kathy escobar.

a little laughter every day.

Posted on May 9, 2012 in just because i thought it was fun | 10 comments

* this month’s synchroblog is called lighten up: the art of laughter, joy, and letting go. the links to other bloggers writing on the same topics are below.

as always i am late to the party, been writing my brains out and traveling so my contribution is short and sweet. laughter is the only way i can survive down here in the muck and mire of real life. laughing at myself. laughing at irony. laughing at the dramedy (drama + comedy) that is the best way to describe our lives. fortunately, jose, my husband, makes me laugh every day and i am part of a community that values laughter, too. i am not sure that comes across in some of the intensity of what i write here, but we have a helluva of a lot of fun in the midst of all this darkness. in many ways, it’s the only way we survive.

laughter is so healing.

every day i need a little lightness. david hayward’s stuff makes me laugh out loud all the time. here’s my all-time favorite cartoon from him (i thought it was pretty appropriate for our rebuilding after deconstructing series):

and this one sort of fits, too. my friend jenny posted it last week with a little blurb about church. so funny and oh so true.

and i am not quite sure how you could possibly watch this and not have it be contagious, no matter how many times you might have already seen it.

have a great week. i hope you can find a way to laugh every day. it heals.

* * * * *

other bloggers writing about this topic this month:

Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – Lighten Up!
Maria Kettleson Anderson at My Real Journey - The Art of Passionately Lightening Up
Melody Harrison at Logic and Imagination – {I Don’t Do Joy}
Wendy McCaig - Lighten Up: Learning to Let Go From A Man Who Lost It All
Carol Kuniholm at Words Half Heart – Resurrection Laughter
R. Lee Bayes at Southern Humanist – Loving Light
Alan Knox – Be Sarcastic With One Another
Patrick Oden at Dueling Ravens - Truth, Beauty, and Yodeling Pickles
Christine Sine at Godspace – Lighten Up: It Really is the Best Medicine
Glenn Hager - Margaritas, Metallica, and A Serious Case of the Giggles.
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – A Spoonful of Sugar
K.W. Leslie at More Christ – When Jesus Made A Funny
Maurice Broaddus – Why So Serious?
Ellen Haroutunian – A Laughing God

reframing crazy when it comes to church

Posted on May 7, 2012 in church stuff, crazy making | 36 comments

how many times have you all heard me talk about our “crazy” little church, the refuge? and about how people i know who are doing all kinds of wild & beautiful missional things for the kingdom are a “little crazy but not alone”? or how “crazy” my life in the trenches is?

i use the word “crazy” all the time when i talk about life down here because compared to the big church machine, it is.

people really do think we are crazy (can’t tell you the number of people who say “i could never do what you guys do” like it’s some kind of weird anomaly in the church of Jesus Christ to actively love one another [that's crazy]). but the truth is that we’ve sort of adopted that language, too. that what we’re doing is somehow “crazy”.

i recently had a very short but lovely conversation with two missional church cultivators who are doing what we’d call “crazy” work, too. in the conversation one of them said, “i used to think we were crazy but then i started re-thinking it. i began to say, hey, we’re not the crazy ones here. read the gospels, this is so not crazy. that system is what’s crazy!”

“that system is what’s crazy!”

those words have really lingered and i’ve been thinking about them all week.

what if we reframed crazy when it comes to church?

what if instead of thinking that small-missional-communities-and-people-working-on-the-fringes-of-life-and-faith were crazy, we started thinking that maybe these things were actually crazy instead:

isn’t it a little crazy that in the church supposedly built upon the teachings of Jesus Christ that half of the population is silenced and kept underneath the other half?

isn’t it a little crazy that millions of people go to church each week and never talk to anyone past saying “hello” to a greeter?

isn’t it a little crazy that the same people who are marginalized on the outside of the church are marginalized on the inside, too?

isn’t it a little crazy that there is usually never a really poor person or a hurting person or a single mom on a board of elders?

isn’t it a little crazy that for the most part the pretty and the popular and the outwardly strong are the only ones we ever see or hear from up front?

isn’t it a little crazy that millions of dollars are spent on buildings & staff salaries while people in the congregations are on food stamps & medicaid?

isn’t it a little crazy how much money & energy & time is spent on dynamic teaching, amazing worship, and an awesome kids program that happens for one hour every week?

isn’t it a little crazy that every church has so many people with amazing gifts & passions & talents that not one person in their congregation even knows about?

isn’t it a little crazy that there are so many people who go to church each week but do not personally know one single poor person ?

isn’t it a little crazy that following Jesus has become about going to church & believing certain things & listening to certain radio stations or voting for certain candidates?

isn’t it a little crazy that pastors have to pay exorbitant amounts of money to seminaries to somehow become “qualified”?

isn’t it a little crazy that we don’t think this is crazy?

seriously, we need to reframe crazy when it comes to church!

a place where people can share openly about their addictions & struggles & hopes & doubts & fears. breaking the divide between us & them. women freely leading alongside men as equals. all welcome and not only until they’re actually honest. safe places for gifts to be fanned into flame with no power or control trips. a focus on living out the Bible instead of talking about the Bible. tangible ways to love & care & serve & learn how to be a friend. dialogue instead of passive listening. experiencing instead of watching.

i’m pretty sure when it comes to following Jesus these things aren’t supposed to be “crazy”.

to the world, yes. to the church built on his name, um, i don’t think so.

yeah, we so need to reframe crazy when it comes to church.

rebuilding is possible: a little hope for deconstruction

Posted on May 4, 2012 in healing, spiritual formation | 4 comments

when i originally had this idea for a rebuilding after deconstructing series, i didn’t know exactly what it would be like. i just knew i wanted to write what was on my heart and see what happened. i have so appreciated all of the comments & honesty & the lovely new people i have met during this past few weeks and connecting with so many of you who have been here for a long time, too. thanks for being part of the carnival. it’s a privilege to intersect with such brave, wise, and honest people–in real life & online, too.

as we wrap up, i wanted to put all of the links for the series in one place, so here they are:

plus:

also, i would love some feedback on areas you’d like to continue to explore related to this topic. there are a couple i already know of in the works: what about the kids? what happens when spouses are in different places completely? how can we find safe community in new ways?

what else would you like to process here? let me know in the comments section.

another question is “now what” for some of you who would like to keep processing through the journey with others who understand in a safe place. there are all kinds of great things online related to faith shifts & if you have any sites you want to recommend, please do. related specifically to this conversation, jim fisher started a closed facebook group called “faith under construction” that will be exploring some of these ideas & more online. if you have some pretty big church wounds and think some extra processing might be helpful, maybe you can consider joining our next online walking wounded: hope for those hurt by the church group, hosted at live it to the full (we don’t have an exact date right now but you can email me and i’ll let you know when we get it set). another great site for those healing from church woundedness is www.churchburned.com, hosted by my friend travis klaussen.

lastly, i thought i’d post a few links to old posts that many of you may not have read before that are centered on this topic. remember my disclaimer: i am a work in progress and please don’t hold me to everything i’ve said here over the years. i haven’t re-read all of these in detail, but i hope that somehow, someway, anything shared here can bring a little bit of hope on this wild & crazy path of rebuilding after deconstruction.

these are the ones that jumped out at me as i looked back (just some light reading, ha ha):