The Ashes and Hope of Community

The fire in Lahaina started mauka (up the mountain), but roared furiously towards the sea (makai). At one point the flames reportedly raced down the slopes, scorching a mile every minute. They destroyed everything in their path.

Homes, families, businesses, cars; even the iconic banyan tree on Front Street fell victim to the inferno. It seems there is nothing left but the burned-out shells of the residents’ lives.

But the community remains, swelling with pride even as it sweats with exhaustion. Photos, videos, and stories portray selfless and heroic acts. Volunteers are working tirelessly to provide for those who have lost everything. People from around our country, and perhaps the world, care and help in ways we’ll never know.

What Is Community?

What is community? Oxford Languages defines community, in part, as “a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.”

Surely the most precious gift humanity gives itself deserves a more beautiful definition.

While the human race thrives through communal connections every day, nothing brings it into focus like a disaster. Nothing else bolsters the ranks and rallies the troops like our innate need to help. This month, the community of Lahaina surged in population as many hearts in the world stood in solidarity with theirs. The ashes of their devastation seem to float down on our shoulders. We see their loss, their frailty, their strength, their grief, their courage, and many of us ache for their pain. We pray, we send help, and we grieve with them. Theirs is just one in the endless chain of catastrophes that we, as the human family, suffer. The Hawaiians won’t always be foremost in our thoughts. But for these few days or weeks, the community of Lahaina has grown by millions.

Hopefully the burgeoning support for the people of Maui will comfort them as the tough work of grief begins. Kevin and I have been fortunate enough to visit Lahaina several times, and escaped the midday heat by ducking under the wild, high branches of their famous banyan tree. The square in which it sits is a gathering place, a place of aloha, a peaceful retreat. Grieving has scarcely begun for these folks. While I’m old enough to have lost many people I’ve loved, my two greatest heartaches have taught me life’s toughest lessons. The first was the death of our daughter Catherine who, at the age of fourteen, died on a snowmobile trip with our church’s youth group.

The second was the loss of church itself.

Loss of Church Meant Loss of Community

The destruction of my soul’s connection with the Christian community looked nothing like the inferno that leveled Lahaina. Rather, an insidious and seemingly innocuous political movement called the Religious Right set into motion a carefully-crafted crusade to elect Donald Trump as president of the United States. I take responsibility for my naivete and utter lack of attention as this unfolded. I heard rumblings and ignored them. I thought surely this was just a bunch of hyped-up overzealous nut jobs blowing off steam. I thought Christians would never fall for his lies.

Sadly, I was wrong.

At that same time, Kevin and I left the valley we’d called home for forty-two years. That loss of community compounded the heartache of betrayal by the people who had introduced me to Jesus. We tried several churches in our new town, Pagosa Springs, but we could find no one who dared stand up and challenge the Religious Right’s status quo. After exhausting all avenues of trying to work within the church to challenge this movement, we walked out the door and never looked back. I launched my website in 2019, and wrote almost continuously for more than two years. I used my ability to write, the only resource at my disposal, to share information and hopefully bring comfort to my fellow Exvangelicals.

I also used it as a virtual punching bag, pouring out my grief and fury until the well ran dry. Like a child who pitches a fit and sobs until only hiccups remain, I finally went silent for quite a while, just to listen. But for those first couple of years during COVID, writing saved me. Blogging, having some work published, and receiving feedback provided a much-needed virtual community.

Jesus may have saved my soul, but writing saved my sanity.

Finally, with Trump losing the 2020 election, and then January 6 receding in our collective rearview mirror, I was lulled into a false sense of stability. “No longer will he trouble us,” I thought. “Surely even the Moral Majority will see him for the lunatic he is.”

Wrong again.

Grief Gives Way to Healing

I finally accepted the fact that Christian Trumpers are probably never going to come to their senses. I decided it was time to stop whining. Lifting my eyes beyond church, I began to search for community all around me. I also remembered my community at large.

When COVID finally receded, I put myself out there when local opportunities arose. Some of my efforts fell flat, but by the grace of God, I’ve met three women in Pagosa who have become friends.

Closer to home, on my little dirt cul-de-sac, I introduced myself to all my neighbors. Most of them are really quite friendly, especially if you drop off some baked goods. Turns out they, like everyone else on the planet, could use a listening ear now and then. Sometimes they need a little more. Someday I probably will, too. They range in age from one year to eighty plus, and their backgrounds are as varied as their ages. Listening to them expands my world. Lord have mercy, did I need that!

Finally, I remembered the women who’ve loved me forever. Friends around the country and friends from years past. I guess I was taking for granted the occasional phone call or email, the Christmas card and the random meme sent with the message, “this reminded me of you.” When COVID banished us from society, our occasional contacts became regular conversations. We’d never forgotten our history or our bonds, but taking the time to reconnect has been a glorious reminder that I am loved, and they are, too.

These days I am busy with people as well as with writing, and I am grateful beyond words.

Looking forward, I’m actually dipping my toes in the pool of new possibilities.

Finally Looking Forward to the Future

An extraordinary opportunity popped up on my Facebook feed a few weeks ago. One of my favorite authors, Anne Lamott, is hosting a writing retreat in Santa Fe in a few weeks. Santa Fe is only a three-hour drive! And Kevin, my amazing partner and best friend, encouraged me to buy the tickets even as I was hitting “send” on the registration.

I knew he would say yes. Because I am unbelievably blessed by my husband of forty years, the cornerstone of my community.

For the first time since the 2016 election, I am feeling a distantly familiar emotion I thought had departed forever:

Hope.

In other fabulous news, they’re reporting that the banyan tree might survive. News reports show video of water being continuously sprayed on her burned branches and trunk. They believe that underneath all the devastation, she might be able to gather her resources and hang onto life- not only to survive, but to thrive.

As one who has been there, I send her healing aloha energy from Colorado, as well as a message of hope:

Hang in there, honey. You can do it.

© Rachel Ophoff 2023, Coconut Mountain Communications LLC, All Rights Reserved.

**As of August 2023, I’ve added a new page to the bookstore called Wisdom, Humor,  and Amazing Writing. These are works from my favorite authors that keep me company, make me laugh, make me cry, and let me know I’m not alone. Check it out!

Heavy Burdens and Hope

“Whenever Christians fail to give other believers the grace they claim for themselves, they fail to embody the love of Jesus Christ, giving purchase to hate.”[1]– Bridget Eileen Rivera

On March 23, 1969, thirty thousand people, many of them teenagers, converged on the Orange Bowl for a “decency rally,” all thanks to Mike Levesque. A senior from Miami Springs High School, Mike was spurred into action by a very public and indecent act: The lead singer of the Doors, Jim Morrison, had exposed himself to 12,000 teenagers during a recent Miami concert.

Enlisting their pastor’s help, Mike and his friends got to work. In less than three weeks they had teens from all over the city cheering from the stands, tiny American flags waving wildly. Local clergy, famous athletes, celebrities, and entertainers inspired them to greatness. In the midst of the frenzy, an antique car drove out to center field and delivered one of the keynote luminaries.

Stepping out into the South Florida sunshine and the crowd’s adoration, Anita Bryant waltzed onto center stage. Beauty queen, famous singer, and brand ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission, she was quoted as saying, “I just know this decency movement is going to succeed.”

Hatred For All To See

I was four years behind Mike Levesque at Miami Springs High School. It’s been over fifty years, and while I definitely remember hearing about the concert, I have no memory of the rally. But as for Anita Bryant: well, you never forget your first bigot. Her far-right views and strident efforts to deprive LGBTQ people of their civil rights reached their tentacles deep into American culture. In the 1970’s she fought tooth and nail to overturn a local Dade County ordinance that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. She won.

The people she attacked and persecuted were my best friends.

Coming Out

We were kids. Three boys and two girls, we were each other’s people in a school of four thousand. We went to the beach. We went to the planetarium. We went to the movies. We hung out at each other’s houses. We listened to records, went to dances, and went out to eat. We had an awful lot of fun together, and we had each other’s backs.

And in our last year of high school, the four of them got together and told me they were gay.

The news stunned me. I always knew I was straight, and it never even occurred to me that any of them, much less all of them, were gay. All I knew about homosexuality was That Anita Bryant hated it. I didn’t even know why.

A couple of days after that awkward conversation, I realized that my friends hadn’t changed. All they did was trust me with their truth. Their gift opened my eyes and my heart.

I loved these people because I knew them. Anita Bryant didn’t know them at all, yet she berated and persecuted these kids who were funny and loyal and loving and creative and brilliant. Turns out America’s sweetheart was only sweet to her adoring fans. At the time, I just discounted her as a crackpot and went on living my life. This was easy for me to do, since I was straight.

Out of Sight, And Almost Out of Mind

Years passed, and we all moved on. One of us died from AIDS in the late eighties. Three of us got together for our twentieth high school reunion, went dancing, and had a blast. I moved to Colorado in 1977, eventually got married, and found Jesus. My first church was in Aspen, a liberal town comprised of folks running away from their real lives. We were a motley crew of drinkers, druggies, and dropouts; this was the first church most of us had ever set foot in. The idea of discriminating against anyone for their sexual choices was laughable. I was woefully ignorant of the Religious Right’s political movement under the auspices of the Evangelical Church. The people I found were loving and accepting, and they introduced me to Jesus. As time went on I allowed the “busy decades” to swallow me. LGBTQ rights were not in my face, so I just didn’t give them much thought.

Then the Religious Right, through the Evangelical Church, put Donald Trump into the White House.

When The Unimaginable Happened

For three years I just prayed, assuming Christians would come to their senses. When that didn’t happen, I began to research their political movement, trying to understand what could have possibly motivated them to support this man. The further I read, the more it seemed Jesus was not part of their thought process. However, the Big Names in Evangelicalism were leaning hard into politics, fanning the flames of anti-LGBTQ sentiment. It was never about Christianity. It was all about power.

Blowhards of the Faith

I’d never paid any attention to America’s blowhards of the faith, so I was ignorant of their decidedly hateful efforts. Turns out I should have been listening. These men aren’t just wealthy TV preachers; they are social influencers on an unimaginable scale. Their muscle lies in telling people what to believe and whom to hate because they insist that their God says so. But supposedly this is my God too.

And herein lies the crux of my sin, even if it is a sin of omission.

I was easily accepted into the church because I was straight and white. It’s where I found family and community. It’s where I found purpose. It’s where I found Jesus. And yet, these abuses of power and persecution of differently-identifying people have been going on the whole time I’ve been a Christian. I never heard anything, and I never saw anything, because those who are “different” never set foot in our sanctuary. And in my selfishness, I never gave it any thought.

Now that my little bubble has burst, I find myself back in the land of “everyone else.” No longer can I harbor the illusion that all are welcome in God’s house. What is a straight, white grandmother to do?

She can get educated.

Getting Educated

I read. I write. And in the wake of my breakup with the Evangelical Church, I created a platform to share my findings. Even though I am completely unqualified to open a conversation on the persecution of LGBTQ souls in Christianity, I found someone who is.

Bridget Eileen Rivera is a sociologist completing her PhD at City University of New York Graduate Center, as well as a gifted writer. Her book, Heavy Burdens: Seven Ways LGBTQ Christians Experience Harm in the Church,* opened my eyes and blew my mind. Her work paints a series of pictures using real stories of precious souls created in the image of God who have been pulverized by the church.

Surely this grieves the heart of Jesus.

Even those of us who are horrified by the actions of anti-LGBTQ “Christians”  can feel powerless when it comes to refuting their arguments. Why?

Disarming “The Clobber Verses”

I think we just don’t know how. The folks behind this juggernaut of extreme misunderstanding have their answers memorized. Rivera calls them “clobber verses.” Until now, learning how to discuss these Bible bullets with any confidence seemed overwhelming. But Bridget Eileen Rivera has done all the heavy lifting. Within the pages of Heavy Burdens I found a comprehensive foundational treatise explaining the history and cultural context from which these verses were drawn, and then weaponized. She sheds light through her exhaustive research in Biblical studies, biology, sociology, and a host of other resources. This creates room for discussion. In the best of all possible worlds, discussion can lead to shared knowledge; knowledge to wisdom; and wisdom to understanding. Ultimately, all of these can lead to hope.

Hope, Faith, and Courage: One Step at a Time

Having hope is right up there with having faith. It takes all the courage I can muster. With all the changes taking place in modern Christianity, can there ever be a time when people who love the same gender or identify differently feel comfortable walking into church? Who knows? I don’t even know if I would ever feel comfortable walking into church again. It might feel like returning to Miami Springs. Neither would feel like home.

Or would they?

There are only two of us left from the original gang. Josie recently texted me a picture of Miami Springs High School while she was down there visiting family. Things have changed. Security fences and locked gates surround the campus. But photos I found online show young people still laughing, and still carrying on in the courtyard. My heart aches, in a good way, remembering my friends who were funny and loyal and loving and creative and brilliant; who faced hatred with courage, even at a young age. In their honor, I’ll keep trying too.

©2021 Rachel Ophoff, Coconut Mountain Communications LLC. All Rights Reserved.

*If you click here, you can order Heavy Burdens through your Amazon account. We would appreciate it.

This post has been published as an article by Red Letter Christians.

[1] Heavy Burdens– Seven Ways LGBTQ Christians Experience Harm in the Church, ©2021 by Bridget Eileen Rivera. Published by Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287.

Welcome to the New Wild West

Rising early, I was hoping for a quick in-and-out visit to the local Walmart on a chilly fall Saturday three years ago. We had recently moved to a small town in southwestern Colorado from what I thought was a similar community, just a few hours north. Not surprisingly, the store was already hopping. But before I could reach the front door, I was waylaid by some tweens-in-green: the local “Girl’s Gathering” was holding a fundraiser.

This was not cookie season, but having been a “Girl’s Gathering” mom myself, I was game for whatever they were selling.

Or so I thought.

The crowd huddled around their table, sharing pens and filling out raffle tickets. Excited patrons were writing checks as they oohed and aahhed over a laminated photo of the coveted prize. Finally making my way to the front, I reached for the flyer as it passed my way. What was all the excitement about?

The shock woke me from my early-morning stupor.

It was a picture of a gun.

A long gun, a big gun, with all the bells and whistles one could hope for in a hunting rifle.

Where Have All The Cookies Gone?

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Back home, the “Girl’s Gathering” sold cookies, with the occasional bake sale to fund special events. A car wash would have been over the top. Momentarily I thought I was in the wrong line. Then a cheerful preteen asked if I had any questions about the rifle.

I mumbled something about her having the wrong person and stumbled towards the automatic door, which wisely slid out of my way. I was stunned. That’s what the “Girl’s Gathering” sells in this town? Rifles? God knows what the “Boy’s Bonanza” has in mind. Howitzers?

This was just another “howdy-do, neighbor,” courtesy of Pagosa Springs, Colorado. For the last forty-two years Kevin and I had built our lives together in another western Colorado valley, and I pretty much expected the same kind of society here. This was only the first of many surprises we encountered in our Wild West reality show/semi-retirement adventure. Some of these surprises were reactions to my previously-held assumptions. Here are some examples of times I’ve fallen into that trap:

1. Small towns on the western slope of the Continental Divide in the state of Colorado are very much alike.

2. Because we had a lot of snow last winter, we’ll be buried by December.

3. All Evangelical Christians have read the Gospels, believe that Jesus meant what He said, so they won’t fall for the lies of Donald Trump.

The first two sound ridiculous. The one about Evangelicals made perfect sense and pretty much gutted me when I discovered it wasn’t true.

Granted, that last one was a biggie, and it’s fair to say I’ve always been pretty naïve. But finding out that Evangelical Christians are a diverse lot really surprised me. After coming to know Jesus in the embrace of born-again believers, their seeming unity was one of the greatest draws for joining the family. Never in my wildest dreams could I have conjured up a religion supposedly centered on a savior that placed politics before theology.

Assumptions and Generalizations

The problem with my assumptions is that they can spring from  generalizations. Recently a former Facebook friend posted a meme comparing Republicans with Democrats. The generalizations were ridiculous as well as insulting, but I realized that I might have posted something similar, albeit in reverse, in my angriest moments during Trump’s tenure. When my beliefs- the tenets I hold most dear- are disproven, my world temporarily falls apart.

My exit from the church was hardly a “bon voyage”; it was more like being tossed into the open maw of an automatic car wash without a vehicle to protect me. After thrashing around, bouncing off the bumpers, being soaped up and hosed down, whirling around the big blue brushes and ducking under those flaps at the end, I was unceremoniously bounced out the exit, much the worse for wear.

Guess who I found out there?

The New Community

The rest of us. Ex-vangelicals, Post-Evangelicals, Recovering Evangelicals, Deconstructionists, Reconstructionists, and proponents of social justice. I may have missed a couple. Our names are many, and all are valid. I’m not the only one thrown from the spin cycle, sputtering and spitting soap and trying to get my bearings. We are all trying to make sense of what we’ve been through, and what we’re learning.

Welcome to the Wild West of the Christian faith.

So who are we, and what are we doing now that we’re here?

An internet search using any of the above-mentioned names for broken-hearted Christians will reveal an expansive new world of heartache and love, of rejection and acceptance, of understanding, of service, and of ministry. We were wired to serve God; we were wired to live together in community; we were wired to express our love for Jesus in outreach to the world. We still yearn to worship and connect. We’re still looking for answers.

As difficult as this continues to be, all of these are very good things.

There’s just one teeny fly in the ointment. It’s like the rifle revelation I had in front of the local Walmart. I still suffer from the tendency to generalize and react without examining my assumptions before I speak.

Pagosa Springs is a town with a rich history of hunting. While I’m certain there are tourists who come simply to shoot at animals, brag about it, and take a selfie, there are hundreds of local folks who hunt for the meat they will eat all winter. Yes, it’s a sport, and no, I’m not a proponent of guns. But I do eat meat, and thankfully someone killed it before it showed up on my plate. My sanctimonious opinion of the local “Girl’s Gathering” was a knee-jerk reaction to a society that has, at least in part, depended on hunting for survival since long before I was born. Someone was kind enough to donate this hunting rifle to help the young ladies finance their activities. It’s not the “Girl’s Gathering” I knew, and certainly this was an unusual choice. But I’m SLOWLY learning to open my mind before I open my mouth.

Oh, the process is arduous. But as I move further into the post-Evangelical world, I’m seeing the need for more compassion on my part. Not only do I need to respect the efforts and opinions of those I agree with, the faith in Jesus I still hold dear demands I do so even for those whose choices blew my world apart.

Which brings me to a book I read recently that speaks to these very issues. I have to confess, I’ve gone back and forth on recommending it because the author’s journey of evolving faith doesn’t exactly mirror my own. But John Pavlovitz’s If God is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk * is worth the read. The title grabbed my attention and the content wrestled me down to the mat. Instead of days, I spent weeks digesting it, praying about it, and digging through it. I offer my endorsement with a caveat: Readers, I challenge you to really think this through. Rather than just accepting his conclusions, draw your own. With that being said, I believe he offers sound advice on how to obey the adage that graces the back cover of the book:

“Thou Shalt Not Be Horrible.”

I can just see Jesus laughing. With the exception of loving God, this pretty much sums up everything he told us to do. How can I not at least crack open a book that might instruct me on how not to be a jerk? Although the author touches on a plethora of relevant issues, all of them eventually lead up to these crucial commands:

Love your neighbor

Love your enemy

Love God

And the gospel as paraphrased by John Pavlovitz: “ DON’T BE A JERK.”

Welcome to the New Wild West.

©Rachel Ophoff, Coconut Mountain Communications LLC, 2021. All Rights Reserved.

*Click on the blue link above to order the book through your Amazon account.