All Posts

I write this as a descendant of the Mohawk, Lenape, Muscogee, and Siksika peoples. I do not speak for all Indigenous people or all descendants. No one person can. Our nations are diverse. Our histories are different. Our teachings are not identical. And so, there is no single Indigenous perspective on land acknowledgments. Look - I know why land acknowledgments exist. For generations, Indigenous peoples were erased from the story of this continent. Schools taught that Native

How many of us grew up in homes where Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas without cozy nights under blankets, watching holiday cartoons on their annual TV reruns? For many, these half-hour or hour-long specials were as much a tradition as trimming the tree or hanging stockings by the fire. Back then, before streaming services made everything instantly available, watching your favorite holiday classic required planning. Families checked TV guides, coordinated schedules, and g

Do you remember that old book and then movie, “The Stepford Wives?” It told the story of a town where every wife became a robot, making them the perfect wife, mother, and homemaker. Like most horror stories, it is frightening because it edges on the real world – it touches on the emphasis on conformity that seems embedded in all human communities. In many ways we all live as Stepford Wives. Our lives take on a pattern that can be nearly identical to our peers. We are born int

UU Santa Fe, November 27, 2022 “A Blessing for Risk-Takers and Failures” written by Robin Tanner. Today we share in a blessing for losers, risk-takers, all failures far and wide.... Blessed are they who fall in the mud, who jump with gusto and rip the pants, who skin the elbows, and bruise the ego, for they shall know the sweetness of risk. Blessed are they who make giant mistakes, whose intentions are good but impact has injured, who know the hot sense of regret and ask for

I just want to point out that all these politicians who keep claiming they are protecting children by taking steps to criminalize transgender and nonbinary people and ban drag shows, forget that some of us remember the wholesome television of our own childhoods. Like "Little House on the Prairie." That show had it all - rape, incest, sex, unplanned pregnancy, racism, pandemic, death, murder, crime, homelessness, and bullying. The episode where the baby burned to death gave me

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. - Nelson Mandela There are 26,727 high schools in the United States. Only seventeen percent of those schools currently offer classes in all four art disciplines, a total of just 4,543 schools. Comparatively, there are more than 16,000 high school football programs and over 17,000 basketball programs. Ask the coaches of these sports programs and they will tell you it is because they help self-fund th

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams. - Jimmy Carter Many years ago, I visited a home where the homeowner had never thrown away the broken and chipped dishes that happen. Instead, each little piece was taken into the yard where they formed a beautiful and resplendent path that was never quite complete. It was lined with flowers and small seating areas. It was glorious. T

a reclaimed blog from years ago There is a song in the musical Rent where Maureen sings, “Take me for who I am, who I was meant to be…” Unconditional love for another means giving up our expectations for the other person. But acceptance also means giving up our expectations for ourselves. It means recognizing that not everyone will like us, even if they do love us. It means realizing that sometimes relationships are so damaged that they can no longer be healthy. Acceptance is

12,351 Sunrises 12,351 Sunsets 34 Years 12,351 Days 296,424 Hours 17,785,440 Minutes 1,067,126,400 Seconds 106,712,640,000 Moments Loss Love Fear Hope Change Growth Be the reason someone else is around to take count of their life. Invite someone for a cup of coffee. Call that friend you haven't spoken to lately. Listen and love the people around you. And if you are feeling like there is no reason to go on, ask for help. September 10th is World Suicide Prevention day. The last

One of the myths in American history is that Abraham Lincoln, a poor man from Illinois, was an underdog who changed the world by sheer conviction. Lincoln might have grown up humbly, but he was far from poor when elected to the presidency. His estate would be worth over $2 million in 2024 dollars, placing him firmly in the top 10% of Americans by wealth. Today, the wealth gap in politics remains stark. Donald Trump is the wealthiest person ever elected, surpassing the fortune

“Never has America lost a war...But name, if you can, the last peace the United States won. Victory yes, but this country has never made a successful peace because peace requires exchanging ideas, concepts, thoughts, and recognizing the fact that two distinct systems of life can exist together without conflict.” – Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto Can we exist without conflict? Is there a path to becoming a nation where we are not viewed as our

When I was in the 7th grade, I briefly tried to get my friends to change my name to Michael. Growing up in a conservative religious family in small-town Wyoming, I had had little exposure to LGBTQ+ people. The concept of gender diversity was even further beyond my understanding. All I knew was that I didn’t fit into the roles assigned to me. I didn't feel like a girl and the changes my body was experiencing in puberty were hard and traumatic. My soul tugged toward something m

A recent New York Times article posed an intriguing question: “Why Are So Many People Going ‘No Contact’ with Their Parents? A growing movement wants to destigmatize severing ties. Is it a much-needed corrective or a worrisome change in family relations?” As someone with personal experience on multiple sides of this issue—having gone no contact with my parents for nearly eight years, losing touch with my bio father and his family after my adoption, and being cut off by one of

The worst is what happens when you’re blithely going about the dogged routine of your life, those moments when you’ve forgotten to have a guard up at all. - Kristy McGinnis Three weeks ago, nothing could have prepared me for approaching Christmas that could have been my last. Shortly before relocating my life from Minnesota to Santa Fe in May, I did my due diligence and attended to my physical and dental care to allow me to find and become established with new providers for t

Each day, the litany of voices and self-recriminations and guilty what-ifs. You see the poster that was hanging in the bedroom walking down an arroyo with a hamper that once held his clothes. You see the shirt, not yet worn, walking by on a body that isn’t who it was given. You see boxes, and pieces, and bits. But you don’t see him. You see other people’s children, and you know others walk the world that you now inhabit, the world of not knowing where the piece of your heart

What do you do when you feel yourself sinking— when the weight of all that could be feels like ten thousand universes pressing on a body meant to carry only one human spirit? Do you turn to faith,or science, or education? Do you seek despair,or anger, or revenge? Where do those paths lead? When you emerge, on the other side of this journey will your presence have been a beacon of hope, or a force of destruction? We each have the power to choose. We decide who we love, who we

In the beginning, the Earth spoke… the wind carried memory through trees older than empires a fiery sun reminded that transformation is both beautiful and risky stones stood, grounded and still, carrying the wisdom of time before time and water, ever flowing, taught that life is movement and change We gather today in this moment from mountains streams and marshlands from inland cities and dry desert plains from industrial hubs along great lakes to small homes along a bubbli

"The World According to Garp," John Lithgow as Muldoon and Robin Williams as Garp. The first transgender woman I ever met was not a person at all. She was a character. Her name was Roberta Muldoon, introduced in John Irving’s The World According to Garp in 1979 and brought to screen in 1982 by John Lithgow. I encountered Roberta and the Garp world just a few years before Harry Potter, about a decade after the book was published and the movie was made. For many of us, Roberta

When I was nine years old, the Queen of England came to my hometown in Wyoming. She came quietly as a guest of a local rancher whose sister had married Porchie—the Queen’s longtime friend and horse trainer. She walked down Main Street with the same small grace as my grandmother, who she slightly resembled. Sheridan was (and still is) a place where prairie life and global pageantry sometimes brush against each other. Horses from our local polo fields have carried royals in ma

Years ago, I was doing research and stumbled on the story of the first woman ordained by the United Church of Christ in California, near the beginning of the twentieth century. The headline celebrated her as a pioneer. The article ran for several long columns in the newspaper, documenting her life in what looked, at first glance, like respectful detail. But as I read, something felt off. The woman whose ordination was being honored was never named. Not once. She was referred