Category Archives: Music

Death’s Frequent Visits and the Spirit Which Remains

28 Wednesday Dec 2016

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carrie_fisher_2013_cropped_retouched“2016 has been a terrible year,” I’ve heard repeatedly since January.  First, it was David Bowie, quickly followed by Alan Rickman.  Over the year shocking and unexpected announcements were made about the deaths of Prince, Mohammad Ali and Gene Wilder.

We can’t forget the many people who had smaller roles in our seventies/eighties pop culture: George Gaines from Punky Brewster and Police Academy, George Kennedy from The Naked Gun movies, James Noble from Benson, Ron Glass and Abe Vigoda from Barney Miller, and the Pat Harrington from One Day at a Time.  Creators like Garry Marshall who gave us Happy Days and Pretty Woman aren’t here anymore. Even music got a little quieter when Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire as well as Glen Frey from The Eagles died.

And then this month happened.

Our beloved 80’s dad Alan Thicke tragically and suddenly passed due to a malfunctioning aorta.  Then came Carrie Fisher’s heart attack on an airplane.  They said she was stable… so she should be ok, right?  Before we heard any more on her condition, George Michael died on Christmas Day.  Two days later, Fisher died.

For my fellow Generation X-ers, our entire childhood is fading fast before us.  Two thousand sixteen reminded us of this.

george_michael_02_bisThe Grim Reaper’s frequent visits happen occasionally.  In my personal life, I remember the uncomfortable year of 1994.  First, my grandma died of metastatic breast cancer.  Then my grandfather had a massive stroke.  Finally, my grandfather’s brother died from a sudden heart attack in the doctor’s office.  My soul felt a bit worn by the end of the year – especially after a breakup of a long term relationship in October.

Grief is the greatest experience I remember from that year.  It’s amazing how so much grief will cloud one specific year of your life.

alan_rickman_after_seminar_28329As a pastor, I see how death comes in waves.  There are times when we have three funerals in one week.  Or there are times when our congregations seem like they’ve lost so many people in one year.  All Saint’s Sunday is filled with names of our recently deceased read aloud.  I’ve seen this happen in two specific years of my ministry so far: 2010 and 2015.

These are people who we knew and with whom we spoke and with whom I worked.  This still makes me why we experience so much grief when a celebrity dies.

We’ve never really knew them – we think to ourselves.  But their contribution to the soundtracks and movies of our lives leads us to consider them a close part of who we are and our life experiences.  Remember the middle school sleepovers and singing Prince songs at 1a.m…. or how many times we watched Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves during the summer of 1991 – – right after graduating high school.  Or how many Star Wars movies with Carrie Fisher did we see on the big screen.  The first I watched at the theaters was Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.  Leia is the one who rescues her beloved and then strangles her captor after she is enslaved.  Fisher brought to life one of the strongest females on screen – transforming from a strong-willed princess to a general in charge of the continuing rebellion.

prince_at_coachella_001They are part of our stories, and we are forever grateful for their existence and contributions.  We are grateful for their vulnerability in art.

Which reminds me of the lines in the play Our Town.  After the main female protagonist Emily dies from childbirth, she yearns to experience life once again.  She experiences a semi-ordinary day in her life – giving her the realization that she really didn’t experience life while she ways living it.  Emily says to the state manager narrator of the story: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it… every, every minute?  The Stage Manager replies “No.  Saints and poets maybe… they do some.”

David.  Alan. Gene. Maurice. Prince. Alan. George. Carrie.  You felt all of  the feelings.  Your experience of emotions influenced your craft in generous and ingenious ways.  You were the saints and poets that were mentioned by the Stage Manager in Our Town.  You experienced the range of emotions – even to the point when it affected your health and well-being.  And you are gone today.  But your experiences remain with you forever on that side of heaven where all of you abide.  Fortunately, your gifts remain with us forever.

Thank you for your gifts, your risks, your authenticity.  Thank you for being you.

Death cannot take you fully away from us because your lasting contributions are still here. This is what everyday resurrection is about.  2016 did not win.

*****

(I missed many other artists and leaders who passed this year as well and who contributed so much.  For a full list of notable people who died in 2016, see this article.)

 

Faithful Badassery

29 Saturday Oct 2016

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faithful-badasseryAccording to Google, the word “badass” is defined as “a tough, uncompromising, or intimidating person” and “a formidably impressive person.”

I have avoided using the word as it hints at some vulgarity.  When you are a leader in the community and church, you look to separate yourself from bad words as to keep a clean image in the eyes of others.

And yet, that’s not exactly what Jesus did…

From experience I can tell you that being a good girl goes only so far.  While being a good girl most of the time is fine, only being a good girl results in people walking all over you and God’s call going mostly unanswered.

Being a good girl keeps a person in two dimension mode, forgetting that adventures are beyond her comfort zone, and that God is sometimes drawing us to those new places.

As time goes on in life and we experience how the world really works.  Life and its brokenness begin to bang up our good girl souls.  The good girl begins to be replaced with something a bit more edgy.  Unfortunately, this loss of innocence happens with all of us.  What we are called to realize is that our scars and screams actually work to God’s and our benefit. You know when the remnants of the good girl need to shine and when the good girl needs to have a seat while the faithful badass takes her place.

The faithful badass is powered by the Holy Spirit.  Just like the lyrics to Pink’s song “Raise Your Glass” we must “raise our glass when we are wrong in all the right ways.”  We stand with the faithful badasses in every age as they walked with God.  We see the faithful badass in the Bible when Vashti says no to Ahasuerus, when Esther stands up for the Jewish people, and when Ruth decides to stay with her mother-in-law in her deepest grief.  We see this faithful badassery when Hagar does everything she can to survive with her son Ishmael, when Tamar fools Judah into giving her offspring, when the daughters of Zelophehad fight for their inheritance, and when Jephthah’s daughter negotiates time to fully live before her slaughter.  And we see many faithful badasses in the women who have lived since the life of Jesus – from Thecla who refused to get married and, instead, evangelized the good news to Joan of Arc who managed to lead in ways young women were not allowed to lead during her time.

Faithful badassery comes from our savior Jesus the Christ when he healed on the Sabbath, ate with the undesirables and turned the tables over when people were unjustly marketing goods in the Temple.

This faithful badassery has been woven throughout all spaces and times.  When I see caregivers spending each pellet of energy ensuring their loved ones are well, I see this faithful badassery.  When I see people of color or women marching because they do not feel that others believe their lives or bodies matter, I see faithful badassery.  When I see men and women speaking out against fraud or sexual assault, risking their own reputation in the use of their voices, I see faithful badassery.

All faithful badassery comes directly from the Holy Spirit.  Without this Spirit of God, we could not exit our comfort zones, risk the death of our bodies or souls, or radically care for one another.

As a leader in the Christian faith, I believe we should claim faithful badassery as part of who we are because it absolutely was a part of who Jesus was and who the Christ is that resides with us today.  It was a part of the lives of God’s children throughout history and it will be a part of the faithful until the end of time.

So when we place our feet on the ground each morning, will we ask ourselves “How will I be a faithful badass today?”

The Grace Project

22 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Life, Music, Pop, Pop Culture, Single in the Sanctuary

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image.jpgI give no grace to myself.

There.  I said it.  It’s been my reality for the 43 years I’ve been alive.  I’ve apologized millions of times for my existence.  My competitive nature does not play well with my graceless attitude because I compare myself with others and then give myself a tough time when I haven’t achieved the same.  I blame myself for not marrying in my twenties or thirties.  I blame myself for not having children or being at the top of my career.  I blame myself for my weight and all of my health issues (most of which I can not control).  I blame myself for the times when I fell short of my goals and dreams.

I blame myself when I forget something relatively small because I forget that I am human.

Because I am so hard on myself, I tend to really rob myself of grace when others give me a tough time about mistakes.  For some reason, ever since I was young, I believed that I needed to be my own worse critic, so when someone else is tougher on me than I am on myself, I raise my level of self-criticism.

I forget that my faith is one that is all about grace.  I neglect to acknowledge that God is pouring copious amounts of grace upon me even as I rob myself of the same. While I am generous in grace with others – mostly because that is the way I would want to be treated – I can not gift the same to myself.

Technically, living in my own critical, graceless head is hell because there is a wall between me and God’s mercy. If hell exists, it can’t be any worse than this, I now think to myself.

There have been times in my past when I’ve noticed that my soul is either filled with rage against me or completely empty.  My soul has lacked love from me, and now is the time to work on filling up that tank with something positive, not the negative it has become accustomed to.

So today I open myself up to the world of my greatest shortcoming: lacking self-grace.  Today, I move towards loving myself, knowing that I will continue to be human and continue to make mistakes.  And sometimes, what I will do will hurt someone else – not because I want it to, but because we all overlook others.  But now when I make those errors, it’s my call to begin the process of forgiveness, to extend reconciliation not only to neighbor but to self.

This new project of mine can be best summed up in the words of Florence + The Machine’s song “Shake It Out”:

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart

Dear graceless heart, it’s time for you to go.  It’s time to heal from your scars.  It’s time to embrace grace as a way of living.

Prince, Tabitha, and That Which Ceases to Die

22 Friday Apr 2016

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imageDearly Beloved… We are called today to get through this thing called life…

In the midst of our difficult days and questions floating through our heads, we cringed yesterday afternoon when hearing that one who brought the tunes to our childhood and early adult years ceased to be.

No more concerts.  No more physical presence among us.  No longer here.

I remember the soundtrack of my life.  I remember when the ever-so-edgy “Darling Nikki” was sung at the top of my classmates voices during a 1984 slumber party.  I probably didn’t know very much about its meaning – I was only 12 – but it was solidly embedded in my culture.

I remember when the words of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2U” comforted me the night of my first real breakup, hearing the soothing melody ring out from Sinead’s voice.

I remember our pom pon routine to the latter part of “Batdance” – the routine we performed on the night I started dating my college boyfriend.  And I remember that Arms of Orion was really my favorite tune of his Batman soundtrack.

I remember riding over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge as the song “Little Red Corvette” blasted from the tapedeck during the great spring break of 1993.  And when I hear that song, I think of my friend who is no longer alive.

I remember the moment in the past year or so when I realized more years had passed since year 1999 than existed between 1984 (the year the song was written) and the actual 1999.  And I remember really, really listening to the lyrics of 1999, knowing how frightened I was in the mid-1980’s of the world exploding one day because of nuclear weapons.

It is with great sadness that Prince is no longer alive.

It is with great joy that Prince is still alive.

Here’s what the resurrection stories of all sorts – especially the story of Tabitha in Acts 9 – reminds us: that even after our physical death, our gifts don’t die. While the narrative includes a physical resuscitation of Tabitha, the real miracle was that she was alive before her resurrection through her talents.   Like the women surrounding the body of Tabitha at her wake celebrating her gifts and showing off her arts, we have spent the past 24 hours sharing tune after tune of Prince’s most meaningful tunes.  We have shared stories passed on to us of what his music meant in our greatest and worst moments of our lives.  We have mentioned the narratives we heard about the great things he had done under the radar.

Through the great resurrection narrative of Jesus the Christ, resurrection happens.  Songs and stories and shared talents keep people alive.

And that is why Prince remains with us forever.

 

 

Joey and the Ones Who Teach Us How to Die

05 Saturday Mar 2016

Posted by in Life, Music, Pop, Pop Culture

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joeyandrory

By Burningkarma – via Wikimedia commons

I’ve never been a super-huge fan of country music.  There are a few country artists whose music I enjoy and a few country songs I have on my mp3 player.  So when I started seeing article after article about Joey Feek and her battle with cancer, I was a bit confused to who she was and somewhat understood why I had never heard about her previously.

As the months progressed and more articles about her would pop up in my newsfeed, I would find myself clicking on the news articles about Joey.  The posts would record each step of her dying process.  From her final Christmas to the last days of her life, each article shaped a narrative to sacred to keep silent.

Through these accounts, Joey Feek showed us what true courage in the face of final days looks like.  She showed us what it meant to live fully in the present and show those close to you how much you love and value them.  Joey’s life was one where discomfort and pain didn’t stop her from continuing to live the best she could.  She embraced faith as part of the process.  And, most of all, she was able to be vulnerable by allowing the world to walk with her on the final steps of her journey.

Joey’s legacy will include her music.  But what I believe was greater included her display of bravery and the way she taught us how to die.  Dying is not pretty or glamorous or what’s supposed to happen when you’re 40 years old.  Joey gave us a vivid picture of the ebb and flow of life and how raw and vulnerable it is to walk alongside of someone in the final stages of life.

We thank Joey, her husband Rory and their family for allowing the world to see the scary, authentic, beautiful and awe-ful world of hospice, palliative care, final breaths, last kisses and living fully in the moment.

Who are the people in your life who gave you a beautiful example of what it means to die with dignity, grace and vulnerability?

Tamar’s Sisters

29 Monday Feb 2016

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Photo from justjared.com

Did you see Tamar’s sisters tonight on the Oscars?

Did you see how this disgraced daughter of David’s story never died?  It keeps happening.  But it no longer stays silent.

Did you see how her twenty-first century sisters’ stories continue to rise?   The powers that be tried to control them. The powers that be tried to silence all of them.  And like the phoenix rises from the ashes, they remain quiet no more.  They sing.  They write.  Their voice is released from the closed box of shame.

Stop for a moment.  How many of Tamar’s sisters do you know?  How many young women on college campuses or in cars or apartments found their bodies invaded?

We all know someone, even if they’ve never told us their story.  Maybe their too embarrassed.  Maybe they believe that no one will believe them.  Maybe they’ve been told that “it never happened.”  But it did.  It happened.

Tamar’s sisters keep moving.  They keep living in ways that Tamar herself couldn’t.  They learn to love fully.  They find ways to heal – at least down to one remaining scar.

To Tamar and to her sisters: we will believe you.  We will listen.  We will make you feel like your story matters.

And like Tamar, your resilience will rise.

Beautiful performance tonight by Lady Gaga at the 88th Academy Awards ceremony.  Click here to find out more about the It’s On Us initiative to stop sexual assault.

Shake It Off – Jesus style

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

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IMG_5640Originally posted on the SONKA Blog.

Last year, Taylor Swift released the album 1989.  One of the songs on the album, “Shake it Off,” focuses on the ridicule she receives from the public and press. The negativity and rejection piles up for anyone, and through hearing this song, we know that many of us go through rejection and negativity. Swift said regarding the message of the song “I’ve learned a pretty tough lesson that people can say whatever they want about us at any time, and we cannot control that. The only thing we can control is our reaction to that.”

Some of us are very good at shaking off negativity and rejection.  Others of us hold on to the dirt that we’ve collected. Between broken friendships, love relationships, job rejections, and every other type of rejection possible, we hold on to the pain way too long. It affects our self-esteem and our hope for the future. We are too focused on being the best, being perfect, and making others happy that we hold onto negativity well too long.

Jesus got rejected. I’m sure that’s not new to most of us, but sometimes we need to say it out loud. He was rejected when talking about the good news of God’s love. He was rejected when he talked about how we should love our neighbors. He was rejected by those who knew him best as a young child.

When we read the Matthew 10:5-14 text, we see Jesus giving instruction to his crew about how to share the good news. Jesus reminds them that there will be rejection. By telling them to “shake off the dust from (their) feet” he’s telling them to move on, not take this rejection personally or let it affect them deeply. Like Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off,” Jesus is basically reminding them “It’s hard, it’s sad, but shake it off and move on. The dust will weigh us down in ways that won’t allow us move forward, so shake it off.”

There is no doubt that all of us will get rejected in some capacity in our lives.  And some of us will want to take it personally.  But sometimes we need to distance ourselves from the rejection and treat it as disposable as dust.

I believe it helps us to know that even Jesus understood rejection.  He understood the pain that came with having people dislike him, deny him, or try to kill him. Through Christ, God completely understands when we feel low after a rejection. And God knows how difficult it is to shake it off when the rejection is so fresh on our souls.

We may face bullies at school, in the workplace, by friends, or by crushes. We may have been turned down from a job or opportunity that we really wanted. We will undoubtedly fail at something – like a driver’s test or any sort of exam. It can be our nature to want to dwell on that rejection or failure for a long time.

Rejection will hurt, and it will take time to grieve the opportunities and people lost. But when we hold onto them too long or too intensely, it affects our physical and emotional health. We start to lose self-esteem and hope. Sometimes, people do drastic things in that time of pain. And it may be hard to really accept that life will improve.

That’s what shaking the dust off your feet means: accepting that it gets better. There is good right around the corner for all of us.  We each deserve good things to happen, love, and acceptance because all of us are made in God’s image. By shaking the dust off of our feet and our hearts, we embrace the God of new beginnings.

Advent Prayer Day 7 – The Cry of Generation X

07 Sunday Dec 2014

Posted by in Church Life, Current Events, Life, Movies, Music, Pop, Pop Culture, Religion

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imageGod, they called us slackers
And those without direction
And angsty
As if Wynona or Kurt spoke for all of us.
Maybe they did… a little.

We wondered when the world would blow up
Who would send the missiles first-
Us versus them.
There’s still a piece of our souls
That cringe when we hear “war” or “bombs” or “nuclear.”

It’s the end of the world as we know it…
But we couldn’t tell if we felt fine,
Or if we didn’t.  Meh.

Maybe it was melancholy that we became accustomed to.
Maybe we stopped hoping.

And yet, we weren’t slacking
We’re just trying to listen for our call
To know where to go
And embracing meaning in everything we do.

We worked.
We kept moving forward.
Moving through the motions as we waited for life to start
Or end.

We couldn’t be as cool as the generation before
Or the generation after.
We’re the middle child, living in the shadow of our older brother Boomer
And eclipsed by our younger sister Millennial.

We are the generation in the wilderness
Wondering if we’ll make it into the promised land.
From crisis to crisis
Our story is a journey
Never a destination.

Sometimes, God, it was tough to find you
And we lost some sisters and brothers along the way.

And now, as adults,
We only know resilience in despair’s face.
We lament, God, as we may never understand our true purpose
Or accomplish what we had hoped for.

Now in the early evening of our lives,
We wonder if we’ll live the dream
Or continue to move through the motions.

 

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In God’s Eyes

28 Monday Jul 2014

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This post is based on a sermon delivered at St. Paul United Church of Christ on July 27, 2014.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. ~~ 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

It was a cinematic grand romantic gesture that has been spoken about and referred to in pop culture throughout the past 25 years.  In the movie Say Anything, Lloyd Dobler, played by John Cusack, stands outside of his ex-girlfriend’s window at dawn holding a boombox over his head, playing the song “In Your Eyes,” in the attempt to win her back.

The act has been imitated in pop culture again and again.  It’s a very sweet deed.  Maybe a teen or twentysomething would think that this is the greatest act of love, and as a young person, we would expect someone to hold up a boombox outside of our window to win us over.  Maybe at 16, when this movie was released, I would have believed that this was the ultimate act and display of love.

But is this love?  And why do we see this surface love in so many movies and pop culture references?

Let’s move from the grand gesture of standing outside of a window with a boombox overhead to the song that’s playing on that boombox.  A few years before the movie came out, musician Peter Gabriel released the song “In Your Eyes” which was featured in that scene.

The lyrics of the song resound a love that goes deeper into the heart of God, a love that’s more than a grand romantic gesture:

“In your eyes
The light, the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway
To a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution
In your eyes
Of all the fruitless searches

Oh, I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
I want to touch the light
The heat I see in your eyes”

Both this song and today’s scripture are reminders of this complete self that exists in God’s eyes, and the hope to see each other through God’s grace-filled, unconditional loving lens.

Today’s text is one that is often read at weddings.  It was probably read at many of your weddings and if not, you have undoubtedly heard it at a wedding.  Unfortunately, the most important part, at least in my belief, is often left out.  Some people stop reading the text at the point where it says “love never ends.”  To me, the most sacred part follows this.  The text reads: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  I believe this is an extremely important piece of scripture to be read at every wedding.  It’s a great reminder to a couple that you won’t see each other as God sees you all of the time, and it’s something you’ll have to work at over and over again.  In this lifetime, we see God, our neighbors and ourselves through that dimly lit mirror.

Granted, true unconditional love is patient and kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude.  But there is something deeper about this love that we are called to have – not only with our significant other but with all people.  It’s a love we can experience when we use God’s lens in seeing one another.

The second most important piece of this text, again in my belief, is the verse “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”  The love we experience and give will transform over time.  Sure grand romantic gestures are a wonderful and refreshing surprise in a relationship – even in a marriage after 25 or 40 years.  But our understanding of love continues to evolve as we grow and as we continue to set aside our childish ways.  When we are a young person, we think love is the feeling we have when we fall in infatuation the first time.  We want to hold boomboxes over our heads as we proclaim to the world how we feel about this person.  But love is much much more than a feeling.  Our view of love continues to transform from fireworks going off in our hearts to something deeper – a relationship which indicates that we are trying to see the other person from the lens of God’s unconditional love.

The third most significant piece of this text in my view is the verse “It  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  The amount of hope that is in this verse can transform any type of relationship from one that could fall apart to one where possibilities can happen.  Looking through the eyes of God to our loved one, our neighbor, a stranger and our enemy brings about possibilities that we may never thought were possible, including healing and peace.

In our marriages and all sorts of relationships, we’re going to mess up.  We’re going to be our awkward, messy selves.  The question is: will the people who matter see us as God sees us?  Over time, we realize that in our health and in our illnesses, people show us love.  In our deepest grief and in our greatest celebrations, people are around to love us.  Love is greater than the chaos in our lives.  The people who see us in just the slightest way God sees us will stick by us in almost any situation.  They will see a more complete version of ourselves

The reaches of love as refer to by Paul extend to all sorts of relationships.  From that of a married couple to the relationship between Christian brothers and sisters, this love is one that calls for us to look through the lens of God’s eyes, to continue to grow in the way we look at love and to hold on to hope even when relationships seem hurt or broken.

How have you looked at someone through the eyes of God recently?  How did it change your view of them?  How have you looked at your spouse or significant other lately?  What about your children, other family members or friends?  And how about the person you can not stand?  If you were to close your eyes right now and put on your God-glasses, how could your relationships grow stronger?

Yes, God is the God of romantic gestures, of boomboxes overhead as music plays at dawn to woo a lost love.  God is the God who would hold the boombox outside of our window to draw us to Her or Him.  God is the God of weddings, of romantic moments that refresh us and first loves.

And God is the God of dimly lit times in marriages and shadow-filled friendships, of sickness and bad times, in poverty and loss.  God is the creator of hope and endurance in our relationship journeys.  God is the one who helps us see that we are complete in each others eyes.

May we embrace the romantic love of youth and the deep love that we find in the dimly lit spaces.  And may you find the lens of God to see others as God sees all of us.  Amen.

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Veering from the Christian Brand

11 Wednesday Sep 2013

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I’ve never been one to follow the “Christian” brand.

Sure, I’ve read a few of the Left Behind books, seen one or two Kirk Cameron movies and listened to some Michael W. Smith in my time. (I actually still like those Michael W. Smith songs from the early 90’s.)

I never dated on the Christian website, mostly because quite a few of the men want “traditional” women. (Being a female member of the clergy and a feminist, I’m far from traditional.) I stay away from Christian programming because it seems preaching, self-righteous and judgmental.

My primary reason is that I like flawed characters with growing edges. I don’t want to see a character that starts believing in Jesus, and then immediately everything is perfectly resolved. Life doesn’t work that way. My faith is a journey with God. Some days are strong and others are weaker. Just like every other human, I’m flawed – and looking for ways to continue to grow closer to God.

In Christian pop culture, I often see easy resolutions and life in polarities. Good or bad. Clean or unclean. There is no grayscale. There is no flawed Christian who is born again.

And Christian pop culture makes it seem like there’s one Christian theology, one view of salvation, one type of relationship with Jesus. But my beliefs are far from that.

I don’t call God “father” unless I also refer to God as “mother.” I’m not “born again” but I find resurrections in my faith each day. I believe everyone goes to God at death – whether they are Christian, another faith or no faith at all. I believe in a woman’s right to choose and gay marriage.

I don’t follow the typical Christian mold. So why would I follow Christian pop culture that predominantly supports this way of thinking?

You will find me watching shows of flawed clergy (The Vicar of Dibley, Rev., The Book of Daniel). You will find me listening to music with implicit spiritual reference and reflections of the Divine (Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, U2). You will find me viewing movies with challenging theological themes that force each of us to look at Christianity differently (Saved!, Dogma, The Last Temptation of Christ). I am authentically living my faith by looking for the Divine in mainstream, edgy culture rather than crisp clean “Christian” mediums. As I believe God is everywhere, God also abides in the edgiest of situations.

I think that’s where Jesus was too. He could have hung out with the clean people of faith but, instead, hung out with those on the margins – those who society and religion deemed unclean. By recognizing the Jesus who hung out on the margins, I know I am called to shine a light on the Divine in the unlikeliest of places.