Teaching (toward) the Beloved Community

Social Work, People of Faith, and the Death Penalty

Among other aspects of my identity, I am a Christian and a Social Worker. Both of these pieces of my identity help me make values based decisions, including my thoughts on capital punishment.

I have utmost empathy for victims of violent crime and for their surviving family members. I cannot imagine the pain they have experienced. I never want to imagine myself in that situation. And, in the recognition that “two can be true” at the same time…I do not think the state sanctioned execution of someone is justice. It is retribution, a paying back, an “eye for an eye”.

Justice work is constant, a steady stream, a continuous protecting, and, when necessary, a re-weaving of the social fabric of community. Justice would be preventing children from experiencing torture by the people entrusted to care from them. Justice would include recognizing the way that experiencing chronic trauma would change your brain development, especially as a child. Justice would recognize that life without parole can hold someone accountable for their actions without enacting the ultimate harm. Capital punishment has legal and spiritual shortcomings, to say the very (very) least. I have asked my Tennessee governor for clemency in a specific case this week, and I have made the same requests before in other situations. I have no confidence he listens but I can’t not try.

I used to have an assignment in one of my classes that involved students giving a persuasive speech on a social issue of concern to them. It is a macro social work practice class, so part of what they are learning is how to bring about change in “big systems”. So, the purpose of the assignment is for them to think about a cause they are passionate about, and then think about an audience and an “ask”…something you are asking the audience to do to be a part of big system change.

Because I don’t ask them to do something I am not willing to do, I have an example ready to deliver each semester we use this assignment. Mine is on the death penalty. I have cared about this issue for a lot of years. I am not eloquent enough or legally smart enough to say more. But I do believe in the sovreignty of life, from womb to tomb, and I try to live that out in whatever small ways I can.

Here is a copy of my persuasive speech, from the last time I used it in fall semester 2025.

Audience: leaders of independent faith communities, Davidson County Religious Leaders

Thank you for allowing me to be present with you today. I am here to talk about capital punishment here in the state of Tennessee. I come to you as a social worker interested in social justice issues, as a member of the group Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and also as a person of faith.

Tennessee’s last execution of a prisoner was August 5th, just a few weeks ago, and the 15th execution since 2000. There are 43 people on death row in Tennessee. There are two dates set for execution: September 24th and December 11th.

The issue of capital punishment has many dimensions: legal, financial, social, and spiritual. Legally, there is no clear evidence that the use of capital punishment as a sentencing option is a deterrent for others who would commit serious offenses as a 2024 report show that the states with the highest murder rates all practice capital punishment. Financially, we know that the economic cost of sentencing someone to death is significantly more than seeking life imprisonment. This is true nationally and is true in our own state as well. Capital murder trials are longer and more expensive at every step compared to other murder trials, and death penalty trials cost an average of 48 percent more than the cost of trials in which prosecutors seek life imprisonment.

Socially, there are many justice issues to consider. The risk of executing the innocent can never be fully eliminated because the justice system, orchestrated by humans, is fallible. Since 1973, at least 200 people who were on death row were later exonerated and we don’t know the number of people who were executed wrongly because the courts don’t examine claims of innocence for people who are deceased. The sentence of death is also applied inconsistently at its best and unfairly at its worst, leaving us to interpret that the lives of some victims are worth more than others, and the lives of some murderers are worth more than others.

Spiritually, executing someone because of an act he or she has committed denies the possibility of redemption. Executions appeal to our desire for vengeance, but are a very flawed way to bring about grace and peace.

Today, it is my hope that you will join with members from other faith groups, along with other community groups, and add your names to those who are calling for abolition of the death penalty in Tennessee. I encourage you to bring this issue to your own faith community. Study it. Seek counsel. Talk with others who are struggling with this issue. Establish relationships with those who have been the victims of violent crime, as well as with those who have perpetrated it. Ultimately, I hope that you will, collectively, communicate with the governor and ask him to halt all executions while we work to pass legislation to abolish the death penalty in our state.

Thank you for your time today, and I would be happy to answer any questions you may have, now or in the future.

Here are some good sources to look at concerns related to capital punishment and advocacy resources:

People of Faith Against the Death Penalty

Death Penalty Information Center

Equal Justice Initiative

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty

Tennessee and policy violence

Yesterday was my day to read the Psalm reading at church, and to offer the prayer that follows. I read Psalm 11 in its entirety, but the section I personally held onto was Verse 4 and Verse 5:

The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne.He observes everyone on earth; his eyes examine them. The Lord examines the righteous, but the wicked, those who love violence, he hates with a passion.”

After beginning my prayer for the people we know who are sick, and for our missionaries, I prayed for the people who are victims of violence…of interpersonal violence, of state-sanctioned violence, and those trying to survive policy violence.

For a state that prides on southern hospitality, we are anything but. For a city (Nashville) that used to pride itself on being the buckle of the Bible belt…no we aren’t.

I grieve the lives that are lost to violence perpetrated by one person onto another. I really and truly do. But I don’t believe capital punishment is the answer, not spiritually, and not from a standpoint of efficacy either. And I live in a state that has seen its rates of poverty increase at the same time public support and sentiment for assistance is decreasing. We also have a felony camping law in a place where basic needs cost more than poverty thresholds.

I ended my prayer yesterday with a plea that we would become better seekers of peace, in a world that seems content with violence. I have some thoughts on how we could be a part of this work, and ultimately I know it begins with the individual actions I make, which is all I can really control right now.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

And I also believe and take to heart the African proverb “When you pray, move your feet”.

About policy violence, we pray with our feet through voting, through campaigning and advocacy, and through building networks of mutual aid. That’s the kind of work I want to spend more time doing in coming years.

Hattie Cotton Elementary and the Twin Towers

Though the Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court ruling in 1954 admonished states to “end racial segregation with all deliberate speed”, the “Nashville plan”was to integrate one grade a year beginning in 1957, meaning that a complete desegregation plan would take 12 years to roll out. (Spoiler alert: The court case of Kelley v Nashville Board of Education was finally dismissed in 1998, ruled by a US district judge to be free of the remnants of state sanctioned segregation. So it clearly took longer than 12 years and that is a whole other story.)

Back to September, 1957, Nashville: 19 Black first graders enrolled in 8 elementary schools that were all white. On September 9th, one Black student enrolled at Hattie Cotton Elementary. On September 10th, in the middle of the night, a dynamite explosion destroyed a wing of the school. Hattie Cotton was closed for nine days, and re-opened without the young girl who had attempted to enroll. No one was ever charged with this crime.

By JPTimbaud93 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147343758

That was 69 years ago today. I wonder if that little girl is still alive, a 75 year old woman now, and what she thinks about the bombing, and the days leading up her brave attempt to go to that school. And I wonder what she thinks of the days and years afterward, when “school choice” was a thing that didn’t exist for her, at least in Nashville. And I wonder if she ever wondered why no one was held accountable for this horrible, evil, violent act. I wonder if she was a person of faith, and if so, what she thought about the people who weaponized their faith against her.

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As I write this, tomorrow will be the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center as well as the attack on United Flight 93. Unlike the act of violence and evil that occurred at Hattie Cotton, I was alive (aye, a whole grown adult) at the time of the September 11 attacks. I will always remember the morning that I, a lowly PhD student, was co-teaching a class on family social work practice. The associate dean (who was my friend, co-teacher, mentor and dissertation advisor) knocked on the door of the classroom. I went to the door, thinking she was bringing me some markers for an activity we were planning and had gotten locked out. But when she had gone to get the markers, she had heard the news of the first attacks from the Dean’s office, and we had to decide how to inform the students, which we did in hushed tones in the hallway.

The estimate of the number of victims who died as a result of the terrorist attacks on 9-11 is 2,977. I am not sure it is possible to project how many people died in a less direct way, through unhealed trauma or grief.

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Every spring for the past six years, one of my favorite colleagues says “We aren’t going to play the Trauma Olympics in here”, when we have opening day of our integrated classes on Trauma Studies. What she means by this, and what we embrace, is that every story of loss or pain that someone shares with us is a story worth hearing, worth bearing witness to. I feel like this is a good phrase for me to remember right now. I am sure I will hear/read many, many reflections on “9-11” tomorrow. I saw/read/heard almost nothing about the Hattie Cotton bombing today.

Some people might argue that the loss of life on September 11 was greater, thus it is more significant to remember. Some might also point out that the impact was felt across the nation (and the world), and that is true.

But two things can be true at the same time.

I would counter that with the position that the feeling of being in danger, of being threatened, of believing you could lose your life and everyone you loved because people didn’t like the color of your skin, is just as devastating and impactful on generations. And while the bombing of Hattie Cotton Elementary only affected Nashville in a direct way, you don’t have to look long or hard to find numerous and continuous acts of violence against Black children, adults, and families all throughout the US.

I think it is appropriate to stop and reflect on the events of September 11. I think it is just as important and appropriate to reflect on acts of violence and marginalization and oppression in our own communities.

Here are a few questions I ask myself when I reflect on these situations: How am I complicit in this system today? What do reparations look like? How can I practice grace toward people who have been most closely affected? Who do I need to be listening to? Who is telling the whole story? Who has blinders on and why? What do mercy and justice look like here?

Go in peace.

Invisible Work

Today (Labor Day, 2026) I went out for a walk, in the middle of the day, which is not the brightest thing to do because of the heat wave we have been experiencing here in Tennessee. I really just wanted to move, and see the sun, though….so off I went. I came back about an hour later, dehydrated and wondering why the people who fought so hard for labor rights didn’t fight for all weekends to be three day weekends.

I kid, I kid. But only kind of.

I have never, as a fully fledged adult, had a job where I have not worked more than what I was contractually obligated to work. And while in my earlier professional years I could have been rightly accused of being a workaholic, the fact is that for about 15 years now I have continuously tried to strive for a better work life balance and I am continually coming up short.

As a woman, and a mother, I do a lot (a whole lot) of invisible labor for our household. Keeping up with the mental load (how many times is dance class happening this week, who likes what for lunchboxes, who are the frenemies these days, checking Schoology, who needs forms filled out and when) plus the general overarching state of always wondering if you are raising good humans, is exhausting.

As a professional, I do a lot of invisible labor at my institution as well. Much of it is relational in nature, and some of it defaults to me because I have been there a long time and people think I won’t mind because I love my work. And I do love my work. I love teaching and being with students. Along with parenting, being a professor has been one of the biggest blessings in my life and I hope I have been a blessing to others. I also can own the fact that some of my over-work continues to be related to me; i.e. I need to figure out and really believe that my value is more than the hours I work.

That being said, invisible labor in the workplace is a for real “thing” and I don’t think we are taught how to draw boundaries around some of the more invisible parts of our work. When there are hours of invisible labor each week at work, the part of work that is more “tangible” (i.e. classes to teach, committees to serve on, students to advise, papers to grade, etc) still needs to be done. And if work that is invisible isn’t counted as work, because of its very invisibility, then nothing will change about it.

(Thank heavens my college philosophy professor taught me the meaning of a tautology somewhere circa 1992, otherwise I wouldn’t have a name for this.)

Here’s a 2021 piece from Political Science and Politics on the challenges of retaining women faculty due to invisible labor. It is important to note the extra weight of this on faculty women of color. It isn’t just a problem in the US either.

I care about this for myself, obviously, but I also care about it for younger women in “the academy” everywhere, and for women who will come into it in the future. I don’t remember anyone talking about this when I was in my PhD program, and I didn’t get any mentoring around this as a young academic.

On a personal level, the best advice I could give would be to start with stronger boundaries than I did. And find someone who has been there longer than you who can give you the honest answer about whether or not you can safely say no to certain requests of your time (i.e. another committee, sponsoring an org, etc).

This is a really interesting podcast from The Faculty Factory on organizational wellness as a strategy for supporting faculty. It is a little heavy on the focus of med school faculty but I think the strategies are applicable to other disciplines and institutions more broadly. Here is even a more current piece from The Harvard Business Review on how invisible work is draining the best employees. There are good strategies here for leadership with respect to making the invisible, visible.

Birthday truth-telling

It’s almost your birthday, 48 Contiguous States plus Alaska and Hawaii.

I would say “Happy birthday America” but some years ago I learned that there are other Americas. (It is a lesson I should have learned earlier.)

I would say “Happy Birthday to the US” but we don’t seem to be united. (And when there are people in our country who are seemingly okay with discrimination and violence and something adjacent to tyranny, I don’t feel a call to be united with every single person, so that’s cool.)

For my part, on our country’s 250th birthday, I want to hear from some truth tellers. And, because my faith is important to me and because there is so much of religion that gets twisted into politics that it makes me literally ill….I want to hear from some faithful truth tellers.

I am thinking of the words of Dr. King, in Memphis, in his last public speech. I want this country to “be true to what you said on paper” like he did. Our earliest “official” documents talk about equality and about justice and about liberty, I want us to truly pursue that.

Maybe because it was his last speech, maybe because Memphis was home for me for several years, maybe because several years ago I heard a reflection from one of the sanitation workers who marched with Dr. King… for whatever the reason, this speech of his is one that I keep coming back to. As he said toward the end of the speech, “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.”

I believe we still have an opportunity to make this country a better one, but it is something we have to be intentional about.

In April 2025, Dr. Rev. William Barber referenced Dr. King’s speech in his own impassioned rally of the people, and encouraged us to “stand tall” and to lead with love and repent of apathy. It does so often seem like people are apathetic to the injustices around us. Aside from Rev. Barber’s powerful delivery, I appreciate that he gives us tasks we can do. We don’t just have to feel apathetic or frozen from the trauma happening around us.

Christians for Social Action is an organization with resources for how we can stand together and take action with people, especially people our systems have marginalized and made vulnerable.

The American Friends Service Committee is another group that I trust and whose work is grounded in a belief that we have to simultaneously challenge injustice and work for peace.

I am going to wrap up here with a reference to Sojourners, an organization I have been learning from for about 30 years now (eek). They have a piece by Jamar Tisby, entitled “After 250 Years, Christians Owe America the Truth”.

Amen, amen, amen.

Meeting people where they are

In social work we talk a lot about “meeting people where they are”. We mean it in the sense of beginning the work where the client is, not where we (or they) wish they were. We mean it in the sense of being non-judgemental, and of prioritizing client voice and choice. Below I reflect on a Biblical example of someone being met where they were. I don’t always connect my faith and my profession so explicitly on this blog (though they are always connected in real life), but when this example struck me a few weeks ago I haven’t been able to forget it.

Photo by u00d6zer u00d6zmen on Pexels.com

One day recently I was coming home, coming through the garage and into our house through our old homeschool room, which is now laundry disaster area, crafting and art making mecca, and temporary garden growing station. I knew that my middle daughter was home because I saw her car in the driveway, and she knew I was on my way home because I texted her when I left campus. So the two of us were in the know about who was home and who was coming home. No one was in the dark about that.

Well. I opened the door to the homeschool room and immediately heard screeching and screaming from her, who was an inch or two away from the door. Me being me, I started screeching and screaming too and there we stood, for almost a full minute, just screaming because we had scared each other so badly with our presence.

Imagine if either one of us had been in the space depicted in John 20, with the disciples in that locked room, when all of a sudden Jesus appears and calmly gave everyone a greeting of peace. I can’t fathom the screaming that would have happened if she and I would have been there. We might have been the focus of the next few verses instead of who we commonly, and I think mistakenly, refer to as “doubting Thomas”.

After his appearance in the room and his greeting of peace to everyone, Jesus says to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Put your hand into the wound in my side. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!” He said that because Thomas had missed the first post resurrection sighting of Jesus, and despite what the other disciples told him, Thomas said he wouldn’t believe until he saw the scars in the hand and on the side. Jesus met him where he was.

When I was growing up, anytime I would express doubt at something, my granny called me a Doubting Thomas. I think that’s how a lot of people refer to him, but I would like to push back on that a bit or at least not make it the prime point of his identity. We know that Thomas had been a follower, and I think at that point in time, he was expressing some disbelief, some confusion. Something I have certainly experienced before. And Jesus had mercy on him, and provided him with the evidence he was seeking. This helped him be at peace, and get moving again toward the work he was called to do.

So many people I know right now are balancing tension between belief and disbelief, between faith and confusion, between certainty in the Lord and doubt. I have been in that place before. And know that Jesus will meet you where you are in your journey, whether it is on a road, in a room, through a hymn, in nature, or through community.

Some of us aren’t having a crisis of faith per se, but we are having a crisis of humanity. Why do so many “believers” spout racist talk? Why do some “believers” abuse power? And, on days that I balance the tension between wanting to lay on the couch and read a good book while the world burns around me, and going out to try to do a little good out in the world, I am thankful for people who meet me where I am in a non-judgemental way and help me remember the work I am called to do.

Moral of the story: (1) meet people where they are, in a non-judgemental way (2) help them hear their calling (3) let people into your life who can do these things for you.

Ponderings of an academic in early summer + resources for self care and mindfulness

A week ago we had graduation, and earlier this week I turned in my final grades. I have been alternating going through piles of paper, a slew of emails, and attending meetings. I have also done a couple of walks and enjoyed not feeling like my hair was on fair.

As graduation is more in my rearview mirror, I will eventually stop going into the office every day and I will read for fun and also take longer walks and get to spend more time with friends and family at a pace that is different than my normal. I eat healthier in the summer. I have more friend time and less screen time.

I flourish in the summer. (My friend Aimee calls this “Summer Sabrina”.)

I think it is important to note: Flourishing doesn’t equal “not working”. I am never fully away from my work for very long, because my work is a big part of my identity and something I feel called to do and be. I think what makes me flourish in the summer is the different pace of the work, and that I have time to reflect more and to think about different aspects of work (and life). And, as mentioned previously, my hair doesn’t feel like it is on fire.

The academic year is fast paced and sometimes frenetic. Even semesters that feel long go by quickly. I am not as mindful in the semester as I would like to be, and not as healthy.

All of this begs the question….what do I need to do differently to have aspects of Summer Sabrina in August through April? How can I practice some genuine self care (even if it is boring self care) so that I might be of better service to others?

Here are some short mindfulness exercises that I do practice fairly frequently, especially box breathing and a senses check in. One of the things I would like to incorporate more are journal prompts for deeper reflection. Here are 100 journal prompts for healing and reflection.

I also want to stretch my poetry and essay reading and writing throughout the year, not just summer. Here is one of my favorite poets and essayists: David Whyte I am also working personally on a collection of poems tied to headlines. How many have I written since last summer? One.

So….while I have other things on my bucket list, a big part of my summer “me time” will be thinking about how to have more wellness and more flourishing year round. If you know me in real life, hold me to this!

Environmental Impacts of AI

I hate AI on principle because of the impacts on the environment. It is profoundly, negatively affecting our environment, of which we only have one.

As a professor, I reaaaaallllly hate AI because it has made my work harder. (Harder in the frustrating sense, not harder in the sense of “I am struggling but learning” sense.) I may write about that differently another day, but today I am focusing on the environment.

Every week for the last several months I have found myself in a conversation with someone about AI, and most of the time this person has found a new use for it that they are smitten about. I generally make a face (the exact face you get depends on our relationship) and say, “But….the environment….”and the conversation really doesn’t go much past that point. It is not that people don’t care about the environment, it’s that people don’t know the depths of the environmental impact. I know that I didn’t. So I have committed to researching some reputable sources and hopefully my environmental arguments will land better in the future. (I say this knowing that even my computer use, anyone’s basic computer and energy use, also has environmental impacts. I know there are other ways I can live more sustainably too. We are all works in progress.)

Below are some of the highlights of what I learned. Let me know if you want more details and links b/c I can surely send them!

From MIT researchers: “Each time a model is used, perhaps by an individual asking ChatGPT to summarize an email, the computing hardware that performs those operations consumes energy. Researchers have estimated that a ChatGPT query consumes about five times more electricity than a simple web search”

From the UN Environment Programme: Globally, AI-related infrastructure may soon consume six times more water than Denmark, a country of 6 million, according to one estimate. That is a problem when a quarter of humanity already lacks access to clean water and sanitation.

The World Resources Institute has some data on the multiple ways that AI (especially data centers) impacts local communities, including the local environment (air and water quality especially).

There is also something known as “the green paradox”, explained in this article. In essence, there are ways that AI can theoretically contribute in a positive way to the environment, such as in monitoring deforestation and other ecosystems. However, the authors of this piece recognize that we are far from AI sustainability practices necessary for it to be more of an ally, and that right now AIs carbon and water footprints are growing faster than equivalent environmental benefits.

So, there you have it: the primary reason I hate AI. And while every time I say it, I feel like a 90 year old screaming to “get off my lawn”, I am going to learn to embrace it. Keeping green spaces and a healthy water supply is worth it.

Social Prescriptions, Loneliness, and Isolation

A few weeks ago I learned that it was “Social Prescription Day”, celebrated annually on March 26. I learned of this in the evening of March 26, of course, kind of too late to prescribe myself, or anyone else, something social to do. (If you are new to the term, social prescriptions are “a systematic approach to addressing patients’ social needs by referring them to or implementing community-based interventions and facilitating social connection based on individual need”. You can see this quote in context, and learn more about social prescriptions, by checking out this case/commentary note from the Journal of Medical Ethics.

Anyway, when I was preparing my class for March 27 (a Friday, so a 50 minute class), I decided I could tie in the idea of social prescriptions to my last class of the day: Social Work Practice with Children and Families. That week on Monday and Wednesday we had been talking about isolation that many families experience, the challenges of building social and instrumental supports with families, and the ways that isolation can increase risk for child abuse and neglect at the family and community system levels. So, we spent the first 10 to 12 minutes of Friday’s class finishing that discussion and looking at a program meant to build informal support networks around families. (You can check out the Family Hui Initiative here…very cool!)

And then I told my students they could have the rest of the class time to do something that would either reduce social isolation (if they were feeling isolated) or they could do something to promote social connection with others or among others. I told them I would ask them the following Monday what they had done, so they couldn’t just blow the rest of class off and be done with it.

I had some students who decided to pair up and go take a walk on campus (and it was a lovely day for that, one of our first warm spring days). I had other students who opted to stay in class and do social things with each other: I had brought a basket and bag of things to class with me: play dough, coloring books and markers and crayons, legos, Uno cards, and a puzzle. I had a couple of students take the sidewalk chalk I had bought and go outside toward the sidewalks around the quad.

I played Uno with four students, including one student who has come late consistently all semester and is new to campus this semester. We had to encourage her to join us, but when she did, she came alive in a different type of way. While we played we shared some about our weekend plans, but mostly about who we had played Uno with in the past, so we had a chance to learn about people’s families. I checked in periodically with the other groups who were coloring, building a replica of the campus clock tower out of legos, and puzzling.

The group that took the sidewalk chalk outside appeared at the end of class to return my chalk. One student who is not actually in my class, but had gotten caught up in the activity, came along with the others to return it. He said, and I quote, “that was very satisfying”.

I left class and walked back to my office feeling pretty good about the use of the time, both how it had tied into our recent content and also how it seemed to help give people a little lift. It definitely gave me a little lift.

The next morning I happened to be looking at social media, and someone on campus who works in a different building had come upon my students’ chalk art and took a picture of it. She said she walked around that building twice just to get to see it again. Our “social prescription” day gave her a little lift, and I hope it did others as well.

Last week in church, in his sermon, our minister said “isolation is where faith goes to die”. In 2023, the Surgeon General declared loneliness and isolation to be an epidemic, and the health impacts have been compared to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

Whether we are talking about isolation or loneliness, two different but related things, it is clear that it is on many minds and hearts of people, both those who are “helpers” and those who are feeling the feelings (and these may overlap some, too).

The 2025 Stress in America Survey was conducted by The Harris Poll and the APA in August of 2025. Results from a nationally representative survey indicate that 54% of adults surveyed felt isolated, and 50% felt they were left out or lacking companionship often or some of the time.

There are interventions to reduce loneliness, and some therapies have been shown to be more effective than others. Therapy isn’t accessible to everyone, though, and isn’t a “cure-all”. I do think social prescriptions are a valid and viable tool.

The good news is, you can “prescribe them” for yourself, for your students, your congregation, your extended family….be intentional about making time and creating space for interacting with others.

Both professionally as a social worker and personally as a mother and basic human, I care very much that people “find their people”. If you need help or encouragement thinking about how you can find *your* people, here are a few ideas: (1)look in the “Hip <name of your community> facebook page”. I can almost guarantee you someone has asked in the group before “how do I meet people?”. Check out their local advice. (2) If you are a believer, but not active in a faith community, be intentional about visiting some places. Find your fit. (3) Visit your local library, local community garden, local greenway. Read bulletin boards for gathering opportunities and see who hangs out in those spaces. (4) Take the risk and ask someone for coffee or a walk. (5) Volunteer at a cause you believe in, and you will meet some like minded people.

And learn to embrace potentially feeling awkward while you are in new spaces….I am the queen of this. Find someone who cheers you on in this (both the making time for people, the intentionality of it, and the embracing of the awkward).