Mother Death

Loving death

With all of its requisite pains,

Has come

To each of us in its own way

Each secret strand is strange to the others

Though they flow from the same spring

Silent and dark, barren and daring

You always feel

It is your fault:

“What did I do to deserve this?

“There must have been something.” Read More

God Absorbs Darkness And Tragedy

Part of the problem with this transactional view of the gospel – that Jesus just came to offer forgiveness of sins and get you into heaven where everything is perfect – is that it doesn’t help us deal with the darkness we are still presently in. You get forgiven and punch your ticket, but you still do and think bad stuff and the world is still full of brokenness and tragedy. Read More

Grace is Pervasive

When I said I was deeply Christian, I wasn’t just saying that. Grace is the number one reason. Most of my life, I have been captivated by the phenomenon of grace in the Christian story. Maybe it’s because I was a guilty child, but maybe it’s because grace is a revolution in thinking for all of us. Maybe we are just built to be big containers for grace. When you drink from that well, a big reservoir opens up inside you and grace is the only thing. Read More

Hospitality: Inviting Your Enemies Inside

It is difficult to understand people sometimes. Some people rub you the wrong way, but if you sit in the same space with anyone long enough seeking only to understand them, it will be hard to continue holding them in contempt. Of course, it depends on your stance. If you really want to hold them down in contempt, you will find reasons. It’s an orientation of your heart to attempt to understand and love someone you would have otherwise written off and walled off. Read More

The Contempt In Us

Search any human heart and you will find contempt. It comes in many forms and is unfortunately as natural to us as breathing and eating. It organizes us. Somewhere along the way (probably in adolescence), we start identifying everything we hate – everything we think we are not and everything we do not want to be. This is probably a necessary process of forming our identity; the problem is too often we get stuck there and believe that is the only way to “be somebody.” Long into our adulthood, we continue to define ourselves by what we hate. Some people die full of contempt, fairly certain they have things figured out and other people don’t. Read More

The Allure of Imperfection

I have always liked imperfect things. One of the ways my high school art teacher taught us to create abstract art is to draw something you see, and then just take certain elements of the thing and stretch them, elongate them, mess ‘em up somehow in your drawing. It’s deconstruction, which we are having to do in so many ways in our lives all the time. We have to destroy and take apart our lives the way they are to get to the next thing and make a better version of what was. I think this kind of abstract art is more interesting than an exact rendering of something. I like things that are imperfect: people, haircuts, shoes, music, art projects and trucks. They’re just more interesting. Read More

Mining Something from These Waiting Periods

Waiting periods are uniquely unsettling. It seems the whole world is currently waiting around for things to “go back to normal.” There is only speculation about when this all might end. None of us really knows. For people who value a sense of control, that can be rather unsettling. Maybe this is our new normal. It seems to be, at least for a time. What’s problematic is that we believe we deserve to have a stable, comfortable, unfettered existence. While it is likely things will return to a form of normalcy, there is no guarantee. And if we are only waiting around, pining for normalcy, we might fail to gather what this present struggle has to offer. Read More

I Love Kanye West

I love Kanye West. I used to say I liked his music and didn’t really endorse him as a person, but now I don’t feel the need to apologize for the fact that I’m not just a fan of his music, but admire some things about him as a person. I believe he is, as he has proclaimed, a creative genius. He is a gifted producer and an entertaining performer. He creates well-crafted and listenable music which pushes the boundaries of popular music and provokes. Admittedly, some of Kanye’s music is vulgar and offensive, so you may not want to listen to it if that offends you. I don’t listen to it because it is vulgar and offensive, but I appreciate his willingness to provoke and be honest. Read More