ siblings, I wonder about your repentance and where you hear the spirit calling you to our shared humanity. Could it be that you, like Peter, need to be reminded to “call no thing unclean that I have made holy”? And for all of us who follow Jesus, I believe that the call to repentance is a call to turn away from death-dealing and toward life—whether we’ve been involved in directing violence to ourselves or to others. Repentance is always a turn of love; a turn toward each other in response to the Spirit of God.

And here we are in Holy Week, at the end of this journey of Lent, where Jesus walks us into a place where we do not want to go—a place where those of us who love Jesus most dearly, and confess Jesus most devoutly, are confronted by the mirror of our own betrayal; our own breaking point, where we walk away from a God who gives and takes—too much—in the face of human violence. Here Jesus, fully God and fully human, steps in to occupy the space of all types of victimhood, suffering violence—physical, sexual, emotional, and spiritual; enduring cutoff, abandonment, condemnation, shame, and assault; facing abuse both systemic and personal. Jesus does not do this because God demands it, or because God cannot stand to face our violence. It is as God that Jesus faces this violence to break its hold on all of us.

On Saturday we’ll face the day on the Christian calendar that is the most perplexing of all. In many ways, it is an un-day; an undoing of who we, as disciples, wanted Jesus to be. On Friday, Jesus walks, bodily, into the way of human violence. And, on Sunday, Jesus offers transforming wounds to welcome us into a new kind of life. But between these days, on Holy Saturday, we wait in the stark undoing of not knowing where or how the Spirit of God will show up. We see that Jesus took on our violence, and we are confronted with the devastation of death. This is not a place we want to linger.

This year, Holy Saturday also marks the 20th anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Like every trauma, this particular violence echoes in our collective stories, and it throbs a particular ache within the bodies of those who survived it. All trauma, from violence large or small, leaves a wake. It is the lingering, chaotic water that follows death. And while we can name the impact of particular waves, the pervasive presence of violence has always troubled the waters of the human story. Love in response to violence has always been a defiantly vulnerable act.

“The pervasive presence of violence has always troubled the waters of the human story. Love in response to violence has always been a defiantly vulnerable act.”

This is where the Spirit hovers—between the death of God at the hands of our human violence, and the resurrection of God that raises not only Jesus, but all of us from the grasp of death. Here, in the ashes and void, there is a shimmer across the face of the water. There is a glimmering ache toward life within the wound of death. It is a Queer transition, demanding that the body that has suffered violence will, through love, come forth with a both scarred and holy persistence. Resurrected life is vibrantly defiant—not as though death had not happened, but because it has undergone death and been transformed by love. This is why grief is core to repentance. Grief is the opening of love through which life moves forward out of death.

I try to imagine some reconciliation within the body of Christ over the violence done to LGBTQ people. I try to imagine some repentance in a society committed to keeping guns over protecting human life. I try to imagine repair of racist violence enacted through social structures, and unquestioned bias. And I am exhausted by the ever-presence of death. We need a Jesus who steps into this violence that leads to death. And we need a Spirit who breathes with us, into this chaos that has always been, and offers a lifeline of grief that pulls us through the waters and into hope.

As we walk through Holy Week, may we listen to the Spirit who hovers over us, re-membering who we are as humans, marked by violence, yet joined by a God who is fully with us. This God faces us amidst violence, enters death, and moves with us into life beyond—life marked by death, yet survived by love. May we consider our own participation on all sides of violence and feel the Breath of God hovering in places of death and spinning grief into an opening for love.

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Self-Contempt in Lent

Cecelia Romero Likes — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 14:00:09 +0000

During this season, we’ve been reflecting on Lent as an affirmation of humanity—in ourselves and in each other—and, therefore, a call to service. But any attempt to affirm and center humanity, even through the familiar Lenten practice of giving up certain habits, forces us to confront the voices of shame and self-contempt that can be so deeply rooted. Here, Cecelia Romero Likes (MA in Theology & Culture, ‘15) writes about the seemingly simple decision to give up looking at her phone while she’s with her daughter—and about the deep messages of contempt that grow loud in the new silence.

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. I can’t seem to make it through the night without some strange dream clawing at my psyche.

I climb out of bed and try to settle myself again with a book or an hour of scrolling through Instagram. I know that it doesn’t really help, but it comforts me.

Sometimes I can hear my daughter shifting in her room, a sleepy momma slipping from beneath her door. She can sense me, my little werewolf, I joke to myself. Her favorite book to pull from my shelf is . I haven’t read it yet; I bought it years ago because someone said it reminded them of me. Maybe she and the Universe are conspiring to get me to pick it up.

Maybe I will; I do a lot of things because she wills me to somehow.

From day to day, parenting is painfully mundane. It’s a lot of routine and repetition; the same games, the same books, the same lessons. My iPhone has become my constant companion, ready to entertain me at any moment my daughter might happen to look away. Despite reading multiple articles on the subject, I recently decided to give up checking my phone while I’m with her based on her behavior—not outbursts or tantrums, only her own growing desire to whittle away her hours in front of a screen.

It’s been a difficult sacrifice to make, putting my phone away while I’m with her, and I have yet to make it through a day successfully. My social media accounts do more than keep my boredom at bay; they help me to feel involved in the outside world, keep me from getting too lonely. They also overwhelm me, distracting me with their content long after I’ve put my phone down. And, I’ve realized, they keep me from facing the darkest parts of myself.

I don’t have very nice things to say, or rather think. I didn’t grow up in a home dripping with affection—for anyone, really. My family taught me how to protect and defend myself; my step-father would quiz me daily about what I noticed on my walk home from elementary school.

You always, always have to be aware of your surroundings, his voice echoes when I find myself getting too familiar with my environment.

My mother isn’t an unkind woman, but one for whom things, people, are rarely good or good enough. Her nature comes easily to me—my inheritance, maybe.

When I’m online, it’s easy for me to direct my hatred at unseen others: strangers who add antagonizing comments to the posts of friends, old high school classmates gleefully announcing their Go Fund Me donations toward Trump’s wall. I project my doubts onto other artists who are just starting out, and worst of all, I pour out my bitterness over the artists who are succeeding and who I deem lesser than me. I count these amongst my ugliest thoughts.

Without my digital scapegoats, my vitriol has the clearest path to its true target: me. The first thought that popped into my head the day that I started my screen-free experiment was, Boy, you’re a shitty mom. It was closely followed by its sibling thoughts about my appearance, my work ethic, my abilities, the invalidity of my dreams. There was no real reason for these thoughts, nothing in the moment to motivate them to come. They don’t really need a reason, they live with me, are a part of me. They’ve just been waiting for a quiet moment to speak.

“Without my digital scapegoats, my vitriol has the clearest path to its true target: me.”

If my time at ��Ƶ taught me anything, it’s that all of us feel this way. Some more than others, but all of us still. It’s part of what it means to be human in this world. We all have shortcomings, doubts, and fears, and they are ready to contend with us. Some have merit and some don’t, but we will never be able to distinguish what’s true from what isn’t unless we face the parts of ourselves that bring us the most shame. There’s no healing, no transformation without reflection. It can be painful and we may not be ready at any given point; it could take years, a lifetime even. But we have to be aware that our self-contempt paints an incomplete picture of who we are.

I pride myself on being a woman with a keen sense of clarity about who I am, but I’ve lived most of my life unable to see my own goodness. I’ve needed to hear about it from other people. Even then, I found a way to disseminate their words, convincing myself that their view of me was obscured. But it’s time to take off my own blinders, to seek out the goodness others have been telling me is there on my own.

Those negative thoughts are less intimidating when I’m able to see myself more clearly. When partnered with a more benevolent self-perspective, they can lead me into compassion and empathy, instead of shame and self-hatred.

This too is part of what it means to be human in this world: the amalgamation of the darkness and the light inside of us. They don’t have to be at war with one another, they can live symbiotically.

I used to think that living a good life meant following this rigid moral code that God had prescribed for us, one in which there was no place for darkness—often considered “impurity” or “sin.” But I’ve come to believe that living a good life means becoming more human, softer, more given to making mistakes. More able to learn from them, too.

This paradigm shift is right on time. I can never teach my little werewolf how to be fully human until I learn how to be one myself.

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Resources for Resistance in Lent

��Ƶ — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 19:08:35 +0000

Jesus’s humanity was on full display in the wilderness: he experienced hunger and thirst, he wandered, and he knew the temptation of sacrificing calling on the altar of short-term ease or glory. During Lent, then, when we remember Jesus in the desert and we reflect on our own wilderness, we are affirming that there is beauty and dignity in the very nature of humanity—even in our hunger, our doubt, and our wandering.

In the face of systems that seek to divide, belittle, and harm certain people based on some aspect of their humanity, this affirmation is nothing less than an act of resistance. And resistance, like all prophetic work, requires a deep well from which we can draw. What inspires your resistance? How is your own humanity affirmed even as you’re working to affirm others? What spiritual formation practices might grow the depth and clarity of your work in the world?

We brought those questions to folks in our community and put together this list of recommendations. May these resources bring rest, fresh insight, renewed hope, and an emboldened sense that we are not alone as we work against de-humanizing systems.

“I’m eager to go beyond theologies of suffering and survival to also examine the theologies of life, flourishing, strength, meaning-making, and #blackgirlmagic that stem from black women’s experiences and perspectives.” –Dr. Christena Cleveland

This is a stunning, revolutionary series Dr. Cleveland is facilitating during Lent, grounded in the conviction that “patriarchy and whiteness need to be exorcised from biblical interpretation.” If you find that high Church rhythms feel too entwined with historically oppressive systems, we can’t recommend this series enough. You can , then become a patron to follow the rest.

Christena Cleveland’s work above feels so crucial because, in part, the dominant expressions have for too long been aligned with the patriarchal, white supremacist forces that undergird oppressive systems. In , two pastor-historians offer compelling historical accounts of the American Church’s role in harmful power structures, and Lisa Sharon Harper and Dr. Soong-Chan Rah then share vital theological reflections and words of confession and repentance. If human affirmation is an act of Christian resistance, then confession and repentance are at once social and spiritual practices. We’re grateful to this book for demonstrating that so powerfully.

At the heart of confession and repentance is the dynamic expression of lament. Lament is the declaration that this is not right, the grief that our embodiment of God’s image falls so short of the Christological affirmation of humanity. From the somber confession of Ash Wednesday to the anguish of Holy Saturday, lament is at the heart of Lent. This episode of , a project from Aaron Niequist and friends, is a guided journey of music, prayer, and scripture that creates space for lament to do its work.

We’ve shared this one before, but we keep coming back to it. Many folks in our community resonate with the thought-provoking, contemplative art by Scott Erickson, and we particularly love the prayerbook he created with Justin McRoberts. If you’re looking to add some depth and beauty to the rhythms of your spiritual practice—not just during Lent—this is a beautiful place to start.

A number of folks also recommended the from artist, author, and minister Jan Richardson. Each week, this blog features a reflection on a text from the lectionary, accompanied by a work of original art. We believe that integrating art with spiritual formation will deepen and energize our practice, and Jan’s work explores this beautifully.

For years, the work of Richard Rohr has challenged our assumptions, opening us to an image of Christ that is bigger, bolder, and more open than we ever imagined. is no different. Rohr guides us through a series of readings for the Lenten season (and beyond), encouraging us to grow into people who are more and more open to surprising, transformative encounters.

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Running and Spiritual Health

Laura Wade Shirley — Mon, 11 Mar 2019 17:01:22 +0000

During the Health Module of the Resilient Leader Project, I took an inventory of all areas of my life. Doing so I quickly realized that I was not as alive as I’d want to be in the area of my spiritual life. The more I worked on the inventory, the more I realized that, a year prior, I had given up running.

My husband had had a partial knee replacement surgery. It was an awful experience for both of us, with complications and longer-than-expected target gains. Watching, caring, and waiting for his knee (and soul) to heal, I decided in some less-than-conscious part of myself that I never wanted to go through that kind of pain (his knee replacement came from many years of running and athletic wear and tear), so I quit running. In this forfeiture, what I failed to realize is that, for me, running had come to serve as a spiritual practice. As I was saying no to running, I was giving up on a way that I connect deeply to God, myself, and the space between.

In the busyness of my world—jobs, kids, house, etc.—I can often lose connection to myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Running has been one way I could carve out time to be alone (quiet, still) and to connect body, soul, and spirit: this trinity of my being coming together with the triune God. Running had served as a time when I could pray, hear from God, and take time to challenge the ways I often hold myself back by choosing to believe in the impossibility (rather than the possibility) of certain things.

“In the busyness of my world I can often lose connection to myself physically, emotionally, and spiritually.”

Years prior, when I was running consistently, I remember noticing that I could never get past three miles logged in any given session. Everytime I would get close, I would stop running, or I would get sick. I seemed to circle this track for at least a year. Finally, as I was talking to my therapist about this supposed limitation, she asked, “What is it like to be in your body, to connect with your body in that way?” In that moment, I knew I was being invited by God to challenge myself to connect my body to the energy within it in ways I simply hadn’t before: to put down the mental barrier I had believed true in regards to running. So in that very moment, I decided to sign up for my first half marathon.

By that time my husband had already completed a number of half marathons, so I asked him to help me get on a program, and I began to run. Since I had small kids at the time, I ran in a gym on a treadmill for most of the training. As I look back now, I have no idea how I handled that level of monotony. But on the day of the race, I was as ready as I was going to be. As I made it through the race and ran that last mile, I was deeply aware of the ways I had been holding myself back not just in running but in life, and a deep sense of joy set in as I accomplished something I had previously deemed impossible. Crossing the finish line, I was overwhelmed at the goodness that could come from stepping into my fears and listening to the invitation from God to run.

I believe spiritual health can come in all different shapes, colors, and forms. God reveals God’s self in all things: the smile of a child, the wag of a dog’s tail, the rising and setting of the sun, the movement of human bodies through time and space, the reading of a good poem, and much, much more. Maybe it’s only natural to limit our experience or view of God, if for no other reason than we get tired and we look for the ease of paring down the options to a short list of predictable alternatives. And maybe it’s also natural to need to return or to inject a sense of novelty into the perceived security that comes from having a certain behavioral repertoire. Sometimes we need to slow down and notice; other times (as was the case for me) we need to put on our running shoes and accelerate.

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