When I was eight years old, I remember a preacher standing in the pulpit pointing his finger at my mother, shaking his finger at her, and preaching that anyone who missed church to take care of the sick was going to hell. My Mother had
I’ve started and stopped writing this article maybe a hundred times. I have so many thoughts and feelings it was genuinely hard to organize them into a coherent account of the last 8 years. After making my decision to go ahead and begin looking for
Read the rest of the series To write about Daddy is a more ambiguous task than to write about Mama. Daddy and I didn’t have what you would confuse with a warm, sitcom type of father/son relationship. We never tossed a ball in the backyard.
Don’t weary yourself with worry over things you cannot change or the past that you cannot erase. Let go and move on! Bishops, preachers, the Pope, religious leaders and Bible “experts” try to tell other people what to think and do spiritually rather than equip,
I know very well what rejection feels like. I probably have more experience being rejected than any other kind of experience. I grew up in a family where education was not valued. I always thought and believed my desire for an education came from God.
In April 2000, after ten years of community consultation and debate, the Committee formed and charged with defining the various needs to be addressed handed to the leaders of the Australian nation a document addressing reconciliation. This document, part of which is printed below, detailed
Read the rest of the series I’ve so far avoided talking too specifically about family members. I’m overly self-conscious about what is and isn’t my story to tell. My family is a group of private folk, very nearly to the point of being secretive. It’s
During the mid 1970s after my father left us for another woman, I can remember crying many times on Sunday morning because I wanted to go to church but could not. I can remember telling mother one Sunday morning that “America is a free country,
Having stripped ourselves of the sacred texts of Sappho, Plato, Rumi, Dickenson, and countless others, in our eagerness to find a seat near (but not at) the Eucharistic table, I don’t want to find us the victim of a malady that I call “Cabin Fever
Read the rest of the series God and sex. One, I learned about through very intentional, formal instruction, the other, through hearsay and secret books and brief, embarrassed sections in health class. The connection between the two was implicit and vague but strong enough to