People Made of Light

I am the easiest one in the room to take for granted.  This gives me peace. I can explain. Like every human, mongoose, and senator, I was born with a box of tangled bulbs. Some light up every time: preference for the underdog, devotion to the elderly, proficiency at remembering the names of Tolkien’s elves.  […]

Hidden Beauty Revealed

Listen to Prasanta read her piece by clicking here:   Senescent (adjective) growing old; aging. Cell Biology. (of a cell) no longer capable of dividing but still alive and metabolically active.   As in: trees laughing leaves, dropping down on me, floating in the wind. I catch a handful of laughter, toss it back in the air.   […]

Announcing our Fall Themes!!

We need your voices! This September, The Mudroom is launching a four-month series titled “Lost & Found: Stories of Belonging in a Bruised and Broken Body.” We desire to amplify the stories of those who’ve ever felt unseen, untethered, or set adrift from the Church—and those who have found or are finding, their way back. […]

When Will Then be Now?

Light in the Darkness Here we are—mid-December: a season of celebration that in at least one uber-educated, moderately liberal, American college town (mine), people seem confused by the juxtaposition of culture and tradition; tradition and church. Mid-December and there is more darkness than light, so we spend more time in fluorescent spaces sprinkled with glittering […]

The Feast of Friendship

I know it’s coming, but I’m not prepared. Fill in the blank with “it.” It could be dinnertime each day. I’m not prepared to answer the daily question, “What’s for dinner?”   “It” could be the next difficult season up ahead, or it could the wildest season of joy. Why do I assume it will […]

Breaking Bread and Belonging

I struggle with feeling accepted when it comes to enjoying time around people. Mainly it is all in my head. I have dealt with mental health struggles since middle school. It caused me to isolate and question whether people approved of me or whether they only tolerated me. Anxiety and depression do that to your […]

Podcast: Through Thorns of Belonging

The walk on the narrow path towards belonging means scraping past a million thorny thickets. Writer and poet Prasanta Verma feels your pain. She meets us in The Mudroom after navigating the twists, turns, and pinpricks of belonging in ways few of us can imagine. Join us, today, for a way forward on the path […]

Of Thorns and Skin

Listen to the audio recording of Prasanta’s words here, or read her piece below: Of Thorns and Skin Your Task Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.*   A long wind brushes its fingers through the trees […]

A Spool of Thread and a Piece of Pie

I was searching for a spool of black thread last summer. I couldn’t find one. Supplies were depleted in brick and mortar stores, and nothing was available at the online marketplace named after a gargantuan river. A simple roll of black thread proved to be a scarce commodity. All I needed to do was mend […]

Stumbling to Stability

When the darkness closes in around us, will we still know that God is good? When the storms rage inside, will we be able to abide in the truth that Jesus will be with us to the very end of the age? What keeps us anchored to God in times like these? We, too, need something to keep us steadfast when it would be easier to cut ties and run from communities of faith that seem to be crumbling all around us. 

There is no place we can magically find God, no one Christian tradition or person who holds the answers. We all spend our life in the slow, stumbling surrender to the mystery

Always a Foreigner, Never Home

My face is the filter through which people see me. It can’t be helped. When people look at me, they see an Asian girl. To some, it’s the face of familiarity, but to most it’s the face of a foreigner. It creates distance, division, and tension. It brings up questions of heritage and place and […]

Mothering in Black, White and Red

When I was very small, my mom only bought me black baby dolls because she wanted to do right by me.  She was familiar with the studies where little brown girls reject black baby dolls and she wanted to be sure, as a white mother of brown daughters, that she was raising my sister and […]

Being is the Greatest Act of Resistance

Birds are our greatest storytellers. Consider the ruby-throated hummingbird migrating from Central America to Eastern North America. These pajaritos carry generations of story within themselves. They are vessels of witness migrating from one place to another, much like humanity, and how stories themselves migrate across generations. Birds do not worry about belonging. Their work is […]