In his recent book, Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, David Whyte holds ordinary words up like prisms before the light of human life, turning them in such a way that both the words and life shimmer with unexpected meaning. When I looked at Whyte’s list of fifty-two words and tried to decide where to […]
Hearing Words of Wisdom, Let It Be
I spend a lot of time talking to my life. I keep telling it what it should produce for me, like joy or peace or some other thing that I desperately seek. I talk and talk and talk. “Let’s experience ‘this’ today,” I tell my life. And then I set out to create that which […]
As If She Even Needed to Ask…
I’m not sure how many Sundays went by before I first noticed that the main entryway has become my mother’s self-assigned station at the church on Sunday mornings. It is the ordinary place she makes holy by sharing the gifts she offers: an open door, an engaging smile, and a warm welcome. When I finally noticed that this […]
The “Big Dang” Theory
Last week, as I was swimming with a couple of my children while on vacation, a little boy near me in the pool realized that I was a perfect audience for him. He was clearly a good swimmer, and he wanted to show me every conceivable flip and spin and splash that he had mastered at his young age. […]
No More Sanitized Hope
Like so many others, I have spent this day trying to make sense of the incomprehensible evil that is playing out in Charleston, SC. It has been a day of memory and confession. Today I remember a class I took in seminary called Resurgent Racism: A Challenge to the Church. Even though the class was designed to […]
Yet Another Open Letter to Rachel Held Evans
Dear Rachel, Though I couldn’t help but notice that I wasn’t mentioned in your recent tweet about it, I also participated in your workshop last week at Princeton Seminary that Barbara Brown Taylor crashed. The topic was fun and engaging. (Seriously, learning to turn hate mail into origami was a blast.) And your energy and enthusiasm filled the room. Ever […]