In case you missed my big announcement with my uphill learning curve Canva Skills, here's a blog post to let you know that God, Sex, and Rich People: A Recovering Evangelical Testimony finally has a release date! Mark your calendars friends because you can officially buy the book I've been working on since 2020 on SEPTEMBER 10th, 2024!!!!!
We are not doing pre-orders so the best best best way to support is buy the book on the day it goes live! As soon as we have a selling channel link, I will be sending that out as well. Per usual, all the latest book announcements will be made on my Instagram and Facebook pages, as well as here on the ole blog -- where it all started.
In the coming months I will be working with my publicist and Quoir publishing to organize a book launch event. I'm hoping to have a whole panel of people/experts to discuss certain themes around #exvangelical goings on -- from experiences leading to scripture investigation to dating and sex and reconfiguring your entire identity. You know, super fun stuff. Please be on the lookout for those announcements as well!
I will finally be screening my God, Sex, and Rich People pilot proof of concept publicly at the book launch! Can you believe it's been three years since I shot this thing?
While the pilot was making its way through the festival circuit, I took time to complete the book. Since the book is now complete, I am excited to get back to developing this series! I'm hoping to livestream the book launch event for all those who can't make it in person. Stay tuned!
Something I'm constantly having to remind myself (and that I am constantly in awe of) is that none of these creative projects happen overnight. They don't even happen over year. I started writing pieces of what I was calling a book in 2020! Four years later, I finally have a tangible date where you guys can buy a tangible book. Four years. This book took FOUR YEARS. Even longer if you count starting to write publicly on a blog in 2015.
I wrote, shot, and paid for a 12 minute proof of concept of a series in 2021. Three years later -- through edits, festival submissions, and festival acceptance announcements -- I can finally screen it publicly. It will likely be a decent amount of years before the full vision series will be seen. I still don't even have a full pith deck ready! Who knows if I'll produce it personally or if Netflix will believe in my dream, buy it, and actually make it instead of buying it and it sitting latent for years (did you know networks do that all time? Buy the show and never get around to making it. Then, after whatever period of time the contract is agreed upon with the creators, if the network hasn't made it yet, they can take it back and shop it to other networks. OR the network that originally bought it makes a pilot, but it never gets a full season. OR the show is contracted for three seasons, but gets canceled after one season because the show doesn't do well enough to go to all three + beyond. Yeah...so anywho. Getting a series to TV is HARD).
The point is, this stuff takes. time. And I have to constantly remind myself that I'm after the heart and process of my creative goals, not just the perceived "success." I have to be patient with how God/The Universe is going to bring it all to fruition. So if you need that reminder as much as I do, I'm giving it to you now: Life is mostly busy work, so do the busy work that you find a lot of joy and meaning in, and leave the rest up to the cosmos.
Also...
I was featured on another podcast! Cheers to Leaving hosted me last week and it was a doozy! I think this was honestly the most comprehensive interview I've done to date. We cover everything from being a preacher's kid, to a theatre kid, to dating normies, to having really bad sex, to Planned Parenthood, and my pilot! I really enjoyed chatting with Cameron and Racheal. Give it a listen on all the platforms!
Gunna try a new thing where I share what's insightful and/or inspiring for me right now. Let's see how it goes...
Right now I'm reading Returning to Eden by Heather Hamilton during my morning "quiet time." I'm not always reading a spiritual book during this time (last month it was Brene Brown's Atlas of the Heart...which I suppose is a bit spirtual but also clincial as it is research on feelings. My favorite kind of research) but right now I am and it's been really beautiful. Returning to Eden is a re-examination of the Bible through the lens of myth and mysticism, instead of the literalism of our modern, Western fundamental Christian understanding of scripture. I highly recommend this book if you are someone looking for a reclamation of the faith that really fucked you. Here are some of my most recent favorite quotes from her chapter about the mystery of the Trinity:
"God is no longer a man in the sky. God is the threefold dynamism of love: generating all things [father], folding itself into all things (including you and me {Jesus}), and unfolding into all things as a never ending revelation of itself {holy spirit}. God is three-in-one: unity in distinction that propels itself forward."
"To trust God is to trust life itself."
"Faith is believing that life is not cold. Life is loving and meaningful. This faith is what gives you the courage to take a step forward, trusting that when you step, life will move towards you."
"In full vulnerability, writing this book is an act of faith for me. I'm writing it now because I trust in the trinitarian nature of God. I trust that if I dance, life will dance with me. I'm writing from my truest, most authentic place, and trusting that these words will find their way to you in a magically ordinary way. That, at just the right time, these words from my heart will find their way to you, and you will know they were written for you."
God is the maker of all things, with us in all things, and radiating out from all things. Isn't that so beautiful, and also, true? This is the mysterious spiritual magic I was drawn to early on in my faith, that eventually got trampled by the Great Commission and purity rings.
Alongside this beautiful message of love and meaning in life is the paradox of tragedy in life.
A little over a week ago, I learned of the passing of my church/teenhood friend, Micah Elfrink due to a fatal car accident. Micah was a woman I had the joy of knowing during what I call my (for lack of a better term) "Purely Goodness'd" years. These were the years of church where life was just...uncomplicated and good. While yes it is true that I was absorbing a lot of harmful narratives about purity culture and patriarchy through Christian literature, conferences, etc...at my home church -- during high school -- I mostly have memory recall of good. I was learning how to develop meaningful relationships, include the outcasts, and apply the Golden Rule in all that I did. These values, ultimately, are what led me to leaving the church, because I realized I wanted to live all of that out devoid of self righteous dogma and the obsession marital bumpin' uglies.
Micah's mom was my mentor and another fantastic mother figure (in addition to my own mom) in my life as my small group leader. Myy older sister was in Micah's small group, and Micah's younger brother Luke was another eccentric theatre kid I loved feeling "seen" by, so I spent many night's at the Elfrink household. Between exchanging white elephant gifts, playing Atari (yes. A REAL ATARI), eating cheese dip til my stomach ached, and getting an even greater stomach ache from all the belly laughs Micah and Luke elicited any time they were in a room together, I remember feeling nothing but belonging in their home.
This family was goodness personified — every one of them. I walked into their home and their hugs and immediately felt love and laughter in a truly divine way. Micah gave the best, big of everything. Her joy, hugs, jokes, and pranks just made everything…awesome. I feel incredibly lucky to have spent time with her in those formative years, and I know anyone who crossed her path thereafter felt the same.
Not only that, this family has already lost their dad and a mother-in-law to similar, sudden tragedies. I cannot wrap my head around how one family has to experience so much bad. It's not fair. It fucking sucks. The world lost a good one.
In sharing some of these feelings with others, I've gotten some sweet responses.
Dad Cow: I will do my best to believe in God’s goodness in spite of the paradox…Jesus even said while teaching in the Sermon on the Mount about loving our enemies “so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.” So Jesus recognized the paradox of this world too.
Another friend shared: I don’t think we are called to provide solace for grieving families in the form of “they are in a better place.” I think we are called to grieve alongside them. Be close to the brokenhearted. Mourn. All things that American Christianity is super uncomfortable with.
I'm not sure how to end this because everything I could say seems trite. All I know is that I miss a time when life was uncomplicated. When it was "purely goodness'd." It was all school crushes, sports events, Bible studies with clear boundaries and no murky messy mystery to sort out.
Life is going to continue to life until it doesn't. And then we have to deal with the loss of that life and how it reminds us to embrace life, knowing full well we'll still get caught up in the mundane and unimportant things of life like frustrations of sitting in traffic and/or your scenes getting cut from a major motion picture movie being shown in theatres...
If you're currently working through the fucked to fucking annoying paradoxes of life-ing, I'm sending you love and so much joy because we should all be seeking to leave a legacy -- like Micah -- of love and joy.
ICYM my last few blog posts and also this cool Purity Culture Recovery Resource Guide, here they are: