It's Time

It's time for me to write again.  It's been awhile, hasn't it?

This blog was birthed out of a desire to leave Fundamentalism, the theological frameworks that had shaped my educational upbringing and spiritual formation.

What I didn't realize was that I was also leaving Evangelicalism to follow Jesus more fully, which entailed both embracing mainline Protestant social ethics and rediscovering my deep connection with Charismatic movements of the Spirit.  God brought me to Yale Divinity School to learn from every tribe, tongue, and nation--as well as the array of denominations that comprise God's kin-dom.

It seems (s)He's brought me to Boston to be the very things I learned were worth aspiring for--and to swim somewhat solo and upstream, for now.

Succeeding in my job has meant flexibility, openness, assertiveness, submission, and the wisdom to know when to go along with and when to subvert the (old school Catholic) system (of dealing with students).  I am a woman of color, given a position and influence in an institution run by white men, and I damn well mean to use it.

Finding a church has been slow going.  I gleaned a lot from Reservoir Church (a church that left the Vineyard Association to become open and affirming, after 2 years of prayer and discernment) and Old South Church (whose senior pastor is a woman and a YDS grad), but it seems that after 3 months of exploration, I have been led to settle down in a church just around the block, which is neither open and affirming nor led by women.  It seems that, even in the place I'll call my spiritual home, I am to be myself/different in the midst of a system that is not ideal.

This election has given me a sense of urgency.  We were brought to the Northeast for such a time as this, my Divinity School friends and I.  I was in New Haven the weekend before and after the election.  I needed to be with my friends.  Some are queer, some are undocumented immigrants, some are brown, some are black, many are women, and all are not OK with Donald Trump becoming the next President of the United States.

It might be time to beat our plowshares back into swords.

It might be time to speak truth to power for such a time as this.

For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Amen.


[http://rachelheldevans.com/blog/life-after-evangelicalism]