MSI Press Blog

  Elizabeth Mahlou’s Blest Atheist unsettles some readers because it refuses to obey the moral binaries that secular storytelling depends on. She recounts childhood experiences that today would trigger immediate CPS removal: physical abuse, emotional cruelty, and sexual violation ignored by the adults who should have protected her. She describes her own resistance — embarrassing her parents publicly, striking back physically, refusing to be cowed. That fierce ego likely saved her life. And then, later in the memoir, after her conversion, she writes a chapter in which she sees her parents not as monsters but as overwhelmed, under-resourced, emotionally limited people raising eight children in poverty. She does not excuse them. She does not soften the truth. But she sees them through a different lens. She names their fear, their incapacity, their brokenness. In essence, she forgives them — though she never uses the word. For many religious readers — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — thi...

  We live in a world that prizes immediacy, clarity, and control. Yet life—especially in its most tender, chaotic, or mysterious moments—rarely offers any of these. What if the very complexity we resist is the doorway to deeper peace? Theological concepts like kenosis (self-emptying), the hypostatic union (divine and human natures in Christ), or the communion of saints aren’t just abstract doctrines for scholars. They are lenses—radical, reframing lenses—that can shift how we see illness, injustice, aging, and even our own limitations. 🌿 Kenosis: The Power of Letting Go In Philippians 2, Christ “emptied himself,” taking the form of a servant. This isn’t weakness—it’s divine strength expressed through vulnerability. When we face burnout, caregiving fatigue, or the loss of control in aging bodies, kenosis invites us to reframe surrender not as defeat, but as sacred participation. We become vessels, not victims. 🔥 The Trinity: Relationship as Reality The Trinity isn’t a puzzle...

    Excerpt from  A Believer-in-Waiting  by Elizabeth Mahlou.  A Simple Grace It all began with prayer, but which prayer began it all I do not know. It may have been the grace I was coerced into saying five years ago. Or, it may have been the prayer of my sister Danielle five decades earlier. I used to think it was the former. Now, in reviewing the whole expanse of my life, I rather think it may have been the latter.   Danielle’s Prayer The “8-pack,” a moniker given to my seven younger siblings and me by my brother Rollie, suffered immense abuse during our childhood. My sister Katrina, in fact, never planned on growing up, certain that she would be killed by Ma before achieving adulthood. However amazing, we all did survive the extensive physical abuse (e.g., being stabbed, thrown into walls, kicked into unconsciousness, pulled down flights of stairs by the hair, and much more), emotional abuse (e.g., being negatively compared with each other, denigrated at...