Credulous: A Journey Through Life Faith and the Bulletin: 5 (Missional Wisdom Library: Resources for Christian Community)

Two decades ago I saw three everywhere. Father Son Holy Spirit. Beginning middle end. Proton neutron electron. Mind heart body. Yesterday today tomorrow. Mother father child. I was settled in three. The triangle is the most stable shape and my God was entirely stable. Now I am seeing plus one and it is wrecking me. I am the plus one. You are the plus one. It is the gospel message. The stability of the Trinity has become the rhombus the square the diamond and the trapezoid. And it is beautiful. And now in this puddle of disorientation I have found peace in abundance. God is abundant. Life is abundant. Come cast into the abundant deep. If death turns us into theologians then Andrea started in the delivery room cradling her stillborn child. With devastating grief raging honesty and fierce vulnerability she invites us into her memoir of struggle. Believing that God enters life as it is rather than how it is supposed to be Andrea reminds us of a gospel that forsakes the happy ending for something far more authentic and ultimately Christian: the holy mess of becoming fully human. --Brian Combs Founding Pastor The Haywood Street Congregation Andrea Lingle is a wise woman who is a curious inquisitive Christian who speaks from a depth of experience as a mother a lay leader a survivor and a retro-church hipster. As she walks us through Christian life and experience through the lens of Sunday morning liturgy she speaks with a voice many of us are straining to hear--that of a 30-something adult who loves Jesus but who has a few questions. -- Larry Duggins Leader Executive Director Missional Wisdom Foundation Andrea Lingle is a writer lay theologian and editor. She lives on a cul-de-sac in North Carolina with her family and neighbors. She is a life-long United Methodist reader gardener and hoper.