Each time I sit down to do Passings work -- to write a blog or answer an email, to engage in a spiritual companioning session or to creat...

“Stand up. Look around at everyone in this room,” he said before pausing to allow us to follow his instructions. The 200 or so conferen...

The world is safe. The world is orderly. I am a worthy person. You may have grown up with any or all of the above assumptions. Many of u...

On May 25, my family and I moved into a new home in a new town. Changing homes during the Covid 19 pandemic required an immense amount o...

He called for Mama. His own mother, Larcenia Floyd, had died two years before and was unable to come to him. Even if she were still aliv...

As I ponder what “home” means to me, I keep returning to two books my children and I treasure. We read these hundreds of times during th...

“I am from clothespins, From Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride” The first time I read these lines, I immediately began to feel them in my b...

Saul Ebema lost his parents and family home to unimaginable violence when he was just a boy. He then lived in a refugee camp, on the s...

On my way out of town for the week, I visit Susie in her home. She is actively dying, so I know that this will likely be the last time I...

I don’t know how to do this. I repeated this phrase over and over again as I lay in my hospital bed. Recently diagnosed with a rare hear...

I spent the better part of three decades not living in my body. For thirty years, my physical form served mostly as either a container f...

I noticed that my hospice patient and her young adult daughter were unusually quiet as I settled on the couch for my weekly visit; it fel...

The little head, covered in long, shiny hair the colors of a raven’s wing, was bent over the table. So focused on the work in front of h...

“Papa!” Ed heard the call coming from the bathroom. “Papa! I need help!” He made his way to the bathroom door and tentatively answered, ...

We sat huddled around candles in the darkened cellar, heads bent toward the center of the circle.  Together, we were taking part in a rit...

The call awakened me; the sun had not yet risen, and I wondered who was phoning at this early hour. “Amy,” I heard my father’s voice as ...

(On a recent podcast, Rob Bell repeatedly called for “many funerals”. He was interviewing Shelby Forsythia about the multitude of losses...

One early morning last summer, as I walked under the rising sun, my mind kept returning to two people. I tried to listen to my favorite ...

“Amy, Principal Pratt would like to see you in his office,” said the voice on the loudspeaker. I was sitting in my second grade classroo...

One day, a young boy was playing with his friend’s dog, rolling around on the ground with freedom and joy. The next day, there was the sa...