Deconstruction in Real-Time

Sunday Soul Care for March 26, 2023

Hey everyone,

Joy here. So… change of plans. I know I promised last week to deliver my final installment of my “Afterlife Crisis” party on end-time theology, but between celebrating my birthday, writing a new Easter ebook (!) and some parental commitments, I just ran out of time to deep dive back into the Left Behind series and craft anything meaningful to say.

Maybe sometime I’ll attempt the topic again, or maybe, we can skip all the triggering memories and just keep saying what I’ve realized I say to everything related to the future: I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the future so I better make the most of this life!

Instead, this week all my time went to working on my new Easter ebook: 

(fanfare and drumroll please)

This sequel to Reimagining Christmas will reflect on Palm Sunday through Easter Sunday, relooking at our Holy Week traditions and attempting to find the balance between taking responsibility for problematic history and moving forward with peace.

Anyone who purchases before next Sunday, April 2, will get bonus audio content of a candid conversation about deconstructing Easter featuring me and a surprise guest!

Thought

For Sunday Soul Care this week, I thought I’d take you behind the scenes of what it was like to write Reimagining Easter.

I don’t talk about the process of writing too much—I mostly just want you to focus on the content of what I'm writing.

But the writing part is a big part of my life, and when I work on a big project, it affects everything.

On a practical level, I have to be really intentional about stretching and exercising so I don’t get injured from the hours of sitting still and typing. I have tricks for figuring out what I actually want to say, and I know how long I can write before I’ll lose focus. My family knows that when mom is on a deadline, she’s just pretty unavailable, and dad has to step and carry even more than normal. Then, when I am done, I have to carve out time to recover, which usually involves sitting like a mindless blob on the couch for a few hours.

But beyond the mechanics of writing, my real work is the external processing of my own deconstruction, and navigating all the emotions and implications that go along with that.

While sometimes I write about things I’ve deconstructed awhile ago, Reimagining Easter found me deconstructing and writing about it in real-time.

I thought when I decided to write this book that I would just be rethinking things I already knew and looking at them in a different light. But as I considered them, I realized I still had a lot of questions. As I researched, I fell headfirst into whole new areas of thought I didn’t even realize existed. I think maybe I’ve been procrastinating deconstructing Easter, and this project brought it all to the forefront.

For instance, I’ve been learning a lot more about Judaism lately, so when I went to write about the Last Supper, I was curious to find a Jewish take on the Last Supper as the Passover meal. Instead, I was baited by my own curiosity into clicking an article about Mel Gibson that ended up detailing the antisemitic history behind the four gospels. 

That’s a lot of information to process when you were just hoping for a quote or two to wrap up a reflection on alternative meanings of the bread and the cup.

Each reflection I attempted to write brought more and more information that I had to grapple with. I learned things I didn’t know about how the Crusades affected our modern-day theology and how paganism and Christianity really came to share a celebration of Easter. With each article and blog post I kept seeing all the faces of the real-life people in history who lived so many horrors that I had no idea about.

I usually advise people to take their time deconstructing and that there’s no rush or due date. But with Holy Week looming, I was on a deadline to learn, synthesize, and articulate in some sort of cohesive fashion.

Luckily I was able to carve out the time I needed to reflect (i.e., by giving end-time theology research the boot), and in the end I’m proud of what I put together.

I reminded myself that no one wants me to pretend I know everything, so I tried to write in such a way that shared what I was learning, while encouraging appropriate skepticism and reader-led research. 

I reminded myself that no one is under the delusion that I am a professional historian, and that it's okay to quote other historians instead of feeling like I need to go read hundreds of pages of historical documents to fact-check them myself.

I reminded myself that this is the work of agreeing to look honestly into the past and whatever it reveals, and to take responsibility for my heritage and its impact in the world.

Reimagining Easter the book is finished now, but I know I won’t ever be. This won’t be the last time when I’m confronted with unpleasant realities of my heritage, or the choice to engage or look away. 

And I’m okay with that, partly because I know it’s not just me… I know you’re all out there with me, doing your best to figure it all out, too.

And that is a very happy note to end on.

Affirmation

May you keep your eyes open

And get increasingly skilled

In the art of learning and accepting,

In the balance of looking back and moving forward,

In the rhythm of knowing when to grow and when to rest.

****

If you’re planning to purchase Reimagining Easter, I’d love for you to buy it today, and maybe even gift one to a friend! Daily reflections with audio will start being delivered next Sunday, April 2.

In the meantime, I’ll be over there on the couch catching up on Ted Lasso.

See you next week,

Joy