Category: <span>the refuge</span>

camping: "church" at its finest?

as you all know by now, i have a lot of issues with “church.” i love love love people gathered together in all kinds of ways to learn and practice loving God, our neighbors, ourselves. it’s the programs, the inauthenticity, the power b.s., the unnaturalness of it all that i can do without. i believe wholeheartedly, in every fabric of my […]

clearing the rubble

“we all blossom in the presence of one who sees the good in us and who can coax the best out of us” –desmond tutu * * * * * yes, there’s no doubt in my mind, we live in a genesis 3 world. created in God’s image in genesis 1, things went awry […]

church in the now, life in the now

“we are always getting ready to live but never living” – ralph waldo emerson i get completely random and weird thoughts here and there (more like all the time). yesterday when i was sorting laundry (yeah, just imagine how much we have with 7 of us in the house and everyone playing sports) i was thinking about church […]

this past saturday the refuge hosted a grafitti art workshop at joshua station, our friends near downtown denver who provide transformational housing for struggling families. it was a perfect spot for our gathering and sam trujillo, who works for milehigh ministries (they are the umbrella organization for joshua station), did an amazing job facilitating a wild and […]

equality is an action word

NOTE: this is part of glenn hager’s monthly synchroblog. june’s topic is “community” and you can check out all of the links here. erin started the lively conversation about finding a place for the church-homeless, the vagabonds, those who no longer can go back to the old ways but don’t have a new place to go, either. it is clear […]

identity prayer

ah, today a short & sweet blog post, yeah! are you relieved? since i only post a few times a week i am well aware i always squeeze in more than average in a single post! sorry, it’s a metaphor for my life…. for the past 6 weeks or so at our sunday evening […]

it stinks down here, but i really love the smell…

i like to participate in glenn hager’s monthly synchroblog (check out the other links here) just for fun because it forces me to think about some specific topics and i get to read about what some others are saying, too. this month was just a few simple questions… how are you doing? what are you […]

no more lepers

“if you judge people you have no time to love them” – mother teresa “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” – Jesus one of my favorite passages of scripture is in john 8, where Jesus protects a woman from the justice-seeking crowd by radically turning the tables on them, calling them […]

unbind her

i spent the past couple of days in downtown denver at a women’s event that some dear women i know put together called woman come forth. i run in weird diverse circles. i have my wild and crazy emerging friends, my conservative evangelical friends, my don’t-go-to-church-and-don’t-plan-to-anymore friends, my recovery friends, my eclecic refuge friends, my i-have-had-bad-experiences-with-christians-but-i-kind-of-like-you friends, […]

the new ways are way harder

i am a “get-it-done” kind of person. a confessed striver, i really like to dream, build, create something from scratch, make things happen. not all of this is for the wrong reasons (as in feeding ego, making me feel valuable & validated…), but i am honest enough to say of course in weird wacky ways […]