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My Fairy Tale for 20 somethings….

http://fairytalesfor20somethings.tumblr.com

Wizard of Oz by Katy Stenta

Dorothy thought that chasing the first tornado would have landed her the weather job. Instead she kept having to travel. Meanwhile her parents wanted her to click her heels and come back home, problem was no work there. She was not moving back in with her parents (again). She kept following the yellow brick road, and following and following.

Finally a TechWizard convinced her and her three traveling companions to Kickstart a book about her journey.

Parenting/Sabbath Hack: Kid Check-in

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Sabbath in the Suburbs... and Beyond

My friend Ashley Goff is a part-time pastor with three kids, just as I am. When her youngest entered school last year, a friend suggested that she try to spend 15 uninterrupted minutes with each kid when they get home. Let the child decide what she wants to do—talk, read a book, play a game. The point is time together without distractions, smartphones, dinner preparation, etc. This puts a bit of structure around the afternoon chaos of snacks/homework/activities/plaintive requests to play on the iPad.

I filed that suggestion away for this year, with all three kids in school. Count me a fan of the 15 minute kid check-in.

OK, we’ve done it twice since school started.

But both times were great!

James has a little trouble when it’s not his turn, but he’s learning. I’m also learning how to deal with three kids at home in the afternoons, often while…

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Gilmour Girls: A Reading List for David Gilmour

YAY! I love this reading list!!!

The Belle Jar

This list is not as diverse as I wish it could be. It’s still very white, and there isn’t a super great representation of queer and trans* folk. It sort of ended up being both a reading list for David Gilmour and a list of my favourite books by women. Writing this has been a great exercise for me, and has illustrated pretty clearly that I need to expand my own reading repertoire – I do love women writers, but I still tend to favour white, cis-gender women. Helloooooo to my own cultural bias.

I didn’t include any Alice Munro or Virginia Woolf because Gilmour says that he likes both of those authors, and I don’t have multiple books by the same author. Those were some rules that I arbitrarily made up for myself.

Please feel free to add to this list or to fangirl with me over how much…

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Focus on the (Chosen) Family

Queer folk long ago developed the idea of “chosen family”: the idea, that is, that the people who are your actual family are the ones who behave like it, supporting you, loving you, bearing you up, holding you accountable when you need it, whether or not those folks are your biological relations.

Thought Required; Pants Optional.

Photo Credit: Valeri-DBF via Compfight cc

This post is my contribution to QueerTheology.com’s Queer Synchroblog 2013. This year’s theme is “Queer Creation.” Links to all of the other excellent entries are at the bottom of this post. After reading mine, go forth and read more!

In order to get to what the theme “queer creation” evokes in my mind, I need to discuss a point of view about as far removed from my own as I can imagine: the views of extremely conservative and patriarchal evangelical Christianity.

My interest in those views came into clearer focus a few days ago, when I read Kathryn Joyce’s Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement. It is a compelling but sobering read. In it, Joyce sketches out a portrait of possibly the most theologically and socially conservative Christians in the United States. The organizing commitment that unites the various groups in this wing…

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Everyday Faith

“Faith, as Jesus describes it, is just doing your job, just doing your duty, not because of any sense of reward but simply because it needs doing. Faith, in other words, is doing what needs to be done right in front of you and this, Jesus says, the disciples can already do. Folks who feel daunted by discipleship need to hear that sometimes faith can be pretty ordinary. That’s what Jesus means, I think, by saying that if they had the faith even of a mustard seed, they could uproot and move a mulberry tree — that it really doesn’t take all that much faith to be, well, faithful.”

“Faith, Working Preacher, isn’t an idea, it’s a muscle. And the more we use that muscle, the stronger it gets.”

https://malindalo.tumblr.com/post/62808255046/to-kick-off-ya-pride-a-month-all-about-lgbtq-ya

Malinda Lo is giving away YA LGBTQ books!

Prayer of Confe…

Prayer of Confession: God, we confess that we forget to pray prayers of thanksgiving. Too often we let the worries and complaints overwhelm us. Forgive us, God. Set us free from the sin that tries to hamper our steps. Help us to pray instead of worry, to praise instead of grumble. Put in our mouths a song of your glory. Let it be as merry as the day is long, so that we might know hope, peace and life eternal. (Silent Prayer)…Amen

The Eastern Orthodox Church holds a non-juridical view of sin, by contrast to the satisfaction view of atonement for sin as articulated in the West, firstly by Anselm of Canterbury (as debt of honor) and Thomas Aquinas (as a moral debt).^] The terms used in the East are less legalistic (grace, punishment), and more medical (sickness, healing) with less exacting precision. Sin, therefore, does not carry with it the guilt for breaking a rule, but rather the impetus to become something more than what men usually are. One repents not because one is or isn’t virtuous, but because human nature can change. Repentance (Ancient Greek:μετάνοια, metanoia, “changing one’s mind”) isn’t remorse, justification, or punishment, but a continual enactment of one’s freedom, deriving from renewed choice and leading to restoration (the return to man’soriginal state).^[29] This is reflected in the Mystery of Confession for which, not being limited to a mere confession of sins and presupposing recommendations or penalties, it is primarily that the priest acts in his capacity of spiritual father.^[21]^[30] The Mystery of Confession is linked to the spiritual development of the individual, and relates to the practice of choosing an elder to trust as his or her spiritual guide, turning to him for advice on the personal spiritual development, confessing sins, and asking advice.

Confession is a statement of who you are, where you are and the striving to go beyond that! It is a statement comprised of self knowledge and belief: seeking the deeper actions of understanding and faith.

WHAT EVERYONE VALUES ABOUT CHURCH

Kirk Winslow gives us the result of an in-depth discussion about the reality of church: The results are about as unscientific as they come. No controls, small numbers, located almost entirely in southern California. But some common threads have emerged very clearly, threads that resound with our understanding of the mission of the church and our particular sense of call.

Robin McKinley: Adventures in Street Pastoring

“Whose idea was this frelling Street Pastors deal? Oh. Yeah. God’s. I guess I have to put up with it then.”

Philosophy, Science and Religion

Some of this article was hard for me to follow….but….

this part about faith reminded me of some faith and belief musings I’ve been praying about

“faith is a special gift from God, not part of our ordinary epistemic equipment. Faith is a source of belief, a source that goes beyond the faculties included in reason.”

Namely that Faith is a gift of God experience by a group of people, who hold diverse and intricate levels and kinds of beliefs…

although I don’t know if faith/doubt and belief are as black and white as this article portrays (but hey that’s philosophy)

I also appreciated:

“Christians, says Plantinga, can “take modern science to be a magnificent display of the image of God in us human beings.” Can naturalists say anything to match this, or must they regard it as an unexplained mystery?”

Its hard for me to believe we are “accidentally” alive!