Mary, Meet Myrine: My Second Tattoo, The Goodness Of The Word And Of The World, And Fleshy, Incarnate Grace
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
3M ago
So in my last blog, I revealed my first tattoo. This blog, I am revealing my second and also very much my last tattoo. People tell me that I’ll come to feel differently about it, but nope: I said what I said. This will do it, though I’m bracing myself for the few planned touch ups to this latest one. Tattoos remind my of my late mother, who, as we pulled in to a station to fill up the car, would say, “I hate getting gas, I love having gotten gas.” Cars need gas, though, and I don’t need another tattoo. But I did want/need this one. This delightful woman rests on my right arm: Mary sings ..read more
Visit website
Mary’s Divine No, Advent’s Divine Yes, and My New Tattoo
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
4M ago
In a conversation about process theology with a Spent Dandelioner a spell back, it clicked that process holds to a God always active. This much, actually, I’d managed to grasp for some time, but I hadn’t really ever put it in contrast to more traditional theology, the theology that, short of Pentecost, is generally heard in the Church. The light went on when I found myself singing the table grace I love so much, and wow, can my family and can the Lutheran family sing this baby in harmony: Be present at our table, Lord! Be here and everywhere adored! These mercies bless and grant that we ..read more
Visit website
For All The Saints…And Yet Sinners
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
5M ago
When certain words come up in the alphabet, I bet Merrium-Webster’s editors draw straws, or play rock, paper, scissors to decide who gets stuck defining it. I thought about that possibility again this morning when I got curious about how a dictionary would define “saint.” You can find their definition here, but the upshot is that every single sub-definition makes purity, perfection, deed-or-virtue-driven worthiness, and a most-certainly earned spot in heaven a pre-req for sainthood. Relatedly, I’m pretty sure that there aren’t many Lutherans on the Merrium-Webster editorial board. ~~~~~~ In t ..read more
Visit website
28 Hot Takes About The State of the ELCA for Reformation Day
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
5M ago
Below is a reduxed, modified FB post I made a couple of weeks ago.  Given that tomorrow is Reformation Day, I’d like to share it more widely via this blog, but you are also welcome to visit that post (hyperlinked here) to see the conversation—and there was one!—generated there. ~~~~~ I know I’ve been a bit off grid lately—life has been awfully busy, mostly for wonderful and good reasons (a link to one of them below!). But publicly quiet though I may have been, privately or in smaller corners of my little world, I’ve been actively musing and in conversations about many a thing related ..read more
Visit website
The Spirit of the Day, the Day of the Spirit
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
11M ago
After a week in this heart-home, my husband and I just left Regensburg, Germany. This place, people, oh this place. Also known as “Ratisbona,” this ancient town, situated on the northern most point of the Danube, essentially preserved from destruction through two world wars, holds within its boundaries tender, breathtaking, complicated histories, certainly personally (both of my children were born there, my doctoral work was done there, and the accident which changed everything occurred there), and on cultural, political, and social terms as well. Marcus Aurelius, for example, meandered u ..read more
Visit website
Easter Morning is Here!
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
1y ago
He is risen! With this good news, although death has a word, to be sure, it’s no longer the last one. Our perception of everything, therefore, has shifted: ~our concepts of what ought to be treasured, or abandoned, or feared; ~our definitions of power, or status, or the beautiful; ~our trust from our worthiness, to God’s; ~our distrust that we are worthy, to God’s resounding declaration that indeed, we are; ~the way we care for the earth, the creatures within it, ourselves, our enemies; ~whether we bide our time or steward it to love the world as God so ..read more
Visit website
Holy Thursday Hot Take
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
1y ago
Holy Thursday hot take: It’s called ‘Maundy Thursday’. I.e., ‘Commandment Thursday’. Not ‘Suggestion Thursday’. That’s it. That’s the blog. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 and John 13:1-17, 31b-35       ..read more
Visit website
Holy Week is Every Week
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
1y ago
God said to Moses, “Remove your sandals, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” When our first year seminary Old Testament class got to this verse, Exodus 3:5, our professor didn’t pass by it quickly. It’s a rare command in the First Testament, so the exact point of it in the tradition of Moses remains unclear.  Certainly in other cultures the gesture is a sign of reverence: any number of religious customs expect worshippers to remove their shoes before entering a sacred space. Even without heaps of internal reference to the practice, then, most schol ..read more
Visit website
Snow on Car Ports: A Bad Dream, and a Pattern, Transfigured (Again)
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
1y ago
I woke up to a rare bad dream the other night. To be clear, it wasn’t a nightmare, per se; hardly the stuff worthy of even a B-movie plot. What shook me awake rather was simply two women berating me—like, with well-honed contempt delivered with a master-class facial and verbal derision—for, get this: I hadn’t yet shoveled the snow off our ugly tarpy car ports. I mean, how northern Minnesotan can you get. But wow did the women in this dream rattle me, both in my dream and when I woke up. I felt so appropriately indicted there was a bona fide lump in my throat, working its way up to a lip trembl ..read more
Visit website
Come Join Us For a European Reformation Tour!
OMG Center for Theological Conversation
by Anna
1y ago
Dear OMG readers, This May, I’m co-leading a tour of reformation sites in the Czech Republic and Germany with my friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Anne Hokenstad. Pastor Hokenstad has put together a robust trip, organized by the very fine Witte Travel company out of Grand Rapids, Michigan. We’ll begin in the Czech Republic, first visiting Prague, and then Lidice, and wrapping up our time in that beautiful country in Plzeň (Pilsen). From there, we’ll make our way to Germany, stopping in Regensburg—the town in which I earned my doctorate in systematic theology, and is dearly beloved by me—and ..read more
Visit website

Follow OMG Center for Theological Conversation on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR