The Emergent Self

Questioning what we're told it means to be human

Topic

Religion & Belief

Belief, doubt, and what remains. On faith, on leaving faith, and on building meaning on other ground.

Painting of an empty public swimming pool behind a chain-link fence on a summer afternoon, with flowering trees and a diving board

Who Decided What Our Skin Would Mean?

In 1977, a student in my rural Georgia classroom told me he wasn't allowed in the city pool. That moment raised a question I still carry: who decided what our skin would mean, and who gains from the answer?
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 God You Can Keep in a ZIP Code

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.
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

From the Altar to the Streets

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.
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.

Leaving Can Be Its Own Kind of Arriving

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.
Watercolor of a front door standing open onto a stone step, where a covered dish has been left, suggesting I'll pray for you as a doorway to showing up

Is “I’ll Pray for You” Ever Enough?

Is "I'll pray for you" ever enough? A former priest weighs the honest case for prayer and asks readers when those words open a door.
Watercolor of an older hand resting gently on another person's open hand across a wooden table, symbolizing human presence beyond thoughts and prayers

Beyond “Thoughts and Prayers”: A Former Priest on Where Healing Really Happens

A former priest on why "thoughts and prayers" fall short, and how presence, practical help, and human connection carry the healing that prayer once promised.