Spirituality. Politics. Music. Life.
As we cross the border today, I’m struck by the predominance of FEAR. Fear of “The Other” is fundamentally what drives the kind of policies we see now. We must understand the real dynamic of the past two years: 1. While our immigration laws have needed reform for decades, there was never any “invasion.” 2. […]
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Today, we cross the border to see the violence/damage that the “metering” policy has wrought. God calls us to love the neighbor as we love ourselves. To have one law for the migrant and the citizen. Instead, we created a new “metering” that is subjecting migrants, Mexicans, AND US CITIZENS to new and dangerous crime […]
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Survivor’s Guilt. Imposter Syndrome. Two words for relatively similar experiences that, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized many people have. Including me. The older you get, you start to look right and left, and sometimes you see folks who used to be standing beside you…aren’t. Somehow, you’ve “made it through” some life-trial, or tragedy. Somehow, […]
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Watching this interview between Colbert and Anderson Cooper, I am reminded of the great quote attributed to Charlie Chaplin: “To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain and play with it.” Colbert is one of the masters of this, and always has been. And it was years ago now that I first […]
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I voted for Ronald Reagan twice to be president. The next time I could vote, I voted for Jesse Jackson. If I was to write the story of my spiritual, social, and political transformation in two short sentences, those two would be it. Those two sentences are the metaphor for a social transformation that continues […]
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Dear White Friends, Can we talk again?I can’t shake the story of Francisco Erwin Galicia. He’s the 18-year-old American citizen that was detained for almost a month by Border Patrol and ICE. I can’t shake the story, because it play directly into a narrative that I have been preaching about for perhaps a decade now…that […]
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I thought of a scene from “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” as I watched the Trump Political Rally in North Carolina last night. In the film, Senator Padme Amadala and Bail Organa are watching as Emperor Palpatine engineers an effective coup within the Senate. It’s met with cheers. And as she surveys the scene, […]
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Realism, not cold water. That is my message to all my friends in Metho-nerd land today. For the past two weeks, we’ve had the breaking news of General Conference delegate elections from all across the country. It is fair to call it a “wave election,” toward the Moderate-Progressive side. It’s STUNNING in some places. My […]
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Let me provide a bit of context for the past few days in the North Texas Conference. It’s just my one perspective on what felt like an extraordinary few days. (So, take it or leave it…) First, the NTC ordained the first openly lesbian woman in the South. (Meaning: In any conference in the Southeastern […]
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