Getting Lost in the Woods

In today’s  gospel lesson , we encounter a community struggling with their own fear and anxiety as they face the unimaginable.  While out walking, Jesus observed a blind man.  What question was burning on the disciples’ hearts, you ask?   They wanted to know whether God caused the man to be blind because of his own sinfulness, or whether it was a consequence of his parents' sinfulness.  This question is rooted in fear. It assumes: If we follow God and do everything just right, we will be okay.  If we choose ourselves over God and neighbor, there will be dire consequences.  Maybe even, eternal consequences.  This fear is the driving force behind the words and actions of nearly everyone in this story: from the disciples, to the religious leaders, the former blind man’s neighbors and parents. However, Jesus does not get sucked into the whirlpool of fear, and instead reframes the question for the disciples.  In   The Message  ...

 Today we celebrate the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. This feast day typically falls during the week, and as a result, we have a rare opportunity to take a closer look at this text.  Luke recalls when Jesus, Mary, and Joseph travel to Jerusalem and enter the temple. The purpose of their family’s trip was to abide by two Jewish rituals, which their family would have wanted to fulfill, as they sought to live into the laws of their faith tradition. The first ritual relates to the purification of a woman after childbirth, and the second ritual relates to the presentation of a couple’s firstborn son. While in the temple, Jesus and his parents encounter Simeon, a holy man, and then Anna, a prophet. Simeon and Anna were both filled with joy and hope, that through this child all of God’s people would know the transformative and healing love of God. When they laid their eyes on Jesus, they knew, all of the laws and teachings of scripture were fulfilled. Jesus is God’s love ma...

Dear Church, It is time for us to embrace an open table.  The Gifts of God for the People of God.  This is God’s table and all are welcome here.  No exceptions. These are the words I say each and every time I celebrate the eucharist (communion, mass, Lord’s Supper).  Numerous other pastors, priests, and bishops say these, or similar words, at the tender moment in our worship when the gathered people come forward to receive the everyday items of bread and wine. We do not fully understand it, but we know that somehow Christ is really and truly present in the bread and wine. They nourish us with peace, grace, unconditional love, and acceptance. It is sacred, indeed.  Maybe it is the sacredness of the experience that has prevented us from embracing an open table. The official teaching of the Episcopal Church (the denomination I serve), is that all baptized Christians are invited to come forward to receive the bread and wine. Those who are not baptized may come forwa...

  So much has happened this year. The fruit of seeds planted, tended, and cared for over these last seven years. It may even go further back than I recognize.  Those earlier years were a blur of constant motion, rapid growth and change. Jason and I fell in love, graduated from college, took jobs, changed jobs, started graduate school, grieved a miscarriage, and rejoiced in a pregnancy that gave us our sweet and wonderful Logan.  There was the ordination process and eventually ordination; we moved from house to house, and delighted in a pregnancy that ended abruptly early, but gave us our loving, red-headed Lucas. We stumbled our way in love, grace, and the occasional expletive, as we learned what it meant to be married, to share a home and a life, to become parents, to figure out what it meant to be adults, to begin to recognize who we are and a bit about why God has made us.  The season of our life before moving to Greenfield was rich, beautiful, and could be descri...

Who taught you how to pray?  This is the question Matt Skinner, a Luther Seminary professor, reflected on in his  Dear Working Preacher column  focused on this  Sunday's gospel lesson .  He wrote,  "It’s a very personal, intimate thing, one’s prayer life. Getting started at praying is less like learning how to drive a car, how to play the banjo, or even how to preach. For most, it is more like learning how to kiss. You learn some by watching others do it. You should be discerning about whom you will allow to teach you. You certainly make mistakes. And maybe you always worry deep in your head that you might be doing it wrong." Learning how to pray really is a good deal like learning how to kiss.  In New England, we generally don't talk about kissing or praying, or at least not beyond the dutiful agreement to hold someone else in our prayers.  Instead we often stumble into these practices.  Growing up, there was never a parental conversation ab...

  This past week I found myself working on the clergy report for my parish's annual meeting. Since there was never a formal report back to the parish about my sabbatical, I wrote a lengthy reflection on the gifts of sabbatical time. It seemed appropriate to share that part of the report here: ​ Sabbatical My sabbatical was a gift.  Primarily a gift of time and space.  I was away from parish life for four months, three months sabbatical time and one month of annual vacation time. As I look back and reflect on what God was up to in my life from May 21 to September 24, I can only smile and give thanks for the many ways God helped me to slow down and fill my inner well, which quite honestly, was dangerously low in places.  As well as, for the ways, the gifts of sabbatical are continuing to flourish within me.  This summer away from parish life was the first time in my adult life that I had ever been given the opportunity to slow down. The summer after I graduated fr...

On a hot summer day this past July, our family explored Grafton Street in Dublin. We wove in and out of shops, ate lunch at Bruxelles Pub, and admired the street vendors' beautiful flowers.  While my family excitedly took in a street performer creating spray paint art, I began to look for a quiet corner where I might disappear. The sheer number of people on the street was overwhelming, and I felt myself shutting down. The only thing to do when this happens, is to find an out of the way place, where I can take a deep breath, and remind myself I only need to endure the over stimulating environment for a bit longer, which grounds me enough to re-enter the crowd. I think it's safe to assume that we have all experienced being overwhelmed or over stimulated. It could be a crowd, or trying something new. It might be the deluge of despair-filled posts on social media. It could be the stack of bills waiting at home, or the impossible to do list. It could be found in the tension of confl...

In early June, our family went camping with some dear friends on Mount Desert Island, off the coast of Maine.  It was our first time tenting in years.  The kids (four boys and one girl, ranging from ages 5-11) were in all their glory as they ran wild across the campground, shouting, laughing, fighting, and singing. All the while finding a few too many inappropriate things to throw into our campfire, which was growing alarmingly large.  Given it was our last night together, and the campground was so sparsely populated, with only a handful of other campers in view, we let the kids be kids. Well, that is until one boy accidentally threw fire at an adult. We figured that must be the sign it was bedtime.  The next morning as we were packing up, an elderly gentleman who was tenting a few sights up gestured for my husband to come see him. Jason headed towards the man, fairly sure he was about to call us to task for letting our children run around like the wild animals ...