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It “did something to the material you’re made of”

For this week of honoring the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kings Jr, I share words from Rosemarie Freeney Harding from her memoir Remnants. Rosemarie and her husband Vincent were close companions of the Kings and involved, for a time, in the racially integrated “Mennonite House” in Atlanta.

“Martin and Coretta and Anne Braden and Ella Baker and others like them had a beautiful effect on people who spent time with them. Living and working in their presence hastened changes in your own thoughts, your reactions, your priorities; even if you weren’t cognizant of...

What The Sneetches teaches

Last Saturday I was doing some house cleaning while listening to a podcast, the most recent episode of NPR’s “Planet Money.” I was intrigued with the title: “The economics lessons in kids’ books.” I was even more intrigued when the episode centered on an elementary classroom “in the Columbus, Ohio suburbs,” which turned out to be Shale Meadows Elementary School in Olentangy Local School District. No personal connections I know of (although probably some I don’t know of), but cool that a national podcast...

Coming of Age, Sharing Our Wisdom

I recently read an article about what it means to seek wisdom and was reflecting on how one of my favorite ways to think about this thing we call Christianity is as a “wisdom tradition.” As the article suggests, wisdom can be hard to pin down or define, but it always goes beyond just a collection of facts or ideas. As a “wisdom tradition” Christianity is less about the...

Longest night, mammals and all rejoice

Happy Solstice. It’s the shortest day and longest night of the year. It’s the first day of winter and it sounds like winter will soon be felt.

It’s a good time for mammals to give thanks for fur, and those who have lost their fur to find a warm blanket, or a fireplace, or an HVAC register. It’s a good time to be inside not just a den or a home, but inside one’s thoughts. To enter the rich darkness of interiority, to sit in the mystery of self and other.

There is a natural rhythm to all this.

We don’t know what time of year Jesus was actually born, but it’s a good...

‘Tis the season for Incarnational Mysticism

One of the core theological ideas of Advent and Christmas is incarnation. In sum, G-d took human form in the person of Jesus. John’s Gospel has no nativity scene, but does contain this one-sentence incarnational Christmas story: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” John 1:14

Some streams of Christianity have emphasized the uniqueness of this event, and thus the exclusiveness of access to G-d through Jesus. Other streams, including the mystics and many Eastern forms of Christianity, have emphasized incarnation as a continuous reality – ever-occurring events –...

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