Feb 23
Feb 23 Blessed are the Minnesotans

Leviticus begins with the clear goals and boundaries that are necessary for the sake of a moral and a religious society, and the tangent is set in motion with the final so-called “Golden Rule.” This all leads and develops to create the Jesus phenomenon, and what could well be called Jesus’ “commandments,” which go far beyond mere boundary-keeping to actually moving beyond all boundaries to take care of those who did not make it, do not fit in, the outsider, the criminal, the vulnerable, and the weak. It is quite a leap which, to be honest, many Christians have never made. You could obey the Ten Commandments perfectly all of your life and never come close to the mark that Jesus sets for the final judgment.
—Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, 26-27

And there it is. Ever since reading it this morning, I have had that paragraph and especially that last sentence rattling around in my head. Because of course that is the difference of actually following Jesus. It is not whether you can keep the commandments, it is whether you are doing what you can to care for those who do not make it, do not fit in, the outsider, the criminal, the vulnerable, and the weak (Rohr also points out that seed of what Jesus is talking about is right there in Leviticus’ admonishment to love your neighbor as yourself).

This last month is Minnesota, we witnessed ordinary people doing just this. There has been a movement to protect neighbors that have been targeted by ICE. Through grocery runs, carpools, Zoom calls, protests, whistles, and so much more.

Feb 20
Feb 20 Hoping for a Change in the Wind

Chris Cox

One of the few reasons that I still put up with Facebook is the Memories app, which will show me what I was posting on that day through the years. Usually it allows me to see pictures of when the two (wonderful) adolescents who live in our house were adorable tiny humans. What popped up this morning were pictures that I posted from a spiritual retreat I took to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky three years ago. Along with the pictures was the caption reading “This place has been very good for my soul. I hope I get the chance to come back again.”

I haven’t been back yet though I still hope to. Trying to remind myself of those few days at Gethsemani, I tried to look for my journal from that weekend to no avail. But I did find myself looking back to a difficult blog that I wrote a couple of weeks afterwards that contained the memory that was creeping on the edges of my mind:

Feb 19
Feb 19 Pulling the Goalie

Chris Cox

Let’s talk about the gold medal game in women’s ice hockey at the Olympics: United States vs. Canada, the two titans of the sport. The U.S. has been on an absolute tear through the tournament; throttling their opponents by a combined score of 31-1. That included a 5-0 victory over Canada. I had their semifinal game against Sweden on in the background a couple of days ago and there was a two and a half minute stretch where the U.S. scored three goals. It was like this team was playing the Olympics on Rookie mode.

So naturally this inevitable juggernaut was losing 1-0 to Canada with just over two minutes left in the gold medal game. With a stoppage of play, the United States made the move of pulling their goalie to allow for an additional player to help the offensive attack on the other end. The obvious flip side of that move is that it there is no one to protect the goal leaving the net wide open for Canada to put the game on ice (I will not apologize for puns whether intentional or unintentional).

The risk paid off as Hilary Knight deflected a shot from teammate Laila Edwards into the goal for the equalizing score. Then the United States went on to win the gold in overtime on Megan Keller’s beautiful goal that made me leap off the couch. The official slogan for the Winter Olympics should be “Making Ice Hockey the Most Important It Has Been to Me Since the Mighty Ducks Trilogy.”

Feb 18
Feb 18 Paradoxology

Chris Cox

There are two moments that matter. One is when you know that your one and only life is absolutely valuable and alive. The other is when you know your life, as presently lived, is entirely pointless and empty. You need both of them to keep going in the right direction. Lent is about both. The first such moment gives you energy and joy by connecting you with your ultimate Source and Ground. The second gives you limits and boundaries, and a proper humility, so you keep seeking the Source and Ground and not just your small self.
-Richard Rohr, Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, 9

Watching the Olympics is a big deal in our household. We spend the weeks leading up to it reminding our sons that the TV belongs solely to Mom and Dad. Whether it is curling, cross country skiing, ski jump chainsaw juggling, or snowboard cross, we will be watching the Olympics (ski jump chainsaw juggling is terribly dangerous and should not be tried by anyone). We also let them know that these weeks are the most patriotic they will see us. Pride for the United States of America will be on display in a way that seems out of sync with how we typically feel about our country, especially in 2026.

It’s a weird thing to feel deep pride and deep shame about your country at the same time. Yet those paradoxes are central to our human experiences. I am deeply proud to be from South Carolina and often quite embarrassed by my home state. I love Star Wars and really wish Star Wars fans would chill the heck out and stop policing what others enjoy. The Christian faith is something that I hold near and dear to my heart even as experiences have made me profoundly wary of most every church that crosses my path. I am aware of both the great good and heinous harm of which I am capable. To be human is to live with these seeming contradictions.

Feb 16
Feb 16 Prologue to a Lenten Practice/Possibly a Terrible Idea

Chris Cox

Lent! It is a time for spiritual reflection, fasting, and taking on practices as we look towards Easter. It is usually not a time for exclamation marks, but it is not yet Wednesday. I have decided to try something this Lent. I really miss writing. It is a way for me to get my thoughts and try to make sense of the world (which is a quagmire of a task presently). So in addition to fasting (no Coca-Cola, french fries, or playing Disney Solitaire this year), I am going to attempt blogging five days a week during this season. Yes, I know it is not 2007 and people these days just make reels or whatever they do on TikTok, but blogging is my lane.

I have been trying to find work for about half a year now and my days are a bit lonely. I feel somewhat like a ghost while the rest of my family is at school. So writing, even crappy first drafts a la Anne Lamott, is my attempt to de-apparition myself during this season. I hope to rediscover my voice. I am not totally sure what I am going to write. I will be going through both Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent by Richard Rohr and In the Low: Honest Prayers for Dark Seasons by Justin McRoberts & Scott Erickson so I will reflect on those some. Likely it will be a little bit of everything.

I’m posting this to hold myself accountable to this plan. We’ll see how it goes; it could be a terrible idea. My hope is that it will provide something nourishing for me at the very least.

Jan 11

Jan 11 Beloved

Chris Cox

When Jesus rises from the water after being baptized, a voice from heaven says that he is the Beloved. That moment is a small but an important factor in how I understand my faith. The notion is a tapestry of this passage, God loving the world in John’s gospel, nothing separating us from the love of God in Jesus in Paul’s letter to the Romans, the twin commands to love God and our neighbor as ourselves in the Greatest Commandment. All of which is to say that if Jesus is beloved then I am beloved too. And so are you.

Thus I view baptism as this great reminder of God’s grace, new life, and our belovedness. I think to the baptism of both my sons, which I was so fortunate to administer for both. I cannot put a value on how much I love Jim and Liam. Their belovedness is off the charts and I am a finite and flawed parent. Even when they are mean to one another, act like surly adolescents, or are rude to myself or their mom, they are still beloved. I hope that they will always know that they are beloved by God, their parents, and many more people. Seeing ourselves through that lens can change our lives. Seeing our neighbor through that lens can change the world.

Jan 6

Jan 6 What is Truth?

Chris Cox

Growing up in a Southern Baptist church, I heard a great deal about “Absolute Truth.” I was warned to guard against the many lies that the world would throw my way. If I wanted to be grounded in any sort of reality then I needed to trust God (and, by default, my particular denomination’s interpretation of God which is where things got dicey). Now I know that it is more than a little bit arrogant for a human or institution to make claims of being the sole arbiter of Truth. Life can be complicated. Yet I have found myself more and more frustrated with what a tenuous grasp we have on any sort of shared semblance of reality.

After the 2020 election, the guy who was the President at the time insisted that the election had been stolen from him. This claim had been debunked time and time again, but he persisted to perpetuate a lie and many people believed him. Five years ago today, he held a rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C. on the day that Congress was to certify the election. A mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol and many eventually breached the building. This was something that our whole entire country witnessed in real time. People on both sides of the political aisle were horrified.

Jan 4

Jan 4 Stuck in the Middle at the Beginning

Chris Cox

I had a semi-recurring dream last night which dragged me back into a difficult period in my past. As a result, I woke up blindingly angry at a lot of people. I could not get my mind off of the hurt. Then I felt stupid for letting the past continue to wound me in this brand new year of 2026.

The calendar is something both kind and cruel. One one hand, new days and new years allow us the opportunity for fresh starts. We often need those kind of signposts to propel us forward. Yet a new year can also be intensely frustrating when you don’t feel new. Maybe you wouldn’t beat yourself up if you felt like you were stuck on some random day. But this is a brand new year so you feel like you need to get your crap together.

Maybe the best way I can get my crap together is to remember that we don’t move in the same linear fashion as the calendar. Traumas, memories, breakthroughs, and the like will sometimes make a person feel like they are making huge progress one day and fifty steps backwards the next. I confess that it sometimes makes me wonder whether I am healing or I just had a really good distraction. It is an easy way to frustrate yourself.

Dec 15

Dec 15 Wake Up Dead Man (or What Would Jud Do?)

Chris Cox

I don’t know if I can say enough good things about Wake Up Dead Man. Yes, it is another twisty Knives Out mystery with Rian Johnson and his stellar cast taking the series in a darker, more gothic direction. This whodunnit—set in a remote parish in upstate New York—is particularly in my wheelhouse because it creates the space for this to be a story about faith and skepticism.

Far from being a didactic, both sides are given virtuous, fully drawn characters which allows the film to be a genuine conversation between the ideas. Wake Up Dead Man also delves into the ways in which faith is twisted by fear, power, and the love of wealth into something that can cripple personal lives and poison communities on a larger scale. It is entertaining, mysterious, funny, and takes seriously grace, forgiveness, calling, and doubt.

Yet a couple of days after watching the film with my family, what lingers with me most is a particular scene about midway through the movie. I will try to tiptoe around spoilers as I provide some context. Detective Benoit Blanc (played by series mainstay Daniel Craig) and a young priest named Jud Duplenticy (an excellent Josh O’Connor) have teamed up to figure out a seemingly impossible crime for which Jud is a person of interest.

Dec 12

Dec 12 Advent Music (or Four Geese A-Playin')

Chris Cox

Usually my Christmas season listening is a steady diet of A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio and a curated list of merry favorites. But this year there has also been a steady dose of the album Getting Killed by Geese. I saw the album on numerous end-of-the-year “Best of” lists and figured that I should give it a listen. I almost didn’t make it past the album opener “Trinidad,” which features a cacophony of drums and guitars as frontman Cameron Winter wails, “There’s a bomb in my car!” This ain’t Christmas music. But it might just be Advent music.

I am not going to sit here and tell you what any of these lyrics mean. Sure, I can posit what a hundred horses dancing in times of war and conversations with Joan of Arc convey but it would all be shots in the dark. But how does the album feel? In the chaos, noise, anxiety, and brief moments of grace, it sounds like now. Both now in the sense of this time and place in history and now as in Advent. This is a season of waiting, expectation, and hoping for some light to come into a dark world.

October 30, 2026

What's My Name? What's My Station?

I have a new office in our home and one of the things I am enjoying is decorating the space. I have placed books, Lego sets, and Funko Pops on the shelves. My wall has photos of family, places that I have traveled, artwork my siblings have given me, diplomas, etc. Across from my desk on the wall, hangs a cross that we got from a church in Reykjavik and a small colorfully-painted tile depicting Assisi. On the floor beneath them is the one item in here that I haven’t yet put up: my certificate of ordination.

I was ordained as a minister ten years ago today. It was a step with which I struggled for awhile. My Baptist roots fostered in me a firm belief in the priesthood of all believers. If you say that you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a minister. So the hierarchy implied by being called “Reverend” made me feel a little uncomfortable. I did not use the title for myself often unless I was writing my Congressperson. Despite these qualms, I did ultimately pursue ordination. I am glad that I did. I am just not totally sure what to make of it now.

I don’t serve as a vocational minister anymore; not in a church, not as a chaplain, not in some sort of parachurch organization. I am an Administrative Assistant in a hospital Spiritual Care department. In fact, I haven’t even attended a church service in maybe a year and a half save an Ash Wednesday service that I snuck off to at the beginning of Lent. I did officiate a wedding in a church over the summer; an experience that I loved and was very meaningful for me. But I don’t really know what to do about that ordination certificate. Or church.

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.