Just Keep Swimming Spirituality Category
The Limits of Forgiveness & Reconciliation, part 2
Posted on December 6, 2019 1 Comment
I have heard horror stories of people in abusive relationships who have sought spiritual advise from their church leaders, only to be told that they should forgive their partners–forgive the verbal, psychological, physical abuse and/or infidelity, for example. They are told to forgive as God forgives (remember the theological model I mentioned in my last […]
The Mystery of Forgiveness & Reconciliation, part 1
Posted on December 6, 2019 2 Comments
Growing up, when I thought about forgiveness–which is ever present in a practicing Fundamentalist Christian’s life–I thought first about God so loving the world that he sent Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. For our forgiveness. When I thought of forgiveness apart from the Cross, I thought about Jesus’s quip to Peter […]
Was St. Thomas Aquinas in My Head? A Very Fitting Study Prayer to Mary
Posted on April 30, 2019 Leave a Comment
Here is a prayer by St. Thomas Aquinas, addressed to Mary, whom he called on for inspiration and strength in school. Thank you to my McAfee Classmate Benjamin Smith for sharing it: O Mary, Seat of Wisdom, so many persons of common intellect have made through your intercession admirable progress in their studies. I hereby […]
A Parenting Psalm: Wisdom Prayer for My Children
Posted on April 24, 2019 5 Comments
I remember as a young girl my Daddy pointing out the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Wisdom comes with age, he said. Well, he finished, it ought to. It occurs to me—I am trying not to worry about it, really—that because of life’s circumstances, there are many “words of wisdom” I have not taught my […]
(Un)Holy Saturday: A Community Lament Psalm
Posted on April 20, 2019 1 Comment
It is Holy Saturday, God, the day good Christians celebrate Jesus’s body lying in the tomb while his soul descended into hell, the Harrowing of Hell, they call it. Holy Saturday is coming home from a funeral. Everybody is exhausted, and the loss is starting to get real. You have to eat~~people have brought food~~but […]
Louisiana Black Church Fires: A Psalm of Community Lament
Posted on April 17, 2019 4 Comments
Holy God, we must speak the names. St. Mary Baptist. Greater Union Baptist. Mount Pleasant Baptist. Louisiana smolders. In the names and the smoke our sin is manifest. We do not speak of their pain because the pain is their own—it belongs to their hearts. We do not get to cry those tears. Theirs is […]
Missionary Position: The UMC, Sexuality, and the Global Church
Posted on April 15, 2019 3 Comments
First, I need to acknowledge my white privilege and citizenship in a colonizer nation. Additionally, I am a U.S. Christian in a missionary culture, which has contributed to colonization. That said, I am also a gay female Christian from a rural Fundamentalist denomination, so I also can speak from intersecting places of marginalization. In late […]
Till Death?: The Curiously Ethical Question of Intentional Monogamy
Posted on April 8, 2019 2 Comments
This week’s post is an updating of a one that began as a paper I presented at the 2017 South Eastern Women’s Studies (SEWSA) Conference called Intentional Monogamy: Not Your Grandma’s Sexual Ethics. I’m thinking about monogamy as an act of queer intentionality. Even before I started my MDiv at Mercer, I had been playing with […]
I Heart Blogging, or, Thank You Dorothy Allison
Posted on April 4, 2019 Leave a Comment
Here’s what you’ll see on my About page now. When Sam Phillips’ secretary at Sun Records, Marion Keisker, asked Elvis who he sounded like, he replied, “I don’t sound like nobody, ma’am.” Writing can be such an isolating activity, that I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling like I don’t write like anybody else does. […]
The Choice to Live Passionately
Posted on March 30, 2019 Leave a Comment
My Spiritual Formation this week is from What Matters Most: Ten Lessons in Living Passionately from the Song of Solomon by Renita Weems. She takes takes the “ten lessons” from the Shulammite woman’s fearless living and loving in the Song. Interestingly, I’ve heard the Song of Solomon called “The Porn Book of the Bible,” which […]
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