Blogging as Spiritual Practice

I have always loved writing. I was called to ministry when I was thirteen, but I felt called as a writer when I was eight years old. I won a school-wide poetry contest in the fourth grade. And when I went to college, I knew I was going on to seminary, so I decided to […]

Etched in Stone

In the first year of serving my first church, I decided to wander through the village cemetery for the first time. I was on a mission to find a famous person’s headstone. After I had found Jane Addams’ burial place (she founded Hull House in Chicago, a settlement house, in 1889), I wandered around the […]

Touched Twice Health Clinic

I stood in the Sanctuary and saw the swarm of people wearing bright yellow and green “volunteer” t-shirts, sitting and chatting with one another, surprisingly chipper for 8:30am on a Saturday. They were some of the two hundred people that will help our second annual “Touched Twice Health Clinic” to go smoothly. We had been […]

Six Weddings, and a Funeral for My Arrogant Discipleship

“One midnight hospital vigil, one funeral, one dead mouse under the kitchen sink smelling up the whole church, one brave parishioner kind enough to deal with said mouse, one interview with the paper, one never-ending church directory project concluded, two sermons written…and six weddings. A week in the insane and fabulous life of being a […]

A New Way to Pray

On those days when you thought you’ve heard it all – that nothing else could faze you – you hear something else. “Pastor, my wife is cheating on me. I can’t believe this is happening after thirty years…” “Pastor, it can’t be stage 4 cancer…” “Pastor, all of my friends are dead. I want God […]

Unexpected Falls

The soft snow swooshed up around my feet, giving way to a crunch of crusty ice just beneath the surface. To my right, the lake was a frozen city of jagged mini-skyscrapers, with shifting plate-tectonics of ice hinting at the waves trapped underneath. The sun was out, the air crisp and the gray horizon was […]

Full Stop: A Sermon on John 11

The telegrams all read the same: “The Secretary of War regrets to inform you that your son was killed in action.” Stop. “Further details will be forwarded to you as they become available.” Stop. There was absolutely no way to argue. No questions you could ask. No more information you could glean. Your son is […]

Clergy Health and Well-being: The Physical and Spiritual

My journey of call has been entwined with my body. I have always been overweight. It has been part of my identity just like my name, my family, and all my quirks that make me who I am. Now, I have wrestled with it and it sometimes negatively affected me. Fortunately, my church told me differently. […]

Please Don’t Call Me “Sweetie”

I attended a meeting recently where a male authority figure in my denomination called me “sweetie” when I approached him and extended my hand for a handshake. Unfortunately, this happens quite often to many of us. This is how it feels when you call young clergy women “sweetie” or “kiddo.” We feel that you don’t […]

Home Is Where…

I didn’t truly appreciate Cleveland while I was growing up there. Teenage Me could imagine nothing more pathetic than never moving away from one’s hometown. So I got out as soon as I could: college in Cincinnati, study abroad in Oxford, graduate school in Nashville. I came back to Cleveland at age 26, PhD in […]