GOD Archives - Ellen Morris Prewitt

Ida Know, but We Gotta Go

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on August 28, 2021. Posted in GOD, GRIEF. 16 Comments

It is Saturday. We’re packing up to drive to my sister’s house in Jackson before Hurricane Ida hits our part of the world. “Ride it out,” they call it when you evacuate to another area. But you fly from the storm, grabbing your file of necessary papers (oh, right: add COVID vaccination cards) and hurriedly deciding what...

Can America be the Land of the Brave?

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on July 6, 2021. Posted in General, GOD, RACISM. 8 Comments

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...

A Random Sunday

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 27, 2021. Posted in General, GOD. Leave a Comment

Today at the Free Church of the Annunciation, we wrapped up the month of June doing We R Righting Group where, during the hour before church, we wrote about Re-Orienting Our New Selves after the discombobulating last eighteen months. We had fun. Fun, I say, if that’s what you think of the Holy Spirit appearing while almost-strangers share...

Nekkid People

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 6, 2021. Posted in General, GOD. 4 Comments

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.”...

The Gifted Young Professional

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on March 25, 2021. Posted in General, GOD. 4 Comments

In the summer of 1981, when I was clerking at the Wise Carter law firm in Jackson, Mississippi, and living at my grandmother’s house, I walked the five blocks to my job in downtown Jackson. Pedestrian commuting was not the rule in Jackson, but my other option was to drive Bigmama’s 1965 land shark Cadillac, fondly known as “Big Blue.“ At that time,...

Lent 2021: Update

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on February 24, 2021. Posted in General, GOD, HOMELESSNESS. 2 Comments

It’s really interesting. Most Lents, my disciplines don’t come easy. I have to be very intentional about observing them. After a bit, they will become a new habit, but it takes a while. This Thumb Prayer discipline is different. As I talked about last week, this Lent I’m working on Thumb Prayers each day. Each day,...

No More Giving Up

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on February 19, 2021. Posted in General, GOD, HOMELESSNESS. 12 Comments

This is the way it goes: Christmas, Epiphany, Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras Day, Ash Wednesday, Lent. We are now in the 40 days of Lent. (This is a religious calendar, but life in New Orleans revolves around it; there’s a season of Mardi Gras for a reason). This year, I’ve made a hard shift on Lent, one many of you might disagree with. Traditionally,...

I Love You

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on February 9, 2021. Posted in General, GOD, GRIEF, LOVE. 6 Comments

I see you looking at my mask with disdain. You think I’m a coward, afraid of getting a virus that is no worse than the flu. One that probably doesn’t even exist, anyway. And if it does, masks sure don’t work. I’m just being a sucker. I envy you the freedom to believe that way. I’m jealous of your luxury of theory because you’ve known no...

Time is and was: 2020 into 2021

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 28, 2020. Posted in General, GOD, GRIEF, LOVE. 6 Comments

Do you believe in what might have been? How about what was and is again? Do you believe in that? Multiple strands of time, I’m talking about, so that, in what might have been, the twin boys I longed for in my first life—King and John Powell—are nearing thirty years old. Brown-headed handsome young men. It could have happened, if I hadn’t...

When a White Woman Accuses a Black Man

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 5, 2020. Posted in General, GOD, HOMELESSNESS, RACISM. 6 Comments

He was a writer, a man I’ll call Jonathan. Jonathan was in writing group with me one hour before he was accused of having snatched a purse from a woman on the street, a felony even though the purse had less than $10 in it. I told the investigators that Jonathan had just left writing group when this crime supposedly occurred; there was no way...