Once upon a time... I was a bigot, brazenly proclaiming my bigotry towards God's beautiful and wholly beloved LGBTQIA rainbow children. Once upon a time... I was completely unaware of the racism I carried within me that sometimes came out of my mouth. Once upon a time... I had no concept of white privilege or …
Tag: church
Bible 101: What the Bible isn’t. Part One
In an earlier post, I wrote about what the Bible actually is because many people are truly confused about the Bible. They think that it is a single coherent narrative with a consistent theological view point despite the fact that it is really a disparate collection of writings that show a great variety of views. …
Bible 101: What is the Bible?
For many people the question posed by the title of this post will be easy to answer and may even cause them to feel perplexed as to why it's a question at all. Their answer would simply be, "It's the Word of God," or they might perhaps quip that it's humanity's Basic Instructions Before Leaving …
He remembered my name.
In 2015, I was in the midst of an existential crisis. The right livelihood I had attempted to carve out for myself as a permaculturist (see Go Golden chapter seven for an introduction to permaculture) had not worked out as planned. I was struggling to find work, living in a tiny attic bedroom we were renting from …
There’s something happening here: The sequel
If you close your eyes and think about church you may get a flood of images of steeples, pews, and a choir, or of clergy members in various types of garments that denote their office and role. Perhaps you will feel emotions, be they positive because your experience with church has been largely positive. Conversely, …
Continue reading There’s something happening here: The sequel
Unmerited advantages
Privilege is something seen throughout American life by certain individuals and groups. Sometimes it comes in the form of granting someone permission to do something in particular and is relatively innocuous. If the students I am teaching at the school I work at get done with their work, I allow them to use their smart …
Traumatic Episodes: A sneak peek
The following is an excerpt from the manuscript I am working on entitled Traumatic Episodes: Finding Grace in a Life Lived with PTSD. It's very much a work in progress. There will be journal-like entries (as with the one below) along with narrative chapters covering different time periods in my life. (Petros the Stress Demon is my …
The season of Advent
I grew up in churches that did not follow the liturgical calendar or the Christian year. Our church year, such as it was, had only two noteworthy celebrations- Christmas and Easter. Christmas was celebrated as a single day, and Easter was marked by Good Friday and Easter Sunday, with both a sunrise service and …
Chaos: A perspective on poverty
Recently, I went into my little kitchen to get my two cats, Solomon and Luna, a little treat. Luna had been lounging on one of the two cat towers that are stationed near windows in the downstairs floor of my home. This seemingly innocuous action, of me opening a cabinet door, set off a …
There’s something happening here…
Around three years ago, I attended church for the first time in a many years. Prior to that I had rejected the fundamentalism of my youth and as a result ended up spiritually adrift for a long time. When I left the church in 2003, for more details see my forthcoming book from Wipf …
The Tattooed Theologian 