A Question for Shifting Perspective

I know I'm not the only person in the world who struggles with feelings of guilt.

My local family is Irish Catholic, and while I was not raised in the RCC tradition, I feel the religious traditions of my family have been very influential, although not directly.

Guilt is a huge motivator in the ways my family thinks of things.  I manage to feel guilty about things that are silly for very long periods of time.

For instance, I still regularly think about a moment in time in which I got mad at my friend for coloring most of a coloring book I left at her home.  I feel bad about it because she felt like she was making a gift for me, whereas I felt like she was using up my toy without my permission.  As the story perhaps suggests, this happened a long time ago.  I was probably about 7 years old.  I'm 33 and I still think about it at least once a week.

There are things like this in my life.  I hold grudges against myself that I can't seem to let go of, even though the more rational, forgiving parts of my brain and spirit know I am being silly.  It doesn't seem to change the ways I feel about myself.  

I think I even developed (thanks to crap boyfriends and some upbringing stuff) a tendency to smash down feelings of pride or desire and beat myself up about them.  Like, when I start to think something good about myself, my brains says, "No, stop!  This is the way to arrogance or disappointment!  You are crap!"  

This often leads me to feel like I don't deserve good things.  It is a way I learned to cope with people who treated me poorly.  A helpless feeling of loving someone who treats you poorly can make us feel like we deserve that treatment.  If this person treats me poorly, it's because I deserve it.  I start to feel like I don't deserve happiness and happiness starts to make me feel uncomfortable.  It almost feels unsafe.

Life is weird, right?

Sometimes I feel guilty about my blessings.  I don't know how to accept success because I spent a lot of time telling myself I wasn't worthy of good things.  When good things come along, I sometimes push them away because they don't feel safe to me.  

All of this is to reference something I lost.  It was an OWN (Oprah Winfrey) thing, but I can't recall who she was talking to.  The question I learned to ask myself is:

"Instead of feeling guilty, can I feel grateful?"

It's a way of orienting myself toward more truth.  It's a way of discerning whether my soul actually feels like I don't deserve something or whether it's a behavior I've learned through abuse.  

Breaking these cycles in myself will hopefully help me raise children who don't get trapped in them.

Systems

I think sometimes I prioritize efficiency in a way that makes me personally inefficient, in some ways.

I have a desire to systematize that can interfere with expedient solutions at times.

But I am also pretty dang good at creating processes.

God Thought 3

Gratitude is stillness.

Thoughts

I think I am in touch with certain ways of knowing that not everyone is... a mystical way of knowing... a sort of spiritual intuition or acumen that not everyone is able to perceive acutely.  It feels important to share the truths I find when listening to this "voice," and from the study it leads me to engage.

The ways I do that are my ministry.

What does that mean?

God Thought 2

Live authentically into the world in ways that can be dangerous and courageous.  Give and demand respect.  We are all sparks of God in this world.

God Thought 1

Create hope at home.
Spread it wide.

Do the gospel at home.
Tell it wide.

Love God at home.
Understand God widely.

Book Idea

The Best Among Us: Progressive Profiles of Courage

Although I feel like this book exists (in different forms) under different titles.

There are many similar books in the world, though they seem to reach different audiences.  Do I write a book that exists in similar forms, or do I lift up those books that exist?  How do you build an audience without creating content, though?  I would make an awesome curator of media, but that's not, like, a thing...

is it?

Book Title?

Jesus Talk

Thinking about...

Creating retail component... I don't want to give too much away, because I feel like someone could steal my ideas (!), but I would need to figure out not only most advantageous and honest tax filing body type and figure out how to do something that has a top-to-bottom chain of supplies and labor that are just and sustainable.

As well as some online content.

Maybe an app.  Not that I know how to make an app.

A Few Book Ideas

in the works.

-An Honest Bible Study (incorporates scholarship and interpretation)

-New Year's Resolution: Build a Spiritual Life
a year of easy ways to start finding your spirit
or Finding Your Spiritual Path (in a year, because who has time?)

-Whatever Wisdom: Modern-Day Parables and Pop-Culture Proverbs

-A Potty-Mouthed Young Minister Challenges the Church
or Church is Boring, Jesus is Cool, Don't Tell Me What to Think

projectile ideas

Truth

spinachandmushrooms:

Front of my notebook. #seminary

Sharing Faith

"Regarding the Spirit as animator of the church, here I highlight that pedagogy ‘in the Spirit’ is to have both a genuine hospitality and an 'outward-bound’ orientation.  Clearly, it is possible to bond people into a closed or elitist group that has a sense of communal identity but is turned in on itself.  The pedagogy of Christian religious educators should never encourage any kind of sectarianism; it is to help create a welcoming and inclusive community and 'lead them out’ into solidarity with any human community in which God’s Spirit is moving to bring about God’s reign for all creation."

— Thomas H. Groome, from “Sharing Faith”

Animal Agriculture

I went to UCC.org and searched for “global warming.”  The first link that comes up offers ways that we can help reduce our carbon footprint.  Under ways we can do that with food, it says:

• Food: grow a garden for vegetables and herbs, support your local farmers through a CSA, limit packaging and waste, start a compost pile.

I am disappointed that this says NOTHING about reducing consumption of animals, even though animal agriculture is the LEADING CAUSE OF GREENHOUSE GASES.  Reducing animals consumption will do more to slow global warming than ANYTHING ELSE, but no one suggests doing that because it’s an ugly thing to talk about.  People like eating meat and they get really defensive about it.

You know what else people are defensive about?  Their homophobic views.  The reasons they don’t support social safety nets.  The reasons they “deserve” wealth and people in poverty “deserve” that.  Alcoholism.  Racism.  Sexism.  Why they drive a giant vehicle even though they don’t haul things.  Why they don’t recycle (it’s too hard!).  Why they don’t compost (ew!).  Why they shop at giant corporate stores who abuse people in many ways.  

Yet we all understand that these are important things to speak out against because we understand that while it can be difficult to talk to someone about these things, they matter.  Yet when you say that folks should try to adopt more earth-friendly eating habits, you’re an extremist.  You’re a terrible person.  

If I called someone out for eating beef, I would come off as a jerk.  If I call someone out for saying “f*g” or “p***y” or driving a Hummer, though, I’m brave and awesome.

I understand that no one likes being judged.  I don’t say things to my friends and family who eat meat in front of me every single day because I understand that it comes off as judgement.  However, when we talk about any of the other issues above, we are promoting justice.  When we talk about promoting vegetarianism or veganism or simply REDUCING animal consumption, I’m a judgmental jerk. 

All I know is: science is on my side.  97% of scientists agree that global climate change is HAPPENING and that it is because of HUMAN activity.  The largest contributing factor to global warming is animal agriculture.  17% of greenhouse gases are caused by animal agriculture.  

I’m ONLY talking about the environmental impact, too.  Animal agriculture is mostly inhumane,  funded by our tax dollars to keep costs ARTIFICIALLY low, disproportionately abuses undocumented workers, with NAFTA it impoverishes farmers in developing and impoverished countries where their styles of animal agriculture are NOT cruel and inhumane, it breeds disease, and the unhealthy amount of meat that we eat contributes to health epidemics like heart disease, high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes, etc.  

Seriously.  Reducing animal consumption is the right thing to do and I’m a giant jerk for even writing this.

Women Preaching

"In the New Testament story of Luke-Acts Anna and Mary speak as prophets, as do the four daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9). Mary learns from Jesus the teacher (Luke 10), and Priscilla teaches. Yet, when the women face the empty tomb and embrace the mission to tell the disciples what they have seen, ‘the story seemed like nonsense, and they refused to believe them.’ Women are taught by Jesus and speak for Jesus. They pray and they prophecy. Yet, even so visibly embraced, welcomed, challenged, and given the task of proclamation, the world will not listen."

— Turner and Hudson, “To be Saved From Silence” in Saved from Silence: Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching (St. Louis: Chalice Press) 1999, 88.

Is anyone else concerned...

about some of the things happening in and near the Holy Land? 

I'm concerned that what is going on in Gaza, Syria, and Iran, including international interplay between these places and their governments (as well as, potentially, North Korea, given its alliances).

I'm concerned that a war in the Middle East could result in destruction of countless places of religious and historical significance, including a multitude of holy sites.  I'm concerned that it could result in the effective genocide of the Palestinian people. 

I'm just concerned.