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Nathan Brasfield

@nathanbrasfield

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▪️Youth and Community Ministries @calvarymemphis @calvarymemphis_eyc
▪️Memphis Food Systems Council
▪️DMin in food justice/ecology

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@memphismushroomfestival on the most beautiful of days. @themushroomqueenco treated me great with these tacos and a bag of my own mushroom meat to take home and @four_lakes_fungi was selling these beauties 🍄 I also have been eagerly awaiting my chance to wear this hoodie again 🥹 by @nathanbrasfield

@clean_memphis and @projectgreenfork sure know how to throw a party celebrating food rescue and local culinary talent! Thanks to Aislinn for being my date 🤭 ♥️ by @nathanbrasfield

Upon returning from Hawaiʻi a week ago today at 9:00 in the morning, I got in bed and dreamed about this island like my mind, body, and spirit had to process what I experienced and readjust to no longer being there—after only five days. by @nathanbrasfield

We love the River and we love WKNO. @wknofm @wknotv

#Em #MississippiRiver by @nathanbrasfield

Little did I know about the Big Island of Hawai’i. When Ben invited to share his condo with him for his 50th birthday (!!), I packed an extra 4 pairs of swim trunks (that I never ended up using) because I thought people in Hawaii just laid on the beach.

I don’t know about the other Hawaiian islands, but this is a place of almost literally *unbelievable* natural beauty of every sort. I think I’m still taking in what I experienced.

As we sat on the condo balcony one morning looking out over the ocean, having enjoyed what had done so far and looking forward to what we had left, I said something like, “It’s not fair, is it?”

It took me some time to more fully realize what I meant by that, and Jesus helped out with this (through Sunday’s Gospel reading from Matthew and the priest’s homily at Christ Church Episcopal). In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (one of my absolute favorites), a gift is a gift because it is inherently unfair to everyone—the recipient, the giver, and those who don’t have a place on either side of it. But, a gift is not what is less than fair. It is what is more than fair.

What is ours to figure out, or work out, is what we do with the gifts that we have been given. This doesn’t sound like a profound insight now that I’m typing it out but I just understand the beauty of it in a new way in relation to gorgeous beaches, sunsets, volcanoes, lizards, coffee, waterfalls, truly amazing verdancy, and a good friend’s generosity. Mahalo. 🌺 by @nathanbrasfield

Feast of Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury from 668 to 690. He developed much structure to the Church of England which persists in Anglicanism to this day, and he wasn’t especially anti-Semitic nor did he prefer to torture or kill with heretics rather than to deal with their problematic views in his eyes in a non-violent way. And for all of this we can give thanks. by @nathanbrasfield

I was struck by a particular part of one of today’s appointed psalms for the Daily Office in a way I never have before.

Sometimes (most times?) I feel like a (biblical) justice fighter and peace advocate called to the world, fearful as it can be. And sometimes I feel like a (biblical) poet who wants to just fly off like a bird away from it all.

It’s a gift that the psalms give us permission to feel more than they tell us what we have to believe.

This is my translation, so take that for what it’s worth. by @nathanbrasfield

Ten years is way too long to have been away from the magic of @wildgoosefest. The year before that was my first time ever going and if you know my story you know how it is the most amazing and the most beautiful story I have to tell about my life.

I didn’t get photos with everyone I could have but I got to thank three people whose conversations with me at my first Goose in 2015 (right after I came out in a large group, to my own surprise) meant so, so much to me: Brian Ammons, Gareth Higgins, and Frank Schaeffer. (After scream-crying on my new friend Paul’s shoulder right before Frank’s final session 11 years ago, he got up and said he would never forget my story. And indeed he hadn’t.)

Other highlights from my return include, mainly, being able to give back to the Episcopal tent by leading prayer services there after it was such an important place of welcome for me all those years ago as a closeted Methodist.)

Also, John Pavlovitz teaching me a key lesson about fear, and hearing firsthand Elizabeth Schrader’s story about her groundbreaking finds about Mary Magdalene.

And it had been nearly a decade since I had seen my old mentor Bec, who had me working in a clothes closet in Atlanta before I ever knew that one day I would be spending much more time in one in Memphis.

Two beautiful foods—the Veggie Thing (with tomato chutney) from the Sugar Shack (home of the shared Vermont maple syrup shots) that apparently has become a Wild Goose fixture since I was last around, and the plate of nachos offered for free for anyone who would come by a group of attendees who just wanted to feed people. (Never underestimate the power of calling out “You hungry??” to people passing by.)

Oh and also we are not going to let white Christian nationalism go unresisted in this country. @votecommongood

It wasn’t the same without Tommy Dillon and Hannah Atkins! by @nathanbrasfield

While he lived Wendell Berry understood and articulated as only our greatest living writer could how the biblical tradition as it is put into proper practice is not about escaping the earth to go to heaven, and much less is it about becoming beholden to economic and political powers that destroy soil, air, and water and at the same time and in the same ways compromise our true love of neighbor. It is rather about how to be truly and fully human—as earth beings made of earth. No one has ever and will probably never again explain it like him, as he did so imaginatively and honestly through parable and poem, and through narrative and argumentation. He is one reason why the creedal line I most confidently assert is the one about the holy spirit speaking through the prophets. The question we’re left with now is whether or not we’ve heard.

(It was also, I have to mention, always a comfort to me to hear an old heterosexual white man with a southern accent affirm the validity of my identity and my right to marry accordingly.) by @nathanbrasfield

Plants plants plants. Fire fire fire. Hickory hickory hickory. That’s some burnt sugary muscadines from @jonesorchard over some coconut ice cream. I need to go check on my sweet potato that’s still in the embers. by @nathanbrasfield

I was the only one out on the terrace at @crosstownconcourse this afternoon to see this butterfly, the same kind featured in a post by the @nationalparkservice today about Dolly’s love of the natural landscape of East Tennessee.

I’ve long thought about what it would be like to live in a world in which Dolly is no longer alive. That world has come sooner than we expected.

My favorite album of hers is Blue Smoke, on which she sings this on the final track entitled, “Try,” that, in typical Dolly fashion, is just all about encouraging and uplifting people:

And dreams are special things
But dreams are of no value
If they’re not equipped with wings
So secure yourself for climbing
Make ready for the sky

🦋

@dollyparton by @nathanbrasfield

Faithful steward of fame and fortune. by @nathanbrasfield