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Celebrating festival days with children
My kids never met a holiday they didn’t like. For them, holidays involve some combination of vacation days from school, extra time with friends and special foods. Once, shortly after Easter, my kids ran up to me, asking, “When is the NEXT holiday?” Our church calendar...
Spiritual decluttering
Spring is a time when the hours of daylight become longer, the weather begins to grow warmer, and we tend to have a bit more energy. Having more daylight can help us feel more hopeful and energized as we look to the future. At the start of spring, people often engage...
Journey? Lent is more of a holy meander.
I have always loved a good journey. I like planning trips and figuring out the best way from point A to point B. While GPS mostly does that work these days, I do love looking things up on a map, to include side quests for the best donuts in Massachusetts, an off...
Trade winds
“If you become a sailboat and sail away from me,” said his mother, “I will become the wind and blow you where I want you to go.” —Margaret Wise Brown, The Runaway Bunny “Head southeast!” chirps the cheery, optimistic voice of my GPS as I pull out of the driveway, in...
What are Christians to think about poverty and policy?
When Jesus says, “The poor you will always have with you” (John 12:8), he is, among other things, quoting from Deuteronomy 15: “Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I [God] therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor...
Tanzania: A WELCA-supported mentoring and scholarship program for girls
As part of Women of the ELCA’s global engagement trip to Arusha and Meru, Tanzania, Valora Starr, director of discipleship; Eva Yeo, director of membership; and Nola Smith, a WELCA participant; join women and girls from the African Girls Scholarship & Mentorship...
Behold, I am doing a new thing
It’s my fifth winter in Wichita, Kansas. Five years ago, before traveling 1,322 miles (about 20 hours by car and in a different time zone) away from my family and friends, I never saw myself standing in this space for my first call as a pastor. Back then, the world...
Anything to declare?
At any given moment, we are carrying around at least six different varieties of seeds. Yes, seeds. Biologists observe that our bodies—being part of the ecosystems in which we live— participate in the dispersion of local plant life by unknowingly harboring and...
Greed and the Christian life
When the “Varsity Blues” scandal came to light in 2019, I wrote about the problem of greed in human life. The Varsity Blues scandal involved wealthy parents of high schoolers who hired a “consultant” to help their children cheat their way into elite colleges. The...
Finding beauty in the cold
For me, fall is such a peculiar time —the sweet spot between my beloved summers and dreaded winters. My family has an ongoing joke that one fall, we’ll finally move someplace warmer and sunnier. October and November always bring that conversation back. But autumn and...