Like a great many people across our country, I was both surprised and moved as I listened to Mitt Romney speak on Wednesday. What caught my attention was not the decision that he reached – evaluating that decision, be it wrong, right, or somewhere in between, is the domain of a political commentator rather than a pastor – but rather it was the way that he spoke of making it.

It sucks to be stuck. And human beings can get stuck not just in the intersection between our minds and our hands, but in so many other places.

I am having some difficulty these days feeling anything like charity towards the people, the institutions, and – let’s tell the truth – the churches that have taught you and so many other people to feel shame about your sexuality.

Our dog Baudelaire is coming to the end of his life. And while he is 17 and I get that 17 years is a pretty darn good run for a dog, that doesn't mean that I am feeling any less sick about this news.

In moving across the communion rail, I see one pair of hands after another. Each of them is held out in this beautiful gesture of openness, a gesture that embodies the words of Jesus’ first disciples: Give us this bread, always.

A handwritten card is a sacrament. When it arrives in the mail, you hold in your hands the beautiful evidence that we are in relationship.