As we rounded the corner, I saw the hearse. It was parked in front of the doors of First-Centenary United Methodist Church in Chattanooga, Tennessee and the finality took my breath away. This past Saturday, we shared in Rachel Held Evans’ funeral. I drove up from Atlanta with my dear friend Tina Francis-Mutungu and the miles […]
The Year of My Undoing
by on April 25, 2019 Leave a Comment
There was a woman I held dear. She was not my mother but she loved me as her own. I picked flowers in her yard and swung in her hammock and watched her make art. I watched her in the year of her undoing. I quietly observed the way her mind puzzled, distorted, melted even. […]
Things I Have Observed in Silence
by on January 24, 2019 Leave a Comment
I am six years old. The bathtub is full of mediocre bubbles. I am on my back and my hair is floating around my head like so much kelp in the water. The ceiling straight above me has an aging water stain from the ice storm the year before. I stay there until the water […]
Let All Mortal Flesh
by on January 17, 2019 Leave a Comment
Sometimes, the best thing to do is to shut the heck up. And too often, that is really hard to do! We get used to the constant buzz of the sound of life lived in the 21stcentury. We’ve got radios in our homes and cars—and sometimes, stuck inside our ears. There are telephones in our pockets […]
Our Confidence is in the Shalom-Maker
by on January 14, 2019 1 Comment
God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. In the early days of the New Year I stumbled upon Psalm 46. I was thinking about how God disarms our violence, and I landed on this psalm on this January morning. But here the song—for it is a song that celebrates the […]
