Learning How to Lean Into the Grey
** Hi. I am making an editorial decision and saying lyrics count as literature. I know, I know. I’m also calling ethics theology, which is only sometimes true. Bear with me. ** And my hands[…]
Another Way
Maybe it was the exceptions we made for one another that brought God more pride than when we stood firm, maybe His heart opened when His creations opened their hearts to one another, and maybe that[…]
Holden Caulfield & Adolescent In-Betweenness
Just like the five decades of teenagers before me, I loved J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye in high school. I loved narrator Holden Caulfield’s stream of consciousness, because that was how I thought and[…]
Conflicting Desires & bell hooks
Why, hello. I know it’s been over a year since I posted last–and I have a lot of good reasons for that–but I wanted to drop in to say hi and that I haven’t completely[…]
Elegy for a Dying Church
* This is the image of my altar and the ordinary icons that represent Wits’ End for me: the card and candles I received last week for my help with the children, the card I[…]
An Everlasting Name
It’s the Tuesday after the horrendous shooting at the Orlando gay bar, and questions are flooding my mind: How do I grieve on behalf of a community? How can I be supportive without making this about[…]
Islamophobia-phobia: an exercise in syntax
Monday afternoon, the 12-year-old I tutor, Ayni, asked me if I had heard that earlier that day her mosque was set on fire. The mosque was housed in a multipurpose building in the High Point[…]
So human
There were vile people in both those cities [Sodom and Gomorrah], as is well known. The world is better off without them. And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all[…]
Truth and Presentation: A Theology and Spiritual Formation of Creative Writing
A quick throwback to, wow, a year and a half now. I am brainstorming for a lecture I’m giving this fall on gender and God (and its play in fiction, like I do), and I[…]