#religion

The Upside Down World ~ The Blog

May 23, 2022
1 min

Check Out The Desert Sanctuary

I may or may not have shared my plans for world domination with all of you yet, but it’s going to entail me running my mouth even more. Starting with podcasts. Like this one I recorded last night with Karl Forehand for his podcast The Desert Sanctuary. (You can also find The Desert Sanctuary on Spotify.) Listen to Rebecca on the Desert sanctuary podcast Karl is a former pastor who blogs on Patheos’ Progressive Christianity page. He has been going through a deconstruction proc

Mar 17, 2021
3 min

A Bubble of Protection

Top o’ the morning to ya! As you may have heard, today’s St. Paddy’s day, so I figured I’d share a prayer that I’ve used for years when I’ve felt overwhelmed or fearful. It’s just an abbreviated version of a hymn called St. Patrick’s Breastplate. There’s an apocryphal story about the hymn in which St. Patrick and his monks were facing certain death from a squad of King Leary’s men who had been sent to kill them. St. Patrick and his fellow monks travelled through the woods sin

Jul 26, 2020
6 min

Regarding the State of My Country

You kind of have to laugh to keep from crying. Sometimes my heart just breaks as I watch the lengths the powers of this world are willing to go to to protect a corrupt, destructive system from even the most reasonable, necessary changes. The pain and suffering they’re happy to inflict on everyone while acting like we don’t deserve any better. I have moments where want to be like some melodramatic woman with a cloth on my head crying out in a psalm: “my country, my country”. W

Mar 21, 2020
6 min

Finding Peace In a Time of Dread

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a freight train barrelling down on you and all you can do is wait for it to hit before. You’re waiting for the power to be turned off. The doctor to give the terrible diagnosis. For the court date to come, the judgment to be rendered, the relationship to irreparably break. Where you’ve just stood and watched the cracks form as the world starts to fall out from under your feet. Even if you’ve experienced it all before, waiting for the freight tr

Feb 10, 2020
3 min

Rules for Discernment – Particular vs Universal

Once upon a time I had the chance to spend time with an unusual man who was a massage/hypnotherapist who believed we’d all be nudists after Jesus’ return. Which I wouldn’t necessarily have a problem with except for the fact that I live on the great northern tundra of the upper midwest where it’s Fahrenheit 9 degrees outside right now. Not long after I met him, he advised me that God wanted us to stop thinking and just trust His lead. He'd had a spiritual experience a few year

Dec 11, 2019
4 min

Hate In a Time of Trump

In the last few years I’ve had numerous people confess to me that they were really struggling with hate towards Trump, his supporters, his enablers and the gang of conmen and criminals who have taken over our government. Given the behavior of these people, their open animosity, disdain and thinly veiled hatred for the rest of us and the harm being done to our government, our allies and some of the world’s most vulnerable people as the result of this administration, hatred is

Dec 9, 2019
5 min

Rules of Discernment, Rule 3: Diversity

Have you ever really thought about how wildly different in appearance human beings are? With the exception of dogs, animals of the same species will share a narrow range of colors, size, and appearances. But humans can have hair that is orange or white or black, skin from the palest whites to the darkest black, noses that are flat or bulbous or wide or narrow. Our lips come in sizes from billowy to so thin as to be practically non-existent. We can have huge bubble butts and f

Dec 3, 2019
5 min

Rules of Discernment, Rule 2: Boogeymen

As most of us are well aware, the church can be a treacherous place. Unfortunately, many Christians are ill-equipped to navigate it without falling prey to false teachers, bad shepherds, false teachings, lies, manipulation, etc. When Jesus said “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves”, he apparently wasn’t kidding. Of course, immediately after telling us that he was sending us out like walking dinner plates at the Fyre Festival, he also said, “Therefore be as shrewd as

Nov 26, 2019
3 min

Rules of Discernment, Rule 1: Authority

One of my persistent frustrations with my fellow Christians is a general lack of discernment and good judgment. As the bible makes amply clear, there are false teachers and bad shepherds out there yet everywhere I turn, I meet Christians who have fallen for con artists and cult leaders and false teachings by the boatload. When you see the wreckage of broken families, broken people and corruption wrought in people’s lives, the persistence and ferocity with which scripture cond

Sep 1, 2017
5 min

A Bunch of Noah’s in Nashville

Do you know what I don’t like doing? Arguing with conservative Christians. I used to do it. But it’s pointless. Sometimes someone is so many different kinds of wrong that it’s hard to know where to start. And why bother? Arguments have been made, the sides staked out and scripts provided to all involved. It’s just the same conversations over and over again. As is so often the case when it comes to controversies grounded in scripture, we tend to come down to two fairly plausib

Jan 27, 2017
2 min

Dark Ooze and Webs of Light

This is one of those visions that probably doesn’t require too much explanation. But I wanted to share my basic take on it. In my mind’s eye, the dark ooze started around Great Britain and spread out from there. I believe that this represents the powerful old money and corporate interests which rule the world and have spread a sociopathic, amoral ideology across the planet. The dark ooze carries with it the forces of slavery, oppression, the worship of money, a mentality of e

Jan 16, 2017
2 min

Is This the End Times Delusion?

I’m pretty sure Christian enthusiasm for Trump, where it exists, is the end times delusion the fundies have been trying to warn us was coming. For those of you who aren’t in the know, it’s a common teaching in some Christians circles that in the end times, there will be a delusion sent by God which causes people to call good evil and evil good. The term delusion comes from 2 Thessalonians 2:11-12 which says “For this reason, God will send them a powerful delusion so that they

Dec 23, 2016
5 min

Jesus Saved Our Christmas Dinner

We have a seating problem in our home. Well, two of them actually. The first is that our chairs don’t match and the folding chairs have all lost their stuffing. It’s not very Martha Stewart-ish. Or comfortable. The second is that I have 3 girls under the age of 8. Who all have very strong opinions about where they ought to sit at dinner. And those opinions change nightly. (Yes, yes, I know – each person should have their own seat that they sit in every night. Please, feel fre

Dec 22, 2016
1 min

The Christmas Bird

Instead of doing my Christmas shopping a couple of years ago, I recorded this. It’s perfect for sharing with the kids, if they are the sort who will listen to a recorded story. Grab a cuppa whatever suits you best and listen to the dulcet sound of my voice sharing a heartwarming Christmas story about a farmer, a bird and a little boy. It will be the best 11 minutes of your day. 🙂 For those of you receiving this via email, here’s the link to the recording on soundcloud. Pass

Dec 21, 2016
7 min

All People Are Real

I’ve mentioned a couple of times now that I have a dissociative disorder. A derealization disorder, in fact. Which means that when my dissociative disorder is triggered, nothing around me seems real. Sometimes things literally look like movie sets and sound stages to me. I can’t even watch movies when it’s bad because when everything already looks fake, bad acting takes on a whole new meaning. When it comes to dealing with people, it’s like being locked inside a glass bubble

Dec 19, 2016
1 min

Let’s Get Something Straight

Praying for someone and being critical of them are not mutually exclusive things. Neither are loving someone and calling out their wrong doing. And, I know this is hard to believe, but speaking out against evil is not the same thing as sowing fear. Right wing Christians understand all these things when they’re targeting the weak, the vulnerable and the oppressed, but seem to lose site of them entirely when it comes to the mighty and powerful. If one more person tells me that

Dec 17, 2016
6 min

Santa, God and the Problem of Certain Belief

I once knew a family that didn’t do Santa Claus with their kids at Christmas. The reason they didn’t do Santa Claus was because they felt it might lead their children to doubt the existence of God. You see, Santa is basically an old man living far away at the top of the world. He gives you what you want because he loves you. But nobody ever gets to see him. And many children think of God as an old man living far away in heaven who answers our prayers (gives you what you want)

Dec 8, 2016
2 min

In Which I Own the Libraturd Title

I’ve avoided nearly all hot-button cultural and political topics around here for many years now. And I don’t write screeds about how terrible other people’s theology or morality is. Yet, somehow, the overwhelming majority of people who have responded to my writing are not, shall we say, politically conservative. I used to be conservative, but reading the bible has a funny way of changing that, it seems. These days I’m a pretty flaming progressive. I’ll go back to being a con

Nov 24, 2016
1 min

A Thanksgiving Blessing

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter

Oct 14, 2016
2 min

Update on Shamneet

So, for the last couple of weeks I’ve been sharing the story of a 14 year old Pakistani boy named Shamneet who was kidnapped and brutally tortured by a man his father had a financial dispute with. He needed surgery to repair his injuries, but his family lives hand to mouth and had no way to come up with the $800 for his care. I have been collecting funds to pay his medical bills. We still have a ways to go, but I have some good news to report on his case. Two days ago the doc