Water is chaos.

I feel like that is one of the first things I learned in my college Intro to Biblical Literature class. When Genesis 1 describes the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, it sets the stage for God to bring order out of chaos. When the Great Flood swallows the earth, it is the chaos of pre-creation consuming life. When the Children of Israel cross the Sea of Reeds on dry land, they find God’s peace in the midst of chaos. When Jonah tries to run away from God rather than go to Nineveh, he finds himself sinking into the sea until a great fish provides an unexpected respite from chaos and death. The stories we see in the Bible have God bringing life out of the madness.

Until I started writing this, I had never considered the juxtaposition between the Spirit of God hovering over the waters in the Genesis 1 creation account and Jesus walking on the water in the gospels. Jesus touches the water. He is not removed from it. The chaos splashes around his feet, the waves soak his robe. It is true that he walks on the water, but Jesus is in the thick of it.

And really? Thank God for that because we find ourselves at sea often in our lives: the illness of a loved one, a child going through a difficult time, a broken relationship, a lost job, living with depression or anxiety, tragedies that seem to happen repeatedly in a sick cycle, hurt, loss, death, uncreation, the dark and stormy nights of the soul when you wonder if God is even real. In the midst of that, I want a God who does more than hovers over the waters, but one who is in the midst of the stinging spray of the sea.

Aug 8
Aug 8 Late Night Drives, Prayers, and Singalongs

Chris Cox

Bedtime has been a not-so-exciting adventure in our home of late. At least one of our boys will typically have a difficult time going to sleep. With yesterday being the night before the first day of school, that was exponentially true of everyone. Excitement, anxiety, and nerves were crushing every suggestion that we had on how to go to sleep. That is how I found myself driving through Nashville sometime after 10 PM with our youngest son in the passenger seat. His mind could not shut off and so his mom suggested we go for a drive.

Knowing that anxiety about returning to school was at the forefront of his concerns, Liam and I took our normal route to his school. We pulled into an empty parking lot and stopped where he would be dropped off the next morning. As we sat there, I asked him if it would be okay if we prayed about the new school year. He nodded his head and then looked at me like I was crazy when I asked if he wanted to say some words too.

So I prayed and he held my hand. We asked God that this school would be a safe place of learning. That Liam would remember that there were friends and adults in that building that loved and cared for him. We prayed that God would help his relationships grow and that he would form new friendships. We prayed that he would remember that God was with him when he was in school each day and that he was always on the mind of his parents. We said, “Amen” and he hugged me. Then he asked if we could drive around a little more and listen to some music.

Aug 6

Aug 6 6,574 Days

Chris Cox

I am 20 years old. It’s my birthday and the waning days of my sophomore year in college. In a fit of boredom that only occurs when you cross the socially acceptable randomness in college with a solid decade of watching David Letterman, I’m curious about what would happen to different objects if I throw them off the top balcony of our dorm building.

There’s this girl that I like. I think she likes me too. I’ve never been super confident about such things, but I’m pretty sure about this. I run up and tell her about my juvenile science experiment and she readily agrees to help me. I grab her hand as we scamper to the stairs. It’s the first time I ever hold her hand. We’re still a few months away from dating. Yet I still remember the electricity of holding E.A. Ferree’s hand for the first time.

We are 40 years old now and today is our 18th wedding anniversary. We have been married 6,574 days. At some point this fall, we will hit the tipping point in our lives where we have been together as a couple longer than we have not. Which seems wild. I wonder what that 20 year old kid would think if you told him that he’d still hold that girl’s hand 20 years later and even then he would feel electricity. And he would feel home.

Aug 4
Aug 4 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Personality Index (Updated Edition)

Chris Cox

There is a massive industry that revolves around people trying to figure out what makes them tick. We want to know our strengths and weaknesses so that we can hopefully go about contributing to the world. Some of the most popular tools for exploring these aspects are the Enneagram (I’m a type 9) and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (INTP or INFP depending on when I have taken it). Yet there is another way of assessing personality types that has been used by amateur clinicians on elementary school playgrounds since the late 1980s: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

For the poor folks who don’t know about these modern mythological heroes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is about four brothers who are—follow me closely here—teenaged mutant turtles who practice martial arts. For multiple generations of children, TMNT have been featured in countless cartoons, video games, and movies including a delightful film that just came out this week. And from the beginning, kids would find themselves drawn to either Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, or Michelangelo.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Personality Index (TMNTPI) seeds to codify what these playground and dorm room conversations have been doing for years: helping people figure out their strengths and weaknesses based upon the turtle with which they most identify. This is not necessarily your favorite turtle though your favorite may be the one with which the TMNTPI links you. Also, most of us will actually have aspects of all the turtles. Yet there is typically one that is strongest.

Aug 2
Aug 2 A Haunted Summer at the Cineplex

Chris Cox

(This post contains spoilers for a bunch of movies that came out from May to July)

The oldest and I were in a Saturday night showing of Haunted Mansion when something occurred to me: Is every movie this summer about grief in some way? Granted I have not seen every movie this summer. I don’t do horror movies. I have not seen Barbie yet though I am going to because EA says it’s amazing and our rector spent a good chunk of a sermon talking about the movie. I also did not see the newest Transformers movie because I was forced to see Revenge of the Fallen many years ago and swore I would never go to one of those movies again.

But the summer blockbusters that I have seen? All have characters haunted by grief.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - We learn Rocket belligerent exterior is masking the immense pain of losing his first friends Lylla, Teefs, and Floor. Peter is grieved by the loss of his relationship with Gamora and grappling with having been taken from his home as a child.

Jul 30
Jul 30 Da-Na-Na-Naaaaaa! (Zelda Treasure Chest Sound Effect)

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

Like many homes containing individuals both my age and my sons’ ages, we have been deep (literally and metaphorically) in Hyrule. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom came out in early May and since its release the Cox men have been scouring the land, the sky, and the Depths for everything that we can in order to defeat the evil Ganondorf (or create an automated flame-throwing robot that will attack a camp of Bokoblins). It’s a delight.

Thus when I read in today’s gospel passage about a great treasure hidden in a field, I immediately heard the sound effect that has accompanied the opening of treasure chests in Zelda games for decades. In the parable, Jesus compares the Kingdom of Heaven (the reign of God, the beloved community of God) to a great treasure that one stumbles upon. The treasure is so valuable that the one who finds it goes off and sales everything that they have just to buy that field.

In Tears of the Kingdom, there are treasure chests all over Hyrule. Sometimes the contents of a chest are not exciting: stakes, a piece of amber, a shield. But then sometimes you will come across a treasure chest that has an incredibly powerful and valuable weapon. This discovery often forces a difficult decision. Your character Link can carry only so many weapons. So if you come across a valuable item when your cache is full, you have to literally drop something in order to make room for it. Sometimes the decision to drop something is easy yet sometimes you have to make the hard decision to part with something valuable to make room for something better.

The parallel is not perfect. Even writing it now, I don’t feel great about comparing the Kingdom of God to a weapon.

Jul 23
Jul 23 Bethel, South Carolina and Elsewhere

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”….He called that place Bethel.
-Genesis 28:16-17, 19a

Whenever I visit my home in South Carolina, I love to go outside at night and take a deep breath. On a clear night the stars are far brighter than they are in Nashville. My parents live on the edge of the woods and though you can hear the distant hum of Interstate 26, the primary sounds are of the life that fills the place. Crickets. Cicadas. Birds bidding good night to one another. And a chorus of frogs that transform from a boy choir chirp to a deep bellow as spring turns to summer.

If I stop for just a moment, I feel peace. The world is still and I feel like God is just a little bit closer. I don’t see angels ascending and descending, but it definitely feels like the holy is in that place. That driveway in Spartanburg County is a Beth-el, a house of God. I am grateful for the times I remember that.

Jul 22
Jul 22 Closing a Chapter

Chris Cox

Ever since I started blogging some (muttering) years ago, I have struggled with how much of my life to share. That’s been especially true of late. I feel like there is more than enough “Chris is sad/angry/confused” material out there and I would have been insufferable the last 4 months (maybe I already was). Yet I feel the need to seek some closure concerning my time at Woodmont. So this is (probably, most likely) the last time I am going to write publicly about this season.

This is not the saga. This is simply me trying to close the chapter so that I can continue to heal and get back to writing about what I am learning about faith or who would win if all the lead characters from this summer’s blockbusters got into a fight (spoiler alert: if weapons are allowed then it is definitely Robert Oppenheimer).

First of all, I want to thank every person who reached out, checked in on us, grabbed a meal, sent a text, and everything else. It would be melodramatic to say that you have saved my life, but you were definitely a barricade that kept me from getting too close to the ledge. Thinking about that analogy, I guess you did save my life in a less dramatic way. Those gestures of kindness kept me moving when I felt desperately alone and like I was going crazy.

Jul 17
Jul 17 Hope in the Dirt

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

Sundays are hard. That is just the reality of my life right now. It used to be my favorite day; a time when I got to to do what I love. Now the day is salt in the wound. This difficult season has put a great strain on my faith. Strong in the initial weeks after stepping down, I find myself spiritually struggling. I feel alone; uncertain of whether there is a place for me. There is a spark of hope and sacred mischief that, for the time being, has been extinguished.

So when Parable of the Sower began to be read this morning at church, I braced myself for the wave of guilt. In this wilderness season, I am the rocky soil, the soil among thorns, the soil patrolled by a Hitchcockian number of birds. How on earth can something good take root when I feel like crap?

While I prepared for a guilt trip, I heard our assistant rector Rev. Sides say this, “Jesus doesn’t use parables to shame.” She said that the point is not for us to hear these words and feel like failures. We contain all four types of soil. We need to be aware of the areas of our life that our rocky or thorny and clear the land the best that we can. Yet Jesus is still going to graciously sow seeds.

Jul 2
Jul 2 A ridiculously difficult passage that I have never really liked

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

Did the title tip my hand too much? The near sacrifice of Isaac has always been a troubling passage for me. Now I can put on my religious studies hat and tell you that compared to some other religious stories of the day that this tale is actually kind of progressive. The religion following the God of Abraham is different from other faiths; even though it feints in that direction, this God does not require child sacrifice. This story conveys the important message (one that I wrote about just last week) about the necessity and difficulty of obedience to God above all else. It asserts that such faithfulness will be rewarded. I also know that this story was told in a context that is dramatically different from our own. It is not written for modern audiences.

But, whew, I really hate this story. I didn’t feel great about as a kid and I truly do not like it today as a father. Despite all the caveats mentioned above, I cannot read this story and not imagine how everyone involved would walk away with irreparably scarred relationships.

How could Abraham have lived with himself knowing that he was moments from killing his own son? How could Isaac—who was tied up, laid upon an altar, and watched his father grab a knife to sacrifice him—not be a complete shell of a person? How could the relationship with father and son ever be the same? And how could either of them not feel conflicted about a God who played such a seemingly cruel game with both of them?

June 15, 2026

Dangerous Memories and Unfinished Futures

“’Do this in remembrance of me.’ Jesus invites you to commemorate his betrayal, death, and resurrection. His invitation makes space for ‘dangerous memory,’ a memory that, as post-Holocaust Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz tells us, ‘puts pressure on and questions our present because in it we remember an unfinished future.’ Memory can unsettle the unreconciled present and open up a future for the hopeless and the forgotten, the failed and the oppressed….Remembering keeps the ghosts alive so that they may warn and comfort, haunt and inspire the living: dangerous memories that rush toward an unfinished future. Making the absent present allows for processing grief, strengthening commitments, and opening up vision. Such remembrance commits you to work for a future for those who have been forgotten, erased, and left behind.”
-Hanna Reichel, For Such a Time as This, 88, 89

I believe that most of us experience an internal tug-of-war between the past and the future. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ titular demon supervisor advises his underling Wormwood that one of best ways to keep a human from doing good is to keep them ping-ponging between those two times that are not the present. One keeps trying to recapture or reach towards moments that are mist. It can keep a person from doing something.

The quote above resonates with me because it harnesses the past and unfinished future into a catalyst that animates our present. We remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus because it means something today and compels us to presently work for the Good that is already here, but also not yet. We remember the hope and pain of the past to do something that help us take some sort of step each and every day. We realize that the hope which exists within the gospel story is not yet fully realized. Many people are still being left behind and forgotten. The realization, as the theologian Metz states, puts pressure and questions on the present.

June 1, 2026

First Day of Pride

Being a parent forces you to take a close look at yourself. Of course, you don’t have to be a parent to self-examine, but there is something about the reality that another living human is under your care and protection for the foreseeable future that makes you take stock of your strengths, weaknesses, and beliefs. For example, I used to think I was a far more patient person before I had kids; like superhumanly patient. And then a crying toddler shows you the folly of that belief. On the flip side, time has moved on and having two teenagers affirms that, yes, I am ridiculously patient and that has been a strength as a parent.

Among many other reorienting moments that came with parenthood was full acceptance of our LGBTQ+ siblings. That process began many years earlier. As someone who studied religion, I knew that the biblical case against these individuals was not nearly as airtight as I was previously led to believe. Science and stories from people gave strong indication that this life was not a choice. And I had met gay and lesbian folks who were good people. The old axiom that you will know a tree by its fruit applies here.

But the tipping point was holding a tiny infant who I loved more than I thought possible and knowing that I never wanted him to be ashamed of who he is. I did not want a potential future in which one of my children came out as something other than heterosexual with the fear that we would not love them. Not accepting my child was not even conceivably on the table. So we raised our kids to know that LGBTQ+ were beloved members of God’s creation.

May 24, 2026

Not a Defeat If You Can Find a Way to Laugh About It

There is this typical ice breaker question that is some variation of “If you could have dinner with anyone famous living or dead, who would it be?” And one of my steadfast answers for almost twenty years has been Stephen Colbert. Through both The Colbert Report and The Late Show, he has given hours upon hours of laughter and more than enough on which to ponder. I feel like we’d have a lot to talk about since we are both unabashed nerds, products of the Palmetto State, and he just seems like a good hang.

Beyond all of that, I appreciate how honestly and humbly Colbert approaches his faith. There have been numerous times over the years when his comedy and conversations take a turn into the spiritual that is challenging and convicting. I remember an episode of The Colbert Report where one minute he was making a joke about Ben Franklin’s predilection for French prostitutes and then organically made his way to the following quote:

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.

Then there are the interviews that he has conducted on The Late Show. Colbert has said that he sort of found the heart of his show when he had a conversation with then-Vice President Biden about grief. Indeed the loss of his father and brothers at a young age has led him to create an empathetic space to explore loss in the midst of celebrities promoting their most recent projects (my mind immediately comes to a conversation that he had with Andrew Garfield about the loss of the actor’s mother).

May 21, 2026

While I Breathe, I Hope

On the way to school, the youngest burrowed his head into my arm. “I don’t like that you’re getting older.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you’re one year closer to death.”

“There it is.” That’s my kid. Very sweet. Very sensitive. Brutally, bordering on inappropriately blunt. “Well, it’s better than the alternative.”

“Getting younger?” He thinks for a second. “Oh…dying.”

“Yeah, you can’t get younger.” I scratch him on the head. “And hopefully I have a ways to go. Ideally, I’ll still be kicking around when you turn 43.”

“You’ll be 73. So that’s reasonable”

“Yeah.”

“Granddad will be 103.”

“Less likely. But maybe. I hope he is as long as he’s happy.”

“And healthy. Happy, healthy, and alive.” Then he goes into a bit from an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine which makes me laugh.

Birthdays, as my oldest posited this morning, are kind of weird when you get older. Or at least they morph into something different from the second Christmas-esque excitement when you’re a kid. Because there does get to be that point where it creeps into your mind that you are a year closer to death. And that forces you take stock of your life which is a hit-or-miss affair due to being human’s volatility.

May 18, 2026

To Jim on his 16th Birthday

One day last week, I picked you up from school after took one of your AP exams and then I moved over to the passenger seat so you could practice driving. In the midst of being hyper vigilant about your speed, how quickly you stopped, how close you were to the side of the road, and what every single other car on the road was doing, I had a distinct moment of looking over at you and realizing that so much is changing. And we’re only at the start.

Today you turn 16. You are about to wrap up your sophomore year of high school. You’ll take a driver’s license test in just a few weeks. We have three more summers before you go off to college. There are times it seems like yesterday when you were sitting in the living room watching cartoons with a couple of dozen superhero toys. There are times it seems like last week when you were a newborn sleeping in my arms.

The feeling of you being 16 is kind of like being the passenger in the car while you are driving. I have a ton of confidence in you and trust you. And I worry about your lack of experience in a big, sometimes frightening world and whether I have taught you well enough. I am wary of everyone else on the road. I wonder if you are going too fast even though you are going an appropriate speed and I am the one who encouraged you not to go as slow in the first place. It is all very exciting, humbling, frightening, and new.

April 21, 2026

What Nintendo Can Teach the Church

Christmas 1988. My brother Taylor and I receive the Nintendo Entertainment System packaged with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and we have been fans ever since. We have grown up with the Japanese company’s gaming systems; the adventures of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Link, Zelda, Donkey and Diddy Kong, and more have been a consistent presence in our lives. Even though we are in three different states now as adults, Taylor, my sister Shari, myself, and our kids will get together every so often and play Mario Kart online. We love Nintendo, which is a weird thing to say about a corporation that makes a billion dollars but it is what it is.

With all that said, I loved the Keza MacDonald’s book Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. Not only is it an engaging journey through video game history through the lens of Nintendo’s iconic (and less iconic) franchises, but the book also has a great deal to say about creativity, community, and culture. In fact, it is that last idea that got me thinking about how this video game company can teach the church (or any other organization) even as I am a bit of an outsider to that world presently.

Here is one of two quotes that jumped out at me from the chapter “Splatoon” which looks at how Nintendo continues innovate and create over 40 years into its video game endeavors:

April 12, 2026

Easter Orphans, A Lost Cat, and A Tightrope Called Hope

“Happy Easter?”

That is the first thing EA said to me as I woke up on Easter morning. I stretched and rubbed my eyes.

“I still believe in Jesus. It’s just the church that I’m not sure about.”

Some context: This was the first Easter in our 20+ years of marriage (and likely in either of our lives) in which we did not have a church to attend. It’s been about a year since we’ve gone to church as a family. Honestly, the church that we attended after I stepped down from working in a congregation had a tall order to tend to our hurting family. It was a good group of people, but the services and community never really clicked with our boys. Then early last year, I got moved to a Sunday morning shift. EA tried for a bit to go by herself but it wasn’t what she needed. In the end, I was gone for about eight months before anyone in the church really noticed and we decided to take a break.

I acknowledge my uncertainty about the church is a bit over-dramatic. Of course, there are great churches out there. There are wonderful people in congregations where my family and I have experienced the most pain. It’s akin to writing off burritos for life because you got violent food poisoning from one (This is based on a true story; I have not written off burritos just that particular Chipotle location). But the church hurt is real. As is the MAGA-fication of the denomination in which I grew up that feels so antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. So we don’t have a place to call home and it’s weird and sad and understandable.

April 1, 2026

Lent Fail

Absurdist Note: I really want to add “Woo-ooh!” after the title. If you know, you know.

I have not pulled off this year’s Lenten disciplines the way that I set out to. When this 40 day period began, I set out to take on this fasts/spiritual practices:

Stop drinking Coca-Cola
Stop eating French fries
Stop playing Disney Solitaire on my phone
Do a daily devotional from Richard Rohr’s Wondrous Encounters
Write a blog five days a week

When the war in Iran began and threw another log on the fire that is the world, it pained me both spiritually and physically. One of the ways that played out was headaches and since headaches were already part of removing the caffeine of Coca-Cola from my life, I decided I probably shouldn’t compound a problem and began drinking Coke again. I have had French fries a few times; not many, mind you, but enough to break up the fast. There have been several multiple day stretches where I did not do my devotional. And my efforts to blog five times a week quickly fell by the wayside. I have managed to keep from playing Disney Solitaire, but that still puts my Lenten average in Mendoza Line territory.

March 29, 2026

An Awkward Parade (Revisited)

Several hundred, some may say several thousand, years worth of anticipation hung thick in the air. Like summer humidity that sticks to your shirt the second you step outside, you couldn’t avoid it if you wanted to. Especially not during Passover week.

There was a guy making his way into Jerusalem; a guy claiming to be the Messiah. This was nothing new. He would not be the first that people claimed would save us. There had been tons of guys going around saying that they were the One; saying that they were going to show Rome what’s what. So a would-be messiah making his way to Jerusalem was about as common as a singer-songwriter making their way to Nashville.

But this felt different. He seemed different. Now there was a fair amount of debate whether he was the right or wrong kind of different. For starters, word got out that he had tried to keep a lot of the messiah talk and even tales of his miracles under wraps. But it is difficult to keep those kind of stories quiet: dead men walking, the blind seeing, demons plunging a herd of pigs over a cliff, and thousands fed from a lunch meant for a single kid. You can tell people to keep that hush-hush all you want, but it’s not going to happen.

March 24, 2026

Blooming Broken Branches

In front of our house there is a branch that is barely hanging on to its tree. The limb is a casualty of the ice storm that tore Nashville earlier this year. As we cleaned up the debris afterwards, we tried to tear it off the tree as we did with a few other broken branches out front. But this branch was more stubborn than the others. So even though it is hanging on by a thread and nearly perpendicular with the ground, it remains as a reminder of a storm.

Now that branch is in bloom. Still hanging on by a thread, still touching the ground but now with flowers and the buds of leaves. It was a surprise at first. We did not really expect that branch to still be alive as it was barely connected to its source. But it is very much alive and now a symbol of beautiful tenacity. Even though it looks askew, I cannot imagine trying to rip that branch from its tree and I don’t think my sons would let me if I wanted to.