I squirmed in my seat, avoiding eye contact with the women in my small group. They offered encouragement to a woman sitting next to me. She spoke in halting sentences, wiping away tears with a tissue they offered. “It’s just…
Tucker Carlson, ‘equal opportunity bigot’
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and his husband, author Chasten Buttigieg, married in 2018 and have been wanting to become parents for a while. The excitement and joy they felt as they anticipated becoming parents were similar to what other…
A home for outcasts or a keeper of the ‘sacred timeline’?
Recently my family and I have been watching Loki on Disney+. For those of you unfamiliar with the world of the Marvel universe, Loki is the god of mischief and an archvillain of the Avengers. At the beginning of the…
Kentucky child care discrimination and proselytizing cases take opposite turns
A two-decades-old dispute between the state of Kentucky and a Baptist child care agency turned two pages in opposite directions within a few days, offering anything but clarity about the situation. On one hand, Sunrise Children’s Services, an agency of…
Spilled Cheerios and a theology of care
During the mid-1990s, I was a sleep-deprived mother of a newborn and a toddler, a wife, a college professor, and a doctoral student with an unfinished dissertation. While zombie-walking through mundane chores, I heard the contents of the last box…
Raising kids at the end of the world
Recently, in the parking lot outside my office, I cried in my car for 10 minutes before work. This was after listening to my local NPR affiliate interview a parent from my son’s school. In her remarks, this parent calmly…
‘I don’t think I care about anything anymore’: How to be anxious and depressed during the end of the world
My son is 6 years old and in the first grade. He loves Lego, Harry Potter, outer space and finishing books as soon as he gets them. Inexplicably, my son maintains this stubborn inquisitiveness about the world around him even…
A pediatrician’s advice to parents worried about the COVID vaccine and their children
Even parents who are willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 themselves may be hesitant to have their eligible children vaccinated, according to new data from Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core. That finding doesn’t surprise Rhonda Walton, a…
How our family is celebrating Christmas in July
Christmas is a mere six months away. Many churches, like my first church in West Jefferson, N.C., where I was an associate pastor, have Christmas in July celebrations and festivities that often coincide with the community’s own festival to prepare…