Hello friends (including new subscribers!) and happy Saturday!
I am really enjoying the chance to check in with all of you more often through these secret newsletters. It is not easy for me to talk about myself by nature, as I am a fairly private and reserved person, so these give me a chance to clue you into my life a little bit more and give a glimpse into what I am reading/watching/thinking/laughing about on a more day-to-day basis. In the spirit of that, here are some minor updates…
I am really enjoying being a part of a local church’s summer book club. I was introduced to it through one of my old church friends, and have been inspired by the work that this community is doing to center the voices of women, BIPOC folks, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. We are reading My Body is Not a Prayer Request by Dr. Amy Kenny, and it is transformative- the concept of worshipping a disabled God is something that has been on my mind a lot lately.
I watched the latest two episodes of Stranger Things, Season 4 with my sister, and it… was certainly an experience. I am not going to spoil anything since it just came out yesterday, so now we begin the truly painful wait until 2024 for S5.
Alayna and I are leading a small group next year, and we are in the early stages of planning. Our vision for the small group from the very beginning has been straying away from traditional Bible studies and focusing more on an exploration of art and faith. We are excited to see our ideas come to life and meet the handful of girls in our group come August.
This playlist has been on repeat for me lately- Lucy Dacus, the Arcadian Wild, and HAIM seem to be the sounds of the summer.
Well, that is about it in the way of minor life updates, so now I think it is time to touch on the main focus of this newsletter- that’s right, the divine feminine! This is a concept that I became more seriously interested in during late 2021, and because I tend to become quickly and fully devoted to any topic that happens to strike my fancy, it has since become transformative for my spiritual life. It is tricky to pinpoint where this all started… perhaps it was another reread of Revelations of Divine Love, perhaps it was listening to Genderfree Jesus by KJ Song one too many times. Maybe it coincided with the release of Teresa Kim Pecinovsky’s feminist children’s book, Mother God, or perhaps it was when my growing frustration with the all-too-common depiction of the White American Male Jesus reached an inevitable boiling point.
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