This week brings Ash Wednesday in the wider Christian world. It’s a day of prayer and fasting, a day to reflect honestly on our relationship with God, to admit—to ourselves and to God–what we see as sins and shortcomings, and to take inventory of our spiritual lives, to see where we still have work to […]
Read more "What to Do with Silence"Last week as our Call to Worship I read something William Penn wrote in 1693, and that passage has really stuck with me this week, popping into my head, first thing in the morning, and reminding me to choose moments of peace in the middle of my day. I tried following his simple instructions and […]
Read more "Consider It Pure Joy"Isn’t Advent all about making a course correction to allow the time and space for God’s Love to shine into our lives? I realized this morning that I inadvertently included yesterday’s reflection in our Advent booklet twice. Here is the Advent reflection that is supposed to be in the booklet for today: Day 12: Thursday, […]
Read more "An Advent Correction :)"Back when I was finishing up seminary, almost 20 years ago now, I spent a semester in chaplaincy training at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Indianapolis. The training, called Clinical Pastoral Education, or CPE, is encouraged but not mandatory for chaplains, and it helps those of us hoping to serve others learn more about ourselves, the […]
Read more "The Many Faces of God"It’s good to be back with you this morning, Friends. I wish I could tell you exactly what I did on my very-relaxing-and-wonderful vacation last week, but I have to admit it’s a bit of a blur now. The main thing I remember is that there was a lot of quiet, a lot of peace, […]
Read more "The Promise of Prayer"The week before last at the hospital I gave two workshops on, “Responding to Stress with Creativity and Kindness,” and that’s had me thinking about the importance of balance ever since. Over the last couple of decades, we’ve learned more and more about what living with stress can do to us, inside and out. That’s […]
Read more "Finding a Balance"Often when people hear about the work I do at hospice—and this is true for other people on my team as well—the person says, “Oh, I don’t know how you do it. It must be so depressing.” I can understand why someone who hasn’t been part of hospice work to think that. After all, I […]
Read more "Grace for a Rough Road"I imagine that you are, like I am, still processing and trying to understand the events of the last couple of weeks in our country. Our souls were shocked to see such violence and disrespect—disregard for the well-being of people and traditions and institutions. And we are still on edge as we hear about safety […]
Read more "Remembering Prayer"Friends, this has been a heartbreaking week. As the daily death toll of COVID-19 surpassed previous records and hospitals across the country reported being overwhelmed and out of beds, we watched horror-stricken and helpless as violence, chaos, and unchecked rage boiled over in our nation’s capital, defacing one of our democracy’s most sacred places, threatening […]
Read more "The World We Want"This year I took a simplified approach to my gardening because I knew it was going to be a busy summer. I bought the plants and seeds; I drew out a plan. I got everything in the ground in mid-May, when the soil dried out enough for planting. Of the three raised garden beds I […]
Read more "A Matter of Will"
The Space between the Words 