Wondering Presbyterian

            Do you have an enemy?             Years ago, the BBC did a modern show about Sherlock Holmes called, appropriately, Sherlock (starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock and Martin Freeman as Watson). In the opening episode, Sherlock sits at a café table with Watson and Watson tells him about an encounter he had with a strange, intimidating man. Watson says, “Just met a friend of yours.”             “A friend?” asked Sherlock.             “An enemy.”             “Oh,” Sherlock nods more knowingly. “Which one?”             “Well, your archenemy, according to him. Do people have archenemies?”        ...

            I have a confession to make. I struggle to take communion 1 . I love presiding at the table. Serving communion is very meaningful for me. I take communion to people in nursing homes and hospitals or at home, and they always find communion very meaningful. I brought communion to a home-bound member once who had never had communion at home before, and he got tears in his eyes when he told me I was his first pastor to do that. It meant the world to him. I find tremendous meaning in being able to offer that as a pastoral care service. But when it comes to receiving communion, I struggle. When I’m in a worship service at a conference or a denominational meeting and they announce that it’s a communion service, I catch myself groaning inwardly. That happened again recently, and I decided it’s time to wonder why that is.             I can remember hearing people mumble...

My husband and I just celebrated our second wedding anniversary and he bought us a Virtual Reality system. We’ve done VR a couple of times at the mall, and I’m a huge fan. Not sure what it is about this that I love. There’s an underwater game that I play where I basically sit under water and watch fish. It’s incredibly meditative, but I have to be careful because if I sit there too long, I get a bad headache. At the end of the day, it might feel like I’m underwater, but I’m also still just looking at a screen. Not great for your eyes. My church has a vision team that is looking at the different realities of our congregation and our culture. Our recent conversations have been about generations. Most recently, we watched a webcast from the Barna group’s partnership with World Vision. They did a huge study on millennials – “the connected generation.” As a millennial myself, (there are many definition of millennials, but the most accepted definition is anyone born between 1981 and 1996)...