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Totally biased fave reads of 2022 (nonfiction)
Happy 2023, friends. Last week I spent a little time reflecting on some of my personal favorite fiction books from 2022. Now it’s nonfiction o’clock. Same caveats as last week: I make no claims to know what the “best books of 2022” were. I’m just here to share what I read and liked in the…
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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…
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Advent prayer: Open
Last Advent season, in 2021, I wrote a bunch of poem/prayers, responding to different daily one-word prompts offered by my church. This Advent season felt like a good time to revisit these prayers and share some of the ones that still resonate. This one is on theme: open. Open God, I want to be open…
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Super chill book review part 2: All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep (Andre Henry)
As promised—and eagerly awaited, I’m sure!—this is the second part of a super chill book review of Andre Henry’s All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep. (The first part is chillin over here if you didn’t catch it before.) Here are a few more quotes and thoughts. 4) On the language of “can’t”: “That was…
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Super chill book review part 1: All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep (Andre Henry)
I was fortunate to cross paths with Andre Henry while studying at Fuller, and I have a great deal of respect for him as a musician, writer, and human. So my expectations for his first book, All the White Friends I Couldn’t Keep: Hope–and Hard Pills to Swallow–About Fighting for Black Lives (Convergent 2022), were…
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Super chill book review: Becoming Rooted (Randy Woodley)
I recently read Randy Woodley’s Becoming Rooted: One Hundred Days of Reconnecting with Sacred Earth (Broadleaf Books, 2022). (First super chill book review for a book that was published in 2022—woohoo!) I’ll confess I did not take the full one hundred days to read it. But I still like how the book is broken up:…
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Super chill book review: Found in Transition (Paria Hassouri, MD)
It’s been a minute (like, six months) since I’ve done a “super chill book review.” But I feel a few of them coming. So watch out! Here’s the first. This one feels especially relevant in this time of states trying to pass bonkers (and deeply damaging) legislation against supportive and healthy care for trans kids…
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Y’all don’t need to worry
(31) Therefore y’all may not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?” or, “What will we drink?” or, “How will we be clothed?” (32) For the nations seek out all these things; for y’all’s heavenly father knows that y’all need all these things. (33) But (y’all) seek first the kingdom [of God] and its justice, and…
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English is limited, God is not: Reflections on “they/them” pronouns for God
I was interested to see Chloe Specht’s article “Actually, ‘They’ is a Beautiful Pronoun for God” published in Sojourners on the same day that I finished teaching a three-week class on “feminine God-talk” at my church. In this class, in the course of talking about feminine imagery, metaphors, pronouns, and other ways of thinking about…
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I could be a little-faith-one
It’s been a minute (or more precisely, about a month) since I’ve posted a reflection on the “do not worry” passage in Matthew 6:25-34, but I know you’ve missed them. So here’s another! (30) And if God so enrobes the grass of the field, which is today, and tomorrow is thrown into a furnace, (will…