Faith in Progress

This past Sunday I had the great joy of baptizing my daughter into the Church.  As a priest, one of my favorite things to do is baptize people.  It is wonderful no matter what -- whether they are sweet babies wearing their long gowns, or nervous children who aren't entirely comfortable in front of the crowd, or adults who are really stepping out on a limb and making a life change.  I love the hopeful parents and the support of their friends and family.  I love the prayers we say just for that person, thinking about their future with God.  I love hearing the water splashing during the prayers over the water.  The reminder of all the ways water has played an important role in our history as people of God, from creation to the escape from Egypt to Jesus' baptism and now to this baptism right here and now.  But my very favorite part is the line that goes with the anointing with oil - "You are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ's own forever...

Epiphany 6, Year A February 13, 2011 Deuteronomy 30:15-20 The other day my son was frustrated about something and hauled out and hit my daughter. This was not a first offense, and so all of us know the well-established consequence for this kind of action. I grabbed Dylan’s hand and told him he was heading to Time Out. As usual, he resisted physically, but this time he also said, “I’m in charge of me and I say no time out!” As I carried him to time out, I told him that in a way he is right – he is in charge of the choices that he makes. But once he makes his choices, he has to deal with the consequences. And the consequence of hitting your sister is a time out. To me, as a parent, it seems so simple – so black and white. Good behavior is rewarded, bad behavior is punished. The choice between the two seems so obvious that sometimes it bewilders me that he makes the choices he makes. Who was it that defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results?...

January 30, 2011 4 Epiphany Micah 6:1-8 The latest person to really inspire me is Kristen Kane-Osorto, the Lutheran Volunteer Corps member who coordinated our recent mission trip with the high school youth group to D.C. Kristen was great – a real model of someone who practices what she preaches. If she had a car, she’d have the bumper sticker “Pray for peace, work for justice.” But she walks and takes public transportation. She lives in a group house with other Volunteer Corps members and they share chores and eat together on a shoestring budget. Kristen is spiritual in a deep and thoughtful and very relational way. She is fully committed to the needs of others – currently working against the systemic causes of poverty and homelessness, and before this working to help victims of domestic violence. She doesn’t need the bumper sticker. Kristen led us through exercises that helped us consider the privileges that we weren’t even aware of – books in our houses, college-educated parent...

My kids have lucked out this week.  Monday they were off for MLK Day, Wednesdsay for the expected storm (that only began after school would have ended), today for snow, they've already called tomorrow for anticipated snow, and they have next Monday and Tuesday off for teacher work days.  If only one could predict these things and plan a vacation.  It wasn't quite how we expected to spend the week, but I'm enjoying the extra down time.  Rather than schlepping kids, we're hanging out together.  Plenty of time for great art projects (votive candleholders made with baby food jars covered with tissue paper and glue, we built a boat from a kit that really floats in the tub), writing stories (a definite future classic called Mr. Hotdog will, I'm sure, find it's way onto best seller lists), watching movies while eating popcorn, using the video camera to make our own "commercials" (for running shoes and bubble bath) and of course, playing in the snow...

January 16, 2011 2 Epiphany John 1:29-42 When I was in law school and getting ready to look for summer internships, our career services folks gave a little seminar about how to interviewing. They talked about strategies for dealing with a question you weren’t sure how to answer. My favorite suggestion, and one that I found to be fairly helpful, was that we could try answering a different question and see if we couldn’t steer the conversation away from the original question. Children do this all the time (my children anyway!) – if they don’t understand the question, don’t like the question, or are afraid of the consequences of their answer – they just move on to a different subject. “Have you done your homework?” “Mom, how do clouds stay in the sky?” Is that what Jesus’ first two disciples are up to this morning? Jesus sees them walking behind them and he asks them, “What are you looking for?” They answer with a seeming nonsequitor, “Where are you staying?” But we should go easy ...

Christmas 2, Year A January 2, 2010 Luke 2:41-52 There are some dates that tend to make us stop and think about years past. Days when it’s almost impossible just to live in the moment. Birthdays, anniversaries of significant events, and, of course, holidays. This Christmas, as always, I find myself doing a lot of reflection on Christmases past. There was the year that I spent the week of Christmas in Oregon with my grandparents and it snowed so beautifully and I stayed with a handful of cousins in the attic room that provided as much mystery and adventure as the wardrobe to Narnia. But that experience can never happen again because my grandparents are gone now, and my cousins are grown and scattered, and the house has been sold to some other family that is probably celebrating Christmas in some other way entirely. And there was the year that my cousin died and mom was gone to Arizona to be with her sister and celebrating Christmas didn’t feel right at all. And there were the...

Christmas Day (Year A) December 25, 2010 Luke 2:1-14 Opening presents on Christmas morning when I was a girl was always a slow and wondrous thing. They were opened one at a time, each of us taking turns, with lots of hugs and appreciation in between. When it was my dad’s turn he would hold up the gift, turn it around, shake it and feel it and try to guess what it was. He was really good at it – it was very hard to surprise him. He would have done really well at our recent moms’ group Christmas gathering. It was a White Elephant party, or some people call it a Yankee gift exchange. Where each person wraps up some wacky item that has been taking up space in their house and they get piled together. (These should be the kind of gifts about which my father would jokingly exclaim: “Ahh…. Just what I always knew I never needed!”) Then everyone draws a number and in order you can either pick a new unwrapped gift and open it, or you can choose to steal something that someone else has alre...