The Power of Vulnerability

Most of life, I think, is a dance between our desire to be loved and accepted, on the one hand, and a desire to protect ourselves from being rejected and hurt on the other. The trouble is, these two desires are most often at odds. That is, the only way you can believe you are really loved and accepted is if you allow yourself to be really known. That is, you stop pretending to be someone else; otherwise, you can never know for sure if they love you or the person you’re pretending to be. But to allow yourself to be known is a risk. The person to whom you reveal yourself may not like you, or may reject you, or may run away from you....

Still I Rise: A Poem for Thursday Mar22

Still I Rise: A Poem...

So much of Maya Angelou’s poetry is simultaneously defiant and uplifting. “Still I Rise” is one of my favorites, recognizing the difficult, at times terrible past African Americans suffered only to draw strength from it so as to confront a sometimes difficult and terrible...

8. Mark 14:12-16

On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed, his disciples said to him, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?” So he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water...

2. Mark 14:1-2

It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him; for they said, ‘Not during the festival, or there may be a riot among the people.’ Fear. It’s amazing how powerful...