Understanding Human Motivations: Spirit, Ernest, and Ozempic

Last updated on: April 6, 2024 at 4:14 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

Of late, I am wooed by Ernest Becker, specifically his book The Denial of Death, published in 1974. A mid-century anthropologist, Becker wrote powerfully about the things that motivate modern people. Our greatest motivation, according to Becker is denying we’re all headed for the grave. On the podcast The Gray Area, Sean Illing summarizes Becker’s work in one concise statement: “The big thesis [of Becker’s work] was that the majority of human behavior is driven by an unconscious desire to... Read more

Finding Community Amid Shared Fragility

Last updated on: April 6, 2024 at 4:18 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

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In the early days of the pandemic, I published an article in a small literary magazine that I called “Fragile.” It was about finding community amid shared fragility, despite the isolation of the time. In many ways, we’re still in the covid era psychologically and spiritually, and most days, national and world events remind me of our common frailty. I wish the themes of this essay were no longer current, yet they seem as current as ever. Here is the... Read more

How Animals Teach Us to Love

Last updated on: March 27, 2024 at 4:38 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

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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... Read more

How Stories Change Us: A Palm Sunday Reflection

Last updated on: March 20, 2024 at 7:11 am By Tricia Gates Brown

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A courageous woman dousing a man’s head with perfume; a conniving betrayer; a feast; jealous officials; an angry mob and disappointing friends; the appearance of law enforcement; a streaker; a humiliation ritual and taunting soldiers; brave women; a crucifixion and mysterious tomb. The Palm Sunday lectionary passage (Mark 14:1-15:47) is thick with drama. The long narrative stands out among ancient tales for its detail and cohesiveness. Before anything else, it is great storytelling. Why have we humans always told stories?... Read more

Revelation Beyond the Pages: The Divine in the Everyday

Last updated on: March 22, 2024 at 11:10 am By Tricia Gates Brown

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What is revelation? My definition broadens almost by the day. Sometimes I hear measures of a song so searingly truthful or beautiful they seem like prayer. Or I see a swallow swooping across a dawn-lit sky and the moment of perfection professes to me more than any sacred text. Other times, I read a passage in a book—maybe by George Eliot or Toni Morrison or Henry David Thoreau—that seems as laden with insight as any scripture, and I see the... Read more

Seeing the Beauty in Small Congregations

Last updated on: March 5, 2024 at 10:52 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

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Serving threshold congregations is my subject today. By this, I mean small congregations on the cusp of change amid a wider period of ecclesial change in our country. Ecclesial change is just one facet of transition in a time when almost every aspect of our country is in upheaval—cultural, technological, political, environmental. By this point, those of us affiliated with religion are familiar with declining interest in organized religion. Most of us who attend religious services likely notice declining numbers.... Read more

When Forgiveness is Slow: A Story for Lent

Last updated on: February 19, 2024 at 6:03 am By Tricia Gates Brown

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Forgiveness is slow. Have you tried to forgive someone who devastated you with no real regrets? How can we whip up forgiveness like the gods, my fellow mortals, when such things take time? How can we expect forgiveness from others when we apologize with no real regret? In the months following my own devastation by someone I loved, on the heels of a stealthy betrayal, I played with forgiveness. Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do when someone apologizes? And... Read more

How an Alternative Practice of Lent Inspires

Last updated on: February 13, 2024 at 10:20 am By Tricia Gates Brown

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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

How God’s Presence is Incarnated Among Us

Last updated on: February 6, 2024 at 1:26 pm By Tricia Gates Brown

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“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

Understanding the Moment We Are In

Last updated on: January 29, 2024 at 6:51 am By Tricia Gates Brown

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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. How on earth did we get here? As an “everyday theologian,” I try to wrap my head around what I see, to give contour to a problem in order to understand,... Read more