As I write this, I am serving as a pastoral intern in a local church. If you told me I’d be in that role as a teenager, I would have been shocked and possibly horrified: there’s no such thing as women pastors, I would have said. I know many of my friends and family who
Philippians 3:12 – Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. (NRSV) Christ Jesus has made me his own. What beautiful words. I’ve not attained anything wonderful, but Christ Jesus has made me his
I first heard about Lent in my twenties, living in Northern Ireland where it didn’t matter if you were Catholic, Protestant or Buddhist – everyone practiced lent. It was quite shocking to me that people could (and would) give up smoking, drinking, gambling or any other addiction, successfully for forty days, then happily return to
Hey all! I had a website crash and haven’t pulled myself together to try and recover much (anything). One day I’ll come back and either figure it out or start over, but until then… there’s not much here.
My plot of land was destroyed. I looked at it in despair, smoke rising from places, vegetables trampled under the careless and heavy usage of people I thought were friends, fruit trees cut down and rocks and stones littering the ground. It was good for nothing anymore, and all those who had seemed invested had
When my husband and I moved to our new home in the city, the first thing he did was plant fruit trees. As the saying goes, the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is today.
So, he eagerly went to the local nursery and picked out a variety of fruit trees and vines: cherries and apples, plums and grapes, and loaded our inner-city yard up as if he still lived on the farm.
It took a few years for anything of note to come, but then one year, we saw some cherries.
They were beautiful! Large and juicy, ruby red, hanging so tantalizingly from the tree. We couldn’t help but try one, long before it was ready… and it was terrible.
It was too sour to swallow, so we spat them out, and committed to waiting for them to ripen.
Dear Lord,
I am speechless.
I want to claim ignorance, to distance myself from the white, religious perpetrators of this, to say I am not like this and this is not me.
Yet as I see so many of your children distancing themselves I wonder, who is left to stand?
We distanced ourselves so much we made the children disappear.
We.
Not them.
Me.
So I am trying to stand – shaky and uncertain.
Stand by those graves and weep, and say I am so, so, sorry over and over again.
Place a marker over each one, calling them by name, not numbers, saying you matter and never again and I will not forget.
Those graves were hidden because everyone had distanced themselves, because nobody was willing to see.
I will try to stand close. I will open my eyes to see. And I will say: I am so, so, sorry.