Read the whole series on home here. Our Christmas wreath is still hanging on the porch of our home. The bright red bow remains, but no longer pops bright against the winter greyscale snowscape. The evergreen boughs have turned brittle and brown, and the bow is now easily upstaged by the blooming geraniums, roses, peonies, and pansies opening to the warm summer sun. In late February, when I went to take the wreath down and place it in the compost pile, I found a nest built on the very top of the wreath, so I let it be. It was too high for me to see into the nest, but I watched as a bird came...

Read the whole series on home here. When I have been home What can home be to those who are weary? I write this particular writing in the wake of multiple mass shootings that have taken place in vastly different cities, neighborhoods, and locations. I write this in the wake of aggression that has been on the rise. I write this thinking so agonizingly over Ralph Yarl and Jordan Neely. My aches ache at this point. Do Black boys deserve the right to live and flourish in this nation that has been dubbed the “land of the free and the home of the brave?" I write this knowing that covid has taken...

Read the full series on home here. month 4 - by M Jade Kaiser Every year, thousands of species of animals migrate in order to survive. Conditions in one place become unlivable and a journey must be made – permanently or for a season – to a place where they will be safer, better resourced, and more nourished. The Artic Tern, a small species (3.5 ounces) of bird, is known as the lengthiest of migrating travelers – flying a lofty 44,000 miles each year from the Artic to Antarctica. As for mammals, the humpback whale makes the longest annual journey at over 5000 miles each direction. Insects,...

Read the whole series on home here. There are so many ways to share where we’re from, to tell the stories of who we are, and where and how and when we are home. I came into this world cradled in the Colorado Rockies, was baptized in a tiny papermill town in Louisiana, spent my childhood years in Fayetteville, NC and San Antonio, TX. We moved every few years, and I remember well the familiarity of packing and unpacking, saying goodbyes and preparing for hellos, anticipating the adventure of exploring new places and friendships while grieving beloved places and people left behind. Encountering...

Read the whole series on home here. When I have been home “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.” - Audre Lorde How do I know when I have been home? In the words of Whitney Houston, “How will I know?”(If you can read that question and not do a little dance…I commend you.) Let me not stray too far. I must start where I am. A Black man living in a certain place and at a certain time. I must be even more specific than that if I am to write on the concept of home, I am a relatively poor, chronically pained, Christian,...

Read the full series on home here. month 1 - by M Jade Kaiser Maybe journey is not so much a journey ahead, or a journey into space, but a journey into presence. - Nelle Morton, 1985 I was first introduced to the work of feminist theologian Nelle Morton in seminary in 2011. I was in my second year of three and smack in the middle of a wild unspooling of my worldviews. Every new perspective introduced felt like an opportunity to come a little closer to home - to myself, divinity, others. I was being changed by the offerings of those theologians, activists, mystics, and others whose...