Every morning, before my coffee and without my glasses, I stare out the window. I cannot make the coffee pour any more quickly than the machine will make it so I stand there. And I stare. I stand there. I stare. And I think.
Pre-Coffee Thoughts
Hearts and Hope
I tend to kill plants. Never on purpose but, somehow, they die. I thought I killed my Purple Heart.
It had stopped blooming. It didn’t look … alive. So I took into my hands and, yeah, I think I killed it. And my hope with it.
Drop the Mask
Faith means feeling. We misinterpret scripture to demand that we - and those around us - not engage our emotions. Only joy. Only contentment. But humans feel ALL the feels. It is an act of faith to feel your feelings. Drop the mask.
She Said It Saturday: We SEE You!
When I was young, coming up in ministry, one of my Big Sisters in Ministry (BSIM) caught me acting at an Annual Conference. She pulled me aside and, with Brooklyn all over her face, asked me, “who are you right now and who are you trying to be?!”
I was acting. Pretending. Whoever I really was had ceased to be visible for the character I was playing, the person I thought I should be for the Church, for my family, for … some strange reason. As seasons change and I shift with the winds of life, I frequently hear her voice in my head demanding to know who I am and who I’m trying to be. Sometimes, I look around me and want to ask the world, the Church, the people around me the same thing. A couple of years ago, I did.
On this first (and maybe last) “She Said it Saturday" I share my version of my BSIM’s question. Set to Cee-Lo Green’s “Big Ole Words,” I ask simply, “what happened to y’all?” I was tired then. And I’m tired now. Here is We SEE You! from July 2020.
Duo-logue: To Write a Sermon
The world, as E-40 said, went crazy. Again. How am I supposed to preach about it? And, yet, by virtue of the job, I cannot remain silent. Here, an excerpt from the pages of my journal, a duo-logue where my interlocutors are my memories and my imagination: and I still have a sermon to figure out.
Just Say It
“I can’t speak NRSV. Jesus ain’t speak NRSV. God sho’ain’t speak NRSV. Jesus predates the English language and certainly the American form of it. Since the Word of God ain’t bound to a particular form of English, neither am I bound to read the Bible in that form of English. So I read it in my native tongue.”
My Womanish Body
An unpublished piece from 2018. I was old then. I’m older now. And I hope no one else ever has to earn the right to love their own body because of the churchy spaces I inhabit and maintain.
The Death of a King
Fulfill your purpose. Live your life - for YOU. Do what you love until you can't do anything anymore. LIVE.
That's the point.
LIVE.
Intersectionality and Kobe Bryant
Intersectional awareness is, literally, being aware of the way that issues intersect across marginalized identities. It's noticing that issues both impact and are impacted by different locations on this web - and it's a web, not a ladder - of marginalization, this system of oppression called kyriarchy.
Come Back to You
Your soul deserves better from you. You deserve better than to be crouched in crowded silent shadows, trying to carve away yourself so that you have room to push someone else towards the light that you don’t realize is coming from and for you. You deserve better than what you are allowing yourself to have.
