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…
A Missing Link
Last summer, leaders from Central District Conference (CDC) had a retreat to determine the conference theme for the next two years. We landed on Wisdom. That’s Wisdom with a capital W, as in the name given the feminine character in Proverbs 8 who raises her voice “at the topmost heights,…
Tending and Attending
This coming Sunday is our second annual (?!?) Youth-led worship service, where not only will our young people be leading us in the various worship-leading roles, but three of them will also offer sermon meditations as the message for the day. This is our second year organizing this service, and…
The Warm Winds of Heaven
Last spring I blogged about a first of its kind gathering of Mennonites and Jews at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary (AMBS) called “Reading the Bible after the Holocaust.” We covered topics ranging from New Testament scholarship, shared historic experience, the dangers of emphasizing common ground in dialogue, Mennonites and the…
Jane at 90
One of my favorite living humans I’ve never met, Jane Goodall, turned 90 this month. She is, perhaps, the matron saint of paying attention. She is most famous for her work among the chimpanzees of Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Initially an outsider to the scientific community, without a…
What Holds Us Together?
A while back Joel preached a sermon where he talked about a theory originated by Phyllis Tickle that the Christian Church goes through a great shift or reformation approximately every 500 years. Tickle (and Joel) used the metaphor of the 500-year rummage sale as a way to think about how…
The Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth: Substitution vs. Solidarity
Sub.sti.tu.tion – the action of replacing someone or something with another person or thing. Sol.i.dar.i.ty – union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests. It’s Holy Week, a time dense with memory and meaning. Within this short span, the gospels speak of the betrayal by Judas, Jesus’ final meal…
