anchored by glory, we rise in mutiny

heyy. i'm ryan.

[twloha]

[thenewbreed]

God is ...

God is Queer

I don’t have to convince anyone that God is Father/Male. I did explain how God functions as Mother/Female according to Scripture. If God is both Father and Mother, God is Queer and/or non-binary. 

Queerness can be described as a disruption of the binary or duality and doesn’t always relate to sexuality and gender but often does. Nevertheless, God is queer in both the sense of how we know and understand God’s gender. But also God disrupts binary thinking, see a very clear example of this in a commonly referenced Scripture passage.

“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”  - Galatians 3:28

We see in this passage a clear disruption of the duality of these categories that were once completely unable to exist side-by-side but now through Christ have been united. Christ has disrupted the binary. 

What if God is father, mother, queer, and more? 

We have to reconsider the ways in which we relate to and conceive of God. As a result, we have to reconsider how then we relate to others in light of the mystery of God. 

[thenewbreed]

Who is She?

I remember one Sunday driving down the 605 South from Arcadia to Huntington Beach and mentally preparing myself to preach. On the drive, I couldn’t help but think about how proud mom would be to see me preach and then give me critical feedback. We sang “Good Good Father” that morning and for some reason all I wanted to sing was Good Good Mother. In the absence of my mom, I experienced Mother God that Sunday morning in a new and powerful way that left me wanting more. 

I remembering growing up in church, God was so clearly male and although loving had some anger and judgement issues. But God as father is not sufficiently the identity of God. Before you get mad at me, let’s look at Scripture. 

God’s character is also deeply feminine. God is a Mother in Deuteronomy as She birthed humanity and is a Mother Eagle (Deut. 32). Hosea describes God as a Mother who nourishes Her children (Hosea 11). God is also a Mother Bear who fights for her children (Hosea 13). In the New Testament, God is a Mother Hen who cares and guides her young (Matt. 23 & Luke 13). These are just a few of the places in which we find Her. 

These are all beautiful descriptions of a God that I want to continue to know more deeply that resonates with love and comfort when She may feel so far. 

After growing up knowing Father God for decades, I want to know Mother God. Cause I desire to know Her and to be known by Her. Who is She?

[thenewbreed]

May God bless you with discomfort At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships So that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, So that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with tears To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger and war, So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and To turn their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness To believe that you can make a difference in the world, So that you can do what others claim cannot be done To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor. Amen.

Franciscan Benediction

[thenewbreed]

If the gospel is a gospel of liberation for the oppressed, then Jesus is where the oppressed are and continues his work of liberation there. Jesus is not safely confined in the first century. He is our contemporary, proclaiming release to the captives and rebelling against all who silently accept the structures of injustice. If he is not in the ghetto, if he is not where men are living at the brink of existence, but is, rather, in the easy life of the suburbs, then the gospel is a lie. The opposite, however, is the case. Christianity is not alien to Black Power; it is Black Power.

James Cone | Black Theology & Black Power (1969) 

[thenewbreed]

Families need to fight... You only need to start worrying when the fighting stops

#blackAF

[thenewbreed]

Our speaking of God is a search for similes, analogies, and metaphors. All theological language is an approximation, offered tentatively in holy awe. That’s the best human language can achieve. We can say ‘It’s like - It’s similar to…,’ bit we can never say, ‘It is…’ because we are in the realm of beyond, of transcendence, of mystery. And we must - absolutely must - maintain a fundamental humility before the Great Mystery. If we do not, religion always worships itself and its formulation and never God.

Richard Rohr | The Divine Dance

[thenewbreed]

[thenewbreed]

[A] reason we are so drawn to this idea of closure is that we like stories that we can control. We like to believe that the lion is tame, that love is never messy and that death is something we can eventually box up and manage. We like assigning stages to our grief so that it feels   more linear, more certain. And we love the idea of timetables so we can predict how long our grief should last, and we can advise our friends, like the pastor, 'You shouldn't still be grieving five or ten years later.' We want to take all the mystery out of grief, all the messy dirtiness, and all the uncontrolled tears so that i can be neatly wrapped in a hardcover with a beginning and an end. We want to feel like we have power over death. Closure is this perfect sense of how we suppose we should deal with death. But perfection isn't arriving at the end, and it isn't arriving at closure because love lives on after death, and so does grief.

Confessions of a Funeral Director: How the Business of Death Saved My Life | Caleb Wilde

[thenewbreed]

I Am The Crowd

In a posture of reading backwards, or reading with full knowledge of a narrative the liturgy of Palm Sunday reminds me that I often get God wrong. Let me tell you what I mean. 

When Jesus entered into Jerusalem and the crowds cried out in praise of Jesus who was going to only liberate of their current situation. Don’t get me wrong, Jesus did plenty of that and absolutely still desires us to be people of liberation. However, this is the crowd who later will cry out to crucify Jesus. Their concept of Jesus greatly changed within a week, because Jesus was no longer who they had made him out to be. This is Jesus is placed against Barabbas, Barabbas as a zealot, he would be a man who would quite literally fight for the freedom of the people. But God had other plans for Jesus, something much bigger that not only allowed for current liberation but Jesus who will bring all things together.

I’m quick to turn on God, when God doesn’t fit within my construct. It’s easy to crucify God when God isn’t who I want God to be. 

Instead, Palm Sunday gives me a breathe of relief in knowing that God’s much more than my construct. That I often get God wrong and to be open to the greater that God has to offer. Praise God for Palm Sunday. 

[thenewbreed]

The Pace of Dying, Death, & Loss

As the whole world begins grieving, we need to begin to start practices and create space for us to do so meaningfully. The world is losing life daily to a virus that is rapidly spreading. The world has lost a way of living, in which most of us are confined our homes. We’ve lost our lifestyles. We can’t have meals, worship, work, play and etc. Some folks are losing their jobs. Whether we want to admit it or not, loss and death are synonymous with each other. The world and us in it are experiencing death in many ways. But what pace are we moving at? 

My grandmother just turned 100 years old a month ago. I’ve had this beautiful continued journey with her, but she’s getting older and moving closer to death. How do we know this? She’s moving slower, she can’t participate in many of the activities she once loved like golfing or cooking. She talks slower. She walks with a walker and requires aid to safely maneuver around. There are numerous times when I walk with her and my busy mind wants to scoot her along faster, but her pace slows me down. When my mom battled and died from cancer. Her pace changed as she moved closer to death.  

As Jesus is being crucified on the cross, as he’s in the process of dying some of the Gospel writers capture something strange that happens.

When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. Mark 15:33

We can choose to read this literally, but for the first time today I read it differently. I read it as an expression of the movement of time in the midst of dying. 

In the midst of the moment of death, there’s no more movement; movement ceases. 

What if the space for our dying and grief is moving slower or stopping?

What if the emotional, spiritual, and physical exhaustion that you are experiencing is your body saying to slow down?

What if the lack of sleep you get in grief is your body trying to slow you down?

So many of us (myself included) have blown right by the pace of dying and death. Whether in the past or now, we haven’t given ourselves the time and space to grieve. 

Psalms 46, highlights how the circumstances of life around can feel so very chaotic. When the world feels like it’s in turmoil, the instruction is “be still”. 

Will we lean into the pace of dying and death?

[thenewbreed]

Tell me I'm only dreaming Tell me he's just sleeping And when morning comes We'll both wake up to see the sun And love that's enough to keep our friends alive

[twloha]

I wasn’t going to just power through it; I wasn’t going to suppress my pain. I could grieve and still be happy at the same time. I could honor my emotions… I could acknowledge my feelings and hold space without giving in to the guilt or urge to suppress.

Brittney Laurel, “Grief: I’m Done Powering Through It” (via twloha)

[thenewbreed]

[thenewbreed]

The Catalyst of Deconstruction

I always tell people that my mother’s death was the beginning of my deconstruction of faith, but I’m realizing it began months prior. 

I remember the first Sunday I walked into church after my mom was diagnosed with cancer. I remember church was the last place I wanted to be. Although, it was the place in which I had grown up, where the community had known me from a childhood to collegiate. Church was not where I wanted to be, it required me to walk into a place to accept the reality of the unknown journey ahead with my mom’s battle with cancer. 

I remember the first worship song we sang that Sunday, it was Good Good Father. I remember not wanting to stand up; as I was spiritually, emotionally, mentally, physically devastated. Somehow I made my way onto my feet, but wrestled to sing the lyrics projected in front of me. For years prior, I had always been cynical towards Christian lyricism but at this particular moment it all found it’s way forward. 

I remember, I could resonate with the first verse through my past experiences of a deep connection with the Divine.

I've heard a thousand stories of what they think you're like But I've heard the tender whispers of love in the dead of night

But of course, it’s the chorus that got me. 

You're a good good father  It's who you are, it's who you are, it's who you are And I'm loved by you It's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am

God certainly didn’t seem “good” to me. And I certainly didn’t feel “loved”. And of course the bridge of “You are perfect in all of your ways”, doesn’t address the suffering of cancer (let alone the brokenness in our world) and how it could be possibly deemed as perfect. 

This was the catalyst of deconstruction. The catalyst of questions that my years growing up in church had failed to answer for me. Instead, my past intellect required me to sing about goodness and perfection, when I was so far away from it. God was not present with me.

A Bit of Reconstruction

Where could I find myself? And where was God?

For the first time, the suffering Christ was an image I needed all the more. Christ, who embodied full divinity and humanity suffering. It’s an image that consoles me to know that God is present in suffering. And being true to circumstances without immediate resolution. 

If you find yourself in brokenness, may you see the suffering Christ beside you.

[thenewbreed]

[I]t is not enough just to look outside ourselves to see the places where society is broken. It is not enough to talk about institutions, churches, and workplaces that fracture and separate people based on race, religion, gender, and sexual orientation, and not see these prejudices and bigoted acts in ourselves. We cannot heal the world if we have not healed ourselves.

Reverend Irene Monroe | Togetherness will get us through the coronavirus pandemic

[thenewbreed]

Christ interrupts and overthrows our assumptions about God and about humanity.

Rowan Williams | The Dwellings of the Light