About

This blog is meant to be a space to explore the diversity of opinions represented in the religious world (Specifically Christianity). For the Unnamed Women refers to the many silent and unnamed characters present in the Bible, as well as to the many people in our world who often don't get their side of the story heard. This is NOT a space to point fingers but to gather together, hand in hand, to make this world and the Christian community a more loving, accepting space.

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Let's Talk about...Suicide

My last post was about pulling back the veil on Mental Health in the church. After writing that post I felt there was so much more to say and will be reflecting on different topics pertaining to mental health in the next posts.

Suicide is controversial, personal, and relevant.

It is controversial because in greater mainstream society we don't want to talk about it. We force it back into the grave and bury it with it secrets, trauma, and grief. The church is especially silent on this issue. The Catholic church has even been quoted as saying those who commit suicide are going straight to hell. Well I don't believe that...and I believe we need to start not only talking about this but shouting it from the rooftops.

It's personal. I went to one university for undergrad that competes for the highest suicide rate in the nation. You don't read that on their admissions website. Before I arrived on campus there was a string of suicides, 5 in one year. As a means to cope the students invented a saying: are you joining the diving team? Well the diving team didn't exist. What they were talking about was the multitude of students who had jumped from various buildings around campus. In my time as a student 4 more students would take their lives. In my new university for grad school there has been two suicides this year. Its personal because it is effecting my community and I don't see much being done about it.

Its relevant. We have heard of the "It Get's better" Campaign targeting LGBT youth who are contemplating suicide. But it is not only young people and the LGBT community that is being effected, but our troops coming home and the elderly. Suicide effects all different people with different backgrounds, races, ages, lifestyles, sexualities...

We can't just hope for a close friend to tell us they are thinking of taking their life. We can't just open up more mental health facilities or hire more counselors. We can't just wait for it to happen again to cry foul. We need to start changing things now.

The church is meant to be built on community. We are meant to be a family. The early church and Christ called each other brothers and sisters. They were a collected unit that cared not only for someone's life on Sunday but for their whole lives. I believe if the church takes its role as a community and family seriously it can help prevent suicide.

Before I go on, I believe suicide stems from a disease of depression or other mental health issues. I believe anyone who is contemplating suicide needs to get medical help and counseling. But rarely does even the sickest person want to spontaneously leap to death. There is usually a progression into the darkness.

I would rather the church feel they had done everything, than wish they had done something if suicide hits your congregation.

We can't leave people behind. In a world that tells us to be individuals, as children of God we are meant to be in community. We are not meant to be alone. It is not enough to say "well you're not lonely: you have God". For those suffering depression this is a stab in the heart. For those with depression it takes every effort and piece of energy to feel accepted and part of community...but it doesn't mean they should be out of community.

As someone who struggles with depression, I have been struck down by days where I don't want to get out of bed. It takes every last bit of effort to even go take a shower. But on those bad days when a friend calls or forces me to get out of my apartment I am so grateful. I am grateful that I have people around me who choose to love me even when I can't accept it. Isn't that how God loves us? God loves us when we can't feel it, know it, or believe it. This is how we need to love those who are suffering through the darkness.

At the opening address of my undergraduate university the president declared: "we will never be a school that tailgates or rallies together before sports game. We are a school of individuals finding their own way in the world". A school of individuals that let students slip through the cracks. A school that refused to maintain any sort of community. A school that told its students that they didn't care about them and their loneliness. No help. No community. We can have an independent spirit and still have community. We can be individuals within a family system.

As the church we cannot be like this school. We cannot abandon our brothers and sisters. We need to reach out and love; even when we just don't feel it. Maybe if we take community seriously we can help those contemplating suicide? Maybe we can save just one life?

And as the church...if someone does commit suicide we need to rally in support of the family and community. We should not hide the funeral as if it is a secret. We must stand beside the grieving family as if it is like any other death. We need liturgies and funeral rights written for these occasions. We need to stand with those who grieve lost family and friends. We need to stop blaming others for "the fault" of this death but learn to mourn and grieve freely. If we can learn to grieve as a community in these moments we can stop the silence. We can honor the dead. And Pray that one day no one else will have to make the choice of living or ending one's life.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Church needs to sing the blues: Speaking out on mental health


1 Kings 19: 4-11

4 But Elijah himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ 5Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ 6He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. 7The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ 8He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. 9At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.
Then the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘What are you doing here, Elijah?’ 10He answered, ‘I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.’
11 He said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for theLord is about to pass by.’ 

*

The story of Elijah is a powerful testimony to the depression that so many people experience around the world. In Elijah's darkest moment God doesn't rebuke him for wanting to give up but instead feeds him, protects him, and even gives him a glimpse of God's glory. In a time when Elijah is contemplating suicide God reaches out. 

This story is a beautiful example of how the church should be dealing with mental health. Elijah is not the only example of deep depression but we can find many voices from the Psalms, Lamentations, Job...and even in Christ's voice in the Garden of Gethsemane. 

Depression is a real, powerful disease that holds many in its grip. Depression is just one example of many mental health diseases people in our communities and world struggle with. 

And yet, the church is not only silent on ways to help those with mental health problems but also actively dismisses people's real sickness as a lack of faith. I can't tell you how many times I have read, heard, or personally been told that those who are depressed just need to have more faith..."you need to pray harder," they say...or "you're just not trusting in God" or even worse... "You must have done something wrong to deserve this"...and even, "well just be happy!" 

I think we should always be praying (praying without ceasing like Paul says) and I believe we do serve a God who can heal and perform miracles. I do not believe that prayer and "having" faith should make us blind to the world's problems. 

In Elijah's worst moment God reaches out. So too are we called to reach out to those who are struggling. 

Those who suffer from clinical and episodic depression, among other mental illnesses, can't "just be happy". The brain doesn't make the right amount of chemicals to produce "happiness". We do more damage by dismissing one's disease or telling someone that how they feel isn't real. 

Its a commonly used example in the mental health profession but I believe it is important to repeat: If someone was suffering from any other disease (cancer, diabetes, HIV) you wouldn't tell them to just pray it away. You wouldn't tell them to just get over it, have more faith. You would encourage them to get help. Walk beside them on their journey to a healthy life or at least through the struggle. So why is it any different for those suffering through mental health problems? 

I would like us, as people of God and as the church, to pull back the veil on mental health and step out in truth and reconciliation. There are so many programs and people we can engage with to de-stigmatize mental health problems. 

Some great places to start:
 *with our troops: PTSD is a real and terrible problem effecting so many of our men and women in the armed forces. 
*on college campuses: where suicide has become a rampant problem (I went to NYU where they compete for the highest suicide rate in the country)
*with the homeless: mean and women who can't just go get a job bc they need psychological services to be functional members of society
*New mothers: who suffer from post-partum depression 
*from the pulpit: preach about mental health and ways to get help

Churches should be building strong relationships with social services, counseling centers, and mental health specialists in their communities to connect their congregants to the right health providers. 

Pastors and ministers need to consider that some people just can't "get the gospels". We need to find new ways to reach out to those who struggle to live and think as "normal" citizens. (Henri Nouwen did a lot of work adapting theology for those struggling with severe mental health issues). 

People of faith should be able to speak out about their own struggles. If more people talk honestly about having depression (and other mental illnesses) it won't seem so foreign or taboo. 

Many people who suffer from mental illnesses can lead productive lives. We can neither be silent about the many diseases that effect the mind or discount the ability to learn and lead lives as functioning members of society. 

We also have to be content with the fact that for many, mental illness is a life problem that can't be cured. It can be brought under control, and people can be taught how to adapt to their surroundings. We need to create programs that cater to these people. Bible studies for the bipolar, liturgy for the schizophrenic, worship for the depressed, communion for the OCD...

Let us follow God's example and reach out to those who struggle with mental health. 





Monday, April 16, 2012

Why Lists Should be Avoided

I have tried to avoid being personally anecdotal in these last several posts but I feel it is time to tell a little of my story. I have tried to write this post a couple times now and realized it doesn't work unless, like a good post-modernist, I position myself. So here it goes...

Lists.

I know lists really well; Especially when they come to the church. I was born in a conservative Pentecostal church. My church world and my "secular" world often seemed at odds with each other. What I was learning in church seemed too simple, too sterile. Everything was painted in strict binaries with deep consequences. It was do this... or if you don't you are going to hell. I knew what it was to be a "good christian" and "live out my faith". I had the lists of rules memorized and the scripture verses to back it all up.

When I went to college in NYC, I was confronted with both an earth shattering deconstruction of my faith and became involved in a group that promoted Christian "list" making. My faith was torn apart, so I clung to what was familiar: these lists. Instead of letting myself learn to ask questions and have faith without answers I ran after "proofs" and "facts".

 It wasn't until graduate school that I could throw the lists out completely and embrace the truly free and unconditional love and salvation of God. I finally realized that there was absolutely nothing I could do to be a "Good Christian".

These Lists still haunt me. They show up in the Bible everywhere. We see the lists of rules for the law code and the ten commandments. Paul is constantly writing about what to do and not to do: his virtue lists. The other epistles have paragraphs full of rights and wrongs. But the gospels are kind of blank.

Lists and Jesus don't really go together. Jesus hardly ever answered a question straight let alone gave his disciples "the disciple twelve step plan". When he did, it never was the answer people wanted. He told the Pharisees the law could be summed up as: Love God and Love your neighbor. Sounds simple but is still argued and debated over. Jesus tells the rich man that the way to get into heaven is to sell everything and help the poor. The sermon on the mount is a long list of nobodies getting blessings. If we made lists like Jesus the church would look REALLY different.

Two problems arise with Lists: why we make them, and what to do with them.

I believe one reason we make lists is because we are desperate for control over our lives. When we grow in relationship with God we realize we have NO control over our lives. Its hard to tell people to constantly be living in subliminal space: but isn't that faith? Faith is trusting in the not knowing, its being content without all the answers, joyful without control.

We also make lists because we have a deep desire to know who's in and who's out. Just as much as we want to know what to do we also like to know if we are special. Did we make it in the cool Christian club? Are we doing this Christian thing right? The fact of the matter is there is no right way to be a Christian. All we are supposed to do is love God and each other.

Yet, there are still those lists in the Old and New Testament.

Moses gives us one example of what to do with Lists: break them! I often forget that Moses breaks the 10 commandments because he is so mad at the Israelites. Moses is not mad because they didn't follow his list but because they lost their faith in God by creating an idol. Some rules do need to be broken. However, this leads to a pervasive problem in the church: picking and choosing. Some rules may need to be broken but I can't tell you which ones. We each need to figure that out for ourselves. We need to hold the text with hands wide open. We can't say my way is the right way and yours the wrong... because at the end of the day we are probably both wrong (ONLY GOD IS RIGHT).

Another thing we can do with Lists, like anyway we read scripture, is ask questions. Not to sound like a relativist, but we can find exceptions for most of the rules. A good "but what if..." helps us see the complexities and diversity inherent within our world's problems. For example: The Bible in multiple places talks about honoring your mother and father (a point in many "lists"). But what if...someone's parents are abusive, neglectful, do not have a two parent system, don't have parents at all. As a (hopefully) future minister I would never tell a child that the Bible tells them to respect their parents when their parents are abusive. I do not think this is an extreme example either...So many of these "lists" have been allowed to keep people in terrible situations, as well as shut the door to entire groups of people from coming into the church. We have used "lists" to tell people to stay in abusive situations, remain silent...we have used them to start wars, defended slavery, and all other kinds of prejudice and inequality. It needs to stop!

We need to remember that grace is free! Grace cannot be gained nor lost. There is no list that can help us earn God's love or force God's love unto someone else.

Let's stop making lists and start loving God and each other. Let's stop trying to be "the perfect Christian" or the "good Christian". Let's try and accept the free gift God gives us. Let's stop trying to organize God's love to fit our lists.







Friday, April 13, 2012

An Original Song

*If you would like to use this song in any worship or musical setting please contact me! 




All Are Welcome
(to be sung to the tune of “It is well with my soul/when Peace Like A River/Ville Du Havre”)
Lyrics By Allysa De Wolf

When others are left standing outside church’s doors
The trees will start bending their leaves
And create a sanctuary where all can sing and pray:
“All are welcome in God’s house today”

Refrain:
Come in (to this place).
No Doors here (to displace).
All are welcome in God’s house today.

The bird’s hum along as God’s people join in song,
Baptized in God’s tears from above.
The sun parts the clouds and the angels do shout
“All are welcome in God’s house today”

The flowers reply as the wind preaches life
For all God’s children through Christ.
Where two or more gather, God is there
To welcome all God’s people in this space!


Here is an amazing version of the original: 
By Mahalia Jackson
 

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The importance of God's ambiguity

Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics I, II, IV expresses (the complicated) and beautiful idea that we can only know God through Christ. (If you have a very long weekend and want to plunge into some incredibly dense but rewarding work: have fun!) Christ is our way in to the divine relationship of the trinity and the ability to participate in the creation of the kingdom come on this earth. Christ allows us to not only know God on a personal level but truly on an intellectual level...Christ allows us to comprehend a piece of the incomprehensible majesty of God.

In Jesus we see God in human form. In the great divine mystery we also pay tribute and worship Yhwh and the holy spirit as one monotheistic being. But Jesus' male identified gender is not the only way to view God.

God in an orthodox sense has been called "father" but God is truly gender-less. In circles fired up about the attributes and names of God, controversies reign on what to and not to call God. As someone who grew up only calling God "Father", the ability to call God also mother was earth shattering. I still love the importance of the meaning behind God as Father and pray frequently in this way but seeing God as a mother has brought in an entirely new way of observing my understanding and relationship to God.

As humans made in God's image it is so important to see God as a spectrum of not only gender but race, class, sexuality...etc. God is not blonde, brown, long hair, short hair, straight or gay, rich or poor...but Yhwh can be!

The first time we get the name of God is in Exodus. God says to Moses, "I am" (which translates to Yhwh*). "I am" is this perfect embodiment of all our imaginations. Not only does it encompass everything but acknowledges the inability to express the nature and image of God. Before Christ came no one could look on the face of God or they would be killed. Our human selves cannot contain or comprehend the "I am".

And yet...we are given so many names, faces, and genders of God. We are given the opportunity to hold with open hands, our idea of who God is. No image is more right or wrong then the other...we need them all.

We can think of colonized countries that were told that God looked like a white man. They need God in their image. The queer community needs to see God as beyond heteronormative standards. Men and Women need to know a God who can be both mother and father. The elderly and young need to see God with energy and wisdom. The poor and rich need God as both popper and king. We need images of God as diverse as the images around us.

God doesn't have to look like people even. I see God in the power of the ocean, the beauty of a sunrise, the wind whistling through trees. I hear God in children's laughter and bird songs. I feel God in the cold in the first snow and  the rays of the sun on my back. God is manifest in nature just as much as Yhwh is in each other.

We can talk about the Holy Spirit in the same way. She glides around us, deep inside all of us. God in our presence everywhere as "I am".

Let us take the time to challenge our ideas of who God is? What is your "I am" and why? Could you see God in a new way? Could you see God like they see God? Let's try it out.



*I keep the vowels out in honor of my Jewish brother and sisters.

Monday, April 9, 2012

How to fill the empty tomb: a DIY guide

If you arrange the Gospels and The Book of Acts by when they were written and by authorship; Acts should fall right after Luke. Acts is thought by many scholars to be Book II of Luke (Book I). Jesus ascends to heaven at the end of the Luke and the disciples return to Jerusalem...back to the temple.

But wait! The temple shroud has been torn, the inner sanctum where God's holy spirit dwelt, has been released into the world in the victory over death by Jesus' Resurrection...why would they go back to the beginning? 

And then there's that tomb. That empty tomb collecting dust as the wind swirls outside its open door. Why don't the disciples run back to the empty tomb? Praise God inside the very space that could not contain him? But alas we never hear about the tomb again.

What we get is a historical account of the early disciples life without the physical presence of Christ (but with the Holy Spirit after Pentecost). After that we get epistles written by Paul and other unnamed authors trying to make sense of a changing world, culture, religion, and a passing of more and more time away from Christ walking on earth. What we get is an attempt to figure out what to do with a Resurrected God. And we haven't stopped trying to figure it out; we haven't stopped going back to the beginning...

We carry with us this historical memory that reminds us that one time, a long time ago, humans walked and talked and did life with God in the flesh of/as Christ. Easter makes my fingers tingle as if I was in the upper room breaking bread with Jesus. My nose breathes in the scent of fish baking in the sun as baskets and baskets are shared with thousands. My lips taste the salt of many a long and short journey over lakes and rivers. My ears ring at the sounds of crowds gathering so close. My eyes see him standing there. I remember what I never was a part of because resurrection brings me there; back to the beginning.

Yet, there's that tomb. Always sitting there, collecting more dust as the years go by.

Genesis says that we are dust. Do we fill the tomb?

We, as the collective human body, sprint forward from Resurrection Sunday to live a resurrected life but we as mortals still die. We become dust.

We become dust with our bodies when our mortal lives are cut short. But We also create dust when we whip the soil that builds are foundation into a fury.

We stand on the knowledge of a resurrected Christ but we create clay idols to place within the tomb. We fill the empty tomb not with idols that are foreign but from the very soil we stand on.

We bend down and scoop up ideas, beliefs, rituals, names, words...and craft them into tiny clay molds to sit upon the cold empty slab in the tomb. Isn't that what the disciples in Acts were doing  and all the epistle writers? They were clinging for that warm body arisen that first Easter Sunday but finding dust instead. Some let the dust slip between their fingers; letting it glide back to earth. While others clung on and made stones of particles.

We make idols that build borders between who's in and out. We lift up platforms that only certain people can stand on and preach. We choose our morals over their ethic. We give Jesus our eyes and skin color. Make our breaking of bread and drinking of wine the right kind. We robe and un-robe. Drum drums and electric guitars while organs fight back with classical quips. We feed those people and starve the others. We turn salvation into sentences and membership. We sprinkle or dunk, dip or sip. Build cathedrals across from crumbling steeples. DUST...

We will continue to fill the empty tomb. Its what we do as foolish humans. We will even move in, clean it out again, and run back to the beginning because the fact of the matter is as the days go by in a world with a Risen Christ its hard to live a resurrected life when we still know that we are dust.

Eternal life is God's gift to us and it will come as God grants it. Its not eternal life that is the difficult thing to handle but the mortal life; the life where the empty tomb still stands collecting our dust.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

It's Complicated

I was initially inspired to write this blog because of my frustration with the lefts inability to come up with a better answer to extremists. While literal-ists are exclaiming the prowess of the presence of words on a page, the left shrugs their shoulders and retorts back with: "its complicated".

I agree that "it's complicated" but I want to yell: "fight back! Play ping pong with scripture and pour cement on our feet to show them that we shall not be moved!"

The need for a better answer digs deeper into the realization that the essential mode of discourse is flawed. This battle of beliefs between "us" and "them" only serves to dig deeper into the dis-unity, hate, and trauma prevalent in Christian culture right now. The fact of the matter is: conservative or liberal, progressive or fundamentalist WE all believe in the same God. When we draw battle lines what we are really creating is our own religion. We are saying: MY answers are the right answer, MY Bible is the right Bible, MY God is the right God. In declaring our dictatorship over religion we go to war with all those who would dare disagree.

Jesus taught us that faith is not about survival of the fittest or having the "right" belief. In fact Jesus showed us the opposite. Holy week  shows us that in the most pivotal moments where we think answers are the best solution, silence is actually the way to go. Easter teaches us that sometimes we have to die, we have to give up to discover God. Even in resurrection those who followed Jesus didn't understand what was going on. Mary Magdalene thinks Jesus is a gardener, Thomas asks for physical proof, Peter is terrified of the empty tomb. Only Jesus understood it all.

The fact of the matter is that Jesus taught ALL of us that "it's complicated". We as believers in Christ can spend all our energy and time arguing over interpretation, scriptural authority, context, history, culture, ethics and more OR we can admit to each other that "it's complicated".

None of us have the answers. Throughout the gospels we see question after question thrown at Jesus and rarely does he ever give a straight answer. If we are to follow Christ then we are to move away from answers and seek God in questions. Isn't that faith: not knowing but knowing anyways?

So I guess what I really want to say is: faith, scripture, salvation, sin, love, mercy...it's complicated! Thanks be to God that God knows what's going on.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

I was born that way!

***Before you read this post, I know there is more to say and explain but take time to think about the little written below***

The news and media has become a sick soup of racism, sexism, and homophobia (among other things). These three -isms seem to be bastions of hatred and polarity. It's like our forefather's should be quoted as saying,  "We, the American people, will build our nation on the prejudice of color, sex, and sexuality."  In a more frightening platitude is that in our post-enlightenment, twenty-first century musings we have begun to think that we are beyond certain forms of hatred.

We have a black president therefore we are no longer racist. We had the women's rights movement of the 70s and 80s so men and women are equal. Gays are everywhere in the media so its only a matter of time before everything is hunky dorry.

The truth of the matter is that hate has gone so far underground we have become silent, blind, and all together ignorant of its presence all around us. There are many theories as to why people hate and "other" each other. I don't want to theorize but offer an alternative idea: what would happen if we paid less attention with issues of creation?

FOR EXAMPLE: A Female, queer, person of color was as Lady Gaga famously says, "born this way".  (Even for those transgender folks there is an inherent idea that one was born in the wrong body. Although they can transform their physical appearance later on in life any transgender person will tell you that they were born in the wrong body.)

We point the finger so much at God's creation. When we say "I hate your skin color" we are really saying, "I hate the way God made you!" When we say, "I hate your sexuality" we are saying "God made you wrong!" When we say "Your sex can't do that" we are telling them "God didn't make you good enough."

We can change things like hunger, homelessness, even health. We can move resources around and create economic systems that help people. Yet, we are caught in this cycle of hating God's creation. We hate what we cannot change.

Genesis 1 tells us over and over again that God created and call it good. For those who like to literally interpret the Bible lets live out this concept: God's creation is good! What humans create is where things get messy. We create hate, poverty, health disparity, war, violence, hunger, inequality, global warming....etc.

We should declare: "I was born this way and God calls it good". We should point our fingers and equally declare: "You were born that way and God thinks you are good...and so do I."

Why don't we stop focusing on things we can't change and do something about the things we can!