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Searching
If I just sit here, God, and try to feel you, or know You, in a way I cannot doubt or explain, will you come, and be with me? Or will my foot that falls asleep, and my mind that begins to write, and the washer that beeps, because my laundry is done and ready…
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Addicted to Hating Trump
A few nights ago I dreamed about a man I love to hate—a man whose conservative, self-righteous, Jesus-talk drives me crazy. In my dream I publicly embarrassed this man. I called out all the ways he was wrong in a room full of people. He was humiliated. I even made him cry. I woke up…
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Connected to Something Bigger
This past week I visited my friend, Melissa Earley, at her home in the suburbs of Chicago for a writing retreat. We spent most of our time sitting at her dining room table, laptops and notebooks open, books strewn about, favorite pens in hand, while we offered each other writing prompts and read each other…
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Keep Walking–A Christmas Sermon
What follows is my Christmas Convocation sermon, “Keep Walking,” to the Monmouth College community, based on Isaiah 9:2-7. If Tim Kramer, our college’s videographer, were to set his camera to film all of us walking the slick sidewalks of campus this winter, I imagine he’d get a pretty good blooper reel. A few weeks ago (when…
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Giving of Ourselves
Since I am busy writing my sermon for our college’s Christmas Convocation, I thought I would share a post written by my friend, Dr. Claire Colombo. Claire is the Director of the Center for Writing and Creative Expression at the Seminary of the Southwest. She’s also a beautiful writer who I met at the Beyond…
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The Riches of Our Christian Inheritance
“Why am I twenty years old and I have never learned of this before?” Diana asked, overcome with emotion. My husband, a professor of religious studies, had just finished giving an overview of Latin American liberation theology and God’s preferential option for the poor to a group of students at my weekly religious life program.…
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Visiting the Prisoner
Two Sundays ago, I preached for my alma mater’s homecoming worship service. In this sermon I talked about how Christ calls us to people and places outside our spaces of affluence and comfort, to those who are invisible and insignificant in society, to those we would not think to go to ourselves if there were…
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Meeting with Sister Margaret
Forty-five minutes north of me, in Rock Island, Illinois, there is a Benedictine Monastery where the Sisters of St. Benedict live and run a retreat center. I have known of this monastery ever since I moved here and have even referred people to the sisters for spiritual direction, but never (in six years) had I…
Teri McDowell Ott 