[Note: This is an end-of-the-year letter I wrote for our congregation, Woodridge United Methodist Church. I've adapted it here for, hopefully, appealing to a wider audience.] I am often asked about that weird word in my title. Koinonia is a Greek word used in the New Testament. I’m not a Greek language scholar, but those …
Category: Justice
What’s next?
"Today and everyday, I will fight hatred with love and kindness." It has been, and continues to be, a very difficult week for some of us. Each day since the election, reports of violent words and actions against women, blacks, Muslims, and LGBT folks are (trigger warning for hate speech and language) filling our timelines …
Lament
Divorce. Disease. Death. The uncomfortable truth is that our congregation, our communities, and our country is hurting. From more than just those three 'd' words, of course. But those are the ones I've encountered most in recent weeks and months. Too often, we feel the need to present ourselves as doing fine -- even in …
My most famous photo
Well, the photo in question isn't really famous. And it's about the only photo of me that's published somewhere other than on my own sites, so that "most" modifier isn't really necessary. Oh, and it's a picture of me but not by me. Other than those minor quibbles, the title of this post is totally …
Time to act thankfully
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the Global Food Security Act yesterday (Thursday). Our friends at Bread for the World, the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, and 65 other organizations endorse this bill. Why? More than 800 million people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger. The Global Food Security Act makes into law: …
‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…’
Interconnected. Mutual. "What affects one directly, affects us all indirectly." Issues overlap. We've talked about this a number of times at my church. For instance, I've been known to say something like this, "If we want to talk about ending homelessness, we have to talk about the lack of affordable housing. If we want to …
Continue reading ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality…’
On message
What lessons are our young people learning from us? In what ways are we teaching and sharing the messages they receive? That video has been making the rounds across the interwebs lately. It's an incredible performance and a stark reminder that our children and youth are extremely perceptive and they see and hear things we …
Celebrating Sabbath
Note: Celebrating Sabbath is my attempt to start each week with a reminder of our identity: whose we are and who we're called to be. The obvious and only real choice today: the first - and still the best - Christmas song. Yep, Mary's Magnificat. That is, the song Mary sings as she visits her …
#StayWokeAdvent
That racism exists in our world, in our country, in our community, in our systems - social, economic, and political - is irrefutable. But as a middle-aged, middle-income, able-bodied, cis-gendered, straight, white, Christian, male, layers of privilege afford me the possibility - the comfort - of not noticing that racism. Or, if I do notice …
It’s not all bad
This has been a tough week: Ongoing war and atrocities in Iraq and Gaza. Robin Williams' suicide Shooting death of Mike Brown and all that followed (and continues to follow) in Ferguson, MO. Death, racism, oppression, violence, pain and despair are not hard to find. I'm going to talk about all of that as honestly …
All That I Can't Leave Unsaid 