I decided to practice contemplative prayer every morning for a week, using “peace” as my centering word and selections from the Psalms and Proverbs for Lectio Divina. I threw in some basic breathing exercises to help me concentrate and resolved to conclude each session with a meditation from St. Teresa of Avila, the legendary Spanish mystic and first woman to be named a Doctor of the Church:
Let nothing upset you,
Let nothing startle you.
All things pass;
God does not change.
Patience wins all it seeks.
Whoever has God lacks nothing.
God alone is enough.
Teresa was said to experience such prolonged periods of ecstasy that she occasionally levitated during Mass. The challenge for me was to get through twenty minutes of prayer without falling asleep or giving up. When the whole family works from home, even the bedroom feels like an office. Just when I’d get started, the phone would ring, the dryer buzzer would sound, or Dan would knock gently on the door and say something about needing a five-pound bag of sugar for a video shoot. But on the few days that I managed to achieve coveted repose, something powerful, perhaps even mystical, happened.
I guess I’d always assumed that cultivating a gentle and quiet spirit would be counterintuitive for me, that meekness was a worthy goal for that other kind of woman—the kind who didn’t care about theology or politics or changing the world. But the images and words that flooded my mind during prayer each morning were far from docile or weak. Instead, meditation filled me with a sense of security, strength, and unyielding resolve.
As I prayed, it felt as though my feet were extending through the ground, growing into long, winding roots, while my torso stretched like a trunk, my arms and fingers extending like branches. With every prayer and every silence the image of a great tree returned to me again and again until I found myself sitting up straighter, breathing in deeper, and looking up.
I don’t know for sure, but I think maybe God was trying to tell me that gentleness begins with strength, quietness with security. A great tree is both moved and unmoved, for it changes with the seasons, but its roots keep it anchored in the ground. Mastering a gentle and quiet spirit didn’t mean changing my personality, just regaining control of it, growing strong enough to hold back and secure enough to soften.
What they forgot to tell us in Sunday school is that the “gentle and quiet spirit” Peter wrote about is not, in fact, an exclusively feminine virtue, but is elevated throughout the New Testament as a trait expected of all Christians. Jesus used the same word— praus, in Greek—to describe himself as “gentle and humble in heart” (Matthew 11:29). Gentleness is one of the nine fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:23), and Paul told the members of the Philippian church, “Let your gentleness be evident to all” (Philippians 4:5).
Far from connoting timidity or docility, gentleness is associated with integrity and self-control, particularly in the face of persecution. The readers of Peter’s epistle would have immediately recognized praus as the same word they used to describe a wild horse that had been tamed or a torrent of wind that had softened into a breeze.
“Blessed are the praus,” Jesus said, “for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).
What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs.
—MATTHEW10:27
Overcast and sixty-three degrees. God couldn’t have been too concerned about the eighty-nine cents in my jar of contention to let me get away with that sort of weather when he could have arranged a blizzard.
By this point I’d been reminded about a million times that the Bible didn’t explicitly command contentious women to sit on their roofs, and that rooftops in the ancient Near East would have been flat and habitable anyway, but I was determined to engage in some kind of public display of contrition for my verbal misdeeds.
So after lunch on November 1, Dan pulled out the ladder and the camera, and I spent an hour and twenty-nine minutes on the safest corner of our roof, reading over my list of transgressions, practicing a bit of centering prayer, and watching a small herd of cats mill about the neighborhood.
We live down a narrow street in a quiet part of town that was developed in the 1970s and includes a hodgepodge of little homes, ranging from split-levels to ranchers to Cape Cods. Only six cars passed during my lunch-hour vigil, and this included a mail truck from which a bored-looking employee of the United States Postal Service waved languidly back at me, unimpressed.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I’m a writer.”
Either she didn’t hear me or she sees things like this all the time.
It occurred to me in that moment that perhaps “gentleness” wasn’t the worst virtue with which to start my year of biblical womanhood after all. It forced me to confront some of my uglier tendencies and reminded me that the next eleven months would require the strength of a great tree. I found myself reacting less and listening more. I held back, chose my words more carefully, and protected people’s reputations by avoiding gossip. The change wasn’t dramatic, but I started handling others with just a little more gentleness, a little more care, keeping in mind that we all have fragile days from time to time.
The criticism would continue. Storms of nasty comments and pointed critiques would blow through. But my roots were growing deeper.
This was a project I believed in. I may have been too broken and narcissistic and petulant to take it on . . . but then, most creative people are.
READ MORE AT RACHELHELDEVANS.COM:
“Strange Ways to Lose a Body Part in the Bible”— http://rachelheldevans.com/body-part
“The Ducking Chair”— http://rachelheldevans.com/ ducking-chair
The story continues in A Year of Biblical Womanhood by Rachel Held Evans.
Acknowledgments
MY RESEARCH FOR THIS BOOK, MORE THAN ANY OTHER, revealed the degree to which I am indebted to wise and faithful women whose insights into the meaning of baptism, communion, confession, and healing shaped so much of the content of this book. I turned to Nora Gallagher, Sara Miles, Barbara Brown Taylor, and Nadia Bolz-Weber again and again and was always freshly surprised by their profound grasp of grace.
Thanks also to my friends Shauna Niequist and Rachel Marie Stone, whose insights into food and table shaped much of the content of the Communion section, and to Heather Kopp, Kathy Escobar, Becca Stevens, Christena Cleveland, and Glennon Melton, who are teaching so many of us to tell the truth.
I devoured every word of Alexander Schmemann’s For the Life of the World and Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity, both of which provided direction and ideas for this project. And I am as indebted as ever to Brian McLaren, who inspires both with his words and his life.
Thanks to Ann Voskamp for the orchids, and Glennon Melton, Sarah Bessey, Kristen Howerton, Jen Hatmaker, Jamie Wright, and Tara Livesay for the dinner and wine. Thanks to the brilliant Preston Yancey who read an early version of this book and assured me I wasn’t crazy.
I am more grateful than ever for Chris and Tiffany Hoose, who have stuck with our friendship through such a busy season, and for Mom, Dad, Amanda, and Tim for loving me so well through yet another creative project. There are not enough thank-yous in the world for Dan, whose tireless support, compassion, and good humor I too often take for granted.
Writing this book forever changed how I look at my own church story and the people who influenced it. I hope I managed to capture my abiding love and appreciation for Brian and Carrie Ward, who have perhaps shaped my faith more than any other couple besides my parents and whose friendship and example has change my life. I am grateful, too, for the communities of Faith Chapel, Grace Bible Church, and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and for all they have taught me about Jesus.
Thanks, of course, to my brilliant literary agent Rachelle Gardner—the perfect teammate and a good friend. And thanks to my booking agent, Jim Chaffee, for supporting me, challenging me, and,
most importantly, cooking for me.
There is no better publishing team than my team at Thomas Nelson—Brian Hampton, Kristen Parrish, Chad Cannon, Stephanie Tresner, Belinda Bass, Emily Lineberger, Heather Skelton, and my copyeditor, Jamie Chavez. Your work on both this project and the last one has made collaboration a complete joy. Thanks especially for your patience.
Thanks to all the people who responded to my random Facebook questions about theology and church, especially Stephen Mckinney-Whitaker, who came up with the title for this book, and Stanley Helton, Steve Schaefer, Jen Rogers, and Ray Hollenbach, who helped me figure out the kingdom of God at the eleventh hour.
Finally, I owe so much of the opportunity to write and publish to my faithful readers at rachelheldevans.com. Your stories, insights, questions, and pushback shaped the content of this book more than any other. In a way, it feels like we wrote it together. I can’t wait to see what we do together next.
Notes
1. Francis, The Joy of the Gospel: Evangelii Gaudium (Usccb, 2013), 28.
2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1954), 42.
3. These numbers come from David Kinnaman’s excellent book, You Lost Me: Why Young Christians Are Leaving the Church . . . And Rethinking Faith (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2011) and from “Religion Among the Millennials,” the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project, www.pewforum.org/2010/02/17/religion-among-the-millennials/ (accessed 13 October 2014).
4. See especially Kinnaman, You Lost Me.
5. Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 45.
6. Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume II: The Reformation to the Present Day (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 71.
7. William Willimon, Remember Who You Are: Baptism, A Model for Christian Life (Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 1980), 37.
8. The name of the church was actually Faith Chapel of Huffman, a nondenominational Bible church. However, years after we moved from Birmingham, the congregation changed locations to become Deerfoot Community Bible Church. I changed the name of the church in this book so it would not be confused with Faith Chapel Christian Center, another church in present-day Birmingham.
9. Nadia Bolz-Weber, Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint (New York: Jericho, 2013), 138.
10. Sources for the reconstruction of these ancient baptismal practices include: Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume I: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (New York: HarperOne, 2010); Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1973); and Willimon, Remember Who You Are.
11. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 69.
12. Ibid., 71.
13. Willimon, Remember Who You Are, 100–101, 103.
14. For these and other stories, see Rachel Held Evans, “It’s a wonder any of us survived youth group,” December 3, 2013, rachelheldevans.com/blog/youth-group-games (accessed 13 October 2014).
15. Thanks to Brian McLaren for calling this aspect of John’s life to my attention in We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (New York: Jericho, 2014).
16. Associated Press, “Tennessee lawmakers confuse mop sink in State Capitol for Muslim foot-washing sink,” Chattanooga Times Free Press, March 26, 2013, www.timesfreepress.com/news/2013/mar/26/tennessee-lawmakers-confuse-mop-sink-state-capitol/ (accessed 13 October 2014).
17. Anne Sexton, Selected Poems of Anne Sexton, edited by Diane Wood Middlebrook and Dianna Hume George (Boston: First Mariner Books, 2000).
18. Heather Kopp, Sober Mercies: How Love CaughtUp With a Christian Drunk (New York: Jericho, 2013).
19. The Book of Common Prayer (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 82.
20. Lutheran Book of Worship: Pew Edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1978).
21. Nadia Bolz-Weber, “Being Good Doesn’t Make You Free. The Truth Makes You Free,” Sojourners, March 28, 2012, sojo.net/blogs/2012/03/28/being-good-doesn%E2%80%99t-make-you-free-truth-makes-you-free (accessed 13 October 2014).
22. Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 110.
23. Kathy Escobar, Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus (Folson, CA: Civitas Press, 2011), 35.
24. Used with permission from Kathy Escobar and the Refuge community: www.therefugeonline.org/ (accessed 13 October 2014).
25. John Mason, A Brief History of the Pequot War (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 2009), 81.
26. Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 39.
27. Christopher Connell, “Bob Jones University: Doing Battle in the Name of Religion and Freedom,” Change 15, no.4 (1983): 41.
28. Erin Conway Smith, “Uganda passes anti-gay bill.” Telegraph, December 20, 2013, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/uganda/10531563/Uganda-passes-anti-gay-bill.html (accessed 1 November 2014).
29. Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (London: John W. Parker, 1808), 448.
30. The Book of Common Prayer.
31. Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out (Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers, 2005), 23.
32. In the interest of full disclosure, this paragraph creatively combines our experiences church hunting both before and after our experience with the Mission, which is described in the Holy Orders section of the book.
33. John 8:1–11.
34. The Book of Common Prayer.
35. J. R. Briggs, Fail: Finding Hope and Grace in the Midst of Ministry Failure (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2014), 46.
36. Ibid., 21–22.
37. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 93.
38. Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith (New York: Harper One, 2007), 44.
39. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume II, 107–108.
40. Taylor, An Altar in the World, 45.
41. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity, Volume II, 60, 105.
42. Paul Bradshaw, ed., The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2003), 136.
43. Nora Gallagher, The Sacred Meal (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), 11.
44. Emily Scott, “Dinner church: sit down at the table,” Episcopal Café, February 3, 2010, www.episcopalcafe.com/daily/evangelism/dinner_church.php (accessed 13 October 2014).
45. Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 14.
46. N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters (New York: HarperOne, 2011), 180.
47. Gallagher, The Sacred Meal, 45, 46.
48. Robert Farrar Capon, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 7.
49. Schmemann, For the Life of the World, 45.
50. Sara Miles, Take This Bread (New York: Ballantine Books, 2008), 58.
51. Ibid, 60.
52. Ibid.
53. My thanks to Rachel Marie Stone for drawing this to my attention in her excellent book, Eat With Joy: Redeeming God’s Gift of Food (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2013), from which I drew much inspiration for this chapter.
54. “Eucharist: The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry,” video, 7:50, posted by New Tracts for Our Times, June 6, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USOMZpGheBc (accessed 2 November 2014).
55. Richard Beck, Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 114.
56. Robert E. Webber, Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail: Why Evangelicals Are Attracted to the Liturgical Church (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1985), 45.
57. Milton Brasher-Cunningham, Keeping the Feast: Metaphors for
the Meal (Harrisburg: Morehouse Publishing, 2012), 38.
58. Susan Heller Anderson and David W. Dunlap, “New York Day by Day; Author to Readers,” The New York Times, April 25, 1985, http://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/25/nyregion/new-york-day-by-day-author-to-readers.html (accessed 3 November 2014).
59. If you were paying attention, you spotted images related to the six Holy Spirit similes found in the previous chapter—breath, fire, seal, bird, wind, and womb—in this chapter.
60. Walker Percy, The Moviegoer (New York: Vintage, 1998), 13.
61. Rachel Sussman, The Oldest Living Things in the World (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 55.
62. John R. Franke, Manifold Witness: The Plurality of Truth (Nashville: Abington Press, 2009), 136.
63. William James, “The Confidences of a Psychial Researcher,” The American Magazine (Volume 68: May–October, 1909), 589.
64. Catechism of the Catholic Church, (Vatican: Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 2000), 1302–1303.
65. Lauren Winner, Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis (New York: Harper One, 2013).
66. Sara Miles, Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead (San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass, 2010), 11.
67. Check out the Momastery community’s amazing Love Flash Mobs here: momastery.com/blog/category/love-flash-mobs/ (accessed 13 October 2014).
68. Exodus 30:34–38, Leviticus 6:15, Psalm 45:8, Psalm 51:7, Song of Solomon 4:13–14, John 12:3–5, John 19:39–42, Revelation 5:8.
69. 1 John 2:20, 2 Corinthians 2:15.
70. Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church. 2nd ed. (Vatican: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2000), 1527.
71. Names and some identifying details changed to protect privacy.
Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church Page 24
