For those who prefer a straight theological bent or a social justice commentary, this will be neither. For those who eschew the woo-woo in life, the inexpiable spiritual stuff, the “weird feeling” kind of days, this post will not be your thing. But this is what happened to me. This is what I remember, and it’s what I’ve always remembered. This is about the day I met Jesus.     I was three, maybe four. It was a sunshiny day... Read more

Church started making me nervous when I was about five.     It was around that time that my mom had some sort of spiritual awakening. I don’t think I ever knew the details of her story — what got her reading the Bible, praying, believing in this crazy idea that God got wrapped up like a hard candy in a human body and started walking around down here on earth.   All I remember is watching her, with her... Read more

As you know, right now I’m going through a thing. It’s an annoying and painful thing. It’s a thing where I can’t bring myself to go to church even though I’m still mad in love with Jesus. Between that and listening to massive amounts of Krista Tippet and On Being, I started thinking about what, exactly, it is I have against church, and the question Krista always starts off her interviews with on that podcast: what was your early spiritual formation like?... Read more

So much has already been said about the Christianity Today article which bemoaned the rise of the female Christian blogger.  To be fair, this isn’t the first time CT has written about bloggers and authority — it did so back in 2012, for example, with this piece.  But the most recent article called it a “crisis of authority, especially for women.” I believe there is a crisis in the church, but I don’t think it’s a crisis of authority. I think... Read more

It’s a question, isn’t it? A tough one at that.   Can you love me anyway?   The other day, I asked that question of a guest on the Jerseygirl, JESUS Facebook page. She had dropped a drive-by comment on a blog post I’d shared, the intent of which was to make it clear that she did not like the post. It was good up to a point, she said, until I let my “progressive liberalism taint it”.   I... Read more

The very first act of God was an apartheid of self — a separation as the rumblings of creation started and an idea, once within God, was suddenly outside of God.   At its deepest core, the Bible is a story of separation — the chasm between God and self, God and us, us and us. It is a story of the pain of this segregation, and how it plays out in our social constructs from the beginning of time,... Read more

Friends, we are half-way through the Whole Woman Summit and it’s been absolutely amazing. The speakers have brought such incredible content, I’m actually blown away.   But today, Tess Clarke, a co-founder of Seek The Peace and the director of Women’s Empowerment, gave such a moving talk on the refugee crisis — with good, hard data and facts that will shock you — that before she was even done talking, Lisa and I decided we needed to release this video publicly... Read more

**Trigger warning: sexual violence**   In between book edits, caring for elderly parents, and the online summit I’m hosting this week, between doses of pseudoephedrine for the sinus infection I have, I grabbed glimpses of Glennon Doyle-Melton’s book, Love Warrior, and something that has been swirling in my head and my heart of late settled on the horizon of my mind, came into focus like when you wipe dew off a window.   That doesn’t make it easy to explain, though... Read more