May 2023 – Liz Cooledge Jenkins

Mental health in a bonkers world

Hi friends,

This week, I’d like to offer you a reflection from musician, author, and activist Andre Henry: Why Therapy Isn’t Enough, I Need a Revolution. I’d encourage you to read it, and I’d love to hear what you think.

I often find myself thinking some similar thoughts. I think about how many of my friends are seeing therapists. Like, everybody. And it’s (mostly) really good. I’m (mostly) so glad they’re doing it.

At the same time, though, I often wonder: What is this world we live in, which has driven so many of my favorite people to need to talk with a professional weekly to unpack their wounds and trauma and figure out how to live?

Experiences like depression and anxiety are becoming more and more widely acknowledged, less and less stigmatized. I’m so glad for that. And yet, when people experience these things, it’s still often viewed as “something’s off with that person,” as opposed to “something’s off with our society.”

But I wonder if many people (by no means everyone, but many people) who often feel depressed or anxious are really just a little more compassionate than average. (Which is a gift, not a deficiency.) Or they’re just paying a little more attention to our world. And many things in this world just are stressful, depressing, and anxiety-inducing. (Like the recent Border Security Expo in El Paso…wtf??)

Dr. King felt this. In his 1965 speech Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution, for example, he reflected on his recent travels to India: “But I say to you this morning, my friends, that there were those depressing moments, for how can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes evidence of millions of people going to bed hungry? How can one avoid being depressed when he sees with his own eyes millions of people sleeping on the sidewalks at night; no beds to sleep in; no houses to go into.”

As Dr. King asks, how can one avoid feeling depressed? We could add Andre Henry’s examples of everyday violence and threat to Black lives. We could add examples of anti-abortion laws that have no concern for women’s lives. We could add examples of anti-trans laws, of queer couples not being allowed to adopt children, of teachers being prohibited from talking about race in the classroom. There are so many things.

I don’t mean to be depressing; I do mean to put depressed feelings and other reasons why people seek therapy in a larger context.

I also wonder this: as important as trained professional therapists are, are there also some things they’re doing for people that, really, the rest of us non-trained-therapists could do for one another?

We know that America is experiencing a “loneliness epidemic.” Many of us struggle to connect on a deeper level with one another. And maybe sometimes it’s easier to tell a therapist what’s really going on than to share with a friend. At least we’re assured (hopefully) that the therapist will listen to us well. Whereas friends may be distracted, looking at their phones—or thinking about their own issues, too overwhelmed by their own struggles to attend to ours.

I’m with Andre in thinking our world needs to change. Mental health concerns are often not only individual issues but also symptoms of a society that isn’t working. I want to see our society change.

And, at the same time, I want to be there for others—and to see more and more people be there for others—in that open, compassionate, curious, nonjudgmental listening way that therapists are (hopefully) so good at. I think this kind of deep listening to one another is something we can all cultivate.

I want to see individuals experience mental wellness. And I want to see connections, relationships, and communities experience wellness through attentive listening and mutual care. And I want to see our world experience wellness via toppling unjust systems and building better ones.

I know this is a lot to hope for. But I think it’s helpful to see that it’s all interconnected.

Wishing you, this week, both good mental health and meaningful work toward a better world.

Peace,

Liz

Peace, being “used,” “Lavender Haze,” complementarianism, and all the things

Hi friends,

I was feeling like it had been a minute since I drew your attention to stuff I’ve written beyond this blog. And I was right. It’s been a very long minute. I think the last time was in December!

So, if you haven’t come across these yet and are looking for some weekend reading:

One last Advent reflection. (Yes, Advent was like three church calendar seasons ago. But I would venture to say we’re still looking for peace…)
On my discomfort with people saying that God “uses” them (or others). Is that really who God is? What we’re aiming for? Can we do better?
For the Swifties out there (no shame)—I love me some Lavender Haze, but I also feel like it’s complicated.
I entered a piece in the Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) writing contest, even though I have mixed feelings about CBE. (They aren’t LGBTQ+ affirming.) I think this essay is resonating with people who have spent some time in complementarian churches. Very grateful to my friend “Ally” for graciously letting me write about her.
It’s been fun to have a couple pieces in Sojourners Magazine! This one (on climate change, earth, colonialism, & Christianity) is only partially available online, but I have a couple print copies I can lend if you’re local—let me know. This one (on Christianity & reproductive rights) is available online.

And, of course—just in case you’re really looking for a lot of reading material—I’m always posting things on Patheos. The bad news there is that the “get the latest updates from Always Re-forming” email signup at the right side of the page was broken until very recently. (If you put in your email there in the last few months, it likely signed you up for the Progressive Christian email list, which sometimes includes my posts but not always, and not the Always Re-forming email list, which is all my posts.) The good news is that I think the issue is fixed now, so you can actually sign up if you like. Yay?

Peace to you this weekend and in the week to come,

Liz

Doubting in Community (a sermon on John 20:19-31, part 2)

Hi friends,

Last week I posted the first half of a sermon on “Doubting Thomas.” This is the second half!

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I noticed something else, too, when reflecting on this passage—something I hadn’t really thought much about before.

I noticed that there’s a whole week in between when Jesus appears to the first group of disciples (without Thomas, in the locked room) and when Jesus appears again to that same group of disciples (this time including Thomas). The English translation says “a week later”; the Greek literally reads, “after eight days.”

Jesus could have come back and shown himself to Thomas any time. Any time at all.

He could have appeared to Thomas wherever Thomas was hanging out that night, while the rest of the disciples were together. I don’t know what Thomas was doing that evening. But Jesus did. He could have gone and found him.

Or Jesus could have appeared to Thomas anytime during that week. But he didn’t.

For some reason, he waited eight days. And for Thomas, those were likely eight lonnng days.

Eight long days of hearing his friends insist that they saw Jesus, but not quite knowing whether to believe it. Were his friends trying to pull one over on him, like saying gullible is written on the ceiling when it isn’t? If it was a joke, Thomas may have thought, it wasn’t a very funny one.

Or maybe his friends were imagining things—a sort of collective hallucination born out of the extreme stress of losing a dear friend and then fearing for their own lives at the hands of the same authorities who hated Jesus enough to want him dead.

Maybe these were eight long days, for Thomas, of wondering whether Jesus cared about him enough to show himself to him. Wondering whether he would have to just take his friends’ word for it in the end (or not), or if he would get to see Jesus for himself. Wondering where Jesus was, what Jesus was doing. Wondering if Jesus had really risen from the dead at all.

It might be easy to call Thomas a doubter. But his experience was legitimately different from that of his friends. They had gotten to see Jesus. Thomas had not. Thomas wanted that experience for himself.

I wonder how Thomas was formed in this time of waiting. How did that time change him?

I wonder this, because I wonder it about us, too. We often live in those eight long days, don’t we? I wrestle with Easter in that way.

Yes, Jesus was resurrected. Yes, there is the promise, in the end, of resurrection and eternal life for us as well.

But we live in the in between. We often live in those eight days between hearing testimony that Jesus rose and seeing him in a tangible way for ourselves.

How are we changed in the wait? And what do we do in the wait?

I don’t have all the answers to this—and even if I did, I don’t think I would lay them out as if they could be condensed into nice little bullet points, maybe something that spells out a cute little acronym. I don’t think wisdom is like that.

But I do want to offer one observation. Whatever else Thomas might have been doing in those eight long days, we know this: he kept spending time with his friends, his fellow disciples of Jesus.

I want to unpack this a bit. We might be tempted to gloss over it. But, to me, it feels like a big deal.

Thomas kept spending time with the community of disciples—even after they said “we have seen the Lord,” and Thomas wasn’t so sure. He didn’t let their certainty, when he felt none, tear apart the relationships they had built. He didn’t let them make him feel guilty about his doubts, or ashamed of them—or if he did feel some guilt or shame, he didn’t go hide by himself because of it.

He didn’t keep his real thoughts from them. He said exactly what he was thinking: Unless I see, unless I feel, unless I have evidence of this for myself in a way I can understand, I will not believe.

Thomas may have had his doubts. But he was honest. He didn’t pretend to believe because everyone else around him did. And he was self-aware; he articulated what he needed in order to believe.

And his friends, for their part—the other disciples—kept hanging out with Thomas, too. We don’t know from the text exactly how they responded to Thomas saying he wouldn’t believe until he, too, saw. But we know they kept all spending time together. We know this because we know they were all together eight days later, the next time Jesus appeared.

The other disciples didn’t shun Thomas because he didn’t believe the same things they did at that moment. They didn’t cast him out as an unbeliever. They didn’t feel threatened by him—or if they did feel threatened, they didn’t reject him because of it.

They accepted him. They accepted where he was at. Unbelief and all.

This is not to be taken lightly.

I think of a time, several years ago, at a church I used to be a part of, when I was asked if I might consider being part of the church prayer team. That meant being available right after church services to pray for anyone who would like some prayer.

I told the church leader who asked me, Thanks for asking, but I don’t know if that’s a good fit for me right now. To be honest, I haven’t been praying much in my personal life, so I don’t know if it quite feels right to be up front offering to pray for others at church.

The church leader didn’t miss a beat in replying, Ah, feeling a little convicted, are we?

I wasn’t, in fact, feeling convicted. I did feel sad, at times, that my prayer life wasn’t what it used to be. And I needed people I could process that with honestly. I needed people who would listen, and maybe ask some open-ended questions, and not judge.

Imagine if the church leader instead had said, I know how that feels. Everyone goes through times when their prayer life is struggling, or nonexistent, or just really different from how it was five or ten years ago. That’s okay. Let me know if you want to talk about that more. Or something like that. Something that opens up relationship. Something that opens up opportunities to know each other better. Something that doesn’t end with judgment.

That’s what I see in Thomas’ community: people willing to receive his honesty and not judge. And that’s what I see in Jesus, too, in this story. This openness, this non-judgmentalness.

After those eight long long days, when Jesus finally does show up when Thomas is there, there’s no judgment. He just identifies what Thomas said he needed, and he offers this to Thomas. Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side.

There’s no shame. No mocking. No “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” that you didn’t believe. There is compassion. There’s a desire for Thomas to believe.

We may find ourselves, in this season, at the beginning of those eight long days—or somewhere in the middle, unsure how long they will last.

We may find ourselves rejoicing, like the disciples did, at some way we have seen Jesus, some way we’ve seen God at work in our lives or in our communities.

Or we may find ourselves confused, like so many characters in these resurrection stories. We understand some things but feel totally lacking in understanding others. We may see Jesus but not know it yet, like Mary and the gardener, or the other disciples who were fishing and saw him on the shore.

We may feel disoriented because Jesus isn’t showing up in the same ways he used to for us.

It’s okay to be in any of these places. God does not judge us for being in any of these places.

Instead, God gently guides us in a process of learning to articulate what we need, and bringing these needs into community—not pulling back from faith community when things are hard or we don’t even know what we believe, but sharing honestly where we’re at and continuing in the relationships we’ve built over time.

God can hold us in all of these spaces, at all points in this journey. And, at their best, faith communities can hold us, too.

This is good news.

There is room for the believers, and room for the unbelievers.

There is room for the faith and room for the doubt. There is no shame in that doubt.

There is room for those who believe without seeing and room for those—and that’s most of us—who feel like we need to see something.

There is room for all of us. There is room, especially, for our honesty.

So, we can show up as we are, like Thomas did. And we can embrace those whose doubts might feel bigger, scarier, or different from our own. We can wait, together, in community, for Jesus to show up in the ways we need him to.

Peace to you this week,

Liz