The Trifecta of Evil: Introduction

The Trifecta of Evil: White Supremacy, Heteronormativity, and Patriarchy

We live in a very broken but beautiful world. One of the ways in which it is most broken can be seen through the existence, perpetuation, and multivalent effects of oppressive systems. While some think of capitalism or misogyny or racism as the worst-thing-ever, I believe that we are made less human, and deny the humanity of others, through three primary mechanisms: White Supremacy, Heteronormativity, and Patriarchy.

I am speaking only in an American context, as that is all I truly know. However, that is one that I know well. I earned a Master’s studying the city and I have lived in 4 very different urban areas in the US over the last 25 years: Memphis, Chicago, Oakland, and Denver. I named these oppressive systems long ago, and have been looking for them actively.

I intend to dismantle them, overturn them, stand against these things. Some of the most beautiful pieces of our world evolve from the human response to this Trifecta of Evil as a resounding “Hell no!” For we are bound and intertwined, equal and different, diverse and common. These forces battle each other for prominence, nurture each other in rebounding waves of increasing violence, and erode community, common cause, and coalition depth. I’ll be looking at these three things over the next couple weeks –how they interact around some common themes and how they can be dismantled.

White Supremacy -White Supremacy undergirds and shores up everything in America. It enables us to perpetuate slavery via our criminal “justice” system. It rationalizes economic coercion and apartheid as typical. The police were first formed to catch & return enslaved peoples, clear out indigenous peoples, and “protect” white women from all nonwhite men. Traditionally, white men and women have worked as teammates in these endeavors, with white women regularly undermining and appropriating nonwhite cultural resources while men keep the institutional systems of white control well oiled via the momentum of their privilege.

Heteronormativity -Heteronormativity declares the cis straight binary as the only normal sexual and gender expression. Heteronormativity strangles the wild diversity of creation as it says IN and OUT and ONLY THIS to a species that requires more. Heteronormativity limits the definition of family, names a child as legitimate or not (!!!), constrains access to housing, legal parity, medical care, and declares as aberrant for humans sexual behavior that is common throughout the animal world.

Patriarchy -Patriarchy forms our basic structure of worth and value, of inherent primacy, and control. Patriarchy makes typical the idea that men are necessary to the success of a thing, and always have a right to speak. Patriarchy says that the boundaries and borders are just for clarity or your own good. While white women have ceded much power and authority to men in exchange for their ‘protection’, Patriarchy will always place the needs, expectations, and rights of men above women.

Congregational Change: Power-Brokers, Intro

I have been part of 10 congregations from 4 denominations - which may sound like a lot to some readers, and a little to others.  The longest one was for 7 years. For many people, that doesn’t sound like a lot of time, especially when some people have participated in a single church/mosque/synagogue/temple their entire life.  But it has taught me that changes in churches are rare. Sure, there might be small changes here and there - and maybe small changes tend to be the healthiest for any given group of people. However, I also think there is enough research and evidence that shows that slow change benefits a certain type of existence, personality, and often unspoken goal/ethos.

What I lament, after a decade of working in church leadership, is how many of the churches I worked in are becoming older and smaller.  I know that people are so tired of hearing this.  Or said more accurately, people in these churches are tired of hearing this.  People who have left church, or simply don’t participate in religion, simply shrug their shoulders and nod yes.  I’m writing this out of hearing established churches keep saying that want to “grow” - in membership, youth and/or money.  Sometimes, although a bit more rare, a church will desire to grow in depth or solidarity (otherwise known in versions of mission, service, charity, justice).  But the conversations of my past decade of ministry largely focused on growing in membership, youth, and money.  

There’s been so many different kinds of approaches to growth, and to be honest, there’s been a fair amount of quality research and consulting work done for churches - in nearly every denomination I’ve been in touch with.  Liberals and conservatives often agree that they both desire growth, even if they use different languages, and sometimes have very different visions for what growth looks like and means. If you want a good both on growth, there should be plenty for you to buy and read!

One of the key components I’ve become more fixated on, is the conversation of power-brokers with leadership roles beyond the pastor(s).  In most churches, the power brokers are rarely named or recognized.  I’m not advocating this as anything negative -this is just a direct and open naming of the powers within any system.  Sure, you can hire a competent, qualified, educated, and strong clergy. However, they can definitely be thwarted, if not completely stymied if they ever disagree with the individuals and groups that have hold relational clout, long-term investments, and the congregational narrative/story within a given church.

If a pastor, or any individual, is inspired to make a significant change (even if they think it’s a “small” one), by default they are questioning the validity of what the power brokers have built and envisioned for years and decades.  BOTH are valid, if it’s a congregation that says every member has a voice in the life of the church/community.  However, to bring about sustainable change, the powers have to be engaged. I hear often, since the plateau of church participation in the 1990’s, that the power brokers want to make their church great again, like the good old days when everything worked so much better.  And I hear often that newer and younger participants feel they have no voice, even if they’ve been part of a community for over a decade, let alone more than a year. Despite the Christian call to community and “instant” salvation and belonging, our church structures are rarely hospitable, and often struggle to include and empower new members (with very few caveats).  

My next post will look at the power and pitfalls with mission statements and the congregations who write and live them.

Power 101: The Dark Side

“But beware of the Dark Side. Anger, fear, aggression, the Dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If you start down the dark path, forever will it consume your destiny.” -Yoda, Empire Strikes Back

I don’t really remember a world without Star Wars. I was 6 yrs old the summer “A New Hope” was released, and 9 when “Empire Strikes Back” came out. If you don’t know the story of Star Wars at all, very little of this post will make sense to you. I suggest you check out its Wikipedia page, found here.

While Darth Vader was certainly a villain in the first film, it wasn’t until Empire that we really begin to learn about the Dark. It is here that we glimpse some of what it might mean to take the path towards the Dark. Now, I grew up in a political family, and by the time Empire was released, I was already hoping for more information about the dissolution of the Republic’s Senate that began the first film. And I suspected the work of the Dark Side. 

Empire Strikes Back introduces many messy situations, which include betrayal, misunderstandings & assumptions leading to mistakes, dropping out & abandonment, humanity within the grotesque, and the possibility that our hero Luke is Darth Vader’s son.

Oh, how many hours my friends and I spent discussing that! Could it be? We debated and dissected. We feared and somehow pitied the Man-machine Vader as he communicated with his Master. We questioned how Obi-wan Kenobi could have lied were it all true.  

These days, I laugh out loud at the scene in “Pitch Perfect” when one of the leads dismisses the question by translating Darth Vader from the German, dark father. But then? We were deep into questions of theodicy -how God allows evil or absent that premise, how on earth do we understand evil- and relative ethics.

When I was 17, I watched Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell on PBS’s “The Power of Myth” with my father. By then, “The Return of the Jedi” has wrapped up our space opera saga and Star Wars was simply something that informed my worldview. The ideas of common archetype, narrative and truth, and sacred story, that Moyers and Campbell debated were easily absorbed by my brain. Some of my conclusions included:

• Epic things happened and the smallest of decisions mattered.

• Small choices that turn you towards ‘power over’ always seem rational.

• Arrogance is blinding.

• Redemption is possible for even the worst of the worse.

These are some of the things that Star Wars implanted in my brain, in my mind’s eye, as I learned to navigate the world. The Dark Side is real. These choices are always before us. And while the space between the Light and the Dark is dusk and twilight and dawn, that is, navigable and transitory and ripe with possibility, they are not safe. 

“I fear nothing. For all is as the Force wills it.”– Chirrut Imwe, Rogue One

The ways in which we move towards the Dark Side? They always feel rational and responsible and damn righteous. They are the choices we make out of fear. They are the choices we make out of anger. They are the choices we make in order to guide the actions of others. They are the choices we make to keep order.

The clearest place this all plays out is indeed in politics, the first arena wherein young me applied these concepts. I think we can all see how greed and anger and fear are manifest in our “civic” and common national dialogue. And local corruption is always linked to these small decisions in generally discernable ways.

But frankly, this dynamic is everywhere. As a minister, I’ve seen these choices destroy marriages and communities. As an activist, I’ve seen these choices tank movements. As a friend, I’ve seen these choices embitter and warp open hearts into unrecognizable stones.

And know this. it IS always a choice. At every moment, we make the choices where to stand, what power we seek, and where it is based.

Love bears its own power, as we know. As Star Wars knows. As all of our faith traditions know. It is not, absolutely not, the power of kingship and rule, control and anger. For Christians, we reference Jesus and Pilate in conversation about this exact question.

I know that nothing is as straight forward as Darth Vader choosing his son over his Master in such epic moments in our own lived lives. Singularities like that happen, sure and yet, day to day these choices are smaller. In fact, we want this to be the case. Small chances hone our turning towards instead of acting against, train us to open our hands instead of clench our fists, and build the structures of response that make the different choices we need clear.

Light grows slowly. It builds and catches and kindles.

Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker: Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes. (Removes mask)

Now go my son. Leave me.

Luke:        No, you're coming with me.

I'll not leave you now. I've got to save you.

Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker:  You already have.

-Return of the Jedi

The Crisis within Modernity

               I am constantly taken back by the variety of prayer beads that family members insist on bringing me when traveling to and from the Middle East. I’ve developed an amusing reputation in my family as the bead collector. From grandparents to the youngest cousins, this practice has blossomed into an ongoing ritual till today. I’ve enthusiastically embraced the title as bead collector and observe in wonder as relatives contribute lovingly to an enormous and sentimental collection.

               The scenario is rather common for Middle Eastern families. The ceremonial unzipping of scattered luggage at 3 a.m. as half-awake relatives instigate what I call the nostalgic interrogation. “How is so-and-so? Did you see so-and-so?” stories, giggles and the smell of coffee fill the house.

               Gradually, as the late night unravels into early morning, each suitcase is unpacked to reveal a trove of souvenirs, antiquities, handwritten letters and the occasional jar of pickled eggplants declaring “…Give to…” followed by the name of the requestor etched in black pen. Always worth mentioning are the half-dozen boxes of baklava that always invoke the unanswered question “how the hell did you get this much filo dough past customs?” In this exciting ritual of unveiling suitcases, we reminisce over memories and my legacy as the bead collector is fulfilled.

               The Prophet Muhammad didn’t use prayer beads in his supplications, rather, he used his fingers to maintain a steady stream of Thikr, or remembrance. The Prophet never outrightly mentioned prayer beads, nor did he condemn them, and it is within this unclear dilemma that prayer beads have earned their controversial status in the Islamic world. I marvel at how sudden everyone becomes a scholar regarding the issue.  I would often get stopped and told courageously “Brother, that is not of the way of The Prophet. That is an innovation” pointing at the beads as if a deadly cobra had coiled itself on my arm. “Explain to me.” I would demand, waving the deadly cobra around. Often the conversation would thin out into a typical “It’s just not in the prophetic path, so just put them in your pocket.” I would cringe at the lack of knowledge and their dismissal to cite any valid jurisprudence or any acknowledgement that beads signify the domain of spiritual discipline and growth.

               Hilariously, I found myself among brothers and sisters who unflinchingly asked “Bro, where are your beads? How are you just walking around bead-less?” as if to suggest I’m just gliding through this whole “religion thing” without a frontal lobe.  It’s usually then that I remind them that Islam is a proactive not a reactive system of faith. That, in times of turbulence or modernity, we are expected to take a step forward, not a step back. If the beads are scary because they came after the Prophet, we need to talk. If the lack of beads disqualifies one from loving God and his Messengers, then we need to talk. To withdrawal oneself when challenged with any new-age, modern understanding of the world is a sign of distrust and deep trouble. Also, to withdrawal oneself when challenged by anything but the primordial roots of Islam is also a sign of distrust and deep trouble. The prophet Muhammad told us to live in the time we are in. How simple is that?

               But how strange when you consider that the Islamic world and the Middle East is filled with these cobra-like prayer beads? Understandably, Muslims see deviation from the Prophetic wisdom as something that could lead them into decent and suspicion. However, we also rely on that very same prophetic wisdom to guide us out of decent and suspicion. Are we paying attention? After looking deeper, I have discovered that the very word for prayer beads in Arabic is called Mas’baha, which means “the place I swim.” Extracted from the belief that when in contemplation or absorbed thought, one virtually “swims” in the realm of God. The one place a Muslim can drown without dying. During the Ottoman Empire, the Mas’baha symbolized inner contemplation, spiritual improvement and was associated with pacifism and humility. When I lived in Syria, it was taken as a subliminal declaration of peace, a subtle way of saying “Don’t mind me, for I am swimming in Gods Ocean.” And nobody wants to mess with that guy.

               I’ve come to realize that Islam will only struggle to find a legitimate interpretation in the “modern” world for as long as Muslims are willing to hide away from that modern world. Repeat after me: “A tug-of-war between The Ancient World and The New World is not a valid spiritual stance.” We are here, right now and not in 610 A.D Ancient Arabia, and that’s ok Muslims, that’s ok.

               But it’s not always cosmic swimming pools and celestial backstrokes. It would be inconceivable to say living in this world isn’t difficult. One of the many battles of today is having the most sacred thing, your faith, scrutinized by the standards of a materialistic, postmodern world; one that unflinchingly screams “Ew! Gross! Your religion is so old! Throw that thing away!” Who isn’t intimidated by that? I am. We all live in this fast-moving, technological world that expects us to update religion as often as our phone updates its software. Sending the impression that people of faith are inadvertently brandishing a filthy rag above their head called religion, and all they must do is simply get rid of it. But hold on! Don’t surrender or encourage others to surrender! Hang on you your beads, for within them is a way to God! Imagine with me that the modern world is a vicious unforgiving tiger. Apply your faith in a way that allows you to mount the back of the beast and ride it! We are not expected to stand there while we get devoured by its brutality. So ride the tigers back. And the greatest wisdom I can share is It won’t even know you’re there. In the meantime, I’m going swimming.

Power 101

I serve in a variety of capacities as I live out my ministry. I am the founding pastor of a small faith community that meets in Denver on a weekday night and enacts justice work in the region at all sorts of times. I work as the Colorado regional organizer for a global NGO committed to the moral voice in issues of climate change and creation stewardship.

I represent my urban community in a statewide coalition of clergy and other faith leaders. I am a chaplain to the politically and civically engaged in a few American cities, including my own. Several atheists claim me as their priest, although I’m actually a Baptist preacher.

In short, I’m all about power.

“Um, what?” you might think at that. Nothing there seems very powerful, except for maybe the global thing. Well sure, I suppose. If your view of power is all about massive numbers, political clout and access, economic control, or ever necessitates a cult of personality or power-concentrated savior, then no. I am not engaged with power at all. 

However, I reject this as the only view of power. These are symptoms of fallen powers, of twisted and oppressive systems that have been used to bind and control rather than empower and nurture. These are the heresies against the deep power of Spirit, and are fed by fear and scarcity, panic and hubris.

If your understanding of power can include the ability to act, the knowledge of who you are and what you truly wield, and a functional reliance on community-based actions (people having your back), then you may understand my take. This list represents a redeemed view of power.

This is an understanding of power as grounded in love in action, an embodied solidarity and commitment to a fundamental belief in the sacredness within all, and a continual recollection of a greater spiritual purpose within all systems. This sense of power wells up from increased deepening and accountability. It develops and nurtures trust, as it is based in mutual listening and humility.

20 years ago, I participated in a small group deep dive of Walter Wink’s Powers Trilogy: Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging The Powers. Together, we parsed through the 1,000 or some odd pages that make up these three books. It took about a year to do, if I remember right. Or maybe longer.

It was during this time that I began to see the scope of the problems in how we live. I began to suspect that the systems and institutions around me, the situations I had accepted as normative and simply issues to be negotiated and maybe fixed when possible were in fact structural pieces that could be dismantled. While I was still trying to use a system of great traditional power, The Episcopal Church, I began to seek out the ways in which that system itself upheld the fallen powers

I’d been brought up with a deep suspicion of all traditional powers that be, or as my late hippie father would occasionally say, The Man. This new understanding of Power itself was key to integrating my lived and embedded theologies with my desire to live a life of integrity and authenticity. It provided me a platform on which I could seek the good inherent and build upon it. It provided me a worldview that could seek out intersections and shared paths and alliances.

It put me on a spiritual journey that I’d seen in visions and not known how to start, but that forever colored my lenses moving forward. I believe nothing is without virtue or value, for at a very basic level, all can be redeemed. Will be. Is already.

And because I did all of this in community, albeit a small group, I knew from the beginning that I didn’t have to do this alone. I learned that I could talk these things out, and that I did not have to know what I meant or where I was going, because none of us knew anything.

The Powers That Be around us are broken and our own connection to divine power is blocked and yet it need not be so. We know that where are as a ‘society’ isn’t working. The effects of white supremacy, greed and control, the zero-sum games and battles for territory –they destroy us daily. And yet. And yet, we declare that it can be different. We seek a new world, and the Reign of God behind all things.

Rev. Jessica Abell

Tattoo: spiritual journey

This may seem like a strange place to start, but bear with me.

When I was a kid I used to fall asleep listening to Greek mythology. As I grew up, I found a true connection -not just in Greek mythology but in the stories and practices of any authentic pagan practice I could find. One of the things that truly connected deeply was the concept of enchantment from the practices of my ancestors in Ireland.

This isn’t a unique concept. The idea is that when a deep connection to the spirit is combined with deep and powerful imagery, it is possible to invoke a greater power and use that power, the power of the divine to weave a prayer far greater than any spoken word or thought. In the Irish tradition as I understand it, it is as much about the sacrifice, the time and the intention put into the prayer as about the image. In this way, it is the spell that makes the image and not the image that makes the spell. Long after the symbol has faded away, the spell will be left behind; its power was in the laying not the holding.

I begin here because for me this tattoo is an enchantment. It is one placed on my body and whose power was in the laying down of the image itself. What is left behind is not what stays with me, though it is what I carry around. If this image washed out tomorrow, I would already have what I needed from it. That’s not to say I wouldn’t be crushed at the loss.

It’s impossible for me to describe the full breath of the experience I had getting this tattoo.

Almost immediately when the tattoo gun hit my skin, I fell into a strange meditative haze. As the tattoo gun drew across my skin, it felt as if the image was being seared into my skin, being dug out somehow -etched not drawn.

The artist was fabulous incredibly focused and dedicated to the art in front of him. His focus and my intensity met to create one of the most intense spiritual experiences of my life. It was the pain that focused me into the careful work of a honed artist and created this space for the spell to be woven. Just like in the belief systems of the ancient druids, for me it was the process that mattered and not the image left behind. It was the sacrifice in many ways that sealed the spell. The physical pain, the time and focus of the artist, the part of my body that I’m dedicating to this spell -all these things and more contributed.

The image is a symbol of what was woven on my body. It is a marker, a denotation for those who might not know otherwise. Well, there is no history of the druidic people using tattoos. I feel the force of years behind this practice and I feel a connection through it to a practice I can’t understand.

I still hold the Christian faith. This tattoo is an emblem of the tension that exists in me -tension in my theology between pagan and Christian, the tension between my call to look forward and my resonance with what is behind us. But it is also an emblem of the peace and strength that I found in that tension, in walking those lines and in holding these often chaotic relationships.

Pilgrimage, the Third Part: Coming Home

As I laid out last week, July was a month of Pilgrimage. I traveled over 5,000 miles on 3 separate journeys, always with my ministry partner but with others who are of my communities as well. I have been a pilgrim at other times in my life. In the 90’s, I and 3 other adults guided our Youth Group in a Pilgrimage throughout Ireland. Both of my parents, and my mother-in-law, have died in my adulthood, and caring for them and tending to their deaths became Pilgrimages of a sort. 

I regularly wove mini-Pilgrimages into the more normative Mission Trips with youth, a side trip to a special place or an exploration of a hidden park. I have walked labyrinths for decades, themselves used as a patterned replacement for a Pilgrimage journey one cannot take in whole. The practice has long been part of my spiritual rhythm.

But it has been a while since Pilgrimage hasn’t touched death in some way for me. Last year’s Pilgrimage with the Lakota Ride was a turning point in my grief over my mother’s death, as I poured tears out onto the ground outside our closing Inipi. Coming home was easier in a way I had never expected.

The third Pilgrimage of July, the trip to The Border in El Paso, TX was for a Moral Monday witness. But of course within only a few days from our action July 29th, scores at a Walmart in El Paso were killed and injured by a white nationalist act of terror on Aug 3rd. My own experience in Texas, and at the Border, was one of solidarity and witness, action and compassion. But again, here looms death at the edge of the thing.

Now I am home for a period. There is some travel in my near future but not an intentional journey, a Pilgrimage. This is the time for processing what has happened, what has been done and left undone, and to discern what patterns are emerging from walking these Pilgrim paths? While we return to the place from which we started on a Pilgrimage, we also never do. We are different. The place is different. And most importantly, something inside us SEES differently.

Something that I’m discovering as I walk around Denver post Pilgrimage time is that these recent patterns are already forming new routes through my thoughts, in what I scheme, and for what I search. Instead of my previous time trapped in a fugue state of painful memory, upon upcoming anniversaries I will follow a path relit on Pilgrimage, and be intentional about my healing and spiritual health. 

I’m also running into patterns established by the public nature of Pilgrimage. By that I mean “people” know we went. They know we went on Pilgrimage. They know we did something with the Lakota. They know we went to The Border. There is a desire to hear about the experience, it seems. Part of coming home is framing the story, discerning the salient portions and narratives, sketches and vignettes. 

Pilgrimage is back in my life now. No more putting that aside, it is too fruitful a spiritual discipline and practice. I have no idea what the #LessonsFromTheRoad will be as I reflect on this time, what it opened up for me, or where this path will lead. But I know I am grateful to be home.

 Rev. Jessica Abell

Tattoo Trials

I recently got my first tattoo. I knew I wanted a tattoo since I was about nine years old, but I waited till shortly after my 25th birthday. Most of my friends who want tattoos already had them, at least one. But for me, I could never figure out the right image. See, I always knew I wanted my art to be both cohesive and expansive which to me means that I want my tattoos to cover most of what a T-shirt would and I want most of that to be one piece.

This always felt like a curse because I couldn’t commit to the main piece yet. I didn’t want to put something small that would stand out or be hard to integrate into the larger vision later. For years, I told people “I’m about to get a tattoo.” Even when I saw people I’d said that to years later, I told them I’d already gotten it! I just didn’t want to show them, I would say.

I didn’t know how to talk about my own search. It took me almost a decade of toying with the same image to settle on something that both felt like the right thing to honor and the right way to honor it. I settled on a confluence of symbols from my past both personally and ancestrally.

Over my heart is a labyrinth with the tree at its center. The labyrinth is personally in my life primarily through my time in summer camp, as a camper and as staff. For over a decade, I walked the labyrinth of the same design as the one now on my heart as a spiritual practice. Walking the labyrinth awakened a spirit in me that I hadn’t encountered before and probably deserves its own post. The walking of these labyrinths is a practiced observed both by Christian and pagan ancestors. It serves as a bridge between these two often juxtaposed faiths that run in my blood.

The tree at the center of the labyrinth is similarly filled with dual meaning. First, it is a reference to the tree of life, another binding and bridging of my divided ancestry as both Christians and Irish pagans hold that sacred image. Second, this image recalls the actual labyrinth at that camp, as the camp logo uses a tree and it’s named for the forest itself. I finally felt like I had something that didn’t feel like to me like co-opting images with no connection to my own life.

Now that I had the image, I had to find an artist. From having known friends who went through the process of having a tattoo done by someone they didn’t know, I knew that to do what I wanted, I needed to trust the artist and for the artist to trust me. I spent months researching the right tattoo artist. I looked at photos online, read reviews of tattoo parlors around Denver, and asked friends. After giving up a couple of times, and finally coming back, I found an artist that was doing work I felt would reflect what I felt should be there.

July 2019, a Month of Pilgrimage

Summer is often a time for travel. In my former world of professional youth ministry, it is full of mission trips, vacation bible schools, overnight camps, beach trips, and conferences. But now I work in the world of a faith-based NGO, political advocacy, and the Spirituality Collective.  I pastor a small alternative religious community that will never have a traditional youth group. Summers are again mine to consider and use for different ministry.

Last summer, my ministry partner Ian and I were honored to join a Lakota horse ride for a time of pilgrimage. It was short and intense and full of unexpected insights and connections. That journey in August 2018 turned my heart back towards Pilgrimage as a spiritual discipline, something I have had in my life in the past.

Pilgrimage is very different from Mission or Education or even Formation as a religious action. Pilgrimage will include some set destination and routes but also requires flexibility and adaptation as the Spirit moves. Pilgrimage will provide some encounter with the Divine but this may not always be recognized as such immediately. Pilgrimage may begin with a query, quest, or quandary but is never about those things alone, and awaiting resolution will sabotage the journey. Pilgrimage holds within it the ability for great change and transformation but nothing is certain without vulnerability and openness.

July became a month of pilgrimage, as I began to discuss in last week’s blog post about the first of three journeys taken. The longest pilgrimage was first, the journey to and from Wild Goose that Ian and I took on our own.

July 2019, a month of Pilgrimage

            Beloved Community (w WildGoose) 7/8-7/16    3,200

            Feeding the Ride                                     7/24               350

            Moral Monday @ the Borderlands    7/27-7/29   1,600

For our second and third pilgrimage, we invited others to join us. Mid-month, we returned to the Tipi Raisers Lakota Ride for a single evening. The friend we brought on this Pilgrimage is an amazing chef and a practicing Muslim, and he prepared the meal. The food was abundant and excellently made, flavorful and filling. We were all three accepted and embraced into the Ride community when we arrived. We shared sustenance and challenges together that night as a group, and we three were given many gifts of love and trust. And art.

At the end of July, a member of Living Waters Night Church, my community in Denver, joined us on Pilgrimage to the US Border in El Paso, TX.  We were heeding the call put out by the Repairers of the Breach and Rev. Dr. William Barber of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign to stand witness there. We arrived in Texas on the anniversary of my father’s death, and so there was a personal element that brought both a sadness and a buoyancy to that day.

We three, along with hundreds of others, attended the Faith Gathering at an El Paso church and then participated in the direct action on Monday. Rev. Dr. Barber and others founded the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina as a way for people of faith to stand witness for or against public policy affecting the poor, the vulnerable, and prisoners and others with little or no voice.

There was plenty of opportunity for things to go awry, as there always is on Pilgrimage. Chaos and the Spirit work well together, but without the naming of this, and the open and full embrace of Spirit, Chaos can turn angry, and divisive, and entitled. And when one is at the Border, on the edge of things, the potential for what pagan author Starhawk calls the Good World and the Bad World to become fluid increases wildly.

But we were wrapped in love and prophecy, in action and clarity of purpose. We were there to stand witness in solidarity with those doing the work on the ground, day to day. Because that is always where the work must be focused. Our faith in action is site specific. And so we journey. And we return.

For there is always more before us, on the road and at home. And Pilgrimage is our route within and well as without.

Go with God, my friends.

Rev. Jessica Abell

Faith in Politics (Another Way)

Photo by chuck chowen @ibechowen

I’m writing this as my first post since returning to Denver from the Poor Peoples’ Campaign Moral Monday at the Border in El Paso, Texas. My last post was about the pervasive heretical interpretation of the Bible that has dominated the religious narrative since the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior so it seems appropriate to write an authentic counterpoint to that heresy using The Poor Peoples’ Campaign as inspiration.

The Poor Peoples’ Campaign is an effort to recall and restore a movement started by Dr. King, one that may have ultimately resulted in his assassination. The Poor Peoples’ Campaign is an effort to weave all disenfranchised people together. regardless of the things that have been used to divide us, race, gender, urban vs rural, Republicans and Democrats.

The Poor Peoples’ Campaign and several other organized efforts are showing the beginnings of something big, a shift in what it means to be Christian. I’ve seen this in many of my conversations across the spectrum of my friends who have “Christian” as a piece of their identity, there is a shift away from the dogma of selective application theology and towards a new old way. By selective application theology I mean the process of using scriptural contradictions, often due to bad translations, to exclude people from God’s love or from the kingdom of heaven. The shift I see is one based in acceptance, one that strives to reflect humanity's diversity, and that will strive for the kingdom of heaven on earth now, not in some far off time or place.

It will be interesting to see whether efforts like the Poor Peoples’ Campaign will have an effect on the national Conversation about what people of faith should be doing in these trying times. To be frank, it is not prayer of thought or best wishes that is on offer from these agents of change. Instead what is on offer is prayer of action and witness, prayer of solidarity and justice. These are the prayers that this movement, much greater than just a poor people's campaign, is bringing to our tables.

In his speech at the opening of Wild Goose 2019, Reverend Dr. Barber called for a moral Pentecost. Not only is he right, I think it may be that the seeds of this Pentecost have been sown in the hearts of some of the most unexpected people and planted by the hands of some of the least likely farmers. It is actually in the hearts of those were raised by the strongest purveyors of the heresies of hate where I find a deep conflict between the Bible they know and the theology they are raised in.

Photo by chuck chowen

@ibechowen

All people who are raised in this way know and are beginning to recognize this conflict. There is hope in this breaking as people realize how far we have fallen as people of faith. The children who were immersed in this heresy seem to be waking up to their conflict far faster than the “mainline” communities. This transformation of the Religious conversation is coming. The real question is, what we can do with these conversations?

What will come out of these conversations? What policy will come from this? What new definitions will emerge? Will we as Christians allow ourselves to be divided and categorized over single issues, as has been our past and is our present with abortion and Sex Ed and many others?

Christianity is a multi-platform faith. These individual issues aren’t enough to define what it is to be Christian. We must talk about the devastation at our border, about the demolition of our environment, about the prison industrial complex, about the wealth gap. All these things are all scriptural issues, not secular issues. They are moral and spiritual as well as mechanical. This is where we must stand up as Christians or people of any faith and refuse to be silent. We must not be externally defined and turned against one another -we know what we are called to do.

Pilgrimage, an Intentional Journey

The Haj, the holy journey, is a requirement of Islam. Trips to Israel have been part of the practice of many modern Jews, no matter where on the planet they live. Christians travel and establish altars at sites of signs and miracles all the time. And so, pilgrimage matters.

Pilgrimage is a pattern of religious and spiritual life in which and through which each step and every part has its import and place. There are no wasted steps on pilgrimage, for the intent is to meet God, and God surrounds us.

I have just returned from pilgrimage with my ministry partner Ian. The central portion of our journey was attending Wild Goose in North Carolina. Wild Goose, in its 11th year, is a giant outdoor festival of Christian worship, song, preaching, conversation, and workshops. The theology is generally liberal and progressive and the participants generally Southern and white.

There were aspects of Wild Goose which met the traditional expectations of a pilgrimage site: the presence of unexpected friends and inspiring messages, a focus on God, the getting outside of our comfort zones and assumptions. And it was certainly present in the conversations around me that for many, the travel there, the experience of Wild Goose, and the anticipated return was a pilgrimage.

And while I greatly enjoyed myself, again I found that it was the journey itself from which I truly learned. We paused along our route for conversations, connections, and cleaning-up and as much happened here than any “there” ever reached. It was a short conversation we had with a friend over lunch in Little Rock, AR that changed the course of the next six months of my life. As a small example of the impact of the little parts along the way…

Pilgrimage, or “Religious Road Trip” as named by a friend, isn’t just for the faith-based set anymore. Gene Sharp’s Dictionary of Power and Struggle names Pilgrimage as one of the activities done by secular activist communities as well. Here in the US, the site of the World Trade Center in New York was made an instant pilgrimage site by the events of September 11, 2001. 

We humans mark.

We mark dates and we mark places.

We mark impacts and we mark effects.

We mark leaders and we mark the fallen.

We mark battlegrounds and we mark treaty tables.

And so we become spiritual pilgrims, travelers along roads we may or may not know, and dancers in an ebb and flow, a movement of Spirit. Pilgrimage may be small or large. It may mimic a route or take that route specifically. It may be freeform or highly planned.

What is certain is that the journey is the thing itself, and upon this road, we meet God. In ourselves, in our companions, in creation and in the still small places we can only find when we leave.

Go with God, my friends.

Rev. Jessica Abell

Faith in politics (how did we get here?)

I’ve recently found myself sitting in city council meetings or listening to testimony at the CO statehouse. People have asked me why I do these things or how I got started doing this kind of work. I feel that a part of the call in the bible for all Christians is to watch and to speak the truth to power. I’ve seen similar calls in many other faiths, not just in the Christian progressive church itself. However I speak as someone who describes himself that way, and I feel that the bible has very clear calls to change the way we distribute our wealth and live our lives.

But don’t look for answers in the bible, instead look for guidance and meaning. These are the gifts of the bible. There is no certainty to be had there for me or you. This is the fundamental challenge of Christanity, to continually question and to still find faith in the shit. It is understanding your importance and your insignificance at the same time, not certainty but belief in something greater.

Right now, I am struggling with the calls to justice I hear in the bible, and how different they are from the American Christianity I see portrayed all around me. These often ignored and glossed-over calls to action are throughout the bible. The Gospel does not contain the “christian values” of American politics. These political values are those driven by fear and fed by a desire to support the Empire that has sustained the church institutional. How could we have come so far from the roots of the teachings of our religion? Jesus was always subverting and undermining the Empire he lived under. How have we, those who worship in his name, now become the cudgel of Empire and enforcers of cultural monochrome?

I blame complacency in congregations and the power hungry in the priest class. We as congregants aren't comfortable sacrificing worldly possessions for the uncertainty of the kingdom of heaven. We don't want to hear that the system in which we live robs dignity and respect from the people whom we are trying to serve. We struggle to make mercy fit in a world where we are told to strike fast when we see an advantage. There will be no salvation if we stay in this cycle of blindness and misunderstanding.

As for the priest class, many are living on the edge of a knife. On one side is destitution and principle and on the other is security and compromise. We as congregants have a responsibility to our faith leaders. It is our support and community that can provide them the security to make choices of principle, and safe enough to keep our faith leaders from compromising to survive.

There are also those in the priest class who hold the title of faith leader who seek only to use that position to achieve purely selfish ends. They build systems and cult of personality that completely drowns out the word faith or any real connection to the divine. These are the people who have taken control of our church systems and our conversation.

It is so easy to be compelled to certainty by the strength of these people, that’s the trap. However this certainty is actually a sign of disaster and not success. Anyone who so boldly states contradictions of the spirit and claims to be speaking the word of god is dangerous. Only with the acknowledgment of human fallacy that we are all prey to, and with true humility, can any truth be examined in the spirit. There is a reason that god is called indescribable.

I’ve built these values based on the Gospel and I can't help but ask again. How have the values I find in my faith exploration become what I see around me all day?

Why I Don't Say Namaste

Firstly, let me say that I was unaware of an explicit connection between “Namaste” and yoga itself until fairly recently, about 7 years ago when I returned to Denver. Secondly, I have been practicing yoga since 1975. Sure, I was 4 when I started but hear me out.

In 1975, my parents and I were living in Steven’s Point, WI, where my father was teaching at the University and my mother was getting a Master’s degree. I was 4 years old and very happy about life there. I’d had some major toddler eczema that a Native American doctor had treated, and so my mother was open to all kinds of things new to her. She used to tell me, “Find the people who know, Jessie.”

My mother’s belly-baby, whom I called Flower, was causing her back pain. Her Lamaze instructor recommended yoga and so we went. The downward-facing dog and the floor stretches really helped and even after my sister Rosie was born, we did yoga in the living room. Yoga became a regular part of my life, and I started practicing in earnest in my late 20s. I have fallen in and out of the discipline, like every pattern of mine, and now have the awareness to seek authentic teachers and systems in a manner like to my pugilist spouse’s search for fight schools with legitimate lineages.

My relationship with Namaste is separate. In my late 20s, I studied Al-Ghazali and Rumi, respectively Sunni and Sufi Muslim mystics and poets with whom I found great resonance. Both men use Namaste conceptually and I fell in love with this idea, that those we meet hold within them a spark of the Divine to which we bow. My deep love, gratitude, and respect for the wisdom that their writings brought me made this Namaste something I loved to share. I cringe now at the thought that I actively evangelized for the distribution and dispersal of Namaste. I taught it to many.

Then we returned to Denver in 2012. I immediately began work as a hospital chaplain resident, and returning to swimming and yoga became necessary to process the grief, formation, and sheer exhaustion of that work. Swimming doesn’t really change, and the near-silent rhythms of water helped me meditate and pray. I returned to yoga as a way to focus my breath and responses in moments of crisis. One of the first things I noticed was the Namaste.

“Namaste” the teacher would say at the close of class, no matter the form of yoga (Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, etc) being practiced. And invariably, the class as a whole responded, “Namaste.” At first I was pleased about this. “Oh!” I thought to myself, “This idea of Namaste has really become normative. That’s exciting.”

I began to speak about the idea more often, and sure folks knew the word. But the concept? That this meant an inherent divinity within each of us, that we had the choice whether or not to acknowledge and honor it, and that to do so required a deep mutuality? Not so much… It began to bother me, to stick in my throat.

Then I began to read writings of people from the Indian subcontinent and their own take on Namaste. I learned about varying interpretations within India or Pakistan or between differing religious schools. I heard a clear insistence upon ownership and groundedness in Namaste. I heard a lament that its use had become appropriated so thoroughly that ironic t-shirts and yoga teddy-bears alike evoked Namaste in some way.

I stopped responding with the group. I ceased with the Namaste. At first, this was fine. I think the teachers just assumed I didn’t know any better. After a while, the subtle hints started. I was told that Namaste meant hello or hey fellow special being and this sometimes turned into not so subtle shaming. My silence is always noticed by the teacher, and rarely by my fellow classmates. Occasionally, a teacher will ask me about it, perhaps by engaging me after class to be sure I know what Namaste means. If I respond that I do, and they follow up, I will explain.

I’m a word nerd. I love language. And it would be a lessening of Namaste itself for me to toss it about. It is a sacred and true thing, and not for every moment.  The truth is that at the end of a yoga class, I’m not there. I know for some, yoga is church. They probably really are in that place of deep connection.  But I’m not. And I won’t cheapen the word to fulfill a social expectation.

As a result, I’ve cancelled my CorePower membership for good. I seek better yoga. And no. I will not say Namaste at the end of class without cause.

My Struggle with Community

There is a long running argument in my head about the merits of communal spiritual practice and the value I put on individual practice and exploration. Broadly, this argument is about all the things I have to give up or moderate in community versus the knowledge that I can't live happily without some form of community. I'm often struck by how frequently I recoil at the thought of community when it’s in front of me, and how often in the places in which I’ve overcome that moment of fear, I’m fed by the resulting moment of community.

I’m someone who is famous among friends for saying “I don't participate in group joy.” This was a joking response to a friend but it speaks to a truth about me. I’ve always had trouble trusting community. It’s taken a long time for me to relax and get comfortable in a new community. There is a particular type of vulnerability to true community that scares me. The truth is that these fears feed a part of my skeptical mind that starts to undermine my ability to buy-in to a community.

This skeptical mind has saved me from a few dangerous situations but it has also prevented me from reaching out to people and to my communities in times of need. The part of me that wants to just not engage tells me that i need a perfect match with all the people in my community. They need to think like I do and practice the way I would, or else I won’t fit in or won’t know what to do. But that uniformity has never been the case in the places I’ve found a faith community that supports and feeds me. In fact, I don't think there’s any church denomination or faith group that meets that standard exactly.

The places I’ve found that actually have been healthy have been the opposite -places of diverse thought, background, practice, and experience. In these places, my not knowing is ok and my fitting in doesn't rely on such shallow things as uniformity. I’m still learning every day, this part of my life has consistently been a challenge and I don't think that will change.

As I've gotten older I’ve realized how much I personally rely on having “colleagues” to do things with. People I respect keep me motivated and happy while I do the hard things. I wouldn't get up early to work out if I didn't go with people from work. I know I am capable of that on my own and know I love to start the day with some exercise. But I just don't set the pattern without the community around me to support me and hold me accountable.

Where this holds with my faith life is in the people around me who have taken the time to listen and try to understand my theology instead of convince me of theirs. These people have been in the places where I can grow. When I do need support, they can actually help because they know how I think and what will help me in the moment. And when I need to be held accountable, they’re actually using language and making points that matter to me, not just throwing out some boilerplate critique and try to take advantage of the situation to challenge my beliefs or morals. That matters -being known. We are known in community. Fully.

Getting to Know the Climate Apocalypse 101: Scarcity & Abundance

In the ancient times of the Hebrew people, the Pharaoh of Egypt was disturbed by a dream. In his dream, 7 fat and lush cows were wholly consumed by skinny, scrawny cows but the lean cows did not change. It was as if they had eaten nothing. The Pharaoh called for Joseph to interpret his dream. Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, grandson of Isaac, was also an alien to Egypt, a foreigner. Joseph was a man of the Hebrew people and read the dream for the Pharaoh, perceiving God’s message. The 7 good cows are a time of growth and abundance, of heavy harvests and abundant water. The 7 bad cows are the following time of famine and scarcity. During the time of the good cows, we must save for the time of famine, when we must spend.

This is the counter-intuitive model of God, the way in which God calls us to be different. And the Pharaoh believed and responded. Great stores were made from abundant harvests and when the famines came, food was there to be dispersed. This intervention saved people throughout the land, and in fact fed Joseph’s own family towards the end of the Egyptian famine. But what a temptation it must have been to eat well in the days of heavy harvest, and to horde whatever could be found in times of little.

During the times of abundance and great wealth, stores and savings must be made. Reserves and reclamations must happen, for famine is next. In the time of scarcity and hunger, we must spend, disperse, and be generous in our support and care of our neighbor, the other. This is the will of God, the way of faith.

But here’s the hard truth in front of me now. THIS is our time of plenty, of heavy harvest and abundant water. Now. The next decade are our good cow years. This is the time to create the new systems for times of little. This is the time to craft reserves and build the relationships that will carry us through the famine. This is the time to find routes of synergy and leverage, to break apart the heresy of the zero-sum game.

The zero-sum game is the concept that within a system, there is a finite amount of X to be distributed and dispersed according to principles of effect. It’s the balanced budget. On a practical level, the zero-sum game breaks down easily, yet is persistent as a go-to rational for fear and hording-based action.

Almost nothing is truly discreet within a system like this. For a zero-sum game to even be a construct requires some level of unrealistic isolation which is impossible in real life. Life is messy. Systems are permeable, and mitigating factors can never really be corralled. 

So stop trying to make it even. Stop trying to rationalize your hording and selfishness as responsible caring for your own. Find ways to live into a vision of abundance, and adopt deep patterns of generous giving and creative restoration. The fear of scarcity has a clawing effect on the soul, and will eat away at all joy. But as we move into times of chaos and a little bit of the unknown, carry this time of abundance and grace with you.  Peace.

Rev. Jessica Abell, Prophet of the Apocalypse

Spiritual practice: The Role of Ritual in Faith Transition

I’m new to this blogging thing and thought I would use these first three posts to talk about the mind, body, and spirit. I find most Traditions tend to have an emphasis on one of these. To me all three have to be treated with respect and held in equal value. This third post is about my process for reaching my spirit and how I use it.

This will be the hardest post I’ve written yet. Its easier for me to talk about the mind and the body than the spirit. Part of that is how intertwined the three are. Part of this is that as I mentioned in the last two posts, I rely heavily on the mind and body to connect to my spirit. I will take this post to talk about how i individually practice my spirituality. In my next post I’ll talk about my spiritual expression in community and what the value of each are.

I find that it takes an honest reflection of the union between my mind and body to even reach my soul. This means for me to get the most out of a moment of deep spiritual connection, my body and mind both need to be aligned. This manifests for me as a focus on small rituals, things throughout a service or practice that are repeated. I use something like standing for song or prayer as a chance to put my mind and body to work together to accomplish an intentionally set goal. To stand slowly or sit with all my weight, even the whole way down. The key to this has been to keep these things simple and small so I'm not overtaxing my body or brain. Selecting something that keeps my mind and body together allows me to let them support each other so that they can both let go of some of the pressures they each bear. These little things help me to stay engaged and to come into a space of the spirit.

I should say that outside of my work with congregations, I rarely attend any type of spiritual gathering. My spiritual interaction is mostly done on my own and the most common way for me to formally engage my spirit is through a meditative prayer ritual. It changes slightly every time. But I often start by finding music. I’m not much of a musician and don’t find playing music to be as revelatory as some do. But music is important to help me find rhythm in my meditation and to change the way my mind is working as I enter the prayer time.

The next thing I do is pick a spot on the floor, usually in the middle of the space. For me the process of setting and unsetting the space is a major part of my practice. At this point I usually start the music and gather a candle and lighter and I may reduce the lighting in the room. From here, I like to do every step as slowly as possible. This helps me break myself of the racing thoughts of the modern world and slow my being down.

From the edge of the space I walk to a point I picked earlier. Once I'm there, I slowly sit down on that point and place the candle in front of me. I light the candle and maybe incense, and begin a simple seated meditation. When I feel im ready to pray, I either do some form of spoken prayer or more often do a movement prayer such as a sequence from my martial arts practice. Once this has run its course, I return to my seated meditation and slowly begin undoing all the set up I did. This time, trying to be even slower then when I set the space.

For me, trying to focus on ritual and responsiveness at the same time is what has helped to feed me in my individual spiritual life. Small things like this are the only ways that I’ve been able to choose the time and place to interact with my spirit. Small spiritual joys happen every day but these alone haven’t been enough to feed me completely, nor has the life of congregational christanity. This makeshift ritual is one of the ways I’ve found to feed myself spiritually.

There is a right way to interact with your spirit but your right way and my right way are different ways. Please don’t think this is some kind of prescription. This is what has worked for me. I so rarely run into any real conversation about individual spiritual expression that I wanted to share this thought and maybe spur a dialog.

Ian Pirkey

Getting to Know the Climate Apocalypse 101: Grief & Lament

The role of loss in climate work

 Recently, I was a panelist for a group of faith leaders from Together Colorado interested in addressing care for creation and public policy.  Each of us on the panel was to address our own eco-theology, and our thoughts specific to being a person of faith working in the public sphere. I found myself speaking about the call to hold spaces of grief, and to name the true and hard things. I said that one of my tasks as a clergyperson has been to name that the old is passing away, and that we are called to live differently. 

After the panel presentations, we moved into smaller groups to discuss how we were moved, what resonated, and where we wanted to go. My own small group articulated a vision of hospice and midwifery, of endings and new beginnings, based in love and sanctuary and abundance. Only when we face with open eyes the endings, and grieve, can we also birth anew, and celebrate.

What is old is passing away. Species are becoming extinct and rainforests irrevocable lost weekly now. Portions of the ice making up Greenland melted 70 years early last month. If your hope about the environment rests in what was, in what is passing away before us, your heart will be broken. Franciscan theologian Mary McGann says that we are afraid to fall in love with the earth because we are afraid of having our hearts broken. And I get that. I do.

But we need not be afraid. There is new life in the endings, and only by facing the grief and lament can we move into a new vision of abundance and green sanctuary. We all carry varying images and visions for what could be. As a Christian, mine is deeply intertwined with the patterns of death and life, endings and resurrections. 

 But for us all to face the Climate Apocalypse with grace and love, and resilience, we must also face the grief, and lament. And know that this too is holy. We must discover what it means to care for this earth, and all of Creation, and how we as people of faith move and act together in a hope based in truth and solidarity.

 Rev. Jessica Abell, Prophet of the Apocalypse

Embodiment: The Role of the Body in Faith Transition

I’m new to this blogging thing and thought I would use these first three posts to talk about the mind, body, and spirit. I find most Traditions tend to have an emphasis on one of these. To me all three have to be treated with respect and held in equal value. This second post is about my process for the body and how I use it.

I mentioned my connection with the world of martial arts in my last post. This one will pull heavily from that experience as well because my journey around embodiment and my physical being has been so intertwined with my journey through martial arts.

The world of martial arts, especially the secular one, is driven by a connection to the physical. That much is probably obvious. What took me longer to figure out was realizing what the physical practice was doing for my soul. What was less obvious is the depth of the connection between meditation or physical discipline and my spirit. I found a connection between my spirit and the world of our aches and pains, of our urgings and our joy. Learning to read and trust my body has been the primary expression of this piece of my spiritual life.

My journey was spurred by an instructor I had who was dedicated to developing her students as people, not just as martial artists. She would talk a lot about how her body would tell her something was wrong long before her mind or soul could react to the world. She strove to teach us trust in ourselves and belief in our ability to change the world. This idea became a building block in my embodiment practice, and how I interacted with my own body.

It was in that gym with other fighters that I learned how to trust my body as I trust my mind and my spirit. There I learned how to read whether the  impulse running through me was insight or vengeance.

It was in the heat of competition that I learned to rely on all the things I was taught, to rely on the things my body could do.  But most importantly, I learned that my body could tell me things that my mind had no time or no information to address. I learned to rely on that intuition. I learned that my body is always communicating with me. Over time, I’ve started to learn the language of my body -the way it tells me I’m getting upset, the way it tells me I should be aware of someone because they might be trouble, or the way it tells me that someone is worth trusting in that moment when everything could change.

My experience ran counter to what so often in strict faith environments is the portrayal of the body: the enemy, the thing to deny in order to be holy. It is representative of sin and indulgence. But this is only one side of what the body is capable of. Without an understanding of what the place of the physical in the Holy is, we can never live life completely.

We are so often told that we need to shutdown the yearnings and whims of the body, that it can’t be trusted and that the best thing to do is to suffer in silence. Perhaps one may talk to the pastor.

In my experience of more relaxed faith communities, the narrative is different in many ways. It is often closer to a healthy relationship with embodiment. However, there is still a hovering cloud that keeps people away from the topics of sex, adiction, and intuition. It’s been my experience that this can lead to equally dangerous situations.

I believe that the most direct way that the Almighty or the Unknowable communicates with me is physically. Directly through my physical sense and perception. In my life, I have grown to rely on a physical intuition, that I feel is fed by both my mind and soul. It is an intuition honed and developed by my time in martial arts but applied everywhere. This intuition is almost entirely derived from a practice of monitoring my own physical state. As my body shifts and changes, I try my best to monitor myself and to look for things that I’ve learned are precursors to or warnings of trouble.

In fact, no healthy spiritual life can exist without addressing the questions of embodiment and what to do with these wonderfully imperfect vessels we are all moving through this life with. Yet in all my time walking with different faiths, this fear of any conversation about the body’s connection to the holly has been prevalent.

I can’t express the value that learning to interact with my intuition has added to my life. Just as with the internal voice I spoke about last week, this understanding has provided me with a feeling of clarity in the moments I’ve been most lost. This does not mean that this has always lead me to the best possible outcome or that I’ve always made good decisions.

There is something to the conservative warnings about the dangers of following impulse to destruction. The truth is that only by exploring can you know the difference between the trap of self indulgence and the freedom of self reliance. The lack of an understanding of this distinction is the biggest problem I see in people’s lives when things are out of whack with their physical being. People will stay in unhealthy situations or overindulge themselves when no one is looking. Avoiding these conversations about what it means to be a physical being in this world always leads to trouble.

The physical is an unavoidable piece of what it is to be a spiritual being. We need to talk about sex and talk about addictions and about our yearnings, our abuses as well our exultations. Without an understanding of these things I wasn’t able to find my spirit; it is the body that links me to my spirit. The intuition is simply the easiest way to reach the Holy and feel it speaking back. It’s been through the physical that I often begin to feel the joy of true spiritual connection.

Physicality is connected to our whole lives -ignoring that serves no one.

Ian Pirkey

Getting to Know the Climate Apocalypse 101

I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Joss Whedon television program that aired over the turn of this century, from 1997 to 2003, generally on Tuesday nights. Facing a weekly “Big Bad” and the regular threat of the end of the world, Buffy and her team of friends and colleagues became well acquainted with crisis. “It’s Tuesday? Must be the apocalypse” was a common sentiment expressed. Perhaps my love of this fierce woman and her fight also set within me a comfort with Apocalypse. Something this show did well was to tell stories in which the endings and changes often included death, and yet always held a kernel of new life.

Nonetheless, grief and lament are real and active, and are of course part of the fear that holds at bay our requirement to face the Climate Apocalypse. Several years ago, I wrote a piece for an online journal that I’d intended to frame after the deep laments of the psalms. I titled it “God Has Left Creation” but the editor found that too stark, too severe. It is published under the title “Has God Left Creation?” And no, I do not believe God HAS left Creation. I believe that is impossible. But I certainly know that we who grieve the loss of so many things, and who grieve the death and pain to come, and search for hope and new life must also cry out. We must lament. For the curtain is being torn, much is being revealed, and all things will change.

“Marriage as Apocalypse” was my sermon title at the first same-gender wedding in the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. The women marrying that day were good friends, and had been a couple for many years at that point, over 20. And yet I contended that the marriage itself, the new thing being entered into, WOULD bring apocalypse -in Greek, apocalypse simply means revelation, an unveiling.

Radical change due to climate shifts is imminent, and has in fact been happening for some time. Ask the residents of The Maldives.

Fires, floods, super-storms, tornadoes, bomb-cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes and eruptions have already become more common –and all of this will only increase in frequency and scope. Climate Apocalypse is real, and what is up to us now is how we respond. Do we know who we are and who we want to be?  

I suppose that I liken this to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil narrative in the beginning of Genesis. I’ve never been comfortable with the framing of that as the FALL OF HUMANITY INTO SIN, but rather the choice to know. To know you are naked. To know you are hungry. To know you do not know. The choice to leave paradise. The choice to make, to create.

And so perhaps the Apocalypse we enter into now is like that as well.

A chance to choose. A choice in how to live.

Because something that Buffy taught me is that Apocalypse can only be faced with open eyes, in community and with love.

Rev. Jessica Abell, Prophet of the Apocalypse

Philosophy: The Role of the Mind in Faith Transition

I’m new to this blogging thing and thought I would use these first three posts to talk about the mind, body, and spirit. I find most Traditions tend to have an emphasis on one of these. To me all three have to be treated with respect and held in equal value. This first post is about my process for the mind and why I use it.

Throughout all of my transitions, I've had relationships that I deeply value with people from different worlds. The martial arts world has been one of the most important to me, and where I have many friends. It was in that world that I really experienced the influence of philosophy on people's daily lives and people's spiritual lives.

In my portion of the martial arts world, most of the influences came from a secular or even atheist perspective. In order to be authentic and maintain those relationships, I listened for the language of the philosophy around me. I learned how philosophy helped to hone and guide people who didn’t have an overt spiritual life. This was interesting to me so I continued to explore what philosophy had to offer. Interestingly I’ve found that philosophy gave me something totally different then it seemed to give the people around me.

Most importantly, I found a language in philosophy for the ‘mind’ portion of the mind-body-spirit trinity. This allowed me to speak with people in their language and allowed me access to a whole new set of wisdom that I never would have had if I hadn't explored what philosophy had to offer. These sources of wisdom have transformed how I interact with my mind, my body, and my spirit. Having this language gave me words and processes to talk about some of the wounds and traps of the mind that come up when untangling the mess of a spiritual transition.

The practice and application of philosophy is a messy and painful thing. It involves standing your ground in argument even when you’re not going to win. It means examining and re-examining the essential moral and spiritual questions of the world from the lens purely of the mind. This process didn't end with me getting answers the way I thought it would. Rather it taught me that every philosophy or way of living has its own set of problematic and down right wrong answers.

This isn't the lesson that most fear, the one that breeds contempt, arbitrary behavior or nihilism. Instead it taught me that when I heard talk of the indescribable or the incomprehensible, the great mysteries of life, these are actually questions the mind cannot answer. They are questions for the body and the spirit. I’ve argued till the sun came up about the nature of will or the existence of good and evil. None of these conversations came to any sort of meaningful conclusion that didn’t involve a great deal of faith and assumption. It's these relationships that have helped me figure out that the philosophy I’ve built for myself is just one lens through which I interpret and interact with the world. When I recognized that this way would never answer my questions alone, I was able to put it into my tool kit instead of making it my life. After all the time arguing, I had learned where my mind goes and how it likes to interact with the rest of my being.

More importantly, it helped me to know where my mind and logic can be applied to my life and where that simply won’t be enough to feed me. This shift has given me a consistent and reliable voice to the mind in my life. This has given me a place to check in, a lens to look at the things I’m doing and experiencing. This view will tell me if things are way out of whack. As long as I don't mistake that voice for the end-all be-all of my decision making and experience, then it can serve to free me up in moments of absolute chaos. I have a deeply held and explored “logical” voice for any situation, a voice that I can trust as an honest expression of one of the parts of my being, and this allows me to focus on how whatever is happening is affecting my body and spirit. This voice of the mind is part of a larger picture. Philosophy can be one of the rocks to building a fulfilling life alongside the physical and the spiritual beings in all of us.

Ian Pirkey