How We failed at Successful Church Planting I sat with middle aged white men in a room decorated by someone infatuated with browns and oranges. The paintings seemed vaguely reminiscent of French vineyards and Italian streets, yet I was closer to crop dust, cotton and Crepe Myrtles in Macon, Georgia. The inquiry began after a couple of jokes and a word of prayer. I crafted my vision of the Church of The Misfits, sharing with conviction about contextualizing Christ to … [Read more...]
Eye Gazing in Prison on Holy Saturday
April 5, 2015 by Leave a Comment
I spent Holy Saturday at the Philadelphia FDC 3South floor with 12 incarcerated women attending a 2-day Heart to Heart retreat. I was there to share the gift of yoga and meditation. The women really appreciate our visits and openly express their desire to learn.Our last exercise was an eye-gazing and I was partnered with Smoke, an African American woman of about 35. Smoke smiled a lot and agreed that she was willing to try it but admitted it made her nervous to stare into a stranger’s eyes f … [Read more...]
(De)Constructing Hell [The End of Metaphysics Series]
February 10, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Žižek, “See you in hell or in communism!” According to Carl Gustav Jung, hell represents, among every culture, the disturbing aspect of the collective unconscious. Imagine if there was a place where all the evil people would go to get what they deserved? Imagine this place was filled with pain, torture, hatred and all the things these evil people stood for and imposed on the world. Imagine that there was this leader who embodied all of the things we hate … [Read more...]
Once You are Real, You can’t be UGLY
January 27, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of … [Read more...]
An Emergent Episcopalian Shares Some Thoughts about the Church
November 16, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Many of us in the emergent conversation have left institutional Christianity. We do not trust institutions and are suspicious of hierarchies. Our personal histories and experiences of Christianity are filled with the frustration caused by the disconnect between the truth claims of our religious Christian institutions and their actual lived existence. We have seen how much energy and money is spent in the maintenance of our institutions, instead of the mission of Jesus. Some of us have been … [Read more...]
Did Jesus Struggle With Racism?
November 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment
For centuries now, the divinity of Jesus Christ has been under fire. Whether this man from Nazareth was actually God, or was it all just a literary plot to perpetuate one of the largest world religions today, these are the questions that are currently being asked across many platforms today. Honestly, I think it's the wrong issue to be focused on. Whether Jesus was divine or not, or fully-divine, or fully-human, or whether you can have coffee without caffeine or not, these questions, at the e … [Read more...]
Perfect Love casts out all Fear. Even Media induced Fear.
September 11, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Growing up in the Epicenter of all known culture in Georgia,West Georgia,Douglasville to be exact- I learned a lot about the world. I learned a lot about taxidermy, camouflage, and the King James Version of the Bible. My mama told me that Jesus loved the little children, red and yellow black and white. We sang the song in my small Sunday school classroom. Although, racial slurs came from every direction outside of the church. It seemed that the baptiscostal hills of the Piedmont had not … [Read more...]
Why is Fundamentalism So Attractive?
September 9, 2014 by Leave a Comment
The fashionable place of fundamentalism in history has found a place in the here and now. Why do we all find our knees eventually bending in the pantheon of fundamentalism? The pantheon refers to all kinds of different types of fundamentalism which we are going to dissect in this article. But, why is fundamentalism so attractive? Why are we, who are part of the human project (we're not human yet) so enthralled by fundamentalism? What intrigues us? The sense of a safety that a system inhabits? … [Read more...]
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