03 6 / 2012
with rue my heart is laden: “A large part of it was that I had ingested early in life the...
“A large part of it was that I had ingested early in life the poisonous lie that I was unlovable. Growing up attracted to the same sex in a society that is often overwhelmingly homophobic can lead to some pretty terrible image problems. It was so easy to believe that I was disgusting for having…
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01 6 / 2012
“Nothing at All” by Christian Yoder
The stars are turning out of line
The planets misaligned
Tired of orbit
For new fires burn just ‘round the cloud
You’re bored sick of still turning around
This old system
Don’t leave me
There’s nothing that certain,
but there’s nothing out there
at all.
Your smile had no pretense
Your joy was innocence
I guess I thought you too far,
far from their lofty reach
Those modern thieves
You gave them all that you held
They left you nothing more
than an empty universe
Believe me
There’s nothing that certain,
but there’s nothing out there
at all.
(Source: cyoder.band.com)
01 6 / 2012
"Someone asked me recently how to do something she thought was going to be difficult… . And I suggested she pretend that she was someone who could do it. Not pretend to do it, but pretend she was someone who could."
(Source: hours)
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31 5 / 2012
"So, for most of my life, for a variety of reasons, I found it far simpler to make friends than to find lovers. No doubt, this had something to do with my homosexuality (since friendship is the only gay relationship that is socially acknowledged) and something to do with my haphazard romantic history (for want of a lover, a friend often filled the emotional space in my life). But friendship, although it may come more instinctively to some than to others, is not a relationship anyone has a special claim to. Gay men have sustained and nourished it in our culture only by default. And they are good at friendship not because they are homosexual, but because, in the face of a deep and silent isolation, they are human."
From “If Love Were All,” the third essay in Andrew Sullivan’s Love Undetectable
One of my favorite sections from this essay. But I do wonder what specifically Sullivan means when he states that “friendship is the only gay relationship that is socially acknowledged.” Is he taking into account our identities as brother and sister? Mother and father? Are these relationships not socially acknowledged?
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31 5 / 2012
“Right now gay teens hear a robust ‘Yes!’ from the mainstream media and gay culture. From the Church, they hear only a ‘No.’ And you can’t have a vocation of not-gay-marrying and not-having-sex. You can’t have a vocation of No.”
— Eve Tushnet, The Botany Club: Gay Kids in Catholic Schools, The American Conservative (via wesleyhill)
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16 5 / 2012
‘When God Talks Back’ To The Evangelical Community
Anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann studies close personal relationship evangelicals have with God.
While attending services and small group meetings at The Vineyard, an evangelical church with 600 branches across the country, anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann noticed that several members of the congregation said God had repeatedly spoken to them and that they had heard what God wanted them to do.
In When God Talks Back, which is based on an anthropological study she did at The Vineyard, Luhrmann examines the personal relationships people developed with God and explores how those relationships were cemented through the practice of prayer.
(Source: NPR)
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04 5 / 2012
"
In the drive to make churches more guy-friendly, we risk confusing cultural (especially American) customs with biblical discipleship. One noted pastor has said that God gave Christianity a “masculine feel.” Another contrasted “latte-sipping Cabriolet drivers” with “real men.” Jesus and his buddies were “dudes: heterosexual, win-a-fight, punch-you-in-the-nose dudes.” Real Christian men like Jesus and Paul “are aggressive, assertive, and nonverbal.” Seriously?
The back story on all of this is the rise of the “masculine Christianity movement” in Victorian England, especially with Charles Kingsley’s fictional stories in Two Years Ago (1857). D. L. Moody popularized the movement in the United States and baseball-player-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday preached it as he pretended to hit a home run against the devil. For those of us raised on testimonies from recently converted football players in youth group, Tim Tebow is hardly a new phenomenon. Reacting against the safe deity, John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart (2001) offered a God who is wild and unpredictable. Neither image is grounded adequately in Scripture. With good intentions, the Promise Keepers movement apparently did not have a significant lasting impact. Nor, I predict, will the call of New Calvinists to a Jesus with “callused hands and big biceps,” “the Ultimate Fighting Jesus.”
Are these really the images we have of men in the Scriptures? Furthermore, are these the characteristics that the New Testament highlights as “the fruit of the Spirit”—which, apparently, is not gender-specific? “Gentleness, meekness, self-control,” “growing in the grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ,” “submitting to your leaders,” and the like? Officers are to be “apt to teach,” “preaching the truth in love,” not quenching a bruised reed or putting out a smoldering candle, and the like. There is nothing about beating people up or belonging to a biker club.
"
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30 4 / 2012
“I Feel Sorry for Jesus” by Naomi Shihab Nye
People won’t leave Him alone.
I know He said, wherever two or more
are gathered in my name…
But I bet some days He regrets it.
Cozily they tell you what he wants
and doesn’t want
as if they just got an e-mail.
Remember “Telephone,” that pass-it-on game
where the message changed dramatically
by the time it rounded the circle?
Well.
People blame terrible pieties on Jesus.
They want to be his special pet.
Jesus deserves better.
I think He’s been exhausted
for a very long time.
He went into the desert, friends.
He didn’t go into the pomp.
He didn’t go into
the golden chandeliers
and say, the truth tastes better here.
See? I’m talking like I know.
It’s dangerous talking for Jesus.
You get carried away almost immediately.
I stood in the spot where He was born.
I closed my eyes where He died and didn’t die.
Every twist of the Via Dolorosa
was written on my skin.
And that makes me feel like being silent
for Him, you know? A secret pouch
of listening. You won’t hear me
mention this again.
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30 4 / 2012
"We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it."
(via loganmahan)
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