Braver/Wiser Archive

May we find unexpected ways to remember where we came from and imagine where we may go next. May we find touchstones of our pasts, and may they become a foundation for the future.

If a friend were in my situation, I would have seen their failings as human. So why hold someone to an unforgiving standard just because that someone is me ?

It is my only memory of a lesson from Kindergarten Sunday School class. Maybe it’s the only one that counts.

Almost every person I told about my family's near-accident told me that it was God intervening. But that’s not fair to us, and it’s not fair to God.

People move places for jobs, relations, opportunities, escape, hindering our ability to put down new roots. And yet, we carry a constancy: the still, quiet voice within.

I’d gotten in the habit of keeping my head down and hardly noticing where I was or who was around me. On this day, I decided to greet the world differently.

Music is my solace and my comfort, the one thing that’s always with me. I feel its vibration deep in my soul; it’s my spiritual practice. Music tells the story of my life.

I choose to believe in community. I choose to believe in the difficult, slow work of building a common life.

Tell me the story of my birth, and help me understand how you were changed the day I entered the world. Help me know love, deep in my bones.

However imperfectly I may be living this life of mine, there’s no one better at it, and there’s no one else who can do it for me.

My heart broke the day my son stood in the bathroom crying. He handed me a pair of scissors and told me to just cut it . I told him how beautiful his hair was and how sad I would be to see him cut it.

I want the spaces in which we meet to be encased by aspirations and forward loving, not affirmations and self-applause. I want to love the people I disagree with, knowing that we’re all just out to find a little more life.

In real life, we can only place the pieces, one by one, and see what kind of picture we create. Sometimes we turn out to have chosen the wrong piece. Sometimes the picture is wildly unexpected.

I know deep in my spirit that I am held by the Mystery; part of the Mystery and witness to it; an agent of stardust whose perception of the world might not be all that there is to see.

What if we encouraged and celebrated each other for who we are? What if, instead of criticizing, we challenged with love, affirming the good we see in one another?

Last year for Lent, I decided to say yes to any request. I made it all the way to Easter without having to honor my decision.

To offer hospitality, we first have to identify ourselves — sometimes in inconvenient or uncomfortable ways — as helpers; as willing to offer kindness or connection to someone we might disagree with.

Being faithful doesn’t mean endless work. It also means attention to the movement of spirit that can appear as an hour of sleep, the truth of a toddler, or a donut in the middle of the day.

I wanted so much to believe that God was watching over this boy, that God was tender and protective and fiercely on the side of life and that this boy would not slip away.

I spent time feeling embarrassed—that somehow I had failed—because I had filed for divorce. It’s been over nine years now, and I wake up every single day happy with my decision.

“Now,” the yoga instructor said, “begin to chant GOD GOD GOD as you vigorously circle your arms.” Oh boy, I thought, Here we go. Of course it couldn’t just be arm circles.

Spirit of Compassion, remind us that our task as humans is not perfection, but faithfulness.

I’m not the same person who stood in that tattoo parlor eleven years ago. Still, I don’t for a minute regret being permanently marked with this snapshot in time, of my wounds and my hope.

I wanted so badly to break free and let loose—but I just couldn't. I was stuck in my own false ideas of the congregation's expectations of me. Luckily, there’s still time.

Liking somebody, even loving somebody, is not enough to protect them from shade that you cannot even see, much less understand.

My oldest child was confused: why would no one stop and help us? Even though people weren’t stopping to help us, my son said, he wanted to be more like me and stop to help someone anyway.

We have narratives that guide the way we experience and know one another—but the Rev. Dr. William Barber often reminds me that “you must always believe the redemption of your enemy is possible.”

Every year, I tell the congregation not to worry about mistakes because there aren’t any; there is only us, telling an old story about love getting born into this aching world.

It’s been said that it’s easier to untangle a string of lights if you plug them in; it’s no different for people. Humans, just like strings of lights, are wired for connection.

Spirit of Compassion, help us draw strength from all that we are. Give us new language with which to claim our wholeness, a new litany of joy built out of words that wounded.

An adequate Christmas would have you calm and open, taking it in, accepting whatever is. Slow it all down like you might be, in some way, attuned to the pace of the Eternal. If you need, you can fake it at first.

My three-year-old is almost completely nonverbal. Every day when she gets off the bus, I ask her the same question: I ask her how her day was, and every day I get the same answer: ”Momma, I ride bus.” I ask her what she had for lunch and who she played with. I ask her if she...

"How complicated it is to break silence: to open all of the secrets in all of our broken hearts. But silence does break; truth seeks the light. We're unraveling silence because we have determined that our power with one another is greater than the power someone once...

My pager went off at 2:30 a.m. The nurse on the phone said they didn’t know what to do with this patient and thought maybe I -- the chaplain -- could talk to her. If I couldn’t help, they might have to move her to the psychiatric unit.

Someone whispered to me, “Can you pray?” All eyes turned to me. I had no earthly clue what to say. It was a profound gut-level panic. It was the moment I learned to speak the truth as best I understand it, and to hold space for it to bloom.

“If I ask you a question, do you promise to tell me the truth?" For future reference, if a child asks you this question at Christmas time, EVADE.

Living up to my sacred identity is hard! It means remembering that every time I fail to choose grace, or goodness, or peace, I am thoughtlessly squandering my divinity.

We, the willing, follow the threads to one another; past rightness and quips and tweets. We will find one another and persist past sunrise.

Life is full of seesaws: it offers us moments of extreme wonder and moments of fear. Sometimes you have to live through the fear for the wonder to arrive.

Each of us at the wedding had unique stories about their life, but most knew how it felt to be an Asian American in this country. That was enough for me.

How many times do I need to make mistakes at the expense of other people, or people’s groups, before I’m ready to admit that I’m not any better at this than the bigoted and willfully ignorant? If I am to “be change,” I must commit to humility and refuse to settle for my own...

We have to have faith that in the end our small actions matter. We can’t predict what will happen when a small change has been entered into a complex system; the only thing we can predict is that we’ve changed the future in some way.

Pray, if you pray. Send love and money, too. We will be rolled and covered, but we will rise and carry others with us. Watch for the opportunities to rise and carry. Watch for the holy moments where some people see God.

Remembering is the art of holding a memory and sharing it; it’s drawing upon that memory so it can help us to grow into people who live lives of meaning and service. As a practice, remembering connects us deeply to each other and to the love that sustains us.

What happened in Charlottesville is nothing new. We know how to fight it, and it is done in community—wherever we can find it. Spirit that runs through us all, remind me to look up, to reach out, to find those doing this work alongside me and join them.

Someone had broken into our garage. We picked our way through the space, storage tubs strewn about, ready to make a list of what was missing: two wool sweaters and half a tent. Someone was suffering a misfortune here, but it wasn’t us.

In the moment that I switched to “teacher mode,” I recalled moments in which I had inadvertently said ungracious things. I was fortunate enough to have professors, ministers, and friends illuminate my clumsiness for me. They did so in a way that was gracious enough that it...

Our souls and minds need sustenance as much as our physical bodies. May we delight in the ways we find to provide this nourishment to our whole selves.

My son, Caleb, and I went to Starbucks on a recent Saturday morning. We often do this as a prelude to the weekly grocery shopping. It sweetens the deal, which is important, as he is about to be 14 and on the autism spectrum. Both of these factors contribute to his resistance to...

There’s something deeply moving for me about the idea of a love that will always have my back. "Always"—meaning unconditionally and without hesitation. And there's something deeply jarring for me about the idea that, despite my most earnest hopes, my best intentions and desires...