What is love? Love has no ego. Love and ego are antithetical. Diametrically opposed to one another. Foreign languages one to another. Ego equally has no love but is all pretense and self-preservation. This quote from Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints) summarizes this well: We have a whole secondary self we put […]
Moonlighters Anonymous
Moonlighting—also known as working a second job, having a “side hustle”—is a pretty standard theme these days. Thanks to Pinterest and Instagram, everyone’s got a home renovation project, a knack for macramé, and a small business opportunity. But in truth it’s been around forever. Loads of famous people “made it” by moonlighting. The American poet […]
When We Are Distracted, God Is Mindful
Grateful to share the following reflection, from Amanda McMillen. I’ve been practicing yoga for 8 years or so, on and off, which led me to meditation and the wonderful buzzword “mindfulness”. The idea of mindfulness is truly a beautiful one. It’s the concept of pausing long enough to bring us out of the minutiae of […]
A Pastoral Missive to Gen X Women
Laydeez, My day (and avocado toast) was ruined by the well-meaning forward of an article called The New Midlife Crisis for Women. It is on Oprah’s website, naturally. So while I was expecting some #liveyourbestlife -ness, I was slammed with the reality of your lives. I gotta say, I am worried. I was born in […]
Cathedral of the Perpetual Hustle
Over the weekend a conversation with friends veered toward work-life balance and the ever-hungry email monster. We wondered whether it was normal to check our emails after work. Almost all of us confessed that we do. We discussed whether our employers should be contacting us after hours (a teacher was expected to answer texts from […]
Raised by Narcissists and the Law of Reconciliation
“God is telling me to tell you to forgive your parents.” AS EMBARRASSING as it is to admit, those words came from my mouth at age 20. The girl I was dating at the time was desperate to move out of her house, away from her physically and emotionally abusive parents. We were in a […]
Coworkers and Anger, Delfina and Me
Huge thanks to this contributor for their anonymous post. Delfina is driving me crazy. Okay, the person who is driving me crazy isn’t actually named Delfina, but I’m leaving Guatemala as I write this, and the name Delfina is on my mind. So that’s what we’ll call her. Delfina is someone I work with occasionally […]
Are You Burned Out?
…students were convinced that their first job out of college would not only determine their career trajectory, but also their intrinsic value for the rest of their lives. I told one student, whose dozens of internship and fellowship applications yielded no results, that she should move somewhere fun, get any job, and figure out what […]
Mindfulness Lowered My Anthropolgy
I started practicing meditation out of necessity. Mind you, it was before mindfulness and meditation were the buzzwords they are now. I started sitting in silence and focusing on my breath in seminary after my father was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. It was the only way I could be in the presence of God; the only […]
The Brake Fast Club: Low Anthropology in Defensive Driving School
This one comes to us from Kate Campbell. I wake up early one Saturday morning and drive over to the tiny strip center where my day’s worth of self-imposed detention awaits me. When I walk into the office, a home-makeover show is playing on the tiny TV screen. A stocky man at the front desk […]
Looking East
Through accidents of First Worldness, I have come to spend much of my life in airports and on airplanes. I live in a city so small that its airport has flights to only one city—Philadelphia—and where there is active opposition to the idea of lengthening the runway so that we might be able to travel […]
The Life of a Hermit TV Star: Sister Wendy Beckett
Saint Stephen’s Day 2018 was marked by the passing of the art historian, TV presenter, and author, Sister Wendy Beckett. I surprised myself when a few unexpected tears leaked out on hearing the news. It wasn’t from her untimely death; she was 88 after all. No, the tears, the more I thought about it, were […]
