I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Belief is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm re...
I'm more haunted by how what I've said and the things I've done have caused harm to myself and others than I am worried that God will punish me for being bad. Because in the end, we aren't punished fo...
I wonder if she’s ever encountered a Denver outreach worker with a bleach kit. Did she ever open a baggie from a clean-handed social worker and see a note under the tourniquet and sterile cooker that...
I recently was asked by an earnest young seminarian during a Q&A, Pastor Nadia, what do you do personally to get closer to God? Before I even realized I was saying it, I replied, What? Nothing. Sounds...
I need to be broken apart and put back into a different shape by that merging of things human and divine, which is really screwing up and receiving grace and love and forgiveness rather than receiving...
Having said that, if you want a community like the one you’ve just read about, I bet you are not the only one in your town who feels this way. So do what we did: Gather a small number of people once a...
Good Friday is a stark and unapologetic display of remorse. Remorse for the way in which humanity kills ourselves and the creation and love and God him/herself.
God forcing God’s people to see themselves as God sees them, to do stuff they know they are incapable of doing, so that God might make use of them, and make them to be both humble recipients and gener...
But then at two a.m. I was startled awake with what can only be described as a bitch slap from the Holy Spirit.
Augustine's shame reportedly took root when, as an adolescent, he got an erection while at a Roman bath. Embarrassing, yes. But Augustine was so consumed with shame of not being able to control his er...
Apparently, thousands of parents had been warned that their children would be exposed to dangerous ideas from scandalous women if we weren't uninvited. Of course if no one had ever been exposed to dan...
Allowing ourselves to name the harm and be angry about the past is not a bad place to be; it’s just a terrible place to stay.
What happens at the cross is a blessed exchange. God gathers up all our sin, all our broken-ass junk, into God’s own self and transforms all that death into life. Jesus takes our crap and exchanges it...
There was something about hearing it that was so different than just imagining it to be true. To hear I was loved meant something very particular because of the context in which I heard it, as though...
The thing about grace, real grace, is that it stings. It stings because if it’s real it means we don’t deserve it. No
Sometimes the origin of the harm can be the most powerful source of its healing.
She said, I think I’m having a crisis of faith. To which I thought, What the hell does that look like for a Unitarian? Yeah, she continued. I think I believe in Jesus. Oh. That’s what it looks like....
Maybe we simply don’t want our leaders to have needs. Maybe it’s not only the leaders who think they should be perfect; maybe it’s also their followers who expect them to have it all together. Maybe w...
Demons, whether they be addictions or actual evil spirits, are not what Jesus wants for us, since basically every time he encounters them he tells them to piss off.
Being loved, really loved, can sting a little, reminding us of all the times we have loved poorly or not at all, all the ways in which we have done things that make us feel unworthy of real love.