When All Else Fails, Listen
If you’ve been following along with the lectionary, you might be aware that a major theme of our recent gospel lessons has been prayer. It’s been a great opportunity to talk with our kids in the children’s message about the ways we pray and what happens when we pray. Far too often, we think of […]
All Means All?
Paul writes about the Body of Christ with specificity, spending time naming overlooked and underestimated parts of the body and lifting up their value to the whole body. The passage ends with the assertion that we are made in our diversity to care for one another, to be stronger together.
What You Pay Attention To Grows
Center, desire, and intention – these three components give us a lens in which to process our daily life and response to change. What, exactly, is getting my attention in the midst of this transition? Is it all of my stress? All of my fears, worries, or dislikes? How do I find my center? Where and when is my attention on God in the midst of all of this?
Contentment
The past five days have been soul-filling and joyful. I have had such a wonderful time reconnecting with my friends Stacey and Steven, the Pacific Coast, and myself. In a usual year, this would mark the end of my vacation time. I would be refreshed and ready to return to work. In a usual year, […]
Podcast
Sabbatical Day 7
Today marks my first week of sabbatical and the gratitude has not stopped flowing from my heart! It has been a gift to step away from the usual day-to-day, decompress from the past six or so stressful months, and spend some time focusing on something new. But really, my focus isn’t so new. It’s what […]
Sabbatical Begins
I have been looking forward to my sabbatical. The rest and recalibration has been necessary, but I have also been looking forward to spending some dedicated time with friends and colleagues about what life-long faith is really about. Along with interviews I will be making along the way, to go towards a podcast that I […]
A Eulogy for a Friend
Though today is a day churning with a myriad of emotions, it is also a day that we recognize a beloved child of God and the ways she touched our lives. This is really what embracing each moment is all about, the realization that nothing is completely one thing or another – either all bad or all good. Life, the true gift of life, resonates in the tension of both/and.
Everything Has Become New
I love how Paul describes being a Christian in this passage. He doesn’t use the word Christian, or some of our other more common descriptors like, disciple or person of faith, but he does use two terms that I think we could use a little more time considering – a new creation and ambassador.
A Good Goodbye
It is one thing to talk about all the good that God can do through these changes and the power of transformation. It is another thing to live through it. It almost seems like every day we are experiencing some new way of experiencing change.