Wondering Presbyterian

                As a pastor, I do a decent amount of visits to homes, nursing homes, and hospital rooms. I find the one-on-one meetings meaningful, though some visits are arguably harder than others. I find visits especially hard when the person I visit doesn’t have family nearby to visit them. Loneliness is a very real emotion, which is why it’s so important to me to at least let a person know that their church thinks about them and loves them.                Families are complicated, and the reality is that visits aren’t always feasible. It gets even more difficult when the visitee (my word. Feel free to use it!) struggles to communicate. Long-distant family members may have a hard time reaching out to loved ones that can’t talk on the phone. Some loved ones don’t even know what a phone   is  anymore.   Not every person I visit knows who I am, even after I intro...

 Last week I was on vacation in the Midwest. I lived in the Midwest for seven years, and I've been back a few times since I moved four years ago. The thing that struck me in the Midwest, as it always does, is how much sky you can see. You can see for miles and miles. That song, "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" was written by someone who has driven in parts of the country like the Midwest. The cloud-scapes of the Midwest take my breath away. I love seeing all the windmills and wondering just how far away I am from the water towers that I can see along the horizon.  I live on the East coast now and I can't see quite as far. I love where I live. The mountains are beautiful. We have some amazing views in this area. There are moments when I drive up the mountain on my way home and I drive right into a cloud. I wonder if I'm driving out of Narnia or into it. I can't always see as far as I might want to, but I've learned to appreciate and love the views I do ...

            I heard something recently that bothered me in a way that I didn’t really expect. My husband and I were in store and a couple of women were talking to an employee about facial masks. The two women were not wearing masks and the employee told them she agreed with them; she did not ask them to mask up. And the women started going on about how wearing the masks is a “sheep mentality.” You just go with the herd, regardless of facts, and don’t pay attention to anything except fear. And I didn’t say anything to them (because I’m not that person in a store), but I thought of something in my head later.              We’re all sheep. We might belong in different parts of the pen, but we’re all sheep.              And I wonder what she might have said if I had thought of it then and if I had decided to say it out loud to h...

  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...