I’m going to a funeral (well, memorial service) today. I don’t end up going to funerals very often. I’ve planned to go to funerals not infrequently—I’ve been a part of my worshiping community for over 20 years, so several of my church-friends have died—but somehow I never end up attending. This despite firmly believing that […]
Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. —Genesis 32:29 But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask […]
Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. In him, this is what we preach and pray, the great Amen, God’s Yes and our Yes together, gloriously evident. God affirms us, making us a sure thing in Christ, putting his Yes within us. By his Spirit he has stamped us with his […]
Mind you, all this happened more than thirty years ago. And are the recollections of a seventeen-year-old. All caveats about eyewitness testimony should be included. *** To set the stage a little— My depression began when I was around fifteen. I don’t remember it being a feature of my 9th-grade year, but it was salient […]
Y’all don’t get many of my words tonight because I gave them all to a young friend of mine. Including the ones about how annoying the ER people were when I was admitted for my suicide attempt. Maybe I’ll tell y’all that story sometime, too… But not tonight!
But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” —John 9:10-11 My church-class lesson for the week begins with this particular version […]
Ever since last November, my social media spaces show me all sorts of narratives of “other.” That’s not what the writers call their stories. Their stories are about how Quality One or Quality Two caused people to treat them differently, caused them to feel pushed away, downgraded. Othered. I am a person of privilege, of […]
What happens when we have to rely on our inner compass? This devotional question made me laugh. Well, made me shake my head and smile, because she sets the context thus: “We live in a world governed by GPS systems. At any given moment, we can know our coordinates. We’ve abandoned the sacred art of […]
Attention is the fourth wheel on a grocery cart, where the grocery cart is your mind and attention the one wheel not always touching but it can swivel in its bearings and catch, allowing you to ricochet across the aisle to slam your agile mind into a wall From “Tom as a Series of Declaratives,” […]
I give a lot of attention to driving around corners. I try to make them as square as possible, given my car’s turning radius. On the approach, I take my foot off the gas, letting momentum+friction get the car to a good cornering speed– slower, but not too slow. Slow enough that the tires Do […]
