Category Archive

My cousin Chuck passed away on Friday and I’m headed to his memorial service tomorrow so the blog post comes early this week. I’ve been remembering Chuck in little passing moments since I heard the news. Chuck enjoyed his life and his enjoyment rubbed off on other people. A big man, he would don a silly hat with a pig snout on it, a family tradition, and preside over the auction/fundraiser at our annual reunion with a grin and booming voice. He proudly held up and sold off handmade quilts, quarts of pear preserves, and other goodies contributed mostly by the old-timers and bought by the younger generations

So earlier this week I was going to a familiar dark room, perhaps similar to the one the disciples inhabited when Jesus made his first and second appearances and they were there with the door locked in fear. In my familiar dark room I look around at my life and say, am I doing enough? I know that we are …

“Jesus breathed on them” (v22). This verse has me wondering…what did the Risen One’s breath smell like?

Did it smell of springtime and fragrant buds? Or was it otherworldly, some new scent they had never before encountered? Did his breath still carry a trace of the rich spices with which he was anointed for his burial? The gall of the cross? Or was there still something of the tomb which clung to him now, even as he stood before them so wonderfully alive?*

Welcome to Eastertide. Thankfully we have fifty days starting with Easter Sunday to rest in (or wrestle with) the mystery of the Resurrection.

DART Stations of the Cross is a community art project which links an ancient spiritual practice with mass transit. It is presented on Good Friday by two emergent churches in the Dallas area, Church in the Cliff and Journey. Participants are encouraged to arrive at the Mockingbird DART station between 6 and 7 pm this Friday, April 2nd and to …

Those of us hungry for Truth cannot merely wave palm branches and lay down cloaks this Sunday without considering our own shadow sides: the fear and anxiety and seeds of doubt that block our path toward fuller living. And the invitation, reverberating through Jesus’ life and the prophets before him, to cultivate practices that transform our fear and our pain so we do not continue to transmit them.

The soul is a wild animal.

Today’s Isaiah passage reminds me that God provides the nourishment for us all, even the wild ones. God gives water in the wilderness, makes rivers to flow through the desert. And out of this water comes life.

So our job is not to spoon feed each other so much as to honor the wildness in our peers and to trust that the Spirit is somehow providing for them, providing for us all. How to honor each other’s wild bits?

I’m tired of Lent.   The worship team hatched this clever idea of trying to ‘destabilize’ our regular worship pattern during Lent as a way of asking how much is Enough? How much can we strip away and still have a Holy encounter? What if we mess up the chairs and make it all chaotic and/or force people to set …

The Isaiah passage for this week raises some interesting questions that disrupt a simplistic take on Lent as merely the season “to give up” or even to “take one” new practices. Isaiah probes deeper – asking his minority community in exile: “What are you really hungry for?” “What do your feed yourselves with?” And perhaps most interestingly for our contemporary context “What do you spend your money on which doesn’t actually nourish you?” Calling out with the cadence of a merchant at a busy market, Isaiah invites his listeners to come, even with no money in our pockets, and to fill arms and baskets with Yahweh’s good food and drink.

And part of the journey into enough is also one of asking for and receiving help, acknowledging that it is in our inter-woven state, a community of individuals who support each other, that we are in fact enough. So Paul today graciously agreed to write the reflection, which I include below. He is a man of many talents- and I am thankful for his time on this day when he also is hosting our community meal and making home-made pizzas! Please bring an appetite and an open heart as we continue to walk together in this season of preparation. peace, Courtney

I am really sick of the idea of abundance. Everywhere you turn there is another church conference on ‘Scarcity and Abundance’ or ‘Resting in God’s Abundance.’ I don’t really get it. I mean-doesn’t this idea collude a bit with the dominant culture? Isn’t it the American dream to have more, bigger, better? Is abundance therefore the best way to talk about God and what God provides in our life?– More than we could ever want, need or imagine? What if instead God was simply enough? And our spiritual work then becomes about resting in God’s enough, even when it looks different than our own expectations. This Lent at Church in the Cliff we are exploring practices that help us discern how much is enough.