Leanne Shawler, Artist

This week I have seen a lot of hate on my Facebook feed. Hate toward Trump voters, non-voters, third-party voters, Clinton voters. Nasty comments in people's posts that are filled with disdain and viciousness. I have read about reported acts of hate toward people of color, women, muslims and LGBTQI people. I have a mixed crowd of all kinds of people and politics on my Facebook feed. Over the course of the election, I felt the need only to unfriend one person who was viciously mean and disrespectful. Now my feed is full of meanness and disrespect. Imagine two monkeys so angry at each other they start hurling their excrement. That's what it is like now and we're starting to stink of shit. I've taken refuge in art (I am having an amazing time taking Flora Bowley 's Bloom True e-course), posting photos of my dogs, and I am seriously considered taking a Facebook fast. So why are my friends behaving so badly? Have we, lost in our hurts, forgotten who we are? Beings...

What has been the role of relationships and/or community in your spiritual growth? This question was recently posed on Facebook by Christianne Squires and I told her I could probably write an essay on it. So here it is. The roles of relationships and communities have both helped and hindered my spiritual growth. Community has hindered my spiritual growth by not teaching me. I've been a Christian from the cradle. I would say I spent the first half (currently) of my life not really getting Christianity. When your Christian education consists of some Sunday School and a confirmation class (where I was taught things my current church teaches to pre-K and elementary school aged children), it shouldn't be a surprise that I didn't really get it. I'd never been educated beyond a kindergarten level and somehow I was expected to know why it was so important to worship God and what exactly that entailed. I was taught nothing beyond "come to Sunday worship...

(A Good Sam community story about the Kingdom of God) The kingdom of God is like a seagull on a skylight with trinity-webbed feet crying crying to be heard to be let in