Hard Hearts on the Path

If you read much Mary Oliver, you'll notice that she pays attention to the natural world and then delicious poems spill out of her in response. It's routine. And delightful. I consider myself a disciple of Mary Oliver, that is, I try to walk in her ways. Going outdoors and letting what grabs you become spiritual content is a discipline, but it can also be a way of life. What I love about her discipline/way-of-life is that it leads to greater reverence for this world, as opposed to other kinds of spiritual disciplines and ways of life that seem to pose themselves at odds with this world in favor of...I don't know, some other world? I have yet to encounter another world. Whatever. This isn't about that.

Yesterday in Oliveresque fashion I found myself delighting in dogs off leash, way back in the woods, trailing where no other humans could be found (except for the one hiking alongside me). The sun was shining like a prize. The sky was crystal blue, with thin, long, knit-blanket looking clouds scattered about. In Michigan, in January, you pray for this scene. Your body's need for vitamin D creates hunger and thirst for this scene. When it arrives--blue on white with shine--you lace up your boots, grab the leash and go, no questions asked. At least that's what you do if you have any sense. Yesterday, after five winters in Michigan, I finally had some sense.

Upon arriving on the path, a friend of mine who is a lifelong Michigander started talking about the conditions of the trail. There was slick and crunch. She explained this by citing the fact that several days of differing weather had resulted in a layering of sorts, which now confronted our feet. In the beginning was dust and grass. Then soft snow packed by hikers before us on the trail. Next, rain fell from the sky and created slush which hardened after a few hours because freezing cold set in. Slush was then topped by another round of not-yet packed snow. All that, right here. Obviously one has to step carefully, plant dutifully, land mindfully in these conditions. It's an ongoing exercise in call and response between ground conditions and one's bodily agility.

Out there on that mixed layered ground environment influences and impacts the form of substance. All of the soft snow, slush, ice, and all those conditions, slick, safe, packed, hard, and soft are about the form water takes on. But it's all water. Its. All. Water. The form and conditions of that water are immensely different based on how they came into this world and what happened to them once they were here.

A couple days ago I got an email from a colleague that pissed me off. She seemed so hard-hearted in her words. I felt shaken reading them, resentful of her, and began questioning the relationship. How could she be so hard? I asked myself in authentically honest meandering. Just a day later, a friend of mine, after having a couple interactions with me that didn't sit right with her, asked me almost the exact same thing. What's up with this hardness?

Going outdoors and letting what grabs you become spiritually content is a discipline but it can also be a way of life. It's a way of life that grows reverence and love for this world, including the hardened hearts you encounter on the path. Water becomes packed, slick ice based on the temperature of its context and whether or not it’s been stepped on (repeatedly). Such a helpful reminder when I'm judging others for their hard ass behavior. Such a helpful reminder when I'm in need of mercy for my own.

Conversing: A Spiritual Adventure

How many conversations does the "average" human being have in a day?

Unless you're an extreme introvert and have the luxury of excessive quiet, alone time, there's a chance that you have multiple conversations in a day. Some short. Some long. Some surface. Some deep.

Interactivity and communication appear to be innate components of life, for better and worse. Not all conversations are created equal. Perhaps they are not supposed to be. Some serve a purpose. Some play a role. Others appear to be a creative endeavor. Conversations happen so often, it's easy to lose sight of how packed with potential each one can be. However, I think there's something to be said about getting mindful of conversations as conversations in the midst of having them. At their best, they can be delightful, creative, nurturing, transformative and powerful for both/all parties.

Yesterday I had two profound conversations with someone I love. This is a person I have known for a long(ish) time and know relatively well. We talk multiple times a day, every day. We frequent the same places and know a lot of the same people. We have heard each other's good ol’ stories multiple times. We can probably name everyone in each other's extended families. Point being: when I have conversations with this person, I don't expect much in the way of thrilling and new information. We've been there and done that, with everything. Besides, "there's nothing new under the sun," right? Wrong.

The content of yesterday's dialogue isn't the point. The point is that we went to profoundly powerful places with each other, not once, but twice in one day. The second one could not have been possible without the first. The first could have stood on its own in terms of courage in vulnerability, sanctified listening and scope of conversational material. But it didn't stand on its own. We came back to it later after we'd had some time apart. The threads from the early morning conversation wove an even more beautiful and fulfilling conversation in the late morning. I found myself looking at the tested and worn relationship with new eyes.

It also made me ask myself, “If we are capable of unearthing this level of new insight and connection with one another, what does that say about our capacity as individuals and as a dyad to make meaning?” Further, how often am I sitting on that kind of gold, that kind of potential for conversational connection and relational engagement and don't know it because I don't plow down to see if it's there?

Conversations are ordinary. They happen all the time. Maybe that's part of the problem. They are so readily available that we take them for granted. But in each one, because there are multiple players, who are ever-dynamic in a world that is ever-dynamic, there's potential for new, riveting, life-enhancing stuff to come out and go down. Pretty snazzy, right?

Maybe it's not just snazz. Maybe it's sacred. Maybe there's Intelligence in this creative life that fashions us capable of unearthing new content within and between us with ever-dynamic outcomes. Creative genius seems capable of such a generous design. If only we were more willing to trust that generosity and plunge into its offering for us and our other/s.

In Ordinary Time, try on conversation as a spiritual adventure. Take a risk. Bring someone closer. Push gently into some of your own vulnerability. Invest in intimacy that's already there but could use some nurturing. Linger in the door way. Make intentional, loving eye-contact. Offer somebody a cup of coffee and tell them to "pull up a chair" while they drink it. Ask a question you actually don't know the answer to. Share gaps of quiet between sentences as honoring the sacred space that connects you. Make love with words. Just because you can. Even if it's someone you know extremely well. Especially if it's someone you know extremely well. You might find yourself surprised by how all things can become new again. 

Love in Ordinary Time

I come from a religious tradition that often espouses love but does not practice it. In fact, we are often bold enough to say that God in Godself was, is and forever more will be love. Those boldly proclaiming such theology will then utter judgment and condemnation from pulpits, Bible studies and "Christian" Facebook groups. They do so swiftly enough that the discrepancy is hard to call out. It's a conundrum but Christianity isn't the only realm where such conundrums about love abound.

About three years ago, I was having a conversation with a friend who told me flat out that she would not have one-on-one coffee with a married man, whom she was mentoring at church, because of "how it would look." Not because anything was going on there, but because it might look like something was going on there. Heterosexual normativity even limits cisgender heterosexuals. What a pity.

Recently I had Sushi with a mentor of mine who is a lesbian, partnered, and in her 60's. As the conversation got deeper--intimacy going and back and forth between as stories of truth, suffering and power enfolded the space--I found myself wondering about how much I love this womyn sitting across from me. For just a second, I felt shame. Am I supposed to love this much? She's partnered. I'm married. There's almost a 30 year age gap between us. “Is this right?” I wondered internally. Where does such a question come from? Both of us have queer sensibilities when it comes to economies of love—meaning we believe there is enough to go around (abundance) and we don't have to relate to one another from guardedness (scarcity). So why was I questioning the wealth of love between us?

Conditioning.

My place of employment just had a staffing change. Our former Office Administrator Vickie, retired and we hired Jaimie to take her place. For weeks I kept struggling with how I could possibly talk about how much I was going to miss Vickie without offending Jaimie and how excited I was to start working with Jaimie without offending Vickie. It's not a zero sum game.

Two days ago my son, who is one year old, was prancing around the house in a diaper, dancing to Bruno Mars' latest hit "Uptown Funk." The whole scene was so dang adorable that I blurted out "Oh little one, you are my favorite!" before scooping him up and giving him kisses all over his baby belly. Before too long I felt guilty about calling him "my favorite" and thanked God his sister, who is almost 3, was sleeping when it happened. But why? He was my absolute favorite iteration of reality in that moment. That moment of adoration didn't take an iota of love away from his sister. Later that day while rocking the 3 year-old sister to sleep I decided to compensate as I was rocking her to sleep: "Oh Waya (her nickname), you are my favorite in the whole world." Guess what? That was totally true.

Often I hear people lament aloud and openly express fears they carry about human civilization not being able to get along. There are so many cultural, religious, generational, class, gender, dis/ability, sexuality, and personality differences among us. How can we possibly get along? How can we live without killing/destroying each other? When I watch the news or hear pundits going on about global realities, I can ask these questions too. Even more than questions about the capacity to get along in our difference, I wonder about the extravagance of love we feel across difference.

I think we love each other way more than we admit or live into. For some reason that feels a lot less scary and a lot scarier all (at the same time) than conversations about destruction and violence.

Love in Ordinary Time. 

Bodies, Food and Feels

Recently a congregant posed this question to her extended network: “Do you view your food choices in terms of potential effect on your weight or how you feel?” It was a powerful question eliciting meaningful, engaging dialogue. I had my own reactions, of course, but I sat on them and let the question have its way with me for a few days before responding.

Every day we take in and we put out. Every single day. We take in and we put out. Talk about Ordinary Time. All the time we take in and we put out. It's the rhythm of life, perhaps the most ordinary truth there is. We eat food. We poop it out. We drink water. We pee it out. We take in by listening. We put out by speaking. We take in by benefiting from the labors of others.

For instance, somebody somewhere made sure that the laundry detergent in my basement got packaged and delivered to the store where I could consume it. I took that in. But I then also use that detergent to do laundry for my family. That's output. Life is this rhythmic spiraling of taking in and putting out.

But how do we know what to take in and put out? And when should we consume versus produce? This gets more complicated.

There are all these maps out there, socially constructed maps. They tell us about the proper ways of taking in and putting out. With food, it's grown increasingly hard to follow directions because the maps keep proliferating and they all seem to say different things. There's the food pyramid. There's "3 meals a day and light snacks in between." There's gluten-free. There's certified organic. All these sources of enlightenment are chiming in about the perfect way to consume. They bank on science. They use before and after pictures to justify their claims. And, like a man behind the curtain, directing all of this, there's an ideal body we all should be aiming for. The ideal body is one that looks like something perfect. But apparently, it doesn’t feel perfect.

As a Christian, I wrestle with the increasing pressure in our society to ignore the body's inherent wisdom. There is no ideal body. There is only your body, and my body and their bodies. These are all we've got and they're frickin fabulous! It took me a long time to figure out that incarnation--divinity of the flesh--is real. Our bodies are worth listening to, worth tending to, worth caring for, not because of some pop self-care craze that only lasts 2 weeks, but because God made them and they are ours. Oh and because they inherently deserve it.

The body is a perfect, albeit complicated and complex barometer. Feelings are full of information and the body is full of feelings. Given that food is something we have to take in every day, maybe we ought to pay attention to how our body feels in response to consumption, as a means of making wiser and wiser choices. That means fretting less ahead of consumption time about our choices, and paying more concrete attention to how our choices feel as we exercise them and in the aftermath. 

I see and hear a lot of folks talking incessantly about what they do and don't want to eat. But I hear very little attention paid (besides the, "Oh I'm so full!" hands-on-the-belly routine) to the way our bodies respond to what we do eat. That requires present moment attentiveness to the body and the ability to integrate what we feel in our bodies in ongoing discernment of our choices. But before all of that, we have to consider our bodies worthy of that attentiveness. So, to that end, an offering, for you, so full of extraordinary power in an ordinary body:

"We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God. (...) we always carry in the body the struggle of life so that that the glory of life may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to struggle for God's sake so that glory may be made visible in our mortal flesh." (A re-write of 2 Cor 4:7ff)

Return & Repeat: Oldies and Goodies Worth Going Back To. And God.

One of the things I've learned from my spouse is the practice and benefit of watching movies more than once. He has certain favorites that routinely get put in the DVD player. Other times—less intentionally but no less habitually—he'll see his favorite movies on television and make sure to hunker down and watch. Again. For the 10th or 25th time.

Our film preferences couldn't be any more different. He likes old black and whites, "classics," cowboy movies, superhero stories, family dramas and plots where a rogue individual breaks out of social conformity in order to liberate the masses. He likes movies about fighting, struggle, war, and cultural imperialism. He likes Kubrick. He likes West Side Story, The Matrix, In the Heat of the Night, The Avengers, and Finding Nemo.

In the beginning of our relationship I found his preferences odd given that he's a pretty gentle and tame dude. The stories he gravitates toward don't seem to match his personality. But then I realized/realize that most of the content he returns to again and again is about personal and social quest; individuals and groups striving (and sometimes bloody struggling) to face life head on in all its complexity, to face seemingly impossible conditions and to come out having fought the good fight. That narrative arc does match his personality, to a T. Sometimes I get so lost in my feminist critiques that I miss the “there” there. Besides, that Bible I preach and teach from each week tops any of J.R.'s movie choices when it comes to patriarchy and violence. So there's that.

What really tripped me out even more than the content of his film choices was the repetition. He watched movies over and over and over again! This was new to me. I didn't come from a family where you watched movies more than once. Been there done that. You know? Well, maybe my mom watched "The English Patient" more than once, but it was an exception to the rule.

Like most family "patterns," you don't really notice them or notice the lack of them, until you crash into folks who come from other/differing family patterns. If you marry into a family where the patterns are barely recognizable to your own, there's good news and bad news. The learning curve is hella high and you get to learn a lot about your family of origin and your new family through compare and contrast. You may be wondering which of those two is the good news and/or the bad news. Yep.

It's not just J.R. that watches stuff over and over. His sister can recite lines from 20 year old episodes of Star Trek verbatim. I kid you not. The two of them watched Star Trek together so much as kids that they can re-enact scenes and dialogues line by line at the dinner table now without missing a beat. It's sensational, truly…and totally not my story.

I watched certain movies a lot as a kid (The Karate Kid was my absolute favorite), but not as an adult. I thought repetitive viewing was something you outgrew when variety became accessible. Before entering this marriage, the only movie I can remember watching repeatedly as an adult was Half Baked. I was a freshman in college and the title matched my life style (if you catch my drift.) It didn't last long. Thank you, Jesus. Point being: in those early days of our relationship, I could not wrap my head around why a person would watch a movie over and over.

Then I had kids. Now I watch the same movies multiple times in a week! Change is real, y’all. So. Freakin. Real.

When I was in Religious Studies in 2003 I took an independent study course in the New Testament. My professor, Rev. Dr. Barry Sang, knew me well and therefore pushed me hard academically. He had me read entire books of the Bible along with their scholarly companions, critiques, exegetes, etc. It was the first time I'd read the bible as an academic, not a church-goer. The angles, entryways, and explorations were markedly different when reading critically instead of devotionally. At that time in my life, it enabled me to engage with the Bible with integrity because I couldn't read that thing with my heart anymore.

I'd given up on that book (the Bible) as far as religious truth was concerned. It didn't do it for me. I'd had it with the gloss-over nonsense I'd experienced in Church: how no one was willing to call out the contradictions, the inherent inconsistencies, the external violence it was causing in the world, the confusion it was ushering into the lives of womyn and queer people, how it depicted God as a punitive dad drunk with "His" own power, callous in "His" rage, careless in "His" actions that clearly made so many innocent and tender and wondrous people suffer for no good reason at all. I'd had it with that book.

But in college, I was invited into a different relationship with the Bible, a different way of engaging it. I was told to bring my questions, to lay bare my critiques, to research history, to research the authors and their contexts, to research the writing, editing, canonizing and translating processes. I was invited to pay attention to how power, privilege, politics, gender, nationalism and imperialism played into the very notion of Scripture production itself. I was told to think about the impact of all that on human behavior, human well-being, human progress. I got to say out loud that I'd take James Baldwin over the Apostle Paul any day--and they (my colleague scholars and professors) nodded in affirmation instead of shaming me for apostasy! I learned to love engaging the Bible again, albeit in a very, very different way. The book was the same, but I was different and so the relationship was different.

Hmmmm...maybe there is value in returning to texts (I'm using "texts" very broadly here: films, literature, scores of music, etc.) over and over. But what exactly is that value?

I think it has something to do with spiritual formation and gratitude. When you return to a movie or a book or song over and over, after a while you being to see how much your own lens, your context of curiosity, rage, hope, and yearning--your very being in space and time--determines what parts of that text appeal to you. You realize that said text has a much more expansive reality outside of your limited context.

For instance, as a college-going baby feminist, I couldn't stand the life trajectory or writings of Paul. But as a person engaged in white anti-racism work that requires seeing what's been rendered invisible and constantly deconstructing privilege, I can totally relate to "scales falling from the eyes." Paul's experience not only makes sense to me in new ways, but has become an authoritative and new, exciting, teacher. My own life course has changed my orientation to that text. But that's not where the revelation stops. It's not just about what the text does for you. It's also about the text itself.

Any text worth going back to again and again reveals its own inherent, multifaceted brilliance over time. If you find that at various points in life, while engaged with that text, it takes on new and significant meaning, there's something in its original design worth noting. Anything packed with stuff that keeps you coming back can be considered a faithful companion, a lover, and should be regarded/treated as such, with gratitude and faithfulness in return. Just because a scene, line or stanza doesn’t take on a new meaning for you doesn't mean that goodness wasn't there all along. Ya, feel me? Give credit where credit is due. It's a practice. 

Sometimes it takes a while to wake up to just how good our companion/lovers are even though they've been good from day one. Isn't it grand that we are given multiple companions and lovers that keep us coming back for the nourishment of our souls over time, even when we don't recognize/realize/embrace it?! Sometimes they just sit there unacknowledged, under-utilized, collecting dust, and then BAM we pick them back up and go at it again. They're not only willingly there for you, but they're more brilliant and impactful than before, despite the neglect! Sounds like grace to me. Grace abiding. Grace abounding.

Thank God for the capacity to return and hit repeat. 

Unexpected Shit

If you've got family, you know about unexpected shit. Just being human brings with it some lessons on the unexpected. Family—which is simply multiple human beings attached to each other—brings lots of unexpected shit. This truism hit close to home…no, actually, literally hit home…a few weeks back during the Christmas season. Before getting to that, I'd like to take a small detour: bath time.

Bath time.

Three to four times a week we bathe our kids before putting them down for bed. It's a rather enjoyable endeavor. I mean, c’mon, toddlers in the bath tub? That's cute. They get all sudsy. They splash each other playfully. They touch their uber interesting body parts and tell you about it all giggly. They get clean, smell good, and love being observed in their rubber ducky splendor by whatever lucky sucker happens to be tub side that night. Usually it's me. As a person who routinely baptizes infants, I now get why water + babies = such a holy combination. Innocence, purity, fluidity, play, sensory stimulation, safe exposure, touch--it's all there. Bath time moments are among the sweetest times of parenting. Point being: I love bath time with my kids. I love it hard core.

I'll confess that most times when I'm sitting there on the bathroom mat massaging Johnson & Johnson shampoo into their little scalps, I am so tired I can barely see straight. Turns out you can be utterly exhausted and lovingly smitten at the same time. Bath time happens around 8:00 p.m. in our household. Any semblance of mental functionality leaves me at 5:00 when I exit work. The three and half hours of family time before bed don't require much critical or complex thinking just a lot of mechanistic activity like cooking, cleaning and singing along to The Hot Dog Dance on Mickey Mouse Club.

It’s not hard. This is fortunate because I’m a total zombie. It takes all my energy to undress their bodies, plop them in the water, wash them down, lift them out, dry them off and get their pajamas on. (I told you I love bath time, right?) I do but it zaps absolutely any reserves I have left, every single time. When it's over, I plop on the sofa just long enough to check the Tiger's score and feel my spouse rub my feet for 20 seconds before drifting off to never-never land.

If my work load or emotional state is heavy, I can dread bath time. The idea itself makes me tired. Which is exactly where I was a few weeks ago when my mom, my sister-in-law and their partners were all in town for Christmas. I'm a pastor. Christmas is the busiest time of the year for me professionally. You add 4 out of town guests to that mix and the pressure is ON. Oh and did I mention that I have two toddlers? Right. So there I was lamenting out loud, at the dinner table, how tired I was, how I couldn't fathom getting Aurora and Isaiah into the bath tub tonight. How even lifting my pinky finger felt like running a marathon; how could I possibly make it through washing not one, but TWO babies? Melodrama type shit.

My mom, patient and tested, listened with compassion. She helped out. We got through it. She then went to her hotel for the evening and came back the next morning. That’s is when the real melodramatic shit happened. As we were clearing up the breakfast meal around 10:45 a.m., I smelled something rather nasty and ripe. Since my son is the only one in diapers, I hoped it was him and I was right. I'd picked him out of his high chair in order to feel for a bulge in his diaper--which was there, massively there--but in the process something gooey and warm started running down my forearm.

Once I got him on the changing table, both of my hands, the portion of my t-shirt covering my hip and my entire right arm were covered in dark orange diarrhea. It smelled as nasty as it looked. It was all over my kid: out of his diaper, throughout his little pants, up the onesie on his back. There was nowhere this shit wouldn't go! This was an over-achiever type shit! Unexpected? Yes. Expansive? Yes. But it was also so gross you almost couldn't believe the degree of gross, except that the sight and smell were bringing you to climax of another kind from another end. The more I cleaned the sicker I got--and there was a LOT to clean. It was brutal.

"Mom, please, please start the bath water!" I yelled to the dining room.

Soon thereafter I heard the faucet gushing next door. Thank you, Jesus! I could not wait to get that filth and stench off me and off that baby. Soap and water are a mighty, mighty power in this life. Within moments there wasn't a trace of unexpected shit anywhere. What a miracle--bath time! The very thing I couldn't fathom doing the night before was my saving grace the next morning.

Which got me thinking…

Sometimes it's the unexpected shit in life that can dramatically altar/alter your perspective for the better.

Which got me thinking…

Is there anything outside of God's scope? Is there anything God can't use to make us better, make us wiser, make us more grateful and grace-filled?

Then I remembered that my friend and Pastor Rev. Alma Crawford had sent me a link from the New York Times about a year ago. It was about how a shit transplant had saved some dude's life. Like, literally, his friend who didn't want him to die had chemicals in her stool that he desperately needed in his system. So she became a shit donor and they transplanted her shit into him. AND. HE. LIVED.

C’mon, yall. Shit has healing properties. Shit.

Isn't God great?

Footprints in the Snow

With all due respect to Robert Frost, the “road less traveled by” isn't always the way to go. There's no doubt that there is a time, a place and a power to divergence. In fact, some of the most brilliant and impactful people upon this Earth are those who have "made all the difference" by veering off on some unbeaten path. Sometimes I think there's too much attention paid to outliers and not enough attention paid to the wisdom of following in someone else's footsteps.

I moved to Michigan five years ago from California where I was raised most of my life. (Read: I went from no snow to hella snow. Like snow for days and weeks at a time. Like snow so high you can't open your garage door. Snow taller than your toddler.) I went from the land of perpetual sunshine to a place where the sun hardly comes out for five months. Huge geographic change. Big cultural shift. But nothing outweighs the change in weather.

People told me when I first arrived that I'd survive as long as I figured out the "right clothing." It only took me 4 years to know what they meant by “the right clothing.” What they meant was heavy beanies and droopy hats that cover your ears. They meant thick scarves that cover absolutely every inch of your neck, thermal undergarments (upper and lower body), socks so heavy they only fit in your chunky winter boots. Oh and chunky winter boots. The kind that weigh at least 2 pounds more than all of your other shoes combined. You could easily harm someone with said boots should you take them off your feet in a moment of self-defense. I'm just sayin’, these Michiganders don't play when it comes to winter foot wear. Sorel, Merrels, Columbia, Keens. 

They. Don’t. Play.

It just so happens that even with (even with!) my super fly, calf-muscle-high black and white Sorels on, the snow is high enough that moisture makes its way into the crack between my jeans and foot gear. No good. This happened the other day when I was trying to make it from my car to the gym entrance for my Cross Fit class. I'd be damned if I was going to arrive with cold, wet feet! It's just not my style, metaphorically or in reality. I stopped after my second step, looked around and realized that someone had already made the trek before me. There were footprints in the snow leading from the parking lot to the sidewalk. I thanked God out loud and jumped over to where the compact snow could be trusted to keep me dry. It was exactly the route I needed to make it to my destination in tip top shape. Of course I got my ass kicked in Cross Fit once I arrived. But at least I got my ass kicked with toasty toes. I digress.

Here's the thing: someone else had to walk through that snow and make a way. Someone else had to endure cold feet in order to create that path. Why not take it? How often do we arrive new on some scene and feel like we've got to reinvent the wheel, be a creative genius from the get-go, never ask for help and make our own way out of no way? Sometimes sacrifices have been made to pave a way for us. We can acknowledge these sacrifices and choose with gratitude and pride. Sometimes it's just plain easier to believe that someone smarter than us went ahead of us once (or maybe five times.) Maybe navigating is a bit easier when you can follow someone else's directions…at least part of the time.

When I was in divinity school, I would get irritated at having to read theologians of the past. Who cares what Augustine, Aquinas, Howard Thurman and Mary Daly have said or are saying? I had my ideas and I wanted to get to them in class, in the dining hall, in conversations everywhere, all the time! You know what I found once colleagues and professors put a cease and desist order on my ego? I found that my ideas about God were nothing new. Many, many intelligent people had been down those intellectual paths way before me and would go down them after me too.

Cold feet suck. So do pompous egos. Sometimes the beaten path can be what makes all the difference.