“Happy Birthday to the Church” Sunday is the day of the church year when we celebrate the birthday of the church. Pentecost. I smell the cake that I just took out of the oven. I’m teaching children tomorrow and we’ll…
Read MoreEaster XII
Take and Eat For a second year we are gardening on a grand scale. Well, to be honest, my husband is gardening on a grand scale and I’m supportive and help when I can. He and my daughter and a…
Read MoreEaster VIII
A Brief History of Reading Part I (mine, not everyone else’s) Although it is tempting tonight to try and be clever about today’s failed prediction of the rapture, I’ll resist. Most of my friends on fb – and the rest of…
Read MoreHoly Week III
Keeping Watch in Silence This is the song that has been playing in my mind all day: Thistle and Weeds by Mumford and Sons. It begins in despair. The images of the homegrown video are evocative in their own way,…
Read MoreHoly Week II
Show and Tell For the last six weeks, since Ash Wednesday, I’ve been slowly working out at the far reaches of my own competence, for the sake of learning something new. For the sake of trying a new practice and…
Read MoreAsh Wednesday
Ash Wednesday “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. Awake my soul.” — Mumford and Sons Today is the day. Ash Wednesday. We begin the trek…
Read MoreEpiphany XV
We incorporate (take into the body) all kinds of memories, postures and gestures that do work quite apart from or despite our best thinking or rational attempts to change. Many of the practices (and wisdom) of the body happen at unconscious and preverbal levels. The way we hold ourselves and move through space entails a deep sort of “knowing” that we rarely think about or notice.
Read MoreEpiphany XIII
This week the Gospel reading holds one of the hardest sayings of Jesus. At least for me. Matthew 5:43-44: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This one is hard not so much because I have a lot of clearly defined enemies. Although I suppose I do have a few. And no doubt, I’ve made some.
Read MoreEpiphany XI
Hospitality (Part III) Yesterday I was in a conversation about a stunning new book by Willie Jennings who teaches theology at Duke Divinity School. In 2010, Jennings published The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale). Here is a link…
Read MoreEpiphany VII
And we need healing from so many things in our lives. The very religious traditions that shape us are broken and sometimes do more harm than good. The institutions and the texts themselves stand in need of healing. The light of the Christ candle was taken symbolically to places in the sanctuary where those gathered could receive healing touch or light a candle to honor their own deep need or the needs of others. It is a standing invitation. . .
Read MoreEpiphany IV
Prayer and Anxiety On Sunday morning I will teach six- seven- and eight-year-olds something about prayer. Or they may teach me. Later this week I’ll begin a two week intensive journey of learning together with a group of adults about…
Read MoreAdvent VI
But finding a book in the mail stack or on the front porch is nothing unusual. The surprise in this book today was the author. And the topic. The real surprise is that I had overlooked this book for so long.
It has been 11 years since I first sat down in silence and began the practice of centering prayer. It has been 20 years since I first sat down in a classroom with Dr. Wayne Oates to learn the tasks and the art of pastoral care. It has been more than 30 years since he wrote Nurturing Silence in a Noisy Heart. I was still in middle school.
Read MoreAdvent III
St. John’s Abbey church is an amazing cavern with a multi-story wall of honeycomb shaped windows. Each pane is filled with abstract shapes and color. They grow more beautiful as morning light rises. However, this morning the beauty cannot outweigh the exclusivity and harm of the words and deeds of the tradition itself.
Read MoreAdvent II
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.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXVIII
This 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 MoreOrdinary Time XVIII
Last time I checked in, I was still in a state of dazed confusion. But grateful for the disorientation of not knowing and on my way to part two of the celebration of Eid ul-fitr. My pastors and I had been at a gathering of several thousand Muslims for their prayer service following on the end of Ramadan.
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