Alise Write

Community Garage Sale

May 6, 2013 by Alise 5 Comments

Writing can be a lonely gig. All of the letters in my Myers-Briggs profile are pretty wooshy except for that big, monstrous E-is-for-extrovert at the beginning. I love being around people. But I also become profoundly non-productive as a writer when people are around, so alone is how a lot of it works. That said, you cannot do the work of writing alone. Aside from finding material from actually living, I would be absolutely nowhere as a writer without the help of a number of other already established authors who have given me advice and encouragement along the way. One person who has given me both of those things in spade is my friend Jason Boyett. Most of the time, I feel like there's not much I can do to repay that. BUT THAT ALL CHANGES TODAY. Due to a bunch of complicated … [Read more...]

Filed Under: writing

Promises

May 6, 2013 by Alise Leave a Comment

About a month ago, Registered Runaway invited me to participate in the Love Letters series. I have written a letter to the LGBT community in the past, but I didn't want to just rehash that, so I took a lot longer to write this post than I ever intended. But I'm happy to say that I did meet my deadline and today my post is up over at RR's site. I wrote it to someone who emailed me here a few months ago. Dear friend, You sent me an email a few months ago. I’m pretty sure I responded, because I usually try to get around to responding to messages that people send me. But I don’t know that I said everything that I needed to say in my email back to you. And even though it was months ago, I want you to know that I think about your letter to me and I think about it often. And I want to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: guest post, LGBT issues

Stuff I’ve Been Reading

May 5, 2013 by Alise 2 Comments

Thanks for the grace last week. I had an amazing time at the Sacred Friendship Gathering but wow. It wore. me. out. Finally feeling a bit more human and have way more respect for my friends who travel and speak regularly. Anyway, here are some of my favorite posts from this week. Here's to some good conversation resulting from the following! This post at A Deeper Family by Diana Trautwein is absolutely beautiful. I echo her hopes for the future. Rachel Held Evans wrote a profoundly thoughtful piece about the way that we frame the abortion debate. This is a great piece that gets into some of the nuance of the issue without trying to answer questions. I am crazy happy for my friend Preston who recently signed a two-book deal with Zondervan. His writing is just so … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Stuff I've Been Reading

Love, Compassion, and Bunko by Tamara Rice

May 3, 2013 by Alise 7 Comments

I absolutely love today's post by Tamara Rice. This one fits so beautifully with what I'm talking about when it comes to interfaith dialog. It doesn't have to be about faith at all, but rather about our shared humanity. This post is a stunning illustration of that point. If you’d like to contribute, check out the details here. +++++++++++ Growing up, I absorbed a pernicious myth from my faith community. Did they mean to pour it into my brain and my heart? I’d like to give them the benefit of the doubt. I’d like to believe that had they known what I was taking in, they’d have adjusted the message for accuracy. But I’ll never know for sure. The myth is this: Because “God is love” and because “they will know us” by our love, Christians possess a capacity for love that … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Mixed Up Faith

Three Obligations I Have as a Faith Blogger

May 2, 2013 by Alise 17 Comments

Today atheists, agnostics, skeptics, humanists, and all kinds of other non-religious folks are organizing to protest the imprisonment of three atheist bloggers in Bangladesh. They could face up to 10 years in prison, or potentially the death penalty. For blogging. They are not alone. Alexander Aan is an Indonesian atheist who was arrested for admitting on Facebook that he was an atheist. Asif Mohiuddin was stabbed and then arrested for his lack of faith. Sanal Edamaruku is an Indian atheist who is living in exile to avoid arrest for explaining that a weeping statue was caused by leaky pipes. Now I recognize that these countries are not the United States. I know that we do not send people to jail for writing harshly about religion. I am deeply grateful for the freedoms that I … [Read more...]

Filed Under: atheism, writing

Speaking Engagement: Wild Goose Festival

May 1, 2013 by Alise 5 Comments

A few months ago, I sent in an application to be a speaker at the Wild Goose Festival. I didn't tell anyone about it. At all. Not my husband, not my friends, not my family - no one. I had very little expectation that I would be invited, so I didn't want to get myself too amped up about this, and telling people about things like this tends to get me amped up. So I was crazy shocked and excited a few weeks ago when I got an email from the good people at Wild Goose confirming that I was going accepted as one of the speakers for the event! I told my friend Leigh Kramer yesterday that I will put "spoke with Gennon Melton" on 100% of my resumes for the rest of my life. Anyway, I would love, love, love to see you there. You can get tickets here. And really, even if you don't care … [Read more...]

Filed Under: speaking, The Christian Guide to Atheists, Wild Goose

Prayer Under the Magnolia

April 30, 2013 by Alise 1 Comment

"Let's pray." +++ The previous two days in Chicago had been very full. As soon as Rich and I landed in Chicago, we made a beeline for Lou Malnati's for some traditional Chicago deep dish pizza. We sound checked and ate a late supper and met some of the other presenters for the conference. The next day we sang and listened and took notes. At the end of the day, we ate waffles that would have made Leslie Knope proud while we talked about our presentation the next day. We had listened to one speaker after another present powerful ideas, backed with history and important quotes and lots of professional experience. To say that I was intimidated would be a bit of an understatement. I was flat scared. But we knew that we were there to tell our story, so we figured out how we wanted to … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Sacred Friendship Gathering

Discussing Faith Over Seafood by Sarah Moon

April 27, 2013 by Alise 12 Comments

When I started this series, I hoped that Sarah would contribute, because I know that she is involved in a number of interfaith relationships, including the one that she has with her fiancé. Any time our faith moves in a completely new direction, we can encounter these differences and I'm thankful that she is talking about how she and Abe are navigating the process of coming into marriage with two different faith traditions. If you’d like to contribute, check out the details here. +++++++++++++ When I first met my fiancé, Abraham, I was a fundamentalist who had recently realized (with trepidation) that I believed in evolution, had just become a feminist, and was considering leaving the Baptist church that I grew up in. When my fiancé, Abraham, first met me, he was … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Mixed Up Faith

Repost: Love as the Boundary

April 26, 2013 by Alise 4 Comments

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I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Chicago, getting ready for two days filled with stories about love and friendship. Part of that will be Rich and me sharing our own story about how we discovered deep, intimate friendship through music, and also through the direct sharing of said music. I am honored to have the opportunity to talk about how my friendship with Rich has changed my life. In honor of the Sacred Friendship Gathering, I want to repost this piece I wrote a year ago about friendship and how, rather than pointing to specific rules about how we're to interact, Rich and I choose love as the boundary. +++++++++++++++ At the Good Women Project, Anne Wilson wrote a piece entitled Boundaries: No One Is Above An Affair. To close the piece, she wrote the following: Love … [Read more...]

Filed Under: friends, Sacred Friendship Gathering

The Christian Guide to Atheists: Atheists Want To Remove God From Society

April 24, 2013 by Alise 11 Comments

Myth: Atheists want to remove God from society A 9/11 cross. A prayer banner in a public school. The Ten Commandments from a courtroom. A town square nativity. Non-believers have fought for the removal of these Christian icons, and they have consistently won those battles. And when a Christian identifies with a particular symbol, it can feel like faith itself is under attack. It can seem as though atheists want to remove God from society. As with many of the posts in this series, there is a small grain of truth in this, and as we’ve seen before, that can make the whole thing seem true. This is another area where empathy will help us to navigate the truth. Imagine that you’re entering your child’s public school. You support the school through your taxes. Your … [Read more...]

Filed Under: The Christian Guide to Atheists