There’s a often told story about a beach that was covered with dying starfish that had been swept ashore by a storm. One person was walking along and spotted another person who seemed busy at a task among the creatures filling the beach. As the walker got closer they saw that the other person was … Continue reading Throwing Stars
Christmas was my mother’s favorite holiday. She delighted in a decorated tree and decorated it with care, rearranging the slapdash ornament placement that characterized my brother’s and my placement. Back in the days when we would lay strands of tinsel over the branches, she would stay up to the wee hours to get each strand perfectly … Continue reading Finding Enough in a Time of Too Much
At the Interfaith Thanksgiving service held on Tuesday night, I shared this brief reflection on gratitude, the theme of the service. May you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! As the autumn deepens, winter is on its way, we prepare to gather with family and friends for a festive meal, and be thankful. And yet, my … Continue reading When Gratitude Comes Hard
At the Ministers Professional Days I attended this last week, our conversations and our worship were filled with exclamations of exhaustion and the wish for words of hope and reassurance for us to offer to the folks in our congregations. To be honest, most of us wanted those words for ourselves, for our broken hearts … Continue reading Our Chance
My dear friends, I believe in the strength of power of love. I believe in the tenacity and strength of our hearts. And I know that at this moment, there is too much broken-heartedness in the world. I have spent the last week struggling as the Kavanaugh nomination, hearing, and subsequent limited investigation have played … Continue reading Our Beautiful and Fragile Hearts
At a training many years ago, the leader talked about how when she became a birder, she also began to see things that weren’t as pleasant. As she described it, she learned to notice small movements that called her attention to a creature nearby. She didn’t realize until she was in New York City and … Continue reading Soul Matters Theme: Vison
On Sunday, August 12, I answered questions generated in the service. I collected up index cards that had questions written on them and selected the ones that I would answer. As it turned out, it was only a few questions out of the big stack that got turned in. It was suggested that the questions … Continue reading Questions, Questions, Questions!
Our Racial Justice/White Fragility book group will be beginning on Wednesday, September 26 and the first book will be Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race. It’s a pragmatic and practical guide to talking about race. It offers us a common vocabulary and set of understandings to begin our conversations through the year. I’ve … Continue reading So You Want to Talk About Race: Getting Started
The staff (Susie Maharry, Nancy Slocum, Libby Ball and I) gathered one July afternoon to do some planning for the year. There are some exciting opportunities for gathering and connecting coming up this year. Watch the weekly E-news to find out what’s coming up! In particular, there will be monthly all ages game nights starting … Continue reading Watch This Space!
Back in the years when I was in seminary, I heard a story about a colleague of one of the large churches. He had been a successful minister, but knew a lot of grief and loss in his life. One teenaged child had drown when the family was on vacation some years before. At the … Continue reading These Are the Best
