Despite my protest, Dad refused to reshuffle the order of cars in the driveway, so we rolled up in an old farm truck, with a huge dent in the bed and non-functioning air horns across the cab. I was a ninth grader, new to my school and heading to my first party with the popular […]
Tag Archives: god
Our lectionary reading comes from the Book of First Kings. Kings, like Samuel and Chronicles, reads like history but lifts up some events while completely ignoring others. “Kings” is concerned with one thing: “Did the king do evil in the eyes of the Lord?” ( 1 Kings 16) After that moral assessment Kings reflects very […]
As the waiter placed the meal on our table, my friend asked if I would offer the blessing. When I said, “Amen” my friend said “You forgot to say ‘the hands that provided it’.” I’m not sure anyone had critiqued my prayer aloud since seminary, so it took me a minute to figure out what […]
I met Connie in the College and Career group at Rosemont Baptist. I was College: a freshman, She was a Career: a college graduate working as a Physical Therapist. One night after a Bible Study at John Wilkerson‘s house, Connie and I took a walk and somewhere along SpringHill Drive we kissed. A budding theologian, […]
In her beautifully written book, “In My Grandmother’s House: Black Women, Faith and the Stories We Inherit” Yolanda Pearce, narrates her journey from growing up in a storefront black holiness pentecostal church in New York City to becoming the Dean of the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University, guided along the way by “Grandmother Theology”. Pierce […]
My mother, a fourth grade teacher and Senior High Sunday School Teacher, upheld language rules. When I was in middle school, one of dad‘s younger brothers came to visit and cursed at the table. Mom joked about needing to wash out his mouth with soap. Uncle Dave, feeling himself, smiled and repeated the foul word […]
In 1976, I found myself in the summer school reading program. One of the few perks of summer school was representing Lexington Fayette Urban County Public Schools in Lexington’s Fourth of July parade. They asked us to dress as our favorite character from American history. I knew I wanted to dress as a Native American. […]
I love VBS, I guess the first time I ever taught or preached was for Mrs. Wells’ 4th grade VBS class as a 12 year old Moses with a bathrobe, an elastic banded gray beard, two tablets fashioned from spray painted kickboards and a memorized script! Our scriptures today and next week are the lessons […]
What has nourished you? What has carried you to this place where you now stand? If I was to think of a symbol of what fed me as a child, I could place a mason jar of homegrown green beans on the altar. Every summer, we picked bushel baskets of beans at the family farm, […]
On Tuesday, I was stuck. My Trinity Sunday was bogged down and going nowhere. At our weekly worship planning, I shared this stuckness with Heather, Kate, Emma and Matt. Maybe my mire began with a Trinity Sunday children’s sermon, where a well meaning leader explained the Trinity with the three leaves of the shamrock, only […]
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