Love Archives - Faith and the Other Five Senses

3 Reasons Why Forgiveness is a Good Plan for the Holidays

smgianotti@me.com — November 22, 2016

* This article first appeared on Patheos on November 9, 2016.

“This isn’t middle school anymore,” one of my ninth grade teachers used to say whenever someone complained about homework, “it’s not a bunch of warm fuzzies.” Neither is forgiveness, and for many of us the holidays can feel more like forgiveness boot camp than walking in a winter wonderland.

As our families disappoint once us again, old hurts flare up, and holiday shopping ends in shouting matches, forgiveness can like an assault to our humanity. Could God really ask us to stoop that low, to forgive that person Continue Reading…

Should Christians Love Across Gender Lines?

smgianotti@me.com — September 20, 2016

My roommate walked in the door as I finished typing an email. As she asked me a question, my fingers went into autopilot. I clicked a few words, hit send, and started to answer her when it broke onto my consciousness that I’d tacked “Love you, Shannon” onto an email to one of my professors, a man in his fifties who also attends my church.

“Oh crap!” I burst into the middle of my roommate’s sentence, “I just typed ‘Love you’ to Dr. Zhivago.”¹

While her diaphragm nearly seized up with laugher, I typed a hasty apology explaining how my roommate came in right as I was finishing the email and how my fingers went into autopilot and how I always sign emails to my family that way. I hit send again and, rubbing my face in disbelief, turned around to finish the conversation.

A shocking response

My roommate and I were still standing in the kitchen, my laptop doing penance on the counter, when his response popped onto the screen.

“Oh my word,” I said to her, “listen to this Continue Reading…

In Bible, Calling, Christianity, Faith, God, Holy Spirit, Hospitality, Jesus, Love, People, Sin, Theology Christianity, evangelical, evangelicalism, faith, gender, Holy Spirit, Jesus, love, purity, purity culture, sex, Sexuality

A Few Words that Changed Me

smgianotti@me.com — July 26, 2016

“So, you’re here today about your blood pressure,” I said, my words trotting out. The key to a successful morning at a doctor’s office is to keep up the tempo. Fall behind schedule before 9 a.m. and you’ll have a morning full of grumpy patients waiting for you. I dropped onto the swivel chair and opened my laptop.

“Blood pressure looks great. How long have you been off the pills?” A couple weeks. She’d waited till after surgery like we’d discussed.

“Any new problems?” No, she felt great. Surgery had gone well. No other concerns.

Photo courtesy of Megan Au via flickr.com (CC BY-ND-NC 2.0)

I closed my laptop and slid the stethoscope into my ears. I couldn’t believe my luck, this was going to be the quickest first-appointment-of-the-day ever.

“Sounds good. Hope you have a great week!” I stuffed the stethoscope into my pocket and headed for the door.

“One more thing…” she said Continue Reading…

My Confession about Racial Injustice: I’ve Been Part of the Problem

smgianotti@me.com — July 19, 2016

This month, two black men were killed by cops, but that’s old news. ISIS also exploded a truck bomb in Bagdad, killing nearly three hundred, snipers in Dallas and Baton Rouge murdered eight cops. Then a truck barreled through the streets of Nice. Another eighty four dead. Why write about a couple of police-encounters-gone-wrong when the world’s got bigger problems?

Over the last several years, questions like that one let me sidestep the news about Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, or Rekia Boyd that fell across my path. I’d squint at the headlines from a distance and, like the Levite in the story of the good samaritan, cross the street and hurry past.

Photo courtesy of Cristian Carrara via flickr.com

Starting to Care

All that changed, though, when my coworker, Sham, showed me a video of cops manhandling black teens at a pool party. Something shifted. I started reading the articles I never saw about Trayvon Martin. I starting asking Sham about her experience as a black woman and mother of black boys. I began to see that the amount of melanin in my skin might have more to do with my experience as an American than I’d realized Continue Reading…

The Problem with Tithing

smgianotti@me.com — July 5, 2016

My friend felt guilty. A grad student and barely able to pay rent, he didn’t have enough money to tithe and worried that he was disappointing God. As I listened to the strain in his voice, it struck me that Jesus never taught about tithing.

Jesus’ silence on the subject is startling considering that money was one of his favorite topics. His voice fills the gospels with financial advice, stories about bosses, investors, and trust fund babies gone wrong. He admonished a rich businessman, commended a poor widow, and sent Peter to find their tax money in the mouth of a fish.

In the church’s current fascination with tithing, it seems we’ve lost the breadth of God’s interest in our money. We’ve settled for an Old Testament rule, adding it to our checklist of ways to please God; but, by drawing a line around a part of our income and packing it off to the church, an orphanage in Africa, or the homeless shelter downtown, we’ve restricted the scope God’s interest in our money and, as a result, shrunk our relationship with of him Continue Reading…

In A Better World, Bible, Christianity, Culture, Embodiment, Faith, Generosity, Giving, God, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Love, Sacramental, Tithing, Worship Finances, generosity, generous, giving, God, Jesus, Money, tithe, tithing, Worship

Finding God through Travel

smgianotti@me.com — June 14, 2016

When Tameshia Williams, a classmate and fellow foodie, told me about how she encounters God through travel, I loved her perspective–so much so that I asked her to guest post here on Faith the Other Five Senses.

* * *

Some people call travel a luxury, but for me it’s a sacred experience. When I travel, God shows me his beauty–dramatic mountain ranges and oceans vibrant with blue. He also reveals the beauty of his image, refracting off the faces of strangers.

I’ve encountered all sorts of people in my last few years of travel: the man who returned my passport wallet when I dropped it in the baggage claim, the guys who shared a bag of pistachios with me on the train, and a group of pre-teen schoolgirls who rescued me from a European bathroom stall with a faulty lock. Yeah…that happened. While some of these adventures left me laughing, others affected me deeply.

Strangers, or friends waiting to happen

A writing festival brought a friend and I, budget-conscious students, to a west Michigan city. We stayed with distant acquaintances to one of our writing professors, Dan and Nancy, who shared their spare bedrooms and meals with us. The more we got to know each other, polite chuckles gave way to bellyaching guffaws. Our small talk snowballed into passionate discussions about race, women in ministry, and art. Now, a year later, we still keep in touch with life updates and prayer requests Continue Reading…

How Imagination Makes Us Better Christians

smgianotti@me.com — June 7, 2016

Growing up in church, I wanted the truth of God to burn in my chest, but too often it sat shelved in my brain, collecting dust. In youth group, I learned about this disease. I had a breakdown between my head and my heart. Other people had it, too. In fact, everyone seemed to be talking about it, but while they diagnosed the problem in sermons, Bible studies, and at my Christian college, no one seemed to have a cure.

Photo courtesy of PhantasmicPanda via flickr.com

You can’t cure a nagging cough without treating the underlying pneumonia, but that’s what many Christians were trying to do. The gulf between our brains and our hearts wasn’t the problem, it was only a symptom of an underlying disease, an infection that started with Modernity.

The real infection was the belief that truth is ultimately a package of facts Continue Reading…

In Bible, Christianity, Faith, God, Holy Spirit, Imagination, Jesus, Love, Sin, Theology Christianity, faith, God, imagination, Jesus, modernity, sin, temptation

How to Thrive in the Church When You’re Misunderstood

smgianotti@me.com — April 19, 2016

I don’t fit the Christian norm. I’m thirty-four, single, and working on my fourth degree. Not exactly a Proverbs 31 woman. Life took a different route than I’d planned and sometimes, especially in Christian circles, I feel out of place. I’m not the only one, though. I have a gay friend who’s chosen celibacy and two others who’ve opted for heterosexual marriage. Then there’s the single mom, the childless couple, and the guy who’s unemployed.

Most conservative churches have a definition of “normal” that my friends and I can’t live up it up. It can leave us feeling confused and isolated, because most of us didn’t choose our unorthodox demographics, we just found our lives playing out on the single, gay, childless, artistic, or job-wandering stage.

Photo courtesy of Michael Furtig via unsplash.com

So, how do we navigate life in the church when we don’t quite fit in? During the last decade, I discovered four secrets to thriving in the church even when I’m misunderstood Continue Reading…

In Bible, Christianity, church, Divorced, Gay, God, Holy Spirit, Infertile, Infertility, Jesus, Lesbian, LGTB, Love, People, Singleness Church, divorced, don't fit in, gay, infertile, infertility, millenials, misunderstood, single, stereotypes

The Jesus I’d Rather Not Look At

smgianotti@me.com — March 22, 2016

When I first saw The Tortured Christ, by Brazilian sculptor Guido Rocha, it didn’t ask my permission, it just went ahead and seared itself into my subconscious. Every couple of months since then, The Tortured Christ pops up, uninvited. All of the sudden he’s there, blood splattering on the carpet of my brain and his screams ricocheting off the walls. It’s rather uncomfortable.

I’d prefer a visit from the placid Jesus–the one who’s taking his torture like a champ, the Jesus that dangles on the end of necklaces, Jesus-asleep-on-the-cross. But, this Jesus keeps showing up–skin retracting between his ribs, muscles seizing in agony–and, honestly, when he stops by, I don’t start humming worship songs or try to gaze deeply into his eyes. I want to look away.

Photo courtesy of Mark Grapengater via flickr.com

The truth is, there’s a lot of things I’d rather look away from–not just Rocha’s Christ–11.4 million Syrians who have been displaced from their homes. Four and half million of them eke out an existence on the border of other countries, without heat in the winter or basic health care, relying on UN food coupons to keep them just beyond the grip of starvation.

I’d rather not notice the man who holds a plastic cup at the intersection several blocks from my house. It gets complicated to think about the addictions that might be driving him to the streets, the shattered family he represents, or the burden of what it means for me to get involved Continue Reading…

In Bible, Christianity, Easter, Embodiment, Faith, God, Good Friday, Guilt, Imagination, Jesus, Love, Theology Christ, Christianity, Easter, God, Good Friday, Jesus, love, Rocha, Suffering, Torture, Tortured Christ, Worship

I Don’t Mind Confessing Sins—As Long As They Aren’t Mine

smgianotti@me.com — March 15, 2016

I don’t really like confessing my sins. It’s a lot like going to the dentist, which I didn’t mind until last October. I sat in the exam chair, looking up at the X-rays and trying to process what my dentist was saying. Not me, I thought, not after thirty-two years. The tiny spot on the X-ray, though, refused to illuminate. My dental sins had found my out. After years of not flossing, I had a cavity.

Photo courtesy of Paco S via unsplash.com

The problem with confessing is that it requires us to face the decay inside. A pearly exterior doesn’t matter—how often we go to church or the amount of our charitable donations. Confession, like X-rays, looks for the evil rotting beneath the surface.

Maybe we read our Bible several mornings a week and feel pretty “spiritual,” but that’s like showing up to God’s Dental with two rows of shiny teeth. He’s more concerned with what’s under the enamel. His radiographs might find that we’re rolling out of bed, not to hear from the God we love, but to manipulate him—we give up twenty minutes of our time and expect him, in return, to answer our prayers. Our devotions, held up to his light-box, might actually reveal self-centeredness Continue Reading…

In A Better World, Bible, Christianity, Confession, Faith, God, Guilt, Holy Spirit, Jesus, Love, People, Sin, Theology Bible, Christianity, Confession, faith, God, Guilt, Holy Spirit, Honesty, Jesus, sins

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