“I was equipped to function in the midst of crisis and to be a non-anxious presence, but nothing prepares you or equips you for the grief over someone who is dear to you.”
What the walking wounded need for Christmas
How my spinal cord injury happened during routine surgery two years ago hasn’t mattered to me for a good while; but the why and wherefore still get me. Now I’m just angry. And being a good Christian, I feel guilty for being angry.
What Chronic Back Pain Teaches Me About Pastoring
As a healthy, 37-year-old pastor, I confess that sometimes I struggle to relate to congregants with chronic illness and pain. That has changed.
Toni Morrison and the story of Rizpah: creating language that heals in a time of trauma
How the late Toni Morrison “did language” invited a greater intentionality in telling the stories that might make for a different future. What could be more important in these troubling and traumatic days than crafting language that heals a broken nation, a people concerned about the current dystopic narrative?
‘To love is to suffer.’ Saints like Julian and Hildegard point us to Jesus’ way of suffering love
To love and to care for others – indeed, to be fully alive – entails suffering in all its forms. Lent is an opportunity to enter afresh into the paschal mystery.
Justice and joy combined in the words of Mary
Justice and joy are intertwined, not unlike the link between joy and pain. To love is to suffer, as the mystics remind us. Deeply acquainted with the recesses of the human heart, C. S. Lewis wrote: “Joy is distinct not…
Three tips from the trail for those who are struggling
In all my planning for our section hike of the Appalachian Trail last week, I apparently only read the blogs that talked about the incredible views I would see along the way. Mountain peaks and rolling hills. If folks wrote…
The year clichés stopped making sense
There is something wrong with 2016. That may be the most self-evident and non-controversial statement to come up in your Facebook newsfeed in quite a while. In fact, it has become an almost universally acknowledged truth. So many of us…
No one warned me that ministry would make a mortician out of me
I want to build the casket and dig the hole. We usually hire those jobs out, but I want to do it myself. Remember the scene in Harry Potter where Harry buries Dobby, but refuses to use magic? Something about…