Just before 7 p.m on July 7, as protesters gathered in Belo Garden Park, in Dallas, Texas, I settled onto a hard wooden seat in the choir stall of St. John’s Abbey Church in Collegeville, Minnesota. As they chanted “enough is enough,” we chanted Psalm 59: “You have been a refuge in the day of…
Generally, when selecting a scripture reading for worship, I would leave out phrases like “the end of all things in near.” But when I read 1 Peter 4:7 this week, I decided it should stay in. Because . . . well . . . if you’ve been following the news at all these past few…
Last week I attended a Collegeville writing workshop on the campus of St. John’s College in Minnesota. I found myself praying with the monks most mornings—not because I’m particularly holy, but because I kept waking up before six and our sessions didn’t start until nine. The benedictine sisters in Atchison, KS, are quick to welcome…
Pharaoh trembled at the growing Hebrew population; at the thought that these slaves might realize their oppression and realize their power. He demanded that the Egyptians throw all of the Hebrew baby boys into the Nile River. Herod trembled at the report from the eastern scholars of a child who had been born King of…
If you thought the Mennonite church’s incompetence in discussing issues of sexuality was limited to its “discernment” of LGBTQ inclusion in the church, then you thought wrong. We are also, it would seem, not particularly skilled at discussing questions of accountability in relation to sexual abuse within church communities and institutions. We managed to get…
Here is a litany we will use at Peace Mennonite on Sunday. It is adapted from one I wrote several years ago for Memorial Day. God of Life, We mourn the culture of violence in our country: where our entertainment enacts and glorifies violence, where over three thousand people sit on death row, where drone…
Turns out I had some more thoughts on Sunday morning’s shooting. This letter was written in collaboration with some wonderful colleagues and signed by even more wonderful colleagues and was originally posted on the Inclusive Mennonite Pastors web site. “We are dying, and you are killing us.” These are the words Jay Yoder writes to…
I struggle to know how to respond in the wake of the shooting at Pulse Nightclub. Fifty dead. Over forty hospitalized. Hundreds traumatized. Guns, again. A tragedy followed by anti-Muslim rhetoric, again. Beautiful queer bodies targeted for violence, again. I feel grief. And horror. And despair. And anger. I feel helpless. I feel like I…
Originally posted on Spacious Faith:
There is a story about the great theologian, Augustine of Hippo. One day after he had been writing about the Trinity for awhile, he decided to take a break and go walk along the beach. He came across a boy who had a bucket. He would fill up the bucket,…
People are drawn to the story of God’s mighty acts, the story of Jesus, not simply for the story itself, but because they hear that story in their own native languages. If the apostles had been speaking Greek, everyone would have understood them—Greek was the lingua franca. But the Greek wouldn’t have been compelling. The…
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