Faith in Progress

5 Pentecost (Proper 8) June 27, 2010 Luke 9:51-62 We have this great soft Bible that I used to bring to church for the kids before we got to this place with all the cool art supplies in the back. Just a handful of stories but all can be manipulated by little hands. The good Samaritan with Velcro bandaids you can put on his wounds. Fish that can snap off and be put into the disciples’ net. You can get Jonah in and out of the whale, put baby Moses in his basket, button Joseph’s pretty coat. And the story of Lot’s wife. She is a sort of popsicle stick – one side pretty and smiling and the other side unhappy and sort of sandy, like an emery board. The kids had recently rediscovered this little bible and when they got to the page about Lot’s wife they clearly didn’t have a clue what it was all about. Dylan thought the story was about a person who turned into an angel. So I told them the story about Lot who lived in this city where the people were really awful – hurting each other and...

Pentecost, Proper 6 (Year C) Luke 7:36-8:3 June 13, 2010 In college, my good friend Glenn could concoct a Top 10 List for just about any occasion. The Top 10 Reasons Why Wake Forest Should Make It to the NCAA Tournament. The Top 10 Excuses for Not Turning in a Paper. The Top 10 Comments Overheard at Biscuitville. There was no subject too serious or too small to merit its own List and they were always smart and laugh-out-loud funny. You spend enough time with someone like that and eventually you can’t resist trying your own hand at it. And so I wrote a few of my own Top 10 Lists. When Glenn got married I wrote The Top 10 Reasons for Glenn and Deb to Get Married. When they had their first child, I wrote The Top 10 Reasons Why Glenn and Deb Will Be Great Parents. The interesting thing about creating those lists was that even though the point was mostly to be funny, you really did end up getting to the heart of the matter. As I wrote my lists, they made me think about how funny Glenn...

Unlike Barbara Brown Taylor, I am returning to church.  Today was my first day back (at least officially) after maternity leave.  Two wonderful kids gave me the most beautiful cards - one for me and one for Maya - that made me feel so welcome. In some ways, not much has changed about St. Aidan's.  The place looks the same and of course, being the Episcopal Church, the liturgy is just where I left it.  But it some ways, things do seem different.  There are some new faces -- people that have come to check out St. Aidan's while I've been gone and stuck around.  I look forward to learning their names and getting to know them.  And there are the people that I know well whose lives have changed since I've been gone.  Maybe because a child is about to graduate from high school or because a parent has gotten ill.  I look forward to being back among these people that I have come to know and love and finding out about their lives again.  Somet...

(I began with three young volunteers playing keep-away with a ball) This is my metaphor for this morning. A person feeling stuck in the middle, unable to quite get to the ball, moving one way, then the other, and feeling frustrated. I’ve been living in that place lately. I have this new baby so I’ve been (theoretically at least) on maternity leave. It’s a strange place to be – sort of between worlds. I’m here, but not really here. And yet at home I feel that way too sometimes. It’s probably partly the sleep haze. And partly that I haven’t quite figured out this new little being. One day she’ll be perfectly content and sleep great, the next day it’s like some phantom is pinching her. And no matter what mood she’s in, getting anything else done or being much good for the other kids has been difficult. The logistics of 3 children are still a bit of a mystery to me. And so some days I feel like I’m stuck in this strange in-between. I can’t quite catch the ball. That’s where we fi...

I am not a fan of bugs.  If it's a ladybug or a cricket -- something that seems good and sympathetic and harmless - I might try to get it outside safely.  But most insects do not meet with that kind of good will.  And unfortunately, with the good weather has come an infestation of all kinds of creatures at our house.  Most prevalent are ants, who seem to prove Darwin's concept of survival of the fittest.  The more I kill, the tinier and faster the next generation seems to be.  And there are the stink bugs, who are incredibly slow and stupid, but if I don't catch them just right in my wad of toilet paper make the worst smell.  When my husband sees me hunting these bugs he starts to sing, "All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all."  Last week it got even more exciting.  My daughter Sophia had a friend over to play and the two of them were playing dress up in the ...

Yesterday I headed back to the church where I grew up, Christ Church in Columbia, Maryland, to preach as part of their 200 year anniversary.  Here's my sermon... April 18, 2010 Christ Church, Columbia, MD John 21:1-19 I feel like I’m back home this morning. This is the church I grew up in. From the time I was a little girl until the time I headed off to college, this is where I came with my family pretty much every Sunday. Sometimes I’d try to get out of it, but mostly my parents insisted. So I was a Sunday school regular with the poor teachers who unwittingly volunteered to be with us. And then one of the core members of the youth group. As teens, we came from every high school around but most of us had been together so long in church we were a force to be reckoned with, although perhaps not a terribly spiritual bunch. I was a frequent acolyte, sitting up front worrying about whether I’d get up at the right time to do the ceremonial hand washing for the priest. I loved the ...

Our long-awaited new daughter, Maya, was born on March 5!  In the end, I may have been a little too patient.  I waited to call in reinforcements to be with the other kids until it was almost too late and we barely made it to the hospital.  Which meant the worst of labor was in the car (not recommended!) and there was no time for an epidural (ditto!).  But all's well that ends well - at 2:15 a.m. Maya joined us.  And Holden is just glad he didn't have to do the delivering.  Big brother Dylan and big sister Sophie absolutely adore her, although they could do without the crying (who couldn't?).  I'll be on official maternity leave for a while which will hopefully be enough time to escape the sleepy haze that has descended upon me.  We'll be in and out of St. Aidan's (with Holy Week and Easter coming, how could I stay away?) but are also looking forward to visiting some different churches along the way.