Healing and Learning with Emmy Kegler's "One Coin Found"
Like all the
best spiritual memoirs, Rev. Emmy Kegler’s debut book One Coin Found: How God’s Love Stretches to the Margins is a marvelous chain of moving personal
stories and what they have taught her about God. There is much to comment on, but
as a teacher - someone deeply concerned about how study can complement
Christian devotion as to make us more powerful believers and attentive leaders
- I found this book particularly wonderful
because there are so many ‘class-settings’ where it could potentially be put to
use. For example:
If
you are leading a seminar for anyone concerned about LGBTQAI+ youth – or a
retreat for queer youth themselves: This book should be given to every
registered attendee. Pastor Emmy shares touching and relatable
anecdotes, like how she got caught “writing anonymous love notes... four-line
rhyming poems to every girl in class... slipping them into their desks when we
left for gym” (30). Anecdotes like this are excellent sparks for meaningful and
transformative group discussion and will likely inspire people to share and
open up (30).
She also clearly and cleanly talks about how, “coming of age in the era of Westboro Baptist’s rise to fame... the year after Matthew Shepard died,” having a firm grounding in the faith allowed her to see “parallels between the blind guides and hypocrites Jesus condemned” and Westboro-types, all while never losing sight of the fact that God loved her no matter what these same folks screeched (29).
She also clearly and cleanly talks about how, “coming of age in the era of Westboro Baptist’s rise to fame... the year after Matthew Shepard died,” having a firm grounding in the faith allowed her to see “parallels between the blind guides and hypocrites Jesus condemned” and Westboro-types, all while never losing sight of the fact that God loved her no matter what these same folks screeched (29).
Especially
notable is when Kegler writes about when her relationship to a conservative
Christian youth group and her sexuality finally reach a breaking point her
senior year in high school. To the refrain of “I did not yet know...” she
launches into an almost point-by-point discourse on queer sexuality and
Scripture, as if casting a life-line into the past for her younger self:
I did not yet know that the six-day creation
we were required to believe in was really seven days... I did not yet know
that the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is not a story of consensual gay
relationships but violent gang rape against outsiders... I did not yet know
that Leviticus is largely ignored by the Christian church except when it is
convenient. (57, 58, 60)
I could go
on and on about this aspect of One Coin Found, but suffice it to
say if you work with queer youth this needs to be a reference text. And if you are a queer youth? Get a copy. I promise
it will help you.
Another way
this book can be put to use is if you are looking for ways to show seminarians
or lay education students how to make good theology. The lessons are
everywhere. For instance, towards the end of the book Pastor Emmy makes a
rather piquant comment about Al-Anon – the much-loved support group for the
friends and family of alcoholics – saying how Al-Anon and Scripture are both “a
series of miracles tucked into stories... where we witness each other’s
brokenness and share in a hope for transformation” (167).
Isn’t that a pretty no-nonsense description of how to make good theology – finding the miracles tucked in stories? Or maybe even looking at a story from one’s life or the Bible “like [a] balloon animal,” turning it one way so “it looks like a butterfly” and yet another way so that “it looks like a bee” (12 – Kegler was only three years old when she made that metaphor by the way)?
Isn’t that a pretty no-nonsense description of how to make good theology – finding the miracles tucked in stories? Or maybe even looking at a story from one’s life or the Bible “like [a] balloon animal,” turning it one way so “it looks like a butterfly” and yet another way so that “it looks like a bee” (12 – Kegler was only three years old when she made that metaphor by the way)?
Likewise, at
the book’s end she even spells out her precise sources – including a six-page list of books organized
by their corresponding chapters (191-196) followed by 12 pages of Scripture
references (197-209). But in the way she presents them in the book, I see less someone trying to back up their own claims and more a sincere invitation to explore - maybe even challenge - her own conclusions.
Between her own stories and the Scripture references and the list of books, my educator’s eyes see a rather unassuming yet comprehensive how-to guide for anyone learning how to better articulate the intricacies of their faith and passions for the sake of others. It models for them how to be clearer communicators, more inspiring readers and thinkers, as well as craft more healing and empowering text and speech.
Between her own stories and the Scripture references and the list of books, my educator’s eyes see a rather unassuming yet comprehensive how-to guide for anyone learning how to better articulate the intricacies of their faith and passions for the sake of others. It models for them how to be clearer communicators, more inspiring readers and thinkers, as well as craft more healing and empowering text and speech.
And as myself, someone who needs the words
and thoughts of others to help complete me in ways wholly unknown to me,
Kegler’s book fulfills that need. So often annoyed by theologians too-enamored
of their own stories, I love how Pastor Emmy both recognizes other stories and
acknowledges how they expose the limits of her own. For instance, when
reflecting on her personal pain as a young queer woman, she doesn’t hesitate to
remind us how “as a white lesbian [she still] had a good chance of not dying” of AIDS nor being killed like “gay men and
trans people,” and as such had some privilege (36). These poignant self-checks,
scattered throughout the book, say something for her integrity. So often
frustrated with the flippant way Christians treat love, I sighed in relief when
I read her admit “I know, too, that love does not heal all wounds. It may bear
and endure all things, but it does not heal them” (160).
Even just a few days ago, as I celebrated the martyrdom of the most blessed Archbishop Oscar Romero, her comment about Biblical truth-telling provided a marvelous counter-melody: “What if every church suddenly facing the racism or queerphobia or sexual assault within their walls cleared the altar and opened the pulpit for every victim and survivor to stand up and say: Here is what was done to me” (168).
Even just a few days ago, as I celebrated the martyrdom of the most blessed Archbishop Oscar Romero, her comment about Biblical truth-telling provided a marvelous counter-melody: “What if every church suddenly facing the racism or queerphobia or sexual assault within their walls cleared the altar and opened the pulpit for every victim and survivor to stand up and say: Here is what was done to me” (168).
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LINKS
She was the theologian at Ext19 and she spoke about the lost...the coin, the sheep, the son. I and others, all engaged leaders, were moving to the fringes of our congregation at that time and eventually left. Her words from that E have stayed with me and I have used them often in talking about the lost or the disengaging. I need to get her book.
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