Wondering Presbyterian

Transcript of my sermon that I preached June 14, 2020 Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to look at your hands. Hands can be amazing things. There are 27 bones in the human hand. Your hands pushed you out of bed, got yourself breakfast, maybe got a family member breakfast. Your hands turned on your screen to watch worship. Your hands cleaned you and your hands maybe gently stroked the cheek of someone you love. Hands have certainly been used for terrible and violent things, but look at your hands. Give thanks for your hands, for the hands that write letters, type emails, draw pictures, wash dishes, clean up after your dog, planted a garden, and worked hard this week to do all the things that you needed to get done. Notice your hands. Notice the freckles and the wrinkles, the scratches or scars, the lines that maybe you notice for the first time. Notice the dry spots and think of a time when your hands hurt and maybe how it felt when someone asked you to do one more things w...

In the early 90’s, Disney introduced their television show, “Adventures in Wonderland.” The show follows the continuing story of Alice, who is able to step through her looking glass and visit her Wonderland friends whenever she chooses. Each episode began with Alice having an issue. Maybe it was trouble making a decision about something. Or maybe it was something she didn’t even realize was an issue, like the episode where she gossiped on the phone with a friend about a classmate who dropped his tray in the lunchroom, or another episode where she stole her sister’s perfume and accidentally spilled the whole bottle all over herself. Most of the time, it’s an issue Alice knows is an issue and she goes to Wonderland for time to think about it. She glances at her cat, Dinah, and steps through the mirror. Inevitably, her adventures with the Queen of Hearts, White Rabbit (who is a stellar roller blade star), the Mad Hatter, March Hair (what is a March Hair anyway? Oh. It’s an English idiom ...

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth." -John 1:14               I just finished reading Ron Chernow’s book,  George Washington: A Life . It was fabulous. If you are looking for a wonderful (and readable!) presidential biography, Chernow is among the top 5 authors to check out. Thinking about all the things that stand out to me the most about what I learned about George Washington in those 817 pages, my top three things are: 1)     He was totally obsessed with clothes. I’m not even kidding. He designed uniforms and custom suits for himself and for his soldiers  and  for his slaves! 2)     He was usually broke as a joke. Washington was not very good at living within his means and often had to threaten the people who rented his land just so he could collect their rent fees and pay his own bills....

Okay. I admit it. I've been procrastinating writing a blog entry on purpose. I've been putting it off because, quite honestly, I've been trying to take more breaks from being on a screen. I've been looking at screens a lot lately. And even though I have special lenses in my glasses now that protect my eyes from the blue light of screens, they don't really help the overall issue: screen fatigue. A lot of us have it. Students are in virtual school, employees are in virtual meetings. Working from home, so much of what I do involves a screen. Some days I log off one zoom meeting just to log into another zoom meeting. Ministry is so much screen these days, because it has to be. I connect to my people with a screen. Worship is through a screen. Then I'm reading a book on my phone's Kindle app, checking out online articles related to ministry, on my coloring app to try and "take a break from work" and... You get the point. It's a lot of screen. ...

The Tenth Doctor once said time isn’t quite like what we expect it to be like. He said, “People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff” (from the episode  Blink in Doctor Who). I’ve only ever experienced time as linear – I lived through middle school once and I DON’T ever have to do that again. Time, as a process, I think, as a law of nature, works in a linear way. But when it comes how time as how we experience emotions – I think it’s more complicated.              This week I’ve experienced a lot of grief. In the middle of quarantine, my dad gave us a health scare (he’s okay, for which I am VERY grateful), but my husband and I also lost two of our cats to illness in a span of three days. Grief is incredibly hard, and our fur babies are our real babies. They are family. I’m ...

I saw a picture online recently of a family. In the first panel, the family was scattered in the room, each person on his or her phone, no one looking at each other or interacting with each other (though they might have been texting each other from across the room…I hate to admit it, but my husband and I do that!). The caption for the first panel was, “Normal time.” In the second panel, people were outside. You could see people playing and walking; one couple was roller blading. The caption said, “During quarantine.” I find myself very aware of the reality of the picture. Most days, as an introvert, I cherish my time at home. I love what I do as a pastor, and then the way I recharge my own spiritual batteries is by having some quiet personal time. I journal, I read, I quilt, and I color. Now I’m in forced introvert time and I find myself…wanting to go to the mall.             Eek. Even typing that makes me cringe.  ...

I'm reading Ross Gay's book, "The Book of Delights." He set out to write a book capturing the daily delights he comes across. It's a joyful book that celebrates the little things, and I'm loving it. It's been a kind of devotional practice for me to read one or two of his entries (each mini essay is about a page, a page and a half long) at night before I go to sleep. And I read his essayettes in an actual physical paper copy of the book because holding the paper, for me, is a delight. I like the idea of the practice, of writing about a delight each day. Last year I started the practice of listing ten things each night for which I am grateful. I write them in my journal every night, even if I don't write anything else in the journal that day. The list varies and there are obvious repeats. Some days I struggle to come up with ten, but I always do, even if number ten ends up being, "I'm thankful that I have a bed to sleep in tonight and a husban...