Two and a half years ago I attended my first Centering Prayer retreat at the St. Francis Renewal Center with a special group of all ages seeking God’s friendship in the stillness. I sat in one of the later sessions of the weekend and began pleading with God: “I cannot do this on my own. I do not know enough to teach this meditation in the prisons as you’ve called me. Who am I to go forward in this way-... Read more
The path to transformation is full of suffering. When I speak about spiritual woundedness and church-hurt, which seems to be more and more lately, I use the metaphor of childbirth. Childbirth is an excruciating process, and when naturally felt in the body a woman reaches the crescendo of pain, the point called the “transition,” where it feels like the body can’t handle one more moment, this is the very point the body transforms the pain into new life, into the... Read more
This month on the Emerging Voices blog we want to focus on moving through darkness and into light ie: transformation. Tomorrow Teresa Pasquale is going to speak to us about healing woundedness. But today I want to talk about leadership and some of the dynamic that have generated some of the woundedness we see in the Emergent movement. Emergent leadership is being called into question and has been for sometime. In the past few years I have watched the founders... Read more
For most of my life I hadn’t the faintest idea what humility was. I would hear others share stories about deeply embarrassing experiences followed by a remark along the lines of “Well, I sure got my piece of humble pie…” I witnessed creative, intelligent, and beautiful human beings respond to praise by belittling the subject of admiration, whether it be their appearance, personality, or work. Over and over, I observed people out rightly disagreeing and even arguing with those who... Read more
It takes a high level of organizing skill to pull off mobilizations like we just saw in NYC for climate justice. It also takes training and movement building to achieve peace among 300,000 people in the streets. What I hope people realize is that the People’s Climate March and Occupy are all expressions of intentional movement building toward building strategic and collective people power that has been going on for 30+ years. We activists train our butts off. Movements are... Read more
Sometimes I wonder what I’m still doing here in this conversation. Of all the friends who have been down the road of deconstruction with me, so many have moved on to other communities, other practices, other faiths, or no faith at all. I can’t say that I blame them. Sometimes coming to a Christian church, whether it identifies as emergent, evangelical, mainline, or progressive, feels like going to a dry well. So much of the language and practices I find... Read more
As a Filipina who is passionate about combining racial justice and feminist activism with my Christian faith, I can tell you my journey has been both turbulent and life-giving. The isolation I have felt because of this commitment to both racial justice and feminism in secular spaces has been painful. As a woman of color I refuse to be segmented. I refuse to be forced to choose between my commitments to ending both racism and the oppression of women. Intersectionality... Read more
I don’t want to write a post about Ferguson. Or racism. Or even go all-in and nod to my patron saint of womanism, bell hooks by writing about White supremacist imperialist hetero-patriarchy. Like one of my many heroes from the Ferguson protests: smileycreek, Flickr I can’t believe people still want to argue about race being an issue. I can’t believe I still have to be a modern Clare Huxtable to prove I’m not lazy but know all the lyrics to... Read more
Over the past three years I have been in a process of learning, unlearning, and trying again. Emergence has given me a language for this wrestling match, a divine lexicon for the struggle. In light of my journey, I want to explore what faith can look like when we find ourselves caught between belief and skepticism; hope and despair; human questions and divine humor. ——————————————————————————————————————————– Just over a year ago I lost someone very close to me. The loss was sudden,... Read more
I love Black Jesus. I don’t mean the Everlast song—though that is a good one. I mean the series from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim created by Aaron MacGruder of Boondocks fame. Gerald “Slink” Johnson stars as a tall, warm-hearted Jesus living in South Central LA. His closest friends are former convicts, drug dealers and a bum who betrays him regularly. He even consistently shows love to Vic (played by Charlie Murphy) despite Vic’s attempts to expose Jesus as some sort... Read more
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