Each time a new baby was born, a single red rosebud was placed on the altar in the sanctuary of my home church. My youngest child was born after I returned to serve there, and 12 years ago, her red…
More thoughts on Mary breastfeeding, hierarchy and ‘kin-dom’ versus ‘kingdom’
Peel back the layers of our modern-day debate over the role of women in the church and you’ll find the underlying stumbling block has to do with hierarchy and bodies. BNG ran an Advent series written by Julia Goldie Day…
Reading Christmas through the lens of Advent’s anguish
“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” —French philosopher Henri Bergson For several years running, my sister and I played a little game to ease the boredom of our family’s four-and-a-half hour drive from West…
The messiness of Christmas
Often, Christmas is a time of making sure everything is just right. We sing of joy coming to the world, we read poetry of how stockings are hung by the chimney with care, and we mail Christmas cards imprinted with…
The tears of Advent
This is the last in a four-part series in which we seek to see anew the incarnation of Jesus through the eyes and body of a woman, Mary the mother of Jesus. Mary went through a great deal just…
God (suffers) with us
As we laid Phyllis, my paternal grandmother, to rest Dec. 11, 2019, I looked around and saw my family trying to piece themselves together. It was an intense funeral, the kind that comes after an unexpected loss; the kind where…
Advent, Gaza and the coming of Christ
As the cold winter months are upon us and we are now approaching the third Sunday of Advent, we want to stop and reflect upon the coming of Christ into a broken and destructive world. This Sunday’s Advent worship carries…
The breasts of Advent
This is the third of a four-part series in which we seek to see anew the incarnation of Jesus through the eyes and body of a woman, Mary the mother of Jesus. For Jesus to live, he had to…
How you connect apocalypse to Advent affects how you interact with the news
Few activities fuel a connection with Advent like reading the news. Stories about weather catastrophes, wars and rumors of wars have many Christians across the theological and political spectrum wondering if the apocalypse is near and perhaps finding themselves praying…