Femminary

Last Sunday was Transfiguration Sunday. The transfiguration was said to have happened on Mount Tabor in Lower Galilee in what is now recognized as Northern Israel. In January of 2016 I was able to travel to Jordan, Palestine, and Israel with a group from my seminary. And I had the opportunity to visit Mt Tabor. The day I went we had an incredible tour guide. We met her that morning in Nazareth…

12 Ideas For How Clergy Can Show Up

My fellow Faith Leaders – A reminder, that calling for (false) peace in this moment is an act of betrayal and not solidarity. People on the ground need our assistance, not our approval and certainly not our calls for restraint or our complicity in messaging from the state. Instead here are 11 ideas for how to show up in this moment (many of which I’ve pulled together from asks I’ve seen from on…

When I created this service 3 years ago I always dreamed of taking it all over the state of Ohio. Now it’s happening.

In 2017 over 4,854 Ohioans died of an unintentional drug overdose. We know that some of these deaths were preventable, a grief that is sometimes too heavy to bear.

In honor of International Overdose Awareness Day, we are embarking on a statewide tour of a worship service called…

Femmes, You Are NEVER Too Difficult To Love

(click to start playing, click on YouTube symbol to see full list of songs) A love letter to all the mean scary Femmes. Love songs for Femmes who have been made to feel like their greatness is a burden. Like they are too bright, too emotional, too boundaried, too intense. You are not too much. And there is *NO* such thing as too difficult to love.…

Response: Where Do You Worship?

A few weeks ago I launched my first writing workshop, “Finding Divinity In The Profane”. Below is a participants response to the prompt: Where Do You Worship.  Where do you worship? I worship in two beds One that swallows me whole And one that holds me hard Softness of a body And the hardness of a shell One that lets me inside And one that forces me out Out Come my melodies from soft places In…

Sermon. This year, is an AIDS year.

St Augustine said that “Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are.” I like that. I like thinking of hope as a productive thing. Too often we treat hope like it’s foolish, or lazy. Too often, consciously or unconsciously, we link hope and ignorance. We look at the world around us and hope…

How to Walk Up Lexington Avenue…

11 years ago today was Kotschi's funeral. I was heartbroken and unbelievably angry. That service wasn't what I wanted for him or for us. His parents fundamentalist faith wouldn't allow him his dignity even in death. He deserved better.

I wrote this funeral service last semester. It is a reimagining of what his funeral could have been. What a service for us could have looked like.

Sermon. The Dignity of Toilet Water

Ever since I started Seminary people have been asking me the same question: Why? Now, that why looks different in different situations. Sometimes it’s a simple, why the change? Sometimes it’s, what called you to ministry? Sometimes it’s, WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? I’m never quite sure what I’m gonna get. So I watch people’s body…