This week Religion for Her is featuring the art of Diane-Blair Goodpasture (www.goodpastureart.com) who has crafted an entire series of works featuring biblical women. This week's social media posts will showcase some of Diane-Blair's pieces from the series. 

As a way to introduce her as an artist to the Religion for Her community,...

Exciting news! I have created a 6 session course entitled “Embodiment is Found in the Stillness.” Five of the sessions are audio recordings and one session is a video of the three Religion for Her co-founders discussing embodiment. There is a detailed workbook with reflective questions included with the course. 

Premise of the...

My husband decided Tuesday night at ten o’clock was the opportune time to passionately relay a familiar epiphany to me. He wanted to volunteer monthly in an orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico, about forty minutes from our home in San Diego, CA. Over the years he has traveled across the border multiple times (he is Mexican-American and has family...

Reflecting on how biblical literature is trauma-infused, and building our capacity to hold space for the variety of trauma wounding likely present in a room full of people gathering around scripture—these can be rather intense endeavors.

Today I invite you to an interlude for joy; a pause between installments in the “Trauma-informed...

“Trauma is something that touches every human being in one way or another.” This is the statement with which I started my first post in this series, and I want to unpack that statement a bit.

First, let me say a word about what I don’t mean when I say trauma touches every human being in some way. I do not mean to say that...

Dear D,

This weekend I found myself tucked in amidst people from around the world on a narrow bridge, all of us leaning over the concrete rail to catch the best glimpse possible of the world-famous Multnomah Falls. I’ve been stopping here every chance I get for years, breaking up the long drive through the Columbia Gorge to skip up the...

It is my deep conviction that honoring God means approaching the faith traditions of others with a posture of curiosity, learning, and respect. This does not mean that I think all faith traditions are fundamentally the same or that theological distinctives are unimportant. In fact, I think the opposite is true: by exploring the faith traditions...

The memes and headlines, shouting voices and snide remarks making their way across my screen in recent weeks have taken me back to a mantra I recited to myself as a centering practice during the election campaigns of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: “God is pro-life and pro-choice.” When I was particularly worked up, I would say to...

Trauma is something that touches every human being in one way or another. It can be thought of as an overwhelm of the system in which one’s resourcing is not adequate to one’s need and a part of us or our story becomes dis-integrated. Gabor Maté, in the film The Wisdom of Trauma, describes trauma not as what happens to you,...

We all live each day with a certain amount of grief simmering under the surface. It is there, even if we fail to acknowledge its existence. Not just the grief associated with losing a loved one, but also the ambiguous grief. That one mediocre grade that kept you from your dream school, the friendship that ended abruptly, the realization that you...

How do you feel about dedicating periods of time to renewal or rest? Do you intentionally take extended periods of time to rest? Choosing to rest is so counterculture, isn’t it? I am a productivity junky. I often don’t feel like I have had a great day unless my to-do is crossed off. I get a dopamine hit every time I cross something...

Ritual is bad and faith is good, right?

I grew up in a very Calvinist Christian tradition in the Presbyterian Church, and we were always concerned about empty rituals. My earliest experiences with the word “ritual” were not positive. It was associated with empty actions and just going through the motions and was contrasted with a...