When I said I was deeply Christian, I wasn’t just saying that. Grace is the number one reason. Most of my life, I have been captivated by the phenomenon of grace in the Christian story. Maybe it’s because I was a guilty child, but maybe it’s because grace is a revolution in thinking for all of us. Maybe we are just built to be big containers for grace. When you drink from that well, a big reservoir opens up inside you and grace is the only thing.
It is just the most beautiful story. You ...
Every once in a while, I am employed to help someone “deconstruct their faith.” I consider it a high honor since it helps me fulfill one of my life commitments – to “undo things.” It is #3 on my list I like to call “My Life Plan.” The text in My Life Plan reads this way: “Undo things – like Jesus, defy expectations and convention.” This is also one of the reasons I find myself floating away from what we call Christianity, but then also finding profound truth in ...
It is difficult to understand people sometimes. Some people rub you the wrong way, but if you sit in the same space with anyone long enough seeking only to understand them, it will be hard to continue holding them in contempt. Of course, it depends on your stance. If you really want to hold them down in contempt, you will find reasons. It’s an orientation of your heart to attempt to understand and love someone you would have otherwise written off and walled off.
In these days when even people ...
Search any human heart and you will find contempt. It comes in many forms and is unfortunately as natural to us as breathing and eating. It organizes us. Somewhere along the way (probably in adolescence), we start identifying everything we hate – everything we think we are not and everything we do not want to be. This is probably a necessary process of forming our identity; the problem is too often we get stuck there and believe that is the only way to “be somebody.” Long into our adulthood, ...
Imagine a world where all people of color are in charge
We will rejoice
Not because one is better than the other
But because we live in a world where the tables can turn and everyone is okay
Where everyone gets a chance to play and sometimes those who have played the longest let someone else have their day
Only poetry will save us
Not logic or politic or rhetoric
But beauty, art and music
Because poetry helps you understand
Things you were not meant to understand
And when people of color take ...
We must practice this inner contemplative work to connect more deeply with our reality. Especially now, there is a strong tendency for us to focus on and get involved with things external to us: policy, politics, the current crises, and the others around us – some friend, some foe. If we are to engage with others and our environment in an effective way, however, we must work toward becoming non-violent, peaceful and powerful within ourselves, ...
If we are going to be effective in these times of cultural and societal upheaval, we must do our inner work. I am not really interested in hearing what you or I have to say about any issue external to us if we have not done work resolving conflicts within ourselves. And I’m not just talking about being able to hash through an issue logically and decide what you believe about it. I’m talking about being able to hold tension and complexity within yourself and realize you don’t have all the ...
I have always liked imperfect things. One of the ways my high school art teacher taught us to create abstract art is to draw something you see, and then just take certain elements of the thing and stretch them, elongate them, mess ‘em up somehow in your drawing. It’s deconstruction, which we are having to do in so many ways in our lives all the time. We have to destroy and take apart our lives the way they are to get to the next thing and make a better version of what was. I think this kind ...