Plastic dishes hang neatly in the kitchen counter’s drying rack. Paw-shaped mud stains adorn the concrete driveway. The Disney Channel projects from the corner television. For many people, this is merely the humdrum of everyday life, but for Tiffany Willie these…
Advocates call out candidates for silence on mental health
By Bob Allen An American Baptist leader has joined an initiative to get presidential candidates talking about mental health. Curtis Ramsey-Lucas, director of interfaith engagement at the American Association of People with Disabilities, joined leaders of two other advocacy groups…
Incidental contact
Packing up a house is an archaeological expedition through the layers of a life in one place, not only because of the collections of things that have to be sorted and assigned a destination, but also because of the stories…
A border already crossed
Recent studies suggest that one out of four adults suffers from a diagnosable mental disorder. That equates to 50 million people in the United States, with 12 million falling in the “serious or chronic” category. This is equal to the…
matter, that is.
When you’ve spent your entire life asking the world for permission to exist, it can be rather unnerving when it repeatedly answers back with a resounding “no.” Growing up, I enjoyed a rather typical existence for a middle class white…
Taking it all in – the pain and the joy
Joseph Andrew Haynie’s eyes were blue. Reading his Army discharge papers fifty-eight years after his death, I learned this simple fact. Joe Haynie married Katie Louise Clyde in the tumultuous year of 1941 – and left not long afterwards for…
Say THIS not THAT: 9 things to edit out of Christian helping speech
Nine Things Christians Can Edit Out of Our “Helping Speech” A few months ago I was really struggling with anxiety and migraines. I felt overwhelmed and and a general sense that life was too much to handle. I called on…
Dylann Roof and the sound of silence
Fools said I, You do not know Silence like a cancer grows. The slaughter of nine innocent people gathered for prayer at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., was horrific, deplorable, sickening, cruel and heartless. It was not senseless.
Something inside
On Thursday morning, 50 of us are jammed into a Sunday school room singing chants. Most of the “us” are scholars — elementary school students — for Freedom School. This is the first day of six weeks that will be…