Braver/Wiser Archive

When it comes to living our expansive, inclusive, anti-oppression faith, we fall short.

As a hospital chaplain, I often listen to painful stories. We call it compassionate presence, but I may be crying inside. When words fail, I pray and sing.

If justice is to be realized, our voices must speak loudly—even boisterously—of love.

People of color—and other marginalized people—can’t just want things to be different. It has to be everyone wanting things to be different for everyone.

The stone soup story isn’t about selfish people. It’s about people who thought they were powerless.

When we can gently hold things steady, change comes from within; that’s where the real growth happens.

Who are you going to be, today? And tomorrow? Who are we all becoming, together?

It's hard to feel gratitude for something when you're focusing on what’s wrong with it.

I call the tall bush on my back patio “Burning Bush” because in autumn its leaves are a fiery red. All winter long I overlooked three uninhabited nests inside of it. For months and months I could have perceived—but didn’t—what was in plain sight. ...

We can’t always predict which choices will wind up having a huge impact on us, whether it's bringing home a stuffed animal or taking a particular train to Oxford Circus.

Sometimes people show up fully and be with me. And sometimes they cannot, even if they really care about me and want to help.

When I internalize cultural messages about the definitions of success or failure—or anything, really—I undermine my own sense of self-worth.

A haircut, a cup of coffee, or just an honest “How are you?” can be transformed into a powerful moment between two people living in a hard world.

I saw a woman surrounded by the pressures to conform to adulthood, being the adult she always wanted to be when she was a child. She was as God made her, not who everyone else wanted her to be.

What could you accomplish this week if you knew you had a ground team wishing you well? Who are the other explorers around you, needing a word of encouragement that would mean so much coming from you?

Despite being warmly welcomed over and over by the greeters, by the family sitting behind me, and by the lead pastor, I couldn’t shake that “guest” feeling.

Over the years, I’ve built up an impressive array of tools for meetings: I-statements, being assertive, and all of that stuff. What I could improve on, though, is knowing when to switch tools.

It is deeply spiritual work to learn to treat ourselves with compassion; to learn to see ourselves, if only in moments, the same way we look at something or someone we find beautiful: a newborn baby, the ocean, a sunset.

Outside of the meditation hall, we plan for the future and think of the past. But so often we replay past regrets and worry about future events to the point where we’re no longer present in the present.

Love without justice is not love. Compassion without deeds is not compassion. Faith without action is not faith. And religion without politics is not religion. In my view, people of faith are not entitled to avoid politics for the sake of a short-lived spiritual high.

Surrender is the last thing, often the only thing, available. And so we give ourselves to it. We fear it is our end. Sometimes—with grace or luck—we find it is our liberation.

Traditions and habits can be changed or broken and that’s not always bad. It doesn’t mean we didn’t learn or like what we did in the past, it just means that we moved on to something else and that’s okay too.

My soul nudged me from a hiding place to confess and to seek forgiveness, and only through the grace of the Great Mystery of Life unfolding around us did I receive the blessing of journeying with a beloved, grieving friend.

Once I quit drinking, my inner voice and I began the harder work: that of creating a life from which I do not need or want to escape.

In real life, sometimes grief looms largest in December. Sometimes there's one too many dress-ups and the gold tulle makes your legs itch. “I just needed it to stop for a minute. Next time I will take calm breaths.”

There's nothing simple about the holidays. Joy can feel empty when it is compulsory. The promise of liberation is hard fought and well earned.

Advent is about expectation—radical expectations that undo the status quo—and anticipation: a skillful search for the places where liberation rises from the ashes.

What, exactly, are we doing when we invite love into our lives? Surely we know that it's much tidier without it, when things stay at a distance.

Something new could come out of this moment of discomfort; something like healing. This is our opportunity to reimagine what Thanksgiving could be — and who we could be.

A white woman pulled over and ran over to me with a shopping bag. She noticed that I never have on a coat and I often stand in the rain. She didn’t know if the things would fit, but the receipt was in the bag. She smiled and drove away. As I looked down at the bag, I had very...

In the eighteen years I’ve served as minister of my small-town congregation, I have led 96 memorial services, most for people I have loved. The longer I stay, the deeper I love and the more I grieve.

God is not a distant force, far away. God is in the beating of our hearts and the backbeat of a funky baseline. God is in a four-on-the-floor drum fill, and in the achy joints and sore muscles the day after.

What had to die was my shame: my belief that I was not worthy of such love. I discovered a greater love within myself as a creation of God, worthy of these gifts.

We could see the main path to the swimming hole ahead, but we had to pick our way through sand spurs to get there. Behind us were rattlesnakes. What did the youth do? They started playing.

Emotional tempests aren’t always easy to weather — pain, grief, disappointment, even love — but the flatness of life without such currents is the slow silence of drowning.

I trusted the woman at the pharmacy to be capable of hearing hard truth. Bless her wounded heart with its internalized misogyny. She just wants women to love and support each other. Thank you. Me too.

Our family prays at mealtime to practice gratitude in our lives. I love that my children are taking it as their own, finding their own meaning.

Who are the angry birds in my life? Do I avoid opportunities in fear of risks? What are the sticks I carry in my heart so as not to be hurt again?

It's an impulse of the human self to be known fully, and that’s almost never possible unless we risk the conversations that help us see past our initial impressions.

This is a story of in-the-middle for those wondering how their story ends.

Black people are so accustomed to being ignored and invisible that a simple acknowledgement—a simple I see you —from a peer goes a long way.

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.