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Right on schedule, I came down with a head cold on Easter Monday. It’s an occupational hazard. It’s practically what Episcopal clergy sign up for. It should just be added into the ordination vows.

Most therapists will say that a key to finding any kind of viable and lasting happiness in the world requires coming to peace with who you are. Not some future self that you wish you could be, not the person that you imagine yourself to be in your best moments, not the person that you will undoubtedly be two, five, ten years from now. No, the person staring back at you in the mirror.

It’s rare that my chiropractor and my spiritual director offer me the same advice, but when they do, I think it’s a sign that I’m supposed to pay particular attention.

Hospitality is important to me. I grew up in a home where it was common to have guests for dinner, even though we were a family of seven without a formal dining room. Simply getting everyone around the table could be a squeeze, but I don’t remember a person ever complaining. We were happy to sit down to my mother’s good cooking and the clink of bowls passing. I grew up knowing that to host an unexpected guest you simply added water to the soup, or corn muffins to the menu. I thought everyone hosted other people in this way. Pastoring a church is essentially the practice of hospitality. 

Usually, it’s a man who says it. He wants conversation to go deeper. He’s hoping for more self-disclosure. With the best of intentions, he wants to move past the mundane. He desires this time to be different. So he says, “Go ahead. Share. This is a safe space.” Except, no, it isn’t.

Diana Butler Bass was the preacher at the worship portion of a recent meeting of the National Capital Presbytery (the local governing body made up of pastors and elder representatives from congregations in D.C. and the surrounding areas). Prior to our meeting and worship, she also gave an extended presentation, "Where Is God? Spirituality, Theology, and Awakening," followed by a time of discussion. During the discussion, she made a comment on how the priesthood of all believers is morphing into something else.

Last week was spring break, and I’d promised the kids that I’d take them to the local trampoline park. They love the place . . . though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the National Association of Orthopedic Surgeons is a major shareholder.

The ongoing uproar over legislative actions in Indiana and Arkansas over the rights of businesses to serve or not serve customers based on religious preferences will echo in our ears for a while longer. The question, of course, is Why?

“I’m going to do something weird,” Malak whispers to Katie, her bunkmate for our six-day interfaith immersion trip to Chicago. Malak slips into her cotton prayer robe, its royal blue flower print covers her head, her arms to her wrists, and hangs to her feet. She begins her prayers, facing Mecca, alternating positions of standing and then prostrating herself with her forehead to the floor while silently praying in Arabic. When she finishes, Katie, a Christian, intentionally takes a moment to say, “I don’t think it’s weird, Malak. I think it’s beautiful.” I wasn’t sure what would come of this interfaith immersion trip.

Why can’t I ignore the disciple Thomas? Each year, when reading the scripture for Lent, and then plunging into the intense, familiar verses about Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter, I rarely think about Thomas. Indeed, with a few exceptions—Peter’s bumbling betrayals, Judas’ fatal scheming—I’m hugely focused on Jesus.

Today, I passed as straight. That’s a weird thing to write, because in fact I passed for straight for most of my life, either because I hadn’t thought yet about not being straight, or later because I *had* thought about it and just couldn’t face what it might mean for my life.

I have been thinking about the wounds people carry, those unbearable weights that take their toll on our bodies and hearts.

You have two choices when you feel it happening. You can let your heart stretch to the point of ripping open to the beauty and agony of living in this mortal world. Or you can pull the protective shield back over the vulnerable center.

For a few years I was what you might call tri-vocational: I pastored a church, I wrote books and spoke to groups and retreats, and I parented three elementary-age children along with my husband. Life was a wonderful crazy-quilt of scheduling: writing an article at the library down the street from the piano teacher, finishing a sermon in the bleachers at swim practice. It also wasn’t sustainable, I now realize.

As part of my work, I have meetings and conversations with couples prior to their weddings. We don't just plan the ceremony. We also use an inventory which purports to measure the couple's "Strengths" and "Growth Areas." The inventory gives us many possibilities for conversations that we can have about their relationship.

As my children get older, the time we spend listening to CDs of children’s music grows shorter and shorter. I can’t say I’m that sad to see this particular era of their lives go away: listening to “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” on repeat can get a little monotonous; but still, like every phase in their young lives, there is some wistfulness for the way things were. There is still one CD that gets lots of airtime in Mommy’s Car, the surprising combination of Fisher Price’s Little People and Sunday School Classics. Featured on this album are such classics as “Arky, Arky,” “Father Abraham,” and “Give me Oil in my Lamp (Sing Hosanna),” which our music minister, JKT, has declared “a perfect Palm Sunday song.”

One of the things that I pride myself on as a pastor and parent is that I take the time to prepare my son for worship—pointing out to him changes or additions in the sanctuary that indicate something new or different will be happening in worship, making sure that he has his own bulletin and hymnal so that he can fully participate in worship with his father and me, even pointing out to him things that I think are strange or weird in worship, helping him recognize our worship habits or notice when we stray from them.

I recently spent a couple of hours at the DMV; it was time to renew my driver’s license. The place was crowded with, in the words of the old prayerbook, “all sorts and conditions” of people. It was a multiracial and multigenerational melting pot. Around me, people were speaking in a variety of languages, including that version of English I associate with New Jersey. (It really is a different language, I think!) Every imaginable style of dress and undress was on display. People had done things with their hair I didn’t know could be done. Almost all of us were talking or texting or e-mailing on our smartphones.

It was a reflection that came to me, as things often do, as I was walking. I was musing on the seeming insanity of my devoting so much time to studying small faith communities, on what possible relevance that might have to the great wild churn of faith.