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Detours, Doubts, and Destinations
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, we left our campground in Fancy Gap, VA heading south on the Blue Ridge Parkway through the Appalachian Mountains destined for Stone Mountain State Park just across the state line in North Carolina. We anticipated an approximate 45-minute drive followed by some fun hiking. We noted the expansive vista at Piedmont Overlook and commented on the numerous residences and rolling hills of perfectly aligned rows of very green bushes. Only later did we surmise that they were Christmas trees! We questioned the origins of flawless green meadows, aka balds, along the ridgeline some dotted with brown rolls of hay. Were the balds natural or had they been cleared? Perhaps a combination of both.
These sights were different from our earlier drives along the southern parkway near Asheville, NC where there were no residences in sight nor open meadows as we drove through densely forested slopes rising high on one side and plunging steeply on the other.
We were making good progress, and all was going well until we saw the sign, “Road Closed Ahead,” an ample warning for the upcoming barricade and huge “Detour” sign both decked out in bold highway orange. We followed the detour signs even as we sensed they were taking us back north instead of our intended south. Initially, the signs were clearly marked “Blue Ridge Detour South.” We entered a small town and passed a sign that simply read “Detour.” We began to doubt that decision, turned around and followed the sign driving into a residential area which seemed odd for a highway detour.
Shortly, we saw one of those portable, flashing, marque highway signs declaring “Blue Ridge Detour, No Thru Traffic” which seemed contrary to the nature of a detour. We passed it, doubted our decision because I had seen an orange sign just beyond the directed turn. We turned around, made the right as indicated and within a block saw the orange sign detouring us back to the left. At that point we encountered an open gate – “Detour” sign on one side, “Local Use Only” on the other — and drove into a pumpkin patch. Hummm??
The road through the huge pumpkin field appeared to be relatively new white shale and gravel. We surmised that the highway department must have made this improvement for the detour as the other roads weaving through the pumpkin path were rutted dirt. We also saw a gray car moving ahead and below us through the terraced pumpkins which buoyed our optimism that we were on the right road. We were in awe of the pumpkin patch. As far as we could see were green vines dotted with various sizes of orange and occasionally green pumpkins. I must confess that I secretly desired to stop and pick a pumpkin but ultimately decided that would not be a wise thing to do. Ominously, the road narrowed, and we met the gray car coming back out. Not a good sign!! Momentarily, we too encountered the machinery and barricade, “Road Closed.”
Back we went through the pumpkins to the flashing detour sign to discover that it read, “Blue Ridge Detour Ahead.” Sure enough, a couple of miles farther was yet another detour sign, again not indicating “Blue Ridge,” that took us down a winding country road. The next sign of note was “Pavement Ends Ahead” which indeed it did, leaving us driving on a narrow gravel road at times passing through trees just wide enough for the car and boasting a steep drop off to the left and a densely forested mountain side to the right. Just a bit spooky!
Already weary of the detours and the doubting, I had entered Stone Mountain into our GPS. We reached an intersection with a paved road where the GPS indicated a right turn. In the middle of the intersection turning around was the little gray car of the pumpkin patch. A barricade blocked the right turn! We spoke to the car’s lone occupant, and she, like us, was baffled and frustrated. Her comment, “Would you believe I just drove through a pumpkin patch.” We all chuckled as we shared that we had done the same. She was from Belgium and was trying to get to Asheville. The country roads and directions were foreign and confusing to us, we could only imagine her experience of them. We wished her well as she decided to turn around and go back. We chose to turn left and let the GPS recalculate a route to Stone Mountain.
A 45-minute drive became two hours. Ultimately, Stone Mountain was well worth the extended trip. Stone Mountain itself was majestic and naturally beautiful. Unmarred by any elaborate carvings as seen on the perhaps better known Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta, GA. The hiking trails offered solace and some solitude. The water music, tumbling and gurgling over the creek bed rocks or gushing as it rushed over the various falls at heights of two to twelve to 200 feet, was soothing and calming in its sparkling clarity and consistency. A special delight was hearing the trees sing as they swayed and hummed in the wind. All thoughts of the detours and doubts vanished under the serene canopy of the forest.
Stone Mountain Falls Trail. Stone Mountain Falls. Widow Creek Falls.
When Experiencing A Mental Health Crisis
The shiny, new fan spun silently overhead while the rusty, old box fan roared at my back. helping to moderate the rising Texas summer heat and oppressive humidity. From the porch I watched the muddy waters of the bayou slowly nudge their way downstream, a testament to both the recent rains and the long-term drought conditions. The family river house was again my place of respite, reflection, and renewal. I wrote:
My mental health professional speaks in terms of a “reset” or “reboot.” In other words, “Let’s turn it off and in a bit, turn it back on and see what happens.”
Love Your God; Love Your Neighbors
My thoughts have been pinging on the phrase “your God.” More specifically, Matthew 22:37-39 has been on my mind: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. … Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus proclaimed these…
What About “What About Easter?”
I wrote “What about Easter?” several months ago posting it to a local media blog The Tyler Loop Babble before posting it here. Not long after it went live on the site, probably within minutes if not seconds, I had this mind-rattling thought, Oh, my, what have I done! The thought was disturbing enough, but the accompanying feelings were downright unsettling.
The feelings of vulnerability and exposure surprised me. Those feelings had little if anything to do with the content of the piece, and a whole lot to do with the fact that I said it out loud – well, I wrote it down. I threw my questions, thoughts, and belief journey out into the ether world for all to peruse, analyze, criticize, and judge. Now, I suppose that’s not a really big deal since anyone – aka yours truly – writing editorial and/or opinion content knows that it’s the nature of the beast and comes to expect analysis, criticism, and possible judgment. Thus, the need for a “tough skin,” a steadfast stance on said opinion, and/or solid supporting empirical evidence where applicable and available.
So, what was the vulnerability and exposure about? Hum! Reflecting on that question, the best answer I came up with regarded cultural context. I/We live, work, and play in the East Texas Bible Belt where the faith tenets of traditional and evangelical Christianity abound. Texas as a whole ranking #11 in the 2022 Most Religious States with 64% of adults reporting as religious.
I doubt that my thoughts expressed in “What about Easter?” reflect those of most East Texas religious folks. Or I wonder? Does our fear of vulnerability and exposure when going against the grain of perceived or real public opinion thwart the expression of our genuine thoughts and feelings? Maybe there are more folks with questioning, outside-the-box thoughts and beliefs, but keep them to themselves. Does that fear shroud our genuine selves? If that fear did not exist, how many of us would risk stepping out and going against the grain for the sake of freedom of expression and an authentic life.
I found it interesting that not long after my bout of vulnerability and exposure, a group of friends posed the question, how do we help folks with different, against-the-grain, outside-the-box thoughts and feelings on any issue be able to step up and speak out? I don’t know. However, I do have an opinion on that: As more of us step up, risk the vulnerability and exposure, and respectfully express our against-the-grain thoughts and feelings, others will as well. There is encouragement, motivation, and power in knowing one is not alone.
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PORCH MUSINGS
It’s morning on the bayou. The porch is cool and pleasant even though the temperature is already 79 degrees at 8 A.M. I suspect the “cool” is attributed to the fans. Fans on the bayou in late Spring serve two purposes – cooling and mosquito repellant!
There is, however, a bit of a breeze this morning. I hear it and see it as the leaves rustle, and the otherwise glassy bayou surface occasionally convulses and shutters. The bayou is up, filled with murky water from the recent rains and runoff, and flowing at a good clip. The spring rains came late and lasted longer this year – through May and into June. I spent several hours yesterday mowing. I have enjoyed mowing since I was a kid. For me, repeatedly making the square, focusing on the line between mown and not-mown grass is calming – almost sedating. I must say it is a bit easier now with the riding lawn tractor than it was back then with the simple, little 22-inch push mower. I see images of myself bent at the hip, focused, and determined to move the mower forward.
The receding water level has left areas, usually dust dry, soggy and squishy – ideal for getting stuck. I am extra cautious remembering last year when I got “too close,” and the lawn tractor slipped leaving me stranded on the muddy bayou bank. The 4Runner and a long, heavy chain saved the day.
When I first came out this morning the birds were in full flight and voice darting here and there to a cacophony of birdsong – tweets, warbles, chirps, screeches, and caws. Not so much now! Perhaps the wind has stilled their flight and voices – yielding to a higher power. Yielding to a higher power – that seems to be easier here on the bayou while immersed in silence, solitude, and the ordained simple, exhausting tasks of “chopping wood and carrying water,” which is according to Brother Lawrence in Practicing the Presence of God, finding God, the Holy, in the ordinary tasks of our days.
I am often drawn to the “monkish” life feeling immense contentment, peace, and joy in silence, solitude, and simple work while observing the awe and wonder of the beauty, complexity, simplicity, and horror of our natural world. I have sometimes felt the “monkish” life” to be a calling. Yet I question – calling or escape? I suppose there is a balance to be had.
Being here on the bayou, this “monkish” life, feels like a return to all that is true and real in life – me, the presence of God, work, and rest. Wow! Where did that come from? Though drawn to the silence and solitude, I know that even as an introvert I am a social being. I enjoy personal interaction with others just not a whole lot of folks at one time and not all the time.
In the natural setting of the bayou, it is not difficult to discern, feel, and commune with God – to practice His presence. But out there in the world, it is not as easy. I get caught up in the activity, the business, the people. In practicing the presence of God in the world I seek to experience a greater awareness of God’s presence in people, all people – created in His image – as I live, work, and rest with and among them.
That’s me, and perhaps humankind as well – a paradox, a jumble of contradictory qualities and traits. I suppose living with and within my contradictions while seeking a sustainable, functional balance that allows me to grow and mature into all I am and was created to be is the stuff of life and the spiritual journey. Whether on the bayou or in the world may I live in the realm of all that is true and real for me: me, the presence of God, work, and rest.
These words from Thomas Merton”s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, some of my reading on the porch, seem to be germane to my musings:
Solitude has its own special work: a deepening of awareness that the world needs. A struggle against alienation. True solitude is deeply aware of the world’s needs. It does not hold the world at arm’s length.
—-Thomas Merton
Questions and Questioning: The Lord’s Prayer?
I have read, memorized, and recited Matthew 6: 9 – 13, “The Lord’s Prayer” since I was a kid in Vacation Bible School and never questioned its content, context, or origins. I can still recite it, but no longer can I say that I do not have questions.
The questions started a couple of years ago, but until now I have only mulled over, sat on, and questioned my questioning. Since I can’t seem to stop chewing on the questions, I suppose it’s time to spit them out!
The first question surfaced around the phrase “. . . lead us not into temptation. . .” What? If we are asking God to NOT lead us into temptation, are we to logically conclude that God would indeed lead us into temptation? There is something unsettling about imagining a father, heavenly or otherwise, who would lead his children into temptation.
That leads to the second and third questions regarding the phrase “Our Father in heaven…” “Our Father. . .” – what about the feminine, our Mother God? Have we forgotten Genesis 11:27 and being told that God created them, male and female, “in his own image?” I interpret that as God being equally male and female. Remember Deuteronomy 32:18, “you forgot the God who gave you birth” – mothers give birth. What about Isaiah 66:13, “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you.” It seems to me that God is as much feminine as masculine! We’ve missed Her way too long, and in my opinion, we have suffered for it.
Moving on! What’s with “in heaven”? God isn’t just out there somewhere way over yonder! God is right here among us. Whether I ascend to heaven, make my bed in Sheol, or paddle around in the uttermost parts of the sea, God is present (Psalm 139: 7-10). Christ admonishes the Pharisees to “Behold” — pay attention for this is important — and then informs them that the kingdom of God is in their midst (Luke 17: 21). I would assume then that God is in our midst for surely God inhabits her kingdom.
As I have chewed on these questions, my prayer to my Lord has evolved:
Father God, Mother God,
In the heavens and on earth among us,
Hallowed – holy, sacred, majestic – is your name.
May your kingdom in heaven and on earth be nurtured and flourish
As we seek to know and do your will.
Give us this day our daily bread,
As we give gratitude and praise for your provision and sustenance.
We ask forgiveness for our sins,
Things done and things not done,
Words spoken and words not spoken.
Through the grace of your forgiveness,
May we forgive those who have sinned against us
Guide us in your will and righteous ways.
Guard us from temptation.
Deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
Yes, I know there is a lot of stuff – opinion, interpretation, research – out there regarding “The Lord’s Prayer” and its content, context, and origins. All of which is probably interesting and thought provoking! I’ve read a good bit of it. However, for my purposes in this writing, it is irrelevant. Mine is not a scholarly discourse, I write simply expressing my knowing as I continue my journey as a pilgrim, seeker, heretic.
A New Tempo?
It is January 3, 2020, and I can’t seem to get started in this new year. Perhaps this is due to my still processing the last of 2019. I checked my sister out of the hospital on August 19, 2019 and took her to our family home (where our parents once lived) located on Big Cypress Bayou outside of Jefferson, TX. The plan was to spend about three weeks there caring for her as she recovered from a partial foot amputation. Unfortunately, the healing did not go as well as hoped and three weeks turned into three months!
Outside of her foot not healing and my missing my home and wife, who did come and stay a few days a couple of times, it was a different and mostly good three months for me. We visited, reminisced, watched television, and each had ample time to ourselves. I spent a lot of my free time on the porch rocking, reading, journaling, writing poetry, and simply watching in awe the natural world surrounding me. My journal entry from October 14th sheds a bit more light on the experience:
I’ve chopped and diced vegetables and the soup is simmering in the pot. It is marvelous sitting on the porch. The heat has finally – I hope – moved away and the cool air is welcomed. Actually, it is raining with a steady chorus of drops making their “pits, pats, plops” on the tin roof. Drips are becoming steady ropes of water running off the roof’s edge. The river is pelted and puckered with raindrops. The rain and gray sky meld to form a haze surrounding the trees across the water. Quite calming and restful!
Yet, I feel a bit anxious and unsettled. Perhaps ambivalence might be a more apt description. I have been here for almost two months caring for my sister following a partial foot amputation. The healing has not gone as well as hoped, and she is still under doctor’s orders to put no weight on the foot. I have kept busy with her care, meal preparations, laundry, cleaning, and mowing. I have pressure washed a 10’ X 60’ porch and the front of the house. I have dusted, vacuumed, or mopped everything in the house. I have cleaned and reorganized much of the huge pantry and the bedroom walk-in closet. I have taken down, washed, and replaced every curtain and drape in the house – at least all those that could be removed.
I have rewired and configured the TV antennae and cables. We now get 25+ channels instead of the previous eight to ten. And, yes, I must admit that I have watched more TV in the last two months than I have in the last two years. I have played too numerous to count solitaire games on my computer (no internet or cell service down here) to the point I believe the program is duplicating games. I have mowed two acres of grass sometimes going over the taller areas two to three times. I have used the weed eater trimming the tall grass on the riverbank until my elbow hurts.
I have made four trips home to Tyler for personal appointments and commitments and two trips to Henderson for doctor appointments. All totally about 1000 miles on the road. I just returned from three days at home catching up on paying bills, household concerns, and social and civic commitments.
Why the ambivalence? Using Brother Lawrence’s words, “to chop wood, and carry water” along with the quiet, serenity, and solitude of the surroundings seems to have precipitated some shift within my being as I feel more centered and settled. As I ponder on that for a bit, my thoughts return to my reading of October 3rd:
I find more and more the power—the dangerous power—of solitude working in me. The easiness of wide error. The power of one’s own inner ambivalence, the pull of inner contradictions. How little I know myself really. How weak and tepid I am. . . . Everything has meaning, dire meanings, in solitude. And one can easily lose it all in following the habits one has brought out of common life (the daily round). One has to start over and receive (in meekness) a new awareness of work, time, prayer, oneself. A new tempo—it has to be in one’s very system (and it is not in mine, I see).
And what I do not have I must pray for and wait for.
—from A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals (October 25 and 30, 1965, V.309-10)
Perhaps therein lies the basis for my ambivalence. Perhaps I fear losing it all upon returning to “common life (my daily round).” Perhaps my 2020 is to be a time for “a new tempo.”
Paying Attention with Rachel Held Evans
There has been a great deal already said and written to memorialize and honor the life of Rachel Held Evens, yet, for some reason, I feel compelled to add my voice. When word of her death came across my newsfeed, I was shocked. Such an untimely death at 37-years old and seemingly unexplainable causes even in the midst of such modern medical technology and treatment. Though I only knew RHE through her writing, I immediately felt a void, a loss, and a profound sense of grief in my soul even as I tried to wrap my brain around the fact of her death. My heart ached for her family, her husband, Dan, and their two small children who might not ever remember their mother.
Upon hearing of her death I immediately went to my bookshelf and pulled out Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, published in April 2015. I find it interesting that April 2015 also marked my leaving the church I loved. I have been a Christian and a member of an evangelical church since I was 13; however, on April 26, 2015, at age 64 I left the church. I had been a member of this particular church for almost 15 years. I was feeling unmoored. Full of questions and doubting the dogma and doctrine I had proclaimed for decades. I discovered Searching for Sunday and read it in December 2015. As I read I felt a kindred spirit with RHE. I was not alone in my questions, doubts, and leaving.
My Searching for Sunday is dog-eared, underlined and heavy with sticky notes. In rereading passages since RHE’s death I am, again, awed by the biblical knowledge, spiritual depth, and courageous, prophetic voice of this young woman. In my reading I was struck with her frequent exhortation—Pay attention!
With all the words that have already been said/written in the last week about Rachel Held Evans, I can think of no better way to honor her life and work than to share her own words:
June 8, 1981 – May 4, 2019
The kingdom (of God) knows no geographic boundaries, no political parties, no single language or culture. It advances not through power and might, but through acts of love and joy and peace, missions of mercy and kindness and humility.
“So, too the Spirit, inhaled and exhaled in a million quotidian ways, animates, revives, nourishes, sustains, speaks. It is as near as the nose and as everywhere as the air, so pay attention.” —page161
“ . . .the gift of the Holy Spirit. It’s as invisible as your breath but as certain as your skin, so pay attention and don’t forget who you are.” –page 163
“The Spirit is like a bird, . . . The Spirit is as common as a cooing pigeon and transcendent as a high-flying eagle. So look up and sing back, catch the light of God in a diaphanous scrim of wing. Pay attention.” –page 163
“The spirit is like a womb, from which the living are born again. We emerge—lashes still wet from the water, eyes unadjusted to the light—into a reanimated and freshly charged world. There are so many new things to see, so many gifts to give and receive, so many miracles to baffle and amaze, if only we pay attention, if only we let the Spirit surprise and God catch our breath.” –page 164
“When the Spirit lives within you, any place can become a sanctuary. You just have to listen. You just have to pay attention. –page 180
“And when we check our pride long enough to pay attention to the presence of the Spirit gusting across the globe, we catch glimpses of a God who defies our categories and expectations, a God who both inhabits and transcends our worship, art, theology, culture, experiences, and ideas.” –page 184
“This is what’s most annoying and beautiful about the windy Spirit and why we so often miss it. It has this habit of showing up in all the wrong places and among all the wrong people, defying our categories and refusing to take direction . . . .God is present both inside and outside the traditional church, working all sorts of everyday miracles to inspire and change us if only we pay attention.” —page197
“ . . . it’s the way God shows up in those everyday moments—loading the dishwasher, sharing a joke, hosting a meal, enduring an illness, working through a disagreement—and gives us the chance to notice, to pay attention to the divine. It’s the way the God of resurrection makes all things new. –page 247
“The kingdom isn’t some far-off place you go when you die; the kingdom is at hand—among us and beyond us, now and not-yet. It is the wheat growing in the midst of weeds, the yeast working its magic in the dough, the pearl germinating in a sepulchral shell. It can come and go in the twinkling of an eye. Jesus said. So pay attention; don’t miss it.” –page 252
“Church isn’t some community you join or some place you arrive. Church is what happens when someone taps you on the shoulder and whispers in your ear, Pay attention, this is holy ground; God is here.”* –page 258
Rachel Held Evans will be greatly missed by her family, friends, and a multitude of others like me. May we remember her spirit, her life, and her message. May we pay attention and be moved by the Spirit as it breezes and blows through our lives and world in all sorts of ways. May we not miss it—the kingdom, God is here!
*All quotations are taken from Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church,Nelson Books, 2015.
Turn This World Around
I tugged several of my old college literature anthologies from the bottom bookshelf yesterday. No, not to do any serious study, but to use as weight for a gluing project! A paper filled with my handwriting fell from one of the books. The writing was in verse form, so I thought perhaps an old poem I had written and tucked away. I have a tendency to do that – start a writing project and put it away not to be found until years later, if at all. But this was not my “writing.” It was the lyrics to an old Amy Grant song, “Turn This World Around.” Apparently the song had some special meaning for me in 1997 since I had taken the time and effort to record the lyrics. The song was included in her Behind The Eyes album released in September 1997 and written by Amy Grant, Beverly Darnall, and Keith Thomas.
Reflecting back on my 1997, in and of itself, it was not a good year, and September was particularly difficult. It was a year of losses and reversals in every area of life – professional, relationship, financial, and health. I could certainly relate to the melancholic melody and many passages in the lyrics of “Turn This World Around.” I was living in the midst of “broken promises and dreams” even as I struggled to carry on “in good disguise.” I needed “somewhere safe and warm” and was thankful for the shelter of friends during this stormy time in my life. I had to “turn and face (my) fears”– the fear of more losses and rejection from family, friends, and the church as I began to acknowledge my same-sex orientation after decades of living in hiding and pretense. I learned to “reach out through (my) tears” and discovered “it’s really not that far to where Hope can be found.”
After finding the paper I dug through my old CD’s. I found it! I had bought it which was something I rarely did. As I listened I recalled the solace and encouragement I had found in other songs in the album such as “I Will Be Your Friend,” “It Takes a Little Time,” “Missing You,” and “Somewhere Down the Road.” Today I look at this decades old piece of paper, read these words, and am thankful for how my world was turned around in 1997, albeit after it was turned upside down. Today I hear a more universal and much needed message for our world. The message that behind our eyes “we are all the same it seems.” We all want to be safe and warm and find shelter with others through the storms of our lives. We all need to face our fears and reach out to the other in the midst of suffering—ours and theirs. It is the reaching out and acknowledging the “hunger and longing” that we all know inside that “could be the bridge between us if we tried.”
We all know our world needs to turn around. We are headed in the wrong direction. Look no further than the death and destruction resulting from the numerous and lengthy armed conflicts throughout the world. Grasp the magnitude of gun violence, the global refugee crisis, increased human trafficking, and world hunger levels rising. We are the world! Only we, working individually and corporately with one another throughout our communities, cities, states, provinces, districts and countries, can turn this world around. Maybe one day we will turn and see behind the eyes of all our brothers and sisters regardless of race, religion, culture, nationality, sexual orientation or gender identity and see our sameness, reach out to one another, and experience the will and kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” Yes, maybe one day – maybe in this New Year!
The BGCT – Welcoming and Affirming
As the dialogue and apparent divisions within the Baptist General Convention of Texas and local congregations over the issue of a welcoming and affirming stance toward their LGBTQ members continue, I encourage us all to stop and ask ourselves, individually and congregationally, this question: Who are we welcoming and what do we really want to be the focus of our affirmation? The “who,” I believe is relatively simple. We want to welcome ALL peoples into the love of Christ and the fellowship of His Body, the Church. Answering the question, “What do we want to be the focus of our affirmations?” may be a bit more complicated. Or, maybe not!
I sometimes wonder if we, christian folks and congregations, have not allowed ourselves to be overly focused on the sexual orientation and same-sex marriage issues. Do we really want to spend our time and energies squabbling over these issues and in the process threatening our unity in and ministry for Christ? Enough is enough already! Let’s truly practice our belief in the priesthood of the believer and respect the spiritual discernment of our brothers and sisters in Christ and our congregations in these particular matters. If we continue contentious dialogue or debate, insist on being right or winning the other side over to our “right” way of thinking, or denying fellowship, we are all wrong, and we all lose with the greatest loss being the cause of Christ. We can respectfully state our beliefs and our respect for the others discernment process, acknowledge our disagreement, and agree to disagree. When we do this, we can then turn our energies and cooperative efforts toward focusing on far more meaningful areas of affirmation.
What might be the affirmations of a welcoming and affirming congregation? Here are a few suggestions for starters:
— Let’s affirm God’s sovereignty over all our lives.
–Let’s affirm our love of God and our love for our neighbors.
–Let’s affirm the sacredness of every person – every human life. Let’s live out that affirmation by treating everyone with respect, seeking to listen to and understand their stories and struggles, and participating in their lives in ways that engender human flourishing, spiritual growth, and opportunities to reach one’s God-given potential.
–Let’s affirm the sacramental nature of all relationships for every relationship has the potential to be a portal of God’s grace in and to our lives.
–Let’s affirm and encourage fidelity and commitment in marital, covenantal relationships.
–Let’s affirm the value of our children and our families by offering support, encouragement, and guidance to parents as they nurture and guide their children.
–Let’s affirm our desire to follow Christ and be His Body and Presence in and to the world.
I believe the BGCT and local congregations can be both welcoming and affirming. I believe this as I recall the first scripture verse I ever committed to memory: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” — Philippians 4:13
Can’t we?
Pilgrim Seeker Heretic 