Composting Faith

A lot of us are shelving Christian notions of god and glory that pivot on supremacy and shame. We grew up with these stories. We grew out of them. We found them to be destructive and traumatizing. Folks have been calling this “deconstructing” faith. I don’t really like the term because I think there is a strong tendency for former fundamentalists to blow up the counterfeit god and just move on. It easily becomes a repressed spirituality, instead of a renewal or revival that can build the inner strength needed to subvert the supremacy stories that soak American society.

I prefer the notion of composting faith. We shovel out the supremacy stories and expired theologies, the manure and rubbish that make our lives reek. The shit that says we are better than certain people. The shit that betrays the sacred truth that we are beloved and that we belong to each other. No matter what. When we water the compost pile with the wisdom of women and working poor and non-white people, crucial components of the biblical tradition find new life. Love. Justice. Faithfulness to the most vulnerable. Our souls soften when we allow suffering to speak, when we tend to death and decay. Then we can dream of a world without supremacy.