Lunch and our spiritual lives

Yesterday, in the newsletter (which you can subscribe to here), I discussed part of my approach to summer. Usually the newsletter is scheduled earlier than Saturday, but I squeaked by making the last changes on Saturday evening this week. Sunday morning, I was sitting quietly in my chair talking and listening to God after reading […]

A Prayer for Racial Violence

God, be near the grieving. Hold them in your love. Free us from our pride and superiority. Rescue us from a frame of reference where we are not safe unless others are broken. May our community spaces be places of life and not death. Turn our guns into shovels, our hate into love, our fear […]

Gardening and our participation with God

Last week, I walked up the hill from the garden, clutching produce in my fist. “Look!” I shook the vegetables toward Justin, showing him my kale and lettuce and spinach, “I grew this!” Justin laughed and jokingly responded, “You mean, God grew that, right?” We were both right. Life of any sort is a mystery. […]

Book recommendations from the internet

I follow a lot of readers and writers on the internet and source a good portion of my reading material from them. Here are a few books that I’ve added to my list and where I found them. The Race-Wise Family (Michelle Reyes’ IG) Letters to Marc about Jesus (Jen Pollock Michel’s substack) The Christian […]

How to think theologically about culture

Take your Bible and take your newspaper, and read both. But interpret newspapers from your Bible. -Karl Barth One of the goals of ministry, for me at least, is to facilitate conversations about how our faith intersects with our lives and our societies. I see people who claim to follow Jesus […]

Expand and Contract: living toward a new way of being in the world

I was talking to a friend yesterday, discussing what you do when systems are broken. What is the response when what it true about the world is different than what should be true? That gap between reality and the flourishing of God’s world calls for a pause before movement. The pause is an invitation to […]

Strange milestones in parenting a medically fragile chid

When Micah was a baby, he had to be fed every three hours round the clock. 9pm. Midnight. 3 am. 6 am. I was unaware that sleeping all night marked my life with normalcy (and sanity) until alarms sounded all night long. Three cans of formula sat by a scale on our kitchen counter and […]