E-Letter #158
The bike trail, covered with the detritus of the recent winter storms, clogs my grandson’s training wheels, bringing his four-year old energy to a screeching halt. “Wanna go look at that tree?” I ask him, hoping to divert his disappointment. “It looks like it got hit by lightning!” I boost him into the crook of the shattered tree, its raw v-shape newly created by the God of the Storm’s gift of an unexpected bolt of electricity piercing a night sky. “What’s this?” my grandson asks as he pokes a scaly patch of moss-green growth torn from the tree trunk split by the fury of a midnight storm....
Read MoreE-Letter #157
In rummaging through a desk drawer, I came across an old file containing a yellowed copy of my senior sermon. I wrote it 25 years ago, and under the bright red A+ my professor, mentor, and dear friend scribbled this note, “You do not yet know what you do not know, and that is a blessing!” I hardly understood his cryptic words, but the grade…oh yes! The sermon was on the story of Jesus’ transfiguration as told by the evangelist Mark, 9:2-29. In it, I tell the story of the overly-confident student who approaches a renowned teacher asking to study under him. The teacher hands the headstrong...
Read MoreE-Letter #156
It’s a part of my morning routine – making coffee, emptying the dishwasher, doing a load of laundry, making breakfast for my husband, filling the multitude of birdfeeders dotting the backyard. I love routine; it grounds me; it settles me; it provides the space and time for my brain and body to wake up. But lately, my brain, like a hamster wheel, has been running on overdrive, and I wake up overwhelmed by the sensation of an overfilled dance card. This morning I dawdle, and by the time I juggle containers of sunflower seed and millet into the backyard, rays of dawn are wrestling with...
Read MoreE-Letter #155
Friday is Valentine’s Day, and if the ice melts, our children will be back in the classroom exchanging cards with their classmates, eating strawberry cupcakes with vanilla frosting and red and pink sprinkles, and pocketing for later those little heart-shaped candies made by the Necco Company and stamped with cryptic messages, “Be Mine”, “ I Love You”, and I’m Yours”. Last Sunday we played a little Valentine’s Day Trivial Pursuit in our Sunday School assembly and learned that while it may be easy to fall head-over-heels in love with someone, in the end it can cost you your head! Legend...
Read MoreE-Letter #153
I sat hunched over the steering wheel anxiously scanning the gray sky, nervously drumming my fingers on the half-empty coffee cup perched in the console cupholder, and listening to Christmas carols booming from the radio “miraculously” playing an iPod playlist. Two of us, pastor and parishioner, were sitting in stalled traffic, the umpteenth car in a long line of exhaust-puffing cars waiting, no…daring the traffic light to change and allow us impatient commuters to move forward. We were caught in a nautilus of traffic winding our way through the slush-covered streets of a downtown...
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