The Emergent Self

Questioning what we're told it means to be human

A God You Can Keep in a ZIP Code

An older White woman in a Sunday coat and hat stands in a sunlit church, seen from behind, looking up at a large Haitian-style creation tapestry of Black figures, animals and a golden sun

A parishioner once told me a tapestry did not belong in church because there were no White people in it. Thirty years later I have the words for what she was defending: not God, but a mascot.

From the Altar to the Streets

Open doors of a grand Catholic church, seen from the altar with a green chasuble in the foreground, looking out on a neighborhood street where neighbors talk together

I loved the liturgy and served a near-northside Indianapolis parish as White flight hollowed it out. Spinoza helped me understand why I had to leave, and what true piety asks of us.

Dignity Is Something We Do

Watercolor of an elderly woman in a pink cardigan speaking with a nurse who listens closely in a sunlit examination room, while a gray-haired man sits quietly in the corner with his back to the viewer.

In the emergency room, I answered every question the staff asked my mother. My answers were correct, and that was the problem. What that morning taught me about dignity.

Was My Depression Really a Gift?

Watercolor of a man seen from behind on a bench in a dim office break room, a second coffee cup set beside him as dawn light comes through the window, asking whether depression was really a gift

Was my depression really a gift? A former priest tests his own claim that the dark years after he left the priesthood were a gift.

Leaving Can Be Its Own Kind of Arriving

Watercolor of a man standing in a doorway with his back to the viewer, a black clerical shirt left on a chair in the dim room behind him and a bright 1990s office ahead, where a plane climbs past the window.

After I left the priesthood, I spent a year in temp jobs, standing in a doorway between who I had been and who I would become. Leaving, I have come to believe, is its own kind of arriving.

Nobody Is Self-Made

A hiker stands alone on a misty hilltop at dawn while faint, ghostly figures along the path below help others climb, steady a ladder, open a gate, and point the way

The phrase “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” began as a joke. Why nobody is truly self-made, and what privilege and intersectionality reveal about success.