Holy Humor Communion Liturgy

Holy Humor is a tradition that dates back to the fifteenth century.  Typically celebrated the Sunday after Easter, the mass provided some levity after the heavy season of Lent.  Its underlying theological premise is that Easter is God’s joke on the devil.  The resurrection is God’s ultimate prank on the forces of evil! In those […]

How to Survive Contract Negotiations

For many clergy, the beginning of the fiscal year also marks the time for annual reviews or contract negotiations. Unlike many other professions, clergy pay and clergy contracts fall on a wide continuum, which leaves clergy asking the questions, “Am I being compensated fairly? Is there a standard number of vacation days? Do I qualify […]

Pastors are People Too: A Review of Welcome to Triumph

Have you ever gone to the grocery store wearing pajama bottoms, a tank top, with your hair a mess and run into a parishioner? Or worse a member of your church board? I know some clergy who do their shopping one or two towns over so as to avoid this type of awkward encounter. What […]

Book Review: Being Mortal by Atul Gawande

I started Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande two years ago, as the world still reeled from Covid-19. I was preparing for the Lenten season ahead of time. This book I hoped would be the perfect discussion and inspiration after surviving a global pandemic. Then, my father was placed […]

A Theology of Play

The spirit of play is very important in my ministry as a pastoral caregiver at a psychiatric hospital. That spirit comes out in various ways. Sometimes I joke with my patients. Sometimes I’m irreverent. Sometimes I tease. In addition to demonstrating playfulness, my theology also involves a type of openness and creativity as I listen […]

The Future of the PC(USA) is Being Reformed by God

The future of the PC(USA) is being reformed by God. And it is as limitless as the holy imagination that we vow to practice when we are ordained.  That’s it. That’s the article that sparked this response. But I’m going to go on, because The Outlook started a conversation that is worth having by using […]

The Word…and Wisdom…Became Flesh

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1 A new year can be a time for new beginnings, but we are also still in the season of Christmas, perhaps with these very words about beginning from the Gospel of John fresh in our hearts. […]

Reading Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian American Feminist Theology by Mihee Kim-Kort A Decade Later

As I was reading Making Paper Cranes by Rev. Mihee Kim-Kort, I found myself feeling simultaneously exposed and held by her analysis and critique of the “both and” world that Asian-American women live in. I regret that until this past month I have never read or been given a recommendation on a book solely based […]

Home by Another Road: Nonviolence, Ceasefire, and Peace in the Middle East

“And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, (the magi) left for their own country by another road.” Matthew 2:12, NRSV After successfully following the star to meet the Christ Child in Bethlehem, the magi were supposed to return to Herod’s palace in Jerusalem to report on the child’s whereabouts. At […]

Make Room

“No room,” they say. “All full,” we’re told. “You’ll have to go somewhere else.” What I’ve come to learn that they’re really saying is that they are full. That their capacity for love is limited– their imagination inaccessible. Closed off. Gone.