In the earliest photo of us, I am concealed behind the bloom of Wren’s baptismal gown while they are ruby-faced, captured mid-scream. It’s an inauspicious snapshot of the relationship to follow. But leap-frog four years. I wait outside Wren’s preschool to pick them up. They’re travelling home with me and godfather Gilberto, my then husband, for their first sleepover. Wren spots me, hunches their shoulders and grins the way they might look at a baby bird. They’re so elated they... Read more
Celebrants press wall-to-wall into houses where we gather, forty to sixty people, night after night reciting the prayers and singing the songs of Las Posadas. Steamy windows emanate light into winter’s deepest dark. Posadas (translated literally as “lodgings”) take place each night from December 16 through Christmas Eve and reenact Mary and Joseph’s attempt to find lodging in Bethlehem. The tradition originated in Spain and was carried to Mexico. The uniquely Mexican version seems to have started in 1538, when... Read more
One of the main tenets of Christianity is the belief that we are transformed by God and made new; that we have been and continue to be forgiven (and this does not require a belief in ‘substitutionary atonement’). Forgiveness, along with justice for the oppressed (ie Luke 4:18), is part of what we call the ‘good news.’ So shouldn’t Christians be especially forgiving? In theory, yes. But Christians fail at forgiveness as much as anyone. Do we truly believe in... Read more
Do you too feel it—the disorienting internal pressure we experience in social-media-soaked times to say something about terrible events? Human motivations being what they are, I believe this internal pressure is gray-tinged: neither fully concerned for others nor fully ego-driven. Most commonly, we find ourselves between this black/white dichotomy. And most events are themselves more pallid gray than black and white, involving complicated situations and flawed human actors. Even something as formerly non-complex as a natural disaster is now, in... Read more
A repeated theme in the gospels is riddles. Both people trying to trick Jesus with riddles and Jesus teaching or answering back with riddles. And in this week’s lectionary passage (Mt 22:15-22), Jesus is using a sort of riddle. He says, “Give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and give to God what belongs to God.” But really, what doesn’t belong to God? In a roundabout way, Jesus is saying—everything belongs to God, so make everything available for... Read more
Whenever I talk about parables, I include the same reminder: a parable is a snapshot, like a photo, that conveys a core meaning. It isn’t an allegory where every detail has symbolic value. The parable in yesterday’s lectionary passage (Matt 21:33-46) comes out of Jesus’ time when the majority were tenant farmers on the lands of powerful people, and when elites tended to have slaves. The story takes these realities as a given; it doesn’t mean Jesus approved of tenant... Read more
The unthinkable is happening. One of the country’s two major political parties has become the party of Donald Trump; and at this point in the presidential election, he appears both likely to win the Republican primary and to be quite competitive. I don’t need to enumerate the unthinkable things he has done or that he plans to do if re-elected,[1] as I assume my readers are aware. My intention here is to explore “what now?” and “how can we adopt... Read more
Roughly seven years ago; late-summer day under a New Mexico sky, the blue of which rivals all sky. Blue like taffeta. Like a French painter’s dream of sky—which is what lured painters to Taos in the 20th century to eventually become the “Taos School,” setting stage for an influx of artists and intellectuals including the likes of Georgia O’Keefe and D. H. Lawrence. I drove out of Taos where I’d retreated to an adobe, pond-side casita on a farm, attempting... Read more
The upcoming lectionary passage in Matthew 20:1-16 strikes me as timely. The attitude we see here—the attitude of the workers who worked all day and are angry about those who received the same pay for less work—this attitude is something exhibited prominently in recent years. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first: it is familiar for other reasons. All of us have felt this way when we are struggling and we see a good go to someone we... Read more
Last Sunday marked the anniversary of my ordination to the Episcopal diaconate in a pandemic, amid a day red with wildfires. It was a surreal time. The tiny, physically-distanced service became tinier as relatives and friends cancelled travels due to smoke. But my husband and sister did readings, my godchild came, along with clergy friends, and my daughter played beautiful music on my computer. Special, it was, despite all. In these years, diaconal ministry has looked different than I envisioned... Read more
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