We've had a lot of hours in the car lately, and downtime in hotel rooms. Road-tripping between Texas and Michigan has meant plenty of time to catch up, to reflect on life. My kid was just at church camp, the one I grew up going to, where so much of my early Christian formation happened [...]
Tag: Christianity
Road-trip Calamities: A History
Here, for your amusement: a brief history of my calamities. I write to you now from a small-town midwestern Econo Lodge, perhaps the most American of places to be on a patriotic holiday weekend. The sum total of what I know about this town so far is this: car repair places are currently closed till [...]
Pride and hope
We were pressed in tight together in the warm wind and light sporadic rain, rows of sweaty people with no personal space, the occasional brush of skin or the feel of breath as we reached our hands high, grooving to the music and hollering or whistling as the rainbow colored floats passed in the parade, [...]
Mercy for the pain
Sometimes we talk as if changing our views, coming to new understandings, is a cognitive exercise, a battle of aligning our mind with the work of justice. We didn't know things, and now we know things - knowledge at the center. But deconstruction is the stuff of guts. Not like "having the guts to [...]
What I used to think
Last week, he sat quietly in our waiting room, tears silently slipping out of his gentled eyes and down his weathered cheeks. He sat, hands folded and eyes lifted up, his mind deep in memory, or prayer. I wasn't certain which. When the vet came out to talk about the details of a very routine [...]
Good, good man
He was the first one on Beulah or anywhere in this neighborhood I ever talked to. I came here white-fearful. But I came with a poker face, trying to be far more woke than I felt on the inside, trying to get my body to match what I considered to be my educated deconstructing mind. [...]
What is this place?
They say that you can never go back home. I used to think this was a certain cruelty, as if leaving somehow was always a betrayal, one that got you banned or held at arm's length or just not privy to the important things, the inside things that matter most. To be away with your [...]
Remember that you are love
Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. I look up from my place leading worship to see my kid the moment after the ashy cross is smudged across his forehead. He is teenage-swaggery, a slight smile as he moves toward the table for bread and cup, so very alive, his youth making [...]
Christ in the wool shop
Tuesday morning, I woke up to oppressive drizzle, both within and without. I got the preliminary UMC news Monday evening. Most of those around me say they inwardly knew that the United Methodist special conference on LGBTQ+ inclusion would end in a reaffirmation of the so-called traditionalist plan, but now with penalties for ordination boards [...]
On having shame and being shameless
"I'm ready to be shameless about..." I sat in the dark balcony of the church last week, listening to Nadia Bolz-Weber speak about sexuality and turning the card with those words over in my hand. Just like there are "humble-brags," I wonder if there are "honorable-shames" - the things it's sexy to feel shame about [...]
