Faith Inspires

"It all goes back to Jesus. 

He spent time with folks who were marginalized."

-Rev. Sue Ringler

From the Huffington Post:

This week’s Faith Inspires highlights the work of Guardian Angels Catholic Community, an LGBT-friendly independent Catholic Church focused on social justice located in Tempe, AZ. An eight-year-old parish, Guardian Angels Catholic Community is part of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion. The ECC was formed in 2003 in Orange, CA and traces its history to the “Old Catholics,” a group of Catholics who came together in 1870 in opposition to the Pope’s declaration of infallibility. Today the ECC, which is independent of papal jurisdiction, has parishes all over the world.

what about fierce love?

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Hans Deutsch, an atheist cartoonist, wrote after his encounter with the Unitarian Universalists:
"There is something that urges me to tell you... how much I admire your utter self denial [and] readiness to serve, to sacrifice all, your time, your health, your well being, to help, help, help. I am not what you may actually call a believer. But if your kind of life is the profession of your faith—as it is, I feel sure—then religion, ceasing to be magic and mysticism, becomes confession to practical philosophy and—what is more—to active, really useful social work. And this religion—with or without a heading—is one to which even a 'godless' fellow like myself can say wholeheartedly, Yes!"

If there is one thing I admire most about UU philosophy, it is wholehearted devotion to love and compassion and justice. It is following up on flowery words with action. It is feeding the hungry, reaching out a helping hand to the weak and helpless, giving hope to the hopeless. It is BEING Christ, rather than talking about him. Of course, those are all my words, not theirs. Those are my impressions from the outside, and I should mention that my impressions from the outside are quite frequently not exactly right in real life.

That said, UU draws from many sources its [completely unorthodox] approach to "church":

• Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life; 
• Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love; 
• Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life; 
• Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves; 
• Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit; 
• Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

The transforming power of love. Fierce love for those around us. As you know, I am studying to become a Chaplain. One thing that draws me to the Chaplain ministry is the ability to love people - not from behind a pulpit, or within the walls of a church alone, but where they are: in the place where they fell through the ice and discovered nothing was below to catch them except freezing hell. The place where their lives are altered forever on the corner of a street, watching their friend slip away. The place where loss and life intersect and grief guides broken hearts toward an answer. The answer I want to give them is not just an ethereal being somewhere in the atmosphere. The answer I want to give them is love. Fierce Love.

I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God.... (Romans 8:37-39)

Nothing at all standing between us and God's love. Not the icy waters suffocating our breath, not the chill of death gripping our heart, not the greatest distance in the world.

God is LOVE, the Bible says. If we were made in the image of God - that is, with his purpose -  then we, too, are love: it is indeed our greatest and most important function. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was Love, and the Word was with Love, and the Word WAS love." (John 1:1)

That word, LOGOS in the Greek, is the marriage of human reasoning and Divine intelligence. 

Traditionally meaning word, thought, principle, or speech, [logos] ... is marked by two main distinctions - the first dealing with human reason (the rationality in the human mind which seeks to attain universal understanding and harmony), the second with..the Divine. (http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/theogloss/logos-body.html)

I leave you with this video... encouraging you to greater heights of FIERCE LOVE!

post script on sexual abuse

**As I was writing my blog yesterday, I discovered that I wrote this but never posted it, following my sexual abuse post. I wanted to post it now. Consider it a late P.S. 
Sometimes I think I'm "over" the things in my past, I spend months in a place of homeostasis. Then something happens, and suddenly I'm having vivid nightmares again. Please know, if this is your story, too, that you're not alone. After writing the post on Sexual Abuse and PTSD, I almost gave up my blog. I didn't write or post for months. It was the hardest thing I've ever written, and it still knocks the air out of me sometimes. But, as my friend, Cyn, says, "You are talking and you are ok." If this is your story, please don't stop talking. We share more than you know.**

The thing that happens with sexual abuse is, like a surgeon, it skillfully and exactly severs the tie between your soul and your body. It then strangles your soul until all you are left with is a shell of who you were, walking around empty. It doesn't leave you alone, though... when it steals your soul and life, it leaves you with companions - post traumatic stress, fear, self-hatred, isolation, loneliness, guilt, and shame. So you walk through life with companions you never asked for. With dreams you never wished upon. With feelings you question. You learn to never trust yourself, and certainly to never trust anyone else.

The world needs more love letters - a challenge!

"Do what you can with what you have where you are."
-Theodore Roosevelt (but probably really Eleanor!!)

Last night I wrote a love letter to a stranger.

Wait. Let me back up...

This year has not been easy. With financial difficulties, a battle with a fierce depression (I won!), a work and school schedule that leaves me breathless, deaths of friends and family members, a cancer scare, and another tough year at school for my sweet baby girl, I've been under a lot of pressure.

That's not to say I don't live a blissful life! I have a wonderful man who completes me in every way. I have three AMAZING kids, who make me smile regularly. I have a home and reliable transportation, and so far, I've got food on the table and heat that kicks in when it gets cold. I have a lot to be thankful for, but sometimes I start feeling sorry for myself, thinking things could be easier. Wishing I had the ((perceived)) bliss of someone else. Blaming the people I love for the pressure I feel. Complaining, whining... its a slippery slope.

When I start getting like this, I have a compulsive habit. I go on the internet and start searching for inspiration. I listen to TED talks (I really love TED). I read Christine Moer's blog. I sign up for happy lists. And I help people.

Sometimes people who know me comment on how many people I try to help through volunteering or donating or raising money or awareness. They seem to think that my efforts are due to a philanthropic, giving spirit. But... the truth is, it makes me feel better. The thing that people who don't do these things don't realize is the big secret: Giving makes the GIVER feel better most times than the receiver. It's true. Giving makes me feel better about myself and my situation, and that's why I do it. Don't get me wrong, I like helping make this world a better place to be, and helping people less fortunate than myself. But the reward of how I feel when I get to help people personally - well, that's worth more than anything I gave them. It makes me smile, it makes me warm and glowy, it makes me HAPPY.

This year time and money have both been constraints, so I looked for ways to help people that worked with my life and family. In May, I did a push to raise money and supplies to send to Joplin after the tornado. In June, it was the wildfires in Bastrop. In November, I signed up the whole family for delivering food. In between, I tried to figure out what else I could do and I found some really great things going on some of which don't require hardly any time or money, but can really help out other people.

For example:
Gateway (my church) doesn't start it's own ministries, instead they connect with local non-profits doing great work in the area and list their volunteer opportunities here. That's how I found out that 5,000 people were needed to deliver meals to needy families on Thanksgiving Day at Mission Arlington. All it required was my family, my smile, my car, and 4 hours of my time. :) Happy day!

Sometimes I just can't make my schedule work, though, so I am always looking for other options... like stuff I can do from home or my computer. That's how I found out about Love Bomb. When you sign up to be a Love Bomber, you get an email every Thursday with the Love Bomb mission. Usually it is someone with a blog who is going through a rough time, and hundreds of people drop warm love notes in the comments on the specified post. Maybe they just say "love bombing you today!" or maybe they write a lot to the person - its up to the Bomber. But that takes me 5 minutes every Thursday!

It was through Love Bomb that I found the most awesome idea of all time, which brings me to why I wrote a love letter last night. The World Needs More Love Letters is a project that can do good no matter who you are, what you have or where you are. Everyone has a piece of paper and a pen, right? The mission is simple: write a letter to a stranger. Leave it in a place where someone will find it.
This is why I was up at midnight last night, writing a love letter to a stranger. The world DOES need more love letters, and I'm just the one to do it. It was just a letter of encouragement, telling the stranger that they aren't alone, and that other people are in this fight together. It was a letter to give hope and encouragement to a person I don't know. A person I will never know, probably. And I left it in front of Dollar General on a pile of charcoal.

It made me happy, writing that letter. When I was telling the stranger not to lose hope, and to believe and have faith that things were going to work out, and that they are not alone and they are loved, something magical happened inside me. I believed it for myself. 


So here's my challenge to you. Go to their website and check it out. Then, tonight, when your kids are in bed and you're getting ready to turn in for the night, spend 5 minutes writing a letter to someone you don't know. You can pour out your heart. You can tell them they are worthy and loved. You can tell them they aren't alone. In my letter, I wrote what I needed to hear. Take a picture of it with your phone and email it to me. Then put it in an envelope and mark the outside something like "For You. (Yes, you the one who picked this up!)" Then tomorrow, while you're out and about, sneakily drop the letter in a place where it will be found by someone.

I'll post every picture I receive on my blog and facebook. We're all in this together, right? And the world DOES need more love letters!!

Control Freaks Anonymous, Part II

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I am a firm believer in the 12 steps. I think the principles are sound, and they have worked time and again. Although there isn’t exactly a “Control Freaks Anonymous”, I know that when you get down to it, most addictions are truly about control. So maybe there is hope for my recovery!

Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.

New beginnings [and] Ocean Depths

I realize I've sort of taken a detour from Judaism. I should have wrapped up my Jewish experience with this wonderful interview I had with a beautiful and intelligent Jewish woman and her husband already. I have that interview and conversation halfway typed and saved as a draft. The thing about my visit with Mary Blye Posani is that she made me think differently about God. She was the culmination of everything I had been learning for the past months. She made me think about sacred spaces and mystery and seeking out those things for myself... and I couldn't really just type up what we talked about and move on. I had to process it all for myself, and figure out what God was saying to me... so I apologize for the detour into my own life and heart and experience... and I will eventually get to that talk I had with Mary on Shabbat, and wrap up Judaism properly, and move on to my next experience. I promise! 
*****************************

On November 6th, at 6pm, I am going to be baptized.

I was baptized as a kid. Maybe 9 or 10. I accepted Jesus when I was 5 or 6. I didn’t understand what either of those things meant, and besides all that, what was God washing away? The sins of a child – lying to my parents, disobeying, hitting my brothers... I didn’t really get it.

So I grew up and made different choices, and when my husband and I split in 2006, I left God and the church, too. Only, I missed God. I blocked him out and I tried to fill up the spot where he was, and instead, I just made a big mess out of my life.

Rosh Hashanah... Repentance, Forgiveness, and an Open Letter

For the past couple weeks, I’ve been a little under the weather. I’ve been trying to keep up with work and with school and all of my outside responsibilities, and I haven’t been focused on my blog so much, but I have been reading. During the days leading up to Rosh Hashanah (Sept 28) in Judaism, and continuing through Yom Kippur (Oct 8), one of the major things required of Jews is to repent and reconcile. Repent of their sins, meaning TURN FROM them, not just say “I’m sorry.” And reconcile relationships. If apologies are due, make them. If relationships can be mended, try. If you need to forgive someone, forgive them. For that matter, if you need to forgive a whole group of people, do that too!

In that vein, I made a list of all the people I was harboring resentment against. Maybe they hurt me deeply, maybe they abandoned me in a time of need, maybe they hurt my children or my family, maybe they changed my perspective of God. There were more names on that list than I care to admit ((and I consider myself a pretty forgiving person!)) I went through

A Mormon Perspective on saying NO to more children

Last Sunday I spent 3 hours finishing off Mormonism in an LDS Church with a sweet friend I met online, Janie. She has her own blog here. She kindly met me here in North Richland Hills so we could go to the ward near my home. As I have been reading her blog, I asked her to share her unique perspective and the LDS perspective on contraception and sterilization. Here are her thoughts:

A Mormon Perspective on Pregnancy, Family Planning, and Sterilization

After During my pregnancy with my fourth child, I was SURE we were done. I told everyone my husband was getting the big snip and I reminded him frequently. I got a card for an urologist from my OB and I carried that card in my wallet. I was considering permanent measures so that I would never EVER have to experience morning sickness again. Add to that: we already had four children (a bigger family than many), my husband had recently been laid off his job, and our house was already bursting at the seams. Four was enough, we were done.

weeping in a chapel... just another one of [those] days.

Today I walk into a Catholic church, straight to the prayer chapel, kneel by the altar, light a candle... and I don’t pray. I weep.

For some reason, on this day, I need to go there. Drawn like a magnet to the tiny chapel.

On this day, I realize, once again, how little control I have over my world. And again, the fear and uncertainty rear their heads and glare at me with eyes glowing like red embers.