The Subversive, Confrontational, Emboldening Stories of Christmas {Part Two}

November 28, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

{Perhaps my favorite thing about this season is reminding readers (and myself) how subversive are the Christmas stories. Before reading this column, I suggest you read Part One HERE.} The Christmas stories in Matthew and Luke[1] served as preludes, or overtures, to those gospels. They encapsulated in miniature the “good news” of the larger piece and are the lens through which to read it. For readers living under the weight of imperial violence, including systematic economic and religious oppression, spying,... Read more

The Subversive, Confrontational, Emboldening Stories of Christmas {Part One}

November 20, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Perhaps my favorite thing about the Christmas season—just a few days away—is reminding myself and others how subversive are the stories of Christmas. Among global literature, they stand out as baldly subversive and anti-imperial while at the same time being neutralized. The gospel writers of Matthew and Luke (the only canonical gospels with birth narratives) each in their own way set up a stark confrontation between Jesus and the Roman Caesars, of all things—something no first-century reader would have failed... Read more

The Magic of Godparenting

November 14, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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In the earliest photo of us, I am concealed behind the bloom of Wren’s baptismal gown while they are ruby-faced, captured mid-scream. It’s an inauspicious snapshot of the relationship to follow. But leap-frog four years. I wait outside Wren’s preschool to pick them up. They’re travelling home with me and godfather Gilberto, my then husband, for their first sleepover. Wren spots me, hunches their shoulders and grins the way they might look at a baby bird. They’re so elated they... Read more

Las Posadas: On Mary and Joseph and the Border

November 7, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Celebrants press wall-to-wall into houses where we gather, forty to sixty people, night after night reciting the prayers and singing the songs of Las Posadas. Steamy windows emanate light into winter’s deepest dark. Posadas (translated literally as “lodgings”) take place each night from December 16 through Christmas Eve and reenact Mary and Joseph’s attempt to find lodging in Bethlehem. The tradition originated in Spain and was carried to Mexico. The uniquely Mexican version seems to have started in 1538, when... Read more

How Humility Makes Way for Forgiveness

October 31, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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One of the main tenets of Christianity is the belief that we are transformed by God and made new; that we have been and continue to be forgiven (and this does not require a belief in ‘substitutionary atonement’). Forgiveness, along with justice for the oppressed (ie Luke 4:18), is part of what we call the ‘good news.’ So shouldn’t Christians be especially forgiving? In theory, yes. But Christians fail at forgiveness as much as anyone. Do we truly believe in... Read more

Why Quiet Listening is Important Action

October 24, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Do you too feel it—the disorienting internal pressure we experience in social-media-soaked times to say something about terrible events? Human motivations being what they are, I believe this internal pressure is gray-tinged: neither fully concerned for others nor fully ego-driven. Most commonly, we find ourselves between this black/white dichotomy. And most events are themselves more pallid gray than black and white, involving complicated situations and flawed human actors. Even something as formerly non-complex as a natural disaster is now, in... Read more

‘The Mercy of the Fallen’: Using our Failures for Good

October 17, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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A repeated theme in the gospels is riddles. Both people trying to trick Jesus with riddles and Jesus teaching or answering back with riddles. And in this week’s lectionary passage (Mt 22:15-22), Jesus is using a sort of riddle. He says, “Give to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and give to God what belongs to God.” But really, what doesn’t belong to God? In a roundabout way, Jesus is saying—everything belongs to God, so make everything available for... Read more

Why Stewarding our Talents Starts with Gratitude

October 9, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Whenever I talk about parables, I include the same reminder: a parable is a snapshot, like a photo, that conveys a core meaning. It isn’t an allegory where every detail has symbolic value. The parable in yesterday’s lectionary passage (Matt 21:33-46) comes out of Jesus’ time when the majority were tenant farmers on the lands of powerful people, and when elites tended to have slaves. The story takes these realities as a given; it doesn’t mean Jesus approved of tenant... Read more

Finding a Wider View

October 3, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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The unthinkable is happening. One of the country’s two major political parties has become the party of Donald Trump; and at this point in the presidential election, he appears both likely to win the Republican primary and to be quite competitive. I don’t need to enumerate the unthinkable things he has done or that he plans to do if re-elected,[1] as I assume my readers are aware. My intention here is to explore “what now?” and “how can we adopt... Read more

When I Encountered the Spirit of a Loved One

September 29, 2023 By Tricia Gates Brown

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Roughly seven years ago; late-summer day under a New Mexico sky, the blue of which rivals all sky. Blue like taffeta. Like a French painter’s dream of sky—which is what lured painters to Taos in the 20th century to eventually become the “Taos School,” setting stage for an influx of artists and intellectuals including the likes of Georgia O’Keefe and D. H. Lawrence. I drove out of Taos where I’d retreated to an adobe, pond-side casita on a farm, attempting... Read more