Tag: Self-Alignment

Hearts Cleansed First

Psalm 45:1, 7  My heart is stirring with a noble song; let me recite what I have fashioned…my tongue shall be the pen of a skilled writer. Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever, a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your reign; you love righteousness and hate iniquity.

Introduction

We just finished discussing the text of the letter to the Ephesians where “alignment” of the inner and outer person was a core thread woven through. For the author of the letter of Ephesians, whom I refer to as Paul, the encounter with God in the event of faith rectifies and substantiates the inner person of the believer with God in the message of what Christ did in his life and death and resurrection, and which is sealed to the believer by the coming of the Holy Spirit. This “spiritual” reality is not enough for Paul, as if just being right with God on the inside is all that matters. According to the logic of Ephesians, for this inner reality to be a real thing it must be/come tangible and that means it must find expression in the temporal realm through the outer person, the body. Faith must (and wants to!) express itself through acts of love. (full stop) In other words, what is on the inside wants to find expression on the outside.

It’s not a pop-psych thing; it’s not a fad or a phase. It’s not “these kids these days!”, it’s a very important concept that must be revisited often in our lives as we grow and mature, change with new information, and after we deconstruct spiritually and intellectually, emotionally and physically. It’s such an important topic that God in Christ Jesus picks up this very concept and discusses it from a different perspective. This time, though, Jesus addresses the discrepancy between empty action toward God because of a heart that clings to human tradition.

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Pharisees and some of the scribes [from Jerusalem] questioned [Jesus], “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the priest, but eat bread with dirty hands? And [Jesus] said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as is has been written, ‘This people revere me with [their] lips but their heart keeps far off from me. In vain they worship me, teaching the teachings of the precepts of humanity.’ Leaving the commands of God, you hold fast the traditions of humanity.”

Mark opens chapter 7 with the local pharisees coming together with some of the scribes having arrived from Jerusalem.[1] Here we, the audience, are being introduced to the building crisis and intensifying controversy between Jesus and the established leadership of Israel.[2] Not just the local leadership is worried, but the larger leadership is worried; so Jerusalem dispatched a group of scribes to see about this Jesus and his claims and actions.[3] As the two groups (the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes) come together they take notice that Jesus’s disciples eat bread with unclean hands—that is, unwashed. This small oversight on the part of the disciples sparks pharisaic and scribal attention because, as Mark parenthetically explains to us, for the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they might carefully wash [their] hands, holding fast to the tradition of the priest; and they do not eat unless they ritually wash themselves also from the market… According to Mark, there is a human-made[4] tradition demanding hands (and bodies from the market!) are thoroughly cleansed before consuming food. Even more, anything to do with food should be baptized (washed thoroughly): winecups, pitchers, copper vessels, and couches.The desire is to prevent something external and unclean from contaminating the person on the inside. So, seeing the disciples break such a tradition—running the risk of making themselves unclean—provokes the Pharisees and the scribes to question Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the traditions of the priests, but eat bread with unclean hands?” As Jesus is pulled into the crisis, this rather small oversight becomes a much bigger deal.[5]

The reason why this small oversight becomes significant is because it marks a very early departure of Jesus’s followers from the traditions of the priests, a departure which will become—over time—more radical.[6] Jesus takes hold of the conversation and moves it away from the banality of tradition-obedience and toward something much more significant: inner-person and outer-person alignment and obedience to God.[7] Jesus begins by calling them hypocrites and then quoting Isaiah, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as is has been written, ‘This people revere me with [their] lips but their heart keeps far off from me. In vain they worship me, teaching the teachings of the precepts of humanity.’ And then concludes, “Leaving the commands of God, you hold fast the traditions of humanity.” In other words, Jesus has turned (flipped?) the table on the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes: it is not my disciples who have left the true tradition of reign of God; it is you who have left God as you cling to traditionalism of the kingdom of humanity.[8] According to Jesus, the existing leadership of the children of Israel have allowed God’s commands to slip away as they grabbed onto the traditions of humanity. They are the ones who are now caught in dissonance: they say they love God but their actions demonstrate that they love their own traditions more. Something is askew.

Then, according to our assigned text, Jesus turns to the crowd, and draws them into the discussion, leaving the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes to their own thoughts, “Listen to me all [of you] and understand, nothing from outside of a person is able to make them unclean by entering into them. Rather, it is that which proceeds out of/is spoken by a person which makes the person unclean. Jesus addresses the crowd because what is at stake exceeds just washing one’s hands according to the traditions of human beings; what is at stake is one’s orientation toward God (inward) and, thus, one’s orientation toward the neighbor (outward).[9] Building from the Isaiah quotation, Jesus recenters the state of the inner person (the heart) as the most important thing, as the seat of what defiles or does not defile a person.[10] It’s not a dirty pitcher or dirty hands that makes one unclean, it’s what is produced from the heart and finds its way out that makes someone unclean. Thus, why Jesus then says, For it is from within the heart of the person that the bad reasonings bursts forth….all these wicked things burst forth from within and pollute the person. In other words, you can be as ritually pure according to tradition as you want—avoiding this or that thing, person, or deed—but if your heart is still far from God then none of it matters because you are still unclean and exposes that you’ve never been thoroughly washed (baptized), from head to toe. [11] You can say you are worshipping God and love God all you want, but your actions (toward your neighbor) will speak otherwise because what’s on the inside always wants to find expression on the outside. For Mark’s Jesus, clinging to traditionalisms in the name of God reveal the heart that is turned away from the neighbor because it cannot see the oppression and marginalization being imposed on the people who are just trying to live to the best of their ability. In other words, for Jesus, the Pharisees and the scribes from Jerusalem have forsaken the mission of the reign of God and have invested in the tyranny of the kingdom of humanity; God’s divine revolution of love, life, and liberation is being ignored (at best) and hindered (at worst).

Conclusion

According to Mark’s Jesus, our hearts must first be made right before we can begin to align the outer person with the inner person in a way that conforms with God’s will and the mission of the reign of God. Our hearts are repeatedly tempted to return to the ways of the kingdom of humanity, and we find ourselves lured to (re)draw lines of division between the “acceptable” and “unacceptable,” the “good” and the “bad,” the “clean” and the “unclean.”[12] (Remember, according to Ephesians, humans love a good dividing wall and God loves unity.) So, Mark’s Jesus is asking us—challenging us, inviting us[13]—to reevaluate and take stock of these tendencies and to align our bodily expressions to our faith, our auditory words to God’s Word residing in our hearts, to recenter in our lives and loves those who have been otherwise left out and oppressed by the dominant culture of the kingdom of humanity (people of color, queer people, indigenous people, people who are disabled, our elders, women, etc.). We must take a deep, hard look at the ways we’ve participated in forcing obedience to external conformity on those who look different from us, act different from us, and who walk through the world differently from us, and really see how we have refused to let them be who they are inside and out, how we have denied their bodies, their stories, and their religions in the world. Our histories expose that our hearts have been far from God—calcified, cold, and dead—even though we have convinced ourselves we acted and proclaimed in God’s will and name! We must take our inner and outer alignment seriously—for Jesus is speaking to us and not “them out there” who are getting it wrong according to our books. We must begin to realize we’ve conflated the goals of our human empire for the mission of the reign of God. And it is “We” because we are being addressed, those who claim to represent God by bearing Christ’s name into the world and those who claim to participate in God’s mission of divine revolution of life, love, and liberation in the world by the leading of the Spirit.

[1] R. T. France, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary on the Greek Text, NIGTC, eds. I. Howard Marshall and Donald A. Hagner (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 276. “…not the local scribal leadership but…a delegation ἀπὸ Ἱεροσολύμων.”

[2] France, Mark, 276. “With the beginning of chapter 7 we return to a situation of controversy and of teaching, the two closely woven together. Opposition and rejection have of course been recurrent themes in the Galilean ministry so far, but with this new pericope the tension between Jesus and the religious leadership rises to a new of mutual repudiation, and Jesus deliberately fuels the fire with a more radical pronouncement even than his controversial comments on the sabbath (vv. 15, 19).”

[3] France, Mark, 280. “The fact that in both instances they are described as having arrived …from Jerusalem probably indicates that they have come specially to investigate and/or to dispute with Jesus.”

[4] France, Mark, 280. “…it is the behaviour of Jesus’ disciples rather than his own actions which provides the point of dispute…The issue this time…is not one of obedience to the OT laws, but of rules subsequently developed in Pharisaic circles. While no doubt it could normally be expected that hands would be washed before a meal for hygienic reasons (since food was often taken from a common dish), the only hand washing required in the OT for purposes of ritual purity is that of priests before offering sacrifice…The extension o this principle to the eating of ordinary food and to Jewish people other than priests, was a matter of scribal development, and it is uncertain how far it had progressed by the time of Jesus.”

[5] France, Mark, 277. “While the issue raised by the scribes in v. 2 is at the relatively inoffensive level of ritual washing before meals (a matter on which Jews themselves held different views), by his pronouncement in v. 15 Jesus deliberately widens the discussion to include this ritual separation which constituted one of the ‘badges’ of Jewish national identity.”

[6] France, Mark, 277. The hand washing is smallish but ends up being the catalyst for the “stark polarisation of views which must pit Jesus’ new teaching irrevocably against current religious orthodoxy, and which will, in the fulness of time, lead the community of his followers outside the confines of traditional Judaism altogether.”

[7] France, Mark, 283. “Jesus’ response will therefore focus on this more fundamental issue of the relative authority of tradition as such as a guide to the will of God, rather than on the provenance of the particular tradition in question.”

[8] France, Mark, 285. “The basic charge is economically expressed by means of three contrasting pairs of words: ἀφέντες…κρατεῖτε; ἐντολὴν…παράδοσιν; θεοῦ…ἀνθρώπων. The fundamental contrast is the last—true religion is focused on God, not a merely human activity. What comes from God has the authoritative character of ἐντολή, which requires obedience; what comes from human authority is merely παράδοσις, which may or may not be of value in itself, but cannot have the same mandatory character. Yet they have held fast to the latter, while allowing the former to go by default.”

[9] France, Mark, 286. “Indeed, the Pharisees and scribes are not mentioned again; their accusation has been rebutted, and now Jesus takes the imitative in raising publicly a much more fundamental issue of purity which goes far beyond the limited question of the validity of the scribal rules for hand washing. No specific regulation is now in view, but rather the basic principle of defilement by means of external contacts which underlies all the purity laws of the To and of scribal tradition.”

[10] France, Mark, 291. “Unlike the things which do not defile because they do not make contact with the καρδία, the really defiling things are those which actually originate in the καρδία.”[10] The seat of thought and will

[11] William C. Placher, Mark, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher. (Louisville: WJK, 2010), 102. “The challenge is not to particular details of traditional purity laws but to the whole idea that ‘purity’ means keeping your distance from unclean persons, things, and types of food.”

[12] Placher, Mark, 103. “Worry about your own attitudes and behavior, not how you might look to others if they see you associating with the wrong people. There are no ‘wrong people’ when it comes to those Christians should care about.”

[13] Placher, Mark, 104. “Jesus invites us to let all our respectability be burned away so that nothing will distinguish us from the freaks and lunatics, and only thus to enter his reign.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

To Be Celebrated

Sermon on 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Psalm 138:1-2 I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with my whole heart; before the gods I will sing your praise. I will bow down toward your holy temple and praise your Name, because of your love and faithfulness…

Introduction

In the relationship between the material and the spiritual, we find ourselves wanting to create order and hierarchy between the two to resolve the discomfort we feel realizing the binary isn’t so clear. Which one is more important? Some say the spiritual, others the material. An answer of both, crosses eyes. Make it clean and neat for me! We like things to be ordered rightly and when they refuse to exist in specific categories we get upset. Our language about and around the spiritual and material and the relationship of both stumbles as it tries to find location and substance. What is is yet it is also not all there is. Right? A table is a table and it is not a table because what is a table?

On a more personal level, we speak of our bodies as if they’re mere Edgar suits (a reference to the movie Men in Black) housing the soul, the spirit, the spark—the conglomerate of mutant alien cockroaches—as if the body doesn’t matter, and we’re above the body. But then when that body hurts from physical or emotional pain or sickness, we find ourselves restrained by the body and alerted to its importance. We call our bodies “it” rather than using our pronouns to speak of our body, reducing it to a thing that is other than us. And we can force others into the degradation of the body as we try to deny them the right to be as they are inside and out.

Religion is participant and culprit in creating a hierarchy and hard distinction between the material and the spiritual. Christian Church history is replete with instances of preference for the soul as being the thing that matters ultimately. The rhetoric around mission and evangelistic work is repent and believe and save your soul from eternal torment. The threat was death physical and then ultimate death spiritual, but the emphasis was on the soul’s primacy over the body. In our Christian tradition we speak of spiritual rewards for obedience and for faith while ignoring physical needs and demands of the human beings to whom we are called to minister. In modern church contexts, the gospel is used to justify the suffering in the body through oppression and marginalization with the promise of the future bodily resurrection—suffer now and later you will be given that liberation you so long for.

But there isn’t a hierarchy; both are crucially important.

2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1

On which account we are not growing weary but even if the outer self is being destroyed nevertheless the inner self is being received again day after day. For the light immediate [moment] of our affliction is working for us for the purpose of the surpassing eternal weight of glory surpassing into surpassing excellence. While we are not regarding attentively the things which can be perceived but things which cannot be perceived. For the things which can be perceived [are] temporary, but the things which cannot be perceived [are] eternal.[1]

2 Corinthians 4:16-18

It seems as if Paul advocates for a dualist interpretation of Christian life—the bifurcation of the “spiritual” from the “material”. However, the thrust of the Christian proclamation denies this interpretation. Paul acknowledges an inner and outer “self”, but what Paul isn’t making one better than the other or wrenching them apart as if they’re two distinct things. The inner self isn’t a full self without the outer self; for Paul, the soul isn’t poured into a body like a cup holding water. Paul is very aware of the paradox of human life in two forms (inner and outer) yet one.

Paul explains the common spirit of the faith is the thing animating the proclamation of the gospel which—when proclaimed and heard—generates faith (4:13). Despite challenges and tribulations Paul faced bodily, his faith propelled him forward to proclaim the gospel.[2] The believing isn’t just spiritual believing for Paul but leads to the material act of speaking/doing for the glory of God. In v. 14, Paul draws on the imagery of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead as the source of our hope: we, too, will be raised from the dead being incorporated into the eternal divine life of God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. For Paul, that Jesus was physically/bodily raised is important and functions in the background of the following discussion on the inner and outer person.[3] It’s not that Paul’s noncorporeal soul will go to heaven when he dies wherein he’ll live forever with God, but that the trajectory of Paul’s life transitioning through death—believed to be imminent—will have its destiny in bodily life with God in heaven on Earth.[4]

Transitioning to vv. 16-18, we must keep the fluidity of activity between the spiritual and the material. When Paul speaks of the inner and outer self, it is anathema to assume he’s ripping the human person into two different things or parts inner/outer, soul/body. Rather, it’s about two perspectives based on one experience in the world: from within and from without. Both are the one person.[5] Just as the voice in my head when I complain about that messy room and the voice that I use to request the room be cleaned are one and the same voice in two experiences: inner and outer.

For Paul, the resiliency of the outer self is dependent on the inner person untouched directly by the violence of the world though the experience of the world endured by the outer person informs how the inner person responds to the world. As the outer self migrates through chronological time into divine time, the inner self changes but doesn’t decay like the outer self. The more experience the outer self has (through aging, experience, trials and tribulations), the more the inner self accumulates knowledge and wisdom. It’s literally why we grow more confident as we age, why our gray hairs speak to wisdom, and our wrinkles tell profound stories of experiences of delight and disappointment.

So, even as Paul’s outer self suffers destruction from time and experience, his inner self renews; this then animates his material continuing in the world until the outer self no longer moves—at which point he’ll await the raising up with Christ of his full self.[6] In other words, the inner self (that which cannot be perceived) is resilient even when the outer self (that which can be perceived) breaks down but these aren’t two separate selves, but one in the same from two difference perspectives of and experiences in the world. Even if the outer self is halted by death, manifesting its temporality, the inner self will be the continuity between this life and the next in the resurrection of that body in its glorified eternal form.[7] The material and the spiritual participate together to the glory of God.

Conclusion

The supposed dichotomy between the spiritual and material is a false one, and it’s violent. We must, in all urgency, reject such a dichotomy. Through the false dichotomy of inner and outer, body and soul, spiritual and material we’ve been complicit in subjugating fellow human beings, forcing them to ignore the violence done to their bodies for the hope of something better in the future. We’ve kept people from liberty and freedom, life and love now with the promise of something else in another life. We’ve deprived people of justice and dignity by wrongly prioritizing the suffering of the menial body as the purification of the majestic soul, asking them to endure what we don’t have to endure. Our God took on flesh and walked the earth, healing the bodies of those cast out and neglected by the dominant culture of state and religion; when we deny bodily, material, and outer necessity to bodily and material outer beings we are denying the incarnation of the Christ, God of very God. As those who confess Christ born, lived, died, raised, and ascended, we cannot deny the importance of the body, material, and outer self for anyone, neither for ourselves nor for others. For God so loved the world and everyone and everything in it like this: God became human to love and rescue the Beloved.

There’s that which can be perceived and that which cannot be perceived, that which is temporary/mortal and permanent/eternal, but not good and bad, better and worse. I want you to have a profound sense of the beauty and importance of the whole person. The body matters. The soul matters. The inner and outer selves matter. It is by the body we go through the world. We feel in the body, we understand through the body, we’re treated according to the body. Thus, our experiences in the world are not uniform because bodies aren’t interchangeable. My experience in the world is different than yours because our bodies are different and unique. The experiences of the outer self influence and inform the feelings and storytelling of the inner self. The way the inner self identifies influences and informs the material expression of those feelings and story in the outer self. We’re paradoxical mixes of that which is perceived and that which is not perceived; and we’re all unique expressions of this vibrant multifaceted humanity—each human worthy to be celebrated as they are, as the beloved children of God.

[1] Translation mine unless stated otherwise

[2] Murray J. Harris The Second Epistle to the Corinthians: A commentary on the Greek Text. NIGTC. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005. 352, “As the principle applies to his case, Paul is affirming that in spite of the inroads of θανατος in his life (v.12a), his unswerving belief in God and in the gospel as God’s powerful instrument to bring salvation to everyone who has faith…made it natural and necessary for him to declare…the good news.”

[3] Harris 2 Corinthians 353, “…but also his Christian conviction that Christ’s resurrection was a pledge of the resurrection of believers (v.14). If persecution or toil should precipitate his actual death, he knew that a resurrection comparable to Christ’s was his destiny as a believer.”

[4] Harris 2 Corinthians 354, “…it should occasion no surprise that here he speaks of his own resurrection, at the same time tactfully assuming his readers’ survival until the Parousia… ‘I, Paul’ as Christian who expects to die before the Parousia from ‘you Corinthians,’ who may well be alive at the time of the second advent. 1 Corinthian’s 15 indicates that in Paul’s thought both the living and the dead will be ‘transformed’ on the last day…but only the dead will be ‘raised’…’Resurrection’ implies prior death.”

[5] Harris 2 Corinthians 359-60, “Because Paul’s anthropology is aspecitival not partitive, and synthetic not analytic, when he speaks of ‘our outward self’ and ‘our inward self’ he is not thinking of two distinct entities, ‘the body’ …and ‘the soul’…with the former as the receptable for the latter. He is, rather, contemplating his total existence from two contrasting viewpoints. The ‘outer self’ is the whole person form the standpoint of one’s “creaturely mortality,’ the physical aspect of the person…The ‘inner self’ is not to be equated with the νους … ‚that which survives death,‘ or even  with the corporate new humanity in Christ. Rather it is the whole person as a ‘new creation’ (5:17) or a ‘new person’ (Col. 3:9-10)…the spiritual aspect of the believer.”

[6] Harris 2 Corinthians 360, “For Paul, the spiritual body was not simply the state of the renewed ‘inner self’ at the time of the believer’s death, but it seems a priori likely that he saw a relationship between the two, that he regarded resurrection not as ta creatio ex nihilo, a sudden divine operation unrelated to the past, but as the fulfillment of a spiritual process begun at regeneration. The daily renewal of the ‘inward person’ …contributed toward the progressive transformation of the believer into the image of Christ in a process that would be accelerated and completed by resurrection.”

[7] Harris 2 Corinthians 373, “Compared with the earthly and therefore transient character of the σωμα ψυχικον, the σωμα πνευματικον is permanent, transcending all the effects of time. Compared with earthly corporeality, with its irreversible tendency to decay, which finally issues in death, the heavenly embodiment provided by God is indestructible, incapable of any deterioration or dissolution.”

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0

Sex and Revolution Pt III: The Aligned Self

Sancta Colloquia Episode 308 ft. Rachel Cohen

In this episode, my friend, Rachel Cohen (@pwstranger), tells me her story. As I make mention of in the introduction, Rachel and I have been friends for the better part of a decade. Our paths have overlapped and split an overlapped again. We share some of that story in the episode, so I won’t go into detail here. Rachel also spends time throughout the episode telling her story of her self-alignment and realignment about her sexuality and embodiment with what she believed and was taught. Rachel’s story is unique and one that is best in her voice, so I won’t go into detail here about that either. What I will say about this episode is that Rachel and I cover good ground looking at the capitalization of self-gaslighting to peddle a false gospel and how we can monetize our shame and guilt for likes and retweets and shares, how certain schools of popular theology use the theme of brokenness and failure as a means of self-justification, and how the freedom of confession can be freeing for a moment and turn into putridness like manna kept longer than commanded. Rachel mentions that for her (and I’m guessing for many other people) there is a perception of thriving that is disconnected from the inner self. We can present as thriving while on the inside the core of the person is being suffocated and starved. The way this misalignment of the self persists is by controlling what information is accessed by the self. In other terms, you are dunked deep into the echo-chamber and held down so that liquid is your self’s amniotic fluid from which you can never be born. But is this actual “thriving”? No, it’s a perception of thriving according to the rule and approval of those around you. To actually thrive necessitates an ability to be *yourself* even in the midst of encountering new information, new people, and even information and people you disagree with and that/who disagree with you. You cannot find *your* voice if you are forced to speak a certain way, so gaining alignment and having “integrity”, Rachel explains, necessitates finding your voice for yourself and to come to your conclusions. No one gets to tell you what to think—even if you are informed by teachers and leaders and mentors, you decide what you are going to think. This ownership of thought is important especially when engaging with theology which is a form of human meaning making, as Rachel explains. And it’s important because here you can distinguish between shame that is healthy conviction and your own conviction because you transgressed *your* own boundary and shame that is destructive because it’s imposed on you by an external system. But this is only the first part of our conversation…there’s part II. So, start listening here and then get ready for part II…*

In part two Rachel goes into depth about the role a robust theology of suffering plays in the life of a queer person and how that theology is used by the dominant culture group to oppress and dominate the lgbtqia+ community. She shares more of her story and her journey while incorporated the work of Dr. Miguel de la Torre (Doing Ethics from the Margins) through out her sharing. We talk about echo chambers, shame, fear of being ostracized and exiled from the group…things that shouldn’t be synonymous with Christians but often are. In group and out group is the way the dominant group maintains its control and primacy, without the fear of exile…or hell (!) how else do you keep the dissenters quiet? To be honest, the episode is long, so there’s no way I’ve done it justice in this summary. So, find some time, crank it up to 2x speed and jump in. It’s a great conclusion to part III of #sexandrevolution

Excited? You should be. Listen to Part II here:

Listen here to Part I here:

Rachel Cohen is a licensed therapist who currently lives in Denver, Colorado with her lovely partner and dog. She has two Master’s degrees: one in Theological Studies, and the other in Counseling. While in seminary, Rachel began to examine and move beyond many of the deeply held beliefs and ideas that were pervasive in the evangelical Christian circles in which she was residing. It was also during this time that she began the complex and liberating journey of coming to understand and embrace herself as a queer woman. She is passionate about helping others untangle unhelpful narratives and ideas, discover more of who they are, and learn how to establish healthier boundaries with others. Her favorite recipe is BBQ salmon bowls with mango avocado salsa. Her favorite pastime is songwriting. She’s currently reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle and The Body Says No by Gabor Maté.
*In this episode Rachel and I speak about a podcast, Millenneagram, that I listened to late in 2019 and early in 2020 as part of my personal therapy practice as I was processing some major pain.  When Rachel and I recorded the host and producer of the podcast, @riverpaasch was not publicly going by “River”. Rachel Cohen brought this to my attention and I felt that I should add something here in the blogpost because it’s important. That podcast is no longer in production. And their work is profound and insightful, and I highly recommend hitting those old episodes as well as finding them on social media to learn from them.

Further/Recommended Reading:

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

Ancient Laws and Contemporary Controversies: The Need for Inclusive Biblical Interpretation by Cheryl B. Anderson

Heterosixism in Contemporary World Religions: Problema nd Prospect by Marvin Mahan Ellison

To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedediah Jenkins

Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life by Margalis Fjelstad

Any poetry by Andrea Gibson

Posted on by laurenlarkin 0