A friend and colleague of mine who does human rights work alongside me mentioned recently that she went on vacation and left her work phone off the whole time, only to fear when she turned it back on she would learn someone she’d been in touch with had been murdered the night before. It wouldn’t […]
Tag: MLK
I Really Hate Fireworks
Listening to the fireworks, I don’t have a whole lot of love for July 4th, and I never have. It’s a holiday that admittedly means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and I have every ounce of respect for that, the grandson of a World War II vet, an Eagle […]
Complicit Theologies: the Status Quo Church
I’m saddened and appalled by all that has happened at the Capitol, even more so by what I expect in the coming days and weeks will be horrific revelations that it’s much worse than we currently realize as evidence is already mounting to suggest as much. Saddened, appalled, yes–not shocked. Now comes the harder part: […]
Thinking through ‘The Cross and the Lynching Tree’
“The cross has been transformed into a harmless, non-offensive ornament that Christians wear around their necks. Rather than reminding us of the ‘cost of discipleship,’ it has become a form of ‘cheap grace,’ an easy way to salvation that doesn’t force us to confront the power of Christ’s message and mission. Until we can see […]
Is America Headed Toward Civil War?
Societies–because they’re made up of people–function a lot like people do as individuals. Just as you or I might bottle up our anger and then one day explode, so can a society bottle up its collective anger and then explode all at once. On an individual level, as well as a societal one, we can […]
Reflections on a Holiday
When I was a kid, our family vacations were almost always to the Florida panhandle. That seemed to be pretty common among West Tennessee families, since it was just a one-day drive to the beach. One summer, though, we went north – the only vacation we ever took that wasn’t to Florida. It was the […]
From the Wisdom of Solomon to Baltimore
There was a risky wager made when Lincoln gave the South a chance to be reconciled to the North without greater punishment than the loss both sides had so deeply suffered already, a wager that hinged on the hope that the “better angels of our nature” would prevail. The understandable hope was that time would […]
Hope beyond Depravity
In its heyday, Dexter was one of my favorite television shows. A serial killer with a code of honor to only kill “really bad” people? I’m captivated. I mean, my love of Dexter wasn’t really surprising; most popular television shows of late are probably going to draw me in given their care for the complexity […]
Learning to Let People Sing their own Songs How they Need to be Sung
Have you ever listened to a song and in that moment that song was exactly what you needed to hear? Like, when my grandfather died, I had Blind Pilot on repeat, or there were times in Morocco where certain songs just powerfully spoke to me. It’s been a few years since my grandfather died or […]
