Skip to main content

Another Mother Mary Publication

I know, I know. I said I was starting a new blog schedule in 2022. And I am, I promise. But I want y’all to know about my latest publication: “The Three Mary’s Birth Hope…or Not” It appears in EAP the Magazine’s Winter issue. You can read it here. The story is an excerpt from my unpublished novel...

Continue reading

Do You Want to be Transformed?

Don’t answer too quickly. Think about it. It’s a big question. Most Christians traditions value transformation, though different churches use different words. Born-again. Repentance. Metanoya. In this Advent season, rebirth is a big one. Most label transformation a goal, if not a promise. Transformed, you won’t see the world...

Continue reading

When Her Face Changed

The video updated the famous Kenneth and Mamie Clark doll experiment. The videographer gave African American children a white doll and a Black doll. She asked each child, which doll is good? Which doll is bad? You may recall that back in the 1950s the US Supreme Court cited the results of the original doll experiment in ordering the integration...

Continue reading

Are You a Scapegoater?

Yesterday, we completed Week 2 of the Mississippi Episcopal Church’s Anti-Racism and Racial Reconciliation training. Click here to read about Week 1 of this 4 week training. What did I learn this week (other than, apparently, my voice doesn’t stand out in a large Zoom group, and I have a short temper about that?) Words Matter When...

Continue reading

Anti-Racism for Advent

This Advent, my husband and I are participating in Anti-Racism and Racial Reconciliation training. If this seems an odd choice, remember that my turn towards anti-racism began with the Memphis School of Servant Leadership, a religious organization. This training is offered by the Episcopal Church in Mississippi. We meet once a week for four weeks....

Continue reading

What’s Your Invisible Wind?

White privilege is like riding the bike down the beach in Waveland. There’s an incline as the land rises toward Bay St. Louis, but it’s a basically easy ride. You pedal along. The Gulf is to your right, the lovely houses to your left. The temperature is okay, not beating down hot. You can feel it in your thighs, the exertion, but it’s...

Continue reading

Can America be the Land of the Brave?

Y’all know this story, right? About how King David of Israel saw a woman bathing and asked who she was. David’s advisors told him she was the wife of Uriah, one of David’s soldiers. David’s messengers “brought Bathsheba to him.” They had sex. David then arranged for her husband Uriah to be killed in battle...

Continue reading

Nekkid People

This morning in church I was a lay reader for the first time in my life. You usually have to go through training or some such before they let you stand at the head of the church at the heavily-carved lectern with a microphone in front of you and read the word of God—we say that after the reading, intone it, actually: “The Word of God.”...

Continue reading

The Mississippi that Might Still Be

When I heard that Mississippi during this massive moment of potential change was focusing on its racist flag, at first I thought, oh, dear Lord —that’s what Mississippians think matters now? But. I lose count when I try to say how many generations I’ve been from Mississippi (’cause, you know, we’re not very good at...

Continue reading