Lenten Lights C Lent is one of the church’s two extended seasons of preparation and reflection. Advent is the other. Time in the church’s liturgical calendar is not merely chronological time (or chronos) with one hour following another, one day following…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XV
A Turn to Lived Experience
The study, practice, and knowledge of big ideas in psychology and religion are shifting and changing in the twenty-first century. One of the most substantial changes is that deep thinking about big ideas demands an engagement with the lived experience of real people and situations.
Ordinary Time I
Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth I did not grow up in a household that observed saint’s days or many holy days at all, other than Easter and Christmas. I knew about Lottie Moon, who was venerated in the weeks leading…
Read MoreEpiphany VII
Breathing a Prayer Let everything that has breath praise the Creator. When we lived in Georgia parishioners there introduced us to the amaryllis. Every year a pot with a gigantic bulb would appear on my desk during Advent. By the…
Read MoreChristmastide III
Looking Back and Looking Ahead Another year of blogging. This post #200 since I began blogging two years ago (Advent 2009). A few changes are underway. I’m working on the site to make it a bit more visually appealing. I’ve…
Read MoreOrdinary Time XLI
Advent Eve I’m writing late and posting this prior to the start of Advent. I’ve been at this blogging-twice-weekly for two years now. That’s 190 posts. A few with pictures only. Some original poetry. Lots of stories. Original photos with…
Read MoreOrdinary Time III
In the Middle of the Story Ever find yourself in the middle of a story unsure of how it will all turn out? That’s where I am right about now. I’m in the middle of several stories, and I don’t…
Read MoreEaster VIII
A Brief History of Reading Part I (mine, not everyone else’s) Although it is tempting tonight to try and be clever about today’s failed prediction of the rapture, I’ll resist. Most of my friends on fb – and the rest of…
Read MoreChristmas | Twelve Days to Celebrate
We’ve been celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas at our house, with enthusiasm – or at least dedication – for more than twenty years. Hard to believe. In the beginning I was an eager and well-intentioned, but mostly uninformed young Baptist. I gave my husband (who was still my fiancée that first year) 12 gifts in the days leading up to December 25. The next year at Christmas, when I was about to begin seminary, and we had been married for a few months, we shifted the tradition to the days after Christmas.
Read MoreOrdinary Time XXXVII
For me this week, which ends the church year, also marks coming around full circle in a year of blogging. I began with Advent last year. So this week I will take time to read through all 93 entries of the past year. Except for a six week sabbath in July and August, I blogged twice weekly. I will be noticing themes, ideas, patterns, and even things that are missing.
Read MoreOrdinary Time IX
The beach is awash in rocks. Each one a solid idea. Some round. Some fitting perfectly into an open palm. Others jagged. Miniscule. Others large as islands. Piles of ideas rolling around in the sea of time. Bumping into one another until no sharp edges remain.
Read MoreLent XI
Switchfoot. Standing here on the brink of Holy Week, I’m glad to be headed in to hear the music of Switchfoot in a live concert in Cincinnati, Ohio at The Underground. Since early November when Switchfoot released their newest album, Hello Hurricane, I’ve been playing it almost daily.
Read MoreLent III
“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 . . .
Christmas I
Christmas has finally come and gone and the night is deepening around me. Silent but for the tapping of keys on my computer and the distant whine of a train whistle. A few cracks and pops say that my in-laws’ house is still settling in for a long winter’s nap. Family Christmas celebrations are complete. Scraps of wrapping paper litter the floor and the bare-bottom tree seems a little spent.
Christmastide, being one of the shortest seasons of the liturgical year, celebrates the revealing of God in the world, the inbreaking of a Living Word into the mundane and daily routines of our lives. But how does the season live on through the year? Or should it?
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