Welcome to Thankful Tuesday on a Thursday. I hope that’s not terribly confusing. I spent the weekend at my college’s Homecoming for my ten-year reunion. Now, let me explain something to you. I did not go to a school known for its academic rigor, though I learned plenty. I didn’t go to a school that anyone has ever heard of, even in Texas, and especially not in the parts of the country I’ve been living in for the past decade.... Read more
Welcome to Mama:Monk’s weekly Wednesday series examining St. Benedict’s Rule and what it has meant to me as a stay at home mom. (Full disclosure! I’m no expert on Benedict or the Benedictine Order. I just love him/them and can’t seem to stop reading books that have “Benedictine” in the title.) “In the guidance we lay down to achieve this we hope to impose nothing harsh or burdensome. If however, you find in it anything which seems rather strict, but which is... Read more
We interrupt our regularly scheduled Thankful Tuesday to bring you my most recent guest post at Her.meneutics (the women’s blog for Christianity Today.) I am a product of the Second Wave Feminism of the 60s. By the time I was a child in the 80s, movies were full of women in shoulder-padded jackets at their corporate desks. The working mom was alive and figuring out her place in our culture. And my grandpa was picking me up after school and watching me... Read more
You’re up at 5 am. They call this “sleeping through the night.” I groan and meet you in our secret place: dark room, soft carpet, a rocking chair in the corner. The glow of nightlight feels sacred when I’m here, like I’ve been roused from my sleep for some holy appearing, a light leaking, heaven-glow. I’m barefoot. My t-shirt says: “Brooks was here” across my chest. It’s a quote from a movie but it’s also your name. And you’ve definitely... Read more
If you haven’t yet read Monday’s op-ed piece in The New York Times, now is your chance. Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens, both professors at Easter Nazarene College, write with conviction, honesty and fairness toward the anti-intellectualism of the greater Evangelical conversation in our culture. This article was written on behalf of all of us in the Evangelical sub-culture who are frustrated with “fundamentalism [that] is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary,” those of us who, in the words of Giberson and... Read more
“My words are addressed to you especially, whoever you may be, whatever your circumstances, who turn from the pursuit of your own self-will and ask to enlist under Christ…” (From the Prologue, the Rule of St. Benedict) Beginning today, we’re starting a new Wednesday series about what I’ve been learning over the past two years as I’ve studied the Rule of St. Benedict. (Full disclosure! I’m no expert on Benedict or the Benedictine Order. I just love him/them and can’t... Read more
My baby learning how to sign “milk” (his arm goes straight up in the air and then he squeezes his hand open and shut…it’s the cutest thing ever) just in time for his 7-month birthday! His “milk milk milk milk” was clear as day and was accompanied by staring anxiously at me as Chris held him. I was in shock. His first word! My husband and son carving a pumpkin on the back deck, talking about volcanoes and imaginary friends... Read more
I’ve been far away for a long time. I used to think of Distance as being the space from here to home. But then “home” changed. It became separate places, so far from one another that my finite body could never be fully home. I was always absent from somewhere. Even when I was with my family in Amarillo, I was far from Chris’ family in Philadelphia and Connecticut. I was far from our community of friends in Syracuse and... Read more
“It is attention and awareness, in other words, that the Rule of Benedict brings to spirituality. Indeed, the very reason the rule of Benedict is not a rule in the strictest sense of the word is precisely because immersion in life is exactly the point of Benedictine monasticism. Benedictism is not a prescription frozen in time; it is time brought under the scrutiny of gospel values. the Benedictine does not set out to avoid life; the Benedictine sets out to... Read more
When Ryan followed the pastor to stand before the rows of white chairs, facing the friends who’d flown in from New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore, he caught some eyes and smiled. We smiled back. My husband and one of the bridesmaids were the first to walk down the aisle together. Chris took his place on the steps, overlooking our faces, his eyes on Ryan’s back. He couldn’t see what we could see. With each set of Ryan’s and Dana’s... Read more
Micha Boyett
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