Hey Narthex. I will be leading compline for my church for the three Thursday nights in Advent, in person at the church and online. It will be my first time being responsible for a service series. I am very excited. Compline is precious to me, but it’s still a little intimidating.🕯️

My mother is the Grinch. Not in a metaphorical or allegorical sense. She dresses up as the season’s villain, and has for years, for parties for disabled adults. This is how she found her way back to Christmas. Sweating in a green fur costume. Because Christmas hurt. She had buried a child & husband.

@scottagunn.bsky.social I just saw your name on the book I had used in a church class today, did a double take and said, “wait… I see that guy ALL THE TIME on Narthex!” Doublechecked your bio and for sure. It’s you!!

Sitting awake in a quiet, winter night always reminds me of growing up on our farm. Waking up in the dark for deer season or standing vigil with a pregnant mare or watching my parents lumbering in coveralls feeding and watering cattle before dawn or my father coming in from coonhunting, near froze.

So when I get new followers that make no sense with my mutuals and interests, and post almost all political stuff, I assume bot or troll and block. Is that wrong?

Every Thanksgiving I will send this. Happy Thanksgiving. Wishing you and yours little bloodshed at your family table!! youtu.be/29XhRfrfsOk?...

But however will we addict people to more and more AI horseshit if we can’t get them to buy the things that use the AI horseshit? It’s the EEEEEEECONMMYYYYY. We need you to be good little thoughtless consumers!

This morning our Bishop visits our church, and I have sponsored our altar flowers in honor of the Transgender Day of Remembrance. They are white, pink, and blue and beautiful. We will honor TDOR in the Prayers of the People. Grateful for this opportunity. #tec🕯️

I am making commitments with my close mutual gifting folks to a Thriftmas this year: only thrifted, used, or up cycled gifts. Will it end late stage capitalism? No. Will Bezos still go to space thru exploitation? Yes. But it’s my commitment to not add to that right now. And that’s a gift. 🕯️

Your friendly reminder to post your church’s TDOR services to the Narthex!! ⚓️

Please look at this on this Trans Day of Remembrance to learn about the loss of trans lives by violence and suicide. www.transremembrance.org/insights-and...

I am BROKEN to read this.

Anybody praying the Daily Office feel like psalm 109 in Morning Prayer today just hit hard in a USA with so much dispossession? Good Lord deliver us. I drove to work through chilly, dense fog over ghostly Missouri hills hearing those words and absolutely aching for God’s kingdom.⚓️

We’re glad to share a new product: The Booklet of Common Prayer! It’s a passport-sized collection of prayers to take with you — fitting in your pocket, it has everything for daily prayer, seven days a week. Take the BCP (at least some of it) with you! shop.forwardmovement.org/product/2700 📕

Because obviously… ⚓️

Okay I was cringing (admittedly I work with GenAlpha professionally and I lowkey want to unalive whoever decided 6-7 was cute). But honestly? Ending a sincere and heavy duty prayer with “BET” straight up **slaps**.

Crinkle fries are as the Lord intended. I will not be arguing this point of doctrine. ⚓️

St. Paul, Galatians 3:28. “There is no male AND female.” Sorry not sorry, KJV. The word choice harkens directly to the language of Genesis. “Male AND female he created them”. In Jesus, duality, labels, traditions, and FEAR are always irrelevant. Inclusion is Biblical. Inclusion is holy. ⚓️

Heya, Narthex. I am exploring religious calling to an ecumenical community (professed order). It is both lay and ordained and recognized by the Episcopal Church. This is tender stuff. Pray for me? 🕯️

Wore one of my favorite skull sweaters to church today. Managed to scandalize the old church ladies. It was what our table talked about at coffee hour ending with “I don’t believe in skulls but I mean I guess I support your right to wear them.” It’s a sweater, Doris, not a heretical statement. ⚓️

It’s DioWestMo Convention!! It’s amazing to be part of the governance of my church in the laity. Pray for us!! ⚓️

I once went to a faux coffee house poetry night where everyone pretended to be as goth and dead inside as possible as “Isis Astarte Demeter Hecate Diana Kali Innana Nightwish Broomstick.” This is giving me flashes of that night.

⚓️

Happy Halloween!!! Spent the evening with my cousin at her haunt, receiving about 750 trick or treaters and 2,000 people. It was so much fun!!

Change my mind. ⚓️

Don’t sleep on small town activism, y’all.

My mother’s beau, a soybean farmer in his late 60s in bib overalls with cataracts, diabetes, and a triple bypass, spent today at a No Kings in a town of under 10,000 in rural Missouri. My mom, admittedly a firebrand, went to three different protests like these to support small town activism

Fine: seeing a little snake crawling in the well outside your garden level office window Fun: watching the snake crawling on the glass and tasting the air Fucked: discovering the snake is a copperhead and seeing it striking a stick 12 inches from your face as facilities is removing it

Solid article from @psychopomp.com (as always!!) but I have to stan The Man Who Laughs as a creepy masterpiece. Based on a Victor Hugo story, the terrifying, tortured, inflicted smile of the protagonist inspired the Joker. It’s a silent film I always watch at Halloween.

I am tired. Work is hard. Memories decline. Oh. And water is wet. Additionally! I love my job. I nurture hope. Theatre is fun. Friendship gives life. Connection gives meaning. Grace is abundant. Stay tuned for more broken news.

such a fun spiraling out of the polite memo from Ross McCleary! "Fire is raw and cleansing like alcohol. Embrace it like an undeserved promotion." https://www.havehashad.com/voc9j

These are awesome picks right here!!

Morticia just got blessed at the St. Francis Day Blessing of the Animals and did not in fact disappear into a cloud of grey, sulfurous smoke! (For anyone running an over/under, she didn’t even hiss when sprinkled with holy water. So.) ⚓️

Kind words, huh @canonmak.bsky.social ?

Everyone’s a sucker for eyes 👁️ 👁️ QuoteSKEET yours

Hey Narthex... y'all ESPECIALLY might dig this one. Jesus told us to love our neighbors. Jesus told us to love our enemies.⚓

Looking for something to read about gays, grace, and good food? Check out my new post over at OzarkMisfit. It's a good (true) story, if you need something that gives you hope. www.ozarkmisfit.com/post/when-yo...

People saying “these autistic kids… it’s all getting so bad. Wasn’t around when I was growing up.” Y’all’s generation collected stamps, put ships in bottles, and invented model trains. Shut up. This guy is hella right. It was not the Tylenol.

The submission window for Reckoning X closes at the end of tomorrow! Now paying 15c/wd for prose, $75/page for poetry and art! Please submit? reckoning.press/general-subm...

This point was made beautifully in debate in committee by a republican state senator in Missouri (I was there) who noted that an antitrans bill sponsor wearing glasses might be unfairly disadvantaged over someone with uncorrected vision so HOW DO WE DRAW THESE LINES? (Dude was weird and I miss him.)

I own DVDs, CDs, and paper books because of this.

the hysteria has gone off the rails so far that the average american thinks 1 in 5 people are transgender. pure absolute insanity that is driving the current lavender scare

Oh. Hey. Hi narthex. Not me yelling for laity empowerment and for lay folks to lean into the ministry of the church. Nope. Surely not that. ⚓️

Making trans folks into a shadowy enemy is ungodly. ⚓️

Preached the sermon at TEC and ELCA churches in town today about my deep & abiding love of sinners. Best parts for me: rereading some of Confessions by St. Augustine, singing Amazing Grace at the ELCA, recalling my own griefstricken conversion, and damn, it was too much, y’all. ⚓️

I did it. I auditioned for Annie Wilkes in my local production of MISERY by @stephenking.bsky.social. The tale of terror, typewriters, and the NUMBER ONE FAN… and I got the part. Couldn’t be more excited to help bring horror to the stage this October!!

Hey, who turned out the lights?? 🕯️🕯️🕯️ The theme for September's flash fiction contest is CANDLELIGHT! You have until the end of this month to submit. Full submission details linked below ⬇️ www.patreon.com/posts/septem...

It’s a Wednesday kind of Saturday.

Dressing as Wednesday Addams for RenFaire and going to my local coffee shop to grab a drink at 8am in my small town reminds me of one thing— people around here are EASILY SPOOKED.