The days are surely coming, says the Lord…It was a menagerie of misfits. There were Tinkerbelles, Shreks and Barbies and Kens, Jasmine and Alladin, a mer-man, a gladiator and a person who had taken a street cone and sawed out holes for their arms. 

I myself, had, lapsed in my Halloween preparations and had found myself twenty minutes before frantically searching my costume box for something worthy.  Giving up, I threw on an assortment of mis-matched costume items and said to whoever asked, I was a mystery.

2024 has served as a year of mysteries. Of unknowns and walking one foot in front of the other when at times I couldn’t see the way forward. As the rain poured down that all Hallows Eve, my friends and I beleaguered and dripping wet,  took our seats in that crowded restaurant on Magazine Street.

We were seated next to what can only be described as a “a true New Orleans spectacle………..

Sue Monk Kidd’s The Book of Longings, explores the what if Jesus Christ had a feminist wife.

Ana’s educated and has been taught by her father, a Scribe for Herod, to write. She falls in love with Words and sees how Words connect her to God  and then,  falls in love with Jesus ben Joseph.

But Ana knows that as a woman, words can be dangerous. She watches as words of accusation leave a woman tongueless,  how words lead to stoning of women, and how the desire to learn words from the temples rabbi leads to poisoining of the intellectually curious and more dangerously.. The women who have the curse of ambition.

Yet, Ana prays- 

“Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart. Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight.

Feel free to modify this to help you spirit connect to God this All Saints Day. This is liturgy I’ve written for a special New Orleans walk in Lafayette No.1 on All Saints with a Presbytery Commission. you may want to modify it to be stationary, or perhaps do set it up in a graveyard where your loved ones are buried, or with stations in a sanctuary. <3

In Revelation in a different part of the Bible, and in the Apocrypha (parts of scripture that are not in the PCUSA-reformed bibles) there is a consistent reference to Dragons. I know, from limited understanding that the Dragon holds great significance to your culture. Correct me if I am wrong, but in Chinese culture the Dragon represents good fortune and ambition.

 In Revelation and in the Apocryphal text, Bel and the Dragon, the Dragon is a symbol to represent similar interests, but to the far extreme of what happens when ambition and fortune are left unchecked and are out of balance. I read it as a representation of too much yang, and not enough yin.

The moment that the Dragon appears in Revelation, it brings death and destruction. The final book of the bible has archangel Michael in a holy fight with the dragon, casting him down to earth. When we have too much and no longer need God, is that when we become our own version of a fiery dragon?

There will always be tension between traditionalists and innovators. This text is hard on the traditionalist- the Pharisees and the Scribes, but it doesn’t promote innovation. Calvin warned that innovation can be the source of many stultifying traditions…. 

If innovation is not always good, neither is tradition always bad-

So what are we waiting for? Are we to spend our time like the bridesmaids, waiting for Christ to come? Or are we to heed our Lord’s final imperative in the story: Keep awake!

These parables are tricky. 

We tend to treat them as doctrinal treatises or allegories, assigning parts to each character in the story. 

But what if Jesus meant to simply shock us with details such as closing the door on the foolish ones only to deliver the real message: Keep awake! One suspects Jesus really did not want us spending hours of Bible study dithering over questions such as “How could Jesus do that? Why would he close the door on anyone?” when we already know the answer is that he closed the door on no one. 

Not prostitute, not tax collector, not sinner. His door is always open.

 The disciples to whom this little tale is told know that and have witnessed it every day. And like them, we ought to be those who recognize that what seems like his coming again is simply our awakening to the very real Good News of Jesus, that he is with us always to the end of the age.

 No waiting required. He is here. Forever and always. We might even say forever and all ways.

This biggest lie women are told is that a Good Christian Woman is Sacrificial. 

I grew up witnessing the women in my life sacrifice all that they had to the service and betterment of others. 

And I remember seeing the tombstones of my ancestors in rural South Carolina as a child, pockmarked by the weather and covered in grit and dust and weeds.

Great great and grandmothers  who served their churches faithfully every week, women who supported their husbands and sacrificed greatly so that their children could eat the pork at the table, while they picked around at the biscuits.

If you could harness the power of God, would you?

That was the question on everyone's mind in the blockbuster film, Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And I say this because this is my personal and lived experience. I do not say this with judgment, but from a place of knowingness. When we refuse to face the pains in our hearts, it is as if we are pouring fertilizer on the weeds of illnesses, threatening to swallow up every good and nurturing seed we’ve lovingly sown.

We have to get up- and figure out who we’re gonna be the rest of the time we have alive….

Photo shot on iPhone X Ashley Brown in Alexandria, Egypt, 2023.

When we’re forced by weather to be still- we’re given an opportunity to face the storms in our hearts. To face the fears our vices and busy-ness have been pushing away.

But the thing about storms- there will always be another one. And they are not meant to be weathered alone.

That’s where Gospel of Mark segways in.

Jesus is the king of surviving storms. And his work on the Sea of Galilee is just as powerful a story as it is a metaphor for the work of faith when we’re experiencing thunder.

In the book, Olive Kitteridge, we follow a woman in her 50’s as she wrestles with her inability to connect to the outside world and her own lifetime of bottling up her emotions and words.

Olive deplores the characters around her, casting judgment on the people in her family and small coastal town, until finally they all slip away from her orbit.

Her son, exhausted by her- begins to see a therapist and enacts some new-fangled thing called, “boundaries”, which Olive finds as a true personal affront….

Photo shot on iPhone X Ashley Brown; First Presbyterian Church Program of Hope Ministry for the Unhoused, 2023

Inevitably, there are moments in our lives when the walls are closing in.

Its last call, the lights flicker. We have to go home.

Face the music. Face the consequences of our actions.

Society teaches us that the human condition seems contingent on the foundation of our suffering.

Society doesn’t tell us though- that’s that when we find out who we truly are.

Photo shot on iPhone X Ashley Brown; Mississippi River/ New Orleans, 2023

If we are- every single last one of us on this Earth- are God’s children, and as Thessalonians says- children of the light, and children of the day”

Then how come we live in a world where there is so much darkness?

Perhaps we might choose to think of addiction as existing in a dark tunnel, with a sliver of light at the end, peeking out at us- encouraging us to step forward in our direction.

And it is so easy to step into that dark tunnel- there are so many easy ways to get suckered in to a dangerous habit.

We are called to raise those up around us so that they too can use their trans figurative experiences in which God has touched their lives and be morphed into leaders of the church- sharing their gifts and ministries with us and the world.

Once you witness or experience a profound change through Christ- you’re never going to be the same.

Epiphanies are mental moments where we have instant clarity, which can turn into motivation to change and charge forward. 

But not all epiphanies are created equally. Some demand a deep inward search, and you'll be stuck asking the tough questions to see what you are made of.