Thank you, Kerlin, for this simple honesty. I'm with you. About prayer after church: I, too, am learning this. It seems now to me that to walk in the woods is to simply let the woods be what they are - full of their own beauty and mystery and reality - without thinking it necessary to interpret or derive meaning or think or feel anything in particular: that is prayer. I used to be searching for meaning everywhere, which really was searching for sermon material; it was searching for an interpretive lens; it was trying to press reality into a recognizably Christian mold so that I could make sense of it for Christians. Now when I walk in the woods I just allow my body to do what it does when it walks in the woods: opening up, vibrating to the rhythms of earth and trees and ferns and birds and squirrels - and all of that is a prayer. My body is doing it whether my brain comprehends or approves of any of it. It doesn't need it to feel like a prayer in order for it to be a prayer; just as our bodies go about healing ourselves whether we intend it or not. Reality is suffused with healing loving power, and it is working in you, and one day you will look back on all this shit and realize it led you to the God beyond all words ideas and images. Anyway, that's what my experience is teaching me right now. Much love, M
Please never stop saying us. Your “us” is home to me. However wherever we manifest and even if the manner in which we are manifesting becomes imperceivable 🌟
Thank you for your truth, it helps those of us who have similar truths feel less alone. Whatever shape your faith or unfaith takes through this pain and grief, it will eventually be beautiful and fill you, because you are true to yourself. In the end, I could not separate God and the church, and that is ok; and however you find your future will be ok too.
I hear God’s grace in your words, even as your faith is in utter shambles. But yet, you write. Your faith does remain, because God remains. It just looks different. Oh, the love of God is here, even in this! May your heart be comforted.
Kerlin, I teach the United Lutheran Seminary and you spoke in a class I taught with Dr. Storm Swain a few years ago. I have followed your ever sense because of your authenticity and your amazing ability to go beyond the norm and reach people deep in their soul. What has happened to you is completely anathema to the Christian faith. As a preacher/professor, I mourn these abusive practices. I am sorry for what the church has done to you. And I am praying for you and your beloveds.
This may be cold comfort now, but I hope it might help later.
I agree with your comment that God is not 'in the church'. Indeed, I would argue that the Church is not of God. Human beings create churches to serve our needs whilst, (hopefully), bringing us closer to God.
Does it help any to remember that the Episcopal/Anglican Church is itself the love-child of two men: Henry VIII, who sanctioned and supported it, and Thomas Cranmer, who wrote all the rules and tenets?
If in doubt, smile to yourself and remember that the Episcopal Church has a big 'bar sinister' across its own escutcheon, and maybe shouldn't take itself quite as seriously as it does.
You are a wonderful person with much to offer this world. Your warmth and compassion will be an asset wherever you go next.
I look forward to reading your thoughts on church, god, self, and.community as you explore your new life circumstances. I wander in this world too. I think how humans can have freedom in communities bc it takes a special social world to lift us up instead of squashing dreams. But I think it is not personal usually. Instead the world is benignly indifferent to our plight. I think I am supposed to figure out out to be tough enough to be self responsible while longing to be held with care by others I want to know personally and join in community thh
And a part of my vision is beginning a different branch of worship, something new and emergent that will have similar form sometime and often times much more expansive that will support a new morality for this new paradigm that has landed among us. I have dreams to create, and co-create a movement to meet the deep needs of the soul, new intimacies and containers for it to be celebrated and honored. All this to serve as a place to find meaning and purpose and connection and worship and rituals that support the emergent and evolving heart, without the confines of a patriarchal monotheistic colonized capitalized religion. Again, let me know if you have interest in speaking about such.
Hi Kerlin. A mutual friend shared your writing with me. My heart and soul are stirred. I am a former priest, and roguely consecrated bishop, who left the confines of the Xn story for a more expansive one. I was so in love with the divine when I was a priest, and I often challenged the spiritual abuse that I saw within the conservative movement I was in in the Episcopal Church, of making people afraid to die because they did not believe correctly, that I challenged that abuse. And I was removed from ministry for doing that. It was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. And yet it has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts.
I left my life, my rules, my wife, six years ago in the Midwest, and moved to the Pacific Northwest to breathe a different kind of moral air. And I am so glad I did. I shared my story at a recent gathering, in Ashland Oregon where I’m living, and I spoke about my passion now, which is regenerative intimacy, compersion, beauty sexuality, and the sacred intimate brotherhood. A number of people at the clergy gathering that I was invited to, though I’m no longer in that arena,were moved. One of them was a friend of yours and they wanted to connect us.
I have a short film I’d love to share with you, based on an essay I wrote about compersion, that a filmmaker read and wanted to make a short movie of it. I hope to attach it below. And a song that I wrote after a year of grief, when I left, about beauty finding me, and Beauty becoming my new complexion of the divine. That song has been an altar for me in my heart.
My Substack post writing is under regenerative intimacy. I am quite bold, not as bold as I will be in the near future :-). I quite available for contact and I would love to hear your story. I am semi retired so I have a flexible schedule. I will put my phone number here as well, and I welcome any contact you might have interest in. 715-220-6122
This sounds like my grief when my husband died 29 years ago. I went from a comfortable identity of 27 years into the unknown of being a single person. I read a lot of grief books and C.S.Lewis’ A Grief Observed helped the most. Lewis expressed the kind of anger I felt—at myself because I couldn’t save Jim, at Jim because he left me, and at God for taking him. And he described the shock and stunned feeling.
Be very kind to yourself! You have accumulated a majorly high score on the stress hierarchy. Yes, therapy is helpful. Also consider massage therapy. You will recover from this and feel joy again. Try to be patient with the process. You don’t ever ‘get over’ the grief, but it does become easier with time.
You are loved. In so many ways you may not now recognize or understand. Some days the best we can do is keep on keeping on. So hooray for you for doing that very thing. ♥️
I couldn’t go to church for over 6 months; even missed Easter. Didn’t care, faith was shredded, I was hurt, angry, lonely, and fed up with the church, the people, the institution, the outdated Canons, etc. etc., etc. However I fought hard to hold onto HOPE. HOPE that someday I’d see some sliver of light break through the darkness. Even got a rescue dog and named her HOPE. I remembered stuff I had said to others that I believed and thoughtful mental reminders helped a lot. It was a FIGHT. A battle like no other. Still is. By the grace of God the sliver finally came. Having hope takes work. You’ll rise. I promise.
Kerlin, even if I’d never met you, I would love what you are sharing because it is so raw and honest-something I personally always found lacking in the church. Sharing your truth will never be disappointing to
Thank you, Kerlin, for this simple honesty. I'm with you. About prayer after church: I, too, am learning this. It seems now to me that to walk in the woods is to simply let the woods be what they are - full of their own beauty and mystery and reality - without thinking it necessary to interpret or derive meaning or think or feel anything in particular: that is prayer. I used to be searching for meaning everywhere, which really was searching for sermon material; it was searching for an interpretive lens; it was trying to press reality into a recognizably Christian mold so that I could make sense of it for Christians. Now when I walk in the woods I just allow my body to do what it does when it walks in the woods: opening up, vibrating to the rhythms of earth and trees and ferns and birds and squirrels - and all of that is a prayer. My body is doing it whether my brain comprehends or approves of any of it. It doesn't need it to feel like a prayer in order for it to be a prayer; just as our bodies go about healing ourselves whether we intend it or not. Reality is suffused with healing loving power, and it is working in you, and one day you will look back on all this shit and realize it led you to the God beyond all words ideas and images. Anyway, that's what my experience is teaching me right now. Much love, M
Please never stop saying us. Your “us” is home to me. However wherever we manifest and even if the manner in which we are manifesting becomes imperceivable 🌟
Thank you for your truth, it helps those of us who have similar truths feel less alone. Whatever shape your faith or unfaith takes through this pain and grief, it will eventually be beautiful and fill you, because you are true to yourself. In the end, I could not separate God and the church, and that is ok; and however you find your future will be ok too.
I hear God’s grace in your words, even as your faith is in utter shambles. But yet, you write. Your faith does remain, because God remains. It just looks different. Oh, the love of God is here, even in this! May your heart be comforted.
Kerlin, I teach the United Lutheran Seminary and you spoke in a class I taught with Dr. Storm Swain a few years ago. I have followed your ever sense because of your authenticity and your amazing ability to go beyond the norm and reach people deep in their soul. What has happened to you is completely anathema to the Christian faith. As a preacher/professor, I mourn these abusive practices. I am sorry for what the church has done to you. And I am praying for you and your beloveds.
Hello Kerlin,
This may be cold comfort now, but I hope it might help later.
I agree with your comment that God is not 'in the church'. Indeed, I would argue that the Church is not of God. Human beings create churches to serve our needs whilst, (hopefully), bringing us closer to God.
Does it help any to remember that the Episcopal/Anglican Church is itself the love-child of two men: Henry VIII, who sanctioned and supported it, and Thomas Cranmer, who wrote all the rules and tenets?
If in doubt, smile to yourself and remember that the Episcopal Church has a big 'bar sinister' across its own escutcheon, and maybe shouldn't take itself quite as seriously as it does.
You are a wonderful person with much to offer this world. Your warmth and compassion will be an asset wherever you go next.
Deirdre
(With tongue firmly in cheek, as always.)
Oh and you can read some of my poetry and random thoughts at thoughshavehands thh
I look forward to reading your thoughts on church, god, self, and.community as you explore your new life circumstances. I wander in this world too. I think how humans can have freedom in communities bc it takes a special social world to lift us up instead of squashing dreams. But I think it is not personal usually. Instead the world is benignly indifferent to our plight. I think I am supposed to figure out out to be tough enough to be self responsible while longing to be held with care by others I want to know personally and join in community thh
https://open.substack.com/pub/regenerativeintimacy?r=x07rn&utm_medium=ios
And a part of my vision is beginning a different branch of worship, something new and emergent that will have similar form sometime and often times much more expansive that will support a new morality for this new paradigm that has landed among us. I have dreams to create, and co-create a movement to meet the deep needs of the soul, new intimacies and containers for it to be celebrated and honored. All this to serve as a place to find meaning and purpose and connection and worship and rituals that support the emergent and evolving heart, without the confines of a patriarchal monotheistic colonized capitalized religion. Again, let me know if you have interest in speaking about such.
Hi Kerlin. A mutual friend shared your writing with me. My heart and soul are stirred. I am a former priest, and roguely consecrated bishop, who left the confines of the Xn story for a more expansive one. I was so in love with the divine when I was a priest, and I often challenged the spiritual abuse that I saw within the conservative movement I was in in the Episcopal Church, of making people afraid to die because they did not believe correctly, that I challenged that abuse. And I was removed from ministry for doing that. It was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. And yet it has turned out to be one of the greatest gifts.
I left my life, my rules, my wife, six years ago in the Midwest, and moved to the Pacific Northwest to breathe a different kind of moral air. And I am so glad I did. I shared my story at a recent gathering, in Ashland Oregon where I’m living, and I spoke about my passion now, which is regenerative intimacy, compersion, beauty sexuality, and the sacred intimate brotherhood. A number of people at the clergy gathering that I was invited to, though I’m no longer in that arena,were moved. One of them was a friend of yours and they wanted to connect us.
I have a short film I’d love to share with you, based on an essay I wrote about compersion, that a filmmaker read and wanted to make a short movie of it. I hope to attach it below. And a song that I wrote after a year of grief, when I left, about beauty finding me, and Beauty becoming my new complexion of the divine. That song has been an altar for me in my heart.
My Substack post writing is under regenerative intimacy. I am quite bold, not as bold as I will be in the near future :-). I quite available for contact and I would love to hear your story. I am semi retired so I have a flexible schedule. I will put my phone number here as well, and I welcome any contact you might have interest in. 715-220-6122
Tenderly,
Derek Tendersong Washington,
Beauty’s Bishop
Derek’s Compersion short film - 6 min
https://youtu.be/Php6WquTJZM
Beauty Returns - Dereks original guitar piece … https://on.soundcloud.com/x8VhJLdWqA16sLo66
This sounds like my grief when my husband died 29 years ago. I went from a comfortable identity of 27 years into the unknown of being a single person. I read a lot of grief books and C.S.Lewis’ A Grief Observed helped the most. Lewis expressed the kind of anger I felt—at myself because I couldn’t save Jim, at Jim because he left me, and at God for taking him. And he described the shock and stunned feeling.
Be very kind to yourself! You have accumulated a majorly high score on the stress hierarchy. Yes, therapy is helpful. Also consider massage therapy. You will recover from this and feel joy again. Try to be patient with the process. You don’t ever ‘get over’ the grief, but it does become easier with time.
You are loved. In so many ways you may not now recognize or understand. Some days the best we can do is keep on keeping on. So hooray for you for doing that very thing. ♥️
I couldn’t go to church for over 6 months; even missed Easter. Didn’t care, faith was shredded, I was hurt, angry, lonely, and fed up with the church, the people, the institution, the outdated Canons, etc. etc., etc. However I fought hard to hold onto HOPE. HOPE that someday I’d see some sliver of light break through the darkness. Even got a rescue dog and named her HOPE. I remembered stuff I had said to others that I believed and thoughtful mental reminders helped a lot. It was a FIGHT. A battle like no other. Still is. By the grace of God the sliver finally came. Having hope takes work. You’ll rise. I promise.
Kerlin, even if I’d never met you, I would love what you are sharing because it is so raw and honest-something I personally always found lacking in the church. Sharing your truth will never be disappointing to
me-in fact it’s the opposite. Thank you.