Peace-ing Together

“Reaching Toward and Letting Go”

Christmas Eve 2024
Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC

“Maybe all of you can relate to that little one inside you who is still hungry for wonder and for joy, expectant for something that will be truly wonderful and all or even more than we had hoped it could be!

Maybe you are starting to sense in to these complimentary gestures of reaching toward something and letting go–a smooth and sometimes mournful and sometimes brave gesture. To believe and to say goodbye.”

Watch Livestream Here (sermon starts around 59 minutes)

Tree-age (“Triage”): When Life Gives You a Hurricane

Over three months since the Storm and today I felt ready to go and walk among the trees off the Blue Ridge Parkway. I knew it would be both medicinal and mournful. What we found was a tree graveyard. Hundreds, maybe thousands of trees mangled and tangled with each other. Still. Broken. Battered. Eery in the residual story they tell. Without thinking, my husband and I began talking about death–trying to remember how old family members were when they died. Reaching back into latent memories about sacred transitions and loss. My mother was eighty-four. His mother seventy-nine. My grandmother on...