Happy Fourth of July! I hope you celebrated in a safe and distant way yesterday, if you did celebrate. There were lots of fireworks in our neighborhood last night, but it seemed a bit calmer and less loud than previous years, which was a welcome change. As you probably heard, especially if you were planning […]
Read more "Then and Now"Good morning, Friends. Our message this morning could also be called, “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” I mentioned to a friend last week that I was hoping I would have a week of “prayerful gardening.” And it turned out to be that and more. I’ve been feeling peaceful and quiet internally, which means I […]
Read more "The Quiet of Home"Happy Father’s Day to you if you are a father, have had a father, or have loved someone who is a father! I read some interesting research this week that showed that being a good dad really does make a difference—a lasting difference—in your children’s lives. Of course we all just know this inherently, if […]
Read more "Through the Eyes of Love"Our message for this morning comes to you courtesy of this beautiful paragraph written by Thomas Kelly. It is included in the Universal Light section of Britain’s Yearly Meeting’s Faith & Practice: The light for which the world longs is already shining. It is shining into the darkness, but the darkness does not apprehend it. […]
Read more "Kingdom of the Heart"Friends, we are living through a remarkable time right now. A time ripe for change in a way beyond anything I’ve experienced in my half-century. When I started writing this message, several days ago, I was feeling overwhelmed and sad, tempted to despair. As I finish this message just now, I have hope. I agree […]
Read more "What Canst Thou Say?"We are seeing in our world right now is the very real, life-long, damaging result of us and them thinking. This is the type of thinking that sows seeds of separation, that values one group above another, that believes that power—not peace, not goodness, not love—is the ultimate goal. We know that human nature has […]
Read more "Doing the Honest Work"How do you find yourself spending your time these days? Are you enjoying the long, open moments, the freedom of choice, the ease of not having anywhere to go? Have you learned to befriend your boredom, to enjoy a little creativity, to calm the anxiety that sometimes arises and then meet it with a friendly […]
Read more "In Spirit and in Truth"I hope you’ve had a good start to your Mother’s Day. Maybe your day started off with coffee and quiet, or with breakfast in bed, or a kiss from your spouse. Maybe you were remembering Mother’s Days when the kids woke you up early because they just couldn’t wait to give you their homemade presents. […]
Read more "The Beautiful Next"Last week, NASA published what I thought was an amazing report showing that the human heart is changed when we go to space. Apparently microgravity, which is the weaker gravity astronauts experience when they are orbiting the earth, encourages the growth of a certain hormone that helps our hearts to regenerate and refresh. Isn’t that […]
Read more "A Healing Pause"You know, it’s usually a fact of normal life: You smile at someone; they smile back. You call a friend on the phone and they answer (or you leave a message and they call you back shortly). You call your spouse’s name from the living room; he says, “What?” wherever he is. Call and response […]
Read more "Call and Response"So how are you holding up in your part of the world right now? Depending on where we are in life, depending on who we’ve got at home right now, depending on what we are used to doing on the average day, the current stay-at-home orders in place for our state may be affecting us […]
Read more "In Deeper Reverence, Praise"When Mary headed to the tomb so early that first Easter morning, she was heartsick and despairing. Everything was bad. Everything was lost. Her hope had been destroyed. She had seen terrible things over the last few days, heartbreaking things that must have shaken her faith in humanity and robbed her of any belief that […]
Read more "We Rise"This is the second of two reflections offered in the Good Friday service yesterday at Hancock Health. As a people of prayer, we know it to be true that prayer changes things. Prayer changes things in mighty and sometimes surprising ways. On our prayer chain at church we have so many stories of illnesses healed, […]
Read more "Prayers of Intercession"Yesterday at Hancock Health I had the blessing of participating in a virtual Good Friday service we offered for our community, knowing that many, many people this Holy Week will be unable to go out and attend services as they normally would. Here I want to share the first of two reflections I offered in […]
Read more "Pause for a Breath"Tomorrow is Memorial Day, a day when we remember those in our nation’s military service who have lost their lives serving this country, doing their best to defend and protect the ideals as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. The tradition of going to decorate graves on Memorial Day—which early on was called Decoration Day—is […]
Read more "Jesus Wept — and Remembered"