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Earth Day, Good Friday, and Wholeness

Stephanie Smith

This month, we are approaching two national holidays. They happen to fall on the same day. But depending on your political, religious, liberal, conservative, radical, conventional standing, you may lean more towards one than the other, or even feel like you have to choose between the two.

Earth Day was instituted in 1970 by Senator Gaylord Nelson, it was a political initiative, intended to enforce national environmental responsibility, and this new holiday birthed the modern environmental movement. Good Friday is annually observed by Christians to remember Christ’s crucifixion and death so many years ago. To the church, Good Friday, together with Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, is the culmination of history, fulfilling Scripture’s promises that a Savior would come into the world and redeem it.

This year April 22nd hosts both Earth Day and Good Friday, and to many people, these holidays may seem to be at odds with each other.  In my experience, Christians are more interested in discipleship than reducing their carbon footprint. Female ministers and abortion can be hot topics, but global warming? Not so much.  Likewise, the people who champion green living march under the banner of sustainability, health, and animal rights. Talk of soul-saving doesn’t really hold appeal, because in their mind, they’re already saving the planet.

It saddens me that anyone would think these two ideals have to be pitted against each other as if in a bull pen. Because in my perspective, both holidays have to do with wholeness. Whole earth, whole redemption, whole life.

Eden was once whole, a perfect earth, perfect creation, and perfect humanity. God called it, “very good.” But sin crept into this good garden and fragmented it, introducing thorns and dry soil, pain and pride—toxic to both our bodies and our souls.

Good Friday marks a turn in our decaying world.   A man who was God sacrificed His life for the world, and this set into action a redemption that would work both backwards and forwards, pulling this broken earth and its broken people into a new heaven and new earth. One day, the effects of sin will be reversed, and the new heaven and earth will reign in renewed wholeness. Christ’s sacrifice on Good Friday set all of this into motion.

Scripture says that creation is in bondage just as are the children of God. “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22-23).

This April 22nd, let’s groan and wait together, the earth and God’s children, the created crying out to our Creator.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers’ blog, www.insidepages.net.

An Offering of the Heart

BonniePonce

Bonnie Ponce reflects on the book of Nehemiah and how the people sacrificed to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and how that relates to supporting Relief. Recently our church began to study the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is a book about a man, Nehemiah, who sees a need to lead his people to rebuilding the Jerusalem’s wall, which has been destroyed. He brings hope to his people and inspires them to work hard. In chapter 3 of Nehemiah, there is a list of all the people that work on the wall – the important people, servants, nobles, people that work on the wall without the support of others. People from different back grounds work together. Even how much work they do is noted.

“Nehemiah…made repairs as far as a point opposite the tombs of David, and as far as the artificial pool and the house of the mighty men.” Neh. 3:16

“Benjamin and Hasshub carried out repairs in front of their house. After them Azariah the son of Maaseiah, son of Ananiah, carried out repairs beside his house.” Neh. 3:23

Relief inspires people to write, to read, to think, and to build up the Christian community with engaging literature. Relief units people of all beliefs to see Christian literature in a new light – what it can be when it is well written and deals with tough issues. Giving should be an offering of the heart. At Relief, we ask you for your financial support because we have a financial need.

Some people are able to give a lot and some people are only able to give a small gift but the important thing is that everyone sacrificed their time and efforts and did what they were able to do to build the wall in Jerusalem. At Relief we ask that if you support our efforts to bring amazing literature to print then please consider a gift – give what you are able to sacrifice. Our campaign will end on April 15, so listen to your heart and give to Relief!

Each of you should give whatever you have decided. You shouldn't be sorry that you gave or feel forced to give, since God loves a cheerful giver. 2 Corinthians 9:7 (God’s Word translation)

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Capturing the Journey Different Ways

Deanna Hershiser

After my post last month about journaling and blogging, I thought some further discussion might be helpful. There's nothing like an eventful, thought-provoking few weeks to remind me how different chronicling life can look for myself from season to season, let alone for others.

I recall seeing pictures on a friend's blog of her journals, the pages resplendent with doodles, swatches, poetry. This activity can have so many variations. My one-page entry style is rather bland in comparison to many.

But it works for me. Lately I've found myself, almost all of a sudden, on a journey with Eastern Orthodoxy. My journal, writing notebook, and blog have all been called into service as I process what's happening in my heart.

Being my "published" venue, the blog lags in time compared to reality. In a post I try to put things together, condensing and shaping even though it's still a rough form. For instance, the day I decided I really needed to consider joining the Orthodox church my husband goes to, I notebooked and then journaled many details that will never see the light of blog. Yet after I had gained a little distance, the explanation I gave on my site felt more satisfactory, more ready for a larger audience of family and friends. And the comments I received seemed to confirm that my quick work to edit and polish helped strike a genuine chord.

At some point I may produce an essay about this time in my spiritual life. That effort, however, will require much more real work and the openness to art, to contradiction. I hope I will give my experience the fuller attention it might deserve.

I would love to hear accounts of others' journaling styles. Do you jot on napkins? Use your camera to capture meaningful moments? What form does your activity take as you process your significant turns and twists along life's road?

Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief, and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com

Are We Due for a Split in Christianity?

Ian David Philpot

Ian David Philpot, ccPublishing's Web Editor, has been reading about a possible division in the Christian faith and shares his thoughts. Jimmy Spencer, a friend of mine and of Relief, wrote a note on Facebook recently that got picked up on a blog. It was titled The Coming Evangelical Split? Feel free to click on the title to read it, but for those of you who prefer a summation, here you go: Jimmy believes that Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins, is either starting or bringing to light a split between hardcore conservative evangelicals and progressive evangelicals. Jimmy doesn't know if it's good or bad, but he know's it's coming, and it is, in large, thanks to the Rob Bell controversy.

When I read that, I didn't want to believe it at first. Religion feels so global to me. And do people in other countries really care about what some guy in Grand Rapids, MI, is saying about whether Ghandi is in heaven or hell? Would that really cause all of us to pick a side and split?

But Jimmy's a smart guy. If he's sure it's coming, then why I am trying to think he's not right.

Later, I saw Evangelicalism Won't Split, It's Erroding--a response to Jimmy. (I'd sum up, but you can get the basics from the title.) Then I read about a pastor in North Carolina who lost his job after writing something on Facebook in support of Love Wins. No joke.

Historically, the Christian church goes through something big about every 500 years. In Phyllis Tickle's The Great Emergence, she points out events of the past that show a pattern. Going back from present day, there's the Protestant Reformation in 1517 (thanks to Martin Luther, some paper, and a nail), the Great Schism in 1054 (when the Greek Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church excommunicated each other), the fall of the Roman Empire in the late sixth century which greatly affected the Roman Catholic Church (aka (basically) the only church back then), and the apostles work in the first century. So there's a decent pattern there. And Tickle believes that we're on the edge of the Great Emergence--a change in the church that will link religion and culture in a way that changes Christianity. (I don't know if I believe it, but she does.)

So, my guess is that Jimmy is predicting that we are nearing, what I will call, the Great Contest--where either love wins or conservative evangelicalism wins, depending on which side you're on.

I, personally, think Jimmy's right. I think we're close to something. I just don't know if it'll be something we notice, or if it will be something that takes a decade to settle before we realize that we're not as close in doctrine with as many denominations as we thought.

Do you think we're nearing a split in Christianity and/or Evangelicalism? Can Christianity stand to take another split or is it too close to obliteration (or marginalization) as it is?


Jimmy Spencer started Love Without Agenda, a nonprofit organization with a simple yet compelling message: to encourage people to change the world--and themselves--one act of love at a time. Check out lovewithoutagenda.com where you can download a free copy of Jimmy's new book, Love Without Agenda: My Journey Out of Consumer Christianity.

Relief News Tuesday 3.28.2011

Ian David Philpot

Issue 5.1 to Print and Shipping Soon!

You've been waiting patiently, and we've appreciated it. We're very excited about this issue, and we can't wait to start packing them to send to you. If you haven't purchased one yet, you've only got one week to take advantage of the presale price--$11.95 (20% off retail).  Order now >>

LoveRelief Update

We know you love Relief. It's the reason that you're even reading this right now. But if you really love Relief, we'd appreciate it if you helped support us. As a non profit organization, we run off of donations and sales. All donations go right into operating costs. With a full volunteer staff, every dollar put into Relief can be seen either on this website or in our print materials. We've got less than 3 weeks to meet our goal of $1,500, and we still believe it is possible, but only if you make your mind up to click on the "ChipIn" button on the right.

Autumn for Lent

Brad Fruhauff

I know we sometimes get confused between the "promise" of America and the promise of God. The dream of prosperity is not the same as the dream of kingdom life--except that no one owes us either. The purpose of fasting during Lent is not to learn self-sufficiency but to clarify one's priorities and to give one's sacrifice to the one who made Himself a sacrifice. Thus part of the discipline is to hold to it even when it doesn't seem to be "working."

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Violence and Grace

Stephanie Smith

In my favorite novels, it seems that the characters come to the moment of illumination only after being confronted with great violence.  When Jane Eyre finds her former home and master have suffered a fire in her absence, the agony of separation inspires her to the realization that she loves Mr. Rochester.  In The Lord of the Flies, it takes the death of a comrade for Ralph to understand that the boys on the island have lost their childhood innocence.  And it is not until author Annie Dillard wrestles with the life-altering plane accident of a small girl (in Holy the Firm) that she sees God’s goodness in a crazy world.

It seems to be human nature to have thick heads that only extreme circumstances can penetrate.  In a state of comfort, we are sometimes too relaxed, too unmindful to learn what our lives actually depend on.  But if our child unexpectedly gets sick, our husband is laid off, or our friend is going through a messy divorce, suddenly our senses are awakened and sharpened in a way that lets us experience life a little clearer.

In the face of violence or tragedy, our daily concerns rearrange themselves according to an eternal reality.  When something goes suddenly wrong, the urgency of the situation mercifully clears away any petty anxieties that once occupied us.  And that is some small grace.  I remember last year driving home from a funeral of a friend I’d known from elementary school, and finding myself suddenly careless about the work I needed to catch up on and the wedding planning I had been stressing over. Instead I wondered whether or not I spent enough time with the people I loved, and then hurried home so I would make it in time for family dinner.

Shauna Niequist, in Cold Tangerines, writes, “You pray for honest, gritty, and tender stories, and then you pray to live through them.” The price of epiphany is often violence, and any prayer beginning with, “God, change me…” is a dangerous one.  Anyone who has ever prayed to know our Father better knows.  But with the violence we are ushered into grace, just as there is grace in the story of the Light of the World who had to suffer death and darkness before mankind could see.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers’ blog, www.insidepages.net.

Those in Hell Can Come to Heaven

BonniePonce

Bonnie ponders C. S. Lewis' question of what would happen if people sent to hell could visit heaven. C.S. Lewis’ controversial novella, The Great Divorce, offers a unique view of heaven and hell. In the opening of the story the narrator is standing in line for a bus in Gray Town. It is a dreary place that is perpetually twilight and raining. When the bus comes, it takes them to heaven, a bright and colorful place, totally opposite of Gray Town. The premise is that anyone who wants to stay in heaven can, but they have to speak to a person from their past that they knew on earth.

Three interactions between visitors from Gray Town and residents from heaven are examples Lewis’ social commentary of our culture.

The Apostate and the Spirit After they great each other, they begin to discuss their friendship on earth and their current locations. The Apostate asks, “Do you really think that people are penalized for their honest opinions? Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that those opinions were mistaken.” The Spirit asserts that they followed the academic fads of the times, stating that, “we were afraid of crude salvationism, afraid of a breach with the spirit of the age, afraid of ridicule, afraid (above all) of real spiritual fears and hopes… Having allowed oneself to drift, unresisting, un-praying, accepting every half-conscious solicitation from our desires we reached a point where we no longer believed in the Faith…The beliefs are sincere in the sense that they do occur as psychological events in the man’s mind. If that’s what you mean by sincerity they are sincere, and so were ours. But errors which are sincere in that sense are not innocent.” They continue to talk and the Spirit asks his friend to repent and believe in God, the eternal fact. The Apostate returns to Gray Town unable to repent.

The Man in Sexual Sin There is a man, like a ghost but dark and oily stumbling through Heaven. He carries on his shoulder a red lizard that whispers in his ear. An Angel approaches him and asks him if he would like him to quiet the lizard and the ghost replies that he would. The Angel states that to silence the lizard, he will have to kill him. The lizard’s voice becomes louder as the Angel continues to offer to kill it. He says, “I know there are no real pleasure now, only dreams. But aren’t they better than nothing? And I’ll be so good. I admit I’ve sometimes gone too far in the past but I promise I won’t do it again. I’ll give you nothing but really nice dreams-all sweet and fresh and almost innocent. You might say, quite innocent…” The man agrees to let the Angel kill the lizard and out of it comes a beautiful man restored to his sexuality embodied in the form of a great stallion. He stays in heaven to live as a resident of heaven.

Sarah Smith and the Tragedian A woman from Heaven, whose name was Sarah Smith, comes to meet her husband, whose self pity has split his soul in two. The man is now a dwarf, leading a tragedian, which is the embodiment of his self-pity. Even as his wife meets him, his is upset that she didn’t miss him since their death and separation. His wife asks for his forgiveness for all that happened when they were on earth and asks him to let go of the chain connecting him to his self-pity. Unable to let go, eventually his soul disappears and ceases to exist at all.

These three encounters lead us to ponder some interesting questions about our culture today. In the first one, the Apostate is in Hell because though he had sincere beliefs and opinions they were wrong and he was sent to Hell. Would a loving God send us to Hell just because our opinions are wrong?

In the second case, a man who struggles with sexual sin – be it homosexuality, adultery, pornography etc. be redeemed and stay in heaven?

In the third case the man’s self-pity consumes his soul so that he ceases to exist. Does self pity keep us from living?

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

There’s No Crying in Starbucks!

Michael Dean Clark

 
 

This is the fifth in a series of thoughts on how place shapes and is shaped by the stories we tell. The first four can be found here, here, here, and here.

This is a love song about the place where I write, not the places I'm writing about.

I have a bad habit, but it’s a habit nonetheless. I write at Starbucks.

Really, most of my friends think I write there so I’ll “have” to buy some coffee. And while I admit that I may have a (borderline) issue with my love for the Seattle bean, that’s not the main reason I work in the House of the Mermaid. It may, however, be the main reason I have a job that provides a paycheck that allows for said coffee ingestion.

But I actually started writing in the Green Room because I discovered that I compose better when there are people around me and natural ambient noise (that I, of course, drown out by putting my headphones on).

But I tried the monastic-writer-thing. The computer-in-the-closet-thing (hat tip to R. Kelly for teaching us all why it’s bad to end up trapped in a closet). The typewriter-instead-of-computer-thing so I could “feel” the story as an extension of my keystrokes.  I even tried the low-rent-Hemingway-stand-and-deliver-thing, but my knee sucks too much to let me grow that manly a beard.

As a side note, I draw the line at the handwriting-in-the-Moleskine-thing. No yuppie journals for this guy (if for no other reason than my handwriting is so awful – thank you journalism years – that the cost-to-benefit analysis just won’t let me be that much of an affluent nerdy hipster).

Nope, for me, the place to write is Starbucks, with their endless supply of Pike’s Roast, horrible cover versions of songs I used to like, and meetings between wedding photographers and their clients. I have, to date, written two complete novel length manuscripts and am a few hundred pages into the first version of a third, and I would conservatively estimate that in the more than 1200 pages of text in those three projects alone, at least 1,000 were written in this, my other office.

Which brings me to yesterday when I was working on changing a scene in one of my books…it’s an important scene. I killed a kid (in the book, not in the store). It’s a child I worked on creating for more than a few years. And I killed her.

Now, I’m not an overtly emotional guy. But I was a little moved when the final words began migrating from my fingers to the screen. Maybe even a little teary-eyed (though I blame that on the eerie confluence of that scene syncing up with my friend’s cover version of Muse’s “Unintended” – thanks for being such a sweet-voiced beast J. Lynn).

 This is the first time I've ever wondered if writing in public, in Starbucks of all places, is a good idea. I mean, I never know when a scene like that is going to present itself and I sure don’t want to get the whole Coffeehouse Weeper rep. That’s just not the guy I want my kids to have to deny is their father. I give them plenty of other reasons for said denials.

On the other hand, what better market research is there for a writer than resting secure in the knowledge that a scene they created brought them to tears in a coffee shop full of strangers? Unless that author is Glenn Beck, it seems like that says pretty good things about the emotional resonance of the moment.  

Michael Dean Clark is the fiction editor at Relief, as well as an author of fiction and nonfiction and an Assistant Professor of Writing at Point Loma Nazarene University. He lives in San Diego with his wife and three children.

Skulls and Bones and Skeletons

Stephanie Smith

A few years ago I spent a weekend at JPUSA, the community of Christians in Chicago who live together in the old Chelsea Hotel and call themselves “Jesus People.” And during my time there, I saw a lot of skulls.

Skulls adorn the hallways, the door frames, and the forearms of the people who inhabit them.  Five doors down from my room there was an unapologetic mural of a skeleton, squarely behind a baby gate and next to a sign that warned in loud purple Crayola, “Nursing Urijiah! Piz come back. ” All over the community, there were instances of this odd juxtaposition of life and death.

I wondered if the skulls were some kind of talisman, like some cultures have to ward off evil spirits, but when I asked one of the women on staff about their significance, she laughed. “Well,” she said, “People here are kind of obsessed with death.”

She explained to me, “The skulls and skeletons are representative of the knowledge that there’s more.  We anticipate death, in a way, because we are eager for our new bodies and the new life ahead with Christ.  We are living in a dichotomy between this world and the next, and we are very aware of that.”  So there are skulls: a reminder of our mortal decay.  She also told me that people at JPUSA tend to live in the awareness that, in the city, they are surrounded by the living dead.  They are among the spiritually destitute and dying.

I’ve often felt this restlessness, of living in the cracks between Eden and Heaven, which some call the age of the in-between, the already-not-yet of the kingdom.  It can be exasperating: is the kingdom here, or is it to come? Christ has come into our world and has promised victory over sin and death, but we still live under its affects while we wait for His return. And it can make us impatient in the waiting, while we see the world around us in such need of redemption.  We were created for eternal life, to bear divine image and have a face-to-face relationship with our Maker, but sin ruptured this paradise and now we live in the imbalance, caught between what was supposed to be and what is now utterly broken. Even the earth is a victim of this tension, “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22).  Even the earth and the roots of mountains straddle this gap between the kingdoms.

There is a dichotomy at hand. We are finite beings with eternal life or death at stake. Perhaps the reminder of our mortal frame, whether skulls and bones or just knowing that there is more to come, can lend urgency to our days to live well, to reach out to the dying, and to eagerly await the life ahead.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers’ blog, www.insidepages.net.

Coffee with an Old Friend

BonniePonce

Bonnie wonders if Anne of Green Gables has anything to offer readers today. Recently I picked up Anne of Green Gables and I felt as though I went to get coffee with an old friend.  Her story is inspiring and refreshing.  Her constant upbeat attitude and imagination-run-wild made me smile as I remembered my own childhood imaginations and adventures. I feel as though such uplifting stories are harder to find these days.  Surrounded by self-help books and seminars; conferences for people to learn how to become better people and more organized in a weekend.  We are inundated with so much to remind us what we need to become.  Anne Shirley blunders throughout the story, growing up and often learning difficult lessons about love and friendship and romance.  So often we just want to find a quick fix in a self-help book.  How to date, how to be a good friend, finding romance - all these 12 step solutions.  As Montgomery comments, "We pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement."  So I wonder is Montgomery right in saying that self-denial leads to things worth having in life?  Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908 and the times were different from our hectic schedules and I wonder at the relevance of this coming of age story.  As much as it is positive and uplifting I find myself wondering if I should put away my self-help books and take the hard road of life or keep seeking a better solution.

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Love Wins: Unless God Decides You're Evil

Travis Griffith

Travis Griffith discusses the implications of Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins. Will it define a new Christianity or destroy those who believe him?

To an outsider, the Christian religion can look awfully intimidating.

Between the constant threats of judgment and the, forgive me in advance here, fanciful stories that dot the Christian landscape, it's really no surprise to hear that modern Christianity is struggling a bit.

Seriously, why would a non-Christian voluntarily join a religion where he or she risks eternal damnation in hell come Judgement Day?  Oh, right. They'd do it for the reward of a blissful eternal life in heaven sitting next to the great Mr. Christ.

Well what if damnation was removed from the equation, along with the requirement to devote life to Jesus? Or even know his name?

Whoa. That'll get some attention!

And it has, in the form of a new book from megachurch pastor Rob Bell called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (HarperOne).

Followers of the Christian faith have no doubt heard of him. I have to admit the first I heard his name was earlier this week while reading a newspaper article while on an airplane coming home from a particularly sinful weekend in San Diego. The article laid out a couple of Bell's claims:

  • God gives humans the choice to either live with him or without him.
  • Death doesn't cut off the ability to repent and there is no infinite torment for things humans did in their finite lifetimes.
  • Jesus makes salvation possible, even for those who have never even heard his name.

There are plenty of folks in the Christian world writing Bell off as a heretic and false teacher of Jesus, which of course they have every right to believe.

From the perspective of those in a situation like mine, though, Bell's vision is an incredibly refreshing, loving and accepting message that will appeal to legions of lost young people searching for some kind of spirituality.

In the trailer for his book (which you can watch here), Bell discusses a moment when a church-member said "Gandhi is in hell." That is exactly the kind of close-minded statement  that turns people off to Christianity. Gandhi, the "Great Soul" himself, is as likely to be in hell as Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a believer in the Universe and a fierce proponent of the power of love and acceptance of all humans, I believe Bell's message could be an interpretation of Christianity the world can embrace in the future: a world where everyone can go to heaven and hell simply doesn't exist.

What do you think: is Rob Bell about to become irrelevant or will his message resonate with a new generation of Christians?

***

Travis Griffith, Relief's Blog Manager, is a former atheist now exploring what a spiritual life really means. His children’s book, Your Father Forever, was published in 2005 by Illumination Arts Publishing Company, Inc. Travis works from his home in Spokane, WA as a professional writer.

The Inconvenience of Lent

Stephanie Smith

In our American culture of drive-through coffee, instant Twitter feeds, and video on demand, we prize immediacy. We like to check our email on our touchscreen phone as soon as it hits our inbox, grab lunch to-go, and download live-streaming news. We are a nation of busy professionals, parents, and students living under the banner of “carpe diem,” driven by the idea that there’s no time like the present.

This “now” syndrome certainly has advantages, motivating us to work hard and invest fully in whatever we’re doing, but what happens when we apply our instant-culture values to spirituality?

Last month, I had a bizarre experience with communion that made me consider this question. After months of exhausting church-searching, my husband and I finally found a church where we wanted to stay. It’s a contemporary kind of church, the kind that has a graphic designer on staff and a coffee bar out in the hall, and we came because we like the teaching and the small groups. But you have to understand, the church we went to before we moved was a liturgical church, the kind with Kierkegaard quotes in every other sermon and weekly communion. So we knew we’d have to make some adjustments at our new church.

But this is what I did not expect: communion that is served before the service, an addendum tacked onto and separate from the worship service. So we set our alarms a little earlier, entered the sanctuary, and found only a fraction of the congregation had shown up. The pastor said a prayer for this handful of early-risers, and at his invitation we filed up front and received the elements, and then it was over. The whole ordeal took literally five minutes. There was no time of confession before receiving the sacrament. There was no benediction afterwards, charging us to go forth bearing Christ into the world. There was no community, only a faithful few. There was no ritual, no careful unfolding of holiness.

It was like grabbing Christ’s blood of the covenant, His outpouring for the world, in a Styrofoam to-go cup. It was a sacrament dictated by convenience, quickly squeezed in between other items on the agenda, and left out of the greater context of cosmic redemption.

The problem with an instant culture, and an instant church, is that a preoccupation with the present diminishes our ability to see seasons, to see story, to observe the unfolding of time. This is the pivotal idea of the sacrament of communion: Christ asks us to remember Him by taking the bread and wine (Luke 22:19), and to anticipate the future when we will eat and drink with Him face to face (Matt. 26:29).

As we now enter the season of Lent, we enter a time of waiting. There is no immediacy or convenience here. But there is a story of cosmic proportions unfolding, as we take the forty days of Lent to remember, to walk through the events of the life of Christ: the temptation in the desert, the agony of Good Friday, the silence and sorrow of Holy Saturday, and the joyful victory of Sunday morning.

It is often difficult for us to lay down our gadgets and agendas to just sit for a while, quiet our souls, and dwell with God. And yet, He laid down everything for us, making Himself “nothing” and emptying Himself to the point of death (Phil. 2:7-98). In his beautiful poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” John Updike writes of the agony of the cross, “Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience...” As we cross the threshold of Ash Wednesday, let us reflect sincerely and sorrowfully on Christ’s suffering for us, so that on Easter morning, our hearts will grasp the incredible joy in His resurrection.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She writes for www.startmarriageright.com and manages Moody Publishers' blog, www.insidepages.net.

A Philanthropic Mind

BonniePonce

Bonnie talks about the history of Philanthropy. Philanthropy is not a new concept.  According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, charitable groups existed in ancient Rome and Greece.  Plato's Academy was supported by an endowment for 900 years.  Even the medieval Christian church began trusts to use for benevolent purposes. "Starting in the late 19th century, large personal fortunes led to the creation of private foundations that bequeathed gifts totaling millions and then billions in support of the arts, education, medical research, public policy, social services, environmental causes, and other special interests."

The ideas of charity and philanthropy are important in the history of humanity.  While everyone gives for different reasons, I think that people give to elevate society.  The arts, education and research all help to enrich our lives and raise our standard of living.

Charity comes from the Latin word "caritas" which means unconditional love.  Show Relief your unconditional love right now and give to a journal that is elevating the standards of Christian fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction!

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/philanthropy#ixzz1GAPib0QA

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Relief News Tuesday 3.8.2011

Ian David Philpot

#LoveRelief Update

So you may have already noticed, but our support raising campaign is really coming along. We're at 13% of our goal and feeling good about it. But do you know what would make us feel better? Giving to us if you haven't already so we can get that 13% over 20% by the end of this week.

If every person that visited our website last month gave us $1, we would have more than enough money to meet our campaign goal. If everyone who visited our website in the next two days gave us $1, we'd be over that 20% goal for this week. Just $1. That's a cup of cheap coffee. We're not asking you to donate the cost of a cup of Starbucks coffee--though we wouldn't mind it. But maybe if you just gave up the cost of a cup of coffee that you'd order at that run-down diner you visit too late on Saturday nights. Really, that's all we need here.

So if you've got some spare change sitting around, think of the positive effect it would have if you gave it to your favorite edgy Christian literary journal. :)

Introducing Travis Griffith, Blog Manager

Relief is proud to announce the arrival of Travis Griffith as the new Blog Manager. Travis has blogged for Relief in the past, and we appreciate his willingness to conquer the tasks that are required in this new staff position. Travis is a Relief published author, and he has a book out called Your Father Forever. Please join me in welcoming Travis to the Relief staff.

An Encouraging Story

BonniePonce

Bonnie shares an encouraging story about how donations can save print media. In this age of technology, digital media has overshadowed printed materials.  Looking around it seems like everyone has an e-reader of some type.  While the pros and cons of e-readers are a topic of debate among literary connoisseurs it is hard to ignore the growing number of people who use them.  Even in my family it is a topic of debate.  I have one and enjoy it and my husband feels negatively about them.  With the growing number of people reading from digital files, it is growing increasingly harder to sell printed material like books, journals, and magazines.  I found an encouraging article about one such magazine that turned to donations to keep going in this technology-saturated age.  I hope that if you read their story that it will encourage you to give to Relief Journal.

In this age it is hard to believe that there is any hope for print media.  Paste is a small independent music magazine that shares a story of financial triumph in hard times by turning to donations from loyal readers to stay in print.  By asking for donations and changing their magazine’s format for a short while they were able to continue to pay their staff and print their magazine while increasing their subscriptions.

Relief, run by volunteers, offers authors a creative outlet and provides exciting new stories to interest readers.  It is important to realize that subscriptions don’t cover all of the costs of printing, so for print media to survive, donations are needed.  Please consider a gift to Relief so we can keep on printing.  While digital media is growing, there is nothing quit like sitting on the couch with a good book in your hands.  Please show Relief some love.

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Relief News Tuesday 3.1.2011

Ian David Philpot

#LoveRelief Update

As you can see by looking in that left sidebar, we currently have 10% of our goal met in the #LoveRelief campaign. We would like to thank those who have already given to us, but we still need more of you to step forward to help us out. Each dollar given to Relief will help us continue to put out the quality writing that we receive everyday. To chip-in, click on the button in the sidebar that says "ChipIn!"

Relief Submissions Closed; Diner Submissions Open

As of today, submissions to Relief are closed. The submission period will open up again on May 1. At the same time, submissions are now being accepted for the fourth volume of the Midnight Diner! The Midnight Diner, Relief's sister publication, is a hardboiled genre anthology with a Christian slant.  To submit or learn more, visit TheMidnightDiner.com.

Memoirs: Self-Obsessed or Sacramental?

Stephanie Smith

American novelist Henry Adams once wrote, “Everyone must bear his own universe, and most persons are moderately interested in learning how their neighbors have managed to carry theirs.”

This line, written in 1918, would be an understatement for modern readers who are consuming the published memoir as fast as it can be printed. The memoir, as a published form of self-narrative, has successfully climbed the literary ladder, claiming equal standing with the traditional novel and receiving recognition by literary scholars as a genre revolution. Within the past thirty years, the memoir has asserted itself as a rising trend in the writing world.

Yet public responses are mixed: skeptics claim that the memoir indulges in syrupy solipsism, the theory that the self is the only reality, while enthusiasts praise it for the value of self-discovery through story. With an emerging cultural impulse to chronicle the self and such conflicting estimations of this trend, the church must join the conversation. The church must recognize the rise of the self-narrative as a signpost for the human longing for transcendence and affirm storytelling as a sacrament in the high art of illuminating divine grace.

The memoir is a personal narrative that provides the author with a verbal processing of the self’s “becoming.” This kind of literature has charmed millions of readers with this human interest appeal in bestsellers such as The Color of Water by James McBride, The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. The voice of memoir offers its readers an occasion for personal identification so that a reader can find him or herself within the story of another and perhaps borrow the wisdom, healing or insight from similar life threads.

Henry Adams’ idea of the private universe of men is being born into memoir, as the individual universe of motherhood experience, healing from the trauma of abuse, or growing up in a racially mixed family is translated into print. The private universe of the writer, then, opens up a new world to the reader in which a common human spirit is realized, introducing the memoir as a catalyst for community.

The Church’s Response: Stories as Sacrament

The church is no stranger to self-narrative, understood in Christian circles as spiritual testimony, and Augustine’s Confessions is just one example. Beginning with the gospels and later patterned in martyology, hagiography, confession and conversion testimony, the story paradigm is rooted in ancient church tradition. The church has an evangelistic responsibility to engage the rising confessional characteristic of culture for kingdom purposes rather than dismissing it as a narcissistic endeavor. The church need not be suspicious of the collective cultural cry for self-understanding, having its own so satisfied in the Person of Christ. Instead, the church must bridle the technique of self-narrative for Christian testimony, and affirm the art of life story as a powerful witness for grace.

The pattern for spiritual testimony finds its structure in the grand drama of redemption, as the unfolding story of a believer’s sanctification is only understood in the identification with the rhythms of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. The storyteller must then recognize the tension between the cosmic Story of redemption and the echoing story of personal redemption. By telling personal story within the framework of God’s Story, we can engage the cultural trend of self-narrative while adding the new, redemptive element of pointing beyond the self to the Savior.

The cultural rise in the self-narrative affords the church a powerful opportunity to channel the very same confessional trait into spiritual testimony. The church can enter the social scene of life-writing by affirming it in theology as sacrament and encouraging it in practice as testimony. The church is already a credible voice in the self-narrative genre not only because of its tradition of testimony, but also in its sacramental ability to transcend the very story it tells by praising the grace of the Divine Author, something no secular memoir can claim. The art of testimony, then, trades a religion of solipsism, characterized by self-devotion, for a religion of sacrament, marked by the surpassing of the self to point to the Savior.

Stephanie S. Smith graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a degree in Communications and Women’s Ministry, which she now puts to work freelancing as a book publicist and writer through her business, (In)dialogue Communications, at www.stephaniessmith.com. After living in Chicago for four years, traveling to Amsterdam for a spell, and then moving back home to Baltimore to plan a wedding, she now lives with her husband in Upstate New York where they make novice attempts at home renovation in their 1930s bungalow. She is a member of the Young Professionals of the Southern Tier and blogs for Moody Publishers at www.insidepages.net.

Thankfulness

BonniePonce

Bonnie Ponce reflects on being thankful. Thankfulness.  It is a word that we think of around Thanksgiving but recently I have been thinking a lot about being thankful.  The other day my husband and I were watching Veggie Tales, which may be strange since we don't have kids, but we were watching the episode with Madam Blueberry.  She is a very "blue" berry who is sad.  She is told that buying more stuff will make her happy but on her way to Stuff Mart she sees a less fortunate girl thanking her parents for a meager birthday dessert of apple pie.  Later she sees a little boy ask for a cool train set but is told no by his father and instead he gets a bouncy ball and he also says thank you, making an impression on Madam Blueberry, who learns to be thankful.

Seeing this short video made me think about my wish list - all the stuff I want and if I had money to burn I would probably begin to make a dent in my list.  It also made me think about what I am thankful for in my life.  Thankfulness is tough - it is so much easier to go through life, see stuff, and want it but to be thankful you have to use your brain and think of what you are thankful for.

Thankfulness is the language of love and joy.  It speaks from a heart overflowing with hope of good things to come.  With Relief I see many good things coming in the future and I hope that with the Love Relief campaign we can continue to bring great literature!

Just an ending thought on thankfulness:

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a gift and not giving it. -unknown

Bonnie Ponce is the Director of Support Raising for Relief and lives in Huntsville, Texas with her husband and betta fish. She has a BA in English from Sam Houston State University. After work she enjoys relaxing with a good book or working on her novel.

Backwards Blogging

Deanna Hershiser

Pondering some realities of journal and blog. Recently I read through my physical journals. Again. Every year or so I get the urge, and usually I begin with the first journal I started since I haven't stopped. My initial post was on March 3, 1989. A Friday afternoon. We rented a house in the countryside, where log trucks woke us mornings and deer spied us from the lawn after dinner. My daughter was three, and my son wasn't quite yet conceived.

Nowadays it takes two or three weeks to finish my journals from '89 to the present. I tend to journal about reading them along the way. Always new insights shine from the book(s) about my years raising children (and a dog, cats, rats, snakes, and mice, plus one mallard duck). I wrote discouragement and joy. I penned creative ditties. I jotted a gazillion ideas, a few of which became published articles and essays.

Sometimes reading through I'm impatient with my entries on writing. Blah, blah, blah, waiting for an editor, blah, blah, this title's a winner!, blah, that rejection hurt, blah, I never expected such a nice response...

Other times I truly relish recalling the writerly process. I think it reflects the rest of my life journey well. Always the unexpected. New turns. Wow, I've really been through all that and lived to tell it.

I keep my journals in a metal file cabinet, and I imagine people reading them when I'm gone. In fact, I write with that in mind and don't share just everything (a girl's got to have some secrets). Rarely do I scratch things out. My basic post is one side of one page, and they aren't super regular. Consistently, though, they're there year to year.

After I started blogging nearly five years ago, my journal entries became fewer. Still, there have been weeks and months of needing only the grittier tools of expression: pen, ink, and welcoming blank pages.

I've enjoyed the similar yet different sensation of blogging, but I don't know how long I'll keep up my individual blog. With vague structure to my system, I find the best part of the experience reading other "journals" on the web when mine's in play. Many good words are out there.

What bugs me about blogging is the nature of review. Blogs were made to be current, newsy. Their top-down, last-first nature makes it difficult to read somebody's story from beginning to now. This may not bother anyone younger than 40. And I'm all for getting a sense of today's happenings. But I don't and won't own an I-Phone. I live without a laptop, even. Instead I stick with my journal and my even more portable Moleskine. I carry books. Blogs could give me that booky connection to other author-type people, if they were accessible from first post to last without archive manipulation. (Maybe there's an easy way to read a blog consecutively that I don't know of...? Would love to hear it.)

You're likely thinking, old woman, don't fret over the way things have become. We read the immediate, we update each other's thoughts all day, and what's wrong with that?

You're right, I'm sure. It's a preference. After all, in his day Plato complained about the new technology involving writing things down, because it would take away the experience of remembering long passages. It would make our brains lazy.

I consider, however, taking my lazy brain off the Internet, though I like the other minds I connect with. I just want to read stories from the beginning. I'd like the chance to see where some bloggers were years ago, follow the flow of their journey, and see the contrast with who they're becoming, to review and reflect on collections of the other me's I'm reading.

Deanna Hershiser’s essays have appeared in Runner’s World, BackHome Magazine, Relief, and other places. She lives with her husband in Oregon and blogs at deannahershiser.com.