What if the church’s job were to move people out the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?”

We are made for loving. If we don’t love, we will be like plants without water.

From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

“Here are the two best prayers I know: 'Help me, help me, help me' and 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

When I was preparing for this role, I honestly didn’t expect to feel as drawn in, to feel as connected to this community, these people, their traditions, their rites, as I have become. Here on Friday, September 17, as I wrap up this first installment of my now-extended length reflection, I have participated in a total of 5 services. Last night, driving home after the final Yom Kippur service, I couldn’t get the melodies out of my head. The Kedushah, the Avinu Malkeinu, and so many more. Their singing has burrowed deep into my conscious in a really special way. Maybe it’s because I haven’t participated in a chanted liturgy since Lent, 2019…

How can you or I share the “little light of mine”, from deep inside?

Why do we go on retreat? There is not a single answer to that question, but this year I find that going on retreat is necessary for a few reasons…

don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind?

Silence is a frightening thing

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.”

You Say, a musical offering by Lauren Daigle, performed and recorded by Sakhan Warren, Olin Johannessen, Ashley Wade, and Zach Jagentenfl.

In our too-much-exodus days,
we pray especially for all
who have fled their homes,
in these and so many other
fires, storms, floods,
in earthquake and warfare.

As St. John’s physically connects its home of spiritual worship with its place of more “family” togetherness let’s all be mindful of our world and strive…really strive…for global human connectedness.

It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets.