“I cannot relate to this at all,” said the young woman with brown eyes full of curiosity. “I’ve never been told I couldn’t do something just because I was female. My family and the church I grew up in affirmed women to be everything God has called us to be. I never experienced what you’re...

I didn’t call her a bitch, because I knew my mom would have been disappointed. I was standing behind the register watching a woman who had been perusing the mugs and coffee presses for three minutes, my green apron hanging from my neck and tied snugly around my waist. She kept sneaking looks over...

I went running with my friend Sarah the other day. She ran ahead of me the entire time; sometimes it was just a step, other times a few paces. Anyone driving by could see I was the weaker runner. I panted harder than she did, with my head pulsating. Sarah wasn’t trying to show off or prove she was...

Three of the rectangular room’s walls were lined with present-stuffed tables: bikini-clad Barbie dolls, Yahtzee, a plastic sword, Dora the Explorer. Hundreds of dreams-come-true. Santa sat in front of the remaining wall, Santa and his lively, sixty-year-old volunteer elf. “I have six more of...

Advent candles lit round the world declare our longing for the coming of Christ. We wait. And, in our waiting we hope, we pray, we yearn. Advent is a season where our energies and passions for all things to be made right are kindled. Christ, the precious Baby in the manger, is coming for us all to celebrate....

I’ve heard it said that Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was, and still is, an angry, angry man. I have no reason to doubt it. There simply is no denying that they literally burst forth into the nation’s consciousness with a vengeance in late 1987, and for the next five-to-six years,...

While programs designed to train missional pioneers remain very much works-in-progress in most dioceses and seminaries, students infused with an Episcopal-entrepreneurial spirit are presently taking the initiative to enhance the missional aspects of their seminary education by forming the Episcopal...

Depending on what time you arrive, the first thing you might notice about Istanbul is the distinct Muslim call to prayer. It happens five times a day: twice in the morning, once at noon, and twice in the evening. The singing Imam’s voice projects from each mosque’s amplification system. In...

Journal Entry of an Angel With No Name 1  November 2011, as mankind reckons his days. In the city of New York, in the country of the United States of America, I, an angel with no name, record these words: I have descended from Heaven to America and have been walking in her cities. Though the inhabitants...

The spiritual life I had spent many years trying to locate within the walls of churches and on my knees in earnest prayer, was primarily one of the other world—the beyond. The spirit that I have found is not located beyond, but in the soil right beneath my feet. The new life it calls me to does not...