Category Archives: Uncategorized

Trigger warning:  In this post, I write about a lynching, in a fair amount of detail.  Please be advised. Google “English ivy,”  and after you pass over numerous advertisements for nurseries where you can purchase it, you will find page after page of warning. You see, English ivy is an invasive plant, introduced into theContinue reading “Pulling Up the Roots”

I was born in 1953.  So I came of age during the 60s.  A time of turbulence and upheaval, of questioning and throwing out old norms of behavior.  A cultural revolution.  There was a lot going on:  the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war and protests against it, the assassinations of major public figures, includingContinue reading “The Power That Is Love”

Before I begin I pause to acknowledge the land I currently occupy, lands that rightfully belong to the Mvskoke Nation, a people who lived here for centuries, who tended the soil and raised their crops, birthed and raised their children, celebrated the Green Corn ceremony and other ceremonies that linked them to each other andContinue reading “Remove and Rebuild”

In the summer of 1996, my parents and I were traveling across Montana. We visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, and then went down below the National Park Service site to a small building right next to the Little Bighorn River, near where Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and roughly 8,000 people from theContinue reading “From Where I Stand”

“As for Sarai, her name will now be Sarah, ‘Noblewoman.’  I will bless her, and I will give you a child by her.  I will bless her, and she will become nations; rulers of peoples will come from her.” Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Is a child to beContinue reading “Saying No to say Yes”

Rev. J. Wesley Shipp, Sr, turned 89 today, March 2.  He and my mother taught me and my brothers everything we know about braving holy discomfort. A farm boy, born and raised in Princess Anne County, VA, who played football for Kempsville High, he remembers that, at age 12 or so, he would stand inContinue reading “Braving Holy Discomfort: A Life”

What is holy discomfort? What are the situations that challenge our personal status quo, that move us to the edge of our understanding, and push us, sometimes kicking and screaming, into zones where we feel confused, angry, downright uncomfortable? As a white woman who grew up in the South, in the Southern Baptist church, IContinue reading “Holy Discomfort”