Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner and Saint
For irregular (and regular) people
Nadia Bolz-Weber
A heavily tattooed standup comic struggling with sobriety goes to seminary school....
When one of the members of her Alcoholics Anonymous group committed suicide, Nadia was asked to take the memorial service as being the only "religious" person any of them knew. She found her calling.
"... I looked around and saw more pain and questions and loss than anyone, including myself, knew what to do with. And I saw God. God, right there.... God, among the cynics and alcoholics and queers."
Encountering Lutheran liturgy and ministry for the first time, Bolz-Weber comes to terms with her fundamentalist Christian background and her new found faith.
After ordination as an Evangelical Lutheran she formed a new church, "House for All Sinners and Saints", for outcasts from mainstream churches.
Contains: profanity, sexuality, liberal christianity
The church she founded is online here: https://www.houseforall.org/
On work experience as a hospital chaplain :
"Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore."
"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard.... And about five o'clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them,'Why are you standing here idle all day?' They said to him, 'Because no one has hired us.' " (Matthew 20:1, 6-7a) :
" [This] is not the parable of the workers. It's the parable of the landowner. What makes this the kingdom of God is not the worthiness or piety or social justicey-ness or the hard work of the labourers... none of that matters. It's the fact that the trampy landowner couldn't manage to keep out of the market place. He goes back and back, interrupting lives... coming to get his people. Grace tapping us on the shoulder. "
"Look! Here is water. What is to prevent me being baptised? " (Acts 8:36) :
"I realised in that coffee shop that I need the equivalent of the Ethiopian eunuch to show me the faith. I continually need the stranger, the foreigner, the 'other' to show me water in the desert."
"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed" :
"Calling something the greatest of shrubs is like saying someone is the smartest of all idiots. Yet Jesus says that heaven's kingdom is like shrubs and nets and yeast.... a ritual impurity."
