I am a student of abolitionist organizing, religion and spirituality, reparations and repair, and experimenting toward collective liberation. In addition to these subjects, I write about my experience with recovery from alcohol addiction and what that continues to unveil to me about how people relate to the world. A single father, I write about parenting, and I sure love talking to people about divorce, though I may never write about that bit. 

I launched this website to publish my writing about spirituality primarily for an audience of post-evangelical wanderers and those recovering from religious trauma who feel uneasy sheltering with atheism or other traditions. That being my own experience (as a missionary family, we were professional Christians), I am excavating new ways of relating to this spiritual heritage, where now I celebrate its gifts even as I continue to bloodlet its toxins. In the soil of evangelicalism’s remains I am growing something new for myself. If describing that new organism is helpful to others, it’ll have been worth it. 

I radicalized at Vanderbilt Divinity School from which I received a master’s in theological studies in 2013. I cut my teeth on activism through reading Black liberation theology. For the last ten years, I have worked for national organizations in the movement to end homelessness, which I consider a limb of racial and social justice. I’m also a facilitator trained in Circle Process, an ancient container for togetherness rooted in Indigenous traditions. 

It is a maxim among many in the nonprofit industrial complex that worship of the written word is a characteristic of white supremacy culture. Notwithstanding that the article propagating this notion faces critique from Black organizers, I’m troubled by the following sentences that remain true for me: 

I love words.

I love definitions. 

I’m fascinated by the ways words both limit and facilitate our ability to connect with and understand one another. Definitions, to me, don’t signal finality nor rigidity; in fact, what I love about them is how they evolve. Even if the lexicographer seems certain, how the listener interprets the word matters more than what the speaker intends. A word itself is only ever a signpost pointing toward the thing it describes, not the object itself, and signposts can be vague or cattywampus and periodically need replacing. Use a word “incorrectly” enough, it becomes correct: google Merriam Webster’s definition of “literally.” Words absent actions are poisonous, but I believe words still matter. And it feels right to write them. I hope you embrace this tension along with me as you read my essays. 

I am an avid but embarrassed Premier League fan (Liverpool forever). I don’t rewatch TV shows but I do watch my favorite standup specials over and over; hang out with me too long, and you will have heard me quote dozens of comedians. I’m queer, but feel like an imposter. I’m a member of my local nonprofit movie theater. Mayonnaise is the best condiment. People who know more about these things tell me I’m a Virgo and enneagram 1; my discomfort with these systems is such a “1” thing, they say. My ancestors are from the British Isles and I’m just beginning a quest to connect with my people before the invention of whiteness. I live on the lands of the Cherokee, Yuchi, and Shawnee nations, known as Nashville, in the neighborhood where I grew up, with my daughters, Genevieve and Adelaide. I love being their dad more than any other part of my identity.  

And I hope you enjoy what you find here.