Wondering Presbyterian

  Some of this may sound familiar; I've written about the root of pattern before. I hope as you read this, you hear it anew and imagine it in a new way.             About fourteen years ago, I learned how to quilt. My mom is a quilter and I always swore I didn’t have the patience for it, but one day I wanted to make something and from that day on I was hooked. I do love to quilt. I enjoy the puzzle of putting fabric together and imagining how a pile of folded cloth can become something so completely different.             I admit I do better with a pattern. I like having the structure of a pattern. I like that the pattern tells me what to do next. There’s some safety in that, I guess.             Recently, I looked up the definition and etymology of “pattern.” It comes from a Latin word that if you are a Harry Pot...

                Have you heard of Phoebe 1 ? Very little is actually known about Phoebe, but she is a woman of valor mentioned in the Bible. We read about her in Romans. Paul writes, “I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a deacon of the church in Cenchreae 2 . I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been the benefactor of many people, including me” (Romans 16:1-2). That’s really all we know about her. She must have had some wealth to be a benefactor. She had some standing in the community, even as a woman (almost unheard of back then!). And she was a deacon.             Phoebe is the only named female deacon in the Bible. The fact that Paul “commends” her to the Romans might be that she was even trusted and able-bodied enough to carry Paul’s letter to the Romans  physically...

           I was working on a quilt recently and, as often happens while I'm quilting, I had a churchy thought. I was cutting fabric and I found myself thinking about how well the process of quilting serves as a metaphor for so many things. Like stewardship.             Stewardship probably lands in the top ten list of words that seem extra churchy. It’s somewhere under atonement and tithe and fellowship. Simply put, stewardship is how we take care of something that isn’t necessarily ours, but it’s in our care for a little bit. In our church, we believe stewardship is how we care for whatever has been entrusted to us using our time, talents, and treasures. As I was working on this quilt recently, I was thinking about how quilting encompasses all three of those things and thus serves as the perfect illustration for how stewardship works.   Time            ...

 I looked at my blog this morning and realized I haven't updated it since August. It's now the second week of October and I have to wonder: where in the world did September go?  I'll just be honest: I've been tired. I've been teetering on the edge of burn out, noticing that I've been spending an awful lot of time doing things that I really could delegate to someone else. I am leaving for vacation in a couple of days and as I look forward to heading north to the land of Vermont, I want to encourage you. Here are ten things I'm learning about self-care that I hope help you refill your own wells. They are in no particular order. First: You're doing just fine. Whatever you're doing, give yourself some grace. We're all tired. This pandemic has worn us all out. The headlines and constant reminders of how social injustice affects all of us is exhausting. There is a lot of work to do on all the fronts, but one person cannot do all of the things. Someone ...

            A few weeks ago, I came in to work and it was raining in my office. Well, not raining exactly. Rain wasn’t coming down from the ceiling. It was actually coming up from my office air/heat unit. Like the geyser Old Faithful, water spouted out of the unit and created a lake on the floor. Water soaked the red armchair, whose dye seeped into not just my carpet, but the carpet going into the main office. My curtains were stained, the closet door was soaked (thank God the closet door was closed!), and everything that was in the office was suddenly not in my office. I am so thankful all my books stayed dry, as well as my clergy clothing (robes, stoles, etc.).             But as much as it is frustrating to have my office in complete disarray, I am not writing for sympathy. I’m writing because I am so thankful for people in my church who stepped up to help deal with the problem. From the ...