Ten Highlights
Ten Highlights I’m still glowing a bit from the very generous, meaningful, and tasty celebration you all threw for me a few weeks ago to mark my tenth year anniversary with CMC. Every job will have its ups and downs, but it truly has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for…
Chirps of Change
Today’s blog is written by Bethany Davey, now serving as a CMC pastoral intern. I know it’s fall—or, nearly fall—when I hear crickets chirping in the daytime hours. Their song, alongside the smell of musty prairie grasses and the subtle lessening of the sun’s summer intensity alert my body that…
Worship Preview
These next three weeks of worship will complete a summer series, honor an anniversary, and set a trajectory that will take us all the way into Advent. Here is a preview of these Sundays: August 25 | Accessibility and Inclusivity, Communion I can’t think of a more liturgically rich way…
No Bad Parts
I (and Abbie) just finished the audiobook No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model, by Richard C. Schwartz. How’s that for some light vacation road-trip earbud sharing? Dr. Schwartz has been developing this model over the course of his professional life, now widely…
A Softball Lesson
This is the final week of the summer softball season for Ila’s NCIL league that plays at Whetstone Park. I’ve been co-coaching along with several other parents since early May. We’ve lost more games than we’ve won, and the 9-11 age range makes for quite a developmental spread. But this…
All the Feels (Part 2)
Last Sunday Joel made a very brief reference in his sermon to the recently released movie, Inside Out 2 as a way to illustrate that you could take in the second part of something (his two-part sermon) without the first, but you’d probably be missing out on some things. When…
The Joy of Declaring Interdependence
“We hold these truths to be self-evident…” We come into this world completely dependent on others to keep us alive. When we reach adolescence, we learn a healthy independence from our caretakers. When we grow up, we come to realize we have been interdependent all along. Dependence – Independence –…
CDC Siblings Gather
Last Thursday through Saturday, five of us from CMC represented the congregation at the Central District Conference annual meeting. Our biennial theme is “Listen! Wisdom is Calling.” I have long appreciated that the conference sees its congregations, in the words of a key document, as “something like a family of…
Building the Kin-Dom
Last week, I had the opportunity to help chaperone a group of four of CMC’s high school boys on a service-learning trip through Appalachia Build (formerly known as SWAP). We spent the week in Kimball, West Virginia building a deck with a ramp for a household that included a young…
Preparing For Another Guest
Today the CMC support team for Keilin received word that Keilin gave birth to her daughter, Amor (which means Love). Keilin was an asylum seeker from Venezuela and lived in our church apartment with her four-year-old son Gerald from January to April. She made the difficult decision to leave the…
