When I was 10 years old, I began experimenting with baking and trying my hand at cooking. I was not experienced and certainly didn’t always have common sense to question my reading of the recipes I followed. The first thing I ever baked on my own was banana bread. I used my mother’s hand-written recipe … [Read more…]
As a parent now, I have come to understand the definition of love, joy, and motherhood very differently than I used to, which means when I think of celebrating Mother’s Day, I understand it as honoring more than just the act of having given birth. Mother’s Day is about the love of mothers and that … [Read more…]
In 2007 I did Field Education in a church in Braintree MA. It was a large old stone building with beautiful stained glass windows in the sanctuary. Each window depicted a different scene from the bible. The church was beautiful though did not make me think of a traditional New England Congregational Church when I … [Read more…]
This week I was sitting at home one evening watching the Nationals play the Braves in game 6 of the World Series, and I was playing around with a Facebook quiz. The quiz said they could determine my generation based on my pet peeves and then proceeded to ask me a series of questions. One … [Read more…]
Living in community and caring for one another is another of the Christian Spiritual practices that often gets overlooked and underestimated. Community was important right from the beginning of Christianity. We know this because where Christ said, “Wherever one or two of you are gathered there I will be as well”. A Christian community is … [Read more…]
The dictionary says, “A spiritual practice or spiritual discipline (often including spiritual exercises) is the regular or full-time performance of actions and activities undertaken for the purpose of inducing spiritual experiences and cultivating spiritual development”. Spiritual practices are more than about prayer. They are not necessarily defined by how one acts in church but rather they can be anything that gives someone a spiritual experience. … [Read more…]
I went to a family party many years ago with my husband’s extended family. Bill and I were only just beginning to date. We were celebrating his grandmother’s birthday that day at a restaurant. But because we had the furthest to travel to get there, we were naturally a little late. So when we entered, … [Read more…]
When I was a child, my brothers used to get together with some of our cousins to go to one of the family fields to play baseball, or to go camping, or to go help my father and uncles in the wood lot, or to go fishing. I remember that I always wanted to go … [Read more…]
Do you have regrets? I would say many of us do. Do you have those things that you wish you did not do? I would say we all do. As a whole humanity holds themselves to certain standards that they don’t always successfully live up to and thus we hold others to even higher standards … [Read more…]
This is the first Sunday in Lent. I think many people no longer know the purpose of Lent. Lent came into being as the Christian time of atonement. During this time, we are called to reflect upon the previous year, our relationships with one another, and how Christ died forgiving those in his life and … [Read more…]
