Tag Archives: resurrection

This Week’s Writings and Readings

Posted on June 29, 2012 | Leave a comment

“Thinspiration”  Yesterday I wrote for RELEVANT on the stomach-turning carousel of comparison I get swept up in by Pinterest, magazine, ads, etc., and why we need a new body model (which comes from a surprising place).

I’ve been immensely enjoying The High Calling’s “Everything Matters” series, exploring the idea from the vantage points of vocations across the spectrum that our work matters and creates culture. Today I’m privileged to contribute a few thoughts on why book marketing is not “dirty work,” but actually participates in an incarnational movement of Word becoming flesh, in Everything Matters: Book Publicity as Cultural Act.

This month when I was traveling, I missed out on both reading blogs and writing posts. But now that I’m back, good grief you people put out some good stuff! These are three posts that have fed and challenged me this week, and hope they will do the same for you:

  • Image Journal’s Good Letters blog is simply one of the best. And novelist Sara Zarr’s contribution this week, Writing on Empty, came just at the perfect time. Read it, and remember it.
  • Why the Bodily Resurrection Matters–Especially to Women by Sharon Hodde Miller is something I sincerely hope all my sisters will  be able to internalize–that our bodies are not shameful, and that the resurrection affirms that God cares about us as whole people, body and soul.
  • If you’re an overachiever like me, you might tend to over-commit, and then get miserable when you’ve taken on too much and it’s too late to back out. Christianne Squires has a word for us in her graciously challenging post, Living a Rhythmed Life: Having to Say No.

What have been your favorite reads this week, whether online or in print? 

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Creative Life, Embodied Faith

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Why the Skull & Crossbones is More “Christian” than “Pirate”

Posted on June 7, 2012 | Leave a comment

A few years ago I spent a weekend at JPUSA, the community of Christians in Chicago (who host the Cornerstone Festival) who live together in the old Chelsea Hotel and call themselves “Jesus People.” And during my time there, I saw a lot of skulls.

Skulls adorn the hallways, the door frames, and the forearms of the people who inhabit them.  Five doors down from my room there was an unapologetic mural of a skeleton, squarely behind a baby gate and next to a sign that warned in loud purple Crayola, “Nursing Urijiah! Piz come back. ” All over the community, there were instances of this odd juxtaposition of life and death.

I wondered if the skulls were some kind of talisman, like some cultures have to ward off evil spirits, but when I asked one of the women on staff about their significance, she laughed.

“Well,” she said, “People here are kind of obsessed with death.”

She explained to me, “The skulls and skeletons are representative of the knowledge that there’s more.  We anticipate death, in a way, because we are eager for our new bodies and the new life ahead with Christ.  We are living in a dichotomy between this world and the next, and we are very aware of that.”  So there are skulls: a reminder of our mortal decay.  She also told me that people at JPUSA tend to live in the awareness that, in the city, they are surrounded by the living dead.  They are among the spiritually destitute and dying.

I’ve often felt this restlessness, of living in the cracks between Eden and Heaven, which some call the age of the in-between, the already-not-yet of the kingdom.  It can be exasperating: is the kingdom here, or is it to come? Christ has come into our world and has promised victory over sin and death, but we still live under its affects while we wait for His return. And it can make us impatient in the waiting, while we see the world around us in such need of redemption.  We were created for eternal life, to bear divine image and have a face-to-face relationship with our Maker, but sin ruptured this paradise and now we live in the imbalance, caught between what was supposed to be and what is now utterly broken. Even the earth is a victim of this tension, “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22).  Even the earth and the roots of mountains straddle this gap between the kingdoms.

There is a dichotomy at hand. We are finite beings with eternal life or death at stake. Perhaps the reminder of our mortal frame, whether skulls and bones or just knowing that there is more to come, can lend urgency to our days to live well, to reach out to the dying, and to eagerly await the life ahead.

How do you navigate this tension in your daily life and work?

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Embodied Faith

Tagged , , , , , , ,

The Christian Tendency to Make It All Better

Posted on April 25, 2012 | 18 Comments
This will be a short post today, while I continue to process the past week at the soul-stirring Festival of Faith and Writing. More on that later. But for now…

We have this tendency as Christians to absorb the shock of tragedy and then, without missing a beat, rear our heads and say, “BUT”–God is good. There is hope. I’m better for it now.

But sometimes it doesn’t get better. And sometimes it’s not good.

And it’s as inappropriate as wearing white to a funeral.

Grieving is okay. Sackcloth is okay. Pain is allowed. It is even merited.

And yes, redemption can break through the tomb like it did two thousand years ago. But have you ever wondered why Jesus was in the grave for three days? Do you think His resurrection would have been as powerful if He’d popped back out, fully healed and alive, after 5 minutes?

Sometimes the resurrection isn’t in view yet. And we just have to sit in our sorrow and keep our eyes open.

There’s a difference between redemption and a teachable moment. We have this incredible hope in Christ, and sometimes it’s hard to resist the urge to shout it out. But I hope in my living and storytelling I will treat redemption reverently, without making it cheap, without making it premature.

Your thoughts? 

→ 18 Comments

Posted in Embodied Faith

Tagged , , , ,

Exploring the Intersection of Spiritual and Physical: A Reading List

Posted on July 7, 2011 | 11 Comments

One of the topics I write about on this blog is embodied faith, something I am trying to be a student of and is of personal importance to me. Embodied faith speaks to me of wholeness, a marriage of the spiritual and tangible, of which the Incarnation teaches us. The Incarnation is a word that means “to be made flesh,” to be embodied, a God who took on muscle and skin. How can you not stand amazed at the transcendent God who becomes a man with sweat glands and hiccups?

The body of Christ, in which the spiritual and physical wholly converge, became God’s channel of redemption in the world. “This is my body, broken for you…”

But I’ve struggled with this my whole life. In many ways, I am a recovering ascetic—one who renounces the sensory, physical experience for a life of self-denial—and I am learning, and loving, this new life of sensory, embodied faith. The tenets of our faith rely on it: the Incarnation, resurrection, the Eucharist or communion of the elements, all require hands to feel, tongues to taste, eyes to see, ears to hear.

I used to see my body as something I could transcend, some skin I could shed if I ran hard enough. I viewed my physical body as grotesque and over-spiritualized it, filling my heart with prayer and dangerously emptying my stomach. I was influenced by the vein of Christian thought that views our bodies as mere “earth-suits,” a temporary fixture that we will surpass once we reach our glorified states. So I fed my spirit and neglected my body, and became desensitized in both.

In my experience the church is afraid of the words, “sensory,” or worse, “sensual.” We translate this to hedonism, indulgence, sexual decadence. We have a hard time not cringing at the word, “pleasure” in church. But over and over again in Scripture I encounter a God who calls to His people to see His face, hear His voice, reach out and touch His glory. A people to behold Him, all senses captivated.

Skin is sacred. It is not severed from spirit, or second-rate, because we are whole people. We do not come in segments, and the Word is made flesh.

One way I am exploring this intersection of the spiritual and physical is through some good reading. I’m in the process of creating a reading list that addresses the issues surrounding embodied faith, here are a few titles (of many more!) on my shelf that I’ve read or am reading currently. What other books should be on this list? I’m open to suggestions!

What else should be on this list? Any recommendations? Thanks for your help!

→ 11 Comments

Posted in Embodied Faith

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Earth Day, Good Friday, and Wholeness

Posted on April 20, 2011 | 3 Comments

This month, we are approaching two national holidays. They happen to fall on the same day. But depending on your political, religious, liberal, conservative, radical, conventional standing, you may lean more towards one than the other, or even feel like you have to choose between the two.

Earth Day was instituted in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson, it was a political initiative, intended to enforce national environmental responsibility, and this new holiday birthed the modern environmental movement. Good Friday is annually observed by Christians to remember Christ’s crucifixion and death so many years ago. To the church, Good Friday, together with Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, is the culmination of history, fulfilling Scripture’s promises that a Savior would come into the world and redeem it.

This year April 22nd hosts both Earth Day and Good Friday, and to many people, these holidays may seem to be at odds with each other.  In my experience, Christians are more interested in discipleship than reducing their carbon footprint. Female ministers and abortion can be hot topics, but global warming? Not so much.  Likewise, the people who champion green living march under the banner of sustainability, health, and animal rights. Talk of soul-saving doesn’t really hold appeal, because in their mind, they’re already saving the planet.

It saddens me that anyone would think these two ideals have to be pitted against each other as if in a bull pen. Because in my perspective, both holidays have to do with wholeness. Whole earth, whole redemption, whole life.

Eden was once whole, a perfect earth, perfect creation, and perfect humanity. God called it, “very good.” But sin crept into this good garden and fragmented it, introducing thorns and dry soil, pain and pride—toxic to both our bodies and our souls.

Good Friday marks a turn in our decaying world.   A man who was God sacrificed His life for the world, and this set into action a redemption that would work both backwards and forwards, pulling this broken earth and its broken people into a new heaven and new earth. One day, the effects of sin will be reversed, and the new heaven and earth will reign in renewed wholeness. Christ’s sacrifice on Good Friday set all of this into motion.

Scripture says that creation is in bondage just as are the children of God. “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-23).

This April 22nd, let’s groan and wait together, the earth and God’s children, the created crying out to our Creator.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

→ 3 Comments

Posted in Embodied Faith

Tagged , , , , , ,