As some of you know from Facebook, as some of you may have guessed through my recent silence, my dad passed away last week. On Thursday, March 7. In a hospice room at St. Francis hospital in Wichita. With the sun shining and the Hallelujah Chorus playing on my brother’s ipad. Facing his bride of…
I had a lot of fun trick-or-treating with Grace downtown on Halloween. We were harmless aliens. Nothing scary. But there were plenty of fierce werewolves and bloody vampires and creepy ghosts wandering around. Plenty of costumes to remind me that Halloween is not really about candy; it’s about death–it’s particularly about our fear of death.…
This Sunday we are observing All Saints’ Day. This call to worship is inspired by the lectionary reading for the day from Isaiah 25:6-9. (Leader reads plain text, people read bold.) Hurricanes and floods and environmental havoc; drones and IEDs and handguns; cancer and heart disease and bodies shutting down; poverty and injustice and oppression.…
If you are looking for material connected to this week’s lectionary readings, there is a call to worship and benediction that go along with the feeding of the 5000+ here. Tomorrow is the funeral for the 6-year-old son of two of my college friends. I have been holding them in deep prayer this week, while…
This is a prayer we prayed at the memorial service for Lola Lohrentz last week. Some of this imagery comes from Psalm 46, which she chose to have read at her service. Lola is deeply loved and deeply missed. I could tell you many wonderful things about her, but she most definitely told me that…
I have been privileged to spend some time recently with a woman in our church who is in the final days of her life. She is on her journey home, and her cancer ravaged body is shutting down. It is a beautiful thing to see the love that her family shares with her and…
Last Thursday I was preparing for today’s service of communion and anointing. I pulled out the little bowl—hand-formed and glazed a brilliant blue—that we use for anointing oil. To my surprise, the bowl still contained ashes from Holy Week. So there I was in mid-December, trying to pour the ashes on our lily plants and…
Spacious Faith 