Blog Archive
Contemplating the messiness of Christian life
The Messy Jesus Business Blog is an ecumenical Christian gathering of musings about what it means to live the Gospel today. A variety of contributors offer prayer, poetry, book reviews, creative nonfiction and prose about what it means to live a life of faith in our complex, modern times.
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Floating with the Currents of Christ
I once lived in a lodge in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, tucked into a lakeside cove. The simple log cabin was lined with windows. On clear days, I could see the trees on the other side of the lake, three miles away. Without going outdoors, I could see how the lake expressed its mood with…
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Brother worm and sister wasp
Near the house where I lived as a child, there was a massive oak we called the Firefly Tree. It stood solitary in the middle of a tobacco field, and every summer attracted apocalyptic numbers of fireflies. Even from a distance, the whole tree glowed and pulsed like a disco party. Decades later, and hundreds…
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The search and the surrender to authenticity
A couple days ago I was waiting for an exam at the eye doctor and listening to a podcast called “The Laughing Mystic.” One of the show hosts, Laura, said, “We spend our early life climbing the ladder of success…Then we find at midlife that our ladder was unfortunately set against the wrong wall.” This…
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Prayers for times like these
For Peace God of Unity and Peace, Bless our longings for peace as we give you our heartaches and fears. Holy One, we beg you to soften the hearts of those who wage war. By your grace, may minds be opened to nonviolent solutions. In your mercy, may diplomacy and peace prevail beyond destruction and…
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“Good Inside”: A restorative Christian approach to parenting and beyond
I was a few hours from home, towards the end of an eight-hour drive from visiting family in Nebraska. It was dark and my three kids were asleep. I needed something engaging to keep me going. A few weeks earlier, I had put on my playlist the audiobook version of a few different parenting books,…
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The presence of the wild, Holy Spirit and the rise of another revolution
Days ago, Christians gathered in Churches around the world and chanted a summons to the sweet, Holy Spirit. Veni Sancte Spiritus. Days ago plus today and tomorrow, we fill(ed) the streets with chants of lament and outrage. We pray, we chant. We cry for raids to end. We risk arrest while neighbors and friends— blessed…
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A way to get through this
Look deep into the current,See what’s real and holy,Look around: see your friends. Study sparkles in their pupils.See how each face is a mirror of love Looking into you.Trust the voices Who will summonYou in the night. Learn their names,their numbers.Plant phone trees.These faces and voices:They are your people.Together you’ll be Pilgrims crossing Jordansand dreaming…
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Preserving Dangerous Memories
It is surprisingly easy to forget the wounds of the past, especially as a person of privilege. Last year, I took a course at Catholic Theological Union called “The Racial Justice Pilgrimage.” As part of the class, we journeyed to sacred sites of the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery, Alabama. These were…
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The Kingdom of Heaven is Full of Mansions
I spent my early childhood in the rural South. The bulk of my social interactions were with our artists’ community of hippie Christian homeschoolers, but the folks who had been there for generations were friendly and pleasant, too. We knew the names of the shop owners in the poky little village near us. We even…
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Becoming Social Poets for Community Transformation
Several years ago during a cool early spring night, a group of parents, youth, elders, and I gathered for a meeting in the rectory office of a parish on the west side of Chicago. We were about to become what Pope Francis called “social poets.” At the forefront of everyone’s mind and stirring within their…
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Bumbling Toward the Economy of Francesco
For over a year we met obstacles from all sides as we tried to get our six lender families on the same page for a date to go out to the farm. Some of us friends had joined our collective capital toward a peer-to-peer loan for a local farm and our ‘return on investment’ was…
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Resurrection Energy: When a Friend and a Pope Die
A few years ago one of my friends died suddenly. And, his death taught me more about the meaning of Resurrection than any theology class or Church service I’ve ever attended. Rev. Graham Golden, O. Praem., was the unique sort of person who seemed to be able to befriend and maintain relationships at an exponential…
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