By Mariela Pérez-Simons“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.” —Robin Wall Kimmerer During my high school years in Cuba, every student needed to
By Ndidi Achebe“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.” —Zora Neale HurstonAbout two years ago, my hometown of Dayton, Ohio became another city to experience a mass shooting—a very traumatic even
By Kimberlee Anne Tomczak Carlson “[T]ales of natural emergence [are] far more magical than traditional miracles. Emergence is inherent in everything that is alive, allowing our yearning for supernatural miracles to be subsumed by our joy in the countless miracles that surround us.” —Ursula Goodeno
By Takiyah Nur Amin“...and what does the Lord require of you, but to DO JUSTICE, and to LOVE KINDNESS and to WALK HUMBLY with your God?” —Micah 6:8 (NRSV)When President Biden was inaugurated in January, most of my white friends thought everything would be okay. I thought different. “There’s going t
By David Kohlmeier“The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.” —William Blake“You may have noticed my painted fingernails. You can thank Ramona!” I joke to the gathered congregation as they behold via my laptop camera, this “Zoom pulpit,” the sparkly blue glittery mess that my 3-year-old has pai
By Li Kynvi“The practice of love offers no place of safety.” —bell hooks, in All About Love: New VisionsThirty years ago, the pink triangle button pinned on my jacket identified me as queer. My T-shirts said “Silence = Death” and “No on 9.” An evangelical right-wing group had gotten an initiative
By Rayla D. Mattson“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.” —Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "A Case of Identity"The year I graduated from college, I got a job and moved in with family friends. They were more family than friends, so when they bought
By George A Tyger“The young dead solders do not speak… They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts. They say, We were young. We have died. Remember us.” —Archibald MacLeish (1940)I met Scott’s father a year after he was killed. It was a pilgrimage for me. I drove a
By Christine Slocum"Your breath is always with you.” —common meditation promptRemember when we used to breathe all over each other? Pre-pandemic, we stood behind each other in the grocery line, chit-chatted before meetings, or sat next to each other in church. There was a clear line of sight to eac
By Karen G. Johnston“And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, this is the world I want to live in. The shared world.… This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.” —Naomi Shihab Nye, in “Gate A-4”A few years before this pandemic, I flew to Chicago to visit my m
