December 5, 2023 • 40 mins
One of the most common questions I get asked goes something like this: are you still a Christian? I’ve been avoiding answering this question for years but today on the podcast I’m diving in head first to share about the evolution of my faith.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's time to.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Let them out and write them down and cover it's
all about and write. Write your story. Write you write
your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to answer a question that I have been
avoiding answering for many, many years. This is a question
that I get asked all the time. I get asked
this question at least once a week, sometimes many more,
in my dms, on Instagram, in my email inbox. I
get asked this question. Not as much anymore because I've
(00:52):
been a little bit more open with family and friends,
but I used to get asked this question in real
life from family and friends as well, And sometimes I
feel like the question is also kind of lingering under
the surface. If someone doesn't directly say it, they're wondering it.
And I feel like I'm in a place where I
might be finally ready to address the answer to this question.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The question goes something like this.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Some version of are you still a Christian anymore? Are
you a person of faith? Are you a believer? And
I've avoided answering this question. I said this on Instagram
when I asked if you'd be interested in hearing the
evolution of my faith? I said the word trap, that
the question has felt like a trap to me. And
what I've uncovered is that my idea of it being
(01:34):
a trap is that that's just all in my own head.
It's all in my mind, it's all in how I
perceive the intention behind the question. But i will say
that one of the reasons why I've avoided answering this
question for so long is because I've been trying to
create some space around what has been a really important
and sacred process for me. I don't take this experience slightly.
(01:57):
I don't take this episode lightly, don't take my answer
to the question lightly. And yet I've had to create
this space around the experience for myself so that I
could just have the experience without feeling like I was
having the experience inside of a fish bowl. Because a
lot has happened in my personal life, and a lot
of which I've been very public about but so much
(02:18):
has happened for me, and so much has evolved and
changed for me that I've wanted to be able to
really go inward and think about what I believe and
how I feel about certain things, and not constantly be
checking that insight or intuition against some teacher who I've
given my power to, or some follower on Instagram who
(02:41):
I've given my power to, or some email subscriber who
I've given my power to, or even a friend who
I've given my power to. I think a lot of
times in our lives we give our power away to
other people who we think have the answers that we're
looking for. And I have really wanted to be in
a process of going inward and asking the questions and
finding those answers on my own. It's not that I
(03:01):
haven't welcomed help when it has come, or that I'm
closed to the idea of receiving help. It's just that
I've really been fine tuning and cultivating my own ability
to listen to that still small voice, to listen to myself,
to trust myself and my own tuition intuition. And this
has been a super, super important part of my process
(03:23):
that now I feel really excited and really ready to
share with you, and I really do hope that I
receive feedback from you. I don't feel like this question
is a trap anymore, and I make the assumption that
the intention behind this question.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Is very pure.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Probably a lot of you are asking this question because
you're wondering if maybe someone else is going through something
similar to what you're going through. Maybe you're questioning some
of the ideas or beliefs that you were handed from
a previous generation. Maybe you're questioning some of the ways
that you were raised inside of church culture. Maybe you're
(04:00):
or feeling the very foundation shake underneath of you, like
I have so many times in the last decade of
my life. And maybe you're feeling kind of crazy, and
you're feeling sort of alone, and you would like someone
to just validate and affirm that you aren't crazy, and
that this experience is actually a great awakening and it
doesn't have to be only scary, although it can bring
(04:21):
up feelings of fear, but this can actually be a
great invitation into a deeper, richer, more evolved view of humanity,
view of the world, view of God, view of yourself, you,
of all of it than ever existed before, and maybe
it might be nice to hear someone else share their
perspective and their story so that you don't feel so
(04:43):
alone in yours. I'm not so naive as to think
that there aren't a handful of people asking this question
with the intent to see if I'm still a trustworthy
person to be in contact with, if I'm still a
trustworthy teacher to follow, if I'm still a trustworthy author
to be reading. I say that because I know from
(05:06):
my own experience, from the person that I was ten
years ago, that I would have been asking those questions
that I would have been wondering, that that I would
have had that intention behind this question, and so there's
no judgment there. I will say, if you're looking to
know whether I'm in the club or out of the club,
or in the camp or out of the camp, then
(05:27):
the chances are quite high that my answer is not
going to be satisfying to you, because I'm not going
to be able to clearly, in black and white terms,
tell you that I'm in the club. In fact, I'm
getting ahead of myself. But the group of people in
the scriptures who Jesus Christ most adamantly opposes are the
(05:50):
group of people who were trying to figure out if
a person is in the club or out of the club.
I don't see my faith like this anymore. I don't
see the dividing line that I used to see that
was there. That dividing line, in my mind was fake.
Pretend it was made up by someone else and then
handed down to me as a sort of bizarre inheritance.
(06:10):
But I don't see those dividing lines the same way
that I used to. And so my answer is probably
not going to be satisfying to you. And yet I
still invite you to sit and listen to my answer
and reflect on it for yourself, and ask yourself what
this brings up for you, What fears does it bring up,
What anxieties does it bring up? What experiences does it
bring up for you? How do you relate to what
(06:31):
I'm saying? How do you not relate to what I'm saying?
And feel free to share all of that feedback.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
With me as well.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
It might help if I go back a little bit
and give you some context for where I came from,
how I grew up, the way that I was raised,
Because you may be listening to this and think, Oh,
I wouldn't even know to ask this question because I
didn't know that this woman, at one point in her
life professed to be a Christian. You may be new
around here and you don't know that. In twenty thirteen,
(06:57):
I published a book with Moody Publishers that is a
very concerent servative Christian publisher out of Chicago. You wouldn't
know that the Power of Writing It Down is published
with Zondervan, which is technically a Christian publisher, although the
book was published under an imprint under Zondervan that is
not an explicitly Christian imprint. But even all of that
is very confusing. You might not have been around during
(07:18):
a time when I was married to a Christian pastor
and we planted a church together, So this might all
be new information for you. I thought maybe it might
be helpful, even for those of you who have been
around a long time, to understand the environment in which
I was raised. My parents are both professing evangelical Christians.
(07:39):
They would say that they're born again, they would say
that they're Jesus followers. I grew up going to church
every Sunday, every Wednesday, other times of the week for
choir practice, for small groups, for youth.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Group, for all of it.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So I was fully immersed in that environment as a
young person. My parents were also for a large part
of my upbringing on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ,
which is not called that anymore. I think it's called
crue now, but camps Crusade for Christ is an evangelical
organization that exists on college campuses to bring people together
(08:15):
in community and also with a distinctly evangelical intention to
invite people into this relationship with Jesus Christ, to accept
Christ as their Lord and Savior, and to become a
part of the Christian faith. So when I say evangelical,
some of you may know exactly what I mean by that.
(08:35):
Others of you may not fully understand that, but essentially
think of evangelical as evangelizing. I was taught at a
very young age to always be speaking clearly about my faith,
to always be inviting people into this relationship with Jesus.
That is what I mean when I say that evangelical piece.
It has to do with always sort of professing that
(08:57):
invitation and inviting people to be part of the Christian faith. Now,
the evangelical movement there are a lot of really beautiful,
wonderful things I could talk about as it relates to
the evangelical movement, and part of my process of evolving
my faith has been that I went through a period
of time where I was really angry about how I
(09:18):
was raised. I felt really frustrated about a bunch of
things that took place that I'll talk about in this episode.
And I have gotten to a place where I see
a fuller picture. It's not that I've stopped being angry
completely or that I'm you know, rainbow washing things that
took place that were not okay, but I also can
(09:38):
see that I was raised inside of a really beautiful, loving,
lovely container, and that container was full of people who
were doing the absolute best that they knew how they
were doing the best that they understood at that time.
They were truly wonderful, kind, genuine people, most of them
ninety nine percent of them, and who were not were
(10:01):
very wounded individuals who needed much more support and help,
who needed boundaries, who needed to be removed from their
positions of power, and there just wasn't the awareness at
the time to create that kind of safety. So yes,
many things took place inside of that container that were
challenging for me and left to Mark and that I
(10:24):
had to process and work through later. But there were
also a lot of aspects of the evangelical movement and
of the Christian Church that I'm very thankful for that
created a really solid foundation from which I could grow
into the woman that I am today. The evangelical movement
is also especially the evangelical movement of the eighties and nineties,
(10:49):
was its own subculture. So if you grew up in
that subculture, you would recognize things like, you know, DC
talk and the True Love Weights movement and what would
Jesus Do and all of those different aspects of that
cultural movement. If you didn't grow up in that, it's
almost like you grew up in a different world than
those of us who grew up inside of that environment.
(11:09):
Like there was a strong dividing line between people who
grew up in the other culture of that time and
in the evangelical movement of that time. So sometimes I
still run into that where I will be having a
conversation with someone who didn't grow up inside of that environment,
and I still feel a little shocked that I missed
a whole part of life that they had that I
didn't have, and vice versa. That you know, my first
(11:32):
concert was DC Talk and Jennifer Napp and those might
mean nothing to someone who didn't grow up inside of
that container. So that has been one challenge that I
have faced as I have evolved as an adult in
this world is feeling like there were certain things that
I missed out on, that I didn't get to experience
because I was part of this smaller container. One experience
(11:54):
that I'll share with you that was really formative for
me and will give you a sense of some of
the ideologies and the way of operating that didn't really
work very well despite the best intentions, maybe didn't create
the outcome that the adults in our lives were hoping.
I was really involved in my youth group growing up.
I would go on Sunday mornings to youth group, and
(12:16):
then I would go to the service with my parents.
I would go on Wednesday nights to youth group. My
best friends were actually not at my school. My best
friends were a part of my youth group, and you know,
we had a youth pastor who was coordinating all of
these experiences that at the time this made perfect sense.
He's the authority, he's the grown up, he's the you know,
authority figure in the room, and we're all the kids,
(12:38):
and so we listened to him. It didn't really hit
me until later that this person who was the authority
figure in the room was probably twenty one years old,
maybe maybe not even quite that old, and we were
what fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, So the age disparity between us,
and just the idea of this person being an authority
over us, or like a twenty year old being in
(12:58):
charge of a room full of teenagers, especially since this
person is a male and many of the participants in
the group are female. It didn't click with me until
later that that dynamic was problematic for a handful of reasons. Anyway,
inside of that youth group experience, I had a situation
when I was sixteen or seventeen years old where I
(13:21):
was pulled aside by the youth pastor with a couple
of my girlfriends and it was requested that we not
be as a physically affectionate with each other as we
had been in the past. Now we were sixteen year
old girls. We were kissing each other on the cheek,
we were giving each other piggyback rides. We were picking
each other up, we were laying on top of each other.
(13:42):
I don't even know what we were doing, but sixteen
year old girls, I would think fairly developmentally appropriate in
my opinion. Now as a forty year old woman, well,
we were pulled aside. We were asked to please stop
this behavior. We were told that this was going to
be a bad witness to people who were coming into
the youth group. That's at least as I and a
whole thing unfolded that I didn't even have the consciousness
(14:05):
or awareness at the time to think about, like how
messed up this was? That this was this was we
were being pulled aside by a male authority figure. We
were told, you know, that this behavior of ours was problematic,
it was going to be a bad witness. It made
us look like we were lesbians, when we, of course
weren't lesbians. And there's so many problematic elements to this
whole thing that didn't occur to me at the time.
(14:27):
But what I do remember is that it blew up
into this explosion, and eventually myself and these other couple
of women, I think there were six of us, five
or six of us were asked to.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Leave the youth group.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Eventually, myself and these other couple of women think there
were six of us, five or six of us were
asked to leave the youth group, and so I did.
I left the youth group, and I actually ended up
going to another youth group. So it wasn't like I
left the youth group and was like, that's it, I'm
done with church. I left the youth group and went
to a different youth group. When I think back on
(15:12):
that experience, it was one of the early experiences I
had where I started to feel at odds with this
container that I was inside of, as safe of a
container as it was to grow up in, as comforting,
as nurturing in many ways of a container as it was.
That was one of the first couple of moments where
I really started to feel like this is not working
(15:35):
for me. Another experience that I can remember very vividly
as a teenager is being a part of a youth
group service on a Sunday morning and the pastor at
the time was preaching on the doctrine of predestination, which
you probably have not heard of that unless you also
grew up in church like I did. But the doctrine
of predestination is basically this idea that God chooses ahead
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of time the people who he's going to send to
heaven and the peace people who's going to send a
hell the vessels of destruction in the vessels of light. Anyway,
the pastor was teaching on this idea, and I can
just very vividly remember sitting in the audience listening to
this sermon and just not liking the way that it
fell in my body. I was just like, that doesn't
(16:17):
seem like a thing that God would do. God, as
I know who God is, God is my experience of God.
I didn't have any more language for it at that time.
I didn't have the ability to debate with the youth pastor.
It wouldn't have even been invited or allowed. All I
knew was that this information was coming at me. It
(16:39):
didn't feel good in my body, and I didn't like
the way that it sat with me. And I just
remember having that feeling as a sixteen year old girl,
to add to the list that would grow over time
of my sort of rub with what I was learning
inside of this environment. And you'll probably remember this if
you were part of that evangelical movement. Growing up like
(17:00):
I was, You'll remember how there were a lot of
alter calls, meaning moments opportunities for you to sort of
recommit your life to Christ after making mistakes, or recommit
your life to Christ after wandering away from him or
living outside of His will for your life. And I
had so many of those. I mean, I could take
(17:21):
you on the journey. It would take hours, and it
wouldn't really be all that important, but a roller coaster
ride through my twenties of quote unquote falling away from
God and then coming back in this alter call sort
of moment and being like, I'm recommitting my life to
this movement, committing my life to this way of seeing
the world.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
And what I couldn't see at the time is.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
That this was all part of my own wrestling with
a worldview that just wasn't really working for me. And
if you think of each of those experiences like tiny, small,
little earthquakes that were shaking me up, but not so
much that anything got really destroyed, but just sort of
shaking me up, shaking me awake. It wasn't until later
(18:05):
in my life when I was filing for divorce from
a man who I had married in large part because
he was a pastor of a church. And I had
been told over and over again in my life that
I wanted to look for someone who was a man
of God. This is who I wanted to marry, someone
who is a man of God. And this person had
violated my trust in countless ways, had been a really
(18:28):
toxic partner for me. And I fully admit that I
had participated in that toxic partnership. But I started to
see how that toxic partnership was actually, in weird ways,
celebrated by the environment that I was inside of. It
was almost like the model for how a relationship ought
to work. There was this expectation of submission from the
(18:50):
woman in dominance by the man, and that dynamic playing
out in my household was incredibly abusive and toxic. And
it was the first time in my life where the
earth earthquake was not a small earthquake anymore. The earthquake
was such a massive earthquake that the very foundation that
had been underneath of me, that I had depended on
and relied on for so much of my life, for
(19:11):
my entire life, just literally crumbled and fell out from
underneath of me and Some of the memories that stick
out to me from this time in my life are
having conversations with my family members who really loved me
and care about me so much and were concerned for
my well being and for obviously my emotional and physical
well being also, but were concerned for my spiritual wellbeing.
(19:33):
And we would have these conversations over time about my
faith and where I stood. And I can remember having
a conversation with my sister where I just told her,
if my life had gone the way that your life
has gone, I wouldn't have had any reason to question
what I believe. But because my life has not gone
that way, because I followed the rules and jumped through
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the hoops and did the things and worked the program,
and because my life fell out from underneath of me,
I'm given no other choice but to question literally everything
that I've ever been taught. And this was a moment
of massive awakening for me. It was very painful. It
still is in moments painful to let go of the
(20:17):
safe and cozy container that we were raised with, even
if the container isn't Christianity, even if the container is
something totally different, It is very unnerving and unsettling. To
let go of a safe container. And yet this is
also the process of evolution. It's the process of growing up.
It's the process of becoming an adult, becoming a grown up,
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owning your own life, having your own responsibility, your own sovereignty.
This is evolving and growing to let go of that
safe container in which we were raised. And one of
the things that I've learned is that letting go of
a safe container doesn't mean letting go of absolutely everything
that I was ever taught. It does for a period
of time, so much of what I learned as a
(21:03):
young woman and a young girl has come back around
to me, and I'm just able to see it in
a different light than I was able to see it before.
I'm able to see it from a higher level of consciousness.
I'm able to take it in in a different kind
of a way than I was able to take it
in back then, because I just didn't have the capacity
to do that then. But I'm getting a little ahead
(21:25):
of myself, because I think what's important to mention is
that there was a period of time, a very long
period of time, where I needed to in some ways
completely do away with this container that I had grown
up with. And actually I say needed to. It wasn't
a choice, so it didn't feel like a choice at
the time. It felt like your world has literally been
(21:46):
taken out from underneath of your feet, and now the
task is to reassemble it in a different kind of way.
And I wonder if some of you who are listening
might have a similar kind of experience. Maybe for you
it wasn't a divorce, but maybe it was an addiction,
or maybe it was the loss of someone that you loved,
or maybe it was some other event. But oftentimes I
(22:09):
think these events come to us they feel like they
completely shatter what we know to be true. But what's
actually happening is it's an invitation, and it's awakening to
a whole new way of being, a whole new way
of seeing the world that's actually bigger and broader than
what we were able to take in before. So when
people ask me this question, are you still a Christian?
(22:32):
I don't know exactly how to answer the question, because,
in many ways, if I'm that person ten years ago,
if I rewind who I was ten years ago, and
I'm asking that question, what I'm really asking is do
you go to church? Do you believe that Jesus is
the way, the truth in the life, the only way
to heaven. Do you accept him into your heart? Do
(22:54):
you follow him unequivocally? Do you tithe to the church?
I don't know. There were all these sort of extra
things that I would have tagged along with whatever that meant.
And I think that in certain cases, this is what
people are asking. And if I laid out for you
what my spiritual life looks like right now, to some
of you, it might look like, Oh, she's not a Christian.
(23:16):
She doesn't check these boxes X, Y, and Z, and
so she's not in the club. And of you, you
might not have that association. You might not draw a
conclusion about it at all. So when someone asks me
this question, I always wonder, like, are you really wondering
if I call myself a Christian? Or are you wondering
if you would call me a Christian if you knew
(23:39):
what my ideology was, if you knew what I believed,
or the way that I saw the world, the view
point from which I look at everything that happens in life.
The way I would answer this question one hundred percent
honestly is yes, I do still feel as if I'm
a Christian. I feel actually probably the best term to
(23:59):
describe my faith present day is something like a Christian mystic.
Like Richard Rhor is a Christian mystic. There are some
other teachers out there who would call themselves Christian mystics.
Christian mystic the way that I would define it, I
don't know the actual dictionary definition of Christian mystic, but
the way that I would define Christian mystic is really
similar to the faith that I was handed from, similar
(24:22):
in many ways to the faith that I was handed
from a previous generation, but with a lot more mysticism involved,
with just a little bit of a different lens to
look at it. And I like to think of my
faith as a yes, and it's yes to everything that
I was taught and so much more. It's like Rabel
calls this transcend and include, and that feels really really
(24:44):
true for me. It's like yes and something else, something bigger,
something more, not just this small container that I was
handed as a child.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
One thing that I think is.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Really important to point out is that my experience of
my faith present day is just as if not infinitely more.
In fact, I would say it's infinitely more rich and
true and permeated in every aspect of who I am
and the way that I live my life today, present
(25:27):
day than it was ten years ago, when I could
have more clearly told you, here are the tenants of
my faith, here's the statement of belief that I believe,
and I'm going to sign my signature on the bottom
of that statement of belief. Ten years ago, I felt
like I could really much more easily do that, And
now I feel like there are so many more questions
than answers, and there's so much that I'm still confused about,
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and I don't know how all of this works, but
it's absolutely fascinating to me. And God is very real
to me. The experience of a power that's greater than
me that I don't fully understand, but that also exists
inside of me that I can communicate with on a
daily basis.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
That experience is so real.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
To me, much more real to me now than it
ever was back in the days when I had more
control over my life and over my faith and over
my existence, or more perceived control. And one of the
things that I think happens when we put a lot
of energy into trying to figure out who's in and
who's out and we do this with way more than
just faith, by the way, but this definitely I think
(26:28):
happens around this question when we're trying to figure out,
like where does this person fit? Are they Mormon, are
they Christian? Are they Jewish? Or are they Hindu?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
What are you?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
What bucket can I put you in so that I
can better understand you? What ends up happening is that
we actually miss what's true, we miss what's present, we
miss what's really going on, and we miss each other.
We miss how much we actually share inside of the
human experience. And like I mentioned before, you know, the
(26:57):
concept in the scriptures of the Pharisees trying to figure
out who's in and who is out based on their actions,
based on outer behaviors, based on you know, outer symbols,
was very directly criticized by Jesus. And I think one
of the reasons why Jesus so vehemently and adamantly criticized
this kind of thinking and this kind of behavior is
(27:19):
because of what happens when we need to figure out
what bucket people fall in. One of the big things
that happens, in my opinion, we're trying to figure out
who is trustworthy, who's a trustworthy teacher, who's a trustworthy author,
who can I rely on, who can I, you know,
go to to sort of feed me with the information
and the wisdom that I need in order to live
my life. When that turns us away from the wisdom
(27:44):
that is already in us, the wisdom that we directly
have access to, and so many of us are outsourcing
our power to gurus or you know, religions or organizations
or other people that are outside of us. And I
think the reasons that Jesus cautioned the Pharisees and other
people against this sort of categorizing is because it turns
(28:07):
us away from our own internal power. And when you
turn people away from their own internal power, things start
to get really wonky, which is why you see inside
of evangelical Christianity the culture around this, you see lots
of the same types of scenarios, situations, people, personalities take
(28:31):
place again and again and again. You see, for example,
just one example, pastor after pastor after pastor after pastor
falling from grace, and you know, we blame the person,
We blame the pastor we say, like, you know, this
was just a bad egg or a bad apple, or
he made these bad decisions, or he sort of stepped
outside of what was acceptable. There may be some truth
(28:53):
in that. And also he's making those choices inside of
a system that we have all co sign to, where
we're making him the god, we're making him the guru,
we're putting him on the pedestal, we're putting him on
the stage. We're asking him to give us the answers,
to give us the wisdom. And no human being was
(29:16):
created with the ability to stay in that position forever
in congruence with who they actually are. So in my opinion,
these people keep falling from grace to show us. Stop
looking for the wisdom that you're looking for in that
other person, start looking inside of you, start going inward.
(29:38):
And maybe this is occurring to me as I'm saying it,
but maybe this is one of the reasons why writing
has been such an important part of my process and
why I'm so adamant to encourage people to use this tool,
because writing, more than any other practice I've experienced in
my life, will show you the wisdom that is buried
(30:00):
in you. It will show you how much you can
trust yourself. It will show you how much your own
personal experience has to teach you. I'm not saying that
your story is everything. I'm not saying that you are
the end all, be all, or that you're the ones
who should be on the pedestal or be on the stage. Nobody,
(30:21):
in my opinion, should be on the pedestal or on
the stage. Part of how we experience God is by
experiencing one another and experiencing the stories of one another.
And maybe this is why this process of helping people
write their story has been so important to me and
has been such a pivotal part of my evolution of
my process. A couple more things I want to say
(30:42):
before I wrap up. And I know this isn't going
in like a clear linear narrative arc. I'm processing this
out loud for you in real time. Not that I've
had these conversations with friends and family and with people
close to me, so this is not the first time
I've had this conversation. But I'm processing this with you
in real time, So I appreciate you allowing me to
(31:03):
do that. But I just want to add a couple
of other things. Number One is one of the big
things that's changed for me inside of my faith is
I don't have a regular Sunday morning church service ritual
part of my life anymore. There are a lot of
reasons why I've chosen to step away from that particular
expression of my faith, one of which is this idea
(31:24):
of putting a person on a pedestal. It's like same
person week after week who is preaching to you, teaching you,
telling you how you're supposed to view the world, view,
the Bible, view, God view, all of it. And that
setup stopped working for me about the time that I
went through my divorce, so that is not present in
my life anymore. And one thing that I'll say that
(31:45):
I've come to really appreciate about the Christian Church is
what a phenomenal, fantastic job the Christian Church has done
over centuries of bringing people together in community. It has
been the biggest absence in my life inside of this
evolution of faith. I don't believe that the absence is forever,
(32:06):
and I believe that the absence is intentional. It's part
of my growth, it's part of the experience. And I've
also had really beautiful community experiences in yoga classes and
at retreats and workshops and writing groups and book clubs
and all kinds of other dinner with friends, you know,
all kinds of other ways that I've had that experience
(32:28):
of community. But I have noticed a really, really big
absence of community since I've left that ritual of Sunday
morning church going and Wednesday night church going. And I
just want to say that, Like I said, I think
this will shift and change, and I think that there
will be a group of people whose consciousness is evolving,
whose faith is evolving, who find a way to gather
(32:48):
and be together. But this is one of the primary
ways that we experience God is by gathering together and
having these experiences together. So we've got to find ways
to do that. I mean, even even inside of COVID
and a period of time when it was very hard
to gather with people, I think most of us learned
through that time how important it is to be together
with other people, having an experience with someone else side
(33:12):
by side, sharing that experience with other people who understand us,
who can witness us, who can see us, And that's
an absolutely pivotal part of our process. That group of
people may need to be narrowed down for you for
a period of time. It may need to look a
little different than it has looked in the past, but
we have to find a way to stay in community,
(33:33):
and I do think that the Christian Church does an
amazing job of pulling people together in that way. Another
thing I'll say that's just been such a sweet gift
in the last couple of years with my kids is
watching my children have an experience of God without me
teaching that to them. There are certain instances where they
have a conversation with me, and I'll feel like, oh gosh,
(33:56):
this is my opportunity to sort of like guide them
and teach them and tell them who God is and
how this all works. And I do have those moments
where I feel pulled to do that, and then I
try to stop myself or try to just slow myself
down and listen to what they're trying to say. My daughter,
for example, has gendered God as she, which has just
(34:20):
been so deeply healing for me and such a blessing.
I've never gendered God to my daughter. I've never called
God he or she. In fact, if you asked, if
you pinned me down in this moment and asked me
to tell you what I think God is, I think
God is they I think God is both he and she,
and I don't think God is one or the other gender.
I think that we have imposed that gender on God. However,
(34:41):
because I've grown up in such a strict paradigm of
God as he, God as Father, it's been so sweet
and healing to hear my daughter call God she. And
it's this beautiful way that I have allowed myself to
let go of the certainty that I've decided I know
who God is, and to allow myself to enter into
(35:01):
this conversation with a child who you know, Jesus says
that the Kingdom of God belongs to the children. That
they're going to be able to see the Kingdom of
God in a way that we are not, because they're
just simply closer to it.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
The veil is thinner. So it's been such a.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Sweet way for me to get to experience my faith
and experience a connection to God through my children. And then, finally,
the last thing I want to say is that if
you're someone who's listening to this and wondering is she
a Christian? Because you're wondering, am I welcome here? Do
I belong here? Am I worthy to be here? Is
(35:36):
she going to judge me for my life choices. Is
she going to, you know, see me in this certain
kind of light because I know enough about what Christians
believe or the worldview that Christians have, then I want
you to know that you are absolutely welcome here, regardless
of your life experience, regardless of you know how you
define yourself, regardless of whatever bucket you would put yourself in,
(35:58):
like welcome all the buckets, Like we're all just here
trying to figure this thing out. And I have as
much to learn from you as you have to learn
from me. If you're here asking the question is she
a Christian? Because you're wanting to know if you can
put me on your pedestal to be your teacher. I
say this with the most love and the most respect,
but I do not want to be on your pedestal.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
It feels like way too much pressure for me. That
is not my role.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
That there may be some people in the world who
feel as if that is their role. It is not
my role. I'm not a prophet, I'm not a teacher
in that kind of a way. I will share the
wisdom that I mind from my life. I will share
that with you as it comes to me, but I
also really want to invite you and open you to
this idea that there is so much wisdom inside of
(36:46):
you and inside of your life that you can access
through a tool like writing, or through something totally different
that calls to you, like cold plunging or therapy or
emdr or yoga or tai chi or something else entirely
that I haven't even mentioned, whatever it is that calls
to you, like, there are so many ways for you
(37:07):
to go inside and find that wisdom for yourself that
your life is trying to teach you. Your life is
trying to speak to you, just like my life is
trying to speak to me. And we can all share
that wisdom with each other. And I really believe that
we when we enter into that kind of a relationship
and that kind of community, when we share our stories
with one another, we have a deeper and more meaningful
(37:29):
experience of God. And that's what God is. God is
that God is all of us connected together sharing what
it's like to be alive and inside of this body.
As for the rest of it, I don't know the
answers to most questions that someone would ask me if
they were looking to me to be a teacher to
them about faith. I don't know the answers to any
(37:50):
of those questions. I'm open.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
I'm learning just like you are. I'm evolving every day,
I'm changing.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Maybe what I believe today to be true I might
not believe tomorrow. I feel like I'm having less and
less opinions about things the older that I get, and
I'm really really grateful to be in that space. It
feels lighter, it feels simpler, it feels easier, it feels
more connected, it feels more grounded than it felt to
(38:16):
be in the old container. And that's nothing against the
old container. I couldn't have gotten here without the old container,
so I'm grateful for it. I have a ton of gratitude.
I have a ton of love. I have so many
friends in my life who still are professing evangelical Christians.
My family members are all in that place, and I
have great relationships with them, nothing but love and connection
with those family members too. And some of my favorite
(38:40):
people in the world, some of the most loving, lovely
people in the world, are professing Christians. And I just
want to say this is my last note, and then
I'm going to say goodbye. Whatever tendency that you have
to draw a dividing line and say those people are
over here and I'm over here. Those people aren't like me.
None of that is real. That dividing line does not exist.
(39:03):
It exists in your brain, but it doesn't actually exist.
And only you can choose to erase that dividing line
and reach out across the line and find the humanity
in the person that you think isn't like you, the
person that you think you hate. That might be life's
work for certain people in our lives. I can tell
you one thing. My ex husband, I have nothing but
(39:25):
love for him. I'm on a long journey of forgiveness
for the dynamic that we created together and the life
that we live together. And I say that just to say,
not with any animosity towards him. I say that to say,
there may be certain people who you need to create
some distance from. But distance is different than creating a
dividing line where you say this person isn't like me,
their other from me. So maybe all be in community together,
(39:48):
maybe we all share our stories and maybe have a
deeper and truer and richer experience of God because of it.
Pick up the pieces of your life, pull them back
together with the word you write all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
You got the.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
Words and said, don't you think it's time to.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Let them out and write them down and cover it's
all about and write. Write your story. Write you write
your story.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Hi, and welcome back to the Write Your Story Podcast.
I'm Ali Fallon, I'm your host, and on today's episode,
I want to answer a question that I have been
avoiding answering for many, many years. This is a question
that I get asked all the time. I get asked
this question at least once a week, sometimes many more,
in my dms, on Instagram, in my email inbox. I
get asked this question. Not as much anymore because I've
(00:52):
been a little bit more open with family and friends,
but I used to get asked this question in real
life from family and friends as well, And sometimes I
feel like the question is also kind of lingering under
the surface. If someone doesn't directly say it, they're wondering it.
And I feel like I'm in a place where I
might be finally ready to address the answer to this question.
Speaker 3 (01:10):
The question goes something like this.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Some version of are you still a Christian anymore? Are
you a person of faith? Are you a believer? And
I've avoided answering this question. I said this on Instagram
when I asked if you'd be interested in hearing the
evolution of my faith? I said the word trap, that
the question has felt like a trap to me. And
what I've uncovered is that my idea of it being
(01:34):
a trap is that that's just all in my own head.
It's all in my mind, it's all in how I
perceive the intention behind the question. But i will say
that one of the reasons why I've avoided answering this
question for so long is because I've been trying to
create some space around what has been a really important
and sacred process for me. I don't take this experience slightly.
(01:57):
I don't take this episode lightly, don't take my answer
to the question lightly. And yet I've had to create
this space around the experience for myself so that I
could just have the experience without feeling like I was
having the experience inside of a fish bowl. Because a
lot has happened in my personal life, and a lot
of which I've been very public about but so much
(02:18):
has happened for me, and so much has evolved and
changed for me that I've wanted to be able to
really go inward and think about what I believe and
how I feel about certain things, and not constantly be
checking that insight or intuition against some teacher who I've
given my power to, or some follower on Instagram who
(02:41):
I've given my power to, or some email subscriber who
I've given my power to, or even a friend who
I've given my power to. I think a lot of
times in our lives we give our power away to
other people who we think have the answers that we're
looking for. And I have really wanted to be in
a process of going inward and asking the questions and
finding those answers on my own. It's not that I
(03:01):
haven't welcomed help when it has come, or that I'm
closed to the idea of receiving help. It's just that
I've really been fine tuning and cultivating my own ability
to listen to that still small voice, to listen to myself,
to trust myself and my own tuition intuition. And this
has been a super, super important part of my process
(03:23):
that now I feel really excited and really ready to
share with you, and I really do hope that I
receive feedback from you. I don't feel like this question
is a trap anymore, and I make the assumption that
the intention behind this question.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Is very pure.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Probably a lot of you are asking this question because
you're wondering if maybe someone else is going through something
similar to what you're going through. Maybe you're questioning some
of the ideas or beliefs that you were handed from
a previous generation. Maybe you're questioning some of the ways
that you were raised inside of church culture. Maybe you're
(04:00):
or feeling the very foundation shake underneath of you, like
I have so many times in the last decade of
my life. And maybe you're feeling kind of crazy, and
you're feeling sort of alone, and you would like someone
to just validate and affirm that you aren't crazy, and
that this experience is actually a great awakening and it
doesn't have to be only scary, although it can bring
(04:21):
up feelings of fear, but this can actually be a
great invitation into a deeper, richer, more evolved view of humanity,
view of the world, view of God, view of yourself, you,
of all of it than ever existed before, and maybe
it might be nice to hear someone else share their
perspective and their story so that you don't feel so
(04:43):
alone in yours. I'm not so naive as to think
that there aren't a handful of people asking this question
with the intent to see if I'm still a trustworthy
person to be in contact with, if I'm still a
trustworthy teacher to follow, if I'm still a trustworthy author
to be reading. I say that because I know from
(05:06):
my own experience, from the person that I was ten
years ago, that I would have been asking those questions
that I would have been wondering, that that I would
have had that intention behind this question, and so there's
no judgment there. I will say, if you're looking to
know whether I'm in the club or out of the club,
or in the camp or out of the camp, then
(05:27):
the chances are quite high that my answer is not
going to be satisfying to you, because I'm not going
to be able to clearly, in black and white terms,
tell you that I'm in the club. In fact, I'm
getting ahead of myself. But the group of people in
the scriptures who Jesus Christ most adamantly opposes are the
(05:50):
group of people who were trying to figure out if
a person is in the club or out of the club.
I don't see my faith like this anymore. I don't
see the dividing line that I used to see that
was there. That dividing line, in my mind was fake.
Pretend it was made up by someone else and then
handed down to me as a sort of bizarre inheritance.
(06:10):
But I don't see those dividing lines the same way
that I used to. And so my answer is probably
not going to be satisfying to you. And yet I
still invite you to sit and listen to my answer
and reflect on it for yourself, and ask yourself what
this brings up for you, What fears does it bring up,
What anxieties does it bring up? What experiences does it
bring up for you? How do you relate to what
(06:31):
I'm saying? How do you not relate to what I'm saying?
And feel free to share all of that feedback.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
With me as well.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
It might help if I go back a little bit
and give you some context for where I came from,
how I grew up, the way that I was raised,
Because you may be listening to this and think, Oh,
I wouldn't even know to ask this question because I
didn't know that this woman, at one point in her
life professed to be a Christian. You may be new
around here and you don't know that. In twenty thirteen,
(06:57):
I published a book with Moody Publishers that is a
very concerent servative Christian publisher out of Chicago. You wouldn't
know that the Power of Writing It Down is published
with Zondervan, which is technically a Christian publisher, although the
book was published under an imprint under Zondervan that is
not an explicitly Christian imprint. But even all of that
is very confusing. You might not have been around during
(07:18):
a time when I was married to a Christian pastor
and we planted a church together, So this might all
be new information for you. I thought maybe it might
be helpful, even for those of you who have been
around a long time, to understand the environment in which
I was raised. My parents are both professing evangelical Christians.
(07:39):
They would say that they're born again, they would say
that they're Jesus followers. I grew up going to church
every Sunday, every Wednesday, other times of the week for
choir practice, for small groups, for youth.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Group, for all of it.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So I was fully immersed in that environment as a
young person. My parents were also for a large part
of my upbringing on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ,
which is not called that anymore. I think it's called
crue now, but camps Crusade for Christ is an evangelical
organization that exists on college campuses to bring people together
(08:15):
in community and also with a distinctly evangelical intention to
invite people into this relationship with Jesus Christ, to accept
Christ as their Lord and Savior, and to become a
part of the Christian faith. So when I say evangelical,
some of you may know exactly what I mean by that.
(08:35):
Others of you may not fully understand that, but essentially
think of evangelical as evangelizing. I was taught at a
very young age to always be speaking clearly about my faith,
to always be inviting people into this relationship with Jesus.
That is what I mean when I say that evangelical piece.
It has to do with always sort of professing that
(08:57):
invitation and inviting people to be part of the Christian faith. Now,
the evangelical movement there are a lot of really beautiful,
wonderful things I could talk about as it relates to
the evangelical movement, and part of my process of evolving
my faith has been that I went through a period
of time where I was really angry about how I
(09:18):
was raised. I felt really frustrated about a bunch of
things that took place that I'll talk about in this episode.
And I have gotten to a place where I see
a fuller picture. It's not that I've stopped being angry
completely or that I'm you know, rainbow washing things that
took place that were not okay, but I also can
(09:38):
see that I was raised inside of a really beautiful, loving,
lovely container, and that container was full of people who
were doing the absolute best that they knew how they
were doing the best that they understood at that time.
They were truly wonderful, kind, genuine people, most of them
ninety nine percent of them, and who were not were
(10:01):
very wounded individuals who needed much more support and help,
who needed boundaries, who needed to be removed from their
positions of power, and there just wasn't the awareness at
the time to create that kind of safety. So yes,
many things took place inside of that container that were
challenging for me and left to Mark and that I
(10:24):
had to process and work through later. But there were
also a lot of aspects of the evangelical movement and
of the Christian Church that I'm very thankful for that
created a really solid foundation from which I could grow
into the woman that I am today. The evangelical movement
is also especially the evangelical movement of the eighties and nineties,
(10:49):
was its own subculture. So if you grew up in
that subculture, you would recognize things like, you know, DC
talk and the True Love Weights movement and what would
Jesus Do and all of those different aspects of that
cultural movement. If you didn't grow up in that, it's
almost like you grew up in a different world than
those of us who grew up inside of that environment.
(11:09):
Like there was a strong dividing line between people who
grew up in the other culture of that time and
in the evangelical movement of that time. So sometimes I
still run into that where I will be having a
conversation with someone who didn't grow up inside of that environment,
and I still feel a little shocked that I missed
a whole part of life that they had that I
didn't have, and vice versa. That you know, my first
(11:32):
concert was DC Talk and Jennifer Napp and those might
mean nothing to someone who didn't grow up inside of
that container. So that has been one challenge that I
have faced as I have evolved as an adult in
this world is feeling like there were certain things that
I missed out on, that I didn't get to experience
because I was part of this smaller container. One experience
(11:54):
that I'll share with you that was really formative for
me and will give you a sense of some of
the ideologies and the way of operating that didn't really
work very well despite the best intentions, maybe didn't create
the outcome that the adults in our lives were hoping.
I was really involved in my youth group growing up.
I would go on Sunday mornings to youth group, and
(12:16):
then I would go to the service with my parents.
I would go on Wednesday nights to youth group. My
best friends were actually not at my school. My best
friends were a part of my youth group, and you know,
we had a youth pastor who was coordinating all of
these experiences that at the time this made perfect sense.
He's the authority, he's the grown up, he's the you know,
authority figure in the room, and we're all the kids,
(12:38):
and so we listened to him. It didn't really hit
me until later that this person who was the authority
figure in the room was probably twenty one years old,
maybe maybe not even quite that old, and we were
what fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, So the age disparity between us,
and just the idea of this person being an authority
over us, or like a twenty year old being in
(12:58):
charge of a room full of teenagers, especially since this
person is a male and many of the participants in
the group are female. It didn't click with me until
later that that dynamic was problematic for a handful of reasons. Anyway,
inside of that youth group experience, I had a situation
when I was sixteen or seventeen years old where I
(13:21):
was pulled aside by the youth pastor with a couple
of my girlfriends and it was requested that we not
be as a physically affectionate with each other as we
had been in the past. Now we were sixteen year
old girls. We were kissing each other on the cheek,
we were giving each other piggyback rides. We were picking
each other up, we were laying on top of each other.
(13:42):
I don't even know what we were doing, but sixteen
year old girls, I would think fairly developmentally appropriate in
my opinion. Now as a forty year old woman, well,
we were pulled aside. We were asked to please stop
this behavior. We were told that this was going to
be a bad witness to people who were coming into
the youth group. That's at least as I and a
whole thing unfolded that I didn't even have the consciousness
(14:05):
or awareness at the time to think about, like how
messed up this was? That this was this was we
were being pulled aside by a male authority figure. We
were told, you know, that this behavior of ours was problematic,
it was going to be a bad witness. It made
us look like we were lesbians, when we, of course
weren't lesbians. And there's so many problematic elements to this
whole thing that didn't occur to me at the time.
(14:27):
But what I do remember is that it blew up
into this explosion, and eventually myself and these other couple
of women, I think there were six of us, five
or six of us were asked to.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Leave the youth group.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Eventually, myself and these other couple of women think there
were six of us, five or six of us were
asked to leave the youth group, and so I did.
I left the youth group, and I actually ended up
going to another youth group. So it wasn't like I
left the youth group and was like, that's it, I'm
done with church. I left the youth group and went
to a different youth group. When I think back on
(15:12):
that experience, it was one of the early experiences I
had where I started to feel at odds with this
container that I was inside of, as safe of a
container as it was to grow up in, as comforting,
as nurturing in many ways of a container as it was.
That was one of the first couple of moments where
I really started to feel like this is not working
(15:35):
for me. Another experience that I can remember very vividly
as a teenager is being a part of a youth
group service on a Sunday morning and the pastor at
the time was preaching on the doctrine of predestination, which
you probably have not heard of that unless you also
grew up in church like I did. But the doctrine
of predestination is basically this idea that God chooses ahead
(15:56):
of time the people who he's going to send to
heaven and the peace people who's going to send a
hell the vessels of destruction in the vessels of light. Anyway,
the pastor was teaching on this idea, and I can
just very vividly remember sitting in the audience listening to
this sermon and just not liking the way that it
fell in my body. I was just like, that doesn't
(16:17):
seem like a thing that God would do. God, as
I know who God is, God is my experience of God.
I didn't have any more language for it at that time.
I didn't have the ability to debate with the youth pastor.
It wouldn't have even been invited or allowed. All I
knew was that this information was coming at me. It
(16:39):
didn't feel good in my body, and I didn't like
the way that it sat with me. And I just
remember having that feeling as a sixteen year old girl,
to add to the list that would grow over time
of my sort of rub with what I was learning
inside of this environment. And you'll probably remember this if
you were part of that evangelical movement. Growing up like
(17:00):
I was, You'll remember how there were a lot of
alter calls, meaning moments opportunities for you to sort of
recommit your life to Christ after making mistakes, or recommit
your life to Christ after wandering away from him or
living outside of His will for your life. And I
had so many of those. I mean, I could take
(17:21):
you on the journey. It would take hours, and it
wouldn't really be all that important, but a roller coaster
ride through my twenties of quote unquote falling away from
God and then coming back in this alter call sort
of moment and being like, I'm recommitting my life to
this movement, committing my life to this way of seeing
the world.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
And what I couldn't see at the time is.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
That this was all part of my own wrestling with
a worldview that just wasn't really working for me. And
if you think of each of those experiences like tiny, small,
little earthquakes that were shaking me up, but not so
much that anything got really destroyed, but just sort of
shaking me up, shaking me awake. It wasn't until later
(18:05):
in my life when I was filing for divorce from
a man who I had married in large part because
he was a pastor of a church. And I had
been told over and over again in my life that
I wanted to look for someone who was a man
of God. This is who I wanted to marry, someone
who is a man of God. And this person had
violated my trust in countless ways, had been a really
(18:28):
toxic partner for me. And I fully admit that I
had participated in that toxic partnership. But I started to
see how that toxic partnership was actually, in weird ways,
celebrated by the environment that I was inside of. It
was almost like the model for how a relationship ought
to work. There was this expectation of submission from the
(18:50):
woman in dominance by the man, and that dynamic playing
out in my household was incredibly abusive and toxic. And
it was the first time in my life where the
earth earthquake was not a small earthquake anymore. The earthquake
was such a massive earthquake that the very foundation that
had been underneath of me, that I had depended on
and relied on for so much of my life, for
(19:11):
my entire life, just literally crumbled and fell out from
underneath of me and Some of the memories that stick
out to me from this time in my life are
having conversations with my family members who really loved me
and care about me so much and were concerned for
my well being and for obviously my emotional and physical
well being also, but were concerned for my spiritual wellbeing.
(19:33):
And we would have these conversations over time about my
faith and where I stood. And I can remember having
a conversation with my sister where I just told her,
if my life had gone the way that your life
has gone, I wouldn't have had any reason to question
what I believe. But because my life has not gone
that way, because I followed the rules and jumped through
(19:57):
the hoops and did the things and worked the program,
and because my life fell out from underneath of me,
I'm given no other choice but to question literally everything
that I've ever been taught. And this was a moment
of massive awakening for me. It was very painful. It
still is in moments painful to let go of the
(20:17):
safe and cozy container that we were raised with, even
if the container isn't Christianity, even if the container is
something totally different, It is very unnerving and unsettling. To
let go of a safe container. And yet this is
also the process of evolution. It's the process of growing up.
It's the process of becoming an adult, becoming a grown up,
(20:38):
owning your own life, having your own responsibility, your own sovereignty.
This is evolving and growing to let go of that
safe container in which we were raised. And one of
the things that I've learned is that letting go of
a safe container doesn't mean letting go of absolutely everything
that I was ever taught. It does for a period
of time, so much of what I learned as a
(21:03):
young woman and a young girl has come back around
to me, and I'm just able to see it in
a different light than I was able to see it before.
I'm able to see it from a higher level of consciousness.
I'm able to take it in in a different kind
of a way than I was able to take it
in back then, because I just didn't have the capacity
to do that then. But I'm getting a little ahead
(21:25):
of myself, because I think what's important to mention is
that there was a period of time, a very long
period of time, where I needed to in some ways
completely do away with this container that I had grown
up with. And actually I say needed to. It wasn't
a choice, so it didn't feel like a choice at
the time. It felt like your world has literally been
(21:46):
taken out from underneath of your feet, and now the
task is to reassemble it in a different kind of way.
And I wonder if some of you who are listening
might have a similar kind of experience. Maybe for you
it wasn't a divorce, but maybe it was an addiction,
or maybe it was the loss of someone that you loved,
or maybe it was some other event. But oftentimes I
(22:09):
think these events come to us they feel like they
completely shatter what we know to be true. But what's
actually happening is it's an invitation, and it's awakening to
a whole new way of being, a whole new way
of seeing the world that's actually bigger and broader than
what we were able to take in before. So when
people ask me this question, are you still a Christian?
(22:32):
I don't know exactly how to answer the question, because,
in many ways, if I'm that person ten years ago,
if I rewind who I was ten years ago, and
I'm asking that question, what I'm really asking is do
you go to church? Do you believe that Jesus is
the way, the truth in the life, the only way
to heaven. Do you accept him into your heart? Do
(22:54):
you follow him unequivocally? Do you tithe to the church?
I don't know. There were all these sort of extra
things that I would have tagged along with whatever that meant.
And I think that in certain cases, this is what
people are asking. And if I laid out for you
what my spiritual life looks like right now, to some
of you, it might look like, Oh, she's not a Christian.
(23:16):
She doesn't check these boxes X, Y, and Z, and
so she's not in the club. And of you, you
might not have that association. You might not draw a
conclusion about it at all. So when someone asks me
this question, I always wonder, like, are you really wondering
if I call myself a Christian? Or are you wondering
if you would call me a Christian if you knew
(23:39):
what my ideology was, if you knew what I believed,
or the way that I saw the world, the view
point from which I look at everything that happens in life.
The way I would answer this question one hundred percent
honestly is yes, I do still feel as if I'm
a Christian. I feel actually probably the best term to
(23:59):
describe my faith present day is something like a Christian mystic.
Like Richard Rhor is a Christian mystic. There are some
other teachers out there who would call themselves Christian mystics.
Christian mystic the way that I would define it, I
don't know the actual dictionary definition of Christian mystic, but
the way that I would define Christian mystic is really
similar to the faith that I was handed from, similar
(24:22):
in many ways to the faith that I was handed
from a previous generation, but with a lot more mysticism involved,
with just a little bit of a different lens to
look at it. And I like to think of my
faith as a yes, and it's yes to everything that
I was taught and so much more. It's like Rabel
calls this transcend and include, and that feels really really
(24:44):
true for me. It's like yes and something else, something bigger,
something more, not just this small container that I was
handed as a child.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
One thing that I think is.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Really important to point out is that my experience of
my faith present day is just as if not infinitely more.
In fact, I would say it's infinitely more rich and
true and permeated in every aspect of who I am
and the way that I live my life today, present
(25:27):
day than it was ten years ago, when I could
have more clearly told you, here are the tenants of
my faith, here's the statement of belief that I believe,
and I'm going to sign my signature on the bottom
of that statement of belief. Ten years ago, I felt
like I could really much more easily do that, And
now I feel like there are so many more questions
than answers, and there's so much that I'm still confused about,
(25:49):
and I don't know how all of this works, but
it's absolutely fascinating to me. And God is very real
to me. The experience of a power that's greater than
me that I don't fully understand, but that also exists
inside of me that I can communicate with on a
daily basis.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
That experience is so real.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
To me, much more real to me now than it
ever was back in the days when I had more
control over my life and over my faith and over
my existence, or more perceived control. And one of the
things that I think happens when we put a lot
of energy into trying to figure out who's in and
who's out and we do this with way more than
just faith, by the way, but this definitely I think
(26:28):
happens around this question when we're trying to figure out,
like where does this person fit? Are they Mormon, are
they Christian? Are they Jewish? Or are they Hindu?
Speaker 3 (26:35):
What are you?
Speaker 2 (26:36):
What bucket can I put you in so that I
can better understand you? What ends up happening is that
we actually miss what's true, we miss what's present, we
miss what's really going on, and we miss each other.
We miss how much we actually share inside of the
human experience. And like I mentioned before, you know, the
(26:57):
concept in the scriptures of the Pharisees trying to figure
out who's in and who is out based on their actions,
based on outer behaviors, based on you know, outer symbols,
was very directly criticized by Jesus. And I think one
of the reasons why Jesus so vehemently and adamantly criticized
this kind of thinking and this kind of behavior is
(27:19):
because of what happens when we need to figure out
what bucket people fall in. One of the big things
that happens, in my opinion, we're trying to figure out
who is trustworthy, who's a trustworthy teacher, who's a trustworthy author,
who can I rely on, who can I, you know,
go to to sort of feed me with the information
and the wisdom that I need in order to live
my life. When that turns us away from the wisdom
(27:44):
that is already in us, the wisdom that we directly
have access to, and so many of us are outsourcing
our power to gurus or you know, religions or organizations
or other people that are outside of us. And I
think the reasons that Jesus cautioned the Pharisees and other
people against this sort of categorizing is because it turns
(28:07):
us away from our own internal power. And when you
turn people away from their own internal power, things start
to get really wonky, which is why you see inside
of evangelical Christianity the culture around this, you see lots
of the same types of scenarios, situations, people, personalities take
(28:31):
place again and again and again. You see, for example,
just one example, pastor after pastor after pastor after pastor
falling from grace, and you know, we blame the person,
We blame the pastor we say, like, you know, this
was just a bad egg or a bad apple, or
he made these bad decisions, or he sort of stepped
outside of what was acceptable. There may be some truth
(28:53):
in that. And also he's making those choices inside of
a system that we have all co sign to, where
we're making him the god, we're making him the guru,
we're putting him on the pedestal, we're putting him on
the stage. We're asking him to give us the answers,
to give us the wisdom. And no human being was
(29:16):
created with the ability to stay in that position forever
in congruence with who they actually are. So in my opinion,
these people keep falling from grace to show us. Stop
looking for the wisdom that you're looking for in that
other person, start looking inside of you, start going inward.
(29:38):
And maybe this is occurring to me as I'm saying it,
but maybe this is one of the reasons why writing
has been such an important part of my process and
why I'm so adamant to encourage people to use this tool,
because writing, more than any other practice I've experienced in
my life, will show you the wisdom that is buried
(30:00):
in you. It will show you how much you can
trust yourself. It will show you how much your own
personal experience has to teach you. I'm not saying that
your story is everything. I'm not saying that you are
the end all, be all, or that you're the ones
who should be on the pedestal or be on the stage. Nobody,
(30:21):
in my opinion, should be on the pedestal or on
the stage. Part of how we experience God is by
experiencing one another and experiencing the stories of one another.
And maybe this is why this process of helping people
write their story has been so important to me and
has been such a pivotal part of my evolution of
my process. A couple more things I want to say
(30:42):
before I wrap up. And I know this isn't going
in like a clear linear narrative arc. I'm processing this
out loud for you in real time. Not that I've
had these conversations with friends and family and with people
close to me, so this is not the first time
I've had this conversation. But I'm processing this with you
in real time, So I appreciate you allowing me to
(31:03):
do that. But I just want to add a couple
of other things. Number One is one of the big
things that's changed for me inside of my faith is
I don't have a regular Sunday morning church service ritual
part of my life anymore. There are a lot of
reasons why I've chosen to step away from that particular
expression of my faith, one of which is this idea
(31:24):
of putting a person on a pedestal. It's like same
person week after week who is preaching to you, teaching you,
telling you how you're supposed to view the world, view,
the Bible, view, God view, all of it. And that
setup stopped working for me about the time that I
went through my divorce, so that is not present in
my life anymore. And one thing that I'll say that
(31:45):
I've come to really appreciate about the Christian Church is
what a phenomenal, fantastic job the Christian Church has done
over centuries of bringing people together in community. It has
been the biggest absence in my life inside of this
evolution of faith. I don't believe that the absence is forever,
(32:06):
and I believe that the absence is intentional. It's part
of my growth, it's part of the experience. And I've
also had really beautiful community experiences in yoga classes and
at retreats and workshops and writing groups and book clubs
and all kinds of other dinner with friends, you know,
all kinds of other ways that I've had that experience
(32:28):
of community. But I have noticed a really, really big
absence of community since I've left that ritual of Sunday
morning church going and Wednesday night church going. And I
just want to say that, Like I said, I think
this will shift and change, and I think that there
will be a group of people whose consciousness is evolving,
whose faith is evolving, who find a way to gather
(32:48):
and be together. But this is one of the primary
ways that we experience God is by gathering together and
having these experiences together. So we've got to find ways
to do that. I mean, even even inside of COVID
and a period of time when it was very hard
to gather with people, I think most of us learned
through that time how important it is to be together
with other people, having an experience with someone else side
(33:12):
by side, sharing that experience with other people who understand us,
who can witness us, who can see us, And that's
an absolutely pivotal part of our process. That group of
people may need to be narrowed down for you for
a period of time. It may need to look a
little different than it has looked in the past, but
we have to find a way to stay in community,
(33:33):
and I do think that the Christian Church does an
amazing job of pulling people together in that way. Another
thing I'll say that's just been such a sweet gift
in the last couple of years with my kids is
watching my children have an experience of God without me
teaching that to them. There are certain instances where they
have a conversation with me, and I'll feel like, oh gosh,
(33:56):
this is my opportunity to sort of like guide them
and teach them and tell them who God is and
how this all works. And I do have those moments
where I feel pulled to do that, and then I
try to stop myself or try to just slow myself
down and listen to what they're trying to say. My daughter,
for example, has gendered God as she, which has just
(34:20):
been so deeply healing for me and such a blessing.
I've never gendered God to my daughter. I've never called
God he or she. In fact, if you asked, if
you pinned me down in this moment and asked me
to tell you what I think God is, I think
God is they I think God is both he and she,
and I don't think God is one or the other gender.
I think that we have imposed that gender on God. However,
(34:41):
because I've grown up in such a strict paradigm of
God as he, God as Father, it's been so sweet
and healing to hear my daughter call God she. And
it's this beautiful way that I have allowed myself to
let go of the certainty that I've decided I know
who God is, and to allow myself to enter into
(35:01):
this conversation with a child who you know, Jesus says
that the Kingdom of God belongs to the children. That
they're going to be able to see the Kingdom of
God in a way that we are not, because they're
just simply closer to it.
Speaker 3 (35:12):
The veil is thinner. So it's been such a.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Sweet way for me to get to experience my faith
and experience a connection to God through my children. And then, finally,
the last thing I want to say is that if
you're someone who's listening to this and wondering is she
a Christian? Because you're wondering, am I welcome here? Do
I belong here? Am I worthy to be here? Is
(35:36):
she going to judge me for my life choices. Is
she going to, you know, see me in this certain
kind of light because I know enough about what Christians
believe or the worldview that Christians have, then I want
you to know that you are absolutely welcome here, regardless
of your life experience, regardless of you know how you
define yourself, regardless of whatever bucket you would put yourself in,
(35:58):
like welcome all the buckets, Like we're all just here
trying to figure this thing out. And I have as
much to learn from you as you have to learn
from me. If you're here asking the question is she
a Christian? Because you're wanting to know if you can
put me on your pedestal to be your teacher. I
say this with the most love and the most respect,
but I do not want to be on your pedestal.
Speaker 3 (36:19):
It feels like way too much pressure for me. That
is not my role.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
That there may be some people in the world who
feel as if that is their role. It is not
my role. I'm not a prophet, I'm not a teacher
in that kind of a way. I will share the
wisdom that I mind from my life. I will share
that with you as it comes to me, but I
also really want to invite you and open you to
this idea that there is so much wisdom inside of
(36:46):
you and inside of your life that you can access
through a tool like writing, or through something totally different
that calls to you, like cold plunging or therapy or
emdr or yoga or tai chi or something else entirely
that I haven't even mentioned, whatever it is that calls
to you, like, there are so many ways for you
(37:07):
to go inside and find that wisdom for yourself that
your life is trying to teach you. Your life is
trying to speak to you, just like my life is
trying to speak to me. And we can all share
that wisdom with each other. And I really believe that
we when we enter into that kind of a relationship
and that kind of community, when we share our stories
with one another, we have a deeper and more meaningful
(37:29):
experience of God. And that's what God is. God is
that God is all of us connected together sharing what
it's like to be alive and inside of this body.
As for the rest of it, I don't know the
answers to most questions that someone would ask me if
they were looking to me to be a teacher to
them about faith. I don't know the answers to any
(37:50):
of those questions. I'm open.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
I'm learning just like you are. I'm evolving every day,
I'm changing.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Maybe what I believe today to be true I might
not believe tomorrow. I feel like I'm having less and
less opinions about things the older that I get, and
I'm really really grateful to be in that space. It
feels lighter, it feels simpler, it feels easier, it feels
more connected, it feels more grounded than it felt to
(38:16):
be in the old container. And that's nothing against the
old container. I couldn't have gotten here without the old container,
so I'm grateful for it. I have a ton of gratitude.
I have a ton of love. I have so many
friends in my life who still are professing evangelical Christians.
My family members are all in that place, and I
have great relationships with them, nothing but love and connection
with those family members too. And some of my favorite
(38:40):
people in the world, some of the most loving, lovely
people in the world, are professing Christians. And I just
want to say this is my last note, and then
I'm going to say goodbye. Whatever tendency that you have
to draw a dividing line and say those people are
over here and I'm over here. Those people aren't like me.
None of that is real. That dividing line does not exist.
(39:03):
It exists in your brain, but it doesn't actually exist.
And only you can choose to erase that dividing line
and reach out across the line and find the humanity
in the person that you think isn't like you, the
person that you think you hate. That might be life's
work for certain people in our lives. I can tell
you one thing. My ex husband, I have nothing but
(39:25):
love for him. I'm on a long journey of forgiveness
for the dynamic that we created together and the life
that we live together. And I say that just to say,
not with any animosity towards him. I say that to say,
there may be certain people who you need to create
some distance from. But distance is different than creating a
dividing line where you say this person isn't like me,
their other from me. So maybe all be in community together,
(39:48):
maybe we all share our stories and maybe have a
deeper and truer and richer experience of God because of it.
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