%1

Bethany Sollereder explores different approaches to understanding suffering—and enacts one.

Is it the baby or the bathwater?

A tumor like a portabella on its neck,
a Pomeranian has poked its head
into my timeline where its owner posts
please pray. And later at the Wednesday night
prayer meeting Widow Jones requests a word
of intercession for her Labradoodle
who has a blockage in his doggy gut
and is as bloated as a bullfrog’s chin.
And so at night I find myself in prayer
like this: Oh, Lord of endless mercy, Lord
of grace and wonder please bring healing down
to Cupcake and to Captain Fluffyface.

My dad, Bill Hamilton, was a beloved divinity school professor. That all changed when God died and we got run out of town.

The legacy of 1960s radical theology

My task at funerals is to share the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.