Unraveling: Coming Out and Back Together
The Gospels introduce a woman suffering for many years, who is healed after touching the frayed hem of Jesus’ garment. Unraveling: Coming Out and Back Together, introduces another individual’s journey from shame and suffering to wholeness. These 21 pieces speak truth to the undeniable ways the church heals and the unholy ways the church harms. Curated in liturgical seasons, Rebecca’s words will break your heart and fill it as her poetry weaves together an experience of answering a call to ministry in The United Methodist Church, pursuing ordination, embracing her queer sexuality, and making the unbelievably difficult and amazingly liberating decision to walk away. Her story leads us to question if healing energy flows from garments or from the unraveling of power and tradition. Is it faith that makes us well or a desire to claim our belovedness and live authentically?
Unraveling isn’t bad or to be avoided at all costs. Sometimes things have to come undone so that new things, better things, more beautiful, amazing, and authentic things can come together.
Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, The Senior Pastor of SunCoast MCC; and the former global Moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches.
“Rebecca Wilson is no ordinary poet - she boldly disrupts and reconstructs worn theological concepts, Bible stories, and images making them come alive.
Excavating pain and betrayal, and also claiming new freedom, healing and hope, she draws us into her story with an artistry that is revelatory and redeeming.”
Bishop Karen P. Oliveto, Mountain Sky Episcopal Area of the United Methodist Church
“Rebecca Wilson’s powerful and beautiful collection of poems invites the reader to bear witness, as she shares a most intimate journey of coming out to the powers that be in The United Methodist Church and of coming home to herself. It is a costly journey, filled with pain and grief, yet ultimately a hopeful one as her truth-telling enables her to weave into creation a more integrated, holy, and whole self.”
Marcia McFee, PhD
"As a professor who has long taught the liturgical year as a testament to human yearning, I experience this collection as incredibly powerful as Rebecca Wilson frames her image-and-emotion-rich expression into the seasons of yearning, knowing, lamenting, and ultimately, celebrating. It is a witness to the holy journey of call and loss and re-call of sacred personhood. While specific to her ministerial and denominational journey, anyone who has felt the sting of rejection will find catharsis and hope in these pages."
Unraveling Resources
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Unraveling: The Light Shining Through
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Unraveling Lessons: All The Flowers We Cut
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Free Unraveling Guide
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An Unraveling Prayer