5 Things We Love About Glennon Doyle Melton
In 2013, I was heading out on vacation to visit my sister. I’d been reading this Christian Mom blog called Momastery, and I'd heard that the blog's author, Glennon Doyle Melton, had just come out with a new book. I picked it up on the way to the airport, and started reading it on the plane.
I had a doozie of a grad-school chest cold at the time, and was coughing so hard I probably warranted a quarantine. Y'all, let me tell you: I went from coughing to crying (like full on, mascara-running, ugly crying) to laughing so hard my stomach hurt, back to crying, back to laughing, and so on (probably with a cough or two thrown in for good measure). I'm pretty sure the flight attendants and everyone around me were ready to have me committed.
When I finished the book, I immediately went out to the local bookshop and bought a copy for my sister (I wasn't going to give her the copy I had bonded with on the plane!). Since then, I’ve given away more copies of Carry On, Warrior than I can count. As a local church pastor, I often find myself passing out copies like I'm Oprah and it's one of my favorite things (which it most definitely is!).
Melton continues to be one of the best preachers, teachers, and theologians I know. She also feels like one of my closest friends and trusted advisors, despite the fact we’ve never met - her writing is just that powerful.
So, without further ado, here are 5 things we love about Glennon Doyle Melton over here at SALT:
1. She's is a prophetic, authentic truth-teller.
GDM is the kind of prophet we need for our time. In a world that’s obsessed with image and perfection, she cuts through the crap. She brings her whole, vulnerable, open-hearted self to each thing she does, and each blog post she writes. She shows us over and over how to be messy, beautiful, gifted, complicated, afraid - and to show up anyway.
2. She preaches, "The next right thing."
This world is a hard, brutiful place (see #3). It can feel almost impossible to know how to be disciples and do God’s work in the world when we are surrounded by the oppression of racism; the violence of war; the injustice of discrimination; the list goes on. Plus, our own demons of addiction, depression, or insecurity threaten to overcome us. But GDM tells us that we can’t solve the world's problems or our own in one fell swoop. We just need to do the next right thing, and keep doing it, and doing it again. If we keep at it, things will fall into place.
3. She has a creative, original lexicon.
From brutiful to perspectacles, GDM coins new words and opens our hearts to new ideas while she does it. And, always with such grace, humor, and charm.
4. She waves her rainbow flag (and encourages others to do it too!).
She reminds her readers over and over again that LGBTQ folks are created in God’s image and queerly beloved. She reminds us that the only meaningful thing we can offer each other is love. Just love. And by the way, this is the blog post that first introduced me to the Momastery community, and left me weeping with gratitude!
5. She's UCC!
So, I’m probably a little biased here as a UCC minister, but I LOVE that GDM is one of our own. She's an ambassador to both progressive Christianity and her local church community. Plus, I happen to know one of her pastors, and he thinks she’s pretty awesome, too. :)
So there you have it! Those are the top five things we love about Glennon Doyle Melton! We continue to be so inspired by her honesty and grace that we created this short film (1:45 mins) as an act of thanksgiving.
Please share this short film (based on an interview GDM did on the Oprah Network) far and wide so that more and more and more people might be inspired and encouraged by this prophet, preacher, and herald of good news!
Peace,
Heidi Carrington Heath (and the SALT Team!)
p.s. Here's the film in case you missed the link :)
