Author Archives

Chris Ash is a writer, teacher, and leader whose practice is inspired by nature, informed by science, and grounded in compassion. They have facilitated safe and sacred space for over twenty years, as a suicide hotline counselor, doula, rape crisis companion, support group facilitator, minister, mentor, parent, and friend. Their research interests include spirituality, compassion, trauma, gender, sexuality, and intimacy. They live just outside Chapel Hill, North Carolina, surrounded by academics who think they're a hippie and New Agers who think they're a nerd. They remain fully committed to being both.

• Privilege and Hierarchy in Community Care by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on May 2, 2019 • ( 3 )

  

  This is part one of a multi-part series on privilege, dehumanization, and hierarchy in organizing, activist, and ministry circles. Early in my training at my current job, my boss explained our agency’s position on social justice and intersectionality to me:… Read More ›

• Gendered Only In Expression by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on March 7, 2019 • ( 6 )

  

  “I want you to see this new piece I wrote for our newsletter,” said Sister Ann. We were safe inside the dining room of the Episcopal convent where she lived and I was an extended guest, and yet she spoke… Read More ›

• Pleasure, Touch, and Spirituality by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on January 3, 2019 • ( 4 )

  

  Sitting in front of the computer, I slowly and intentionally insert earbuds, click to start my favorite writing playlist, and open up Microsoft Word. I feel the tips of my fingers resting lightly on the keys, and notice the slight… Read More ›

• The Deep Exhale by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on November 13, 2018 • ( 5 )

  

  There’s this thing that happens to advocates when the world around us burns with injustice and fury and we shift into what we know, the holding-fighting, fierce-eyed, tender-hearted caring that pours out compassion and links lives with survivors, shedding trails… Read More ›

• God, Consent, and Freedom by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on October 4, 2018 • ( 9 )

  

  Over the summer, I started at a new job, which I’ve decided I can safely describe as a “dream job” – one to which I can bring my full self, and in which I can use all my gifts and… Read More ›

• Spinning the Fire, Shifting the Current by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on July 5, 2018 • ( 15 )

  

  Seventy-two hours out of every week, I carry a hotline phone. While calls come in waves and some shifts are silent, my everyday and professional lives are peppered with reminders that evil doesn’t just pierce reality through acts of power,… Read More ›

• Bake the Damn Cake: Owning Up to and Mitigating Our Traditions’ Trauma Histories by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on June 7, 2018 • ( 9 )

  

  “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human… Read More ›

• (Not Yet) Elder Reflections by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on May 3, 2018 • ( 5 )

  

  Four years ago, as I went to touch up my roots with a shade of red I’d been dying my hair since I was 18, I noticed that what had started as a few random strands of gray amidst my… Read More ›

• Friend Zoned by God by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on March 5, 2018 • ( 5 )

  

  Sometimes life hurts. Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we dive deeply into darkness. Sometimes we fall. Sometimes our lives line up so perfectly we can’t help but sense the hand of the divine helping us clear our paths and point… Read More ›

• Carrying Our Mothers by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on February 1, 2018 • ( 17 )

  

  The past few weeks, I’ve been sitting with the many layers held by the concept, and the manifest reality, of mother, mothering, and motherhood. Mother is seen in the divine feminine, in the cosmos, and in the sea and the… Read More ›

• Priestessing the Priestesses by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on January 4, 2018 • ( 10 )

  

  Last week, I had the incredible privilege of sitting vigil with a friend in hospice in her final hours on this earth. She slept for most of the time I was there, but her waking moments were lucid, if brief…. Read More ›

• Breaking the Silence by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on December 7, 2017 • ( 13 )

  

  Yesterday, Time Magazine announced that its “Person of the Year” for 2017 would be “The Silence Breakers” – the name it has given to those women who helped launch and made headlines in the #metoo movement. This movement was started… Read More ›

• Forgiveness and Faith by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on November 2, 2017 • ( 11 )

  

  Some of the most brutal weapons ever used against me were crafted and wielded by my own hands, forged in grief and self-loathing out of the words of others. In my better moments, I recognize that while another’s frustration with… Read More ›

• Family, Interdependence, and Mutual Support by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on July 19, 2017 • ( 14 )

  

  Over the past few months, a precious person has come closer into my family’s life in such a way that their presence in my home, among my loved ones, has come to feel natural and easy. This is someone I… Read More ›

• Holding Two Truths by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on June 1, 2017 • ( 10 )

  

  Last month, I attended a series of workshops on self-care, family dynamics, and recovery from complex trauma. In one session, someone asked the facilitator, a counselor with over 30 years of experience in mental health fields, how to balance faith,… Read More ›

• Making Space for the Joy and the Grief by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on May 4, 2017 • ( 14 )

  

  Last week, I made a day trip on short notice to fly with a friend to Orlando. As we said our goodbyes, my friend encouraged me to try to catch an earlier flight to avoid arriving home too late in… Read More ›

• Eros, Caritas, and Relationship by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on April 6, 2017 • ( 3 )

  

  In 2011, the Anglican Theological Review published arguments for and against same-sex marriage. “A Theology of Marriage including Same-Sex Couples: A View from the Liberals,” co-written by Deirdre Good, Cynthia Kittredge, Eugene Rogers, and Willis Jenkins, presents a rationale for… Read More ›

• Redeeming Gender, Softening Extremes by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on March 2, 2017 • ( 17 )

  

  Last month, I attended a lecture by Anglican theologian Adrian Thatcher on his recent book, Redeeming Gender. In this book, Thatcher draws upon the one sex and two sex theories described by Thomas Laqueur in his book, Making Sex: Body… Read More ›

• On Being an Occasion of Joy by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on February 2, 2017 • ( 10 )

  

  When I was 19, I fell hard into the kind of deep depression that hits college kids whose unstable upbringings, rife with inconsistency and trauma, left them ill-prepared to face the self-direction and responsibility of independence. I didn’t grow up… Read More ›

• Present in Our Bodies: Sensuality, Movement, Feelings, and Joy by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on January 4, 2017 • ( 22 )

  

  Christmas morning. I don’t usually have Sundays free and our family holiday celebrations lean nontraditional, so I’d come to a special ecstatic dance celebration and brought my 9-year-old daughter with me. As the music started and people all around us… Read More ›

• Positive Presence in Tiring Times by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on December 1, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  I am tired. I’m tired in that way that happens when mind-overload, followed incautiously into concrete corners, limits the ability to conceive of solutions and dig up hope. I’m tired of reading commentary and I’m tired of thinking about the… Read More ›

• Intellectual Circles, Authenticity, Legibility, and Working Class Roots by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on November 2, 2016 • ( 19 )

  

  In my other writing for Feminism and Religion, I’ve discussed how a key focus of my spiritual path involves dancing within the tension of opposites, finding ways to move mindfully and freely inside the orbit of sacred circularities in which… Read More ›

• Touch and Presence as Intimate Communion by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on October 6, 2016 • ( 17 )

  

  Over the past 20 years, I’ve been blessed with many moments in which fully aware or embodied presence has intersected spiritual transformation, both in my own life and in the lives of others. In my work on a crisis hotline,… Read More ›

• Intellectual Curiosity as Holy Devotion by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on September 26, 2016 • ( 18 )

  

  A significant part of my spiritual practice involves exploring the tension of opposites  – learning to create and grow in the space between polarities without feeling obligated to choose one over the other as my truth. Immanent or transcendent? Both…. Read More ›

• Knowing the Live Oaks: Finding the Balance Between Historicity and Inspiration in Neopaganism and Goddess Spirituality by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on September 1, 2016 • ( 10 )

  

  Last fall, my family took a vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where I grew up. As a child, one of my favorite places to visit was Brookgreen Gardens, a wildlife preserve that was once the winter home of Archer… Read More ›

• I’ll Go With You: On Bathrooms and Theocracy by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on August 4, 2016 • ( 9 )

  

  Last month, I took a dear friend on a trip to the North Carolina mountains. Throughout the trip we were sharply aware that we were no longer in the progressive enclave where we both lived – the tiny area whose… Read More ›

• Living Out the Tension: Spirituality, Self-Care, & Activism in Action by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on July 7, 2016 • ( 4 )

  

  “Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another, but presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying.” – Pauli Murray  My… Read More ›

• The Tension of Opposites: Love, Chaos, & the Wild Vortex by Christy Croft

  By Chris Ash on June 13, 2016 • ( 13 )

  

  “Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that a high tolerance for ambiguity, ambivalence, and a tendency to think in opposites are characteristics researchers have found common among creative people in many different fields. But professional creators… come to understand that in… Read More ›