Every day the sky gets a little grayer and I wake up a little more awake, to use the same word twice in one sentence which is against my personal convictions. The trees are all delicate and lacy, the leaves gradually unfurling in tens of shades of green. Can’t believe it is really spring. I don’t think I ever really felt like it was spring, here, before, not like I remember it from the West. Somehow the dilapidated buildings of... Read more
I’ve actually been up for hours but it’s been spent trying to shove the children who have class into some kind of space where they can actually be ready for that terrifying eventuality. It was really nice to have the scholastic calendar account for Holy Week, but it would have been even more charming if we could have had two weeks off–modern life is so relentless. Anyway, they are the only ones showing up for anything, the rest of us... Read more
Still very much not awake. So so so not awake. Have to wander around in a fog of some kind of productivity though because some children have school work, and some laundry is crying out, and there are some tasks that have to be knocked off my synod list. Don’t know what synod is? Oh, don’t worry, by the time it gets here you’ll wish I had never uttered the word. Anyway, here are some easter pictures. Sometime this week... Read more
Good Moaning! Happy Easter! We woke up mid morning, or something, and rambled on and on about Holy Week and stuff. We’re tired, of course, and so that makes this podcast super special fun. Not surprisingly, I don’t have very many links because I didn’t read anything this week. But here is what I do have. If you’re tired, don’t feel too bad about it. If the writing is brilliant, does it really matter? I’m convinced! So much this. I love... Read more
Mercy is a difficult experience. A lot of time when God is having mercy, it feels like maybe you are going to die, as Jonah finds out the hard way. Read more
Busy week. About to leap up and go back to church to work on the altar. And then rush across town to fix the fourteen year old’s sorrow about the Easter shoe question. ‘Is there any sorrow like my sorrow,’ she keeps asking, ‘that you made me get shoes I didn’t want?’ ‘Oh my word,’ I repost, ‘you didn’t say you didn’t like them. You have to speak Out Loud. I’m not a mind reader!’ So I’ll run back and... Read more
A blessed and holy Good Friday to you all! May God richly bless you. Read more
One service down, five to go. Tonight is feet washing, communion, and stripping the altar. It’s supposed to be solemn, but as it’s the children who come up and carry everything off into the sacristy, it’s not usually very subdued. That’s the problem with these once yearly services. They’re kind of cool, and we all look forward to them, and it’s hard to, how do you say, ‘enter into the spirit’–which is that you walk with Jesus through his suffering,... Read more
Struggling, which is the Christian word for failure, to get all the way out of the sleep mode and into the awake one. The sky is gray and cloudy and full of threatening rain, which we don’t need, because the river is right at capacity. But it looks like the sky is going to divulge itself anyway. I spent yesterday buzzing around town in consideration of Easter baskets and Easter dinner. The only reason I had so much energy on... Read more
[Jesus excited to see what Pepsi will do next.] Swinging wildly back and forth between a pious desire for the appearance of holiness and devotion on this blog during the holiest and best time for devotion during the whole church year and an uncontrollable desire to comment on the news which keeps delivering up such fantastic moments it’s nigh impossible for me to pass them by. I mean, that Pepsi ad is such a gift–really the thing we all needed... Read more
Preventing Grace
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In