The Last Minute

For better or for worse I finished seminary today.  And, true confessions, right now I'm not feeling very good about it. Not in the "Oh, I'll really miss all of this" but more like "Why did I do that?" "What was I thinking when I thought I was called to this?" "Next time I say I really feel called to something, someone smack me upside the head." I'm leaving seminary at this moment with some pretty chronic imposter syndrome. By the time I realized I was not a good fit for seminary, or at least this seminary, it was too late. I'd invested too deeply. My relationship with it is also mired and muddled in the complicated feelings of really caring for some of the other parts of my life and people, and things I have done during that time. It's tangled in the notion that I am a totally different person because of every struggle and frustration and how those same things simultaneously made me feel sad and lonely. I don't th

Maybe I'm just over-tired and wrecked from this completely insane semester, or I'm fizzling out, or perhaps it's something about being an over-emotional woman, or perhaps even something about being a sappy parent changed me but I just can't engage in rational or unemotional discussion about privilege or status or anything remotely social justice when it comes to kids lately. I just (as the white girls say) can't even. This most recently reared it's head surrounding the Spring Valley incident, but it has come up before in the unaccompanied minor immigration crisis, in Tamir Rice, in Jordan Miles, and truly when any child who is caught in the violence of adults (and their language). I am seeing a line as thick as the one in the dirt marking a game of tug-of-war. And I know, rationally, there is nuance. Culture, climate, bias...all of these things are at play. I know because I've studied it. I know because the thing that I am called to is the educated dis

While I was sitting in class today simultaneously taking notes on the lecture, answering e-mails for my internship, and organizing my notes for an event on Friday, panic blew up like a fifth grader huffing into a wad of double bubble in my stomach. It was accompanied by the ever familiar feeling of a pulled plug in my mouth, drying it out like the mojave desert. I've been having a lot of these physical manifestations of nerves and panic lately. It never really happened to me until I was well into adult-hood, and then it was rarely. Recently it's been worse. Maybe because I'm nearing the end of a lot of years of schooling and finally feeling at peace with my calling. Maybe it's because I've matured enough (unlikely) to see the consequences of my failings. Maybe I am developing a panic disorder. Maybe it's a new symptom of my ADHD. Maybe it's a parent thing (oy vey the world we live in!) I am also really really terrible at self-care. So today, when I

This sermon was preached at Waverly Presbyterian Church on July 5, 2015 Luke 4: 14-22a 14  Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15  He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. 16  When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17  and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 18  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,     because he has anointed me         to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives     and recovery of sight to the blind,         to let the oppressed go free, 19  to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20  And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.

I entered the latter half of my twenties in the sticky cicada hum of August, consumed in a life I hardly imagined just months prior. I spent that birthday hosting the farewell celebration of a friend headed off to a year long adventure teaching in the country of Malawi, one of the poorest countries in world. That evening I hosted that party with my four month old baby on my hip laughing and talking with friends I made when I was a 19-year-old kid barely hanging on. This occurred just days prior to restarting the pursuit of the social work degree I had to abandon because of a difficult pregnancy. This occurred not even two weeks after an 18-year-old unarmed kid was killed by a police officer. These moments appear, on their surface, unrelated. They seem unconnected points, especially because I did not know Michael Brown. We are, for all intents and purposes, stars galaxies apart. Since that time, I have watched the burning searing pain of communities boiling over the top. Their h

Recently I've had thoughts that just pile-up. They are crammed in corners and crevices, pages torn out of my school notebook and tucked in my planner, post-its stuck in my journal, tiny writing cramped in corners of books. They aren't very poetic, or incredibly nuanced, or thoughts no one has had before. But they are snippets I can't undo. They are a cold wind rattling in my chest and catching on my breath. I can't promise very much about them at all. The thing I can say for sure is that they are honest. I've never been particularly stealthy or good at keeping my mouth shut, but there are things that even I tiptoe around. They are things I've kept to myself, because they are taboo, or could get me in trouble with someone somewhere. I'm hoping maybe someone somewhere will have had a thought or two like this too. I try. I really do. I promise that the part of me that really doesn't want to stir up trouble is still lying dormant somewhere in the depth

Recently I've had a lot of thoughts that just pile-up. They are crammed in corners and crevices, pages torn out of my school notebook and tucked in my planner, post-its stuck in my journal, tiny writing cramped in corners of books. They aren't very poetic, or incredibly nuanced, or thoughts no one has had before. But they are snippets I can't undo. They are a cold wind rattling in my chest and catching on my breath. I can't promise very much about them at all. The thing I can say for sure is that they are honest. I've never been particularly stealthy or good at keeping my mouth shut, but there are things that even I tiptoe around. They are things I've kept to myself, because they are taboo, or could get me in trouble with someone somewhere. I'm hoping maybe someone somewhere will have had a thought or two like this too. Us Christian mainliners, we like to build little forts for the things we don't talk about; we dig a shallow moat and set up a few scra