#1 Emma Stone’s powerfully edgy voice in Disney’s new release Cruella. It’s tied with Wicked, the musical, for my all time favorite origin story of a villain who’s not really a villain.
*Watch LeCrae’s fabulous Ted Talk for the truth about heroes and villains!
#2 The Poetry of Pádraig Ó Tuama
From his poem How To Be Alone:
There is a you
telling you another story of you.
Listen to her.
From his poem Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
You knew the touch of a friend
was not dependent on their cleanliness, and you knew this
because you knew need, knew the way that story bleeds
through actions of a day, and how shame makes us
play parts that are beneath us.
#3 Dani Shapiro’s podcast Family Secrets (recommendation by Nadia Bolz Weber). So many great truths around why stories need to be told so we can be free!
Because growing up in a family in which a secret is being kept from you, is like growing up in a family which has its own poltergeist. Maybe you can’t see it, but know you can feel it, you know you can hear it rattling things in the attic, you know something is wrong but the truth of it is hidden from you. And when there is a difference between what you are sensing and what you’re told, it erodes your trust in yourself and in others in a way nothing else can. Many of us who grew up in families with secrets we sensed while everyone around us was saying nothing’s wrong, just come to the conclusion that well….then something must be wrong with us.
#4 My clients tell me about the most fabulous agents of healing on the planet. This month’s gem is Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth. I’m only halfway through but here are just a few of my many underlines.
Patriarchy exists in the Bible because the Bible was written in a patriarchal world. Historically speaking, there is nothing surprising about biblical stories and passages riddled with patriarchal attitudes and actions. What is surprising is how many biblical passages and stories undermine, rather than support, patriarchy.
The problem in the church is not strong women, but rather weak men who feel threatened by strong women, and have tried various means, even by dubious exegesis, to prohibit them from exercising their gifts and graces in the church. (New Testament scholar Ben Witherington)
Glorifying the past because we like that story better isn’t history; it is propaganda.
#5 Finally, this prayer, read by an amazing group of Young LIfe staff at a graduation ceremony, is completely beautiful and from an instagram account I’m blessed to now follow: Black Liturgies.
