Why Quiet Listening is Important Action

October 24, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

Do you too feel it—the disorienting internal pressure we experience in social-media-soaked times to say something about terrible events? Human motivations being what they are, I believe this internal pressure is gray-tinged: neither fully concerned for others nor fully ego-driven. Most commonly, we find ourselves between this black/white dichotomy. And most events are themselves more pallid gray than black and white, involving complicated situations and flawed human actors. Even something as formerly non-complex as a natural disaster is now, in... Read more

‘The Mercy of the Fallen’: Using our Failures for Good

October 17, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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A repeated theme in the gospels is riddles. Both people trying to trick Jesus with riddles and Jesus teaching or answering back with riddles. And in this week’s lectionary passage (Mt 22:15-22), Jesus is using a sort of riddle. He says, “Give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and give to God what belongs to God.” But really, what doesn’t belong to God? In a roundabout way, Jesus is saying—everything belongs to God, so make everything available for... Read more

Why Stewarding our Talents Starts with Gratitude

October 9, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Whenever I talk about parables, I include the same reminder: a parable is a snapshot, like a photo, that conveys a core meaning. It isn’t an allegory where every detail has symbolic value. The parable in yesterday’s lectionary passage (Matt 21:33-46) comes out of Jesus’ time when the majority were tenant farmers on the lands of powerful people, and when elites tended to have slaves. The story takes these realities as a given; it doesn’t mean Jesus approved of tenant... Read more

Finding a Wider View

October 3, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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The unthinkable is happening. One of the country’s two major political parties has become the party of Donald Trump; and at this point in the presidential election, he appears both likely to win the Republican primary and to be quite competitive. I don’t need to enumerate the unthinkable things he has done or that he plans to do if re-elected,[1] as I assume my readers are aware. My intention here is to explore “what now?” and “how can we adopt... Read more

When I Encountered the Spirit of a Loved One

September 29, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Roughly seven 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

Using a Different Metric of Fairness: The Parable of the Vineyard Workers

September 19, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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The upcoming lectionary passage in Matthew 20:1-16 strikes me as timely. The attitude we see here—the attitude of the workers who worked all day and are angry about those who received the same pay for less work—this attitude is something exhibited prominently in recent years. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first: it is familiar for other reasons. All of us have felt this way when we are struggling and we see a good go to someone we... Read more

We Are All Ministers: Reflections on My Anniversary of Ordination

September 12, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Last Sunday marked the anniversary of my ordination to the Episcopal diaconate in a pandemic, amid a day red with wildfires. It was a surreal time. The tiny, physically-distanced service became tinier as relatives and friends cancelled travels due to smoke. But my husband and sister did readings, my godchild came, along with clergy friends, and my daughter played beautiful music on my computer. Special, it was, despite all. In these years, diaconal ministry has looked different than I envisioned... Read more

What Does it Mean Today to ‘Take Up Your Cross’?

September 5, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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What does it mean in our context to “take up one’s cross”? And how is it something life-giving, in the sense that we lose our life in order to find it—as Jesus expressed paradoxically? The story in last Sunday’s lectionary, which contains these phrases, gives us a glimpse into the late stage of Jesus’ ministry when he sees what it is all coming to. Even people who are not followers of Jesus, or not Christians, often acknowledge that Jesus was... Read more

Sharing Your Gifts is Essential to Human Flourishing

August 29, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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In last Sunday’s gospel lectionary passage, Mt 16:13-20, we read about Peter receiving the “keys to the kingdom”: Jesus tells Peter he is building his church on him and what Peter binds on earth will be bound in heaven, etc. Traditionally, this story is interpreted as the time Jesus instituted the authority of the church or the beginning of the line of apostles that gave popes and priests authority—starting with Peter on down to today. But most scholars believe this... Read more

When Joy is a Field of Wildflowers: Adopting a Perspective of Abundance

August 23, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Over half of my life I operated not from a perspective of abundance but scarcity. During that time, according to my skewed perception, everyone was a competitor or critic, always judging and potentially threatening, and nothing felt secure. It seemed just when I had something in hand, it would be whisked away. So everything had to be white-knuckled and guarded, whether relationships, status, ideas, or things. But then in 2005, everything changed in an extraordinary season of wonder and transformation... Read more