When you’ve been burned by the flame of faith

or, why I am burning a John Piper book today. ☠️😂

I’m writing this on Pentecost, which many Christian traditions call the Church’s birthday. The narrative of Pentecost in Acts 2 is like something out of a fantasy novel—the kind that’s just strange and beautiful enough to make you want to live inside it. The Spirit comes as wind and fire and the gathering of Jesus’ friends begins to speak old truths in new tongues.

There is wind that doesn’t destruct and fire that won’t burn you.

And, my, if that isn’t strange and hard to hear when you’ve been whirled and burned by people who claim to be speaking for the Spirit.

I love how the First Nations Version tells this story:

They saw flames of fire coming down from above, separating and resting on each of their heads. The Holy Spirit had come down upon them and began to fill them with his life and power. New languages began to flow out from their mouths, languages they had never learned, given from the Holy Spirit. (v 3-4)

When they heard about the bizarre cacophony, people poured in from all over the city, baffled. “We all can understand them in the languages of the places we have come from!” (FNV, v. 8)

The Church begins in a burst of language that expands the people of God’s welcome in words that honor the far-reaching places they are from.

The Strange and Good News of this God who dwells among us and in us begins to spread not in univocality but in a symphony of unique speech.

This is our spiritual origin story.

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Lately, it’s like I’ve become fluent in a new language. I drive from point a to point b, twisting my torso and more than swaying to every song from three albums basically on repeat.¹ I lean into the levity and shamelessly give the passing cars a little snarky side-eye like I’m daring them to laugh at me. Like I’m daring them to do more than hurry to wherever they are going too. Like I’m daring us to believe life isn’t a race and we actually can relish it.

My limbs are lighter because my feet have a place to rest and my heart no longer needs my hands to hold up a heavy shield just to stay safe. Last week I heard my friend Suzanne Stabile tell folks that when she first started spiritual direction with Father Richard Rohr, she shared with more than a wee bit of frustration how she had no idea what God was doing in her life. And he told her: Good—what God is doing in you is none of your business.

Can you imagine a spiritual guide giving you permission to not have to know God’s purposes for your life to trust that they are good?

What if the will of God isn’t something you have to find to feel good?

I am writing from the deck of our new home—our first house²—where the wind is waving cottonwood branches behind me with the quiet rustling greeting of late Spring. And just as the viburnum in the corner of our yard is now a fountain of green, Love is bubbling up a new thing in me.

I don’t have to understand this freedom to trust that it is good.

I don’t have to know exactly how I came to learn this language, to let my limbs and lips form its words.

I don’t have to know what’s ahead, to trust that speaking this language won’t eventually shatter me.

You don’t have to understand the unfolding of your new beginning to welcome it with wonder.

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The only thing I grew up knowing about Pentecost in my Presbyterian household was that we don’t do that. I went to a Pentecostal school for kindergarten through first grade and one day in chapel in front of everyone my teacher tried to slay me in the Spirit, whispering gobblygook in my ears, fully expecting me to double over in a gasp of holiness.³ Instead I shook my head, sat down, and definitely told on her to my mom when I got home. Because we don’t do that.

So, I missed the whole memo that Pentecost isn’t performative but peculiar. I missed the message that the Church is born in the beauty of meaning surpassing any one language, culture, or place. Because we don’t do that also meant: there is one truth, one meaning of Scripture, and one right way to live, and it for sure looks like us.

And decades later, when I looked around and only saw faces like mine and they all frowned at me to be slayed in a different kind of spirit of striving for the sake of “the kingdom”—that was definitely slaying something deep in my spirit—church went on hospice in my heart. The gathering that was supposed to give me grace brought the deepest grief of my life. I didn’t want her to die, but I also didn’t want to die.⁴

We had to uproot the tree of our lives to save ourselves from the toxicity that had seeped into the spiritual soil around us. Today I read that mature trees that are transplanted often will stay in shock for years before they can relax and root into their new soil. And, ouch, if that isn’t the truth for people too.

a collage from one of my recent forays, where I love paying attention to the soil

In a few minutes, Ryan and I are heading out into our yard to plant two trees to honor the personhood in us that no toxicity could kill. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but this is substack and so I’ll let you in a little farther than the rest of the internet. I’m burning a John Piper book in a nod to my former belief system, and I’ll mix the ash with fresh, nutrient-rich soil to spread around our trees’ roots. Because:

all that has caused decay and death in us can become the dirt of our new dreams and new strength.

I want to get my hands dirty planting new dreams and honoring old hopes—because no part of this spiritual transplanting has been tidy. I want to sweat—not to protect someone else’s institutional structure or suppositions but to protect the spirituality born in us in wind and flame that both baffles and brings others together.

Two fruit trees—apple trees, who need each other to pollinate and thrive—will grow in our yard, year after year reminding us of the real roots of resilience that we refuse to let others poison. Out of death, decay, shock, and sweat, someday there will be fruit.

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So I’m sitting here, shimmying along to First Aid Kit in ways that are for sure embarrassing my husband, and I know the promise of Pentecost still lives in my bones.

You can take the tree of out the toxic soil, but you can’t take the life out of her cells.

I’ve been in shock for so many years that I feel surprised to suddenly feel so settled.

Grounded here, in a new city, in our very first home home, spending the weekend gathering with friends who have also had to uproot the trees of their own faith, I know the trunk of my life has a secure place to stand. These limbs—they reach toward the light and they wave in the wind, permitted to prosper in ways I wasn’t sure would ever be mine.

I am learning the language of levity. I am suddenly speaking the vernacular not just of vulnerability but of peace. I sense deep beneath my skin that my body has suddenly been freed to flourish.

I do not claim to know what Love is doing in my life, but I have felt the flame and withstood the wind and all I know is that I now speak a language no one taught me but everyone can hear, as though in their own native tongue.

And with this new language on my lips, I can never, ever go back to speaking in a spiritual tongue that can only hear its own words as wise. I can only stand here, baffled, suddenly able to communicate with so many more people about the wonder of the Goodness that lives in all of our bones.

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Speaking of new beginnings… Some announcements:

I’m burying this here at the bottom of the email because I don’t give a 💩 about following All the Best Practices. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I wanted to write you that essay and here we are…with a few more delightful things to share:

On Saturday, I’m starting the first of several large adventures to our national parks. I’m revisiting places my parents took us as kids, foraging through my own story and faith for what is good. Just as I bring home goodness in my foraging basket each week, I want to bend to the ground of my beliefs and the roots of my belonging and consider what to keep carrying with me. This is…the heart of my next book. 😬🙌🏼

So, if that process interests you, you are officially invited to become a paid subscriber of Embodied!

that’s me on the right ☠️ 🥰 hiking boots and happily pointing at things I find amazing are *my roots*

• For paid subscribers, I am going to be sharing a whole lot more of my process of foraging through my faith, writing my ass off, and witnessing so much beauty as I wander through some of America’s most beautiful places. (So, basically, you don’t have to wait for my next book to experience some of it with me. And I think that’s fun.) You’ll hear from me on most weeks, with slight exceptions for treatment or illness.

• I’ll also be providing exclusive monthly book reviews of what I’ve been savoring, occasional somatic practices for an embodied faith, some exclusive poems (including me reading them in beautiful places 🥰, along with pretty lock screens), and more personal stories I just don’t feel totally comfortable sharing on IG anymore.

• I’m excited for this to become a place for richer dialogue for us, where we can talk about our spirituality with more safety because we are protected behind a paywall with other people who really want to be there and are committed to kindness.

• Contact me if you can’t afford a subscription, and though it might take me some time to be able to reply, I will gladly help you out. And if any of you want to donate to a fund to support others to have subscriptions, send me an email. That would be beautiful to do together.

• You can click the button below to update your subscription to paid! And you can always cancel later. I promise I won’t get all pissy about it if you do 🫶🏼

Secondly, I am hosting my first-ever somatic retreat on June 17th!

• My dear friend (and somatic practitioner) Nicole Field and I are hosting Bury + Bloom: a one-day somatic retreat. All female-identifying folks are welcome and we only have a couple spots left! You can register/learn more here. I also have a lot more info in the “somatic retreat” highlight on my Instagram. We are thrilled to get to hold this space for you.

  

1. For the curious: I’ve been rotating between Jack Harlow’s Jackman, Labrinth’s Ends & Begins, and First Aid Kit’s Palomino, each with their own distinct flavor of joy.)

2. You can see some photos and read a few words about how grateful we are to own our first house here.

3. I’m not saying she didn’t believe it was real; I’m just saying Little Me was clearly honed in on spiritual manipulation and already didn’t want it. ☠️😂 Also: this is NOT a comment on whether Pentecostals are good; just that a kindergartner shouldn’t be coerced into spiritual experiences she doesn’t want…

4. Like, for real, being in the institutional church was feeding and exacerbating my trauma so much that I was passively suicidal more than I ever would have thought was possible for myself. I wrote about this a bit in both This Too Shall Last and in more detail in The Lord Is My Courage.