Posts

Mercy Trumps Vengeance

On January 21, 2025 at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, the newly elected president and vice president attended an interfaith prayer service to begin their first full day in office. It isn’t a new tradition for the newly elected president and vice president to attend an interfaith prayer service the morning after inauguration nor […]

Sheltered Under God’s Wings: Young Clergywomen Meet with the First Female Chaplain of the House

The Rev. Dr. Margaret Grun Kibben, the 62nd Chaplain for the United States House of Representatives, stood in front of a group of young clergywomen who had gathered in DC for our conference. A unique series of events allowed for fourteen attendees of the 2024 Young Clergy Women International Conference in Washington D.C. to meet […]

Pastoring Faithfully in Divisive Times

The day after the 2016 presidential election, the seniors group at the church I serve was scheduled to gather. When I arrived, they told me that they’d agreed not to talk about the election. Emotions were too raw. So instead they shared stories about their grandchildren’s latest adventures or their day-to-day health challenges. Maybe that’s […]

Notes to Myself: Commitments for Talking Politics with Care

Monastic rules of life have drawn Christians through the ages to the spiritual disciplines. New monastics often look to one of the most well-known – the Rule of Benedict – and then write their own rule of life to order their lives in community. I have never been terribly successful at thinking of the Christian […]

Pressing on to the Kindom of God

Two years ago, I wrote an article for this publication on the significance of the United States having elected our first female President. I wrote it before the election, obviously, but hedged things in such a way that it could still be tweaked and published in the very unlikely event of Hillary Clinton losing the […]

A Love Letter to My Swamp Monsters

When you are ordained, you agree to love your congregation in the name of Jesus Christ. When you like them and when you don’t, you love them because, well, that’s just the deal you’ve made with God. In seminary they told us this would be both infuriating and holy work. What I didn’t learn in […]

Ask a Young Clergy Woman: Politics in the Pulpit Edition

Dear Askie, I’ve always been pretty into politics, but I’m wondering if that has to change? I’ve been serving in my first call for two years, and my church has a big spectrum from conservative to liberal. I’ve posted some articles on social media about my preferred candidate, and some articles that are critical of […]

Love One Another: Election Edition

Are you an American citizen of voting age? Good. We need to talk. We’re in the thick of primary season, and have months to go before November. In my capacity as an “official religious person,” I sometimes feel the need to speak into the raucous echo-chamber of conversation that social media has become. If you’re […]

They Will Know…By Our Love

We just wrapped up a highly contentious election season here in the United States.  Mud – and other sorts of muck – was flung freely between all of the political parties and their supporters.  It wasn’t pretty.  I suppose that much of that behavior was to be expected in the secular arena (which is a […]

Generation to Generation

I come from a long line of strong women. While our last names and family trees follow the men in our lives; there is a deep current that runs through the women in my family. I am the great-granddaughter of Marie, who was born in 1892, and went on to raise 3 daughters and 6 […]