Writing

New essay in Lily & Sparrow Journal There are days when theology stops being something we think about and becomes something we can feel. A few weeks into my first call as a priest, I found myself carrying a weight I hadn’t quite anticipated. It showed up in my body before I had words for it: pressure in my chest, tension across my shoulders, a persistent sense that I was somehow not enough for all that had been entrusted to me. Then someone helped me notice where I was carryi

Twenty-five years after 9/11, remembering the call to love across the lines of fear and division Today, twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, I find myself returning to the day after. I remember September 12 as the day that changed the trajectory of my life and, in many ways, my faith. The smoke was still rising over New York. The grief was still raw. And already, alongside the horror of what human beings could do to one another, I was beginning to see something else: w

Learning beloved community, one table at a time There is a question I have been carrying with me lately: What kind of community are we becoming? It is a question that came up for me again this week as I prepared Sunday’s sermon on Matthew 18. Jesus says some familiar things in this passage: about conflict, forgiveness, accountability, binding and loosing, and the presence of Christ whenever two or three are gathered in his name. But underneath all of it, I hear Jesus asking s