I Met A Very Dangerous Person

Turns out, authentic love is deadly to fear and bias – it puts certitude and apathy in danger.  And I met someone dangerous (in the best possible way).

From the very beginning, Reverend Karen Safstrom had a big impact on me.  I had never been part of a church that allowed women to preach, so the first few times I heard Karen preach, I cried.  It was so unexpected.  Hearing a woman preach with power and authority resurrected something in me that had clearly been buried.  Keith had been bothered by the fact that, in a conservative church, our girls would never hear a woman preach, but I had no idea that it was something I also needed.  I cried tears of gratitude, of relief, of surprise – I like to think of myself as a self-aware person, but in this case, there were emotions I never saw coming.

Karen was nice enough to reach out to the loud, chatty Southerner who cried during her sermons, and we soon discovered we liked many of the same authors.  Richard Rohr says, “I realized that the people I really found joy in were not people who loved me so much as people who loved what I loved.” That’s how I felt about Karen.  She loved what I loved and became a really wonderful friend at a time when I needed a friend

I have lots of great friends, but very few who will “go there” with me on these meandering spiritual treks.  Karen was not only unafraid, but challenged me to go even further down the theological rabbit hole.  Because she was fearless, she gave me confidence to explore even harder questions, to lament even more difficult realities of life, to celebrate God in new ways.

In redefining evangelism for me, Karen’s biggest contribution was just in being herself.  She had a wide and diverse group of friends, and she honestly respected all of them.  She could find something good in everyone, and she helped me to see God in people and places that I had never considered.

This was at a “Fresh Expressions” conference – Karen was always open to new ideas. We also went to the “Liturgist Gathering” in Boston, and visited a pub theology group before hosting one locally.

Karen asked me to be on the board of a new ministry called “Uncommon Ground” that was meant to be something outside the church to provide safe spaces for people to explore spirituality.  (Research shows that most people are spiritual, but they no longer trust religious organizations, so there is a growing group of “nones” who no longer wish to affiliate with any religion.)

As the group developed the vision and mission statements for Uncommon Ground, I had the opportunity to have conversations about the sacred and spiritual with so many wonderful people.  Even my atheist friends were willing to chat with me about it and liked the programming ideas.  We ended up having pub theology nights, book club and video discussions, hikes, meditation classes, and all sorts of novel things like a contemplative photography class, etc.  I loved all of it, and it was so refreshing to offer these things without any ulterior motive (no one was going to give you propaganda about their church; no one was going to tell you what to believe – it was just a place of honest exploration in a nonjudgmental community).

I thought I was respectful of everyone until I heard Karen talk about people of other faiths, people with no faith to speak of, people who experienced God in ways that I can’t relate to (in nature, in meditation, in yoga, in community service, etc.), I realized that I definitely had unaddressed biases, and I made a lot of assumptions about how people experience God.

John Crist stand-up (before the scandal). Karen loved to laugh and she had a wicked sense of humor.

Karen’s love and respect for all people and her reverence for the mystery and magnitude of God taught me so much.  God busted me out of my comfort zone in a big way.  I no longer saw God through the narrow lens of the church or things I considered “sacred.”  I learned that every single person has something to teach us about God, even if they don’t recognize or acknowledge Him in their own lives.

I heard Nadia Bolz-Weber say (paraphrasing here) that we must be rooted in tradition in order to innovate with integrity.  That’s the combination that Karen had.  She respected tradition and was rooted in a firm foundation of faith, but her faith was so much bigger than just church and tradition.  She understood that God is greater than any of our limited constructs and her trust in a “big” God, without limits, gave her the freedom to love.

Turns out, authentic love is deadly to fear and bias – it puts certitude and apathy in danger.  And I met someone dangerous (in the best possible way).

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I wrote the words above in the fall of 2019, and never imagined I’d be sharing them as a tribute to my friend whom I will not get to see again on this side of heaven.  But her friendship will continue to impact me for the rest of my days here.

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