Nice girls don’t say bad words.  Nice boys wear belts and undershirts.  Nice people come from nice families.  I grew up in a world that, though decidedly Christian in its beliefs—including the importance of embracing Jesus as personal savior for sin—also had a strong overlay of “nice.”  We were the typically southern & odd amalgamation of half sinful enough to merit hell and half incredibly nice.Read more

I'm writing this as I get ready to head out for a week at the beach with my extended family.  I am grateful to have a family to go and be with, a beach to lie on, and little people to boogie board with in the waves.  It is a gift. I really do know this.  But I can't fake it; I'm also daunted.  Everyone there--and there will be 35 plus folks--over the age of 18 will come with his or her spouse/partner, except me.  Every other female adult my age or younger (there are 8 of us in that category) will have--within the last year--gotten married, gotten pregnant or had a baby, the one exception being one sister-in-law whose first child is college bound.  Whether or not you are a woman, if you have ever been single longer than you thought, or been in situations where you can't escape that "odd man out" sensation, I think you might understand why ... this scenario gives me a rather large internal wave!Read more

The curse resonates.

I'm part of a bible study/discussion group, focused around the content of a workbook on sexuality & emotions, which has participants from across the spectrum.  We have folks who are vague theists; men and women who are married and who are single; people who are living together; folks who are committed believers; representatives spanning 4 decades (20s to 50s), from Asian, African, and Caucasian descent, and with a PhD, Master's degrees, college, some college, and no college.
It's a really unusual group.

Last Tuesday evening we read through Genesis 3, and the strangest thing happened.  The curse:  "her desire shall be for her husband and he shall rule over her" resonated with everyone.Read more

I am missing cartilage between the big toe and ball of my right foot.  They did surgery to remove this weird--tennis induced--bone spur, only to discover:  "The joint is shot."  And unlike with knees, there's really no such thing as "toe replacement" surgery.
    So today, when I walk-limped into the foodbank where I volunteer, I began talking to the coordinator who asked, "How's your foot?" (she knew I'd had surgery).
    "Not so good.  No cartilage.  I'm afraid my tennis days might be over."
    "Over?  That's sad," she said.
    "Definitely," I confirmed, acknowledging the loss after 33 years of smacking the ball around for exercise and joy.  Looking down at my running-shoe clad foot, I continued, "It's a fallen world.  Darn it."Read more

Twenty-one pink boxes of donuts.  Two cardboard boxes, jammed with 50 pounds of bread.  One garbage bag of random pastries.  I lower my convertible's top to fit it all in.  With the top back up, and the morning sun beating through the canvas, I close my eyes at the next stoplight, breathing deeply, imagining I'm in a French bakery.
    In fact, I am taking the day-old bread from Harris Teeter and Safeway to the Arlington Food Assistance Center where it will be weighed and distributed to the 130 clients coming that morning for supplemental groceries.  Waiting at the light, I cannot help but wonder at my nine months of logging eight weekly hours at the aesthetically challenged, slightly odd-smelling warehouse in south Arlington. 
    Twenty years ago, I embarked on an internship at Voice of Calvary, a ministry among the poor in Jackson, MS.  That month led to a journey of efforts at racial reconciliation, inner city living & ministry, talking with homeless people, tutoring kids, and giving to social-justice ministries.  But during the two decades I came to realize that the problems were far deeper than I, Miss Preppy Girl from Preppy Girl Land, could ever solve:  the poor needed jobs I couldn't create, communities I couldn't develop.  Throwing one star fish back into the sea is lovely for that one starfish, but it would not stop him or her from washing back up on the shore with all the others in the next strong tide.Read more

    House in Suburbia, married, +/-2.5 kids, double (or one really big) income.  Normal?  Yep.  Seems like almost every message out there--even amid those who talk about God's kingdom--says that this vision is, really, the end game.  And reality is, there is nothing wrong and much right with this norm.  As a matter of fact, I've wanted it, and Bob and Ronda (my visiting friends/ministry colleagues and potential long term housemates) have gotten it.

    There are tremendous upsides to this normal.  Think about God's favorite metaphors:  the Scriptures constantly refer to His marriage to us, His family, and His dwelling place.  Jesus is going to prepare a place for us, his bride, and he speaks in terms of wedding banquets and mansions.  To disparage these earthly realities would verge on disparaging some of the very means of God's self-disclosure.

     But as Bob and Ronda contemplate moving here--even into the home where another couple and I live--to team together in intentionally caring for one another & reaching out to those around us, we've been thinking a lot about "normal."  Normally, 50+ year old empty nesters don't leave their beautiful Ann Arbor cottages to move into a group living situations in preppy and powerful Northern Virginia.  And 44 year old single women who think they want to marry don't commit to stay planted in even limited partnerships with non-husbands. Read more

January 20th was a day undeniably drenched in power.  And I was, admittedly, a bit in awe.  There was the peaceful exchange of power—noteworthy in its relative global rarity.  There was the power of the crowd, literally warming and sweeping itself along, erupting with ardent cheers in response to powerful prayers and poems, songs and speeches.  There were powerful past presidents, security forces and steel plated, tank-like limos.  There was the powerful reaffirmation of the supremacy of this nation.  And, regardless of political position, most people I’ve talked to sensed that the public acknowledgment of deep racial wounds, and the president’s embodiment of wound-transcending achievement, released a powerful surge of healing and hope for many.
    Frankly, I admit that I thrill at experiencing a day drenched in power.  I say “admit” as if it were a sin, but it’s not. Something in us as human beings was made for abandon to that which is greater, to be swept up in worship of that which is stronger, smarter, holier, and more powerful than ourselves.  For better or for worse, days like the 20th can be tastes of that.
    How strangely odd it was for me, then, that night, head still spinning, to encounter Matthew 27 in my devotional reading: Jesus before Pilate.  The contrast took my breath away.  Read more

After walking with my family through the August drowning of my brother and sister-in-law’s beloved two-year-old son, I have come to see the resurrection of Jesus in a brand new, far more intense light.  What follows is an excerpt from a thank you note I sent to many of the friends who walked with us.  It is a description of a painting that I painted in an attempt to depict my experience.  Perhaps in the painting’s description, you will see something of what I’ve only begun to grasp about Jesus’ ultimate slaying of the final enemy of life, death.Read more

  Last Friday night I was sitting in the Metro 29 Diner, meeting a friend with whom I had a broken relationship. As we met together for the first time in a while, I admitted that in my nervousness, the only thing I knew how to pray was lifted from Jesus himself: “Thy will be done, in the Metro 29 Diner as it is in heaven.” We laughed about that, my friend noting that he, too, had been praying our Lord’s prayer.

Sometimes, when I feel lost in the chaos and confusion of so much of our contemporary culture, and when I don’t know what to ask of God, I feel keen empathy for the disciples who beseeched Jesus, “Teach us how to pray!” Pray, he responded, that the Father’s will might be done on earth as it is in heaven. When I think about what that might mean, I imagine the clouds which hamper heaven and earth’s intrinsic unity being pushed aside. It’s as if our prayers pry open a way for the rule and reign of Jesus Christ to enter every earthly place and moment, from awkward diner conversations to the chemistry lab, from bathroom chats to board rooms.

Recently, this same friend was telling me about a new blog in the online journal of the "Washington Post." It seeks to offer a non-partisan peek at what the author calls the unregulated “faith and politics industry.” This watchdogging is necessary because, as the author explains, “When dealing with faith and politics few things do violence to our (already limited) powers of impartiality like our own faith and our own politics.”

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So, I’m on a second date with this guy from e-harmony, and we’ve just had a quite tasty (and expensive) dinner. We arrive at the theater ten minutes late for the movie for which I’ve lobbied: Flushed. It’s one of those animated flicks promising to elicit laughter, not blushing, so I’m guessing it’s a good second date movie. My date, however, leans towards Borat whose next showing is in five minutes. He has paid for dinner and is paying for the movie; Flushed has already started and I have heard that Borat is sweeping the theaters. “Okay,” I say. 

 The previews during Borat do not bode well. Three big themes are showing up: sex, killing, and, like the overlap in a Venn diagram, body parts. At least I have Milk Duds. Read more