Throughout history, powerful Christians have understood Daniel 7 to show them that God has chosen them to be divinely appointed world rulers––but then behave more like the beasts than the “nobodies” that God actually chooses to rule. From Constantine’s theologians claiming to establish the kingdom of the saints, to Charlemagne’s biographer describing his kingdom as the renewed fourth empire, to American notions of manifest destiny that drew on the language of Daniel 7: empire after empire has claimed what they think is Daniel’s promise of eternal global domination. Those claiming to be the holy ones became the beast, speaking arrogant words and making war on the vulnerable communities who suffer under systems of domination.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

You could never have imagined this in your grief, when we shared our sorrows in the death of your husband and your son, my husband. In those days I had only begun to understand the power in the bonds of family and in the God you knew so well. I now know the Lord deeply and intimately, as if the Lord was my birth mother who laid me on her shoulder and rocked me to sleep.

While our communities continue to be surveilled, detained, and disappeared, mothers still rise in resistance. Rizpah, like the madres and abuelitas of Argentina, reminds us that empire’s greatest fear is women who refuse to forget.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

I recognize that I am not offering a single neat or easy alternative, and I am well aware of how deeply ingrained stewardship is in the mainline church. It will take years of exploration and experimentation to move beyond it. What matters is that we keep seeking language and practices that draw us closer to the witness of the Gospels.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

To be clear, I love pet blessings. But what if we also recovered Francis’s radical poverty, simplicity, and love of the human Jesus as an essential way of rebuilding the Church anew?

What images have disillusioned me into believing that I am unworthy to sit in beautiful spaces with my golden locs, richly melanated skin, and full body? How did I convince myself that the being once called “good” by the creator needs to be transformed into standards enculturated by modern society?

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

As someone who is lonely and lost and is in the process of reconstructing their life, this experience of walking the labyrinth with a bunch of people I’ve never met was the most welcoming church experience I’ve had in decades.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

Even if not invested in war directly, much of our theology is steeped in violence. We hear it in Sunday school songs, see it in images of a triumphant Christ wielding a sword, and witness it in political leaders who stoke division with violent rhetoric.

My spiritual director asked me, “Have you ever heard of Mary, Untier of Knots?”

When kids spill out onto the sidewalk in laughter or race down the block on bikes, we catch a glimpse of the divine extravagance.

As we approach “stewardship season,” I want to question the language of stewards and stewardship. To be clear, this is not a critique of fundraising. I serve a small Spanish-speaking congregation, and I know firsthand how vital annual pledge drives are for a workable parish budget. My concern, rather, is theological. My question is whether stewardship is still the best framework for what we are doing this season.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

Praying together helps me see how God has already torn open the heavens through Christ’s death and resurrection, and is alive and actively working to bring hope where we thought it a lost cause and to topple all the would-be gods and emperors with a love stronger than any evil and a life stronger than death.

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness. 

Each week, we’ll offer a curated selection of blog posts that speak to the upcoming lectionary texts to help spark your imagination and serve as a thought partner for you. We hope these musings meet you right where you are with a fresh, bold, and faithful witness.