Gimme All Your Love So tell me what do you want me to do…You want me to lay down and play dead and do backflips for you? Walk in your shoes for a while? Tell me, what’s right? Gimme all your…
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Lenten Lights A Woke up to heavy fog this morning. After dropping off my daughter at school, I headed for the Cumberland River, by way of an untaken path. I ended up at a small boat ramp. I photographed ducks…
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Love, Courage and Trust for Lent I wasn’t ready for this week. It’s been theological and emotional whiplash. And we’re only to Wednesday. The Grammy Awards, the State of the Union address, my daughter’s mid-winter teacher conference and three-day break,…
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Music for the Journey from Fat Tuesday to Ash Wednesday On Mardi Gras I spent the day at the house of the Sisters of Charity in Leavenworth, Kansas. I was leading a retreat with a lovely group of new Presbyterian…
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Ash Wednesday “In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die. Where you invest your love, you invest your life. Awake my soul.” — Mumford and Sons Today is the day. Ash Wednesday. We begin the trek…
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“Letting Go: An Ash Wednesday Reflection”
DRIVING TO CHURCH IN THE GATHERING darkness of a late-winter afternoon, I find myself in a state of persistent indecision. By the time I arrive at the Ash Wednesday service at my church, I’ve still reached no conclusion about what I should give up or take up for the Lenten season. Like most years, as Ash Wednesday approaches I wonder what will make my journey more meaningful. What do I need in this season? Some years the need is to let go of some burden; in other years the call is to take up some spiritual practice. Still other years I settle on nothing and wander through Lent more lost than the children of Israel in the wilderness.
Wednesday Words for Writers ~ D
Desk A clean desk invites fresh writing. And it can be a ritual or signal that it is the right time and place to write. Recently I visited a man who has started numerous Montessori schools. If he said to me…
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Wednesday Words for Writers ~ C
Confidence Crisis This is part of the occasional series Wednesday Words for Writers. Check out previous posts on the letter A and the letter B. This post comes from a recent response I made to one of the academic writers that I…
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Wednesday Words for Writers ~ B
Blocks What usually comes to mind when you think of “writer’s block”? Is it the blank page or flashing cursor on the screen? The stories and words that won’t be fully formed in your mind? Or is it that elusive idea that…
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3MMM | Episode 142: Lenten Practices
Have you figured out your Lenten practices yet? Lent is coming soon! This week in fact. Wait. What? Wasn’t Jesus just in diapers? Now we are sending him out alone? Into the wilderness to face wild beasts? Well actually. Jesus…
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3MMM | Exciting News: Podcast is Coming!
Ash Wednesday We have some good news to share. Weekly episodes of the Three Minute Ministry Mentor are coming to you in a new form: the 3MMM Podcast. Where do you listen to podcasts? On a run, a hike, or…
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3MMM | Episode 14: Contemplative Prayer
Prayer. What is the connection between the practice of prayer and the practice of ministry? The responses to this question could fill many pages of many books. (My own responses fill many posts in this blog.) The connections we make…
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3MMM | Episode 5: Being There
Happy New Year’s Eve! What kind of year has 2018 been for you? Happy to see it go? Or wishing you could hang on to the good of it for a little longer? Perhaps you are a New Year’s resolution…
Read MoreLent XXVII
Lenten Lights AA ~ Six Word Story ~ because Sundays in Lent are celebrations ~ +++++++++++++++ Six-Word Stories for Lenten LightsSix Word Stories, inspired by Ernest Hemingway show up often on my blog. During the 40 days of Lent, six-word stories are (usually)…
Read MoreTransfiguration Sunday
Anticipating Light Often I discover what I need, and what the world needs of me, are right in front of me or hidden within me. Yet I need light to recognize and receive the gifts and return them to the…
Read MoreEpiphany VI
Contemplating Lent Lent. A season of preparation. And repentance. Preparation, I can get with. Repentance, that’s harder to face. Preparing is one of those things I can do. Maybe even when I can’t do the thing itself. Family lore says…
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Show and Tell For the last six weeks, since Ash Wednesday, I’ve been slowly working out at the far reaches of my own competence, for the sake of learning something new. For the sake of trying a new practice and…
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“On practicing Our Faith” On practice. On practicing our faith. On practicing our faith with the Jesus story.
Where exactly are we in the Jesus story, right about now? Let’s try to locate ourselves on our journey through the Jesus story. The lectionary. You recall what that is: the list of scriptures that reaches out across the Christian landscape and leads us week by week and season by season through each church year. Each year we follow the Jesus story in the Gospel readings . . .
