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The Way is Made by Walking

“I come from a place, I am going to a place, I am and I am.” –Jo Carson We came from California, Georgia, Utah, Michigan, North Carolina, and New Mexico. We came from New Jersey, Illinois, Kentucky, Virginia, and South Carolina. We carried with us and within us cultures, languages, stories, habits, manners and mannerisms from centuries and generations and from all around the world—from Korea to Africa, from Ireland to Venezuela, from Germany to Scotland, from Greece to Egypt and other places we did not or could not name. We came from families, from congregations, from partnerships, and from … Read the full post

An Open Letter to Politicians about Rape

Dear Politicians: My name is Marcia. I am 43 years old and I am a rape survivor. I am lots of other things, too: a mother, a pastor, a wife, a theologian. But most of all today, writing to all of you, I am a survivor. It’s been almost 30 years since I was raped and living with that part of who I am is an everyday challenge for me. Once I finally started telling the truth about what happened to me, a portal was opened for the stories of other survivors to move from silence to being heard in my presence—sometimes only by me, … Read the full post

Careful What You Ask For

I preached this sermon at Hudson Memorial Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, NC on October 21, 2012. The scripture passage for the day was The Gospel of Mark 10: 35-45. The sermon is really about all of chapter 10 in Mark’s Gospel. Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark is not a walk in the park. Chapter 10 of the Gospel of Mark takes us alongside Jesus and his disciples on the road to Jerusalem. Our passage is only part of the repetitive comeuppance that people are getting from Jesus just about every time they ask him a question. … Read the full post

Living Liminality: Of Thresholds and Dwelling Places

A version of this post is the first of my contributions to the Feminism and Religion blog on which I will be a quarterly contributor. Sometimes I think it happened gradually. Other times it feels like sudden change. Either way I find myself in an in-between space that is my life. With apologies to Victor Turner and his cultural anthropological appropriation of liminality as a threshold space, I have come to view my liminal living as a more permanent dwelling place these days. Turner’s category of liminality locates subjects in the betwixt and between as they move from one manifestation of … Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XXIII: The Anatomy of the Asterisk

“White people are accountable for the ways in which we fail to hear and understand the needs and claims that other communities make upon us… white learning [often] comes at the expense of those already multiply harmed by white interpersonal and structural failures in perception, sensitivity, and justice.” –Aana Marie Vigen, “To Hear and to Be Accountable” in disrupting White Supremacy From Within: White People on What We Need to Do” UNC just can’t seem to help itself. They keep worsting themselves with the football fiasco. Now Hakeem Nicks, the all time best receiver ever to put on the Carolina blue … Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XXII: Moral High Ground and Shifting Sands

“If the LORD does not build the house, the work of the builders is useless.” –Psalm 127: 1 The NCAA has taken a stand against the culture of football at Penn State. Their attempt to take the moral high ground against a culture they helped to create raises some big questions for me. I heard the Chair of the Executive Committee of the NCAA (which, by the way, is not the Rainbow Coalition–check out the roster. By my count 20 of the 23 members are white and 19 of the 23 members are male) say that Chancellors and Presidents … Read the full post

A Meditation on Violence

“So then, we must always aim at those things that bring peace and that help strengthen one another.” –Romans 14:19 The tragedy of the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting reverberates through American culture with our grief, our questions, and our groping for where we go from here. For now we are collectively following an all too familiar pattern through the aftermath. First, there is the media blitz of on-site reporting, eyewitness accounts, breaking news, and social media chatter. Then comes the research on all the back-stories—of the victims, the perpetrators, the witnesses, and any others who have even tangential connections … Read the full post

Embodied Prayers of the People

This embodied prayer is something I wrote to use in worship at White Memorial Presbyterian Church during my month as their Theologian in Residence. I also used this prayer at the General Assembly breakfast at the 220th General Assembly in Pittsburgh, PA. Prior to writing this prayer I had experienced several different versions of a prayer in four directions–some from Native American traditions, some from Celtic origins, others with a particularly Christian character from Native American worship resources. My friends and colleagues Valerie Tutson and The Rev. Irvin Porter have modeled versions of prayer in the four directions in several … Read the full post

Matters of Life and Death

I just finished a month as the Theologian in Residence at White Memorial Presbyterian Church in Raleigh. The focus of our “deep and wide” month together was the Incarnation. Together we took a multilayered approach to exploring the embodied vitality that the Incarnation invites us toward. Below is the sermon I preached one Sunday during my month there. “BUILDING A BETTER BELIEVER” SCRIPTURE: GENESIS 3: 8-15, 2 CORINTHIANS 4:13-5:1 WHITE MEMORIAL PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, RALEIGH, NC June 10, 2012 It has been a great first week of work here at WMPC as your theologian in residence. Thank you for your … Read the full post

I Witness Guest Blogger Cheyanna Basham

If you look at the moon long enough you see sadness. The moon mourns of what the worlds now becoming, all the demons called drugs taking the innocent people turning them into people they swore up and down they would never be and soon the demon will take their life… letting their children and parents suffer… leaving parents to take care of kids who weren’t meant to be theirs. They love them and those who died watch over them and try so hard to keep them on the right track as they watch from above. God understands what the demon … Read the full post

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