Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

I don't know enough about how the weekly verses are chosen to understand why there are two gospels for today: the story of the birth of John the Baptist, and the story of Jesus' encounter with the thieves crucified on either side of him, one asking him to prove his supremacy, the other asking to be remembered at the time of the world's salvation. Perhaps it makes sense that on the Sunday before the start of Advent, we should encounter two gospels that reflect, in a way, the whole of Jesus' life, from his birth, foretold through the miraculous signs surrounding his cousin John's birth, to his crucifixion. The circle continues and returns to the image of rebirth in the Easter story, and each year, we live through that life over and over again through the church calendar. I am focusing today on the image of circles. Sometimes, the circular nature of our lives remind us, again and again, of how we must learn and relearn the same lessons in new ways. Our country faces th...

I decided that starting Friday, the day after I was officially chosen to be S's parent, I would tell anyone who asked me directly that I was planning to adopt a 14-year-old girl, even if the person was not someone I knew well. Most people who know me at all know I'm in the process of adopting, but I have only told a few the details of my decision about S. Although it's not a "done deal" yet, it is time for the community to get used to the idea--and in a small community like ours, S is likely to have contact with many people who live here in one way or another. And, in any case, more people may know about my adoption than I think--I have no idea how many people from my community are reading this blog (though I suspect not many, as most of the people who respond to it via e-mail are friends living in other places). This weekend, I ran into a community leader who knew I had been planning to adopt, and I told her my plans after she asked. Her first question was, ...

Yesterday, I learned I had been chosen to be S's parent. I had been conferencing with students all day, starting at 7:30, and I was in the last conference of the evening, around 5:30, when I got the call. Last night I e-mailed a big group of friends, too overwhelmed to figure out who to call. I got a couple phone calls in response, and a friend and I went out to eat. I had a beer and tried to talk about how I was feeling, which was relieved, overjoyed, scared shitless, and sad for the other family, all at once, without much success. Then I went home and prepared for another long day of conferences. Now, I wait while S. learns about me, decides what she wants to do next--talk on the phone, meet where she lives, meet where I live. Anything could go wrong, of course--we could not get along in person, she could decide she doesn't want to be adopted after all and would prefer to be moved again to another foster home (her fate sometime before April if the adoption does not work out)-...

We had come to the end of a path in the woods, to a chasm of trees below us, and in front of us, a narrow railroad bridge. I don’t remember where we were, exactly, or whose idea it was to cross that bridge, but I do know that Jen went first, putting one foot in front of the other, steadily. Kris and I were more cautious. I went next, giggling from nervousness, and Kris, behind me, said, “Don’t even think about laughing, or you’ll fall, and if you do, I’ll reach out toward you without thinking and fall right along with you.” This only made me laugh harder. “I’m serious,” Kris said, and I could hear a little trembling in her voice. When I stopped laughing and steadied myself, I realized Jen was already far ahead of us. She was humming to herself, swinging her hips. She had always been the bravest one among us. The image of her walking steadily across that bridge is seared into my memory. She is wearing one of her signature hippy skirts with black combat boots and a ratty t-shirt. Her fin...

Haggai 1:15b-2:9 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 Psalm 145 Luke 20:27-38 I remember encountering this verse for the first time as kid. It terrified me. I didn't like Jesus' answer to the Sauducees' question about marriage. They are trying to trick Jesus, as always, with questions that will prove he isn't as smart or as knowledgable as his followers believe--so they ask him about the afterlife. If a woman has seven husbands, marrying each in succession after the previous husband dies, whose wife will she be in the next world? Jesus answers that in the next world, we are all God's children, and so there will be no need for marriage. I didn't want to believe this. If marriages wouldn't exist in the next world, then what human relationships would exist? This seemed especially perplexing when I thought about my mother. Whenever I met her again in the next life, I wanted to encounter her as the woman I'd known her to be, to be loved and cared for in the same way ...

Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4 Psalm 119:137-144 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12 andLuke 19:1-10 What does it mean to welcome another human being into one’s life? This question is at the root of the story of Zacchaeus the tax collector. Zacchaeus climbs a tree as Jesus is passing in the midst of a crowd because “he wanted to see who Jesus was.” This is a laughable image, to say the least—a grown (though very short) man scurrying up a tree. He was risking embarrassment, no doubt, by doing so. What did he expect to gain, anyway, from a glimpse of Jesus? The story is too brief to offer an answer to this question. Somehow, Jesus sees Zacchaeus. He looks up and says, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” And so Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus—but he doesn’t stop there. He goes on to give half his possessions to the poor, making amends for the greedy life he’s lived up to that point. He promises to pay back anyone he has cheated “four times” the amount the person lost. And Jesus ...

Note: I wrote this a few weeks ago, but just now finally got my computer at home up and running again, thanks to the help of a computer-savvy student...and hopefully I'll be posting weekly again! I was finally ready, I thought, to come back to this blog, after an exhausting month of multiple professional and personal challenges, but when I read the gospel for October 7, I became physically distressed. Jesus tells his disciples, “Suppose one of you had a servant…would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat?’ Would he not rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink.’ Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” This passage bothers me for multiple reasons. Perhaps most viscerally, I have known too many wo...