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My Attachment to Things, So Embarrassing

When Daddy Joe died—killed by a train in what the responding officer called as clean a t-bone as he’d ever seen—Mother said she stopped caring about things. Only people mattered. I always took this to mean that attachment to things was shallow. Yet. I love my new burnt sienna pillow cases in wrinkly linen. I love my 1950s TV trays I’m...

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The Howard Thurman Walk

I started this July the 4th morning with a walk. A join virtual walk. My Contemplative Justice group yesterday decided to walk together wherever we were at eight o’clock this morning. We’ve been reading the work of the mystic Howard Thurman, whose original entry to God was leaning against the trunk of an oak. This morning, we would do...

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Releasing Those We Love to God

We read the “Abraham almost kills Isaac” story in church today, and I have thoughts. Mostly on what this Genesis story says about releasing those we love to God. Mother, her children, and God When my mother was a young widow, she had her children baptized. She had returned to her native Mississippi where she’d given birth...

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What Makes You Come Alive?

It dawned on me (ha, ha—pun alert) sitting here staring out the window at the breaking morning light (what has happened to me? why am I waking up so early? who the hell knows): I have sorta/kinda become the family historian. How can I not admit this when I recently THREE times told to family members the story of the Mississippi ancestors, a story...

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White Christian Fear of Racism

I’ve hit a conundrum I can’t understand. I’ve been Christian since the moment my mother hit her knees and, against every fiber in her being, gave up her motherly control over me to have me baptized as “God’s own forever.” As such, I know sin as separation of God. I also know the good news that repentance leads...

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The Bishop Came to Our House

Yesterday, in church, the Bishop came to our house. She wore her gold hat and white robes. She carried a carved shepherd’s crook, because she is the shepherd of our souls here on earth. At her side stood a tiny woman called the Bishop’s chaplain, as if the Bishop gets to travel with her BFF spiritual friend always. The Bishop was...

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The Devil You Know

I saw the book at Novel Bookstore in Memphis. Its vivid orange and black cover drew me in. I realized the author was Charles Blow, who I had followed on Twitter before I got off Twitter. I always liked what he had to say. In the back of my brain, I seemed to recall he had moved from somewhere in the North to Atlanta. I picked up “The Devil...

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