Before you read this you should read “Trinket Transformation.” Saturday before last, I found a little boy under my table eating M&Ms. He was clearly eyeing my Iron Giant Action Figure. “Go ahead, you can play with it,” I said. He grabbed it and ran down the hall. I stepped to the door to watch…
I got to design my own office when we built our church four years ago. It’s a 10′ by 10′ room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves all around, a large window and a recessed area for a computer. In the middle is a round, wooden table that seats four. It’s a tight fit, but it works. When I…
If you absolutely must rely on generalizations to feel safe in your relationships with others, at least try not to use blunt instruments like gender, skin color, affiliation with major world religions, or nationality. If you must hem your pants don’t use a crosscut saw. At least try to find some scissors. Generalizations are a…
We’d need a place for this. Hopefully a place that is beautiful. My old church would be perfect. So would the Quaker meeting house here in town. Some place like those. This place would be open for five hours on Sunday afternoons. A curator or spiritual guide would open and close each week. Come and…
When my faith went it did not go down the way I imagined it. And yes, I used to imagine what losing my faith would look like. Years ago at the church, alone on a Friday, standing before the empty room, working out my sermon and I would wonder just how much of this does…
Where is this Jewish troublemaker, this messiah, or king, or whatever it is he calls himself? He’s in the antechamber your grace. He has been…softened, as it were, in preparation for your interview. Bring him in. Jesus is thrown to the floor. Oh good god, they’ve overdone it. Albus this man is clearly no danger.…
I dreamed there was a mall in San Antonio with nothing but churches in it. People would come from all over the city, have breakfast in the food court, then attend whatever service appealed to them in the moment. Jeanene and I had attended a few times out of curiosity but never found anything of interest.…
The first one eased out the door after 18 months of using her bedroom as a dorm, having no curfew, coming and going at all hours, driving us crazy with worry, and losing her religion joyously, like a kid throwing confetti into the air and with no apparent shame as she said to us, “Yeah,…
This piece was originally posted in February of 2004 and was intended to describe my experience as an anonymous blogger and my creepy feelings about how insulated Church culture is in our world. It also marks the first appearance of Hugh Elliott in my writing. Hugh appeared off and on over the years in things…
And so it has come to this. I’m going to leave for awhile. For a time. For an unspecified sabbatical. Maybe forever. Who knows? It certainly has a forever feel because I’m going out into the wild woods of the world and I’m not leaving bread crumbs behind me. For now I still count myself among…