The city of chaos is broken down, every house is shut up so that no one can enter; all joy has reached its eventide; the gladness of the earth is banished. Desolation is left in the city, the gates are battered into ruins. (from Isaiah 24) I have done my share of grieving, believe me. Hours of watching horrifying news coverage, reading tragedy in the newspapers, hearing sobbing voices of friends over barely-acquired telephone access . . . this was... Read more
What my mother-in-law was thinking when she carefully selected this card for me . . . I don’t want to know. Read more
I am a woman who finds true adventure in confronting the questions of life. I love the pondering; I anticipate the wondering; I relish the angst. But lately I find myself devoting a whole lot of time to questions I really could care less about, and this is proving to be a rather frustrating experience. I don’t suppose it helps to say from the outset that I never . . . ever . . . in all of my life... Read more
For some strange reason that I cannot fully explain, my birthday this year has been something of a rattling experience. Last year I turned 35 and sailed right through it. Today, 36 seems ominously close to 40, an age that I associate with high school memories of my totally uncool parents. And, with all due respect Mom and Dad, I must insist: that cannot be me! Never! My private fits of anxiety over this crisis came to the surface tonight... Read more
I am rather afraid that, in actually expressing these thoughts, I am crossing the line. And as you know if you read my blog regularly, my “line” is already pretty close to a rather steep precipice. Yet, I decided from the outset that I would always be honest and transparent on this blog, so here we go:Call me crazy, but I am starting to think that I am spiritually impaired in some significant way. I hate (and I do not... Read more
A prayer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, written in prison and published in his book Letters and Papers from Prison: Am I then really all that which other men tell of? Or am I only what I myself know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger... Read more
Psalm 84:2My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God. It happened after a small group session on “pastoral identity”, where five of us participants in the Lewis Fellows gathering on Church Leadership were talking about who we are. I had just mentioned a memory of my first official ministry position, one I had taken, to be honest, because I could not get a job as a pastor... Read more
I am one of those people who carries a kind of a restlessness in my spirit, a sense that I don’t really belong where I am, that there’s another place where all the wondering and uncertainty, pain and insecurity of life would be eased completely. I’ve felt differing degrees of this “homesickness” at various points in my life but it seems to be a feeling that is never very far away. The funny thing about it is that I can’t... Read more
This was the view off my front porch Saturday night at 9:30. Well, this, plus trees frosted with several inches of snow and sidewalks promising a good work-out of shoveling the next morning. When this is what it looks like from the front porch on Saturday night at 9:30 it is pretty safe to say church attendance the next day might possibly be a little sparse. For some pastors, we professionals who spend hours reading books about “how to grow... Read more
The thing on my mind this morning is the Gospel lesson for this Sunday: Mark 1:40-45. I am painfully and increasingly aware of my own quirks, oddities, peculiarities and, as we call them in churchy language, gifts. One of the (many) gifts I have is that I tend to think rather obsessively about the lectionary scripture passages for the week. My increasing awareness of strange habits like this one is thanks in large part, not only to my ever-growing self... Read more
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