Liz Cooledge Jenkins

Tag: agency

  • No really, you don’t have to stay

    Hi friends, This week I’d like to direct your attention to a recent blog post by Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes. I read this a few days ago, and it has stuck with me. Dr. Chanequa compares the logic of those who try to tell people they should keep going to church with the logic of those…

  • Advent prayer: Soul

    An Advent poem/prayer on the theme of “soul.” Soul God, I want to live and move out of the depths of my soul. I want to see soul in everyone I meet. I want to be connected with my soul. So many forces have tried to break this connection. Sometimes it feels like they have…

  • Advent prayer: Release

    A poem/prayer, reflecting on the theme “release.” I’ve been reading an indigenous memoir called The Woman Who Watches Over the World, by Linda Hogan. One of the things Hogan says happened when she was in the hospital recovering from a traumatic brain injury was that she asked all the questions that had gone unasked and…

  • Prayer: prepare

    I wrote this prayer back in Advent, but it feels about right for the last week or so. Grieving for and with those most impacted by violence, by power moving through our world in perverse ways. The original Advent prompt word was “prepare.” Prepare God, the weight of the world is still here. I know…

  • Super chill book review: Hope in the Dark (Rebecca Solnit)

    Rebecca Solnit originally published Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities in 2004, so a lot of it centers on the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. I read the third edition, published in 2015, which includes a long and lovely newly written foreword. The premise of the book is that “The future…

  • Extraordinary Courage, Extraordinary Kindness

    Sharing a sermon from a couple years ago: feel free to listen here, or the text is below! The passage is Ruth 2, where Ruth meets Boaz. As I reflect on the story of Ruth, I wonder if the world of our heroines, Ruth and Naomi, might in some ways not be as different from…

  • To dust you will return: the Good Samaritan, Martha, and Lent

    Below is the text of Luke 10:25-42, followed by a brief reflection, an edited version of which is a part of my church’s Lenten devotional series. The idea of the series is to connect narrative passages from the book of Luke to Lenten ideas like lament, fasting, sorrow, repentance, and humility, and to reflect on…

  • Always Reforming: a short sermon on Luke 6:1-16

    I’m thankful to have had another opportunity to give a short sermon at my church, Lake Burien Presbyterian Church (aka “Lake B”). If you prefer a video version, here’s the church service. My part starts around 35:14, but David (before) and Miguel (after) are very much worth listening to if you have a few minutes.…

  • Politicians, resistance, and Jesus the all-ruling one

    In the earlier days of the pandemic, I decided to translate the book of Revelation from its original Greek.  It turned out to go more quickly than my current project, the book of Luke. Revelation’s author, John, tends to use language that is (relatively) simple and straightforward in Greek. So, I’m not sure how many…

  • Women, I Would Like to Call Forth

    Women, I Would Like to Call Forth Women,  I would like to call forth your holy anger. Let it rattle the sidings  of your churches―the ones  that keep telling you to serve, but do not serve you well. Let it be no longer  held constrained within your bones in bonds unspoken, swept  beneath the doormat…