Wondering Presbyterian

There are moments when things in the universe line up too perfectly for it to mean anything other than God. In this story, it starts and ends with a book.             My husband and I binge-watched “Russian Doll” on Netflix. In the show, two characters keep reliving the same day and have to team up to figure out why and how to break the loop. The main character, Nadia, wants to give a book to her ex-boyfriend’s daughter: Emily of New Moon . As we watched the show, I thought to myself, Self: I have this book somewhere. I bought it at an antique mall in El Paso (IL) years ago. It’s a beautiful hardback copy and as I searched up and down for it, I realized a horrible truth: I probably decided since I hadn’t read the book, it was time to pass it on. Though I can’t remember specifically doing it, I can picture myself putting the book in the box to give to the church yard sale. But because of the show, I want to read the book.  ...

            Winter makes me nesty. I mean, it makes me want to just make a nest and hibernate. Or clean things. The two big projects looming over my husband and me this year are our basement and our garage. We’ve only been in the house for a year, so the unpacking list is still fairly long. It was about 9:30 at night not too long ago when I decided I would go tackle a basement box. At first, I wasn’t even sure the big blue bin was mine. I had to unbury it to even try to peak in it, but as soon as I saw the black graduation gowns, I knew they weren’t my husband’s. Inside this giant bin was a wealth of treasures, from my college and seminary graduation gowns (both black) to the stuffed animals, to a Safari Barbie doll and a smaller plastic bin with a bunch of old papers that my grandmother had saved. My mom found a bin for each of the seven grandchildren stuffed to the gills with the papers of our lives: newspaper clippings featur...

On February 23, I went to an all-day spiritual writing workshop at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. We spent some time free writing and going through the process of revising and re-seeing our work. I want to share with you what I wrote about the night before when my husband and I stood at a scenic overlook outside the city. A statue of the Virgin Mary stands across the street in the parking lot of Saint Mary of the Mount Parish, watching us as we stand at a railing overlooking the city. I wonder how many couples she has seen stand in this place. Has she had her fill of heartbreaks and hearts mended, of laughter and selfies? Is she still awed by this view, the sight beyond the railing? Perhaps she is why the street is called "Grand View." To stand there day after day and grandly view the lights of the city -- the blinking warnings on tower tops to airplanes and buildings painted in greens, blues, pinks, and yellows -- to stand and see the lights when they come on ...

        A few snow falls ago, I curled up with Netflix and binge-watched the show “The Good Place.” The premise of the show is this: there’s a woman named Eleanor who dies and goes to the Good Place. The problem is there’s been some kind of mix-up and she’s not supposed to be there. But, she doesn’t want to go to the Bad Place, so she tries to learn to be good: to earn her place there. At some point during her stay in the Good Place, she learns about this point system: each time you do something good, you get points. And when you do something not good, you lose points. Eleanor learns about the point ticker and, hoping that you can still earn points for the Good Place after death, she spends a whole day just doing good things: holding doors for people, saying nice things to people, etc. Later in the day she looks down at the ticker and she’s shocked to see that the number hasn’t changed. She’s still in the red. With the help of her companions, she realizes the prob...