“The Lord’s Divine Providence Has as Its Goal a Heaven from the Human Race. I have explained elsewhere that heaven did not originate in angels who were created angels at the beginning, and that hell did not originate in a devil who was created an angel of light and was cast down from heaven. Rather, both heaven and hell are from the human race. Heaven is made up of people who are involved in a love for what is good and a consequent discernment of what is true, and hell of people who are involved in a love for what is evil and a discernment of what is false.” (Divine Providence 27)

Continue reading Letting Go of Anxiety →

Author’s Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on the author’s blog “It’s Between Me and God”, written for a wider audience. This version has been tailored specifically for a female, General Church audience.

This is my story. Well, a small piece of it, anyway. It’s not a conversation about the secular legal and political issues surrounding public acceptance of homosexuality, or the legalization of same-sex marriage. It’s also not a theological essay. I’ll state my conclusions, but save for another post how I arrived at those conclusions. Right now, this is just a reflection on the application of those conclusions in my life.

This post also comes with a TMI warning. It’s intimate. It’s personal. Sharing it on my personal blog six months ago was the first time I’ve shared such intimate details of my life with anonymous strangers. At the same time, it’s something that I’ve often discussed ‘in person’ when the topic comes up. If you know me personally and would rather not hear the story of my sexuality, feel free to skip this one. If, however, you want to know my thoughts on homosexuality, and the LGBTQ questions the Church is facing, then you need to know my story. I believe that the hardest questions the Church faces are best addressed face to face, in loving, personal, dialog with people who have names and faces and stories. It’s hard to love someone who is nameless, faceless. It’s why I think God came down to earth. He took a name, a face, so that we could love Him. It’s easy to forget to love first when we are debating an ‘issue’. So I think that the best place for a discussion is with people who we can see, and hear, and love. At the same time, so many of our conversations are happening online. So many important issues are being discussed, and debated on Facebook and in YouTube comments. I have often felt like my voice was missing from the conversation and decided that means its time for me to speak up.
Continue reading LGBTQ – My Story →

Here are two poems I would like to share. My “Sprouting Poem” was written this week while I was in a state of physical retraction from the cold of this Fall season bearing down on me. Often when my body slows down, it clenches up in a desperate attempt to keep warm. This tightening is accompanied by an overactive mind looking for comfort but unwilling to quiet down. I did not want to merely put my thoughts to rest or dismiss them, but rather I want to let them string themselves out like a chain of beads that then coils up in a basket when they have finally exhausted themselves. I am so relieved when my thoughts come to rest in the realization that God must be in charge because I cannot possibly manage this without Him. Continue reading Two Poems →

The current General Church Central Office appears to be focused on Small Groups as the answer to outreach, church health and world peace. This obsession seems unwise to me… Continue reading Tearing Down Those Sacred Small Groups (sort of) →