I Accept
I so often forget that all of this is a journey. I resent the absence of a destination, of perfection. I wonder if I’m doing it right, if I’m doing enough.
We Need to Talk About Sexual Assault
Guys, we need to talk about sexual assault. I don’t just mean now. I mean we need to wake up and pay attention. How long are we going to let this be the status quo? When are we going to do something about it?
The Civil War Wasn't Your Fault (and Other Things I Wish I'd Known)
“My system could have prevented the Civil War” is more than just laughable hubris. It carries the implicit suggestion that if we had only tried harder, done more, and followed the rules better, we could have prevented our own civil wars.
Confessions of the Older Brother
I’ll break every rule I so carefully kept all these years, and blow all I’ve saved on riotous living. Maybe by throwing away everything, I’ll finally find the love I’ve been trying to earn all along.
From the Other Side
I can still remember how empty those words felt a year ago, how little I believed what I was writing when I told myself I’d make it to the other side.
A Journey of Grief
I carry my grief with me wherever I go. I wish it didn’t take so long to move from the depths of our despair to a place where we can say life is good again. But it always does.
When Faith is a Clusterf*ck
Sometimes the chapters are all in the wrong order, and despair follows way too close on the heels of joy.
Letting Go
You do not have to write your own story. You do not have to believe all the right things. You do not have to be good. You only have to keep walking, and know that you have always been infinitely loved.
The Truth About Waking Up
I read your message last night, the one you sent a week or two ago. You told me about how my faith and hope are helping you hold on to faith and hope even when you want to give up. You called my writing “honest” and “vulnerable” and told me that you cried reading it. You…
Day 31: Using My Words
It’s just late afternoon, and already dark outside, so I guess it’s November now and October’s #Write31Days challenge is over. I guess also that I’m a day late with this post, and that maybe I skipped a few days toward the end. I guess I was just busy doing human stuff. /// As I watched…
Day 28: Getting Help
I wasn’t sure if I was going to bring this up, but we’re only a few days from the end of this 31-day writing challenge, so fuck it — let’s go. Sometimes part of becoming human means asking for help. Here’s what that’s looked like for me in the past year: Every Monday morning I…
Day 26: Failing
This is also part of becoming human. And in the grand narrative of the world, missing two days of a thirty-one day writing challenge is barely worth mentioning as a failure. I realize this. What’s worth mentioning, though, is that failure is inseparable and essential to the process of becoming human. (As much as I…
Day 23: Choosing Happiness
So we’re twenty three days into this project of becoming human, and I guess I want to say that today I’m happy. That’s all. But you know it’s been a long road to get here. I was thinking about that, today, about what it takes to choose happiness. About how many times in the past…
Day 22: Having an Ordinary Day
My liturgical friends have a stretch of the church calendar they call “ordinary time”. I don’t know very much about it, but I think it has something to do with the rhythms of life, and the way that the high points and holidays are scattered across stretches of the year that are simply ordinary. Today…
Day 21: Walking with God
I used to think of God as always either calling or sending. But those ideas — calling or sending — suggest that god is somewhere other than right beside me I now think of god who as one who walks along with me, every step. And god isn’t nearly so concerned with where I walk, as much as that I stay…
