Small gestures
On Sunday, rather than lighting the peace candle, worship leader Becca Lachman invited us to place our hand over our heart and imagine the peace candle as a light within us. It’s a prayerful gesture one can access any time. Later in the service there were many candles burning…
Happy? Anniversary Protestants
What do Facebook and Twitter have in common with the Protestant Reformation? Nothing and everything. Six days from now, October 31, is the 500 year anniversary of the German monk and professor Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. It was a list…
Beauty and grief
In the past few days I’ve had multiple conversations about Ohio in October. In short, it’s a beautiful time of year. It’s special. It’s the trees that do it to us. I’m fearing the downward line of societal disintegration, and they’re still there, pointing to circularity. They’ve gathered their…
Thoughts and prayers
There are a lot of thoughts and prayers happening these days. Hurricanes, a mass shooting, and the re-awakened demon of nuclear war ought to cause a lot of thinking and praying. “Thoughts and prayers” has become a common phrase, shorthand for I care about this, something to say when…
Going deeper with Sanctuary
This Sunday we’ll begin a fall worship series focused on Sanctuary. In the last month Sanctuary has become a major theme for our congregation. We have practiced Sanctuary in our building and been a part of a mobile Sanctuary surrounding Edith at various times after she left our building. It…
The new year: fear and joy
This morning I was part of a meeting that included Edith Espinal, her attorneys, and several key advocates. This coming Monday is an important day for her. She has a check in with ICE in which there will be one of three outcomes: 1) Her stay of removal will…
Sanctuary so far…
Two weeks ago today three of us from CMC sat around a table at which Edith Espinal made the decision to go into sanctuary in a local congregation to avoid imminent deportation. After one location quickly fell through, we found ourselves being asked whether the Mennonites would be able to…
Participant-Observer
I’m getting caught up on On Being podcasts, and just listened to Krista Tippet’s conversation with Mary Catherine Bateson. She’s the author of the book Composing a Life, and daughter of anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. One of the things she touches on is the value of being…
The past and the present
In November of 1957 a group of students in Columbus started meeting together. They were all from other places. What they shared in common was an upbringing in a Mennonite congregation, and a desire to fellowship with each other. As the group grew, they went from informal gatherings to establishing…
Thoughts on a run after returning from a week of late summer vacation
August 9, 2017 An early morning run along a familiar trail. The air is cool for August. The Olentangy crawls along beside me. There’s a fog over the water, the river in another state, hovering over itself, contemplating its own possibility to float, change, vacate the predictable flow, disappear…
