Minister’s Blog

I will be very glad to see you this Sunday, and in the coming weeks. It’s felt like a long time! I am also looking forward to our rituals, prayers, sweet silences, and singing together. It’s been a rough few months in our country and world–and in recent days the passing of Wendell Berry, Dolly Parton, and the glorious Gloria Steinheim, have only added to my general state of weepiness. As I get older, I have come to see that deep sorrow and great joy can, indeed, exist at the same time; for...

Happy June Church Family! Summer is almost here and with this comes a shift in rhythm at First Parish. Our month’s theme of Flourishing Together reminds me that all of us need rhythm shifts to thrive. My personal flourishing depends upon doing the work I love with you, and also putting it down from time to time. Following our Flower Communion worship service on June 21st, I won’t lead worship until September. Your spiritual flourishing on Sundays will come in the varied, soulful worship...

Something I love about congregational life is the sweet rhythm of a church year. May and June invite us to reflect on all that we have done to put our faith into action this past year–caring for so many souls within and beyond our walls; to look ahead and consider what is calling our names for our return to one another in the fall; and, especially, to slow down and prepare our bodies and spirits for the needed quieting that late spring/summer offers. Because we are a church, we work to...

My family and I found ourselves counting down the days to turn the calendar this year–it felt like a little celebration on Wednesday! It’s been a cold and shadowy winter and spring’s impending awakening sure does make me feel like a kid in a candy store. Walking by a crocus the other day had me beaming and skipping…finally, you’re here. April’s theme is Awakening, and I am looking forward to making this my mantra all month. This need not blot out or minimize the very real state of emergency...

The title, “The View from Here”, is something I borrowed from a colleague of mine who has used it in her church’s newsletter for several decades. It’s a great header, and a good reminder about what the ministry requires–a regular taking in of that wide, broad view. The theory of Adaptive Leadership, which many clergy adhere to, teaches that effective leaders know how to boogie down on the dance floor with those they serve and, with regularity, step away and get up on the balcony to take in and...

Greetings Friends, I continue to send my heartfelt thanks for your messages of care as I worked to recover from the flu this past week. I am glad to be back at church now, working to catch up on emails and to-do’s. Thank you for being patient with me as I find my way back to things. This month we will be working with the theme of Embodiment which will help us to consider what our bodies and beings are asking of us these days. From my vantage point, I know that grief is calling some of our...

Greetings Church Family, I pray that the holidays, in whatever way you spent them, brought you closer to some much-needed love and joy. I savored time away from chores, errands, and agendas to enjoy time doing puzzles, playing board games, and watching movies with my family, along with night walks in the woods (a favorite of Jason and I’s!) Often, it’s the sweetness of small things that bring me a feeling of gratitude and renewal–particularly in unsteady days like these. Returning to church...

Greetings Church Family! Welcome to the Season of Light–a time where millions of people around the world draw meaning from Advent, Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, and Kwanzaa. While these traditions vary greatly in belief and context they do have ‘light’ in common–in particular, the lighting of candles to represent life and hope in a time of sustained darkness. We are, of course, no strangers to shadowed times, for we are living through a collective disordering that has our nerves frayed. For...

Greetings Church Family, This month our theme is Abundance, which I’m looking forward to. This theme can feel challenging when the world feels so bleak. It takes a lot of spiritual muscle to face hard truths, while not succumbing to the dangers of scarcity thinking (the belief that resources like money, time, even love, are limited and a fear that there will never be enough.)  However, the practice of Abundance doesn’t turn us away from reality, it helps us see the fullness of it....

Over the summer I decided to memorize 5–10 of my favorite poems and prayers so that they could go with me everywhere. It became clear, quite quickly, that I was in too deep, and that memorization can be hard! In the end, I finished one: the Jerusalem Bible’s version of Psalm 23, which is near and dear to my heart. This endeavor taught me many things, one of which was that you really get inside a text when you try to memorize it. It also reminded me about worthwhile undertakings being less...