Love Means Showing Up
A seminary friend of mine went through a divorce while she was a mom of young children, pastoring a small, rural congregation made up of mostly of older adults. She was worried about how her parishioners would take the news. Would they still trust her leadership? Should she offer to resign? There was no need
There is a new ritual in many church services that I adore. Congregations sometimes call it a “Blessing of the Backpacks” and it usually involves school staff, teachers and students coming forward for a prayer as they start the school year. A few weeks ago, the minister at the church we were attending used liturgy
The timing isn’t great. Many of us are still reeling from the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. Between their rulings against our reproductive rights and the separation of church and state and their striking down laws that protect us from gun violence and climate change, I’ve heard enough from these judges in the past few weeks
When I worked at a church in Oxford, Mississippi, I remember a church member commenting, “I get so tired of people saying to me, ‘It must be so amazing to live in such a fun town all year long.’ They are only here for a few Saturdays in the fall; I live and work and
In college, I had a literature professor who shared something very important with our class. After a discussion about a short story, she leaned against her desk and said, “I want to tell you something that took me countless hours and thousands of dollars to learn in therapy. Here it is: I am not my
There’s nothing like a trip to the Grand Canyon to put one’s life in perspective. I’d never seen the Grand Canyon before and was determined to get my family there this spring. It did not disappoint. People talk about the vastness of the canyon and how pictures don’t do it justice. They are right: vastness
It’s official—I’m getting weirder. I’ve started mailing family members prisms that they can hang in their windows so they too can have magical dancing rainbows on their walls. This is completely unsolicited; I’ve just decided they all need one. I recently added a large potted lemon tree to my bedroom because I’ve always wanted one
For the umpteenth morning in a row, I was knocking on my twins’ bathroom doors, reminding them that school started in ten minutes. I was hearing a lot of “I knoooowww, Mom!”, but I wasn’t seeing much progress. We were all frustrated and crabby. The moodiness of two thirteen year old girls getting ready for
I loved school recess when I was a child, but only certain activities. Since I wasn’t very coordinated, I tended to stick to jumping rope. Two friends would hold each end of a long jumprope and we’d all take turns lining up in the middle. The rope turners would count to three, tapping the jumper’s
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” Desmond Tutu This will surprise exactly no one, but I bought way too many daffodil bulbs. This past year, we moved from a “farmette” on four acres to an in-town house on a quarter of an acre. I ordered bulbs