Neyhart

If you love the Chronicles of Narnia this is for you

Revisado: 10-04-24

Absolutely delightful!!! I love everything about this book and I would love a sequel!! I love that the book is inspired by C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books and is even referenced a couple times!

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TW Suic!de

Revisado: 08-24-24

This story needed a huge TW for suicide. Horrible ending. Absolutely DO NOT RECOMMEND and wish I hadn’t listened to it.

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Loved this!

Revisado: 03-19-24

It’s wonderful to hear other non-binary stories! It helps this non-binary person feel less alone!

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A must read

Revisado: 01-25-24

I need everyone to read/listen to this book! Austin does a wonderful job here, This is a great resource for anyone who is struggling with theology around transgender people and is wanting to understand and learn more. Highly recommend.

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Fabulous narration! Hilarious!

Revisado: 07-14-23

I loved listening to this! Highly recommend to all the other “dykes to watch out for” ;-)

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Cozy scifi is my favorite!

Revisado: 01-26-23

So delightful! I need more Dex and Moss stories and I need them now! :-)

I have loved everything I have read/listened to by Becky Chambers. I highly recommend her books!

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Love hearing one of my favorite books read by the author herself!

Revisado: 12-22-22

A Wrinkle in time (and its sequels) remain one of my all time favorite books/series. So it is delightful to hear it read by the author!

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Pastoral, Healing, Water for a dry and weary soul

Revisado: 02-07-19

The first words that come to my mind to describe “Shameless” by Nadia Bolz-Weber are pastoral, healing, water for a dry and weary soul.

The money quote for me came in the introduction:

"We should not be more loyal to an idea, a doctrine, or an interpretation of a Bible verse than we are to people. If the teachings of the church are harming the bodies and spirits of people, we should rethink those teachings." (5)

Right after that, Nadia reminds us that 500 years ago Martin Luther took a close look at the harm in his parishioners’ spiritual lives. In his case he focused on the damage that came from them trying to fulfill sacramental obligations that the church said would appease an angry God. Luther was bold and daring enough to believe that Christians could find freedom from the harm their church and done to them: “Luther was less loyal to the teachings of the church than he was to people, and this helped spark what is now known as the Protestant Reformation." (5)

I also loved the illustration of the irrigation system that only waters in a circular pattern, leaving the corners and edges of the farmland without water. Nadia says this book is for those un-watered places, for the ones who do not fit inside the small circle of the church’s behavior codes. "This book […] is water, I hope, for those planted in the corners. [...] This book is for the young Evangelical who silently disagrees with the church’s stance on sex and sexual orientation, yet feels alone in that silence. This book is for anyone who wonders, even subconsciously: Has the church obsessed over this too much? Do we really think we’ve gotten it right?"

Nadia writes, “our sexual and gender expressions are as integral to who we are as our religious upbringings are. To separate these aspects of ourselves—to separate life as a sexual being from a life with God—is to bifurcate our psyche, like a musical progression that never comes to resolution."

Nadia makes me laugh several times throughout the book also: “So if the traditional teachings of the church around sex and the body have caused no harm in the lives of the people around you, and have even provided them a plan for true human flourishing, then this book probably is not for you. (Good news, though: the Christian publishing world is your oyster. There you’ll find no lack of books to uphold and even help you double down on your beliefs.)"

She made me laugh again at the end of chapter 5. In this chapter Nadia talks about the day that she and several of her parishioners worked together to write their "Denver Statement" in response to "The Nashville Statement". She then showed us snippets from both. The very end of The Nashville Statement says, “WE DENY that the Lord’s arm is too short to save or that any sinner is beyond his reach." The counter line from The Denver Statement says, “WE DENY that God is a boy and has actual arms." 😂


Other quotes and passages that really struck me:

From the introduction:
- "I will not indulge in the sin of false equivalency. To admit that both the church and our culture can cause harm is not the same as saying the harm from both is equivalent. It is not. Because as harmful as the messages from society are, what society does not do is say that these messages are from God. Our culture does not say to me that the creator of the universe is disgusted by my cellulite."

- "Let us consider the harm that has been caused in God’s name, but let’s not be satisfied with stopping there. We must reach for a new Christian sexual ethic."

- "Where sex is concerned, for sexual flourishing to occur we must be guided by more than just the absence of “no” and the absence of harm. That’s why I believe we must also bring concern to our consent and mutuality. Concern moves us closer to the heart of Jesus’s own ethic: love God and our neighbor as ourselves. It requires us to act on another’s behalf. It reframes the choice entirely outside of our own self-interest in a way that consent and mutuality alone do not.”

- “Concern means taking notice of how our sexual behavior affects ourselves and each other. I may be having a mutually pleasurable, consensual relationship with someone, but if I am cheating on my spouse at the time, I have failed to show concern for the person I am married to. If I am in a crisis and totally distraught, I may be more likely to consent to sex when in fact it is the last thing I need. If someone intuits this and sleeps with me anyway, they have consent, but they are not showing care and concern. A sexual ethic that includes concern means seeing someone as a whole person and not just a willing body. The only way to show true concern for ourselves and others is to see, to pay attention."

From Chapter 1:

- “The Greek word for salvation is sozo, which means “to heal, bring wholeness, preserve.” This is what God does. God heals fractured parts of ourselves back together into wholeness."

- "Holiness is the union we experience with one another and with God. Holiness is when more than one become one, when what is fractured is made whole. Singing in harmony. Breastfeeding a baby. Collective bargaining. Dancing. Admitting our pain to someone, and hearing them say, “Me too.” Holiness happens when we are integrated as physical, spiritual, sexual, emotional, and political beings. Holiness is the song that has always been sung, perhaps even the sound that was first spoken when God said, “Let there be light".

- "Whether we realize it or not, we often find ways to alleviate feelings of existential aloneness through the seeking of unity. We fill our lives with things that distract us from the sound of our deepest isolation tapping at the window. Food, entertainment, success, sex, relationships, busyness, gossip—there are plenty of ways to divert our attention from the unavoidable, terrifying aloneness of human existence. But there is a difference between distraction from and alleviation of. Moments of unity—holiness—actually alleviate isolation, which is not the same as simply distracting us from our isolation. In the same way, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee distract from the feelings of hunger, but eating food alleviates them. Temporarily, of course. But that is what it means to be human."

- "To connect to the holy is to access the deepest, juiciest part of our spirits. Perhaps this is why we set up so many boundaries, protections, and rules around both sex and religion. Both pursuits expose such a large surface area of the self, which can then be either hurt or healed. But when the boundaries, protections, and rules become more important than the sacred thing they are intended to protect, casualties ensue."

- "Holiness is about union with, and purity is about separation from."


From Chapter 2:

- "The nineteenth-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher defines heresy as “that which preserves the appearance of Christianity, and yet contradicts its essence.”

- “The heresy is this: with all the trappings of Christianity behind us, we who seek to justify or maintain our dominance over another group of people have historically used the Bible, Genesis in particular, to prove that domination is not actually an abuse of power at the expense of others, but is indeed part of “God’s plan.”

Footnote 52:
"The best definition of sin I have ever heard is found in Francis Spufford’s book Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense (New York: HarperOne, 2013), where he defines it as HPFTU: “the Human Propensity to F*** Things Up.”

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somewhat helpful look at church and mental illness

Revisado: 11-12-18

Troubled Minds incorporates memoir with statistics and advice about the church and mental illness. Amy Simpson describes her own experience growing up with a mother who suffered from schizophrenia. Throughout the book, she discusses the failure of so many churches are to understand and discuss mental illness in a helpful, accurate, productive way.

#MentalHealth #Christianity #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

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A call to the Jesus way of non-violence/pacifism

Revisado: 11-12-18

A wonderful invitation to lay down our swords and turn them in plowshares:

I loved the last paragraph:

"I know what the cynics will say. I know how the scoffers will sneer. I know the non-dreamers believing only in the brutal ways of force will laugh me off as impossibly naive. But I don’t care. I’ve grown immune to their strain of unbelief. I’ve turned a corner. I believe that what Isaiah dreamed of, Jesus died for. I believe that what Isaiah said would come to pass in the last days, Jesus inaugurated in his resurrection. I’ve caught a glimpse of the better world that can be— a world that Jesus came to give and continues to offer us. I believe the world of peace is possible in Christ. I won’t let the doomsday preppers with their Armageddon obsession talk me out of it. Jesus has already spoken the first word of a new world— the word peace. So things have changed. I have changed. I’ve prayed my last war prayer and preached my last war sermon. I’ve given up bellicose flag waving and singing lustily about bombs bursting in air. I’ve bid a final farewell to Mars. From now on I follow the Prince of Peace. I know others will come with me. Maybe you will be one of them. I hope so."

#pacifism #christianity #SocialJustice #tagsgiving #sweepstakes

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