Heidi Neumark

I've long identified with Mary's fire. Now I want to learn from Elizabeth.

At the border, survivors of violence present their scarred bodies as testimony.

In a time of terror, the seminary needed the contraband words of Gustavo Gutiérrez.

Our family reunion in Argentina looked like something straight out of one of Jesus’ parables.

The Totentatz window was created soon after the Shoah but with no reference to the city's murdered Jews. Two of them were my grandparents.

Our call is a close call, one that draws us close to the sharp edges of life. "While we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake."

People are rightly disgusted by buildings with separate entrances for low-income residents. But churches have side-door people, too.

It’s been seven years, and I cannot access Jesus' word of peace. The tears still sting and slosh over my pail of remorse.

After the funeral, I was ready to help the boy's family find a church home closer to where they lived. Instead, they stayed with us.

The frankincense gift needs to be taped back together. So does the stable wall.

In addition to the biblical text, the most important material for me tends to come from our context and from what I discern in the lives, community and world around us.

The story of the widow of Zarephath and Elijah is bracketed by two other stories that are excluded from the lectionary and are therefore never heard by many people in our congregations. Both of them concern the deviant monarchy under which the widow and her child live.

Many churches, including mine, will mark All Saints Day this Sunday. Of course, politics will also be on everyone’s mind. At first it seemed to me that the two have little in common, but then several connections occurred to me.

Most churches in the New York area closed down as Hurri­cane Irene approached. My circumstance was a bit different.

In the hospital emergency room, someone accidentally bumps into an aide carrying a bedpan, and urine sloshes onto the floor. After several hours of waiting, my mother is finally admitted. I pay for TV, but she does not have the strength to push the buttons on the remote. She can’t find the red button to call the nurse either. She tells me that last night she was taken down to a dungeon where she lay awake in terror. Now she wonders why someone left a black Scottish terrier in the corner of her room.

As I write this, the kitchen table is shaking. If our table is shaking, I worry that the church’s beautiful stained-glass windows, desperately in need of repair, are also shaking. The parsonage is attached to the church and shares the same foundation. Seven feet away all hell is breaking loose. Several blocks of businesses that have served this neighborhood are being knocked down by giant backhoes and inflated real estate prices to make way for towering apartments.