Emerging Women

By Erin Crisp

One of the first signs of spring in my hometown corner of the world was a trip to my grandfather’s sugar shack, usually with my cousins. It was a crude little dirt-floored structure nestled at the edge of a stand of sugar maples. At one end of the shack, a huge metal vat the size of a bathtub filled half of the shack. Underneath the vat, and of a similar size, was a wood burning stove with a curvy little stovepipe that rose from behind the vat and escaped through a hole in the slanted aluminum roof. Bright winter sunlight broke through a thousand tiny cracks in the walls, and on every available stud inside, nails held ladles, spoons, nets and filters. Two folding chairs and a small homemade table were the only other furnishings. It wasn’t especially colorful or comfortable inside the shack, but I remember it with a smile. Maybe it was the smell. For 2-3 weeks every spring, a sweet, woodsy aroma of smoke, syrup, moisture and the earthy outdoors combined with the barn-like smell of my grandfather’s coveralls. I can almost taste the hope of spring as I type.

The syrup making ritual involved checking sap buckets daily, collecting it in 50 gallon size containers that would then be dumped into the vat in the sugar shack- 43 gallons of sap yields just 1 gallon of sticky, sweet syrup, so this was truly a labor of love. Mixing, testing, stirring, feeding the fire that raged below the vat, skimming the syrup with a net to remove impurities that were distilled to the surface, day and night, batch after batch, waiting for the exact moment of perfection- too long and it would burn, too short and the flavor was weak.

For my part, I was involved as a tourist, but for my grandfather and uncles, it was laborious. The end product? Clear glass quart jars of syrupy, caramel-colored goodness would file into my grandmother’s mudroom weeks later.

Today, during this same season of the year, I am involved in an entirely different ritual of purification.

With my prayer, “Cleanse my heart Lord. Purify me from impurities.”
I imagine, “Turn up the heat in the old wood stove. Load on the firewood Lord.”

With the common practice of giving up something for Lent, I imagine the excesses of my life being distilled at a rumbling boil, escaping through the curvy stovepipe of my spirit into the vastness above.

With the difficult work of self-reflection and prayer, I imagine the physical labor of my family members, toting heavy buckets of sap, standing or sitting around a steaming vat day and night, chopping and feeding logs to a ferocious fire for days on end.

And the end result of both processes? A beautiful sweetness that can only be produced through a process- a process of bringing what I have to the sugar shack, stoking the fires of reflection hot, releasing that which is impure (allowing another to skim off the really nasty stuff), and looking forward to the hope of a sweeter, closer relationship with my Maker.

As I allow Him, God is happy to illuminate the clouds of my watery self being released toward Him. He accepts it, releases me from the burden of carrying it, and I anticipate the closeness of knowing Him in all of His flavorful goodness as the days of Lent progress.

This post originally appeared at Erin’s blog Five Crisps: One Mama’s Musings on Her Three Boys and Life.

By Jessica Coblentz

In an excerpt from her recently published diaries, Dorothy Day recalled a friend who, exactly 9 months before Christmas day, celebrated the Annunciation by getting on his knees, leaning over, and kissing the ground. This is the day that God entered Mary’s womb, he would exclaim. He delighted in the fact that Christ Christened the earth with divine incarnation on that day. With that day, the earth became sacred in the most tangible, significant event of Christian history.

I so often think of Christmas day as the annual celebration of the Incarnation. However, this man’s celebration of the Annunciation challenges me to think of the Incarnation of God in the world as something that occurred not in a single day like Christmas, but rather, through an unfolding process–quite literally, though the season of Mary’s pregnancy.

And, really, the Incarnation did not reach its pinnacle with the birth of Christ in a manger. The Incarnation continued throughout Jesus’ childhood, adult life, crucifixion, and resurrection. And I think the Incarnation, the unfolding of the divine in temporal life, it continues today. It is my regular witness of it in ordinary life that compels me to believe this paradoxical religious claim with such devotion.

What if I lived each day like it was Christmas–the celebration of divine Incarnation in this broken, messed up world? I don’t mean to pose this question in some sort of sappy Coca-cola Christmas commercial kind of way. I mean it. What if I lived with the type of reverence for the goodness in this world that would compel me to kneel down and kiss the dirt? What if I took the time to recognize the continuous unfolding of the Incarnation like that?

Come to think of it, what if I simply lived Christmas day–one day a year–like that? Perhaps that’s a start to a new way of living out the whole year.

Jessica Coblentz is a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. Follow her writing on the Web at www.jessicacoblentz.com.

By Ann Catherine Pittman

I read all four resurrection stories last night in an attempt to understand what it means to start over. I started off reading the first and second chapter in Matthew: the story of Joseph, Mary and the baby’s trek to Egypt. That’s starting over, I thought. A new culture a new language, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. So I headed toward the back of the book.

Matthew’s resurrection story is short and has the treasured Great Commission. Mark’s is even shorter unless you count the longer ending complete with snake-handling, but most scholars don’t, so I skipped that part. Luke has the great story of the two travelers who get the whole biblical story from Moses to the Prophets to the Messiah retold and interpreted for them by none other than Jesus himself… man I would have like to be a fly on the headdress of one of those guys. And then, I turned to John. Like the others you’ve got the women at the tomb, but also the race of Peter and “the loved one.” There’s the breathing on the disciples incident, and of course the famous “I’ll believe it when I see it” story compliments of Thomas’ doubt. But to end the book: an outing at sea.

After the crucifixion and the appearances of Jesus, the disciples return to doing what they know how to do best. Like a kid who finishes Summer Camp and then has to go back to school in August, the disciples return from their journey with Jesus and head to their fishing boats. I suppose Luke went back to his hospital clinic and Matthew went back to the IRS office, but Peter, James, John and Andrew joined back up with their partners and went back out to sea.

With New Year’s Eve, we too come off the high of Christmas. Usually it’s a time when everyone is a little bit nicer, a little more giving, and a little more repentant. From Christmas we move straight into the New Year when our culture offers us an opportunity to take our repentance and really “do” repentance by making resolutions. We even change numbers on the calendar, a constant reminder that we have really started something new.

Two Thousand and Ten
Twenty Ten
Two Oh One Oh

It’s not 2009, it’s 2010. And for our culture it’s a time to start over, start fresh.

Similarly, that’s what the disciples faced after Jesus’ ghostly appearances. What now?

“Well, I guess we go back to work.”

And that’s what happens to us too. We have an encounter with Christ and then we have to go back to work. Our lives don’t change as radically as we feel they should. We don’t get new parents or a new city to live in or a new job or a new body. What changes is within us. When the external parts of our world keep on going and we’re standing there wide-eyed and gape-mouthed having seen Jesus alive and at work, at some point we have to push our jaw back into place and go on with our lives.

And that means going back to work.

“Cast your nets on the other side,” Jesus called to them. Returning to work after an encounter with Jesus can mean doing things a little differently.

“Come have breakfast with me,” Jesus invited them. Taking a break in our busy lives for communion with Jesus can be necessary for nourishment.

“What is that to you what I do with your friend’s life?” Jesus asked of Peter. Following Jesus doesn’t mean making comparisons between you and others in your community, neither does it mean passing judgment on them.

It’s pretty easy to spiritualize this text as I’ve just done. And it’s pretty easy to just leave it alone. But the disciples had to carry on just like you and I carry on. So how did they do it? How do they live normal lives, changed by their encounter with the risen Christ?

And that’s what New Years reminds me of: my conversion, or rather, my continual process of conversion. This time of the year reminds me what it means to start over in our hearts and minds, but carry on living in the same world as before.

And so I leave you with a question (just in case resolving to go to the gym every day weren’t enough of a burden).

How will we start over… now that we’ve had breakfast with God?

Rev. Ann Pittman is the Minister to Young Adults and of Creative Discipleship at First Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. She is a writer, singer and mother of two cats and a dog. She blogs at www.anncpittman.blogspot.com.

By Jenny Rae Armstrong

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it really means to be a Christian, and about the challenges of being or calling oneself a Christian in American society. As a missionary kid in Liberia, I had friends from many different nations, cultures, and faiths, and was faced early with the fact that many good, devout people believed very differently than I did. The sincerity and devotion of my Muslim, Buddhist, and Jain friends challenged me. They held tight to the doctrines they were taught from infancy, lived out their faith in the ways prescribed by their sacred books and cultures.

I couldn’t help but wonder, was I any different? I had been born to Christian parents in the backwoods of Wisconsin, and I believed in Jesus with all my heart. But if I had been born in Taiwan, like my friend Yu-San, would I be a Buddhist? If I had been born in the Cameroon, like my friend Mohammed, would I be a Muslim?

The answer made me uncomfortable. I figured that if I was going to ask Yu-San or Mohammed to reconsider their beliefs, to be willing to chuck everything they had been taught by the people they loved the most out the window, I had better be willing to do the same. To ask questions. To regard my culture with a critical eye. To be willing to temper my “worldview” with as much logical and emotional distance as I could muster.

That was a very good thing, a refining and refocusing of my faith. And honestly, I think this is an are where “third culture kids,” children who are raised in a culture that is not their own, have an advantage. They are the perpetual outsiders, savvy anthropologists who don’t fit into their home or host cultures (whichever is which). Everyone sees the world through their own pair of glasses, the lenses focused by education, experience, and cultural expectations–it’s just that third culture kids tend to have several pairs lying around, and find it easier to change them at will.

Anyhow. Fast forward twenty years, to a sleepy little county in Northern Wisconsin. Churches abound, their libraries stocked with books on developing a “Christian worldview” (invariably written by evangelical Protestant males of European descent). Christian novels, Christian newspapers, Christian music, Christian tee-shirts, Christian dietary supplements (?!) are everywhere. Politicians on both sides of the aisle season their speeches with oblique allusions to their Christian faith, in the hopes that if they can just brush the hem of Jesus’ garment, some of his glory will rub off on their agendas. And while not everyone in Douglas County, Wisconsin would claim to be a Christian, there are precious few of them who would claim to be anything else, a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist.

My question is, how is it possible to be a Christian in a place like this? How is it possible to tell the difference between your faith and your culture when they are, for all intensive purposes, one and the same? I’m overstating the point, obviously, but our preconceptions of what it means to be a Christian are HUGE. Do we assume Christians talk a certain way? Vote a certain way? Dress a certain way? Drink (or not drink!) a certain way? If we’re honest, most of us would question the salvation of a man seen swigging alcohol at a party with prostitutes. Good thing Jesus didn’t need to be saved.

If we strip away the preconceptions, take off our glasses and try our hardest to step outside our carefully crafted worldview, what are we left with? Is it enough? Is your faith built on the shifting sand of cultural Christianity, on what you’ve heard at church, from loved ones, on Christian media or from the latest Beth Moore Bible study? If those same sources told you something different, would you believe differently?

Or is your faith built on something that doesn’t change, on the salvation of God through the person of Jesus, as revealed through scripture?

It’s not an easy question to answer, and it can be hard to see Jesus through the religion that sprung up around him. I struggle with this constantly–I even struggle to remember to struggle, to keep searching for more and more of God instead of settling into the warm, familiar comfort of American “churchianity.” But I am afraid that the American church has been lulled to sleep by a false sense of security, that instead of running the race with perseverance, we’re playing the hare and hunkering down for a theological snooze, certain of our innate superiority and inevitable victory.

I guess what I’m really asking is have we put our faith in Jesus, or have we put our faith in Christianity? And which would we choose if (and when) the two are at odds?

If you’re not sure you can tell the difference between the two, a good place to start would be by reading the Gospels–Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John–in long, uninterrupted hunks, so you can get a sense of the big picture unfolding in each book, instead of little snatches of verses read out of order and out of context. Study Jesus–viewing the church through the lens of the Gospels, instead of vice-versa, can be very enlightening. I’m going to be kicking off my 2010 Bible reading with another pass through the Gospels, to refresh my focus on the person of Jesus. It’s just so, so easy to lose sight of him…

Jenny Rae Armstrong is a freelance writer and musician. She and her husband Aaron own DeepWater Music (www.deepwatermusic.net) and live in Northern Wisconsin with their four little boys. This post originally appeared at her blog jennyraearmstrong.blogspot.com.

When I was a child I remember an impression rise up in my mind that there were invisible strings attached to people. I was careful to not get mine tangled up behind me. For example, if I walked around a table in a clockwise direction, I was careful to walk back around it in a counter-clockwise direction. I literally retraced my steps. I’m aware this sounds like a manic O.C.D. episode, especially for a child, but it was brief lived; probably ran the time span of about a week.

That image has been long vanished from my mind until recently contemplating on the truth that each individual has a myriad of defining moments that are largely taken for granted. The smallest visions that we see around us all have a string that winds back for miles in time; twisted around and through the most unexpected influences. A woman holding a child is rarely anything noticeable. Backtrack down her time-line from that moment and see the knot that is the attempts that were miscarried, the tangle of relationship issues that had to be considered to start a family, all the way back to the twisted mess of anorexia that had depleted her developing body to the point that threatened her ability to ever conceive at all. Awareness of the presence of struggle allows for a deeper appreciation of even the most simple things; (in this story) snuggles between mother and child.

Examples of shallow assumptions that cheat us of special moments could be listed ad nauseum. The point would be the same: each life has a ball of twine stringing behind it. Every moment we experience and witness has a complicated history that is usually forgotten or ignored. We speed through visions around us on auto-pilot. Individual struggles are not considered and we assume that things just work out somehow; rarely recognizing that the most seemingly unrelated kink in the line affects and determines the direction of the line. In doing so, we miss the special moments when those tangled strings become clear and straight and, for a moment, we can soar.

This post originally appeared at the blog Diary of a Doubting Believer.

By Adele Sakler

i’d love to thank William Lobdell and his book, ‘Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America – and Found Unexpected Peace’ for inspiring this post. While in Indonesia diving, we met a lovely couple from the Bay Area who are currently living in Shanghai, China. She was reading Lobdell’s book as she had worked with him at one point in her career. She told me what it was about and i immediately knew i would resonate with it and told her i’d have to read it. Coming back to our villa one afternoon after diving, i found his book sitting on the chair on our front porch. She said it was her gift to me, and it was in more ways than one for sure!

Lobdell has a similar journey as mine and in the course of writing and covering Picture-1 religious stories for the LA TIMES thought of this as G-D’s calling on his life. He fervently sought out the most interesting stories to tell and attempted be as authentic and neutral as any human could be in his line of work. He covered ALL religions with enthusiasm, integrity and as a way to learn more about others. Naturally when stories emerged about the Catholic Church and the abusive sex scandals perpetrated upon innocent children and the attempts to cover up and dodge any responsibility, Lobdell was a natural to cover the stories.

Throughout the years of covering positive religious stories through his evangelical eyes and then on his journey to converting to Catholicism, Lobdell then began questioning why a ‘GOOD G-D’ would allow these horrible things to happen. He wondered why so many times Christians really did not act all that differently from people who claimed no religion at all. In essence, he was not seeing any real transformation in the lives of people who cling to their religion. Often, religion is a power tool to be wielded to control, conceal, keep up appearances. He talked with close friends but came to the point in his life where he did not need G-D in his life or the assurance of an afterlife. He de-converted from his faith and came to peace and freedom in his life.

Excerpts from Lobdell’s Epilogue that have caused me to pause and chew:

‘The laws of nature, circumstance and coincidence make more sense than the divine’ (p. 276)

‘I guess time will tell whether my decision was foolish or smart. But I have no regrets. For me, it was the move I had to make.’ (p. 283)

There is so much just in those excerpts but even MORE in the entirety of his book. i have asked the same kinds of questions he raised about Christianity and G-D. i know of many of the religious figures he mentioned and covered in his reporting. He mentioned a Benny Hinn crusade in Las Vegas, NV where a blind boy was brought for healing by his babysitter. Out of fear the boy said he was healed. Hinn made a big ta-do about it by saying G-D told him to pay the boy’s medical bills and his education. When i read this i realized i had been at that crusade. A friend who was battling terrilbly chronic health problems asked me to drive with her to attend the healing crusade. She was desperate to find relief and i agreed even though i had no respect for Hinn. i had attended a crusade of his years before and felt like it was all a sham. i just felt i needed to support my friend and it was a way of spending some quality time with her. The boy was never really healed. Lobdell wrote about the boy, William, and his uncle and guardian, Randy, that, ‘It took two years, a series of phone calls and my inquiry before his family was told that a $10,000 fund had been set up in William’s name. Randy still couldn’t get any details on how to access the account until a second story appeared about William.’ ( p. 187) i remember that display of ‘hearing G-D’ really rubbed me the wrong way while i sat there next to my ill friend. i remember feeling uncomfortable yet cautious that i was being judgmental of one of G-D’s children. Then when i read about all of the follow-up, i was a bit more comforted in my sensibilities at that time. i believe there is a difference between judging people and using one’s brain in critical thinking and observation.

i have deconstructed my faith and continue to do so as i see it as a simultaneous and continuous process in tandem with reconstruction of my faith and beliefs. i guess in some sense i see it as an arduous process of wrestling with a thesis, deconstructing and looking at what the antithesis possibilities are and coming to some sort of synthesis. Maybe i am wrong but this is where i am at and how i deal with my faith. i believe intellect, reason, emotions, personal experiences, limitations of humanity, etc. ALL play a part in our lives, whether we believe in some form of a Divine Being or not. After reading Lobdell’s book, finding myself wrestling with so many of the same damn questions as he did, i am in a quandary as to why do i still hang on to a belief in G-D. Yes, many of my once-held beliefs like the inerrancy of the Bible, black and white, easy pat answers, with certainties taken at face value, are no longer a part of my faith. i hold things loosely as i am a human not fully capable of knowing the mind and purposes of G-D. Yet, like Lobdell, the answers often given as to why bad things happen to good people and why G-D allows it all, are just tired, tortured and plain unsatisfying. YET, why do i still hang on when someone like Lobdell de-converted and left his Christian faith all behind and found utter peace? WHAT makes me different; not better, mind you? Am i just afraid to let go or am i stupid or deluded? It took me years to get to the point of accepting my sexuality and coming to peace with G-D about it. i FINALLY have peace and joy in my life like never before. Like Lobdell, i am still the same person with the same morals and find myself ever more grateful in my life. Like Lobdell, i still stumble and fail miserably as a human being. What makes me and Lobdell so different with such similar stories of faith journeys? Why did he decide to stop wrestling with the mysteries and questions and find peace outside of his faith while i find comfort and peace in the mysteries and wrestling? What are your thoughts?

i leave you with this quote:

“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.”
– Jiddu Krishnamurti

Adele Sakler currently resides in Sacramento, California with her partner, and their cute Tibetan Spaniel named Mushu. She suffers from, and is in treatment for Chronic Lyme Disease, a few other Tick-Borne diseases and Heavy Metal Toxicity. She considers herself at this point in her journey a Christian agnostic because she just can’t seem to sign on the dotted line and ascribe to all the doctrines and long-held man-made traditions of Christendom. She loves G-D and is a failing Christ-follower. She blogs at www.existentialpunk.com and is the creator and site administrator for www.queermergent.com.