The last alcohol I drank was gin and tonics at a Valerie June concert in San Francisco on December 4th, 2017. I had “quit” drinking earlier that summer but then started drinking again on my birthday in September. I mean, Adam was in town and there was a great rooftop party at Vinyl and honestly I was feeling really good and wanted to go out. To like, celebrate my not drinking.

I’m usually verrrrrry skeptical of new fad-like spiritual practices. They’re usually not that new and often stripped of their ancient lineage and context. Or they’re extremely dramatic and have a lot of blame pictures in them that people use to justify their own bad behavior. Or they’re a quick fix for an uncomfortable problem that actually needs deep work. Or they’re just a common human experience sold to you in a $333, $444, or $555 dollar package…

I remember my first conscious encounter with a spiritual waiting room. I was very in love with the man who is now my husband but at the time he was very very unavailable. I couldn’t goddam believe it. I spent months cursing the vision board in my office filled with my most romantic ideas that seemed to perfectly match this unavailable dream boat…

In case you haven’t heard, we’re in a crisis of stolen attention. This is like, old news, but it’s having big effects right now. Or rather, the culmination of stolen attention came to pretty gruesome fulfillment on January 20th this year. There are a lot of reasons we have the president we have. One of the big ones is the cresting wave of people whose attention has been devoted to rage-bait rhetoric spoon fed through social media…

There are five Christian churches within four blocks of my new house. Two of them are actually diretly adjacent to the property, a fact which I find amusingly ironic. Some of the more religious neighbors have already begun putting Christmas decorations up, including the now-classic sign “Remember the Reason for the Season.” They mean Jesus, of course, but as we step into the great cloud of witnesses, spirits, and creatures of the dark I’m realizing Jesus isn't the reason for the season at all.

Long before I discovered seminary and that whole world of theological nerdery, I had the 200s section (religion and philosophy!) of the Denver Public Library. On summer breaks in college I would down to the central branch at 13th and Broadway and spend hours browsing the shelves, pulling piles of books into my basket, and finding a cozy corner to spread out.

Mary loves to make an apparition. Since her incarnation as the physical mother of the Christed Jesus, she has appeared hundreds of times through the centuries. When she appears she calls herself the Queen of Heaven, the Lady of Divine Indwelling, the Immaculate Conception made manifest, Our Lady of Good Success, and the Virgin of the Golden Heart…

One of the most extravagant miracles in the Hebrew Scriptures is the parting of the Red Sea. For those not familiar, this is when Moses leads the Hebrew peoples out of slavery in Egypt. After 10 Biblical plagues (including rivers of blood, frogs falling from the sky, and dead firstborns) Pharoah relents and tells the Hebrews to get out of town.

What are my current addictions? Screens of all kinds. I want to turn off the TV, put down the phone, look away from the tablet and I literally can’t. Fast foods, processed foods, sugars of all kinds. Inertia and being sedentary. Isolation; oh my Jesus I am addicted to isolation. And my current biggest addiction of all; the news…

Dr. Daniel Foor says that each person killed is a whole universe lost. That has stuck with me and taken root as I’ve listened to these international debates over what makes a genocide. The truth is, it doesn’t matter what you call it. The wealth of humanity lost with even a single family, a single girl, buried in rubble is too immense for words.

The thing about enemies is they’re very useful when cementing an identity. If I’m ever unclear about who I am, I can at least be sure I’m not that. Demagogues know this. Dictators build their whole political curriculum upon this fact. Tyrants rely upon the fragility of “my” identity and the fear of “yours” to do all kinds of terrible things...

Just as Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, just as Moses crossed the desert for 40 years, we also go through dry spells.  Sometimes my faith is luminous and the presence of God shines out at me from every crack in the sidewalk. And sometimes I’m bored as hell of spirituality and put more faith in YouTube cake fail compilations than anything that might actually help me.

For many people where I live, summer is Sundance time. To be clear, there’s more than just one Sundance. Actually more like hundreds or thousands acoss Turtle Island and Abya Yala (the Americas). The first time I ever heard of a Sundance was a story about a white anthropologist who was invited to one and wanted to document the tradition…

It is Esther, and Esther alone who calls up her courage and acts to save her people. There is this one verse in particular where her cousin Mordechai is convincing her to act and says, “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this…”

This Gospel is mostly about Jesus’s dangerously popular preaching against corrupt religious leaders who are backed by the Roman empire (sound familiar?!) and liberating people from their captivity to fear and limitation. It’s a spicy read for sure….

I love all the fierce women who show up in the Gospels. They’re pushy, they’re spicy, they’re clever, they’re astute, and they’re usually a heck of a lot smarter than the disciples. The women are the ones that Jesus seems to have the most interesting interactions with and - of course - the ones most maligned by history…

In 2019 I undertook a year-long shamanic studies program. About halfway through the program, the teachers sat us down and said something to the effect of, “Now that you know about these teachings, you can’t pretend you don’t know without dire consequences.” The teachings they were referring to were practices for building spiritual integrity and power…

My first week at the nursing home, an activities aide told me she was here because she fell in love with the residents. Looking around at a dining room full of dementia-riddled old people sitting in wheelchairs with bits of lunch clinging to their clothes, I thought “No way in hell…”

One: Ignore the story, listen only for the truth. Most people have a story about what they think is going on. I’ve had many stories in my day of which I was utterly convinced. This is the story built by the ego to defend itself and it’s self-centered purposes. And this story is often very convincing, even to me as a healer. And yet you can tell it’s an ego story because it’s always got some element of limitation or victimhood in it…

What I’ve learned is to take the long view on history. This is incredibly hard to do when the short view is getting rather urgent. And this is exactly what we were talking about at coffee hour. If we are eternal souls destined to reincarnate until we live through every possible human experience, what the heck is the point of all this?