Faith, Grace, and Hope

10 . Walk away. Do not give the bully attention. Completely unfollow on social media, if applicable. The person in question has nothing that you want. 9. Information embargo. Engage in ZERO information seeking. Consider what power you have personally and how you can use it to stop streams of revenue, attention, or power to the bully in question. Abstain from where you might see the person or be forced to hear about him/her/them. If another person wishes to rant about the bully, politely inform them of the embargo. If someone else wishes to know the whys of the embargo, give short truthful answers that speak from your own experience. Do not mention the bully by name. 8. Sanction. Words do hurt as much as actions. There are consequences to saying whatever you want, whenever you want, to whomever you want. Gaslighting, lying, bluster, and threats are not acceptable speech. Refuse space to the person who engages in this behavior. A person who cannot hold to accepted rules in an int

Pentecost 12                                        Isaiah 1:1, 10-20; Luke 12:32-40             Two weeks ago, I did a silly thing, since I was still on sabbatical. I looked ahead to see what the texts were for today. Innocently thinking, I’ll start preaching again and it would be good to have what I’m supposed to reflect on rattling around in my head. So I looked up the lectionary passages- that’s the list of prescribed readings for the year- and then looked them up in my Bible. In reading the Isaiah passage, I got about as far as “you rulers of Sodom” and closed the Bible with a loud swiftness. Let’s check the gospel: don’t be worried, sell your stuff, and be consumed with showing mercy and charity. Snap, close it again.             Gosh, that’s just the stuff people looooooove to hear.             It would be great if I just decided here, instead, to tell you some stories of my sabbatical- right. Surely, I saw some interesting things or thought some deep thoughts o

The BlogHer August prompts are about fairy tales. Do you believe it's possible for some people to get that fairy tale ending of happily ever after? I think it depends on what we think happily ever after looks like. I read a lot of romance novels and the community of romance readers is very big on what we call the HEA (happily ever after). In fact, if there is a not a clear resolution of conflict and at least the implication that the main characters are going to live together in love and harmony, then we're fairly quick to reject it as romance.  However, HEA covers a multitude of dishes, vacation squabbles, differences of opinion, socks forgotten on the stairs, burned dinner, and general frustration. The implication is that love will cover all these things- if indeed any of these things occur. Many contemporary (setting and writing) romances deal with a variety of more complex issues: learning difficulties, mismatched personalities, chronic illness, children who are more t

Lately, I've craved sentences. As a voracious reader, I absorb large quantities of words, words by the gallon, the bucket, the ocean. However, in the present time of my life, I long for and adore simple sentences. Literally, I'm looking for something that could tattooed on the top of my foot. Ruth Huizenga Eberhart has just such a sentence. In the middle of Ruined ,  her wrenching memoir of rape and spiritual agony, she writes, " The fall is a more universal theme than restoration."  The fall is a more universal theme than restoration .  Maybe I don't want that exactly inked into my skin, but its message is indelible. So was the four hour encounter in Ruth's 20th year shaped everything that came after it. As it so often does, the will of neighbor- his or her poor choice- causes a crisis when one has to examine where that choice intersects with the will of God.  Ruth's rape, the aftermath, her relationships- all of these things intertwine with he