This responsive reading was originally written for an Interfaith Service of Prayer and Healing following the 2020 election. It was a Zoom event planned and led by my home church (Washington Park UCC, Denver), and First Congregational UCC and Temple Beth Shalom, both of Ocala, Florida. It was inspired, in… Read More »Imagine! A Prayer for Community
I have a pair of earrings carved from the found antlers of a moose in Alaska. Thinking about these delicate pieces of jewelry inspired this poem. And, as always, it seems my thoughts turn back to community, and the need to carve out hope together. And that we all have… Read More »Carve Out Hope
Wide open to the world, your love overflows. I’ll admit it, I’m really, really partial to dogs (I am starting to like cats a lot, though, but I am basically a dog person). Labs, shelties, goldens, chihuahuas, dachshunds – you name it. Days before the 2020 presidential election, Peter and… Read More »Angel Unaware
Church has always had such powerful images for connectedness – Body of Christ, people of the table, covenant, communion of saints, for example. They transcend both time and space. They’re who we are. This reading celebrates and affirms our connectedness to all creation, and offers another image for our reflection… Read More »For Comfort and Calling
This Call to Worship explains just why we gather as a community of faith. It talks about work, and healing, and community, and what we are to be about. Together. We are part of something so much greater than ourselves, but we each have gifts and roles to play in… Read More »Called Together
Did you ever notice that, in the Bible, it seems like anytime angels make themselves known to a human, the first words they say are, “Fear not.” That doesn’t strike me as a very realistic expectation. A little fear in the face of this strange and divine presence is not… Read More »The Qualifier Angel
During National Poetry Month’s 2020 “Poem a Day” challenge, the prompt for one day was to write a Haiku variant that consisted of three lines – with one, two, three words. “Vigil” was the result – something stark and simple, like standing outside the courthouse or detention center or state… Read More »Vigil
On Easter weekend, I got to do a baptism for a friend’s young daughter. I wanted to celebrate the value and worth of this adorable and lively child, in a world that would try to deny her value over and over as a person of color and a female. I… Read More »Baptismal Vows for Parents/Godparents
Trust the science! I was never much good at science, but here goes: Quantum physics somewhere along the line has discovered that the “building blocks” of matter (discreet, separate) are not really blocks anymore. They’re waves or fields, connected, not discrete and separate. Several years ago I read two books… Read More »Proclamation and Confession of Faith
We love in the face of deathIf we can do that, we can do anything During the early days of COVID, there were stories abounding about how we could hear the birds again, since traffic noise was down. How clean the streets were. How the water was clearer. I wrote… Read More »This Is What We Do