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?

"Where are you a pastor?" It's not an uncommon question when you've chosen to do ministry in a small, rural town, especially when you wear a clerical collar much of the time. I'm getting used to the puzzled looks on people's faces as they struggle to reconcile a genderqueer body in this...

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.