If Jesus agrees with CCV, I don’t think I can be a Christian.
99: “maybe faith, who jesus?” part 3/4 of my series of personal essays on my faith journey of the past year after leaving our former church home of CCV
TRIGGER WARNING: mention of self harm. And, as the last 2 parts have included, talk of spiritual abuse by the church.
Welcome to the third installment of my lil’ 4-part series….
It’s been 1 year since I was fired from staff at Christ Church of the Valley (CCV) and pushed out of the church community I had been a member to over the past 10 years. This also forced my husband to make the difficult decision to leave as well, after growing up attending CCV with his family, who are founding members. Since then, we have struggled financially, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, but are fully submerged in our deconstruction journeys. As we unlearn the harmful all-or-nothing, exclusionary thinking of the Evangelical Christian Megachurch we had attended, we are venturing into new terrain. It’s different and new, but we are feeling safer taking steps forward as our new church (Foothills Disciples Christian Church, aka Foothills) fully includes and welcomes everyone to the table and is a much safer place to explore the doubts and the unknowns of our faith journeys. I felt an incredible pull to reflect on my journey from the past year and where it looks like I’m heading, so here it is! I hope y’all enjoy the wild ride!
I would say the first part of this journey was scary. As freeing as I initially felt when I was fired, I felt like a prisoner on an emotional rollercoaster in the months following.
It was only once I became a little more comfortable with not knowing all the answers and others not agreeing with me, did I feel a little less dizzy. It wasn’t until I practiced self-regulation and better boundary-setting that I felt like I had a little more control of how my life was going.
This part of my story is about how I wrestled and continue to wrestle with
what I have been taught was right and good
and
what I believe in my heart is right and good.
I am growing a lot as I have paved new mental pathways that have led me to stand up for myself as passionately as I stand up for others. This work has involved moving toward trusting myself and listening to my natural cues in ways I was told to distrust or ignore before. This rewiring is deeper and affects more parts of me than I could have ever known. And I’m still working through it.
My hope in sharing all of this here is for anyone going through the same journey. If a younger me knew other people were doubting, knew others were coming apart in the same ways she was, maybe I would have less knots to untie in my head. So, maybe, this article will get to some other LGBTQ+ people who want to hold onto their faith or even explore it for the first time, but feel a very serious, consistent pushback from the Christian communities surrounding them.
How has Christian culture gotten here— to this place that makes many big churches, like CCV, so comfortably confident to stand against Jesus’ teachings that EVERYONE is fully welcome at the table?
CCV’s Sexuality Series rocked a lot of people’s lives in a negative way, no matter how much CCV wanted to label the series as a success. At a staff meeting after the series aired, they even brought up pastors to speak about the connection the messages inspired. In 2 of the 3 examples, couples and families felt rejected by the message but were welcomed in love by the pastor at their campus that they already trusted and shared a close relationship with (I wonder what happened to queer or questioning Christians who were less connected…). To me, CCV was trying to give these stories the label of “successful” because people STAYED— even if they were offended by Ashley’s message— BECAUSE OF the work of actual working pastors on campuses. These queer or questioning people only stayed because the community that had been built around them was accepting them in some shape or form, not because Ashley’s message inspired hope for queer people. I can only wonder how those stories played out in the months following…
If CCV invited criticism and welcomed it as a tool to improve, maybe they would send out a survey or ask their staff or church members how their lives were affected by the sexuality series, or if they were at all. Were they preaching a message that most people’s “itching ears” were already oh-so hungry to hear? Did they care more about pleasing the 99 than reaching out to the 1? Do they care about the endangered lives of the sexual and gender minorities that are currently being targeted in our world today?
I had to hope that if CCV executive pastors knew more queer and trans people on a personal level, they would have acted differently, for their loved ones’ safety and dignity.
However… that is sadly not the case.
This message tore more than just my family apart, but I don’t want to share a story that isn’t mine to share… It’s Ashley Wooldridge’s burden to carry.
In Need of Empathy
“Isn’t it sad that they’ll never know the love we have?
But that’s not on us. That’s on them.”
There is no doubt about it— this series drew a line in the sand between who CCV considers to be normal, biblical law-abiding Christians and those who live in an “alternative sexual” lifestyle and therefore don’t fully belong in all aspects of church. And it makes sense that people who are entirely unaffected by the lack of queer inclusion would think nothing of this series or messages like it. It didn’t change anything for them! Many of my close friends and loved ones personally told me that this series was “no big deal,” even sometimes as a tone-deaf reply to my obvious upset tears. To them, it was no big deal, so they didn’t have any interest in knowing why I was experiencing something different.
This is a pattern I have run into a lot in my life, from authority figures to “friends” to parental figures to mentors: emotional neglect. With the experiences I have had since childhood getting my emotions dismissed and invalidated, I was an all-too-easy target for that kind of treatment to feel familiar and acceptable to me as an adult. I was never taught to trust myself. I was instead taught to seek external validation that what I was doing was good or right. This translated well to the church environment, where this kind of thinking isn’t labeled as a symptom of abuse or neglect, but regarded positively as an admirable, biblical skill.
At the time that I was still on staff and feeling a sense of rejection and disgust for what I secretly believed, my body didn’t know how to interpret this in a healthy way. It manifested in me physically harming myself followed by feelings of shame and confusion once I felt grounded again. Trusting others had become a great struggle, even though it was a consistently unmet need. A majority of my community didn’t seem to care that I was hurting nor did they think it should hurt me. Their silence and deliberate avoidance didn’t heal me or stop me from feeling how I did; it only intensified it. It was very apparent that I needed to get a new therapist— and I needed one that was not one of CCV’s “approved Christian counselors” (that had signed that they also believed gay relationships were sinful), that I wouldn’t see actively volunteering at CCV.
Miraculously, in what I do believe was God providing for me when I needed it most, I was connected with a wonderful, extremely informed, queer-affirming therapist. And just in time too. I believe it was our second or third online session when I became aware of the fact that my boss was trying to get me fired. She’s truly been there for me throughout the craziest of times and has helped me keep my feet on the ground.
Why did this all hurt so much? Well, there’s a commitment, a trust in leadership, that is expected from many churches. There is an investment of spiritual trust that many pastors hold too loosely. This trust becomes the source of the pain of spiritual abuse. We trust pastors initially because we think they’re motivated by love and self sacrifice. It’s heartbreaking to learn that their intentions are grounded in something else. You feel used, betrayed, and alone.
Allergic to Conditional Love
After being fired and being isolated by much of my Christian community, I naturally became closer and more reliant on my non-Christian friends. A small echo in my head reminded me about how I had been previously advised not to put my full trust into non-Christian friends. Those friends were my responsibility to sneakily lead back to Christ. But I always felt uncomfortable with that sentiment. I have learned so much from many of my friends, but so much more from my friends who are open to messing up and trying again, the friends that are accepting of what it means to be human: my non-church friends.
When I felt alone, I wasn’t actually. My therapist kept reminding me: even though a lot of our support system had been slashed, I was not alone. I had friends— friends who were there to help validate my pain and support me in a time where I felt purposefully cut off from my CCV friends. My close Christian friend of over a decade reacted in ways I always feared she would, with judgement, fear, and distance. But my non-Christian friends and I connected in new ways that religious expectations had gotten in the way of before. My deconstruction of my faith and my openness to learn about new points of view brought us even closer. Closer than I had ever been or ever could be with my strict Christian friends.
The rules and expectations of my tight Christian circles made it extremely difficult for me to be open with people. The mask I wore was practically begging to be torn off, but it seemed most Christians around me were comfortable with shallow, friendly lunch acquaintanceships. Many who I was closest to actually preferred it, ignoring any opening I tried to give them to grow closer. I think once I’d been calling myself a Christian and attending CCV for some years, there was an expectation to be a sort of leader. Instead of being able to enjoy connecting with a community, we were pushed more and more to take next steps toward serving others in ways many people are maybe not prepared to do or truly ready for. Participating became more about appearance than anything. You want other people to see you as fully committed and fully bought-in. You want to truly feel that way— and feel it passionately all the time. However, it’s not a constant and— for many many people on our church staff— the commitment to serve became a burden.
“I’m the only view of Jesus some people will ever see. I have to make it count.”
“Jesus got all the beatings and pain that I deserved. I owe him everything.”
“There is no other purpose in life more important than serving Jesus. Therefore, I don’t want to spend too much time with anyone or anything that isn’t centered on church.”
Things people say offhandedly in the church world are shocking statements out here in the real world. Looking at all of these ideas now, I am horrified by how pressured I felt to believe these sentiments wholeheartedly, or even at all. I was confused, disturbed, and threatened by these concepts, but didn’t feel like there was any safe way to ask questions or express doubt. Because— too often— any signs of doubt were met with anything from judgement, to forced time-off, to being fired. And this wasn’t just in my experience.
A struggling staff member confiding in a trusted friend and mentor should be a safe place, but this safe place is automatically threatened when that friend is another staff member. I’ve heard multiple accounts of these personal conversations all-too-quickly leading to the struggling staff member’s position being terminated.
Everyone messes up and everyone doubts, but there is no room for that on CCV’s staff. If you’re “not sure,” you’re done. You can’t talk about certain hardships or trials you’re moving through in fear that they might frame you in a negative light. You can’t talk about doubts or your mistakes, especially if you’re a face representing CCV. To save your job and provide for your family, you can’t fully confide in your religious friends. I tried to inspire the type of authentic connection I was craving, even in the months before I was fired, by trying to join new neighborhood groups and then starting a neighborhood group of my own, but this only sharpened the tension I was feeling.1 I felt the pressure to be an inspiring example no matter what space I was in.
“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?”
“I’ll be your villain if it makes you smile.
And I’ll know in my heart it was you,
though you’ll convince me for a while.”
I really wish I had trusted myself enough during my almost 2 years on staff or my 10 years at the church to be able to see what was happening to me. It truly was like I was in an abusive relationship. I was truly sticking it out until there was no doubt in my mind that I was in the wrong place. And I really don’t recommend getting to that point.
And when I left that building, I knew— every fiber of my being knew with certainty— that all of it was wrong. It had all become so clear tome that even when I was hurt by the aftermath of our fallout with CCV, I still felt 100% sure that I was doing what was best for us and our little family. In a way, I am thankful of how sure I felt.
Now I know that a lot of my beliefs do differ from my old CCV community, but I still can’t make sense of being treated as if I had committed a crime. Did I really not see how radicalized CCV’s beliefs and policies were until I was the target of their wrath? I know they think LGBTQ+ people are living in sin, but we’re still people and CCV is still a church. I would think that being an LGBTQ person wouldn’t disqualify me from being seen as a person to pastor...
CCV really made me the passionate queer freedom fighter I am today.
Being discriminated against can make any part of us feel like a burden we need to bear. If being queer was “just a small brick in the pyramid of who I am,” it wouldn’t have costed me this much. But I am finally choosing to let in rejection for the freedom to live my life authentically.
But did this have to come at the cost of my relationship with Jesus?
I spoke in a previous article— the famous one I was fired for lol— about how much this question plagued me. This path has not been chronological. When I wrote that article, I still worked for CCV. When I wrote that article, I was not questioning my faith. I was explaining how my identity as queer didn’t conflict with my faith. And I felt confident in posting what I did because I found two AMAZING articles that opened my eyes to the idea that I could be queer AND Christian at the same time.
I thought I had deconstructed. I thought I knew pain. lol
But then I faced more rejection than I ever had in my life for my inclusive beliefs. And everything I had been confident in fell to pieces.
I tried reading God and the Gay Christian and I still found great hope in the great articles linked above, but what some may call “biblical” evidence of inclusion and spectrums of gender and sexuality, others would call a “twisting of God’s Word for their own selfish gain.” (Oh how I hate that.) I could still hear Ashley reciting that “itching ears” verse and suddenly, I didn’t feel a need to prove myself anymore. Even when I was excited to find a verse or an accepting friend or a new church that didn’t reject the rainbow parts of me, I couldn’t share that joy with just anyone.
I remember crying tears of joy on a plane back from a family vacation with my in-laws when I read the articles on God’s expansive love for LGBTQ+ people. But when my sister-in-law excitedly asked what I was so happy about, I began crying a different type of tears. This was not an emotionally safe place for me to share my emotions. My good news was not good news to them. They were actively against something that brought me joy, something that brought me close to God.
…and for what? It didn’t affect their lives in the slightest.
Any Christian speaking about denying themselves or giving their entire lives to God made me want to physically run away. Anyone who spoke like that was put on a list in my heart titled “people who could or would hurt me” and I didn’t want to give them any more chances to do that.
The bible became something I feared immensely after CCV used their interpretations to ostracize us from the community. I didn’t want to adventure into the bible in fear of finding out that their interpretation was the truth. It couldn’t be the truth. Because if it was the truth, I couldn’t be a Christian. If it was the truth, I didn’t want to be a Christian.
But thankfully, it isn’t!
Thankfully, I found Foothills and I put my trust in safe people there.
Thankfully, I had non-CCV friends that supported me and could help me feel a little less crazy about all we had been put through.
And thankfully, I found awesome online communities like Public Theology with Zach W. Lambert, that were doing the truly good work of sharing inclusive interpretations of bible stories that have been historically used against queer people.
Religion has become (and I think always has been) really twisted and lots of people have been deeply hurt in the name of God. How can we say baptism is the only way to God if we won’t let someone do it? How can we say it’s only through belief in Jesus that we are saved when Jesus’ name has been used to do so many terrible things? For as welcoming and loving Jesus was portrayed to be, the modern day Pharisees calling themselves “Jesus-followers” were doing something completely different.
So many people have been hurt by the church’s anti-gay stances.
When will churches realize what TRUE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE is?
I don’t want to get stuck on verses, but everyone I talk to is. They don’t want me to get political, but LIFE is political. They say I’m hung up on these small beliefs, but they won’t even look me in the eye when I bring it up. They’re either quietly dodging my questions or aggressively bible-thumping me. It feels like there is no way to truly connect with these very religious Christians around me anymore.
How could I connect with them? When I try to talk about Sabrina Carpenter, they ask who she is and share that they only listen to worship music. When I try to ask them about their lives and their jobs, they talk about needing to give up more parts of their lives to God. When they’re stressed or upset, they try to avoid ever sounding unthankful, turning even the most frustrating events into something that God is doing to them to teach them a lesson.
To me, these strictly religious Christians are slowly losing/giving up what it means to be human. It’s like hanging out with robots, rolling around repeating “Do you have a moment or an hour or a whole year or your life to continuously talk about Jesus Christ?” I have to think that Jesus died on the cross for us to be saved and not for us to suffer our whole lives as Jesus’ loyal fanbase, working tirelessly to “grow the kingdom.” These types of Christians really wear suffering like a badge of honor, claiming the title of martyr proudly, reading the bible every day instead of taking one day or any part in the day to go to friggin’ therapy.
It makes me so happy that Jesus’ first miracle was creating enough wine for a big party. He was called a drunk by religious men, but savior by those closest to him. He accepted everyone, even the ones that most Christians didn’t accept. But it doesn’t seem like Christians these days are down to follow that part of Jesus’ ministry.
While I was camping this month, I was particularly moved by an author’s interpretation of the story of Mary, a follower of Jesus who regularly acted upon her pure passion and longing to be near him. She had rejected the societal role being forced onto her so that she could act from a truly authentic place. Just before Jesus’ death, she breaks an insanely expensive bottle of perfume on Jesus’ feet and wipes them with her hair (which was seen as an erotic move back then). Below, I shared the scene from The Chosen as well as the interpretation I read.
“There is no way to read this, to picture it, and deny the passion of this moment… Jesus could have held up his identity as a man as a shield. He could have rebuked her, as his disciples did, for her extravagance or her lack of control. To do so would have been to protect all things about manhood and Godhood that his followers wanted him to protect. He could have held tight to his identity as a man and held her to her identity as a woman. But he didn’t, and Mary knew he wouldn’t. He had welcomed her before, and she knew she was safe to do the same.
“Not only did Jesus welcome her passion; he honored it as an act of understanding and care. More than that, in the next chapter Jesus echoes her act. Her behavior informs his when he washes his disciples’ feet. His expression of love and care is built out of hers. The disciples couldn’t have helped but remember the passion of Mary when Jesus knelt to wash their feet.
“This is our living offering— to bring what we actually are and offer it in relationship— a theology of connection that allows us to live as full persons with each other and in God.”
— Written by Linda Kay Klein (author) and Carla Ewert (writer and speaker) in Dialogues on Sexuality.
I read this story and I see myself in Mary. She was always seen by society as doing the wrong thing at the wrong time, but Jesus accepted her as she was. He didn’t want to limit her authentic expression of love for the comfort of others. To me, there is no way not to see how queer-coded and Gabby-coded this story is: God accepted the people everyone else rejected and, not only that, but he seemingly prioritized her authentic expression over what was usually acceptable in society based on the laws.
But I couldn’t help but think about other ways this story could be viewed. Maybe people were confused about why Jesus didn’t prioritize the comfort of the Pharisee who almost became a follower of Jesus (a character added in The Chosen that wasn’t specifically mentioned in the bible). Maybe those people place blame on Mary for this man not coming to Jesus. Or perhaps there’s a big question mark regarding Jesus’ actions. Why was Jesus so tolerant of actions that everyone else in the room was intolerant of and disgusted by? Why would Jesus encourage her expression when it made other people uncomfortable?
Something to think about, I guess.
So much goes unsaid and so many opportunities for connection are missed when people would rather stay comfortable instead of talking about what really matters.
Respecting Differences
As a a kid, I was always drawn to the idea of coexistence. Once I started going to CCV, I never mentioned my feelings on coexistence because it was said the idea of coexisting was impossible. It wasn’t looked down upon as sinful as much as it was looked down upon for being stupid. From the very start of my time at CCV in high school, the Christian Nationalism was already very strong. There was no respect for people of other religions. The view was that Christianity was the only way to heaven and nothing else— definitely not Islam and not even Catholicism— was correct or morally okay to believe in. This mindset made the mission to win, train, and send all the more “life or death.”
Even though CCV had a whole series talking about how Mormons were wrong, I couldn’t help but see their similarities when I lived in Flagstaff. Mormon missionaries came to my door at least once a month while I lived there. It was the same two boys and they didn’t take my “no” for an answer. Even though I already believed in Jesus, they still pushed THEIR version of the truth as being what I needed. Why couldn’t they be happy and respectful of the fact that I already had spiritual fulfillment elsewhere?
Just like those missionaries, members of CCV have absolutely no respect for differences of belief. And this is not just across different religions, but within the same ones. My doubts and questioning and exploring made them uncomfortable. No one came to my aid; they just wanted me to shut up and return when I found a way to conform.
“It became increasingly clear that my fellow Christians didn’t want to listen to me, or grieve with me, or walk down this frightening road with me. They wanted to fix me. They wanted to wind me up like an old-fashioned toy and send me back to the fold with a painted smile on my face and tiny cymbals in my hands.”
—Rachel Held Evens, Searching for Sunday
So, where was I to go from here?
My church relationships were apparently built on the idea that I was sure about all the same things they were sure about. While some kept their distance— like my deconstruction journey was a plague they were afraid of it catching— others stood firmly against the very ideas I was questioning. They were SURE that CCV was correct and SURE that they had done everything right. They were SURE that I had been led astray by the devil and I was dragging my husband along with me. They had an idea of the happy smiley Gabby that they wanted back, as if my being upset about this situation was me being less like myself.
It’s taxxing to explain to people that you don’t feel loved or accepted by them when they can turn around and say that my emotions are being thwarted and that this is an attack by the enemy. With the devil being there to blame every bad situation on, there’s a weird, unhelpful explanation for everything all revolving around victim-blaming. Anything I say is labeled as emotional and not seen as biblical or logical. They believe my emotions derive from my deceitful heart and are overriding my better judgment. They want me to completely detach from a fully functioning part of me, one of my favorite parts of myself: my big feelings. And while I call everything a part of myself, I don’t think I am me without all of my parts, especially my big feelings.
I fully reject their beliefs on emotions, as I know how unhealthy it’s been for me to suppress my feelings and I’ve seen how their beliefs have stunted them in their own emotional growth. Redefining feelings doesn’t save you from needing to feel them. Reading the bible doesn’t make you better than anyone else, nor should it give you power over others. And there is no one clear interpretation of the bible because there isn’t one clear way to live your life in a way that is good and right, yes, even in the eyes of God.
I don’t want to be associated with intolerant Christians that subscribe so heavily to the rules their religious institutions have defined that they’ll push out believers who don’t conform to their narrow view of following Jesus.
Welcoming the Excluded & Dignifying the Dismissed
After years of confusion, reading verses that said one thing and being told different verses that say another, I am starting to feel a sense of peace.
After years of fearing rejection, I am happy to have found a space where rejection is impossible. I can finally let my guard down and take my mask off.
After years of pain, not ever hearing that it was okay for me to question what a pastor taught, I find myself actually learning what it means to hear “the good news of Jesus.”
The bible is a collection of stories, but the bible is not univocal. So many people’s experiences are included in the bible and— not unlike how parents might parent their children differently— God gives different advice to different people in different situations. The bible isn’t a syllabus. It doesn’t clearly tell us what to do in every situation, but when we look at the bible through the lens of finding the good news, we find what we’re meant to find.
CCV uses their exclusive interpretations to win, train, and send out believers armed with specific guidelines to impress onto others. CCV uses the bible as a means of control through unhealthy, unquestioning obedience and shameful self-denying. CCV interprets the bible in a way that tells them which people are in and which people are out.
Even when one verse of the bible talks about eunuchs being forbidden to even enter a church, another verse tells the story of Phillip, telling the eunuch the good news of Jesus and baptizing them. While people in Jesus’ day and in ours can get confused and scared of things they don’t understand, Jesus understood and was not afraid to expand God’s love and grace toward those on the outskirts. No rules or doctrine or creed should get in the way of someone feeling loved and accepted by Jesus. And in our attempts to try to find the one true path forward, we miss the spirit moving. “We miss that this whole thing is an encounter with the Living God.”
At timestamp 53:48 of the video above, we hear main pastor Rebekah Krevens speak of Foothills church traditions when it comes to baptism. In our tradition, there is a certain way we do it. You have to say certain words and you get baptized when you’re old enough to understand the choice you’re making.
But Rebekah loosened her grip on these traditions when she received an email from a woman who wanted her infant son to be baptized. In their family’s tradition, they believed people should be baptized as babies and the church they attended did it this way as well. However, the church they attended refused to baptize their baby because the baby had two mothers. Nevertheless, it was important to them for their infant son to be baptized before his upcoming surgery for a heart defect.
So, Rebekah disregarded our usual church traditions, remembering that life nor the bible are syllabi and she baptized the baby. She said it just felt like the pastoral thing to do. And, with tears running down my face in the audience hearing this story, we agreed.
Even in the midst of my internal and external wars against exclusionary translations of the bible, Rebekah helped me find the good news. I was not excluded from becoming a part of the bible’s unfolding story.
“The good news of Jesus is God’s love knows no boundaries. The good news of Jesus is for those who’ve been told there wasn’t. The good news of Jesus welcomes the excluded and dignifies the dismissed.”
— Rebekah Krevens, Main Pastor at Foothills Disciples Church
Near the corner of 67th Avenue & Happy Valley, there stands the stronghold of a megachurch that fired and excluded me because of my beliefs on LGBTQ+ inclusion.
But on the corner of 39th Avenue & Happy Valley, there is a church that answers the question “what keeps anyone from being included?” with a resounding “Nothing.” Because all are fully invited to hear the good news of Jesus.
There is not a place for me at CCV. But there is a place for me at Foothills.
And I now feel confident in believing there is a place for me in the eyes of Jesus, as there is for everyone.
And I think one of my new favorite songs describes how I feel perfectly. If you can spare an extra few minutes, I invite you to take a listen and read along.
“I have a heart full of questions
Quieting all my suggestions
What is the meaning of Christian
In this American life?
I’m feeling awfully foolish
Spending my life on a message
I look around and I wonder
Ever if I heard it right
Coming to you ‘cause I’m confused
Coming to you ‘cause I feel used
Coming to weep while I’m waiting
Tell me you won’t make me go
I need to know there is justice
That it will roll in abundance
And that you’re building a city
Where we arrive as immigrants
And you call us citizens
And you welcome us as children home
You were alone and rejected
Misunderstood and detested
You gave it all, didn’t hold back
You even gave up your life
How can we call ourselves Christians?
Saying that love is a tension
Between the call of the cross and
Between the old party line
Coming to you for the mothers
Who are all running for cover
There is a flood from their weeping
Tell me you won’t make them go
I need to know there is justice
That it will roll in abundance
And that you’re building a city
Where we arrive as immigrants
And you call us citizens
And you welcome us as children home
There is a man with a family
He has a wife and a baby
He broke the law just to save them
Working for three bucks an hour
Truly you said we were equal
Everyone’s heart is deceitful
Everyone born is illegal
When love is the law of the land
Coming to you for the hungry
Eating the scraps of this country
Didn’t you swear you would feed them?
Tell me you won’t make them go
I need to know there is justice
That it will roll in abundance
And that you’re building a city
Where we arrive as immigrants
And you call us citizens
And you welcome us as children home
There is a wolf who is ranting
All of the sheep they are clapping
Promising power and protection
Claiming the Christ who was killed
Killed by a common consensus
Everyone screaming “Barabbas”
Trading their God for a hero
Forfeiting Heaven for Rome
Coming to you ‘cause I’m angry
Coming to you ‘cause I’m guilty
Coming to you ‘cause you’ve promised
To leave the flock for the one
I need to know there is justice
That it will roll in abundance
And that you’re building a city
Where we arrive as immigrants
And you call us citizens
And you welcome us as children home
Where we arrive as immigrants
And you call us citizens
And you welcome us as children home
Is there a way to love always?
Living in enemy hallways
Don’t know my foes from my friends and
Don’t know my friends anymore
Power has several prizes
Handcuffs can come in all sizes
Love has a million disguises
But winning is simply not one
Weekly Subscriptions & Cancellations💁🏽♀️
the ideas and soundtracks I want running in my head, or not.
🙋🏽♀️SUBSCRIBED to:
Progressive statues! No Kings Protests! LIBERATION!!
Paralives coming out so soon!!! I’ma be on that ASAP.
Getting my little Summer Berry Lemonade at Starbucks and then going to write at the library. :) What a treat!!
My Fairy Oracle Deck! More on this later fo sho!
🤦🏽♀️UNSUBSCRIBED from:
Phoenix Fan Fusion, unfortunately. 😔Super unorganized, extremely packed, and hard to navigate. Fellow AZ Nerds please say it ain’t always like this! Maybe I’ll try it out another year…
The attack on the library?? 📚 Are we seriously so afraid of learning new things??
Pushing myself. I have a limited amount of energy, especially right now and I need to keep my priorities straight.
People pretending that everything is fine and saying that I’m just “too political.”
🌻Show & Tell:🌻
I painted a brick and felted a cat!
Time for some TLCCC💕
Treating myself to: (well, my mom treating me to) getting my nails done for the first time in forever!!
Listening to: “Citizens” and crying in my car.
Crafting: painting bricks and felting a kitty! (oh no, I LOVE felting!!)
Craving: Olive Garden, so Zach and I have gotten to share some dates there. :)
Caring SO much about: this series! it’s been a lot of work but it feels so rewarding. I am very thankful to those who have been reading along and who have reached out to me with such wonderful messages.
For those who don’t know, “neighborhood groups” were CCV’s (and a lot of churches’) attempt at artificially inspiring connection. CCV staff members were encouraged to start their own groups and invite people in their neighborhood. Staff members are required to be in or host a group, but I don’t think the staff expectations allowed enough wiggle room for any staff member to be able to truly connect with their groups. Neighborhood groups as a concept is, at best, a nice try at inorganically creating community and, at worst, a way to make customer service puppets of your staff, even when they’re off the clock and should be relaxing.
I attended CCV because it was 4 minutes from my home. I never felt more uncomfortable in my life! I am Asian but I felt CCV only wants white people and they were pretty cold to me. People started getting up and left when Ashley talked about finances and giving to church. I felt that racism and elitism was really strong at CCV. It really saddened me because I wanted to connect at a local level!