When the Shadow of Death Touches Christmas

Let us pray: Come thou Wisdom from on high and order all things far and nigh To us the path of knowledge show and cause us in Her ways to go. Amen. It was for the author of the gospel attributed to John as if time had stopped and started all over again. Or been...... Read More

The Bible and the Second Amendment

As I have listened to folk talking about “the right to bear arms,” it has struck me that they are treating those words (and the Constitution) as scripture. What would happen if we applied the principles of sound biblical exegesis to the Second Amendment? For starters we’d have to take seriously the contexts – literary,...... Read More

Letter to My Enslaved Ancestors on the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation

A Letter to My Enslaved Ancestors, I don’t know your names or from where you were stolen. I don’t know how many of you freed yourselves or died in bondage. Yet I claim you all and I honor you. The savage ferocity of slavery has torn your names from the memories of your descendants but...... Read More

#What2Preach In the Aftermath of the Sandy Hook Massacre: A Tweet Chat

I found my self advising preachers, pastors and priests on what not to say about God in relationship to the savage atrocity at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on December 14, 2012 in which twenty children and six adults were mowed down and murdered by a young man who also took his...... Read More

O Little Occupied Town of Bethlehem

You could say I was following a star. As they say, it's always Christmas in Bethlehem. The beautiful art in the newest building of the Bethlehem Bible College portrays the signal moment in Bethlehem's - and some say the world's - history. But a few things have changed since then...... Read More

Advent, Infertility and Miscarriage

Advent is a sacralized last-trimester pregnancy among other things. Many women identify with the pregnant Virgin – in spite of the sexual intimacy through which most of them were impregnated, medical and reproductive technologies aside. But all women will not and cannot become pregnant and give birth. For some that is extraordinarily painful and magnified...... Read More

The Commemoration of King Kamehameha and Queen Emma ~ 28 November

Today is the commemoration of King Kamehameha IV and Queen Emma, Hawaii’s Holy Sovereigns who brought the Episcopal Church to Hawaii. I had the great pleasure of spending parts of my 2010 sabbatical in Hawaii where I learned about the ali’i, royals....... Read More

Neither Jew or Gentile, Slave or Free, Male or Female: Did Paul REALLY Mean That?

Nehemiah 8:1 All the people gathered as though they were a single person into the square before the Water Gate. They told the Torah-scholar Ezra to bring the scroll of the Torah of Moses, which the Holy One of Sinai had commanded to Israel. 2 So, the priest Ezra brought the Torah before the assembly,...... Read More

Wil’s Words of Wisdom for the Womanists Catching Up to Me: You Betta Werk!

AAR/SBL Womanist In-Gathering 2012: Rituals of Wisdom and Healing American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL   I’ve learned a lot about being a woman and being a womanist from drag queens. So I’m going to share with you: Wil’s Words of Wisdom for the Womanists Catching Up to Me: You Betta...... Read More

An Army of Preaching Women

Psalm 68:11 The Sovereign-Commander gives an order; the preaching women are a great army. Isaiah 40:9 Woman, go up to a high mountain, you who proclaim good news to Zion. Woman, raise your woman’s voice with power – proclaiming good news to Jerusalem. Raise it woman, do not fear woman; woman, say to the cities...... Read More