Dear reader,
This newsletter will be infrequent. And that’s okay.
We all need more grace—grace for ourselves and grace to share with others.
That said, I welcome this infrequent newsletter as a way to articulate how I am (or am not) living my values. It feels like good accountability, which, as a person of privilege, I need to build into my life. Benchmarks for faithfulness, might be another way of putting it.
I often return to Brené Brown’s book, Daring Greatly for inspiration. Brown writes that the epitome of daring greatly is “wholehearted living” — a way of living that aligns with your values; with who you want to be. Courage, authenticity, and integrity are a few of my “wholehearted living” values. When I live from these values I feel as if I am offering the best version of myself to the world— I am showing up for others and myself in ways that align with who I believe God calls me to be.
Every day presents new opportunities to live my values. I don’t always succeed. People piss me off, rub me the wrong way, treat me in ways I find demeaning and disrespectful and then I find myself responding with more of the same. In this reflection on 1 Corinthians 13, I wrote about a week when I received two scathingly angry letters directed to me as the editor of the Presbyterian Outlook. The temptation to clap back was strong. Replying swiftly with an equally angry email would have felt self-righteously satisfying. But responding to ugly with ugly just leaves me feeling ugly.
In my book, Necessary Risks: Challenges Privileged People Need to Face, I wrote about the fear and anxiety that kept me in hiding for much of my young life. It wasn’t until I reached college that I recognized how small my fear was keeping me. God wanted more from me and for me. I just had to muster up the courage to follow this growing sense of call.
God continues to call me to places, people, and positions that trigger my anxiety. In these moments, it’s my instinct to retract in fear—to constrict myself and make myself smaller, to hide. (I can feel this constriction in my neck and shoulders where I carry all my stress.) Lately, though, I’ve been practicing being more mindful when my anxiety is triggered. I pause, breathe, and ask myself: Who do I want to be in this moment? How do I want to respond to this person or situation causing me stress? This brief moment of mindful pause helps me buy some time to choose the better response.
Recent writing:
I am constantly calling on my courage in my writing, to not stay silent in the face of injustice and important issues. In this reflection on Luke 14: 1, 7-14, I wrote about the threat of Christian nationalism. Here I wrote about debt forgiveness after President Biden announced his plans to cancel student loans. In this article for the Christian Century, originally entitled “Transitioning”, I chronicle all the stupid mistakes I made while trying to be supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community. This learning led me to recently publish a full issue of the Presbyterian Outlook on gender and sexuality. Here’s a link to my editorial from that issue.
Upcoming speaking:
Wednesday, November 9: Discussion via Zoom of Necessary Risks with campus ministers and chaplains. I wrote the book while serving as a college chaplain and discuss all I learned from my students, particularly those from marginalized communities.
Thursday, November 17th: Webinar on the “Risk Failing” chapter of my book for Ukirk campus ministers, chaplains and students. We’ll focus on systems of injustice that are built to perpetuate failure and my experience of this in our carceral system.
Friday, November 18: I’m speaking to 200 high school youth at the Keep Awake Conference at Massanetta Springs Conference Center. The conference’s theme ties into the Matthew 25 initiative of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) I’ll discuss power, review the power analysis tools community organizers use, and hopefully leave these young people with the understanding that they have power to create positive change.
Saturday, December 3rd: Preaching in chapel at Union Presbyterian Seminary-Charlotte and Sunday, December 4th Preaching at Caldwell Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. The lectionary text for this second Sunday of Advent focuses on John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea. The people of Judea had to venture outside the city, to the wilderness to hear John —a man who ate and dressed as one of the poor. What might we hear and learn if we risk going to the margins of our society and spend time listening and learning from the poor?
Books I’m loving:
I just finished Unwinding Anxiety: New Science Shows How to Break the Cycles of Worry and Fear to Heal your Mind by Judson Brewer. I picked this book up at my local library, but learned so much from it, I bought it and even downloaded the Unwinding Anxiety app. I appreciate Brewer’s use of mindfulness to help us understand our anxiety, and then also to help us respond to our triggers in healthier ways. I haven’t completely stopped burying my face in a tub of Breyer’s ice cream to comfort my anxiety. But I am much more aware of my anxiety triggers and have more healthy tools to turn to now.
I also just started reading James McBride’s novel Deacon King Kong. I hadn’t read McBride before, but I’ll definitely read more of his books. I love his character development, dialogue, and humor. Deacon King Kong is set in a south Brooklyn housing project where an old church deacon publicly shoots the project’s main drug dealer. When writing Necessary Risks, I only read books by writers of color. I learned and grew so much from that practice, from encountering different perspectives and cultures, that I have continued to prioritize reading books by authors of color. I wouldn’t have discovered James McBride if not for this practice.
Let’s talk!
What practices help you live your values? What benchmarks for faithfulness, or accountability markers, have you built into your life to help you recognize when you are not?
I look forward to hearing from you in the comments or through my website www.terimcdowellott.com.