The past couple of years directed my thinking and longings to what kind of friend I want to be. Or maybe it’s more like what kind of person I want to be. They are hand-in-hand concepts. This is what I am thinking about going into the new year. There is such beauty and power in …
Christmas is a good time to talk about why we don’t call God, “Mother.” We know that God is a Spirit, not male or female. And yet we use Father/Son language, “him” language. Even though we see some maternal language associated with God, we privilege the paternal language. Sadly, and even dangerously, many in the …
“When we read authors who use language different from what we’re used to, we have an opportunity to try to hear what they are intending to say, an opportunity for empathy and what theologians once called the judgement of charity.” This is what I needed to do. I thought I already was, but reading Greg …
This is my third post on Dr. Curt Thompson’s book, The Soul of Desire. Today I want to introduce his practice of confessional communities. It is a form of group therapy. In reading about this method of interpersonal neurobiological psychotherapy that Dr. Thompson practices, I thought about how our friendships need to be more like …
Prey Tell—well here is a hard-hitting word play for a hard-hitting book about the silencing of women. Tiffany Bluhm doesn’t use the whimsical approach to try and soften the male reader and help him better digest the hard truths she sets out to convey in this book. It even makes me a little uncomfortable at …
Some are asking me more about my theology of gender. I’m working on another book that will continue to speak to that, but mainly because I want to reinvigorate the church in Song of Songs. This book, found in the center of our Bibles, teaches us about Christ, his church, man, and woman. It teaches …
Dream, if you can, a courtyardAn ocean of violets in bloomAnimals strike curious posesThey feel the heatThe heat between me and you Perhaps these lyrics in Prince’s popular song accidentally describe what we see in the best song of all, the Song of Songs. In it, we see the lushness of the garden scenes highlighting …
During times of trial, many Christians rightly find comfort in the Psalms. I have been turning to the Song of Songs. It’s led me to read a lot of commentary and sermons on the Song as I have been studying it. The latest issue of Credo Magazine is out and I have a review published …
“The usefulness of an elder will depend in the long run more on his character than on his gifts and knowledge.” David Dickson said in The Elder and His Work Yesterday, a website went live with an overwhelming number of screenshots from a Facebook group named Genevan Commons. Sadly, I know there are more. I …
Over the Christmas and New Year holiday, I treated myself to read Volume II of Amy Mantravadi’s Chronicles of Maud series, The Forsaken Monarch. At first, I couldn’t decide whether to read it on Kindle or in print, as I didn’t know if I could comfortably hold a 657-page book the way you’d want to curl …
Aimee Byrd 