Luke 1:39-45 (46-55) Advent 4C My husband and I met some of our best friends, Nancy and Mark, in our hospital’s birthing class for first-time expectant parents. When we realized we were the oldest couples in the class, we gravitated to each other. Nancy and I laughed together about the hospital’s label of us being of “advanced maternal age” at 35. Dan and Mark exchanged uncomfortable glances when the birthing videos were shown; the featured screaming, all-natural woman from the 1960s convinced Dan he needed to stand by my head and convinced me that an epidural was a gift from God. Our babies were born days apart. Nancy and I continued to meet after the class to commiserate over the joys and struggles of mothering newborn infants. What I appreciated most about our friendship was that we could be straight-up honest with each other about how hard it was and how tired we were without fear of judgement. Pregnancy and parenting are full of blessings. But not every moment is … [Read more...]

Isaiah 12:2-6 Advent 3C Many of us distrust our physical selves, focusing too much on our minds, too much on our ability to think and rationalize to solve all our problems. We walk around like stressed-out heads on sticks, neglecting the mind-body connection. Somatic therapy seeks to heal the split between body and mind (often caused by trauma) and uses breath work and body movement to help people settle their nervous systems. In his book, “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies,” Resmaa Menakem describes somatic work as not about reducing stress, but increasing our body’s ability to manage stress. Breathing exercises and meditation won’t make your commute shorter, your co-workers less difficult, your bills easier to pay. But it will help you be less resentful or reactive when your commute, your co-workers, your bills make life more difficult. Menakem’s grandmother inspired his study and use of somatic therapy. “My … [Read more...]

Luke 3:1-6  Advent 2C Thanks to this week’s guest writer! Brian Christopher Coulter is pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Fort Worth, Texas. If you'd like to print the .pdf, click LITL_12.5.21. Denver Moore was a speaker, a writer and a New York Times bestselling author who lived out his later years in Fort Worth, Texas. His most quoted words are his book “Same Kind of Different as Me:” “Just tell ‘em I'm a nobody that's tryin’ to tell everybody 'bout Somebody that can save anybody.” I moved into his city of Fort Worth about seven months ago and quickly learned that Moore remains a kind of a local legend around here. Even though he passed away in 2012, his story permeates the streets, and his life lingers in their collective memory. Moore lived a hard life. He grew up as a sharecropper, worked on a plantation and lived most of his days in a small town in the South before he decided one night to jump a freight train and ended up in Fort Worth without a job, without … [Read more...]

Mark 13:1-8 Ordinary 25B; Proper 28 “We are in an imagination battle,” writes adrienne maree brown in her book “Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.” “Imagination has people thinking they can go from being poor to a millionaire as part of a shared American dream. Imagination turns Brown bombers into terrorists and white bombers into mentally ill victims. Imagination gives us borders, gives us superiority, gives us race as an indicator of capability. I often feel I am trapped inside someone else’s imagination, and I must engage my own imagination in order to break free.” Brown has teamed up with spoken word artist Walidah Imarisha to lead “visionary fiction” workshops to create strategies for activism and social change, and to compile an anthology of fantastical stories that imagine new, freer worlds without reinforcing dominant narratives of power. (See “Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements.”) Their goal is to engage more people, … [Read more...]