Let’s get lost and found

Last updated on: September 15, 2022 at 6:52 am By Tricia Gates Brown

In the lectionary, we’re reading about lost things. Specifically, this past Sunday, the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin (Luke 15:1-10), which—along with the parable of the prodigal son—may be Jesus’ most beloved teaching stories. Many of us can relate to being lost and being found; we appreciate these images of God because we need them. On the other hand, those terribly self-satisfied and self-righteous may find these passages unsavory. In our self-righteous moments, we prefer others to... Read more

The Queen and the Monk: On freedom and the death of Queen Elizabeth

Last updated on: September 10, 2022 at 3:13 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

Because I am no expert on the royal family or Queen Elizabeth, I find myself in the days following her death listening while not speaking or writing much about her. As I listen, I am most impressed by the fact that people loved her. Despite ambivalence about what she represented (namely, an empire that has, even in the past hundred years, been unthinkably callous), she is a person much loved. In part, this is due to her “heart,” a word... Read more

Don’t wait: The Source doesn’t need your perfection and purity

Last updated on: September 6, 2022 at 4:44 am By Tricia Gates Brown

“I will follow you wherever you go,” people told Jesus (Luke 9:51-62). But then they hedged, thinking of what needed doing, of what others might think if they went all-in with the spiritual life. In a family-oriented culture like that of the Mediterranean, people thought of family obligations: I must go and bury my father; I must say goodbye to those at home. In the story in Luke, Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead.” In modern American... Read more

Yestertown

Last updated on: September 4, 2022 at 4:10 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

Recently I sold a soul-cottage I built in 2007 on the cusp of Oregon, 15 minutes’ drive from the beach, and bought a small house in a town I vacated in 2004, vowing never to return. Yet return, I have. Health and allergies eventually drove me from my coastal-rainforest refuge. But why return to Yestertown—as I’ve come to think of the new old town? So much history trails me in this place. That may be the point, I suppose: homecoming—at... Read more

Things Change: ‘The first will be last, and the last will be first’

Last updated on: August 30, 2022 at 6:46 am By Tricia Gates Brown

Everything we read, including everything we read in the Bible, is colored by culture, and in this week’s lectionary gospel (Luke 14:1, 7-14) we certainly encounter cultural elements I’ll skip over. I want to focus on something else—specifically, an idea that appears repeatedly in the teachings of Jesus; the idea that ‘the first will be last and the last will be first,’ or as it’s stated in this passage: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble... Read more

Animals teach us about God

Last updated on: September 2, 2022 at 6:03 am By Tricia Gates Brown

Of late, some of my closest companions are animals—several cats and one dog. With a few, I am close in ways I am close to few others. Few—or none—of my friends do I kiss and nuzzle and stroke and tell, “I love you so much; you are so precious to me…” (on and on gag infinitum) with regularity. At least in western culture, effusive affection isn’t the language of relationships, apart from those with young children and between couples en... Read more

Immigration, Illegality, and Mercy

Last updated on: August 24, 2022 at 5:13 am By Tricia Gates Brown

This week’s lectionary gospel (Luke 13:10-17) shows, along with other healing stories, how Jesus taught mercy over concerns like being correct, or keeping laws, or being “righteous.” To Jesus, the freedom and relief of the woman he illegally healed on the Sabbath—a woman trapped in suffering for eighteen years—ranked so far above any law that Jesus blasted the leader who reminded him his action was illegal. He says, You show mercy to your donkey on the Sabbath. Why wouldn’t I... Read more

How I Pray {Part Three}

Last updated on: September 2, 2022 at 6:08 am By Tricia Gates Brown

“Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” Frederick Buechner (“Grace,” in Wishful Thinking) Recently my friend Ali introduced me to this description of prayer: “where the this meets the more-than-this.” Of late, I’ve also heard expressions of fear from different friends. Fear of physical vulnerability in the face of looming medical tests. Fear of losing a partner seriously struggling with illness. Fear of financial insecurity in the face of job loss. Fear of threatening... Read more

Learning to Listen to my Life: In Memoriam Frederick Buechner

Last updated on: September 2, 2022 at 6:04 am By Tricia Gates Brown

No author has impacted my life as has Frederick Buechner. Not only have I read all but two or three of his copious writings (two of his novels are among my ‘top five’: Godric and The Final Beast), but he inspired me to become a writer. Finding and reading him changed my life—the honesty, the remarkable loveliness of his writing filled me with aspiration. It still does. And the wide-open, not fussy, warm-and-hospitable God Buechner portrayed made me want to... Read more

How I Pray {Part Two}

Last updated on: September 2, 2022 at 6:07 am By Tricia Gates Brown

One day last week, two friends wrote out of the blue to express that they were thinking of me. Besides being moved, I was struck by how thinking of someone in this way is a kind of prayer. One friend said “I am holding you in the light, as the Quakers say,” describing a Quaker understanding of prayer. In my view, when someone comes into focus in your heart and mind and you surround them with the warm glow of... Read more