I turned forty-eight a few weeks ago, and in a birthday moment gifted to me by my wise-cracking daughter, I realized—you’re right, I am likely more than half-dead. Oddly, that awareness has been a gift.
For most of my life, I’ve chased the next day, imagining some future “when-I-grow-up” moment when life would finally settle into its intended meaning. But somewhere along the way, the future became the present, and I now find myself with more life experience than life expectancy.
And it’s freeing. To acknowledge that my time is limited is not only to face the future but to recognize the responsibility that comes with the life one has already lived and been given. My life-guiding questions have now become: What will I do with the experiences that have shaped me? What will I make with the stories I’ve inherited?
One of those inherited stories is the faith tradition that raised me. I grew up in a conservative stream of American Christianity, a sect referred to as the holiness movement. It was a tradition that emphasized personal conversion, moral purity, and a “holiness of heart and life.” Planted early in my young imagination was the thought of sinners in need of salvation, the urgency of public revival, and the eternal consequences of one’s life under the judgment of God.
As I was growing up, the Church and its message were assumed essential and central. Within that world, I sensed a calling. By my twenties, that call led me into pastoral ministry. I preached, pastored, and genuinely believed the local church was the hope of the world.
In my thirties, I began to notice the cracks—not in the foundation of faith itself, but in what had been built upon it. I saw how the church could cultivate fear and call it faith, promote moral disgust disguised as holiness, and demand forgiveness to protect abuse while silencing the harmed.
Looking back now, I realize my inherited tradition ought to wear a warning label. What once promised life too often produced control. What was meant to form character sometimes only managed to preserve conformity. And with the clarity that comes from being half-dead, I can now name what I couldn’t before: much of what I inherited has become less like a living vine and more like an artificial trellis—built to keep its shape rather than to bear new fruit. What once required us to surrender all has been rewritten as a way to keep what we have.
What I’ve experienced isn’t an isolated failing or a few bad branches—it’s symptomatic of something deeper in the soil. To say it plainly: the fruit of the church-at-large is often unrecognizable when compared to the pattern, life, and teachings of Jesus.
The conservative church, in particular, has become so deeply entangled with nationalism that the pulpits of my youth now sound more like empire propaganda than gospel announcement. The theological imagination once formed by the Sermon on the Mount now bends toward winning, defending, excluding, and preserving. The cross—once a symbol that exposed the ways of power and privilege—now flanks the flags of power on the very platforms that bless them. What was once rooted in Sabbath rest and shared bread now performs as a marketplace of branded experiences. And those who once called me to faithfulness seem unable to discern the captivity of their own faith and the wandering of their own allegiance.
The result across much of the church is a spirituality of scarcity and exhaustion: anxious, defensive, and transactional. The very institutions that once gave my life structure—I can no longer trust with honest integrity. Of course, this is not everywhere and everyone, but it’s widespread enough that the faithful exceptions have become exactly that—exceptions.
And yet, I cannot simply walk away. For this is part of my story, written into my very being. I hold some measure of responsibility for it—and within it. These are my people, even if I can barely recognize them. This is my tradition, even when it has lost its way. While I no longer stand comfortably inside the institutions of Christianity, I have not abandoned them either. I find myself living somewhere in between—at the edge, in the margin.
And living in the margin, I’ve discovered, is not a place of exile. It is sacred soil—where decay and renewal mingle, where the dirt reveals inherent dignity, where humus gives rise to humility, where something new can patiently grow.
From the margin, I can still see both the beauty that remains and the illusions that persist. Perhaps it’s a bit like loving a friend caught up in a pyramid scheme—you care deeply but can no longer trust the relationship is fully genuine. You long for real connection with the person beneath the façade. You hope they’ll wake up before they’ve lost everything, including themselves.
And I confess, to stand in the margin at first felt like failure. “I no longer fit in,” I told myself. “What and who am I now?” But then I began to see a different story taking shape.
Richard Rohr calls it “the edge of the inside”—the place of deepest faith and freest grounding. It’s the vantage point that holds both gratitude for the institution and freedom from its illusions. What appears peripheral and “edgy” may, in fact, be the very place where real transformation takes root—where we can see with clearer eyes precisely because we’re no longer blinded by the spotlights or paid by the offering plates.
Walter Brueggemann imagines it as prophetic space: the margin is where the poet-prophets dwell, challenging the royal consciousness and envisioning another way. For when the center becomes an axis of power and performance, the margin becomes the necessary soil for new imagination—or perhaps for the recovery of old imagination, the kind that animated those first communities who gathered in homes and catacombs, who shared all things in common, who were known by their poverty of spirit and solidarity with the poor.
So…I’ve come to this place with peace: to live in the margin is not to give up on the church or the faith; it is a place for honest and holy living.
So what now? I no longer seek a new blueprint for church, a model to scale, or a program to develop. Those impulses feel more like residue from the system I left—the need to prove faithfulness through measurable results.
I’m learning instead to settle into the margin—to trust that the scaffolding doesn’t have to look like it once did. That companions matter more than rigid institutions. That practices matter more than programs. That presence matters more than performance.
In my work as a spiritual director, I see glimmers of it already: small, intentional moments…not for performance but of deep presence and dialogue. People who show up with one another even when it feels unproductive—who sit with lament without rushing to resolve it, who break bread with joy, and who speak honestly about where love has met them, and where it hasn’t.
So, with my remaining half-life—those years my daughter reminded me that I hopefully have left—I’m learning to ask: What are my tasks while living in the margin?
The answer is simpler, and much harder, than I expected. It’s something like this:
I’m offering presence and building companionship—developing a willingness to stay in the tension, to hold both grief and hope, to honor what was while remaining open to what might be. The reality is this: I need a host of reliable companions who can offer a sense of coherence in our fragmented age. And I also hope I can be such a companion for others.
I’m asking reflective questions that don’t demand immediate answers. I’m listening for how and where the Spirit may guide. I’m making space for silence that doesn’t need to be filled. I’m holding space where people can arrive honestly, without pretense or performance.
I’m speaking with courage about the story of God that is larger than any one container, more generous than any gatekeeper, and more given to humility than hierarchy.
And I pray—not with words of wanting or wishing, but with a stillness and silence that says everything I know how to say.
And tomorrow? I’ll continue to tend the soil in the margin, to connect with companions walking a similar path. I’ll show up to tend what’s mutually offered—to practice presence, hospitality, and honest conversation.
That seems like faithful work for whatever time I have left!
Shane Ash 