Feb 23
Feb 23 The Sacred in Strange Seasons

Twenty-seven degrees is cold. There has never been a moment when I saw that the temperature was in the 20s and thought, “Oh boy, let’s go outside!” Yet it is funny how a few days of temperatures in the early adolescence can make 27º feel almost pleasant. It was that cold this morning as I walked into work and I found myself thinking, “This isn’t too bad.” It is fascinating how quickly our bodies can adapt to what at one time was the abnormal. I think that our spirits do the same.

This season is a weird one for me. This is the eighth Sunday of the year and I believe that I have been to church once; back in early January. It is almost certainly the least that I have been to church since I was a fetus. And since my mom was in church regularly during that time then it might as well be the least that I have been to church ever.

The irony is that this absence is due to my presence at the hospital providing spiritual care. On Sundays, I hold a pager, check the network for consults, make rounds, and sit with folks navigating peaks, valleys, and everything in between. Sometimes, these encounters are just chitchat. Many times, it is a sacred experience. Even when God is not mentioned, the divine has this way of showing up in the room. What I experience on Sundays is not exactly church, but it’s not not church either. I’ll often experience community, a passing of the peace, an exchange of wisdom, and sometimes prayer.

Jan 26
Jan 26 If You Can, Hold On

Chris Cox

So…it’s been a bit of a week. There was yet another school shooting in our area, which has torn open wounds for people who have experienced these tragedies before and scared anew children in schools including my own. On the national front, it seems that calling on people to protect the frightened and vulnerable is seen by many as a radical leftist agenda rather than, as I have understood it, basic human decency.

Of course, there have been other things good, bad, and in between. Everything is not lost but, Good Lord, the dark clouds loom ominously and I feel tired. You might feel tired too.

I would like to give you some sort of rousing speech about things being darkest before the dawn, but we don’t really know how long the arcs of history bend. I’m reminded of my favorite Frederick Buechner quote, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” I actually quoted that to one of my sons this week talking about the shooting in Antioch. But, you know, it’s okay if you feel a little scared. You are a person after all (I said this to my son also).

So we’ll go from Buechner to the mid 2000s arena rock banger “All These Things That I’ve Done.” Not the lyric “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” though there is something in there too. But simply this: “If you can, hold on.” Throughout scripture, people are encouraged to not grow weary in doing what is right (Galatians 6:9-10 pops into my mind immediately) even though said weariness is warranted.

Dec 25

Dec 25 To Be Loved, To Be Seen, To Be Heard

Chris Cox

Today has been a weird Christmas Day. Not bad, just different and strange. I got to have a lovely Christmas morning with E. A. and the boys. We opened presents in our living room and listened to our holiday playlist. I got to see everyone’s faces light up at different gifts. I got to lay against my wife on the couch as she read and laughed as I played video games with one of my sons. Then I went to work at the hospital and I will be here until Boxing Day afternoon.

Yet I got to eat Christmas lunch in the cafeteria with my cohort as all of us worked full shifts today. We gathered in our normal circle in our CPE room and learned from each other like we do three times a week. It was my day to share my statement of ministry, which is our statement of what we think effective spiritual care is to each of us. I already knew that my statement delved too deep into the theological at the expense of the experiential. I wrote about Christ as our guiding example, about “God with us” and the ministry of presence, the Greek word kenosis and the way we approach serving others with humility.

All technically good practices but my educator asked me where I was in this process. It was a good example of what Christians should strive towards; it was a good general statement. Yet where did my story intersect with all of this?

Dec 17
Dec 17 Rejoice

Chris Cox

The first reading for the Third Sunday of Advent is Zephaniah 3:14-20 and this is a short story about why part of that verse always stops me in my tracks.

Taylor Swift once famously sang that when you’re fifteen and someone tells you they love you then you’re going to believe it. When I was fifteen, I was gangly, unsure of myself, and generally did not think that I mattered that much. I do not know how the conversation started that led to Zephaniah started, but I do know where it ended. One of the staff members at the camp my family ran (also that summer, a professional theater troupe; long story, different story) named Lauren encouraged me by reading this verse:

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will renew you in His love;
He will exult over you with loud singing
as on a day of festival.
—Zephaniah 3:17-18a

Nearly thirty years later, I distinctly remember hearing this verse for the first time. And it was probably the perfect time for me to hear it. A few years later, I probably would have waved it off because Christians way too often decontextualize passages meant for the people of Israel and make it about us feeling good. I wasn’t there yet, so Zephaniah stuck with me. I guess when you’re fifteen and someone tells you God loves you, you’re going to believe it. So, thank you for that, Lauren. Context or not, that verse always reminds me that God loves me.

Dec 14
Dec 14 Peace...Eventually

Chris Cox

Peace is the movement of Advent that often sounds the most hollow. Hope is an anticipation. Joy and Love are traces of which we receive many glimpses. I guess it is true that we might receive glimpses of peace as well. Yet I sometimes wonder if those glimpses are just respites born of privilege; a peace that comes from being fortunate to be born into a life not knowing hunger, war, or prejudice.

No justice! No peace! This was one of the cries in the Summer of 2020. Covid had locked all of us down which left us without distractions when the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others came across our newsfeeds. Tens of thousands donned masks and carried signs of protest. From bullhorns we heard it declared that none of us were free unless all of us were free. No justice, no peace. Summer 2020. Winter 1955. Advent 2024. Winter, spring, summer, and fall ad infinitum.

Peace is often the desire of a person who is sitting in a hospital room with their dying loved one. Typically they desire peace for the beloved with tubes connecting them to machines. They do not usually ask for peace for themselves. Folks will ask prayers for all kinds of miracles, but it seems that most know that being at peace with the loss of a loved one is a bridge too far. I am not even sure that most people would take that peace even if they could. It is true that time heals many things and the years may ease the sting of loss, yet there is no complete end to grief. Complete peace is just out of reach. Though the beautiful flipside of this reality is that no end to grief means that there is no end to love.

Dec 1

Dec 1 Hope

Chris Cox

This is the first Sunday of Advent and for many a church the theme of this day is hope. I have spent a good portion of the day thinking about hope. I think hope is often relegated to wishful thinking or starry eyed optimism. One hopes they can do well, hopes for the best, hopes that everything will work out. This hope can be dashed, lost, or given up. For hope to mean something in this world it has to sustain a barrage of blows. Hope has to be more than wishful thinking to survive.

Working in a hospital has made me realized all the more how tenuous our grasp on hope can be. Hope has to be fierce here. And even if that hope is undeterred by bad diagnoses, surgeries, and the ominous cacophony of life-sustaining machines, those hopes can still find themselves sometimes crashing into the cold reality that a loved one will not be okay. At least, not okay in the way we hope.

There is a song on Vampire Weekend’s latest album called “Hope.” I really like the song, but I wonder if I should. The plaintive refrain is “I hope you let it go / I hope you let it go / The enemy’s invincible / I hope you let it go.” Sometimes I hear those lyrics and it is a comfort to me. Other times it feels like it is just waving a white flag in the face of an unfair world.

Nov 6
Nov 6 Some Thoughts the Morning after Another Election

Chris Cox

One of the funny things about being a chaplain resident is that my life is very much intertwined with a piece of 1990s technology. If a member of a medical team wants to contact a chaplain about a patient—especially if it is an immediate concern—they page us. I will hear a chirpy beep, check the number, and call back to see how my assistance is needed.

My initial reaction to that pager was fear. Actually, my initial reaction was amusement. Then as I started my first shift on call, I was anxious. I did not know what was going to be on the other side of that chirpy beep. I just knew that it was not going to be easy and that was scary.

In a weird way, I have come to appreciate the pager because I am required to answer it. It’s my job. I cannot run and hide from it. If a chaplain is needed and I am on call then I have to dial that number. I have to show up in that hospital room to try to listen to the emotions and needs of that patient or family member whether I am ready or not, whether my last visit was deeply meaningful or horribly awkward. You get the page and you show up.

Sep 15

Sep 15 Taking Up Our Cross?

Chris Cox

Weekly Lectionary

“If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” - Mark 8:34b-36

This verse is one that is baked into my spiritual journey. If we are to truly follow Jesus then we must take up our crosses. We must be willing to lose our lives. I cannot tell you how many Sunday morning and youth group sermons I have heard about that topic. It was a verse that we remembered and printed on t-shirts. It was our calling.

And I’m not sure if any of us did it.

I am not second guessing the sincerity behind any of the people who have quoted that verse in earnestness (including yours truly), but those stakes do not really present themselves to a white, middle-class American kids. As much as martyrdom was a hot topic for late 90s evangelicals—I owned and regularly perused a copy of Jesus Freaks: Stories of Those Who Stood for Jesus myself—it wasn’t really on the table in South Carolina.

Sep 11

Sep 11 Joshua Tree

Chris Cox

Western Sketches

Have you ever been in a place so still that peace sinks down into your bones? That is one of my best attempts at describing Joshua Tree National Park. One evening late in our trip, the four of us traveled about a hour from our hotel to arrive at the park before sunset. Our sons were hesitant to go. They were tired and had just spent two days at Disneyland. How could rocks, trees, desert, and sky stand up to Disneyland?

It stood up pretty darn well.

We drove into the park and found an area to pull our car into. We piled out to see trails working their way towards these piles of rocks through brush and these trees-that-weren’t-really-trees with their branches bending in all sorts of Seussical directions. The boys and I scrambled up the rocks until we couldn’t go any higher. We rejoined EA on the ground and took in a land unlike any we’d seen. We took pictures. Then we found another way up the rocks and made our way to the top.

All the while, the setting sun painted the sky in shades of glowing orange, gold, and salmon pink on a canvas of steel blue. And we would just watch. For awhile, we sat on rocks high above the ground. Then we returned to the desert floor and we gazed at the rocks, trees, desert, and sky. My heart rate slows just thinking about that view.

Aug 29

Aug 29 A Very Late, Likely Inadequate Response to the Bullhorn Guy Who Said We Were Heading to Hell for Going to Disneyland

Chris Cox

Western Sketches

As we joined a throng of people walking from various Anaheim hotels to Disneyland, there was a guy with a sign and a bullhorn. He was…not preaching, but pontificating at every passerby; telling them that they did not need fairies, princesses, and heroes, they needed Jesus. By going to this land of imagination we were being an affront to God. And he informed us that we—hundreds of people he’d never met—were going to hell for partaking in what the Mouse had to offer that day. A few people snapped back at him and he snapped back.

Despite having a litany of reasons for why he was wrong, I didn’t say anything because I am a conflict-averse person and I can’t imagine a worse start for your kids’ day at Disneyland than their dad getting into a theological argument with a stranger when the park is just a few hundred feet away. I reminded our sons that his yelling and condemnation was not what our faith in Jesus was about. Then we went on to have a lovely day at the Happiest Place on Earth.

Yet over a month later, I wonder what I would have said to him had I stopped. Granted, the best means of communication would be a two-way dialogue although people who have a bullhorn are typically not interested in a conversation (which is a pity, because it is actually quite fun to have conversations with people while you are using a bullhorn).

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.