heartstrings make tender roots that strain toward the sunlampeven as they burn from the heatthat drink deep of bitter tearseven as they disintegrate from the acidand still they prove to bethe tastiest morsels for devouring is it any wonder that my garden doesn’t bloomwhen you trample growing shootsto rip out tender rootsand have them for […]
Author: shannonvtrenton
Wrong
i knowjust enough to knowhow sparse and fleetingare the things i knowfor every thing i learni unlearn three morefor a life built on being righti have learned to live in the spaceof being wrong and maybe i’m wrongabout the guest list for heavenand maybe i’m wrongabout how gloriously we are madeand maybe i’m wrongto believe […]
What do I tell your children?
I have a question for you. You, my friend or colleague or family member who is elated (relieved, maybe) at how things turned out at General Conference last month. (Yep, it’s a #GC2019 post.) We have been over so many angles of what happened there, what may be yet to come, but one thing has […]
#Homiletics2018 Day 3 – Looking Inward
Wednesday was a day of more inward focus for me at Metropolitan AME. The sermons and lectures I heard were no less focused on justice, nor did they neglect the people we serve. But each speaker moved me to consider my own holistic ministry practice in a meaningful way. Sadly, I missed what I heard […]
#Homiletics2018 – Days 1 and 2, a recap
It is already halfway through the week at the 2018 Festival of Homiletics, and I can barely catch my breath! It’s one thing to lay out your color-coded calendar and see ten worship services and nearly as many lectures in five days–and that’s just in one location!–but being in the midst of such fire and […]
Providence
Providence: The Christian understanding of God’s continuing action by which all creation is preserved, supported, and governed according to God’s plans and purposes for human history and human lives. For the past eight months, I have done more thinking about my call to ministry than I did in the two years that led me tof […]
Madame President
When I was a little girl, I wanted to be a lot of different things: a doctor, a lawyer, a ballerina, a singer, and on my days off, a worker at McDonald’s. Clearly I also harbored a secret desire to be a Time Lord, since I imagined I could do all of these things at once. Throughout […]
I’m certain of uncertainty
Brian has a drawer in his dresser full of t-shirts that he’s either had since before I met him in 2004, or that I bought for him early in our relationship. Many of the shirts are wearing thin; many have holes forming in the reinforced collars because of age, wear, and that time he lived in a […]
Cleansing the Temple
My goal this Holy Week is to look at my faith and the church’s engagement in the world through the lens of Jesus’ time in Jerusalem. Today, I’m thinking about the typical sermon one hears on Palm Sunday – Jesus enters the gates of Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, with children waving palm […]
Transitus
Palm Sunday is the beginning of the end of Jesus’ active ministry on earth. His arrival in Jerusalem, foretold in the millennia before he took human form, sets into motion all of the events of Holy Week. This post is based on a sermon I delivered at Shoregate UMC this morning as part of the […]