The Last Minute

I'm not a huge crier when I'm sad or even happy. 99% of the time it happens because I am PMSing and otherwise it's because I am so incredibly stressed out I no longer have a hold on my emotions. So...usually tears arrive before I take a test or because it's 3am and I'm on page 20 of a ten page paper and I still have like 30 things to talk about. But since said alien took up residence in my uterus I cry all of the time. At least once per day. I have no grip on my emotional filter at all. This manifests in more ways than tears. Like the time I wanted to cross the street and this guy was being a total douchecanoe in his fancy little mid-life crisis penis car and I gave him the finger like it was no problem and screamed a nasty little list of profanities about how pedestrians had the right-of-way. I promise I don't behave like that in public generally. But pregnancy makes you do scary things. I generally don't recommend it if you don't want to experience s

So, I've been incredibly frustrated with my Seminary experience for a number of reasons. I won't go into that much more right at this moment, other than to say a lot of times I get frustrated by the hypocrisy of the community I'm a part of. If you are interested in the frustrations I have had, you can read my personal experience that I wrote last year about why I love Jesus but hate seminary. I recognize that this is not everyone's experience with Seminary but it has been by and large mine. I'm not going to apologize for it, but stand by the words I said there and leave it with the caveat that none of us are perfect, only Jesus is. Moving on. I've lived in this community over two years now in Seminary owned apartment housing next door to the campus. I've been surrounded by neighbors who both attend Seminary and some who attend other schools in the region (or both, like me). This is a very very University dense city and cheap housing is of paramount impor

As I scroll through my facebook newsfeed and am inundated with a sea of red equal signs, all I can think about is that one scene in The Lion King, you know the one, where Rafiki finds out Simba is alive and pressing the pad of his thumb into ink paints hope alive; a mane around the head of the faded cub he neglected so long ago. Then in his joy and excitement he says, "It is time". I feel like we, in the United States of America, are standing at that pivotal precocious point. We are living in a land that is barren and dark, wasted and neglected. It is a land that has been greedily stripped of its nutrients, it is a land that is painfully broken. Now, because this is a metaphor, I don't mean the land itself (at least, not in this instance). But a people. We've forgotten how to take care of each other, how to make sure the circle of life envelopes all the kingdom. We have upset the balance of power and neglected to extend the place the light touches to everyone. So th

I don't know about the rest of you out there but after this week my feminist hackles are raised. I am in a fighting mood and I am not ready to back down. So, some things about me that are important going forward: I am a straight, white, married, woman in my mid-twenties. I was raised in a middle class, urban, democratic, feminist household. I attended public inner-city, elementary and high schools in an North-Eastern mid-size city. I have attended a rural primarily white college I have attended an urban community college I graduated from an urban all-women, overwhelmingly liberal, fairly diverse, woman's studies focused undergraduate institution. I currently attend a small Presbyterian seminary that I consider conservative. I offer this because my educational background, and the spaces I have occupied over my life are integral to how I view the world. These experiences, while limited in their scope of my life, give a peak into where I am coming from. They are hardly

Dearest child, Though you have barely been imagined, though you have not yet been yearned for and you don't have a star in the sky I point to and call yours, I am writing you this letter because my heart is heavy with the world today. Someday, when you are here, and running barefoot in a green backyard and I am watching you with my feet in a blue plastic kiddie pool filled from the hose, I might remember this letter. Someday when you are dripping in hormones and slamming me out of your bedroom (like I did to my mother) I might slip this under your door. I may not know if you are gay, or straight, or transgender, or if you don't believe in labels. You may not know who you are yet either, and that is wonderful too. None of these things change the part of me that is also a part of you. The part of me that gave birth, or adopted, or fostered you into the person you are now, the part of me that heaves in pain with you in one breath, cries out with joy in the next. Whoever you