Well, it’s been a hot minute, but I have a rather good excuse: my second book is now out and available for purchase! Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation is a love letter to one of the most formative, life-giving spaces for me. But, as you may have guessed from the subtitle, there’s also a fair amount of critique found within this love letter. Organized by the seven main talks I gave as a... Read more
I have not known true thirst – not to the point of death or to believing death inevitable if I do not get drink I so eagerly, desperately crave. It makes me wonder: Did Jesus know such thirst before this moment on the cross? Did he realize his humanity would become so obviously apparent in this singular moment, put on display for all to see based on the singular human need to drink? Today we have walked through the Seven... Read more
The following book recently arrived in the mail: Author Liz Cooledge Jenkins is a writer, preacher, and former college campus minister — but what makes her story interesting is that she spent much of her young adult years in conservative, patriarchal spaces. Hence the title, Nice Churchy Patriarchy. She writes the following in the introduction: Over the many years of deep involvement in evangelical communities, I found myself gradually and painfully becoming aware that patriarchy — that is, all the ways... Read more
It’s story time, kids! Several years ago, my brother spit into a bottle and sent away for a DNA test kit. Like many of us, he was curious about his own origin story — including the origins of my mom’s side of the family. My siblings and I share the same biological origins, you see. My mom is his mom, his dad is my dad, and so the story goes. Beyond these facts, however, we’ve long known my father’s side... Read more
There’s a tradition, or I suppose I should call it a rule in my family: You have to say I love you at school drop-off. Or else. It goes something like this: my boys, ages ten and twelve, and I will be driving to school. Sometimes we’re listening and singing along to music; sometimes we’re talking about homework. Sometimes we’re asking questions about the days and weeks ahead; sometimes we’re trying out jokes; sometimes we’re just not getting along. But... Read more
I recently won the following book from Englewood Review of Books: Englewood, if you don’t know, is one of my favorite places to go for book reviews. (It’s also a place I regularly write for, such as this early fall review for Sarah McCammon’s The Exvangelicals). Nouwen’s book, Following Jesus, is short, and as per his usual, a gift. Although I’d not read any of his writings in years, returning to his thoughts felt like sitting down to coffee with an old... Read more
I found the following book in my neighborhood’s free little library a couple of months ago: Even though I typically read fiction books on Kindle and Audible (a habit I am desperately trying to curb, so as not to support Mr. Bezos anymore), paperbacks are not out of the question. That being said, Women Talking caught my eye. What’s not to love about eight Mennonite women who secretly gather in a hayloft every evening to decide whether or not they... Read more
On Tuesday night, I took up one end of the couch, while my younger son took up the other end. The dog lay somewhere in between. Each of us covered under our own pile of blankets, he stared at his book while I stared at mine. “Mama,” he suddenly said, looking up. “Why am I so tired?” I nodded my head: I too was tired, exhausted by the news and by the events of the previous twenty-four hours, exhausted by... Read more
I finally read a book that had been sitting on my shelf for a while: To be honest, it wasn’t my favorite Buechner book. Telling Secrets, I loved; Listening to Your Life, I ate up at various times of indecision. But Whistling in the Dark felt antiquated and lazy, like a primer the publisher believed a good idea to publish simply because they knew it would sell (simply because his name graced the cover). The concept was simple: create a... Read more
A friend recently passed along the following book: I think you’ll like it, she said, and mostly, I did. Composing a Life tells the stories of five different women, but even more, it tells a story of life and of how all the different facets of who we are often act a work in progress. As the back cover reads, the author’s “life-affirming conclusion is that life is an improvisational art form, and that the interruptions, conflicted priorities, and exigencies that... Read more
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