Wednesday, September 12, 2018 | Reflections
I grew up on the outskirts of coal country, where mining is more than a job—it also brings a sense of self to those who work the mines. Coal has fallen out of favor in search of cleaner energy—the job losses are as violent an extraction as the mining process itself—...
Tuesday, September 11, 2018 | Reflections
In this brief snippet from John’s Gospel, we remember that Jesus’ life was constantly under threat during his ministry. It is all too easy to read these short anecdotes at arms’ length. In this passage, we see Jesus returning to his hometown and nearly being run off a...
Monday, September 10, 2018 | Reflections
The Age of Enlightenment didn’t do us any favors in terms of learning how to trust human intuition. Hundreds of years later, I still feel programmed to rely on measurable outcomes that claim to be without bias. I thank God for people who have helped me unlearn that...
Sunday, September 9, 2018 | Reflections
I work with a lot of young transgender people. Of the countless struggles in the lives of these kids, one of the most common is with their own names. Several of them refer to their birth names as “dead names.” They share some deeply theological understandings about...
Saturday, September 8, 2018 | Reflections
I first encountered visual artist Brandan Odums when I saw his mural of a young black woman wearing a shirt that proclaimed, “I am my ancestors’ wildest dreams.” Lately, I’ve been compelled by women and men who are writing about the ways in which white supremacy cuts...
Friday, September 7, 2018 | Reflections
There’s an exercise I’ve done in therapy a few times when I am in a fraught relationship or feeling stuck or in a time of immense stress. I imagine that I make the decision to walk away from my life and move to a beach somewhere and start completely fresh, washing the...
Thursday, September 6, 2018 | Reflections
Earlier this year, I spent time at Standing Rock, living together with other people as an embodied witness against the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The pipeline runs through sacred tribal land and under the drinking water of millions of people. What an...
Wednesday, September 5, 2018 | Reflections
When I was in middle school, my friend’s grandmother took a hiatus from attending worship because her Episcopal church had stopped saying the confession before Holy Eucharist. “If I can’t confess my sins before I eat the Lord’s Supper, I may as well not take...
Tuesday, September 4, 2018 | Reflections
“If you give someone a fish, they’ll eat for a day. If you teach them to fish, they’ll eat for a while longer. If you organize against the privatized water system and get fishing rights for all, maybe everyone will have food.” That’s a rough translation of a quotation...
Monday, September 3, 2018 | Reflections
I studied liberation theology and African-American history in college. I learned about the pitfalls of global capitalism and the preferential option for the poor. And I immersed myself in the stories of political revolution, nonviolent resistance, and the radical...
Sunday, September 2, 2018 | Reflections
The stories of the Old Testament live warmly in my childhood memory alongside Mother Goose and Winnie the Pooh. It has been a thrilling process to undertake an adulthood journey of bringing these stories into a startling, clear, modern light. Throughout the Old...
Saturday, September 1, 2018 | Reflections
I am writing this reflection eleven days after I was on the streets in Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting a white supremacist rally. The streets were desecrated by the presence of evil made manifest. No amount of spiritual preparation could have readied me to walk...
Friday, August 31, 2018 | Reflections
Sigmund Freud believed that human beings will go to great lengths to deny unpleasant truths about themselves. The method he developed to treat mental illness helped his patients face these truths. By doing so, they were often able to eliminate the symptoms.Based on...
Thursday, August 30, 2018 | Reflections
Many years ago, I attended training for a special trauma therapy developed by groundbreaking psychologist Francine Shapiro. The training included a relaxation exercise called the Safe Place.The person facilitating the Safe Place exercise asks the client to imagine the...
Wednesday, August 29, 2018 | Reflections
When I was a young boy, I imagined God as an omnipotent version of my parents, watching me every hour of the day. Every sin, even the smallest misstep, was seen from on high and recorded in the great book of my blunders.I now understand this was a distorted and wonky...
