A few years ago, I created a practice that brought Lent to life for me—a new way to commemorate or practice the season. You see, for me, Lenten imagery is strikingly about the darkness and dormancy preceding Easter, like the darkness and dormancy of winter that precedes Spring. A plant goes dormant in wintertime, but it does not die. In fact, the nourishment of winter is essential to its growth. Winter is when roots are strengthened, made ready for the... Read more
A friend once told me, “I wish Christianity wasn’t such a wimpy religion! You know, turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, blessed are the meek….” She was tired of it. But the fact is, Christianity is not a wimpy religion (though I contend it’s about nonviolence). It is, quite often, poorly taught. Luke 6:27-38 [lectionary during week this essay was originally published] and its parallel in Matthew are among the most important bits of scripture we get wrong.... Read more
You could say Christians have an incarnated worldview, an “en-fleshed” worldview. This isn’t just because incarnation is part of our spiritual imagination—meaning, the divine made visible in Jesus and indeed in all of creation—but because Jesus’ work addressed physical and emotional needs, needs that were en-fleshed, or experienced by actual human bodies. The Christian life is not merely about an inner, individual experience of faith and peace; even less about beliefs in our heads or hopes for the afterlife. We... Read more
We are in a time. Long before the pandemic, separation and polarization had come to characterize American society—the result of many factors, not least being the media-/now-social-media landscape of the past thirty years. But surely our physical separation from one another since March 2020 has accelerated divisions and suspicions. We are in a time that some speculate could even lead to civil war (of some kind). How on earth did we get here? As an “everyday theologian,” I try to... Read more
In 2015, I experienced a tragic loss. Each morning for weeks, I’d wake at 4:00 with my heart racing; so I’d brew chamomile tea, pull on jeans (looser by the day as I shed pounds through grief), and head out the door to thwart anxiety. As I walked, I often prayed a soothing repetitive prayer or repeated the 23rd Psalm—perhaps my favorite passage of scripture. In hard times, the personal-ness of this Psalm works like medicine on my heart, giving... Read more
“Many things occur between God and [humans] which escape the attention even of those to whom they happen.” —Abraham Joshua Heschel Consider this: If we compressed creation history down to one year, with the Big Bang occurring on January 1, Homo sapiens would not arrive until 11:59 PM on December 31st. We are but a blip in the history of this universe. To my mind, it is crazy to think God was not present in—incarnated in—our world until the last... Read more
Every year in Advent, John the Baptist makes a showing. He’s an interesting character to focus on during this season when we celebrate the birth of Jesus. We think of John out in the punishing desert, covered in rough-skin shirts, eating bugs and yelling at people, calling them vipers, demanding that they repent. An altogether different vibe than sweet tellings of the Christmas story. But the fact is, before anything transformative happens, we must prepare; and John the Baptist was... Read more
Roughly five years ago; late-summer day under a New Mexico sky, the blue of which rivals all sky. Blue like taffeta. Like a French painter’s dream of sky—which is what lured painters to Taos in the 20th century to eventually become the “Taos School,” setting stage for an influx of artists and intellectuals including the likes of Georgia O’Keefe and D. H. Lawrence. I drove out of Taos where I’d retreated to an adobe, pond-side casita on a farm, attempting... Read more
“Advent,” meaning the arrival or the coming, is my favorite liturgical season. And yes, part of what’s coming is Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus 2000 years ago. The rituals of this season build with anticipation and hope in a way both beautiful and centering—at an often-frenetic time of year. Gradually, we light more and more candles, marking how Jesus came as ‘a light’ into the world. We decorate with evergreen boughs and trees, symbolizing the triumph of... Read more
When I read a passage in the gospels, I like to read backward and forward a chapter or two, taking in the larger narrative the passage is a part of. This reading shines a searchlight on an area, rendering a high-resolution view. I found the practice helpful with Mark 13:1-8 [lectionary the week this essay was originally published], which portrays Jesus predicting the fall of the Temple—a passage frequently poorly interpreted. So, what leads up to it? First, on the day we... Read more
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