This Sunday, we welcome Pastor Naylo of Bethel United Methodist Church to preach as part of our Lenten series, All Y’all. He is a gifted communicator and a gracious presence, and we are grateful to receive his voice among us. But before we say anything else, we begin...
Every piece of glass does one of two things. It either lets light through or throws your image back at you. It either reflects you back to yourself or lets you see something beyond yourself. We use glass for windows because, at its best, it is almost invisible. When...
This week marks the beginning of the Season of Lent and a new series based on some difficult teachings of Jesus on anger, adultery, retaliation, divorce, swearing, and love. But before you tune out, hang with us at least long enough to find out that our traditional...
When we travel today, we rarely choose roads the old-fashioned way. Most of us enter a destination and are offered a route shaped by preferences we don’t even remember setting. Preferences like “fastest route” or “avoid tolls.” We tap “Go” and trust the voice guiding...
Over the past year, most of us have felt unmoored. Truth feels fragile. Anger feels constant. Power feels reckless. And too often, fear has been rewarded while compassion is dismissed as weakness. In moments like these, it’s tempting to retreat, to disengage, to...
One of the defining struggles of our time is the widening gap between those with wealth and power and the vast majority who live without either. These inequities reach far beyond access to comfort or convenience. They shape whose voices are heard, whose bodies are...
“Who are the peacemakers in times of haunting wars?” Olena Tovianska asks from Irpin, Ukraine. She does not ask as a distant observer or a detached theologian, but as someone living inside the question. War is not an abstract concept where she lives; it constructs...
A concept known as “emotional intelligence” gets top billing in the psychological and organizational literature of our day. Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to understand, regulate, and responsibly express emotion, as a core foundation for healthy...
This past week has been devastating. The news has been relentless about federal immigration enforcement expanding into cities and neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the family of a mother killed during an ICE operation in Minnesota is grieving. Her community is grieving....
This week, a young mother was killed in Minneapolis. A life was taken. A family was shattered. A community was wounded. I want to say plainly what many of us are feeling: I am angry. I am heartbroken. And I am struggling to find words that neither numb the truth nor...