Tag: God

Posted in musings

church unity and social media bubbles

Posted on by kristinabean

It’s becoming fairly well known these days that the algorithms used by social media tend to lock us in to an ever-shrinking bubble, where we only see things that already align with our views (unless we purposefully join groups we disagree with to seek out different views). I hadn’t really thought about it much until I logged on to Facebook early this month, after about half a year with almost no social media, and belatedly realized that I hadn’t seen a single puzzle piece or “light it up blue” post for Autism Awareness day. No ableism, no “search for the cure”, no questionable medical advice – nothing.

If I had taken my Facebook feed as an accurate microcosm of the culture around me, I would have thought that everyone had finally started listening to #actuallyautistic voices and started to see autism as just a different way of being human. Obviously, that isn’t the case (living in the real world and reading news from other sites makes this pretty clear) – but it is the snapshot of the world that Facebook filtered out for me.

It was a really enlightening moment for me. This is what happens to people who keep reading articles and liking posts and joining groups that are all on one side of the political spectrum: they see more and more of what they like, and less and less of what they’ve avoided, until they begin to see the whole world filtered through those beliefs – which makes it easier to perceive anyone who doesn’t share those beliefs as ignorant, deluded, or extreme. It happens with “natural wellness” as well, until people who just wanted to incorporate preventative herbal remedies into their lives find themselves surrounded by reasons to avoid vaccines (which are medically tested in large numbers of people) and go on restrictive diets (which are not).

As uncomfortable as it can be to deliberately seek out articles, groups, and people with whom we disagree, I believe it is fundamental to balancing out our own beliefs and perceptions of the world. Even more than that, I think it is essential that those of us who are Christian do this; I don’t see how we can endeavor to create any kind of unity within the church otherwise. The unity that Jesus prayed for before the crucifixion, that Paul beseeched the Philippians to pursue – this cannot exist unless we are all willing to do the hard work of engaging with and listening to those with whom we disagree.

Lately, I’ve been reminding myself that God loves everyone, and that all of God’s creation is fearfully and wonderfully made. That means God loves the autistic person who struggles with social interactions and communication, and God loves the neurotypical parents who wishes their child were normal – without needing to change either of their neurotypes to make them more worthy of God’s love. God loves the black person pushed to the margins of society by systemic injustice, and God loves the white person who has profited from their race – without needing to change either of their skin colors. God loves the woman who has been told all her life that she can’t share her love of God from the pulpit, and God loves the man who has benefited from centuries of misogyny – without needing to change either of their genders.

I’ve been reminding myself that while God will always call us to growth, to increased wisdom and righteousness, and to greater closeness with God, God will not require us to become someone we were not created to be. God may ask us to deny ourselves so that we can love each other better; God will ask us to repent from our sin and become a new creation in Christ; but in all this God is leading us more deeply into our true selves. We may be only shadows of those selves now, but those shadows still show the shape and form of who we will be.

I believe that God does not tell autistic people that they are welcome as soon as they can stop stimming and look God in the eyes. God does not tell black people that they are welcome as soon as they straighten their hair and accept a lower place on the social ladder, or tell refugees that they need a job and a good grasp of English before they can enter God’s kingdom. God does not tell women that they must give up their desire to preach God’s word, or abandon their careers, or ignore their gifts of leadership.

(Following these lines of thought out further, though it leads me into tempestuous cultural waters, I would argue that God does not call gay people to sacrifice their romantic and sexual desires (unless a particular individual is called to celibacy like a straight person might be), nor does God call trans people to deny their gender and obey social expectations based on their sex at birth. God created us – with difference, with diversity, with disability – and all parts of us can reflect God’s image and bring God glory.)

In fact, if I am to fully grasp the scandalous immensity of God’s love, then I have to go one step further. I have to recognize that God does not simply love us in all of our human diversity: God also loves is in all of our human sinfulness. Even as God hates injustice and oppression, God loves the people committing it and wants them also to repent, and make restitution, and be reconciled to God.

My love is not this deep. I want to write people off as hopeless, beyond redemption. I want to take revenge mercilessly for the horrifying oppression and injustice I see – or I want to abandon people to their own ignorance and bigotry and discount their opinions as worthless. It is easier this way: to stay in the safe confines of my own little bubble, on Facebook and even in reality, to assume that my beliefs are right and leave the outside world to its own devices. In the face of these tendencies, what I pray is that I would trust in God’s vengeance, in God’s ability to weave justice and mercy seamlessly together, never weighing one soul as higher in value than another, and clearly seeing all our actions and all our intentions. I pray that when I work for the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth, I would strive to right wrongs and undo injustices and throw off every yoke, as Isaiah and Mary both sing – but that I would also strive to make room for repentance and new beginnings. I pray that I would value a unity that makes space for all God’s created people, in all our stages of growth, as we become more fully ourselves and more deeply God’s, and that I would always listen and love even when I vehemently disagree.

This means that when my pastor says something I disagree with – something that I think perpetuates injustice along gender lines, for example – I can not in good faith simply leave the church and find another. If I care about unity and if I care about love, I have to take that uncomfortable statement as an opportunity to open a discussion about justice and mercy and God’s crazy boundary-destroying love; to listen with love in my own heart to ideas that could hurt me; to remember that no person is so far gone that the mercy of God cannot reach them; and to take the chance that I might be the one whose beliefs are wrong or misinformed.

And it may mean that I need to find some groups on Facebook that I might be uncomfortable in 🙂

Posted in family life, musings, quotes, sqt

{sqt} – some awesome saints, and other thankful things

Posted on by kristinabean

I’m linking up with Kelly at This Ain’t the Lyceum today – head over and read the other quick takes!

  1. Right now, I’m so thankful for the communion of saints and for the wisdom of the church in setting up set days to remember them! I’m thankful for St. Therese of Lisieux, whose feast day was earlier this week, and her reminder to me that all that matters is to love God – and that I can love Him completely and faithfully in each small, tedious, mundane act of service and duty that I do. I’m thankful for her example of perseverance and submission, accepting the waves of life as God brought them and honoring the human authorities over her.
  2. I’m also thankful for St. Francis, who we celebrate today, and his radical yet simple life of faith. How could I not want to learn from and follow in the footsteps of a man who saw and respected the beauty and dignity of all nature without succumbing to the nature-worship of the ancients or the romantic poets, who received visions from God but interpreted them so literally that he may have been autistic and certainly appeared foolish, who embraced that foolishness and transformed it into complete humility, who designed his own way of life and faith yet never broke fellowship with the institution of the Church, who lived in utter poverty and served the least and the forgotten? When a person’s prayers are preserved 700 years after their life and still ring with deep resonance and passion, that is a person I want to emulate and honor, whose prayers I wish to echo.

“I pray, O Lord, that the fiery and sweet strength of Your love may absorb my soul from all things that are under heaven, that I may die for love of Your love as You deigned to die for love of my love.

St. Francis, prayer to obtain divine love
  1. I’m thankful also for the warrior saints – for the angel Michael, who we celebrated on Michaelmas, and for his legendary archetype St. George fighting the dragon. Life can seem so big and demanding and overwhelming to a child, like the dragon loomed large over St. George, but in the saint we find inspiration to fight our dragons, to get up and try again even when we are knocked wounded to the ground, until they are finally slain. Like Michael fighting demons to bring the message of God to Daniel, using his strength and courage and valor to persevere in obedience, so we can summon up those traits (by the grace of God, and by practice and growth) to fight back the temptations to fear, laziness, anger, and any other vice that besets us. We read an illustrated rewriting of Spencer’s version of St. George and the Dragon this year, and it has given both the boys and myself extra motivation to endure in doing good even when it is hard. We know there are dragons; it is good to be reminded that they can be killed.
  1. I’ve been thankful for the weather recently as well! The heat broke and several days of rain blew inland from a hurricane, just a couple weeks after I seeded for the fall garden season, so all the little plants are doing beautifully and the sweet potatoes (which had to be started in the summer) are absolutely thriving – I’m trellising them so the vines don’t take over the garden beds and the vines are at least six feet up the trellis already.
  2. The kids were also so excited about the rain, as it’s such a rare occurrence here and the monsoons were weak this summer. We went on walks all around the neighborhood to enjoy it, Aubade splashing in every puddle, Rondel searching for treasure along the way, and Limerick challenging my strangeness by biking around barefoot in pajama pants and a winter jacket…
  1. There have also been some hard days recently – my moods and autistic sensitivities both oscillate based on a number of factors including my monthly cycle, and irrational guilt plus social anxiety plus hair-trigger sensitivities to certain sounds or touch does not make for a pleasant time. But I am so thankful that Paul understands and supports me through those times. He might not relate to it at all, but he knows it’s a struggle I have and he carries the extra weight of it when I can’t without ever making a big deal about it or drawing attention to himself. He doesn’t get upset when I hide by myself in a curtained side area during church service instead of sitting with him on days when I can’t tolerate the people around me. He makes time for me to rest and then makes sure that it happens when I need it. In short, he is always showing me love.
  2. And finally, I’m thankful for prayer and the Word and a God who draws near to us and longs for us to draw near to Him. I’m thankful for the sacraments: for the physical and tangible things God uses to convey His grace, like the mud and spit He used to give the blind man sight, and the waters of baptism that cleanse more than just our bodies. I’m thankful for His plan of redemption, for the hope that all broken things will be restored and that the glory to come will outweigh the suffering of the present, for the opportunity to say yes to His will and be a part of making all things new.

What are you thankful for this week? I’d love to hear the good things God is working in your life, whether it’s in the weather or a book or a relationship 🙂

Posted in musings

walking by faith: because coping with mental illness is like striving for a virtuous life

Posted on by kristinabean

When you live with a mental illness, you get a lot of practice at redirecting the pathways of your thoughts. Sometimes it’s as simple as stopping and taking a deep breath when the first hint of an unhelpful emotion or mantra wafts in; other times it takes repeated corrections, minute by minute, guiding your thoughts out of the road they want to travel and into a different pattern.

“He’s angry at me”, my mind says – and I have to force myself to look at the facts of the situation, remember he didn’t sleep well last night, so maybe it makes more sense that he is angry at something else or just tired and not showing positive emotions well.

“I can’t do anything right”, it says again, and I have to list off the things that have gone right in the past hour, no matter how small they are, and put the mistake in perspective: I fed the kids a healthy breakfast, I got a shower, I got everyone to speech therapy on time with activities prepared, and it’s not the end of the world if they only have socks on and their shoes are sitting at home…

“You’ll never be worth anything, they’d all be better off without you”, it repeats, and I have to turn the feelings inside out, repeat what I believe in the core of my being about the innate worth and dignity of the human person, remember the irrational and inexplicable unconditional love of a child, pray for the strength to run my race with endurance as did the saints who suffered and died for their faith, lift up my head like a superhero knocked down but not out once again.

The emotions are harder to deal with, being by nature less specific of a difficulty. Sometimes it seems as if the whole world is covered in a gray mist, blocking out the color and the joy and the reason to try, and all you can do is make your way from one task to the next, drawing on reservoirs of strength you didn’t know you had, waiting for the sun to break through again. Sometimes guilt (or self-loathing, or whatever the word for it is) attacks like a fistful of knives in your brain, and you hold your breath through the mental pain and then, somehow, inhale again and lift your face to the fight once more. Sometimes everything you take in is edged with inexplicable sadness, the inverse of a silver lining, and you embrace the beauty anyway, despite the bittersweet twist in your heart.

And what I’ve been coming to realize, lately, is that this turning away from the easier path into downward mental spirals and unhelpful thought patterns, and this setting of my feet so carefully and unsteadily in new ways of thinking, is really very similar to the process of living a virtuous life. Here is my fear, dissuading me from some act of charity or justice or faithfulness – now I must turn my thoughts aside from that path, from the rationalizing of my cowardice, and take an action I very much do not have the emotional support to make. And in the act, I make it that much easier to choose courageously in the future. There is my anger, snapping out at the people I love, roughening my edges to sharp and jagged lines, giving me hurtful words to hurl – now I must close my mouth, count to ten, pray for peace and gentleness and self-control, try to look through another’s eyes, and eventually even try to speak in kindness and in calm. And in the act – in every time I try, even if I do not entirely succeed – I train my mind and will to not fall so automatically into the pathway of that vice. It’s rather a daunting thought, knowing that I have both sanity and virtue at stake here 😉 – but on the other hand, what practice I will have at it! And with God near at hand with His grace and strength, and the community of saints present to encourage and guide me, I have hope that my practice (in both arenas!) will not be in vain.

Posted in musings

pastor barbara and the out-of-sync girl

Posted on by kristinabean

Once upon a time there was a church which had a female pastor. Now, this pastor wasn’t the lead pastor, or even the primary teaching pastor; she led the family and children’s ministries, actually, and spent most of her ministry time with women and youth. But she had the title of pastor – Pastor Barbara.

She was beautiful. She had long, curly brown hair and a nose with that perfect spark of defiance bringing its straight lines singing up from her face. She had a gentle way of moving – never too fast or too sudden – and a gentle way of speaking – never too loud or too harsh. And when she saw the children she loved and taught and prayed for, her whole body would glow with that love and light, like an emanation of the Holy Spirit through her presence.

There was a small girl at this church who adored Pastor Barbara wholeheartedly and unstintingly, although mostly from a distance as she was a quiet child. She enjoyed above all the new songs that Pastor Barbara would sing with them! For her, songs were a release from the uncertainty of social interactions, because the songs (at least the children’s songs that she knew) would specify how you were supposed to act. Take for example “Father Abraham:” no one would ever move that way in everyday life, but the song says to do it so everyone does it and no one has to worry about being out of sync.

Continue reading “pastor barbara and the out-of-sync girl” →

Posted in musings

Is God’s love enough?

Posted on by kristinabean

Oh I’m running to your arms
I’m running to your arms
The riches of your love
Will always be enough
Nothing compares to your embrace
Light of the world forever reign

These are the type of lyrics that often send me into a defensive, guilty tailspin. If the riches of God’s love are really enough for me, really sufficient for me, why do I still need and crave other things? Why is the love and companionship of others so essential if all I should need is God’s love? And why do I need doctors or medicines or therapists if His love alone will “always be enough”?

But what I realized this morning is that all those things – family, friends, books, food, music, nature, and yes, even psychiatric medicines – are expressions, manifestations, gifts of His love, His love itself overflowing abundantly into our world and our lives. There should be no shame in enjoying or even needing those things; they are blessings of the goodness of God poured out for us. Accepting that help doesn’t mean we don’t trust God enough, but rather that we are humble enough to accept His help and love in whatever way it comes, however mundane and through whatever human conduit.

His love is indeed always enough; it just doesn’t always appear the way we think it should.