An Old Emergence

An open letter to President Fisher and the Belmont University Board of Trust: Five years ago, I was part of a discussion group sponsored by the university to have “difficult dialogs” about Belmont and its treatment of LGBT students. At the time, I was newly out of the closet, a student in the School of Religion and CEMB, and an active leader of student organizations on campus. I was invited to be a part of this group that literally met underground (the symbolism was not lost on us even if it was unintentional) in response to the university denying the recognition of an LGBT student organization. However well intentioned this group may have been, it was a debacle. While I am thankful to this day for the myriad faculty and staff members who were involved in supporting the position of students like me, it was clear that the university was not actively listening to us as a minority within the population. Then, in the fall of 2010, Lisa Howe ceased to be employed at Belmont. I say, “c...

I just deactivated my Facebook account. Just now. Not more than five minutes ago. I've been leading up to this day for a few weeks now, even if I only announced my intentions publicly last week. More and more I've come to realize how freeing it will be to have only my blog and an email account for a year. Some have bet that I won't make it a couple of months, but they are missing the true intention of my decision to cut the line connecting me virtually to all the people in my life. It will be a challenge at first, I'm sure, after spending the last eight years plugged in to various outlets for social media. Almost since their inception, I've been a part of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. It almost feels like a weight lifted to be free of them. Or, at least, at the moment it feels that way. It will be strange to just have my email address and this blog as a way to connect with people online for the next year. And it's highly likely that very few peopl...

This morning I woke up with a sore body, feeling the physical manifestations of the myriad injustices I have seen and felt around me over the last few days. I am trying so hard to release these things because, in truth, none of them directly impacts me. But I just cannot do that. I am bearing the weight of the poor decisions of other. I am feeling the pain of grief. I am carrying the sorrow of discrimination.  This has always been an issue for me. I am an emotional being, deeply empathic. I love this about myself because I am relational person. I thrive through spending time with other people. But it is a two-edged sword. It leads to the feelings I am dealing with this morning.

I want to begin by saying that I’m writing from a place of anger, a place of hurt, and a place of pain. It takes a lot for me to find myself in this place, and it takes even more for me to write about it in such a public forum. But what I have to say needs to be said, and it needs to be said publicly. As I have often said, the training and instruction I received in theology during my undergraduate career centered on the concept of generosity. This generosity was to be extended in many directions, most importantly toward those with whom you most disagreed. This generosity was an emphatic must in a group of twenty-somethings debating the finer points of theology, but it was an important lesson learned for living life in a world of constant disagreement. However, generosity can only extend so far.

Over the last three weeks I have had the opportunity to spend some time with the youth group at my new church, Baptist Church of the Covenant. We have been participating in what is a yearly event at BCOC called “School for Christian Living” during which time the church restructures its normal Sunday school hour into a three-hour seminar. This time is broken into two sessions with a lunch break in between.

I really hate making New Years resolutions. I’ve done it before, but they have never amounted to anything worthwhile. My resolutions have always been somewhat trivial, intensely focused on making me better than I was before. It’s a bit of an unhealthy cycle. But not this year. This year I am standing at a crossroad. The finale of 2010 was exceptionally difficult for me. I graduated from college, finishing up four and a half years at a place that transformed my life. I moved back to Hoover, leaving behind a life that I had spent half a decade building. I left a church, and for the first time in my life doing so was devastating because I loved the church, not because I had been betrayed by it.

Belmont’s motto is “From here to anywhere,” and while I may be guilty of cracking jokes about that sometimes, these words have transformed from being simply a motto to having deep meaning for me over the last four and a half years. I discovered who I was called to be at Belmont. This is a profound statement considering who I was when I started classes in August of 2006. I had just begun the process of working out my inherited faith, and having been fairly well burned by the churches of my youth, I had no desire to seek out a church home in Nashville. It was a perfect paradox. I firmly believed that Christian community was essential to growth as a believer, and yet I was running away from church at full speed.

There are a few authors that I have had the opportunity to revisit multiple times during different seasons of my life. Among this group of authors are Zora Neale Hurston, Anne Fadiman, Brian McLaren, Parker Palmer, and Ayn Rand. Each time I encounter them, I learn something new, and often it is from reading the same text multiple times. I've had people tell me that my fascination with re-reading the same books over and over again is strange. My reply is always that normalcy is highly overrated.

To be dead is to be devoid of life, of vibrancy, of sensation. It is to no longer feel or change or develop. That is to be dead. Many of my friends, are embarking on new seasons of their lives right now as school is starting and summer is ending. I am included as I prepare for my final semester of college. When seasons change in our lives, there are often disturbances. These can be either good or bad, depending on how we receive them.

Wonder. What an interesting topic. I’ll admit that it’s one I’ve been turning over in my mind constantly for the last few months, and when April approached me a few weeks back to share my reflections on wonder, I jumped at the chance. I had no idea how difficult this would be for me to do. It would be easy for me to stand here and tell you that wonder is what I experienced while standing atop Table Mountain in South Africa; that wonder is seeing things first-hand that can only be described as miraculous; that wonder is somehow being able to distinguish that you’ve heard the voice of God speaking into your life. And while all of those things would be legitimate, speaking about them would be the easy way out. Lately I’ve been struggling very hard to believe in wonder, or at least, struggling to let myself experience it. My cold academic mind militates violently against my deeply spiritual heart on a regular basis. Many days I find it hard to believe in a divine Other as I encoun...

I like lists. They help me be goal-oriented in a way that my self-diagnosed obsessive-compulsive disorder finds particularly satisfying. I make a summer reading list every May of books I wish to encounter in my time off from required reading. More often than not I will include the most recent book I completed so that I may begin my list with an accomplished task. Few things are more fulfilling to me than marking things off a list. I also make lists as reminders. These lists mostly appear when I am packing for a trip or preparing for a presentation. They're far less task-oriented than my other lists, and they help combat my poor short-term memory. I made a list last night that is far different than any of these others lists. I wrote down the names of twelve people. Seven months from now it will be the first day of January 2011. I will have graduated from Belmont and will be on the next part of my life's journey, whatever that may be. I have seven months left at Belmont and, perh...

There are churches I have known that have completely missed what being a church is about. The infighting and politics have completely trumped any form of pastoral care and generosity. Everyone has such an agenda that it is impossible to truly grow and become vibrant as a congregation. Instead, stagnation occurs, and eventually death comes knocking on the church doors. I wish there was some way to shake a congregation and yell, "WAKE UP!" But there isn't. We can only stand by and watch and cry and pray. But how does a church get to this point? The churches I have been a part of in my life have at one time or another been thriving bodies of Christ, being in the world doing things. They were places of joy and celebration. And even though the two churches in which I grew up preach a theology that doesn't align with what I believe now, I can still appreciate how both of them grounded me in a faith that has held on for dear life through my life's struggles. It's tru...

Hey friends, check out my friend Amber Garner's blog about her upcoming move to the Dominican Republic to work with an orphanage. On her blog, you can even donate to her ministry via PayPal. It costs a lot to give up everything to move to another country, and I'm not just talking monetarily. But if you are led to do so, feel free to help support her through your donation. Every little bit helps. THANKS!!! Amber in the D.R. (click here)

Yesterday I found myself having multiple conversations about the future. In fact, lately I've found that subject matter to be inescapable. Perhaps it comes from being near to graduation...or at least sort of near. Many of my friends will soon be graduating, and I have begun turning my eyes toward December and my own graduation. As I do this, one pervasive question continually comes up: What's next? I can assure you this is only the first of what will most likely be many writings on the future by me. As a senior in college, the future has started to loom menacingly on the horizon. However, this concept of looking toward the future is not reserved for college seniors. One of my conversations yesterday was with my friend Grant, a freshman at Belmont. We were both struggling with the same question. What's next? About this time of year as winter struggles in its death throws and spring begins to emerge, I believe many of us look for newness, for refreshment. Grant later asked, ...

I have spent the last ten days traveling. I've seen Berkeley, CA. I've spent time in Seattle, WA. I have become well acquainted with the Salt Lake City airport on 3 separate occasions. All this time I have had the opportunity to spend time with some amazing people in my life. This is spring break, a fantastic invention of the academic world for undergraduate students. This is the first of my four years in college that I have actually taken my spring break instead of working. It has been a much-needed respite from my undeniably hectic weekly schedule. Over the last week, I had the opportunity to visit with my sister and brother-in-law as well as my cousin Brian. As I live in Tennessee and they live on the west coast, it is rare for me to get to see them often. My time spent with all of them was wonderful, and it made for a perfect break. But the reason I'm writing here, is to think more intentionally about how relationships and spiritual peace can go hand-in-hand. While i...