I had a close friend in seminary that was going through some challenging times in her life shortly before entering seminary. In one year, she and her husband lost everything they had in a fire, her dad died, and she lost her job. Anybody experiencing what she did would have been more than a little … [Read more…]
As a teenager, my favorite past time was talking on the phone with my friends. The worst punishment for me, at that age, was to ground me from the telephone. It was my connection to the outside world. It allowed me to find out what was going on in the group’s gossip, to discuss the … [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…]
Today’s scriptures are all about God’s call in the lives of humanity. We all experience some kind of call or draw to God in our lives. So we all can relate to these accounts. I remember when I first became aware of my call. I was a young child of 12 years old. I remember … [Read more…]
During the Depression, there was widespread hunger, lack of employment, and homelessness. My Great Uncle and my Grandmother often told me that they knew of people who suffered greatly in town but being children of farmers they suffered very little and barely noticed the Depression. But what my grandmother remembered the most about that time … [Read more…]
Since the very beginning of Christianity, churches formed rule, regulations, and ways to try to control and understand the movement of the Spirit in the lives of those who call themselves Christian. When I was in college, I attended a lot of different churches from various Christian traditions and what stood out to me is … [Read more…]
When I walk into a church for worship, the seat that I take is up in the loft. As the child of a choir member, this was where I was raised to sit when in a church. To this day, I am a little uncomfortable sitting in the congregation. When I take a class, my … [Read more…]
When I was growing up, my brothers and I had a knack for getting into trouble. We were always rolling around like a pack of puppies and inevitably one of us would run into the house crying and bleeding. But my parents had a way with dealing with us and parental disappointment in our family. … [Read more…]
Last week I mentioned how little Will Bassett asked me what God sounded like and how would he know if God was talking to him. Jewish rabbinical tradition tells us to look towards nature for the word of God. We are told to look towards nature for our heavenly inspiration. I love to go out … [Read more…]
Our world is constantly moving, changing, evolving, and in a state of becoming something else. Our lives too are often found to be in constantly flux. Babies are born, young people get married, families grow, and people pass away and families shrink. In the world, people fight one another, wars begin and wars end, world … [Read more…]
