katiez – for all that we have done… and left undone. for all that we have said… and left unsaid. Lord have mercy. #deathpenalty hughlh – “You can say they deserve to die, but the key moral question is ‘Do we deserve to kill?’” — Helen Prejean Mike Oles – Mourning for America tonight. This…
Wheat & Tares
the church in the world: mission, justice, good news
Facebook parenting = 21st century coffee klatch
Whenever we went back to my grandma and grandpa’s house for holidays, the family gathered together in the living room and we told stories. Or rather, as the babe in the room I listened to stories, while my aunts and uncles and my mom told about the adventures and misadventures they found themselves in growing…
Fear or Dialogue?
(This is a post I wrote last fall, but for some reason I never published… as we come closer to the tenth anniversary of September 11th, I thought I might go ahead and push the “publish” button) A sort of running theme here on the blog on the past has been the very simple idea…
postmodern holiness
I have been having a discussion with some colleagues about what it means to be disciples and pastors in the world today. The question was raised about what it means to be holy and to seek after God’s holiness… especially in the context of the postmodern world we live and move in. Some of us…
ding dong, the witch is dead…
I found out that Osama Bin Laden had been killed last night as I was crawling into bed. It has been a long week, I was tired, and my husband came in and announced the big news. My husband! Who normally isn’t all that concerned about world politics/situations. The first thing I thought of was…
how can we laugh at a time like this?
I’m sitting at my computer, looking out the 24th floor window of my hotel in Des Moines. I am currently attending our annual School for Ministry and learning all sorts of neat things about capital campaigns and what kinds of fonts to use on worship slides. We’ve had some good practical teaching this year… with…
born this way
A good friend helped me to find a post by Brian Kirk called “Lady Gaga, Lent, Teens, and Original Sin.” It is a good read, but there are a few tweaks that I might have made to his argument. In his article, Kirk shows how Lady Gaga’s latest song “Born This Way,” helps teenagers to…
rights of workers
Recently, we have wrestled in various states surrounding Iowa, and now in our own state with the rights of workers. I watched the situation unfolding in Wisconsin over the last month and was appalled at how it has all turned out. The United Methodist Church has had a long history of supporting labor reforms and…