One of our most important tasks coming out of the last 30 months is to be listening to children. In the recently released #PandemicPastoring Report, I wrote, “teenagers, children and adults everywhere suffered social isolation and profound stress.” The multiple…
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How will you survive the holidays this year?  Listen up! The holidays are here, and children everywhere are thrilled. But many teenagers and adults are wondering, how will we survive the holidays? Great question. Even in a normal year, so…
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Has the Spirit been speaking to you in the course of this pandemic year? Where? How? Through whom or what? The past year has been quiet in some ways, making listening easier as many of us work from home. We…
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Not only has the world turned upside down in this long pandemic season, now it is also in flames. It burns with fires that seek change. It burns with holy calls for justice. Even as the world burns, even as…
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Holy Week Stop. Drop. And Listen. Holy week is upon us. As one of the two most intense weeks of the church year, perhaps you feel tempted. I know I have been. Tempted to make everything as meaningful and wondrous…
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We are in a new moment in the history of humanity. All aspects of life have been disrupted. No one is exempt from the impact of the world-wide coronavirus pandemic. Alongside that reality is another unchanging reality: no one is…
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Listening. Listening matters. It matters for pastoral practice as well as personal relationships and every part of our lives. Listening is intimately connected to paying attention to life with all of our senses. My guest this month is Rev. Dr.…
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I like to feel heard. And understood. How about you? Yet finding people who really do that well and who have time to listen carefully can be a challenge. And then there is the trust. The best listening and understanding…
Read More“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.” (Anne Sexton) This is the work of Advent. If I can listen to my own soul* and give you even an inkling of what I hear, I have given a gift far greater than all the stuff or the fluff that fills most of the sound and fury of our waking hours. But giving this sort of authentic self revelation to those with whom we are already most familiar. . . now that is a challenge.
Read MoreWhile I was away from blogging a lot happened. Life has a way of carrying on, whether I write something down about it or not. Of course. (Smile.) A few moments from the past six weeks seem worth revisiting . . . for what I learned from them. There were some important personal discoveries, not all of which need air time on a blog. Other moments keep sending sending their messages along. So here is one. I fell. I fell down and I can’t believe I didn’t break anything.
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