Wilderness Voices

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Advent is a time of waiting, a wilderness wandering time.  This sermon, “WILDERNESS VOICES,” draws from passages in  Malachi 3:1-4 and The Gospel of  Luke 3:1-6.  I preached it at New Hope Presbyterian Church in Chapel Hill, NC on December 9, 2012. Last week we began our Advent waiting with the invitation to “see for ourselves.”  Jeremiah and Jesus and even Abraham Lincoln called to us from their own waiting, in their own resolve.  Each man stood up straight and trusted that God’s promises of redemption are true. This week we encounter another man, John the Baptist.  Another man who stood… Read the full post

Thanks, Amazing Student Athletes from John Shoop

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My husband, Coach John Shoop, has been writing for Chapelboro.com this fall about Triangle area college football.  The articles have generally been a coach’s perspective on things like game preparation, offensive philosophies, and related topics.  This week his final column is worth reading for anyone–even people who don’t care about football.  It’s about diverse community and mutual relationships–it’s about giving thanks. I hope you’ll take a look.

Living Liminality: Of Thresholds and Dwelling Places

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A version of this post is the first of my contributions to the Feminism and Religion blog on which I will be a quarterly contributor.  Sometimes I think it happened gradually.  Other times it feels like sudden change.  Either way I find myself in an in-between space that is my life. With apologies to Victor Turner and his cultural anthropological appropriation of liminality as a threshold space, I have come to view my liminal living as a more permanent dwelling place these days.  Turner’s category of liminality locates subjects in the betwixt and between as they move from one manifestation of… Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XVI: American Idol(atry)

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Strive at first to meditate Upon the sameness of yourself and others, In joy and sorrow all are equal Thus be guardian of all, as of yourself ~Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva …the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols. ~John Calvin, The Institutes An idol is anything we excessively adore.  That something may well be worth our love and affection, but it becomes an idol when that affection gives way to a distorted adoration.  Idols become everything—more than they could ever really be.  They embody our fantasies, our hopes and dreams.  And even more… Read the full post

Calling Audibles Part XIV: Touchdowns for Jesus

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What is impossible for us is possible for God. ~Luke 18:27 “Tell John Kasay that God doesn’t care about football.  She’s a baseball fan.” This was the witty retort of a minister friend of mine back in the late 1990s when my husband, John, was coaching for the Carolina Panthers.  We had lost a big game to Tampa Bay.  Kicker John Kasay had missed a field goal that could have won the game in the last few seconds. When asked about the missed kick in a post game press conference, Kasay suggested that the wind suddenly changed and that God… Read the full post