Strong Enough to Hold Me

September 9, 2015Leave a comment

So, I’m writing about church two days in a row–that never happens.

This essay for SheLoves Magazine is a bit more raw; more up close and personal. It explores my journey with Church from a different angle, zooming in on what it looked like sort out my faith in burn-out mode after India. This is what it was like to show up in church, dragging my baggage and doubts behind me. In particular, this is what it was like to take communion on days when I wasn’t sure I was–or wanted to be–part of the Body of Christ. This was what it was like to experience grace on the other side of failure. Here’s an excerpt:

Seeing the delight that the entire congregation took in including small children in the service, gave me hope. So did the fact that there was an old woman who felt free to dance in the aisle while the rest of us sang worship songs with typical Baptist understatement, slightly swaying or clapping where we stood.

For the past two and a half years, I had lived in slum communities in India where children were always buzzing around the edges of adult conversation and activity, but were rarely the focus of constructive attention. I had seen kids locked inside of dark rooms while their parents were at work during the day; I had seen them slapped around, kicked, screamed at, threatened, and neglected…

Head over to SheLoves Magazine to read the rest of the piece.

Why I Still Bother With Church

September 8, 2015Leave a comment

Today RELEVANT magazine online published a piece I wrote about my evolving relationship with church over the years. At different stages in my journey, following Jesus has led me in and out of organized Christendom. Sometimes church has been a place to find helpful answers; other times, church has brought my most troubling questions into being. Church has both shown me love and stoked my darkest fears and insecurities. Like a dysfunctional family in which you alternately (or simultaneously) treasure your sense of belonging and resent your unflattering resemblances, church has been for me an exasperating, unwieldy community that reflects the fractured beauty of the messy human beings who comprise it.

There are times when I want nothing to do with it–usually when I am confronted with the very real damage the church as done in the world by choosing violence, power, and tribal allegiances over the humble way of Jesus (who includes and serves everybody, loves even his enemies, and is never swayed by desires for control or self-preservation). Cynicism is such an easy release, but so far I have never managed to permanently make my home on that lonely promontory of self-righteousness. This piece maps the journey so far, and describes the new territory I’ve recently discovered. Head on over to RELEVANTmagazine.com to check it out!

Filmmaking, Rumi, and Permanent Residency (or in other words, August so far)

August 20, 2015August 20, 2015Leave a comment

Today, a piece I wrote about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was published in the latest issue of Christ and Pop Culture. A lot of media portrays this part of the world as being locked into a hopeless gridlock of violence, but this article explores a different narrative: the creative ways that ordinary people are promoting peace by bringing “enemies” together and building relationship (surprisingly, through amateur filmmaking). For now, the full text is only available through a paid subscription, or by downloading this single issue of the magazine, “Enemies Among Us,” for $1.99. Otherwise, I’ll be sharing the article here for free once it becomes publicly available in a few weeks.

In other news, I am now a Canadian permanent resident! It’s hard to describe the relief I feel in finally becoming an “official” person in this country who can work, study, see a doctor, or cross the border freely just like anyone else. My frustrating (but still privileged) experience as an immigrant has been fairly smooth, but it gives me a deeper appreciation for the profound anxiety and instability that mark the lives of the people I know who have come to Canada as refugee claimants, or as undocumented workers whose desperate life circumstances aren’t legally recognized as reasons for them to be here.

I found out about my new status in Canada just two days after returning from an 8-day silent retreat. When I had first told people I was going on that retreat, someone joked that the next step would be to take holy orders and become a Trappist monk. I laughed, knowing that at least in my case, silent retreats have nothing to do with being holy, and everything to do with wanting to be whole.

I went on my first (much shorter) silent retreat back in December out of a recognition of how much healing I needed. I was drawn towards silence by desperation. Despite my intense fear of being alone with myself—or with God—for more than three full days, a voice from somewhere inside me whispered that perhaps I was terrified of exactly the sort of space and stillness I needed in order to make peace with the sadness, fear, and anger that I was more or less able to keep at bay in daily life. Part of me knew that I needed silence.

I surprised myself by feeling reluctant to leave at the end of that first retreat. Me, the talkative, task-oriented extrovert who had done almost nothing for the better part of five days except sip tea, stare into the fire, and have long conversations in my mind! If anything, my longing for unbroken communion with God in the space of long, quiet days had only intensified, and I committed to going on a much longer retreat later in the year.

By the end of July, however, the part of me that had voluntarily signed up for more than a week away from normal life felt small and faint; insignificant in comparison to the part of me that was content with the day-to-day activity which often crowded out the desire for stillness, or even prayer. With travel to and from the small island where it would be held, the retreat meant spending the better part of 10 days away from Andy—by far the longest we have ever been apart during the six and a half years of our relationship—and it involved not just being away, but being completely out of contact, with everyone.

“What’s your intention for the time?” a friend asked me a few days before I left. “I don’t know,” I answered, fear rising up inside me. Wait, I don’t know why I’m going on this retreat, I thought franticly. Should I even go? I briefly considered cancelling, but couldn’t come up with a good excuse.

And yet, when I arrived, it felt like coming home. There’s so much I could share about my experience, but much of that new growth is still so raw and tender, this is the internet, and there’s only so much you can really describe to others about your deepest , most intimate, inner life anyway. I will say that the hardest thing about being in silence is not the absence of speaking, but all the emotions and thoughts and memories that come up when you spend that much time alone with yourself, without even the distraction of basic social obligations like eye contact and verbal greetings.

On the first day, the person I was meeting with for spiritual direction gave me a poem by Rumi called The Guest House:

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

I had ridden a wave of circumstantial happiness out of Vancouver, and I reflected that perhaps now I would have the chance to find out what it was like to spend time with God in silence while in a fairly peaceful, even-keeled condition instead of in the midst of emotional turmoil. But eight days is a long time, long enough for turmoil to ensue and subside, and ensue again.

Little did I know that one of the greatest gifts of my retreat would be having enough time to weather those internal storms, and to see that however intense or scary they might seem, they didn’t wash me away. I didn’t exactly manage to “meet them at the door laughing,” as Rumi advised, but after spending a few hours or a whole day in the company of shame, or anger, or sadness, or self-doubt, the “visitor” would inevitably leave and I would still be there. So would God.

The peace that I felt at those times was profound. It wasn’t the usual, flimsy happiness that depends on things going well or turning out a certain way; nor was it the conditional self-acceptance that often follows having done something well. It was that deeper awareness of the bedrock reality that the world is permeated and sustained by Love, that I am loved, and that ultimately—as medieval mystic Julian of Norwich writes—“All will be well, and every kind of thing will be well.”

In a way I couldn’t possibly have planned, those days in silence seem to have marked a boundary line between two seasons in my life: a slow season of processing my transition from India and focusing on my own healing, and a more active season of engaging with the world more fully again. Not abandoning prayer and stillness, or having it all together, but, you know, finding a paid job. Etcetera. I’m excited to see what this new season brings, but I am also thankful for all of the hard-won lessons I will carry forward from the season behind me.

Remnants: an interview with Jenny Hawkinson

August 10, 2015August 10, 2015Leave a comment

Back in June, I interviewed my talented friend Jenny Hawkinson for an article with Cordella Magazine, an online quarterly featuring women artists and writers, and the piece has just been published today. Jenny is a visual artist in the downtown east side of Vancouver, the same neighborhood where Andy and I lived in an intentional community for the first few months after we moved to Canada.

In the past, I never had much appreciation of art for its own sake–art sometimes struck me as irrelevant or elitist; an impractical luxury when there are so many “real” issues going on in the world. But I’ve learned a lot from Jenny about the importance of art in cultivating hope, building community, and imagining the kind of world we want to work toward. Her life is a beautiful example of what it looks like to share life with people on the margins of society, and to engage with the brokenness of the world through art.

Click on over to read the interview and see some of Jenny’s beautiful work!

What Jesus Can Teach Us About Confronting Racism in Ourselves

July 29, 20151 Comment

Racism is obvious to us in hateful individuals who may utter racial slurs or openly support groups like the KKK. Unless we are willing to look more closely, racism is less obvious when embedded in the day-to-day operations of the criminal justice system, or when subtly continuing to shape the socioeconomic landscape of our country. But the most difficult place to see and acknowledge racism is likely within ourselves. Today I’ve written an article for Sojourners about what we can learn from Jesus on that difficult path of self-exploration. Strange as it may sound, even the Son of God had to conquer ingrained prejudice. Here’s an excerpt:

Many whites balk at the suggestion that their views and assumptions might be racist because they know themselves to be moral people who live decent lives and maybe even have some black friends. They certainly don’t hate anybody, and they aren’t supporters of the Ku Klux Klan. Because they understand racism on an individual rather than systemic level, it seems impossible to hold together an image of oneself that contains both “good person” and “racist.”

Yet individual guilt and hatred often have little to do with white America’s unwitting participation in the institutional racism of our society. We can’t avoid bearing a resemblance, warts and all, to the culture that raises us… (read the rest)

This is the challenging, humbling work of repentance. If we desire to see the Kingdom come in the world, we must first be willing to clear the way for it to break into our own souls.

what Jesus can teach us about confronting racism in ourselves

Just Mercy: Exploring the Landscape of The Criminal Injustice System in America

July 27, 2015Leave a comment

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy is a book about “getting closer to mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America”—a memoir of his early years as a lawyer for death row inmates in the Deep South, and the trajectory that eventually leads him to broaden the scope of his work to include wrongly imprisoned individuals across the country. In the wake of events in Ferguson, Baltimore, and elsewhere over the past year, this book is more relevant now than ever. Through his story, Stevenson offers Americans a compelling challenge, rooted in love: to look critically at our history of racial oppression and to rethink our criminal “justice” system in light of the ways in which that historical violence has bled through and continues to deform that system today.

The story follows Stevenson from Harvard Law School to an internship with a legal aid nonprofit in Alabama where he is confronted for the first time with real people facing the death penalty. After graduation, he returns to Alabama to continue advocating for innocent men on death row, and over the next several years goes on to discover just how widespread the dysfunction, corruption, and injustice in the American legal system really are. Stevenson’s legal work expands over time to include advocacy for children who have been sentenced to die in prison, and “lifers” or death row inmates whose intellectual disabilities, mental illness, and traumatic histories were not taken into account during their trials. The common thread between all of these individuals is that race and poverty have made them unable to defend themselves in the legal system: they are powerless to resist wrongful imprisonment and extreme punishment.

Stevenson gives historical and statistical context to the personal narratives he tells, presenting them not as mere anecdotes, but as powerful, symbolic examples of a larger whole. He writes that the United States has the highest incarceration rate of anywhere in the world: 2.3 million people are in prison, and another six million are on probation or parole. A quarter of a million American children—some as young as twelve—have been sent to adult jails and prisons where almost 3,000 of them are serving life sentences. Furthermore, many people are imprisoned for nonviolent crimes. “Writing a bad check or committing a petty theft” can result in decades of prison time or even life imprisonment, and there are now “more than a half million people in state or federal prisons for drug offenses.”

People of color make up the vast majority of the prison population, and Stevenson describes the way that mass incarceration continues the racial terrorism of the Jim Crow era into the twenty-first century, impacting racial minorities in much the same way as did segregation laws in the early twentieth century (Michelle Alexander makes the same point in her 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness). Justice Bureau statistics show that black men are four times more likely than whites to be shot by police. Black and Hispanic youth in urban poor neighborhoods face “random stops, questioning, and harassment” from police which increase risk of arrest for petty crimes and often result in criminal records “for behavior that more affluent children engage in with impunity.” The results of this racial discrimination in police work and the court system are clear: “one of every fifteen people born in the United States in 2001 is expected to go to jail or prison,” but among black males, that number is one in three.

Parts of Stevenson’s book read like the suspenseful courtroom scenes of a crime thriller. In recounting the stories of people like Walter McMillian, a black man framed by local law enforcement in Alabama for the murder of a young white woman, Stevenson draws the reader into the unfolding drama through descriptions of tense days in court, emotional dialogues with McMillian’s family, and heated confrontations with corrupt officials.

Throughout Just Mercy, vivid character development restores names and faces to the children, women, and men whose suffering is ordinarily hidden from view within the prison system: the grief-stricken man who is executed before Stevenson’s eyes, the terrified young teenager serving a life sentence for shooting his mother’s abuser, the loving mother of six who is incarcerated for capital murder after a medical examiner falsely asserts that her stillborn baby was born alive. In these heartbreaking pages, readers encounter not only tragedy and injustice, but individuals who have maintained hope, resilience, and compassion in the midst of it all.

Yet Just Mercy does more than simply relate the facts, or tell a good story. It digs down to the heart of the issue, examining the deeper psychological and spiritual reasons that we as a society have supported and allowed mass incarceration and harsh punishment for the most vulnerable people in our midst.

Reflecting on the brokenness he has discovered in himself through his personal involvement with the poor and the incarcerated, Stevenson writes, “So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken… we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments… we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible.”

Stevenson has learned from his years of working to reform the legal system that “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” He asserts that “we are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated,” and the only way to reclaim our humanity is to realize “that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and—perhaps—we all need some measure of unmerited grace.”

Just Mercy is an invitation for all of us to do the kind of honest soul-searching that will uncover this vulnerable, flawed humanity, and to refuse to comply any longer with a system that denies it.

Sidewalk Battlegrounds and Breakthroughs

July 20, 2015July 20, 20151 Comment

“You’re very beautiful,” the man on the corner commented as I walked by.

His voice was calm; he might not have meant any harm. But he was just one of many men to have offered their unsolicited opinions on my appearance over the past week, one of whom had stepped into my path and gotten in my face as he delivered his creepy line. I had had enough.

I turned toward him, furrowed my brow and said with irritation, “I don’t want your opinion.”

“Oh, okay,” I heard him say in a sarcastic voice as I turned around. “Well, then have a nice day!” he yelled after me as I started to cross the street. His voice grew louder as I got further away. “Actually, don’t have a nice day! Also, YOU’RE UGLY!”

I stared straight ahead and walked resolutely toward the elevated rail station, but my heart rate was up. What I was hearing was a five-year-old’s tantrum coming out of a grown man’s body—and that made me scared. He sounded unstable, and his disproportionate fury told me that this was not a person in control of himself. I didn’t want to become the target of his pent-up aggression about who knows what—stress at work? Rejection from an ex or from womankind in general?

As I sat down on the train, I took a few deep breaths to calm myself down, but I couldn’t help replaying the scene in my mind, thinking of what I would have liked to say to him.

“Listen,” I should have told him. “I am a human being, and I have the right to walk around my own neighborhood and go about my business without having my sex appeal appraised by random men who have appointed themselves judges in some kind of 24-hour beauty pageant! If you just wanted to brighten my day with a genuine, no-strings-attached compliment, then you need to realize that those “compliments” more often feel demeaning— or even threatening—than warm and fuzzy. And if you don’t care how your words make me feel, then it’s not a compliment. So shut up!”

Earlier in the week, I had beaten myself up over remaining passive when I was harassed on the street. I kept my eyes straight ahead, pretended like the guy wasn’t there, just kept walking. You should have said something! My mind screamed. You shouldn’t just let him get away with that!

But of course, now I had been reminded of why I rarely did respond—because these were unpredictable strangers, and it wasn’t worth putting myself in further danger in order to speak my mind. Realistically, a short, reactive confrontation like that was unlikely to change deep-seated patterns of sexist behavior or a man’s lack of respect for women. And if men twice my age really thought that their lascivious stares or pronouncements were doing me a favor, then there was more confusion there than I usually had time to sort out on my sidewalk commute to somewhere else.

Still, it doesn’t always happen like that. Days later, just a couple blocks away from Tantrum Man, an older man weighed in on my appearance as I made my way home from the grocery store.

I could feel his eyes on me as he began: “What a lovely, beautiful—”

“I’m not interested in your opinion. Thanks.” This time I smiled calmly and said this in a neutral voice.

“Well you should be,” I heard him say behind me in an equally casual tone, “‘cause I’m a fashion designer, and you would enjoy it.”

I had to laugh to myself at the absurdity of this reply. But a block later, I was not amused to find that he was still walking behind me. He caught up to me as I was waiting to cross a busy intersection.

“Here it is a lovely, beautiful day, and you got your panties in a wad for no good reason,” he said as he walked up to stand beside me on the curb. His tone wasn’t hostile, but the words were demeaning. (Basic human respect tip: conjecturing on the state of a stranger’s underwear is NEVER an appropriate conversation opener.)

I inhaled slowly. “The reason I’m upset,” I told him, “Is because I can’t walk around here a single day without some guy commenting on my appearance, and I just want—”

“I was just trying to say hi.”

“Well then just say hi. That would be fine.” I explained that “compliments” like his were threatening because I never knew where they were headed or what he might say next. Plenty of guys went beyond “friendly” behavior.

“Like what do they say?” he asked as the light changed. “How unfriendly can they be?”

More insensitive questions—I wasn’t about to go into the details of the times I had been groped, or propositioned by strangers—but he seemed genuinely perplexed by my concerns.

In the time it took us to cross the street, I told him how some of the men who have taken an interest in me on the street have been intimidating, or even violent. “You need to be aware of how some women are going to feel about your comments.”

“Well, I appreciate that,” he said as we stepped back onto the sidewalk. “Lesson learned. Have a nice day!” He turned to walk away with a genuinely friendly wave.

I continued down the sidewalk with a bemused smile, taken aback that he had listened respectfully and apparently been able to receive my point of view.

My experiences with street harassment have taught me two things. First, I am not responsible for controlling men’s behavior. In any given situation, it is completely legitimate for me to prioritize my personal safety and emotional well-being over trying to help men understand the destructive results of their behavior. Often, getting out the situation as fast as possible is the best thing for me to do.

And second, men are unique individuals and human beings who are capable of change. Despite the prevalence of “rape culture” and the many negatives experiences I and other women have had, conversations like this one give me hope for a society in which men and women treat one another with dignity and respect as equals, and in which we are able to empathize with one another’s experiences.

Ultimately, we are all looking for love and respect. I believe that one or both of these unmet needs have been at the root of every negative experience I have ever had with a stranger. Many of the men who catcall women on the street don’t have any social skills in their repertoire for engaging with the opposite sex in a healthy way, and they act (or react) out of their own loneliness and pain. This doesn’t excuse the behavior, or make it any easier to deal with when I’m the target of their dysfunctional efforts at connection, but it does help me to understand it.

Working towards justice and speaking the truth are things that I am still learning to do in love. It’s easier to do when I remember that my enemies are not other human beings, but destructive behaviors and the belief systems that drive them. Behaviors, beliefs, and people can change.

street harassment stories

The story I carry inside me

July 16, 2015July 20, 2015Leave a comment

“The past year has perhaps been the most difficult one of my life.”

So begins the blog post I’ve written for The Mudroom today. It’s the most vulnerable thing I’ve written recently: a reflection on the experience of deciding to leave India and then struggling to find my feet again in the West. The piece is a very brief snapshot of what has been and continues to be a difficult and beautiful journey for me.

For the past 10 months in Vancouver, I’ve been prevented from working or beginning grad school because of a lengthy immigration process. I’ve often felt trapped by my powerlessness to do anything about my permanent residency, and I’ve been frustrated by having so much time at loose ends. I said when I came here that I was looking for a season of rest and healing, but I have continued to fight that every step of the way, wanting desperately to jump into another busy season and another purposeful role that might provide a new identity for me instead of allowing my identity to be completely separated out from what I do. Who am I when I simply am?

When I allow myself to accept what is happening instead of trying so hard to change it, I recognize the gift of this time. I was able to go to counseling for several months to process my experiences in India (and my life up to this point); to gain valuable insights and skills. I took advantage of the opportunity to go on a few days’ silent retreat during Advent, and I’ll be returning to the same tranquil island for a 10-day silent retreat at the end of this month (a prospect which both thrills and terrifies me). I’ve had the time to get to know refugee claimants at Kinbrace, holding babies and cutting birthday cakes and eating delicious foods that remind my new friends of their faraway families and homes. Andy and I have been sheltered by a church community and befriended by a circle of wonderful people who make Vancouver feel like home for us weary travelers.

One of the biggest gifts of my enforced joblessness has been the freedom to write for long stretches of time. I’ve written a few freelance pieces here and there, but mainly I’ve been writing my book. I had no idea how long it would take. When I finished my first draft after six months, I remember thinking, “How do people spend years writing a single book?” Now I understand. Though not as much as I’m sure I will understand a few months from now, when I realize (again) how many steps I didn’t know about!

The process of writing a book has often felt like bushwhacking a trail through the jungle; I’m never sure what lies ahead or how far away my destination is. But without fail, at every moment of uncertainty a sign has appeared—in the form of a person I meet, a conversation I have, or a piece of information I come across—to direct me a few paces further. It has been by turns exhilarating, tedious, and discouraging. I’ll work on one part of my manuscript and think, Damn, this is good. Then later I’ll come back to it and think with alarm, This will never turn into a book.

I didn’t realize what a deeply personal and reflective process the writing would turn out to be. I didn’t realize how much of my own story—before, during, and after India—I would have to be willing to spill onto the page. I’ve had to face my fears of failure and of vulnerability again and again, but here—on the third draft—I’m feeling a growing confidence that there will actually be something to show at the end of all this craziness.

“The end” hasn’t yet been assigned a fixed date on the calendar, but it’s probably a testament to the growth of the past few months that the uncertainty no longer destabilizes me. In the meantime, click on over to The Mudroom to read more about the journey that is continuing to shape me, and my book.

burnout recovery process

Who’s paying for your vacation?

July 6, 2015July 6, 2015Leave a comment

photo credit: womansday.com

Summer is prime time for vacations. School is out, and the warm weather is perfect for outdoor adventure, or just lounging at the beach or the pool. For many of us, vacations are a way to relax, recharge, and escape the stress of everyday life, but we often don’t realize the implications of our vacationing practices for the people and places we visit.

Back in June, I wrote an article for a magazine called Christ and Pop Culture about how to vacation without checking our ethics at the door. The magazine offers their readers a digital subscription for tablets and iPads, so the article has been behind a pay wall until now–but today it’s being featured on the website for free. Here’s how it starts off:

“From royals relaxing at summer palaces to wealthy Americans seeking out natural surroundings for the sake of health during the Victorian era, vacations have historically been a privilege of the social elite. It wasn’t everyone who could afford a second house by the sea or a trip out to the wilderness to escape the cramped conditions of cities. Yet both rest and connection with nature have always been basic human needs whatever your station in life.

These days, the world’s cities, cultures, and natural landscapes are often marketed as prepackaged commodities available for consumption to anyone who can pay the ticket price (which still includes people with money, and excludes people who are poor). But this purely materialistic understanding of vacation is a destructive oversimplification of God’s creation. As consumers, we are encouraged by industry executives and advertisers to narrow our focus to the monetary cost of our trip. But as followers of Jesus, we are called to be concerned about the rest, health, and wholeness of the places and people we visit as well as our own…”

Click here to read the rest of the article, in which I examine the unsavory specifics of cruises, all-inclusive resorts, and air travel, and offer practical advice for vacationing in ways that are just and compassionate.

ethical vacations

Things that happened while I was gone

June 30, 2015June 30, 20151 Comment

Over the weekend, Andy and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary. We were out in the woods on a small island off the coast of BC, building small cabins that will serve as “hermitages” for people on silent retreat who need a place for deep solitude and prayer. It felt good to do some manual labor, to see tangible progress as we worked, and to feel good and tired by the end of the day, in a sore-muscle rather than a screenburned-eyes or overwrought-mind sort of way. Our motley construction crew was made up of people from all over the place, some in their teens and some in their fifties, and it was fun hanging out with people of all ages—that doesn’t happen very often outside of family reunions, and intergenerational friendship is one of the things Andy and I had enjoyed so much about living in India. After spending a long Saturday on the work site, we enjoyed a brisk swim at an isolated beach. There were Canadian geese sitting on the water around us, so it definitely stretched my idea of what summer at the beach looks like!

Apparently while we were hammering away in the woods and sleeping in rustic cabins without electricity and running water, a lot was happening back in civilization, and particularly in the country of my birth.

There was the courageous act of protest by a brave woman named Bree Newsome, who scaled the flag pole in front of the state capitol building in South Carolina to take down the symbol of white supremacy and racial violence that had flown over the seat of the state government there for more than a hundred and fifty years. Civil disobedience is intended to show the moral absurdity of laws through breaking them and willingly suffering the consequences of one’s actions. Bree’s action did exactly that: South Carolina police (including a black officer) were forced to arrest a peaceful black woman, who quoted scripture aloud as they handcuffed her, for the “crime” of removing a banner under which black Americans have been enslaved, raped, murdered, beaten, intimidated, and systematically oppressed for over a century. No scene could have more pointedly demonstrated the righteousness of her cause: the law was against her, but justice was certainly on her side. She now faces up to 3 years in prison and a fine of up to $5000 for her heroic act. All of us who follow Jesus can learn from this woman’s sacrificial example.

Also over the weekend, President Obama delivered a eulogy for Clementa Pinkney, a black pastor who was among the slain in Charleston on June 17. I don’t know what opinion you hold of Obama as a person, or a politician—I can’t think of him without remembering the countless drone attacks he has authorized against innocent civilians in the Middle East—but his eulogy for Pinkney is one of the best sermons I have ever heard, and is probably THE most powerful speech I have ever heard from a head of state. Perhaps the fact that, as President, he has made important public decisions with which nearly every one of us has disagreed at some point or another makes him exactly the kind of flawed, imperfect human being who can speak with authority about grace. Seriously, if you haven’t yet listened to the speech, please, please do. It is a heartfelt lament of the ways that we have deeply wounded one another in America, an inspiring reminder of the resilience and love that have continued to grow even in the midst of violence and oppression, and an eloquent call for us to move forward together as a nation towards forgiveness and justice, extending God’s grace to one another in every facet of our lives.

“Justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other,” he remarks at one point. “My liberty depends on you being free, too.” One can hear in these words the echoes of both Jesus’ call to love our enemies, recognizing our neighbor-hood with them, and MLK Jr.’s assertion that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The other big national news of the weekend was the legalization of same-sex marriage across the United States. The reactions of many American Christians have already become an embarrassing adventure in missing the point, but I still hold out hope that we as a Church will be able to let go of our fearful siege mentality and recognize this opportunity to love and extend grace to people who may not share our sexual orientation or our theology. I’ve always been confused by the political kerfuffle over trying to legislate a Christian lifestyle into the laws of the state, since God has never called the Church to control the government. We have been given the task of modeling the Kingdom in our own lives, creating a community that images God’s hospitality and love, and inviting others into freely-chosen, loving relationship with God.

Using legal means to force non-Christians into choices and behaviors that Christians have specifically chosen as disciples of Christ seems not only pointless, but controlling and counterproductive to our true mission in the world. If we send the message to the people around us that we are more concerned about policing their sex lives than about caring for them as people, then we’ve not just lost the “culture wars”—we’ve lost the respect and trust that would have laid the foundations for any relationship with people outside the church to grow. We’ve lost our credibility as God’s ambassadors of love. We’ve lost our purpose as a community.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be involved in wider culture—we certainly should. But even in the realm of sex and relationships, why not concern ourselves with the destructive forces of pornography, trafficking, sexual abuse, and domestic violence that are destroying vulnerable individuals and families and marriages? Which will give a clearer picture of God: a Christian reacting with fear-mongering and angry statements in protest of same-sex marriage, or that same Christian instead demonstrating a mature ability to be gracious with people who disagree with them, whose lives and choices are different from his own? Some Christians have compared homosexuals with Hitler, referred to them as “Gaystapo,” or likened the court’s ruling to the 9/11 Terrorist attacks. Regardless of what we believe about homosexuality, angry antics like these should offend our consciences as Christians. Would Jesus be stirring up fear and hatred at a time like this? Or would he be inviting a same-sex couple over for dinner to hear their story and get to know them as people, refusing to reduce the complex beauty of their humanity down to a single political issue or life decision? I get the sense that he’s probably prompting us to do that right now.

supreme court ruling on same sex marriage

Trudy Smith

Living in the tension of the already and the not yet