Gaining a heart of wisdom
For the past several years, change has been the only constant in our Christmas celebration. Grown up sons marry, pack up their collection of treasured ornaments, and hang them on their own trees. College guys come home when they can and join in the fun on an intermittent schedule. Teens branching into individualized creativity grab… Continue reading Loving My Mid-Life Christmas
Christmas is the season of listening. We gather around the story of Luke 2, as it's read aloud. We hang sleigh bells on our Christmas trees and on our door knobs and enjoy the nostalgia for days when holiday traffic was all "over the river and through the woods." Carols ring out in the most unlikely… Continue reading A Season of Listening
My husband said, "Amen," and five voices immediately joined his as we sang our morning blessing song around the breakfast table. Seth, an overnight guest, looked from face to face with an expression bordering on terror until we sang the last note, and then blurted, "Do you do this often?" We did. Because we wanted… Continue reading We Need to Talk About Singing
When a pastoral search goes well, everyone wins. Last year when a soft-spoken lobsterman rose to his feet and challenged us at Spruce Head Community to seek a shepherd who would lead us and love us, we began praying and seeking to that end. The seeking and the finding has united us, and we are… Continue reading A Bundle of Letters on the Church’s Doorstep
In the month of December, the Christmas story often stands alone, lifted with huge parentheses out of the New Testament — maybe delivered in Linus’s hushed boy soprano, and then tucked away with the durable resin nativity set and the white twinkly lights until next year. It’s a great story, so it’s easy to see why… Continue reading Word Made Flesh — A Celebration of Reading for Advent
This has been a year of complicated math. With one son having spent a snowy spring semester plowing through an online Technical Math II class (every bit as bad as it sounds) and another presently working his way through geometry, we have had some fairly intense conversations around operations and theorems, but it's also been… Continue reading Musings — November 2017
Following the writings of the prophet Jeremiah has been a challenge this year. So far, it's been seventeen chapters of lament tempered by steadfast faith -- along with words of judgment interspersed with glorious promises of restoration. It shouldn't have surprised me then when Jeremiah 17 took a sharp curve in the road at verse… Continue reading Who in the World Am I? (Dating the Enneagram)
For those of us in the United States, this is a day of thanksgiving. However, gratitude is not circumscribed by geographic boundaries. Nor do we need a calendar’s permission to leave room for gratitude, so . . . LORD, we thank you! We confess that our hearts are often full of ourselves, for we mistake… Continue reading Thanksgiving Prayer
From her earliest days, Meadow Rue Merrill dreamed of adopting a child, and she longed to travel to Africa, even wrestling a promise from her husband that if she promised to marry him, he would not stand in the way of her going. Redeeming Ruth is Meadow's record of God's "yes" to her dreams -- and it… Continue reading When God Says “Yes”
Last week a huge windstorm felled both trees and power lines, leading to widespread power outages throughout the great state of Maine. By some miracle of grace, we came through the storm with our lights still burning, but my oldest son was without electricity for several days. Since he and his family came here to… Continue reading Blessing Management: Jayber Crow Discussion Group (Conclusion!)
Living Our Days 