Doing an Oma
We found out last week that my mother has pancreatic cancer. __________________________________________________ The maxim holds: the thing that you love most about someone is also the thing that makes you insanely berserk about that same beloved. For my mother, it’s her determination. My mother is nothing if not determined. Determined to be her own person, [...]
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Naturally, Absurd
So the kidlets and I were in Target this morning, racing to get an errand done between church services. The day was a big day at our congregation, and in my own little world. We’d scheduled a meeting after each service to decide whether the church supported the pursuit of a “congregational renewal” grant. Pastor [...]
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And now that we know that although death is real, life is real-er,
there’s more to do with our lives than preserve them. Rejoice in the freedom and grace of Easter. Anna
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Passion Week, Passion Life
The below appeared in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader newspaper today. I’m reposting it here, because it’s a Holy Saturday-ish set of musings. This past week, Christians celebrated Passion Week, a week oddly named, apparently, given that Jesus was on his way to death on Golgatha. The word “passion,” however, comes from the Latin passio, [...]
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Good Friday and “The Jews”
Good Friday is a High Holy Day in the Christian tradition, and I would argue is half of a singular event: Cross/Resurrection. The tale is tragic, the music somber, the services haunting. These three days ground my understanding of who God is and what God is up to. They are where I begin and end [...]
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Umbrella Men and Palm Branches
In December, 1967, John Updike was writing “Talk of the Town” for the New Yorker, and he spent most of that “Talk of the Town” column talking about the “Umbrella Man.” He said that his learning about the existence of the Umbrella Man made him speculate that in historical research, there may be a dimension [...]
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What is OMG again?
People aren’t always so sure what OMG is. It seems to me that it might not be so dumb, then, to bullet out a few broad descriptors. 1. OMG is a blog. I write, and I invite readers to submit questions about theology, religion, Scripture and the intersection of any or all of these with, [...]
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Anne Rice Redux
Question: It may be semantics, but leaving church and leaving congregational religion may not be the same. Consider–if I woman has been for whatever reasons in abusive marriage(s) and decides that marriage is not a good thing, that is not a declaration that all men are bad, but a declaration that marriage is not the [...]
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Tenuousness and Tenacity and the Commencement of Lent
It’s 8:04 on Tuesday morning, and I’m sitting in the waiting room at the hospital after just sending my son off to yet another surgery. I am somewhat ashamed that I don’t remember how many surgeries he’s had since the accident in 2004; maybe that’s because I hope that each one is the last one. [...]
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An Epiphany about Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish and Genesis and the Joys of Being a Geek
As much as I have recently made a case for Advent, and then for Christmas, you might have expected that I would write something about the season of Epiphany, now over a week past. Instead, I’ve been too busy reading about the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Enuma Elish. Well, that and my daughter came [...]
