Welcome back to Compass, Finding Spirituality in the Everyday. My name is
Ryan Dunn. And in this episode of Compass, we're joined by Reverend
Elizabeth Riley. She discusses with us the concept
of rage prayer, which is fully expressing ourselves with
God in authentic, honest ways. Even
if that begins to move into explicit anger and frustration.
Reverend Riley shares her journey in moving through gatekeeping around prayer
and feeling a need for permission to express anger towards
God. She talks about starting a public practice of rage prayer on
TikTok, and she highlights the importance and transformational
power of being completely authentic in prayer.
So this is about more than just anger. Rage prayers can be a means of
processing grief, heartbreak, and acceptance of
difficult life circumstances. There's a whole lot of
interesting, useful ideas in this episode. Reverend Elizabeth is an
Episcopal priest currently serving in the diocese of Olympia, which
covers the western portion of Washington state. You can find her
on TikTok at the rev Riley and her book,
rage prayers, comes out on October 8, 2024.
Let's talk prayer, authenticity, and TikTok
on the Compass podcast.
Reverend Elizabeth, let's start with this. How goes it with your soul
today? My soul is good.
Kids are off at school. A lot to be
joyful about there. Excellent. Well, good. I'm glad
to hear that we're starting this from a happy
in I'm curious, like, how do you define
a rage prayer? That's a great question.
Rage prayer is something that has really evolved. And I
think at sort of the original outset,
I've used rage prayer as a way
to explicitly express anger
within prayer, because we've needed a lot
more explicit permission to do that.
So when we can't find the silver lining,
when we're not ready to find the good news yet,
I've spent a lot of my life learning how to preach the good news,
but there is a space before the good news often.
You know, it's the good Friday of our prayer life
where we can't run to the resurrection yet.
And so in terms of rage prayer, it started out as this place of
really explicit anger or frustration or
sadness. It's evolved for me,
into something that's about authentic prayer, And I
think you can have a joyful rage prayer even,
but it's become a tagline for praying what's true
and what's honest. And so that's evolved into some
really beautiful things and expressions of kind of our full range
of emotions that we aren't always given permission to have,
in traditional prayer life. You mentioned
we are feeling a sense of needing permission
to commit to some of these prayers. In your spiritual journey,
has there been a, a sense of
gatekeeping around prayer? Like prayer is only
using these words or only expressing these kinds of feelings.
I started my Christian journey within a Catholic church
right around when I was in, 1st
grade. And so if you've been a part of a Catholic community, you'll probably
recognize that that's right around when first communion is happening. Right?
And I ended I was baptized into the Catholic church and then went through my
first communion. To receive your first
communion you first do your first confession,
and so this sticks with me as
this very integral part of my faith life that had to do
or of how I was kind of formed in my Christianity where it
felt like we are supposed to have shame and humility
around anything that's potentially bad or sinful.
And then there are things that we could feel good about, and there was a
lot of black and white thinking within that. That. And
in addition to kind of having my prayer in
sacramental life wrapped up around this sort of confessional piece that
also felt just really odd at 7 years old to
figure out, like, what do I need to go confess? Like, what have I done
wrong and yours were soul searching around, like, well, who was I not
honest to my parents? Not nice to my sibling? So
there was sort of I mean, honestly, what felt like emotional manipulation,
within that just a little bit, even though I had some
incredible leaders within that church and people forming me my
faith. Christianity has
throughout its history really wanted us to
be, docile and
humble towards God, and I think especially as a woman
I've experienced this to an extensive degree where
we're meant to be kind and polite
and put a good spin on whatever it is and
the cliches of Christianity, when God closes
a door, God opens a window, or god
needs another angel or just the terrible things that
Christians say or god must have had a reason. You
just those spins that even if I
wasn't explicitly taught them,
I took them in from culture, from
media, from things that my parents had been
taught even as they had their own versions of deconstruction of trying
to not be a part of that type of Christianity or that type of faith
practice. And
what through that, even though
that was not what was explicitly said to me, I learned it and
internalized it. And through my ministry and my
work, I think many people have internalized
a similar message, whether they're within the church or outside of the
church. A message that,
Christians are supposed to be pleasant, and we're not supposed to talk
about uncomfortable things and,
certainly certainly we wouldn't be angry at God. We can
be angry at ourselves, but God
must have had a reason. So we're rarely given
tools that actually help make sense of what does it look like to be
angry at god. So you started a public practice of
rage praying on TikTok. Accidentally. Okay.
Yeah. Tell me about that. Like, what what led to that, like,
public outpouring where it's, like Oh my goodness. Enough is enough. I need to do
this. It was sort of accidental and a little
difficult to explain if you don't know the ins and outs of social
media and trends, but there was a
song that was trending on TikTok,
and it was this very upbeat, you know, it felt like
girly pop 2010 music a little bit, but
the lyrics were talking about, do you ever get a little bit tired of
life? And it was this
weird, contrast between
lyrics that sort of talked about the difficulties of
life and this sort of poppy music, you know, that you felt like you'd be,
like, getting ready with. Mhmm. And I
ended up making a video
basically saying, hey, you don't have to put a positive spin on
things. Like, let's actually just be angry in our prayer. It was a it was
a joke. It was not intended to be
this new prayer practice. And
I posted it, and it's like, oh, that felt like something. Like, this
the idea of I I think I used the phrase in
that in that video, let's rage pray.
Mhmm. And I was, like, I wonder if that could be something.
A week later,
I, my divorce started. And rage
prayer ended up being the practice that really bloomed in the
midst of my personal life just completely
changing while also finding
something that sustained my own faith
and felt like I had something to offer the world. And so or, you
know, the 10 people who cared on TikTok, whatever that version
of the world is, and became an
outlet to to process some of that and talk about some of that.
And I will say my rage prayers have
never been my most viral videos on TikTok. I had
a ministry on TikTok before this, and they're still not the videos where
you know, these are not the things that are making,
me known. But the the depth of
connection for those who do find it powerful and who have watched
it and who do keep coming back because of rage
prayers, there's a depth of, a connection
with the practice yearning for more of that that and that's the real transformation. It's
not, oh, here's a funny 10 second video I'm gonna share, and it's gonna go
viral, but something that feels like it has substance
and life to it. So as you started to cultivate this as
a practice for yourself, did you start to
look for kind of a precedence in that? Like, were you
coming through the hymnal looking for expressions of rage
prayer or or through scripture? Well, I didn't
have to come far. Thank goodness. It
really I think part of why it was so easy for me to go to
this practice is because as soon as I sort of had a
name for it, I also saw it throughout our history, throughout
our scriptures. This is not new.
Showing anger towards God or lamenting at the
world is a deep
intrinsic part of the Abrahamic faiths,
and Christianity. So I've
actually, often used this, within my
funeral sermons homilies that no
matter how long or how well a life is lived, we are
given permission to grieve. And as we celebrate a life,
we it's okay for us to grieve what's not there and
that even Jesus before,
he raised Lazarus for the from the dead, he wept.
As Jesus, was on the cross, he cried out, my
god, my god, why have you forsaken me?
It's throughout our scriptures. In the Old Testament and in the New Testament,
our Psalms are full of lament Psalms.
Let me pull up this one. Psalm 130. Out
of the depths I cry to you, oh, Lord, Lord, hear
my voice. There is deep yearning in our
scripture. The entire book
of Job is a great example.
Right? Scripture is
our scriptures are the stories of humanity's encounters of God in our
all of our human experiences, the great highs and the
lowest lows and how we relate to God through
that. And we see incredible
grief and lament and anger throughout scriptures.
I mean, the grief of Mary at the death of Jesus,
the grief of Moses not reaching the
promised land. These are not all happy endings. Mhmm.
But that doesn't mean that there's not good news. But I think we've
completed it a little bit too much that Christians need to have these
Disney happy ending outlooks, which is really
not that biblical. Our scripture is a lot
more honest. I love
the story, the road to Emmaus. So on the ray road
to Emmaus, we have the resurrection of Jesus has happened.
Right? And yet the world is still what it
is. And these individuals are walking
and really greet like, nothing has changed. What is different
in the world? And it expresses this
really true thing that even
in the whole hope and light of the resurrection, everything is not
fixed. And I think that is something to pay attention to in our
own practice. Mhmm. All of us experience
rage. We all experience frustration sometimes on the daily.
Few of us feel assured enough, I guess, to kind of tarry in that
space where, you know, we're like sitting with rage and here
you've set out to provide a tome
of of rage prayers. Probably, you
know, a 100 or so plus. What did the
process of, like, setting all these
down and, editing them over and over again, what
did that do to you? Or what has it done for you in terms
of, like, your spiritual journey or feeling a sense of connection with
the divine?
It's been a huge gift. Mhmm. I mean, for
myself to engage that practice, but the number of people who have walked
alongside me in this process, who've given feedback,
who've been part of talking through, what
is it like to rage? What are the things we wanna rage with? And I
think the way in which I've gotten to see other people's
spirituality sort of shift through that process has been a real
gift. I've really mapped
or I loosely mapped, rage prayers onto the prayers
of the people. We already have
a a map in our in our liturgy for praying in the Episcopal
church. And so there's a section on,
praying with faith, praying for justice,
raging through more the human condition,
and finding that and I think this is part of what's helped me expand
rage prayer in my own mind to be beyond just the explicit anger
at life or God, but to see rage prayer as being about
authenticity and actually it can be giving
thanks for something ending that needed to end.
I do end the book with a section called petty rage,
which is daylight savings and taxes
and, you know, traffic.
So the The the subscription
was speaking to me. They're raging over forgotten
subscriptions. Yeah. Exactly. Right? The reply all.
God, I know why you sent the floods. Like, we
get the reply all. Part of the process has been teaching
me and what I try to emphasize in the book is we are
never meant to stay in rage. Okay? My
hope is not that we will go and live in anger, but
that in freely expressing it, we can move through it.
And so as odd as it is to say, I think
my experience has led me to actually having a lot more peace
and a lot more joy because we're not repressing and
bottling those things up, but giving them
voice and truth and honoring those experiences.
And that's what leads to transformation in
our world, there's plenty to be angry about there's
plenty of injustice and
We can't ignore it. We can't push it down. We
can't just hope someone else will fix it.
But giving our authentic
response of anger can also allow us to
say we cannot leave the world as it is
and fuel us into changing it. So as we rage for
justice, what are we not going
to tolerate in terms of marginalization
and dehumanization in our world and how can our anger
lead us to changing the world. And when you look at the social justice movements
that have happened throughout history, and I think
movements that are happening now when we see how young
people are being mobilized in voting,
When you see people fighting injustices of genocide throughout the
world, it is expressions of authentic anger,
that push us to want the world to change
for the better. So my prayer too for others
is that this can be transformational. Not that we
stay in rage, but that it leads to deeper joy too. What kind of response
do you get through the feedback system of of TikTok in
expressing these rage prayers? Are people relieved that they
have kind of a a a comrade in
in feeling some of this frustration? Or I mean, Tik Tok is
such a beautiful place of feedback. And if you're not on Tik Tok,
I'm you're probably like, what is she saying? Because if you're not on Tik
Tok, Tik Tok sounds like a really scary world with, you know,
people just trolling you in the comments or, you know, either that or you have
to dance to some ridiculous song. I have found
on TikTok the most incredible community of people
often who are disillusioned with the institution of the church,
but who over and over and over speak to
the healing that rage prayer has given them, the
healing that progressive clergy on TikTok have given them. So I am part of
a much bigger umbrella of clergy throughout
Christian and non Christian faiths.
Our Jewish siblings are on there, and we have Muslim siblings on
there, and folks who are making content and talking about being
a progressive person of faith, in the modern day and age.
And what that's gotten to build with the community of folks who
have left church because it is dominated by
voices that don't match any of their ideologies,
and to give them a space where they can encounter that
I get so much feedback of healing and hope. People who
have said, you know, I don't know if I will ever go back to church,
but thank you for giving me a glimpse of god
or this healed something that was broken in me or or whatever it is, and
I see this on other progressive clergy TikToks as well. So
I have just found an incredible response,
which is in contrast sometimes to the response of
the institution. So,
my rage prayers are not every Christian's cup of tea,
and I saw that very quickly as I started seeing reviews
from maybe more conservative Christians or folks who were
expecting one thing and found me to
be very different, and I'm okay with that. I
know that how I practice my faith I mean, look,
the negativity I get on face on TikTok is usually about,
me being a woman and, you know, speaking for the devil. So
I'm used to not being everyone's cup of tea, and sometimes I'm like, okay. So
as long as I'm upsetting the right people,
we're okay. So I will from the
institution of the church and from the Episcopal Church there are certainly
folks who want us to appear a certain way, who want a sort of
properness from clergy. I
cuss quite a bit in this book, there that's part
of rage prayers, so I know this isn't for everyone
and, I'm okay with that, but for the people who
need it from the swarms of people who have
left the church and who have never dared step foot in our spaces,
they're the ones giving me the best response. And so it gives me a lot
of hope for what the future of not the
church necessarily, but humanity's relationship with
the divine, which should and hopefully is
bigger than any institution of faith, that that
can have a future and a hope and a possibility.
Is there one particular rage prayer that, you've written down
that you go back to again and again?
There is a line in, my
divorce rage prayer, actually, that and I wanna
get it right. So divorce was a big part of how
rage prayer started for me. And so, obviously, writing a rage prayer about
divorce was important. And so I start the rage
prayer for divorce saying, I did
not pray for this until I did. I
prayed every other prayer until I prayed this one
and it goes on. But I think we can apply that to so many
things in our lives Mhmm. Where
coming to the reality of what we are left
with or where we are at and the acceptance of that
or the praying for the outcome we would have least wanted a
year ago. That's something I go back to a lot in
many aspects of my life and, the grief
and the heartbreak of, you know, reaching a point
where you do pray that something ends so that new
life can be given to something else and that both people can
go off and have, you know, the wholeness they deserve. I've seen
that replay in other aspects of my life, in relationships and jobs.
So that's really stuck with me and the permission,
to pray for things even when they might seem
like not what we wanted originally. Well, thank you for sharing that with us.
What do you hope as you've put this book together, a collection of rage
prayers? Like what do you hope that the casual reader takes away from
it? That they can reject every
single one of my prayers and that's fine, but that they
have permission to pray differently than they ever have
before. And to try
on something that maybe felt taboo or, like, the wrong
way to pray. There's no wrong way to pray. It's all conversations with God,
and we get to show up fully to God. So I
hope that the casual reader takes away some permission to try
showing up with god fully as themselves, that god can take
that, that that, if that is too risky,
then we aren't in relationship with God if we can't be our
full selves. So that's what I hope someone takes
away even if how I rage pray is completely
distasteful to them, that they explore what
that could mean for themselves because I do think it brings us closer
to the divine or the holy or whatever that language is
that we have for it, and can
allow a tool that has felt
very much in a box before, that I think can be much more
expansive and for many more people than just,
people who call themselves Christians. I wanna talk a little bit
more about, your TikTok experience
because a local pastor oftentimes
is, seen stereotypically as,
like, the embodiment of their their local congregation. And so
when a pastor then steps into a social
media space where it's, a call to
be or a challenge to be very authentic, and
personal Mhmm. Then there can create a little bit of
dissonance between like that representative of the institution
and the person who is the pastor who is online.
Has your your TikTok presence had any
kind of, effect on your
your local congregation ministry? Yes. Certainly. It
has opened up a lot of conversations and, you know,
not everyone gets it. I stumbled into
TikTok accidentally through the pandemic. And so this was a
piece of, my experience was being
at home, ending up going viral on TikTok, and
having that be an outlet. I,
more recently have started at a new congregation, and I
would say that having been more established in this practice
now, it's much easier to teach a congregation
about what that is and what to expect and, that
I've really embraced this as part of my ministry and part of my passion.
I will say for all of folks, potential hesitation,
we've also seen people walk in the door who've said, hey. I saw your priest
on TikTok, and so I came.
I'm always I say always. I
care about having space to show up on social media as
myself and not as the rector or representative of
the congregation. So my TikTok is not at
congregation's name. It's at the rev riley. Mhmm.
And I don't speak for my congregation. I didn't do many
videos of my congregation because I wanted
that freedom, and I needed that freedom. And I advocate for
that, and I think there are spaces for churches to show up as their church
brand. So I also helped do,
TikTok for the Episcopal Church, and I get to show up under that
brand. There's some videos that just won't work that way,
so there needs to be space for both.
Clergy have, you know, been wrestling with this for a while. I
mean, for 10 years plus, we have been on Facebook and
whatnot, and you'll often see clergy with a little tagline that says all
posts and opinions are my own and not a representation of my congregation.
So I think having that expanded to,
the various ways we show up online, certainly, I can't
completely disassociate from any title I wear in the world,
but giving us some flexibility to show up in a few different ways,
is something we can learn, and I think I'm working with
my congregation to learn how to do that. What's next for you?
Being very excited about this book coming out and just having it,
enter the world. I am
doing more social media consulting and really trying to
help other folks, find their joy in
their digital evangelism. I am passionate about the fact that I
think most of our spiritual institutions have some good news,
or ragey news to share online and that we have
these unique charisms of our congregations
that are worth sharing.
You know, I would get people on TikTok saying, oh, I
wanna come to your church. Like, what's the link online, which is flattering.
And I said, you know, I'm I'm not the magic unicorn I you
think I am. There's actually lots of Episcopal clergy, frankly,
that look even like me.
So I'm passionate about connecting folks to their local
congregations and also helping our local congregations
share their message more widely so that
folks can realize there are these branches of Christianity that are
not like the dominant loud voices in our media.
And so that's a lot of what's next is helping other people share their
stories, set up TikToks. I
was at general convention this summer, taking videos of
bishops, getting them to do blessings, and, helping
share just some authentic, easy good news. And
it was amazing to see the response to that. So hopefully, a lot
more of that sort of work. Well, it's at the rev riley on
TikTok. Any other convenient spot for people to and and on
Instagram? Okay. Cool. Any other convenient spots to come and check out
your work? My websites, the
revreilly.com and rage prayers will
be wherever you buy books. I really hope you all will find your local
bookstore and go support them. They're amazing. They can pre order anything
you need. So I'm excited to see that hit the shelves.
Awesome. That's October 9th. Right? October 8th. 8th.
Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Getting it out there.
Thank you so much. This has been really wonderful to talk to you about rage
prayers and what I'm doing. Hey. Thanks again for
joining us on Compass. A couple other episodes to explore
include episode 137, crafting a clarity of
belief with Bruce Reyes Chow, and episode 141,
community comedy and church renovation. It dives deep
into the idea of rethinking how we go about
church. Compass is a production of United Methodist Communications.
More episodes and show notes are available at umc.org/compass.
New episodes come out every other Wednesday. So we'll talk again in
2 weeks time. Peace.