Wondering Presbyterian

I just finished a sermon series on the psalms. One of the passages was Psalm 69, which is a lament psalm that cries out to God for help (“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.” -Psalm 69:1). It was a tough passage and I told the congregation from the sermon that it’s okay to admit you’re not okay. And sometimes these hard passages in the bible remind us that it’s okay to not be okay.             And then there are passages that just…don’t seem okay. Those passages that you read and think, “Thank God THAT story never comes up in the lectionary!” In an article from 2006, Barbara Brown Taylor calls these the “terror stories.” In her article, called “Preaching the Terrors: When Your Text Is Bad News,” Taylor wrote that the Bible is “a book about a sovereign God’s covenant with a chosen people, as full of holy terrors as it is of holy wonders, none of which we may avoid without avoiding part of the truth.”             That hit me in a raw way because I had just

      A few years ago, I went to a workshop on listening. I think I’m a pretty good listener, but it’s always good to work on listening skills. In the workshop, we had to find a partner. Each partner got to talk for two minutes while the other person listened. The workshop leader challenged us to just listen without making any kind of sounds at all. Not even the occasional “Mmhmm” sound! We were allowed to nod and were encouraged to maintain eye contact. It was a kind of active listening that I hadn’t experienced before; the idea of not making the designated sounds to show I’m listening was unexpected. It was a positive experience and when I’m listening now, I try to let my body language and eye contact show the “listening sounds” better than a verbal “mmhmm.”             Some people are really amazing listeners. Some people are amazing listeners because it’s embedded into them and some people learn amazing listening skills. Most of the time, I think I’m a good listener. And othe

Disclaimer: I know, I know. Who needs disclaimers?  But  this is a topic on my heart today and when there's a topic on my heart after a week of trying to come up with a different topic for a blog post and not being able to, I have to go with what's on my heart. The following is the stuff I've been thinking about. I do not intend it to be morbid...I encourage you to read on thoughtfully and consider where you are in your own thoughts about death.             I am not a fan of those times when my husband tells me that he will most likely die before me. Actually, “not a fan” isn’t even strong enough language for how I feel when he says that to me. Not that he says this a lot: but occasionally, we get on the topic of death and inevitably, this remark will show its ugly face.             My husband and I are both in our thirties and relatively healthy. Neither of us plan on kicking the bucket anytime soon, but death is a reality (just like taxes, I’m told). To that end, we’