I’ve heard other people’s churchyard memories from childhood that involve hide and seek among tombstones, the sound of bells, or processions of saints, palms, and monstrances. The ecclesiastical architecture of my childhood probably can be best described as “Baptist Bunker;” I have vivid memories of joining forces with Sunday School classmates to find ways into and out of window wells significantly deeper than a kindergartener is tall. After some stints at megachurches and a nondenominational “Bible Church” that met in a funeral home, my parents settled on a yellow-brick-with-glass-blocks-as ..read more

We wash feet on the New Haven Green, feet that need deep callouses, that walk in wet socks after spates of rain. If you listen while two feet soak,  maybe you come to know the daily movements of a woman named D., whose feet drag from the warming center  into winter dawns to rest in the bus shelter until the library opens at 10, who hurries to the seat by the window in the sci-fi/fantasy reading room, and waits for her ankles to hinge and tilt with A Wrinkle in Time, turning gravity into a Mrs. Whatsit lullaby. On Sundays and all public holidays, when the library is closed and it’s ..read more

It’s Ash Wednesday, and I’m excited. Not because I like to dwell on death. I just love ashes: the fire and matter, this rite of passage, this riverboat of living and dying we’re all in.  As far as I know, drawing the cross in ashes on foreheads is the only unconditional ritual of the church. You don’t have to be ordained or even baptized to give ashes. And to get an Ash Wednesday blessing, no need to profess a thing: Just receive, in a dark smudge, the dust-to-dust of us, the particles of stars on your skin.  This afternoon, I’ll receive ashes on the New Haven Green, then offer ..read more

We’re thrilled that Jeanna Kadlec– “writer, astrologer, former lingerie boutique owner, and recovering academic”– answered KtB‘s 11 Questions about her new memoir, Heretic: Describe your book in three adjectives! Restorative, queer, unfuckablewith.  What is one of your favorite sentences from the book? “I dyed my hair red, I screeched like an owl, I wandered in the wilderness until I created myself anew.”  Name a book or writer that inspired or guided you as you wrote. Mary Oliver got me through some tough moments. What is something you discovered in the process of writing this boo ..read more

I’ve heard other people’s churchyard memories from childhood that involve hide and seek among tombstones, the sound of bells, or processions of saints, palms, and monstrances. The ecclesiastical architecture of my childhood probably can be best described as “Baptist Bunker;” I have vivid memories of joining forces with Sunday School classmates to find ways into and out of window wells significantly deeper than a kindergartener is tall. After some stints at megachurches and a nondenominational “Bible Church” that met in a funeral home, my parents settled on a yellow-brick-with-glass-blocks-as ..read more

Photo credit CNN Politics. It is hard to believe that just a few days ago my family and I went to a Fourth of July parade and found ourselves fleeing gunfire. It feels like a lifetime ago.  When I left my house in Highland Park, IL, this morning, I turned back after half a block. I was going to see the memorial where the vigil was the night before, and my hands felt empty. The daisies in my yard had just started blooming, and I meant to cut some of them, but then I thought about the alliums, those tall springtime bursts that look like fireworks, which after flaring purple fade to brown. I ..read more

The heavens distract from the gnashing of ants And from your mouth pour forth doom after doom. The shaking fist proclaims the wound of your brand— Nightmare upon nightmare sprout from your moon. You’ve pitched termites into our wooden house, And cloud upon cloud upon cloud you build, Night after night we hear the working jaws Packing them full of grayness and rainfall. Your steeples ..read more

Rachel Replogle grew up surrounded by homophobia and purity culture.  “This was a world with a lot of different messages that I grew up in, hearing that being queer was wrong, hearing that my body was inherently bad and that any sort of sexual desire was inherently evil,” Replogle explained, “any attraction to a gender that was not explicitly outlined in the Bible was inherently evil.” Replogle, who now identifies as a nonbinary lesbian, grew up in a deeply conservative religious environment, her mother a prominent ex-gay speaker and her parents in charge of a local campus ministry.  ..read more

I don’t mean to be ungrateful.   At six, seven, eight, you were prophet, priest, king;   I told myself not to praise you.   I only knew you, I unknowingly worshipped with my child heart.   You spent our time trying to direct my eyes to the cross. I swear, I thought I was looking.   At sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, you were refuge, shield, sword;   double-edged, your blade dug into my flesh into my bones in the name of Jesus,   without meaning to.   But there was love, love, love, dripping from our hands. We both gripped the sharp edge, and it was painfu ..read more

Beatitude   a forsaken saint in a shop-rite uniform is begging alms on the overpass.   he sees my uniform. oh, you work at shit-rite, too? we talk, & my wallet comes out––   sometimes multiplication of loaves just means splitting one loaf between two people.   but miracles, like mutual aid, are survival pending revolution. Beatitude   The guy who fills my pockets with atomic fireballs gives me the whole bag––a filling fell out and he can’t buy the time between two jobs to fix it.   Another EMT-in-training asks for my emergency medicine cheat sheets, hard up ..read more