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I got my fourth tattoo recently. The typical person wouldn't know I had any, let alone four. The only ways people find out is if I or somebody else tells them, or if there's some occasion that calls for no sleeves or shirt. I don't really hide them, but I don't really broadcast them either.

Several years ago I heard a TV special in which actress Jane Fonda said this about life: “We are not meant to be perfect. We are meant to be whole.” Hearing it was one of those stop-me-in-my-tracks kind of moments. What truth!

My daughter has a pet plant, Vivaldi. He’s a succulent, and a nice, bushy one, too. But it wasn’t always that way for Vivaldi. When she first brought him home from the nursery, she was given special soil and instructions to “be careful not to overwater a succulent.”

As the Poolesville Community Garden winds down its first year of operation, it's been great seeing the church and our partnership with local businesses, Poolesville Green, and the town of Poolesville, Maryland, thrive. It's exciting, and a blessing, because gardens are a wonderful, amazing way to be fed.

That was going to be the opening line of my stand-up routine, but I got married and never actually tried doing stand-up comedy, so now this great line is reduced to a blog post title.

I’m a Presbyterian pastor who often talks about hospitality, sometimes in relation to one of my other passions, which is uncluttering. Last spring my husband and I took the practice of hospitality to a new level when we became Airbnb hosts.

Not long ago I was talking with friend who has become the pastor of a church in his small home town. He’s been there for a few years, having been away for 20, and has found himself among people he has known all his life. The parish council president, for instance, is an old classmate from nursery school through high school. Some of his elderly parishioners are his old teachers. He knows almost everyone on Main Street, regardless of their denomination or lack thereof. What’s got to him, he said, is the invisible wall that has been constructed between him and all these old friends. 

I was picking up a book at the library one day when I saw a rundown black car pull up. A woman began to painfully extricate herself from the drivers seat. Her clothes were shabby, hair dishevelled, posture bent. Her overall appearance gave the strong impression that the world had kicked her around a bit. She looked up and, seeing me walking toward her, began to wave at me and called out in a raspy voice, “Hey, can you come over here and help me?”

People in my profession get asked to pray a lot. Many times, there isn’t even any asking going on—it’s simply assumed the pastor is the one who prays. When one of us pastor types goes off script and cheerfully offers for one of the other Christians in the group to have the honor, uncomfortable silence ensues. “Who feels called to offer a blessing for this meal?” Crickets. I can’t blame the non-pastor types.

One of the unanticipated pleasures of my recent trip to the middle of the Pacific Ocean was the complete absence of the Internet. Oh, the scenery was stunning, and the wildlife—particularly under the surface of the water—was an amazing riot of living beings. The food was delicious and very slightly overabundant.

The first major decision I made was racist. A young white man in his twenties, I was going to change the world. The new director of an urban early childhood program dedicated to providing services within a multiracial, multicultural, mixed-economic setting, I was passionate about the mission. I was not a novice to racial tensions, having given my confession of faith in a storefront church with a strong emphasis on inclusiveness, and educated in the St. Louis city and Ferguson-Florissant school districts.

My search for the last year has been around finding balance, and it is the topic for the next retreat I am leading. And my experiences over the last year have been full of not only searching for balance, but also in trying to define what balance would look like.

Right now I am home. Sitting in the house that we own. Where we are raising our children. Where mail arrives daily bearing my name. Where we welcome family and entertain friends. Where I pull weeds and paint walls. Where my car pulls into the driveway and my shoes slip off in the doorway. And I am writing about going home. Which is not here.

I've spent a lot of time as a mother noting my children's milestones. Oh, I think: he's climbing up that ladder unassisted. That never happened before! Or oh, how about that—she just listened to song lyrics, extrapolated their meaning, and ask a relevant question about them!  Tonight, I sat across from my husband in a restaurant. This past year has been very difficult for both of us, and has been its own sort of milestone, for many of the weighty and immense reasons that make adulthood complex.

“So, what’s your plan? You going to keep working your way up to bigger and better churches and church leadership positions?” This was the end of a conversation I had with one of my parishioners at the church where I am the newly minted minister to children. Over the past few weeks it has become clear how difficult it is for most people to get their heads around my recent change in ministry roles.

Religious fanaticism is, regrettably, front and center in our collective consciousness again in this the summer of bad news. Whether it is Iraq or Israel/Palestine or other places around the globe, many people are quick to point to the role that religion plays in stoking the flames of violence and hatred. And whenever there is violence associated with religion in the news, we can expect to see articles like “The god effect” over at Aeon magazine.