Some articles have been appearing lately about an alarming number of teenagers and especially teenage girls who are in despair, struggling to hang on to living. (This has long been true of LGBTQ+ teens. Statistics now showing a dramatic rise in distress and suicidal ideation in teen girls specifically). It’s not news. People have been […]
Category Archives: beauty
Growing up in Michigan is a story of winter, at least in my memory. The harshness of winter when things cannot grow in the ground and the fun of winter tobogganing at the golf course hill, snowboarding on the small hill in our backyard, sledding, snowball fights, and walking out on the big ice waves […]
My mom is beautiful. She just turned ninety-three-years old. I don’t know if she ever really yearned to be a mother—especially of five children. I’ve not asked her that question. Or was it the only alternative to a woman of her generation, married young with an eight-grade education? Her own mother died when she was […]
A few days ago I finished reading our friend Riva Lehrer’s new memoir, Golem Girl. I closed the back cover of this most beautiful book and felt so full of wonder, joy, spirit, and hope that I wanted to get down on my knees and pray and then get up and dance and sing. It’s […]
I just finished reading the editorial pages in this last Sunday of 2018’s New York Times. The editorials grouped under the title “Hope Isn’t Only About the Future” renewed a sputtering flame of creative writing inside me (other than sermon-writing and other writing for church work). 2018 was a hard year. I lost some heart […]
I went to hear an interview last night at Rockefeller Chapel on the campus of University of Chicago in Hyde Park. The interview, part of the Chicago Humanities Festival, was with Krista Tippet and Ta-Nehisi Coates. Along with the ticket price I received a copy of Coates’ most recent book, We Were Eight Years In […]
When was the last time I spent an entire day at home with my daughter, Temma, just the two of us? It’s been awhile. And, thus, not much time writing either, beside sermons, e-devotions, and newsletter articles. I have returned to full-time pastor work after five years working part-time in the church. When I was […]
My husband Tim and I met in an intentional Christian community in Grand Rapids, Michigan. We lived together in large households with other folks, pooled all of our resources together, worshiped, prayed, and shared our lives together. Tim and I were married in the community and the community surrounded us and held us up when […]
One of the many joys of being a Pastor is facilitating the marriage ceremony of two persons who are “in love.” This weekend Tim and I traveled to Galena, Illinois where I presided over many, many weddings when I was pastor of The First United Methodist Church there from 1998 – 2002. This was my […]
Writing From the Margins 