I smashed the back bumper of my nephew’s brand new Explorer today. It was…as you can imagine…a total accident. When we pulled over to get out of our cars, look at damage, and talk, Zachary was…Zachary. He was kind, extended grace, and was warm. He hugged me and did not do anything at all to […]
Like all parents, mine told conditional stories like… …You can date when you are 16. …When you are older, you can wear makeup. …You can buy that when you save enough money. But one of the ones that stuck with me was… …Big girls shouldn’t wear white jeans. So I never ever did. I have […]
I’m not a risk taker. I am instead a planner. I like order. Structure. I am not a big fan of ambiguity or uncertainty. I won’t blame everything on my childhood but let’s face it…kids who grow up in chaos tend to either gravitate to crazy amounts of chaos or rigid structure. And I have […]
Freedom… The theme is Freedom. As in “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free…” (Galatians 5:1) Two lessons…one day…on freedom…that I have to prepare and deliver to a group of women, hungry to hear something fresh and new in their lives on one of the few weekends a year they get away […]
If asked about the journey so far, yesterday I might have said it has been solitary. Being the youngest of 5 children who somehow managed to be an “only child” for a good portion of her upbringing (because of age differences), left me a child in the midst of adults. Learning too much while too […]
It’s complicated. Is that true for everyone? Does everyone have a complicated, difficult, delightful, hard, confusing relationship with their mother? No? Just me? I don’t believe you. I think mothers and mothering and daughters and daughtering is tough all around. Maybe tougher for some than others. But definitely complicated and definitely not simple. For instance… […]
But sometimes it seems easier to move a mountain, shoveling it with spoons, than to shift the sorrow or sickness from a human heart and life. –NT Wright in Lent from Everyone I have a house full of boxes that need unpacking…and while it looks overwhelming, I believe it can be done. I have a […]
I’m entertaining old demons today. They’ve come to visit and I can’t manage to send them away. When they visit they always stir up old shit based on some new hurt. A rejection A slight A fear A rough word A meanness A harsh touch And here they come to ask the old questions and […]
He put another parable to them. ‘The kingdom of heaven,’ he said, ‘is like a grain of mustard seed, which someone took and sowed in a field. It’s the smallest of all the seeds, but when it grows it turns into the biggest of the shrubs. It becomes a tree, and the birds in the […]
nihilism (noun) The rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. Synonyms: Skepticism, negativity, cynicism, pessimism Last night as Dr. Cornell West shared the story of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and why his life is relevant to us today he said “Heschel believe that the major ecumenical movement […]