That's the real scandal of so many of these calls: the cold remove on the other end of the line. You hear it from clergy, from office managers, and from whoever the office manager transfers the call to (presumably someone who's better equipped than the office manager to answer this sort of query). Flatness. These calls, and the bureaucratic sheen of cruelty, are excruciating: I'm sorry, we can't help you, click.

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. 

In most worship settings, I have come to learn over time that my methods to cope with overstimulation is a social risk. What helps me (and many other people on the autism spectrum and/or with ADHD) stay focused and in-tune may come off to the congregation as disengaged, distracting, or even disrespectful. ... Often, I attempt to mask my discomfort by dissociating and building a world in my mind where I am safe and have space to be alone there.

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. 

The invitation I’m offering in Liturgies for Resisting Empire is to identify those overarching themes of imperial thinking – like dominance and power, dualistic thinking, structures of hierarchy – that have taken root in all of us, to understand the history and processes of how they came to be, and to make intentional choices that act counter to that and lead us towards communal healing.

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. 

On November 16th, the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Roman Catholic Church will celebrate the eighth World Day of the Poor. This global observance was established by the late Pope Francis in 2017 [to remind us that] that, in Francis’ words, “so long as Lazarus remains at our gate” (Luke 16), the Church’s work is not yet done.

When a little Rumi or Jinu shows up at your door for Halloween, or when your Sunday School classes won’t stop chanting “gonna be gonna be golden,” you don’t need to worry that demons are encroaching on God’s world. You can smile, knowing these kids have learned something about shared suffering and transformation and redemption.

I’m convinced that if pastors engaged their congregations with the same intentionality comedians bring to a club, our sermons would not just inform but truly connect, inspire, and transform.

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. 

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.