Growing up in a Southern, progressive Christian church and going to seminary, we often made fun of the Jonathan Edwards’ style ‘fire and brimstone’ preachers throughout West Tennessee. Their vision of the future and the afterlife was dark and ominous. In hindsight, we should have taken their fiery spirit more seriously. We’re facing a future […]
Tag: spirituality
Death in the Face of Death
Watching the country’s long-expected rapid descent into fascism is numbing. The images out of L.A. aren’t just reminiscent of 2020; they evoke a foreboding of something somehow worse. The scenes of tanks on train tracks into DC for a military parade are the hallmark of a dictatorship in the making, yet too many people remain […]
Fear and Loneliness – and Hope
I oscillate these days between crippling fear and endless hope. It’s a strange dichotomy, actually. The fear is both very real and very fantastical. By that, I mean what I have an imagination for – climate collapse, the collapse of our democracy, economic collapse, the pending authoritarian threat and the very real damage it could […]
Seeking a Climate Revival
I was asked at a climate conference in Washington, D.C. recently to forgo my digital devices – no laptop, no phone, no watch. Given how bleak things are in this moment, and the fact that I had seen firsthand how frequently governments hack those they deem “dissidents” in the press freedom space – this layer […]
To be silent, or not
This morning brought unsettling news. The Court of Appeals in the Philippines upheld the conviction for Nobel laureate Maria Ressa and her former colleague at Rappler, Rey Santos Jr., all but ensuring she could see as many as 100 years in prison on charges of criminal cyber libel. You read that right: if convicted on […]
Beatles Mania
As long as I can remember, I’ve always been a Beatles fan. The first album (that wasn’t soundtrack music) anyone ever bought me was a Beatles album my sister got me for Christmas or a birthday one year. I must’ve been twelve or thirteen at the time. I already knew half the songs that played […]
Fear, Loathing, and Love in West Tennessee
My parents are visiting me in Pennsylvania. That’s a good thing, given how long the pandemic took them from me. What came as a surprise, though, now that I’ve bought a house, it seems they decided to bring with them everything I owned from the time I was born. It turns out I was a […]
One Year, Alive.
I told myself after a year of “quarantine,” of “surviving” a pandemic, after documenting the months and months of it, that it was only fitting to make sure, one year on, that I would document that too. It’s like a rite of passage, is it not? All the loss and all of the loneliness and […]
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: […]
You are not Christian.
Throughout my life I was told by “Christian” pastors, children’s ministers, camp leaders, youth directors, Sunday school teachers, and other church workers and parishioners so many heartfelt, dignified, and loving words about what Christianity was through the life and ministry of Jesus. I believed them. Today, I no longer see those same people living the […]
