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| Photo Credit: Katzie and Ben Photography |
I love this quote from your book, although, on the surface, it can seem disconcerting. “[T]he older I get, the more Moscow [a city that has only six minutes of sunlight a day during December] seems like a metaphor for the spiritual life... For whatever reason, faith can become more distant as we travel through life, encountering disappointment and twisty turns." Do you still feel this way?
I continue to feel this way about my faith journey. That
said, I recently took a canoe trip with my family in a wilderness area here in
Minnesota. It’s a place where I had my most significant faith experiences as a
teenager and being back there made my faith closer and more real than it has
felt in a while. The Christian experience, for me, is about repeatedly forgetting,
and then remembering, God’s promises. I love how Saint Benedict writes that we
are ALWAYS beginning again in the spiritual life. No one has it mastered.
You go on to write about many millennials, and others,
being spiritually nomadic. "Denominational wandering is not unusual for
modern Christians, nor do I think it's necessarily a bad thing. For
millennials, the schisms over finer theological points, such as child versus
adult baptism, or what happens at Communion, matter less than the authenticity
of the congregation and its activity on issues of social importance... Fewer
and fewer of us are centered in just one denomination. We are spiritual
explorers, and when the church shows its ugly underbelly, many of my generation
are looking for God outside institutional religion's walls."
I’m especially interested in going deeper with your
thought of what matters is the ‘authenticity of the congregation and its
activity on issues of social importance…’ And do you think that this pursual of
authenticity could be fueling some of the movement of Christians among
different denominations?
Authenticity of the congregation is, in a nutshell, about whether people are living differently because of their faith. Anyone can find community in a CrossFit or book club, but where else than church are people called to give radically, act prophetically, and love their neighbor as themselves? Personally, I’ve been willing to jump denominations in search of genuine expressions of this kind of beloved community, whether it’s in a Mennonite intentional community, Catholic monastery, or in the homeless ministry at my American Baptist church. I can’t speak for an entire generation, but I do think many people are less loyal to denominational identity and more interested in seeing Christians live out their faith in a very chaotic world.
You write in detail about your experience with the Visitation [Sisters of Holy Mary] Monastery and your relationship with the sisters there. You describe the sisters as being "[O]rganized and persistent, having endured decades of common life in-community pre-and-post Vatican II. They are neither passive nor timid, remaining faithful to their vows. They are the hearty ones, who have stayed in the church amid decline, who have seen their traditions devalued and mocked, who devote their lives to singing the Psalms and embracing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience."
That’s quite an endorsement! Are you still a Visitation Companion? And, at the time of your initial encounter, how much of a spiritual anchor were the Sisters for you?
Yes, I am still a Visitation Companion, though I haven’t
prayed in person with the sisters since the pandemic began. I have participated
in zoom prayer, virtual retreats, and attended the funerals of two sisters that
died in the last year. The sisters were and continue to be a spiritual anchor
because they model the relationality of the Gospel, showing me that no
Christian is a Christian alone. Just like in the Visitation Bible story, Mary needs
Elizabeth’s affirmation. It confirms to her God’s calling in her life. Even
though my life and marriage haven’t turned out the way I imagined, my
relationship to monastic women calls out my vocation as a Christian to love,
serve, and follow Jesus.
You mention the difficulty of carving out a new spiritual
path for an interfaith family. "The thing about blazing a new trail in
your interfaith home is that it costs something. The path is arduous, and no
one has cleared the downed trees. There are no obvious faith practices to
mutually draw from; instead, you must decide on family rhythms as you go."
I’m wondering if the same doesn’t apply to anyone who
moves outside of a traditional commitment to a single denomination or
congregation. I’m single, so I haven’t experienced what an interfaith family
would experience. But even in that singleness, there are times of massive
disconnect. Especially when trying to communicate with members of the former
evangelical church I attended. What are your thoughts?
Massive disconnect is a great way to put it! Many people
have become alienated from the church and, in the process of trying to
reconstruct their faith, struggle with rituals and spiritual practices. In
writing this book, I realized that my struggles in this area are not unique to
Christians in interfaith families.
One of the more insightful thoughts you have is on the
subject of living a "solution-oriented culture, that often seems to value
the final result over respect for the process. And that faith is a gift that
continually evolves. I once believed that a steady, certain faith in God and
the Nicene Creed and the Bible was an absolute requirement for being a
Christian. But in my own faith journey, the temperature keeps fluctuating and I
can't seem to control the weather."
I’m curious to know what you think about how much the
“solution-oriented” culture actually gets in the way of spiritual growth? And
how do we face this challenge?
Humans don’t do particularly well with ambiguity. When I was
part of the evangelical tradition, the clear black-and-white understanding of
faith was comforting because I thought that, if I did and believed the right
Christian things, life would work out okay. Jesus was presented as the solution
for all my problems. There was not a lot of room in this theology for doubt,
struggle, or failure, and so, when I experienced those things, I didn’t know
what to do. I was focused on the product – that I should be a new creation in
Christ, fully transformed. I was scared that I didn’t have all the answers
anymore. But I’ve learned that I can still work out my salvation in community
by living the Christian values I do know to be true, things like service or
humility. I think God cares more about how I live those values in my
relationship to God, to my faith community, my family, my neighbor, than about
having a “solution” for living my best life now.
There’s a compelling argument you make for having a more
flexible margin for doubt that Western Evangelicalism seems to have. "The
evangelical tradition in which our faith was formed always hammered down the
importance of right belief. All it took to be a Christian was believing that
Jesus was the Son of God, that he died on the cross for our sins, and that we
must accept him into our hearts to achieve eternal life. Having all the right
answers seemed so simple. Is it any surprise that many former evangelicals, who
took this emphasis of right belief so seriously, eventually walk away when
their doubts begin to feel overwhelming? Being part of any religion is less
about how we feel or what we believe at any given instant, which changes moment
by moment, and more about our commitment to wrestle with our faith."
I’d love to hear any further thoughts you have on this!
Including what this no margin for doubt may have in contributing to the loss of
professing Christians in the U.S.
Doubt is part of faith and to pretend otherwise is a huge
disservice to the lived experience of Christians from across the ages. Read
about the lives of the saints and you will see how many struggled with belief.
I love the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with God, where he stays engaged in
the struggle and refuses to leave without God’s blessing. It’s a great model
for faith. I hope that church leaders teach that it’s okay, and even necessary,
to wrestle like Jacob. I hope they communicate that someone can still belong to
a community and engage in spiritual practices even if they aren’t always sure
about doctrine.
I appreciate your quote from Benedictine Sister Joan
Chittister, founder of the Nuns on the Bus social justice movement, noting that
she “has written extensively about the vows of religious life, criticizing
their outdated framework. She wrote: 'What the world needs now, respects now,
understands now is not poverty, chastity and obedience. It is generous justice,
reckless love and limitless listening.’"
Does this tie in to what you wrote about people searching
for authenticity (question #2 above)?
Absolutely. Generous justice, reckless love, and limitless
listening are things not commonly found in our culture. They are infused with
God’s good grace and inspire us to see God’s movement in the world. We ache for
God to make all things new. Seeing the Visitation Sisters live their vows gives
me courage and greater trust in God.
Your love for your husband Josh, who left the Christian
faith, shines through in your book. "As Josh stops to identify fungi
growing on a downed log near our path, I remember [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer's
warning to love people more than my visions for life - whether that vision is
for Christian community or the perfect religious upbringing for my kids. It's a
struggle. I wonder if the work of love begins when our ideals shatter, when
we're forced to sort through the broken pieces together."
The quote from Bonhoeffer is very powerful stuff! And
your honesty in admitting that, at times, it really can be a struggle is well
put. I’m wondering if you’d care to go deeper with your observation about “the
work of love begins when our ideals shatter…”
Josh and I are both idealists, which means we had a long way
to fall when the realities of life contradicted our lofty visions. It doesn’t
mean that we don’t still have ideals, or values, or hopes for the future, but
we hold them more loosely. Instead of projecting into the far distance, the
work of love is daily and quotidian. In marriage it’s the way we listen to each
other and turn toward each other. It’s much, much, harder than dreaming about
the perfect community.
Continuing with the same subject of your marriage. You
observe: "Loving each other doesn't mean giving up our distinct
beliefs or practices. Loving each other means we each seek to understand and
honor what the other holds sacred.
… it's how I practice the [wedding] vows we made to
mutually obey one another. Kathleen Norris writes that, at its root, 'The word
obey means 'hear.' And listening in that sense as mutual obedience, is
fundamental to marriage... Such intimacy is a great gift because it also
contains the challenge of doing what is necessary, every single day, to
maintain the relationship.'"
You point to some very solid ways to face the challenges
of an interfaith family, or being spiritually nomadic. First, the idea of
mutual respect and seeking to understand different beliefs without being
threatened by them. And then the importance of listening, to hear what the
other person is saying.
Would you care to elaborate on any of this?
Love in a marriage is not about merging identities, but
about spurring one another onward in our unique callings in life. In this busy
season of life, both of us working full-time and raising two elementary-aged
kids (during COVID!), our biggest challenge is taking the time necessary to
“hear” one another during a time of great stress. Lots of people are dealing
with this tension. We are all exhausted and burned out. For me, I must make a
concerted effort to continue my individual spiritual practices while being open
to what Josh holds sacred. I encourage him to go for long bike rides, and he
encourages me to take the kids to church. It’s never perfect, or balanced 100
percent equally, but we carry on because we have that mutual respect and regard
for each other.
