The church I serve is pretty non-traditional, but we do have some traditions. One of them is that the children are invited to color the bulletins every Easter. We have a potluck breakfast before worship, and when the kids finish eating they can gather around a table with a stack of bulletins and assorted crayons,…
This is the Good Friday service I put together for this year. We will again be using a script put together by a church member that simply pulls out the dialog of the passion story. I find this to be a powerful reading, though it could be confusing for people unfamiliar with the story. You…
I am involved with a new blog project called Practicing Families. One or two Mondays each month, you’ll find my weekly prayer practice in the form of a family liturgy over on that blog. And never fear, I will always link you over. For my personal prayer practice this morning, I did a visual lectio…
This morning I finished reading and praying through Jan Richardson’s retreat material for Women’s Christmas. I had my colored pencils and art journal ready as I read, and found myself sketching out this picture to accompany a favorite quote: May you sink the roots of your soul Deeper and deeper still into the love of…
My blogging/pastor friend Marci Glass is giving star words for Epiphany. The general idea is that you receive a word to contemplate, a word to help guide your thinking about God and your relationship with God in the coming months. She gave me the word “desiring.” So now I’ve written it on a star.…
God of the broken-hearted, God of the broken heart, Receive our sighs too deep for words. In your time by your grace heal us. In this meantime hold us as we weep. Hold us and rock us with the rhythm of your own grief-struck quaking body. Amen (I wrote this several months ago when I…
I’m getting ready to copy, bind, and ship the Colored Pencil Prayers books! All orders that I receive by midnight on Friday, December 7, are guaranteed to ship by Monday, December 10–which should get the books to you in plenty of time for Christmas. [Please note that you can order books after December 7, they…
I am preparing for this upcoming Sunday’s worship service–the second Sunday of Advent. The Advent Conspiracy theme for this week is “Spend Less.” And I should give credit to parishoner and friend Thomas Heilke for the phrase “right relationship with the economy”–which he manages to use about once a month in his insightful…
I’m reading Christianity After Religion by Diana Butler Bass. She discusses the root of the term “religious”–religio. This, she says, means “finding a forgotten path of wonder and awe through the wilderness of human chaos and change.” (p. 97) Finding the path of wonder and awe . . . So do something wonderful today. Watch,…
Holy Loving Lovely One. You are near as breath. Enveloping as the crisp darkness– comforting and mysterious– that holds us in its depths this night. Each night. Praise be. Amen.
Spacious Faith 