Wondering Presbyterian

  I learned something today that I think is so cool. I was prepping for a children’s message. I had decided to talk about patterns and how Jesus follows a pattern: Jesus loves, Jesus is there. These are the two things about Jesus that are always true. Jesus loves and Jesus is there. I wanted to convey this in a children’s message, so I had a quilt and a pattern picked out to show everyone. Then I looked up the word “pattern” because I’m a word-nerd and I love etymology. I found out that the word “pattern” is from the Latin word “Patronus.”             Are you geeking out right now? Because I’m totally geeking out about this. I love love LOVE that the word “pattern” comes from the word for Patronus. If you’re a Harry Potter fan, you’ve definitely heard this word before. In the Harry Potter series, a Patronus is kind of like a spirit animal. Harry uses the Patronus to battle creatures called the Dementors. The word Patronus literally means “model” o...

11-13  All the people boomed out hurrahs, praising  God  as the foundation of The Temple of  God  was laid. As many were noisily shouting with joy, many of the older priests, Levites, and family heads who had seen the first Temple, when they saw the foundations of this Temple laid, wept loudly for joy. People couldn’t distinguish the shouting from the weeping. The sound of their voices reverberated for miles around.           -Ezra 3:11-13 (The Message)       I’m a little late with my blog post this half of the month because quite frankly, I didn’t know what to write about. I have so many different things on my mind that narrowing my focus down to one thing to write about seemed nigh impossible. But something I’ve been thinking about lately is this concept of “re-entry.” As the global pandemic continues and vaccines become more widespread (no, I haven’t gotten mine as of the writing of this entry) and we pus...

            I’m reading a book right now called   Intuitive Eating* . It’s a concept that rejects the diet culture and encourages people of all ages to get back in touch with their bodies as far as listening for hunger signals and eating based on how you feel (ie, whether you are hungry). It removes all the labels of “good” and “bad” from food, which is meant to move you away from associating food with guilt. My nutritionist recommended this book, and it has really hit a raw nerve in me that I didn’t realize was as raw as it is. I’ve never had a great relationship with food, so learning to get back in touch with my own internal “intuitive eater” is my new challenge.              One of the things I appreciate about the book is the movement away from number-based results. While numbers in blood work can reflect accurate health markers, the writers argue that some numbers – like weight – don’t actually accurat...

                Ash Wednesday is this week, which means we are heading into the season of Lent. A few years ago, someone told me Lent is very Catholic and we Presbyterians don’t need to observe Lent. I agree with part of that statement, but I think it’s only half true. Over the years, I’ve come to believe Lent is less about deciding what to give up or what to take on and more about just presence.               Lent has a lot of parts to it that I believe are important in our annual faith journeys. In our walks of faith, we have different milestones that happen once over the course of our lives. Baptism is a one-time event, even though we are encouraged to remember our baptisms daily. Confirmation* happens once, you are ordained once (we believe that once you are ordained as an elder, a deacon, or a pastor, you hold that title for the rest of your life, even i...

  Warning: This article may contain spoilers for the movie  Soul . Which you should watch and then come back and read this. I’ll wait.              A couple of weeks ago, I watched the new Disney Pixar movie,  Soul . Soul  is the story of a band teacher whose life-long dream is to be a jazz musician. The band teacher, Joe, wants nothing more than to sit at the piano on a stage and lose himself in the soul-moving-dance that is music. In a beautiful scene towards the beginning, Joe auditions to play a gig at a local night club and as he plays the piano, everything else around him fades away. He goes into a sort of trance that lets you know his whole self is  in  this music. He gets the gig of his life and on his way home, he falls into a manhole and ends up in a coma. The next thing he knows, he’s on a highway to the light but he doesn’t want to go just yet. He finds a way off the path towards the Gr...

             I can recall only one birthday when my parents hired a magician. He was a member of my church and we used to dog sit for him, so really he was also a family friend. I don’t really remember much about the experience, but I remember there were flowers. And I remember thinking magic was real.              I don’t know when we lose that sense of real magic. Every summer when America’s Got Talent comes back on TV, I watch the magicians and try to google how they do their tricks. How could they possibly make that disappear? Could they really change that into that? And the ones whose tricks are wrapped up in a bow with mental gymnastics the likes of which I could never begin to understand (looking at you, Clairvoyants!), forget it. There are moments when I still believe magic is real and moments when I believe it’s just smoke and mirrors. And yet, I wonder sometimes if smoke and mirrors aren’t all bad.  ...

                At the beginning of the year, I handed out cutouts of gold stars to the folks in my congregation. Each star had a different word written on it, and these were the “Star Words.” I had just heard about the concept of Star Words as an Epiphany practice. The basic premise is that as the Magi followed the star, we let the Star Word guide us into the new year. Maybe it’s a word that sticks with us all year and maybe it’s just a word we needed for that day. I know some people have kept their word visually present in 2020, and there were a small handful of stars returned to my office (anonymously, of course!)             My word was “serenity.” I keep the star near my desk in my office, though I admit since I’ve been working from home, I don’t see it much. But, since I am the keeper of the gold paper that was used to cut out the Star Words (a project that took my husband and me about t...