What are we going to do with Jesus?
A dozen or more years ago I was invited to be on a panel of Baptist leaders in Georgia to forecast the future of our kind of Baptists (the moderate and progressive kind). I was too young and inexperienced to do much forecasting. And I’d been asked mostly out of tokenism. They needed to have at least one woman say something.
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Wide Awake
I am wide awake.
Standing at the top of a six-foot step ladder.
About to fall off.
Backwards.
On purpose.
Gratitude: On this eve of Thanksgiving, what else can one write, but words that offer thanks? So many places to start. But I think I’ll simply name a few small things. Things easy to overlook, but important not to miss. . . like ladybugs
Read MoreFor me this week, which ends the church year, also marks coming around full circle in a year of blogging. I began with Advent last year. So this week I will take time to read through all 93 entries of the past year. Except for a six week sabbath in July and August, I blogged twice weekly. I will be noticing themes, ideas, patterns, and even things that are missing.
Read MoreMy daughter loves to hear our childhood stories. She also likes for us to tell stories from the time after we were married, but before she was born. That’s a barrel full of material. So the other day on the way to school, I told her about climbing up to Spence Field. “We wanted to climb high up the mountain so we could see a long way.” I tell her. I don’t tell her that it was also because we were young and wanted to prove ourselves.
Read MoreThis morning’s run along the Harpeth River brought birds from out of the bushes and trees. As the last leaves skittered up the path before me, the sun was shining, and the wind alternated between a steady breeze and great gusts. Overhead and along beside me crows complained, red-winged blackbirds swirled, a hawk circled two times, doves mourned, and other smaller birds busily prepared for colder days ahead.
Read MoreThis week I sat down with one of my favorite pastoral theologians and got to catch up on what she’s doing with her life energy now and tell her about the work that I’m doing as well. Christie Neuger has written and edited several important books in pastoral care and counseling and also in the broader arena of the practice of ministry.
Read MoreThis post is especially for the many of you who are also writers, or aspiring writers, sermon writers, devotional writers, academic writers, bloggers, and journal-keepers. This week I took steps to solidify one of my most central habits. I have a habit of writing. It has been slow coming.
Read MoreWhen a flood overruns the banks of a river, things are swept into surprising places. In early May of 2010 my neighborhood and all of Nashville saw the most dramatic flood in living memory. The news cameras caught a building floating down the interstate. One child was swept through a culvert only to survive. The rivers roses to inundate homes, schools, businesses, cars, roads and bridges. The death toll was over 30. The financial cost of the destruction was estimated in the billions. Efforts to sort through the damage and rebuild from the destruction continue and will for months and years to come.
Read MoreAll Saints’ Eve . . . I spent the last few days at the American Academy of Religion . . . and came home in time for Halloween Trick-or-Treat. Driving home this afternoon I thought of the many friends old and young who have been lost to me. So many of them will be remembered this year on the first All Saints’ Day following their deaths.
Read MoreMargaret Atwood’s Nashville Debut It was her first time in Nashville. She used to listen to the Grand Ole Opry in the cold winter of northern Canada. When they got short wave radio reception. So because it was her first…
Read MoreYesterday I got lost for an hour taking pictures of acorns and oak leaves. The sun was autumn bright. The sky a brilliant blue. Some leaves were still green. Others were tinged red and yellow. Little stripes on the acorns…
Read MoreThis Sunday some of us will hear from Luke’s gospel of Jesus. It is a parable about praying. It starts like this. . . . Luke 18:9-10: He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray
Read MoreDeeper Into the Shadows. Last post I wrote about some of the complexity of racism and white privilege as seen in American pop culture. If you follow the link to the description of the Rat Pack you will find another element in that complexity: gender.
Read MoreMe and My Shadow: Fans of the Rat Pack and their 1960s version of “Me and My Shadow” still argue about whether the friendship of the Hollywood stars was a resistance to racism or recapitulation of it.
Read MoreWe are coming to the end of the season of the church year we call “Ordinary Time” but tomorrow is no ordinary day. At least not for Mary Beth Dunbar-Duke. She will be ordained tomorrow afternoon in a special service at Providence Baptist Church in Cookeville, Tennessee.
Read MoreTuesday. Two stories on NPR this morning gave me pause: Graphene and At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Rolling around in my head was an essay I had read on Monday evening, which raised the question of whether practical theology might best be thought of as art or science. In The Challenge of Practical Theology, Stephen Pattison argues that “sciencism” has run rough shod over, well, nearly everything. We are so enamoured by science, he says, that we measure most everything else against it.
Read MoreGoing to Seed . . . We made what will likely turn out to be the last big harvest of the season at the garden today. My husband and daughter dug two tubs of peanuts and 10 crates of sweet potatoes. (One sweet potato was as large as my daughter’s head! Most were just average size.) I picked a bag full of okra, reaching over my head to pull plants down and clip the pods.
Read MoreA Walk Down to the Lake
Deadline days
fill my mind with words and work
and give me tunnel vision
So when a small break between projects opens up . . .
When I travel especially on vacation, I find myself drawn often to the pottery of a place. It seems to me to be a melding of a place’s natural resources and it’s local artists in a form of beauty I have a hard time resisting. Maybe I romanticize the authenticity that a bowl or mug can offer, but nonetheless I’m drawn to it. This summer was no exception. On both family vacation trips I found myself buying up small pieces of pottery for gifts and for use in my office and kitchen.
Read MoreOne of the central metaphors for my work and sense of vocation is a bridge. This summer I saw one of the most iconic bridges of the American imagination: Golden Gate in San Francisco, California. Both days we got close to the bridge it was shrouded partially in fog. Not unusual in the Bay area. Not unusual for the work of bridge building and walking.
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