“Looking across the desk at the three—a symbolically weighty number when applied to biblical visitors—something didn’t feel right to the young pastor. She struggled to keep from nervously swiveling in the big chair.…

“But, Oh Best Beloved, without psalms of lament, we are cut off from our anger or our grief. We give up the opportunity to be honest with God about our emotions. Just as…

“Is it any wonder we are becoming fatalists, resigned to living in the impenetrable dark? I admit to feeling helpless, despondent and, at times, numb. Waves of depression and faithlessness wash over me,…

“Thirteen years ago this week, the day before Thanksgiving, on a whim, I drove from West Virginia to rural Kingston, Georgia to a no-kill dog rescue. As I pulled up to the gate holding…

“As a woman and as a lesbian who has spent years subjugated by society as well as by people in my own Church, I know what it is like to have the Good Book…

“In Mark’s version of the temptation story, just before Jesus is driven into the wilderness, he sees the heavens open and the Spirit descending like a dove. Mark tells us that Jesus, still…

“Like an infant swaddled, Lazarus is bound in strips of cloth, his face wrapped in bands of fabric. ‘Unbind him and let him go.’ The fetters of death and despair are unfastened. The shroud…

“Throughout the years, Calli has taught me so much about living with frailty and an illness that is not only ‘messy,’ but which can lead to more and more serious and even fatal…

“Advent in general, and in the year 2020 more specifically, arrived with an unimaginable—not imaginable—host of negativities: skepticism, bitter certainties, despair, and cynicism nipping at the outer flanks of what we hope is true. We…

“It is about being ready for an arrival, as well as about not being ready for a delay. We’re oh so ready for a vaccine, for a return to the analog world, for…