One Sunday morning when my daughter was a toddler, she was intent on being near me during worship and no one could talk her out of it. She spent much of the service in my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck and playing with my hair. She didn't care that I needed to give …
How Do We Talk to Kids About Fasting?
How do we talk to kids about fasting? Recently I planned a children’s sermon around Isaiah 58, in which the people of Israel think that by fasting they’re pleasing God. Isaiah reminds them that God wants justice and a whole new way of life. Isaiah 58:6 tells us that simply refraining from eating is not …
Christmas Eve Sermon, 2019
Let us pray: On this Holy Night, we welcome the Christ Child into our midst and into our hearts. We pray for more love, more courage, more joy, more hope, and more peace for ourselves and for the world. We pray that we welcome Your Son with the same love that we welcome our neighbor. …
Sermon from August 11, 2019: Reflections on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly
Dear friends in Christ: grace and peace to you from God our Creator, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, who sends us out. Amen. I spent last week at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Churchwide Assembly. This is a gathering of around 1000 ELCA voting delegates from across the country …
Continue reading Sermon from August 11, 2019: Reflections on the ELCA Churchwide Assembly
Mother’s Day
How many times have I chopped an onion? That would be like asking how many times I’ve Poured a glass of milk Tied a pair of shoes Picked up toys Slept eyes half-open Sometimes I really hate chopping that onion I grab a convenience bag out of the freezer, Onion pieces, icy and damp And …
Extravagant Beauty
Each year when fall arrives, I watch for my favorite maple trees on my route from home to church. I delight in the way their leaves begin turning at the very tops, then the color slowly spreads to include the bottom branches, lighting up the trees in brilliant hues until finally circles of orange, red …
Do Something Badly
Last weekend my family threw a kid birthday party for my daughter at a local roller skating rink. As her friends arrived, my first question to each guest was, "Have you skated before?" Most of the kids shook their heads, then marched off to grab roller skates. I paced around them, wondering if they would …
Prayers for the World
On my second day in Scotland, after I'd slept off some of the jet lag, I ventured onto a tour bus that took me to the Glasgow Cathedral. In the bright sunshine, the cathedral stood as a dark example of Gothic architecture, built before the Reformation, older than Lutheranism and anything I'd experienced since my …
Prayers with the Brothers
"One monk, when asked about diversity in his small community, said that there were people who can meditate all day and others who can't sit still for five minutes..." -Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk The St. John's Abbey Prayer Schedule is this: 7am Morning Prayer Noon Prayer 5pm Eucharist 7pm Vespers In my stretch of …
Silence
Last August, as part of my sabbatical, I drove to Collegeville to stay in the St. John's Abbey Guesthouse on silent retreat. I had originally planned to stay for a week, though my plans were changed due to different family events including tonsil removal recovery for my son and a nephew's baptism that I didn't …
Narrating Grace 