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4.47 AVERAGE
4.47 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
So many highlights, so many notes. I am thankful for Sarah Bessey
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Beautiful and challenging, thought provoking and inspiring. So many phrases that made me stop and ponder, acknowledge that I've felt similarly. I want to discuss this with others grappling with some of the same questions.
Content Warnings
Minor: Sexism, Grief, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Abandonment, Alcohol
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
What my soul needed during this season…
emotional
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
Warm. Reassuring. Thoughtful.
Can a book be your best friend?
I have long loved Sarah Bessey's writing so this book did not disappoint. My friend Paul recommended Bessey's blog to me back in 2011, back when she started her posts with "in which..." and referred to her kids as tinies. Her faithful and raw story telling hooked me even before she wrote about having a baby in the parking lot, though I do remember that post well. This book is a friend in the wilderness that is seeped in truth and comfort. I started it right before I finished my job in Nashville and it has travelled sweetly with me this summer. Though Sarah Bessey and I don't often land on the same theological conclusions, we travel the same roads and ponder the same questions and we chase and love the same Jesus and, for me, that's enough.
My current wilderness is not as desolate as some I've crossed before, but even still, I was glad to have some field notes on this journey. I read chapters one at a time before bed and it truly, truly felt like talking with a best friend. If you feel wilderness-y at all, read this book.
Lines I underlined to keep (Kindle says I underlined 2% of the book):
Preface:
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.
Chapter 1:
the wilderness has been your primary address for as long as you can remember
An evolving faith is simply faith that has adapted in order to survive.
One thing that my dad told me when I was at the beginning stages of my own deconstruction has become the hallmark of my work in this arena, particularly with Evolving Faith. In response to my very real and legitimate fears of where this wilderness wandering and questioning would lead me, he told me something along the lines of this: “I’m not afraid for you. If you’re honestly seeking God, I believe you will find what you’re looking for, even if it looks different than what I have found.”
I have yet to find a problem I won’t throw twelve books at
Chapter 2:
That we’re disappointed and grieving. However we got here or why, we’ve arrived on the other side of the city gates with our sorrow as lonely company.
The point isn't to arrive but to keep going.
We can question what belonging means, even while we find community in a local church.
Chapter 3:
We agreed that the aftermath of a landslide—or six—isn’t the ideal time for a major life decision.
Maybe now isn’t the time for you to upend everything. Maybe now is the time to let the silt settle until things are more clear. Whether it’s in your relationships or your beliefs, your vocation or your location, your internal self and your external circumstances—maybe give it a minute.
Maybe we’re so used to being in crisis mode, running from fire to fire, from boycott to brouhaha, we have forgotten that we have a life already. Madeleine L’Engle writes, “We’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”
Chapter 5:
We had hoped that the people who introduced us to Jesus wouldn’t be deceived by Christian nationalism or conspiracy theories. We had hoped our marriages would survive. We had hoped our friendships would last even as we changed.
Sometimes we’re like the disciples, who expected one type of Messiah and got the crucified Lamb of God instead. Sometimes our expectations need to be disappointed in order to make room for the true, the wise, and the good realities of God.
On the days when I believe this
I wonder if there is room in your hope, if not for resurrection yet, then for the companionship and guidance of the Spirit as you travel.
Our hope is with us. And soon, our eyes will be opened to who was walking us home all along.
Chapter 6:
But because I refused to acknowledge it in my awake life, I was now reliving that moment of feeling so completely out of control, so afraid, so alone, so unprepared, so exposed, over and over and over again in my dreams. My soul wouldn’t let me get away with sanitizing that story, not anymore.
In this torn reality, you can’t find your way to the corner store you visited every week: the roads are gone, the landmarks you used to give directions have disappeared, and even if you manage to get to the right spot, the corner store isn’t as it was. You know you’re standing in a place you know or knew, but you can’t get your bearings because all of the ways you’ve always navigated your life have been destroyed.
I simply let the salt swirl into the water and allowed the jar to hold it all. Each grain of salt reminded me of what the Psalmist wrote, “You keep track of all my sorrows.
Healing is hard work, harder than we ever knew, plainer and more ordinarily steady than we expect. But what was meant to shame you or silence you or punish you will become the making of you. Eventually you will learn, as most of us do someday, that just as grief stained backwards, you’ll regain the good again.
Chapter 7:
Is there anything better than when a kid whispers “wow” under their breath? It sounds like prayer.
“Sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a song.” I would only add, “And sometimes you need a kid.” Every walk with a kid invites a slower pace through the wonder of this ordinary life, noticing things like dogs, trees, flowers, rocks, big trucks. It’s hard not to feel wonder when the person you’re with is constantly amazed.
These are the moments that are saving my life right now. As Blaise Pascal wrote, “In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.” When the world is struggling or when we are exhausted, we are invited to the holy conversation of noticing. Noticing the sanctuaries of spruces still available to us, noticing the stars, noticing our children, noticing the night. We live into the night until it becomes a friend.
steady reclamation of wonder, a discipline of being amazed
It is my hope that the wilderness will restore your capacity for wonder. It’s my hope that you’ll relearn how to ask questions and you’ll be startled by ladybugs and the return of a robin will make you glad. It’s my hope that children and elders will find you a patient presence. And it’s my hope that you’ll realize that being useful and having answers isn’t everything. There has to be room for nonsensical, wasteful, and sacramental noticing, because through it you begin to witness God’s heavy pour of love into your cup. It might sound odd at this stage of your journey to tell you this, but here it is: cultivating curiosity, wonder, and beauty will serve you well in your evolving faith.
Chapter 9:
We confess and we hear each other’s confessions, we forgive and we are forgiven. We are empowered and beloved at the moment of our vulnerability. We open our grief to one another (choose wisely) and hear the truth our souls long to hear: you are forgiven, go and sin no more, I’m here with you, let’s untangle you together. There is no place you can go where you will outrun God’s love and longing for your wholeness.
In this process of repentance and confession, you’re going to have to learn to allow yourself to say, Yes, I have done things wrong. Yes, I am tired of faking fine and avoiding accountability. Yes, I am weary of being strong. Yes, I am in need of help. Yes, I have hurt people—intentionally and unintentionally—and I need to make it right. Yes, I taught or expressed theology that I deeply disagree with now. Yes, there were consequences for the things I said and did in the lives of other people. Yes, I used tactics like bullying or silencing or ostracizing. Yes, I judged and gossiped and accused. Yes, the way I act on social media or at work or in my family isn’t consistent with my deep hopes. Yes, I am ready to admit that I get things wrong, that I benefit from systems, that I choose violence, that I am led by my legitimate desires for belonging or respect or love into behaviors that delegitimize others or myself. Yes, I am complicit with systems of abuse or supremacy or marginalization. Yes, I am entangled, and I do not know how to get free. Yes, I have been carrying the weight of this alone, and, God, I’m so so so tired. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.
Healing doesn’t come because we’re so good at faking fine
Chapter 11:
I can gather to reflect and contemplate, to hear the ways that others have solved this puzzling problem of existence. Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder and challenge me.
“What would it look like if I stopped trying to fit? What would it look like if I embraced being fitless?”
“stretch mark friends,”
Chapter 14:
Then there is the moment of realization: not this. Not anymore anyway. It’s scary and awful, but it’s also very brave to say it out loud and to let your life reflect it. Especially when we don’t know what’s next or what could be coming or even what we hope for yet, but we simply know it’s not this.
Turn away, yes, but remember to turn toward what you hope for, what you dream for, what you yearn for, too.
If you already know “not this,” begin to explore and dream about what could be the alternative. The alternative story, the alternative you, the alternative future, the alternative healing. You might need time to live into it, it might be hard work, it might feel futile and small and ridiculous. And yet there you will be, with a baptized imagination and a dawning sense of what is possible and a ferocious commitment to hope, moving toward Love.
Benediction (I underlined all of it, but won't retype it all here):
Sometimes when we don’t know what we think about anything, it’s nice to just rest in someone else’s faith for a while anyway, especially when we feel a bit out of sorts.
you’re on a slower, more winding path that prioritizes wildflowers and cliffs, the salt tang of the sea and spruces
I pray that you would be surprised by streams in the desert, nourishing and clear-to-the-bottom water for your soul that reminds you over and over again of all the ways the sacred is still hiding in plain sight.
I pray for an audacious hopefulness, one that takes suffering and loss as seriously as it takes faith and love.
I pray you would find work that brings joy to you. May you find honor in what you put your time and energy toward...that you would reclaim what brings you wonder and satisfaction
Can a book be your best friend?
I have long loved Sarah Bessey's writing so this book did not disappoint. My friend Paul recommended Bessey's blog to me back in 2011, back when she started her posts with "in which..." and referred to her kids as tinies. Her faithful and raw story telling hooked me even before she wrote about having a baby in the parking lot, though I do remember that post well. This book is a friend in the wilderness that is seeped in truth and comfort. I started it right before I finished my job in Nashville and it has travelled sweetly with me this summer. Though Sarah Bessey and I don't often land on the same theological conclusions, we travel the same roads and ponder the same questions and we chase and love the same Jesus and, for me, that's enough.
My current wilderness is not as desolate as some I've crossed before, but even still, I was glad to have some field notes on this journey. I read chapters one at a time before bed and it truly, truly felt like talking with a best friend. If you feel wilderness-y at all, read this book.
Lines I underlined to keep (Kindle says I underlined 2% of the book):
Preface:
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—and that it may take a very long time.
Chapter 1:
the wilderness has been your primary address for as long as you can remember
An evolving faith is simply faith that has adapted in order to survive.
One thing that my dad told me when I was at the beginning stages of my own deconstruction has become the hallmark of my work in this arena, particularly with Evolving Faith. In response to my very real and legitimate fears of where this wilderness wandering and questioning would lead me, he told me something along the lines of this: “I’m not afraid for you. If you’re honestly seeking God, I believe you will find what you’re looking for, even if it looks different than what I have found.”
I have yet to find a problem I won’t throw twelve books at
Chapter 2:
That we’re disappointed and grieving. However we got here or why, we’ve arrived on the other side of the city gates with our sorrow as lonely company.
The point isn't to arrive but to keep going.
We can question what belonging means, even while we find community in a local church.
Chapter 3:
We agreed that the aftermath of a landslide—or six—isn’t the ideal time for a major life decision.
Maybe now isn’t the time for you to upend everything. Maybe now is the time to let the silt settle until things are more clear. Whether it’s in your relationships or your beliefs, your vocation or your location, your internal self and your external circumstances—maybe give it a minute.
Maybe we’re so used to being in crisis mode, running from fire to fire, from boycott to brouhaha, we have forgotten that we have a life already. Madeleine L’Engle writes, “We’ve forgotten what it’s like to live in a peaceful and reasonable climate. If there is to be any peace or reason, we have to create it in our own hearts and homes.”
Chapter 5:
We had hoped that the people who introduced us to Jesus wouldn’t be deceived by Christian nationalism or conspiracy theories. We had hoped our marriages would survive. We had hoped our friendships would last even as we changed.
Sometimes we’re like the disciples, who expected one type of Messiah and got the crucified Lamb of God instead. Sometimes our expectations need to be disappointed in order to make room for the true, the wise, and the good realities of God.
On the days when I believe this
I wonder if there is room in your hope, if not for resurrection yet, then for the companionship and guidance of the Spirit as you travel.
Our hope is with us. And soon, our eyes will be opened to who was walking us home all along.
Chapter 6:
But because I refused to acknowledge it in my awake life, I was now reliving that moment of feeling so completely out of control, so afraid, so alone, so unprepared, so exposed, over and over and over again in my dreams. My soul wouldn’t let me get away with sanitizing that story, not anymore.
In this torn reality, you can’t find your way to the corner store you visited every week: the roads are gone, the landmarks you used to give directions have disappeared, and even if you manage to get to the right spot, the corner store isn’t as it was. You know you’re standing in a place you know or knew, but you can’t get your bearings because all of the ways you’ve always navigated your life have been destroyed.
I simply let the salt swirl into the water and allowed the jar to hold it all. Each grain of salt reminded me of what the Psalmist wrote, “You keep track of all my sorrows.
Healing is hard work, harder than we ever knew, plainer and more ordinarily steady than we expect. But what was meant to shame you or silence you or punish you will become the making of you. Eventually you will learn, as most of us do someday, that just as grief stained backwards, you’ll regain the good again.
Chapter 7:
Is there anything better than when a kid whispers “wow” under their breath? It sounds like prayer.
“Sometimes you need a scientist and sometimes you need a song.” I would only add, “And sometimes you need a kid.” Every walk with a kid invites a slower pace through the wonder of this ordinary life, noticing things like dogs, trees, flowers, rocks, big trucks. It’s hard not to feel wonder when the person you’re with is constantly amazed.
These are the moments that are saving my life right now. As Blaise Pascal wrote, “In difficult times, carry something beautiful in your heart.” When the world is struggling or when we are exhausted, we are invited to the holy conversation of noticing. Noticing the sanctuaries of spruces still available to us, noticing the stars, noticing our children, noticing the night. We live into the night until it becomes a friend.
steady reclamation of wonder, a discipline of being amazed
It is my hope that the wilderness will restore your capacity for wonder. It’s my hope that you’ll relearn how to ask questions and you’ll be startled by ladybugs and the return of a robin will make you glad. It’s my hope that children and elders will find you a patient presence. And it’s my hope that you’ll realize that being useful and having answers isn’t everything. There has to be room for nonsensical, wasteful, and sacramental noticing, because through it you begin to witness God’s heavy pour of love into your cup. It might sound odd at this stage of your journey to tell you this, but here it is: cultivating curiosity, wonder, and beauty will serve you well in your evolving faith.
Chapter 9:
We confess and we hear each other’s confessions, we forgive and we are forgiven. We are empowered and beloved at the moment of our vulnerability. We open our grief to one another (choose wisely) and hear the truth our souls long to hear: you are forgiven, go and sin no more, I’m here with you, let’s untangle you together. There is no place you can go where you will outrun God’s love and longing for your wholeness.
In this process of repentance and confession, you’re going to have to learn to allow yourself to say, Yes, I have done things wrong. Yes, I am tired of faking fine and avoiding accountability. Yes, I am weary of being strong. Yes, I am in need of help. Yes, I have hurt people—intentionally and unintentionally—and I need to make it right. Yes, I taught or expressed theology that I deeply disagree with now. Yes, there were consequences for the things I said and did in the lives of other people. Yes, I used tactics like bullying or silencing or ostracizing. Yes, I judged and gossiped and accused. Yes, the way I act on social media or at work or in my family isn’t consistent with my deep hopes. Yes, I am ready to admit that I get things wrong, that I benefit from systems, that I choose violence, that I am led by my legitimate desires for belonging or respect or love into behaviors that delegitimize others or myself. Yes, I am complicit with systems of abuse or supremacy or marginalization. Yes, I am entangled, and I do not know how to get free. Yes, I have been carrying the weight of this alone, and, God, I’m so so so tired. Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.
Healing doesn’t come because we’re so good at faking fine
Chapter 11:
I can gather to reflect and contemplate, to hear the ways that others have solved this puzzling problem of existence. Most of all, I want them to hold me to account, to keep on track, to urge me towards doing good. Holding spiritual beliefs on my own is lonely. I want to be part of a group that makes me return to ideas that bewilder and challenge me.
“What would it look like if I stopped trying to fit? What would it look like if I embraced being fitless?”
“stretch mark friends,”
Chapter 14:
Then there is the moment of realization: not this. Not anymore anyway. It’s scary and awful, but it’s also very brave to say it out loud and to let your life reflect it. Especially when we don’t know what’s next or what could be coming or even what we hope for yet, but we simply know it’s not this.
Turn away, yes, but remember to turn toward what you hope for, what you dream for, what you yearn for, too.
If you already know “not this,” begin to explore and dream about what could be the alternative. The alternative story, the alternative you, the alternative future, the alternative healing. You might need time to live into it, it might be hard work, it might feel futile and small and ridiculous. And yet there you will be, with a baptized imagination and a dawning sense of what is possible and a ferocious commitment to hope, moving toward Love.
Benediction (I underlined all of it, but won't retype it all here):
Sometimes when we don’t know what we think about anything, it’s nice to just rest in someone else’s faith for a while anyway, especially when we feel a bit out of sorts.
you’re on a slower, more winding path that prioritizes wildflowers and cliffs, the salt tang of the sea and spruces
I pray that you would be surprised by streams in the desert, nourishing and clear-to-the-bottom water for your soul that reminds you over and over again of all the ways the sacred is still hiding in plain sight.
I pray for an audacious hopefulness, one that takes suffering and loss as seriously as it takes faith and love.
I pray you would find work that brings joy to you. May you find honor in what you put your time and energy toward...that you would reclaim what brings you wonder and satisfaction
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced