Disqus - Latest Comments for Phule77

Re: Episode 108 - Gay Parents, Foster Care, and Death by Machete or Chimpanzee

Phule77 — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 10:19:55 -0000

I'm a former foster parent who adopted two of the children placed with us...The Foster system is always underfunded and understaffed. It's one of those areas that, much like schools, always seems to be at the bottom of importance for state governments in terms of funding, and which often falls under medicaid for Federal concerns, which are being actively attacked at the moment.

There are always far more children in the system than there are parents for, though if every church volunteered to foster a child, it would end the problem tomorrow.

Additionally, states like Arkansas often fight to, say, make sure that only straight married couples can foster or adopt, when in fact there aren't nearly as many of them as they would like..Evangelicals like the idea of taking care of social services at a church level, but most churches aren't doing that well, and can barely take care of themselves. (http://taddelay.com/blog/14...

So, no, the system is not great for kids, because there are always more children (https://www.wsj.com/article... who have needs than the system can really provide for accurately. But the things that are driving the children into the system are greater.

There are so many problems with Meth and other drugs right now, never mind people who have had kids mostly because they wanted to have sex but didn't want to be bothered with birth control (or who couldn't afford it, especially in regions where planned parenthood is being actively attacked) and children often become an after though or an active casualty of these adults who are just trying to escape their own lives.

A significant issue within the Foster element are children who, because of abuse or mistreatment by their parents, are fundamentally disabled, and because they aren't cute and easy to care for, there are not the kind of volunteers for fostering that there are for "normal" children who are only traumatized and trying to live.

The point to the Foster system is that we do what we can with what we have, not that it is what it should be. Nothing about this is as it should be.

Re: Episode 35 - The Cosmic Christ with Richard Rohr

Phule77 — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 20:33:39 -0000

Couldn't find any other place to put this.

I'm so inspired and driven by the sort of thing Rohr talks about...he had a concurrent rob cast that I've listened to twice, then downloaded all of homilies.

I want the community where this sort of discussion and practice fits, but I can't find it. Evangelicals will give me certainty and sin with rock music, while mainline churches will give me liturgy, tradition, and social discussion with little discussion, study, sharing, or room for the movement of the spirit.

I'd settle for people to talk to without having to go buddhist, but there don't seem to be a lot of options for that in little Rock arkansas, and I can't afford the time and money to attend an event and hope that I happen to meet somebody.

Just so lonely for community where I'm not a heretic or an over thinker. .

Re: Episode 16 - The End (Eschatology)

Phule77 — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 11:37:25 -0000

You appear to be critiquing things that they've already said are up in the air previously. I'm not clear what the point of this is.

Re: Episode 33 - One Wild Life Spirit

Phule77 — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 08:48:19 -0000

Mike talks about realizing he doesn't have enough of an ego, and having to create one. I really wonder what that's like. I...I hear about these events you're having, where the idea is creating shared community, and that's...both hopeful and frightening?

I haven't felt like I truly "fit in" anywhere in...well, I don't remember when. But I've been in various aspects of the church my entire life. And one of my takeaways from the church is a constant struggle with this idea that anything involving my ego is bad, is destructive. I have a very poor framework for what is good for me, because Jesus on the Cross means that I'm bad (which is hogwash, but good luck recovering from that sort of bomb quickly).

For people who don't know how to be part of community, who aren't good at anything but surviving...how do they approach this sort of thing? How do you allow vulnerability when experience teaches that most people will just take advantage of that? How do survivors approach non-traditional community in a healthy manner?

Re: Episode 19 - Searching For Sunday with Rachel Held Evans

Phule77 — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 08:43:18 -0000

The main thing with home churches is that you are your structure for accountability. If you bury the lede on things, if you allow suppositions to continue unchecked until a certain point in the future, you're essentially burying mines and then hoping that your community as a home church is strong enough to survive the explosions. Some do, some don't.

With any "church" environment, we bring all of our baggage and experience with us, and we all use slightly different linguistics to talk about the same experience. Anything you can do within the environment you create to bring measures of clarity or shared definition is helpful, even if it's only in creating boundaries of what you are not, or what is safe.

Some people are looking to be right. Some people are looking for nothing to be right. Some people are just looking. Figuring out how to foster the elements you're looking for and welcoming are important.

Re: And the Walls Came Tumbling Down

Phule77 — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:25:51 -0000

People also build walls because dealing with life is so painful, it's easier just to feel as little as possible, because it makes you less vulnerable.

Of course, there's no easy way to take those walls down...

Re: 2015 Fall Movie Preview

Phule77 — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 14:29:52 -0000

There's a nerdist podcast with Max Landis (son of John Landis) and his elevator pitch for his version of Peter Pan is simply mind blowing.

Re: Leaning Into Hope

Phule77 — Thu, 17 Sep 2015 07:48:35 -0000

So much of the issue seems to be finding people who will not just listen, but who can take your ideas and run with them, who are having some of the same ideas, or the same learning.

As somebody who has learned and read a lot, I'm often dismayed because I need to bite my tongue so as not to interrupt where somebody else who is learning is moving forward. All of my movement for the last decade or so feels like it has been from getting older...not from expressing myself, not from interacting, not from the dynamic quality gained from conversation with others, and what we do together.

It seems like, the older we get, the harder it is to find other people who really want to have good conversations, who want to listen, and compare, and process. Rather than bringing us together, the internet simply provides bold faced fascades of who we would like to be, or simplistic representations of who we think we are.

I wish you luck in overcoming your defenses. I'm working to overcome mine.

Re: What It Takes to Embrace Your Emotions

Phule77 — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 12:05:44 -0000

Sometimes, there's no constructive or meaningful way of dealing with emotions. When you've spent a lifetime suppressing them, quashing them, controlling them...learning to express and deal with them is not something that you can do on your own, and is something that few communities are well formed to assist with. We stay out of each other's business. Nobody is going to come knocking to see how they can help, and they're certainly not going to stick around when you don't know how to express the pain you've spent a lifetime not speaking about.

Though it's probably easier for people who don't deal with anxiety and depression.

Re: How Kim Davis is Damaging the Christian Witness

Phule77 — Sat, 12 Sep 2015 11:16:36 -0000

Kim's church is something like oneness pentecostal, which holds that there is only God, but God can take on the forms of the Son and Spirit as He chooses, also called modalism. It's one of the oldest recognized heresies of the church.

I suppose it doesn't really matter if Kim is a recognized participant...after a while, that falls into that "no true scottsman" logical fallacy, and there's limited benefit to it.

But I think it's a problem for Christian culture that globally, Christians are far less defined by their love for each other and outsiders (outside of disaster relief) and instead by their conjoined fear of hell and the steps they'll take to define who is going there.

We tell ourselves that Kim is a problem for the church, but honestly...are we really the church that we wish to believe we are?

Re: Why Do I Go To Church?

Phule77 — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 20:13:54 -0000

I left our church about a month before the pastor did, without realizing what he was doing. I'm happy for him, I hope he'll be happier where he's going now.

I've never been good at fitting in anywhere. I wish I could give you advice on that, but I'm always looking for people who I can talk to, who I can connect to, but I've generally done very poorly at it.

Re: Defending My Progressive Christianity

Phule77 — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 13:18:10 -0000

This feels sort of like telling a rape/ abuse victim "not all men are *, and I'm sure you did something to bring it upon yourself...if you'd just approach men with more grace, I'm sure you wouldn't have a problem with it."

Re: Anxiety Isn’t A Choice

Phule77 — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 10:15:03 -0000

Anxiety functions as an aspect of my personality, due to taking in too much information without an adequate filter to figure out what isn't necessary. It hampers my social interactions, and it's also a defense mechanism based on past experiences that allows me to maintain distance where I should probably be engaging in risk, but am afraid to.

Prayer generally isn't going to fix anxiety (anxiety being very different than worry, as it's often subconcious) unless prayer leads those praying for you to interact with you, rather than waiting for you to get well.

Relationship changes things, but we all fear the repercussions of rejection or miscommunication. Fear is the mindkiller, and Sting looks great in a blue jumpsuit.

Re: Please See Me as More than a Woman

Phule77 — Fri, 28 Aug 2015 09:26:44 -0000

Increasingly, my favorite pastors are women, at least partially because they're relational in their theology.

For a decade, my favorite supervisors have been women, because they approach things in terms of both identity and direction, rather than just trying to figure out why their workers won't fit into the hole they think they should go into.

Women are fantastic, and they bring creativity and life to otherwise "purpose driven" and often empty endeavors.

Thank you for participating.

Re: Let Women Be Addicted to Porn

Phule77 — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 11:16:43 -0000

If you go back about 150 years, women wanted all of the sex and men didn't need it. Ah, culture.

I see you, sister. Grace and peace be unto you.

Re: Defending My Progressive Christianity

Phule77 — Tue, 25 Aug 2015 11:14:06 -0000

Right there with you, brother.

Re: It Is Well With Me

Phule77 — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 20:51:29 -0000

Healing keeps changing as you grow, it becomes inextricably bound up in who you are.

Re: The Lie of Male Masculinity

Phule77 — Fri, 24 Jul 2015 20:11:09 -0000

"You play football like a girl."

Oh, wow, thank you. that's the best thing anybody's ever said to me.

Re: Episode 16 - The End (Eschatology)

Phule77 — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 11:26:41 -0000

1. Aeon Zoe (translated as "eternal life") on context seems to have much more to do with quality than quantity, but we've somehow inverted that.

2. My perceptions and discussions of aeon Zoe make me want to create difficult, beautiful art, but there's no place for it within the Evangelical church, which is obsessed with painting exit signs.

3. Art, for me, celebrates or enacts community and relationship, i.e., if I have to do it in the closet alone, I have robbed it of meaning. But then, I believe in a relational, participatory God.

Re: Episode 6 - Lost and Found (Part 1)

Phule77 — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 14:59:08 -0000

My dad always talks about how, when he hit these crisis moments in his life, these father figures showed up to point him to the next stage.

But I've never had those figures. I haven't had experiences. I see patterns...but I always feel outside, on the edge, that there is no inclusion outside of the intellectual.

But I desperately want belonging, experience, feeling. It frightens me that there might be further depths to explore, to plumb, to hit some heretofore undiscovered "bottom" without killing myself from sheer desperation on the process.

I can see all of these things, and I don't have the language to explain it. I don't know if there is a better community, its all people, after all.

I love you guys. Thank you for sharing.

Re: I’m Tired of Talking About God

Phule77 — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 11:59:45 -0000

I think that a major issue is that American Christian culture is in the business of drawing lines in the sand...God can't be found in that activity, that music, those people. But everything true and good comes from God. The world is good, even if it contains brokenness, and Jesus came to redeem all of creation, not just the bits with the right label on them.

The Christian lifestyle should be symbiotic, not parasitic, and it's precisely the vampirism nature of the protestant church that robs all wholeness from its participants.

Re: I’m Tired of Talking About God

Phule77 — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 12:47:13 -0000

Part of the burnout happens when God can only be in "Christian" things, and Western Christianity is often so vapid and paltry.

It's easy to burn out when the content itself has no roots, no depth, no life. How many times can you rearrange the magazines in the waiting room for heaven before you have to leave?

Re: I'm Glad When I Hear "I Don't Believe in God" | BadChristian

Phule77 — Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:43:33 -0000

I generally have far more friends, per se who are non-Christian than Christian. I've been called a heretic by any number of Christians whose map didn't match mine, and I get accused of being too deep, or too theological, for other Christians to gel with...i.e., I ask why, instead of sticking with simple black and white concepts where we can all know what's real.

Whereas, when I talk to ex-christians, post-christians, agnositcs, and atheists, they're all about listening and discussing and conversing. They're very interested in a Jesus who serves and loves people, but they have a lot of trouble finding followers of Christ who operate in like mind, aside from individuals.

Generally, Christians as individuals can be friendly and helpful, but Christians as organizations (churches) want something, want to prove something, want to get something, want to control something. People don't trust the groups.

Re: Where I’m actually coming from as a progressive evangelical

Phule77 — Sun, 26 Oct 2014 22:08:19 -0000

You essentially said that there wasn't any point, that progressives will do the same thing as everybody else. What's the difference between "it's all the same, no matter what they do" and "what is the point in trying"?

Re: Where I’m actually coming from as a progressive evangelical

Phule77 — Sat, 25 Oct 2014 18:54:35 -0000

so, we shouldn't try, we should just accept the existing paradigms, because otherwise we'll just repeat them?