Intention
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Love Sees That There’s No Such Thing as a Little Thing
“How great it is to be faithful to a little thing,” I remember contemplative psychotherapist Jim Finley reminding me when my phone again randomly selected a track on a walk earlier in the day: “It’s not measurable.
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Maybe it’s time for me to let go of Thomas Merton
Today marks 53 years since Merton died in Bangkok, Thailand. I wrote the following article originally published by The Christian Century on December 6, 2021. “How can we be sure younger generations learn about Thomas Merton?” Every time I show Day of a Stranger, the documentary film I made about the Trappist monk, I’m asked some form of this question. Viewers…
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Yes Means Yes, A Sermon
Antiracist work is not comfortable. It requires a continual willingness to step into discomfort, lest we be complicit.
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Things are Different: Grieve, Slow Down, Pay Attention, Stay Tender.
Things are Different: Grieve Our lives will be forever changed. The grief and loss we now face will forever change us. They already have changed us. They will continue to change us. As long as I keep letting it in, grief is tenderizing me in ways my body had yet to feel. Loss is softening…
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The Absurd Vocation
“One person plus one typewriter constitutes a movement.” –Pauli Murray Coming off a week-long class on activism, organizing and social movements in Durham, North Carolina (and my first full year of seminary at CTS), I climb back into the quiet walls of a Kentucky monastery: Gethsemani Abbey. Here, the silence seeps into my bones like…
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Be The Hope, Now
Islamophobia is not just a problem for Muslims, it is a problem for all of us. It is not the “job” of the marginalized, persecuted, or attacked group to solve the problem. To ask the even more deeply grieving “what do you need,” or “what can I do,” puts even more agony upon them. This…
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The Way of Love; The Way of the Outlaw
The one whose vocation is love lives in a narrative that is controlled by reality.
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The Single Garment of Destiny
“…I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly,…
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When Letting Go Is Holding On
“My dishonesty with myself and others hinders the honesty of all humanity, hinders the progress of all people.” Journal entry on 2/12/12 In 2012 I made the decision to let go of some certainty in my life for the sake of exploring something unknown. I quit my job. I quit my salary-paying, insurance-giving job full of security…
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Dear Nashville Statement
I serve a God whose artistry in creation is as vast as it can be within us. And this table is not for removing people or telling them to go away. The table was always meant to be shared.
Dr. Cassidy Hall, DMin, MDiv, MTS, MA 