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The Sound of Emerging

On Tuesday, May 10, the final votes were cast to pass an amendment to the constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) removing the ban on the ordination of gay and lesbian people who are not celibate. This decision brings with it blessings and challenges–change always does. Read on for what the thirteen year cicadas can teach us about what it could all mean. The thirteen-year cicadas have been emerging for the last couple of weeks in the North Carolina woods. The sound is a primal shrill bottomed with the hum of creatures who sound relieved but also pressed for time. … Read the full post

Left-handed writing

Several days ago I broke my right hand–the hand that I write with. Since then I’ve tried to learn how to write with my left hand. I have found it to be a chore as well as a window into wisdom that can come only from depending on something we’ve neglected or ignored. How does the Body of Christ honor the need we have to embrace what seems like our weaker parts? What happens when some parts are so neglected that they atrophy and can’t be heard because they speak a language we do not understand? And what if … Read the full post

Look Up

Look Up “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you… Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now its springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” –Isaiah 43:1b-2, … Read the full post

Waiting

Wait for the Lord, whose day is near. Wait for the Lord, be strong take heart. –from the music of the Taize community Two stretches of the year Christians are called on to practice waiting—we wait for the Incarnation in our Advent stretch, and we wait for the Resurrection in our Lenten stretch. Through the ages the institutional church has suggested lots of ways for us to signal and really feel this waiting. Believers may be invited to worship more, pray more, give something up, have a daily scriptural reading and prayer practice, eat differently, or add and subtract elements … Read the full post

“Gray Matter”– a response to the “White Paper”

On February 2 a steering committee of seven pastors in the PCUSA sent a letter to the church with a “white paper” attached about what’s wrong with the church and how they think we should right it. The white paper makes me thankful for the gray. Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may no overtake you.” –John 12: 35 “Gray Matter” One of the things I love about Jesus—and one of the things that makes following him so hard sometimes, is that he … Read the full post

Contorting, Distorting Violence–Help Us Make it Stop

Violence contorts our lives, our bodies. Redemption resists utter destruction maybe sometimes just with the will to take another breath. “Peace is what I leave with you; it is my own peace that I give you. I do not give it as the world does. Do not be worried and upset. Do not be afraid.” John 14:27 Since the Tucson shootings I’ve been thinking about how to post a blog in response to what happened. Everybody and their sister and brother had something to say about it. After a few days it felt like a saturated topic with not much … Read the full post

I Witness “Star Trails” by Guest Blogger Susan Steinberg

Epiphany embodies our journey toward redemption. The paths we follow may require that we look up, that we look outside ourselves, and that we look beyond the horizons of what we’ve known or expected. “I Witness” guest blogger Susan Steinberg is looking up toward the ethereal trails of stars. “. . . they set out, and there ahead of them went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was.” ~ Matthew 2:9 I learned something new last week: stars make trails. Long, beautiful, circular trails, like glowing labyrinths in the night … Read the full post

Being Born

Christmas is about birth. Its mystery. Its power. Its promise. In our culture we tend to silence the body’s wisdom even in birth–an experience which calls on the intuitions and strength of bodies like no other. At Christmas we hear the reverberations of angels–do not be afraid. Let us all find the courage anew to let ourselves be born and to let ourselves give birth to God’s creativity in us. This prose poem is a birth story I can tell. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in. -from Psalm 121 ~From behind … Read the full post

Mary

Mary is a model for us in our Advent waiting not because she was meek and mild, but because she was bold enough to get tangled up with God. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for God has looked with favor on the lowliness of God’s servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed…” –Luke 1: 46ff Perhaps more than any other figure in scripture, Mary has held the expectations and norms of humanity with a complicated tenacity. She, the mother of God, has embodied views of femininity, sexuality, … Read the full post

I Witness “Together for Good” by Janet E. Beatty, Guest Blogger

I/Eye Witnesses to redemption see the shimmers of God’s transforming power even in the fragments of our lives. We know that all things work together for the good For those who love God, Who are called according to God’s purpose… Who then will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword?… No in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things … Read the full post

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