Opening Address The salt of the earth meaning Jesus points to this morning isn’t decoration — it’s a test, and it’s worth carrying with you before anything else is said. Beloved, grace and peace to you this morning — however you arrive here: tired or hopeful, certain or doubting, welcomed elsewhere or shut out elsewhere. […]
Author Archives: Pastora Tori Matthews
THE DAILY OFFERING Opening Address Beloved, grace and peace to you this morning — however you arrive here: tired or hopeful, certain or doubting, welcomed elsewhere or shut out elsewhere. Bloom is not a room you have to earn your way into. Sit with us a moment, offered today in the spirit of a low […]
Today, in Bloom — the daily word. Delivered at dawn, kept all day. Receive it by email. The Reading I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Isaiah 56:5 The Reflection Sit with the tense of the promise. Not “I will tolerate them,” not “I will make an exception.” I […]
Today, in Bloom — the daily word. Delivered at dawn, kept all day. Receive it by email. A Morning Prayer for the Ones Rebuilding Holy One who was never the voice that harmed us —meet us in the words we can still say,and be patient with the ones we cannot. God of the true name […]
Today, in Bloom — the daily word. Delivered at dawn, kept all day. Receive it by email. The Reading The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5 The Word Notice what the sentence does not say. It does not say the darkness was mild, or brief, or imagined. […]
Reclaiming Library · Entry 05 in the reading path — where the argument leaves the Bible and enters the historical record. New here? Begin at Start Here. “Trans people are new.” It is the quietest weapon in the arsenal — no verse required, just an assumption that people like us appeared last decade. This entry […]
Reclaiming Library · Entry 01 — the beginning of the reading path. New here? Start Here maps the shelves. “God made them male and female.” Five words from Genesis 1:27, deployed as if they were a taxonomy with a locked door. This entry reads the creation accounts as Hebrew literature — which is to say, […]
Reclaiming Library · Entry 02 in the reading path. New here? Begin at Start Here. There are gender-variant people in the Bible. Not implied, not read-in, not “if you squint” — named, addressed, and honored, in the Hebrew prophets and in the founding narrative of the church. The clobber-verse tradition survives by never mentioning them. […]
Reclaiming Library · Entry 04 in the reading path. New here? Begin at Start Here. Romans 1:26–27 is the passage modern condemnation leans on hardest, because it sits in the New Testament and sounds, in English excerpt, like a general verdict. It is neither general nor a verdict. It is the setup of a rhetorical […]
Reclaiming Library · Entry 03 in the reading path. New here? Begin at Start Here. Two verses in Leviticus — 18:22 and 20:13 — have been made to carry more condemnation per syllable than any other lines in scripture. They have been read at funerals of people they helped kill. So this entry does what […]