You wouldn't believe it! I went to the library with my kids yesterday and saw The Book of Belonging at the shelf. It wasn't even on display, but it somehow called my attention. I started browsing and saw it was a Bible with beautiful brown pictures! I had just donated my children's Bibles for that reason- we couldn't see ourselves in them. I read the first story- Creation- and I was hooked. So we brought it home to read from the library! Then this morning I see this essay! What a gift! Thank you, Mariko! And thank you Sarah! I'd love to have our own copy to read beyond the due date!
Hi Julia! The concept of original goodness changed so much for me too! Have you read Danielle Shroyer's book Original Blessing? It deeply informed my storytelling and is such a lovely, accessible read!
I had never heard the story of Moses changing the law for women to be able to receive inheritance. I grew up in church and wonder how many other examples of women being equal were not shared.
I feel so very fortunate to attend a church where I've heard this story more than once! I love that it is among the stories the young people might cling to later in life.
When my queer adult child was brave enough to be their true selves in the church they had grown up in and they were pleasantly told to be quiet. “All my life, the church told me I was ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ until I told them who I really was. And now, I am suddenly no longer made that way. But didn’t God know who I really was all along? So, who was lying — the church or God?” My heart broke and I left the church in search of the God I always believed loved us all. I am still in the wilderness these days but it’s not so bad here…
How could a loving God make us so sinful that he had to kill his only son to save us? This was the question that began to unravel it all. I had been deeply hurt by an experience in the church and this was the question that made me question everything. I remember the courage it took, the mental block I had to overcome, in order to even ask questions. And I am so deeply grateful for the many people who had space for my questions and for me. Ten years, most of a MDiv, thousands of questions, two children, and my first solo pastor position later, I woke up this past Easter Monday thinking to myself, "I did it. I did a Holy Week without substitutionary atonement. It's possible and I did it." I'm just delighted to discover this book and see the kind of resources that will lead my children to ask questions, but not the ones I had to face.
The thought was one that RHE placed in my head over and over. What in the world makes me think I have all the answers for a big, beautiful, loving God? I don’t get to make the “rules.” I just need to love the best way I can as often as I can.
It's less a question, than an assertion posited to me when I was in my 20s, that really turned me into a whole new direction -- it was when my co-worker used the phrase "original blessing" - and I said, "what?" - and she said, you know, from Matthew Fox's teachings. The concept of original sin was so baked into me - BUT --- I had stopped and wondered at beauty in every form all through my life: my favorite houses on our familiar driving routes - the ones that were tucked into the trees and land around them, and had blooms tumbling around their door frames; the huge sprawling tulip tree in our back yard; the daffodils every April, so reliably there each spring; the smell of lilacs in May; the autumn leaves filling my eyes with color, my nostril with their dry leafy smell, my ears with their crinkling sound; my favorite songs; my favorite fabrics and colors; the blue of the sky; the brisk cool winds off of Lake Erie in autumn that sent lifting energy through me; the racing water along the gunwhales of the battered sailboat belonging to our friend. But all of these things I gathered into my heart and senses all that time - it never had occurred to me that it was part of an ORIGINAL BLESSING. That we were fearfully and wonderfully made, first before all else. It's taken me decades to live into a fraction of that understanding. But what a blessing to have that idea introduced to me when I was yet young.
I remember having a similar question, Wendy! The concept of original blessing healed a lot for many of us, I think. (I really liked Danielle Shroyer's book by that same name, too.)
My grand (as they are helping me to grow, I've challenged myself to work at using non-binary language with my grands) was seven when they sat in the backseat of my daughter's car with arms crossed and demanded, "Are all these Jesus stories true?" My daughter looked across the front seat to her sister and made her, "Oh, Jesus, what do I say now?" face.
She gathered herself, looked over her shoulder and said as nonchalantly as possible, "Mostly, I think." That seemed to be enough.
That seven year old is now 18, and is riddled with similar questions. In a recent conversation, they wanted to know the story of my Aunt Helen, who saw visions. They themselves have encountered something similar once or twice, but not good. Scary, hard. Aunt Helen's were good, and they wanted reassurance that sometimes what people "saw" was good.
Maybe it was a small story, what Aunt Helen told me she saw--Jesus on the cellar stairs-- because the story was dismissed by the Men with Important Jobs in my family, men with educations, while my mother and aunt had never gone to college. I was nine, and wondered about it secretly, what Aunt Helen saw, but I couldn't agree with the men. Her story always stuck to me because I loved her! I loved those Men with Important Jobs as well, and I wondered if I needed to think like they did to be really smart. A kid conundrum.
So what's a child to do? Hold some kernel of the Truth in secret, at least her own truth, that her aunt's experience was not something to make fun of or set aside. That child didn't know what to make of the idea of visions, but understood something the Men with Important Jobs did not, something she couldn't even say then, but knew to be true. Spirit resides, and Spirit sometimes shows Spirit's self to us in weird ways on the cellar steps, so we'll pay attention. I didn't come to that belief quickly or easily, but I am moving in that direction.
One of the best gifts of being a grandmother is having a spicy grand who will still ask a question, (ie, "Does God love boys more than girls?" or, "Are all these Jesus stories true?" or "Grammy, what about Aunt Helen's visions?") and to be able (by grace!) to answer with some level of God-confidence that the answer is right for that child, in that moment. Thanks be!
If only…my 46 year daughter in Calgary lives without any feeling of belonging. No faith in anyone but herself to accomplish excellence in physical and mental health. With years of anxiety, at times depression, and hard work, she has done well. She is gay, and that took many years of acceptance. Has gone many years and is still sees a therapist. That has been her saving grace. She excels in her career. Close to her sister. nieces and nephew in Calgary. Our conversions are often and long ( I live in Sarnia, ON), but she does not want to hear about our God to whom we belong or this Jesus she knows I love. I pray that God will seek her, and touch her heart, otherwise He may be waiting a long time. For the last one and a half years her health has spiralled downwards. Thankfully receiving thorough medical investigation and findings of autoimmune diseases, leading to physical and mental decline. In the care of a dermatologist, endocrinologist, rheumatologist and today is seeing a neurologist. Still no clear diagnosis. Diligent in exercising now a struggle. My mantra “I cry for help oh God, Lord rescue her. “
Unlike so many who had to deconstruct their faith, having been raised as an ardent atheist, in many ways I had to construct my own faith. When I read the Bible in college, with no spiritual or religious foundation, I eventually asked myself the scariest question I could imagine: Could this be true? Not in the sense of did these things really happen and did they happen the way this book says, but in terms of the deeper truths I was beginning to sense within myself despite my determined resistance. Could there really be a force out there, God even, that desires loving relationship with humanity? Could such a god, after trying everything else, have decided to try embodied love as a way of drawing close to us? Could I risk everything I knew to be true and logical, could I risk my family's rejection, could I risk having my life turned upside down by being curious about God's steadfast love that would never forsake me?
I've asked many more nuanced questions since, but that first, hardest question changed everything.
I purchased a copy of The Book of Belonging as soon as I read Mariko Clark's essay (and your introduction) this morning. I can't wait to discover her spicy stories about a God who can be trusted. After reading it myself, I anticipate buying many more copies as gifts for parents I know. (I don't have kids, but, like the audience that reacted so strongly to Matthew Paul Turner's book, I know how deeply a book written for children can touch an adult's heart.)
This is where I am in process of starting over. Clearing the slate of all the childhood teachings and ways the Bible has been explained to me for years. Starting with God, God's love, the God who speaks to me things I did not know and draws me gently closer, even through incredibly unconventional methods.
I'll never forget the question the pastor's wife asked me one Sunday in the mid 1990's right after church when we were standing in the foyer visiting. She said to me, "How can you be a Christian if you are a Democrat?" (Probably more of a jab than a question.) I was too dumbfounded at the time to come up with a good answer. But you can bet that over the last 30 years I have reworked that scene with plenty of answers. This was probably the beginning of my "deconstruction" which has been a long journey of reading, researching, and evolving. We were only in that church about ten years but they were formative years for our two sons and the far reaching effects are still reverberating today...and that would be a whole other very long story.
I am 42 and have been going to church since birth and I have never heard the story of the five fearless sisters at all. I would love to change that for myself and my two wonderful sons and incredible daughter.
On our way to church one Sunday morning….the little voice in the backseat…and I can point out exactly where the car was and where the sun was in the sky when my husband and I turned to each other in something just short of horror…”mommy, can Catholics go to heaven?”
My heart.
Had she learned some version of that in our church….where we were bringing her right now…even though her father and I weren’t hearing it? Was she concerned about her friend Hannah and all of Hannah’s little brothers and sisters? Did it filter in through the homeschooling lens and from that community we were part of?
Yeah, that question was the first domino in a long row of rapidly falling interpretations. They’re still falling, I’m still learning and re-forming, my deliciously queer and magical and intelligent and intentional voice from the back seat keeps prompting more conversations.
It’s not easy, still isn’t, but Jesus isn’t in a rush.
"I HATE Jesus"-My 7 year old on our way to church.
Context she has sever ADHD. At school there are a ton of supports in place so that she can be successful in accessing her education (which is below grade level). A quick conversation reveled that she equated Jesus with Sunday school and what she really hated was Sunday School were she felt she was always disrupting the plan (the teachers were trying VERY hard and at their wits end). Why is our methods of teaching children faith so traditional? Why does it have to fit such a strict mold that is so out of touch with how children learn? And why must it bo SO SO unaccessible for my neurodivergent child? How do I show her that Jesus has nothing to do with Sunday School? [and how do I get what I need from church if she can't manage the children's program? This is the 3rd church in 3 years!!]
A question which entered my heart and led me to listening to the spirit within and finding truth and faith came to me over 30 years ago. I was in a faith sharing group and one of the woman whom I had come to truly admire her life and her faith shared with us that she was divorced. and My, then somewhat rigid cradle Catholic understanding of God this statement tumbled me into going deeper and deeper and deeper. How could a faithful woman be divorced? I asked myself at the time I was years into a marriage to a man who was abusive. I had prayed and prayed and prayed for God to hold my marriage together, but in that moment with that question, I understood the voice of the spirit comes from within God is merciful. God is loving. God is kind. Obedience to archaic rules rather than to the voice of the spirit is not the way we are intended to live!
I am now happily married just completed a book called Spirit and creation: two women, one vision finding truth and peace and creation. God is good.
You wouldn't believe it! I went to the library with my kids yesterday and saw The Book of Belonging at the shelf. It wasn't even on display, but it somehow called my attention. I started browsing and saw it was a Bible with beautiful brown pictures! I had just donated my children's Bibles for that reason- we couldn't see ourselves in them. I read the first story- Creation- and I was hooked. So we brought it home to read from the library! Then this morning I see this essay! What a gift! Thank you, Mariko! And thank you Sarah! I'd love to have our own copy to read beyond the due date!
Two questions that shifted everything for me were:
1. Why would I want a relationship with a God who puts some of creation in a torture chamber after they die? (All I could says was, ya, why would I?)
2. What if this faith thing is not about original sin but about original goodness?
Thank God for questions.
Hi Julia! The concept of original goodness changed so much for me too! Have you read Danielle Shroyer's book Original Blessing? It deeply informed my storytelling and is such a lovely, accessible read!
I had never heard the story of Moses changing the law for women to be able to receive inheritance. I grew up in church and wonder how many other examples of women being equal were not shared.
I feel so very fortunate to attend a church where I've heard this story more than once! I love that it is among the stories the young people might cling to later in life.
When my queer adult child was brave enough to be their true selves in the church they had grown up in and they were pleasantly told to be quiet. “All my life, the church told me I was ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ until I told them who I really was. And now, I am suddenly no longer made that way. But didn’t God know who I really was all along? So, who was lying — the church or God?” My heart broke and I left the church in search of the God I always believed loved us all. I am still in the wilderness these days but it’s not so bad here…
I’m feeling all the same things, Angela. Hugs.
How could a loving God make us so sinful that he had to kill his only son to save us? This was the question that began to unravel it all. I had been deeply hurt by an experience in the church and this was the question that made me question everything. I remember the courage it took, the mental block I had to overcome, in order to even ask questions. And I am so deeply grateful for the many people who had space for my questions and for me. Ten years, most of a MDiv, thousands of questions, two children, and my first solo pastor position later, I woke up this past Easter Monday thinking to myself, "I did it. I did a Holy Week without substitutionary atonement. It's possible and I did it." I'm just delighted to discover this book and see the kind of resources that will lead my children to ask questions, but not the ones I had to face.
Yes, Lizzie! The Book of Belonging is also PSA-free and we would love to hear how it resonates with the theologies you've embraced, too!
The thought was one that RHE placed in my head over and over. What in the world makes me think I have all the answers for a big, beautiful, loving God? I don’t get to make the “rules.” I just need to love the best way I can as often as I can.
It's less a question, than an assertion posited to me when I was in my 20s, that really turned me into a whole new direction -- it was when my co-worker used the phrase "original blessing" - and I said, "what?" - and she said, you know, from Matthew Fox's teachings. The concept of original sin was so baked into me - BUT --- I had stopped and wondered at beauty in every form all through my life: my favorite houses on our familiar driving routes - the ones that were tucked into the trees and land around them, and had blooms tumbling around their door frames; the huge sprawling tulip tree in our back yard; the daffodils every April, so reliably there each spring; the smell of lilacs in May; the autumn leaves filling my eyes with color, my nostril with their dry leafy smell, my ears with their crinkling sound; my favorite songs; my favorite fabrics and colors; the blue of the sky; the brisk cool winds off of Lake Erie in autumn that sent lifting energy through me; the racing water along the gunwhales of the battered sailboat belonging to our friend. But all of these things I gathered into my heart and senses all that time - it never had occurred to me that it was part of an ORIGINAL BLESSING. That we were fearfully and wonderfully made, first before all else. It's taken me decades to live into a fraction of that understanding. But what a blessing to have that idea introduced to me when I was yet young.
I remember having a similar question, Wendy! The concept of original blessing healed a lot for many of us, I think. (I really liked Danielle Shroyer's book by that same name, too.)
seconding Danielle Shroyer's book! I got the chance to meet her recently and she's just as brilliant and lovely as you'd imagine!
My grand (as they are helping me to grow, I've challenged myself to work at using non-binary language with my grands) was seven when they sat in the backseat of my daughter's car with arms crossed and demanded, "Are all these Jesus stories true?" My daughter looked across the front seat to her sister and made her, "Oh, Jesus, what do I say now?" face.
She gathered herself, looked over her shoulder and said as nonchalantly as possible, "Mostly, I think." That seemed to be enough.
That seven year old is now 18, and is riddled with similar questions. In a recent conversation, they wanted to know the story of my Aunt Helen, who saw visions. They themselves have encountered something similar once or twice, but not good. Scary, hard. Aunt Helen's were good, and they wanted reassurance that sometimes what people "saw" was good.
Maybe it was a small story, what Aunt Helen told me she saw--Jesus on the cellar stairs-- because the story was dismissed by the Men with Important Jobs in my family, men with educations, while my mother and aunt had never gone to college. I was nine, and wondered about it secretly, what Aunt Helen saw, but I couldn't agree with the men. Her story always stuck to me because I loved her! I loved those Men with Important Jobs as well, and I wondered if I needed to think like they did to be really smart. A kid conundrum.
So what's a child to do? Hold some kernel of the Truth in secret, at least her own truth, that her aunt's experience was not something to make fun of or set aside. That child didn't know what to make of the idea of visions, but understood something the Men with Important Jobs did not, something she couldn't even say then, but knew to be true. Spirit resides, and Spirit sometimes shows Spirit's self to us in weird ways on the cellar steps, so we'll pay attention. I didn't come to that belief quickly or easily, but I am moving in that direction.
One of the best gifts of being a grandmother is having a spicy grand who will still ask a question, (ie, "Does God love boys more than girls?" or, "Are all these Jesus stories true?" or "Grammy, what about Aunt Helen's visions?") and to be able (by grace!) to answer with some level of God-confidence that the answer is right for that child, in that moment. Thanks be!
If only…my 46 year daughter in Calgary lives without any feeling of belonging. No faith in anyone but herself to accomplish excellence in physical and mental health. With years of anxiety, at times depression, and hard work, she has done well. She is gay, and that took many years of acceptance. Has gone many years and is still sees a therapist. That has been her saving grace. She excels in her career. Close to her sister. nieces and nephew in Calgary. Our conversions are often and long ( I live in Sarnia, ON), but she does not want to hear about our God to whom we belong or this Jesus she knows I love. I pray that God will seek her, and touch her heart, otherwise He may be waiting a long time. For the last one and a half years her health has spiralled downwards. Thankfully receiving thorough medical investigation and findings of autoimmune diseases, leading to physical and mental decline. In the care of a dermatologist, endocrinologist, rheumatologist and today is seeing a neurologist. Still no clear diagnosis. Diligent in exercising now a struggle. My mantra “I cry for help oh God, Lord rescue her. “
Unlike so many who had to deconstruct their faith, having been raised as an ardent atheist, in many ways I had to construct my own faith. When I read the Bible in college, with no spiritual or religious foundation, I eventually asked myself the scariest question I could imagine: Could this be true? Not in the sense of did these things really happen and did they happen the way this book says, but in terms of the deeper truths I was beginning to sense within myself despite my determined resistance. Could there really be a force out there, God even, that desires loving relationship with humanity? Could such a god, after trying everything else, have decided to try embodied love as a way of drawing close to us? Could I risk everything I knew to be true and logical, could I risk my family's rejection, could I risk having my life turned upside down by being curious about God's steadfast love that would never forsake me?
I've asked many more nuanced questions since, but that first, hardest question changed everything.
I purchased a copy of The Book of Belonging as soon as I read Mariko Clark's essay (and your introduction) this morning. I can't wait to discover her spicy stories about a God who can be trusted. After reading it myself, I anticipate buying many more copies as gifts for parents I know. (I don't have kids, but, like the audience that reacted so strongly to Matthew Paul Turner's book, I know how deeply a book written for children can touch an adult's heart.)
This is where I am in process of starting over. Clearing the slate of all the childhood teachings and ways the Bible has been explained to me for years. Starting with God, God's love, the God who speaks to me things I did not know and draws me gently closer, even through incredibly unconventional methods.
I'll never forget the question the pastor's wife asked me one Sunday in the mid 1990's right after church when we were standing in the foyer visiting. She said to me, "How can you be a Christian if you are a Democrat?" (Probably more of a jab than a question.) I was too dumbfounded at the time to come up with a good answer. But you can bet that over the last 30 years I have reworked that scene with plenty of answers. This was probably the beginning of my "deconstruction" which has been a long journey of reading, researching, and evolving. We were only in that church about ten years but they were formative years for our two sons and the far reaching effects are still reverberating today...and that would be a whole other very long story.
I am 42 and have been going to church since birth and I have never heard the story of the five fearless sisters at all. I would love to change that for myself and my two wonderful sons and incredible daughter.
On our way to church one Sunday morning….the little voice in the backseat…and I can point out exactly where the car was and where the sun was in the sky when my husband and I turned to each other in something just short of horror…”mommy, can Catholics go to heaven?”
My heart.
Had she learned some version of that in our church….where we were bringing her right now…even though her father and I weren’t hearing it? Was she concerned about her friend Hannah and all of Hannah’s little brothers and sisters? Did it filter in through the homeschooling lens and from that community we were part of?
Yeah, that question was the first domino in a long row of rapidly falling interpretations. They’re still falling, I’m still learning and re-forming, my deliciously queer and magical and intelligent and intentional voice from the back seat keeps prompting more conversations.
It’s not easy, still isn’t, but Jesus isn’t in a rush.
"Jesus isn't in a rush" is a WHOLE SERMON.
He’s playing the long game.
"I HATE Jesus"-My 7 year old on our way to church.
Context she has sever ADHD. At school there are a ton of supports in place so that she can be successful in accessing her education (which is below grade level). A quick conversation reveled that she equated Jesus with Sunday school and what she really hated was Sunday School were she felt she was always disrupting the plan (the teachers were trying VERY hard and at their wits end). Why is our methods of teaching children faith so traditional? Why does it have to fit such a strict mold that is so out of touch with how children learn? And why must it bo SO SO unaccessible for my neurodivergent child? How do I show her that Jesus has nothing to do with Sunday School? [and how do I get what I need from church if she can't manage the children's program? This is the 3rd church in 3 years!!]
A question which entered my heart and led me to listening to the spirit within and finding truth and faith came to me over 30 years ago. I was in a faith sharing group and one of the woman whom I had come to truly admire her life and her faith shared with us that she was divorced. and My, then somewhat rigid cradle Catholic understanding of God this statement tumbled me into going deeper and deeper and deeper. How could a faithful woman be divorced? I asked myself at the time I was years into a marriage to a man who was abusive. I had prayed and prayed and prayed for God to hold my marriage together, but in that moment with that question, I understood the voice of the spirit comes from within God is merciful. God is loving. God is kind. Obedience to archaic rules rather than to the voice of the spirit is not the way we are intended to live!
I am now happily married just completed a book called Spirit and creation: two women, one vision finding truth and peace and creation. God is good.
We got the Book of Belonging at Christmas, and I've cried through reading the stories to my kids many times since. Such a beautiful picture of God.