Shouting About Beautiful Art
Sundays are for sharing and shouting – that’s the point of these shout-outs – I want to share what I found to be particularly fascinating, beautiful, and shout-worthy online this past week…
1. This Song: Empty Me Out by Liz Vice.
2. This post: The Sanitized Stories We Tell by Sarah Bessey. Here’s my favorite line(s): “I feel like we give out gold stars to people who get over things quickly. And like any former evangelical over-achiever I wanted my gold star.
We want people to heal on a timeline. Yes, yes, that’s terrible but aren’t you over it yet?
It makes me wonder how much of my trauma or sin or grief or devastation I have not dealt with yet. I wonder about my miscarriages. I wonder about my damaged body image from years of… continue reading HERE
3. This post: What Do You Believe? by John Blase.
Every year at the Great Big Gathering of the Righteous the young wannabes would stand so tall before the assembled to be asked the all-important what-do-you-believe-about questions in order to determine their fitness for the furtherance of the faith. What-do-you-believe-about women preachers? What-do-you-believe-about gays? What-do-you-believe-about tongues and healing? What-do-you-believe-about the just war? For years at the Great Big Gathering of the Righteous an old rubbled-hearted pastor in his out of fashion rags would…continue reading HERE
I am a husband, father, pastor, leader & reader. I love God, love people & love life.
Sarah Bessey nails it again. I just finished reading her new book (coming out in November) and the chapter on lament was one of the best.
In general, I think the body of Christ sucks at lament, at listening, at incarnational living. I know I’m not good at it. When people want to share their past, or even sometimes present pain I get uncomfortable and impatient. I make judgments and offer quick fixes and spiritual platitudes. I think the reason is that I am not comfortable sharing my own pain. Don’t bother me with yours, I can’t deal with my own.
In her book, Sarah (I can call her Sarah, right? I feel like she’s a friend…) talks about what she calls, Somewheres. Somewheres are the people you can go to when you need somewhere to process grief or anger or pain. She says if we don’t have a Somewhere, we either process everywhere or nowhere. Neither of those last two are healing options.
Praying that I can become a better, Somewhere.
Wow- I love what you wrote Vicki Judd.
I’m tucking that away.
“In general, I think the body of Christ sucks at lament, at listening, at incarnational living.” This is great!
So much richness and beauty here … the kind of beauty that flashes and pulsates and glows, that hits my sternum with truth that demands to be heard. Many good lines and phrases here but my fave is “an old rubbled-hearted pastor”. There’s such a lot packed into that description, in a way that can hardly if at all be articulated. Thanks for finding the deep-seated rubies.