Enough: Or, why we should all be laughing hysterically in the magazine aisle

I can’t for the life of me recall what book I read it in, but I remember an author saying once that he raised his children to be wary of consumerism by teaching them to laugh at commercials. 

Like, the whole family would sit around the TV together and bust out laughing when someone from LG asked, “Is it a washer? Or something better?”

 (It’s just a washer.)

I’ve decided I like this idea, particularly as a woman, who most advertisers seem to take for a complete idiot. 

Case in point: Last night, Eva Longoria winked at me from the TV screen and, with a gold-colored tube of mascara between her fingers, said, “Don’t just volumize your lashes! Millionize them!” 

 Okay, first of all, Eva, neither “volumize” nor “millionize” are words. 

Second of all, even if it were scientifically possible to “millionize” my lashes, would that really be safe? (I’m getting a creepy vision of Animal in a Muppet Special.)

And third of all, if L’Oreal wants to join the feminist movement for real, how about they begin by not perpetuating the stereotype that girls are so bad at math and science that they’ll go out and buy a product that promises to “millionize” their eyelashes.? I mean, what’s next? A “trillionizer?” A “gazillionizer”? When you start with “millionize,” there’s nowhere else to go but crazy town. 

It reminds me of the text on the back of my shampoo bottle, which promises that all my dry, frizzy hair needs is a little “fortified fruit science” and all will be well. 

 Fortified fruit science. 

Because that’s a thing. 

You gotta laugh at this stuff to keep from crying. 

Same goes for the magazine aisle. Strategically placed near the checkout line at the grocery store, where, after a frustrating hour of decision-making, calorie counting, list checking, and child-bribing, women would otherwise be forced to stop, wait, and ask themselves a few questions about the meaning of their existence, the magazine aisle dazzles us with photoshopped images of super-skinny models, next to impeccably arranged place settings, next to actresses praised for losing their baby weight in five minutes, next to Martha Stewart holding a perfectly frosted chocolate cake. 

As if all of those scenarios are possible at once. 

The headlines say things about “10 Ways to Snag a Man” and “4 Recipes Your Family Will Love” and “29 Ways To Lose Weight And Still Eat a Donut Every Day,” but what we really read is: 

Are you pretty enough?

Are you crafty enough?

Are you sexy enough? 

Are you stylish enough? 

Are you domestic enough?

Are you enough?

Too often, we forget to laugh at the absurdity of these questions, and instead find ourselves grabbing a magazine from the rack, flipping through its pages, desperately looking for something that might make us “enough”— fortified fruit science, perhaps? 

Well, last week, TIME Magazine skipped past all the subtleties and came right out with it. Next to the now infamous picture of a thin, provocatively posed, bombshell of a mother, defiantly breastfeeding her nearly four-year-old son, were printed the words: 

Are you mom enough?

 The cover sparked a flurry of responses as women around the world issued a collective, “WTF, TIME?” 

There has to be a way to write a compelling cover story on attachment parenting without exploiting every woman’s deepest insecurities,  pitting mothers against one another, and making this poor kid’s future college life a nightmare!

But the way I see it, TIME gave us a something of a gift. By stripping that cover of all pretense, it revealed in plain language the lie behind so much of the media’s messages for women: If you aren’t a sexy, put-together, powerful, super-mom, who breastfeeds her kids until they’re four while baking apple pies, making crayon art, and investing in a successful career,  then you’re a failure. You will always fall short. You will never be enough. 

 Such an idea is so absurd, it should elicit laughter, not groans.  It’s like millionized lashes and fortified fruit science—too stupid to take seriously! 

And yet a small part of us believes it.

Why?

This whole idea of the “ideal woman” is one reason I decided to take on my year of biblical womanhood project.  I hated how well-intentioned pastors and leaders were taking the Bible I loved so much and turning into yet another magazine cover that asks:  “Are you biblical enough?”

And by “biblical,” most pointed to a glamorized, westernized version of the Proverbs 31 Woman, who rises before dawn each day, provides food for her family, trades fine linens for a profit, invests in real estate, and works late into the night weaving and sewing.  Christian books and conferences tend to perpetuate the idea that a woman’s worth should be measured by the details, rather than the message, of Proverbs 31, and like the magazines in the checkout line, often  focus on fitness, domesticity, beauty, and success as ways of earning the favor of God and men.

But here’s the thing. 

The poetic figure found in Proverbs 31 is not the only woman in the Bible to receive the high praise of, “eshet chayil!” or “woman of valor!” 

So did Ruth. 

And Ruth could not be more opposite than the Proverbs 31 Woman. 

Ruth was a Moabite (a big no-no back then; men were forbidden from marrying foreign wives). 

Ruth was childless.  

Ruth, was a widow— “damaged goods” in those days. 

Ruth was dirt poor. 

Rather than exchanging fine linens with the merchants to bring home a profit to her husband and children, Ruth spent her days gleaning leftovers from the workers in the fields so she and her mother-in-law could simply survive!

And yet, despite looking nothing like the ancient near Eastern version of a magazine cover,  Ruth is bestowed with the highest honor. She is called a woman of valor. Eshet chayil!  

She is called a woman of valor before she marries Boaz, before she has a child with him for Naomi, before she becomes a wealthy and influential woman. 

Because in God’s eyes, she was already enough. 

 The brave women of Scripture—from Ruth to Deborah to Mary Magdalene to Mary of Bethany—remind me that there’s no one right way to be a woman, and that these images of perfection with which we are confronted every day are laughable to those of us who are in on the big secret: We are already enough. 

We are enough because God is enough, and God can turn even the smallest acts of valor—letting go of a grudge, cleaning puke out of a kid’s hair, inviting the homeless guy to dinner, listening to someone else’s story— into something great.  

Proverbs 31:25 says the wise woman “laughs at the days to come.”

I don’t think the Proverbs 31 Woman laughs because she has it all together.  

I think she laughs because she knows the secret about being enough. 

And so my big act of valor this week will be simple: I’m going to pick up the first magazine I see in the grocery store, point to the cover, and laugh like a maniac, right  in front of God and everybody. 

....Let’s just hope it’s not something sophisticated like The Atlantic, cause then I would look like an idiot. 

Ask a Pagan....(Response)

So I confess that, perhaps unfairly, I felt some trepidation about inviting a pagan to participate in our interview series. But, after receiving over 100 questions from you last week, Jason Mankey rose to the occasion with some really informative, thoughtful, funny, and gracious responses. I had no idea how little I actually knew about modern paganism until I entered this conversation. This turned out to be one of my favorite interviews of the series. (Guess it pays to get out of your comfort zone.)

Jason is a Pagan writer, blogger, and lecturer, and an initiated Wiccan. In addition to writing for the Ipinion Syndicate and at Patheos, he is active on the Pagan lecture circuit.  Jason grew up just outside of Nashville Tennessee, and was president of his Methodist Church Youth Group there.  He converted to Paganism at age 21 and has been involved with that ever since. Currently living in Northern California, he is involved with many Pagan groups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also blogs at Panmankey.com, and you can follow him on Twitter here. 

Hope you learn as much from this as I did. 

***

To start, several readers were interested in your conversation story. What led you from your Methodist upbringing to paganism? 

My childhood was spent mostly in the Midwest, while my junior high and high school years were spent in Gallatin Tennessee, just north of Nashville.  During my teenage years I was a conservative Republican and heavily involved in the Methodist Church.  I was even President of my church youth group and gave a sermon at an Easter Sunrise Service.

During my first two years of college I spent a lot of time at the Baptist Student Union on campus.  It was a pretty conservative group and when my brother came out of the closet during my sophomore year the BSU was not very supportive.  I heard a lot of “he’s going to hell,” while I argued that “he’s a better person now that he’s being honest with himself and everyone around him.”  I was told that didn’t matter, and all that mattered was his sexual preference.  I know a lot of Christians who are loving, tolerant, people, these folks weren’t, and their attitude caused me to re-examine a lot of spiritual things, and to deal with a lot of my questions about Christianity, which I’ve always had.

I remember asking a youth counselor once “What if we are wrong as Christians?”  His response has stuck with me over the years, “well if we are wrong, it’s a good way to live your life.”  I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now.  Christianity is generally a very good way to live your life, but I’ve always had doubts.  By the time I was in the second grade, I was extremely interested in other religions and various mythologies.  I consumed Greek myth like it was going out of style, and started reading books on comparative religion by the fifth grade.  I never understood why there was only one pathway to God when there were so many different people on Earth.  If Yahweh wanted the Ancient Greeks to worship him, why didn’t he just say so?  And why would someone growing up on the Fiji Islands be condemned to hell for not hearing about Jesus?  That’s completely illogical to me.  Wouldn’t it make more sense for deity to reveal itself in ways that make sense to the local populace?  

I also found the idea that God was exclusively male to be a troubling one.  Women are over half of the world’s population, why should deity strictly be masculine?  Wouldn’t it make more sense for deity to be both male and female?  The world is full of duality.  We have night and day, girls and boys, summer and winter, etc.  I worship both a Goddess and a God, while not condemning everyone who disagrees with me to the fires of hell.  That’s why modern Pagan cosmology makes sense to me.

As a spiritual person, I’m looking to connect with deity.  I very rarely felt connected to deity sitting in a pew listening to someone talk about God. I wanted to experience God.  I practice Wicca (one of several Modern Paganisms), and Wicca’s ritual framework allows me to have that experience with deity that I often felt was missing as a Christian.  There’s not a series of complicated rules separating me from the divine; it’s right there waiting for me anytime I want to experience it.  I felt complete and whole the first time I prayed to The Goddess.   

From Gina: How would you define the word pagan?  I feel like the answer to this question is essential for us to understand what's actually being discussed.    

It’s my belief that there are several different definitions of the word “pagan.”  For a long time,  the most common definition of the word pagan read something like this "anyone who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew."  This definition is still used by a lot of people, and when those people stumble upon a faith outside of the Abrahamic Tradition they label it "pagan" by default.  This definition nearly matches the use of the word pagan in some anthropological circles.  Many anthropologists will label native religions as pagan, even if that religious tradition in Africa has nothing in common with one in the Philippines. 

In my own writing, I often use the word pagan to refer to ancient pagan religions of Europe and the Middle East.  Since most of those religions are unique unto themselves, I sometimes call them ancient paganisms.  While it's true that both the Ancient Greeks and the Vikings worshipped a multitude of gods, the similarities mostly stop there.  They get lumped together in 2012, but they wouldn’t have been lumped together in the year 300; they would have been separate faith traditions.  

The original meaning of the word pagan means "country dweller," and comes from the Latin word "paganus."  Whether subconsciously, or as a result of the word pagan's origins, a lot of people refer to old or rustic practices as “pagan.”  I’ve seen various old folk dances (such as Morris dancing) referred to as “pagan” on a number of occasions even though it lacks any real connection to the paganisms of antiquity.  There are a lot of holiday customs which are also referred to as pagan even though they lack a religious element, or developed entirely from Christian elements.  (Halloween is not as pagan as you think it is.)   

When I use the word Pagan (capital-P), I'm using it to signify one specific thing: an ambiguous but somewhat unified theory of Western Religious thought.  I generally preface the word Pagan with “Contemporary” or “Modern” in order to differentiate it from the various other uses of the word outlined above.  (While I used the words Modern or Contemporary, many Pagans prefer the term Neo-Pagan, and it was common in academic circles for awhile.)   In my mind, Modern Pagans generally share three or four characteristics.  Some Contemporary Pagans practice all of these things I'm going to list, some just one or two, but all are pretty recognizable as facets of today's Paganism.   

Nature Religion:   Pagans revere nature.  Pagan holidays aren't birthdays or death-days. They occur on celestially auspicious occasions, generally equinoxes and solstices and the “cross quarter” days between those events.  Basically we celebrate the changing of the seasons and this annual cycle is often referred to as “The Wheel of the Year.”  While the level of "revering nature" varies from Pagan to Pagan—some worship nature while others simply honor yearly cycles— it’s still pretty universal.

I like to use the phrase “we are a part of nature, not apart from it.”  I wasn’t put here to have dominion over the Earth; I was put here to be a part of it.  This is a tenant that separates Paganism from a practice like Modern Satanism.  I don’t want to manipulate this world, I want to exist in harmony with it.   

Polytheism:  Calling all Pagans polytheists is rather limited, some are duotheists, and many believe that "all gods are one god,” which could be looked at as a form of monotheism. I even know a few atheist Pagans.  What makes Paganism unique, and why I use the term polytheist, is that Pagandom will generally support your experience with the gods.  If you worship Thor and I worship Pan, we aren't necessarily adversaries.  Your religious experience is just as valid as mine.  We may not worship the same gods, and we may have different concepts of what deity is, but as a community we don't invalidate someone else's religious experience.  These last few sentences also apply to how I view the religious traditions of others.  Your spiritual experience is valid to me, and most Pagans don’t think of other religious traditions as being “wrong”; we just disagree with anyone who thinks they have a stranglehold on the truth.  Even when we disagree on the nature of deity, Pagans generally use the same type of language during ritual.  We talk about The Goddess as being real even if there are those around us who have a more pantheistic view of deity.  As a Pagan, if you attend a public ritual you go in knowing full well that a whole plethora of different deities might be called upon.   

The Feminine Principle:  Most Pagans revere a Goddess, or are open to the idea that deity is not exclusively male.  Pagan Goddesses are equal to male deities. In addition to honoring the Divine Feminine, Pagan Circles generally see equality among the sexes.  Women can lead rituals (and in many traditions are actually above men) and participate as equals (or superiors) in 99.9% of all "Pagan" traditions.

The Western Religious Tradition: The majority of things that make up Modern Pagan Religious practice come from Western Sources.  Most of us tend to worship European and Middle Eastern deities, and the nuts and bolts of ceremony are also generally European.  Many Modern Pagans attempt to recreate (or at least re-imagine) Ancient Western paganisms, whether they are Greek, Roman, Celtic, Egyptian, or Norse.   In addition, there are several groups out there that would prefer not to be under our umbrella.  Labeling Native American Traditions "Pagan" is a recipe for trouble. The same goes with Hindu traditions.  That doesn't mean Modern Pagans ignore ideas, beliefs, and deity from outside of Western Culture; it just means that those impulses are generally filtered through a Western prism.  Lots of Pagans I know worship Eastern Gods, and use Native American Ritual Techniques, but if they wanted to focus exclusively on those things they would join a Shinto Temple or petition the Lakota tribe for membership.  Paganism is highly flexible and it's easy to add things to it, but those things are generally adapted for Contemporary Pagan use.

So when you ask me to define the word “pagan” you get a very complicated (and long) answer.  It’s safe to say that it has a variety of different meanings (and a few I didn’t get to in this answer) depending on the context.  I also prefer to see the word Pagan capitalized when referring to the modern religious practice.   

(A lot of this answer was lifted directly from a blog post I wrote called “Defining the Word (or words)' pagan.') 

From Shane: Do you represent any kind of pagan orthodoxy? Is there such a thing? I've always thought of paganism as a catch all for a tribalistic spirituality that is outside the framework of the world's major religions. Are your beliefs ones that you share with a community or are they just your beliefs? Assuming there is solidarity among modern first world pagans, is it in what you have in common or in who you are reacting against? 

Paganism is an umbrella term, encompassing dozens of varying belief systems.  As a result, there is no “Pagan Orthodoxy,” but certain traditions could be said to possess an orthodoxy.  Gardnerian Wicca is an initiatory, oathbound practice with certain rules and a consistent ritual structure.  If you were to practice it in a way that violated its structure and teachings that could be considered a violation of orthodoxy.  What makes Paganism unique is that we acknowledge that there are hundreds of ways to practice it, and as long as you doing at least a few of the things I outlined above, the rest of us are fine with you standing under the umbrella.  

Modern Paganism might have very well started as a reaction to the industrial revolution.  A lot of the language found in Modern Paganism can be traced back to the English Poetry of the Romantic Era, an era where poets like Keats, Shelley, and Byron were lamenting the loss of the eternal English countryside.  (If you are really interested in learning more about the origins of Modern Paganism, I suggest picking up Professor Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon.)  Today though, it’s not the loss of the countryside that unites most Pagans, but a deep love of the Earth and a desire to see that creation as sacred, which means maybe we haven’t changed much at all. 

From RHE: As I was selecting guests for our interview series, I had second-thoughts about inviting a pagan. Which seems strange considering the fact that we've interviewed an atheist, a Muslim, an Orthodox Jew, and several other people representing decidedly non-Christian faiths. Based on some of your articles, it seems like this sort of hesitancy to engage is common. Why do you think Christians are especially wary of paganism? Do you think this is based on misconceptions regarding pagan beliefs and practices?

The word pagan is pretty loaded, and it conjures up a lot of negative images for a lot of people.  These people associate Modern Paganism with the pagan religions of antiquity, which were in direct competition with early Christianity.  I think some of my ancestors threw some of your ancestors to the lions, and then you turned around and did the same thing to my ancestors.  In ancient days, it was a pretty adversarial relationship, and some of this is expressed in the Bible.  The Jews weren’t real happy with a lot of their pagan neighbors, and the priests in the Temple tended to get upset with the Hebrew people when they would worship a goddess.  In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul certainly doesn’t come across as a cheerleader for our side.  The Bible paints a pretty negative picture of ancient pagans. That has to have contributed to some degree.

The largest tradition within Modern Paganism is Wicca, or Witchcraft (there’s some debate in our community whether or not the words are actually synonyms, but I’m going to use them as such).  Like the word pagan, Witch and Witchcraft are loaded words.  When people hear the word witch, they might think of something out of a fairy-tale or myth.  If you associate the word “witch” strictly with vampires and zombies, it’s going to be hard for you to look at a religious community using that term as a serious one.  The word “witch” is also a lot like the word “pagan”; it has various definitions depending on who is using it.  In anthropology, it often signifies a person using magic to harm or manipulate people.  Movies are still being made with “evil witches,” so our P.R. person is not the best.  At its best, “witch” can be used to represent an empowered woman, which for some in the Christian Community is also frightening.   

Part of the problem also lies within certain segments of the radical Evangelical Christian movement.  I have a bookshelf dedicated to volumes like Wicca:  Satan’s Little White Lie, and Halloween and Satanism.  Many of these books are full of sensationalist garbage, freely mixing Satanism and Modern Paganism with no respect for truth, only an ideological viewpoint.  What’s so frustrating about some of these books is that they sometimes have an element of truth to them, and then go straight from nature religion to “Black Masses” and “Human Sacrifice.”  If I was a Christian and had been exposed to this type of stuff, I probably wouldn’t want to talk to Pagans either.

I once worked with a girl who believed that witches were sacrificing babies to Satan annually on Halloween.  She had been told this in church, and no amount of reasonable conversation would convince her otherwise.  This is what we are up against in some segments of the Christian Community.  A Christian friend of mine was unfriended on Facebook by a former pastor just for sharing one of my blog posts on interfaith dialogue.  Even associating with Pagans is still seen as taboo in a way that associating with Muslims or Buddhists is not.  

In some segments of the Christian community, there’s a lot of “guilt by association.”  Just saying the word pagan can get you into some trouble.  There’s also a big misconception out there that we are trying to “convert” people to Paganism.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I don’t want to convert anybody, I’ll respect your beliefs if you respect mine, or at the very least just leave me alone to practice in peace.   

From Grae Dream: Jason - thanks for being open enough to tread into these waters! I am a Christian...but an astounding number of agnostics and pagans and atheists keep coming into my life, and I love them to bits. Not the least reason being that I've had better spiritual (grand sense) conversations with some of them than many of my Christian friends! So thanks again for dialoging. One thing I've heard from my pagan friends is a sense of frustration that for them, they seem to feel a lot of pressure from society that you have to be "religious" to be moral. Obviously, as you've said, you don't sacrifice kittens or anything melodramatic like that. My question really is this: What would you say influences your own moral/ethical framework? Is it the Rede? The practices of whatever god/goddess you follow, seeing as you're a Wiccan? A general belief in the goodness of human kind? Philosophy? What influences your moral code? 

My church youth group did an exercise once where one of our adult counselors took on the role of an atheist.  Our job was to convince him of the truth about Jesus Christ.  I remember many of the arguments we made were moral in nature, but our “atheist” kept relating a moral code that was just as triumphant as the Christian one, so we were forced to abandon that tactic.

Eventually, we made our way to “you’re going to hell if you don’t believe in Jesus,” and I remember his response being something like “I live a moral life, why would I be going to hell?”  This exercise probably had the wrong effect on me considering where I ended up, but from that moment on I began to see morality as something that could be separated from religion.  

Pagans are not a “people of the book.”  We don’t have a Bible, or a long moral code, but there are several things which generally contribute to the ethics of Paganism.  For many Wiccans (and even some who don’t use that term), it’s the Wiccan Rede, which states “an it harm none, do what you will.”  It’s a very simple phrase, but it’s applicable in plenty of situations.  Drunk driving for instance, would fall under the Rede; you shouldn’t drive drunk because you could obviously harm someone while doing so.  Many of the rules which come up in the Ten Commandments are covered by the Rede (do not kill, do not steal, do not lie).  The Wiccan Rede has a lot in common with “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  

In addition to the Rede a lot of Pagans believe in karma and the “threefold law.”  Many of us believe that what we do comes back to us, often in triplicate.  If I’m nice to others, then I will be rewarded with nice things happening to me.  If I project positive energy, positive energy will come back to me.  If I engage in negative things and hurt people, I will wind up experiencing negative things.  This is sometimes also called “The Law of Return.” 

Where Pagan morality differs from Christian morality is that we don’t see things as a cosmic test.  If two people choose to engage in premarital sex and they are being upfront and honest about it with each other, then it’s not a problem.  If someone were to manipulate another into a sexual situation, then that’s a huge problem.  

From Karl: As a pagan, do you believe the God of the Christian Bible exists, and simply reject him in favor of paganism?  Or do you believe the God of the Christian Bible doesn't exist and that paganism is a more accurate reflection of reality? And what do you believe about Jesus Christ? Does paganism take a stance on this or is your view here yours alone but not reflective of other pagans?

First of all, Pagans do not “reject” anything.  When someone chooses to embrace Paganism, there are no oaths which call for the rejection of Jesus or his Dad.  Becoming a Pagan means acknowledging a different path, but it doesn’t mean paving over the old one.  So I’m extremely uncomfortable with using the word “reject,” because it doesn’t apply to us.  There are many Pagans who continue to embrace Yahweh and Jesus in their rituals; they just supplement them with other gods.  It’s not common, but it happens, and it’s something I used to do with regularity.

If I’m going to argue that all of the pagan gods of antiquity are valid representations of deity, I have no choice but to look at Yahweh as a valid representation of deity.  So yes, I would say your God exists; I just don’t see him as “the only way,” just as one of many ways.  I find that Paganism better reflects my own worldview (gender balanced, earth is sacred, direct pathway for communion with deity), but I don’t think it’s necessarily superior to anything else.  As long as you are tolerant and accepting of others, I think your path is just as valid as mine.

Where we would disagree, of course, is in how we view the Bible.  To me the Bible is a divinely inspired work, but it’s not inerrant or infallible.  It has a lot of problems, and reflects the biases of the people who wrote it and the time(s) in which it was written.  Modern Bible scholars for instance will tell you that the Apostle Paul only wrote seven of the thirteen epistles generally attributed to him.  That’s a problem, and while I don’t think that revelation diminishes anything in the New Testament, it speaks to the very human nature of The Bible.

Jesus is a more complicated topic.  There are a lot of Pagans who greatly respect the teachings of Jesus.  If Christians paid more attention to the Beatitudes and less attention to Leviticus, the world would be in much better shape.  My personal belief is that Jesus was a man who preached a message of love and peace, and probably believed that the end of the world was near.  When Christians worship Christ, I believe they are worshipping a genuine deity that reflects the values of the man Jesus.  Yes, this is a complicated way to argue that Jesus was both a man and is now a deity, and in no way represents Pagandom as a whole.  I’m sure that there are Pagans who view Jesus as just a human teacher, or perhaps they see him as a metaphor for something else. Some Pagans claim him as one of ours whose message got distorted.  

I think that faith in Jesus often makes people better. There’s a lot of positive in his message, and whether or not someone sees him as divine or not doesn’t change that.  Yes, we disagree on what his mission was, or what it all means from a cosmological perspective, but that doesn’t mean we have to argue about those points.  A lot of Pagans have had bad experiences with Christianity. They feel as if they’ve been judged and cast aside for their religious choices.  Curiously, I never really hear any Pagans bad-mouthing Jesus, just his followers sometimes.  (Paul is another story, but I digress.)

From Katherine: I read on your website that you practice spells. I'll admit that most of my perceptions regarding spells come from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I am guessing are not truly representative. Are there any "rules" or code for practicing spells? In BTVS (I know, I know...), Willow gets slammed for using magic for her own enhancement and messing with the order of the universe.  Is there really such a thing as black magic? What does that entail? Are there certain rituals that are strictly off limits?

I hate the word “spell” because I don’t think it accurately reflects what we do.  For most Pagans, magic is simply the manipulation of energy, an energy that’s already around us.  Have you ever gone to church and been in the middle of a really moving service and felt a heaviness in the air?  My favorite example is probably the “electricity” in the air at a major sporting event, there’s something there that you can feel while not being able to touch it.  Those things are representations of energy.  Pagans generally just direct that energy towards specific goals or purposes.  Let’s say I need a job, I could gather up that energy and direct it towards me finding employment

In a lot of ways, magic is a lot like prayer, just minus the middleman.  Instead of having to seek someone’s approval to change a certain circumstance, we just try to change the circumstance.  If my Dad were to have surgery on his heart, I wouldn’t ask deity to make sure he’s OK; I’d try to direct energy towards him to make sure everything turned out alright.  That doesn’t mean I think that magic (energy) can cure cancer, but it might help alleviate suffering or provide enough oomph to get someone through another day.  A famous Wiccan High Priestess once said that “magic is like an intense prayer” and I agree wholeheartedly.

When it comes to magic, most Pagans respect “free will.”  You shouldn’t do a spell to get Justin Beiber to fall in love with you; you should do a spell to bring love into your life.  Getting Biebs to fall in love with you would be manipulating his free will and a violation of “an it harm none.”  I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using magic to better your life, but there is something wrong with using it to better your own life at the expense of others.

For the record, I should also point out that belief in magic is not something unique to Paganism.  Every religion, including Christianity, has had magic users.  Putting a dream catcher up in your bedroom is a type of magic; you are using it to catch “good energies” and bring them into your life.  Magic is something that can be totally separated from a religious context.  I don’t need to pray to Aphrodite to use magic, I can just use it.  The whole “power of positive thinking” thing is magic, same with creative visualization.  It’s not something that requires dusty old books and iron cauldrons.

I once told a friend that “I don’t really use magic” and he began laughing hysterically.  When he was done laughing he told me that i use it every day.  At the time I managed a coffee shop and on a daily basis I tried to fill that store with “good vibes.”  What I was doing was projecting positive energy and that energy generally made people like me.  “Like attracts like,” so to speak. In order to be successful I had to create an atmosphere that people wanted to visit.

From Sarah: Where do you see some common ground for paganism and Christianity?

I think there’s a lot of common ground between Pagans and Christians who care about issues of social justice, acceptance, and the environment.  I believe both groups care about looking out for others and being good environmental stewards.  You may not share my religious beliefs, but as long as you respect them, I’m fine with it.  

From Kat W.: I've known of pagans who run the gamut from secular agnostics who treat their spirituality as completely metaphorical, to those who are pagan re-constructionists attempting to resurrect ancient tribal religions and espouse a literal belief in their chosen pantheon of gods.  Where along this spectrum do you fall?  Would you say it's common for Wiccans to have a "personal" relationship with their god(s) similar to how Christians think of Jesus, or is that not how pagans generally view their association with a deity?

It depends on the Pagan obviously.  If I’m more of an agnostic Pagan. I’m probably not going to have a relationship with deity in the way a Christian might with Jesus.  I’m probably more focused on deity than the majority of Pagans, and in my practice interacting with deity is an important part of my spirituality.  I believe wholeheartedly that my gods have a certain consciousness and that I’m capable of interacting with them.  

Sometimes, when talking to Christians, my interactions with the god Pan parallel their interactions with Jesus.  They talk to Christ like I talk to Pan, and we both feel a certain “presence” when we commune with our gods.  Some Pagans make devotion to a certain goddess or pantheon their focal point;  others are more involved with seeing the Earth as a manifestation of deity.  
My wife is extremely partial to Aphrodite, and sometimes she’ll say things like “I think Aphrodite disapproves,” or “I think Aphrodite was the one who put this dress on sale.”  She’s a lot like me in that she has a very personal relationship with deity.  

From Monika: My question relates to something I have been thinking about for awhile. From what little I have seen of Pagan art, imagery, ritual, ect, it appears there is a sincere honoring of both the male and the female energies. In particular, I get the impression that harmony between male and female is especially celebrated. This strikes me as very beautiful and positive for our world. I couldn't help but contrast this with the very sad track record Christianity has on these things. Institutional Christianity, to its own detriment, has often pitted male and female against each other, and downplayed the female energy, while Paganism sees the Divine in both. Am I correct in my impressions? And can you share thoughts on your religion's stance on these things, and how we all can move forward in understanding, no matter our faith?

One of the things that separates Modern Paganism from most other Western Religions is how much emphasis we place on The Lady (or The Goddess).  Though there aren’t any hard or fast numbers, it’s my belief that more people have come to Modern Paganism through The Goddess than any other factor.  We celebrate her in art, poetry, song, and deed.  Along with nature, she’s the beating heart of our movement.  My own personal beliefs are a reflection of the balance I see between Lady and Lord, but there are a lot of Pagans who worship a Goddess (or goddesses) exclusively.  I still think they are a part of our tribe.

One of the things that Christianity lacks is figure of female divinity.  In Catholicism, the Virgin Mary is revered a lot like a goddess (as are some of the female saints).  In the modern age, due to books like The DaVinci Code and Holy Blood Holy Grail,  it’s become hip to look at Mary Magdalene as kind of a female Christ figure, even though those books don’t quite articulate it that way.  I’ve heard arguments that Yahweh is neither male nor female, but we are so conditioned to thinking of him as male (and you’ll notice that I wrote “him” there without a second thought) that it’s been hard for that idea to take root.  

Early Christianity has a very positive message for women.  While none of Jesus’ twelve apostles were women, Mary Magdalene was considered an important figure in his life, and it was the ladies who first found out about Jesus’ victory over death.  Paul mentions females in positions of authority in his (authentic) letters, and early Christianity was unique in pagan antiquity in that it allowed everyone to sit at the table, regardless of ethnicity, sex, or status as slave or master.  If Christians were able to move back to this more equitable, and inclusive, version of Christianity, I think that “sad track record” could be mended.   

I’ve really enjoyed answering your questions, and I’m grateful to Rachel for the opportunity to do so.  Before signing off, I think it’s important to remind everyone that while I’ve tried my best to write about Modern Paganism from a variety of perspectives, it’s a very subjective thing, and you might hear completely different answers from other Pagans.  I don’t speak for all of Pagandom, but I like to think my views are pretty typical.

If you have questions after reading this, I’ll be around in the comments section for a while and will do my best to answer any additional queries.

Blessed Be,

Jason Mankey

***

Check out the rest of the interview series - which includes an atheist, a Catholic, a Mormon, a nun, a Muslim, an evolutionary creationist, a humanitarian, an environmentalist, a gay Christian, a Democrat, a Republican, a Libertarian, a Quaker, a Pacifist, and many more - here. 

Church stories: Facing my brother’s addiction

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing stories of people’s church experiences—some inspiring, some frustrating, some encouraging, some heartbreaking. (Read Jessica Goudeau's church story: "Being the Change We Seek.")  Today’s post comes to us from Rebecca Howard.* Rebecca is committed to the Church and passionate about calling the people of God into deeper community with each other and those around them. Professionally, she researches adolescence, trauma and faith and how they intersect. Her story today is about how well-intentioned Christians responded poorly to her brother’s addiction. 

I’m not sure when my brother died.

It’s tricky because while in some ways he’s very much alive – he breathes, eats, sleeps and has temporal mass –in others he is a walking ghost.

For at least the last decade and arguably several years longer, my baby brother has been an addict. Alcohol, women, opiates – he dabbles in many vices. All of them destructive. All of them expensive in myriads of ways. All of them symptoms of larger problems no professional can seem to accurately assess, diagnose or cure.

Before you ask, yes, there have been professionals. Therapists and learning specialists dotted the landscape of his troubled adolescence. As we, his family, felt the sweet sensitive boy of his childhood slip through our fingers we gladly prostrated ourselves at the altar of anyone who claimed wisdom—first and foremost our local evangelical congregation (more on that later).

But as his high school experience slammed to a close in a series of disrupted celebrations, we began to face the inevitable: drug addiction.

For many years we lived in denial. It’s easy to do – how can you accuse someone you love of being one of “those people”? You convince yourself it’s only a phase, only one party, only a short span of time. As addicts are expert liars, the line between casual experimentation during adolescence and full-blown addiction often sweeps by unnoticed. We were a good family who made good decisions and lived upstanding lives – surely our youngest was not caught up in that world. But the last months of his high school years brought many events which convinced us this was all beyond our control. We began to grapple with the reality that the little boy we had watched grow up was dead and something new was living in my brother’s body. AddictBrother was a lot different than RealBrother, and we were not quite sure how to get RealBrother back.

After several confrontations, ultimatums and interventions, he chose to go to a 90-day, residential treatment facility in a far-away state. When he emerged from that program seemingly sober, we thought for sure our nightmare was over. Instead it would continue over the next several years – ruining his college experience and possibly damaging his future as an adult. Deception, followed by brief honesty,  followed by residential facility, followed by further deception marked the rhythms of the next few years of our lives. As I type this, he is in the process of transitioning from residential facility number six to halfway house number two. He has been kicked out of facilities, relapsed several times and spent a weekend as a homeless beggar. While he has finally reached the point of desired sobriety, his inner angels seem to be constantly shouted down by his greater demons. We are continuously walking the tightrope of trying to help him make good choices and trying to keep him safe and alive. Trust me, the moment where you have the choice of letting your baby brother be homeless or going to rescue him is not one anyone should have to have.

  As he makes this transition, we cling to hope. We have accepted the death of the boy we once knew and are eagerly anticipating getting to know the NewBrother who will be resurrected out of the destruction.

I could regale you with stories of the past few years: things I never thought I would have to know but do, like the street value of OxyContin or the smell of a detox facility. However, I want to share something especially painful: the reaction of the church towards our family crisis. 

We are a faith-based family. I have attended church services since I was in the womb and have been in leadership positions in various congregations since I was 11.

We are not a periphery family. My parents were close friends with much of our pastoral staff at the church I grew up in. In the past decade I have been a youth worker at several churches, worked at various faith-based nonprofits, served as a missionary and was a seminary student. The faith community is central to the bedrock of our family.

And yet people of faith have routinely sucked.

I have been told his addiction is my fault, my parent’s fault, Satan’s fault. I have been told I am simply not praying hard enough or I simply do not have enough faith. I have been told my life is too stressful for someone to be in community with me. I have been accused of being a bad youth worker since I couldn’t even keep my brother out of trouble. I have been told this is God’s plan for our family and if we just keep persevering, God’s glory will be known and it will all be worth it. I have been told that my suffering at my brother’s choice is simply “my cross to bear.”

None of that was helpful.

None of that was loving.

None of it was the correct response.

His addiction is not my fault. Nor is it my parents’ fault. Nor is it Satan’s fault. My brother’s addiction is a horrible mixture of choices and biology, but those choices are his own and are not a reflection on my parents or myself ,and especially not my abilities as a youth worker. I have prayed and wept and fasted and screamed for God to intervene. And to be honest, I do not care how much God deserves glory – if the last decade of my life was just for that purpose, I have no desire to serve, love or worship that god. 

I needed to be held as I cried.

I needed to be told that someone else knew life was hell and they were sorry.

I needed to be reminded it was not. my. fault.

Really, what it boils down to is that I never needed platitudes and I always needed to be loved. I never needed to hear the casual, flippant response of "well, I’m praying for you" at the conclusion of the conversation. While I understand that is the only programmed response within Christendom to crisis, it is faulty. I never needed to be told that I was enabling my brother with the ways in which we were trying to help him find life. If you do not have professional degrees, do not diagnose people or situations. It helps no one and could serve to damage further.

Throughout the years I have found people who have trudged the battlefield with me. Who have driven me to visit him in facilities and helped me hide from dealers to whom he owed money. Who have fixed me meals when I could not muster the energy to press a microwave button and who have forced me to laugh when I forgot what joy felt like in my soul. I cherish those people and hopefully they know how much. They have mostly been people of deep and abiding faith and I am indebted to them for helping me find glimpses of heaven in the midst of hell.

Community is necessary in crisis.

How can the church be present in crisis?

 By being present.

The holiest thing anyone has ever told me is “I am so very sorry” and meant it.

You can tell when someone is deeply sorry and when someone is trying desperately to end the conversation because they’re uncomfortable. It should tell you something that after ten years of this garbage, I am still shocked when someone looks me straight in the eyes and expresses their sorrow over my pain. It’s like a breath of fresh air and honors me more than those people probably know.

So I suppose that’s my call to the Church: be present, be loving and join in their brokenness. Fix food and run errands, but most of all, provide a safe place for them to feel validated in their pain. Provide glimpses of hope in the tension of suffering and don’t offer answers you don’t have.

Love requires patience and often patience requires the willingness to sit in the brokenness of humanity and groan along with it.

May you find the strength to do that and in turn provide that strength to others.

Above all, may you learn the holiness of “I am so very sorry.”

***

*name changed to protect family privacy 

N.T. Wright on the Enlightenment, postmodernism, and common misreadings of scripture

It’s Monday, which means it’s time to continue series on learning to love the Bible for what it is, not what we want it to be.  

As part of the series, we’re working our way through several books, and have already discussed The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith. Up next up is Inspiration and Incarnation, by Peter Enns.  But currently, we’re discussing Scripture and the Authority of God by N.T. Wright, and today I want to address Chapter 6, entitled “The Challenge of the Enlightenment,” and Chapter 7, entitled, “Misreadings of Scripture.” 

I confess I checked out few times while plowing through Chapter 6, which explores the effect of the Enlightenment on biblical interpretation and scriptural authority. Because this is just the sort of stuff you bring up at parties to make friends. 

Here Wright notes that “much of what has been written about the Bible in the last two hundred years has either been following through the Enlightenment’s program, or reacting to it, or negotiating some kind of halfway house in between.”  And so Christians need to be aware of which Enlightenment assertions “must be politely denied, which of its challenges may be taken up and by what means, and which of its accomplishments must be welcomed and enhanced.” 

Without casting Enlightenment rationalism as categorically evil, Wright details some of the problematic consequences of Enlightenment assumptions regarding the biblical text: false claims to absolute objectivity, the elevation of “reason” (“not as an insistence that exegesis must make sense with an overall view of God and the wider world,” Wright notes, “but as a separate ‘source’ in its own right”), reductive and skeptical readings of scripture that cast Christianity as out-of-date and irrelevant, a human-based eschatology that fosters a “we-know-better-now” attitude toward the text, a reframing of the problem of evil as a mere failure to be rational, the reduction of the act of God in Jesus Christ to a mere moral teacher, etc.  

Wright then discusses how the rise of historical biblical scholarship has both helped and hurt the Church, arguing for something of a middle-way between anti-intellectualism on the one hand and the glorification of it on the other. According to Wright, “to affirm ‘the authority of scripture’ is precisely not to say, ‘We know what scripture means and don’t need to raise any more questions.’ It is always a way of saying that the church in each generation must make fresh and rejuvenated efforts to understand scripture more fully and live by it more thoroughly, even if that means cutting across cherished traditions.” 

And I especially like this: 

“Not all who try to follow the Bible in detail as well as outline are fundamentalists,” says Wright,  “nor are they all guilty of those cultural, intellectual, and moral failings which North American (and other) liberals perceive in North American (and other) conservatives. Equally, not all who question some elements of New Testament teaching, or its applicability to the present day, are ‘liberals’ in the sense pejoratively intended by North American conservatives or traditionalists.” 

Wright urges Christians to avoid plugging their ears and refusing to acknowledge the insights that can be gleaned from historical criticism on the one hand, and accepting historical criticism wholesale on the other. 

“There is a great gulf fixed between those who want to prove the historicity of everything reported in the Bible in order to demonstrate that the Bible is ‘true after all, and those who, committed to living under the authority of scripture, remain open to what scripture itself actually teaches and emphasizes,” he says.  

As the chapter continues, Wright tackles postmodern scholarship, which he believes has offered some helpful critiques of Enlightenment assumptions while providing useful analyses of how certain texts might be received by particular groups, but which tends to veer into the complete dismissal of large portions of the biblical text. And so Wright sees postmodernity’s effect on contemporary Western readings of Scripture as “essentially negative.” “Postmodernity agress with modernity in scorning both the eschatological claim of Christianity and its solution to the problem of evil, but without putting any alternatives in place,” he says. “ All we can do with the Bible, if postmodernity is left in charge, is to play with such texts as give us pleasure, and issue warnings against those that give pain to ourselves or to others who attract our (usually selective) sympathy.” 

Wright’s solution is “a narratival and critical realist reading of scripture,” which he doesn’t flesh out in this chapter, but will in future ones...which is good, seeing as how I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. 

Chapter 7 gets a little more interesting because Wright lists common misreading of Scripture—by the religious right and the religious left. 

His list of misreadings on the right includes:

- the rapture 

- the prosperity gospel 

- the support of slavery (so I guess he’s referring to readings both past and present) 

- undifferentiated reading of the Old and New Testament

- an arbitrary pick-and-choose approach to Scripture, complete with an implicit canon-within-the-canon, which, for example, is tough on sexual offenses but says nothing about the regular biblical prohibitions against usury

- support of the death penalty

- “discovery of ‘religious’ meanings and exclusion of ‘political’ ones, thus often tacitly supporting the social status quo”

 - readings of Paul that leave out the Jewish dimension through which his letters make the most sense

- attempted “biblical” support for the modern state of Israel as the fulfillment of scriptural prophesy - an overall failure to pay attention to context and hermeneutics

[I can think of plenty more, starting with this idea that the Bible presents us with a singular picture of “biblical womanhood” that more closely resembles the June Cleaver culture of pre-feminist America than the familial norms of biblical times -  not that I’m biased on that one or anything. :-) ]

His list of misreading on the left includes: 

- claims to objective or neutral readings of the text

- claims that modern history/science “disprove” the Bible or render it  irrelevant or unbelievable

- the cultural relativity argument which assumes that “the Bible is an old book from a different culture, so we can’t take it seriously in the modern world.” 

- caricaturing biblical teaching on some topics in order to be able to set aside its teaching on other topics

- “discovery of ‘political’ meanings to the exclusion of ‘religious’ ones”

- the proposal that the New Testament used the Old Testament in an arbitrary and unwarranted fashion

- the claim that New Testament writers did not think they were writing ‘scripture,’ so appealing to their work does them violence

- “a skin-deep-only appeal to ‘contextual readings,’ as though by murmuring the magic word ‘context’ one is allowed ot hold the meaning and relevance of the text at arm’s length."

- reducing “truth” to scientific statements on the one hand, or to deconstruct it altogether on the other. 

Wright believes a critical realist reading of the text is something of a third way between two extremes, one that can “take the postmodern critique fully on board and still come back with a strong case for a genuinely historical understanding.”

He argues that we do have serious and academic methods by which we can “say definitively that some readings of ancient texts are historically preferable to others,” and that those should be employed thoughtfully and humbly by the Church. 

In chapter eight, “How to Get Back on Track,” Wright will propose a five-part recommendation for approaching scripture today.

Good. 

It's all getting a little theoretical to me.

 *** 
So, did any of that make sense to you? What do you think of Wright’s assessment of the Enlightenment and of postmodernism? What would you add to the list of biblical misreadings—on either the right or left?

Check out the rest of our Bible series here. 

Sunday Superlatives 5/13/2012

Best Mom in the Whole World:
Robin Held (pictured above with the best dad in the whole world)
Mom is a third-generation elementary school teacher whose reputation as the best 4th grade teacher at Dayton City School reminds me of how blessed I was to grow up in a home full of creativity, compassion, adventure, and love.  She instilled in me a love for reading, a self-depreciating sense of humor, a curious mind, and a tender heart.  It was mom who first introduced me to Jesus, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Carol King. I am so grateful for her influence and friendship. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! 

Around the Blogosphere...

Best Video:
N.T. Wright sings Bob Dylan at The Rabbit Room

Best Writing:
 Michelle DeRusha with “Let Us Proclaim the Mystery of Faith”

“I fill the dishwasher, toss errant sneakers and flip flops into the shoe basket by the door, raise the matchstick blinds over the living room couch, singing the old familiar words as I work. 

Let us proclaim the mystery of faith…  

My voice rises and falls. I dig deeply, remembering the cadence of the priest’s voice, practicing to match the tone just right as I throw muddy socks and stained tee shirts into the washer, as I dump a basket of warm clothes on the bed, as I butter bagels hot and yeasty from the toaster oven.My kids glance warily at me over their books, leery of the chanting. They're not entirely surprised their mother is acting like a monk, but not entirely comfortable with it either..."

Best Analysis: 
Mimi Haddad with “Is God male?”

“God is self-revealed in terms we can understand through our own experiences, using metaphors which are, at times, feminine. We should not, however, make these metaphors—these implicit comparisons—absolutes. When we do, we are making God in our image, whether male or female. God is not limited by gender because God is Spirit. It is idolatry to make God male or female. God is no more female or goddess than God is male, and males have no priority over women in the New Covenant community because of gender (Gal 3:27-29).God is beyond gender, and leadership is not gender-bound.”

Best Interview:
Frank Viola interviews David Lamb about his book, God Behaving Badly 

"I was on a date with my wife Shannon recently and we ended up chatting with my server. He says to me, 'So what do you do?' I reply, 'I teach the Bible, mainly the Old Testament.'  My response prompted him to ask, 'The Old Testament—isn’t that where God is always getting angry, smiting people and destroying cities all the time?'  I tell him, 'Well, not exactly, but I get that question a lot because the God of the Old Testament has a bad reputation.'”

Best Response:
Lisa Belkin at Huffington Post with “No, I am not mom enough”

“I am not Mom enough to take the bait. To accept TIME's deliberate provocation and either get mad at this woman for what I think I know about her from this photo, or to feel inferior, or superior, or defensive, or guilty -- or anything at all, if it means I am comparing myself to other mothers. I am not Mom enough to think that the debate over how to feed our youngest children -- an important and nuanced conversation about nutrition, and workplace policy, and government responsibility, and gender relationships -- can be boiled down to a simplistic, unrepresentative, staged photograph.”

Best example of nerdy theological humor: 
Amanda MacInnis with “10 Reasons Christians Shouldn’t Read the Patristic Fathers”

Best Conversation-Starter:
Roger Olson with "How to Believe without Being Fundamentalist"

"...It is possible to hold firmly to, proclaim and teach, the incarnation of God, the deity of Jesus Christ, even a full bodied doctrine of the Trinity, and not do it in a rigid, narrow, absolutistic way. One mark of fundamentalism and neo-fundamentalism is going beyond belief in and proclamation of the incarnation to insistence on a certain theory of how it worked as essential to the incarnation and deity of Jesus Christ."

Most Encouraging:
Laura Ziesel with “Mother is a Verb”

“...My status as a mother has very little to do with my biological reproduction or my legal status as a parent; my status as a mother has to do with the mothering I've done in my heart, with my words, and with my hands."

Most Challenging:
Kristen Howerton with “Where is the mommy war for the motherless child?”

“This is the only mommy war I’ll wage.  I’m confident that most mothers are doing the best that they can for their kids, even if their choices are different than mine.  I think it’s ridiculous that so much energy is spent on debating largely inconsequential parenting decisions when so very little attention is given to the children who DON’T HAVE PARENTS. Why isn’t this causing outrage?  Making magazine covers? Inciting ranty twitter posts? This is the war I’ll be involved in: We, as a society, are not doing enough to protect at-risk and motherless children, both in our country and globally.  (Because apparently we’re too busy worrying about that kid whose mom gave him formula).”

Most Riveting:
Jessica Goudeau with “Stick it to the slumlords!” and “The Man Who Walked Into the Hornet’s Nest”

“...I went in Thursday ready for battle. Armed with information about what’s legal in the state of Texas, I went ready to nail this guy to the wall. Because they had turned the gas off and, ten days later, hadn’t turned it back on. That meant that the people in this one particular building had not had hot showers or cooked food in ten days–in Texas, you have to have the issue resolved in seven.”

Most Useless (Yet Fascinating):
The Billfold with “How Much Money You Need To Realistically Recreate The Scrooge McDuck ‘Gold Coin Swim’”

Most (Oddly) Disappointing: 
Maya calendar workshop documents time beyond 2012

Bravest:
Sarah Bessey at Deeper Story with “I’m an evangelical Christian. And I think same-sex marriage should be legal.” 

“My marriage is the greatest relationship of my life, spiritual in every way. And my ability to have a strong marriage, that affirms God’s heart for relationships and demonstrates unconditional love is not altered by someone else’s inability or disinclination to do so.”

Wisest: 
Jamie Arpin-Ricci with “We Never Come to the Bible Alone”

“We do not come to Scripture alone, but do so with the Holy Spirit who helps us discern God’s truth and will within.  We do so through our brokenness and thus get it wrong time and again, but with humility, chastened certainty and the grace of a forgiving God, we continue to pursue Him.  This isn’t a formula or '5-easy-steps', but it is a path upon which we will discover more of God and His truth. This same Holy Spirit is the Spirit who unites us as One Body in Christ.  Therefore, the Spirit quickens our understanding of Scripture as we seek to discern together as community.  And that communal discernment engages the diversity and multiplicity of gifts within that community without condescending against some strength or privileging others.  We are mutually interdependent on one another through the Spirit.  In many ways, this unity and interdependence should provide an impetus for a humble, yet passionate engagement of mission.  After all, each person who comes into the Body of Christ brings with them absolutely unique expressions of gifting, perspective, etc.  In fact, it is often in those who are most other that bring us the most essential understanding to become more like Christ together.”

Saddest:
Greg Warner with “Jennifer Knapp, an unlikely gay Christian icon"

"When I came out, I didn't expect how much it hurt my heart that people assumed the experience I had as a person of faith had never mattered and didn't exist...I realized (the Christian faith) was an integral part of my life when it was assumed that it wasn't.’”

Most Inspiring:
Investor Place with “10 Remarkable Women in Business History”

“Born into slavery in Mississippi, Biddy Mason grew up to be a successful real estate developer and human-rights champion. But before she did all that, Biddy successfully sued her owners for her freedom after the family and their slaves moved to the free state of California in the 1850s. A decade after winning freedom for herself and her three daughters, Biddy became one of the first black women to own land when she purchased commercial property in what is now the heart of downtown Los Angeles for $250. She turned her initial investment into a small real estate empire worth about $300,000 in 1884.” (Eshet Chayil!)

Most Surprsing:
Mental Floss with “The Founder of Mother’s Day Later Fought to Have It Abolished” 

“’A maudlin, insincere printed card or ready-made telegram means nothing except that you’re too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone else in the world.” She also said, “Any mother would rather have a line of the worst scribble from her son or daughter than any fancy greeting card.”

Most Beautiful:
Idelette McVicker with “Let Us Be Women Who Love”

“Let us be women who Love.
Let us be women willing to lay down our sword words, our sharp looks, our ignorant silence and towering stance and fill the earth now with extravagant Love.
Let us be women who Love.
Let us be women who make room.
Let us be women who open our arms and invite others into an honest, spacious, glorious embrace.”

On the blog...

Most Popular Post (with 43,000 Facebook shares!): 
“How to Win a Culture War and Lose a Generation”

Most Popular Comment (with 209 “likes”!):
In response to the culture war post, Tammy Kingston wrote: 

“While I am sure most of the Christians you encounter of the over 40 age group probably did celebrate the passing of that ridiculous amendment, rest assured that this 48 year old heterosexual married woman most definitely did not.  Living in Alabama, the very heart of right wing evangelicals, my views are not very popular, and I am perfectly okay with that.  I always look forward to your blog posts even when they are as sad as this one.  The word "evangelical" continues to make me more and more uncomfortable because of all the vitriol it has come to represent.” 

So what caught your eye online this week? What's happening over at your blog?

Ask. Seek. Knock. Breathe.

Today’s faith and parenting post comes to us from the talented Beth Woolsey. Beth is the writer and humorist behind the Five Kids Is A Lot of Kids blog. She has been described as “optimistic, authentic, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, [capturing] the mom experience with all its pathos and humor,” and was named one of Sheknows.com’s Top Five Moms Who Will Make You Laugh Out Loud.

Beth and her longsuffering husband, Greg, are parents to five kids. Their kids are adopted and homemade, singletons and multiples, and some have special needs. Most importantly, Beth says, “they’re all our very own.”

Beth was raised as a missionary kid in the highlands of Papua, Indonesia and the jungles of Southern California. She holds a B.A. in History and Religion from George Fox University. She continues to question all things spiritual, cares deeply about living a Christ-centered life, and creates all kinds of problems by living out loud; she blames her family for continuing to encourage her.

Enjoy! 

***
I used to prefer for God to live in a box.

Not a jewelry box. Or a moving box. Or a giant refrigerator box. Or even one of those pet store hamster boxes with breathing holes like the one I bought in 1980 with my best friend, Tracy, because two seven-year-olds co-owning a hamster is always a good idea. 

Nope. My God-box was different. 

My God-box was more like a Lunchables box. The kind that’s well-shaped with plastic compartments for neatly stacked crackers and round spheres of pressed meat and contoured for protection against breakage. 

That was, to my mind, the very best, most structured kind of a God-box, and my God deserved the best. 

I liked my boxed God very much because He was neat and tidy, and also a He with a capital H. And everything in my life fit into my God-box compartments. 

I think that’s normal for a kid raised in the Church, and it isn’t bad or wrong. It just turned out to be, well, a little too easy and preserved for the realities of my life as it unfolded. 

I became a mama for the first time in the Fall of 1998 when a foster mom, in the dark of night in a tiny home in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam placed a nine week old baby girl into my shaking arms. It was eleven days shy of my 25th birthday, and my husband and I marveled over Abby's fingers and toes and the fact that two whole governments were willing to entrust us with her little, perfect life. 

I had everything I wanted. A husband I liked nearly all the time. A daughter I adored. A home. And a personal relationship with JesusChristMyLordandSavior. 

I was wildly, deliriously happy and fulfilled.

Except when I was terribly unhappy. And except when I was oddly empty. And except when I felt like I was choking in the dark of night as I sat for hours and hours on the hardwood floors outside my baby’s room and my butt grew numb while I wondered why I lacked for peace when I had gratitude and faith. 

My confusion and bewilderment felt a lot like drowning or despair which I suspect are two words for the same thing. The wild flailing of arms. The gasps of air at the surface that were too brief to provide real respite. The rather desperate panic at the idea that, perhaps, being a mother wasn’t enough and being a follower of Jesus wasn’t enough, either.

Both ideas terrified me beyond description. How could they not, raised as I was by a loving Christian community to understand that God always fills the empty spaces and that a woman’s satisfaction comes from being a wife and a mother?

Instead, I found myself as a young mom lost in a wasteland of spiritual and emotional loneliness. Adrift. Isolated. Living in the opposite country from the illusive and idyllic Village where I was sure all of my friends’ children were being raised by content mommies who were far more Godly than me. 

And so it was that becoming a mother stripped me down to nothing and left me bare, exposed to my fears and my not-enoughness and my God. It was there, in that empty space, that I slowly began to unpack my Lunchables box, trying to discover whether any pieces of my God-meal matched a more significant, infinite, loving God who could sustain me… whether I could somehow mesh my easy, compartmentalized answers with my difficult, messy questions…. and whether, perhaps, I might find myself in the process.

My box was loaded with things that were striking to me in the way they didn’t fit with my understanding of a loving God. Things I was surprised I’d carried for years and in secret because I thought I would be shunned by the Church if I discarded them. Things that I thought were core to being a follower of Jesus, but which I found out… weren’t. Things like:

• a Letter of the Law fundamentalism that’s married to mob-mentality politics,
• “the Lord helps those who help themselves” and “love the sinner and hate the sin” and other trendy sayings that embrace a cringe-worthy sense of entitlement or judgment and, strikingly, aren’t in the Bible,
•  and the pressure to deliver the Horror of Hell story with enough conviction to scare people toward a merciful God and into Heaven 

These and a thousand thousand other things stuck in my throat and became increasingly difficult to swallow. They clogged my faith and made it hard for me to breathe. And so, with the cacophony of “but you must believe these things to raise righteous children” and a great deal of uncertainty ringing in my ears, I let them go. 

I let them go for the risky pursuit of an authentic faith. A faith based on the person of Jesus in the Bible. A faith based on Christ as my present, accessible, here-with-me-now teacher. A faith that embodies my desperate longing to see all people treated equally, to follow the deeper Spirit of the Law, to welcome strangers, to reject fear, and to love people with abandon. A faith that’s far scarier and more thrilling than platitudes, easy answers and trendy sayings because it means telling my children that I don’t know everything.

Jesus said a lot of earth-shattering things, but now that I’m a mom, I think this was one of the most radical of all:

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” - Matthew 7:7-8

It seems to me that Jesus’ words are a clear directive.

Ask, Jesus says. Seek. Knock.

And then, if I’ve got this right, Jesus follows up a few verses later by saying that God will actually respond. God God, the Lover of us all, will reveal divine things. To me. To you. To, oh, anyone who asks. And God will do it without discretion or conditions. Without caution or prudence. Without making a list first of who has a right to which truth or who will handle the answers the best.

The revolutionary, almost subversive, thing about asking is that it goes beyond making it OK to have secret questions and inner doubts and gives us permission to raise our hands in God’s classroom with a “Pardon me, but I don’t get it.” Or “Really, God? Can you explain further?” Or “I just can’t bring myself to believe what the rest of your class is telling me.” 

I suspect – a sneaking suspicion that gets louder as I age – that we’re somehow expected to keep asking. Out loud. And to keep seeking. And to keep knocking. Which has crazy implications on parenting from a Jesus perspective because typically when we don’t know something, we pretend we do. That’s in the Parenting Manual. Or the Being a Grownup Manual. Or the Christianity Manual. Or maybe it’s just being human. 

If I am a parent who follows Christ and is honest about all of my not knowings, though, about still being in process, about being an asker and a seeker and a knocker, then I have to change my Christian parenting paradigm. I have to say to my children, instead, “I know only some of God’s heart, but I’m willing to share what I have” and then humbly leave that piece sitting on the counter for them to accept or reject.

But if I do that – if I tell that truth to my children – what will happen to their faith? 

The truth, it turns out, can be an extraordinarily painful thing to tell. When I’m truthful, I find myself wading through my doubts, flashing my insecurities in public, and flipping through my dog-eared and coffee-stained questions like they’re well-worn copies of my favorite books.

If I say to my kids, “I don’t know; I’m a seeker just like you,” have I fallen down on the Christian Mama job? Have I led my kids astray by failing to hand them the answers? Have I abdicated my responsibility as a spiritual leader?

I don’t think so. And I’ll tell you why.

My sister-in-law, Kim, has been wandering around our faith community lately asking hard questions about the way the Church loves and harms people through acceptance or exclusion. About our collective fears. About the ways we engage in conversations. She’s letting her questions fall out all over the place, raw and beautiful in their authenticity. And she’s making people uncomfortable – or giddy – with her inability to accept the class’s answer and her insistence on raising her hand over and over and over.

Kim said two things that struck me as inordinately true during her questioning process. The first is her belief that the way we engage our conversations may be more important than our conclusions, for if we abandon love, kindness, forbearance and gentleness in favor of fear, self-righteousness and anger, what have we gained with a mere conclusion? And the second thing she said is I wonder if we trust Jesus to be enough?

I wonder if we trust Jesus to be enough. 

As a mama who cares about my kids’ relationships with God, I have to ask myself… am I engaging in spiritual conversations with them with love and kindness? Or am I fearful and angry about their doubts and conclusions? Do I actually believe that God will answer my kids’ questions with true discoveries and open doors? Or am I trying to rapidly solve their theological dilemmas by assuring them that God has already gifted me with all the answers and so they needn’t bother God by asking themselves?

I had a conversation recently with my father about whether we’re obligated as Christians to be aspirational.

“Are we,” I asked, “supposed to hold ourselves up as an example of the Godly life? Because I’m afraid I lack what it takes for others – my children, my friends, my blog readers – to want to aspire to be like me and, therefore, like God.”

You see, I have a lot of inadequacies in the aspirational areas, but the main one is that I know too little, and I admit it too often. I confess to cleaning my toilets and my children with embarrassing irregularity. I make people wear shoes in my house because I’m not sure what they might step in, and I should probably make people wear shoes in my theology for the same reason. I parent less-than-perfect children in less-than-perfect ways, and I actually prefer it that way. 

“This is no way to be an example to others,” I told my dad, “no way to point the way to Christ, despite the relief I feel in living this life. Some days, I don’t strive to be the best Jesus-follower I can be. Some days, it’s all I can do to breathe.”

But my dad said the most amazing thing to me in response to my self-flagellation. 

My former-Marine father who likes things to be orderly,

…my Christian missionary father who stashed emergency-reference copies of Dr. Dobson’s The Strong-Willed Child throughout my childhood home,

…my traditional-interpretation-of-Scripture father who wonders where I get my wild and crazy theological ideas,

…that father of mine said, 

“What if the root word of aspiration isn’t only to aspire to? What if the root word of aspiration is also to aspirate? To expel or dislodge the things that make people choke? To tell a truth that is so wild and so free that it helps people learn to breathe? What if you’re called to be that kind of aspiration?”

And I thought, by God, if this life is about helping people breathe, I can do that. 

Ask. Seek. Knock. Breathe.

I used to prefer for God to live in a box. Neat and tidy. Quiet and nice.

Now my life is full of questions. It’s messier and louder, more disruptive and fulfilling, than I imagined.

And I? 

I can finally breathe. 

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Check out the rest of the entries in our faith and parenting series.