Category: Being
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Who Wants to Work For a World That’s Not Working With Us?
“I hate school,” says my 7-year-old almost every single day. “Oh really?” I ask with curiosity. “What do you hate about it? Tell me more,” I encourage even as I am continuing to make her food for lunch and pack her things to send her to the very place that she has just told me…
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Bias By Us: How Our Unconscious Programs Us to Harm the Other
Black, White, or Other? “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” “Pedro, Pedro, go back to Mexico.” Being Black and growing up in the South—between Virginia and Mississippi—with a name like Pedro Senhorinha Ramos Montero Silva brought in many unwelcomed experiences in my life. One of which was the othering…
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No! You Do Not Totally Get It
Do you know what always annoys me? When people always talk in absolutes and never understand that there are things they may never understand. Did you see what I did there? I used absolutes to explain that I am always annoyed with people who speak in absolutes. Annoying, right? Absolutely Ludicrous So in the off…
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What Will You Build With Your Life?
This is Notre Dame. It took almost 200 years to complete. The architecture is nothing short of magnificent. Reflecting on what it took for this edifice to materialize, I was awestruck. Generations of people toiled. Whole families were born and died without ever seeing it finished. I imagine on that first day when the first…
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Karma, Unbelonging, and the Consequences of Freedom
Did you know that I have a podcast with two of my fellow poets, Katerina Jeng and Mercedez Davis and that is one of the freest spiritual conversation spaces I’ve ever been a part of? We all went into job transitions at the same time two plus years ago. We started talking with each other…
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A Confession of Sin
As I confessed in the past blog post tagged here, The Sin of Overprotection, my biggest sin is overprotection. I know that this might sound benign. But, in my experience, it does me as much harm as other people’s professed sins, It has cost me relationships, it has caused me needless suffering, and in many…
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Do the INR (Individual Narrative Responsibility) Work
How often do you reflect on how much the stories you tell yourself impact your life? Personally, I think about it everyday. Because since I was a child, I have always been keenly aware of narrative dynamics. Consciously or unconsciously we all perceive ourselves as characters in a narrative. And how we locate ourselves in…
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In the Shadow of Bullies and Hypocrites
Grief Will Make You Take Stock and Clean House Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a lot of reflection on my personal history in the Church and my relationship to my fellow human beings. A lot of it is in light of how the church treated Carlton Pearson. Ever since I went…
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A Black Santa for White Christmas
Picture this. It is Christmas 1977. My mom and dad are arguing. I am 2. Somehow I know that I shouldn’t understand what is happening. But, yet I do. The final threads in the fabric of our family are snapping. My father is leaving. As he heads for the door, I feel an invisible tether…
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Message From a Frustrated Former Pastor (Concerning Pauline Interpretations and Other Stuff)
Since I don’t go to a particular church right now, I sometimes visit different churches or listen to messages from different folks online. Today I came across a guy online giving a message out of 1 Corinthians. Sadly he was using it to “put women in their place” and talk about “weak men” who support…
The Roofless Church 