Bringing a Child into this Broken World
How on earth can we bring a child into this broken world?
That’s the question that worries me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a father. When I met my wife three years ago, it started to become a reality. The first time we met, I talked about wanting a family. Of course, at the time, she had a boyfriend, so I wasn’t talking about starting a family with her! We were married less than a year later, and knew that we wanted to have our own children soon. Last summer, we got pregnant, and in the next few weeks we’ll welcome our little baby.
The Engaged Soul
Mary Oliver’s instructions for a life in the poem Sometimes:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
It’s a complicated boarding system.
There are zones that seem to be assigned without
the actual layout of the airplane in mind
such that passengers in aisle & middle seats are often settled in,
snoozing and ready for take off
when the passengers with window seats arrive
There’s the shuffling of people in and out of the narrow spaces
and the constant reminder to step aside once we’ve located our
seats,
to allow others to do the same.
Boarding an airplane shouldn’t be this difficult
What’s Broken is Brilliant
Come, Ye Disconsolate
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Maybe because I was born 1954, the same year as Brown v. Board of Education, I have always known that brokenness is not only individual, but also social and collective. I learned that religious community and theology often hold a people struggling with brokenness, suffering, and injustice. My earliest influences in being held this way are my family church and the movement for African-American civil rights.
How Does Our Faith Hold Brokenness?
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In Duluth, Minnesota, in the center of the city, there is a statue of three young men, college-aged, strong and hopeful, looking out of the stone toward the world. On a summer night in 1920, not so very long ago, these three—Isaac McGhie, Elias Clayton, and Elmer Jackson—were lynched there by a mob that may have numbered as many as ten thousand people. Read more →
From Your Minister
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As I follow the news of upheaval that appears to be escalating daily—collapsing political and economic systems, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados and floods—and as I interact with many people whose lives are affected by those bigger systems, here’s what I’ve been wondering. Read more →
REsources for Living
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Unitarian Universalists tend to be pretty upbeat about human nature. We remind ourselves of each person’s “inherent worth and dignity,” and rather than baptizing babies (to cleanse them of original sin), we welcome young ones with rituals that affirm that we’re delighted to have them exactly as they are. Read more →
The Cup of Our Life
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it is time for me
to see the flaws
of myself
and stop
being alarmed Read more →
Welcoming Color in a World of White
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Typically it is a very white place. In winter snow’s continually falling all around and piling up everywhere. Wherever I go there’s white faces and white talk.
Minnesotans are a pretty moderate, rule-following people. When you stop at an intersection cars get into fights about who goes last. Minnesota has good parks, fine schools, great bike paths, and lots of co-ops. All in all it’s a pretty nice place.
It’s just so goddamn homogeneous!
A Lump in My Throat
I woke up this morning at 4:45am. I was simply done with the sleeping of the night—it was a restless night anyway. I kept waking up. I kept waking up because of a little annoying pain in my throat and the slightly discomforting feeling of my breathing being affected by some mysterious thing that literally seems stuck in my throat.
A few weeks ago I began to feel this little thing. I got it checked out and I am being sent to have a scope put down my throat and possibly a MRI or CAT scan. Since the thyroid test came back normal, and the strep test negative—that leaves the options of a possible tumor. As the non-news news sinks in further, the realization that I currently have no health insurance is just a little disconcerting.
