Creative Cries
Many of you expressed kind words last Sunday about the lyrics I wrote for our Advent theme, which we will be singing to the tune of What Child is This? There are more verses coming each week, which I’ll include below. For now I wanted to give a little more…
Spooky Season
I hope you all had a happy Halloween, a blessed All Saints Day, and are enjoying a beautifully sunny All Souls Day. Or perhaps you celebrated Dia de los Muertos. Or maybe you know these holy days as Samhain. Regardless, I hope these days of transition from Fall to Winter…
Blessing (of) the Animals
Today is the Feast Day of Saint Francis. Mennonites don’t generally do a lot with traditional saints or feast days, but I know Saint Francis holds a special place in many of our hearts because of his connection with Creation and the natural world. There are many different stories and…
Narrative Lectionary Lectio Divina
Last Sunday I announced that I would be leading a new group that will meet before worship to spend some time with the scriptures we will be using from the Narrative Lectionary during worship this coming year. I shared that my plan was to use lectio divina to guide our…
Playful Prayer/Prayerful Play
To open a Christian Education Commission meeting a few weeks ago, I shared a passage from a book I’m currently reading called The Hopeful Family: Raising Resilient Children in Uncertain Times by Amelia Richardson Dress. Throughout the book, Dress looks at various spiritual practices and offers caregivers ideas about what…
Midweek Blog: MennoCon Reflection
The MCUSA Convention last week was full of lots of different experiences: worship services, keynote speakers, reunions, seminars, panels, group discussion and yes, some good barbecue and fellowship. There was too much to give a full account here, though we invite you to join us in worship on August 13…
Midweek Blog: Values Driven Living
A friend recently recommended the book Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price. This friend found the book to be helpful in understanding his own experiences as a “masked” Autistic person, so I decided to read it to help myself better understand and relate to him…
Pastoral Care and Counseling
In the most recent Lamplighter, Dan Lehman submitted an article on behalf of the Shepherding Commission that talked about all the different things that commission does. Before going to print, he ran it by the commission for any edits, and I offered one small change. In the section about how…
The Hardest Place to Be
I had been trying to wrack my brain to come up with another experience or trip that I’ve taken in my life that could count as worthy of being called a pilgrimage when the lyrics to the song “Arrow” by half.alive helped me remember and think about the importance of…
Riding With the Wind (Pilgrimage Reflection)
After I graduated from Bluffton University, I decided to sign up for Mennonite Voluntary Service with a placement in Hutchinson, Kansas. In many ways, this whole endeavor was a pilgrimage because part of the reason I went to the “wilderness” of Kansas was to try to figure out what life…
