Braver/Wiser Archive

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.

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 had over us."

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.