Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interests lie in language, violence and religion. Having grown up in a place that has a long history of all three (Ireland, yes, but also Europe) he finds that language might be the most redeeming of all three of these. In language there is the possibility of vulnerability, of surprise, of the creative movement towards something as yet unseen. He is inspired by any artist of words: from Krista Tippett to Lucille Clifton; from Patrick Kavanagh to Emily Dickinson; from Lorna Goodison to Arundhati Roy. Ó Tuama loves words — words that open up the mind, the heart, the life. For instance — poem: a created thing.

We are disappointed to announce that an unexpected health issue is keeping Barbara Brown Taylor from traveling to Memphis this week for Calvary’s Lenten Preaching Series. Barbara sends her love to Calvary, her “home away from home,” and she’s written a sermon to be delivered in her absence titled “Blessed are the Spiritually Bankrupt.” Surely the next best thing to hearing Barbara in person is to hear her words among a roomful of people giving thanks to God for the gift of her preaching and praying that she receive an extra measure of the healing power of God’s love. Come join us this Thursday at 12:05 p.m.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor is a New York Times best-selling author, teacher, and Episcopal priest. After serving three congregations—two in downtown Atlanta and one in rural Clarkesville, Georgia—she became the first Butman Professor of Religion and Philosophy at Piedmont College, where she taught until 2017. Since then she has spoken at events with wonderful names like Wild Goose, Evolving Faith, Awakening Soul, and Gladdening Light, but her favorite gig is being full-time caretaker of a farm in the foothills of the Appalachians with her husband Ed and very many animals.

The Mystic is a catalyst; through music, story, silence and dialogue, we hope to strengthen our attachment to hopes and dreams. In the mystic, diversity is a prerequisite for all creativity. In The Mystic, the world is far-better served by different beliefs than it could ever be if limited by rigid uniformity. Join Scott Morris, Joshua Narcisse, Kirk Whalum, Micah Greenstein, and Lillian Lammers for this amazing evening.

The Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis uses her gifts as an author, activist, preacher, and public theologian to create an antiracist, just, gun violence-free, fully welcoming, gender-affirming society in which everyone has enough. Lewis has preached in pulpits and on stages in the U.S., South Africa, and France. She’s been serving as senior minister and public theologian at Middle Church for 20 years. The author of several books and articles, Lewis’s most recent book, Fierce Love, was published in 2021. Her Just Love Story Bible will be released in 2025. Lewis produces an annual justice conference with Middle Church—Freedom Rising: You. Move. The World is scheduled for April 2024.

Cole Arthur Riley is a writer and poet. She is the author of the NYT bestseller This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Guernica, and The Washington Post. Cole is also the creator and writer of Black Liturgies, a project that integrates spiritual practice with Black emotion, Black literature, and the Black body. Her spirituality in this season is comprised of more questions than answers and grounded in myth, storytelling, interior examen, and embodiment. She is currently interested in questions concerning collective and inherited memory and has been formed by thinkers such as Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Thomas Merton, Octavia Butler, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Elizabeth L. Jemison is a professor, writer, and teacher who loves questions of how we encounter the past and why it matters for our present. She teaches American religious history as an associate professor of religion at Clemson University. Beyond academic settings, Jemison regularly speaks to congregations and community groups about how religion and history shape our worlds and why studying them can deepen our faith. She is the author of Christian Citizens: Reading the Bible in Black and White in the Postemancipation South (UNC Press) and has published in Religion News Service and Religion & Politics, among other venues. Jemison is a proud native Memphian, who now lives in Greenville, South Carolina, with her spouse and young children, who daily invite her to deepen her sense of wonder.

The Rev. Sarah Condon is an Episcopal priest in Nashville. She makes a home there with her husband Josh (also a priest) and their two children. Condon is the co-host of the Mockingcast and a speaker/writer for Mockingbird Ministries. She also writes an advice column called “Dear Gracie” for Mockingbird magazine. Condon lost her parents in December 2020 in a car accident. It changed everything about her. Her ambitious nature fell apart, and she found something gentler in its place. Frequently she is thinking and writing about forgiveness and the unexpectedness of God’s grace in a world that demands brutality.