Sometimes what looks like compromise is not compromise at all. Sometimes it’s the hard choice to be a constant and a light in a shady and unstable environment. And sometimes it means being the one willing to be humbled and be wrong and change and grow in a stuck and calcified culture. I remember, after … Read More
In fact, according to the timeline in those same scriptures, the next time there is anything of significance to be made of th Because I came into the practice of faith through a distinctly protestant doorway, I didn’t know, early on, what to make of the Catholic of veneration or even emphasis on Mary, the … Read More
In recent years, I have noticed a kind of uptick in conversations and the pace of conversations and the intensity of conversations about mental health come the holidays. Some of that has to do with maybe the shorter days, some of that has to do with being around people who might be triggering, or just … Read More
Near the heart of the Christmas / Advent Story is the expectation that God is going to offer a gift. The head-fake in this Bible story is that, when those waiting come upon and/or are given that gift, it’s just a baby. And I know folks have surrounded Jesus’ birth with all kinds of magic … Read More
During the first season of the podcast, I got to talk with Dominique Dubois Gillard about his book “Rethinking Incarceration.” One of the things we talked about was the difficulty and opportunity to steer the ship, even slightly, in institutional spaces already (and often blindly) dominated by whiteness and privilege. His most recent book dives … Read More
This will take on a bit of a confessional tone. A few years ago, Dr. Christena Cleveland talked on my podcast about the need for black leaders to steer away from trying to influence white spaces so often. The effort, she clarified, to change white minds about whiteness, should be executed by white hands. Not … Read More
It was somewhere in the early 2000s when I got a package in the mail from a friend, who had just taken a job with an organization that purported to rescue people from slavery. And I’ve got to admit, and especially at the time, it was something of an embarrassing admission that I had no … Read More
Stephen Pressfield calls it “Resistance.” A number of religious traditions call it “sin.” But regardless of the name folks apply to it, it seems to me that we generally share, cross-culturally and throughout history, a sense and a lament that things don’t work out perfectly; that things fall apart and that plans don’t always go … Read More
A number of years ago, I sat in on a reading by the poet Gregory Orr. Gregory Or was then (and is now) a favorite poet of mine. In fact, he’s a favorite writer of mine. He was maybe five or six pieces into this reading when a conversation struck up between two of the … Read More
I ask just about all my guests about life online. I’m of the opinion that “real” life happens there and I’m increasingly interested in the way it does; particularly when that happening takes on labels like “religion” or “faith” or “spirituality.” I think a fair amount of personal formation takes place online and I’m intrigued … Read More
