Conventions

 Okay, so we all know I'm a news junkie and I love national politics.  So some thoughts that have no productive intent...

What is wrong with Junior?  I dunno much about drugs, but that dude had, like, sweaty eyelids.

I don't even need to say anything about Kimberly Guilfoyle.  We all saw.

I think Eric is coming for Jr's spot as favorite son.  He looked way more sane, has his new beard going for him, and has a normal family.  Junior, on the other hand, seems to be dating Every Negative Female Stereotype (I hear she also goes by "Kim"), although I'm sure his infidelity charms his father.  

For some reason, I expected more from Tiffany.

Melania seems to, like, care about her historical legacy.  What a notion for the Trump family, who, in my perspective, are quite short-sighted in that respect.  

Anyway.

Yes, are evacuated.

My spouse and I were evacuated on Tuesday evening.  These are a few pictures from before we received our evacuation notice.  

We hope our hope survives, but we were able to get our cats and chickens out.  We have what matters.

 

Youth Offering: Buffy Group Week 6

Ana Maria Archila

"I found the courage in myself and I understood that courage is a currency that is contagious.  When you are in the presence of someone who is doing something difficult, something courageous, you feel invited to do the same.  When you are in a place where solidarity is being displayed, you find abundance in yourself and you, too, can participate in acts of solidarity.  And I think that's why I believe that even though we lost the fight around Kavanaugh, there was massive transformation happening in our country because people witnessed and participated in an act of courage and acts of solidarity that transformed their sense of their own power, and at the end of the day, that's how social change happens.  It resides not in the hands of politicians who failed, mostly, to lead with moral clarity.  It resides in the hearts of people who listen to the voice inside that says, I must do something."
--Ana Maria Archila, Co-Executive Director of the Center for Popular Democracy, September 26, 2019 on "The Takeaway," from National Public Radio.

Youth Offering: Buffy Group Week 5

For adolescents and high school kids, I recommend watching Buffy and using these videos to talk about it:
Season 1, Episode 5 :

Youth Offering: Week 3 Buffy Group

Buffy Week 3 (for teens and their adults):

Worship for July 19, 2020: "Wheat and Weeds"

Youth Offering: Buffy Group Week 2

Season 1, Episode 2:

Resources Thru July 19

Spirit Stories Subscription Boxes

I’ve aimed to create “lessons,” which is to say: a story and activity you can do with your children at home or in a classroom. Each lesson is designed around a Bible story, includes a modern picture book story which can help explain and elevate the moral themes of the Bible story, and a craft that also explores the theme.

These are designed to be useful: many correlate to particular times of year– not just religious holidays, but cultural moments like “Black History Month” and LGBTQ+ Pride.

They are designed to be inclusive: Most lessons do not require children to be able to read, though their experience is often elevated when they are literate. The books are also chosen with care to include a diversity of characters and protagonists, authors and illustrators.

The crafts are also designed to be accessible for children who aren’t yet masterful artists (and for teachers and parents that may not be, either!).

The lessons are progressive. I aim to use inclusive language that does not shame or degrade your child’s identity. I do not use gendered language for God (I don’t call God “He.”). While some of the materials and books do use such language, I encourage you to replace “he” with other pronouns to expand your child’s understanding of divinity and the inherent worth of gender.

The lessons are also progressive in their theology. Bible stories are weird. I do not intend to “fix” texts that are uncomfortable, nor do I aim to tell anyone “how” to think about God. I try to approach these stories with a scholarly background, a firsthand experience of many holy land sites, a respect for the text and its authors and subjects, and an open way of understanding these stories.

STORY
The picture books that correlate with each lesson are not necessarily “biblical.” We don’t live in a world of burning bushes and temples and our biblical figures didn’t live in a world with cars or the internet. The picture books lift up biblical themes in ways that I hope can help young people think about Bible stories differently– in ways that lift them out of the dust and sand they seem to live in within our imaginations.

I want there to be room for differences in the ways we understand God and experience God’s presence, not to dictate anyone’s understanding. I hope that the lessons, stories, and crafts can help you and your child/ren explore God’s presence and role in your lives.

SNACK AND/OR CRAFT
Each lesson has a craft designed to help your children enjoy learning about the material, engage different skill sets and media to engage various learning processes, and create something to remind them of their own divine spark. Many lessons involve cooking something that corresponds with the Bible lesson. If there is no cooking/kitchen component in the lesson, there is a suggested affordable snack (usually water and matzah). If the lesson doesn’t include kitchen craft, it will include artistic crafts. These vary slightly in their complexity and cost, but are designed to be affordable, easy, and fun. We know not everyone can afford a $25-per-child curated craft each week. Most of my supplies are from the dollar store or a closet.



SERVICES
FULL YEAR DELIVERY
Our most economical and environmentally-friendly option. All materials for a calendar year of weekly lessons included in a single delivery. Craft and recipe materials not included.

CHOOSE A SINGLE LESSON
Choose one of our featured lessons.

MONTHLY DELIVERY
Our most popular plan. Monthly deliveries with a lesson for each Sunday (or whatever day you use). Lessons are shipped the month prior to their intended use to allow time to purchase supplies and materials.

CHOOSE A SINGLE MONTH
Order one month (4 lessons) from our selections available.

USES

FAMILY EVENING @ HOME
If you are looking for a progressive home supplement to your church experience or wish to explore Christian scripture from a progressive lens with your children at home, our subscription boxes may be a great solution for your family.


CHURCH SCHOOL
Does your Sunday School classroom span a variety of ages? Is it hard to find projects and lessons that work well for diverse ages and families? Our lesson plans are designed to be accessible to grades K-5, but enjoyable for the adults, too. We take care to use materials that represent a variety of people in a variety of roles while being faithful to sacred stories.

Sunday Worship Playlist: July 12, 2020-- Still Here

Sunday School Lesson for July 12, 2020

Following is a lesson for this coming Sunday. Please look it over so you can make any preparations or purchases necessary.

Sunday School Lesson for July 12, 2020  Download

Youth Offering: Buffy Group

For adolescents and high school kids, I recommend watching Buffy and using these videos to talk about it:



Season 1, Episode 1:

Interconnection

This sense of God as inherent in all things, yet greater, is articulated in a diversity of ways within with Christian tradition and beyond it. While biblical texts can offer windows into this all-pervasive God, more recent theologians have articulated relation in more explicit ways. Alfred North Whitehead developed a cosmological system in which he insisted that all of life was intrinsically connected. This relatedness “...means that the value an actual occasion achieves is not merely for itself, but contributes to the value for others in the future, and for God.”(1) Each atom in our bodies is connected to every other atom in the universe in a way that requires us to consider what that means. If God is, indeed, inherent in every element of the universe, my kindness, love, and compassion must extend to all of God in a way that asks me to heighten my awareness of my actions and in a way that highlights the absolute importance of my life in my unique manifestation as a conscious, moral being. For economically privileged members of the Global North, like myself, this means curbing consumption, most specifically of products which serve to enslave and degrade our planet and the lives in the Global South.

As a first-person Whiteheadian, I see each of us as what Whitehead might call “actual occasions.” To illustrate, if we can imagine the two halfs of a Venn Diagram as actual occasions, God is the relational newness, growth, and transformation that happens when each of us “prehends” the other-- the space shared by two circles-- we absorb parts of each other and are forever different and more individually diverse and creative than we were before our encounter. This encounter with the tangible fecundity of life is the space in which the grandeur of God becomes real-- where the veil becomes thin. These moments of encounter in which we delve immersively into the world with the conscious intent of seeking God, elicit the emotional responses that convey a sense of transcendence. The gift of Process Theology allows me to glimpse a God that loves the most menial and intimate spaces of life, yet is also articulated by propensity for creative potential and transformation. The God with the unspeakable YHVH name beyond our comprehension is also the God that forms life out of mud in one of the foundational stories of our faith.

True Relationship-oriented faith must seek deep community engagement, but must also be aware of the ripple effects of our most mundane and seemingly meaningless actions on our distant brothers and sisters. It must engage our histories with our current world, helping us to understand how our theologies and church structures have engaged in the damage and good that make up our current world.

1) Dr. Donna Bowman and Dr. Jay McDaniel, eds., Handbook of Process Theology (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2006), 151.

Undoing Duality

I believe that our binaristic western categories sit squarely in many of our blind spots. Much of our world seems to be divided into (supposedly) disparate categories: male and female, spirit and flesh, revelation and creation, saved and unsaved, white and black, citizen and immigrant, human and nonhuman, among others. More often than not, one category is decidedly preferable, despite the reality that many biblical and spiritual sources will suggest differently. These places also often sit in our blind spots. While trees, people who look different than us, and dogs may be part of our everyday lives, we may seldom consider what it is like to exist as something else. As Whitehead suggests, “In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.”(1) Progress requires creative imagination and recognition of our interconnectedness.

In Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith, Justin Tanis highlights how Jesus' ministry and the Jewish tradition ask people to seek new and complex ways of viewing the world and scripture, to "tease out all... possible meanings so... [we have] the richest available knowledge of how God spoke, and speaks..."(2) Tanis suggests that, similarly, transgendered ways of being similarly call on all of us to look more deeply and consider the complexities of this world from outside the boxes of binaristic thinking. Not only does this ask us to open ourselves to new ways of being and thinking about gender, but it asks us to consider the ways that we limit our own thinking based on our societally-ingrained presuppositions about gender and what it means in our lives and world. Unraveling this binary allows us to see how we are not only arbitrarily defined by our sex organs, but by our species.

Laurel Schneider suggests that we need to move into "promiscuous incarnation," understanding God as unbound to a particular kind of body.(3) If God is not limited by these binaries, why should humanity, created in God’s image? The Church has suggested that God became flesh in one particular time, place, and body. Many churches still hold that those particularities are meaningful. Schneider offers a counterpoint: that this need to specify God's particularity reflects human tendencies and, furthermore, serves to reinforce claims of exclusivity and power. The Jesus of the Gospels is extravagant and promiscuous in whom he chooses to love, implying that God is likewise as promiscuous. The particularity of Jesus' body, then, at least as far as moral implications that can be derived from it, must be liberated. We must understand God as incarnate in all kinds of bodies in order to approach the kind of love that God truly conveys. This must, perhaps queerly, reach other animal and non-animal expressions of God.

If I see God as woven throughout and within creation, God loves as intensely and closely as is possible. Perhaps a panentheistic God can queerly return us to embodied intimacy with God that happens at a physical level, that thrives on physical contact with diversity. If we take this to heart, we can open to ours to how God is present in everything and to reading our scripture with fresh minds.

1) Alfred N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, 9.

2) Justin Tanis, Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Pr, 2003), 177.

3) Laurel Schneider, “Promiscuous Incarnation” in The Embrace of Eros: Bodies, Desires, and Sexuality in Christianity, ed. Margaret D. Kamitsuka (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).