If you’ve ever talked me to me about shopping habits, you know I am passionate about two things: shopping frugally and shopping ethically. These practices take extra time and attention in a way that makes me consider them spiritual disciplines. I want to be conscious of how I’m spending our money and I want to […]
The Soul of Community
It’s All Saints Day, a day inviting us to remember our loved ones who’ve passed on and tell stories of how their lives changed ours. This is surely one of the most bittersweet moments of death: a time to gather in the living room or at the funeral home or around the graveside to tell […]
Creation Care
Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, This land that gives us our food, our water; these trees that clean the air for us to breathe; all these green and growing things that bless our bodies with their beauty – these are not resources. They are fellow creatures, with their own rights and responsibilities before God. They […]
Blessing when you want to Curse
The refrains of our community right now are filled with sounds of sadness and loss, anger and disappointment. These melodies are dark and deep, aren’t they? The reasons for the heaviness of our hearts are many, not the least of which are an unbelievably stressful election season, the seventh month of isolation in a pandemic, […]
How fasting can dismantle our fear
Can I suggest one of the reasons humanity is so prone to perpetuating systems of injustice is due to our fear? It is fear keeping us from prioritizing someone else’s needs above our own, concerned about having our needs neglected. It is fear that keeps us hoarding our resources – our money, our food, our […]
How your vote can help build God’s Kingdom
Our spiritual formation – our being transformed into the image of Jesus – has three essential spheres: personal, corporate, and social. How painfully challenging is this word from the late Robert Mulholland? “Corporate spirituality will wither on the vine if it does not reach out into the world.” So here we are talking a lot […]
Pray, then do justice.
According to Father Ronald Rolheiser, Social justice tries to look at the system […] within which we live so as to name and change those structural things that account for the fact that some of us are unduly penalized even as others of us are unduly privileged. The Holy Longing When we talk about social […]
Pick a side.
As I was getting dressed this morning I opted for a shirt I bought off of Etsy in lieu of the racial unrest sweeping our nation. It’s a quote from Desmond Tutu. It says, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.“* Desmond Tutu is a retired […]
Look again
Lament is about listening to the stories of brokenness and anger, giving value and voice to people who suffer all around us. Lament is refusing to turn a blind eye. Lament is choosing to align ourselves with the grief and suffering of others. Lament speaks truth and lament holds onto hope that God is here […]
Why lament when there’s work to be done?
When it comes to our next steps of social justice, I am praying you will eagerly join me in the work of #anti-racism: dismantling the racist atrocities that occur every day in both obvious and covert ways and instead establishing God’s Kingdom of abundant generosity and lavish welcome. Friends, when it comes to establishing God’s […]