Kathryn* would have never been ambushed by Clinton and Stacey for an episode of What Not To Wear. Her always-coordinated outfits always had a bit of a Talbot’s catalog vibe to them; her shoulder-length hair was curled, sprayed and nearly pageant-ready every single day. She had the kind of ultra-femme demeanor – a little girl voice plus a helpless and reverential manner – that brought out unusual levels of latent chivalry in many of the men around her. If the... Read more
A one=page publishing contract for my first play. Play and contract were typed using electric typewriters. Contract is dated October 19, 1983. They bought all rights, and paid me $100 to publish the play. Read more
Creator of all, before the words that transformed work into a a curse, you gave labor to man and woman as a gift full of dignity and meaning. And even after the great rent in the relationship, but immediately before Man and Woman were sent to make their way in the world in pain and sweat, a single sentence tells us that there would be an echo of Eden’s in all the toil that followed: “Adamnamed his wife Eve,because she... Read more
Based on my July 11 post at the Christianity Today her.meneutics blog entitled “Would Jesus Walk Away From A Mortgage?”, you can imagine that this red notice that appeared this morning on my next-door neighbor’s front door did not bring joy to my heart. In case you can’t read it, it is a final notice of eviction. Since I wrote the post, I have spoke with 5 real estate agents (including one of those dudes that has signs reading “We... Read more
The subtitle this 181-page spiritual memoir is “A Moody, Somewhat Self-Indulgent Introvert’s Search for Spiritual Community”, which perhaps may feel as though the book’s cover information gives away the proverbial ranch. But Reluctant Pilgrim (Fresh Air Books, 2010) is far more than the story of a solitude-craving woman’s church search. Author Emuna Okoro tells it like it is – whether the “it” is a confessed fondness for designer purses or the confusing cacophony of emotions that spilled out of her... Read more
One foot in front of the other. Again. The tracks their feet had made during the silent marches of the days before today were beginning to wear a rut in the sun-baked ground surrounding the walled city. Fully-armed men marching, the only sound the heavy cadence of their footfalls. They’d been instructed to carry their weapons, but had been prohibited from using them by their commander-in-chief. I have wondered if any of them were tempted to murmur, to voice their... Read more
“Christianity isn’t a religion. It’s a relationship.” If you’ve spent any time at all in the evangelical world, you’ve probably heard some version of those words. In his book With: Reimagining the way you relate to God (Nelson, 2011) Pastor and author Skye Jethani explains that most of us settle for an erzatz version of this relationship: Life FROM God: People in this category are focused on what God will do for them, rather than being interested in God himself.... Read more
I am currently reading Carolyn Custis James’ thoughtful call to action entitled Half The Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision For Women, which is an invitation for kingdom women to respond with kingdom intelligence, passion and action to the injustice in our world. And then yesterday, I read this this fairly detailed description of men’s and women’s roles by a Pastor Mark Chanski on the Gospel Coalition blog. Honestly, I am not trying to rant about the GC crew. I mentioned... Read more
What’s a nice egalitarian woman like you doing in a complementarian church? When we started attending this church a year and a half ago, a friend said to me, “You know they’re Gospel Coalition people, right?” Yes, I did know. In fact, during our decision/discernment process about whether this church would be a good fit for us, we’d invited both pastors over to our home for some frank conversation about how their neo-Reformed theology worked itself out in the congregation.... Read more
I’m not much of a fiction reader, but when I saw Leonard Sweet’s name on the cover of this book, I decided to give it a spin*. Co-written with Lori Wagner, The Seraph Seal (Thomas Nelson, 2011) is a genre-blurring book the authors have dubbed “engaged fiction”. The meat of the book is an apocalyptic journey through the end of days that borrows in structure from barn-burners like the DaVinci code, book-ended with Sweet’s trademark provocative, prophetic decoding of the... Read more
Pilgrim's Road Trip
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