I am a mid-life mom, lawyer, creative, and person of faith. I am passionate about justice, art, and loving the people around me with all my heart. I have been married for 29 years this year to a man I fall more in love with each year, and I have three amazing, loving, talented, and beloved children.
My journey began in my large biological family, as the oldest of seven siblings. My parents raised us in a conservative Christian movement that I now understand is a cult. As a result, I felt a lot of certainty about my beliefs and my place in the world. I also experienced significant anxiety, fear, and an inability to relate to people outside my worldview. We were “us” and everyone else was “them.”
In college, some of my friends teased me for some of what they thought were more extreme views and understandings, like when I sang to them a children’s song called “Pigs don’t live in houses,” written to encourage children to be “godly” by keeping their rooms clean. Until they challenged that view, it seemed “normal” to me. After college, when I worked as a Christian minister for several years, I felt proud that I was able to “hold the line.” It was easier for me to comply with religious ideas and rules because none were as strict or demanding as what I experienced growing up.
Growing up, I participated in “mission work,” volunteering my time in other parts of the country to support similar churches and do “outreach” into the communities around them. Twice, we visited a small midwestern city and put together a vacation bible school in a poor urban neighborhood. I remember enjoying painting and construction work as well as time spent with neighborhood children. The children were “poor.” I remember feeling so sorry for them, having no context for the rest of their lives and believing that they needed to be “saved,” if not from their situation, at least to the form of salvation I understood—at least they would go to heaven. We spent no time caring for their physical needs, but we taught them that they needed to say the prayer so that they didn’t go to hell. One song called the “Countdown” said it this way:
10 and 9, 8 and 7 six and five and four
call upon the savior while you may
3 and 2 coming through the clouds in bright array
the countdown’s getting closer every day.
In college, it only made sense to me to be a part of mission work. So, I enrolled in the summer urban ministry fellowship offered by the campus ministry. There, I began to learn that faith could be so much bigger. I attended a black church. I connected with the worship and teaching in a way that I never connected in my home church growing up. The sermons in my home church were formulaic, comprised of three points, usually alliterative, so that it was easy to take notes. One example I remember was, “Savior, Salvation, Sanctification.” I remember my dad quizzing us on whether we remembered the three points over Sunday dinner.
The only application of these sermons related to our personal prayer lives and actions. Every sermon emphasized the need to know that we were “saved.” In high school, our family began attending a very small church, approximately 30-35 members. Every Sunday, the pastor would have us bow our heads and close our eyes at the end of the service. Then, he would ask people to raise their hands if they wanted to be “saved.” I opened my eyes and looked around. The only people in the room were members of the church, most of whom had belonged to this same small church for decades. I was intrigued—who would raise their hand this Sunday? Was someone really spending all of this time at church every week without fully committing? No one ever raised their hand, but, in perfect style, the pastor said “yes, I see that hand,” a couple of times. This technique was meant to encourage anyone who needed to raise their hand but was afraid to be the only person to go ahead and raise their hand, they were not alone. In this situation, however, it became a bizarre exercise where everyone later raised their heads and looked around to see which of them must have finally accepted Jesus into their hearts and become “saved.”
Sermons in the black church I attended were personal, meaningful, and relevant, and so was the worship.
Instead of the triumphal “Onward Christian Soldiers,” we sang songs like “I Need You To Survive.”
Time in the black church opened my eyes to the different ways that theology shapes our understanding not only of God but of our place in the world. The contrast between the exodus theology and the triumphal white nationalist theology of my upbringing could not have been further apart. I felt more at home in services in the black churches we attended, as a woman and as a person who needed help from God to sustain me rather than provide me with power to conquer my days.
I have been meaning to start a blog for years but am only now making my first halting start at putting my thoughts into the world. I hope that this will be a journey of adventure and discovery, and I would love for you to join me.