Angela Townsend | The Grit and Grace Project

Angela Townsend

Angela Townsend bears witness to mercy for all beings as Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. This was not the vocation she expected with an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, but love is a wry author of lives. Angie also has a B.A. from Vassar College. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 32 years, giggles with her mother every morning, and delights in the moon. She lives in a warmhearted nook of Pennsylvania with two shaggy comets disguised as cats.

a mailman walking down a city sidewalk holding packages and the secret to a wonderful life

A Mailman’s Secret to a Wonderful Life: J.O.Y.

By Angela Townsend / Faith

When you are 22, you underestimate the post office man. High on the aurora of your independence, you don’t realize you’re forging a lifelong bond with an elderly man who calls his office “The Pickle Jar.” Roger ran the post office at my seminary. I had arrived in love with Martin Luther and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, young in Jesus’ unconditional arms, confidently expecting the three best years of my life. I was correct. But I had no concept of great littleness, of God’s preference for bread over flourish. I had imagined that moments came in vestments and goblets, hymns and heights. They did, of course, and they filled my table until the legs collapsed in laughter. Lectures lit my canyon. Conversations flooded my […]

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God Treasures His Keepsakes: Us

My father sold space when I was small. I couldn’t comprehend pharmaceutical advertising, and I told my little friends he was a “space man.” What mattered was that his calling carried him great distances. He came home with love offerings: a San Diego Zoo sweatshirt with a bear that squeaked when squeezed, or an otter mother-and-baby made from the ash of Mt. St. Helens. No bauble was more exotic than Turtle Bull. A Lifelong Love for Turtle Bull Crossing the universe in Dad’s pocket, Turtle Bull was an ivory individual the size of a walnut, all the more exquisite for arriving in a red silk pouch. Dad found him in Chinatown and chose him for his smile, a gaudy grin familiar to