Sunday, September 9, 2018
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
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
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
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
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
“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
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
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
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...
