Laments
RECENTLY, I TRAVELED UP I-77 from Columbia to Charlotte to catch a plane bound for New Orleans. On this short car ride two opinionated friends accompanied me. One of the widely accepted rules of...
View ArticleThe feast of Rummage
MOST CONGREGATIONS I KNOW take a deep breath between Easter and Pentecost, and for good reason. Lent is intense with study and service; Holy Week filled with prayer and worship; Easter glorious in its...
View ArticleAre you sure you want to bring the confirmation class to GA?
I’VE DONE IT MYSELF — dragged the nine members of the confirmation class to a Saturday presbytery meeting so that 13-year olds could witness first-hand the felicities of Presbyterian governance in...
View ArticleChurch-hugged
FOR OVER A MONTH I HAVE BEEN SKIPPING out on Sunday morning worship. Yet, in the past weeks of absence from church services, I have never felt more embraced by the church community as my life goes...
View ArticleLiberty and justice for all
JULY 4 AND JUNE 14 OCCUR CLOSE to each other on the calendar, and their themes are similar. July 4 commemorates the day in 1776 when the Second Continental Congress (1775-1781) signed the Declaration...
View ArticleMy stab at a pastoral response
I SUGGEST WE START BY COMPILING A LIST of things Christians have disagreed about through the centuries right on into today: God’s sovereignty or human responsibility. Social action or evangelism....
View ArticleThe decider
I’VE BEEN THINKING … At the close of his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes use of a freedom word in the parable when he tells about the act of deciding. He puts it this way: “Everyone then who hears...
View ArticleSpeaking from the heart
“A MAN CANNOT LIE,” said Sigmund Freud (in the sexist language of his day), “if he lies with his lips he will chatter the truth from his fingertips.” Freud is talking, of course, about the way we human...
View ArticleThe church being itself
WHEN YOU GO TO A MEETING of the General Assembly of our communion, as I do every other year as part of my job, you experience an array of emotions. There’s the joy of encountering dear friends from...
View ArticleTraveling companions
THEY SIT SIDE-BY-SIDE on my dining room table, a plastic dashboard Jesus (complete with a spring and an adhesive base) and an eight-inch, cloth voodoo doll with red yarn hair and mismatched button...
View ArticleThe pursuit of happiness
NOT LONG AGO I WAS TALKING with a young adult about a choice that faced me. When I told him I was not sure what I was going to decide, he responded, “Well, just remember — you have to be happy.”...
View ArticleLocal mission to babies (and their parents)
ARE THERE SPECIFIC NEIGHBORHOOD BABIES, or perhaps your own grandchildren, whom you wish had more connection to church? That the parents of these precious little ones would have more love, joy, peace,...
View ArticleForgive and forget?
ANDREW LANG WAS A CELEBRATED Victorian Scottish man of letters who once published a very kind review of a book by a new young author. Not long afterward, this same young writer repaid him for his...
View ArticleTriangle of family faith
OCCASIONS LIKE THANKSGIVING can bring to mind varied thoughts of persons who have been present in years past. November includes the birthday of my maternal grandmother (the 11th) and my father (the...
View ArticleNothing!
AT THE VERY LEAST WE FELT a sense of responsibility … maybe even God’s call. As I wrapped up an interim, my husband quit his job, we sold our home, put everything in storage, moved in with his spry...
View ArticleThe new and the young meet the old and the old
It seems that everywhere you look these days the old is passing away. For some of us, it undoubtedly has to do with having entered the middle years of life — years they say are characterized by the...
View ArticleA better thought
I’VE BEEN THINKING … about the word reconcile, especially the way St. Paul uses it in his letter to the Romans: “ … If while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his son,...
View ArticleA party
AS I WRITE THESE WORDS, I’m just grinning as I reflect on our annual seminary Christmas party last night. The president’s manse was spruced up with outdoor lights, the tree was fully decorated, the...
View ArticleShared Psalms
At an evening concert in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Protestants and Catholics joined under one roof to hear and sing ancient psalms set to centuries-old Celtic melodies. This event was more radical...
View ArticleMarked
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. WE ARE MARKED, EACH ONE OF US, with the sign of the cross. We are marked as God’s own. We are marked as sinners of God’s redeeming. We are marked as...
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