Introducing Myself In The New Year

TL/DR: It’s complicated, but here I am.

Greetings from Richmond, VA (#RVA) on the first day of 2025.

I will not regale you with aspirational aphorisms difficult to attain. Instead, I’m going to do what I often do when I feel overwhelmed (Do you ever feel overwhelmed?). I am going to center my attention on what is around me.

I am drinking my second cup of coffee. I’m a 5+ cup a day caffeine hound. I am seated next to my Spouse. She is the strongest, most tenacious person I know. I love her for those qualities and many others. Our son (He’s nine.) still sleeps. That is a rarity. He’s usually up with me first thing in the morning. We’re pre-dawn denizens of the Northside.

I’m a teacher, preacher, and creative type person currently working as a hospice chaplain. I write to keep myself grounded in all that I do and because I love the craft. Writing is a form of play for me. Writing online has been my serious pastime for 25+ years.

This Homeric journey started with a blog on Blogger…Conjectural Navel Gazers: Jesus in Lint Form. We were encouraged to be online during graduate school (Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, 2001-04) to share what we were learning and to encourage conversation with people outside our program. See: The Cluetrain Mainfesto for more.

I was in seminary, the post-graduate training program for people entering Christian ministry. I enjoyed it a great deal and managed to earn a second masters simultaneously. I’m a confirmed and accredited liturgy nerd. I was ordained at North Shore Baptist Church in Chicago, IL in 2004. I would serve an Emergent church called Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler (or simply Reconciler) and The Community Church of Wilmette.

Then there were the years writing on anglobaptist.org. That was my personal blog named for my liturgical predilections. I am not an Anglo-Catholic sort. I’m Anglo-Baptist. Keep it low and slow. I miss that old blog, but the “anglo” started communicating differently than I intended. The Black Lives Matter movement and other similar concerns convinced me to change things up. So, I moved to Medium. Now, I’m on Substack.

In that time I wrote for some academic journals (liturgy, ethnomusicology, and homiletics) as well as the Sojourners blog and The Christian Century blog. We had moved to Berkeley, CA from Chicago, IL. Those were some heady times. I was working on a PhD in Liturgy and Ethnomusicology at the Graduate Theological Union and the University of California Berkeley. Yes, I am a Berkeley-educated cis male type person from rural Virginia. I am a cornucopia of progressive liberalism, urbanity, and southern cooking.

For those in the know: this means I play banjo, bake biscuits, and ascribe to a variety or liberation theologies. I like to sing. A lot. And I believe that the Late-Capitalist marketplace is bad for most people.

I served at First Baptist, Palo Alto for a time, and then we moved our lives to the Episcopal Church formally. I was confirmed in 2015. My son was baptized at the Great Vigil. We worshipped at All Souls Episcopal Parish.

I never finished the PhD. I timed out. There are reasons, of course. I was cruising along ahead of schedule and then I started coming undone. The lack of structure of the dissertation phase proved too much. Add to that the unexpected birth of a son, a month-long hospitalization (I am bipolar, apparently.), the COVID pandemic, and a cross-country move from Berkeley, CA to Richmond, VA…well, I just could not get it done. So, now I have three Masters degrees.

Yes, I am thinking that I’d like to complete the project somehow. Yes, I am thinking about writing a book, but not an academic tome on my research. Instead, I want to write something about the quotidian and Christian faith. Yes, I’m still teaching, preaching, and generally making a nuisance of myself in Episcopal parishes.

I believe in the Oxford comma, the appropriate use of lard in cooking, and in my family’s ability to drive long distances with cats. I believe that Jesus came to save us from all that is onerous in life including abusive religiosity, harmful politics, and personal hubris. No, I don’t believe that you need to think like me to be “saved.” That’s not how any of this works. Not really.

Here on Substack, I write about those first morning moments, coffee, Jesus, being Franciscan, and whatever else pops into my head. The posts are short. That’s on purpose. I’m hoping to start a conversation with each of them. I still believe in the Internet and the possibility for deep connection.

Today is New Year’s Day. I will listen to U2 like any self-respecting Gen X malcontent should.

Please feel free to ask me anything at all. I’m around.

Y’all be excellent to each other.