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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…
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Wives and participles and Bible and I’m done defending Paul
I thought I might write a post exploring how the original Greek of Ephesians 5:21-33 comes across a little less patriarchal―or at least a little more ambiguous in some ways―than our English translations suggest. And there are plenty of things that could be said to this effect. I could write about how Paul’s call to…
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God is Calling Her Children
God is Calling Her Children God is calling her children to the garden, to walk through wildflowers in the place where life grows slowly and unveils itself in its own time, to let soil slip through fingers in the place where we do not need to be trailblazers, conquerors and colonizers, chairpeople and board members, but,…
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She Raises Her Daughters
A poem inspired by awesome parents like my friend Sarah Suarez, who put so much thought and intention daily into the ways they raise their daughters, and by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ recent speech in response to Rep. Ted Yoho’s disrespectful comments and subsequent non-apology. If you haven’t watched the full video of AOC’s speech (included…
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Gendered titles & getters-of-stuff-done
While reading the biblical books of Ephesians and Colossians in Greek, I have been struck by Paul’s repeated references to himself and others as διάκονος (pronounced de-ä’-ko-nos; it’s where we get the English word “deacon”): Paul says that he has become a διάκονος of the good news of God’s promise in Jesus, according to the…
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Elizabeth’s Pregnancy
This is not a pregnancy announcement :D. It’s not really a full blog post either. I was thinking about writing something about Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist. After all, it’s almost Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus―and Elizabeth’s miraculous pregnancy and Mary’s were closely connected. I love the story Luke tells about…
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When You Can’t Win
“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son…
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I Must Decrease…Or Must I? (Part 1 of 3)
Finally moving on from Matthew 3! Here’s a story about John the Baptist from the book written by another dude whose name was also John: After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because…
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Spiritual Heritage
And you should not think to say among yourselves, “We have Abraham as father.” -John the Baptist (Matthew 3:9a) The Pharisees who came against John’s baptism thought that they did not need to “make fruit worthy of repentance,” because they could trace their lineage back to Abraham. They claimed Abraham as the forefather of their…
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Brood of Vipers (Part 1 of 2)
But when John saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7, NRSV). When I first read this verse, I wasn’t sure what to make of the thought that a bunch of Pharisees and Sadducees came…