Tribal Church

I recently heard Serene Jones talk about her recent book Trauma and Grace. Jones spoke about how trauma affects our leadership and our liturgy. She explained how our worship can provide a space for people to express rage and experience grace…

[you can read more here]

No Comments »

“I don’t like to talk about myself in sermons,” a preacher told me recently. I’ve heard that a lot from pastors. There’s a sense that we are there to present the word of God, to talk about what commentators and theologians say about the Scripture, but not to focus a spotlight on ourselves. I respect that idea, but I don’t practice it myself. Because I don’t think it’s possible to separate myself from preaching.

I’m all over my sermons. Is it because I’m an ego-maniacal exhibitionist? Not really. Those who know me well (well…my husband) can tell you just how many secrets I keep neatly wrapped up only for myself. You wouldn’t know it if you heard me preach every Sunday, but my self-disclosure boundaries are actually pretty high. I don’t talk about personal things publicly unless I’ve adequately dealt with the event emotionally and spiritually, and I’ve gotten the appropriate blessing from the other people involved.

Perhaps the reason I come to preaching from a little different angle has to do with a shift in interpretation in general. There was a thought that we could cross over a bridge–a hermeneutical bridge–and transport ourselves into the first century. We could learn all of the customs and the traditions of Jesus and the disciples. We could understand the author’s intent, and then we could present that intent to our congregations.

This worked for a really long time. Especially since the writers of most of our commentaries were academics–and European white males.

But then, we began to hear disparate notes. And a chord began to form when women and ethnic minorities began to crowd the halls of academia, pointing out the neglected texts of terror and wrestling with the scriptures in new ways.

The liberationist movement began base communities asking people–all kinds of people–cleaning women, squatters, children, “What does this mean to you?” Then, women and so many others who were on the outside margins of society began to stand in the pulpits and proclaim what the parables, poetry and prophecy meant to them, in their particular circumstance.

And even though all of these people were speaking all along, we began to listen to each other. Intently. As we did, a great symphony arose from Christendom. We understood these powerful words in the contexts of different people, and we realized that no one ever really knew the author’s intent completely. No one ever made it over that bridge without dragging a whole lot of baggage with them.

As preachers, we read texts through our own eyes–our socioeconomic background, our educational experience, our family relationships, our heartaches, and our triumphs. And so, as I prepare my sermons for Sunday morning, I can’t separate myself from the Scripture. I’m right in there. I have a messy relationship with all of those words.

And I don’t try to separate myself. I try to be acutely aware of my location in the text, and it’s location within me. I begin to think about how it resonates, inspires, angers, or irritates me.

When I read about Mary giving birth to Jesus I can’t ever forget that good Saturday when I became a mom, and I can’t help but realize that all of my life, as many times as I heard that story echo from a pulpit, I had never heard it coming out of a mother’s mouth.

And so, I tell the stories, the stories of the scriptures along with my own stories, with all the sights, smells, and emotions. Not because I’m a very open person, but because I hope that my particular context might help someone else. That the small details of my particular narrative might somehow tap into the great meta-narrative that forms us as people. Because I hope that I can add a note to that symphony. A note that resonates inside of someone else, and allows them to be a part of it.

So, what about you? Do you ever tell personal stories? Why or why not? What works for you in the pulpit? What inspires you when you hear others preach?

the photo’s by parasol

30 Comments »

Early on in the semester, the students met on Sunday nights, but I’m not sure that was the best time. There was always a ton of homework for them to catch up on that night. But the problem is, there’s never a good time. There’s always a scheduling impasse.

Western’s had a campus ministry for over a decade now, and during that time George Washington University has mushroomed around our church, making us a central spot for students to worship. We have very strong Sunday morning attendance with our students and we often schedule things immediately after the service. Yet, it’s nearly impossible to get something else on the calendar for them.

Something happened since the comparatively carefree days when I attended college fourteen years ago. Then, Campus Crusade for Christ dominated the campus ministry scene. They played invisible football games through the campus to draw attention to how much fun they were having. Students spent hours packing in the entertainment and pizza until the leaders would slip in a Bible Study and the “four spiritual laws.” College ministries looked a lot like youth groups, with overgrown participants.

I don’t see too many invisible football games any more, at least not in our setting. I’ve been involved with campus ministry, in one way or another, in all of those years, and I’ve watched it change dramatically.

Why are things so different? Well, it’s because the average college student in America is changing. I always thought of the average student as 19 years old. He was (perhaps) working part-time for a bit of entertainment money, but he had a lot of free hours between his classes. He was just as likely to be a Republican as he was to be a Democrat.

Now the average undergrad in the United States looks much different. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, she (there are more women than men enrolled) is twenty-six and will probably not be able to attend school full time for four years (51 percent of students attend part-time for a period of their enrollment). Over 80 percent of all students work an average of 32 hours per week. Thirty-seven percent of students are not able to complete their degree. If she does graduate from a four-year college, she will typically have $24,000 in student loans and credit card debt on top of that.

As far as political standing, college students are not painted in red or blue; although in 2005, 60 percent were traditional liberals while only 16 percent were traditional conservatives (Harvard Institute of Politics, 2006). These statistics also don’t reflect the values of conservative ministries like Campus Crusade and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Over all, students look a lot less like older teenagers, and a lot more like young professionals.

I watch our students, juggling four jobs at a time and feeling thankful when they get a degree with “only” 50k of personal debt (GW’s the most expensive school in the country).

For our crowd, pizza doesn’t always pack them in–changing the world does. Time is precious for the young women and men who gather here, and when we give them compelling reasons to show up, they make time. And so we program things like talking about peacemaking, the environment, human rights in Burma, and gun-control laws. Then we can slip in a bit of dodgeball or volleyball….

From what I can tell, on many campuses we would be doing our greatest ministry by providing free childcare for college students. I would love to see campus ministries begin economic justice groups for students, groups who would pressure the credit card companies who charge 30% interest to students to quit enticing teenagers with t-shirts and trinkets. I would love to see students become organized in backing health care issues, since young adults in our country are the ones who are the least likely to be covered by insurance.

With the changing face of students, there are so many opportunities for us to make a huge difference in the way we reach out to them. So, what would you want to see?

13 Comments »

I taught a class last night on Models of God. I actually wanted to teach it on Life Abundant, so I could have a chance to read it and dig into it. But, the book didn’t come in on time, so I presented Sallie McFague’s older one. It’s still fresh.

McFague calls for a risky “thought experiment” concerning God. She talks about us as a post-Christian society in the sense that we can’t accept the traditional models and dichotomies that have informed our theological language in the past. The idea of humble servants worshiping an omnipotent King is not a relevant image for us today, and new metaphors have to be born in our society.

Metaphors for God are risky because contained in each one, there is an element of who God is and who God is not. In stating the truth of a word, we also state a falsehood. McFague uses the metaphors of Mother, Lover, and Friend. In these models, there is intimacy and mutuality in the relationship.

In this important moment in history, we have the power of knowing that we can destroy nature. So, we need a broader, holistic image, one that takes into account our creative partnership with God, one that reinforces our capacity as stewards, one that will invite us to nurture creation, one that will be vitally important in the ecological, nuclear age.

It has been twenty years since McFague wrote these words, and it seems that this thought experiment has been well underway. At least in our church, no one questions the idea of God as Mother.

But, in the last couple of decades, I daresay that the family context has changed. I mean, it can no longer be assumed that the Father is an over-arching Patriarch in our families. According to Housebroken: Confessions of a Stay-at-Home Dad, in over forty-five percent of families, women make over half of the income. This important economic shift in our families has a tremendous impact on equity and roles in the home.

As a result, if a decision needs to be made about who stays at home to take care of the children, it’s often the men. It was in our family. From the time our daughter was one until she was four, Brian was the one who made sure that we were all fed and warm. He changed the diapers, applied the band-aids, and potty-trained our daughter. He was the nurturer. Our daughter has a different view of “Father” than I do.

With this in mind, do we need to rethink our image of God the Father? We can no longer assume that the father in our homes will be the ruling patriarch who makes all the money and all the decisions. Perhaps the dichotomy of father/mother has collapsed a bit. And isn’t this what we want? Can we begin to use the metaphor of God as Father in the holistic sense McFague imagines it, as a nurturing and relational term?

6 Comments »

Interesting moment from the mid-atlantic Young Clergy Women’s meet up:

YCW: [Major editor of Christian magazine] doesn’t read blogs.

Me: Why?

YCW: (Shrugging) She doesn’t think they’re important.

Twenty-something CW: (Bursting into laughter) She’s going to be shocked in ten years. All of her readers will be dead, and she’s going to wonder what happened to them.

We all laughed. We know where the next generation of readers are, in front of the computer, reading blogs.

Most people in publishing are renegotiating their business plans, becoming more fluid with the Internet conversation, engaging a new generation, or they’re trying to ignore it entirely. Yet, the developments can’t be disregarded for too long. The plates are shifting on the surface of our thought, and it will be fascinating to see where we end up. Here are some major developments:

Knowledge equals power has given way to a movement where sharing knowledge equals power. For example, while in the past, a site like Theolog (Christian Century’s blog) would be competing with Out of Ur (Christianity Today’s blog), ignoring its existence, pretending that it doesn’t matter, and doing whatever it could to amass the other’s customers. Now Theolog links to Out of Ur on their blogroll, inviting their readers to visit the other site.

The shift in thinking is potent, and it reflects a major development in social and information networks. It’s no longer about amassing information and disseminating it from one central source, but it’s about becoming a part of a greater network and community.

Publishing companies decide who’s worth reading has given way to a movement where people decide who’s worth reading. I honestly didn’t understand what an impact blogs had until I began writing one. Are they the center of all good thought, dismantling all of our academic and publishing institutions? Of course not.

Writing a quick unedited blog entry every morning is not the same as investing the major time, research, and energy that it takes to write a book. And there’s great wisdom in having more people involved in the publication of a piece. It could never replace the heft of thought that goes into most academic degrees.

Still, I can’t help but be amazed at the audience that a blog can reach. Reverendmother, who’s been writing beautiful daily posts for years, likens it to a message in a bottle. We now have this ability to write something down and send it out. And people are picking up the bottles, unscrolling the notes, and paying attention to them.

Making money on subscriptions and advertising will need to make way for…well, now, here’s the problem. Publishers need to make revenue. Writers need to be paid for their work. But where’s the cash flow going to come from? If readers gravitate to self-generated publications, will more writers abound without any pay?

Some see the answer in a sort of cable-style Internet, where people will have to pay to go to premium sites. I hope that’s not where we’re headed, but I don’t know…. What do you think?

5 Comments »

I feel awash in powerful women this morning. Four things are converging upon me: I saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age yesterday, read Newsweek’s “Women & Power” articles this morning, will meet with a few members of the The Young Clergy Women’s Project this afternoon, and I’ll be visiting the photos of Annie Leibovitz on Friday.

The movie was beautiful and grand. We spent a great deal of time circling around Cate Blanchett in her amazing costumes, taking in the imposing castles and soaring music. There was a lot that a less aesthetic editor would have left on the cutting room floor in order to keep the pace of the story up. And even after studying this period of history in depth many times, I scratched my head in the film’s (literally) swirling confusion.

But I love dresses and chorales and immense stone spaces, so I took it in with pleasure. And Queen Elizabeth, herself, is endlessly enthralling. Even with all the courses I’ve taken, I always want to know more about her. How did she keep peace between the Protestants and Catholics when there was so much turmoil on the continent? How did it feel to know that your father had your mother beheaded? What was her religious experience?

The movie centered around Queen Elizabeth’s virginity, her desire to love and be loved, and her ultimate calling to become the mother of England. Using her loss as her greatest strength, she defends a nation with that intense fury that a mother has when protecting her child.

The articles in Newsweek are verbal transcripts, and they read in that fashion (I wonder if it was painful for the accomplished writers to read their words in that form). There seems to be a lot on the editing floor in these that I wish I could pick up and piece back together again. The most fascinating portraits were by Shirley Franklin (Atlanta’s Mayor), Shonda Rhimes (Creator and executive producer of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and ‘Private Practice’), and Elaine Pagels (Professor of Religion at Princeton University).

Elaine Pagels, in her brief page, quickly reminded me of the depth that religious leaders acquire in their eternal wrestling with life and belief. I felt somehow honored that she was there. A thinker, a Christian, one of our own, represented in the pages of power. She packed so much into the few words, as she spoke of her upbringing, attending church with parents who had a condescending view of religion. She articulated her spiritual awakenings in the evangelical movement and her quick disenchantment. She talked of the urgency of her faith during the death of her six-year-old son. She told what it was like when her husband died, and she was left as a widow with two adopted children. And she explained how community and spiritual meaning nurtured her in all of this.

Her photo is unlike any of the other women. While the other women captured the camera, and stood in the center of the compositions, Pagel’s photo is in the dark Princeton chapel. She seems to be an incidental visitor in space, a tourist who just happened to turn with a casual smile when the camera clicked.

So, here’s my question for the day–it’s a question that my friend Matt Buell asked me when we saw the stark, powerful “Women” exhibition by Leibovitz. It’s a question that I’ve thought about for years, but I still have not been able to answer. If Leibovitz photographed a portrait of you, what would it look like?

the photo’s entitled “powerful women” and it’s by she saw things

3 Comments »

I heard that Elizabeth Gilbert was going to be at the National Cathedral yesterday. And…I…missed her. It was on my calendar for weeks, but I went out to eat chili with my family instead.

You see, we have a lot of meetings this week (and last week, and the week before), and I was missing my family more than I was missing Elizabeth Gilbert. I made the right choice. My very independent, six year old spent the whole meal, practically in my lap. I felt like I was running a three-legged sack race all night. At the end of the day, she didn’t want to let go of my midsection to go to sleep.

It’s strange, living in the D.C. region. We miss so much. A couple months ago, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates were both doing readings. Did I go? No. Barbara Kingsolver? Missed. This month Dave Eggers will be here (okay, there’s no missing that one…I thought he was a recluse…). There’s a free concert every single night at the Kennedy Center, across the street from my church, and I have not gone in a year.

If I were reading this from rural parish, I would either (1) hate the author with a seething fury, or (2) think that she was some sort of moronic cultural misfit. So, to the people who are frustrated in rural areas: You are amazing, you ought to be paid much, much more, and I’m sorry for bringing all of this up. I’ve been there too. If you come to visit D.C., I can tell you where all the great shows, restaurants, authors, and exhibits are. I just may not be able to visit them with you.

I’m not the only one. I remember talking to Jack Stotts, when he left his presidency at McCormick Seminary to become the president at Austin Seminary. He made the move, of course, because Austin (my alma mater) is such a good school. But, he also did it because he had an elderly mother, who was in Texas and she didn’t want to leave Texas. (Is this public knowledge? I hope so….)

I worked for Jack. I was his student assistant, and I did some research and editing for him. I learned so much from him. We often reminisced about Chicago, and he would say, “The thing I miss about Chicago is having the option to do things. I didn’t go to the shows or museums, but I always had the opportunity out there. And that was nice.”

In Chicago, I was younger, and I rarely missed an exhibit or show that was in my price range. But now, fifteen years later, they seem to slip by pretty easily. Brian reads the arts and style sections and says, “Did you know that Shawn Colvin is coming into town?”

And I reply, “Really? I would love to see her again.” But it’s hard to get a babysitter and since we’re both pastors, we’re already gone so many evenings, and it’s just nice to be at home. Or at The Hard Times Cafe, eating chili, with a grown child on my lap.

I almost got frustrated when I tripped over her for the tenth time on the way to the car. But, we were all hungry for affection. And how long will I be able to get a two-hour hug from my daughter? She’ll be growing out of that by next week, and then, the next week, I’ll be sending her off to college. At least that’s how it feels. I don’t want to be a smothering mother, but I also want to savor every last moment of affection, while she’s willing to dish it out.

Jack Stott’s mother died. I bet he never regretted the move from Chicago–even if he missed a few readings.

9 Comments »

John Wimberly, the HOS, sat down with me when I was on the job for about a week. I spent six years as a solo pastor, and I was just beginning my first associate position. I never imagined myself as an AP, but when I began to apply for HOS jobs, some older, wiser friends told me that I wouldn’t get them because I needed more time in a multiple-staff setting.

Plus, Western’s amazing. It really is. I felt a strong call to this church and it’s a great honor to have the position here. I’m learning a ton of important things, and it began with that first meeting.

The HOS said, “You need to find a place for all of your energy.”

I felt exhausted. I wasn’t settled from the move, there were so many things that I needed to get done. I responded, “I don’t really have any energy.”

“Not physical energy, intellectual energy,” he explained. “Now that you’re not preaching every week, you need to find someplace to put it, or you won’t last six months here. You need to find something outside of the church walls.”

He was right. I had a month of waking up on Saturdays, saying, “I’m free! No sermon to write!” I made pancakes for breakfast and went to the park with my daughter. But after about six weeks, I missed it. I was writing sermons in my head, frustrated that I wouldn’t be able to preach them.

My job’s demanding. There’s a lot to do. An awful lot. But it’s a departure from a solo position. I preach about once a month. I rarely do the weddings or funerals. Plus, we have a secretary, sexton, janitor, and security guard. I’m not multi-tasking a hundred different things.

Do I miss running off the bulletin while I shovel the snow? Well, no. But the AP job is different.

I’m a general associate. Every once in a while, I teach a class, but that’s it. I watch my wise and intelligent friends, frustrated because they feel like “cruise directors” in their AP positions, channeling people from one program to the next. I didn’t go to seminary to be a cruise director.

So, I began writing. I’m applying for a think tank (a benefit of living in DC). And, I’m looking into local Doctoral programs for the fall.

(That’s another thing I’m told I need to get for an HOS position. “People like to be able to call their pastor ‘Doctor.’” I’m not real excited about that fact. Don’t get me wrong, I love to study and I’d love to get a doctorate. It’s just that we recently sent our “last” check to Sallie Mae. Gheez. Why are pastors expected to have doctorates when we barely make enough money to pay off our MDiv’s?)

The HOS has been in his position for 25 years. It’ll be thirty when he retires. The congregation has flourished from his long tenure. They went from being a handful of tenacious people who fought off the vote to close, who couldn’t afford to pay their pastor from month to month, to becoming a vital mission in the heart of the city. The HOS even stayed after a major building project–a time when most pastors bail.

When I asked him how he did it, he said he learned to channel his intellectual energy. While serving the tiny congregation, he’s gotten a PhD and an MBA. Then the church started a breakfast program for the homeless in our basement, an art program for children in transitional housing, and poured the foundation for a health clinic in Ethiopia. He keeps actively engaged in starting new projects, and he transfers them off to able hands.

Being wise with our intellectual energy seems to be important in almost every position in the church. What sort of things have you done channel it?

4 Comments »

Yesterday, I talked about Linda Hirshman’s book Get to Work, and my fear that her focus is too limited. Hirshman seems to make the conclusion that important work is Google-able. If our names don’t show up on the search engine (and she is not talking about Google blog search), then we need to rethink our lives. Hirshman champions the early Betty Friedan who compares housework to the work of animals.

She really didn’t have to go there, did she?

Hirshman makes the important case that upper-class women matter to all of society. She argues that none of us would say that elite men do not matter to society. But, she makes the damaging misstep of depreciating household labor.

We all know that someone’s got to clean the bathroom. After years of extensive research, I haven’t found an animal that can vacuum my living room. And if the chore is outsourced, most of the time, the person behind the mop is a woman. If the elite women in our society go around thinking that scrubbing those floors is for the four-legged, then none of those privileges are going to be trickling down, and we are headed for a huge problem.

This is where David Jensen’s Responsive Labor comes in as a much-needed corrective. The first words of the Preface made me breathe a little deeper:

“Daily work matters for the Christian faith. Our ordinary labors–cleaning, cooking, caring for children, teaching, writing, investing, sculpting, trading, and building–are responses to the life God gives to the world.”

He is no Phyllis Schlafly, the Presbyterian (is she still Presbyterian?) who works against equal rights. Instead, he listens to important women like Dorothee Soelle and Sallie McFague. He broadens our idea of work as he questions our assumption that “real work is paid work.” Jensen begins his survey of work in America with the unemployed and underemployed. He studies the working poor, the work of women, and acknowledges that often a woman’s “second shift” begins at home. He’s not just pointing out the work of the upper class, he’s taking a good look into the face of the women who are cleaning house as well.

Jensen’s concern is that our faith often speaks to the things that we do away from work: church, prayer, contemplation. In doing so, we ignore business of our everyday lives. And so Jensen helps us to reflect on our leisure, our consumption, and our work.

Yesterday, I spent my lunch hour at Miriam’s Kitchen, the feeding and social services program in our church. We serve breakfast to a couple hundred homeless men and women every weekday morning, and we also open up a couple times a week for a “cafe” lunch, where people can gather for sandwiches, music, haircuts, and social support. Most of our clients are chronically homeless, but I met a twenty-three-year-old woman (I’ll call her Irene) yesterday who had only been in a shelter for a couple of months. Irene’s from out of town. She fled to D.C. with her two children to escape her violent husband.

She was staying with a friend, but when her husband began threatening her friend over the phone, Irene found herself and her children out on the street. Now, she works full-time at a coffeehouse, attends UDC to earn her degree in nursing, and in her free time, she’s trying to find a place where she can live with two children. She keeps a neat, detailed list of all the places that she has been in her daytimer. I sat there, exhausted, just talking to her. She has to do a whole lot of work.

Irene’s story has a happy ending. After just a few minutes at Miriam’s, the staff of social workers found her a home. Now she has a safe place for her children, a place where she can continue her education, and she can work.

As theologians, pastors, academics and politicians think about work in our country, we can’t forget about Irene. We cannot relegate her work to the work of animals, nor can we assume that the privileges of elite women will trickle down in her favor.

5 Comments »

I’m writing a little piece for my alumni magazine on being a mom in the ministry. It needs to fit around David Jensen’s main article on faith and work. So, I’m reading a couple of books in preparation: Responsive Labor: A Theology of Work by David Jensen and Get to Work…and Get a Life, Before It’s Too Late by Linda R. Hirshman. They’re actually good companions for each other, two people walking very different paths, going different directions, yet sometimes they intersect.

I’ll tackle Hirshman first. I use the term “tackle,” because I’m pretty sure if Linda and I were in the same room together, she would kick my butt. Yep. That’s clear.

That being said, she’s like the older, smarter, bad girl in high school that I really wish I was cool enough to hang out with, but I know I’m not. Linda Hirshman is an old-school feminist. I, on the other hand, am what she would call a “choice feminist,” part of the new-school, attachment-parenting, my-family-is-my-life, my-career-comes-second crowd. I think that women should be free to make these decisions and I still think changing diapers is important. Actually, I’m pretty sure that Hirshman would rip the “f” label right off of my flame-retardant bra.

If I may use another analogy, Hirshman’s like the mom who killed herself to get her daughter into an Ivy League, who’s still paying off the student loans. While I’m like the daughter who decides to take her expensive degree and go into a low-wage, high-fulfillment social work job.

Can you sense the tension here? Well, we’re going to be sensing it for years to come, because there are a lot of moms who are stark-raving furious with their daughters right now. And Hirshman does a good job of shaking us up, in less than 100 pages.

Her plan is simple: (1) Never study art, prepare for work; (2) Never quit a job without having another one, take work seriously; (3) Demand a just household; (4) Consider a reproductive strike; (5) Stop electing governments that punish women’s work. (Okay, maybe #4’s not so simple. I mean, a lot of us really like having babies.)

I wince at her manifesto, because she doesn’t ever convince me that this plan will work outside of the realm of the upper-middle class, although she tries. She uses a sort-of trickle-down theory, saying that it matters what the elite minority are doing because they’re role models, and other classes reflect the labor trends of the upper class. But her research is scant and unconvincing.

Although, I have to admit, Hirshman is responsible for me becoming a writer. I even give her more credit than Ann Lamott and Julia Cameron. You know why? Because reading her convinced me that my work was important enough to start outsourcing household labor as much as possible.

I used to watch HGTV. When a plumbing problem occurred, I would spend days at Lowe’s trying to figure out the best solution. Then I would buy some Time/Life manual, and spend weeks trying to solve it. I was queen of DIY. I learned a lot, saved a lot of money, and it was fun. But it was time-consuming, and plumbing is not what I was educated to do, or (to put a theological spin on it) what I was called to do.

With Hirshman’s manifesto, I began to realize that my work was important. That the time at Lowe’s would be better spent going to that place where I felt God calling me–in front of the laptop. When I began outsourcing my household labor as much as I could, I had more energy to live out my calling. I wrote my first book. And between the IRS savings and the preliminary sales, I’ve already made enough money to pay the plumbing expenses.

She also has some important critiques for the church, as she points out the ways that we put up obstacles to obstruct equality.

So, I have to say it. Thank you Linda Hirshman, for taking my work seriously. You know, we don’t agree on everything, but I’m still listening and learning from you.

photo by g-mikee

1 Comment »