An Old Emergence

There was a time When I wouldn't let my body See the light of day. It was wrong It was less than It was other. Let me introduce you To my acne scars, Reminders of adolescent breakouts That stayed around for too many years as uninvited guests. And here are my stretch marks From gaining weight And losing weight And gaining weight And losing weight And, well, you get the idea. Be careful not to go blind When the light hits my Porcelain skin And it's thick dusting of Ginger hair, but This. Is. My. Body. Those words trickle down Through liturgy and scripture And tradition and maybe They mean more than just Words of institution. Maybe it's time to stop hiding What's going on underneath And wear my scars and my marks And not let what I assume others see Influence what I see. Because my acne scars aren't written Across my face like they Could have been. This. Is. My. Body. My stretch marks tell a story Of how I have failed but ...

A couple weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that I had made some big life decisions. Well, here we are. Today is my last day at Capital Teas. And to make things more interesting, I do not have another job lined up yet. This is terrifying. However, I have never felt more right about a job-related decision in my life.  So why did I do it? That's the real question. And it comes down to something I have never been great at: a leap of faith. I have had a great life plan multiple times in my life. I have wanted EVERYTHING planned in great detail, even if none of those plans actually panned out. When it comes to taking risks, going out on faith, I am woefully unprepared. Yet here I am. Out on faith. Let's be fair, I had a pretty good job. It paid my bills. There was potential for advancement. I knew the industry. I knew where I stood (most of the time). But I wasn't happy. I know people will say that happiness is fleeting and that job security is important. But I was...

Four years ago I was sitting among a few male friends on campus in the lounge of our University Ministries offices. We had decided, a few weeks back, to form this group so we could spend some time in closer mentorship with our University Minister. At the time, I was struggling through reconciling my journey of self-discovery and my faith. Some of that reconciliation was earth-shattering. And while I never brought that up with this particular group, I was comforted by their companionship as we talked weekly about other struggles. This particular Wednesday night also happened to be Ash Wednesday. Earlier in the evening, I had joined with my church family in Nashville to observe the ritual of receiving ashes. At Glendale, my small, liberal Baptist church, we received ashes in the shape of a circle, denoting the cyclical pattern of life and of our faith journeys. This night was my first encounter with Ash Wednesday at a church of my genuine choosing. It was also the first time I had e...

“Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, 'Yu, u nobuntu'; 'Hey so-and-so has ubuntu.' then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, 'my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.' we belong in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other persons.'" Never has this quote from Desmond Tutu seemed so relevant than it does this week as the Supreme Court of the United States takes up discussion and arguments over two cases that directly relate to marriage equality. This is a topic so mired in stigma and profound conviction (on both sides) that it is terribly difficult to have productive discussions about it across the plumb line of ideological separation. But the thing that brings people together more often than not...

We’re that kind of old… Where we are but we’re not But we’re expected to be Yet not treated like we are. Youth is less who we are And more what we have That we’re slowly losing. And we act like we want to lose it Even though we know when it’s gone We’ll just want it back. We’re that kind of old…

I cannot write anymore. I had a good streak there for a couple of years. I blogged fairly regularly about this or that, pretending that my theological opinion was some great gift to the blogosphere. In my mind, so many people read what I was writing. I was making some kind of impact on the lives of someone, surely. Then I stopped writing. The “real world” took over, and my career moved me to a new city. I began working 60-hour weeks, and in the process forgot to post blogs. Forgot to write at all.

“To take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice.” –Desmond Tutu My mind is racing to so many places tonight. I just don’t know where solace can be found. I want so badly to write some great, insightful response to the travesty of justice that was the execution of Troy Davis. But all I have in my heart is sadness.

As summer appears to be stretching fervently into September, I am reminded how much I despise hot weather. After spending eight weeks on the road this summer working for Passport Camps (half of which was spent in the blistering 3-digit degree temperatures of Dallas), I am officially home and have moved on to the next season of my life.

It is fairly disheartening to have a vision but no means to achieve it. Barriers seem to multiply the closer you get to true revelation, but none is so discouraging as age. It seems like everywhere I turn lately I am confronted with the fact that my young age keeps people from taking what I have to say seriously.

Let me be clear from the outset of this post: I thoroughly enjoy Lady Gaga’s music. I love that she advocates for the rights of LGBT people. I love that she is an entertainer, and that her music tells a story…even if that story is often just plain weird. I would give just about anything to meet her and/or attend one of her concerts. I find her music both provocative and addicting. However, Gaga is not a religious scholar.

Sunday begins the arduous five-day journey to Good Friday. The tradition in which I grew up never paid much attention to the liturgical calendar, so it has only been in the last few years that I have stumbled upon the greater Lenten tradition. Of course, along the way, I began to work out my own personal theology. This means that every Easter, I am forced to contemplate what the Atonement really means to me, as well as the language I use to talk about it.

Isn’t this a strange time of year? I remember how the third quarter of every school year was always the worst. Even in college, the first half of the spring semester always seemed to drag along. It was like the second half winter was intentionally more dismal than other times of the year.

This year for Lent, I am not really focusing on giving anything up. Instead, I am focusing on ways to improve the way I live my life. While there is a definite spiritual component (which I’ll get to), the bulk of my focus is on my physicality. I am being intentional about the way I eat. While there are many different scripture passages that deal with food, I am always drawn to the passage at the end of the sixth chapter of 1 Corinthians: “You must know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is within you – the Spirit you have received from God…So glorify God in your body.” (The Inclusive Bible) This speaks to more than just food, but to fitness, about the body as a whole. It doesn’t point out gluttony or drunkenness. So often those passages are used to call alcohol evil or are twisted to change the meaning of gluttony to focus on material things. So instead of looking at those kinds of scripture, I like that the writer of 1 Corinthians reminds us that our bodi...

holy god who suffers with us, suffers for us, suffers because of us place your arms around us and hold us tight

One of the three women I have the blessing to call “Pastor” has a way with words like no one else I know. Her name is April, and she is the co-pastor of Glendale Baptist Church in Nashville, TN. Now that I’ve moved away from Nashville, I rely on copious email communication to keep April in my life on a regular basis. Every email, in addition to having a reply to my question, concern, or rant, has bits of wisdom and spiritual direction woven in.

I got the opportunity to spend four days in Nashville last week. It was indescribably wonderful to hang out with my friends whom I miss terribly. I really do have the best friends in the world. The laughter, the hugs, the deep conversations…all were things I needed more than I realized. But along the way I began to discover something that shocked me. I actually began to miss home. I really don’t like Birmingham. Compared to Nashville, it just isn’t a particularly exciting place to live. Yet I’ve started to make it my life. Now that I have (almost) fully moved into my new living space, I feel like I’m here for the long haul.

Today we honor the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a life lived in peace, and a life spent working toward equality. Dr. King remains to this day an inspiration for all who still struggle for equal rights. Growing up in Alabama endows a white Anglo-Saxon protestant with a unique perspective on race relations. Even though I never experienced segregation or the atrocities that were perpetrated in my home city of Birmingham in the sixties and seventies, I still experienced a form of “us-them” mentality as a child. I remember thinking and “understanding” that there was something different about the black, Asian, and Latino students in my classes.

An insightful reflection from Rev. Diana Butler Bass in response to the shooting that occurred this morning in Arizona involving Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Follow the link HERE .

(if you missed part 1, you can check it out here) I am resolved to do things differently this year. I am finding out that I have a fair bit of time on my hands post-graduation, pre-working. While I anticipate having a job of some sort secured by next week, I will still have a significantly larger amount of time on my hands than when I was in school. So I'm going to be intentional with my time.

I really hate making New Years resolutions. I’ve done it before, but they have never amounted to anything worthwhile. My resolutions have always been somewhat trivial, intensely focused on making me better than I was before. It’s a bit of an unhealthy cycle. But not this year. This year I am standing at a crossroad. The finale of 2010 was exceptionally difficult for me. I graduated from college, finishing up four and a half years at a place that transformed my life. I moved back to Hoover, leaving behind a life that I had spent half a decade building. I left a church, and for the first time in my life doing so was devastating because I loved the church, not because I had been betrayed by it.