Category Archives: Uncategorized

“If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’ then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.” (Jeremiah 20:9) I am looking for the hand, I say.No, she answers with characteristic bluntness.Continue reading “Un(en)titled”

I am taking a break from posting for the next three weeks (June 23 and 30, July 7), as my brothers and I prepare to memorialize our Dad and bury our father’s and mother’s ashes in a plot they purchased with our grandparents back in the 1960s. I was raised a Southern Baptist and nowContinue reading “In the midst of life”

In the inaugural post for this blog, in March, 2021, I wrote that my mother and father taught me and my brothers everything we know about holy discomfort. “My mother dreamed of tending her own home, raising a family,” I wrote. “She always joked that she honestly had wanted the picket fence!  And yet sheContinue reading “My Mother’s House”

Going into the ministry was nowhere in my father’s plans for his life when he was a boy.  It was Grandma Reid who named him. “Why don’t you call him John Wesley?” she proposed. “Maybe he’ll be a preacher.”   Of course, there was that one time that young Wesley abruptly announced that he was goingContinue reading “John Wesley the Baptist”

Sometimes Love looks like turning tables over in the Temple. But that’s not how I was brought up. Eris.  The Greek Goddess of Discord; Discordia, in Latin. The etymology of the name is uncertain, some scholars connecting it with a Greek verb whose English translation is “to raise, stir, excite.” None of which I knewContinue reading “A Southern White Girl’s Upbringin’”

Warren Massenburg was over 6 feet tall at the age of 15, his broad face framed by an Afro that added at least 3 inches to his height. He carried a hefty amount of weight. His name fit him perfectly. We stood together in the halls of Wake Forest High School, between classes. “You know…,” heContinue reading “Who I (truly) am”

The man in the black and white photograph is looking to his right. The camera is positioned slightly below him, a position that emphasizes his stature. Caught in mid-speech, mid-sentence, mid-thought, he is intent on what he is saying. His gaze is focused; his right hand extended, the long fingers spread wide. The seriousness in his faceContinue reading “Dangerous Proposition”

“What is truth?” the Roman governor Pontius Pilate asks Jesus, during what Christians know as Holy Week. In the Gospel of John (chapter 18), Pilate asks this question after Jesus says that he has come into the world to testify to the truth.   “What is truth?” Pilate asks.  And Jesus does not answer.   It is notContinue reading “Truth”

Holy discomfort this week looks like letting go. My father is ill. His pneumonia is not responding to antibiotics, and he is refusing to eat. My brothers and I gathered around his hospital bed. The nurse poked at him to wake him up and yelled into his ear, “Your children are here. ” He rousedContinue reading “A poem for my father”