Locs, Heels, and the Bible

I love Advent. It is not because I love waiting, because I don't. Advent is the season of waiting, great expectation, and preparing room for the One who comes wrapped up in human skin, bearing our humanity, and returning in final victory. I love Advent because it slows down the paceToo often though, our focus narrows to a manger and a mother, leaving the broader story of Jesus’ lineage behind a veil of silence. Yet the opening lines of the Gospel of Matthew resist that silence. In the genealogy of Jesus, there is an interruption of rhythm, a break in the usual pattern of “father of… father of…” Five women are named—five women whose presence in the text is not accidental but theological, not supplemental but central. In this sacred season, as we light candles and read prophecies, the Church must also remember the women whose lives, wombs, and choices shaped the bloodline of Christ. And we—especially those committed to the status and role of women—must not miss the invitation in the...

Each year, Christmas shows up wrapped up in tinsel and lots of sentiment, and for a brief moment the world pretends that it has learned how to love. We sing of peace while tiptoeing carefully around the bodies that peace is yet to hug. We speak of joy then we turn around and ration it. We light candles while entire neighborhoods live under the threat of structural darkness. Christmas tells the story of a child born into precarity, yet we have learned how to sentimentalize the manger and sanitize the risk involved. As much as we glide around the issue, the fact still remains that the Holy Family fled and hid to escape the structural darkness that never truly went away. So, Christmas, when told honestly, is about incarnation under pressure. God shows up where empire counts people as expendable and calls it order. God shows up without permission, paperwork, or without an invitation from power. That alone should trouble our carols. And then comes Boxing Day. Boxing Day is not as visible ...

It is no small thing to hold gratitude in a year like this, where everything feels stretched thin and the space between us and God feels so thick. I’ve heard fear humming at front doors, while anxiety makes the bed as if their names are on the  mortgage or the rental agreement. “Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, and God’s steadfast love endures forever.” “How’s that working for you?” says the voice that will not let me go. I thought it was love that was supposed to hold on like that.  Instead, what stalks are policies that bruise communities, and the reports of people disappearing into systems that do not know their names. And yet, we are still here; breathing, choosing to gather, daring to hope in a time that punishes hope and continues to scope  out where a good dream is hiding that it might crush it. “Give thanks to the Lord, for God is good, and God’s steadfast love endures forever.” I insist, even as the sound of terror persists  and tries to snuff o...

Pastors are human beings and we gather stories the way chalices gather the fruit of the vine - in pours. The cup is beautiful, yes. However, it gets heavy. We do grieve more than we admit. We grieve the saints whose funerals we preside over. We grieve when members leave, sometimes with words that bruise, sometimes with silence that lingers. We grieve colleagues who retire, because their absence rearranges the hallways, the Zoom room, and the denominational map. We grieve the ministry plans that were not approved by the committee, the initiatives that ran out of volunteers, and we are not immune to the shifting ground. In addition, we carry our own private griefs.  Grief in ministry is part of the road. Scripture is honest about this. Israel sang laments in public. Jesus wept at a friend’s tomb and lamented over a city that would not listen. Jeremiah ’s tears watered the pages of prophecy. Paul writes of being “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,” and the Psalms teach us to bring both...

Dear Arleigh,  Another year has come, and still my heart struggles to comprehend the weight of your absence. The world has the audacity and insensitivity to move on. The days fold into weeks, weeks fold into months, and here we are six flipping years later. My spirit carries the ache of you being gone every single day. Today especially, I feel the sharp edges of missing you, as though all that time has not dulled them at all. I still remember your laugh and how it could fill a room and light up every moment. I remember the way you looked at me when you were proud, or when you wanted to make sure that I saw you. I did, my child. I saw you then, and I still see you now. I see you in the small details of life and hear you in the peeling of the wind chime. I catch glimpses of you everywhere. There are days when I still want to call your name out loud, as if you will just walk through the door and answer me. Some nights I say prayers that you still know how much you are loved, and how m...

Right there in the ozarks of Arkansas, where the earth still holds the blood of lynched bodies and echoes of night riders, a new danger is taking root. Disguised as a quiet rural commune, a self-declared white nationalist town is being carved out with 160 acres of exclusion and hate. They call it “Return to the Land.” Return to the land my arse. Don’t let the pastoral branding fool you. It has nothing to do with community farming or sustainable living. This coded fortress is nothing more than a repackaged segregationist ideology with solar panels and Wi-Fi.   History as Rehearsal: This movement is not new either. It is the digital grandchild of the White Citizens’ Councils. The rhetoric has changed, but the goal has not. It is still remove, isolate, and dominate. The world has watched what happens when people build ethno-nationalist states. They don’t end in quiet. They end in genocide, apartheid, and collapsed democracies. (I say ‘collapsed democracies’ tongue in cheek). Als...