The Unmooring Issue 2, The Ancestry Issue by The Unmooring Journal

Ancestry June 2021 Issue #2

Cover Art: “She Sent Her Son”

The Unmooring www.theunmooring.org Volume 1, Issue 2 issuu.com/theunmooring Cover Art: “She Sent Her Son” digital painting, 2020 Mae Warner PO Box 2834 Ventura, CA 93001 editors@theunmooring.org Editors Bonnie Rubrecht | Kylie Riley Art Editor Rebekah Drumsta Proofreader Katie Staub Published June 2021

under Creative Commons License CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

United States of America

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We, the editors of The Unmooring journal, live and work on the ancestral land of the Chumash people, which was stolen during European colonization in the name of the Christian God. We recognize that this violent act was sinful and strive to protect the land that we are visitors on. We strive to embody in our journal the deep debt of gratitude that we owe indigenous peoples.

editors’ letter Welcome to the ancestry issue. I know you are probably wondering why we took on such a big topic for our sophomore issue. It was a decision that was made naively without any understanding regarding the complexity, the emotions, the rawness that exists when talking about ancestry. When we started this conversation, we thought the issue would cover family heritage, connection with nature, and lost wisdom and how these things have influenced our understanding of God and faith. We did not expect that it would be layered, complex, and even triggering. Ancestry can mean so many different things; to some it harkens back to their forebears, to others it leads to a reflection on motherhood, some see connection to the environment, and for some it brings up trauma. All of these are relevant and important concepts regarding ancestry which captures the multifaceted impact of ancestry in our lives. There is not an illegitimate experience when connecting to the past. It is about bringing wisdom forward so that it is no longer lost. It is about finding new ways to interpret the wisdom of our ancestors and apply it. A conversation about ancestry includes cross sections of our lives. Intersectionality is inherently dangerous. Traffic accidents often occur at intersections because people do not slow down to observe the conditions around them. Similarly, when we are thinking about the intersectionality that exists when examining ancestry, if we are not careful to slow down and see how each section merges together, there is a danger for something to get overlooked or for someone to suffer injury. There is an inherent beauty and an inherent risk. When we consider ancestry, we are bringing together all of those who came before us as well as the people and land around us, all of which are building blocks that make us who we are. As much as we want to believe that we are independent, autonomous and untouched by the world around us, it is simply untrue. We are made unique by the layers that create each of us - those who came before us, the land and environment we live in, and the experiential. These things shape us foundationally and influence how we experience our faith. If we do not pause at these intersections in our lives and push forward without examination, we will miss the wisdom that is there waiting to be found. Ancestry links the past, through the present, toward the future which allows us to reflect on who we are, who we can be, and our connection to the world around us. Our ancestors had a vastly different relationship to the world than we do today. They worked with the land in a codependent relationship. By reconnecting to our ancestors and to the land, we can see with fresh eyes, God’s beauty. The tapestry of our world, the intersections, are the places where we can experience God if we slow down. For us, ancestry is more than just our own lineage but it is also a tie back to the land. “For the fate of humans and the fate of animals is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and humans have no advantage over the animal; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.” - Ecclesiastes 3:19-20

y& e l i R e ht Kyli c e r b u R Bonnie 02

Liturgy: Symbolism in the Gospel of John Caroline Collins

Honoring Our Past Ruth Hasan

Artwork Sandy Arensen

I Used to Be Afraid of Truth Emily Louis

Artwork Jeanette Sthamann

Deconstructing DNA Rebekah Drumsta

Liturgy: I am Not My Mother Karly Noelle Abreu White

Artwork Sarah Harper

Beneath the Surface: Mae Warner

On Learning to Pray Alea Peister

Artwork Dawn Megli

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Sacred Space Lisa Swander

Liturgy: A Lament Maylin Tu

Sins of My White Ancestors Sarah Sanderson

Artwork Melanie Pyke

Belief and Betrayal Dawn Megli

Artwork Mary DeMuth

Beneath the Surface: Amanda Cox

The Outsideness of God Jessica Miskelly

Liturgy: Today’s Goodbye Angelica Huato

Ebb Tide

sandy arensen Sandy Arensen is an American artist and art teacher living in Naivasha, Kenya. See more of her work on Instagram at s.p.arensen.artist.

caroline collins

Caroline Collins is a twenty-two-year-old, Master of Theological Studies student at SMU’s Perkins School of Theology. Her vocational call to academia and to be a writer led her to earn her B.A. in Religion at Southwestern University, graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2019. Her plans after receiving her Master’s consist of (hopefully) admittance into a Religious Studies PhD program, focusing her research on the intersection of biblical studies and philosophical hermeneutics.

mary demuth

Mary DeMuth is an international speaker, literary agent, podcaster, and she’s the novelist and nonfiction author of over forty books, including Pray Every Day (Harvest House Publishers 2020). She loves to help people re-story their lives. She lives in Texas with her husband of 30 years and is the mom to three adult children. Find out more at marydemuth.com. Be prayed for on her daily prayer podcast with over 1.5 million downloads: prayeveryday. show. For sexual abuse resources, visit wetoo.org. For cards, prints, and artsy fun go to marydemuth.com/art.

rebekah drumsta

sarah harper

Sarah Harper is an artist, educator and photographer, and currently lives in Dallas, Texas. Sarah’s work is inspired by the colors, textures, and beauty of everyday life and she strives to capture moments of peace and joy in everything she creates. When Sarah is not creating her own art or photography, you can find her working on her latte art, dreaming up her next trip or taking long walks with her dog Penny.

Rebekah Drumsta holds a BA in Urban Ministry and Family Crisis with a Counseling Minor, an MA in Religious Education and is a Certified Professional Life Coach. She is a freelance writer and the author of When Family Hurts: 30 Days to Finding Healing and Clarity. She has made appearances on and consulted with sources including BBC, NBC, ABC, The Daily Telegraph and a variety of other platforms including podcasts and film projects. Read more at rebekahdrumsta.com.

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angelica huato-nelson ruth hasan

Angelica Huato-Nelson is an educator in Northern Los Angeles County. She finds great joy in developing meaningful relationships with her students, which she believes is key to nuturing a love of learning in students. Angelica suddenly lost her beloved father and found healing through writing this prayer.

Ruth Hasan is Northern Irish, Christian, wife, mother and baker. She was born and bred in Northern Ireland and studied for a Bachelor of Divinity in Aberdeen, Scotland where she met her husband. They resided in Aberdeen with their children for the next 20 years, excepting an 18 month hiatus in Texas. Ruth and her family returned to her home town in Northern Ireland 2 years ago. She is passionate about seeing the local church live out the mission of Christ to love and serve all, and Ruth’s greatest desire is to see genuine diversity and inclusivity in the church— that everyone would truly belong - that all would be seen, heard, known and loved.

emily louis

Emily Louis is passionate about Christians knowing how deeply loved they are. It is her mission to equip and encourage those who have worked hard to gain God’s acceptance to heal their relationship with him and bask in the good news of grace. She hosts the Abundant Grace podcast.

dawn megli

Dawn Megli is a reporter for the Thousand Oaks Acorn, a weekly newspaper in Ventura County, California. She is a single mother of three, an avid hiker and a deacon at Monte Vista Presbyterian Church. She holds degrees in English and journalism from California Lutheran University and the University of Southern California. Most importantly, she is a sinner saved by grace.

ntributors

jessica miskelly Jessica Miskelly is a Roman Catholic turned atheist turned Christian who learnt that science didn’t have all the answers. She has never been able to stop asking questions. Though this has, at times, paralysed her with doubt, ultimately it lead to a more robust faith that can stand firm against difficult questions. She lives in southern Australia with her husband and two children.

karly noelle abreu white Karly Noelle White is an author, copywriter, and editor. Her work has been featured in the award-winning anthologies Lines of Velocity, Untangled, Nothing Held Back and Pieces of Me, all by WriteGirl Publications, as well as Writers Resist. She is a wife, mother, and nurses a tea addiction. She earned her degree in English Literature at Biola University and cares a lot about faith, justice, literature, equality, education, and Batman.

alea peister melani pyke

Artist Melani Pyke lives in Crystal Beach, Ontario, Canada and has been reaching people worldwide for over 25 years with her didactic oil and acrylic paintings which feature layered meanings inspired by nature. Although recognized by international art curators and collected throughout North America, Europe and Asia, Melani continues to play an active role in the local community by leading art classes and painting live at events. She is also well known for public mural projects through out the Niagara region. Originally from Brantford, Ontario and mainly selftaught, Melani completed YWAM’s School of Illustration program in Kona, Hawaii in 2001, and Mohawk College’s Graphic Design program in 2003. Melani has achieved national recognition through Art Battle competitions as well as through multiple juried exhibitions under the Canadian Federation of Artists. On the international level, Melani had 3 paintings featured in the Water For Life International Art Exhibition in Cancun, Mexico in 2019.

Alea Peister’s writing meditates on embodied spirituality, grief, and pilgrimage. She lives in Orange county, where she delights in long walks in her old, tree-lined suburban neighborhood. Her writing has been featured in Ekstasis, Whale Road Review, The Curator, Art for the Isolated, and Biola University’s Lent and Advent Projects. You can find more of her work on her website, www.forthesakeofsharing.com, and on her Instagram, @forthesakeofsharing.

sarah sanderson Sarah Sanderson is writing a book of repentance of her own and her ancestors’ racism. Find more at www.sarahsanderson.com, or on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

jeanette sthamann

lisa swander

Jeanette Sthamann is a prophetic artist, wife and mother of two beautiful kids. She was born and raised in rural Saskatchewan and now resides in Okotoks, Alberta. Painting is an act of worship for Jeanette, a lot of her paintings come from her intimate times with the Lord where He reveals Himself to her through visuals! It’s her heart for people to be drawn into the beauty and nature of the creator and she is honoured that she gets to be a vessel of His creativity! Jeanette loves to journal what she’s hearing from God and she has a desire to see others receive and release God in creative ways. It always deeply touches Jeanette to see how personal God is and how He minsters to others through her artwork and through the gift of creativity.

Lisa Swander is a freelance writer and aspiring gardener who loves writing about the intersection between feminism and spirituality. She lives in Indiana with her husband and two children. This is her first published work.

maylin tu

Maylin Tu lives in Los Angeles, California where she writes about religion, identity and pop culture.

mae warner

Mae Warner is a budding self-taught artist who has always had a flair for the creative. Her biggest career aspiration right now is to write and illustrate children’s books. Mae and her family live in sunny Florida and love the beach and theme parks. Mae has always felt a calling to connect with and uplift women, and she currently loves to read and learn about the divine feminine within various religious beliefs.

Symbolism in th CAROLINE COLLINS The body, in action, thought, speech, or by other extensions, “be’s”—the verb I have designated to describe one’s “being”—in what Sandra Schneiders calls the ‘sensible dimension,’1 ie, what can be perceived with one’s senses in the present. Sensory experience, invite me Revealer. Though my body may remember, may Your healing wade deeper. The sensible dimension creates a place where the present person and reality, or realities, encounter one another. The ways Jesus “be’s” via speech, action, etc. are bodily extensions of Jesus’ self interacting with the present reality/realities. Sensory experience, invite me Revealer. Though my body may remember, may Your healing wade deeper. The “symbolic language” describing Jesus in the Gospel of John expresses elements of Jesus’ being in ways other people in the sensible dimension can perceive for themselves. If Jesus is to be “birther” and “life-giver” in John, then it must be depicted through the use of maternal symbols— namely, water and blood outpour. Sensory experience, invite me Revealer. Though my body may remember, may Your healing wade deeper. Such vivid language is instantly recognizable in the lived experiences of all those who have undergone pregnancy and birth, whom themselves endured and had their bodies forever altered so that their children could have life and have it abundantly.2 All things came into being through Jesus, as do living beings come into being through birth canals.3 Sensory experience, invite me Revealer. Though my body may remember, may Your healing wade deeper. In this way, symbolism is not an “exit sign,” nor a “stand-in” for something that is absent; rather, it is a means by which things are revealed, presented, and even recognizable in one’s lived experience: what has been, and what can continue to be, perceived with the senses. Sensory experience, invite me Revealer. Though my body may remember, may Your healing wade deeper. Among whom the Word begot and communed, At the bosom do we find life abundant with You.

1Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, (Chestnut Ridge, NY: Herder & Herder, 2003) 2John 10:10, 19:34 3John 1:3

he Gospel of John

Jesus as Birther and Life Giver

Honoring Our Past RUTH HASAN

Over the last decade or so—the decade of my thirties—my faith has taken a meandering path from certainty to doubt to peaceful uncertainty. Like many others, the faith of my childhood and teenage years saw me through early adulthood—marriage, babies, and family life —without too many conflicts. Sure, I had my differences of opinion, but I remained resolute in what I believed to be the fundamentals of my faith, and the differences of opinion were minor(ish). My thirties were a different decade—God unsettled our family; uprooted us and changed us irrevocably. Along the way there have been times of great joy, bountiful blessings and abundant spiritual growth. There has also been deep hurt, intense trauma, and a greater affiliation with “Doubting Thomas” than with my namesake—the ever-faithful Ruth. As I have travelled through this last decade, my faith has been fought for, clung to, reimagined and rebirthed. As I reach the end of my thirties and begin a new decade, I have been left pondering the person I am today, and the people who have impacted me along the way. The writer of Hebrews talks of “a great cloud of witnesses”1 who have gone before, and then goes on to list some of these great witnesses of the Hebrew faith, who have led the way and continue to inspire and challenge the people of God centuries later. When I consider my own cloud of witnesses, it is easy for me to bring to mind the people who have been so instrumental in my faith journey over this most recent decade—the people who have walked with me through both the trauma and the blessings, through the times of faithfulness and the times of crippling doubt, through the joys and the sorrows.

As our family has navigated international moves, job uncertainties, the painful departure from a much loved church family, life-threatening illness and the loss of dearly held dreams, I am thankful for the people who have walked, and continue to walk, the journey with us without diminishing my voice, or questioning my faithfulness to God in the midst of my grief and fear—for the people who held hope for me when I was unable to and allowed me all the time I needed to heal. I am thankful for the people who have shown me, for the first time, that doubt does not preclude me from the community of faith, nor does it diminish my standing before God. These people who have shown me what it means to be a faithful, loving, compassionate community who care well for those in their midst, have lighted my path and lightened my load and I will be forever grateful. As I have stepped into new spaces, new communities and new churches, I am thankful for the people who have stood with me and who have offered new opportunities to use my God-given voice, for those who took a chance on me and who spoke words of life over me. I am thankful for those who have challenged my theology and practice

“I am thankful for the people who have shown me, for the first time, that doubt does not preclude me from the community of faith, nor does it diminish my standing before God.”

1Hebrews 12:1 (NIV) 2Philippians 1:12 (NIV)

with grace and openness and who allowed me space to “work out [my] salvation with fear and trembling”2 without dictating the path I should take. I am thankful for those who have embraced my children and demonstrated to them what it means to be a people of God who love all and long to see all flourish. I am

thankful for what I have been taught, the grace shown to me and the challenges laid before me. But what of the people who came before them? What of the men and women who nurtured me and taught me in my formative years? What of the church leaders and family elders who molded my life and molded my faith in ways which I now see were not always helpful or healthy? What of the witnesses with whom my differences of opinion are more major than minor? I grew up in a traditional, conservative, Christian family. My Dad and Granda were elders and leaders in their respective churches, and lay preachers in our denomination. My Mum and Granny were stereotypical elders’ wives—they accompanied, they supported, they baked and cooked and hosted, they taught children, and they stayed silent. I grew up surrounded by men like my Dad and Granda, and women like my Mum and Granny. Our churches were full of them, and while it was the men who were the most visible and most vocal, the women left as much a mark on my life, if not more. It was them, after all, that I was taught to emulate. More often than not, the women who came before me held their tongues, they deferred to their male counterparts and their church elders. They certainly had opinions, indeed my Granny was known within our family as being rather pass-remarkable, but in matters of faith and theology, their voices were largely unheard. The women taught children in small Sunday School groups, but it was there that their public ministry stopped. In spite of this, I learned much from them. Their silence in the public sphere of the church did not make them invisible and nor did it render them

insignificant in my life. It may have been the men speaking from the pulpit, but the women were my role models. So what of these women who nurtured me, taught me, disciplined and molded me? Where do they fit in my cloud of witnesses? What of these women whose nurturing, teaching, discipline and molding has required unpicking, healing and rebuilding? How do I look back at who I was taught to be, as the person I am today? How do I take account of what I was taught about God, and what I now hold to be true, when they aren’t necessarily the same thing?

“In the same way that the poet and hymn writer looked to God to be th vision for our land, these women h looked to God daily to be the vision foundation, and the light for their l Aaron Niequist writes in his book The Eternal Current: “I grew up in a Christian system that assumed our version of the tradition possessed all the truth… We guarded what we had and defended our beliefs and decided we couldn’t learn from anyone outside our inner circle.”3 The question stands: can we still learn from those within that inner circle, when we are now the ones outside of it? Can we honor their part in the molding

and developing of our faith, even if that faith is now quite different? Can we count these women we were supposed to emulate in our cloud of witnesses, when we are walking a path they did not lead us to? In many ways, my life probably looks very similar to that of the women who came before me. I am raising my children with a healthy respect for their elders, I place a high value on education and on always giving your best, and commitment to the church is paramount in our home. My children are encouraged to read as much as they possibly can and to develop a love of literature and of learning, and I desire that they love and know the Bible as well as any other book they read. Just like my mum and Granny, I love to cook and feed and host, and I want to foster that gift of hospitality in the next generation of our family too. There are many similarities and yet the differences are clear.

silenced when they have a question or a difference of opinion. I am raising my children to know that they have a voice which matters in our home, in our faith and in this world. I want them to be free to express doubts and questions as much as passion and faith. While I aim to foster an enduring commitment to the church in my children, I recognize their independent faith and have no desire to stifle their own journeys or impose my theology upon them. Most significantly, while I was raised in a community of faith which emphasized the fear of God over and above the joy of

While I want my children to respect their elders and leaders, I never want them to be

d he have n, the lives.”

the Lord, I wish for different for my children. Yes, I want them to know that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”3 but I also want them to know, and really grasp the reality, that we have a God who delights in us and rejoices over us with His singing.4 I want them to know that they are valuable and valued because that is how God sees them—as a delight, not a duty. The differences are perhaps best summed up in the Irish concept of “notions.” Ask anyone in Ireland and they will tell you that the very worst thing you can have is notions. To have notions is to think a little too highly of yourself, to strive for or seek more from life, whether that be a job, a new car or simply trying out a new cake recipe. The Irish are great at getting by and the idea that you might want more, or seek different opportunities, or God forbid, buy new curtains when the ones you have had for the last 20 years are perfectly fine, is abhorrent to many! Here in Ireland we joke about people having notions, and the lighthearted jesting is often seen as banter or the Irish “craic,” but the shaming underneath the jesting is real, and it is this culture of shame which has permeated the church here, and permeated the faith community I was raised in. I was not raised to consider myself too highly, to strive for more, to consider myself worthy of more. Shame and fear was what led me to Christ, and it is what kept me tied to Him. The joy of being a daughter of the King did not come—to consider myself chosen or worthy or loved or delighted in would be to have notions. My children can have as many notions as they wish—I pray that they know just how worthy they really are. When I consider the women who have gone before me, I can look at the different ways in which I was raised; the theology, the foundations and the priorities drummed into me from an early age. I can

3Romans 10:23 (NIV) 4Zephaniah 3:17

look at all these things and grieve, or I can choose to look to our similarities instead of our differences. I can choose to honor who they are, over and above the doctrine they taught me. When I think of the women in my story—my beloved Granny, my mum, my Sunday school teachers and my summer camp leaders, the women who stayed silent in the church, and the women who had plenty to say, the women who affirmed and blessed me and those who didn’t. I often think upon the ancient Irish hymn “Be Thou My Vision.” This hymn, based on an old Irish poem, most likely written sometime in the 6th-8th century,

was a prayer over our land—a prayer that the vision for our land would be Jesus Christ and none other, a prayer that God would be our guide, our wisdom and our strength. It is this same devotion to God which defines the lives the women who have come before me. The signposts, guidance, teaching and discipline may not be the same as that which I now leave for my daughters, but the devotion is rightly emulated. In the same way that the poet and hymn writer looked to God to be the vision for our land, these women have looked to God daily to be the vision, the foundation, and the light for their lives.

In recent years many Christian voices have called out the unhealthy faith cultures some of us were raised in. As readers and listeners, we have been challenged and encouraged to find freedom away from the oppressive confines of churches which do not honor, affirm, and bless us. These are good and right conversations to be had. We must acknowledge toxic behaviors and beliefs, and we must always call out trauma and harm, but can we also choose to affirm those who believe differently to us? Can we also acknowledge the good in the imperfect? Can we also honor those who did not abuse or traumatize, but loved and nurtured us in their own, imperfect way? Can we choose to see the Imago Dei in those who came before us, and still claim them in our crowd of witnesses, because of the example they set of being wholly devoted to God above all else? As is often the case, I revert to the words of the poets to make sense of life, and I think of the words of one of Ireland’s most beloved of poets—Seamus Heaney. In his poem “Digging,” Heaney tells of his family history—his father and grandfather before him—farmers who tilled the ground, toiling and striving for their harvest. Heaney did not follow in his ancestors’ footsteps; he did not choose the life of a farmer, which, growing up in rural Ireland, set him apart from many of his peers as well as his family.

Heaney instead chose the life of a writer—a life path so far removed from that of his father and grandfather before him that it couldn’t really have been any more different. In “Digging” Heaney honors his ancestors and their labors of love which produced the crop for the family. He honors their work, their toil, and their dedication. He acknowledges his different choices, but chooses to live from their example, with a promise to honor their history with his very different work. His poem ends with these lines:

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it. And so, I too choose to live a life affirming and honoring those who have gone before me—differences and all. My female ancestors were not trailblazers, they were not leaders and their lives will never be held up as beacons to guide many home, but their complete devotion to God, above all else—“Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art”—is worthy of honor and emulation. As Heaney did, I choose to honor the lives of my ancestors by living out my life with the same vigor and dedication.

5Heaney, Seamus, Digging - Death of a Naturalist, (London: Faber & Faber, 1966) 6Hull, Eleanor, “Be Thou My Vision,” 1912

“Uzazi,” 6x8 in, watercolors, 2021

Sandy Arensen 21

I Used to Be Afraid of Truth EMILY LOUIS I am thankful for my Granny who prays for me. This might sound cliche but it’s something that I refuse to take for granted. Her prayers have been an integral part of my finding freedom and abundant life in Christ but I didn’t always value them. I grew up inside of a church where the personal opinion of the pastor was preached in the same regard as Scripture. I was taught that the church we went to was the only one that was right and anyone who left was villainized and misrepresented. Salvation was taught by grace and faith but there was a laundry list of things to do to keep God happy or to prove spirituality. I bought in completely but my Granny could see that it was a spiritually abusive environment.

I was a goodie-two-shoes growing up. I liked having all the answers (or thinking I did). I played it safe by listening to sources that were trusted and approved by the circle I was in. I was proud of the echo chamber that was built around me. This was my way of making sure any so-called dangerous viewpoints never tempted me. And thus, I was confident in my beliefs, not because I was legitimately well-versed on a topic, but only because I wasn’t really aware of another perspective. While inside this thinking, I had an attitude of superiority that downplayed the way anyone else did church and that included my Granny. I remember specifically questioning whether or not she was

legitimately “saved.” It wasn’t because I didn’t see the fruit of her relationship with God—I wasn’t really looking for that—it was because she listened to people like Joyce Meyers who was labeled “heretic” and because she read out of a translation of the Bible that wasn’t a King James Version. There was a fear of others’ beliefs and hesitation to research things for myself. It is easy to vilify or be afraid of what we don’t know, especially when we feel like we can’t trust ourselves to make wise decisions or trust God to guide us into what is right. Somehow, it’s easy to be afraid of the truth. Who wants to learn that they’re wrong? It seems safer to stick with the familiar; there is comfort in our own beliefs and conclusions. But we know where the growth is, right? It’s on the outskirts of our comfort zone. When we admit that we don’t have nearly as many answers as we once thought and we stretch beyond our limited perspectives and open ourselves up to new vantage points, we grow. And yes, we experience growth when we fail and admit we were wrong.

looking in. As she was about to leave, her last comment had me fighting back tears: “I’ve been praying for years that God would open your eyes.” Even when I was afraid of truth, God answered her prayer and kept his promise to guide us into all truth. So many times I have looked at old friends and asked “Why were we able to get out of the toxicity and they still can’t see it?” Now I know the answer: because of the grace of God and my Granny. At times, questions feel like dangerous friends but they steer us to the light. You are secure in God and he can handle the questions. Some of the most important beliefs I hold today are what they are because I dared to question. With fresh eyes, I can look back at those moments of fear and notice that God was with me, calling me out of the tidy certainty. Thank God for my praying Granny.

I was able to identify and name the fear of others’ beliefs after a pivotal event afforded me the privilege of a faith crisis. When I was 26, my childhood pastor and pastor at the time, was exposed for abuse and, honestly, for who he really was. Because so much of what I believed about myself and about God came from that leader and the environment focused on control, his exposure started me on a journey of questioning everything I had ever been taught. Doubt and uncertainty were scary at first but they have served me well. There is richness and beauty in complicating our faith, in appreciating other views. If we trust God to make himself known, we can press into the tough questions. Coming to my own conclusions and breaking off damaging beliefs has been liberating and healing. Six months after we left the church and the movement we were in, I got to sit down and have an honest conversation with my Granny about how my family’s 30 years there affected her. We sat at my kitchen table and each had the opportunity to talk about our experiences and feelings. It was healing for both of us to talk freely and express what it had been like. For one of us, on the inside and the other, on the outside

Jeanette Sthamann 24

“Kiss of Heaven” 24x24 in, oil on canvas 2020

Deconstructing DNA REBEKAH DRUMSTA Many of the core revelations discovered because of DNA testing can be applied to the reasons why people are choosing to walk away from traditional Christian structures and faith altogether—abuse, hypocrisy, lies, and trauma. Could it be that science and faith have collided in the quest for truth? Nearly four years ago, I began working as director of public relations for a fledgling nonprofit. This organization is raising awareness by providing community and education for those whose lives have been affected by an NPE (“not parent expected”) discovery after completing an at-home DNA test. In chorus, I am a writer and life coach advocating for those who have experienced spiritual abuse. Both positions have opened the doors for consulting and various other amazing opportunities. It didn’t take long before I began seeing some patterns piercing both of my professional worlds and I could not help but compare the effects DNA testing is having on society with the conclusions of those who are deconstructing their faith and the accompanying religious structures.

DNA Testing At-home DNA testing has caused one media frenzy after another in recent days as companies are galloping forward with science, connecting our DNA around world with those who share our genetic story. While most people take an at-home DNA test out of curiosity to discover more about their ethnicity, many are also testing for health or other reasons—not realizing there will be secrets conveyed by their test results. Science is constantly learning more about how amazing our bodies are. We have learned through DNA testing that we can read our own family history book. Today, it’s not if someone you care about will make an unexpected DNA discovery, it’s when. As genetic connections are revealed which indicate an affair, assault, lie or secret, individuals are faced with stark realities about the humanness of their own family—as is often the case inside the NPE community such as when a person learns the man who raised them is not their biological father. Often, further investigation uncovers a new medical history, race, religion, or

Craftily veiled or shrouded in fear, the naked truth about our churches, private family life, and the foundation of our culture’s existing religious systems are being shaken, not only through difficult questions and challenges to conventional Christian faith, but by what science is disclosing through DNA test results. What Is Being Revealed? When you spit in that tube or swabbed your cheek, in that moment, you were unaware that your life was about to change forever. Weeks later your life’s trajectory would be altered with a revelation about what flows inside of your own veins or someone with whom you share a genetic connection.

biological relations. The meaning and traditional structure of family is being challenged around the globe. Faith Deconstruction Faith deconstruction as a movement is also a contemporary phenomenon. People are boldly standing against abuse, authoritarian control and systems of shame, manipulation, and patriarchy coupled with a new passion for justice and undefiled religious thought.

Disruption of identity can occur, striking suddenly like an earthquake when a DNA discovery flashes across your computer screen, leaving fractures in your own heart, your family and in the lives of the ones you love the most. If the at-home DNA test says you are related…you’re related, as it has an approximate 99% accuracy rate on that account. Due to this precise science, much is shockingly made known to blindsided participants including: - secrets - family traumas

“The story of Jesus has been relevant in every age of human existence.” - generational behaviors - hypocrisy - lies - abuse - and more Often in unexpected DNA matches, you must gather all the “truths” to determine the facts. Once, I heard a statement, “There is a difference between truth and fact.” The fact might be that your DNA is connected to someone you did not expect. The truth is mom and your newly discovered biological family member(s) have different stories. The “truth” can be approached much like a crime-scene detective. The detective comes up to the scene of a crime where there are several witnesses. Each witness has their own perspective—they saw one aspect, one angle of the crime. The detective interviews and listens to each witness tell the “truth” about what happened. Then he takes each of those stories and sees where they overlap to get the facts. With the revelation of sometimes painful or formerly hidden information, comes significant relational and social decisions. DNA testing is revealing the truth, from all perspectives, about our lives and the lives our ancestors. DNA and Deconstruction Within the American church today, individuals are also experiencing a crisis of identity, that identity having been founded on a certain religious or spiritual platform which has now been shaken. As new information is welcomed and new ways of thinking or belief possibilities enter a person’s life, they are faced with stark realities.

1High-demand group is defined similarly to and often used interchangeably with authoritarian group or cult.

Layers of abuses, unbiblical and toxic structures, and cultures of shame and victim-blaming are being realized and cannot be bypassed but must instead be faced with the realism of human behavior, a science affirming grasp of mental health and untainted Christian ethics. No longer willing to defend the abusive environment in which they lived, people are telling their stories to raise awareness, be a voice of caution and support to others who have also survived religious abuse. Those raised inside high-demand1 groups masquerading as Christian churches or organizations within fundamentalist extremism or shaming twists of Scripture are revealing realities about the Christian constructs of our last generations. Those raised inside high-demand groups masquerading as a Christian church or organization within fundamental extremism or evangelicalism, are revealing realities about the Christian constructs of our last generations. No longer willing to defend the abusive environment in which they lived, people by the thousands are examining their religious foundation and dissecting, or deconstructing, their beliefs. While some cannot reconcile what they have been taught with the realities they discover thus choosing to leave their faith altogether, others are finding a healthier approach to Christianity free of shame, manipulation, man-made rules and interpretations, or misemployed uses of Scripture. Does Heritage or Societal Impact Matter to God? There is an entire book of the Bible devoted to who begat who—it’s the book of Deuteronomy. But if we’re honest, most of us skip over that detailed book because it’s “boring.” Even the opening chapters of the Bible are filled with the description of Adam’s family tree, and unless you’re into exegesis, you likely skimmed those

Written by dozens of authors, spanning more than one thousand years, the entire Old Testament is documentation of the religious, historical, and yes, ancestral foundation setting up the arrival of Jesus. The New Testament displays that through the life and death of Jesus came fulfillment of not only ancient Jewish law and customs but also the historical foretelling found in the Old Testament. The story of Jesus has been relevant in every age of human existence. The first miracle performed by Jesus was at a wedding, a social gathering. The event had run out of wine and Jesus stepped in—He cared about the couple’s big day. This was also important in the culture in which they lived. He turned water into wine at that wedding, which kept the party going! The initial public act of Jesus showed His concern for a cultural social situation and is evidence to us that yes, Jesus would care about the social ramifications of surprise DNA heritage discoveries or deconstructing harmful religious beliefs in our world today. More than that, He would be concerned with the root causes of these two experiences, including lies and abuse. The Results

chapters too. Knowing our family heritage and the heritage of our people seems to be important in the Bible. The genetic line of Jesus Himself was well-documented and included some amazing, dare I say rebel, and progressive women. Understanding our history as a stepping-stone for the future carries significant Biblical meaning.

Learning from and seeing the outcomes of the past can deter us from making the same mistakes in our own lives, families, and world in which we live. Understanding the cultural and collective norms of times gone by allows for gratitude for how far we have come and insight as to where we still need to grow today. As a student of your own family history as well as the environment in which you were raised, you can progress with eyes open to the spiritual, emotional, and social needs of yourself and loved ones while charting a course towards healing, health, and restoration. Every generation has its ethical, spiritual, and moral dilemmas which must be wrestled with and resolved. At-home DNA testing and faith deconstruction are

a few of this era’s responsibilities and should not be avoided. These scientific discoveries and the questions warranted by our faith should inform how we do life. It may be idealistic to envision a world free from abuse and secrets, manipulation, and coercion, but to echo Maya Angelo, we can do better because now, we know better.

Thank you for the breaths my son takes as I rock him to sleep. His overtired cries giving way to quiet, even breaths. I inhale the scent of him, the lavender of his baby lotion, And I lift a silent praise to You, And turn my thoughts to my mother. Did she ever inhale the scent of me, rock me gently to sleep, while I fought for every moment? Look on that woman, Who hurt with words and silence, Manipulations and lies, The violence of a thousand words, Made her children into her enemies. Watch her with her grandson, She stares at him with hunger, begging him to love her best. And, come and fill her empty, gnawing gut.

I am Not My

KARLY NOELLE ABREU WHITE

Mother

Spare me such a hollow fate. May the only longing in my gaze, as I stare at my boy in wonder, be that he grow up to be good, and his tummy never empty. As he clutches at my shirt with his chubby fingers, and I hold my breath, lowering him into his crib, please let his eyes stay shut. He is just next door, not in our room anymore, He sleeps better in his own bed. Remind me, Lord, that I am not my mother.

Sarah Harper

“A New Voice” 11x14 in, water acrylic and ink,

rcolor, , 2021

“Imagination Offerings” 11x14 in, watercolor, acrylic and ink, 2020

“Intersections of Hope” Series. 6x8 in, layered collage and paint, made with watercolor, acrylic and ink,2020.

beneath the surface: mae warner

An Artist Statement from Mae Warner about her work, “She Sent Her Son,” the cover art for this issue of The Unmooring. I’m Mae Warner and I live in Florida with my husband and our two toddler sons. I’ve always been artistic, but never really delved into honing my painting skills until the summer of 2020. I watched a lot of YouTube videos and learned some new techniques, then the digital painting “She Sent Her Son” seemed to pour out of my soul and became the first painting I’ve produced. When I painted “She Sent Her Son,” I felt pulled to depict the importance of the female perspective in Jesus’s story. He came into the world as a newborn child through a woman. As a mother of two young boys myself, I wanted to celebrate all that Jesus’ mother must have contemplated as she held her precious Son, knowing that he would ultimately give His life for the world. Her strength and trust is so powerful to me. I am very interested in the beliefs of the divine feminine, so “She Sent Her Son” was also inspired by the Black Madonna—a belief in a Mother Goddess with dark skin (sometimes depicted as the Virgin Mary), mostly found in Europe and Asia. I felt drawn to depict the Black Madonna holding Jesus Christ because I wanted to send a clear message that every person of every race reflects God. I believe one of the main reasons Jesus Christ came to Earth was to break down all stereotypes, hatred, and incorrect human teachings to lead us to love and wholeness and to access the divinity within us.

On Learning to Pray ALEA PEISTER “Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower . . . we are built to commune with God.” — Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land Growing up, most of the instruction I received about prayer was that I ought to do it. “Pray every day, and read your Bible!” said all the pastors, youth pastors, and exemplary laypersons at church, youth group, summer camp, and anywhere else I was supposed to be learning how to love God. Any practical specificity I received regarding prayer tended to focus on petitionary prayer—on presenting lists of requests to God that he would heal people, solve their problems, end my own doubt or suffering, or bring nonChristians to salvation. In the context of these lessons I felt bored with prayer, and burdened by a sense of my inadequacy when praying. I was wearied by the long lists of intercessions I felt obligated to repeat every night before bed. I lacked the concentration and devotion it seemed to take to have passionate, nourishing experiences every time I sought to feel connected to God. I failed to drum up sufficient focus, interest, and commitment whenever I set out to form a daily habit of prayer and Bible reading. Prayer became a problem I could not solve, and I had little interest in trying. If good Christians were

supposed to enjoy praying, or to see concrete results from their petitions, or to feel particularly confident about their spirituality and God’s love for them when praying, and I felt and saw none of these things, why try? My recent discovery of the tradition of Christian contemplation has transformed my understanding of the value and purpose of prayer. Contemplation is often articulated, by those who write or speak on it, as a practice. In Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird writes, “The practice of silence, what I shall call ‘contemplative practice’ or simply ‘practice’ cannot be reduced to a spiritual technique. Techniques . . . suggest a certain control that aims to determine a certain outcome. . . . A spiritual practice simply disposes us to allow something to take place.” In contemplation, that which I practice allowing to take place is, quite simply, union with God. I seek to move past the veil of discursive thought, self-doubt, emotional turmoil, and other human distraction that hides me from him. Having passed through this veil, I seek to enter the stillness of his always-given union with my true self. Of this union, Laird notes that “union with God is not something we are trying to acquire; God is already the ground of our being. It is a question of realizing this in our lives.” I have learned that it is a committed returning to the

faithfulness—is itself the work and holiness of the saint, and the active substance of her faith. In The Interior Castle, Teresa of Avila commends this committed returning to her monastic sisters, writing,

practice of prayer—no matter how boring, lonely, distracted, or uncertain it may seem—that is the primary agent of grace. The framework of practice has taught me that the substance of my faithfulness is not feeling but commitment. It is a returning to belief in and reliance upon the objective reality of communion with the One I believe to be eternally present in my inward being. This returning—this simple, repetitive

“All that the beginner in prayer has to do—and you must not forget this, for it is very important—is to labor and be resolute and prepare himself with all possible diligence to bring his will into conformity with the will of God. As I shall say later, you may be quite sure that this comprises the very greatest perfection that can be attained on the spiritual road. The more perfectly a person practices it, the more he will receive of the Lord and the greater the progress he will make on this road; do not think we have to use strange jargon or dabble in things of which we have no knowledge or understanding; our entire welfare is to be found in what I have described. . . . If, then, you sometimes fail, do not lose heart, or cease striving to make progress, for even out of your fall God will bring

good.” Lately, when I pray, I mostly try to show up. I make space to think and feel what I am thinking and feeling in silence and, in doing so, to somehow move through these thoughts and feelings as if they are a veil, that I might discover and rest in God’s presence on the other side. I offer who and how I am today to him. I try to, through a practiced remembering, ground myself in his constancy, in his always-offered love and presence with me.

Over time, God makes use of our faithfulness in prayer to shape us and draw us near to him. He graciously, gently unfolds the reality of his love in those who faithfully open themselves to the work of his hand. He enfolds us, always, in the grace of union with him.

I am not that good at it. I am so easily distracted. It can take so long for the practice to feel meaningful or productive. Painful feelings are unpleasant to feel, and it is easier to avoid them. Embarrassment and difficult memories make me want to hide. Joy, even, can feel unreal when I bring it to prayer—I tend to feel disconnected from it, unworthy of its gift. But prayer calls me right into these wounds and these graces, into their depth and reality, and challenges me to find and abide with Christ in them. So I return. And the longer I practice showing up to prayer, even for just a few minutes a day, the more aware I become of God’s presence with me. Over time (typically long periods of time) my challenges sometimes make sense, but through the practice of contemplation I have been learning that the purpose of prayer is not to make sense of things or solve problems or become spiritually confident. The purpose of prayer is simply to receive the gift of God’s presence. It is to attend to his presence, however he may choose to offer it, and to offer mine in return. As praying people our challenge is in the waiting—in the midst of our fear and failures—to trust God just enough to show up to prayer again today, tomorrow, and the next day, and again the next day. When our questions go unanswered, perhaps it is not that he finds us unworthy to receive solutions. Perhaps, instead, he is inviting us into the excitement and beauty and sorrow of the mysteries that concern us.

“My recent discovery of the tradition of Christian contemplation has transformed my understanding of the value and purpose of prayer.”

Dawn Megli

“Portal to Peace” Digital photograph, Leo Carrillo State Beach, 2020

Plummer’s Mariposa Lily, Satiwiwa, Santa Monica Mountains, 2019 Simi Hills above Oak Park, 2020

Anacapa Island, Channel Islands, 2020

“Fingerprints of God” Series. Digital photographs, 2019-2021

Chumash Trail in Point Mugu State Park, 2020

The Sacred Space LISA SWANDER

Please be aware that the following essay contains graphic descriptions that may be difficult for some readers.

The day my uterus ruptured was the beginning. Not the beginning of me, of course, or even the first beginning of my life. I’d been through my share of onsets—adolescence, career, marriage, motherhood—before my freshly-split womb stormed onto the scene. Each beginning was a dot, a You Are Here on the neat, horizontal line I walked, the paved pathway to the life I’d been taught to imagine. But the tear in my uterus was a different kind of beginning. I was thirty-one that year, and life had been flat and orderly for a while. I’d secured the career and the husband, then checked off the baby and the church. We were two years into parenting and one year into regular attendance, and I felt both could be absorbed into successful womanhood without a hitch. Yes, I was exhausted, but that was a known side effect of a life of service. I’d been teaching middle school for a decade. Adding a baby was a simple matter of extending my work day from seven hours to twenty-four: other people’s children during the day, mine at night and on weekends. If I needed sleep or a haircut, my husband could swoop in for an hour or two, work permitting.

earlier, why wouldn’t I cook dinner every night? If day care was at my school, why wouldn’t I just keep the car seat? If he worked late every evening and twelve hours each Saturday, why wouldn’t I just do all the parenting? I could rest on Sundays, I reasoned. Except for every other Sunday, when I took care of both other people’s children and mine in the toddler room. My pregnant body raised issues with that arrangement, but I powered through. Fatigue was a sign that I was crushing it, this service to God and man. I was leaving it all on the spiritual floor, and my undereye bags challenged anyone to say otherwise. As far as I could tell, this was the way to be a woman. Like most nondenominational churches, ours had a culture around gender. There were songs about men leading and women begging to be led. Women could preach, but only on Mother’s Day, or to talk about that obeying husbands business in Ephesians.

“Complementarianism was not the a breathed, exactly, but it was certainl scent that wafted through it.”

We hadn’t meant to be complementarians. The logic just kept holding it up. If I was always home

We had a craft circle and a meal ministry, and the men’s group went skeet shooting. Complementarianism was not the air we breathed, exactly, but it was certainly a scent that wafted through it.

I did my best to ignore this from week to week. Everyone was so kind, and I was on the right religious team for once. So I had some crippling stomach pain a few times a month. What was a little tension, a little unease during Sunday service? Nothing I couldn’t wring from my hands into every cell of my body, locking it away tight where God couldn’t see. Besides, I knew better than to trust my flesh. It lied to us. It made us angry and resentful when we should have been grateful and joyous. The world was obsessed with our bodies, but we weren’t. We were clothed in strength and dignity, and this sick, exhausted, petulant form was nothing but a wire hanger that I was free to ignore. When my uterus ruptured, it was not the culmination of a great and sophisticated examination of these ideas. It was, as I said, merely the beginning. It would be many more months before I discovered Rachel Held Evans, learned that doubt was an asset, and realized feminism and Christianity are not mutually exclusive. I still had years to go before I found Anne Lamott and Meggan Watterson and the permission they gave to broaden my view of God. I had never heard of Sue Monk Kidd or Glennon Doyle. I did not yet know the authors who would help me remember the sacred feminine in me, and help me discover it, if I cared to, in the teachings of Jesus. It would be many more years before I would arrive at an uneasy peace with my spiritual wandering. I would endure many more dark nights of the soul, many cataclysmic moments of transcendence, before I accepted that I’ll never settle for only one way of knowing God.

air we ly a

Before any of that, there was a Saturday night in early April. It was the day before my due date, and as I settled my massive, unbalanced body into bed next to my husband, we both thought everything was fine—aside from the indignities of late pregnancy, of course.

To me, my blossoming stretch marks and varicose veins and pinched sciatica were further evidence that my body did nothing but betray me. It was a burden handed down from Eve, an obstacle that stood between me and my commitment to incinerating myself on the pyre of others’ needs. That night, I took the sleeping pill my OB had prescribed and prayed for at least two hours before my first bathroom break. Around 11:00, I woke up. Not for the bathroom. For the feeling that my abdomen had exploded like a tree struck by lightning. “This must be what labor feels like,” I thought, and took exactly two shallow breaths before falling to the floor.

“It would be ma before I would uneasy peace w wandering. ” made me wonder how much pain the human body could endure. Or fabricate. But I didn’t scream.

Around 11:02, my husband called 911. There were convulsions. There were also chattering teeth and a green complexion and other signs of shock. There was my answer to both the dispatcher and the EMT that yes, I’d had a previous C-section, and so it might be a uterine rupture. But I wasn’t treated for shock or internal bleeding or anything other than low oxygen levels, and that was my fault. It was my fault because I refused to scream.

Eventually, the doctor on call stood over me, speaking apologetically to my husband. It had been almost an hour. A line of white crust had formed around my mouth, and the stretcher rattled faintly with each tremor of my body. “I’m not sure what else we can do,” she said. “Maybe take her home and call her OB.” Maybe drive her to the OB’s hospital, someone else suggested. It was only 20 minutes away.

I was quite committed, even as my body split apart, to be a bother to no one in the ER that night. I knew to fear hysterical illness more than death. I knew a woman’s overreaction was a one-way ticket to irrelevance, a permission slip to everyone else in her life to never take her seriously again.

“I won’t make it that far,” I whispered, but my voice was easy to ignore. All my energy was focused on the railing of the stretcher, on squeezing like it was the last tree root between me and the bottom of a ravine. A nurse loomed at my feet, hands on hips, frowning not unkindly.

At least if I died, silent and suffering, they might eulogize me with the ultimate compliment. She never complained. A true Proverbs 31 wife.

“Sometimes labor just hurts, honey,” she said.

My body lied, and I would not be duped. So I was polite and soft-voiced. I said, “Yes, please,” and, “No, please don’t,” to ice chips and a cervical check, respectively, and I got my cervix checked anyway. I still didn’t scream, even though flipping to my back shifted the baby toward her eventual exit, and

The pain kept me from thanking her for her input, but I did manage one last whisper. “This isn’t labor.” No one heard. They’d already left to draw up the discharge paperwork, and my husband put his forehead on my hand and wept.

“I can’t take seeing you like this,” he said. “You have to get better, Lisa. You have to.”

any more years arrive at an with my spiritual

In the years since, my daughter has shown little patience for indecision. I suppose that when you have a hotline to God, the constant frizzling of your own intuition must make adults and their waffling positively unbearable. “Come on, Mama,” she tells me all the time. “What are you waiting for?” It was at that moment, then, as best as the doctors could figure, that she thrust her shoulder through the hole in my uterus. And it was at that moment that I screamed. I can’t describe the pain, but if it helps, I imagine it felt not unlike the creature bursting through the guy’s abdominal wall in Alien, because that’s more or less what was happening. I was dying and my baby was dying, and I screamed and screamed and did not stop. The ER, so filled with clinical detachment all evening, came alive. Doctors surrounded me. Ceiling tiles rolled past. I screamed. A doctor held my shoulders down. I screamed some more. I screamed until I heard my own voice first amplify, then muffle, as the mask went over my face and the gas into my lungs and then, as the panicked anaesthesiologist kept promising, there was no more pain, Lisa, no more pain, okay? Sometime after I regained consciousness, I held her for the first time. The feminine wound, as Sue Monk Kidd calls it, festers in my DNA. My epigenetics include excommunications, aborted careers, mental illness,

sexual abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse. I didn’t know its name then, but I knew its universality; after all, I had been a feminist long before I was an evangelical. And now God had entrusted me with a girl. She came with a tiny pink bow, pasted to her head with lubricant while I was still asleep. We had just met, and already we’d skidded to the edge together, peered over, and realized it wasn’t meant to be an edge at all. We’d simply needed to turn. The on-call doctor, shaken and nervous, gave me the simplest version of events. What had woken me up an hour prior was my uterus splitting cleanly from end to end, “like someone pulled it open with a zipper.” For the baby and I both to survive this was a miracle. We would not have survived the car ride home, or to my OB’s hospital. The time between my first banshee scream and my daughter’s birth was less than a minute, and we would not have survived another. “I don’t know what you all believe,” she said, sitting down on the nurse’s stool at my bedside, “and I don’t know what I believe either. But I can tell you I was in that operating room thanking every god of the universe tonight.” She lifted my daughter from my body a few minutes after midnight. It was her due date, April 5, 2015. Easter Sunday. When we told the story in the days and weeks following, that was the keystone, the piece de resistance—an Easter miracle. A wink from God, a reminder that we’re still in the business of triumphing over death. Who could argue? Even the agnostic doctor fell to her knees in the face of it. It’s been six years since that Easter, and I still believe she’s a miracle. It would be impossible not to. But I believe something else about that night, too, and especially about what it was that pulled the gaze of our beleaguered on-call doctor toward the heavens. It was

more than just a close shave and a calendar. The doctor, with her hands in my body, was its most intimate witness. She knew the urgency of its message, its desperation to be heard, the ravaged condition of its tissues. As she lifted my daughter out and up, she held the power it possessed, a wrinkled and vibrant piece of creation. When she stitched my gaping womb, she closed the circle and let our healing begin. We both heard my screams. We both witnessed the beginning of my emptying, the self-betrayal I had pushed into my body beginning its ascent, out through my throat and into the open air. We both heard the birth of a woman’s belief in her own holiness. But only the doctor heard the cry of my baby. She held the sacred space for me. And when she leaned against the operating room wall a moment later, to tremble and to pray, I like to think it was because she heard the cry of the sacred feminine, demanding to be born. I pray the same for all of us.

A Lament

for Feng Daoyou

MAYLIN TU No one claimed her body Strangers attended her funeral We will not be erased. We condemn the dehumanization of Asian women Seen and unseen Invisible and hyper-visible Body as object Existing for the white male gaze We will not be erased. She did not owe you anything She did not owe you her body She did not owe you her life She did not deserve to die We will not be erased. Her body was not a temptation I am someone’s ancestor My body is not a temptation She was someone’s ancestor We will not be erased. We bear witness to the pain of rejection We bear witness to the pain of loneliness We bear witness to the pain of objectification and fetishization We will not be erased. We are not foreigners to you, God

We are not abandoned We are not alone For you looked upon what you created and called it good And the body was good And the body was good We will not be erased. We are the descendants of dreamers Who refuse to marry Who care for brothers and mothers Who toil so that their families can eat Who deserve to rest We will not be erased. We pray for our descendants For their protection For their well-being For their joy They will not be erased. We call her auntie, sister, elder, friend Ghost bride married to no one except herself May her descendants know her name May her descendants know her joy May she never be forgotten She will not be erased. We will not be erased.

Sitting wit of My Whi SARAH SANDERSON “Hold space for your ancestors,” my friend Robert urged on Twitter recently. As a Black American, Robert is a descendant of slaves. His ancestors went through a lot. I honor his desire to honor them. But a white reader responded that they didn’t know what it meant to hold space for their ancestors. “Because they were vicious,” they wrote, “or at best acquiesced to viciousness.” I know what they mean. I, too, am white. Some of my ancestors owned slaves. This is not a fact I’ve ever wanted to sit with. When my father sent me a copy of an old legal document proving that one of our ancestors once laid a property claim to another human being, I looked at it for a moment, but I didn’t put it in a special place. I didn’t tuck it into the sleeve of my great-great-grandmother’s Bible or the theology book my great-great-grandfather wrote. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to hold onto it at all. I allowed it to slip into the river of paper that daily floods my household. I lost it. It is this losing, this forgetting, this refusing to look, that feels so natural for us as white people—of course we don’t want to admit that our inheritance is abhorrent—but it is this same losing, forgetting,

th the Sins ite Ancestors refusing to look, that condemns us all the same. When we insist on colorblindness, it is our own sin to which we become most blind. The other side of my family did not own slaves, as far as I know. Some of them even fought for the North in the Civil War. But many of those ancestors were complicit in their own way. Some of those ancestors lived in Oregon way back at the beginning of its inception as a Territory, just as Oregonians were galvanizing themselves to wage brutal genocide against Native Americans, and to pass the most stringent exclusion laws against African Americans ever known in the history of this country. Some of my Oregon ancestors held positions of rank and dignity—a state Supreme Court justice, a mayor—but there is no record of their stance against any of these atrocities. Their silence, even across a century and a half, still speaks.

descendants of the occasional station master on the Underground Railroad, marchers and children of marchers in the Civil Rights movement. But the fact that the Underground Railroad had to be so secret in the first place, and that the Civil Rights movement was so hard-fought, belies the fact that throughout America’s history, most of our white ancestors were busy upholding a racist status quo. Some white Americans get nervous when we start talking about our ancestors’ sins. The Trump White

“This is the legacy most white Americans would rather forget: either ancestors who actively oppressed other human beings, or ancestors who turned a blind eye.”

This is the legacy most white Americans would rather forget: either ancestors who actively oppressed other human beings, or ancestors who turned a blind eye. Yes, there are the odd abolitionists’ great-grandchildren among us,

House put out a statement in September 2020 condemning “blame-focused diversity training,” and calling the idea that our country is fundamentally racist “a lie.” According to the statement, the concept that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or “sex” is “divisive”; therefore, all such discussion is banned from all Federal workplaces. A few of my white friends have heatedly repeated these ideas to me in recent months. They know in their bones that America is a good place. From the Pilgrims to the pioneers, they are proud of their white ancestors. They are deeply hesitant to talk about racism, past or present, lest we somehow unseat all the goodness they know is here.

Other Americans, of course, know in their bones that America’s fundamental racism is real. From the very first European explorers’ disregard of the land’s Native inhabitants, to the Constitution’s reckoning of African-

to wage gaps, to white women threatening to call the cops on Black men, to deaths from coronavirus: for Americans of color, there is no escape from racism. “Where can I go,” another Black person I follow on Twitter wrote recently, “where people don’t hate me?” It is our inability to reconcile these two narratives—the good Pilgrims whose faults we dare not face; the reality of four hundred years of racism we cannot ignore—that even now threatens to fracture our society. “The heart of our nation’s problem with race,” says Mark Charles, “is that we do not have a common memory.” If we cannot agree on what has already happened, we will never agree on how to move forward. And if white Americans do not take responsibility for actions committed in the past by members of our race, who will? My friend Robert responded to the white reader unsure of how to hold space for their ancestors, “I think holding space could look like sitting with the viciousness and letting it transform and instruct you.” Sitting with the viciousness. How might we be transformed and instructed as a nation, if we were willing to sit with our ancestors’ viciousness as well as with their victories?

Americans as “three-fifths of a person,” to slavery, to Jim Crow, to segregation, to redlining, to lynching, to the school-to-prison pipeline, to unemployment rates,

If we need an example of a place where ancestors’ value is not discounted even as their sins are fully explored, we need look no further than the pages of the Bible. For the same Bible that tells us to honor our fathers and mothers, the same Bible that sets up its patriarchs and matriarchs as examples of the faith—it is this same Bible that holds its ancestors unswervingly to the light of truth. Who

could imagine that the foreign slave Hagar, raped by the patriarch of the faith and beaten by its matriarch, would be given space in the pages of their Bible to tell her own story? Who could imagine that David the king would also be revealed as David the adulterer? That Paul the apostle would be Saul the murderer? That Jacob would be a liar, Judah a hypocrite, Peter a betrayer, Noah a drunk? The Bible pulls skeleton after skeleton out of closet after closet, until at last it begins to dawn on us that maybe honoring those who came before us begins with being honest about them.

place of begging for forgiveness, it seems, we must first be clear about what it is the forgiveness is for. The Psalmist even vows, “We will not hide them from their descendants.” We must resolve that even the knowledge of our ancestors’ sins will be passed down to our descendants.

“It is our inability to reconcile these two narratives—the good Pilgrims whose faults we dare not face; the reality of four hundred years of racism we cannot ignore—that even now threatens to fracture our society.”

Our first impulse, perhaps, once we finally allow ourselves to sit with our ancestors’ sins, is to ask forgiveness. Some Christians argue that we should not ask forgiveness for things we ourselves did not do. But asking forgiveness for your ancestors’ sins is, in fact, biblical. In Psalm 79:8, the Psalmist prays, “Do not hold against us the sins of past generations; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.” It’s absolutely right for us to pray that God will forgive—that is, not hold against us—the sins of our ancestors. Lament is the key. “We dare not come to this ministry of reconciliation,” writes David W. Swanson in Rediscipling the White Church, “with any other posture.” And as the Psalmist knows, lament demands litany. Litany: it means words of worship. It means list. Psalm 79, in fact, is preceded by Psalm 78, which consists of 72 verses mostly focused on listing the sins of the ancestors. They were stubborn and rebellious, disloyal and unfaithful. They did not keep God’s covenant, the Psalmist writes, and refused to live by God’s law. On and on and on the Psalmist goes, listing ancestral sin after ancestral sin. To get to the

And knowledge of our own. Because when I sit with the sins of my ancestors, the first thing I want to say to them is how could you. But the question quickly turns against me: how could I? Because I, too, have turned a blind eye to injustice. I, too, have allowed prejudice to infest my own heart. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn says that the line between good and evil runs down the middle of every human heart. It runs down the middle of mine. Sitting with my ancestors’ viciousness transforms and instructs me only insofar as I am able to acknowledge the viciousness running deep in me, too. How often do I believe that life would be easier if everyone was just like me? That is a kind of viciousness. Sometimes my viciousness turns against people who look different from me. Sometimes it turns against people who think differently. “Sin is here the kind of purity that wants the world cleansed of the other rather than the heart cleansed of the evil that drives people out,” writes Miroslav Volf. A terrible purity, indeed. The litany of lament must begin with my ancestors’ sins and extend to my own. I invite you to try this with me, if you are white, as a prayer exercise: list your ancestors’ racial sins, as fully as you can. There will be time, another time, to focus on their accomplishments—indeed, it’s all we’ve ever done. Here, just for an hour, sit with their sins. The viciousness. The brutality. The greed. The desire for power and control. Your great-

great-great-grandfather’s slave-owning, if you know it. Your grandmother’s passing remarks. Your father’s idle assumption of superiority. Then add your own sins to the list. Passivity. Complicity. Not caring. Pride. Willingness to be a beneficiary of an evil system. All of it. Keep going. List. Lament. Beg for mercy. I’ll wait—and while I do, I’ll write my own. * Mercy comes. I’ve often thought, lately, of a story Corrie Ten Boom tells in The Hiding Place about her sister Betsy. As she lay dying in a Nazi concentration camp, Betsy shared with Corrie a vision she had of a place where Nazi guards would be able to come and rest. She knew they would emerge from the war deeply psychologically scarred. Betsy soon died, but when Corrie left the camp at the end of the war, she made her sister’s vision a reality: she started one rest home for concentration camp victims and another for former Nazi guards. She writes that she knew the residents of one home were beginning to heal when they would ask if they could send a gift to the residents of the other. I love this image of grace extended to, and from, all people. Will we know we have begun to heal, as white Americans, from the psychological scarring of racism, when our deepest desire is to bless those who have been harmed at our own and our ancestors’ hands? The God of the gospel elevates victims of injustice. From the song of Isaiah to the Magnificat to Jesus’ own words, the Bible tells us over and over that the last shall be first. At the table of the Lord, the best seats will be filled with those who got a raw deal in this life, and that is how it should be. But there is room at the table for oppressors, too, if we will humble ourselves enough to go in the door. John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” after he left his life as a slave trader. I once was blind, but now I see. Even wretches can find grace. Maybe that’s why it’s America’s favorite hymn.

“Jesus with Child on Ro 6x6in, oil on canvas, 20

“Wings of Protection” 10x10 in, acrylic on canvas, 2016

ock” 020

Melani Pyke 65

Belief and Betrayal DAWN MEGLI As I held my grandmother’s hand while she lied on her deathbed this summer, I prayed over her in the name of Jesus. Wrinkled and withered, her 100-year-old fingers felt small and cold in mine as I prayed through sobs, and tears streamed down my face as I spoke over her that she would not pass from life to death but from life to life. My father’s mother had been a lifelong Christian and for all her faults, her faith was one of the most important parts of her identity since her girlhood in Nebraska. She could no longer speak or open her eyes, but I felt her ease into my hand and into my words as I spoke over her final moments in the common language of our Christian faith. But as I fulfilled my duty to my grandmother to help her transition to God’s care, I knew I was betraying my mother, who stood a few feet away next to my father as I prayed. My mother raised me eighth generation Mormon, and the prayer I prayed didn’t sound or feel like a Mormon prayer. It was absent the formal language like “thee” and “thou” with which I had been raised. It didn’t start with the prescribed “Dear Heavenly Father” and I didn’t talk about how families are forever. Growing up, I spent three hours at church every Sunday and attended youth group each week. There I was taught that families were the most fundamental social unit in heaven as well as on earth, but only families ritually sealed together in the Mormon temple would spend eternity in the celestial kingdom, the highest of the three levels of heaven. My family wasn’t sealed in the temple. My mom was inactive in her faith and didn’t return to practicing Mormonism until after she had married my father and given birth to my older

brother. When it came time to raise her children, she returned to her native faith. My father wanted nothing to do with it, so my siblings and I grew up feeling like half-breeds. When the church lessons were about eternal families, the Sunday school leaders would extol the merits of families being together forever and how it was the true measure of a family’s devotion. Then they would turn to us and say, “but I’m sure your parents love you, too.” It was at once an inadequacy and an aspiration. I was the most devout of my siblings and my mom used to tell me that I would be the one to enter the temple and undergo the priesthood ritual to seal my family together forever. It was a commission I would never live up to. I broke away from the Mormon church when I was 17, after I survived a sexual assault and the counseling I received from my local bishop—including an inquiry about what I had worn the day of the attack— convinced me this was not representative of God. In fact, I lost all belief in God and spent the next 15 years lost in unbelief, mental illness, suicide attempts, two divorces, alcoholism and drug addiction. I’ve been hospitalized, institutionalized, and incarcerated. I was lost in darkness. I was also a single mother with three kids and one day a woman who worked at my children’s afterschool program befriended me. She started coming over to help me with dishes, to help me with laundry and to be my friend. Then one day she asked if she could pray for me. I thought she meant she would go home and pray for me, so I said yes, but I was surprised when she wrapped her arms around me and started to talk to God. For the first time in over a decade, I felt safe. I felt loved. I felt okay. I felt like I was home.

My daughters and I got baptized Christian on December 7, 2015, the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, “a date which will live in infamy.” I was saved in Christ but my salvation was a wedge between me and my mother. I now had a godmother I was clinging to instead. To this day, I feel like I’ve betrayed my mom. And it cuts me to the bone because all I ever wanted was to be close to her and make her proud in every way. She raised me to do baptisms for the dead, a Mormon ritual to induct late loved ones into the church posthumously. I remember being dressed in white and entering a large baptismal font supported by twelve large oxen representing the 12 tribes of Israel. I was baptized repeatedly in quick succession on behalf of those who had died before me, people I had never met, people I was never related to. But when my body was submerged, it was supposed to be their sins that were washed clean and their souls that were inducted into the family of believers. It’s why genealogy is so important to Mormons. Even in death, they’re looking for converts. My adoption into the Christian faith wasn’t just a betrayal against my mom. It was a betrayal against countless women across the seven generations before me—women whose families had lived in Dover,

Illinois to Missouri all the way to Utah, which they called Deseret, where they practiced polygamy. When my mother had her DNA tested for Ancestry.com, the map of her results was titled “The Mormon Migration.” My mainstream Christian faith was, and is, a betrayal against my very blood. But it’s not my blood or my mother’s blood that will save me. It’s the blood of Christ. It’s the cross that tells me I am accepted in my brokenness because Christ was broken. It’s the Father, Son and Holy Spirit that show me God is an event of communion, not exclusion. It’s the empty tomb that tells me I am saved by what God did, not what I do. I’ve encountered the face of God and it isn’t the corporeal Heavenly Father of Mormonism who lives near a star called Kolob. It’s a consuming fire. It’s the invisible power behind the mystery of good overcoming evil and light penetrating darkness. It’s the mystery of Emmanuel, God with us, always with us. God is light, God is life and God is love. In Luke 14, Jesus told his followers, “If you come to me but will not leave your family, you cannot be my follower. You must love me more than your father, mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters—even more than your own life! Whoever will not carry the cross that is given to them when they follow me cannot be my follower.”

“It’s the invisible power behind the mystery of good overcoming evil and light penetrating darkness. It’s the mystery of Emmanuel, God with us, always with us.” England for 200 years until the first wave of Mormon missionaries converted them in the 19th century. They crossed the Atlantic, buried children at sea, moved to a foreign country and fled persecution from Ohio to

I’ve betrayed one family, and the pain of that is my cross to bear, but I’ve been adopted into a new family, a lineage illuminated by the shekinah, a pedigree of the

glory of the divine presence. I was once lost, but now I’m found. I’ve been sober for over five years now and the shame I once felt over my past has been replaced by joy—the joy of Lazarus raised from the dead and no longer shrouded in grave clothes. When my grandmother was dying this summer, I knew I had to help her take the step into the next life. After living on this earth for 100 years, sustained by nothing but her stubbornness through a World War, a Great Depression and the deaths of two of her children, she seemed like she didn’t know how to let

go. I had the sense she didn’t know how to die but I knew I was anointed by the Holy Spirit to give her peace. So as my mom looked on, I put my betrayal to one set of ancestors on display as I chose instead to honor the ancestor in front of me. I prayed not in formal terms, but in personal ones. I prayed to my Father God, Abba, and told my grandma she was safe in Christ and free to let go. She did. I now have a new set of ancestors. Instead of my biological genealogy, I claim the legacy of women like Ruth and Rahab, women not born into the faith, but adopted into it by the grace of God.

“An Untold Story Never Heals” 18x20 in, watercolor, 2018

Mary D 70

“I Am Bold” 6x6 in, watercolor, 2021

DeMuth 71

beneath the surface: amanda cox

Amanda Cox is the artist behind Little Salt Wagon, her art imprint, and is also studying regenerative agriculture. We asked her to talk about her work, her faith, and her thoughts on our heritage as Christians in a fragile world. Our interview is edited for clarity and length. Tell me a little about yourself as an artist. My grandpa, my dad’s dad, was a full-time artist. I got to spend a little time with him when I was a kid, and that was the beginning of my art exposure. I’ve loved art from the very beginning. It was a really cool way to get introduced to it. I went to school for art, and I went into it knowing it wasn’t necessarily a very applicable major. I spent a bunch of time learning skills but afterwards I wasn’t creating a lot. As of recently I’ve gotten back into it. I started Little Salt Wagon a few years back for the purpose of just drawing and painting and creating again. Once I started doing that and selling work, I realized, Wow, this is really fun! I’m getting really good feedback on it. Art has always been there but ebbed and flowed in different phases of [my] life. I never thought in a thousand years I would be doing it for any sort of income. What inspires you as an artist? As of recently, definitely nature and anything from the earth is the most inspirational to me. Maybe it’s living in Ventura and feeling like I live in town, I crave more calm, peaceful landscapes. I’m so inspired by nautral landscape and I’ve been doing more of that [artwork] recently. It’s beautiful to look at and when I’m painting, it’s like I’m going to that place. In the past, I did more [around] human figure. In school, for example, I was really drawn to life painting and that was my favorite class. I guess that’s a natural thing too: the human body is part of God’s creation. Before that, a lot of it was nature-inspired but now more than ever—it’s simple, beautiful, peaceful landscapes. How does your faith influence your artwork? I’m one of those people that when I go into nature and I see the beauty of the mountains or the oceans, I see such clear design from God. For me, it’s been a foundation of my faith—looking out at the earth it’s so

intentionally designed. It plays into me wanting to be out there more. Why do you think creativity is important in your faith? I do think creativity is such a clear attribute of God, our Creator—literally the word, Creator. For me personally, it feels like something that I’ve always had since I was little, and something that maybe God gave me. Anytime we do something that comes naturally it feels like such a sweet reflection of him. It feels like a personal thing: God made me this way and gave me these skills and it’s my way of honoring him. It’s a joy for the person doing it and blessing for others. Do you see a connection between farming and creativity? I feel like what I’ve been making doesn’t reflect agriculture obviously, but I want to do more stuff that’s oriented towards agriculture. Maybe in this next year it might happen more for me. I think even just doing plein air landscapes is a step in that direction. Everything I do make is printed on eco-friendly paper and eco-friendly packaging. I’m excited to see what connects those two worlds. What do you see as the connection between the Christian faith and stewardship of the land? It’s always something that I’ve been surprised by—that more Christians aren’t more engaged in. When I read the Bible and think about who God is, it makes sense to be careful stewards of what we’ve been given, with the understanding it’s not permanent. But I would think Christians would be more concerned and reflecting the blessing we’ve been given and taking care of it as much as we can. I think there is definitely different perspectives, and there’s an urgency. We definitely need to take care of it, but this is not my only hope; I believe in a greater plan and it’s not totally up to us. That’s where I’ve landed with it; being a conscious good steward, and the more I’m involved in the regenerative agriculture world, the more I’m like, this really points me to God.

The Outsideness of God

JESSICA MISKELLY

I am a child of thinkers. Born in the postEnlightenment West to scientist parents who wrote and solved logic puzzles for fun, I inherited a reverence for logic. Logic undergirded science, science explained things and I wanted explanations for everything. “What is evil?” “How many stars are there—if there is an infinite number and the universe is infinitely old, shouldn’t the night sky be bright?” “Why do we experience time?” My Catholic teachers told me to stop asking questions and to concentrate on loving God. Love—I thought—was a feeling. Feelings couldn’t be summoned at will and I couldn’t stop asking questions. So I turned away from my teachers, and from the devout Christianity of my grandparents, to a science which promised “theories of everything.” But “everything” was showing itself increasingly irreducible to logical explanation. Irreducibility Logic is a powerful tool. Science, built on a scaffold of logical reason, works so well it gave us smart phones and life-saving medicine. But it gets weird close up. I remember performing Young’s Double Slit experiment in high school, that seminal nineteenthcentury physics set-up that demonstrates light behaves as both a particle and a wave. Which one was it, actually? No one knew. Quantum mechanical theory predicted the uncanny result and said it was both. At the same time. The act of looking gave a specific answer, but that answer depended on how you looked.

The same experiment could be done with matter— seemingly solid particles of that lumpen stuff we deal with every day. This matter cannot be pinpointed as in a certain spot at a certain time, so is it still “matter”? As esoteric and epistemologically frustrating as quantum mechanics is, it made predictions that were accurate, and led to technology that worked. Dismissing it whole-cloth was not a solution. My rationalist ancestry told me resolving this apparent contradiction of wave-particle duality just required more information and better theories. That was, after all, the call of a scientist. To discover and explain. This elusiveness, however, sprang into view elsewhere. In linguistics, defining a word’s meaning required appealing to other words—to people’s experience— always approaching but never reaching a precise global definition, what Glenn Miller called the “linguistic wall”1 or Wittgenstein the “languagegame.”2 Similarly, in neuroscience consciousness seemed irreducible to a sum of myriad neuronic connections. Instead, an emergent theory was proposed necessary, where “the of facts about consciousness [were] not deducible from any number of physical facts.”3 That we were conscious, and believed we were real continuous selves that mattered, could not be explained. Neuroscience’s mechanistic forays into such areas offered weak explanations that suffered from chicken-or-egg syndrome—that my ventral tegmental area lights up when I am feeling love does not tell me why that happens or how it leads

1Miller, Glenn, “Looking At The Wall,” christianthinktank.com/phil0615.html, (Accessed 2018) 2Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wittgenstein, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein, 2020 3Chalmers, David, Strong and Weak Emergence, Davies, P. & Clayton, P. (eds.) The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis From Science to Religion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)

to the feeling of love. Is it cause or effect? I was disturbed by the tendency of modern science towards irreducibility—perhaps things were not just difficult to understand because we didn’t have all the information to understand them but because they were inherently not understandable by our systematic, logical methods. Some questions may just not have clear answers. Which would make my earlier dismissal of Christianity because it couldn’t answer my questions pretty hypocritical. Bell’s theorem was the final undoing of my rationalist worldview. This elegant theorem assumed the existence of that extra information that would resolve all the apparent contradictions, like wave-particle duality, and make quantum mechanics a better theory. A complete theory. The extra information, or “hidden-variable” would definitively characterize matter as a particle, as always thought, with properties independent of measurement. The assumption of such a hidden-variable changes quantum mechanics such that it contradicts what we see. Hence, the assumption is wrong. No such hiddenvariable exists that allows us to preserve the notion of matter as a particle or “local” entity having particular properties independent of measurement. The universe was fundamentally non-local. Light and matter don’t just seem to be both particles and waves, they are both particles and a waves. Things cannot be pinned down to a certain spot at a certain time because they are not in a certain spot at a certain time. Logic built a grand framework of science that predicted planetary movement and molecular interactions and then, under high focus, predicted its own collapse. The mind and its logic had hit its limits.

God’s Solution—Multi-Faceted Ways of Knowing Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”. (Mark 12:30) Implicit in this statement is that we are not just feelers (with the heart) or thinkers (with the mind). We are both, and more. Being multi-faceted beings—heart, mind, and soul— neatly explains why a method of knowing based

on just one of these measures—like the mind—is incomplete. The biblical world view shows itself as more aligned with our experience of the world than either rational logic or feeling spiritualism on their own. I

words that “to require subjective experience before Christ is trusted is bound to lead to confusion… Such teaching makes men look to themselves instead of the Saviour”4 were an unutterable relief.

“To love and have faith (trust) in someone requires looking to them, focusing on their qualities, not our own, and is an act of the mind as well as the heart.”

had made the common post-Enlightenment mistake of elevating reason and logic too highly. Both ways of knowing—thinking and feeling—are valid. Thinking’s logical science revealed a wonderful order to our world and allowed us to use that order to construct technology to help human flourishing. Feeling, in turn, reveals knowledge that we cannot obtain using logic. I know my mother loves me not because I can logically prove it, but because a body of evidence I have collected over half a lifetime, made up of experience, coupled with my conscious processing of that experience as feelings, tells me that she does. But feeling, like thinking, does not have all the answers. Feelings can be fickle. The Bible itself teaches that “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jeremiah 17:9) and we should always be careful not to over-rely on our feelings. God told you to do it? Is what you did in accordance with the teaching of the scriptures? If it wasn’t, then he probably didn’t. I have often been surrounded by “feelers,” whose wellmeaning exhortations to stop thinking and start feeling my way to faith—“pray and you’ll just feel it”—evoked not encouragement but terror. To believe certain feelings were necessary for faith and to not have those feelings, or even if I did have inklings of such feelings to doubt their “reality.” left me terrified. Was I was lost and rejected by God? Theologian Charles Spurgeon’s

To love and have faith (trust) in someone requires looking to them, focusing on their qualities, not our own, and is an act of the mind as well as the heart. Throughout the Bible, God’s love is frequently spoken of as steadfast (eg, Genesis 24:27, Exodus 15:13, Numbers 14:18, Deuteronomy 5:10), a term that is at least as well-associated with an act of the will as that of the heart. Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemene, was completely faithful to his Father but still desperately wanted to avoid his painful death. His feelings did not align with the ultimate act of his loving faith. So we can act in faith and love even we are not feeling faithful or loving. C. S. Lewis put it well when he said “Faith,… is the art of holding onto things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.”5 Holding onto my faith is helped by knowing more, always having an answer to “make a defense to anyone who asks [me] for a reason for the hope that is in [me]” (1 Peter 3:15), even if it is not a complete answer, for no one has those. Martin Luther wrote that it is a “real strength, to trust in God when to all our senses and reason He appears to be angry; and to have greater confidence than we feel.”6 In the depths of my despair, I remember Jeremiah praying: “My soul continually remembers it and is bowed down within me. But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.” (Lamentations 3:19-21, my emphasis).

4 Murray, Iain H., Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism: The Battle for Gospel Preaching, (Banner of Truth Trust, 1995) 5Lewis, C. S., Mere Christianity, (New York: Harper San Francisco, 1952) 6Luther, Martin. Treatise on Good Works, 1520, (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

Navigating the Join One of the greatest barriers to embracing faith, even after accepting that logic had failed on its own, was how to navigate the join between the different ways of knowing. If reason and logic did not always give answers, how would I know when to use them and when to rely on something else, like feeling; how would we collectively ever agree on which case was which, a kind of communal serenity prayer gone mad? Wasn’t this relativism? Remember God’s Outsideness The fallacy here was still holding onto the notion that I could know the picture of the whole—whether by thinking alone, feeling alone, or some combination. If we are within a system we are incapable of examining the whole from the outside, like being in the wrong dimension. We cannot see the whole when we are part of the whole—an experience of which the circle, trying to comprehend the nature of the sphere, was familiar with in E.A. Abbott’s Flatland.7 Only God, who is outside creation as the Creator, has that power of overseeing. Greater than nature, he cannot be fully comprehended from within nature. No human in the Bible is sufficiently supreme to comprehend God in his true form, thus he appears to Moses as a ‘burning bush’, to Israel as a “pillar of fire.” God declares his ‘outsideness’ when he rhetorically asks Job “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the Earth?” (Job 38:1); and replies to Abraham’s question as to who he is that, “I AM who I AM” (Exodus 3:14), the self-referential declaration denying that any other appeal to worldly explanation is required or would be understood. Along with Spurgeon, “I worship a God I never expect to comprehend.”8 Accepting some things are beyond our comprehension does not mean we totter on the slope of relativism. There is still right. There is still wrong. We just don’t have a commandment rulebook to encompass and neatly categorize every situation arising in our lives. God calls us to love him and love our neighbor, and through this we grow in

knowledge and discernment. (Philippians 1:9) We are not automatons, following a list of commandments for every situation we encounter, and we are not slaves to feeling, doing only what satisfies. We are loved creations made in the image of the Creator and we love in response. Loving God includes accepting him as above us and listening to what he says in the scriptures so our feelings and actions incline towards him. Loving our neighbor includes accepting them as equal to us, listening to them, and serving them. By doing this we will naturally tend to what is “right,” a process of sanctification that will not be completed on this earth. Embracing our small creatureliness, means seemingly paradoxical dichotomies of faith versus science, or difficult doctrines like divine sovereignty versus human responsibility, are not pitched against each other on the single scale of reason or of experience. Rather, they are considered via all measures using our bodies, minds, and souls with a humility that accepts complete understanding is beyond us. It is a disturbing tendency of the West to try and reduce complex truths—including Christian doctrine—into overly-simplified categories or false dichotomies. Though easier to understand, these lose some truth in the process and create unnecessary divisiveness. Not everything can be systemized. Science has shown us that. We would do well to heed Spurgeon: “O that the time were come when seeming opposites would be received, because faith knows that they are portions of one harmonious whole.”9 These days, I cultivate a habit of trust and faith, reading the scriptures, reading theologians to better understand the scriptures, praying and engaging in practical acts of love towards the people in my life—even when I don’t feel like it. I embrace logic because it uses my mind with which I was gifted, along with heart and soul, at creation. I also embrace feeling. Always I remember neither gives complete understanding. To assume so would be to deny my ancestry as a created being of a greater God.

7Abbott, Edwin A., Flatland, (Dover Publications, 1952) 8Murray, Iain H., Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism: The Battle for Gospel Preaching, (The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995) 9Ibid

“Accepting some things are beyond our comprehension does not mean we totter on the slope of relativism. There is still right. There is still wrong.”

Mi querido Papi Te quiero mucho Y no quiero diserté adiós.

Mi querido Papi Te quiero mucho Y te quiero decir gracias por lo que me enseñanates.

Pero si te quiero decir que te eschuché cuando me dijiste, “It will be ok Mami.”

Gracias por el amor del trabajo. I had no idea how much of your work ethic you instilled in me. You enjoyed your work. You loved solving problems (even if there was some cursing involved) and more importantly you enjoyed helping and serving others. I find so much of that in myself. Thank you for the work ethic. Gracias por el amor de humor. You had an annoying way of cracking a joke when I was trying to talk about serious things with you. The way you made others laugh was a beautiful thing. You should watch me in the classroom; I’m a joke a minute. Thank you for that gift. Gracias por el amor de sonreír. You always willingly shared a smile with others. It might be after you cracked a joke or asked a silly question, but the smile was always there. Thank you for your smile.

Que te escuché cuando me dijiste, “Don’t worry too much Mami.” Que te escuché cuando me dijiste, “You don’t need to be so serious Mami.” Tus palabras me recuerdan no ser demasiado seria, para poder ser más creativa. Tus palabras me dan libertad para poder soñar. Para poder tener ánimo en participar en la vida, pero realmente participar. Mi querido Papi Te quiero mucho Y no quiero diserté adiós. Entonces por el momento te dijo, “I love you so much Papi.” -Tu hija

today’s goodbye Angelica Huato-Nelson

photographs of The Unmooring editors’ ancestors

Ebb Tide

“See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.” Isaiah 49:16

Would you like to learn more about The Unmooring? The Unmooring is an online journal that explores critical issues of faith through women’s voices. We look to both ancient writing and wisdom as well as contemporary commentary as a means to create dialogue. We are navigating everchanging waters. We are, in this moment, unmoored but not adrift. Rather, we look to create space where women can discuss, debate, argue and read new voices on subjects of faith, foundations and Christ. We are eager to hear every voice that questions and seeks out truth and is willing to wrestle angels to find a way forward. We hope we find a way, tethered as we are to Christ, to create new spaces, new moorings—be they temporary or fixed, like a star. Read more about who we are and what we’re up to here. If you’d like to subscribe to our email newsletter for updates, sign up here!

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