Seeking Authentic Voice

Mary Beth, over at RevGals offers this Friday Five: 1. If you suddenly received a ton of money and could open up some kind of store or service just for the pleasure of having it (assume it wouldn’t have to be too financially successful!), what would it be? I'd offer holistic health care that paid the therapists a living wage and made the treatments available to everyone. We'd have yoga, massage therapy, acupuncture, Reike, shiatsu, chiropractic, sauna and steam rooms, and a whirlpool, health classes on vitamins and diet, meditation classes, religion and spirituality resources, and a tea room where one could eat a simple healthy meal, drink delicious tea, and read. 2. What service or store that no longer exists do you miss most? I can't think of anything. However, what I wish for is a good old fashioned vegetarian restaurant - although we have lots of veggie options of the Middle Eastern variety, I'd love a vegetarian restaurant like we had in Chicago: Blind Fait

A reflection on the readings for Christ the King, Last Pentecost The other day I was doing some work around the church building. It was quiet and I was all alone. Suddenly I heard a scrambling sound and went to investigate. Down the hall from my office, I came upon a squirrel. The squirrel froze in place and looked me in the eye. Without comment the squirrel turned and bounded down the hall, tail switching. He took a left toward the entrance to the parking lot, and then because the doors were closed, circled through Bobs office and then back down the hall the other way toward the church. Following it I closed interior doors along the way, minimizing its options.   I opened the exterior doors hoping the fresh air would guide it outside. I finally arrived in the church where I found the squirrel hiding under a pew in the choir loft. It scampered past me down the stairs and into the church hiding under pews in the front couple of rows.

Deb, over at the RevGals blog offers this post-Thanksgiving Friday Five: .... let's think about leftovers today.. 1. What has SURPRISED you in this season of Thanksgiving? My husband and are parents of grown children. Our daughter is 24 and our son is 20. Our daughter lives 300 miles away and is involved with a man who may become her life-partner. As a result she needs to share the holidays with his family and with ours. I am taking the approach my mother-in-law always took - go easy on yourself. Don't spread yourself so thin trying to engage with ALL of family that you can't enjoy any of it. That means that this year she and Keith did not come here for any part of the Thanksgiving weekend. Instead she went to Keith's family and then stop by and visited some extended family (her aunt - my husband's sister, and cousins). And, it was okay. We called each other via "Face Time on our iPads and talked for a bit. My husband, son, and I spent the day together a

  Today will be a simple day for me and my family. At the moment I am nursing a sore throat, sitting by a fire in the fireplace and sipping coffee with raw honey. Our daughter will not be here, she and her boyfriend have to go back to work and time is limited. So, they will spend the day with Keith's family. My husband, son, and I will head out later this morning to cut down a fresh Christmas tree. I have already made an apple/pear/cranberry/blueberry/raspberry pie and a pumpkin pie. The onion and celery and fresh sage are ready for the stuffing. I made the cranberry relish and baked the sweet potatoes. So after we get the tree all we have to do is put the turkey in and make mashed potatoes, and dinner is ready. Later tonight we'll decorate the tree. Mostly we'll just enjoy the day. A couple of quotes and a prayer for this Thanksgiving Da y. Where ever you are may your heart be filled with gratitude and peace. Johannes A. Gaertner To speak gratitude is courteous

A week ago I was immersed in a restful Pre-Advent retreat with two other clergy-women friends. The three of us decided we really needed some time away, time to rest and just be together. We brought in my Spiritual Director who offered us some gentle yet thought provoking reflections on Adventy-themes: emptiness, anticipation, vulnerability, waiting, fullness, birth. We went to a retreat center about two hours away, spent two nights there, appreciated someone else cooking the meals and cleaning up afterward. We drank tea, colored mandalas, prayed, walked, talked, enjoyed a glass of wine together. Of course, as usual, the return was full - each of us launched back into church life and family life and pre-holiday plans. I have barely been able to catch my breath. So it is, the life of a parish priest. I'm slowly getting back to the book on philosophy (Philosophy:Something to Believe In by Richard Paul Janaro, Glencoe Press,1975). I am determined to read the entire book and have a

What is it about 2am that beckons me; pulls me out of a deep sleep? Three nights in a row the hour calls me to awaken. Not from anxiety, my usual insomnia. More like a check in. How is the state of your soul? How goes it with your spirit? True, some anxiety in me. From busyness and rushing and always preparing to offer some piece from myself - a teaching, a sermon writing or a meal. It seems, however, these three nights of a crescent moon are just a time to waken and make a tiny assessment - stretch my legs and toes try not to wake too much, just slightly conscious, and give thanks. Thanks for breath, and peace, and retreats with colleagues. And joy in little things. 2am beckons me. it's rather funny three mornings in a row. So I'll not make more of it than it is. Just accept it as some kind of gift or request or awareness. Before too long I'm asleep again, morning sun comes and another day begins. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I was nine years old when my parents finally relented and arranged for me to be baptized.   I wanted to be baptized because I yearned to belong to a community of faith that I knew and loved. I wanted to be part of my ancestry and heritage. My uncle baptized me with full immersion in a font the size of a swimming pool, dunking me three times into the deep water. Years later my family and I left that church and I found myself without a faith community. That was okay for a while – I was a teenager and then a college student and it was after all the 1970’s – a lot of cultural change was happening and I was trying to find my way through it. By the time I was 31 I was married with a new born baby. My husband was raised Roman Catholic, and it was important to him that we have our precious baby baptized immediately. So we entered baptism prep classes at the local Roman Church and had her baptized at six weeks of age. By the time our son was born four years later we were ac

 A few days ago I wrote about my pursuit into the study of philosophy. I am reading, for the first time, a book I purchased at least a decade ago. “Philosophy: Something to Believe In” was written by Richard Paul Janaro and it seems to be a text book for a community college course. It was published in 1975. The end of the first chapter summarizes his thesis: “Philosophy is good for humanity because it is the practice of asking questions and developing the art of reflective thinking in order to understand something about what we believe and why. Philosophy is the discipline of reflecting upon the consequences of human action and the sense of responsibility which the social nature of humanity seems to require. He posits the notion that many of our beliefs exist “just because we must have belief….The act of believing, he writes, is a form of experience bringing about its own peculiar and profound pleasures. Even the momentary anguish of confusion, of knowing what to bel