Whether you’re quietly deconstructing, peeling off layers of Christian subculture, or walking alongside someone who is . . . Catherine McNiel sees you. Lean in for Nichole Woo’s conversation with Catherine on faith, doubt, and deconstruction—and how maybe they aren’t mutually exclusive after all. Click below to listen on Spotify or find it here on […]
My mom has a particular story about me that she likes to tell: As she was doing dishes in our kitchen, she looked out the window and saw me in the backyard trying to catch frogs and kiss them. While it’s rather cute to think of a porcelain-white toddler with black curls and thick baby […]
I never understand more than at Christmas why people become atheists. Often I can understand it and empathize with the feelings and questions that led people there, but at Christmastime, I feel it so much more. It just makes sense. Jesus was born, and where did that get the people of his village, which probably […]
The Sunday that changed everything started like any other —wrangling kids into their car seats and rushing to leave the house on time. But as we drove the seven minutes to church, a fist of anxiety squeezed the middle of my chest, making it hard to breathe. We dropped the kids off at Sunday school, […]
I felt grown-up in a borrowed pair of strappy heels and a new ivory eyelet dress, carefully chosen so it wouldn’t show through my white confirmation robe. My friends and I gathered on the church lawn to pose for pictures. After dozens of dignified shots, we flapped our arms for a silly photo, pretending the […]
In Mark 10, a blind man named Bartimaeus sits by the side of the road literally screaming for Jesus’ help. When Jesus finally addresses him, he asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” I love that question. Jesus wants to know what Bartimaeus wants, presumably to give him exactly what he wants. […]
I never understand more than at Christmas why people become atheists. Often I can understand it and empathize with the feelings and questions that led people there, but at Christmastime, I feel it so much more. It just makes sense. Jesus was born, and where did that get the people of his village, which probably […]
We have been experiencing a bit of a thaw here in the Midwest, so the air has spring smell about it. The mud, the warmth, the melted snow, have fooled us all into thinking that spring is here. Growing up in Alaska, we generally had one thaw per year, in late April. Unlike other places […]
I pass by the holy water font without pausing, fifty-three years of reflex gone. I slide into a pew tucked in the back corner of the cavernous church, an arm’s reach from the flickering votive candles. An arm’s reach from the nearest exit. It was not always thus between you and I. I spent hours […]
The night I almost stopped being a Christian, I sat alone, at midnight, in the living room of the house I shared with three other women. I was twenty-two, almost six months out of college, depressed, and despairing. I’d discovered I was depressed in my therapist’s office the summer before. The revelation was like […]
“Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.” ~Brene Brown The questions started out small. They bugged me, but they weren’t scary. Nothing that couldn’t be solved by switching churches or rethinking the way I voted. My undoing began when the deep questions erupted. […]